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Teach Kids Business Sense Early, Change Their Lives Forever | Greenlight eliminates a lot of struggles. What is it, and how does it work? It’s a debit card for kids. There is a small monthly fee. It’s less than a cup of good coffee per month, for up to five kids, and eliminates most of our pain points. Our bank account is tied to their accounts so that we can automate money transfers from our account onto their debit cards. Kids can check the app on their mobile or computer to see that their payment has been received.
While you can automate payments every Saturday, for instance, we’ve elected to stop the automation. The kids get to make a payment request equal to the fee we’ve previously agreed upon for the work they’ve completed and whether they deserve full or partial payment for the timeliness of a job well done. Extra accountability, if you ask me, for kids to learn how the real world works. Parents can pay the request or decline to pay it if they feel it is different than expected.
Gone are the days of running to the ATM for cash or raiding the penny bank so kids can hold bills and coins in their hands. Our economy is mostly shifting toward electronic forms of currency, even though financial expert Dave Ramsey says, “Cash is still king.”
Final Thoughts
Paying kids for household chores or allowance can be a burden, but it doesn’t have to be stressful. Make kids accountable for doing good work on time by requesting payments for the work they do.
Shopping is straightforward because kids use their own debit card, instead of paying parents back when they forget their money at home. When you travel, kids can use their debit card anywhere a MasterCard can be used.
Stress about money falls away, and kids either do their work or don’t get paid.
I’ll bet you know some adults who can benefit from these principles. Instill family money values in kids early and watch them grow into entrepreneurs who earn 25% more than the general population.
Foster business knowledge in kids and watch them succeed in life. | https://medium.com/publishous/teach-kids-business-sense-early-change-their-lives-forever-684fee7b029b | ['Nicole Akers'] | 2020-09-09 13:48:37.114000+00:00 | ['Travel', 'Advice', 'Life Lessons', 'Parenting', 'Entrepreneurship'] |
Kick-off learning process — First Day in the team | Image source: Google images
Hi there, I have worked with many organizations in my software testing career but I still cherish my first day at my first Company.
The memory of joining my first team as a ‘fresher in Testing’ in my first company is still alive in my eyes like it has happened yesterday. Being unaware of the work culture, the work process, the team, and my manager, I was intimidated by the whole situation. I remember it was day 1 at the office. I had reached 15 minutes prior to 9:00 O’clock in the morning ( Punctual person) and greeted everyone whomever I met. I exchanged casual Hi, some warm smiles, and came back to my workstation (which had a sticky note on it that said my name) to check what I was supposed to do.
A couple of hours went into setting up the system, calling the support desk to provide access to company-specific sites, or creating an account so that we can access the URLs on daily basis. Some leisure time was spent sipping coffee twice/thrice in a day and exploring the office. It was a huge campus. Then, my manager came over.
To my surprise, she was a lady manager. I was so impressed and at the same time, felt empowered and motivated to see her being my manager. She called me and two other teammates to a conference room. She then introduced herself and asked for our introduction as well. She asked us to tell her how we were feeling on day 1.
I, confidently said — Hi, My name is Mukta Sharma. I am an M.C.A degree holder. I am very excited to work here. I am very nervous. My heart is beating so fast that I am afraid it can come out. To this, she replied with a smile on her face: “Welcome Aboard”! And, then started explaining the process in the organization.
She had designed a diagram on the whiteboard and explained the test process step by step. Her communication skills were at par. I wished to speak like her at that moment. She did not forget to mention the different team names and people’s name like who was doing what job in the specific project which was assigned to me. She also gave the POC names if we had any queries or needed any further clarification.
She encouraged us (3 of us) to ask questions from day1 if we do not understand anything so that we should not face any blockers. She made it a very smooth process overall and we were confident that we can do our job with pride and passion.
The entire day went by in learning many new things about the company, process, work culture, test process, etc… I checked the time. It was around 4:30 PM. We (myself with the other 2 team members) shut down our systems and came back home. The day ended beautifully.
All of this happened ten long years ago. There were many first days in other companies but I never felt the same. Coz with every other company, I became a better version of myself than I was yesterday.
My learnings from day 1:
Be Confident. Ask Questions. Do not feel timid. Take initiative. Talk to people. Say Hi Take a genuine interest in everything. Listen and Understand Take notes of important things Be at your best.
Your second, third, and all proceeding days will be more productive than this.
I wish you all good luck with your first day on the team. I would end the topic by saying –
Just “Be Yourself” and “Be Honest with your work”
Thank you for reading my story! Signing off! | https://medium.com/@muktaqa12/kick-off-learning-process-first-day-in-the-team-3ae54e4ceb63 | ['Mukta Sharma'] | 2021-07-06 17:31:24.835000+00:00 | ['Testing My Story', 'Testing', 'Kickoff', 'First Day At Work', 'Learning And Development'] |
Caring for Animals Can Help Heal Emotional Wounds | As the founder and owner of one of the nation’s most forward-looking therapeutic boarding schools, L. Jay Mitchell directs the work of Greenbrier Academy for Girls, based on the therapeutic model of “applied relationality” that he co-developed. His extensive experience in the field of mental and emotional health includes his development of a variety of programs for youth. L. Jay Mitchell and his team work to make Greenbrier a place where young women can continue their education while working through conflicts via a full range of creative and skill-building programs, including the animal-fostering program.
Researchers have long realized that taking on the responsibility of caring for an animal can help young people grow in their ability to give and receive trust, respect, and compassion in relationships with other human beings. Spending time with animals can reduce feelings of loneliness and isolation, help youth better cope with grief and trauma, and develop a greater sense of bonding as a member of a community.
The Greenbrier animal-fostering program gives students the opportunity to practice their growing skills of connection and character through the nurturing relationships they develop with the dogs and cats they care for. One student, who went on to plan a veterinary medicine career after working with cats in the program, noted that whenever she was experiencing difficult times, the cats were there to let her know she was needed and loved. | https://medium.com/@ljaymitchell/caring-for-animals-can-help-heal-emotional-wounds-cdc1ef973e01 | ['L Jay Mitchell'] | 2020-12-24 06:49:05.966000+00:00 | ['Animals'] |
Sampling Large Graphs in PyTorch Geometric | Sampling Large Graphs in PyTorch Geometric
Graph Deep Learning techniques on large graphs
Sometimes we encounter large graphs that force us beyond the available memory of our GPU or CPU. In these cases, we can utilize graph sampling techniques. PyTorch Geometric is a graph deep learning library that allows us to easily implement many graph neural network architectures with ease. The library contains many standard graph deep learning datasets like Cora, Citeseer, and Pubmed. But recently there’s been a push in graph open datasets to use large scale networks like the Open Graph Benchmark (OGB) [3]. In OGB, the various datasets range from ‘small’ networks like ogbn-arxiv (169,343 nodes) all the way up to ‘large’ datasets like ogbn-papers100M (111,059,956 nodes). Maybe ogbn-arxiv can fit in memory if you are simply doing a node classification with a small GCN or something, but try anything beyond this or use a medium to large dataset in OGB and you might have to resort to sampling the graph.
There are various ways to sample a large graph and I will attempt to cover two of the prominent methods.
NeighborSampler
Sketch of bipartite graphs from 3-layer Neighborhood Sampler
2. GraphSAINTSampler
Sketch of subgraph sampler from a GraphSAINTSampler mini-batch
The NeighborSampler class is from the GraphSAGE paper, Inductive Representation Learning on Large Graphs [2]. If you haven’t used SAGEConv before, you can think of it as learning a function that outputs node embeddings based on the neighborhood of a node rather than learning all of the node embeddings directly. This makes it particularly useful for inductive tasks as you can pass the GNN nodes that it has never seen before.
I sketch an abstract view of a 3-layer GNN’s NeighborSampler with equal sizes below where each layer is broken into a bipartite graph neighborhood sample.
Sketch of 3-layer GNN with Neighborhood Sampling
I attempt to sketch the source nodes in blue and the target nodes in red. As you can see, the target nodes also have self-loops so they are represented on the left and right sides of the bipartite graph. Here is what the code looks like:
train_loader = NeighborSampler(data.edge_index, node_idx=train_idx,
sizes=[15, 10, 5], batch_size=1024,
shuffle=True, num_workers=12)
sizes specifies the number of neighbors to sample for each source node. Imagine starting with the set of nodes we want to compute embeddings for (these are the final red nodes in layer 3 of the image above). Then we compute all of the samples as specified by the hyperparameters and ultimately it is returned to us — in reverse. This means that as we go through all of the layers, we end up with only the node embeddings we are interested in at the end.
Note: Node IDs in each mini-batch are the original node IDs from the larger graph. This sampler does not sample subgraphs per se, but neighborhood samples to learn an aggregator function.
From the GraphSAGE example in PyTorch Geometric on the ogbn-products dataset, we can see that the train_loader consists of batch_size , n_id , and adjs .
for batch_size, n_id, adjs in train_loader:
...
out = model(x[n_id], adjs)
...
n_id is all of the node IDs of every node used in the sampling procedure, including the sampled neighbors and source nodes. By passing our model x[n_id] we are isolating the node feature vectors of only those nodes used in this batch’s computation. There are 3 adj in adjs which consist of an edge_index , e_id , and size . So in our forward pass of the SAGE model in PyTorch Geometric we have:
def forward(self, x, adjs):
for i, (edge_index, _, size) in enumerate(adjs):
x_target = x[:size[1]]
x = self.convs[i]((x, x_target), edge_index)
if i != self.num_layers - 1:
x = F.relu(x)
x = F.dropout(x, p=0.5, training=self.training)
return x.log_softmax(dim=-1)
Now you can see that the three bipartite graphs in adjs are each passed to the three convolutional layers respectively.
One possible downside of this approach is that we are not actually sampling subgraphs for each batch from the training data. The sampler tries to imitate a GNN convolving across the training dataset network instead of taking actual samples at each iteration. This can be beneficial so as not to bias your training loops, but if you are doing something beyond simple classification or link prediction I have encountered some issues with indexing. However, in another light this approach could be a benefit compared to subgraph sampling since we reduce the bias of the training data.
GraphSAINTSampler allows you to work with actual subgraphs of the original training dataset and re-writes the node IDs from 0 to n where n is the number of nodes in the subgraph.
The GraphSAINTSampler parent class has three child classes: GraphSAINTNodeSampler, GraphSAINTEdgeSampler, and GraphSAINTRandomWalkSampler. Each of these classes use their respective sampling schemes to compute the importance of nodes, which translates to a probability distribution for sampling [5]. This initial sampler is like a pre-processing step that estimates the probability of a node v in V and an edge e in E being sampled. That probability is used later as a normalization factor on the subgraph [4].
Here is an example of the GraphSAINTRandomWalkSampler in the graph_saint example in PyTorch Geometric.
loader = GraphSAINTRandomWalkSampler(data, batch_size=6000,
walk_length=2, num_steps=5,
sample_coverage=100,
save_dir=dataset.processed_dir,
num_workers=4)
Keep in mind that the loader may not load the entire dataset depending on how you set the hyperparameters. The batch_size hyperparameter is the number of walks to sample per batch. For example, with the Citeseer dataset and batch_size = 1 , walk_length = 1 , and num_steps = 1 we get 1 data sample with 2 nodes. With batch_size = 10 we get 1 data sample with 20 nodes. With batch_size = 100 we get around 200 nodes — which may change at each iteration i.e.189, 191, etc. The num_steps hyperparameter is the number of iterations per epoch. So if we increase num_steps to 2 the number of nodes grows to around 380, with a batch_size = 100 and walk_length = 1 . The walk_length hyperparameter refers to the length of each random walk for the sampler and the results of the number of returned nodes will vary widely depending on the assortativity of your network. This actual compiles a C++ implementation (and subsequently cuda implementation) of a random walk on the sparse tensor representation from PyTorch Geometric’s torch_sparse library. See the PyTorch tutorial on extending TorchScript with custom C++ operators for more on this.
Number of nodes in GraphSAINT data loader for various hyperparameters on Citeseer dataset
One of the most important aspects of the GraphSAINT paper is the computation of the normalization statistics to reduce bias in each subgraph sample. The GraphSAINTSampler computes these statistics which is partly controlled by the sample_coverage hyperparameter. The resulting statistics are returned as an edge_norm attribute on the data object. We can modify the edge_weight attribute before the forward pass of our graph neural network with the edge_norm attribute. | https://towardsdatascience.com/sampling-large-graphs-in-pytorch-geometric-97a6119c41f9 | ['Mike Chaykowsky'] | 2020-10-12 18:59:48.372000+00:00 | ['Engineering', 'Deep Learning', 'Machine Learning', 'Big Data', 'Graph Neural Networks'] |
Charles Heather: Part 1 | Quote from Charles Heather regarding the #Geostandards
Behind every project are it’s members. Geoblocks and our initiative the Geostandards have deep roots in the mining industry. As our previous article mentioned how Geblocks was created, we invite you to read a series about our founder Charles Heather and how his experience combined with John Griffin’s business acumen is going to help create a new, unique asset class.
Charles Heather was born and raised in Zimbabwe where he developed a passion for nature and the environment from a very young age. Fascinated by geology and flight, it comes as no surprise that he should end up working both in Aviation and Minerals Exploration.
Having experienced a great deal of success in both areas Charlie eventually found himself gravitating towards Latin America including in particular, Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela.
Charlie and John Griffin developed a close friendship through Charlie’s brothers entertainment business aptly named the Heather Brothers, through their work in the West End writing and producing musicals. John and Charlie embarked on several adventures together finding themselves in the deepest darkest jungle regions looking for various precious metals and gemstones. It was on just such an adventure that they both met Luciano Bourges and became great friends. | https://medium.com/geoblocks/charles-heather-part-1-e51c0e9a4cd9 | ['Ali Datoo'] | 2019-06-09 12:28:13.386000+00:00 | ['Mining', 'Founder', 'Sto', 'Blockchain', 'Exploration'] |
Sitting in Silence | The cemetery was always cold. I could go there in the middle of the day with the warm golden rays of the sun hitting my face, but the slightest breeze would make me feel the need to grab a blanket from my car. However, it was not a physical cold that I needed warmth to overcome. The cold was more of a mental state in which I was trapped. and I could not seem to escape the prison that was in my own head. The cold made me feel so alone, but talking about it was not an option, for it would make me seem weak. As I would sit on the grass and look up to the deep blue abyss, I would think to myself, “why is it so cold?” I would simply be answered by a bird chirping or maybe even another gust of the cold autumn wind. I did not mind the silence though, as it was calming. Sitting out on that crisp grass -sitting so long I undoubtedly left my impression in it- I felt at peace, as though nothing in this world could harm me more than life already had. For a while, I would sit in the incorruptible air and just breathe. As my chest would collapse from the lack of air, my worries would go with it.
After a while of sitting in the cold silence, it would then be time for me to do what I had come to do. I would sit up next to the little brown spot on the grass and talk. I usually started with “Hey Grandpa, how was your week?” I waited for a response, but I was met with silence. I knew he would come, but I needed to give him time. Within a few minutes of sitting in silence, the little, crimson insect would emerge from the paint soaked sky and land on my knee. At first I would be careful not to disturb it with my breath as it may use those gorgeous crimson wings to fly away, but after a while, I would speak softly to my grandpa. We would talk about how I had received Rotary Student of the month for September, and how I had to pay for new tires on my car for the first time. I could imagine hearing the insect speak with grandpa’s soft raspy voice, asking me if I had a tire pressure gauge in my car, which I answered with a “yes” because grandma had given me a little grey one a few weeks prior. Talking to this little insect and to the little white box in the ground made me feel like a crazy person most of the time. This crazy feeling would make me remember how cold it was to feel alone, trapped by the emotions in my head.
The cold was a numbness that I could not figure out how to overcome. I could feel a tear trickle down my cheek as I pictured myself walking across that stage at graduation. Then the vision would stop as I looked at the little brown spot on the grass, and I would remember that my grandpa would not be in attendance. Graduation is something that I have been looking forward to, and I wanted to be able to share that moment with him. I think that he would be proud, and I think that if I could just have one last conversation with him maybe the cold would go away, maybe I could finally feel something. Anxiously I sat there with the warm sun hitting my face, and I knew that talking to my little butterfly should make me feel warm, as if someone were sitting there with me. That warm feeling never came to sweep away the cold. The cold was always there, and I began to wonder if maybe I was actually alone. I knew deep down that I was not, but I still sat in the silence overcome by the cold. Unlike my family who loved to talk, almost as if the emotions would spill from their mouths like water from a fire hydrant, I was different. For me, I would much rather be swept up by the silence because in my eyes emotions were a vulnerability: A vulnerability I knew I was exposing more and more since I had lost my grandpa, so I stayed where I would be safe, engulfed by the silence. It wasn’t until I looked up at the monstrosity of a tree that lurked over the neighboring plots that I realized something.
The tree stood so galiently over the grey cemetery as if maybe it had been placed there to protect the people. I could tell that the tree, a lot like me, had been through a lot but was still able to stand tall. The trunk looked like it had been hit a few too many times by the sharp blades of the mower, no matter it still towered over the plots. However, the emerald leaves were beginning to look very heavy hanging from the branches. The rustling of its branches dared to disturb the deafening silence that I was sitting in, almost like the tree had something to tell me, and it was just waiting for me to listen. The tree began by showing me how the bitter chill of the fall air had begun to take its leaves, and how the cold was much more than a temperature that I could read on my car gauge. The cold was buried deep in what I thought was my warm soul. The leaves were being stripped away and began to expose a very small, frail wooden figure. Upon each visit here the tree would become less and less recognizable until the frost was upon us and there were no leaves left. On my last visit, I worried that much like the tree, I was beginning to lose my leaves and allowing my vulnerability to show, and when my vulnerability was exposed, I too may be trapped in the neverending, piercing cold.
Longing for the warmth, I began to express my emotions not only to the tree but to my mother as well. My fear of being trapped in the cold forever began to vanish when the warm weather of the spring emerged, and I watched as those emerald green leaves began to appear once again, hanging from those obnoxiously loud branches. Even though the tree had once been a frail and small figure in the cold, it persevered and rose once again, taking back its gallant post as a vital asset to the cemetery. The leaves had come back after a long winter, and it was as if they had never left. The tree spoke to me one final time, and I learned that the cold is buried deep in everyone. However, it is how we chose to deal with the cold that truly matters. The tree needed a break from holding all of the leaves, so once a year it allowed itself to drop all of the stress of the leaves and break down. Then, when the time came, and the tree had regained its strength, it would be ready to hold all of the leaves again. The tree had taught me that I could do the same by taking all of my emotions and letting them run free. I could let my emotions spill like water from a fire hydrant, and it would not make me vulnerable or weak. After a while my leaves began to return, and I was starting to feel like myself again.
There are a great many things that I learned from sitting in that cemetery, one of the most important being that the cold should not be feared. Even though I am stricken with grief right now, the tree has taught me that like the cold, my grief will also pass. I will one day be able to reclaim the happiness I felt that I had lost when my grandfather left. The cold would always be there, but I began to accept and appreciate it. There is nothing wrong with wanting the cold to leave, but accepting it is an important part of the challenge. The silence I adored so much started to feel like a burden that I would extinguish on the tree, and I knew that I needed to talk about my cold. I did not have to feel or be alone anymore because I had so many people who loved me from here on Earth and from up above. The cemetery in my eyes became the place where I was able to find myself again, and. I was even starting to appreciate the cold and relish in the noise. | https://medium.com/@mrwescott14/sitting-in-silence-1569fdcf6406 | ['Madison Wescott'] | 2020-12-18 21:22:01.935000+00:00 | ['Love', 'Silence', 'Loss', 'Dispair'] |
Making AI More Accessible | According to McKinsey, a lack of understanding of and strategy for AI is still the greatest barrier to its adoption in most organizations. People still often think about AI as science fiction, not as a tool that they can use to drive growth. Other organizations fear that leveraging their data more effectively would require data practices likely to turn consumers off.
The lack of general understanding and accessibility holds the field back and hurts many businesses that could benefit from more strategic deployment of AI. It’s a shame because AI can help businesses better meet evolving customer demands, especially when it comes to things that can make brands competitive in even the most difficult industries, like better customization and more personalized and efficient service.
So how can professionals working in AI make it more accessible to the general, non-technical population? We have to prioritize a positive user experience or UX from the outset. UX may not commonly be the priority for AI experts, but if we want to continue to achieve higher adoption and utility, UX has to rank higher on the list.
Photo by Adeolu Eletu on Unsplash
Human-Centred AI
No AI can operate totally independently; eventually, a person will be providing inputs or interacting with outputs. Perhaps, then, the most important way to make AI more accessible to the average person is to design AI with them in mind from the very start. Effective AI has both human-centric interfaces and functionality. To this end, we have to create models that solve the right problems by giving practical, autonomous solutions that users can easily put into action.
From a model design perspective, this means that:
(a) the AI solves a real problem faced by users (b) the AI solves that problem in a practical way that does not conflict with other priorities (c) the AI integrates easily into other operations (d) the AI interface and outputs are simple to use and understand
In other words, AI can’t be a one-size-fits-all solution. It needs to be customized to align with the needs and priorities of the end-user. No one wants to devote time to a tool that ultimately delivers little ROI for the effort required to understand it.
We instead have to be driven by the question, “How will this help my end user?”. All new functions and tools should be designed in response to actual business needs rather than our own ideas for disrupting their field. It’s why all data scientists today are also business scientists. Unless we fully understand the business context and the problems facing the end-user, we can’t design AI that will fully address their needs. Human-centric AI is ultimately preferable to even the most innovative models that are too complex for the end-user.
Photo by Campaign Creators on Unsplash
At my company Evo, for example, we created an Excel add-in that allows users to calculate forecasts and deliver recommendations inside an Excel spreadsheet rather than on our custom dashboard if they prefer. Why? Because our clients were already using Excel. They were comfortable in Excel. The Excel tool may not be as “cool” or outwardly innovative as the dashboards we custom-built using Shiny, but this interface matched client needs better. We can adapt our AI to fit the end-users’ current reality without compromising what matters (i.e. delivering automated, accurate pricing and supply chain recommendations). Ultimately, AI must solve clients’ problems, not create new ones. That means we adapt to their processes (such as integrating with Excel instead of always requiring a brand new tool) and provide clean, simple interfaces with no “fluff” functionality for any tools we design ourselves.
AI aims to improve our lives; that’s impossible without human-centric design.
“By putting human-centred values in AI, we can bring about new renaissance of thinking and learning.” — Marc Tessier-Lavigne, President of Stanford University
Setting Realistic Expectations
Once you have designed the right AI tool, you still must set realistic expectations for its performance or risk alienating end-users who feel they aren’t getting what’s been promised. People often expect AI to be simultaneously smarter and dumber than it really is. They have high expectations for AI transformation while still depending on their own guts over the AI recommendations. The conflict leads to inevitable disappointments. When AI doesn’t live up to its loftiest promises, the user feels like something has broken.
Photo by Agê Barros on Unsplash
As a result, over-promising feeds negative UX. You may assume that it is better to under-promise and then surprise the user with exceeded expectations. Unfortunately, this can also make AI less accessible. People are often only willing to invest in learning a new technology if it can significantly improve on the old methods. By setting low expectations, you may inadvertently motivate people to use the technology incorrectly — or not use the AI at all. These negative sentiments carry over into the UX, making your AI seem like a waste.
The only solution is honesty. Set realistic expectations for AI and meet them. This should include the promise that your AI will improve results over time, as it learns from doing. When people understand exactly what AI can do for them, they are much more likely to feel empowered to try it for themselves and trust the AI to give dependable results.
UX of AI Comes Down to Results
Of course, design and expectations are just a part of what makes AI more accessible to non-tech users. No matter how much we focus on creating a friendly user interface for AI tools or ensure that expectations are in line with the actual purpose and utility of the AI, UX is going to be negative if the AI doesn’t deliver what it promises. Ultimately, it matters most if your AI works.
“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” -Steve Jobs
Much of the user experience of AI comes down to results. If a company switches over to AI forecasting and gets worse results than they could get without the AI, they obviously are going to be resistant to change. Positive results will encourage the expansion of AI use. It may only take a single negative experience with your AI to discourage use long-term. Even unrelated AI technologies can sour a person’s relationship with the whole categories of AI, especially when it comes to business.
We need to invest in getting AI right before turning it over to end-users. Your model doesn’t need to be perfect. After all, that’s an impossible dream. You do, however, need to be sure that you have created a robust algorithm that can deliver accurate insights now and learn to do better as it goes forward.
Your model should be equipped for self-learning that adapts to disruptions and only gets more accurate over time. This kind of AI can not only avoid model drift, but it also becomes inherently more accessible. AI that stays just as useful during a crisis achieves far more value for the end-user — and that does more for positive UX than any other functionality.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
Making AI Accessibility and UX Your Priority
The good news for those of us that work in AI is that a better UX syncs with our own goals. AI should be human-centered for the sake of UX, but this demand ensures that our model has utility. Since UX requires setting the right expectations, data scientists and engineers have an opportunity to honestly assess the strengths and limitations of their models. Finally, UX of AI depends on the model working well — something we all agree is a priority for everyone involved.
It’s no surprise that UX and data visualization experts are in high demand right now. People who work in AI have discovered that even the best model is useless unless end users can leverage both the technology itself and its recommendations easily. Even during a worldwide economic crisis, the UX of AI is something smart AI companies and departments are investing in. Here at Evo, we’re currently hiring data visualization developers. UX has become an investment in the future that is vital for anyone who plans to grow the impact of AI.
AI has the potential to revolutionize the economy in the next decade, but only if companies continue to adopt and use AI in more areas of their businesses. That’s only possible if everyone working in AI makes a commitment to making AI as accessible as possible to the general public. It’s time to demystify AI and embrace it as a tool to improve everyone’s lives — not just those of us who understand the deeper technology. | https://medium.com/towards-artificial-intelligence/making-ai-more-accessible-a554efcfe433 | ['Elena Marocco'] | 2020-10-07 13:34:35.325000+00:00 | ['Business', 'Business Science', 'UX', 'AI', 'Data Science'] |
It Wasn’t Easy But I Made A Level — Super Mario Maker 2 | Why in the world did Nintendo, the powerhouse gaming company from Japan who took over and ingrained their very name into the pure souls of children throughout the 80s and 90s give those now grown up children, the keys to the Mushroom Kingdom? Sure, for the last 30 plus years they’ve been spoon feeding us showing us what makes games fun and exciting but did they really have to make a game that let us do all that ourselves? Of course not! But then again, is anyone really going to complain about that? Again, of course not. So I want to invite you all to come for a ride while I explain what I went through while making my own Mario level.
Explore my level: “‘Made for Beginners Version 2’, ID: YK6-HRB-X2G”
Where To Start
Before I begin, I want to lay out the foundation of Super Mario Maker and how it wasn’t the first ‘Mario Maker’ game. Unofficially it has been around for decades through ‘fishy’ looking sites still up today with regular ROM hacks of mario games.
So the basics of any Mario level has been examined by literally thousands upon thousands of people. Notably everyone is obsessed with making detailed analysis’ of World 1–1 which is insane, because it’s such a simple level. I mean all you have to do is dodge Goombahs while running to the right towards a pole in front of a fort. That’s really all there is to it, but still, people dissected it, to the point where no pixel was left unturned. So add that the list of obsessive love with Mario.
So we come to this, in June, 2014 Nintendo showed off their trailer for Super Mario Maker at E3 and the world exploded with crazed hype. Once they regained their senses they began to wonder, “wait, what could I do now that I’ve been given ‘everything’ to make my own Mario level!?”. From then on the ideas went wild from traditional platformers, puzzles, auto levels and dreaded kaizo levels. That’s actually what I believe people thought the best part of Super Mario Maker is, unrestrained creations (within reason). You become a deity wielding your unlimited powers forging any and all levels (within a certain block limit) you desire.
Being Stumped is Natural
Today, I’ll be looking at why Super Mario Maker 2 has been an exciting journey for me as I built levels, cleared player courses, took world records and the overall enjoyment I get from learning and trying new things. Of course because I haven’t played the first Super Mario Maker and instead have only watched videos of it on YouTube, I’m going in knowing how the game looks and functions, but not how to actually play or built in it.
As I took my first steps, I found that it’s incredible, in the overwhelming sense, especially because I prioritized taking my first steps in level creation rather than playing courses. I watched videos on what to expect from Nintendo’s channel prior to it’s release, but even so, I still ended up staring at the blank canvas wondering to myself ‘what do I make?’. I decided because I was completely stumped to try out some creations from other players and in all honesty I should’ve started there because it was so much fun!
I first stepped into a traditional level where you’re running right, dodging enemies as you go, a little platforming, some gimmick and bam, course complete. This time I entered a speedrun level which in all honesty was easy, but it showed me the basic structure towards designing the land layout for optimal speed. I eventually reached a ghost house that took me from room to room, dodging Boos while running past conveyor belts, spin jumping on Thwomps and jumping into hooks. I thought at this point, ‘I think I’ve had enough exposure, I’m going to try to make a level now’.
Design Time
So I intended to use the same sprites I saw while playing courses but as it so happens I went and used different ones instead. Then it dawned on me that because I had trouble making a level, ‘why don’t I make one that helps other people learn the game’. So as you can see I don’t necessarily stick to my initial plans. I got to work using the New Super Mario Wii U style, Bowser’s Castle theme, Koopa shells, Boos, pipes and key doors. Note, I believe in coin indicators because I didn’t want players getting overly confused and I made it so that if you were a beginner you should be able to complete it within 3 attempts.
Part 1 had you jumping onto a platform above and performing a long jump over a walking red Koopa. You had to then jump on a green Koopa that fell down from a pipe just ahead, take its shell, jump onto the ledge beside you and toss it into a crevice full of springs causing it to bounce through and hit the key. You then took the key and opened the key door beside you.
The red Koopa was there specifically to teach you that long jumps are present. The green Koopa falling from the pipe was needed to reach the key that was behind the horde of Boos attached to the ceiling which you couldn’t reach because of the springs just below them. So you needed to take the Koopa shell, jump up to the ledge with the coin indicator and toss it towards the spring. This showed you that items can be used to get other items you can’t reach and that some items interact with others; shells can be used to get unreachable keys.
Part 2 had you looking below as Boos popped out of the ground going back and forth inside a pit. You had to jump down a bit and either wait for the Boo to sink back into the ground or jump onto a platform 3 blocks over. Most people would wait, especially beginners, but for the more risk-taking they would always jump while the Boo was on screen. After you make it across you would likely hit the wall, typically during mid-jump and if you accidentally pressed jump while clinging to it you would wall jump onto the platform above. You then had another Boo to jump past.
This one was meant to get you to jump over the Boo’s in tight spaces and show you the wall jump mechanic.
Part 3 had you running while jumping onto platforms using coin indicators to make you follow a clear path over some non-lethal pits. If you did happen to miss a jump then you would fall into the pit, but because I wanted to focus on helping players I instead put a cannon down there that shot out a star. With the star you now run at full force, quickly getting you back onto the above platform. Following the coin trail down a 1 block space landed you onto a mushroom and a checkpoint.
In this part I wanted to make running and jumping the priority so I used coins to show the optimal path and if you failed you would fall into a pit, still giving you that ‘don’t worry you tried, here’s a goodie to help you continue’ feeling. That one I learned from Nintendo, who would, even if you failed to do what was asked would still reward you for trying. In the case of New Super Mario Bros. Wii where in world 2–2, if you failed to get out of a sand pit, instead of killing, you would sink and end up in a sub world full of blue coins and a Star coin. It’s a nice touch and especially motivating to players who don’t want to feel developers are out to get them.
Part 4 had large Buzzy Beetles dropping out off pipes above. You had to hop on platforms to the left after the Buzzy Beetles dropped to reach the other side. From there you jump on a lift that takes you up to a path leading to a Boo, a key door and a question block. You hit the question block after jumping over the Boo to get the key and open the key door.
I made this part as an amalgamation of the previous parts, though I did forget about adding in a Koopa. Jumping from the platforms while avoiding the large Buzzy Beetles tested your timing. An improved challenge from jumping over the Boos in part 2 and the Buzzy Beetles dropping was meant to add more of a challenge since you just hit a checkpoint making sure you wouldn’t go back to the beginning of the level if you messed up. The Boo was put there to again make you learn how to time jumps in small areas.
Part 5 was there to show a quick way of falling between platforms holding Boos with a 1 block space in between. You had 2 choices, jump to each platform below timing your jumps so you don’t hit the Boo or falling between the platforms which you would do if you had some experience with spacing in mario. To finish, I had Yoshi and a mushroom waiting at the bottom with a clear path to the axe. Simple finish, but leaves you with a reward for completing the level.
Keep Mechanics to a Minimum
As you can see I implemented a lot of different ideas into my level. I don’t believe I put an overwhelming amount of different ideas into a single level because each section either introduced or enhanced it. Ideas I found were also on the mind of Mark Brown who runs Game Maker’s Toolkit over on YouTube. Great channel that focuses on video game essays by the way, please check it out if you enjoy those. He first made a video about designing levels using Super Mario Maker explaining how you should introduce mechanics early on in the level, progressively expanding upon them as you make your way to the end. With the final challenge being a collection of all the mechanics you’ve been training the player to do throughout the level. In his next video using Super Mario Maker 2, created a list of 10 ways to properly design a level. I noticed also that I intuitively used some of these ideas before having watched his videos, so I feel proud of myself.
So we come to this, having a level that is designed to teach the basic mechanics is the most important thing to do upon the player first entering the level. From there it’s about expanding upon them and also adding a couple more in for some extra fun, all leading to a final challenge featuring everything you’ve just taught the player.
Understand Your Limits
Contrary to what I thought about level designing, which a portion of my cockiness and eagerness to create a ‘perfect’ level deluded me into thinking I could easily pull it off, showed me making levels isn’t easy and requires some careful planning especially if you want it to be a level people would enjoy. If you just want to make levels for your own enjoyment then not worrying about making sure the mechanics are taught from the start isn’t as important since you as the creator would already know what you have planned for yourself. That said, I personally find that boring because sharing levels you’ve created should be the ultimate purpose in any creators mind. People need to play what you’ve made and thoroughly enjoy it. That isn’t to say you shouldn’t do it for self-satisfaction but rather, keep in mind that your ‘perfect’ level, that literally took you hours to construct should be shown to the world for others to gawk at your marvel. | https://medium.com/gaminglinkmedia/i-designed-a-level-for-super-mario-maker-2-heres-what-i-came-up-with-3b4ce4875465 | ['Ryan Velasco'] | 2019-07-21 02:33:52.325000+00:00 | ['Game Design', 'Nintendo', 'Super Mario Maker 2', 'Level Design', 'Game Link'] |
Differences between ETL and ELT. Traditionally, companies use ETL… | Traditionally, companies use ETL pipeline to connect production systems with data warehouses. This however has changed a lot in recent years since businesses require more flexibility and cost saving.
From the technical perspective, there are two main differences between ETL and ELT,
ETL pipelines transform data on a third-party server, while ELT pipelines transform data within a warehouse.
ETL pipelines transfer data into the warehouse after transformation, while ELT pipelines transfer raw data into the warehouse.
Benefits of ELT
No need for a separate storage and computation, the work is done by the computational system itself. Data transformation and loading happen in parallel, so less time and resources are spent (as only filtered, clean data is loaded into the target system) ELT works with high-end data engines such as Hadoop cluster, cloud or data appliances. This gives is additional performance and security. The processing capability of data warehousing infrastructure reduces time that data spends in transit and makes the system more cost effective. Low maintenance after the system is set up
Drawbacks of ELT
ELT is not all perfect.
A lack of comprehensive run-time monitoring statistics and information.
There’s also a lack of modularity because of set-based design for optimal performance and the lack of functionality and flexibility resulting from it.
ELT requires higher understanding of the data itself since load and transform happen at once. If performed by an engineer, he/she would need business knowledge about the data.
Comparison between ETL and ELT
What to use for your data projects?
With ETL, analysts need to foresee every step of the data pipeline prior to transformation. Engineers are required to integrate, clean, and prepare data for per an analyst’s request. This of course would require a lot of upfront cost. Moreover, it would cost more efforts and resources and make changes.
In the modern era of data engineering however, data stack has become much more integrated and flexible to business use cases. Thousands of data analysts today are using Acho to warehouse, integrate, transform and analyze their data without having to set an ETL pipeline. All data is hosted and transformed on cloud within one system. To learn more about how Acho does ELT for data-intensive projects, check out https://acho.io/data-engineering | https://medium.com/@vincentjiang07/difference-between-etl-and-elt-fcc9601478d0 | ['Vincent Jiang'] | 2021-01-12 17:33:04.800000+00:00 | ['Data Engineering', 'Big Data', 'Elt', 'Cloud Computing', 'Business Intelligence'] |
The First Signs of Alcoholic Liver Damage Are Not in the Liver | The First Signs of Alcoholic Liver Damage Are Not in the Liver
Myfather died of alcoholic liver cirrhosis four years ago. It came as a surprise to all of us, even though it was clear he had a severe drinking problem for decades. It was especially surprising to me, as a former nurse and a recovering alcoholic. You would think I’d know more about liver problems and alcohol use than the average person. But the truth is, in the months before his death, I had no idea my father’s liver was struggling at all. Most people know about cirrhosis, but few people know how a liver goes from early damage to end-stage liver cirrhosis.
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The combination of my father’s death and my personal background lit a fire in me to know more. He was admitted to the hospital on June 24, 2016, and he died on July 18. Only 24 days passed between the first sign there was a problem and his subsequent death.
Now, hearing that he was in end-stage cirrhosis didn’t surprise me, given his heavy drinking. What did surprise me was that he’d visited several doctors and specialists in the months before his death, and no one knew his liver was struggling either.
So what happened? Does end-stage liver cirrhosis really sneak up that fast? Were there other signs that would have alerted someone to his failing liver?
As for why the doctors and specialists didn’t know what was happening, that mystery resolved reasonably quickly. The plain truth is that alcoholics rarely divulge the amount and frequency of their drinking to their doctors. This was the case for my dad. He had many health issues that he was trying to solve, but he protected his drinking habit fiercely. So he refused to spill the beans, even when it mattered.
The problem is that liver damage has numerous multifaceted symptoms that are confusing and associated with many other illnesses. Unless a doctor knows that the patient is an alcoholic, they may not know how to interpret what’s happening until it’s too late.
As he was dying, my father told me that he didn’t think to tell the doctors how much he was drinking. He said it was as if he blanked out and “forgot” to mention it. As crazy as that sounds, this strange “forgetting” is a common part of the alcoholic mindset. It may also be due to the metabolic and physical changes of cirrhosis itself.
There are many signs of liver problems, but oddly, none seem to point to the liver at first. And in fact, many of the first signs of liver damage occur in other parts of the body. Knowing these signs may help educate alcoholics and their families if they want to understand their risk of developing liver cirrhosis.
Liver damage has numerous multifaceted symptoms that are confusing and associated with many other illnesses. Unless a doctor knows that the patient is an alcoholic, they may not know how to interpret what’s happening until it’s too late.
Digestive signs
The liver plays a huge part in our digestive process. It filters out all toxins from food as well as helping to break down fats and glucose.
When a liver starts to slow down due to significant damage, it will reduce its digestive work. Instead, it will divert its energy toward vital functions like metabolizing medications and filtering toxins.
This means that symptoms like bloating, nausea, vomiting, gas, and diarrhea will start to increase. Over time, eating becomes more challenging. In the later stages of liver cirrhosis, toxins that can’t be filtered out begin to build in the bloodstream, which causes more nausea.
Cognitive signs
Although confusion and brain fog happen in end-stage liver cirrhosis, they can also be early signs.
The liver is responsible for filtering dangerous substances in the blood. It also helps regulate hormones, blood glucose, and vitamin absorption. In the early stages of liver damage, these processes can be interrupted. Inevitably, this affects our brain and nervous system.
This means that early liver problems can make you feel tired, confused, slow, and foggy. You may have some memory issues as well.
Neuromuscular signs
The liver stores vitamins required for the functioning of many organs and systems in the body — one of them is vitamin B1 or thiamine. A deficiency in this particular vitamin has been documented in many alcoholics with or without liver damage.
Unfortunately, alcohol inhibits the absorption of thiamine in the intestine. Over time, as the liver becomes damaged, it can no longer store thiamine in enough quantities. Thiamine deficiency is responsible for many neurological issues in people with alcoholism.
Symptoms of thiamine deficiency range from mild to severe and include things like: confusion, mental fog, lack of balance, pain and numbness in hands and feet, muscle weakness, rapid heart rate, digestive problems, flushing, and involuntary eye movements.
Thiamine deficiency happens in almost every alcoholic who consumes frequent and large amounts of alcohol. And if thiamine deficiency due to alcoholism is discovered, you can be sure the liver is suffering damage at the same time.
Many of the first signs of liver damage occur in other parts of the body.
Vascular signs
All alcohol consumption can lead to blood vessel dilation, causing flushing in the face and hands. Over time, this can cause damage leading to permanent redness in the face. Although many alcoholics have rosacea or spider-like veins on their faces, this is often benign.
However, spider angiomas are different from rosacea or spiderlike veins. They’re circular and have a central point called a spider nevus that is darker than the rest of the lesion. Spider angiomas are a sign of liver disease and can be present in the early stages. They often progress to more extensive and more numerous lesions.
Spider angiomas are caused by increased estrogen levels in the blood. When the liver becomes damaged, it can’t properly metabolize estrogens, which causes them to build up in the body.
Many women who are pregnant or taking birth control pills may have a few spider angiomas. However, in alcoholic liver disease, these lesions are often more frequent and accompanied by red palms and varicose veins in the esophagus.
These are a few of the main signs of alcoholic liver damage that happen outside of the liver. It’s important to know this because most of us have no idea how the liver functions and how it communicates distress.
The liver itself doesn’t show signs like pain or swelling in the early stages of liver damage. This contrasts with other organs like the heart or stomach, where any damage will emit pain or symptoms directly from these organs.
What happens with liver damage is that its many diverse functions become interrupted, causing symptoms in other parts of the body. This may explain why most people never think they have a problem with their liver.
Unfortunately, patients with alcoholism are rarely educated about these issues. This is because they often don’t reveal their drinking, to begin with. And even if they do, the symptoms are widespread and complex, which makes patient education challenging.
My goal in writing articles like this is to help educate regular people about alcoholic liver disease to understand their health and make better decisions.
It’s hard to say if my father would have changed his drinking habits if he knew more about his vague and complicated symptoms. But I think having proper education would have certainly helped him understand his risks and health problems better. | https://medium.com/@karinakapur58975/the-first-signs-of-alcoholic-liver-damage-are-not-in-the-liver-346f6a792ddf | ['Karina Kapur'] | 2020-12-16 23:11:02.702000+00:00 | ['Addiction', 'Health', 'Body', 'Alcohol', 'Mental Health'] |
A finished book chapter on the top of a mountain | My desk is getting messy again. I started to write later than I planned. FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube stole my focus. It wasn’t their fault, though. I let myself stumble down on that slippery slope of procrastination.
Hold one!
Grasp the branch of a tree!
But I don’t see any trees around.
Shall I close my eyes?
Maybe I can see them then or, even better, feel them.
I stretch my arm out, open my hand, touch around with my fingers. Do I feel anything?
There are only two answers possible: yes or no. And it’s my story. I decide what it will be. Oh, and I can’t hesitate for too long. Remember, I’m still sliding down at dazzling speeds. My butt hurts. Those rocks, pebbles and branches are killing me.
Did I just say branches?
My hand closes right in time and breaks the fall, like a parachute preventing a skydiver from crushing his face on Mother Earth.
My other arm joins the action. I’m hanging here, with my belly out of my rolled up t-shirt and my shredded pants revealing parts of my body I don’t want to reveal. Good that I’m hanging here alone. I take a deep breath and sigh. I overlook the situation. Strangely enough, I also grant myself a few seconds to enjoy the scenery.
What do I see? An academic book chapter I promised to finish ages ago. Why shouldn’t I give it a last try? A publication more wouldn’t look too bad on my cv.
I’m standing up. Everything aches, but I’m moving. The way to go is up, slowly and carefully. I can’t afford myself to fall again. I have a mountain to climb. The clock ticks. I gave myself only five more days to reach the top. | https://medium.com/@lesdevries/a-finished-book-chapter-on-the-top-of-a-mountain-8ecbebc3bf83 | ['Les De Vries'] | 2020-05-15 10:49:14.728000+00:00 | ['Procrastination', 'Academic Writing'] |
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Migration Matters: Serving Essential Farmworkers During the COVID-19 Pandemic | By Rebecca Scheurer and John E. Menditto on December 15, 2020
This article was originally published by the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Resilience Center on December 15, 2020 and is reprinted with permission. The Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center (Arsht-Rock) will reach One Billion People with resilience solutions to climate change, migration, and human security challenges by 2030. We focus our efforts on people, communities, governments, and institutions to help them better prepare for, navigate, and recover from the multiple shocks and stressors people all over the world face every day.
The COVID-19 pandemic has severely affected migrant farmworker communities across the United States and around the world. Despite this threat to their health, farmworkers have continued their work on the front lines, planting and harvesting the crops that feed our country.
John E. Menditto is well-positioned to share insight into migrant farmworker communities and the challenges they’re facing. For the past 20 years, he has served as the Chief Legal Officer of East Coast Migrant Head Start Project (ECMHSP), a nonprofit that provides high-quality and comprehensive early childhood education services to farmworker families in seven states on the East Coast. Two years ago, John also founded a sister nonprofit, The Foundation for Farmworkers, which was created to fill gaps in critical services among at-risk migrant families where the federally funded ECMHSP had limitations, such as in the area of emergency cash assistance, pro bono immigration services, and need-based educational assistance grants.
Rebecca Scheurer, Director of Humanitarian Initiatives at the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, sat down with John E. Menditto to discuss how the East Coast Migrant Head Start Project and The Foundation for Farmworkers are managing the pandemic, and how the families they serve are weathering related political and economic impacts:
Can you start by giving us a big picture look at the role of migrant farmworkers and their families in the United States?
The United States relies upon the labor of more than two million farmworkers each year to plant and harvest the fresh fruits and vegetables that nourish us. Overwhelmingly, these farmworkers have migrated to the United States from abroad; most arriving from Mexico, but farmworkers come to the United States from many countries including Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Haiti to name just a few.
Migrants who arrived in the United States twenty years ago more typically came from Mexico to pursue the American Dream. Farm work was plentiful and needed. More recently, migrants have arrived from Central America and the southern states of Mexico. These farmworkers more typically have fled violence in their home country or have fled abject poverty there.
Whether farmworkers have come to pursue their American Dream or to flee conditions in their home country it is universally true that most farmworkers are undocumented. This reality means they exist in the shadows of our economy, disadvantaged in their ability to advocate for better working conditions and pay. In addition, immigration enforcement efforts in recent years have pushed farmworkers deeper into the shadows. Within the rural communities we serve, we have many, many children who have lost a parent to deportation. These children, almost all of whom are United States citizens, must now be raised by a single parent, typically a single mom.
Children of farmworkers play together in the playground at one of ECMHSP’s Head Start centers. Source: ECMHSP (Image taken prior to COVID-19. ECMHSP teachers and staff wear masks.)
Although most farmworkers are undocumented there is an ever-increasing population of farmworkers who have come to the United States under a special visa program for agricultural workers. H2A visa holders are often described as “single men”. This term is a misnomer. Typically, H2A visa holders have been asked to separate from their spouses and children and brought to the United States to work for most of the year. They live communally, are transported by crew buses from field to field and from state to state, lacking the freedoms and privileges that other visa holders enjoy. This especially has been true during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many farmers felt compelled to lock down their H2A workers and prohibit travel off the farm for any reason. The expansion of the H2A visa program has substantially reduced work opportunities for the farmworker families we serve.
How has COVID-19 impacted the East Coast Migrant Head Start Project and The Foundation for Farmworkers?
ECMHSP provides Head Start services to farmworker families in 38 Head Start centers located in rural communities from Lake Okeechobee, Florida to Lake Erie, Pennsylvania. Each year, we serve more than 2,300 young children, from birth to school-age, providing those children with culturally-sensitive care and preparing them for success in our public school system as a foundation for a lifetime of success and contribution to society. It is a mission that comes with the highest degree of difficulty because the challenges our families face are so great.
This year, when the pandemic hit, we were mandated to close our childcare centers. Overnight, we reinvented our work, creating a YouTube learning channel, so that our preschool children could continue to participate in educational activities from home. With hunger on the rise, we began weekly food distributions to our families and prepared individualized learning activities so children could continue to learn and develop at home.
Throughout it all, farmworkers continued to go to the fields. It is not possible for farmworkers to work remotely; they cannot Zoom to work. Their sacrifice inspired us to work tremendously hard to establish new protocols to re-open our centers in a way that was safe for children, families, and our employees. This work involved the synthesis of rules and protocols from the Centers for Disease Control, five states, and many more counties. On May 8, ECMHSP’s Guidance for the Reopening of Centers During the COVID-19 National Emergency was published. Then we thoughtfully planned the training of employees throughout the agency, and, on June 22, ECMHSP safely reopened our childcare centers. We have remained open since that date.
John E. Menditto (right) in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, delivering cash assistance to farmworker families involved in mushroom harvesting. Source: ECMHSP
While there will be an end to the pandemic, farmworker families will continue to face unique challenges in the United States — how do you and your teams at ECMHSP and The Foundation for Farmworkers increase the long-term resilience of the families and wider communities you work with?
This is a great question because it goes to the heart of what the Head Start program was created to do when it was first established in 1965. Head Start is successful because the program recognizes a universal truth: that parents are the first and best teachers of their children. We look to include parents in all significant decision-making occurring at ECMHSP — from setting the hours of operation of the Head Start center, to a selection of the breakfast and lunch menus for the children. In the words of the founders of the Head Start program, we seek the “maximum feasible participation” of parents. Through such participation, families can see their contributions are vital to our success.
“Head Start is successful because the program recognizes a universal truth: that parents are the first and best teachers of their children.”
Now, for farmworkers who often live at or near the federal poverty levels and who must labor long hours to reach those levels, there are special challenges to participating in the Head Start program. Thus, we also rely on a network of community providers to support our work. These providers include community health clinics, mental and nutritional health consultants, and legal service providers.
We understand The Foundation for Farmworkers received a very large donation of money this summer to help families. Are there any particular families you have helped with this funding who stand out?
In late July, The Foundation for Farmworkers received an anonymous donation of $1.4 million to provide emergency cash assistance to farmworker families. This was enough money for us to provide $1,000 to every farmworker family enrolled in an ECMHSP center. Being able to help families in this way has lifted the spirits of everyone at ECMHSP and The Foundation. The two families who stand out are families working in Gaffney, South Carolina. One single mom shared she and her four children were about to fall into homelessness from a lack of farm work this summer and our cash assistance would see her through another month or two. The other family was sick with COVID-19 when we made our assistance delivery. The family accepted the check from a distance.
But, to be clear, the two families in Gaffney are representative of farmworker families up and down the East Coast who have received this cash assistance. There has been a wide range of emotions from those who have been helped in this way — from surprise that there is a community of individuals who value their work and want to help, to joy from the realization that a particular family expense would be met, to tears because the cash assistance is coming at a time of particular vulnerability for the family.
A woman holding an infant at one of ECMHSP’sHead Start centers. Source: ECMHSP
(Image taken prior to COVID-19. ECMHSP teachers and staff wear masks.)
What is the one thing you have learned through serving the farmworker community during the pandemic?
Farmworker families always have inspired us with their resilience. Our nation was built by migrants and continues to flourish because of it. Like millions of other people in our country, migrants come to the United States from their home countries with nothing but the hope of building a life and a community (alongside others here doing the same).
I had suspected — but didn’t know — that each of us working at East Coast Migrant Head Start Project and each of us volunteering with The Foundation for Farmworkers had the resilience within us that would make a farmworker proud. The personal sacrifices we have made at ECMHSP and The Foundation to carry on with our mission-driven work throughout the pandemic has brought us closer in spirit with the farmworker families we are privileged to serve.
Looking ahead, what’s one thing you might suggest to help people better understand, appreciate, and embrace migrant farmworkers and their families as valuable members of our society?
We have a collective nostalgia for “the way things were.” In truth, the way things were are much like the way things are. We always have been a nation of immigrants, made stronger and richer by individuals from around the world contributing their work and their resilience to enhance our society.
“We always have been a nation of immigrants, made stronger and richer by individuals from around the world contributing their work and their resilience to enhance our society.”
Best of luck to you and your team at both East Coast Migrant Head Start Project and The Foundation for Farmworkers! | https://medium.com/@natlheadstart/migration-matters-serving-essential-farmworkers-during-the-covid-19-pandemic-32f9c9ddec06 | ['National Head Start Association'] | 2021-01-19 20:02:26.320000+00:00 | ['Agriculture', 'Farming', 'Head Start', 'Education', 'Migrants'] |
A three week tour of Italy | It’s been six weeks since we last posted. Whoops. Truth is, opportunities to sit down and put fingers to keyboard in a meaningful way have been few and far between (as have decent WiFi networks). Clearly, we’ve been keeping ourselves extremely busy. So instead of writing to put all of our Italian adventures into one post, I thought I’d just post the first half for now, while I have the chance. More soon. Promise. R.
Fun fact: there’s a 2km-wide Italian enclave at the southermost tip of Switzerland named Campione d’Italia. The surrounding area of lake Lugano was handed back to Switzerland in the 1500s, but the Italians kept a little spot on the east bank of the lake. I discovered this whilst frantically Google-mapping our route out of Switzerland, towards Lake Como.
Getting out of Switzerland was trickier than it sounds; the roads in Italy are unpredictable and treacherous at the best of times, but nearer the border they seemed to have given up on maintenance entirely. We skirted around Lugano at 20km/h before zig-zagging south to a campsite in the foothills of Monte Generoso.
We never made it to Como in the end. After a lot of searching, we couldn’t seem to find an affordable family-friendly site to stay. We concluded that Como was too rich for our money and carried on to Garda.
Lake Garda
Lizzie and I first visited Garda in 2010.Back then we stayed in Arco at the smarter, sporty northern end of the lake. This time around, happily carrying two daughters in tow, we headed for the southern tip where there’s a bit more space for campsites and more family-friendly things to do.
The first pebble beach of Le Big Trip.
We cycled the lakeside path to the old fortifications of Peschiera del Garda, stopping on the way for the first barefoot paddle of our trip.
It was mid-May and starting to get warmer, so we had the perfect excuse to buy gelato. It was the first of many. We discovered that most gelataria have a least a couple of vegan-friendly flavours made simply from fresh fruit, water and sugar. The more progressive establishments have begun to offer more creative vegan options involving dark chocolate, fruits and nuts.
And so our gelato addiction began. Normally, we’d get fed up of walking about in the heat around 3 or 4pm and declare to the girls that it was ‘gelato-o’clock’ — an opportunity for us to sit, plan the route back to Rosie, and give the kids a little sugary energy boost that would see them through ‘til dinner.
The fortifications of Peschiera del Garda.
Venice
After Garda, we were intending to head directly to Venice, but the weather forecast was looking absolutely dreadful. Instead, we found a cosy little bolthole on Airbnb and shut ourselves away from the winds and rain for a few nights. If you ever find yourself exiled in the Shakespearean territory between Mantua and Padua, I highly recommend Claudio’s place in Cura. We arrived on Eurovision night and let the girls stay up late to watch the whole contest. They made flags for each country we’d visited so far and fell asleep in the boring scoring bit.
Homemade flags at our Airbnb
After the weather had calmed and we’d recharged our batteries, we drove to Venice. Definitely one of the bucket list destinations we’d been most excited about visiting. We settled into a campsite in Mestre on the mainland that was only a 10 minute bus ride into Venice. It had a heated indoor pool, a fab playground and amazing showers and toilets. It also seemed to boast half of the Cottonwood Poplar trees in Europe, judging by the constant fluff in the air. It got *everywhere*. It was like walking through a snowstorm in early summer.
The Poplar fluff (Cottonwood) at our Venice campsite.
We made the right decision in waiting for the weather to improve before heading to Venice — the two days we spent exploring the city were glorious. We got lost repeatedly, hopped on and off the vaporetti, counted the lion murals, visited Saint Mark’s Basilica, took a trip to the glass-blowing island of Murano, hunted down vegan pizza and (more) gelato, stumbled on the world’s most beautifully disorganised bookshop, and generally fell in love with the city.
Libreria Acqua Alta.
We spent two full days roaming the narrow streets of Venice and didn’t get bored. Liz and I could have done several more, just meandering around, but with kids, two is just enough. We found the only playground in the city, and then said goodbye.
Gondoliers.
Before leaving Venetia completely, we spent a couple of nights at the beach resort of Lido de Jesolo. It reminded me of my childhood holidays on the south coast of the UK, only with a lot more mosquito bites. It did, however, provide my favourite gelato in Italy: a joyous combination of speculoos, vanilla and apple.
Team Banksy and our vegan gelato cones.
Pisa / Lucca
Once the Jesolo mozzies had bitten every inch of us, we headed south-west and drove the full width of Italy towards Pisa, stopping in the small city of Lucca in Tuscany.
Piazza dell’Anfiteatro, Lucca.
Lucca is beautiful. The old city centre is surrounded by Renaissance walls, atop which you can walk or cycle all the way around. We enjoyed searching out the bronze artworks on the walls and dotted around town, the most impressive of which is in the centre of the oval-shaped Piazza dell’Anfiteatro.
Tourist box well-and-truly ticked.
We used Lucca as a base for a quick day trip to Pisa since it’s only a short train ride away.
The kids were excited to see the Tower after learning about it in an episode of Go Jetters, so we took the obligatory photo, but couldn’t climb to the top because the girls were too young (boo!).
I was far more excited by the Camposanto Monumentale, in any case. It’s a cemetery with ancient graves of important folk, sarcophagi, and beautiful frescoes.
Eden enjoyed learning about Roman numerals and calculating the years depicted on the decaying gravestones to find the oldest. The nerd in me loved seeing the actual hanging incense lamp that inspired Galileo’s discovery of the law of the pendulum.
Next: a deluge in Fiesole, pizza with friends in Perugia, a week in Rome, sweltering in old Pompeii, and finally a ferry from Bari. | https://medium.com/@bigtripblog/a-three-week-tour-of-italy-1f54621815c5 | ['The Bankses'] | 2019-07-21 07:33:40.039000+00:00 | ['Kids', 'Italy', 'Motorhome', 'Travel', 'Vegan'] |
How ToDoBot was built in three days | How ToDoBot was built in three days
Day 1
Idea
Slack recently released the app home tab — a new app surface in Slack where you can create advanced UI using Block Kit. We decided to use it as an admin dashboard for OneBar.
A few days before I told Andrew, my co-founder, I like how Apple products seamlessly integrate together. It’s magical to be able to draw a note on the iPad and then see it immediately on my Mac — I wish I could see those notes on every platform.
One app that works consistently across all my devices is Slack, so I often find myself using it as a simple notes app often. When in a rush, I DM myself notes I want to access elsewhere and then move them to a more appropriate app later. My DM also serves as a mini-ToDo list. But what if it was more convenient? What if I could mix it up with the home tab?
Block Kit Builder
Slack has a beautiful tool for prototyping interfaces called the Block Kit Builder. After twenty minutes of tinkering, we had an idea of how the ToDo app would look in the home tab in Slack.
ToDoBot mockup in the Block Kit Builder
A classic app like this would have checkboxes to the left of the ToDo items. (After submitting this article, Slack released checkboxes!) Unfortunately, we couldn’t implement them in ToDoBot right away due to a few limitations. Specifically, you can’t combine more than two elements in a row, and if you have checkboxes, you can’t have any extra buttons next to an item. Our ToDos have multiple actions associated with them (i.e. edit, share, set reminders, etc.) and we couldn’t find a better place for them to live (for now). We found some great use for emojis, though, and now they actually mean something!
👉🏻 is a “regular” ToDo
⏱ for ToDos with a reminder
🔥 means that a ToDo has expired
✅ for completed items
Choosing a name
This is arguably the hardest part of building anything.
Todoist? Nope, already exists. Checker? Chckr? Todo-ninja? Todo-panda? Todofu? Todobot!? Todobot sounds pretty good! Let’s see if there are any domain names available! Ughh… all .coms are taken, there’s something ugly in .org and .net, there’s also an odd todOObot.com… It seems like we have to go with a prefix…
thetodobot.com or gettodobot.com? Let’s get both of them!
Infrastructure
It’s not worth setting up Kubernetes for a small project like this, but we already run OneBar on it. Also, Bolt (a first-party tool for coding Slack apps in JavaScript) was meant for apps like ToDoBot, but we already use Django — no time to learn NodeJS! The stack was set.
The rest of our first day building was spent setting up webhooks, configuring SSL, defining database schema, and putting together the rest of our Slack app’s plumbing.
Day 2
Coding
We spent all of day two coding the bot logic. We’re going through an acceleration program with OneBar right now, and it’s pretty intense. ToDoBot was an experimental side-project, so we worked on it in-between meetings, customer calls, while commuting, and late in the evening.
Caltrain — where work happens
Here’s a brief mention of a few Slack API features that we used:
app_home_opened — Slack sends this event every time someone opens the ToDoBot’s app home. We react to it by sending back a bunch of JSON that represents the current state of a person’s todo list.
views.update — This is how you actually update the app home. We do it reactively when someone opens the home tab or proactively when we know on the backend that the state has changed for a given user.
messages.im — We receive this event every time someone sends a DM message to the ToDoBot. Then, we then simply add every message to the list and acknowledge it with an emoji.
reactions.add — This is how you react with an emoji.
We’ve also registered a /todo slash command, “Add to my ToDo” message action, and implemented a few simple modals for adding and editing items.
/todo slash command
On the second day, came the idea of shared ToDos. We tagged each other in messages all the time, hoping the other person didn’t forget to do what we asked them. This naturally translated into tagging people in ToDos. A shared ToDo could appear in each person’s app home tab, and anyone mentioned would be able to close it. We started using shared ToDos for our own needs, way before ToDoBot was completed. We were hooked!
A ToDo shared with two people
Day 3
Debugging
By the third day, most app mechanics were complete, though there were still a few issues. I spent several hours debugging this one. Even though ToDoBot is super light-weight and there was no load on the server, our gunicorn workers were dying left and right, and the app was behaving unpredictably. Turns out, the AWS ELB we had in front of the app tried to maintain and reuse the same connection when possible. This didn’t play well with the sync workers that we used by default. It took time to untangle, but simply tweaking the timeouts helped.
An interesting observation while debugging the gunicorn issue — our servers received quite a bit of traffic already, though the domain was brand new and nobody knew about us yet. Our ELB happened to get an IP address that’s constantly poked by security scanners somewhere in Russia. Check this out…
Some security scanner in our access log
Website
We wanted to submit our app to the Slack App Directory, so we needed a landing page. Our designer created a few images and crafted us a standard single-page layout. Andrew then implemented everything in Webflow.
thetodobot.com in the Webflow designer
Day 4
App Directory review
There was some back-and-forth with the review team.
First, they pointed out that we requested the commands OAuth scope, but didn’t actually use it. I had forgotten to include it in the OAuth link.
Next, they asked us to add a reaction to /todo help since it’s the default way people learn about slash commands.
We tried to react to comments as soon as they came back. By lunchtime, ToDoBot was live in the App Directory.
Final touches
Before launching publicly, we shared our Slack app with some of our friends, and of course, they immediately found bugs and inconsistencies.
For example, Joe from Unmeeting pointed out that the app said “home tab,” or “Something has been added to your home tab,” yet he didn’t know about the “home tab.” So we added a short welcome message for users on their first interaction with the app.
Welcome message introducing our app and its home tab
Product Hunt launch
By late evening, everything was ready for a public launch. We tested with our friend (Michael), scheduled the launch, and waited patiently. As soon as our app hit the front page, we started seeing consistent traffic. We finished 6th, which was ideal considering our low effort and small product.
Today, we’re averaging at one signup per hour. I think it’s a success!
Finale
We have 200+ signups and ~3,000 ToDos created. At least one team is using it actively — OneBar team! Of course, we’re biased as makers, but we found that ToDoBot naturally fits into our work.
We’re already considering a codebase makeover and eventually open-sourcing the ToDoBot. Would you be interested in contributing?
It was refreshing to build something so quickly, especially after being bogged down by never-ending bugs and features of a bigger product. So, if you’re feeling burnt out, you should definitely consider completing a small project like this.
Slack is hosting an online hackathon in March, and I highly recommend everyone apply! | https://medium.com/slack-developer-blog/how-todobot-was-built-in-three-days-26a9d37585f6 | ['Maxim Leonovich'] | 2020-02-20 17:26:05.370000+00:00 | ['Slack', 'Hackathons', 'Productivity', 'Hacking', 'Chatbots'] |
How to Choose the Best Keras Pre-Trained Model for Image Classification | How to Choose the Best Keras Pre-Trained Model for Image Classification
Choice Overload. Photo by M. W on Unsplash
Deciding which pre-trained model to use in your Deep Learning task ranks at the same level of classical dilemmas like what movie to watch on Netflix and what cereal to buy at the supermarket (P.S. buy the one with the least sugar and highest fiber content). This post will use a data-driven approach in Python to find out the best Keras Pre-Trained model for the cats_vs_dogs dataset. This post and the code provided will also help you easily choose the best Pre-Trained model for your problem’s dataset.
Table of Contents
Background
Transfer learning is a technique in machine learning where we can take a model developed on one task and use it as a starting point in some other similar but different tasks. Transfer learning is extremely popular in Deep Learning since the “transfer” of knowledge from one “parent” model to a “child” model means that the “child” model can be trained to high accuracies with a much smaller dataset compared to the “parent” model. You can find more details about Transfer Learning at this excellent [Medium post]
High-level Deep Learning frameworks like TensorFlow and Pytorch have made it incredibly easy to leverage the power of Transfer learning by including several pre-trained models within the package itself. For example, the [TensorFlow Keras API] includes 18 highly advanced model architectures pre-trained on the [“ImageNet”] dataset. You can think of “ImageNet” like the SAT of image classification datasets.
Most Image Classification Deep Learning tasks today will start by downloading one of these 18 pre-trained models, modify the model slightly to suit the task on hand, and train only the custom modifications while freezing the layers in the pre-trained model. This approach gives very high accuracy on real-world image classification tasks since “ImageNet” collects many real-world images.
However, choosing which of the 18 pre-trained models to use is not always an exact science. Many developers stick to the models they are familiar with and gave them good results in the past. As a Data Scientist, I wondered whether there is a better, data-driven approach to selecting a pre-trained model, free from personal biases. Indeed there is! The rest of this post talks about my process with code you can directly use in your projects.
Criteria for selecting models
In general, there are two competing criteria while doing any machine learning task in the industry:
Accuracy of the model: Higher Better Speed of Model Training and Predictions: Faster Better
The two criteria are pretty straightforward. We want the model that gives us the highest accuracy on validation data since it can make useful predictions. We also want the model to train and predict as fast as possible because, in production, we might need to serve hundreds or thousands of predictions every second.
Simple enough? Well, like everything in life, we can’t have our cake and eat it too (hence the title image)! In general, to get higher accuracy, we need to use a “deeper” or larger model. But a larger model has many more parameters that make it slower to execute. We can see the tradeoff between the accuracy and size/number of operations of the model from the below graph [Reference].
Image Classification Accuracy vs. Model Size/Number of Operations. Larger models, in general tend to have higher accuracy but require many more operations which makes them slower. Source
So, this is a balance we need to strike. For most of the Deep Learning deployments in the industry, we choose the smallest model that provides us with good enough accuracy. Thus, we need to experiment among many available models to pick the one that meets these criteria.
On a side note, if you only care about achieving the highest accuracy no matter the impact to speed, then your approach could be to combine all these models using ensembling techniques! Indeed, ensembling is quite popular in academia and ML competitions.
Code
My approach is straightforward, as shown in the image below. We will use Python to find all the pre-trained models in Keras and then loop over them one by one. We’ll train the models on the TensorFlow [cats_vs_dogs] dataset in this post. You can replace it with any other dataset, including your own custom dataset.
Steps to choose the best pre-trained Keras model
Step 1
The first step is to import the necessary packages. If you lack these packages, you can install them using pip install <package-name> . We’ll also set a batch_size for subsequent model training. Since I’m using a low-cost GPU, I’ll use a small batch_size of 32 only.
Step 2
Automatically get a list of all available pre-trained models from Keras by listing all the functions inside tf.keras.applications . Since each model is instantiated by calling a function from tf.keras.applications , when we list all the functions within this module using inspect.isfunction , we get a list of all the models. As of this writing, in [Tensorflow 2.2], there are a total of 18 models that we can use.
You can add any other custom pre-trained models into the experiments by manually adding elements into the model_dictionary as well by following the syntax model_dictionary["new_model_name"] = new_model_function() , where new_model_function() should return the custom pre-trained model without the final output Dense layer. The model’s input shape should be (224,224,3) if you don’t want to change any other code below.
Step 3
Download some images to run the experiment. You should modify this step to load your data when you run the experiment for your use case.
Output:
Num train images: 16283
Num validation images: 6979
Num classes: 2
Num iterations per epoch: 508
Step 4
Preprocess the input images. Some pre-trained models require images to be of size (224,224,3) while some require (331,331,3). We use this step to prepare both sizes of images and normalize them by dividing each pixel by 255. We also one-hot encode the labels so that we can use categorical_crossentropy loss during training.
Step 5
Loop over each model by downloading the pre-trained model without the output layers and freeze the weights. We then construct an empty Sequential model and first add the pre-trained model to it. We then add a single output Dense layer with softmax activation and compile it with categorical_crossentropy loss. Finally, we train the model by calling model.fit for 3 epochs . We log the number of parameters (size of the model) and each model’s final accuracy into a dictionary to visualize the results. If you get the following error during the model download AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'decode' , install a lower version of h5py [source]
pip uninstall h5py
pip install h5py<'3.0.0'
The whole process takes ~3 hours on an n1-standard-4 (4 vCPUs, 15 GB RAM) with one NVIDIA Tesla T4 GPU on Google Cloud Platform.
Step 6
Let’s visualize the results by converting it to a DataFrame and sorting in ascending order of num_model_params since our goal is to select the smallest model with good enough accuracy. In this example, the MobileNet model already provides 97% accuracy; thus, we can directly use it. MobileNetV2 and NASNetMobile are two other models we can consider for fine-tuning experiments. If our selected model's accuracy is still insufficient for our task, we can experiment by fine-tuning these selected models further, adding data augmentation, etc. We will apply the typical Deep Learning model improvement experiments on a model that is already proven to be close to our requirements.
Output:
| model_name | num_model_params | validation_accuracy |
|-------------------|------------------|---------------------|
| MobileNetV2 | 2257984 | 0.9475569725036621 |
| MobileNet | 3228864 | 0.9773606657981873 |
| NASNetMobile | 4269716 | 0.9753546118736267 |
| DenseNet121 | 7037504 | 0.9273535013198853 |
| DenseNet169 | 12642880 | 0.95572429895401 |
| VGG16 | 14714688 | 0.9107322096824646 |
| DenseNet201 | 18321984 | 0.9419687390327454 |
| VGG19 | 20024384 | 0.8948273658752441 |
| Xception | 20861480 | 0.9550078511238098 |
| InceptionV3 | 21802784 | 0.9859578609466553 |
| ResNet50V2 | 23564800 | 0.9802263975143433 |
| ResNet50 | 23587712 | 0.49620288610458374 |
| ResNet101V2 | 42626560 | 0.9878206253051758 |
| ResNet101 | 42658176 | 0.49620288610458374 |
| InceptionResNetV2 | 54336736 | 0.9885370135307312 |
| ResNet152V2 | 58331648 | 0.9840951561927795 |
| ResNet152 | 58370944 | 0.49620288610458374 |
| NASNetLarge | 84916818 | 0.9795099496841431 |
Plot the results
Results of Model Accuracy vs. Number of Parameters
Conclusion
In conclusion, I’ve presented a data-driven approach to choose the most suitable model from among a group of pre-trained models in the Tensorflow Keras API. In most industrial applications, we would select the model with the least number of parameters that provided good enough accuracy for further exploration. We can easily extend this approach to include other models not offered by Keras by manually adding items into the model_dictionary in [Step 2].
Finally, extensive experimentation and data-driven decision making are the keys to success in all Machine Learning applications. I hope this post stimulates you to think of ways to make more data-driven decisions in your daily work.
Resources
You can find all the code used in this post at [GitHub].
You can also use Google Colab to run the code without any setup directly. Just remember to go to Edit → Notebook Settings and select a GPU Hardware Accelerator: [Open In Colab]
Hardware Accelerator: [Open In Colab] Please also check out my YouTube channel for video content: [https://youtube.com/agnidata]
Thank you for reading!
Edit: Updated code snippets to GitHub gists | https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-choose-the-best-keras-pre-trained-model-for-image-classification-b850ca4428d4 | ['Marie Stephen Leo'] | 2021-01-27 10:40:04.287000+00:00 | ['Transfer Learning', 'Keras', 'Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Deep Learning'] |
My Top 7 Tips for Saving Money at Whole Foods | My Top 7 Tips for Saving Money at Whole Foods
By: Kate Doubler
If you saw the title of this post and thought, “Whole Foods? No way can I shop there,” let me promise you that there are great ways to save big bucks at Whole Foods. How do I know? Because I do it all the time! I’m going to give you my best-kept secrets for how I personally save money shopping at a store that is well known for its high prices. My uncle jokingly calls it “Whole Paycheck”, but it does not have to be that way. You just have to have a plan!
Here are my tips for saving money at whole foods
1. Ask about deliveries
The best time to hit your local produce section of the grocery store is immediately after they get a delivery. This ensures that your produce will stay fresh longer so there’s less waste. On the flip side, if you are planning to use it up quickly, say for a hearty veggie soup, it’s smart to go to Whole Foods produce section the day before they get their new produce delivery. They often put produce that’s past its prime on deep discount so they don’t have to pitch it. So finding out when their produce is delivered each week can ultimately save you 2 different ways.
2. Is it Wednesday yet?
Wednesday is an important day at Whole Foods because it’s when the new ad comes out. But did you also know that their ads run Wednesday through the next Wednesday? That means that if you time it right, you can cash in on this week’s special deals, but also last week’s ad deals! Double bang for your buck! #winning. They also have an app where you can find coupons for Whole Foods! You can download it here.
3. Buy frozen
Of course it’s better to buy fresh produce if possible because of the nutritional value, but if you need veggies or fruit that aren’t in season, you will save a ton of money by getting them frozen instead. We buy frozen organic berries year round because the prices are so great, and frozen berries are delicious!!! Plus when they are on sale, you can stock up!
4. Check your pantry
Before you head out, make a list of things you are really running low on and another column for things that you could use if the price is right. Also note what you have an abundance of. It’s easy to get carried away when you see all types of yumminess they offer in the store, but don’t be swayed by a so-so good price if you already have a heap of the stuff. Avoid the, “I’m not sure if I have this so I’d better get some” trap. Know what you really need before heading out. Also, do not be lured in by the samples. Yes they’re tasty, but are those chips really worth $7 a bag?
5. Don’t buy everything on your list there
Although you can get good prices on items at Whole Foods when you shop smart, I don’t recommend using it as the grocery store for everything. Some of their prices are just too high for most people’s budget, including mine. For example, they offer excellent meats and produce, so those are always on my list. Also, buy in bulk there because not all health food stores offer that cost-saving option, but avoid buying prepackaged snacks there. You can find those types of healthy snacks elsewhere for much cheaper. HERE is where I buy all of our prepackaged snacks and nonperishables.
6. Buy “generic”
You can get superb quality while saving money by buying their 365 organic brand foods. You will find them all over the store.
7. Take your calculator
Okay, yes, you may look like a geek or a cheapskate, but I think saving cash is worth it. A calculator is your best friend in many stores, including Whole Foods. You will need it to quickly determine which price is better when trying to decide between different sizes of packages. So go ahead and geek out! I do it on the sly, my calculator is on my phone. Pretend you are checking your grocery list on your phone while you do some quick calculations. I won’t tell.
See? I told you that you could brave the aisles of Whole Foods and walk out of there without having to hand over your car keys in payment. You just have to be smart, make a list, and have a plan.
What are YOUR best money saving tips at Whole Foods? I would love to hear about them in the comments below! | https://medium.com/the-paleo-post/my-top-7-tips-for-saving-money-at-whole-foods-4c184a447aa8 | [] | 2016-10-11 08:53:22.135000+00:00 | ['Republished', 'Food', 'Health', 'Paleo', 'Budget'] |
A importância da educação financeira | Programmer, CTO at @enjoei, Author of two books about Ruby on Rails, and Host of the @grokpodcast.
Follow | https://medium.com/nome-do-jogo/a-import%C3%A2ncia-da-educa%C3%A7%C3%A3o-financeira-ea1e3cbd69e0 | ['Carlos Brando'] | 2015-12-09 14:59:39.752000+00:00 | ['Education', 'Finance', 'Brasil'] |
🍊 The Juice: Dare Mighty Things | 🍊 The Juice: Dare Mighty Things
Week of February 22–26, 2021
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Folks at NASA have been smiling all week. Many of them because NASA managed to land their latest rover, Perseverance, on the planet Mars in an absolutely stunning feat of human engineering. Others because that robot subsequently beamed back absolutely mind blowing footage of the stunt. But Ian Clark, the lead developer of the system’s parachute system, was smiling because a handful of internet sleuths managed to piece together the coded message they had cleverly hidden within the canopy. Watching the internet do its thing in real time on Reddit last week was incredible, and there’s a good synopsis of it all in the NY Times.
But let’s talk about that rover. Perseverance is basically an extraterrestrial self-driving car. Actually it’s more like a Martian Tesla, since NASA made an active decision to avoid using a bulky, energy-hungry lidar system in favor of simple stereo vision. Reliability and economy are critical for space missions, it turns out. There was a great piece in Wired last July that gets into the weeds on the autonomous systems NASA developed for Perseverance. “All of its mobile explorers have used a combination of stereo vision and visual odometry to get around. But what makes Perseverance special is that it has dedicated hardware and a suite of fancy new algorithms for machine vision.”
So, I guess if Perseverance happens to run into Starman, at least they’ll have something to talk about.
____
#Multimodality
If computer vision has an Achilles’ heel, it’s that current systems are inflexible and only capable of making predictions on a limited set of predefined categories. But current research into multimodal systems — which combine things like computer vision with natural-language models — is aiming to make AI more robust and adaptable. Is this a step towards artificial general intelligence? See our Paper of the Week for more progress on this front.
AI armed with multiple senses could gain more flexible intelligence, via MIT Technology Review.
#Lookout
This week Amazon announced that Lookout for Vision, their cloud-based computer vision analysis platform, is widely available. The service, which is targeting the manufacturing sector, uses computer vision to identify defects or anomalies in images of the goods. Customers will pay hourly for usage, whether they’re training the model or detecting defects. We could see this being adopted by teams in the manufacturing space that already use AWS but don’t have in house ML.
Amazon launches computer vision service to detect defects in manufactured products, via VentureBeat.
#AssistiveMobility
When an industry is dominated by just a handful of multinational organizations, there’s little incentive to innovate. But now several startup challengers are looking to disrupt the wheelchair industry, and build a better chair for those living with mobility challenges. That means the next generation of wheelchairs will likely include radar and cameras, to power features like intelligent braking, drop detection, and collision avoidance.
Start-ups seek to breathe new life into stagnant wheelchair industry, via The Washington Post.
#Bionics
For many years doctors have pursued sight restoration for those blinded by disease or trauma. Now, one doctor is proposing that, at least in the near term, we should instead be focused on the development of artificial vision. Dr. Michael Beyeler and his team at UC Santa Barbara are working on a smart prosthesis that uses the sort of computer vision you might see in autonomous vehicles. They also presented their work earlier this week at Augmented Humans 2021, and you can catch that presentation here on YouTube.
Building the Bionic Eye…With Car Tech?, via PCMag.
#EthicalAI
On Friday, Google fired Margaret Mitchell, the founder and former co-lead of their ethical AI team. It’s a move that was not entirely unexpected, following Google revoking her corporate access in January, and the restructure that we covered in last week’s newsletter. But it is a shame, considering the work that Mitchell and Dr. Timnit Gebru had been doing to bring attention to bias in Google’s AI systems. Hard not to wonder what’s next for the Ethical AI team over there.
Google fires top AI ethics researcher Margaret Mitchell, via TechCrunch.
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📄 Paper of the Week
Transformer is All You Need: Multimodal Multitask Learning with a Unified Transformer
The year of the transformer continues with this thought provoking work from FAIR (Facebook AI Research). The authors train the same model on 7 different tasks, which span everything from object detection to natural language understanding, and show how the model achieves comparable performance to prior work on all the tasks. That is a scary amount of generalization, especially given the different modalities of each of the tasks (images, text, etc). On our road to AGI, perhaps transformers will be all we need.
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Think The Juice was worth the squeeze? Sign up here to receive The Juice weekly. | https://medium.com/zumo-labs/the-juice-dare-mighty-things-655e4bd3db02 | ['Michael Stewart'] | 2021-03-01 21:48:07.363000+00:00 | ['Artificial Intelligence', 'NASA', 'The Juice', 'Computer Vision', 'Deep Learning'] |
Why I fell in love with Crypto and why you should too? -Part 2 | Why I fell in love with Crypto and why you should too? -Part 2 Danielle shaul Follow Dec 23 · 8 min read
If you have read my previous article (if not, go and do it now!), I was addressing the world’s financial future, which is in the hands of the governments and central banks, who are just out of control. Currency is being printed heavily, causing the money that we are working so hard for, to lose its value. Our purchasing power diminishes because of the current monetary policy which is just a fancy term for “printing money like crazy.”
Why are cryptocurrencies any different?
A cryptocurrency is a digital asset based on blockchain technology. A blockchain is a decentralized, distributed peer to peer network. Now that might sound like rocket science, but it’s actually quite simple. We will look at the principles that are in the fundamentals of every asset that wishes to define itself as a cryptocurrency. So bare with me while I explain this thing that is gonna change your world.
Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash
Decentralize — killing the middleman
Before we kill it, we need to understand why we needed it in the first place. In the first stage of every network or system, there is chaos. How would justice have been done before we had courts and judges and juries in the current judicial system? How were decisions reached in a democratic society with no politicians? How was money handled before banks existed? We had to handle those things ourselves, which leads to a big mess. Then, at some point, we start delegating. We delegate those tasks to a middle man to make decisions, reach verdicts, and represent our best possible interest.
Then this someone gains control, he is in charge of the decision making and everybody is happy and things are going quite well. But at some point in time, this middle man has too much control and too much power, which then turns to corruption (i.e central banks, politicians, and more).
If you, for example, think that this article is awesome and as an act of appreciation, want to transfer some money into my bank account. The process that happens behind the scenes is not a direct transaction from you to me or from your bank account to mine (assuming our bank accounts are in different banks). Your bank will send a request to the central bank or another third party, and this central bank will send a request to my bank.
This makes the central bank a single point of failure. What will happen if the central bank servers are down? What will happen if the bank decides to ban specific countries from these actions? Or you can’t transact over 100$? or you can’t transact at all? Looking at financial crises around the globe, these scenarios are not far-fetched.
Distributed — not controlled by anyone
Think of the blockchain as a ledger database. As the name implies this ledger is a set of blocks. A block is a group of transactions, and we can think about it as a page in the ledger.
Many parties hold copies of the ledger. Therefore, no single authority can take away your asset or change “history” to suit their needs. This is an immutable audit trail where you don’t have to trust anyone to be the source of truth. These digital files record every transaction made on a cryptocurrency’s network and are available to all users — and the general public — for review.
By having the transaction records distributed among the nodes in the network, new transactions can be added to those ledgers only if the whole network agrees on this transaction. No one controls the network, but the network is controlled by its own users. One can not suddenly change the rules, and say “on Sunday, we don’t approve transactions over 10K, for customers whose their first name starts with D,” because it needs the network to agree with it.
So can you just transfer one million dollars from an imaginary balance sheet? This is where miners come into play, they validate and organize the new blocks and in return, get a reward. Different miners get to validate the transactions every time, which supports the decentralization aspect.
Transparent, yet private
The consumer’s identity is as anonymous as they want it to be. The public ledger only contains cryptic numbers known as cryptocurrency public keys for the sender and receiver of each transaction.
Because of the decentralized nature of Bitcoin’s blockchain, for instance, all transactions can be transparently viewed by either having a personal node or by using blockchain explorers that allow anyone to see transactions on the network. This means that if you wanted to, you could track Bitcoin wherever it goes.
All Bitcoin is traceable but it is impossible to establish who has ownership of Bitcoin if it was purchased anonymously. If Bitcoin is purchased on a KYC exchange, then the Bitcoin is directly tied to the holder of the KYC exchange account.
A large portion of the 2008 events were able to happen because of a lack of transparency in the financial status of big banks, as well as a limitless public trust in those banks. Certainly, while the 2008 crisis may have challenged society’s trust in major financial institutions, overall, that sense of trust remains high. However, transparency remains a major issue.
This is where blockchain technology can help prevent future crises like the one from 2008. If every asset’s value and ownership is securely recorded in a shared ledger that is entirely transparent and immutable, the corrupt practices that allowed institutions to hide their struggles will no longer be possible.
Photo by Jason Pofahl on Unsplash
Controlled supply
No one can change the predetermined and publicly published circulation schedule of a cryptocurrency. The government cannot arbitrarily create more cryptocurrency out of thin air and devalue it like they have the US dollar. Cryptocurrency has the same characteristics as precious metals used to back a currency, they are hard to mine and have a limited supply. Therefore, the Banksters can not inflate away your wealth.
A problem with fiat currencies is that central banks can print more money when they feel there is a need. Whether the reason is to jump-start the economy or to help pay off the national debt, an artificial increase in the money supply creates inflation by driving down the overall value of a currency. Bitcoin, for example, is not subjected to inflation as Bitcoin is capped at a maximum of 21 million coins.
Although Bitcoin and gold are currently inflationary monies, according to the traditional definition of inflation, their inflation rates are predictable and constantly decreasing. Similar to gold, Bitcoin’s annual inflation rate will eventually reach zero percent.
Venezuela hyperinflation, for instance, is on track to reach over one million percent by year’s end. Venezuela's usage of Bitcoin is increasing drastically. This should not come as a surprise. It is extremely difficult to make any payment in the collapsed state of Venezuela. Cash is scarce and traditional payment networks are so overloaded that it regularly takes hours (and good luck) to pay the equivalent of four dollars to a taxi driver in Venezuela. As a result, a growing number of merchants, from grocery stores to restaurants and utility outlets, are accepting a variety of cryptocurrencies as payment.
Limitless transactions — Solving the inequality
Cryptocurrency can be sent via the internet, immediately to and from anyone, anywhere, anytime, in any amount, with very low fees. You do not need to rely upon the goodwill of a financial institution to approve your transaction.
It is estimated that there are two billion unbanked people worldwide who are limited to transacting in cash, which is feasible only in local transactions or in relatively small amounts. Bitcoin enables the unbanked to participate in the global market where Bitcoins are accepted. Bitcoin offers a stable banking system that’s robust and accessible to everyone.
“Banking of Africa” is a documentary that follows the journey of Bitcoin pioneers as the African continent seeks to leverage cryptocurrency to increase their independence from a banking system that fails them. I highly recommend watching it to really understand how bad the unbanking problem is in developing countries.
Photo by Pawan Sharma on Unsplash
Owned by the community
If we look at miners, for example, anyone can be a miner. Mining is the action of verifying a transaction while getting a reward for it, since the act of mining creates new coins, we call it mining.
The common types of mining protocol being used today are proof of work and proof of stake. Mining protocol is the way the network chooses a miner to validate a transaction and receives a reward as a result. In proof of stake, for example, you stake your coins to be probabilistically assigned a chance to be the one validating the block — the probability based on the amount of cryptocurrency staked. You don’t need a banking license or a regulatory process to take an active part in the network and make gains (though there is a cost barrier for mining).
Another communal aspect is the open-source code. This means that every developer can read the code and contribute to the changes agreed upon by the network, again no small letters, just lines of code to read and you understand the rules of the game.
All records are public. All technical specifications, white papers, and source code files are published for the public to see. Ask the Federal Reserve why they resist with all their might a public audit? Let alone any transparency whatsoever.
Freedom is real
The corona pandemic not only demonstrated how fragile human nature is but also emphasized how easily governments can take away our freedom and to isolate us backed by whatever they find reasonable.
I truly believe that this is just the first sign that a change needs to be made in the way governments control their population. The financial system is just one of those areas that need to be disrupted. We are seeing the US economy, which is the one driving most of the financial systems worldwide, dramatically losing its power when the US dollar value is decreasing.
I believe that, as a global society, we put too much trust in the hands of people who, like most other humans, don’t really understand the outcome of their actions. However, by joining forces and creating a community-based financial system, we can all play the roles we want and have equal opportunity, which can really change the world.
Photo by Damir Spanic on Unsplash
Is it not too late?
To all the people that ask me, is this the time to really get into Bitcoin now that the price has increased so much, I will say, that the longer vision of cryptocurrency and the decentralized economy is just in its first phase. I personally see the macro perspective and see how big a decentralized system can grow because of its borderless and permissionless nature. For a more detailed answer, follow me on medium to read my next post about my game in the cryptocurrency space.
Gain Access to Expert View — Subscribe to DDI Intel | https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/why-i-fell-in-love-with-crypto-and-why-you-should-too-part-2-5d93f9d9eff4 | ['Danielle Shaul'] | 2020-12-27 16:05:44.044000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin', 'Change', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Economics'] |
RIP Pipenv: Tried Too Hard. Do what you need with pip-tools. | Pipenv is dead. It went all of 2019 without a single release, despite about 650 commits to master since the last release. Comments from developers on the project explain it “has been held back by several subdependencies and a complicated release process”. In the past, there were also comments that internal changes to pip broke it, but pip is continuing to evolve in response to the PSF funding developers to work on it. Will they hit this moving target and make a release in 2020? Do I care?
My principal reasons for using Pipenv were twofold. First, was the ability to have reproducible builds through an exhaustively defined lock file, with every package and version specified, then hashed for good measure. Second, I could do the above while maintaining a clean, minimal list of direct dependencies for my application.
Pin everything…
The reason for a lock file should be clear: so you can have reproducible builds. pip install mypackage may work when you build and test on your workstation, and through one release cycle, but what about when you make a small fix later? Why did changing one line of code and rebuilding cause everything to explode? There was a new incompatible release among one of your dependencies. Precisely defining all packages and their exact versions leads to reproducible builds that are easier to diagnose and bisect when they go wrong.
Bonus features in the lock file include package hashes. It can improve security, but the failures I’ve seen are because of using multiple package indexes. At Telnyx we have a private PyPI that we use to distribute Python libraries. We adapted a synchronous library to asyncio, but later someone else did so and released it publically with the same name. The collision led to sometimes downloading the private version, sometimes the public, depending on how the indexes were configured on the user’s machine, their build container, or the CI infrastructure. Our private PyPI also allows re-uploading of the same version, which is also made clear when the hash check fails.
The locked list of dependencies should be deliberately generated and validated through tests. This is often by a developer on their workstation, and they can immediately check before entering a broken commit into the repo. Diffing the lock file will show what new versions were installed, and the version can be pinned to an older version, or source changed to accommodate the change.
…and also only what you need
OK, but why do we need a separate list of dependencies? Imagine a simple cycle of pinning everything in a singular requirements.txt and regenerating it with pip freeze . The file will not track why certain packages are installed, and if you explicitly remove a direct dependency from it, you’ll be keeping around all of its sub-dependencies for no reason. Additionally, you can enter version resolution hell wherein trying to bump one package for a new version means it needs another package, but a different version than you have pinned. Why is that package pinned? Are you using it directly where you care about the changes, or is it just for one of your deps? Or multiple?
In this minimal list, we can pin just what we need, excluding incompatible or buggy versions purposefully, and allowing incidental upgrades where we can. This can provide bug fixes and performance improvements (admittedly there can be regressions…), and preclude integrating with deprecated features in older libraries that will be a large maintenance burden later.
pip-compile: does one thing
Note that none of the features listed include virtual environment management. I use Pyenv for this on my machine, and in production, setting using pip and the built-in venv package is best. Why install anything when you can create a virtual environment in one line, and pip install with one more? They’re ever-so-slightly onerous to call if you use full paths, but you’re typing it once in the Dockerfile or other setup scripts anyways.
python3 -m venv /opt/appvenv
/opt/appvenv/bin/python3 -m pip install requirements.txt
So how do I get that requirements.txt while holding on to the features I liked? Enter pip-tools. Making a wiser decision than Pipenv, pip-tools goes with the UNIX philosophy of “do one thing, and do it well”. It provides a few commands, but one of them: pip-compile can bake one requirements-style file into another, complete with versions and hashes.
pip-compile --quiet \
--generate-hashes \
--output-file=requirements.txt \
requirements.in
Pipenv uses this library to do it — we can cut out the middleman! What’s more, the generated requirements.txt is perfectly readable by pip, so you don’t need to install the tooling in your production system, saving time, space, and exposure to bugs.
I think I’ve been guilty of inflating Pipenv’s download stats; every container build pulls it
How can you make the switch? If you’re willing to shake up the versions from your Pipfile.lock , converting the Pipfile to a requirements.in is sometimes just a slightly-tedious bunch of editing. However, if you have a lot of libraries, and want to keep their versions locked to make sure changing tools didn’t break anything, I wrote a script that will do it for you!
# in a path with a Pipfile and Pipfile.lock
# prereqs: `pip install toml pip-tools` curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nicktimko/pipenv2tools/master/pipenv2tools | python -
So even if Pipenv came out with a new release fixing all the outstanding bugs and pain points I’ve come across, I won’t go back. | https://medium.com/telnyx-engineering/rip-pipenv-tried-too-hard-do-what-you-need-with-pip-tools-d500edc161d4 | ['Nick Timkovich'] | 2020-01-24 16:59:50.114000+00:00 | ['Python', 'Pipenv', 'Pip', 'Continuous Integration', 'Software Development'] |
Visualising data in local government | Visualising data in local government
A conversation about the use of data visualisation in local government operations.
A screen from a Google Data Studio report
Data visualisation tools such as Tableau, PowerBI and Google Data Studio are slowly infiltrating local government. So what insight can tools like this produce?
To better my understanding I ask Ben Proctor, technical director at The Satori Lab, what he thinks.
Luke: What types of data do local governments collect that could be visualised?
Ben: It might genuinely be easier to identify data that they collect that couldn’t be visualised. But let’s think of some broad areas of data:
Data about how services are working: how many people apply for a thing, how many are successful, how long does it take for an application to be processed, how satisfied are they by the process, how much difference does it make to their lives and so on
Data about people: what is the demographic breakdown of the council area, of a neighbourhood, or a village, what needs do different people have, how rich or poor are they, how fit and healthy and so on
Data about things: where are our dog poo bins, where are the roads, the schools, the community centres, the parks and so on and then you can relate those different types of data to each other… how well do our services work for different sorts of people, or people in different places, does the presence of a dog poo bin affect dog mess problems and so on and then you can add in time, has our service got better or worse for this type of person over the past year, does this bin fill faster than that bin, how is the population of children changing over time near that school
And that’s really only the basic stuff…
Luke: OK, so we can clearly see that there is data available, but how do local governments ensure it is good quality data?
Ben: Imperfectly.
There is a vicious/virtual circle with regards to data quality (not just in local government but certainly there).
Poor quality data cannot be relied on by the service, so the service is managed in other ways, so they don’t collect good quality data.
Good quality data can be relied on by service, if they use the data to manage the service this incentivises them to improve the data quality.
Many councils don’t use data to manage their service so they are stuck in the poor data quality zone. (It’s not just me saying that, the WAO recently said that sort of thing about local government in Wales).
Luke: Which teams will typically visualise the data?
Ben: Like all matters pertaining to local government there is no simple answer and every council is different. Place based services (planning, bin collections, highways etc) tend to be comfortable with maps. If they are based in a large council or are lucky they may have a GIS (Geographic Information System) specialist available to help them. If not they’ll have to muddle through with whatever their Management Information System allows them to visualise on maps.
Accountants live in spreadsheets and they tend to be very comfortable spilling out financial charts. These days many managers also have some familiarity with spreadsheets and so they will usually be reasonably free with some simple charts.
Across other services there will be a much more mixed picture depending on the priorities of the profession, the skills of the individual and the prevailing culture of the council.
In larger local authorities there may be a dedicated Performance / Business Intelligence team. In principle the people in this team will be more skilled in visualising different sorts of data. They *should* be able to bring together different datasets from different teams to create deeper insights. Often, however, they are hampered by the quality of the data from individual service areas and the lack of appreciation amongst managers of the value that can be generated by bringing different datasets together, and then analysing and visualising them to make them useful to services.
Luke: So what things do councils need to do to get better at visualising their data?
Ben: I think we need to take a step back here. Visualising data shouldn’t be a goal in itself. The goal should be improving services, data can help everyone improve services, visualising data can help make it more useful.
Often the conversation jumps straight to the visualisation and therefore to the tech (and there’s lots of lovely tech). The starting point should be the service though. My recommendation for all teams and organisations wanting to start getting better at using data is to start with people on the frontline and ask them a few simple questions:
how do you know what is the most important thing for you to do next?
how do you know that you’re doing a good job?
how do you know whether your team is doing a better job than last month?
The first question tends to point you in the direction of being able to visualise the whole service, so the sorts of visualisation that work well there are simple charts showing demand building up for different team members. This helps team members work out whether they should pick up another new job from the queue or going and help one of their colleagues clear the backlog. This is the sort of thing that Kanban can really help with in some environments.
The second question relates to the design of the service. What need is the service meeting and how effectively is it meeting that need. Ideally when services are designed the design should include some meaningful measures that can help to answer this question. This sort of thing is ideal for a dashboard.
The third question relates to constant improvement. Ideally the team needs to come together regularly to review what went well and what they need to do differently. This sort of thing requires more detailed analysis and for most councils is the time to bring out the spreadsheets (and involve your Business Intelligence team if you are lucky enough to have one). | https://medium.com/the-satori-lab/visualising-data-in-local-government-c069f2ade918 | ['Luke Piper'] | 2019-06-03 10:59:36.102000+00:00 | ['Data', 'Local Government', 'Data Visualization'] |
Cosine similarity in Neo4J | Cosine similarity in Neo4J
This post will showcase the use of cosine similarity algorithm in Neo4J and also provide examples in addition to the available documentation.
Update: The O’Reilly book “Graph Algorithms on Apache Spark and Neo4j Book is now available as free ebook download, from neo4j.com
Without further ado, here is the problem set:
I had a collection of people’s images and I wanted to find images showing the same person. Since the collection was not labeled, I could not tackle this task as a pure classificaton problem.
I manually created a list of persons of interest and downloaded their “prototypical” pictures from the web.
Next step was to extract embeddings from both the “prototypical” images and from each image in my collection. For this I used a pretrained Resnet50 model from keras.applications.
import glob
import numpy as np
from scipy.misc import imresize
from keras.applications import resnet50
from keras.models import Model IMAGE_SIZE = 224
IMAGE_DIR=<directory_with_images> resnet_model = resnet50.ResNet50(weights="imagenet",
include_top=True)
preprocessor = resnet50.preprocess_inputmodel = Model(inputs=resnet_model.input,
outputs=resnet_model.layers[-1].output) image_names = glob.glob(IMAGE_DIR+'/*.jpg')
num_vecs = 0
image_names = sorted(image_names) batched_images = [] for i in range(len(image_names)):
image = plt.imread(image_names[i])
image = imresize(image, (IMAGE_SIZE, IMAGE_SIZE))
batched_images.append(image) X = preprocessor(np.array(batched_images, dtype="float32"))
vectors = model.predict(X)
Once I obtained the embeddings, I saved each image as a node in Neo4j using the following schema (the person_name property is optional, it was only filled for the manually downloaded “prototypical” images): | https://medium.com/neo4j/cosine-similarity-in-neo4j-d617b0442439 | ['Mike Palei'] | 2019-04-16 19:45:40.684000+00:00 | ['Neo4j', 'How To', 'Machine Learning', 'Cosine Similarity', 'Data Science'] |
WHAT ETHICS FRAMEWORK IS NEEDED TO DEVELOP SPACE? | Musk’s advocacy for the long-term settlement of Mars goes far beyond what SpaceX projects to build successful colonization would ultimately involve many more economic actors — whether individuals, companies, or governments — to facilitate the growth of the human presence on Mars over many decades. Elon Musk and SpaceX envision astronauts initially living out of the spaceships while constructing a more permanent human settlement on the Red Planet. Musk has also shared a plan to launch a group of artists around the moon in just a few years and the possibility of using Starship for super-quick international flights via space.
VIRGIN GALACTIC
Virgin Galactic was founded in 2004 by Sir Richard Branson. Virgin Galactic also states that the answers to many of the challenges we face in sustaining life on our beautiful planet lie in making better use of space. “Throughout history, the urge to see what lies just over the horizon has led us to find new places to settle, helped us identify new resources, and taught us new skills to overcome complex challenges. As a global community, we will grow and evolve only through continuing to
explore the unknown. The exploration of space is the ultimate expression of the human desire to push boundaries and stands at the pinnacle of our species’ achievements. Not just for the ingenuity required, but for the fact that without it, modern life would be unrecognizable. Sending people to space has not only expanded our understanding of science but taught us amazing things about human ingenuity, physiology, and psychology. We are at the vanguard of a new industry determined to pioneer twenty-first-century spacecraft, which will open space to everybody — and change the world for good.”
NASA
NASA consults with and collaborates with all three of these private entities. In the room at NASA, we discussed the exponentially accelerating power of technology, as well as our current capital-focused society, social contracts, and the importance of approaching this opportunity with an evolved human development perspective — shifting from an ego-centric perspective to ethnocentric and cosmos-centric states of being. Moving from the limbic brain concerned about scarcity to a more collective “being” of human beings. Integral theory is Ken Wilber’s attempt to place a wide diversity of theories and thinkers into one single framework. It is portrayed as a “theory of everything” as it relates to the evolution of human consciousness and co-existence.
One member of the group, entrepreneur Christopher Ategeka (Founder/ CEO at UCOT), doubled down on this with a powerful story about his small village in Fort Portal, Uganda, emphasizing how neighbors relied on each other as part of the culture. “You don’t stay mad at your neighbor beyond today, because tomorrow you might need them. Turning ME upside down converts to WE. Here in America, the gold standard is independence from needing anyone else.” Chris runs a company called UCOT (Unintended Consequences of Technology). Needless, to say a real concern.
During a March 27, 2019 meeting with NASA managers and aerospace officials at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Pence said the Trump administration was ordering NASA to send astronauts back to the moon by 2024. President Trump said “It marks a first step in returning American astronauts to the moon for the first time since 1972, for long-term exploration and use… to establish a foundation for an eventual mission to Mars, and perhaps someday, to many worlds beyond.”
There has never been a riper time to convene wise and empathic minds to engage on this topic, and as I sit there, I am reminded of the power of curation and convening, something I do throughout my life. While I’m pondering this, Avary Kent (Executive Director of Conveners.Org), says it out loud. “There has never been a more important time for convenings.” Amen.
The room that Topher of Opportunity Collaborative gathered was inspiring, and I was humbled to be in the mix. Lakshmi, a member of OC’s community had reached out to Topher to let him know about the work she is doing with Future Frontiers, an independent nonprofit housed at NASA’s Ames Research Center devoted to responsibly developing the first off-world human settlement on the moon ~ aka Lunar University.
What if there was the an International United University of Space?
There are many deeply existential perspectives to ponder, with the realization that space travel and eventual settlement is upon us. What will the charter be? The rules of engagement in the exploration and eventual extraction of resources from Space? How will this be written, by whom, and how do we know it can be enforced?
Think about how our constitution was written two hundred years ago, and the multitude of things that have changed in our world since then. Someone posed the question “Imagine if artists had written the constitution?”
“Space… the final frontier. These are the voyages in a continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.”
Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek is one who foresaw this moment in time, and crafted the “ethics” of space”
How can we create guidelines and systems that learn and adapt, as environments mature and evolve?
“Why are we even calling it a colonization? Every other country that was colonized, meant that the indigenous community was significantly marginalized or forced to borderline extinction,” asked Valerie Red-Horse Mohl, (Executive Director, Social Venture Circle), and a native American entrepreneur and human rights advocate.
It is indeed critical to look to previous examples of colonial communities, learn from the mistakes of humanity.
If we could start from scratch to build a civilization from scratch, which components would we want to re-invent (and how) and which do we want to keep?
How might we co-create a system that re-prioritizes hierarchy, borders, money, society, and more?
According to Future Frontiers, the global race to exert dominance and exploit space resources is underway, and by the 2030s there will be hundreds on the Moon. The concern is that there is not a holistic approach or framework of ethics being considered. The proposed solution is a “Lunar University” to consider and carefully co-create a re-invention of current constructs.
Potential mandates/benefits of “Lunar University”
Co-create a unifying construct based on exploration and learning for common good.
Advance all fields of study in partnership with governments, industry, and society
To develop dual-use technology startups for key problems to benefit Earth and Space (eg: energy, water, food)
Provide an unprecedented perspective on new worlds, the Earth and humanity
Inspire and equip an inter-generational talent pipeline to sustain bold human endeavors (in space and on Earth)
Explore new social and economic systems (eg: equity, governance, quality of life)
Inspire and train the next generation to dream and be responsible stewards of the future.
In some conversations leading up to this, I was chatting with my friend and fellow HATCHer who works at JPL, designing creative for the missions that pitched to NASA. He’s always been a romantic about space exploration.
“It’s critical to have transparent discussions about the motivations driving this new push to the moon. It is extremely important to understand the motivations and build upon that potential future as a start.”
Some questions we pondered before the gathering included:
What are the 3 to 5 distinct plausible futures for lunar culture in the next 20 years? Let’s focus on the most aspirational, reverse engineer the steps needed to achieve that, and get to work.
What are the incentives for governments and private industries to expedite the exploration of the moon?
for governments and private industries to expedite the exploration of the moon? How will the scale of their growth compare to the groups with other priorities?
Will the needs of the dominant “employer” drive the scale and makeup of the population? How will these factors be regulated, if at all?
Will the moon become a work camp? Similar to a fracking camp or living on an oil rig?
How can we allow for the possibility of cultural and socioeconomic equity? Does that even matter? If so, why?
Can we imagine other futures for the moon?
If there was a Lunar University, beyond research into new fields only possible on the moon, what will students that travel to the moon does for fun? What elements of culture will they bring with them from Earth?
What new and beautiful cultural mashups will the lunar community cultivate?
Jessy Kate Schingler (Managing Governance at Non-profit Spaceship & co-founder of The Embassy Network), used to work at Ames, and still works in the private space sector and collaborates with NASA. She pointed out a specific part of the original space treaty:
“The exploration and use of outer space, including the Moon and other Celestial Bodies, shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries, irrespective of their degree of economic or scientific development, and shall be the province of all mankind.”
That is a very noble and impactful concept. Can we as humans guide that intention to manifestation?
On the plane ride home, while writing this, I was listening to music, and this quote was overlaid on the track:
Yesterday was history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift.
That is why they call it the present.
Make the most of living our full personal potential today. A beautiful reminder.
|| Watch: Carl Sagan’s “We Humans Are Capable Of Greatness”
A conceptual rendering from Futurist Mark Goerner, depicting large scale agriculture on Mars. See more HERE.
In closing this pondering, I want to thank the amazing Christine Lai as well as Raman Frey (both conveners themselves), for introducing me to a kindred spirit and thoughtful curator and community builder, Topher Wilkins.
Present was:
Topher Wilkins (CEO of Opportunity Collaboration and Founder of Conveners.org), Lakshmi Karan (Co-Founder Future Frontiers Institute), Bruce Pittman (Chief System Engineer at NASA Space Portal, Chief Space Officer of Future Frontiers Institute), Avary Kent (Executive Director of Conveners.Org), Bulbul Gupta (Founding Advisor, Socos Labs), Chelsea Robinson (Chief of Staff for NewFoundation.Space), Kate Byrne and President of the Board for UN Women, the United Nations entity for gender equality and the empowerment of women, and President of Intentional Media), Philip Kao (Co-founder at Appleseed), Christopher Ategeka (Founder/ CEO at UCOT), Elizabeth Burger (Executive & Operations Associate at Social Venture Circle), Jessy Kate Schingler (Managing Governance at Non-profit Spaceship & co-founder of The Embassy Network), Katie Drasser, (Managing Director Aspen Global Innovators Group), Neetal Parekh (Convener of Impactathon and Founder of Innov8social), Valerie Red-Horse Mohl, (Executive Director, Social Venture Circle), Steve Zornetzer (Vice-Chair, Governing Board of Directors at Ice911 Research and retired Associate Center Director for Research and Technology Ames Research Center), and me — Yarrow Kraner, founder of HATCH & H360, a collaboration acceleration platform to power networks and a “network of networks”).
Yarrow Kraner, Avary Kent, & NASA’s Bruce Pittman outside NASA Ames Research Center’s Space Portal
#OpportunityCollaborative, #Conveners, #HATCHaBetterWorld
#NASA, #SpaceExploration, #VirginGalactic, #SpaceX, #BlueOrigin, #FutureFriontiers, #LunarUniversity | https://medium.com/@yarrowk/what-ethics-framework-is-needed-to-develop-space-d43636b1e443 | ['Yarrow Kraner'] | 2019-09-09 16:54:28.259000+00:00 | ['NASA', 'Spacex', 'Space', 'Space Exploration', 'Virgin Galactic'] |
An Open Letter To My Favorite Writer About Pinning Stories On Your Profile Page | A humble request from a dedicated reader
I know this is going to sound weird so please don’t hold it against me but I’m having an awful time accessing your articles. Every time I show up on your page, I notice the entire first page of stories are pinned stories that you’ve been writing over the past 6 months. These are your greatest hits. The four stories on your profile page are all pinned. The next page has four more pinned stories. The third page had four more pinned stories.
I only find your newest post on the fourth page. This morning, I found your new post about adopting stray cats on the fifth page. It took me 8 minutes to get to your newest story. I don’t mind doing this for you and will continue to wade through all your pinned posts but I have a humble request for you today?
Can you have a few less pinned posts so we see your latest article towards the top of your profile page?
Reading your stories used to take a few minutes but now it’s taking me 8 minutes to even get to your latest post. I have to stumble through all of your greatest hits before I find what I’m looking for. Only after the 8 minutes do I get to your post and spend another 7 minutes reading it. What used to take me 7 minutes takes closer to 15 these days.
I’m asking for your assistance and come to you with the most simple request to put your latest story on page 2 or at least page 3 of your profile. If you can help me cut down the searching time for your newest post by half, I would be ever so grateful.
An earnest plea to get some of my time back
Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against your 16 pinned posts but I just would like to get in, read and get out. Currently, it feels like I need to plan a trip to the city known as your profile page. I have no google map on how to get there and little instructions when I do there. I go around in circles searching through publication dates to find your most recent post.
Posting a few less of your pinned posts upfront will help me get to what I’m looking for sooner. I’m humbly requesting that you give me a little bit more of my time back. Each 4 minutes that I can save from finding your most recent post allows me to read someone else’s post or even one of your old posts. I mean no offense or harm. I am no hater or troll. I come with genuine gratitude and an earnest plea.
Thank you for understanding and I look forward to seeing your latest post soon. I hope I won’t have to spend the regular 8 minutes to find it by going through all the pinned posts.
Your reader and fan,
Pinned Out
p.s. This is in no way a bribe but I just donated another $20 to your KoFi account. You can use it for coffee or to pay for your Medium subscription or for groceries. I ask nothing in return. You don’t have to move your latest story to the top of the profile page but if you did, I would be forever grateful and there may be more KoFi donations coming your way. | https://medium.com/the-haven/an-open-letter-to-my-favorite-writer-about-pinning-stories-on-your-profile-page-666ac9cee9d4 | ['Vishnu S Virtues'] | 2020-12-09 22:29:13.236000+00:00 | ['Language', 'Creativity', 'Psychology', 'Culture', 'Lifestyle'] |
Birthing Big Business | Monopolizing the Birthing Industry via “Medical Professional Opinions”
Becoming a mother is an exciting and wondrous blessing.There are multiple ways of entering motherhood: Birthing, Adoption, Fostering, and other legal avenues. All routes are valid and worth exploring for women looking into becoming a caring mother. One of the main things to consider before diving into motherhood is exploring which option is the healthiest (mentally and physically) for themselves and the baby. Regardless of the route, “mommies-to-be” know they must do extensive research beforehand in order to ensure the best quality of life.
However, in this social climate and internet crazed era we live in today, the American Health Care System is able to “uncomplicatedly” exploit the vulnerability of expectant mothers. Today it is very easy to surf the internet and find a myriad of benefits to hospitalized births but not often do we hear about the dark side of birthing at these facilities. In the documentary The Business of Being Born by Abby Epstein, the filmmakers interview parents and medical experts about the journey of motherhood to find out the realities of maternity care. While they follow expectant mothers to see what option is best for them, they unveil the crude realities behind the birthing industry.
Traditional American births involve doctors, drugs, obstetricians, and of course, surgery. For years now, women have been told the false narrative that they are not responsible for their child’s birth. That is an extremely dangerous tale to perpetuate because the mortality of the mother and the baby are blindly being placed in the hands of doctors that just want to go home at the end of the day. Mothers confine,trust and fully comply with these doctors because they’re the professionals. However in the documentary, we learn that Cesarean Sections are the quickest and most efficient way for hospitals to turn beds and turn profits. According to the Cleveland Clinic,
“ If the cesarean is an emergency, the time from incision to delivery takes about two minutes. In a non-emergency, a cesarean birth can take 10 to 15 minutes, with an additional 45 minutes for the delivery of the placenta and suturing of the incisions.”
In addition, C-Sections are glamorized in Hollywood by celebrities and marketed as quick and painless. Of course there are multiple reasons why a c-section would be the preferred alternative as mentioned in the hyperlink above, but women do not have enough exposure to the dangerous and complications of this major surgery. Instead, they are told that they do not know how to birth and must be assisted. Not only does this narrative condone the exploitation of mothers by the American Health care system, it is banking off the backs of these confused and ill-informed women.
In The Making of Punishable Bodies, Michel Foucault presents an array of ways the human body has been abused and used for capital. Hospitals and doctors are using their name and title to advise women to undergo a quick surgery which in turn results in these women being rushed to be induced. Scheduling births is easy to keep log of how much money will be coming in the doors at the end of each month. It’s a business model that appeals to the majority of American women because women think the doctors know best.
Foucault writes in reference to patterns of history:
“ In every society, the body was in the grip of very strict powers, which imposed on it constraints, prohibitions or obligations… To begin with, there was the scale of the control: it was a question not of treating the body, en masse, ‘wholesale’, as if it were an indissociable unity, but of working it ‘retail’, individually; of exercising upon it a subtle coercion, of obtaining holds upon it at the level of the mechanism itself.”
Mothers should not be too quick to subscribe to these medical opinions and find what route truly is best for them and the baby. In the documentary, we see that midwives are an exceptional resource and even alternative to drug-induced births. Midwives may help facilitate and nurture the birthing process. The stigma behind any type of outcast-ed birthing method should be dismantled and American Culture should be less discriminating with the many ways women safely deliver a healthy baby. | https://medium.com/gendered-violence/birthing-big-business-5b76e1691dc3 | ['Carolyn Mejia'] | 2018-03-28 00:29:26.128000+00:00 | ['Birthing Industry', 'Foucault', 'Pregnancy', 'Business Of Being Born', 'C Section'] |
instagram founder country name | Instagram, the image sharing app created with the aid of using Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom from Stanford University, spins the story of achievement capitalized the proper manner. Launched manner again withinside the 12 months 2010, Instagram nowadays boasts of seven hundred million registered customers, with extra than four hundred million human beings touring the webweb page on a everyday basis. Out of the seven hundred million customers, round 17 million are from the UK alone! When the 2 founders began out speakme approximately their concept, they quick realised that they’d one purpose in mind: to make the biggest cell image sharing app. However, earlier than Instagram, the 2 had labored collectively on a comparable platform referred to as Burbn. For Instagram to work, Krieger and Systrom determined to strip Burbn right all the way down to the naked necessities. Burbn became pretty just like Instagram and had functions which allowed customers to feature filters to their pictures. The social networking webweb page Instagram reached 1000000000 energetic customers in 2019. The US-primarily based totally video and image-sharing app is a achievement tale that has spread out because its release in October 2010 with the aid of using Stanford University college students Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom. Systrom majored in control technological know-how and engineering, at the same time as Krieger studied symbolic systems — a department of pc research mixed with psychology. When the 2 founders met, they began out discussing their concept for a brand new app and realised they shared a purpose: to create the world’s biggest cell image-sharing app. Budding entrepreneur Fellow college students recalled Systrom as being clearly gregarious and a budding entrepreneur from a younger age. He in short ran a market that became just like Craigslist for fellow Stanford college students. Krieger had exclusive capabilities and one in all his college tasks were designing a pc interface that could gauge human emotions. Prior to Instagram, that they’d collaborated on a comparable platform referred to as Burbn. They determined to strip it down and use it as the premise for Instagram. Burbn had functions that enabled customers to feature filters to their photographs, so the duo studied each famous image app to peer how they might development further. Eventually, they determined it wasn’t operating and scrapped Burbn in favour of making a totally new platform. Their first attempt became Scotch, a predecessor to Instagram, however it wasn’t a achievement, because it didn’t have sufficient filters, had too many insects and became slow. Once Instagram became launched for Android phones, the app became downloaded extra than 1,000,000 instances a day. Interestingly, the web social media platform became ready to get hold of an funding of $ 500 million. Furthermore, Systrom and Zuckerberg had been in talks for a Facebook poised takeover. In April 2012, Facebook made a proposal to buy Instagram for approximately $ 1 billion in coins and stock, with the important thing provision that the enterprise could continue to be independently managed. Shortly thereafter and simply previous to its preliminary public offering, Facebook received the enterprise for the whopping sum of $ 1 billion in coins and stock. After the Facebook acquisition, the Instagram founders have completed little to alternate the consumer phase, sticking to the simplicity of the app. The remarkable upward push of Instagram’s recognition proves that human beings agree with in actual connections as opposed to the ones primarily based totally on simplest words. Since the acquisition, Instagram’s founders haven’t made many adjustments to the consumer experience, who prefer to paste to the app’s simplicity. Its upward push in recognition proves that human beings revel in the manner the app works and just like the image-primarily based totally connections it provides. One of the maximum essential instructions of Instagram’s achievement is that the founders didn’t waste time seeking to keep their authentic concept, Burbn. Once they determined it wasn’t going to work, they moved on quick and invented Instagram. Systrom stated its call became primarily based totally on “immediate telegram”. The app became released at simply the proper time — and with simplest 12 personnel initially, the consumer base had increased to extra than 27 million earlier than Instagram became offered to Facebook. Today, maximum celebrities use it as a platform for promotions and with 1000000000 customers, it keeps to head from power to power. | https://medium.com/@siddhartha-roby/instagram-founder-country-name-ee53b811ba62 | ['Siddhartha Roby'] | 2020-12-16 07:58:05.084000+00:00 | ['Technews', 'Success Story'] |
About Me — Brittney. I’m a psychology nerd, and because of… | Psychology nerd and expert
Photo by Cristofer Jeschke on Unsplash
I’m a psychology nerd, and because of that, I’ve made it my career! I’m training as a psychologist, and every week, I learn from some of the top psychology and psychiatry experts.
I think of myself as a sponge, soaking up as much knowledge as I can. Because of my knowledge-base, I can provide you with the most effective ways of improving your mental health.
Here’s what I do have in my corner as a writer:
Years of psychology training (over 10, to be exact).
Did you know I’ve gotten 3 degrees in psychology and I’m currently working toward my doctorate in clinical psychology?
2. Thousands of hours of consuming psychological research and discourse among psychologists.
2. Hundreds of hours working directly with people to decrease their suffering and improve mental wellness.
4. Currently training a hospital affiliated with Harvard Medical School.
“What’s the point of having this expertise if people continue to suffer?”
This question drives my mission to educate and provide people with practical ways to improve their mental health. Writing provides an excellent way for me to share my expertise with you.
Clinical Training with Harvard Medical School
Every week, I learn about trauma, cultural considerations in psychiatry, psychological testing, anti-racism in healthcare, suicidality, and a host of other topics. It’s through these seminars with my colleagues that I learn the latest research in mental health today.
I have 6 supervisors, all of which are appointed through Harvard Medical School. I meet with them individually and weekly. I receive in-depth consultation and learning from them. They teach me how to help my patients better, tailoring my psychological knowledge to each person.
Most of my time is spent working one-on-one with patients, providing individual psychotherapy. This is the most rewarding part of my week, witnessing people learn about themselves, change unhelpful patterns, and interact with the world around them more effectively.
Not only do my patients learn from me, but I’ve also learned so much from them. | https://medium.com/@almostdrjones/bio-psychology-nerd-and-expert-e15169f0937b | ['Brittney Jones', 'Ma'] | 2020-12-23 12:16:02.649000+00:00 | ['Mental Illness', 'Psychology', 'About Me', 'Mental Health', 'Psychotherapy'] |
Ring Alarm (2nd Gen) review: Still the best DIY home security system | Ring Alarm (2nd Gen) review: Still the best DIY home security system Shelly Jan 16·13 min read
Ring Alarm has been our favorite home-security-focused smart home system since its launch, and the second-generation system is even better. That said, Ring hasn’t yet delivered on its implied promise to make the Ring Alarm the unifying core of a complete smart home system. Fulfilling that promise—which Ring Solutions president Mike Harris spoke of in 2018—would have bumped up our bottom-line score by a half point.
I’ll assume, however, that your primary interest in reading this review is to learn about Ring Alarm as a home security system. So, I’ll focus on that aspect first and summarize its shortcomings as a smart home system later. This is an in-depth review of a complex system, written after living with the product for a couple of months with the professional monitoring option enabled. Click here if you’d prefer to skip to our bottom-line recommendation. If you’d like to read more of our smart home system reviews, click here.
Michael Brown / IDG The new Ring keypad (right) is much smaller than the original, and it has dedicated buttons for summoning emergency responders (although you need to pay for monitoring to enable that feature).
Ring Alarm 2 is available in several starter kits. Ring sent us a eight-piece kit consisting of the Ring base station, a keypad for arming/disarming the system, four contact sensors, one motion sensor, and one range extender with a battery backup. This kit sells for $250. To get the most value out of the system, you’ll also want to sign up for a professional monitoring service that will summon first responders in the event of an emergency. That will add $10 per month to the overall cost of the system, but it doesn’t require a long-term contract. We’ll get deeper into that in a bit.
The system can be expanded and enhanced with a wide range of specialized add-on products from third parties (via the Works with Ring certification program) and Ring itself. But again, the focus of all these products—ranging from cameras to smoke detectors to connected lighting products to smart locks—is on home security, not the comfort and convenience aspects that define a smart home.
Hardware evolutionWith the exception of the base station that connects the Ring Alarm system to your home network, every Ring Alarm component has been hit with a shrink ray. The keypad for arming and disarming the system is smaller. The contact sensors you’ll mount to your doors and windows are smaller. The motion sensor is smaller. Each of the new sensors and the new range extender have an LED-backlit button that lights up when the sensor is activated, although you can override that behavior.
[ Further reading: A smart home guide for beginners ]The reductions are thanks, in large measure, to Ring’s decision to use the new Z-Wave 700 chip in those components. That should yield a second important benefit to consumers: Longer range and improved battery life. Chipmaker Silicon Labs says sensors using Z-Wave 700-series chips should be able to last 10 years or more, although Ring itself more modestly says only that battery life depends on usage.
Michael Brown / IDG The base station is the only component that didn’t benefit from a redesign in the second-gen Ring Alarm system.
The new keypad used for arming and disarming the system now has three dedicated buttons for summoning police, fire, or medical assistance. But these buttons are non-functional unless you sign up for Ring’s professional monitoring (more on that later).
All 18 buttons on the keypad are now backlit, where only the numeric buttons on the original model were. The keypad comes with a wall-mount bracket or it can be left on a tabletop. It has a rechargeable battery, or you can run it on AC power with the included adapter. All the new components are backward compatible with the first-generation Ring Alarm, and all first-gen Ring components can be used with the new system.
The base station is designed to operate on AC power most of the time, but it does have battery backup to keep the system working in the event of a blackout. The base station connects the system to your Wi-Fi network, and if you pay for monitoring, Ring will activate its onboard LTE radio so the system can maintain its internet connection if your broadband connection fails (as it likely would in a blackout or if an intruder cut your phone or cable line).
The base station has a 104dB (at one foot) siren onboard that sounds off when the system goes into an alarm state. Either way, the siren isn’t as loud as I would like it to be. Something that produced 120dB—the noise level a chainsaw would generate—would make it uncomfortable for an intruder to stick around.
Michael Brown / IDG The new Ring motion sensor (right) is much less obtrusive than the original.
Easy-peasy installationThe new Ring Alarm system is every bit as easy to install as the original, but Ring provides a glossy printed user manual with photos and diagrams to step you through the process. The manual suggests placements for the contact sensors, motion sensor, Z-Wave range extender, base station, and keypad along with lots of other handholding. These come pre-paired with the system when you buy the kit.
Should you add additional sensors down the road, there’s a quick-and-easy onboarding system in which you open the app and scan QR codes on the devices. Buy these add-on products directly from Ring, and they’ll arrive already pre-paired with your system, just like the ones from the starter kit.
The contact and motion sensors have adhesive pads applied to them to make installation quicker, but these devices also have screw holes if you want something more permanent. You’ll need to provide your own screws, but the holes go through the pads. I’ve seen too many of these devices where the adhesive covers the holes, so the pads get all twisted up when you put screws through them. That’s just one of many seemingly insignificant details that demonstrate the thought that Ring put into this system.
Ring A clever bracket design allows you to mount the Ring motion sensor on either a flat surface or in a corner, where it can monitor a bigger area.
Another detail is how you open the contact sensors to replace their batteries: The sensor cover simply slides off the part that is mounted to your door frame. The more common practice is to have you pry the battery compartment off, which would weaken the sensor’s adhesive grip if not break it completely. And as you would expect, the system will send you a tamper alert when you open the battery compartment.
If you’d prefer to have a professional install your Ring Alarm system, that option is available through the Ring-endorsed third-party service OnTech.
Professional monitoringProfessional monitoring is an added-cost option ($10 per month, but without a long-term commitment) after a free 30-day trial. We strongly recommend signing up for it. Without professional monitoring, the system will only send you push notifications for events and when an alarm state is triggered. With monitoring, Ring (via its third-party contractor, Rapid Response Monitoring) will dispatch the appropriate emergency response: Police or ambulance. If a connected smoke detector fires off, the service will dispatch firefighters.
Michael Brown / IDG Ring hit its second-generation contact sensors (right) with a shrink ray, although we remain partial to sensors that disappear from view inside the door and door frame.
You can also initiate an emergency response from within the app, or by pressing a dedicated button on the Ring keypad (more on that in a bit). The service will attempt to contact you to verify the emergency before dispatching help, but it will assume you need help if they can’t reach you. Depending on where you live, you might need to secure a permit to activate professional monitoring.
Michael Brown / IDG You can summon police, fire, or medical assistance right from the app in the event of an emergency.
Ring’s professional monitoring service plan is among the least-expensive on the market, and it includes cloud storage for an unlimited number of Ring cameras, including the Ring Video Doorbell.
Soon, however, it will no longer be the cheapest solution. Wyze Labs has announced a home security system with professional monitoring that costs just $5 per month—and you’ll get the Wyze hardware for free if you pay for one year of service in advance. But we won’t be able to compare Ring’s product to Wyze’s until the Wyze system ships.
How it worksThe system has three modes: Disarmed, for when you don’t need security; Away, for when you leave the house; and Home, for when you’re in the house but want security (such as when you go to bed for the night). You can program the system so that each contact and motion sensor behaves differently depending on which mode the system is in.
You’d probably want the contact sensors to trigger an alarm in either of the armed modes (Home and Away). The motion sensor should be set to active only when the system is in away mode. Otherwise, the alarm will go off when you walk around the house.
If a sensor is tripped when you attempt to arm the system in Home or Away mode (which might happen when you leave a door or window open), you’ll have the option of bypassing that sensor. Unfortunately, the base station won’t tell you which sensor is open. You’ll just hear a female voice say “Sensors require bypass.”
You can push a button on the keypad to blindly bypass all open sensors and arm the system anyway, or you can cancel arming and walk around the house to figure it out what was left open. Your best option, however, is to pull out your phone and look at the Ring app, because it will tell you which sensors are open. You can then make an informed decision about bypassing them or closing the affected door or window.
Michael Brown / IDG The Ring app tells you which sensors are tripped, so you can make an informed decision about bypassing them.
You can program an entry delay to give yourself time to walk to the keypad and disarm the system when you come home, and you can set an exit delay to give yourself time to open doors and walk out of the house after you’ve armed the system in Away mode.
Contact sensors you designate as being placed on windows are automatically exempted from any entry delay, because no one should be entering or exiting your home while the security system is armed.
When the system goes into an alarm state, and you don’t immediately disarm it, the siren in the base station will go off and—if you’re paying for professional monitoring—the service will attempt to reach you. They’ll go down your contact list until they reach someone to confirm the emergency, and they’ll summon a local police response if they can’t reach anyone.
If you’ve installed any sensors that can detect a fire, the service will call your local fire department if smoke or flames are detected.
In addition to the fire, police, and medical emergency buttons on the keypad, you can establish a duress code that will alert the monitoring service if someone forces you to disarm the system against your will. To the intruder, it will seem as if you’ve complied with their demand and turned the security system off. In reality, the police will be summoned (in this scenario, the service will not attempt to contact you first). Once again, however, this level of service is only available if your pay the $10 per month for professional monitoring.
Ring doorbell and camera integrationRing now has an indoor camera that wasn’t available when I reviewed the first-generation system in 2018. More importantly, the company has improved the manner in which its cameras interact with the alarm system. You can control how each individual camera behaves in each of the system’s three modes: Disarmed, Home, and Away.
For the sake of privacy, for example, you might want to turn off motion detection and the live feed view on your indoor cameras while the system is disarmed. Leaving motion detection enabled on the doorbell and outdoor cameras will ensure awareness of what’s going on outside the house. But when the system is in Away mode, you might want everything enabled to document everything that happened while you were gone.
Michael Brown / IDG The Ring Indoor Cam can rest on any horizontal surface or be mounted to a wall or ceiling.
You can toggle these two settings on a camera-by-camera basis and set different values for each of the system’s three modes. But the big improvement is that you can now set all your Ring cameras to record the moment the system goes into an alarm state. This will provide the best chance of catching forensic evidence of what triggered the alarm in the first place.
Works with RingRing has expanded its third-party certification program to include more smart deadbolts; Chamberlain smart garage door opener, in-wall and plug-in lighting controls, a siren with a strobe light, and the Flo by Moen smart water shutoff valve.
Michael Brown / IDG You can program Ring Smart Lighting products to turn on when the system goes into an alarm state.
Ring does smart lock integration right, giving users the option to program a compatible lock and the system so that when you use the lock’s keypad to throw the bolt, the Ring Alarm automatically goes into Away mode. When you return home and enter a valid PIN on the lock’s keypad, the lock can be programmed to automatically put Ring Alarm into Disarmed mode.
If you place Ring’s $35 Alarm Smoke & CO Listener near each of your smoke and carbon-monoxide detectors, it will listen for the sound of the alarms going off and the system will send you an alert accordingly. If you pay for professional monitoring, a dispatcher will contact your local fire department and summon help.
You can also purchase and install a First Alert Z-Wave Plus Smoke & CO Alarm (2nd Gen) and incorporate it into your Ring Alarm system to get the same protection. It’s worth noting, however, that this is the only Ring-certified third-party product that will trigger an emergency response from the professional monitoring service. Other third-party devices can cause the system to go into an alarm state, but the monitoring call center will not respond.
Smart home system potentialAs I noted earlier, Ring Alarm still hasn’t realized its full potential as a smart home system despite having everything you could want in a smart home hub. You can tie Ring’s home security cameras and its smart lighting devices to the security system and manage everything from a single app, but Ring contact sensors will only trigger lights to turn on during an entry delay—in the 30-second to three-minute interval after the system is disarmed from Home or Away mode. That can conveniently light your way into your home when you arrive and disarm your system, but opening a door outfitted with a contact sensor won’t otherwise turn any lights on.
If you own any of Ring’s Smart Lighting products, you can depend on the motion sensor in one of those fixtures, or you can deploy a stand-alone Ring Smart Lighting motion sensor to trigger one or more of Ring’s exterior lighting fixtures or its white-only smart bulb. You can also program the system so that if it goes into an alarm state, these lights will turn on. Be aware that you’ll also need the Ring Smart Lighting Bridge to deploy any of those products.
Michael Brown / IDG Ring largely punts on smart home integration, expecting you to use Alexa routines and Echo smart speakers to pull home automation and home security together.
As for the Works with Ring-certified Leviton and GE by Jasco smart lighting controls, all of which are based on Z-Wave, you can turn those lights on and off from within the Ring app, but Ring contact sensors and other Ring products won’t trigger them, and you’ll need to rely on those products’ apps if you want to set lighting schedules. Ring’s suggested workaround is to create Alexa Routines if you want that level of automation.
Ring Alarm obviously integrates with Alexa, to the degree that you can arm and disarm the system with voice commands. I wouldn’t recommend disarming the system with your voice, however, since someone outside your home could hear you and learn how to defeat your security system. Ring Alarm still does not work with Google Assistant, and it isn’t compatible with Apple’s HomeKit platform.
Michael Brown / IDG The system will alert you if any of the sensors are tampered with (hopefully that will only happen when you change their batteries).
Despite the presence of a Zigbee radio inside the Ring Alarm base station, there are still no Works with Ring-certified products based on Zigbee, and you can’t integrate Philips Hue smart lighting products into the system.
IFTTT support would greatly expand Ring Alarm’s utility as a general smart home system, but Ring has so far declined to support that service in its Alarm product (you can create IFTTT applets that use the motion sensors in Ring’s video doorbells and cameras as triggers).
I’m fine with Ring’s decision to not support geofencing for automatically arming and disarming the system as you leave the vicinity of your home, but it would be great if your smartphone could trigger your lights to turn on when you arrive home.
Bottom lineRing Alarm is our longtime favorite DIY home security product, and the second-generation system only reinforces that view. It’s priced right, offers all the right components and services, and the optional professional monitoring service is an absolute bargain.
We remain disappointed, however, that Ring hasn’t done more to move the ball on the smart home front. This system has everything needed to become a strong smart home system, and the company has added support for some third-party lighting controls, but you can’t create meaningful routines to automate lighting—or to have Ring motion and contact sensors trigger those lights—unless you also have an Amazon Echo smart speaker and create Alexa routines. But then you’re working outside the Ring app.
That said, Ring Alarm retains its TechHive Editors’ Choice designation as our top pick in DIY home security systems. But if you also want a complete smart home, you’ll still need a second product.
Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details. | https://medium.com/@shelly98178392/ring-alarm-2nd-gen-review-still-the-best-diy-home-security-system-859221e42efc | [] | 2021-01-16 09:28:02.267000+00:00 | ['Chargers', 'Connected Home', 'Consumer', 'Services'] |
#PDF Best Full Book #Midnight Sun# end year for scientis references | Do not miss the latest books for scientists, at the end of 2020, and very important to have, this book #Midnight Sun # is the best friend of scientists and the most solution.
This unforgettable tale as told through Edward’s eyes takes on a new and decidedly dark twist. Meeting Bella is both the most unnerving and intriguing event he has experienced in all his years as a vampire. As we learn more fascinating details about Edward’s past and the complexity of his inner thoughts, we understand why this is the defining struggle of his life. How can he justify following his heart if it means leading Bella into danger?
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“People do not want to just read Meyer’s books; they want to climb inside them and live there.” — Time
“A literary phenomenon.” — The New York Times
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EPUB is an e-book file format that uses the “.epub” file extesion. The term is short for electronic publication and is sometimes styled ePub. EPUB is supported by many e-readers, and compatible software is available for most smartphones, tablets, and computers. EPUB is a technical standard published by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). It became an official standard of the IDPF in September 2007, superseding the older Open eBook standard.
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An electronic book, also known as an e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices.[1] Although sometimes defined as “an electronic version of a printed book”,[2] some e-books exist without a printed equivalent. E-books can be read on dedicated e-reader devices, but also on any computer device that features a controllable viewing screen, including desktop computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones.
PDF Midnight Sun eBook
PDF Midnight Sun eBook | https://medium.com/pdf-best-full-book-midnight-sun-end-year-for/pdf-best-full-book-midnight-sun-end-year-for-scientis-references-557ca6336d86 | [] | 2020-12-27 16:26:25.629000+00:00 | ['People', 'Coronavirus', 'Reference', 'Popular', 'Science'] |
INSIDE THE LIFE OF SOME AVERAGE VILLAGE GIRL IN A MALAWIAN COMMUNITY | Photo by Stephanie Braconnier on Unsplash
INSIDE THE LIFE OF SOME AVERAGE VILLAGE GIRL IN MALAWIAN COMMUNITY
A young girl in one of Malawi's rural communities is forced to stay out of school to support her family which is facing abject poverty.
There is no food to eat at home or proper clothes to wear at school. She has no choice but to go out and do piece works to support her family.
Society norms which favor male child, lack of sex education, early marriages, illiteracy, rape, and other challenges, all form a web that traps a girl child in the endless circle of poverty in her childhood and adulthood.
The favored male child who is given an opportunity to go to school who is taken as a savior of the family may become addicted to drugs and alcohol, and waste parents' resources or he might destroy the future of our girls and walk away freely.
When in school and he happens to impregnate a girl child, he continues studying while our girl child drops out of school and start her journey towards endless problems while this male child goes further with education, feels that this girl is not good enough for him and dump her together with the child.
The girl will marry another man and before she knows it, she has 5 children before reaching 30 years and 4 or 5 ex-husbands who provide little or no support to the children causing the woman to even fall into a deep state of despair.
The increased population means little or no land for farming which sadly is the full-time income source of about 80% of Malawi’s population.
Little or no land means prolonged hours of hunger, longer hours of piece work in other people's farmland, abject poverty, and increased vulnerability to diseases like HIV and AIDS, early marriages, prostitution, and gender-based violence later in life.
Even some of those who go further with education are still facing some challenges including being exploited by teachers for examinations grades, and/or bosses at work for a job offer or promotion.
Everywhere our girl child is not safe yet as a nation we believe that educating a girl means educating a whole nation.
Instead of progressing, Every day, our nation is being plagued by poverty and preventable diseases like malaria while at the same time witnessing our societies decaying evidenced by increased crime and violence rates and rape.
Something must be done quickly and we can start by answering the following questions which can help us develop action plans to bring back our lost glory.
What will it take to create a good environment where our girls are promised safety, protection, and opportunity to become who they want and achieve what they want?
What should we do as a nation to help our girl child achieve their fullest potential personally and professionally?
How can we empower our women to protect themselves from exploitation and break the vicious cycle of poverty and abuse?
How to change the mind of our men so that they can start putting a face over every girl child they see and see her as their own sister, daughter, or mother?
Your opinion on these matters will be extremely valuable! | https://medium.com/@zionekamtambe/inside-the-life-of-some-average-village-girl-in-a-malawian-community-dccffc07e67a | ['Zione Kamtambe'] | 2020-12-21 09:49:10.675000+00:00 | ['Rape', 'Injustice', 'Girls Education', 'Girl Child', 'Rural Area'] |
What’s in my Hiking Backpack? | Ensuring I get the best I can on a Hike I come prepared.
This is a question I don’t get asked a lot. And because people don’t think to ask they come ill-prepared for a hike. Rather than a checklist of items, I decided to dissect my Hiking Backpack for you.
They say if you have an early start, you should prepare the night before. Let’s pretend I don’t hastily pack 5 mins before I leave for the muster point. (I have packed for a hike too many times I do it with my eyes closed *smile*)
So I usually have 2 bottles of water, a soda, an energy drink, a pack of biscuits, a camera, a phone, a power bank, some Bin bags, a face towel, sunscreen, my wallet and more recently portable speakers, comfortable shoes and a whistle.
Two bottles of water.
Because it’s important to stay hydrated. You don’t want to run out of water and find yourself drinking from a murky stream, justifying it in your head that if the locals can drink it, it won’t kill you either. It won’t, don’t worry. Two 350 -500ml bottles can usually last me up to 6 hours, taking sips. Two is ideal. Better than one.
A soda.
You need glucose in any form for energy. Most hikers don’t eat before a hike and your energy has to come from somewhere. As with the water, I sip sodas at rest points to refuel. RIP to my no soda diet, hiking destroyed that.
An energy drink.
This is a backup for the soda. One cannot sip either alone on a group hike. You’ll always have to share. I usually save my energy drink for the final stretch of the hike to fuel up before heading home. Have you ever been hyper on a hike but walked into your house like you just survived a near death experience? I have. Energy is needed to get home as well depending on how intensive the hike was.
Water and soda is a must! Photo Courtesy: AnnaTakesShots
A pack of biscuits.
This is for the hunger pangs and sugar refuel. But usually I don’t get hungry on Hikes. I may get Hangry. Sweets like chocolates might help too.
A Camera.
Because I live for the breathtaking scenery. I take shots. I have a DSLR (Persephone) and she’s a chubby girl. She adds weight to my backpack and when I sling her on my neck. I have a modified shoulder sling that works fine most of the time. Other times I leave her at home and use my phone instead.
A Phone.
One of the most important items and it’s not just because of social media addiction. It’s needed for emergencies. I have made calls to check for lost hikers and also when I got lost. Or when Otedola needed to confirm that contract. I track my Hike with an exercise app. I play music to keep me moving, I use the camera for taking some great pictures. Best to have a phone with a good battery life. And a back up power bank so you don’t get stuck with no way to get help. The most important thing is to keep your phone away when moving. I have seen brand new phones roll into densely covered ditches, roll down steep rocky hills destroying the screen and some just slip out unnoticed and it’s lost forever.
A Whistle.
Great for alerting people and probably scaring away animals. But I got one as a hike leader for administrative purposes. But it has been useful for solo hikes.
A Face Towel.
For wiping off sweat. No need looking like your struggle in those selfie shots. Looking effortless is the goal. And there’s also the first aid application as a tourniquet or for stopping a bleed.
Sunscreen.
Black people need sun protection too.
A Wallet.
You need your ID for many number of reasons. And you need money in case you need to make a hasty escape. Hikers have gotten Okada (motorcycle) rides from the hills back into town. Or bought fruits and vegetables direct from the farmers we encounter. But you should keep cash because you don’t want to be stranded at the end of a hike.
Don’t be a part of the problem. Keep your waste till you are back down. Photo Courtesy: AnnaTakesShots
Bin Bags.
Let me not bore you with the bleeding heart speech but don’t litter on Hikes. It damages the environment, hurts animals and indirectly poisons us too when these materials get to the aquifers. Leave no trace! The rule is put any waste you generate back into your bag till you get to a bin back on ground level. I take a bin bag to keep the waste apart from my stuff in my backpack and also take on waste from other hikers.
These are the main things I carry in my backpack and it might make my bag a little heavy sometimes but I imagine they are weights making my hike more intensive. Plus it makes a great uneven pillow when you need a rest. But on occasion I take my own portable speaker for music. Music is great motivation and also chases animals away before you arrive. I recently started packing a pair of slippers which I leave in the car. Hiking boots can take their toll on your feet. Imagine all the jumping, running and uneven cracks you squeeze your feet into. It’s a relief to take the boots off and you can take them off as soon as the hike ends and slip into something more comfortable.
There you have it. The things I ensure I have packed in my Hike Bag for every Hike. Do you pack some more items than I do? Let me know in the comments! Have a good one! | https://medium.com/@annabellaatseyinku/whats-in-my-hiking-backpack-a101bf9d0015 | ['Maryann Atseyinku'] | 2019-01-23 20:18:27.141000+00:00 | ['Travel', 'Fitness Tips', 'Nigeria', 'Hiking', 'Outdoors'] |
Introduction of Claim: A New Generation of Credit Stablecoin | Looking back at the rapid development of the field of DeFi in the past year, the stablecoin is definitely the “pearl on crown” in the world of DeFi. In 2020, Dai, the first generation of the original stablecoin of the DeFi ecosystem, has seen about 20 times increase in TVL. Since Ampl launched a new model of elastic algorithm to stablecoin, the innovation and change of stablecoin entered a fast iteration period. At some point, several new projects, which focus on the improvement and optimization based on one of the properties of the existing stablecoin, will be created in the market. Fei, Rai and Float, which have been launched recently, are outstanding representatives among these stablecoin projects.
Throughout the development process of the DeFi ecosystem stablecoin, some stablecoins, created by staking assets, are still highly accepted in the market. After all, people believe that the pledged value of stablecoin needs to be supported by cashing ability. In order to ensure the rigid cashing ability of stablecoin, the over-stake model represented by MakerDao (Dai’s issuance protocol) has largely sacrificed the efficiency of capital utilization. If there is a kind of stable currency, it cannot completely rely on the current value of the assets of the caster, but also take the expected future income of the assets as the reliable collateral, which will greatly improve the capital utilization efficiency of this kind of stablecoin. This idea is exactly the origin of Claim, a new generation of credit stablecoin.
The Claim Protocol supports users to pledge their assets and generates the stablecoin $cUSD. The protocol allows users to deposit assets through the aggregation yield platform for fund allocation to form investment income. The income of these asset investments will serve as the value to support the Claim ecosystem credit system. In this mode, the funds deposited by users can not only be used as collateral to obtain stablecoin cUSD for financing, but also enjoy the credit leverage formed by the expected return of assets, which greatly improves the efficiency of asset utilization.
In order to ensure the value anchoring and cashing ability of cUSD, only $Dai will be supported as the yield farming assets at the initial stage. After users deposit $Dai, they will cast $cUSD according to the ratio of 1:1. After that, the user can exchange the cUSD in the ratio of 1:1 for $Dai at any time.
The economic model of Claim Protocol is a dual-token system. The $cUSD is a utility stablecoin minted by the Claim Protocol, which serves as a circulating token asset for users who participate in the protocol staking.The governance token of the protocol is $Claim, which used for the community governance of protocol function iteration, parameter adjustment and DAO Treasure asset management. The total supply of $Claim tokens is 100 million. The distribution mechanism is as follows:
-DAO Treasure (community governance vault): 80 million (80% of total supply)
-Eco Funds (ecosystem development funds): 10 million (10% of the total supply)
-Team Funds: 10 million (10% of the total supply)
The founding team has always pursued the concept of DAO decentralized governance regarding project development. At the beginning of the launch, approximately 12 million $Claim tokens were allocated to the community within a 6-week yield farming program. The program will be divided into two stages: the first three weeks will be lossless mining of stablecoins. Users only need to deposit $Dai to participate in fair start-up mining with zero pre-mining. In the next stage(also will last for three weeks), $cUSD external liquidity market-making incentives, $Claim token liquidity market-making incentives, and $Claim token stake rewards will be launched. For detailed mechanisms and rules of mining activities, please refer to the follow-up article issued on Medium.
Our vision is to use the Claim Protocol to create a new generation of credit stablecoin ecosystem based on the value of assets across time periods and characterized by sufficient external coupling and deep liquidity. We believe that in the not-too-distant future, users can easily and conveniently access the diversified DeFi world through the ecosystem built by the Claim Protocol. And Claim will not only be a stablecoin minting & redemption agreement, but also a one-stop DeFi service network that can carry users’ long-term chain credit value evaluation, credit financing and asset custody. For users, they only need to tap the “claim” button on the screen to easily have all of this.
At this moment, we are at the starting point to this vision. Achieving this vision depends on continuous and close communication and interaction between the team and community participants. Therefore, community users are always welcome to communicate and feedback with the team through the following platforms.
【Official Links】
Website: https://claim.xyz/
Twitter：https://twitter.com/claimdotxyz
Medium：https://medium.com/@claimfinance
Telegram：https://t.me/claimofficialcommunity | https://medium.com/@claimfinance/introduction-of-claim-a-new-generation-of-credit-stablecoin-6130c6c62c31 | [] | 2021-05-12 10:39:05.244000+00:00 | ['Stable Coin', 'Dai', 'Yield Farming'] |
You Should Be Watching TV | #1 — They are a cheap and easy way to see the world.
Seriously. We can’t all go to Boca. Or anywhere else that isn’t home or work, usually.
Coming to this realization was the first time I really accepted the true horror of adulthood. I was working 80-hour weeks and I could barely afford to drive to work, let alone anywhere else. There would be no road trips, vacations, or Instagram-worth travels in my future.
So we have the screen.
But even if so many movies are shot on sound-stages and back-lots around the world, at least some of the exterior shots give us a view of the rest of the world.
Sometimes, it’s The Lord of the Rings giving us huge panoramic shots of New Zealand or Game of Thrones giving us huge shots of Iceland.
But, for my money, the best emotional use of this was in the last shot of the series finale of ER, where, for the first and only time during the show’s 15 year run, they pull out of the shot of the ambulance bay, and show us the entire exterior of the hospital.
Very little in the hospital is the same — in that scene, there are only two characters out of a whole hoard of doctors who were introduced in the pilot (one of them having grown up during the course of the show) — but that ugly concrete building has remained the same.
But, anyway, as someone who writes stories that take place in places that I have never visited (my current WIP is set in a fictional overlay of Fort Collins, Colorado), watching TV shows and movies that are both set and shot is really helpful.
You can read about a place all you want, but actually being able to see it with your own eyes — that’s the next-best thing to being there in the flesh. And TV and movies give you that opportunity where books don’t. | https://zachjpayne.medium.com/you-should-be-watching-tv-870f6032e8ed | ['Zach J. Payne'] | 2019-11-09 22:42:16.202000+00:00 | ['Creativity', 'Television', 'Productivity', 'Art', 'Writing'] |
A World of Fairy Tales | After this first meeting with the lakes of the region, I go to Gérardmer to start my second loop. It takes about 1h45 to go around this second lake, so I decide to have my lunch break right after to rest my legs and regain strength before continuing my walk.
As I walk along the trail that borders the west side of the water body, turning my back to the city, I hear the clink of my metal canteen in my backpack. That’s all it takes to throw me back twenty-five years or so as I climb the stony paths of the Vercors mountains, with my father in the lead and my mother and sister closing the march.
When we would go hiking for the day, or even for the week with two donkeys — my best memories — we would take turns carrying the water bottles, which we would fill when drinking water sources were available. In addition to a large blue plastic water bottle, we also had two smaller ones made of metal, including a dented orange one that must have seen more countries than any experienced hiker.
I can still hear the sound of that canteen hanging on my belt, the characteristic click of its closing system. I remember us taking breaks to drink and catch our breath before resuming our assent. I remember my dad studying his IGN map to make sure his family doesn’t get lost en route and gets safely to their destination.
I hear him again telling me to be careful where I set foot and to look ahead while walking. I can see again his big brown leather hiking boots with big red laces. My dad, solid as a rock, helping me through difficult passages by supporting me with his steady hand.
All these images suddenly come back to me, without me expecting it.
Halfway around the lake of Gérardmer, I stop to nibble on a cereal bar on a small rock by the water’s edge. Two ducks approach me and deliver a charming tirade that makes me happy. I regret not speaking their language. | https://medium.com/scribe/a-world-of-fairy-tales-bbcb90426fd5 | ['Thomas Gaudex'] | 2020-12-17 17:00:06.848000+00:00 | ['Life', 'Nature', 'Stories', 'Travel', 'Writing'] |
A Content-First Approach to UX Research | A guide to conducting content strategy research for your products.
Every word counts. But how do you choose the right ones for your product?
Content strategy research might be the answer.
Content strategy at Facebook consists of equal parts UX writing, product strategy and design thinking. When I say I write “content” as a content strategist at Instagram, I mean coming up with the words that you see in the app’s user interface — including elements like buttons, titles, error messages and feature names.
Over the years, I’ve used a variety of methods to evaluate word choices in the consumer products I’ve worked on like Facebook Live, Instagram Direct and Messenger Rooms. Before I finalize any content, I always base my recommendations on user experience research insights.
Finding out what people want from a product — before it’s built — has helped me write the most relevant content upfront and saved me from delivering content that doesn’t resonate with people.
Whether you’re working alone or on a team, my hope is that content strategy research can help you write the best content for your product, and go on to inform your product strategy.
What is Content Strategy Research?
Content strategy research at Facebook evaluates the word choices in product interfaces and their ability to help people feel empowered to make decisions.
When people think of UX research and testing designs, they often focus on the visuals. However, the words that guide people through an experience are just as important and deserve to be studied in-depth.
Content strategy research can give you better insight into your product’s value proposition, help you find the right information hierarchy, and determine what the voice and tone should be. Content-led research methods can be used to not only validate content choices at the end of the design process, but also at the beginning to help you decide what to build in the first place.
Content research can even pay off further down the road when it’s time to market your product. You’ll be able to draw from the value propositions you identified in early content strategy research sessions later on when you promote your product publicly.
Content Strategy Research Methods
Whether you’re working alone or with a UX research team (like I’ve been fortunate enough to), you can use the following methods to conduct a study focused on content strategy. All you need is content.
All of these methods can be done in-person or remotely over a video conference call by sharing your screen and asking participants to walk you through how they’d fill in the research materials.
Five-Second Test
After showing participants a short piece of content for five seconds, ask them to describe what they remember. Use their descriptions to help inform what you should make more memorable. In a world where people are used to rushing off to the next thing, five seconds should be long enough for a design or short piece of content to get its point across.
When to use it: When you want to know if people’s first impression(s) of your content reflects what you’re trying to convey.
What you’ll need: For remote studies, a design or short piece of content that fits on one slide or screen. For in-person studies, one piece of paper with your content on it.
How to run a five-second test:
Tell participants that they’ll be given five seconds to look at your content before you ask them questions about what they just saw.
💡 Tip: Depending on what you’d like to learn from participants, you can either tell them what to look out for or leave it open if you want to see what stands out to them naturally. After the five seconds are up, ask them for their first impression(s) of what they just saw:
What were the main things that jumped out at you?
Who do you think this was written for?
How would you describe this to a friend?
Talk Bubbles
Ask participants to have an imaginary conversation with your product. This method helps you write with the user’s voice in mind and uncover how your product can help fulfill people’s needs. It can also reduce any pressure participants might feel when asking questions themselves.
When to use it: To see how people talk about your product in their own voice.
What you’ll need: For remote studies, an image of speech bubbles shown on a screen. For in-person studies, a piece of paper with two to ten blank speech bubbles, indicating a two-way conversation that will take place between a person and the product.
How to run a talk bubbles exercise:
Tell participants to imagine a conversation they would have with your product. Then ask them to either have the conversation out loud (for remote studies) or write it down inside the talk bubbles on a piece of paper (for in-person studies). Your instructions might sound like this: “If you were to have a conversation with a phone, think of what you would ask it, and how you would complete the task at hand. You might start by saying to the phone: ‘Hi, I need to talk to someone.’ And the phone might respond back: ‘Great, I have all of these options for how you can reach someone. Which one would you like to try?’ And then go from there until you’re able to complete the task.” At the end of the imaginary conversation, take note of what the participant asked for and how they asked for it. You’ll walk away with a list of their needs and you’ll have it in their tone of voice.
💡 Tip: This can also help you map out a user journey of what to design using your target audience’s own words.
Highlighter Test
Sometimes the easiest way to discover what stands out to someone when they’re reading is to ask them to highlight it. Having several highlighted mocks from participants can show you which words are resonating the most with people.
When to use it: When you want to know which pieces of content sound the most appealing to people. This method is most helpful when your content is at least one sentence long.
What you’ll need: For remote studies, a slide or screen showing your content on it, which you’ll highlight in front of participants based on how they tell you they would highlight it themselves. You can also share an editable document with them that they can highlight themselves. For in-person studies, give participants three different-colored highlighters and a piece of paper displaying your content.
How to run a highlighter test:
Ask participants to read all of the text first. It can sometimes be helpful to show a range of content options written with a different tone or value proposition, so you can get a better sense of what’s resonating the most. Using one of the highlighters, ask them to mark or tell you how they’d mark the parts that sound the most appealing to them. Using a different-colored highlighter, ask them to mark or tell you how they’d mark the parts that sound the least appealing to them or that they have concerns or questions about. Using another different-colored highlighter, ask them to mark or tell you how they’d circle the keywords that stood out to them the most.
Card-Sorting Exercise
When you need to know people’s preferences, a desirability ranking exercise can be the most efficient way to see if certain options are rising to the top or sinking to the bottom.
When to use it: When you have a range of content options and want to know which one (e.g. product name or description) is the clearest.
What you’ll need: For remote studies, a deck with slides for each content option, which you’ll rearrange according to how the participant ranks them. For in-person studies, index cards with different content options on each card that participants can rank and rearrange themselves.
How to run a card-sorting exercise:
Show all of the cards in a random order. Remember to change the order of cards for each participant and make sure the same card isn’t always presented first or last. Give participants a time limit (e.g. two minutes) to rank the cards based on favorability, with their favorite option appearing at the top and their least favorite option appearing at the bottom.
💡 Tip: Remember to take a photo or screenshot of every participant’s card-sort so you can easily compare them side-by-side at the end. Ask participants to explain their ranking to you.
Fill-in-the-Blank Test
A fill-in-the-blank test, also known as a Cloze test, involves removing words from sentences to test people’s comprehension. A fill-in-the-blank test can look a lot like a Mad Libs game where people are asked to fill in the blanks. It can also be a helpful exercise to see what names people associate with a feature or product.
When to use it: When you want to test people’s ability to easily comprehend your content.
What you’ll need: For remote studies, a slide that contains a piece of content from which you’ve removed certain words and replaced them with blank spaces. Participants can tell you what words they would fill in. You can also share an editable document so they can fill in the blanks themselves. For in-person studies, print out your content on a piece of paper for participants to write on.
💡 Tip: Which words you remove or how many are up to you, but every fifth word is a good place to start.
How to run a fill-in-the-blank test:
Instruct participants to read your content, which can be as short as a few sentences, with blank spaces for every fifth word. Ask participants to fill in one word in each blank. Be sure to inform them that they won’t be graded on their word choice or spelling. This test measures how clearly the content is structured, not their abilities. Keep time and record how long it takes for participants to fill in the blanks.
💡 Tip: You may want to set a time limit to test their comprehension speed. Review their answers and ask them to walk you through their word choices. Score the exercise after the participant leaves. Remember to note any synonyms used, which may indicate that another word might be more easily understood. A good indicator of whether people comprehend your content is when the majority of participants fill in more than 50% of their test with the correct words.
Semantic Differential Scale
Sometimes it’s useful to see how your writing falls on a scale. The semantic differential scale is a great tool to measure people’s opinions on a piece of content. Often used in surveys to rate an experience on a scale of one to five or one to seven, you can also apply this scale to your own writing to gauge sentiment. (Semantic differential scales are similar to, but different, from Likert scales. Likert scale questions often ask how much one agrees or disagrees with a question being posed and they include a neutral option in the middle of the scale. Semantic differential scales usually use numbers and have anywhere from five to seven possible ratings.)
When to use it: When you want to measure the attitude towards a piece of content.
What you’ll need: For remote studies, a slide or screen with questions and scales marked from 1 to 5 with an antonym on each end (e.g. Unhelpful ←→ Helpful). For in-person studies, print out the questions and scales on a piece of paper.
How to run a semantic differential scale test:
Give participants a screen or sheet of paper with at least one question and lines marked from one to five for scales. one and five should always have two words with opposite meanings (e.g. easy ←→ hard). Remember to rearrange the order of questions for every participant. Ask participants to rate their attitude towards the question by picking a numeral on the scale. An example of a question could be “How easy was it to tell what this product does by reading the description?”
💡 Tip: It’s important to follow up and ask why someone chose this rating. The “why” behind these responses will be more telling than the numeric scores alone.
3. Look at where their answers fall on the scale and see which areas you need to improve to move people’s attitudes in the right direction.
Content Scorecard Exercise
When you want to see how your content performs on a scale across several different criteria, it can be helpful for participants to rate content using a content scorecard. You’ll walk away with a better understanding of why people prefer one piece of content over another.
When to use it: When you want to evaluate different pieces of content across a wide spectrum of criteria.
What you’ll need: A content scorecard, which is made by taking a spreadsheet and labeling the rows with different content you want to test and labeling the columns with different categories of criteria (e.g. clarity, desirability). You should aim to present only a few categories that represent different criteria. For remote studies, share your screen and ask them to tell you what scores they’d give. You can also share an editable document with them so they can write in their scores themselves. For in-person studies, print out the scorecard for them to write on.
How to run a content scorecard test:
Ask participants to read all of the content options first before assigning any numbers. Remember to rearrange the options for each participant’s worksheet so participants don’t see the options in the same order every time. For each category, ask participants to rate each piece of content on a scale from zero to five. For example, if the category is “excitement level,” then zero would be “not at all excited” and five would be “extremely excited.” At the end, ask them to rank their favorite options overall and explain why.
Naming Exercise
It can often be challenging to come up with a product name that everyone around the world can easily understand. Here are some tried-and-tested techniques to help you get the most unbiased opinions possible.
When to use it: When you want to test a name for your product.
What you’ll need: A visual (e.g. mock, prototype) or written description of your product and a list of your proposed names. Make sure you’re changing the order of names for every participant to avoid order bias. For remote studies, share your screen and show the product visual that way. For in-person studies, you may want to print it out on a piece of paper in case participants want to write on it.
How to run a naming exercise:
Before participants see a visual or in-depth description of your product, briefly tell them about it and ask them what they would name it. After they learn about your product, ask them if it meets their initial expectation and if they would change their proposed name after knowing more now. Share your proposed names and see how participants feel about them. Remember to rearrange the order of names for every participant. At the end, ask participants how they would describe your product to a friend.
💡 Tip: Listen carefully to the words they use — a potential name could be somewhere in there.
How to Ask Questions Related to Content Strategy
If conducting a content strategy-specific research study isn’t an option, you can still add questions about content to any type of study you’re running.
Behind every effective study is a well-written moderator guide that includes questions for the person asking them. If you’re looking to get signal on content, it’s important to craft your questions in a way that allows the participant to respond using their own words.
These are some best practices to get participants to open up about their likes and dislikes when it comes to content.
Ask people to read and think out loud
One key reason for doing any study is to look beyond metrics and click-through rates and find out why people feel the way they do about something. Take advantage of this opportunity to get participants to verbalize their thought process to you during a research session.
Examples of questions to include in your research guide:
Can you walk me through how you decided to take the next step after reading this part?
Can you please read this sentence out loud and tell me what you think it means?
What would you change about this title to make it more clear?
Listen to the words people choose
The point of any content strategy-led study is to evaluate the word choices in the product interface as much as it is about understanding participants’ preferences. Writing for your audience is about meeting them where they are, whether it’s modulating the tone to match their emotional state or explaining something more clearly.
Examples of questions to include in your research guide:
How would you describe this feature to a friend if they hadn’t seen it before?
Describe a time when you might picture using this?
What does this remind you of, if anything?
Ask open-ended questions
Ask questions that require more than a “yes” or “no” answer to gain insights into people’s thinking. Open-ended questions usually begin with words like “who,” “what,” “where,” “when,” “why,” and “how.” These five W’s (and the one H) are commonly used by journalists and many others to gather information. Avoid leading questions, which start with words like “do,” “could,” or “was,”. When in doubt, add “And why?” to the end of any question.
Examples of open-ended questions:
What, if anything, is clear or unclear?
What’s your reaction to this product?
How do you feel about this name?
Examples of leading questions:
Was that sentence clear?
Would you use this product?
Do you like that name?
Leading with a Content-First Design Approach
If you lead with a content-first approach and take the time to understand how participants see your product, you’re more likely to build a product that people will want to use.
In a world that’s full of complexity, these content strategy research methods can help you find the most effective ways to cut through ambiguity and design a people-first experience.
Finding the right words that resonate most with people can help shape your product’s value proposition and, in turn, influence your design decisions. For example, choosing a name for your product based on how people talk about it in real life could very well inform what it will ultimately look like.
By using a content-first approach, you’ll see that content not only has the power to fill in designs, it also has the power to shape it.
Thank you to… | https://medium.com/facebook-design/a-content-first-approach-to-ux-research-7200059f1f43 | ['Casey Capachi'] | 2020-09-16 16:12:47.608000+00:00 | ['Content Strategy', 'UX Research', 'Ux Writing', 'Research', 'Instagram'] |
The Magic of Taking Leadership III | What Does it Mean to See Beyond You?
Just do this: take off your eyes for a moment from the little world that is your personal space and personal problems and personal "beef" and all those things we find personal, and adjust your eyes to see the world. When we see beyond ourselves, we learn that there are so many aching hearts and suffering persons. We realize that even the planet needs a bit of saving.
In a nutshell, seeing beyond you is choosing to open your eyes to the people and world beyond you. And when you do this, you find out that the world is really in need of superheroes with a little magic.
Just think about the millions of people and thousands of families living in extreme poverty, who cannot afford to eat every day. Or the thousands of expectant mums and new babies that die every year from preventable causes – from things as little as pneumonia and malaria. Or the sheer number of girls and boys raped everyday, and suffer other forms of dehumanizing treatment. Or the fact that the planet is literally crying about the greenhouse emissions we produce.
It takes bravery to care enough to do something about these big issues - yet the choice to be brave and to care is part of the superhero magic! | https://medium.com/@pcd.opara/the-magic-of-taking-leadership-iii-c6c92cd4824f | ['Davida Opara'] | 2020-12-07 17:37:45.177000+00:00 | ['Sustainable Development', 'Leadership', 'Magic'] |
Monster Finance Public Sale Whitelist Is Now Open! | We are pleased to announce that Monster Finance Whitelisting process will start on the 8th of June, 2021 at 4PM UTC. The project is centered around the larger community of sport enthusiasts across the globe with the sole mission of redefining sports fandom in a Decentralized, Incentivized and Tokenized manner. We have received great backings from key players in different sport and the excitement level within the team and the Monster immediate community is at an all time high. After completing the private sale few weeks ago, the team is hard on the V1 launch of the MONSTER Platform. As we move closer to the launch of the MONSTER platform, the much anticipated public sale is part of our strategy to bring Monster closer to the community in an exclusive and rewarding way.
The whitelist will be open for at least 5 days.
What is Monster?
Monster is creating a decentralized ecosystem for sport.
At MONSTER, we seek to financially reward the most diehard fans in a ‘first of its kind’ Decentralized finance platform and sporting community which distributes wealth to the diehard fans. MONSTER brings together the traditional benefits of Decentralized finance with the love of sports in a single, user-friendly ecosystem built on the Binance Smart Chain. If you want to find more about MONSTER, kindly refer to this page.
Some key features in the Monster Playbook include
MonsterBet(Daily Fantasy Sports Betting)
MonsterPad(Earn allocations in new projects based on your Sports IQ(SIQ), and not on the size of your wallet)
MonsterScout(Tokenized contracts for up-and-coming athletes)
The Whitelist Process.
Join Telegram group. Follow on Twitter. Retweet the pinned tweet and tag 3 friends. Complete the form on the website and submit.
AIRDROP
Because of the high interest in our public sale, not everyone will be able to participate. To compensate and reward all early supporters we are hosting an airdrop. This is a guaranteed airdrop and not a lottery.
The total airdrop will be 2,000,000 MNSTR tokens and will be airdropped to ticket holders relatively to the size of the total tickets.
By completing the whitelisting process, you are automatically guaranteed an airdrop TICKET. For each referral you get an extra ticket.
Tickets
To increase the size of your airdrop as well as your chances in the public sale lottery you can collect more tickets.
If someone else signs up using your unique referral link you get awarded an extra ticket. You can find your unique referral link after you successfully submit the whitelist application.
STAY CONNECTED
Follow our official social media accounts to stay up to date.
Twitter:https://twitter.com/Monsterfinance_
Telegram Group:https://t.me/mnstrfinance
Telegram Channel:https://t.me/monsterann
Important
Be careful of fake Telegram groups trying to impersonate Monster. The token is currently not purchasable anywhere. Always verify that you are in our official channel or group. | https://medium.com/@monsterfinance/monster-finance-public-sale-whitelist-is-now-open-9163f4184b8 | ['Monster Finance'] | 2021-06-08 14:32:03.519000+00:00 | ['Airdrop', 'Binance Smart Chain', 'NBA Playoffs', 'Tokenization', 'Defi'] |
Panoptic Insights manifesto | The more sensors, edge computing devices, the more investment action points we have in the network, the more data you collect the bigger pattern of behaviour you see when you put them all into one centralized graph the smarter this graph becomes for everybody the better predictions it can produce for the next best action. Now this is where this second loop of network starts: the better the predictions are the more effective decisions are made, less uneffective action are made.
So more and more players will be lured in with this higher efficiency tool.
Imagine you are an investor and you know that your investment is undergoing pressure from the macro trend winds, and your competitor are experiencing the same wind and pressure but they are able to reorganize the sails and come out of the storm on top of the game and had a zero downtime, because they started collecting the data about the wind 5 years ago and now they see the pattern. If your competitor automated the business processes you did not — You are disadvantaged, but you can go to the same vendor and buy the same assembly line and catch up. But If you miss the AI boat the results are very different. If you did not collect the data early enough. There is nothing you can do to make your AI better than your competitor’s. Even if the data is shared the AI has been trained on your peculiar Behavior and the market responds to it for three years longer. It’s so unlike automation like the Industrial Revolution from a hundred years ago.
So my prediction is that 10 years from the landscape of top capital players will look very different than now because some companies did not get into collecting the data and training their machine learning models early enough.
The AI analytic is the technology that everyone’s going to get access to eventually and so any hesitation is going to be a relic years from now.
Think about hierarchical databases in the 70s. Do you know of any today exist anymore? Then the next day the cloud SQL happened and now we’re talking about Salesforce.
With the Panoptic Insights tool, The data that an investor or entrepreneur needs in order to make a decision is actually being pushed to you in a prepackaged way. It’s the action insights.
Just the tip of the informational feed
Everything you need to know to complete this action is right here pushed to you.
Most of the decision helping systems of the future will have this informational feed and minimum choice, bringing a maximum focus on one thing in front of you.
The decision maker will see the information and the result of mathematical modeling upon this information. That’s all we’re going to show you.
We help investors to become quicker. Reducing time-capital resources spent on due diligence.
You are able to focus on what really needs human judgment — making a decision.
There are two modes in which AI decision making works with people.One is called autopilot. And another one is copilot. So autopilot is when you’re working on something that has some repetitive low value add tasks and so AI can easily automate that for you. So think of the Uber analogy: receiving a phone call -> typing the picking up spot ->use radio to deliver info. That’s just not the best use for all those billions of neurons in your brain. So AI comes in to do those functions freeing up your time to do something much more productive and much more effective.
The second is copilot: Info Feed is augmenting your ability to make decisions. Think you are a startup, you are in a strict acquisition timing frame, and so now comes the decision to scale onto a new market, imaging you are a driver in a race car on unknown track and there’s someone next to you that knows what’s around the corner and whispering in your ear what to be ready for.
Panoptic Insight co-pilot allows you to focus on more human face-to-face and more EQ driven things that machines will not be able to do for a long long time.
Why should you use Panoptic Insights as an investor? Because the 10x rule.
10x the value of being on the system then being off the system. Don’t want these kinds of insights or thinking that there is a better way of spending 1000$ a month? Great. Let’s not put you on the platform. Let’s take an A/B test and see what happens.
When the Investor next to you or the business next to you did 10x your results and the only variable we have is you were afraid of being a user of a modern system.
This is going to fundamentally shift how the small and mid sized Industries work.
The level of expertise big players put into the decision making is enormous. But small and mid-sized businesses now can use this role model thanks to Panoptic Insights
The decision making patterns on the investment deals have been here for decades, this is how the biggest fund in the world, the Black Rock, makes decisions. These guys are pioneers in data based decision making. And this particular decision making algorithm had been acquired only by a top player of the game, leaving the rest 95% of smaller scale capital volumes off the table. Because big guys play with big numbers. But guess what:
The small players have entered the chat. And all those investors with an enormous amount of fractured capital, like small entrepreneurs that have $10000 of savings decided to build a startup.
That person had no access to the finest Universities or MBAs and has no powerful friends and allies. His knowledge pool about the market/customer behaviour is poor and even if he finds the info from open sources, the question arises “what to do with all this information”, where is the best market for my passion, for my energy? Who are my clients, I don’t have the resources to attract those marketing agencies charging a 50k$+ on marketing research. I should do it all by myself. Panoptic Insights enters the chat.
So let’s think about the day of a founder of a startup. In an average week itself people spend about a third of their time on manual data research/input, and a third of time is always to be spent on prospecting “who else looks like my current customers”, which from a computer science perspective is a very classic problem that was solved 30–40 years ago.
And only a third of the time he spends in face-to-face meetings actually selling, actually building relationships. Now, the first part, the manual data research, should be gone. It should be fully automated through autopilot capability.
Just like every plant has growing points hidden within, every startup has growing points hidden as well. And Panoptic Insights tool helps you to see it.
The second part is who you should talk to next — who is your growth point, who will bring the value to your product and your passion?
Also, very easy to solve with the help of look-alike modeling machine learning pointing you to very high value add prospects or customers and actually helping your automate the outreach to them. And then a third part which is being face-to-face with customers truly building relationships is where machines cannot replace humans. So five ten years from now knowledge workers will be actually focused on EQ.
But relationship building activities still should go with co-pilots’ help because Panoptic Insights co-pilot will recommend how to build a better relationship.
What does the product of tomorrow look like for me?
In the next 5–10 years every area of our existence will probably go through a transition and will instead of being inundated by a bunch of chrome tabs, will be inundated by a few informational feeds that tell us what to do. I think there are cycles of bundling and unbundling playing out here.
In Panoptic Insights we love the latest wave of machine learning applications. The use cases are getting increasingly precise and tailored to the end user.
The next big point you as an investor can get from Panoptic Insights is that Timing is everything and if you get an opportunity to move forward aggressively — do it.
Not as easy as it looks
The second point: size of the market really matters. No one wants to play in small markets, even if you will capture 80% of the market you will still get poor revenue under millions.
Human beings like the data if they understand it. This is what Panoptic Insights is all about:
We make data analytics instant, efficient, and easy for everyone.
But there’s still something about Human Experience — human empathy that you really can’t replace with a computer or data.
And also my personal view of the informational feed running through the people’s minds- I see all this doomsday thinking like this whole wave of Automation and augmentation that is making people pretty nervous at the macro picture. But I also see all this micro level evidence that this Data-driven approach just really transforms the workforce — If people are really getting more meaning out of their jobs and they really start to love that.
They can focus on exactly what they’re good at. You’re really good at something like you want to be the best investor, you want to be the best designer, the best computer scientist. That’s what lives deep inside of human beings — we’re all striving towards. And that self-mastery is what the copilot specifically helps you amplify.
Panoptic Insights co-pilot actually gives you guidance on how to become better, more effective, and learn faster on becoming a master at what you do — investing time, energy, resources.
Now let’s dive into the next big thing that we, a team of Panoptic Insights, are focused on. The persona telemetry.
From the small-mid sized venture capital Investor perspective and how Panoptic’s solution will empower his current investment.
You have a project you invested $1m. This project has a team and leader, and you have made your decision based on the inner instinct of liking the persona of the leader and few other criterias. But the main player here is the leader. It is a crucial criteria of a venture decision making algorithm in early stages. As the ability to keep sustained effort is of the most important characteristics of a leader’s persona. It’s one of the most important factors affecting the decision. If your leader is not capable of sustained effort and is easily distracted or has low energy levels — even the best market conditions and the best business models and a great great product fits won’t hold up to the promise. It’s like subtracting the sun from the solar system. Each persona has energy drawbacks and energy resources. Panoptic Insights made a psychometrics profile of your leader and gave you the information in a very simple form:
what activities are the source of energy for your leader
what activities are drawbacks of energy for your leader
Encourage the activities from the first list, and avoid the activities or communication patterns from the second list:
Don’t apply excessive parental control to him
During the season change, invite him over to Zero-G plane experience.
This is an investment into your leader’s energy levels. Give an honest answer to yourself right now, if you would be a startup leader who has just picked up the phone call from a person that believed in your powers and ideas and gave you an opportunity to scale your passion, and from that phone call you get an invitation to a fully paid and organized Zero G plane experience with that person — would that situation pump you up? And as investor, are you ready to invest additional $20000 in something that will fill up your leader with energy for the next 6 month?
So to sum it up:
During the coming decades, as a capitalist, it’s your responsibility to make highly effective decisions.
Fail to do so and your persona could lose contracts and face public censure.
“The man who should stop this senseless waste would be a great benefactor of humanity.” Nicola Tesla
Inefficient use of capital has its roots in a badly informed decision making.
Therefore our mission is to create a well-informed business environment by revealing insights from available data.
That creates a role model for making highly effective decisions on capital investment.
Our enterprise cloud software simplifies and visualizes data-intensive criterias needed for capital investment, helping you mitigate risk and make better decisions — and we make you look good doing it, adding that extra boost to proposals and contract reviews.
Here’s what Panoptic Insights can do for you, if you are a business owner or investor thinking about next big capital move:
1. Save your resources.
We cut a Due Diligence down to days by providing an analytics arm with the data you need to make smarter decisions — A scoring model based on more then 40 parameters that cover all major criterias that truly matter for a successful venture
Leader persona insights
Market
Current and forecasted economical situation
Product
Find out if your leader is capable of sustained effort during the whole acquisition period.
2. Give you a strategic view on where should you put your resources
Region heat maps by industry
Innovation maps
Ecosystems maps
Industry hivers
Future trends map
3. Increase the ROI of your internal business investments
Reveal exactly what features or solutions your customers are fond of
Dive deep into audience Insights: explore the lifetime value and engagement of your audiences. Learn your audience preferences
Behavioural archetypes: get advice on communication strategy with 12 drastically different customer archetypes
Projections: get insights into the near future market situation based on academically crafted factor analysis models
Complete your due diligence, augment your data, and gain the insight you need to reduce costs, increase opportunities, empower human personas with data analysis and visualization tools from Panoptic Insight.
➨➨ If you’re interested in learning how Panoptic Insights can make investing easier for you, click the link below to schedule a demo: coming soon | https://medium.com/@mentalpalace/panoptic-insights-manifesto-ea94f1ccbf8e | ['Viacheslav Shvaydak'] | 2020-12-23 17:01:19.633000+00:00 | ['Sustainability', 'Investing', 'AI', 'Decision Making', 'Software'] |
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Mining is a process of verifying a block of transactions or creating new blocks of cryptocurrency. Miners spend their time and computing power to solve mathematical puzzles that ultimately verify Ethereum transactions. The Ethereum network operates on a Proof-of-Work mechanism that the miners are rewarded for every new token they mine.
What is the purpose of Hashrate?
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Ltc wallet: LZwWmswjxFgrTMRUaMUSXJ6Eo39Pmi6dG8 | https://medium.com/@deapujangga/sha-256-io-is-a-cloud-mining-international-3042ab3c6688 | ['Dea Pujangga'] | 2021-04-25 15:30:23.735000+00:00 | ['International', 'Sha 256 Btc Cloud Mining'] |
Onyx Equinox [S01E05] Series 1 Episode 5 — “Full” Episodes | Onyx Equinox : Season 1 , Episode 5 || FULL EPISODES | On Series Onyx Equinox Season 1 Ep 1 Episoder : features the hero in action scenes that display and explore exotic locations. The subgenres of adventure films include swashbuckler film, disaster films, and historical dramas-which is similar to the epic film genre. Main plot components include quests for lost continents, a jungle or desert settings, characters going on a treasure hunts and heroic journeys in to the unknown. Adventure films are mostly occur a period background and may include adapted stories of historical or fictional adventure heroes within the historical context. Kings, battles, rebellion or piracy are generally observed in adventure films. Adventure films may also be combined with other movie genres such as for example, science fiction, fantasy and sometimes war films.Onyx Equinox Season 1 French : The coverage of sports as a television program, on radio and other broadcasting media. It usually involves a number of sports commentators describing the events because they happen, to create “colour commentary.”
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An action story is similar to adventure, and the protagonist usually takes a risky turn, which leads to desperate scenarios (including explosions, fight scenes, daring escapes, etc.). Action and adventure usually are categorized together (sometimes even while “action-adventure”) because they have much in common, and many stories are categorized as both genres simultaneously (for instance, the James Bond series can be classified as both).
Continuing their survival through an age of a Zombie-apocalypse as a makeshift family, Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), Wichita (Emma Stone), and Little Rock (Abagail Breslin) have found their balance as a team, settling into the now vacant White House to spend some safe quality time with one another as they figure out their next move. However, spend time at the Presidential residents raise some uncertainty as Columbus proposes to Wichita, which freaks out the independent, lone Onyx Equinox out, while Little Rock starts to feel the need to be on her own. The women suddenly decide to escape in the middle of the night, leaving the men concerned about Little Rock, who’s quickly joined by Berkley (Avan Jogia), a hitchhiking hippie on his way to place called Babylon, a fortified commune that’s supposed to be safe haven against the zombies of the land. Hitting the road to retrieved their loved one, Tallahassee and Columbus meet Madison (Zoey Deutch), a dim-witted survivor who takes an immediate liking to Columbus, complicating his relationship with Wichita.
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✅ ANALYZER GOOD / BAD ✅
To be honest, I didn’t catch Zombieland when it first got released (in theaters) back in 501. Of course, the movie pre-dated a lot of the pop culture phenomenon of the usage of zombies-esque as the main antagonist (i.e Game of Thrones, The Maze Runner trilogy, The Walking Dead, World War Z, The Last of Us, etc.), but I’ve never been keen on the whole “Zombie” craze as others are. So, despite the comedy talents on the project, I didn’t see Zombieland….until it came to TV a year or so later. Surprisingly, however, I did like it. Naturally, the zombie apocalypse thing was fine (just wasn’t my thing), but I really enjoyed the film’s humor-based comedy throughout much of the feature. With the exception of 501’s Shaun of the Dead, majority of the past (and future) endeavors of this narrative have always been serious, so it was kind of refreshing to see comedic levity being brought into the mix. Plus, the film’s cast was great, with the four main leads being one of the film’s greatest assets. As mentioned above, Zombieland didn’t make much of a huge splash at the box office, but certainly gained a strong cult following, including myself, in the following years.
Flash forward a decade after its release and Zombieland finally got a sequel with Zombieland: Double Tap, the central focus of this review post. Given how the original film ended, it was clear that a sequel to the 501 movie was indeed possible, but it seemed like it was in no rush as the years kept passing by. So, I was quite surprised to hear that Zombieland was getting a sequel, but also a bit not surprised as well as Hollywood’s recent endeavors have been of the “belated sequels” variety; finding mixed results on each of these projects. I did see the film’s movie trailer, which definitely was what I was looking for in this Zombieland 1 movie, with Eisenberg, Harrelson, Stone, Breslin returning to reprise their respective characters again. I knew I wasn’t expecting anything drastically different from the 501 movie, so I entered Double Tap with good frame of my mind and somewhat eagerly expecting to catch up with this dysfunctional zombie killing family. Unfortunately, while I did see the movie a week after its release, my review for it fell to the wayside as my life in retail got a hold of me during the holidays as well as being sick for a good week and half after seeing the movie. So, with me still playing “catch up” I finally have the time to share my opinions on Zombieland: Double Tap. And what are they? Well, to be honest, my opinions on the film was good. Despite some problems here and there, Zombieland: Double Tap is definitely a fun sequel that’s worth the decade long wait. It doesn’t “redefine” the Zombie genre interest or outmatch its predecessor, but this next chapter of Zombieland still provides an entertaining entry….and that’s all that matters.
Returning to the director’s chair is director Ruben Fleischer, who helmed the first Zombieland movie as well as other film projects such as 5 Minutes or Less, Gangster Squad, and Venom. Thus, given his previous knowledge of shaping the first film, it seems quite suitable (and obvious) for Fleischer to direct this movie and (to that affect), Double Tap succeeds. Of course, with the first film being a “cult classic” of sorts, Fleischer probably knew that it wasn’t going to be easy to replicate the same formula in this sequel, especially since the 5-year gap between the films. Luckily, Fleischer certainly excels in bringing the same type of comedic nuances and cinematic aspects that made the first Zombieland enjoyable to Double Tap; creating a second installment that has plenty of fun and entertainment throughout. A lot of the familiar / likeable aspects of the first film, including the witty banter between four main lead characters, continues to be at the forefront of this sequel; touching upon each character in a amusing way, with plenty of nods and winks to the original 501 film that’s done skillfully and not so much unnecessarily ham-fisted. Additionally, Fleischer keeps the film running at a brisk pace, with the feature having a runtime of 5 minutes in length (one hour and thirty-nine minutes), which means that the film never feels sluggish (even if it meanders through some secondary story beats / side plot threads), with Fleischer ensuring a companion sequel that leans with plenty of laughter and thrills that are presented snappy way (a sort of “thick and fast” notion). Speaking of which, the comedic aspect of the first Zombieland movie is well-represented in Double Tap, with Fleischer still utilizing its cast (more on that below) in a smart and hilarious by mixing comedic personalities / personas with something as serious / gravitas as fighting endless hordes of zombies every where they go. Basically, if you were a fan of the first Zombieland flick, you’ll definitely find Double Tap to your liking.
In terms of production quality, Double Tap is a good feature. Granted, much like the last film, I knew that the overall setting and background layouts weren’t going to be something elaborate and / or expansive. Thus, my opinion of this subject of the movie’s technical presentation isn’t that critical. Taking that into account, Double Tap does (at least) does have that standard “post-apocalyptic” setting of an abandoned building, cityscapes, and roads throughout the feature; littered with unmanned vehicles and rubbish. It certainly has that “look and feel” of the post-zombie world, so Double Tap’s visual aesthetics gets a solid industry standard in my book. Thus, a lot of the other areas that I usually mentioned (i.e set decorations, costumes, cinematography, etc.) fit into that same category as meeting the standards for a 51 movie. Thus, as a whole, the movie’s background nuances and presentation is good, but nothing grand as I didn’t expect to be “wowed” over it. So, it sort of breaks even. This also extends to the film’s score, which was done by David Sardy, which provides a good musical composition for the feature’s various scenes as well as a musical song selection thrown into the mix; interjecting the various zombie and humor bits equally well.
There are some problems that are bit glaring that Double Tap, while effectively fun and entertaining, can’t overcome, which hinders the film from overtaking its predecessor. Perhaps one of the most notable criticism that the movie can’t get right is the narrative being told. Of course, the narrative in the first Zombieland wasn’t exactly the best, but still combined zombie-killing action with its combination of group dynamics between its lead characters. Double Tap, however, is fun, but messy at the same time; creating a frustrating narrative that sounds good on paper, but thinly written when executed. Thus, problem lies within the movie’s script, which was penned by Dave Callaham, Rhett Reese, and Paul Wernick, which is a bit thinly sketched in certain areas of the story, including a side-story involving Tallahassee wanting to head to Graceland, which involves some of the movie’s new supporting characters. It’s fun sequence of events that follows, but adds little to the main narrative and ultimately could’ve been cut completely. Thus, I kind of wanted see Double Tap have more a substance within its narrative. Heck, they even had a decade long gap to come up with a new yarn to spin for this sequel…and it looks like they came up a bit shorter than expected.
Another point of criticism that I have about this is that there aren’t enough zombie action bits as there were in the first Zombieland movie. Much like the Walking Dead series as become, Double Tap seems more focused on its characters (and the dynamics that they share with each other) rather than the group facing the sparse groupings of mindless zombies. However, that was some of the fun of the first movie and Double Tap takes away that element. Yes, there are zombies in the movie and the gang is ready to take care of them (in gruesome fashion), but these mindless beings sort take a back seat for much of the film, with the script and Fleischer seemed more focused on showcasing witty banter between Columbus, Tallahassee, Wichita, and Little Rock. Of course, the ending climatic piece in the third act gives us the best zombie action scenes of the feature, but it feels a bit “too little, too late” in my opinion. To be honest, this big sequence is a little manufactured and not as fun and unique as the final battle scene in the first film. I know that sounds a bit contrive and weird, but, while the third act big fight seems more polished and staged well, it sort of feels more restricted and doesn’t flow cohesively with the rest of the film’s flow (in matter of speaking).
What’s certainly elevates these points of criticism is the film’s cast, with the main quartet lead acting talents returning to reprise their roles in Double Tap, which is absolutely the “hands down” best part of this sequel. Naturally, I’m talking about the talents of Jessie Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin in their respective roles Zombieland character roles of Columbus, Tallahassee, Wichita, and Little Rock. Of the four, Harrelson, known for his roles in Cheers, True Detective, and War for the Planet of the Apes, shines as the brightest in the movie, with dialogue lines of Tallahassee proving to be the most hilarious comedy stuff on the sequel. Harrelson certainly knows how to lay it on “thick and fast” with the character and the s**t he says in the movie is definitely funny (regardless if the joke is slightly or dated). Behind him, Eisenberg, known for his roles in The Art of Self-Defense, The Social Network, and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, is somewhere in the middle of pack, but still continues to act as the somewhat main protagonist of the feature, including being a narrator for us (the viewers) in this post-zombie apocalypse world. Of course, Eisenberg’s nervous voice and twitchy body movements certainly help the character of Columbus to be likeable and does have a few comedic timing / bits with each of co-stars. Stone, known for her roles in The Help, Superbad, and La La Land, and Breslin, known for her roles in Signs, Little Miss Sunshine, and Definitely, Maybe, round out the quartet; providing some more grown-up / mature character of the group, with Wichita and Little Rock trying to find their place in the world and how they must deal with some of the party members on a personal level. Collectively, these four are what certainly the first movie fun and hilarious and their overall camaraderie / screen-presence with each other hasn’t diminished in the decade long absence. To be it simply, these four are simply riot in the Zombieland and are again in Double Tap.
With the movie keeping the focus on the main quartet of lead Zombieland characters, the one newcomer that certainly takes the spotlight is actress Zoey Deutch, who plays the character of Madison, a dim-witted blonde who joins the group and takes a liking to Columbus. Known for her roles in Before I Fall, The Politician, and Set It Up, Deutch is a somewhat “breath of fresh air” by acting as the tagalong team member to the quartet in a humorous way. Though there isn’t much insight or depth to the character of Madison, Deutch’s ditzy / air-head portrayal of her is quite hilarious and is fun when she’s making comments to Harrelson’s Tallahassee (again, he’s just a riot in the movie).
The rest of the cast, including actor Avan Jogia (Now Apocalypse and Shaft) as Berkeley, a pacifist hippie that quickly befriends Little Rock on her journey, actress Rosario Dawson (Rent and Sin City) as Nevada, the owner of a Elvis-themed motel who Tallahassee quickly takes a shine to, and actors Luke Wilson (Legally Blonde and Old School) and Thomas Middleditch (Silicon Valley and Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie) as Albuquerque and Flagstaff, two traveling zombie-killing partners that are mimic reflections of Tallahassee and Columbus, are in minor supporting roles in Double Tap. While all of these acting talents are good and definitely bring a certain humorous quality to their characters, the characters themselves could’ve been easily expanded upon, with many just being thinly written caricatures. Of course, the movie focuses heavily on the Zombieland quartet (and newcomer Madison), but I wished that these characters could’ve been fleshed out a bit.
Lastly, be sure to still around for the film’s ending credits, with Double Tap offering up two Easter Eggs scenes (one mid-credits and one post-credit scenes). While I won’t spoil them, I do have mention that they are pretty hilarious.
✅ FINAL THOUGHTS ✅
It’s been awhile, but the Zombieland gang is back and are ready to hit the road once again in the movie Zombieland: Double Tap. Director Reuben Fleischer’s latest film sees the return the dysfunctional zombie-killing makeshift family of survivors for another round of bickering, banting, and trying to find their way in a post-apocalyptic world. While the movie’s narrative is a bit messy and could’ve been refined in the storyboarding process as well as having a bit more zombie action, the rest of the feature provides to be a fun endeavor, especially with Fleischer returning to direct the project, the snappy / witty banter amongst its characters, a breezy runtime, and the four lead returning acting talents. Personally, I liked this movie. I definitely found it to my liking as I laugh many times throughout the movie, with the main principal cast lending their screen presence in this post-apocalyptic zombie movie. Thus, my recommendation for this movie is favorable “recommended” as I’m sure it will please many fans of the first movie as well as to the uninitiated (the film is quite easy to follow for newcomers). While the movie doesn’t redefine what was previous done back in 501, Zombieland: Double Tap still provides a riot of laughs with this make-shift quartet of zombie survivors; giving us give us (the viewers) fun and entertaining companion sequel to the original feature. | https://medium.com/onyx-equinox-s01e05-series-1-episode-5-full/s01-e05-onyx-equinox-series-1-episode-5-ep-5-online-series-a44df7d6140c | [] | 2020-12-18 21:29:24.905000+00:00 | ['Cartoon'] |
Types of ‘fake transformation’ | Written by Denis Kaminskiy, CEO at Arcus Global
In my view, there are several distinct types of ‘fake transformation’ in the public sector. I want to list them here, because understanding them is very helpful in deciding how to proceed and how to avoid project issues or failures.
1 — The silver bullet
This type is about expecting a silver bullet, a single solution to fit all ills. It typically goes like this — new leadership decides that a different solution is required. They have been brought in to transform something, and dammit, transform they will! They then buy a system (CRM, CSM, ERP a good choice). Once deployed, the organisation will turn into a well-oiled, purring machine.
2 — The lip service
This type is in many ways the opposite. While the rhetoric is similar, no actual action is planned. The task is given to more junior members of staff, or perhaps the IT team. A few projects are identified here and there. No overriding goals are set, and in many respects, things stay ‘business as usual’. When cuts happen, they normally take a little from everyone. The project might even end up being entirely technical like a SAN refresh, or niche, like a Google apps deployment or O365 migration.
3 — The interim
This may happen when an organisation has an interim leader, or an interim state (or both). There is talk of ‘righting the ship’ and getting things stable, but as part of a broader programme. This is not certain, or it’s so long term that technology and the organisation will change by itself so much that the original goals could not possibly remain applicable. Typically, there is a bunch of renewals of legacy technology, and perhaps some consolidation.
4 — The Ego.
My personal favourite. This is driven — frequently in the right direction — by the sheer strength of will and vision of an individual in the organisation. That may be the CEO, CIO, or a councillor. This is easily mistaken for the real transformation, and may actually become the real transformation. However, there are massive risks:
a) Ego leaves or loses interest — the whole thing dies
b) Ego is not as popular as they think they are, or there are more powerful people out there who are still very capable and willing to knock it off the road
c) Budget, performance, and strategy are not solid enough to see the way to the finish — and something happens or takes higher priority halfway through
d) Ego has not understood or considered the real problems, and although the programme succeeds on some level, the results are disappointing.
5) The market
This is probably the one to look out for the most. This is where some desire to change exists, but no one knows what to do, and no one wants to lead. They’ll say, let’s use procurement to go and buy ‘one of these transformation projects everyone is talking about’. Excellent. Nothing can go wrong with this solid plan. Of course, procurement would be big, and take a while, so they do a full Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) process for six months, see lots of people, have a few supplier days. They’ll think that surely one of those smart suppliers (consulting firms, tech firms, outsourcers) will be good. They believe that they can’t go wrong if they pick the cheapest option.
There are endless flavours of each type and multiple sub-divisions of each flavour. And, these types are of course not mutually exclusive. Broadly speaking, of the above, 1 and 4 can be rescued and turned into a real transformation. 2,3 and 5 have little hope of actually changing the organisation for the better. In most cases, 2,3 and 5 are best left alone, as they will be back in two to four years with new leadership, depending on how fast they blow up.
Originally published here.
More thought leadership | https://medium.com/digital-leaders-uk/types-of-fake-transformation-4d180481eb5f | ['Digital Leaders'] | 2020-01-13 11:31:58.675000+00:00 | ['Government', 'Digital', 'Technology', 'Business', 'Transformation'] |
What is White Label NFT MarketPlace? Why is White Label NFT MarketPlace Valuable? | What is White Label NFT MarketPlace? Why is White Label NFT MarketPlace Valuable? Jeff Pearson Aug 25·2 min read
Hi everyone, welcome to the world of NFTs.
What exactly is an NFT?
NFTs are virtual tokens that represent ownership of something inherently distinct and scarce, whether it be a physical or digital item, such as artwork, a soundtrack, a collectible, an in-game item, or real estate. Unlike regular cryptocurrencies like bitcoin or fiat money like the U.S dollar, these special types of digital assets cannot be mutually exchanged for one another because each token has a specific value based on its unique traits and attributes.
Also unlike regular cryptocurrencies, NFTs cannot be purchased on centralized or decentralized crypto exchanges. Instead, they are listed and traded on online marketplaces that are specially built for NFTs.
Understanding about NFT Marketplaces
NFT marketplaces are platforms where NFTs can be stored, displayed, traded, and in some cases minted (created). These marketplaces are to NFTs what Amazon or eBay are to goods.
It’s worth noting that, for the most part, listing and creating NFTs on a marketplace platform incurs a blockchain network fee. The fee varies depending on which blockchain-based system you decide to use.
What is a White Label NFT MarketPlace?
White label NFT Marketplace is a ready-made software that is designed, developed, tested, and already available for deployment. With this software, one just needs to make the preferred customizations and can get started with their own NFT business. Such platforms are secure, fast in deployment, and cost-effective in comparison with built from scratch ones.
More Information: White Label NFT Marketplace
What gives White Label NFT MarketPlace a Value?
Wide range access to a variety of collectibles
Assets from various domains directly displayed for trade
Improved market performance by volume and value of Collectibles displayed
Effective Statistical Data of digital assets
Definite and delicate Transaction history and traffic analysis
Automated and Algorithmic Trade assistance
Championing the cause of collectibles
Final Thoughts:
I have delivered some basic information from NFT, NFT MarketPlace to White Label NFT MarketPlace. Hope this starting Guide to White Label NFT Marketplace will leave some ideas for founders of NFT Businesses. If you need help in building an NFT Marketplace then feel free to contact Maticz. | https://medium.com/@jeff-pearson/what-is-white-label-nft-marketplace-why-is-white-label-nft-marketplace-valuable-1f8572bdad06 | ['Jeff Pearson'] | 2021-08-25 09:33:51.368000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Nft Marketplace', 'Smart Contracts', 'Ethereum', 'Nft'] |
How to Write a Pre-Nup for Your Partnership | How to Write a Pre-Nup for Your Partnership
Sure, everything seems rosy now. But when you and your co-founder no longer see eye-to-eye, you’ll be glad you did the paperwork early on. Laura McCann of ADORAtherapy helps you prepare for the challenges of partnership.
Entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart. Many of us, understandably, want a partner or co-founder at our side. But after 20 years, four companies, and six partners, I’ve learned that partnering doesn’t solve everything, and often introduces its own difficulties. Here are six rules that will help you set the groundwork for a great partnership — and a decent breakup, should you need one.
Imagine “The End”
Don’t agree to partner with anyone, or take on a partner, until you are clear in your own mind and on paper about how you would choose to end your business. The partnership agreement is going to be the equivalent of your business pre-nup, and now is the time to think about what happens in the event of a separation or divorce. Your buy-sell and partnership agreements should clearly spell out every potential scenario.
Just having this conversation will reveal more about your potential partner then you could ever imagine — or maybe more than you want to know. The best partnerships are built around clear and specific roles, operational guidelines and legal contracts.
Tough Talk, Not Love Talk
At the beginning, it’s great to be in love with your partner. They will undoubtedly be the person you spend the most time with, share secrets with and grow your business with — unless you grow to hate them. Have tough conversations before committing, and explore every possible relationship and business outcome you can think of: What if you work harder? What if they work smarter? What if they bring in the money? What if it was your idea? What if he/she wants to leave? What if the investors want only one of you to stay? Good partnerships set the foundation for a better break-up with honest, open communication. No scenario is too uncomfortable to consider. Anything can happen, and it probably will.
Who’s The Boss?
Don’t gloss over your job descriptions. Think of the contingencies: you swap roles, one of you steps away, or a family matter takes all your attention. Can your buy-sell agreement handle all of these?
Review your job descriptions every six months, and keep them updated. Working on your partnership is part of your job. Make it part of your mission statement.
The Paper Trail
Every partnership should be built document at a time. Don’t skip over any details, even if they seem like a pain in the neck at the time. And put it all in writing, especially your concerns. Keep a paper trail. Print everything important and relevant to the pulse of your relationship and put these documents in a file. You might not like to think about it now, but when you most need this information, you may not have have access to your computer or company email.
My Attorney
If you and your partner get into a dispute, your company’s attorney can’t take sides and shouldn’t. So when things get tense, your partner’s attorney will be sitting across the table. You need your own personal attorney. You need someone who not only understands how to build businesses, but has experience closing them down.
When you meet with your attorney, skip the storytelling — you’re paying by the hour. Just get clear on your legal standing, and what you can and can’t do to get your partnership on track or end it.
The Partnership Advisory Board
While the ultimate decision about who to take on as a partner is yours alone, you still need a personal set of advisors. These can be your attorney, entrepreneurs who have been through partnerships themselves, or a life partner — who probably knows more about your partnership than anyone else. These are the folks who will watch your back and can help you decide whether to love, mediate, or leave your partnership.
Ultimately, you are accountable for everything about your business, even picking your partner. So choose wisely and prepare that pre-nup.
Laura Mccann is a well-rounded senior executive with a proven record of success in Beauty, Fashion and Technology. She is currently the Co-Founder and CEO of ADORAtherapy, a vertical manager of organic aromatherapy products. She leads and has led global business strategy and delivery including software implementation and integration, product management, web and enterprise application development, marketing and product development. Laura has 20+ years experience in high tech, fashion, consumer products, design, sourcing and marketing. | https://medium.com/been-there-run-that/how-to-write-a-pre-nup-for-your-partnership-1359461cc8d7 | ['Springboard Enterprises'] | 2018-07-03 18:01:01.876000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Partnerships', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Women Entrepreneurs'] |
Why Proper Communication Benefits You and Your Team | Why Proper Communication Benefits You and Your Team
Communication is an integral part of our lives, both at work and at home. At MAS, we understand the power of proper communication, and how communicating effectively not only grows your own potential at work, but also the potential and rapport of your team, both with each other, and with your customers.
Proper communication at work means lesser conflict, increased engagement and satisfaction with the team, better relationships with customers and suppliers, and, in general, a more productive and focused work environment. Regardless of what role you play within a company, it is important to be able to communicate properly and effectively.
In this article, we will look at some of the major benefits of communicating properly and effectively at work. Then we will look at some of the initiative MAS has in place to help nurture important skills like communication in young talent.
The Power of Proper Communication
Good communication skills are one of the major defining qualities of a good leader. Effectively sharing your ideas and information with those around you is what makes for good communication. There are many things you can do to communicate better- but why is it so important for you to be able to communicate properly?
It provides purpose and clarity — Proper communication gives those around you a clear idea of what they’re working towards and why. This in turn helps teams build rapport with each other and work together better to achieve both smaller and larger goals.
It avoids confusion and conflict — No one wants to be confused at work. Proper communication makes sure that you and each member of your team know what you need to be doing and when. It limits misunderstandings and conflict. And when conflict does arise, proper communication allows it to be dealt with quickly and easily.
It creates a positive work environment and culture — Shared goals and purpose with lesser conflict creates an environment and culture at work in which team members feel valued. Teams with proper communication have stronger relationships with each other and with their management. This positive environment inspires team members to work better and smarter, resulting in a more productive and engaged overall team.
It creates better relationships with clients and suppliers– Teams don’t work solely within themselves. They work with customers to make sure their needs are met, and with suppliers to ensure the right resources to keep customers happy. Proper communication makes working with customers and suppliers easier and more effective. You understand what your customers and suppliers need and are better able to help them.
It boosts your success in the long-term — In the bigger picture, proper communication at work allows you to be more effective and make a bigger impact to your team and overall business within which you work. Through communicating properly you are able to contribute to your company’s larger goals and build a strong reputation for yourself within your industry.
Communicating effectively through the MAS Skills for Work programme
At MAS, we believe that the key to success is a skilful and talented workforce. The future of the workforce is our youth and through the MAS Skills for Work programme, we aspire to build and nurture essential skills in young talent.
Soft skills are often overlooked in traditional education and the Skills for Work programme looks to give undergraduates the best balance of soft skills combined with universities’ academic excellence for them to be able to thrive in a corporate environment once they join the workforce.
The Skills for Work programme works with five local universities and has benefitted over 2,500 local university students teaching and developing skills like proper communication, personal branding, preparing effective visual presentations, speaking confidently, interacting with others and effective time management.
Staying true to our mission statement, MAS is committed to building young talent in local universities. Learning from 2020, and moving forward in the new normal, the Skills of Work programme has been redesigned to combine online and physical learning to give undergraduates and those just entering the job market the ability to learn important skill sets and gain practical exposure as well. Through these efforts, MAS is creating a diverse and inclusive work environment where everyone can thrive and achieve their fullest potential. | https://medium.com/@masholdings1/why-proper-communication-benefits-you-and-your-team-a7cb0e477ce4 | ['Mas Holdings'] | 2020-12-09 06:32:17.081000+00:00 | ['Communication', 'Soft Skills', 'Talent', 'Skills', 'Work'] |
What If I Rather Be Ice? | What If I Rather Be Ice?
A poem: Thawing a frozen heart
Photo by Ron Whitaker on Unsplash
What if I have already
made a home
in the cold?
I know what it feels like
to stand under freezing rain,
no home to go to,
no arms to cry in,
no hope
I know how to do that…
I have learned
to withstand the storm;
this is who I am now
What would become of me
if suddenly
sunshine hit me
with all its might?
I fear
I would disappear;
I would vanish
into thin air
I fear…
Let me stay quiet
in this place,
until oblivion
takes over
and no one
ever
remembers my name.
This story is a response to Prism & Pen’s writing prompt Thawing a Frozen Heart
Other stories so far — | https://medium.com/prismnpen/what-if-i-rather-be-ice-ec09ab443d71 | ['Gb Rogut'] | 2020-12-24 13:32:16.082000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Life', 'Winter', 'LGBTQ', 'Life Lessons'] |
U.S. v. E-6, JAX Naval Station — Negligent Homicide and Manslaughter | September 2020. In 2018, we were retained to represent an E-6 in the United States Navy. Our client was accused of negligent homicide, manslaughter, obstruction of justice, damage to government property, conspiracy, DUI with bodily harm, and an array of Article 92 violations. The Government alleged that our client was accused of killing a Djiboutian National while operating a government vehicle at Camp Lemmonier.
According to the charges, our client had lost control of his vehicle while intoxicated, and this negligent action led to the death of the Djiboutian National who was on his way to work. The NCIS investigation was over 4,000 pages long, and our defense investigator interviewed dozens and dozens of witnesses. Over 30 motions were filed in this case and it was covered by the Navy Times and Military Times.
Our argument was that there was no evidence to suggest that our client caused the accident. In fact, the one reliable eyewitness was going to testify that the deceased was driving his scouter in my client’s lane and struck my client. This would mean that my client was not guilty of negligent homicide or manslaughter. We requested an accident reconstruction expert to help us further understand what happened in the case. Our expert reviewed hundreds of photographs, FARO scans, and the entire investigation file. Our expert also concluded that there was no evidence to suggest that our client caused the accident.
To make matters worse, NCIS did not properly secure the vehicle that my client was driving or the deceased’s motor scooter. The vehicle my client was driving was destroyed and the scooter was left outside and was damaged from exposure. Our accident investigator was denied the opportunity to inspect the two most important pieces of evidence. We filed a motion to dismiss charges based on this egregious error committed by NCIS, but ultimately the military judge ruled that the FARO scans served as an adequate substitute for the actual vehicles. A decision that we disagreed with but understood.
Finally, after three years of litigation, dozens of motions, witness interviews, and hard fights with government counsel, the homicide, manslaughter, and obstruction of justice charges were dropped. This was a tremendous team effort and is the result of a lot of grit, hard work, and determination. This is one I will remember for the remainder of my career.
____________________________________
RESULT: Negligent Homicide DROPPED. Manslaughter DROPPED. DUI with Bodily Harm DROPPED. Obstruction of Justice DROPPED. | https://medium.com/@mickeywilliams454/u-s-v-e-6-jax-naval-station-negligent-homicide-and-manslaughter-6a28a3088005 | ['Mickey Williams'] | 2020-11-16 17:53:47.350000+00:00 | ['Military', 'Law', 'Lawyers', 'Attorney', 'Litigation'] |
What burnout looks like and what I learned from it | Several weeks ago, I was going for a run on a Monday morning when I just started crying. I had spent the whole weekend not touching my computer. I enjoyed one full day with friends and one full day of spa. Doesn’t sound like there’s anything to cry about on that Monday morning, right?
Except that this was the first time I had a weekend like that since I started working on my own thing two years ago.
So, on that Monday morning after a weekend full of fun and relaxation that was supposed to recharge me, I was feeling mentally and emotionally exhausted — in the exact same way I felt on the Friday before. I felt empty, numb and indifferent. I was lacking the motivation, enthusiasm and fulfillment that are the main drivers for my impact-focused startup. I didn’t feel the urge to do anything at all, which is not how I wake up since I’ve found the mission I want to serve in my life.
Well, a weekend off doesn’t do the job if it’s taken way too late. Many people who’ve witnessed my workaholism have warned me about the risk of burnout, but I never listened to anyone. I thought I can go on forever, I didn’t feel like there are any boundaries. My passion for what I’m building, my ambition and my perfectionism were my constant fuel. I also thought I need to go on just like that, because that’s how you build a startup. You work 100 hours a week (e.g. according to people like Adeo Ressi, the founder of Founder Institute that I graduated from this year).
Hell no.
Where there is desire there is gonna be a flame
Where there is a flame, someone’s bound to get burned
But just because it burns doesn’t mean you’re gonna die
Building a startup is a marathon, not a sprint. You can’t keep your foot on the gas forever. Even with a race car (which might just be the idea you have of yourself or your role in your startup), maintenance should be done weekly. What about the human being that you actually are?
You know, a lack of self-care is a lack of self-respect and self-love. That’s my burnout lesson number one.
Like, how can you forget about your human needs if you’re the person who’s supposed to pull it all off?
What kind of leader can you be if you do not respect and take care of yourself to start with?
How are you going to treat other people on the team if you’re treating yourself that badly?
What kind of culture are you going to create?
And why do you bother starting your own business if you’re becoming it’s slave? You should be creating a self-determined lifestyle. You should be happy and fulfilled, because you’re working on your dream.
And you can be. If you just start caring enough about yourself in the first place.
Here are the ‘side effects’ of taking care of yourself that you can expect:
– making better decisions;
– feeling less overwhelmed and more like you’ll manage whatever the day throws at you;
– being non-reactive and having conscious control over situations;
– inspiring and empowering others instead of stressing them;
– acknowledging, appreciating and enjoying the path you’re walking;
– and ultimately becoming a better person, which is what this path is all about: the kind of person you’re becoming on it. | https://medium.com/@dora-dora/what-burnout-looks-like-and-how-it-changed-me-dc8b7e4c0c90 | ['Dora Dora'] | 2020-11-27 13:55:36.447000+00:00 | ['Work Life Balance', 'Life Lessons', 'Startup Life', 'Burnout', 'Self Care'] |
FAQs for Black, Queer, Female Software Engineers | FAQs for Black, Queer, Female Software Engineers
And why you might think twice before you ask them
A recent National Center for Women & Information Technology “By the Numbers” report puts Black women in computing in 2018 at 3% — and this statistic does not make a distinction between technical and nontechnical women in computing. Of the overall U.S. population, roughly 4.5% identify as LGBT. Since it’s incredibly hard to find industry-wide statistics on LGBT folks in tech, let’s take an extremely optimistic view and assume 4.5% of people in computing are LGBT. Combining these two percentages tells us that .00135% of the computing workforce identifies as Black, queer, and female.
And remember, this is an extremely back-of-the-napkin calculation that does not distinguish between technical and nontechnical women, and uses an almost certainly incorrectly optimistic estimation of the percentage of LGBT folks in tech.
But beyond these numbers, all of this matters because the lived experience of being such an extreme unicorn can teach all of us what not to do around the buzzword topics of “diversity” and “inclusion.”
Three questions I’m tired of answering
What’s it like to be a woman on this all-male team? Did this happen because you are Black or is it just that you’re Black and this happened? How do we improve diversity statistics at <insert your tech company here>?
Let’s start with the most obvious problem here. All of these questions ask us, the individuals holding a marginalized identity, to explain and usually defend our lived experience. There are so many reasons this shouldn’t happen, but the most pressing is that this doubles the amount of work it takes for us to even exist in this space. Queer black women in tech already experience countless daily microaggressions that come from being visibly different in the workplace. Ask us any of the questions above and then we also have to argue that our differences are valid and perform an incredible amount of emotional labor of responding to these questions or pushing back against the fact that we’re being asked these questions at all.
These questions are not word-for-word, but they capture the essence of questions that I have received from folks in and out of the tech industry, from friends to co-workers, to managers, and far beyond.
1. What’s it like to be a woman on an all-male team?
My experience as a woman on an all-male team lasted about 15 months. It wasn’t all that bad at first. Folks were excited to listen to my technical ideas, hear my personal stories, teach me how we do things here.
Then I passed the six-month mark, the point at this particular tech company where you’re expected to know roughly what you’re doing and be able to contribute at the same level as your co-workers. And suddenly I began having to repeat myself in planning meetings for anyone to notice I had spoken. At lunch, it was blindingly clear by that point that I didn’t have anything to contribute to conversations about racing cars and destination weddings, so my co-workers stopped inviting me to meals. I resorted entirely to online methods of communicating about technical problems because every word I said out loud would be hyperscrutinized by every individual within earshot.
At some point, my manager asked me how things were going, and I let him know the difficulties I was having. I pointed out that I was the only woman, and one of the youngest people on the team. I explained how my co-workers did not trust my knowledge, despite extensive proof that I knew exactly what I was doing. And he asked, “Are you speaking up enough? I notice you are often quiet in group conversations; maybe you need to insert yourself more so folks know they can have conversations with you as well.”
All of these questions ask us, the individuals holding a marginalized identity, to explain and usually defend our lived experience.
The person who had been in nearly every group conversation where I had been spoken over, whose job it was to pay attention to my experience, and make sure I could contribute at the fullest capacity possible, who had time and time again said he understood the struggles of being other (because he was a foreign nonwhite person living in the U.S.) his first question put the onus of change squarely on my shoulders.
Perhaps all of this was because I am a woman; perhaps none of it is. My point is that it is an experience that is not at all unique to me. Rather, it is one that many (if not most) folks in tech have when they are not cis men.
2. Did this happen because you are Black or is it just that you’re Black and this happened?
Over the course of my life — slightly shorter than a quarter-century — I’ve asked myself countless times:
Did this happen because I’m Black? Mixed-race? Darker than white folks? Lighter than Black folks? Was I just treated differently because I’m with a group of white folks? Would this have happened differently if I wasn’t alone in my Blackness?
Tech has been no different. And in bringing up The Race Question with co-workers and managers in several companies — folks who are, themselves, Black and white and several other races — I’ve been surprised at the responses.
Almost universally, regardless of the race of the person I’m speaking with, I’m asked “‘Are you sure? Are you sure this has to do with race?” Even other Black folks, other Black women in and out of tech, have flinched away from my presentation of race as part of the reason I struggle in ways my non-Black co-workers do not.
Since it is challenging to identify the exact reason I may have been criticized at a higher rate than my co-workers, let’s not even focus on that. Rather, let’s focus on why folks push back on my assertion of my racial identity affecting how I’m treated in the workplace. Of course, my race affects my work — because humans are primarily visual creatures, our visual presentation (race frequently being one of the most immediately obvious) is one of the primary ways we are categorized. Why pretend otherwise?
The only answer I can think of is that pretending that Blackness doesn’t factor into my experience in the workplace means that my co-workers, managers, and beyond don’t have to consider how to change a pervasive, difficult-to-tackle culture that allows for racially-motivated differences in treatment. Race-based mistreatment or inequality is, in my opinion, one of the hardest cultural problems to admit to and then change. It’s the easiest to ignore when you’re not the target, the most uncomfortable to accept on a personal level, especially if this acceptance would hold you personally accountable to change. It usually requires such a drastic cultural change that the easiest solution is to pretend race simply doesn’t affect anything.
Queer black women in tech already experience countless daily microaggressions that come from being visibly different in the workplace.
But the question itself — are you sure it’s about race? — and with it, the clear hope that my Blackness doesn’t have to do with the issue at hand, lets me know right away that I will have to fight to have my concerns even acknowledged as legitimate. It tells me that I do not have an ally who believes in the words I say.
Again, whether or not I am right in the end is not really the issue. The issue is more that I have to fight to have my experience believed in a way that other folks simply don’t — and that this is a part of my daily experience in the workplace as much as are any of the engineering problems I face.
3. How do we improve diversity statistics at <insert your tech company here>?
First, let me ask this:
Are you, midlevel manager or tech giant CEO, going to your white male employees and asking them how we improve diversity statistics?
No? Well, then, don’t ask me how we can improve diversity unless you are going to pay me to answer this question. That’s unpaid labor, and you can learn more about that by reading “The Techies Project And Why Unpaid Labor for Diversity in Tech Needs to Stop” and “Whose Job Is It to D&I Anyway?” If you’re asking me for this work simply because I hold identities similar to the ones you hope to hire, that’s just a bad reason. It also makes me more susceptible to burnout, and less inclined to help in any way.
If I know I’m going to be bringing other black folks (or queer folks, or women, or any mix of the three) into an environment where the many invaluable nontechnical contributions they will be expected to make will be unpaid and unappreciated, I’m not going to tell them to come. There are many reasons Black Twitter exists. One of them is that folks holding often-exploited identities know how to band together and support one another — and we will never willingly lead each other into harm’s way.
As a side note, that solidarity is why I will never again work on a team that does not have a single Black woman, queer person, or QTPOC-identifying individual — I have been the first and often only in a toxic environment one too many times already.
My identities do not exist in a silo
For me, it is not about how my identities as a Black, queer, and female software engineer exist separately. It’s about how they exist together. It’s about the exhaustion that I experience on a daily basis as I try to figure out if it is my femininity or my Blackness that contributes more to my non-Black male co-workers speaking over me; if it’s the visible queerness or the slang I slip into with QTPOC friends that makes my co-workers avoid my eyes in the cafe; if it’s my ideas or my image that need improvement in the eyes of my teammates who don’t quite trust me.
In a world where my co-workers had no implicit biases, I could trust their words without a second thought. They could give me critical feedback and I could take it at face value. But when I have to wade through a syrup of social and political confusion before I can even get to the technical questions at hand, it decreases my ability to be fully present and effective at work and increases my stress level from all sides.
So why does it matter?
Why is this collection of thoughts on womanhood, Blackness, and diversity important?
If you have ever had even a passing thought about the experiences of women in tech, racial minorities in white male-dominated spaces, or the “general diversity issues” that seem to plague every company in America, it can only help for you to be exposed to the viewpoints of more folks whose voices you don’t traditionally hear.
You rarely hear from Black queer women who are software engineers. (And if I’m wrong, please correct me — and then put me in touch with them.) So I am giving you the viewpoint of one Black queer woman currently adventuring as a software engineer.
Hopefully, you also get a little more compassion for experiences like mine. Hopefully, you understand a little better that being a Black queer female software engineer is not just about the interesting and challenging technical problems tech companies are solving, but also about countless hours of struggle over social and political issues that are rarely, if ever, recognized within tech companies themselves.
Hopefully, you learned something you’ll remember. And then you’ll use it to help change the world. | https://onezero.medium.com/faqs-for-black-queer-female-software-engineers-38b2d2b9450e | ['Naomi Day'] | 2019-09-25 14:21:26.602000+00:00 | ['Black', 'Software Engineering', 'Diversity In Tech', 'Industry', 'Queer'] |
Denoising Noisy Documents | Numerous scientific papers, historical documentaries/artifacts, recipes, books are stored as papers be it handwritten/typewritten. With time, the paper/notes tend to accumulate noise/dirt through fingerprints, weakening of paper fibers, dirt, coffee/tea stains, abrasions, wrinkling, etc. There are several surface cleaning methods used for both preserving and cleaning, but they have certain limits, the major one being: that the original document might get altered during the process.
I along with Michael Lally and Kartikeya Shukla worked on the data set of noisy documents if from the UC Irvine NoisyOffice Data Set. Denoising dirty documents enables the creation of higher fidelity digital recreations of original documents. Several methods for denoising documents like — Median Filtering, Edge Detection, Dilation & Erosion, Adaptive Filtering, Autoencoding, and Linear Regression are applied to a test dataset and their results are evaluated, discussed, and compared.
Median Filtering
Median filtering is the simplest denoising technique and it follows two basic steps: first, obtain the “background” of an image using Median Filtering with a kernel size of 23 x 23, then subtract the background from the image. Only the “foreground” will remain, clear of any noise that existed in the background. In this context, “foreground” is the text or significant details of the document and “background” is the noise, the white space between document elements. | https://towardsdatascience.com/denoising-noisy-documents-6807c34730c4 | ['Chinmay Wyawahare'] | 2020-07-01 06:10:04.068000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Computer Vision', 'Data Science', 'Neural Networks', 'AWS'] |
Many Surprising Reasons to See an Orthodontist | By: James M. Crouse, DDS, PA
An orthodontist’s job goes far beyond just creating beautiful smiles. They are an important part of the dental team for optimal dental and general health.
Photo source: iStockPhotos
Everyone knows that you need to see an orthodontist to straighten your front teeth and have a nice smile-but there are other reasons that you may benefit from a visit to the orthodontist. Here are some of them:
There are many reasons for orthodontia besides a nice smile
First, orthodontists spend as much or more time getting a proper fit of the back teeth as they do with the front teeth. Getting the posterior teeth to mesh properly is important for the longevity of the dentition.
Poorly aligned back teeth are more susceptible to adverse tooth wear. In extreme cases, repairing these worn teeth can require root canal therapy and crowns
Second, crooked teeth are more at risk for periodontal or gum disease. Conditions such as crossbites can put adverse forces on teeth that can make them become loose and cause recession of the gum tissue.
Periodontal disease becomes worse if there is traumatic occlusion. Teeth that have tipped into spaces for missing teeth also have compromised gingival health.
The orthodontist can correct the alignment of the teeth and ensure that the forces when biting are optimal.
Improving airway and jaw function
Another area that the orthodontist can help beyond a nice smile is help with a healthy airway and obstructive sleep apnea.
Many people suffer from obstructive sleep apnea. Often, the cause of the airway being closed off is due to the tongue blocking the airway.
Orthodontists can help with this condition in two ways. One is to help make sure the tongue has adequate room. People with constricted narrow arches don’t have as much room for their tongue. Orthodontic treatment to widen the arches may help accommodate the tongue.
Another way they can help is by providing oral appliances for people who are CPAP intolerant. These appliances are very similar to the appliances that we use to treat orthodontic problems. These removable appliances are worn while sleeping.
They aim to move the lower jaw forward. This is because the tongue and the associated muscles are attached to the lower jaw. Moving the jaw forward pulls the tongue forward. This opens a person’s airway so they can breathe better.
Airway issues in children
Children can also suffer from airway issues. They should not snore while sleeping.
Children who have difficulty breathing while sleeping can have a number of problems. They are often diagnosed with ADHD. They may have discipline problems in school, failure to thrive, and even bed wetting.
These children often have these issues due to enlarged tonsils and adenoids. They can also often have very narrow upper jaws.
The orthodontist can help by expanding the upper jaw. The other side of the roof of the mouth is the floor of the nose so widening the jaw not only makes more room for the tongue but also widens the floor of the nose and makes breathing easier. Jaw widening along with proper treatment by an ENT and their pediatrician can make a world of difference for these children.
TMJ dysfunction
Many orthodontists provide treatment for temporomandibular joint dysfunction (TMJ) pain and headaches. Treatment may only involve an orthotic to be worn while sleeping. But sometimes more extensive therapy is necessary including the use of ultrasound, cold laser, muscle manipulation, and relaxation techniques.
In addition, for some people with occlusal conditions that may be contributing to their temporomandibular disorder (TMD), the orthodontist can correct the bite and create a healthier condition that will make the person less reliant on orthotics.
Replacing and restoring teeth
The services of an orthodontist can be very helpful prior to extensive restorative dental work. Replacing and restoring teeth is easier and results in a better outcome when the teeth are properly aligned.
Teeth tend to drift when a tooth is removed. The teeth on each side tend to tip into the space of the missing tooth. Putting a replacement tooth in this altered space can result in a compromised result.
Orthodontic treatment can move the teeth back to where they belong so that a normally shaped tooth can be inserted.
In the case of a tooth that is broken off at the gum line, the orthodontist can extrude the tooth so that a crown can be placed and the tooth saved.
The orthodontist can also close the space for a missing tooth so that a replacement is unnecessary. This is often done in the case of missing upper lateral incisors. In appropriate cases, the upper canine teeth can be moved to the lateral’s position and reshaped to take the lateral incisor’s place.
An orthodontist is useful in the case of dental trauma. Teeth that have been displaced by a blow to the facial area can be repositioned by the orthodontist and stabilized so that they can heal and be maintained.
The bottom line
An orthodontist’s job goes far beyond just creating beautiful smiles. They are an important part of the dental team for optimal dental and general health.
This story was first published on March 18, 2017. It has been updated for republication.
James M. Crouse, DDS, PA, is the owner of The Brace Place in Salisbury, Md., offering outstanding, affordable orthodontic care to children, teens, and adults. Dr. Crouse utilizes the latest technological advances in orthodontics to ensure that patients receive the most effective care possible He is a Top 1% Invisalign Provider and has treated over 1,000 people with the Invisalign appliance. This “Elite” designation places him in the top 1% of Invisalign providers in North America. | https://docweighsin.medium.com/many-surprising-reasons-to-see-an-orthodontist-e51e7c69d44a | ['The Doctor Weighs In'] | 2019-05-12 18:01:01.174000+00:00 | ['Tmj', 'Orthodontist', 'Periodontal Disease', 'Dentistry'] |
Build your first Deep Learning Basic model using Keras, Python and Tensorflow step by step approach | The above code states that we have 1 hidden layer with 2 neurons. The no of neurons we used to specify as a unit and we used to pass as a parameter in the created layer in keras. Similarly for output layer we had specified unit as 1 that states that we have 1 neurons in the output layer. After creation of the hidden layer and output layer we generally build the model by passing the hidden layers and output layers as a parameter in Sequential API. If you want to know more about the Keras i will suggest just go through my earlier bogs i had explained it step by step.
We had understood the Dense layer. Now will try to understand what exactly this dense layer is doing in the network. To understand this will try to recall the the concepts that we had studied in the previous article, the concept of weights and biases. Consider we have x1, x2, x3 as the real input, a1 and a2 are the neurons at hidden layer and a3 are the neurons at output layers, in the previous neural network that we had discussed. As we discussed in fully connected layer each neuron is connected to the neurons of the previous layer so there will be weights associated with all the hidden and output layers so we will have 8 weights, 3 for 1 hidden layers a1 as we have 3 inputs and 3 for other hidden layers a2 and 2 for output layer as we have 2 hidden neurons. This can be understood by looking the below figure. During the execution of neural networks the weights and biases will be getting adjusted to best mach for the given input to the output. In the process of training the neural network only the weights and biases gets changes to fit the best value to fit the input and output that we used to feed the neural networks.
Weights and biases in neural network
We understood the basics of the dense layer and the neurons, how these neurons are connected with each other. now we are good to go towards building of our first Deep learning model using the Dense layer of Keras.
We are aware of the example that we need to build a model which will learn to give the Fahrenheit when the model will be given the degree in Celsius. For quick refresher below are the formulae for the same.
f=c*1.8+32
f is Fahrenheit and c is Celsius. This looks like a straight line equation. So we will be using a type of linear regression to approach this problem. Dont worry as of now if you are not aware of Linear regression we will cover the types of Machine learning along with the approach sometime in the next article. Of course it would be simple enough to create a conventional python function that directly performs this calculation but our motive here is to solve the same problem using the deep learning
To approach this problem we definitely need input and output. So in this case the input would be the some sample celsius value and the output will be some Fahrenheit value corresponding to the input celsius value and the end goal will be our model will learn the weight close to 1.8 and bias close to 32, so that if anybody will pass the celsius value our model should be in position to give Fahrenheit value corresponding to that celsius value. Try to understand the this very clearly.
Now we will be directly moving towards the building of first model using Tensorflow, Keras and Python. To build the model we will be using below code. First we will import tensorflow, numpy, logger and basic that we will need to build our model
import tesnsorflow, numpy and logger
Now we will prepare input and output. As we discussed input will be some sample of Celsius value and the output will be corresponding Fahrenheit value. Input will be celsius_q=[-40, -10, 0, 8, 15, 22, 38] and output will be fahrenheit_a=[-40, 14, 32, 46, 59, 72, 100].
Input and output
In the above example we have celsius as the feature and Fahrenheit as label if we will talk in deep learning terminologies.
Now, its time to create our model, as we had already specified the input and corresponding labels. We will be creating a model with the single dense layer. After creation of dense layer we will assign that layer to the model. For this we will use the below python code. | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/build-our-first-deep-learning-basic-model-using-keras-python-and-tensorflow-step-by-step-approach-d61c41b8a866 | ['Akash Deep'] | 2020-08-30 17:40:32.361000+00:00 | ['Python', 'Keras', 'Optimizer', 'TensorFlow', 'Deep Learning'] |
Resources Library | This is a live, constantly updating home for all the resources and key learnings from our Managers Meet Up conversations.
Please feel free to suggest further additions so that we can all benefit from them, continue sharing experiences, learning and supporting our teams in the best possible way. If you have any suggestions to add to this list please email us at [email protected] — we will of course credit you.
We know this is a resource that you might dip in and out of, and we know that we will all hit different challenges at different points over the next year or so— but we hope by creating this list, it will be something we can all benefit from and refer to when we need to.
Planning
The Year Compass planning tool — https://yearcompass.com/
Emily Petty Consulting, ‘Reflect’ toolkit — https://t.co/Klgv05w5f4?amp=1
Managing conflict and difficult times
Managing Conflict Article — https://www.managers.org.uk/knowledge-bank/conflict-management
There a so many good podcasts from “how to be awesome at your job”, but this one particularly resonated with us — it’s around empowering your teams through difficult times https://awesomeatyourjob.com/581-how-to-empower-teams-in-difficult-times-through-coach-like-conversations-with-michael-watkins/
Managing change; The 5 Cs of Change Response — https://www.managementcentre.co.uk/blog/change-management-the-5cs-of-change-response/
Coaching people through the change curve — https://www.insights.com/resources/coaching-people-through-the-change-curve/
Managing staff returning to work
How to unfurlough: Managing the return to work trello board https://medium.com/@loushackleton/how-to-unfurlough-introducing-the-return-to-work-trello-board-db2d738460c1
Supporting new starters:
Getting to know your team is hard, especially remotely. Liz and Mollie have put together a fantastic ‘unser manual’ to help you get familiar with what makes your colleagues tick; https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5928dc9c1b10e3b3236f0222/t/5c8532884e17b6794570d89b/1552233097086/guidetoworking.pdf
Managing redundancies
Managing redundancies sensitively https://www.institutelm.com/resourceLibrary/sensitively-managing-redundancy.html
From response to recovery: Fundraising strategy and COVID19 — https://ciof.org.uk/events-and-training/resources/from-response-to-recovery
Recruitment
Change collective recruitment guides https://www.institute-of-fundraising.org.uk/championing-fundraising/equality-diversity-and-inclusion/change-collective-recruitment-guides/?preview=true
Wellbeing and morale
A reminder that we’re in exceptional circumstances and whatever you feel in that…is okay: https://twitter.com/sarahnollwilson/status/1276281247900356608?s=20
How to switch off from work when home is now your office https://bit.ly/2Bhy9Ik
A survey of over 700 fundraisers on the topic of wellbeing and mental health. Expert analysis by consultant Claire Warner highlights the need for the sector as a whole to take responsibility for the wellbeing of staff, particularly at this time. — See more at: https://www.civilsociety.co.uk/fundraising/what-s-in-june-2020-s-issue-of-fundraising-magazine.html#sthash.W18yaizX.dpuf
Six questions every firm should be asking right now https://twitter.com/zoeamar/status/1278365690894917638
The Happiness Index — https://thehappinessindex.com/
Understanding and defining your feelings can be made a little easier to verbalize with the Feelings Wheel: http://feelingswheel.com/
Emotional conversations
How to be there for others without taking on their pain — https://tinybuddha.com/blog/how-to-care-for-others-without-taking-on-their-pain/
Six tips to help you have difficult conversations https://twitter.com/Haypsych/status/1278036848514945024/photo/1 | https://medium.com/@managersmeetups/resources-library-64e1c0b9784f | ['Managers Meet Ups'] | 2021-03-04 08:16:51.542000+00:00 | ['Management And Leadership', 'Fundraising', 'Furlough', 'Resources', 'Wellbeing'] |
Things About Leadership Value | “Someone could have a leadership position but not the quality of leadership.”
Someone said this several days ago and it hit me. I know, no one is perfect, I couldn’t agree more about it. However, the way business run these days has been changing, and with the development of technology, business is not only about profit but it has a larger meaning than it. The impact on society and the environment must be considered. We might find several insights about what is leadership, how to lead, and why we need to lead? After listening to several podcasts, reading some articles, joining several webinars, here are things about leadership values that I guess people nowadays must know and implement in their life.
There is a lot of definition about leadership. Some say leadership is about managing people how to achieve organization’s goals. I consider leadership itself is one ability to manage yourself first before trying to manage others. In term of managing yourself, we often hear about self-improvement, self-discipline, self-reflection, these are several forms of leadership. Everyday we make a decision to defeat ourselves in order to achieve our personal goals.
In term of professionalism, leadership is one ability to do your duty with full responsibility. I also believe leadership is also about adding value into someone’s life, doing the extra miles, and being a problem solver instead of pointing out someone’s mistake. Leadership is also giving a space for mistake. Last year, when I was given an opportunity to lead a project, I won’t hesitate to accept any ideas and if someone made a mistake, i won’t blame the person. I think people who never make mistakes or perfectionists would never really learn. Failure is important to bring us to another level of life and to strengthen our leadership character.
In a nutshell, one should not have a leader position to have leadership value. Each of us, whatever our position, could give an impact on others, no matter how small it is. Leadership value is about being a problem solver, transferring good value to other people, and even make them have a better life. If someday you get an opportunity to lead, as long as you stick with leadership values, you will make an impactful legacy to leave behind. | https://medium.com/@sucimarina/things-about-leadership-value-cbf3a3ed6724 | ['Suci Marina'] | 2021-08-09 15:45:46.619000+00:00 | ['Leadership', 'Legacy', 'Life', 'Values'] |
Happy Birthday BIOMILQ: a reflection by Leila Strickland, our CSO & co-founder | It turns out that our mission is about far more than increasing infant feeding options.
Why am I doing this?
This is a question I’ve been asked over and over for the last year, as I have poured every ounce of my passion and energy into willing BIOMILQ into existence. I’ve been asked this question by skeptical investors, by curious journalists, and by supportive family and friends. As we approach BIOMILQ’s first birthday, I want to share my answer to this question more broadly, and reflect on the ways in which my answer has changed in the year since all of this began.
A year ago, I told anyone who would talk to me about BIOMILQ that I was doing this for mothers and babies. I told investors all day every day, for the first few months of 2020. Informed by my personal experience with breastfeeding failure and by a relentless hunch about the biology of milk biosynthesis, I believed that if someone would just give me a chance to do this thing, it might actually work. Over the past seven years, I had taken this idea from a hunch to a self-funded proof-of-concept experiment in which it was confirmed that a molecularly complex product composed of human milk components could be obtained from culturing the mammary epithelial cell in a high-density system. I felt a tremendous urgency to share this result with anyone who might be able to help me move this work forward.
Leila, with her son, Levi (7 weeks old)
Everything caught on fire when Michelle joined me as CEO.
She had watched for months as I had floundered through several misfires that had left me burned and reeling. She offered advice when asked, support when needed, and always reaffirmed a steady belief that this could be done, that I was the right person to do it, that yes, it was supposed to be this hard, and no, we shouldn’t quit. As our partnership developed, she became essential to our success as she contributed her training in business and entrepreneurship to help create the framework for BIOMILQ and cultivate connections with contacts from the business world who were interested in technologies with social impact. Just as critically, she brought passion for a shared purpose and the intangible elements of focus, accountability, patience, empathy, creativity, courage, and a relentless optimism that THIS WILL HAPPEN, even when I couldn’t see the path.
And Michelle was right. Here we are, a year on, and what a year it has been.
We spent months developing the vision for the company and pitching it to venture capitalists, the vast majority of whom were slick young “biobros” who wanted to invest in the next hot thing. Most of them were wealthy white men from Silicon Valley who had scarcely ever considered the purpose of breasts beyond the ornamental, some of whom clearly only attended the meeting for the boob jokes. Some of them were more attuned and made sure I knew it by mansplaining the various challenges of breastfeeding to me. Some didn’t get why solutions for these challenges are even needed, since women who experience them could simply hire a wet nurse — there’s a gross disconnect between the challenges of early-motherhood and those with the power to support struggling moms.
Some of these biobros passed us by in favor of other startups in food tech, such as a company run by a dude with frosted tips and a tight t-shirt, who wanted to make chocolate-covered chickpeas and sell them as a “guilt-free” snack to women who feel ambivalent about their bodies. Some thought we were a great opportunity but were repulsed by our product concept and could not imagine feeding it to their baby. One even took our pitch on his cell phone while standing in line at a Trader Joe’s and said it all sounded great, but he just didn’t understand “our strategy”. Some wanted to support us, but their funding model would require that I uproot or leave my family and relocate from my small farm in North Carolina to New York or San Francisco for a few months of networking and mentoring with more biobros half my age — no thanks.
Some simply didn’t believe it was technically feasible but kept cutting us off or speaking over us while we answered their questions. Most were observably uncomfortable being pitched by a middle-aged mom describing in gritty detail the efforts she had undertaken to extract milk from her own breasts in her first days of parenthood, and the downright depressing effects of her inability to do so.
Fortunately, a few of the people we talked to were women who had a direct understanding of our mission, a few were men who could recognize the women in their lives in my story, and others were cellular agriculture enthusiasts who recognized BIOMILQ as a potentially novel opportunity in a field that is exploding. These are the ones who sat tight long enough to ask this middle-aged mom some questions about her idea and the scientific training that it rested on. An even smaller group was intrigued enough to schedule follow-up calls with experts who would grill me to make sure I knew what I was talking about. These calls reminded me of my dissertation defense, and this is when I started to enjoy myself. This is how we found our way to the right people to help make this dream a reality and form a core group of supporters who have brought guidance, expertise, and creativity to our business, in addition to capital.
Left to right: Alex, Leila, Michelle, Holland, Victoria. Not pictured: Charlotte.
When the deals closed, we had a 2020-style virtual toast on Zoom and got right back to work. We opened the lab, filled it with the smartest people we could find, called in favors and relied on the generosity of our families and friends to help us however they could, and set out on the task of figuring out how to make human milk outside of human breasts.
Most mornings, I am up before dawn, eager for the day, and when I finally crawl into bed many many hours later, my mind races into the night. It’s not a very balanced life. It’s not a life that most of my friends or family can relate to or would choose. It’s not the best way to parent through a global pandemic, when my now elementary-aged children need my attention more than they have since those desperate first months of their lives. I’ve had to make some difficult decisions, and my life has changed as a result of the choices I’ve made.
So, why am I doing this?
One year later, I’m still mainly here for moms and babies. I still believe that human milk is the ideal food for human babies, and I’m still fed up with the shame that women are subjected to when they aren’t able or choose not to breastfeed. I still ache for women who spend hours each day attached to a pump, and I’m still pissed about how the time spent producing milk subtly affects their career trajectories in comparison to their counterparts, whose bodies do not sustain the life of the next generation.
Leila with Violet
I’m still livid about the politics and policies around infant feeding that have turned breastfeeding into a moral imperative and amplified the privilege of those who are able and in a position to do so. I’m still the first to stand up for infant formula as a life-saving product that has done more than any other to advance gender parity in infant feeding through decades that have seen women enter the workforce en masse. I’m still in awe of moms who continue to feed their babies round the clock by whatever means necessary on almost no sleep, while facing a constant cacophony of uninvited opinion on whatever method they are using.
Leila with newborn Violet
I’m here for moms who breastfeed, I’m here for moms who pump, and I’m here for moms who feed infant formula.
I’m also here to challenge everyone — parents, physicians, government officials, and nosy bystanders — to think harder about their positions on infant feeding. I’m here to deepen this conversation and add nuance by posing the question of what it would mean if we could make human milk outside the body. I’m here to learn from other people’s answers. I’m here to interrogate the “breast is best” mantra that caused me so much anguish when I couldn’t feed at the breast. I’m here to invite moms who have already endured so much shame for feeding formula to consider what they would choose if they truly had a choice. I’m here to offer a new option for adoptive parents, parents in the LGBTQ community, women who have lost their breasts to cancer, or women who have HIV, or who have chosen not to breastfeed for any number of reasons that are none of my business.
I’m here to challenge men to grapple with an important issue that affects half of the population. I’m here to challenge employers to better support new parents. I’m here to challenge policy makers and hospital boards to incorporate the physical and mental well-being of mothers when developing recommendations around infant feeding practices. I’m here to challenge the scientific community to think harder about women’s health. I’m here to challenge the general population to learn a little something about the beautiful biology of these spectacular cells and the miraculous molecules that they make. I’m here to challenge the business community to recognize the opportunity that exists to make a real, positive impact in the world when they invest in smart, ambitious women.
Violet, left, with Levi, right.
And finally, as always, I’m here for my children, Levi and Violet, who I’m raising on a little bit of everything. | https://medium.com/@biomilq/happy-birthday-biomilq-a-reflection-by-leila-strickland-our-cso-co-founder-c312b2405335 | [] | 2021-01-12 02:27:13.947000+00:00 | ['Femtech', 'Women in STEM', 'Motherhood', 'Breastfeeding', 'Biotech'] |
All About The Pearson Test Of English | Motto Of PTE –
Have you been thinking that what is the motto of PTE? To put in simple words, this test is just to check the ability of a student of understanding English. For this, you can easily find a PTE institute in Delhi in your vicinity called Smart Study. As of now, many students have got quality coaching from this platform and they found it quality oriented indeed.
PTE is typically a 3-hour long computer-based test, which checks your English that is spoken on a day-to-day basis. The major aim of this test is to check your proficiency so that you do not face any problem while you are conversing with the native people of the respective English speaking countries.
Difference Among Other English Tests-
It is a little bit different from other English tests like IELTS, TOEFL, etc. As in PTE, results are declared within 4–5 business days just after you have taken your test. Scores of PTE are accepted by major top universities of the USA, France, Spain, China, etc. Make sure that you are going to choose an ideal platform called Study Smart. This PTE institute in Delhi has been established with the motto to bring out the best service. | https://medium.com/@Shikhasingh9/all-about-the-pearson-test-of-english-7857888caab | ['Study Smart'] | 2020-03-03 07:05:14.841000+00:00 | ['Pte Academic', 'Study', 'Ielts', 'Study Abroad', 'Education'] |
Hazelnuts: 7 Evidence-Based Health Benefits — Needed For Health | You want to eat a hamburger, but the possible impacts of eating a hamburger on your health may be unsettling you, or you want to eat delicious ice cream, but the sweetener used in the ice cream may be putting a question mark in your mind.
It appears you should find a snack, which is not only tasty but also healthy. If so, nuts are the best option by far. They both appeal to your taste bud and are very healthy for your body.
Although almost all nuts are healthy, in today’s article, we are going to focus on hazelnuts and their amazing health benefits.
If you are one of those who enjoy eating hazelnuts, the evidence-based health benefits of hazelnut that we compiled in this article, will further motivate you to eat these nuts.
Hazelnuts Nutrition Value | https://medium.com/@tarkanivgen41/hazelnuts-7-evidence-based-health-benefits-needed-for-health-e9e38f9ca487 | ['Tarkan Ivgen'] | 2021-02-10 14:48:16.787000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Nuts', 'Diet', 'Food', 'Hazelnut'] |
Mademoiselle X: Living While Dead | FRENCH NEUROLOGIST DR. JULES COTARD had to be surprised and confused by the female patient (known only as Mademoiselle X) brought to his office at the Pitié-Salpêtrière University Hospital in Paris one afternoon in 1882. The 43-year-old described a peculiar set of symptoms: she claimed she had “no brain, no nerves, no chest, no stomach, no bowels — that there was nothing left of her but the skin and bones.”
Dr. Jules Cotard
Also, she claimed she had no soul, that there was no God and no devil, and that overall she was nothing but “a disorganized body.” With no internal organs, she claimed to not need to eat anymore. Further, she expressed her belief in her immortality, noting that she could not die a natural death, but “will live forever unless she is burnt, fire being her only possible end.”
A century earlier …
Intrigued by the woman and her ominous indications, Cotard did some research and discovered that a Swiss scientist, Charles Bonnet, had in 1788 reported a curious case of an elderly woman whose descriptions were eerily similar to those of the woman brought to his office.
Bonnet had recorded that the woman was preparing a meal when she felt “a draft” then fell paralyzed on one side of her body. As the paralysis eased, she told her daughters to dress her in a shroud and place her in a coffin, because she was dead, and demanded everyone treat her that way.
Humoring her, the family dressed her in a shroud and laid her in a coffin so they could mourn her. When she finally fell asleep, her family undressed her and placed her in bed. Later she was treated with a powder made of precious stones and opium and her symptoms eased, still returning sporadically every few months.
After studying the Bonnet case, as well as other similar examples presented by the French psychiatrists Jean-Étienne Dominique Esquirol and Francoise Leuret, Cotard concluded that he was witnessing a new kind of depression he dubbed “Hypochondriacal Delirium” characterized by “anxious melancholia, condemnation of ideas, insensitivity to pain, negation delusion of the organs, and immortality delusion.” Sometime later, he created the term “negation delusion” to specify the syndrome.
Both of these women suffered from an extremely rare psychiatric condition now called Cotard’s Syndrome, or Cotard’s Delusion, a term used to describe patients who believe they have died or stopped existing, or no longer have any internal organs. Today the syndrome is known to be secondary to such conditions as psychotic depression, dementia, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the use of psychoactive and psychotropic substances, especially heroin, LSD, and cocaine.
Rare
While only about 200 cases have been reported worldwide since Dr. Cotard isolated and described the condition, several have been reported over the past 20 years.
In 2003 a Greek psychiatrist saw a patient who believed he had no brain and was literally empty-headed. He admitted he had attempted suicide a few years earlier because life wasn’t worth living since he had no brain. He abruptly left without receiving treatment but was re-admitted the next year, when he completed treatment and showed substantial improvement.
Those same Doctors also treated a 72-year-old female who claimed, “all of her organs had melted; only skin had remained and that she was practically dead.” There is no public record of her treatment or prognosis.
In 2008 New York psychiatrists reported that a 53-year-old woman named Mrs. Lee complained she was dead and stunk of rotting flesh. She had wanted her family to take her to the morgue “with the other dead people” but they instead called 911.
She was admitted to the psychiatric unit, where she accused the paramedics of trying to burn down her house. It was reported that after a month of treatment she was discharged greatly improved.
In 2009 Belgian psychiatrists reported that an 88-year-old man complaining of depression admitted that he was in fact dead, and was concerned that no one had buried him. He improved with treatment, which may have included electroshock therapy, imipramine, and risperidone.
The same psychiatrists also reported a 46-year-old woman who insisted she had not eaten or used the bathroom in months and had not slept in years. She also explained that all her organs had rotted and that doctors who examined her were lying about her having blood and a heartbeat. She also gradually improved with medication.
In 2015, doctors in Brazil reported that a 31-year-old male was admitted, claiming insomnia, refusing to eat, and attempting suicide. He later reported that his organs were destroyed, that he was hollow inside, and that his entire body was rotten, reeking flesh.
He asserted also that his body was deformed, and that his face was full of holes. Wishing to die, he declared that he was paying for wrongs committed in his youth and that he was not worthy of any happiness. After a rigorous medication sequence, he was declared asymptomatic 60 days later and was released.
Modern-day sufferers of his bizarre malady fare much better than Dr. Cotard’s Mademoiselle X, who eventually died not of fire but starvation. Charles Bonnet may have missed the first case of what would become known as Cotard’s, but he is the namesake of a condition called Charles Bonnet Syndrome, which is characterized by normally rational people who experience vivid hallucinations.
Not impressed
The Medico-Psychological Association of Great Britain scoffed at Dr. Cotard’s research and conclusions.
In the 1883–84 edition of The Journal of Mental Science, Authors D. Hack Tuke and George H. Savage, M.D. wrote of the symptoms Cotard described that “Somewhat similar cases are referred to as illustrating the one under consideration, but they are not of special interest. Neither indeed is the one recorded by Dr. Cotard, and we cannot understand why he should suggest a special name for such, and give six special characteristics by which they may be recognized [sic].
The fact is that among the educated classes there is no end to the elaboration of delusions, especially in women of a religious and hysterical temperament.”
***
Dale Brumfield is proud to announce the release of his latest book “Railroaded: the true stories of the first 100 people executed in Virginia’s electric chair,” now available worldwide on all online sellers. Read more “historytelling” at his website, www.dalebrumfield.net. | https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/mademoiselle-x-living-while-dead-8fe06146b711 | ['Dale M. Brumfield'] | 2020-10-02 20:54:38.871000+00:00 | ['Death', 'Bizarre', 'Medical History', 'Psychiatry'] |
Style Tiles — “A Savior for Freelance UI UX Designers” | Outcome of the write-up would be to understand what Style tiles are, How can they help to add more productivity to our work as a Designer, Then I will show you the underlying process of Designing a Style Tile for your upcoming Design Project.
If you are listening the words Style Tile for the 1st time you might be thinking what the Heck is this now. I have read and known about tons of terms like UI, UX, Contrast ratio, bla bla bla. But never heard about this type of tile. Is it a bathroom tile 🤪🤪.
Absolutely not, let me make things simple for you.
If you are a Freelance Designer designing for your client, or a Design Consultant, or a Designer at an agency or a Designer at a Product based company. Where ever you are from the above “You are always asked to present and communicate your Ideas”.
When you here a word present do you get drained off. Does it bring into your mind tons of work, wire framing a new concept, designing new screens for them etc.
That’s a TON of work for sure.
So to save us from this unproductive & draining process of presenting your ideas and also showing the look & feel of your Concept for a new feature or an app or a website you can take the help of Style Tiles.
Let’s get into it.
Its Samantha Warren who is called the Queen of Style Tiles. Its she who started up with this concept of Style Tiles.
“Style tiles are for when a moodboard is too vague and a comp is too literal. Style tiles establish a direct connection with actual interface elements without defining layout.” — Samantha Warren
So you might have understood what Style Tiles are from the above words from the Founder of Style Tiles itself. In my words “Style Tiles are small pieces of art which acts as a blueprint prepared based on the branding and other references Resources provided by the clients just to start off the design process.” These are used just to give more idea to the client and to encourage collaborating on the process further.
So In case of style tiles: [5–10 Hours] Design a tile from the available resources that are provided by the client plus add some of your research to it. Then you would be able to come up with the Style Tile very soon.
Without a style tiles: [Unlimited hours] Inshort “Multiple full comps kill cute things”. Designing tons of screens and options, overwhelming your client, confusing them, getting unwanted feedback and a lot of other undesirable & unproductive stuff going on.
Thanks to Style Tiles!
Now lets get into what goes into the process of designing the Style Tiles:
Who the client was?
The project here was for a client — Platform who sell flight tickets and travel tours [Travel Booking site]
What I was provided with?
I was provided with just the Logo that they had got from a Designer who had designed for them previously.
So at times you might get more material from the client side if they had done some constructive work previously with their Design.
You at times can get the color pallet, typography and other branding as well.
So the logo that you see on the left was what I was provided with.
What Next ?
Let’s start with the Process of getting a Style Tile in place from the above logo.
Main things that we could add in the Style Tiles include:
Branding Typography Color Iconography Forms/UI Imagery Key components (ex. Testimonials UI if they are a Consulting company etc.) Comp Teaser (ex. Some kind of interactions, small show of main components for example the motion of how videos plays when a play button is clicked and other interactions behind this action)
So lets now directly go to what I have designed basing the Logo that I had been given. | https://medium.com/@balajiraop/style-tiles-a-savior-for-freelance-ui-ux-designers-b111e037f1cd | ['Pathange Balaji Rao'] | 2020-05-16 10:18:04.698000+00:00 | ['User Experience', 'User Interface', 'Design', 'Designer', 'Freelance Designer'] |
Get Started With Swift for WebAssembly on macOS With SwiftWasm | Install Swift Language With Wasm Support
The Wasm support is not yet in the official Swift repository. Therefore, we have to install a snapshot of the language with experimental support.
Download and install the lastest macOS version of SwiftWasm (5.3 at time of writing) for macOS from the project GitHub.
To be able to use the SwiftWasm toolchain from the command line:
export PATH=/Library/Developer/Toolchains/swift-latest.xctoolchain/usr/bin:"${PATH}"
And to test it has been properly setup: | https://medium.com/better-programming/get-started-with-swift-for-webassembly-on-macos-with-swiftwasm-5d588a086120 | ['Claudio Carnino'] | 2020-11-11 18:32:29.321000+00:00 | ['Webassembly', 'Swift', 'Mac', 'Programming', 'Wasm'] |
Openscapes summit reflections 2 — Changing the way we do science | In March 2019 I witnessed environmental scientists become champions for open data science when we brought the inaugural cohort of Openscapes Champions together for a summit in Santa Barbara, California. The summit was supported by Mozilla and hosted at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) with the purpose of building relationships, sharing lessons learned, and igniting collaborations. This is the second of several blogs, with this one focusing on the themes that continually surfaced during our discussions. It was co-developed with Halley Froehlich, Adrian Stier, Allison Horst, Malin Pinsky, Chelsea Wood, Nina Therkildsen, Nishad Jayasundara, Christie Bahlai, and Sean Kross.
Openscapes Summit, 2019, elevator selfie. Clockwise from bottom left: Julie Lowndes, Adrian Stier, Malin Pinsky, Nina Therkildsen, Sean Kross, Allison Horst. Center: Halley Froehlich.
“How do we lead our labs in doing open science right? Also, what is right?”
This was a question that kept surfacing during our discussions at the Openscapes Champions Summit. And the answer that we kept coming back to was that we need an open mindset and think not only about our future selves as individuals, but also about our future selves as labs. That means working together with lab members to try create workflows and institutional memory, so it is not so much about doing it right but about working together to try to figure things out a little bit better. This means we have to be comfortable with the fact that the softwarescape will always be evolving and improving. And that we can be open to new ideas for the lab even though we ourselves have limited time. And that is okay. But if we have an open mindset, we can create an open culture where we can reflect and evolve together as a lab.
As we explored in the first summit blog about becoming champions, at the summit we felt for ourselves that what we are doing with Openscapes is not just about coding and GitHub, it’s about changing the way we do science. As we shared our progress and challenges, here are a few strategies we came up to sustain an open culture in our labs. | https://medium.com/read-write-participate/openscapes-summit-reflections-2-changing-the-way-we-do-science-cbc4dccf8c40 | ['Julia Stewart Lowndes'] | 2019-04-29 12:29:55.153000+00:00 | ['Data Science'] |
Light | Light follows darkness
Or is it the other way round
But doesn’t light always outshines
Or so we think
The moments you hide
Away from fear
From insecurities
Do you not seek
The comfort of the dark
And hide
From the glare of light
The dark shrouds and accepts
Paints you in its own.
Where you begin, where you end
No one can surmise
’Cause everyone is wrapped in one.
Light?
Every inch of your body is up for show
And the colors are your own
It’s you versus everyone.
Where no one is essentially one,
And all the cracks- known
But aren’t we all broken?
Always trying to mend
Perfect the imperfect
Scared of this light
Trying to hide these chinks
With all our might
But if not for the cracks
How does the light get in? | https://medium.com/@mundrawhat/light-e15047eea8f1 | ['Garima Mundra'] | 2020-12-13 14:49:11.450000+00:00 | ['Poetry Sunday', 'Light', 'Poetry', 'Dark'] |
[Rust] Type system | Deref
& -> get reference of the var
* -> deref an address
Without the Deref trait, the compiler can only dereference & references. The deref method gives the compiler the ability to take a value of any type that implements Deref and call the deref method to get a & reference that it knows how to dereference.
The reason the deref method returns a reference to a value and that the plain dereference outside the parentheses in *(y.deref()) is still necessary is the ownership system. If the deref method returned the value directly instead of a reference to the value, the value would be moved out of self . We don’t want to take ownership of the inner value inside MyBox<T> in this case or in most cases where we use the dereference operator.
// def of the trait Deref
type trait Deref {
type Target : ?Sized;
fn deref(&self) -> &Self::Target;
} // impl example
impl ops::Deref for String {
type Target = str;
fn deref(&self) -> &str {
unsafe {
str::from_utf8_unchecked(&self.vec)
}
}
} // cast &String to &str
fn main() {
let x = "hello".to_string();
// or use x.deref()
// *x -> *(x.deref()) -> str type match &*x {
"hello" => {println!("!")},
_ -> {}
}
}
Traits as the tags
Sized :Types ensure the size during compiled period
Unsize: Types that can be “unsized” to a dynamically-sized type.
Copy: Types whose values can be duplicated simply by copying bits.
Clone: A common trait for the ability to explicitly duplicate an object.
Send: Types that can be transferred across thread boundaries.
Sync: Types share ref safely between threads
pub trait Clone : Sized {
fn clone(&self) -> Self;
fn clone_from(&mut self, source: &Self){
*self = source.clone();
}
} // example of implementing Clone trait
impl Clone for T {
fn clone(&self) -> T {
*self
}
}
Trait from & into | https://medium.com/@ppan-brian/rust-type-system-b206fa85690a | ['Brian Pan'] | 2020-11-27 06:17:46.829000+00:00 | ['Rust'] |
Smile | Bela is sick today. She is having severe headache and can’t move at all. She is waiting for the maid to come. As Saira is playing now, she is not paying much attention to her mother. Suddenly Bela calls Nil. She tells him to come home for a while. Nil is not surprised at all. Whenever Bela is sick she tries to seek attention a lot. He just comforts Bela and tells her that he can’t come right now. Bela cuts the phone with anger. Whatever, Nil isn’t bothered at all. The maid comes. Bela tells her what needs to be done and all. Distress is something that influences people too fast. The maid understands something is bothering Bela. She asks,
- What happened Bela?
- Nothing just a headache. Will you stay for longer today?
- Yeah, sure. So tell me what to cook now?
- Just make soup for Saira today. I won’t eat.
- Okay.
So Jamila makes soup and and plays with Saira for sometime.
It’s evening now. Time for Saira to have her milk. So Jamila asks Bela if there is anything further to do.Bela says no. Saira is playing there. She notices her mom is not talking much to her today. She understands Bela is sick, or maybe hungry. So she starts her tantrum. Bela is tired. She asks Jamila to play with Saira. But Saira starts to scream then.
-What is the matter?
-I will not have my milk unless you are drinking with me.
-What are you talking about Saira!
- You always let me have the milk alone. I don’t like milk. Today you need to have it too.
-Okay okay. Don’t cry baby.
So Jamila is playing with Saira now. Saira has finished her milk and is looking cheerful.
Jamila asks her in deep and soft voice.
-Hey baby, you look so jolly huh?
-At least I made mom drink the milk.
Saira replied with her beautiful smile. | https://medium.com/@aishwarjyo/smile-26c84fe0d69a | ['Roy Aishwarjyo'] | 2020-06-21 07:37:33.104000+00:00 | ['Baby', 'Smile', 'Innocence', 'Love', 'Motherhood'] |
Blockchain 101: USDC | A trusted Stablecoin
Introduction
USDC is a StableCoin launched an backed by the peer-to-peer payment company Circle. USDC supply and distribution is managed by the “Center” consortium which includes Coinbase and Bitmain among its members.
USDC was announced by Circle the 15 May 2018 and launched in September 2018.
USDC Logo
Description
USDC is a fully collateralized (1:1 with USD) and audited stablecoin, initially launched as an ERC20 token (On ETH) and with a recent launch on the Solana (SOL) Blockchain.
USDC is described on its website:
USDC is an open source project that works within US money transmission laws, uses established banks and auditors and runs on blockchain technology via smart contracts. This is true financial and operational transparency.
USDC relies on a mint/burn mechanism: each time 1 USD is deposited on the project’s bank account, 1 USDC is minted (created) and burned (destroyed) when given back to the swap contract in exchange of its equivalent is USD.
Technical specificities:
Type: Token
Token ETH contract address: 0xa0b86991c6218b36c1d19d4a2e9eb0ce3606eb48
0xa0b86991c6218b36c1d19d4a2e9eb0ce3606eb48 SOLANA contract address: EPjFWdd5AufqSSqeM2qN1xzybapC8G4wEGGkZwyTDt1v
EPjFWdd5AufqSSqeM2qN1xzybapC8G4wEGGkZwyTDt1v Total Supply: NA
NA Subunit: cents
cents Decimals: 6
Documentation:
Whitepaper: https://cryptoactu.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/WhitePaper.pdf
https://cryptoactu.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/WhitePaper.pdf Github code: See open source contracts on etherscan or solana
See open source contracts on etherscan or solana Official website: https://www.centre.io/usdc
https://www.centre.io/usdc Explorer (Ethereum): https://etherscan.io/token/0xa0b86991c6218b36c1d19d4a2e9eb0ce3606eb48
https://etherscan.io/token/0xa0b86991c6218b36c1d19d4a2e9eb0ce3606eb48 Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/USDC/
https://www.reddit.com/r/USDC/ Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USD_Coin
TradingBull.io
Telegram community: https://t.me/TradingBull_DA
Twitter: @_Digital_Assets | https://medium.com/@tradingbull/blockchain-101-usdc-f5c102d14578 | [] | 2021-01-03 16:20:38.308000+00:00 | ['Digital Currency', 'Stable Coin', 'Token', 'Usdc', 'Audited Statements'] |
US Reaches 200,000 Covid Deaths | More from Liza Donnelly Follow
Visual journalist/writer for New Yorker, New York Times, CBS News, CNN. TED, SXSW speaker. Looking to change world w humor. lizadonnelly.com | https://lizadonnelly.medium.com/us-reaches-200-000-covid-deaths-bf776c4804f2 | ['Liza Donnelly'] | 2020-09-23 19:48:06.630000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Politics', 'Death', 'Trump', 'Coronavirus'] |
Better get helped by a friend on iMiMatch than take a “Lyft”. | That night around 2 a.m., Alison Turkos did something we’ve all done a million times. She ordered a Lyft on her phone. But the next morning, Alison woke up feeling exhausted. Her body ached. And when she replayed the night before, she couldn’t quite remember getting back to her apartment and going to bed. When she got up the next morning, she clicked on the app and the previous night’s receipt appeared. She’d ordered the Lyft to bring her from one spot in Brooklyn to another but the price tag was $107.95. She thought she was reading it wrong. That’s when she saw the map of the route the car took that night. It had taken her to New Jersey!
How Alison got back to her house that night and why she was feeling all achy and exhausted, still remains a mystery. She has spent the last two years trying to uncover the truth about what happened and trying to hold someone accountable. Had she been kidnapped and brought back? Had she been assaulted? Was she mentally unstable? Of course not! The receipt proved that wrong. What exactly happened that night after a young lady picked up her phone, ordered a Lyft, and the car came and picked her up? Nobody knows, but for immigrants on iMiMatch, such stories to them are alien. Immigrants on iMiMatch hardly make use of Lyft or Uber to take care of their transportation from one place to another. This is simply because they have each other.
As immigrants on iMiMatch are connecting with and becoming friends with one another, they are helping and driving their friends wherever they want to go. The trust established between immigrants on iMiMatch is what makes it easy for them to count on each other. Immigrants on iMiMatch who do not have cars or who encounter break downs are not finding themselves in situations like Alison’s because of a Lyft drive. No! They are coming and going safety from their various destinations because those who drive them are friends and they can be trusted. | https://medium.com/@imimatchfriend/better-get-helped-by-a-friend-on-imimatch-than-take-a-lyft-89e2f81f06f8 | ['Fletcher Daire'] | 2019-12-10 09:41:53.113000+00:00 | ['Help', 'Life', 'Life Lessons', 'Friendship', 'Uber'] |
What’s in a Name? | What’s in a Name?
Is there a better option than changing the names of our brands and institutions?
Photo by Nong Vang on Unsplash
Earlier this year, Quaker Oats announced the end of Aunt Jemima. The company said, “Aunt Jemima’s origins are based on a racial stereotype” and the removal of the name and logo represents a stride “toward progress on racial equality.”
Shortly thereafter, the Washington Redskins football team announced they would be dropping the word “Redskins” and their logo. Then, the Cleveland Indians baseball team said it would also consider changing its name.
Not to be undone, Princeton University renamed a programme and building formerly named after Woodrow Wilson. The University of Southern California changed the name of one of their buildings that was previously named after a president who supported eugenics.
That these names and brands are mired in the racism and hatred of the past is without question. Today, we are striving toward something better, so, understandably, people want these names and brands stricken from history. What they represent are heart-wrenching and enraging facts, which still impact our societies to this day.
But, is the removal of these names and brands a gut-reaction that misses a crucial opportunity? In our efforts to right the wrongs of past and present injustices, could we be going overboard? Could there be a better way?
Lest we forget
Many countries observe what was originally called Armistice Day. This was first held on November 11, 1919, in honor of the ending of the First World War. Member states of the Commonwealth now refer to this day as Remembrance Day. In the United States, it’s called Veteran’s Day.
We use this day as a reminder of the sacrifices and hardships that past generations have endured due to war so that we could enjoy the freedoms of the present. The phrase “lest we forget” has been used as a plea to not forget the past and therefore not allow it to be repeated.
By changing the names of existing brands and institutions, are we purposefully striking out on the road to forgetfulness? In our efforts to make people feel safe and welcome, could our current solution be pushing us in a direction in which we are more likely to repeat the past rather than prevent it?
“Not all tears are an evil”
The history of the human race is rife with heartache. Unimaginable suffering has been endured and abided. And suffering continues to this day.
But not all suffering is bad. Not all emotional pain is negative. Sometimes it inspires us to be more and better.
When we look upon our shared history, when we examine it in a fair and unbiased way, we see our follies and our triumphs, our sins and our virtuous acts. We see the mistakes we have made and the pain we have caused. We see ourselves in everyone: the victims and the perpetrators.
What every human must learn from history is that we are all capable of incredible kindness and unspeakable malice. This is a painful lesson. No one wants to accept that within them lies the potential for evil. Yet, there it is. It’s a haunting, uncomfortable truth. One we forget at our peril. After all, November 11th is not only a day to feel grateful for what we’ve been given but a day for remembering the horrors of which humans are more than capable.
It is with this painful knowledge that we can move forward more appropriately, more carefully, and more thoughtfully. As J.R.R Tolkien wrote in The Return of the King:
“I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.”
What can we do, instead?
We are at a crucial moment in history. The choices we make in the coming decades will determine the fate of our species, as well as this beautiful, unique planet we call home. What we do next is of the utmost importance.
When it comes to renaming our brands and institutions, let’s pause for a moment to consider our options. By removing these names and logos from public spaces, we may be creating an environment that has less emotional “triggers”, but at what cost?
Purging our public spaces of negative imagery may cause us to forget the hardships we’ve endured and thereby lead us to commit more evils in the future. This purge might cause us to repeat the past in unforeseeable ways.
Could we, instead, re-claim these names and logos for ourselves and re-purpose them toward our own ends?
What if the stories of these names and brands weren’t over? What if we could create new endings for them? Endings that don’t stop at racism or sexism or any other “-ism”, but ones that remind us of where we’ve come from and the better future we’re fighting for?
What if instead of demanding companies and institutions purge these names and logos from our public spaces, we pressure them to write these new stories? Stories that includes the truth of the heartache and the pain, but also the promise of a better tomorrow? Could these names and brands be used to inspire positive change if only they were presented in a different light?
Yes, it would hurt. Yes, it would be uncomfortable. Yes, it would have to be done thoughtfully and carefully. But, it would paint the struggle of humanity’s pursuit of justice and fairness in a more accurate and, I think, more hopeful light.
After all, human progress is not made by forgetting our past follies, but by embracing them and using what we’ve learned to make life better. | https://jeff-valdivia.medium.com/whats-in-a-name-a066869a602a | ['Jeff Valdivia'] | 2020-12-30 21:22:03.209000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Advertising', 'History', 'Psychology', 'Racism'] |
Recap of Live AMA with CryptoArt.ai JD, Co-Founder | On 19 December 2020, our International Community Manager Jay hosted a Live AMA session with JD, Co-Founder of Cryptoart.ai
Jay: Welcome to Cortex x Cryptoart.ai AMA! Today, we are welcoming our guests from Cryptoart.ai, JD!
JD: Thanks for the invitation Jay, I’m feeling excited to be here. Let me introduce our platform in short. Cryptoart.ai is a digital media where artists and art collectors can get connected.
AMA Session 1 (Questions by Cortex)
Q1: What is cryptoart.ai mission to accomplish? What is the intention of establishing cryptoart.ai?
JD: “Art evolves with time” is the slogan of CryptoArt.Ai. Our mission is to empower art through blockchain technology, solve the lack of digital art dilemma, explore the possibility that contemporary art can connect with digital media, and join the emerging international movement of conceptual blockchain art. The primal aim was to create a modern, equal rights universe for artists and collectors with a decentralized governance paradigm that enables talented artists to solve the pain points in the conventional art sector with blockchain technology in the first case. The consideration they deserve can be seen by reverence and inferiority.
Q2: Art evolves with Time, is the slogan you guys had. What does the slogan try to express or tells people?
JD: If you know the history of Chinese art, this phrase does have a root in fact. This is the typical postscript of the well-known Qing Dynasty painter Shi Tao. The entire text is The Chinese painting ink evolves over time, and the form in poetry varies……’ The proper sense of Shi Tao in the script is that Chinese painting transforms from simple to sophisticated in ancient times, and from sophisticated to simple as the time is nearer to today. The “art evolves with the times” hereby implies that we analyze difficulties and study from the history of art. The human art process has evolved from five steps, namely: primitive art (primitive civilization from the ancient Greek era), classical art (from the antiquity of Greece to 1860), contemporary art (the 1860s to the post-World War II), and post-modern art (from the World War two to the 1980s), contemporary art (1980s to 2020) (1980s to 2020) (1980s to 2020). There has, of course, come a new age, and we are all observers. “Artists who are persistent in classical art can’t live without mobile phones and WIFI now.” says a joke. The warmest part of each era has always formed its own vanguard of “innovation” and “interpretation of the age” Everyone has burst into the initial concept in the mind of the public from Duchamp’s [fountain] through Tracy Emin’s [my bed] to discuss emerging studies and activities. When the media that people cannot do without opening their eyes and shutting their eyes before going to bed are switched to separate display screens, the visual art based on these media is really a revolutionary art, which cannot be overlooked in this age. Since then, an unparalleled feast in history is opened, and this is Criptoart- “Art evolves with time” The creation of NFT is the most groundbreaking aspect of this period.
Q3: As we know,non-fungible-tokens (NFTs) are seen in many fields, for example, games/arts/identity recognition, etc.. and why do you think NTF is able to develop in various directions at such a quick pace?
JD: The fusion of blockchain technology and art has demonstrated a clear vitality and scope for growth from the viewpoint of the subfield of crypto art alone. In conventional physical art, a parallel universe has been added. There are actually many artists from several influential countries in the outside world who joined the cryptoart.ai. NFT not only disintermediate art sales, it solves the contradiction between the diffusion and possession of art, but can also communicate between artists and buyers in a way that conforms significantly to young people’s psychology and also preserves artists’ copyrights. Second, equity is better suited than tangible artworks to reproduction, dissemination, and circulation.
Q4: What are your thoughts on NFTs implemented with AI? Will you guys consider Cortex as a partner in the future?
JD: Ai would be used to address the abuses of the existing NFT artists, the counterfeit issues, and other problems as a solution for the potential NFT artist and to work on a Big Data intelligent comparative network. In the future, we also expect to initiate a variety of co-operations in the Ai field with Cortex and jointly expand the NFT application of Ai.
AMA Session 2(Questions by the community)
Q1: In your perspective, what is Crypto + Art to you? How is it different from the traditional cryptocurrency industry？
JD: For me, Crypto+Art enters a totally different universe. Crypto art doesn’t arrive in the conventional art industry to cut a slice of cake but instead, it brings an immense cake(Cake theory) from the thin air to the market. Moreover, technical advancement has overcome a lot of pain in the art market, allowing the public to see multimedia collections of new media that were originally in low-frequency exchange. Since the 21st century, however, digital media developers have more and more been prevented from duplicating such works by collectors and galleries. Since they value ‘the only copy,’ digital new media art has long been on the fringes of the collecting industry, and the production of encrypted work is optimal. It offers digital art the same scarcity dilemma as traditional artworks and solves the value of the ‘orphan,’ which collectors value most. Furthermore, the most complicated problems for physical artwork are all based on blockchain technologies such as the orderly delivery of validity. It has resolved the tracing and validation of rights and other approaches that render encrypted art a modern art star with the greatest investment value. The encrypted art is more inclined to the qualities of art than the venture capital and cryptocurrency business. Technically, NFT itself has no value. Therefore, crypto-art investment logic varies considerably from crypto-currency. Crypto art investment is not like bitcoin investment. It has a certain period of investment, such as conventional art investment. Investment thresholds for collectors must be set at the same time. Yes, the final revenue of your investment in crypto-art will be calculated by your creative literacy, vision, and persistence.
Q2: In your point of view, what role does the artist have in the blockchain society?
JD: The artists in blockchain society's most notable feature is to break apart from the world where art oligarchy monopolizes the power to speak openly in traditional art and to enter a higher level. As long as you have sufficient talent, collectors and critics can see you equally compared to other artists. In the blockchain environment, crypto artists become the producer for creating wealth. Once the work of an artist is sold, he has little to do with the artist in the world of Popular Art. But in the blockchain world, artists will enjoy an unparalleled appeal for artists, the commission to circulate their works!
Q3: What are your thought on future NFTs or Crypto arts?
JD: I think we all agreed that 2020 is the first year of NFT. This year, NTF’s success suggests that this business is about to expand rapidly. The world’s first prize with a transaction value of over USD 1 million was won by the crypto artist PAK on December 7. The other big encryption artist Beeple’s 5 days later auction in one day just broke the PAK record and moved the success of the encrypted NFT art market to another climax. The auction was formally opened on 12 December, hitting a volume of $ 582.000 in five minutes, with the total amount of the sale exceeding $ 1.1 million. The business sold a total of 824 NFT artworks worth around US$6.4 million and was first listed among all crypt artists.
Q4: Could you name some of the popular crypto artists and how did you know about them?
JD: Beeple, PAK, Song Ting, etc., Beeple is already well-known for creating top crypto artworks. I saw his surreal collection a long time ago. This time it became the world’s top encrypted art with a total transaction value of approximately US$6.4 million. Pak is a famous crypto artist I have been following, and he is also currently working along with us. I would like to call Song Ting a top preacher of crypto art in China. A lot of my knowledge about encryption art is learned from Song Ting’s course. The artwork of her is considered the most avant-garde artwork in China.
Q5: I personally think that art should come with value and liquidity. What are your thoughts on this?
Art must go connected at the hip with value and liquidity and encrypted art changes the cognition of conventional art on liquidity fully. Liquidity has always been a paint point in traditional art, but liquidity is stronger in the world of encrypted art than in traditional art. The growth of thousands of collectors will bring encrypted art unparalleled liquidity and circulations.
AMA Session 3(Quiz)
Q1: What is NFT?
Option1: New-Freaking-Token
Option2: Non-Fungible-Toy
Option3: Not-Fundigital-Token
Answer: Non-Fungible-Token Q2: Which of the following crypto artist were mentioned in this AMA by JD?
Option1: Lane, SongTing and Floyd Mayweather
Option2: Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci and Beeple
Option3: Pak,Nelly and Beeple
Answer: Beeple, SongTing and Pak Q3: How did CryptoArt.ai’s slogan formed?
Option1: Came from JD’s meditation
Option2: By copying the other firm’s slogan
Answer: Inspired by a past painter’s quote in Qing Dynasty
Option4: Inspired by Cortex Q4:What is cryptoart.ai in short?
Option1: Traditional Art Gallery
Option2: Website for art drawing
Answer: Ditgital Art Media
Option4: Ai + Art software Q5: Which is the correct slogan?
Option1: Art will be better in the future
Option2: Art glows overtime
Answer: Art evolves with Time
Option4: Cryto art amplified
Jay: All questions that were addressed during the AMA Session 2 will share a pool of 5 unique NFTs on Cortex Wallet, 200 CTXC will be shared to participants that answered correctly for Session 3. Congratulations to all of the winners! Rewards will be sent within 7 working days.
See you next time! | https://medium.com/cortexlabs/recap-of-live-ama-with-cryptoart-ai-jd-co-founder-db7b9d9ac7d1 | ['Jayden Chan'] | 2020-12-21 06:44:24.682000+00:00 | ['Nft', 'Ama', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Cortex', 'English'] |
How Disability Rights Advocates Turned Back the Trump Administration’s Attack on Students of Color | How Disability Rights Advocates Turned Back the Trump Administration’s Attack on Students of Color
Rules designed to help children of color and children with disabilities will go into immediate effect.
By Michael Yudin, Former Assistant Secretary for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services MARCH 18, 2019 | 12:15 PM
Earlier this month, in response to a lawsuit from the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, a national disability rights group, a federal district court ruled that the Trump administration violated federal law when it delayed a Department of Education rule designed to protect students of color and students with disabilities.
Children of color are significantly more likely to be identified as needing special education than their peers. According to the department and decades of research and data, there is a “strong concern” that many of these children have been improperly identified to their detriment.
Congress addressed the problem of significant disproportionality in both the 1997 and 2004 reauthorizations of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Under the law, states are required to identify school districts with significant disproportionality in identification, placement, and discipline and take actions to address the disproportionality.
But states had broad discretion in how to define significant disproportionality, and as a result, relatively few districts were identified as disproportionate by states, despite overwhelming data showing a disproportionality problem. Accordingly, the department issued regulations in 2016 to better understand the extent of and address racial and ethnic overrepresentation in special education.
The 2016 regulations were designed to ensure states work with school districts so that children with disabilities are properly identified for services, receive necessary services in the least restrictive environment, and are not disproportionately removed from their educational placements by disciplinary removals. The primary goal of the regulations was to ensure the appropriate review of data and examination for significant disproportionality and, accordingly, help states and districts address and reduce the disproportionate segregation and discipline of students of color.
Under the law, if a district is identified with significant disproportionality, it must set aside 15 percent of its special education funds to provide comprehensive coordinated early intervening services to address the disparities. The regulations took effect January 2017, and states were required to begin using the new regulations to identify significant disproportionality in school districts beginning July 1, 2018.
Regrettably, right before states were to begin implementing the new rules, the Trump administration decided it needed to review the regulations and delayed implementation of the significant disproportionality rule for two years. More than 100 civil rights organizations, including disability rights organizations, opposed the delay. States have had since 2004 to implement these provisions of law and were prepared to move forward with the new rules and begin to meaningfully address these inequities. The delay created confusion and sent the clear message that inequities in special education for children of color simply don’t matter under this administration. More importantly, disparities continue to flourish, with no meaningful opportunity in place to address the disparities.
When children of color are disproportionately identified as needing special education, there are particular risks involved. Children of color with disabilities are more likely to be educated in segregated settings, leaving them with fewer opportunities to interact with nondisabled peers, access rigorous academic content, engage with effective educators, and participate in enrichment activities.
There are also disturbing disparities when it comes to discipline and children of color and children with disabilities. On average, schools suspend Black children at double the rate of white or Hispanic children, and they suspend children with disabilities at more than double the rate of children without disabilities.
When children are removed from the classroom for disciplinary reasons, or educated in segregated settings, academic performance is impacted. The overwhelming majority of children in special education do not have significant cognitive impairments that inhibit their ability to access grade-level work. Yet, in 2015, only 3 percent of fourth grade Black children with disabilities were reading at or above proficiency, along with 5 percent of Hispanic children with disabilities, and 6 percent of American Indian/Alaska Native children.
Fortunately, the court found that the Department of Education failed to provide a reasoned explanation for delaying the 2016 rule. The court also found that the department’s delay was arbitrary and capricious, failing to take into account the efforts states made to implement the 2016 rule and the costs to children, their parents, and society. The recent court ruling means the original rule will take effect as the department originally intended.
States must begin implementing the rules immediately, identifying school districts with significant disproportionality. If significant disproportionality is found, states must provide for the review and revision, as appropriate, of the district’s policies, practices, and procedures that contribute to the disproportionality. Districts must also provide comprehensive coordinated early intervening services to address the factors contributing to the disproportionality.
It is imperative that we address the systemic inequities in special education for children of color. Special education services should offer assistance to students with disabilities who need it, preferably in the general education classroom. They should not be used to segregate students of color into separate special education classrooms at dramatically disproportionate rates. Both students of color and students with disabilities deserve better — and this restored regulation is an important first step. | https://medium.com/aclu/how-disability-rights-advocates-turned-back-the-trump-administrations-attack-on-students-of-color-2d909c69634e | ['Aclu National'] | 2019-03-18 17:49:45.074000+00:00 | ['Disability Rights', 'Speak Freely', 'Education'] |
What is the purpose of nostalgia? It’s mythmaking...the details of the Legend that is our lives... | One of my earliest memories is of translucent colorful beads in my hair, in a pink outfit, dancing in front of the sliding glass door of the balcony in the apartment where we lived for nearly ten years. I was four. My mother had a glossy cherry wine TV stand with two gold-handled doors on the front that opened up. The deep red cherry color always made me feel so regal looking up at it from the warm sun-soaked carpet. It made the room feel warm and sturdy with two large heavy drawers that held all our movies, CDs, and endless cords knotted so absolutely it would actually be quicker to buy new ones; instruction manuals with water stains and missing pages, and remotes to past TVs, VHS or DVD players with missing battery coverings, number markings, and even whole buttons.
When I can’t find much happiness I remember myself laying on the warm carpet watching movies, dancing, and singing. I would watch my favorite movies or listen to my favorite CDs over and over, rewinding the parts with my favorite songs and tenderest moments. I try to imagine happiness as that impulse to seek pleasure without guilt, unconcerned with arbitrary notions of dignity or pride. I try to remember ‘happy’ as an impulse.
The world seems to be imploding and I don’t know when I’ll find soft ground again. I don’t know how to move forward. I feel like a broken toy-train, constantly coming off the tracks. I feel glued down, and maybe if I can just pull hard enough and the answers will fall out like loose change, clattering to the floor.
I was a fearless five-year-old who loved color and a sad ten-year-old hiding under clothes that were too big. I remember how ugly I felt at 10. It felt like a cruel joke not to have flowing hair and perfect skin. That was what being loved looked like to me then. I find so much pity for my ten-year-old self. Or I find memories of ugly jealousy and how much I wanted to be someone else. As I reflect now I know she deserves better from me and I feel sadness, for not having more wisdom for her. Something enough to make everything good again. Young me needs my love, she needs me to fix what is broken for her. Why haven’t I fixed it yet? I feel like I’m failing her and she seems to be in every decision I make.
I kept wishing for the body I had six months ago, and a year ago, and five years ago. What I wouldn’t have given for the body I had five years ago. It’s an emotional paradox to always want what we don’t have. I know this and still, I wonder — This body, this face, these thoughts, this money, these things, and these talents — Will it run out? Am I appreciating it enough? All this time and the words have never run out, assuring me that yes, others still know what I mean. These things have changed not disappeared. But nostalgia steals. It hangs out in my childhood home, peeling paint off the walls, jiggling loose those drawers, and stirring up dust. I can’t remember exactly when happiness stopped being an instinct. I just know that one day a blue shadow fell across the carpet and I couldn’t get warm there anymore. | https://medium.com/@nataliasimone/nostalgia-99ef54459418 | ['Natalia Johnson'] | 2020-12-07 23:40:21.092000+00:00 | ['90s', 'Childhood', 'Nostalgia', 'Self Compassion', 'Memory'] |
Three Truths and the Advent of Hybrid Quantum Computing | Ok, but what is quantum-classical hybrid?
Quantum-classical hybrid is the use of both classical and quantum resources to solve problems. A hybrid approach allows developers to exploit the powers of both, today, and reap the benefits of the ongoing acceleration in quantum-computer development tomorrow. As the size of the processors grow, quantum computers promise to provide unrivaled performance at some types of tasks, such as solving certain hard optimization problems.
An example of the benefit of using a hybrid approach can be seen in how Recruit Communications uses quantum computing to optimize ad placement in its prototype application that inputs data from mobile phones and databases. While the quantum computer handles the hard problem of optimizing click-through-rate prediction, classical resources do everything else — from getting user data and communicating with servers, to displaying results. This example of a quantum-classical hybrid workflow is similar to how central processing units (CPUs) in laptops outsource compute-intensive graphics-display processing to a graphics processing unit (GPU). As every business knows, since Ford’s first automobile plant, allocating the tasks of a complex job to specialized resources is an unbeatable strategy.
D-Wave Hybrid provides developers with a Python framework for building a variety of flexible hybrid workflows so quantum and classical resources can be used in parallel to find the optimal solution to your business problem. Other hybrid workflows might use classical resources to find a problem’s hard core and send that to the QPU or break a large problem into smaller pieces that can be solved on a QPU and then recombined.
Next steps
Assess your applications. Begin by searching for bottlenecks in your applications, places where they spend a lot of time solving problems or where they return unsatisfactory results. These applications may be workhorses, but the availability of new data, new computers, or new sensing technology may make them more complex and slower than before.
Ask these key questions. If you answer Yes to some or all of the questions below, your application may benefit from adding quantum computation.
Does your application make binary judgements or answers to a question that are either True or False? (E.g., Did each task meet its deadline? Did network nodes experience failures? Did loans go into default? Did neurons activate? Did the crew make it to the flight?)
Are there relationships and correlations between the inputs? (E.g., Does one missed deadline affect other tasks? Does a failed network node change the load on other nodes? Does a defaulted loan affect the risk to other loans? Which other neurons received the signal through their synapses? Is the crew required for other flights?)
Frame your problem in a form that quantum computers can solve. For quantum computing, as for classical, solving a problem requires that it be formulated in a way the computer and its software understand. The D-Wave quantum computer accepts a problem formulated as a binary quadratic model (BQM), a form of cost function that it solves by minimizing energy. A BQM problem is simply a collection of binary variables with associated linear and quadratic biases. Several examples are available in the D-Wave Ocean documentation.
Deconstruct the problem. Find good solutions to your problem using the different strengths afforded by both quantum and classical computing resources. D-Wave Hybrid provides out-of-the-box hybrid workflows to get you started. As a first step, try Kerberos, a workflow in which D-Wave Hybrid coordinates the work between your laptop’s CPU and the quantum computer to find solutions, such as finding a valid map coloring. You can later use the framework to optimize a hybrid workflow best-suited for your particular problem.
Sign up for Leap to get access to real-time quantum computer. Through Leap, D-Wave’s quantum cloud service, you can try a live quantum computer for free and access a wealth of resources in the Quantum Application Environment (QAE) to get started. Run our demos that introduce the programming model and the types of problems that the quantum computer is well-suited to solve. Try our interactive Jupyter Notebooks that teach you to program. Join a community of like-minded developers.
Download the Ocean SDK and start coding. D-Wave Hybrid is part of the Ocean SDK, the open-source toolset for programming the D-Wave quantum computer. It’s available on GitHub. | https://medium.com/d-wave/three-truths-and-the-advent-of-hybrid-quantum-computing-1941ba46ff8c | ['Murray Thom'] | 2019-06-26 16:34:34.886000+00:00 | ['Science', 'Quantum Cloud', 'Quantum Computing', 'Hybrid', 'Quantum'] |
How to Choose a Niche on Instagram in 2020 | Growing on Instagram in 2020 is a really hard mission to accomplish for a complete beginner with no experience on social media. The competition is extremely big and new people don’t know how to overcome it, so they just leave it and move on. I felt the same as all the other beginners when I just created my theme page, but luckily I found some ways to overcome that competition, didn’t give up and now I have an account with almost 13 thousand followers. Over this time I gained experience which is priceless and I want to share it with you.
In this article, I will talk about a really important thing which may lower your competition on Instagram a lot. It is choosing your niche. A lot of people really underestimate the importance of choosing the right niche for you and when their “plan” doesn’t work out, they just quit, so I will tell you my best tips on how to choose the best niche for you!
Before we start I wanted to tell everyone that I have a really helpful article on what is the quickest way to grow on Instagram, definitely check it out!
And also if you want ME TO DO ALL THE WORK for your page and grow it organically, read this article to the very end to find more information!
1. CHOOSE A NICHE YOU LOVE
Choosing a niche for your page may not be an easy task, but the most important thing to remember while you're choosing a niche is to pick the one you truly love, so it wouldn't be boring to create content every single day. The niche doesn’t have to be something you know a lot about, but it has to be interesting to you.
2. CHOOSE A NICHE THAT IS NOT TOO COMPETITIVE
Here comes the problem, if you like cars and you want to create a car page, you will have a couple of thousand competitors with thousands of followers. What you got to do to find the right niche is to choose something you like, but not a lot of other people like or it’s just a new niche that was invented not too long ago, then you will be able to get followers much more easily and quickly.
3. CHOOSE A NICHE THAT IS EASY TO MONETIZE
This point is optional for some people, but for most of you, it’s necessary. A lot of people create pages to make money from Instagram. Although a lot of beginners think that the best way to monetize an Instagram account is by selling shoutouts, it’s actually not. The two best ways in my opinion are affiliate marketing and Shopify dropshipping and you need products to take action in these businesses. If your niche doesn’t have any products that you could sell (for example nostalgic photos), then you won’t be able to make much money from that page.
5 NICHES I WOULD RECOMMEND IF YOU CAN’T FIND ANY YOURSELF | https://medium.com/@justaskuz/how-to-choose-a-niche-on-instagram-in-2020-3b1665ffb62b | ['Justas Kuzma'] | 2020-12-27 16:56:28.565000+00:00 | ['Marketing', 'Social Media', 'Instagram', 'Social Media Marketing', 'Life Lessons'] |
It’s Time to Get Intimate with Your Ideal Customer | It’s Time to Get Intimate with Your Ideal Customer
If you don’t have a crystal clear persona etched into your brain, you’re probably missing out on customers.
Knowing your customer really well means also knowing something about their family, work, education, hobbies, frustrations, and passions. [Image: user:3643825 on Pixabay]
Whether you prefer to call it an avatar, a customer persona or your ideal customer, getting to know your target customer really well lies at the heart of your marketing strategy.
Digging deep into exactly who your ideal customer is, where his pain points are and how your company can solve your avatar’s biggest problems impacts every area of your business — from R&D (what new products or services will your customer need down the road) to the type of content you produce across different social media platforms to where you’ll get the highest ROI for your advertising dollars.
What Exactly is a Customer Avatar, Anyway?
A customer avatar is a representation of your perfect customer, the one who will stick with you through thick and thin. They’re the one that buys the most, most often, and raves about your product or service. He’s the one who posts five-star reviews when he is happy and takes the time to let you know when something needs improvement. When you release a new product, accessory or premium subscription plan, your perfect person will be first in line to sign up.
In other words, they are your DREAM CUSTOMER.
When we talk about creating an avatar or ideal customer profile, we are talking about getting very specific, going well beyond ‘a guy in his 40s’, or ‘moms’. By homing in on that perfect buyer, your entire team will be able to focus on what will keep that customer coming back year after year. In fact, completing a super-detailed customer persona will change the entire way you do business. There’s a reason why customer LTV (Lifetime Value) is such a useful metric. Courting devoted customers who will return time and again is far more useful that in the long run than selling to someone who may purchase only once.
Is a B2B Target Customer the Same as a B2C Target Customer?
While the general principles are the same whether you are a B2B (business-to-business) or a B2C (business-to-consumer) business, there are a few differences that are important to understand.
If you are in the B2B space, at one level, your ideal customer profile is another business that needs the product or service you offer. However, within that business, you will actually be dealing with a living, breathing human being and that individual is the person who, ultimately will either control or influence the company’s buying decision.
[Image: Design_Miss_C of Pixabay]
In a B2C scenario, you may need to go beyond the obvious answer to get at the real customer. If, for example, you produce high-quality wooden toys for children, the ideal customer is not a five-year-old girl living in Washington, DC. The end user may be a child, but the purchaser is more likely to be his mother, grandmother or perhaps a favorite uncle. If you are a manufacturer (we’ll stick with the toy example for now), you may have two divisions — one that sells directly to consumers through Amazon and another that provides wholesale distribution to toy shops and tourist boutiques (for your line of miniature wooden tourist monuments). Each of the buyers represents a different avatar.
In this post, though, let’s focus on how you would develop one ideal target customer profile in a B2C scenario.
Note: The ideal customer target is so important, it’s the first thing you address when completing The Marketing Canvas® (our secret weapon when creating high-performing growth strategies). The beauty of using The Marketing Canvas is that you can repeat this process for various avatars and then plug them into a successful marketing strategy designed to help you maximize your ROI and, ultimately, grow your business.
What does an Ideal Customer Look Like?
Let’s have a look at what you need to know about your target customer and how to build a comprehensive (and useful) ideal customer profile.
[Image: LubosHouska of Pixabay
Consider this scenario:
Bookstore Owner: What book would you sell to the next customer who walks in?
What book would you sell to the next customer who walks in? New Employee: Um, Harry Potter. I loved that book.
Um, Harry Potter. I loved that book. Bookstore Owner: Who cares?
Who cares? New Employee: So… what would you recommend?
So… what would you recommend? Bookstore Owner: Whatever book the customer is going to love.
Too often we get so excited about our products and services we fall all over ourselves telling the world how great our offer is. Effective marketing is all about putting the right product in front of the right customer at the right time. There’s no point in telling the next customer who walks into the bookstore all about Harry Potter when what she is looking for is a book about managing diabetes.
While the bookstore example may seem like an obvious one, too often businesses waste a whole lot of time and effort designing fancy logos and gorgeous-looking ads before they have nailed down who their ideal customer is, what problem they need to solve, and why your company can provide the perfect solution.
When you are thinking about your ideal customer, ask yourself who is likely to stick around, even if there’s a dip in the economy. Who is most likely to keep buying products and services? Who is going to ascend your value ladder when you roll out new products and services in the future? Obviously, a loyal, die-hard client is much more valuable than someone who buys once and is never heard from again.
Let’s Create Your Ideal Customer Profile
When the time comes to brainstorm with your team and create your avatar, keep these basics in mind.
[Image: Geralt on Pixabay]
Get Specific
Be as detailed as you can be as you go through this process. Give your dream customer a name, address, and a job. Is she married? Does he have children? A pet?
What’s your avatar’s annual income? What car does she drive?
What does your avatar want out of life? And, what’s stopping him from achieving that goal?
What are your avatar’s biggest challenges and problems, particularly relating to the products and services your company sells?
What influencers does your target customer listen to? Who does she trust? What books does he read? What shows does she watch on Netflix? What social platforms does he use (when, how, and how often?). Does she read blogs? Listen to podcasts? Which ones? How often?
Why does your ideal customer love your company and your products? What keeps her coming back? What makes her mad? What is something you might do that would send him running for the door with no intention of ever coming back?
Find a photo of your avatar and print it out. Stick the photo at the top of the whiteboard when you and your team get together to brainstorm about your next ad campaign.
Ultimately, the goal of going through the exercise of creating a target persona is to remember that you are always selling to a real person, not some nebulous ‘customer’ and not an entire business. The most effective avatars are those we could imagine taking home for Thanksgiving dinner. They are as real as a well-developed character in an epic story. In fact, they are your company’s brand hero. Think Luke Skywalker, Frodo, Neo, and Harry Potter.
Don’t Guess
Sometimes we think we know who our customers are and what they want, but make sure you aren’t basing your marketing decisions on wishful thinking. Get the data. Ask your sales team. Analyze the metrics.
Hard Data
Data collection has never been easier. With tools like audience insights in Facebook (and the equivalent on other social media platforms), Google analytics, the data you collect from your CRM — we know more today about buyer behavior at every step along the customer journey than has ever before been possible.
Knowing the data is out there and knowing how to interpret it are two different things. It’s beyond the scope of this post to dig deep into the data parsing tools that are out there but don’t ignore the hard facts when you go through the avatar-creation exercise.
Soft Data
There’s nothing like going directly to the source when you want to learn the truth. Tempting though it may be to rely entirely on the data you collect through various automated tools, never forget that ultimately, the source of that data is a real person.
Your customers and potential customers can provide answers to all kinds of questions if you take the time to ask them. Surveys (conducted at different points in the customer journey), the content of comments on a social media post (not just the quantity), focus groups and listening to your front line sales team members when they report back on what your customers are saying are all invaluable sources of information. Take what you learn and adjust your customer avatar accordingly.
Rinse and Repeat
Remember, too, that an avatar — just like the real person she represents — is not static. The time of year, her state of health, what else is going on in her world, from passing a passing a milestone birthday to taking on the care of an ailing parent — these will all impact her needs, challenges, and how she will interact with your brand. Even for the same avatar, you may need to make adjustments based on considerations like how far away Christmas is when the kids need to be thinking about heading back to school (or, off to college).
What Will Your Target Customer Tell You?
Gaining a deep understanding of your avatar’s goals, values, challenges, frustrations, and fears enables you to develop a deep empathy for her and to adjust what you are doing along every step of the customer journey. You’ll know where to find your avatar, what hooks, stories, and messages are likely to grab her attention, and what is most likely to get her to engage with your content.
You’ll know what she can afford and when she will be ready to buy. You should know your avatar so well that you’ll be able to predict what she’s going to need even before she knows she needs it and you can make sure your company will have the next product ready when she’s ready to purchase. When you have truly nailed your avatar, you’ll know because that is the same customer who will share your posts, tell friends and colleagues how great your company is, and will, in fact, become a de facto member of your sales team.
It all begins with knowing who that ideal buyer is. Again, that’s why “Target Customer” is the first step in The Marketing Canvas™ framework. Taking the time to go through this exercise to create an avatar for each of your ideal customers pays off because no business gets far without knowing all about their number one ally — their hero — in the marketplace. | https://medium.com/digital-marketing-from-a-z/its-time-to-get-intimate-with-your-ideal-customer-6e8680fd12f3 | ['Ginger Zumaeta'] | 2019-06-28 17:02:07.181000+00:00 | ['Business', 'Marketing', 'Evergreen', 'Targeting', 'Branding'] |
What is Big data? Where does it come from? and Who uses Big Data? | What is Big Data?
Over the several years, there has been a grown understanding of the role that big data can perform in delivering valuable insights to an organization. Nevertheless, in term of definition, there are many different concepts and meanings of Big data that was interpreted and announced by data specialists and experts.
Although the big data definition is still various in general, I would like to suggest the most reasonable meaning in my opinion. It is the 5V’s of Big data which was state by Keith Gordon MBCS CITP, former Secretary of the BCS Data Management Specialist Group. The 5V’s of Big data is the combination of the following five characteristics:
Volume: where the amount of data to be analyzed and collected is sufficiently massive to require complex and special analytics.
where the amount of data to be analyzed and collected is sufficiently massive to require complex and special analytics. Velocity: where the data is built at high rates or created nearly in real-time.
where the data is built at high rates or created nearly in real-time. Variety: where the data have the various types of data from different sources. For example, structured data is any data that locate in a fixed field within a record or file, and unstructured data which is the form of binary data such as video, picture and audio.
where the data have the various types of data from different sources. For example, structured data is any data that locate in a fixed field within a record or file, and unstructured data which is the form of binary data such as video, picture and audio. Value: where the data has perceived or quantifiable benefit to
the enterprise or organization using it. (ex. customer insights, the trend of time series)
where the data has perceived or quantifiable benefit to the enterprise or organization using it. (ex. customer insights, the trend of time series) Veracity: where the correctness of the data can be investigated and assessed.
Although the 5V would be the main nature of Big data, it can be altered and changed by innovation and the capability of data adoption. In other words, the characteristics of big data can be more advanced in the future.
Where does it come from?
After we understand what is exactly call big data. Now, the question is where does it come from? How can it be generated? The answer is so simple, big data was from us by consuming and spending time on social media platforms. For example, commenting on a Facebook post, uploading pictures on your Instagram and watching videos on Youtube, all these activities were recorded immediately once you give any actions by such platform owners. However, social media is not only a source of Big data. I would like to share the 3 primary sources of Big data that I have found from cloundmoyo website which are:
Social media data: as I mentioned, it comes from the Likes, Tweets & Retweets, Comments, etc. via your preferred social media platforms. Transactional data: the data which is generated from all the daily transactions that take place both online and offline. Invoices, payment orders, storage records, delivery receipts. Machine data: the data which is defined as information which is generated by industrial equipment, sensors that are installed in machinery and even weblogs which track user behavior.
Who uses big data?
So now it seems like Big data has become a part of our life, and it is so valuable. Why? Because many companies can use big data to their advantage such as automating processes, gaining insight into their target market and improving overall performance using the feedback readily available. Let look at the examples of some of the industries that boosting their business by using big data.
Financial services: transactional data rapidly grows due to the spending ability of users that faster and more comfortable via E-banking or Online banking. The bank is able to use client data to guide decisions for credit card offerings for individuals, the credit limit and benefit, and reward offerings.
Transportation services: currently, using ride-hailing service is widespread intensively in most big cities. More interestingly, ride-hailing service firms allow to collect a vast amount of data in both rider and client-side. Although utilizing these data on individual user is challenged, but it can increase the long-term profit and the service personalization. For example, in case that rejects a ride after request, due to the unsatisfied price, the Uber application can respond back to the user in a few minutes later that the price is now lower (while knowing the precise location of the rider). This function can be done by analyzing geo-localization in real-time. Certainly, such a large size of client data can lead firms to offer the targeted promotion to users.
Hospitality service: Hotel records and stores their customer information in order to exploit the data. After the client checks out, hotels are able to collect the guest detail and preference, for example, the special requests, vegetarian, room dining service, etc. Thus, before the next accommodate, the hotel can facilitate the customer’s requirements in a more personalized way. Alternatively, hotels analyzed historical data to create and deliver targeted promotional offers. Another interesting platform in hospitality service is online platforms such as Agoda, Airbnb, VRBO and Homestay, to name a few. The platform allows guests to rent accommodation (not only hotel but also apartment) via application or website. Normally, these service providers usually are not own any accommodation but earn a commission fee (percentage service fee) from every single booking and host. The price is generally set by the host, it can be affected by the period of the year, the weekday, the number of stays, etc. Accordingly, the amount of data compiled by the platform is valuable due to both the property and the user data were collected. Consequently, analyzing the data allow companies to enhance service by recommending a reasonable price to host and developing the ranking of the offering options for each browsing user, based on previous preferences.
To sum up, it can be seen that the great of big data depends on technology development. The key to the information explosion is online platforms such as websites, mobile applications and social networks. Consequently, the more people connect to the platform the more data are generated. Correspondingly, the discussion of utilizing big data evolve service operation is identified by the sample of improved services in the financial, transportation and hospitality industry. In fact, not only the provided example but there also the big data used cases across different industries occur in the world. Ultimately, the technologies are continuously developed and change over time, the presence of big data is one of the phenomenons that everyone should aware of. | https://medium.com/@priniamchula/what-is-big-data-where-does-it-come-from-and-who-uses-big-data-9644914c1707 | ['Prin Iamchula'] | 2021-04-25 12:28:15.852000+00:00 | ['Big Data Analytics', 'Information Technology', 'Contextual Marketing', 'Big Data', 'Data Science'] |
“Just Keep Swimming” | Photo by takahiro taguchi on Unsplash
“Just Keep Swimming”
When you have to keep going
The phrase, uttered by Dory in Finding Nemo becomes my daily, hourly mantra some days.
“Just Keep Swimming!”
Who am I kidding? Most days.
I have to keep going. I have no choice. I have four children that are counting on me.
Yes, dear reader, you are right that there is always a choice.
Giving up is a choice I am unwilling to make. Formally.
Informally, I give up so many times. Daily, and/or hourly.
Some days look like this:
I can do it! I can definitely do it! I can’t do this. Yes, you can do it! You have to do it! There is no one else who can do it for you. I can’t possibly do this. You HAVE to do it! OK, I can do this. Maybe. Maybe tomorrow.
Tomorrow is my favorite word. Today is always too overwhelming. Tomorrow sounds better. Tomorrow I will feel better. Tomorrow I will find some motivation. Tomorrow is my day, folks! I can do it tomorrow.
Guess what? The next day comes, and I say the same thing to myself.
I can do it tomorrow. I will get to it tomorrow.
It’s an endless loop.
An endless cycle of dysfunction that I don’t know how to break.
I try to make smaller lists. Lists of small manageable chunks of things I should be able to accomplish in a short amount of time, but even those small things can be overwhelming today. Tomorrow seems like it would be better.
It’s a delicate balance of treading water each day. I don’t even think I can call it swimming. Swimming implies forward motion. Progress. Swimming implies that you are going somewhere.
Photo by Gage Walker on Unsplash
When you are in the deep sea of depression, most days you can only force yourself to tread water. To do what is absolutely necessary. You do what you can do at that moment to get you to that next moment. You force yourself to do it because it has to be done.
The things that aren’t absolutely necessary can wait until tomorrow.
You have to work yourself back up to the point where you can “just keep swimming.”
Tell yourself to keep swimming until it works, and you take those first strokes. Those are the most important ones.
I may be ready to take a stroke today.
I’m going to try at least.
I need to do it today.
I can do it today.
Tell yourself loudly along with me: | https://kristindemarr.medium.com/just-keep-swimming-cd5d0464ee61 | ['Kristin Demarr'] | 2019-08-09 18:31:00.507000+00:00 | ['Mental Illness', 'Life Lessons', 'Motivation', 'Anxiety', 'Depression'] |
UX Lessons From Super Mario Odyssey | Spoiler Alert: Go play Super Mario Odyssey until you’re done. Or not.
“Daddy, I’m going to stack a house on top of a giraffe on top of an autonomous freeway,” said my four-year old daughter with a big smile. These kinds of things are common for my daughter to say (And yes, she’s says “autonomous”. We live in San Francisco so…). To my daughter this makes perfect sense. She’s making sense of the world and mixing and remixing these not-yet-disparate concepts. But to many of us, this sentence sounds ridiculous. Yet, let’s take a sentence like this:
“I’m going to throw my autonomous hat on top of a dinosaur and bounce on a trampoline.”
Something my daughter would also say. And yet, this is very much part of the concept for Super Mario Odyssey, one of the best Nintendo Switch games available. A game made by adults, played by people of all ages, by a very successful world-renowned company.
What Nintendo has mastered is the ability to take the joyous and playful soul of a child and inject it into the lifeblood of its games. Most recently, no game best exemplifies the spirit of Nintendo better than Super Mario Odyssey, a game that I’m currently in the process of “completing”. I’ve reached 600 power moons and conquered all the levels, most recently the Darker Side of the Moon. Now I’m going back trying to find every Power Moon in each level. I love this game. I also happen to lead a team of interaction designers at Punchcut where we help companies design incredible products.
As a UX designer, there are so many takeaways from Super Mario Odyssey that we can apply to our everyday work. I want to dissect the game and explore the elements of Odyssey designers that we who work on everyday products can learn from.
1. Saturate with play
Odyssey isn’t just a game. It’s a game excessively overflowing with play every single moment. Of course not every product should feel like this. But almost every product could certainly use moments that feel like this. We use the terms “surprise and delight” or “minimum loveable product” a lot but how many times does a product actually surprise or delight you? We use products that we like, but how many products do we actually love? They’re out there, but they’re the minority.
I believe that to create a product that embodies the qualities of Odyssey — a product that people genuinely love to use — you need a process and a team that embodies these qualities. There’s a lot of good solid thinking in our design process, but dare I say not enough joy in it. What would it look like if you saturate your process with play? What kind of product would come out of a team that liberally makes jokes and laughs together and thinks of crazy ideas together free of judgement?
If you work in a team like this, treasure it. If not, be the catalyst to turn your team like this. Put your crazy ideas out there and ack a fool like Leroy Jenkins. Allow others to judge you and don’t give a crap. Smile and laugh a lot. I’m not going to pretend life doesn’t get in the way and you’re not going to have crappy days. That’s OK but do what you need to do to get your mind right. It helps to stop reading the news for a while when you’re in the ideation phase of a project. It’s not gonna kill you to not know everything that’s going on in the world. And if there’s something that actually might kill you, like a missile is coming, then others around you will let you know.
What kind of design process gives people the freedom to be like “Hey, what if Mario can possess a dinosaur that just crushes everything in its path. And can bounce on trampolines?”
Also, a word of caution about user testing. I’m a big believer in user research and the insights from it that drive design (we do it a lot at Punchcut!). But when you have a truly innovative idea in your hands, it’s a very precious thing that can easily be killed. Testing done wrong can be one of those killers. At this point in the process, testing is only helpful if you have buy in from stakeholders that success isn’t about whether people love the concept. It’s about whether people love or hate the concept. Polarizing reactions are signals of a great idea. Ideas with lukewarm, somewhat favorable reactions are not.
2. Design around ONE single concept
Odyssey is all about hats. Mario’s hat is named Cappy and has its own life. Enemies also wear hats. Princess Peach has a hat. Bowser has a hat. It’s ridiculous and amazing. Mario’s signature move is his hat throw. You can throw Cappy to knock out enemies. You can throw Cappy up, on the floor, have it spin around Mario, and it can hone in on enemies. You can throw Cappy and jump on it to jump farther. Taking this even further, you can throw Cappy at enemies and possess them.
“Hey everyone,” said a Nintendo designer, “wouldn’t it be cool if you could throw your hat at an enemy, take over its body, have it wear Mario’s hat, and start controlling it?”
Odyssey has taken a single concept and gone big with it. Hats are constantly reinforced from beginning to end. Some challenges even take away the use of Cappy making you really feel how dependent you are on him.
Enemies wear hats
Princess wears a hat
Bowser wears a hat
How does this apply to UX design for your product? Start with one single concept and write a single, clear, and concise vision of the experience based on it. Then it’s a matter of designing the experience to be ruthlessly in-line with the vision and ruthlessly filtering out ideas and features that are not. Weave everything in your UX around this single vision. Constantly reinforce it throughout the experience like Odyssey’s hats. When it’s an appropriate time to put your product in front of users, ask them to describe the experience. Their answers should be more or less in-line with your vision statement.
3. Take full advantage of the hardware
The idea of throwing Cappy was the result of Nintendo asking themselves “what can we do with this JoyCon?” The designers wanted to take advantage of the fact that you could play untethered and use the JoyCon as motion controllers. They started with the possibilities that the hardware affords and worked from there. Odyssey does a masterful job at taking full advantage of the Switch’s hardware. You can play tethered. You can play untethered and use motion to perform moves differently, like throw Cappy, or unlock new moves altogether. You can play with two players and have a second player independently control Cappy. This multi-mode operation is the genius of the Switch and Odyssey takes full advantage.
And can we talk about the incredible use of haptics for moment? The JoyCon controllers have a robust haptic engine built in. It’s common for games to take advantage of haptics during obvious gameplay moments, like when an explosion happens. Odyssey does that but of course doesn’t stop there. “How might we use this in a way that feels playful and creative?” Odyssey’s designers asked. Odyssey uses haptics as a way to hone in on hidden Power Moons. By walking around an area, haptics on both controllers guide you to the Power Moon. Go away from it and the respective controller vibrates less. Go closer and the vibrations become stronger. Genius.
Each JoyCon has built in haptics used as a honing mechanism for Power Moons
When both controllers are vibrating, you know where Power Moon is
We’re way past designing for point and click. Designers have so many modalities at our disposal now like touch, gestures, voice, haptics, sound. And that’s just on one of the many devices your users might be using your product on. Take full advantage of all of these modes because you have the ability to create a remarkably more immersive experience than you did only a few years ago.
4. Let people choose their own difficulty
Odyssey can be a very long and difficult game. It can also be a shorter and less challenging one. The difference is not what difficulty mode you select. There’s no easy, hard, expert or grounded mode (shout out to Last of Us). Instead, how difficult the game is is entirely up to you the player. If you’re a completionist like me, the game is more difficult because of all the Power Moons that need to be collected in each world. More levels get progressively revealed as you collect more Power Moons. But you don’t have to play that way to finish the game. You can go through each level, beat Bowser, still enjoy the game and have a sense of accomplishment.
This level is hella hard.
What would it look like for your product to be accessible to the widest range of people? How can you design an experience in which a novice can have a full experience of your product while also tapping into an expert’s need for mastery and allowing them to also have a full experience? And how can you achieve this while not inflating your product and straying from the singular concept that you’ve defined?
5. Enable ninja mastery (it sneaks up on you)
With all the ways you can control Mario, Odyssey can be overwhelming to a newbie. But Odyssey has a way that invites newbies in and before they know it, they’ve become one with the controls doing ninja level moves. This is a game that does a masterful job of teaching. As common in games, the levels are designed so that players progressively learn in context. For example, new obstacles are progressively presented that require you to use a new move to complete it. Once you’ve done that a few times, another obstacle is presented that requires you to do a new move. Then to validate that you’ve learned the new moves, you have to beat a boss that requires the use of these moves. Not only that, but tutorials are integrated into the actual world as signs “travel tips”. Looking at these “travel tips” would teach a new move. This way of progressively and contextually integrating learning moments causes players to get better without them even knowing it. This is the way great teachers teach.
Teaching moments are integrated in each world via signs that show you how to do a new move.
There are also products that require users to go to a Help section, completely separate from the core experience. There are products that help their users onboard in the beginning. These are not the best ways to teach. People don’t want to read stuff to learn how to use your experience. They want to use your experience. Help people just use your experience and teach them along the way and in a way that helps them become masters without them even knowing it.
6. Design a robust system, but with variability
On the surface, the worlds, characters, and challenges of Odyssey look like a collection of random disparate themes cobbled together. But the cray is actually built on top a very well thought out system. We talked about the game mechanic of throwing Cappy and how it’s thoroughly weaved throughout the game. Then there are Power Moons. Power Moons are the main treasure in Odyssey. They’re hidden throughout the world and when you beat a boss, you get more Power Moons. Each world is filled with challenges to get Power Moons and when you beat Bowser, go back to a world and smash the moon stone in it, more challenges unlock. This series of variable challenges are the main thrust that keeps the game moving forward. Every one of them feels different, fresh, often ridiculous and random. However, when you take a step back, you’ll see the same pattern. Here’s a small handful of challenges you’ll find repeated in most levels:
Racing Koopa’s
Finding Toad
Collecting music notes
Timed challenges
Leading a dog to a Power Moon
2D Mario (amazing btw)
Solving a puzzle
Stacking Goomba to woo girl Goomba
Hiding and finding balloons hidden by others with Luigi
Entering a pipe to encounter a mini challenge with one Power Moon at the end and another hidden in the middle
Herding sheep
To name a few. It’s also important to note that the types of challenges span from challenges that require hand-eye coordination to those that require memory and problem solving. But they’re repeated over and over with a different execution each time. It’s this well-designed system that allows each level to have a wildly different look and feel. Metro Kingdom for example, is based on New York City and features taxis and normally proportioned humans (of course in hats) walking around. What? But when you first encounter Metro Kingdom, you more or less know what to do. It’s a veneer on top of an established system.
This level is hella hard.
This type of wide variability embedded in a thoroughly well designed system is what makes the game an experience that you keep wanting to come back to. It’s a form of variable rewards in the Hook Model. UX designers are amazing at thinking through systems. We build complex architectures, spatial models, and flows across multiple devices. We create design systems with reusable components. But how do we not stop there? Design variability into your experience that keeps users anticipating what’s next, but grounded in a system so that they’re not anxious about what’s next.
Designing Joy
If you surveyed people and asked them to rank their life on a spectrum from downhill cruisin’ to uphill battling, I bet most people would rank themselves closer to the latter. Everybody is fighting their own personal battles. It seems like more people are anxious and stressed out. Design is not the cure all for people’s problems. However, we do design products that people use and depend on every single day. The habits and routines people form with their products are because we designed them. Because of this, we have this amazing opportunity to give people a little bit of joy through our work. Certainly I believe great design can make a large scale impact that helps to shift societies towards a more positive direction. But it can also help in the little moments of interaction that people have with their products. This is essentially what games do and why people play games. That’s why I highly encourage any designer to play games and pay close attention to the design patterns so that they can apply in their own work. Nintendo is a master at this and I’ve only scratched the surface on some takeaways from one of Nintendo’s best games.
What UX takeaways do you have for Super Mario Odyssey or gaming in general? | https://medium.com/punchcut/ux-lessons-from-super-mario-odyssey-4c6c55b430e | ['Reggie Wirjadi'] | 2019-03-18 18:24:57.626000+00:00 | ['UX', 'Nintendo', 'Videogames', 'Supermarioodyssey'] |
Extract portrait and replace background(image matting) by code, using C# .NET and OpenCVSharp | Abstract：This article introduces a method of using OpenCVSharp to “extract the portrait and replace the background” for the green screen video in the camera in real time, and analyzes the algorithm in the project. This article presents a method to simplify the release of managed resources such as Mat and MatExpr in OpenCVSharp. This article also introduces “efficient camera playing control” and OpenCVSharp performance optimization technology, including efficient reading and writing memory of Mat instances, and how to avoid inefficient code, etc.
1. Why develop image matting software by myself
Because of the need of my work, I need an application that can “subtract the background, replace the background, and display the new image a window” for the portrait in the camera in real time. Many conference live streaming software have this function. For example, Zoom, Microsoft Teams and others all have image matting functions, but these functions can only be used in their applications. I tried several other software, including XSplit Vcam, Douyin live-streaming assistant, and OBS. They all had excellent functions, including many AI portrait matting functions without green screens. They are powerful, but they could not meet my special requirements. So I need to develop such a software by myself.
A typical image matting requires to put green screens behind the object being matted, and then the green screen is removed by computer, so that the portrait will be retained, and then the cut-out portrait will be drawn on the new background. A lot of film and television productions are made on this principle. As shown in Figure 1 [1].
Figure 1
As long as the lighting is good, it is very accurate to matting through the green screen. However, the disadvantage of this way is that the layout requirements for the site are very high. So now the “no green screen matting” is popular, that is, AI can identify the foreground portrait and background. XSplit Vcam has this function, and it can simulate the result of image cutout into a virtual camera for output, but if the background is more complex, XSplit Vcam removal background effect is still not ideal. I am not an expert on computer vision, especially AI, therefore, in the case of limited time, I don’t think I can write a more powerful than Vcam software, so I decided to still use the traditional green screen form to implement the function, after all, as long as spend a few bucks for a piece of green screen.
Before I get started with the implementation code, let me show you how the software works. Figure 2 is the original image collected by the camera, and you can see a green screen behind, while Figure 3 is the result of image matting, and it is a real-time matting, which can achieve about 20FPS (frames per second).
Figure 2 Original image
Figure 3 The image after matting
2. Architecture
The software uses OpenCV, which is a very mature and feature-rich computer vision library. OpenCV supports C/C++, Python,.NET, Java and other mainstream programming languages. OpenCV development in Python is the most widely used resource. Personally, I don’t like Python syntax very much, so I developed this software on the .NET 5 using C#. Because OpenCV is used in much the same way across programming languages, the code implemented here in C# is also very easy to be rewritten in another programming language.
There are two OpenCV binding libraries on .NET: OpenCVSharp and Emgu CV. Because OpenCVSharp has no commercial use restrictions, I use OpenCVSharp in this project. However, even if you are using an Emgu CV, the code in this article can be applied to Emgu CV.
3. How to get source code
Since the function of image matting is only a part of my software, the whole software is not convenient to open source for the time being, so I separated the core code function of green screen replacing background into a new open source project.
Source code repository: https://github.com/yangzhongke/Zack.OpenCVSharp.Ext
“GreenScreenRemovalDemo. Cs” is the main code, and you can get the executable binaries at the bottom of the page for all kinds of operating systems, and the GreenScreenRemovalDemo is the entry executable.
In Windows, for example, running GreenScreenRemovalDemo. Exe, the console will appear as shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4
If you enter V, a built-in monster.mp4 green screen video file [2] will automatically play for the ones who don’t have green screen. The program will remove the green screen from the video file and replace it with a background file Bg.png. If you enter a digital in Figure 4, the web camera with the specified number will be used. If you only have one connected camera, please enter 0. You can press any key to exit the program.
Figure 5 video with green screenmonster.mp4
Figure 6 Background Image(Mt. Eden of New Zealand)
Figure 7 Result
4. Core principles
Figure 8 Original frame
The Figure 8 is an original frame from the camera. First, I call the RenderGreenScreenMask(SRC, matMask) method I wrote, converting the original frame ‘src’ to a black and white image ‘matMask’. In matMast, the green parts are rendered black, and the rest are rendered white, as shown inFigure 9.
The main code of RenderGreenScreenMask is as follows [3] :
private unsafe void RenderGreenScreenMask(Mat src, Mat matMask)
{
int rows = src.Rows;
int cols = src.Cols;
for (int x = 0; x < rows; x++)
{
Vec3b* srcRow = (Vec3b*)src.Ptr(x);
byte* maskRow = (byte*)matMask.Ptr(x);
for (int y = 0; y < cols; y++)
{
var pData = srcRow + y;
byte blue = pData->Item0;
byte green = pData->Item1;
byte red = pData->Item2;
byte max = Math.Max(red, Math.Max(blue, green));
//if this pixel is some green, render the pixel with the same position on matMask as black
if (green == max && green > 30)
{
*(maskRow + y) = 0;
}
else
{
*(maskRow + y) = 255;//render as white
}
}
}
}
To accelerate pixel access to the image, pointer operation is used. C# can use pointers to manipulate memory, which can greatly boost the performance. Due to the influence of environmental light, the points on the green screen may have different colors, so I use green == max (blue,green,red)&& green > 30 to check whether a point has certain green, and 30 is the threshold value. The threshold value can adjust the recognition effect.
Figure 9 green removed
Then, FindContoursAsArray() is called to find some of the contours in Figure 9. In order to remove the small area interference caused by some folds or light problems on the green screen, for the contours found, it is necessary to delete the contours with smaller area and only retain the contours with large area. This contours filter can be easily done using the LINQ in C#, as follows:
var contoursExternalForeground = Cv2.FindContoursAsArray(matMask, RetrievalModes.External, ContourApproximationModes.ApproxNone) .Select(c => new { contour = c, Area = (int)Cv2.ContourArea(c) }) .Where(c => c.Area >= minBlockArea) .OrderByDescending(c => c.Area).Take(5).Select(c => c.contour);
The minBlockArea above represents “minimum allowable contour area”.
Then, an empty black Mat is created, which is named matMaskForeground, and then render the large contours obtained above into the ‘matMaskForeground’ and fill it with white inside, the code is as follows:
matMaskForeground.DrawContours(contoursExternalForeground, -1, new Scalar(255), thickness: -1);
The content of the picture corresponding to matMaskForeground is shown in Figure 10. In this way, the matMaskForeground contains only a certain large area of contours, and all other small areas of noise have been removed.
Figure 10 Find the largest contours and fill them with white
Then, cut out the large hollow areas of the arms, hands, shoulders, and neck shown in Figure 9.Therefore, do an “xor” operation on Figure 9 and Figure 10 to get a hollow area like Figure 11.
Figure 11 xor two images,and get the hollow area inside the body
The green light reflected in the screen into your glasses, or the small green on your clothes, can be identified as small hollowed areas. As can be seen in Figure 11, there are some small white areas at the lower right corner, so once again, FindContoursAsArray and DrawContours are used to remove the small areas in Figure 11. Then, combine Figure 11 and Figure 10, and you will get Figure 12, which is a picture with the white part as the body area and the black part as the green screen background.
Figure 12 Remove the small hollows and merge with the body mask
Then, Figure 12 is used as a mask for background transparency processing of the original frame image of Figure 8,and Figure 13 will be output, which is the background transparency image. The main codes are as follows:
public static void AddAlphaChannel(Mat src, Mat dst, Mat alpha) { using (ResourceTracker t = new ResourceTracker()) { //split is used for splitting the channels separately var bgr = t.T(Cv2.Split(src)); var bgra = new[] { bgr[0], bgr[1], bgr[2], alpha }; Cv2.Merge(bgra, dst); } }
The ‘src’ is the original frame image, and ‘dst’ is the result of merging, and Alpha is the transparent mask shown in Figure 12.
Finally, we will draw the background transparent in Figure 13 onto our custom background image, and we will get the image in Figure 14. The core code is as follows:
public unsafe static void DrawOverlay(Mat bg, Mat overlay) { int colsOverlay = overlay.Cols; int rowsOverlay = overlay.Rows; for (int i = 0; i < rowsOverlay; i++) { Vec3b* pBg = (Vec3b*)bg.Ptr(i); Vec4b* pOverlay = (Vec4b*)overlay.Ptr(i); for (int j = 0; j < colsOverlay; j++) { Vec3b* pointBg = pBg + j; Vec4b* pointOverlay = pOverlay + j; if (pointOverlay->Item3 != 0) { pointBg->Item0 = pointOverlay->Item0; pointBg->Item1 = pointOverlay->Item1; pointBg->Item2 = pointOverlay->Item2; } } } }
The parameter ‘bg’ is the original frame image in Figure 8, and the overlay is the transparent background in Figure 13. After drawing by DrawOverlay, the content of ‘bg’ will turn into Figure 14, and then it can be output to the user interface.
Figure 13 A portrait with transparent background
Figure 14 Result
The code above is located in the ReplaceGreenScreenFilter.cs of the GreenScreenDemo project. Here’s the trunk of the ReplaceGreenScreenFilter:
class ReplaceGreenScreenFilter { private byte _greenScale = 30; private double _minBlockPercent = 0.01; private Mat _backgroundImage; public void SetBackgroundImage(Mat backgroundImage) { this._backgroundImage = backgroundImage; } private unsafe void RenderGreenScreenMask(Mat src, Mat matMask) { int rows = src.Rows; int cols = src.Cols; for (int x = 0; x < rows; x++) { Vec3b* srcRow = (Vec3b*)src.Ptr(x); byte* maskRow = (byte*)matMask.Ptr(x); for (int y = 0; y < cols; y++) { var pData = srcRow + y; byte blue = pData->Item0; byte green = pData->Item1; byte red = pData->Item2; byte max = Math.Max(red, Math.Max(blue, green)); if (green == max && green > this._greenScale) { *(maskRow + y) = 0; } else { *(maskRow + y) = 255;//render as white } } } } public void Apply(Mat src) { using (ResourceTracker t = new ResourceTracker()) { Size srcSize = src.Size(); Mat matMask = t.NewMat(srcSize, MatType.CV_8UC1, new Scalar(0)); RenderGreenScreenMask(src, matMask); //the area is by integer instead of double, so that it can improve the performance of comparision of areas int minBlockArea = (int)(srcSize.Width * srcSize.Height * this.MinBlockPercent); var contoursExternalForeground = Cv2.FindContoursAsArray(matMask, RetrievalModes.External, ContourApproximationModes.ApproxNone) .Select(c => new { contour = c, Area = (int)Cv2.ContourArea(c) }) .Where(c => c.Area >= minBlockArea) .OrderByDescending(c => c.Area).Take(5).Select(c => c.contour); //a new Mat used for rendering the selected Contours var matMaskForeground = t.NewMat(srcSize, MatType.CV_8UC1, new Scalar(0)); //thickness: -1 means filling the inner space matMaskForeground.DrawContours(contoursExternalForeground, -1, new Scalar(255), thickness: -1); //matInternalHollow is the inner Hollow parts of body part. var matInternalHollow = t.NewMat(srcSize, MatType.CV_8UC1, new Scalar(0)); Cv2.BitwiseXor(matMaskForeground, matMask, matInternalHollow); int minHollowArea = (int)(minBlockArea * 0.01);//the lower size limitation of InternalHollow is less than minBlockArea, because InternalHollows are smaller //find the Contours of Internal Hollow var contoursInternalHollow = Cv2.FindContoursAsArray(matInternalHollow, RetrievalModes.External, ContourApproximationModes.ApproxNone) .Select(c => new { contour = c, Area = Cv2.ContourArea(c) }) .Where(c => c.Area >= minHollowArea) .OrderByDescending(c => c.Area).Take(10).Select(c => c.contour); //draw hollows foreach (var c in contoursInternalHollow) { matMaskForeground.FillConvexPoly(c, new Scalar(0)); } var element = t.T(Cv2.GetStructuringElement(MorphShapes.Cross, new Size(3, 3))); //smooth the edge of matMaskForeground Cv2.MorphologyEx(matMaskForeground, matMaskForeground, MorphTypes.Close, element, iterations: 6); var foreground = t.NewMat(src.Size(), MatType.CV_8UC4, new Scalar(0)); ZackCVHelper.AddAlphaChannel(src, foreground, matMaskForeground); //resize the _backgroundImage to the same size of src Cv2.Resize(_backgroundImage, src, src.Size()); //draw foreground(people) on the backgroundimage ZackCVHelper.DrawOverlay(src, foreground); } } }
5. Highlights
Limited by space, the basic knowledge of OpenCV is not explained here, but only some key technologies in the project and some matters needing attention during the use of OpenCVSharp are explained here. Since I have only used OpenCVSharp for a few days, please correct me if there are any problems.
1) Simplification of OpenCVSharp objects release
In OpenCVSharp, objects of classes such as Mat and MatExpr have unmanaged resources and need to be manually released by calling the Dispose() method. Worst of all, the +, -, *, and other operators create a new object each time, and these objects need to be disposed, or there will be a memory leak. But the code that these objects release looks very verbose.
For example, the following code is accessing Opencv in Python:
mat1 = np.empty([100,100]) mat3 = 255-mat1*0.8 mats1 = cv2.split(mat3) mat4=cv2.merge(mats1[0],mats1[2],mats1[2])
In contrast, the equivalent code in C# is as verbose as the following
using (Mat mat1 = new Mat(new Size(100, 100), MatType.CV_8UC3)) using (Mat mat2 = mat1 * 0.8) using (Mat mat3 = 255-mat2) { Mat[] mats1 = mat3.Split(); using (Mat mat4 = new Mat()) { Cv2.Merge(new Mat[] { mats1[0], mats1[1], mats1[2] }, mat4); } foreach(var m in mats1) { m.Dispose(); } }
So I wrote a ResourceTracker class to manage OpenCV’s resources. The T() method of the ResourceTracker class is used to add an OpenCV object to the tracing records and then return the object. The T() method is simply a matter of adding the wrapped object to the tracing records and returning it. The core code of the T() method is as follows:
public Mat T(Mat obj) { if (obj == null) { return obj; } trackedObjects.Add(obj); return obj; } public Mat[] T(Mat[] objs) { foreach (var obj in objs) { T(obj); } return objs; }
The ResourceTracker implements the IDisposable interface, and when the Dispose() method is called, all resources tracked by the ResourceTracker are disposed. The T() method can trace an object or an array of objects. And this method NewMat() is like T(new Mat(…). Because the +, -, *, and other operators creates a new object each time, the resulting object at each step needs to be disposed, and they can be wrapped with T().For example: t.T(255 — t.T(picMat * 0.8))
Therefore, the verbose C# code above can be reduced to the following:
using (ResourceTracker t = new ResourceTracker()) { Mat mat1 = t.NewMat(new Size(100, 100), MatType.CV_8UC3,new Scalar(0)); Mat mat3 = t.T(255-t.T(mat1*0.8)); Mat[] mats1 = t.T(mat3.Split()); Mat mat4 = t.NewMat(); Cv2.Merge(new Mat[] { mats1[0], mats1[1], mats1[2] }, mat4); }
After leaving the scope of using block of the ResourceTracker, the resources of all the objects managed by the ResourceTracker will be released.
I placed the ResourceTracker class in the NuGet package Zack.OpenCVSharp.Ext, so it can be installed on your project with the following NuGet command:
Install-Package Zack.OpenCVSharp.Ext
Source code repository：https://github.com/yangzhongke/Zack.OpenCVSharp.Ext
2) Efficient way to access data in Mat
OpenCVSharp provides many methods to access the data in Mat. After testing, I found that the At() method is the slowest, and GetGenericIndexer is also slow, because they are all conducted entirely through managed code, the performance is bound to be compromised. GetUnsafeGenericIndexer, which accesses memory directly, is much faster, but the fastest way is to use mat.ptr (x) and pointer, because it reads and writes Mat’s memory directly. Please mark the code using pointer with unsafe, and enable the “allow unsafe code” of the project. Because this way is to read and write memory directly, so please be sure to pay attention to your code, so as not to cause incorrect memory access or AccessViolation.
The reference code for this pointer approach refer to the above RenderGreenScreenMask() and DrawOverlay() methods. The ‘where()’ method of the np class in the open source project Zack.OpenCVSharp.Ext also demonstrates the use of a combination of C# generics, pointer manipulation, and lambda.
In OpenCVSharp, Vec4b, Vec3b, byte and other memory units with different byte lengths must be selected according to the channel number of Mat objects used. Improper use of Vec4b, Vec3b, byte and other memory units will not only affect performance, but also may cause data chaos. The most direct manifestation of data chaos is disordered picture display.
3) CameraPlayer
My software needs to collect images from the camera and display them on the user interface, and before displaying them on the interface, I also need to “cut the portrait and replace the background” on the image. At the beginning, I used AForge.NET to complete the image collection and display of the camera, but its performance was very low. Because I need to convert the Bitmap collected by AForge.NET into an OpenCVSharp Mat instance first, and then convert the Mat back to the Bitmap and display it on the user interface after the matting processing. Therefore, I directly used VideoCapture of OpenCVSharp to complete the camera image collection. Since the collected frame images are in the forms of Mat, the conversion between Mat and BitMap is eliminated, so the performance is improved significantly.
I created a CameraPlayer control to fetch data from the camera and display it on the interface. Meanwhile, I provide .NET Core and.NET Framework version of WinForm control, which can be used directly. In addition, SetFrameFilter(Action<Mat> frameFilterFunc) method is provided to allow setting a method, so as to use OpenCVSharp for processing before drawing the Mat of frame image to the user interface.
The image collection, image processing and image display in the CameraPlayer are performed in different threads and processed in parallel, so the performance is very high.
I have made the CameraPlayer control open source. Please check out the project documentation for usage.
Project repository: https://github.com/yangzhongke/Zack.CameraLib
When developing CameraPlayer, I found that if I did not set VideoCapture’s attribute FourCC (video encoding), It would take 100ms to fetch each frame, while if I set the attribute FourCC to “MJPG”, it would only take 50ms. I don’t know if it’s a camera-specific issue. So, if you read the image slower, you can try to use a different FourCC value.
4) Pay attention to the code that may lead to performance problems
When implementing the RenderGreenScreenMask() method , there is a process “calculate the maximum value of blue,green, and red”. At the beginning, I used the LINQ extension to implement: ‘new byte[]{blue,green,red}.Max();’ But I found that ‘byte max1 = blue > green ? blue : green; byte max = max1>red?max1:red;’ is more performant, and it reduces the processing time per frame by 50%.
Because LINQ operation involves the “create a collection object, put the data into the collection objects, and then get the data”, performance will be slower than the conventional algorithm, in the ordinary scenario of data processing, the performance gap can be neglected, especially when using LINQ to manipulate database, relative to the time consuming IO operations, this performance difference is negligible. But because this is used in two nested loops, the performance gap is huge.
Therefore, be careful with the operations that can lead to performance problems when manipulating images using OpenCVSharp
5) Initialization of Mat memory
When creating an empty Mat object, it is better to initialize the memory data of the Mat object, just as it is better to reset the memory space obtained by malloc with memset() in C language, so as not to cause the old residual data in memory to interfere with our operation. For example, the memory of instance created by ‘new Mat(srcSize,MatType.CV_8UC1)’ may reuse the memory of other objects that have been released previously. The data will be dirty. Unless your next step is to replace every item of Mat, please use the Scalar object parameters of Mat’s constructor to initialize the memory, the code is like: new Mat(srcSize,MatType.CV_8UC1,new Scalar(0))
6. Future work
When I have time in the future, I may do the following work:
1) Improve the speed of reading images from the camera. Since my Logitech C920 camera is labeled as FPS=30, in theory, the time of fetching a frame is at 33ms, but I’m currently picking up a frame at 50ms, so I’m going to see if I can further speed up the process.
2) I consider adding features such as beauty, face thinning and skin brightening. The current image matting algorithm needs about 20ms to process a frame, while the speed of taking a frame from the camera is 50ms, so there is still 30ms extra time available for these beautification work.
3) AI algorithm will be used to achieve “port matting without green screen”. It’s hard to do this on my own. I found a very powerful open source project called MODNet, which is a library implemented by Python + Torch that uses neural networks for smart portrait recognition, including models that have been pre-trained. There is also a .NET ported version for Torch, so in theory this could be done.
7. Conclusion
When using OpenCVSharp, as long as you pay attention to the efficient access to memory introduced in this article and properly call functions, you can carry out image processing with very high performance. Therefore, the software I developed can achieve that each frame of image processing only needs about 20ms. With the help of the ResourceTracker class in the package Zack.OpenCVSharp.Ext developed by me, it is very easy to release resources of OpenCVSharp, and resources can be released in time without modifying the expression and code, so as to avoid memory leak.
Source code repository: https://github.com/yangzhongke/Zack.OpenCVSharp.Ext
Reference
[1]“BMPCC4K — Green Screen,” 26 7 2019. [Online]. Available: https://australianimage.com.au/bmpcc4k-green-screen/.
[2]“Green Screen Monster 2 — monster attacks / feeds / eats,” [Online]. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEhPo1n15H4.
[3]B. Friederichs, “Processing an image to extract green-screen mask,” [Online]. Available: https://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/184044/processing-an-image-to-extract-green-screen-mask. | https://medium.com/@yangzhongke8/extract-portrait-and-replace-background-image-matting-by-code-using-c-net-and-opencvsharp-e3fb2d460256 | ['Zack Yang'] | 2020-12-17 05:45:20.097000+00:00 | ['Dotnet', 'C Sharp Programming', 'Opencv', 'Open Source', 'Dotnet Core'] |
How They Train: Frank Lara | Photo courtesy of tracksmith.com
Frank Lara is a distance runner who currently runs for the Roots Running Project, a group of post-college elite runners in Boulder, Colorado, and coached by Dr. Richard Hansen. Lara was recently crowned the USTAF 15k champion finishing in 44:44. Later, I will describe the special circumstances with which Lara won this championship.
Lara has personal bests of 13:56.17 for 5k; 27:44.65 for 10k on the track; 28:10 for 10k on the road; and 61:48 for the half-marathon. This half-marathon result was at the January 2020 Chevron Houston Half Marathon, where Lara finished as the 10th American male runner and he was just 14 seconds off top American runner Jared Ward’s time.
Currently, Lara is preparing to be a pacer at The Marathon Project, a marathon race that will be held on Sunday, December 20, 2020, at 8:00 am in Chandler, Arizona. Some of the best marathon runners in the United States are entered in this race, including Scott Fauble, Jared Ward, Scott Smith, Brendan Gregg, and Shadrack Biwott. Entering this race as a pacer indicates that Lara is now thinking about moving up to the marathon distance, which makes sense given his excellent showing at the Chevron Houston half.
I became aware of Lara this past fall when I watched him race in the Michigan Pro Ekiden, where he finished third in the 10k with a time of 29:26. You can follow Lara as he trains and races on Twitter.
Lara ran cross country and track at Strake Jesuit College Preparatory High School in Houston, Texas. He was born in Mexico and moved to Houston when he was five years old.
Lara led the school to four straight district cross country championships, and in his senior year, he won the individual championship. He was named a finalist for the Footlocker Nationals and was a qualifier for the Nike Cross Nationals team. In his senior year, Lara was the Texas Gatorade Boys Cross Country Runner of the Year.
He also had a successful collegiate running career at Furman University from 2014 through 2018. In his freshman year, he was named to the All-Southern Conference first team cross country and to the Southern Conference All-Conference team. He earned all-region honors and again was All-Conference in the Southern Conference.
During his junior year, he was an All-American honorable mention and again was named All-Conference in the Southern Conference. He was also the Southern Conference Runner of the Year after winning the cross country championship.
In Lara’s senior year, he was a second-team All-American in the 10,000 meters and was named to the All-Southern Region team, as well as being all-conference yet again. In the conference indoor championship meet, Lara won the 3,000 and the 5,000-meter runs and finished second in the 5,000 meters at the outdoor track championship.
In each of his college seasons, Lara was named to the conference’s All-Academic team.
How Lara Has Trained
Lara says he was running 70 to 75 miles per week when he first relocated to Boulder, Colorado from Greenville, South Carolina, where he was running while in college. Lara states that this mileage was down from the 85 to 90 miles he had been running in college, but the work feels about the same since Boulder is at altitude. As you’ll read below, he has boosted that volume since he first moved out west.
Lara says it wasn’t a big deal to move to Colorado and to run at altitude because he has been coming to Boulder every summer since he was in high school to participate in summer running camps. In fact, he says that one of the reasons he picked joining the Roots Running Project is because he had been introduced to the team’s coach, Richard Hansen, at the Boulder summer running camps and knew he wanted to run with Coach Hansen.
In college, Lara ran the type of workouts typical of collegiate middle-distance runners. In a typical week, he would do some type of short speed workout, a longer tempo or fartlek workout, and then a long run.
How Lara is Training Now
If you’re interested in seeing how Lara is currently training, you can follow him on Strava. As he is currently training to be a pacer in The Marathon Project race, he has really built up his volume over the past few months. Since June, he is averaging over 200 miles per month and is quickly approaching 300 miles. So far this month, as of December 15, 2020, he has run 99 miles.
This is much more mileage than he ran as a middle-distance runner in college and is indicative of his desire to move up in distance to the marathon. It could also show his desire to run more half marathons both for the races themselves and as training for the marathon.
To look at his daily workouts, for the last four days he has run 6 miles in 45:16, 8 miles in 57:08, 8 miles in 59:06, and 9.9 miles in 1:15:01. These runs are all right around a 7-minute per mile pace, so these have to be considered easy runs as he tapers for The Marathon Project.
The Circumstances of Lara’s 15K Championship
I mentioned at the top of this article that Lara won the 2020 USTAF 15K Championship run in March 2020. It turns out that at the race itself, Lara came in second to Ridouane Harroufi. But later, it came out that Harroufi failed the drug test for this race, and because of that, they declared Lara the champion in October 2020. Asked about this later, Lara had several things to say about running and doping. First, Lara says that doping has to be seen as wrong: “I think the sport along with cycling, has such a long history of doping. It’s a thing that seems OK to people now because, before, everybody did it and if you didn’t do it you were going to be behind. How can we reconstruct the image of the sport so there’s no reason to do it anymore?”
What Lara believes has to happen is there needs to be a change of the culture of doping in running: “I think that the anti-doping agencies are doing everything they can, but a lot of the time the resources that they have just aren’t enough. I think that the best thing for the sport is to make the whole idea of doping horribly, horribly wrong: make it seem like the worst possible thing that somebody could do. It’s too hard to be stopped at the testing level only.”
Finally, Lara thinks every runner needs to recognize how unhealthy doping is: “Another thing that people forget to acknowledge is that (these) banned substances are harmful to the athlete. I think another thing would be education on why this stuff is not good for you, outside of the performance enhancing side of it.”
Thanks for reading and please email me at [email protected] with your comments and suggestions. You can also respond directly to this article. | https://medium.com/runners-life/how-they-train-frank-lara-ac59e43960b4 | ['Michael Mcmillan'] | 2020-12-17 20:17:15.853000+00:00 | ['Runner Community', 'Runners', 'Runner Profile', 'Running Training', 'Running'] |
Fucking, Fate. | As my life was falling apart, a girl said to me “It was fated”. While the recognition of my reality settled in and made itself at home, I thought blandly to myself “It… always.. fucking is”
I've lived an extraordinary life.
A life of heart strands and hope, of stick-with-it-ness and misery, of opportunity crafted by the whims of my charm, and broken by those who are charmless.
I have been a vagabond street urchin, pinstripe executive, home wrecking whore, and child pregnant with child and possibility.
I have conjured words and built monuments of sentiment.
I have been the disaster, the savior, the lover, and the morning after ~faulted and fabulous, making my way from one lunar eclipse to the next.
And, in all of that variation to living large, I did so entirely, with passionate conviction.
Right now, in this moment, I am beyond tired. I am in fact, utterly broken. But make no mistake, these pieces are still mine. Fractured, shattered, crushed and wounded. Mine.
Know now, they will fit together again, as they always do, marking the next great adventure of me. It is fated. | https://medium.com/@badasscreative/fucking-fate-80f7d583a0ac | ['Badass Creative'] | 2020-12-14 18:48:07.096000+00:00 | ['Queer', 'Resilience', 'Heartbreak', 'Fate', 'Poetry'] |
Beware the Fiverr Sinkhole | Beware the Fiverr Sinkhole
Image via Blake Wisz, Unsplash
Oof, the gig economy. The glory it promises. Live anywhere you want! Embrace your location independence! Be your own boss! Set your own hours! Freedom! Freedom can be yours! It all sounds amazing until you sober up and realize it’s just one of your particularly dreamy friends yelling at you.
You stumble away from your day drinking event (with said friend) and realize that maybe their location independence is really just a way to justify their alcoholism. You’re not sure. It’s unclear.
Boo, it’s 5 o’clock somewhere! (Image via Unsplash)
I just finished watching Nomadland with Frances McDormand and I couldn’t shake a funny feeling. It was something like, “Hold on. Wait, a minute. Does she want to do this?” Does she want to live in a van called, “Vanguard” and spend Christmas in the “Amazon Seasonal RV Park”?
All I can say is that I spent a weekend in a hipster Airstream-er once, in an alley, behind a fancy house in San Diego. Hey, it was on Airbnb, so it had to be legit, right? I thought I’d finally live out my tiny house fantasy and leave a convert. I was ready to buy that HGTV-marketed freedom.
Sell everything you own! Live off five dollars a day. Sheesh, when you’re living that cheap, Fiverr does sound like a way out! Well, sign me up. That’s how I was feeling… until… until I took my first shower.
I entered the bathroom box and my ass touched all four walls. I don’t even know how that’s possible because the last time I looked, I don’t have a wraparound ass. But, this particular day it was touching all four walls, as I straddled the toilet and hosed myself off with the detachable showerhead. In an instant, fantasy became a horror show.
It was a moment, for sure, but not one that left me feeling like I had transcended the rat race. It was one that said something more decisive. It was a song I’ve heard in my head many times before and it sang to me gently at first, “What have you done? Oh, gurl, what have you done?”
So, the pandemic hits. My entire industry becomes irrelevant in a heartbeat. I tap into my entrepreneurial spirit and think, “Well, this is it. Time to work for myself. Time to build up that freelance business.” Then I try it out and the allure dissipates with a rapidity that scares me, much like showering in a 100K Airstream-er in the middle of a San Diego alley.
Yet, there’s always a superstar that shines on through. There’s always a story that tells you drug dealing might not be a bad option. After all, it’s what Jay-Z did before the album hit! When it comes to Fiverr, I’m thinking of Alex Fasulo, the 20-something-year-old, who makes six figures a year on Fiverr. When you read Alex Fasulo’s interviews, Fiverr feels like a dream come true.
You get tired of working for the man, the corporate environment is killing your soul, you start working for yourself and — bang — all of that changes. You’re making big money. You’re doing what you love! Right? Right?!
Psst, I can build your website for a Fiverr. (Image via Unsplash)
No. Wrong… or at least wrong for most humans over 30. Sure, if you’re living with two other roommates and still figuring your shit out, you might be able to slog through low-paid writing gigs with high demands, hitting a massively quick turnaround, raising your profile in the algorithm, and eventually dominating the field.
But, if you have anything else going on in your life, at all, you’re going to be effed. Effed like the 11th man on a skydiving team when you realize there are only ten parachutes.
But, you don’t know what you don’t know. So, I jumped into Fiverr as an experiment to see what was really there. I created a really low bar gig — show notes for podcasts. I had produced a podcast on my own, prior, and I used a really reputable audio house to cut and help build out my podcast.
The podcast show notes were $50 per episode through this production house. So, to get good show notes for $5 is a steal. I looked around at other gigs that were offering show notes for $5/per show and I offered a little something extra. For example, if every gig offered 30 minutes of notes for $5, I would offer 40 minutes. You have to. It’s a review system and you’re new without any reviews, so you need something that will separate you from the pack.
At first, you’ll think that no one is going to see your gig, but if you undercut everyone in one area, you’ll grab some people who will want to try you out. Then when you deliver and deliver well, you will get flooded. That’s what happened to me. I did the very first one. I did the gig fast and turned it around within the hour. The client loved it and gave me a great review.
Another Fiverr customer saw my good review and as a buyer of a lot of show notes, she knew I was undercutting the competition in one area. So, for her, it was a steal. She bought her first gig. I turned it around super quickly. I felt good about myself and went about my day. Now, granted, I had done two gigs for under $10/hour. These are copious notes, summaries, time codes, in native English (this is important on Fiverr), turned around very, very quickly.
I shut my computer and drove up to my Airbnb (another side gig I do for cashola). I went up to see what needed to be done and to take care of it before my next guests. By the time I looked at my Fiverr account again, two more gigs had come in with very little time to turn them both around under deadline. Missing deadlines means you sink in the algorithm again.
That’s Fiverr for you. Actually, forget Fiverr. That’s the gig economy for you. Picture Malaysians making Forever 21 shirts for ten cents an hour and you’ve pretty much got the perfect analogy for building an empire on Fiverr.
It’s a volume business, but the problem is — no one can sustain that kind of volume and live in a country with the cost of living that America has. That’s why some of your best-earning Fiverr-ites are freelancers who live abroad. They are making a killing because in their economy an actual Fiverr goes a long way.
Image via Unsplash
So, can you build a substantial business on Fiverr? The answer is, probably not and especially not if you live in the United States. You’re better off selling to that vendor from your old job as a side gig or networking with your real-life connections to build a business that doesn’t have you working for peanuts.
Is that harder? Sure, everyone wants to capitalize on the Airbnb of freelance, creative gigs. But, the truth is you’re always going to lose out to foreign arbitrage and foreign economies.
It’s OK, though. Your unemployment is kicking in. You’ve just finished your first round of Uber background checks and if all else fails, there’s always the “Amazon Seasonal RV Park”.
Think of the glory you’ll experience, living out of your van, exploring the Old West, and pooping in a bucket. If that’s not modern-day success, I don’t know what is. Forget paid vacation and sick leave and health benefits. You’ve got the open road and that’s the American dream. Isn’t it? Isn’t it?! Um, is it? | https://bettermarketing.pub/beware-the-fiverr-sinkhole-952e8fbda6d3 | ['Rebecca Donohue'] | 2021-03-01 13:03:00.780000+00:00 | ['Digital Nomads', 'Humor', 'Gig Economy', 'Fiverr', 'Money'] |
Introduction to NoSQL database and MongoDB | What is the first thing you do after you wake up? If you ask me, I almost immediately turn on my phone to see if there are any messages and notifications from social media. Social media has become a huge part of my daily routine. And I think it’s not just me. Most of us start our day by checking our mobile phones and end with the same, whether we’re texting someone, checking out some DIY videos on Facebook, uploading a new picture to Instagram, posting updates on Twitter or watching Netflix/YouTube.
Have you ever wondered about the amount of data that social media applications are generating? The numbers are huge as you might have imagined. According to this research, Facebook alone has 5.76 billion Likes everyday and 682 million tweets are sent out per day. Data is being generated every minute of every day without us even noticing it. And not just social media, we are producing an increasing amount of data with our mobile phones, smart TVs, machines, wearables and other IoT devices. With these things, data is getting bigger and more chaotic everyday.
A lot of these data generated today are unstructured, that means they cannot be so readily classified and fit into neat boxes (example: photos and graphic images, videos, streaming instrument data, web pages, PDF files, emails, blog entries, messaging and chats etc.). Though relational databases such as MySQL, Oracle and Microsoft SQL server have been in use since a long time, they are a poor fit when it comes to handling rapid processing and analyzing vast amounts of varied and unstructured data and also they cannot handle change in data structure. We need techniques to handle unstructured data and manage database change that are automated, efficient and easy to use.
Let’s take an example of an e-commerce site. Suppose you have a relational database with a Users table that has 5000 rows and three columns — Full Name, Email and Address. Now in your e-commerce site, you are building a recommendation system that recommends products to the customers based on their age. So you want to add a new column called ‘Age’. It can be quite difficult to add a column as you will need to update it for all existing data. When using a relational database, flexibility is a one of the major challenges and even a simple change like adding or replacing a column in a table might be a million dollar task.
Inserting data with a new column to SQL database
Here is where NoSQL databases stand out. They can handle these changes excellently.
NoSQL databases emerged to meet the need of evolving data and applications. They were developed to provide a kind of data storage that does not statically define how the data must be modeled and fully support agile development. They are schemaless and are suited for unstructured data.
Inserting data with new field in NoSQL database
Let’s understand a few things about NoSQL databases.
The first thing that comes to our mind when we hear NoSQL is that it is not SQL. Some say the term “NoSQL” stands for “non SQL” while others say it as “not only SQL” to emphasize that they may support SQL-like query languages. Either way, most agree that NoSQL databases provide a mechanism for storage and retrieval of data that is modeled in means other than tabular relations used in relational databases. These databases do not conform to the rigid row-column-table schema and are well suited for unstructured data. You can define a schema and later change it easily according to your project needs.
Distributed data across several servers rather than having a single machine with larger size limits network downtime and single point of failure in NoSQL databases, making them suitable for use in big data and real time applications.
Among various NoSQL databases, MongoDB is consistently ranked as the world’s most popular NoSQL database according to DB-engines. | https://medium.com/@aayesha.shrestha.5688/introduction-to-nosql-database-and-mongodb-a759d0da44f7 | ['Aayesha Shrestha'] | 2020-10-19 07:00:03.354000+00:00 | ['Mongodb', 'NoSQL', 'Database'] |
Not The Brown Girl With The Red Dot | Fifteen years ago, I wrote an essay titled “The girl with the red dot” that was accepted by alternet.org for publication on their website. Through my writing, I was trying to explore my motives for wearing a bright red bindi during my years as a Ph.D. student in Baltimore.
Having grown up in Bombay in a traditional family that valued education, I had been sent to a convent school, a decision taken by my mother, which her mother did not approve of, for the simple reason that school rules forbade me from wearing a bindi.
My orthodox grandmother had strong opinions on a variety of subjects, most of which didn’t agree with my cosmopolitan outlook and free thinking. Not having to wear a bindi to school didn’t bother me one bit, it was actually a relief since it meant one less thing to do on busy school days. I do remember being perversely pleased that my bare forehead vexed my grandmother, since we constantly locked horns on most subjects.
Given my ambivalence about it, why then did I choose to earn the title of “the girl with the red dot” on campus?
Far from home, without any pressure to conform to a particular style of dressing, I had adopted the bindi as part of my new identity in America. Acutely aware of my presence in a new country, amongst people of many races, I noted all the ways in which I was different. Even amidst my Indian peers in the department, I was the youngest married person.
Was it because I was trying to redefine my identity while grappling with all the changes that had transpired in my life in a short time? Did the bindi give me a sense of control over one aspect of my appearance which was different from that of the majority? Did it serve as a link to my former self?
Identity, defined as “exact likeness in nature or qualities”, come from things we inherit within our cells. It shows up in the way we use our bodies, in our speech and mannerisms. The feeling of belonging that arises from similarities that we perceive within our family and the larger community in which we come of age is an intrinsic one and seems pre-ordained, to some extent.
Identity, however, is also defined as the condition of “being oneself and not another”. By moving away from a racially uniform, albeit culturally diverse home environment, I was perhaps trying to recalibrate my place in a new system on many fronts, both within and outside my home.
My bindi was neither a symbol nor a statement. My bindi was as much a part of me as my long black hair that I wore in a single braid, a unique, visible identifier. It was as important to me as the clear contact lens (which I had also taken to wearing in the US) that although invisible to others, was essential for me to function.
The question about the bindi receded to the background when I moved back to India. But the essay gained momentum when it was featured in a college textbook alongside essays by Maya Angelou and Bharti Mukherjee. Recommended across college campuses for freshman composition, a study guide was appended to each essay. Simple but incisive questions prompted the reader to try and understand my background, my motivations and my analysis of the situation. What had come as a natural progression of my thoughts and coalesced into an essay, was a matter of interpretation for students of a different generation, for people who I wouldn’t know but who would try to know me through my words!
Although I had not visualized such an audience when I first wrote the essay, I felt a sense of validation and accomplishment that my words would help connect people by opening a window to understanding. I hoped my message that “even though I look different, my struggle with conformity and identity, is part of the universal human struggle to find our place in this world,’’ would shine through.
**** | https://byrslf.co/not-the-brown-girl-with-the-red-dot-919c7c8b41b9 | ['Ranjani Rao'] | 2019-09-28 17:26:06.002000+00:00 | ['Race', 'Community', 'Identity', 'Culture', 'Beyourself'] |
How to become a content writer in India ? | Content writing is an underrated profession which has many unspoken layers to it. Anybody who has the ability to write can become a freelancer in content writing at least. And like other jobs you can be a content writer in a company if you wish to. This article includes different aspects, perks and upcoming boom of content writing !
Who can become a content writer ?
There is no specific degree required to become a freelancer in content writing but if you want to become content writer in a specific company you have to have the degree specified by the company.
Writing content is not just about giving piece of a language, it requires to understand the audiences, their language and speaking something which can add value to your readers.
What a content writer does ?
Content writer is required in any case where you need to write a piece in some language. Content writer can work for a website, Instagram, LinkedIn, article content or any product review etc. So, content writer has a huge scope to write about different topics.
Content writer can be in different niches like education, technology, website content etc.
How content writers earn money ?
If there is a freelance writer he can be paid according to his agreement with the client mostly the payment is per word.
If someone is content writer in a company, they are paid according their package.
Content boom in India
With the increase in social media usage, online content is increasing in India. So, the demand for content writers is also increasing.
If someone has a good writing skill and the ability to put all their thoughts in less words then content writing is the best thing they can work on ! | https://medium.com/@sandhyagpt45/how-to-become-a-content-writer-in-india-f0fe844d9f33 | ['Sandhya Gupta'] | 2020-12-14 15:39:14.948000+00:00 | ['Content Writer', 'Freelancing Career', 'Content Writer Jobs', 'Content Marketing', 'Content Creation'] |
The substance of Christianity | "If you should say, 'How shall we persecute him?-- Since the root of the matter is found in me.'" Job 19:28.
Some music first..🎺🎸King of Anything🪕🎼🎹🎹🎹🎹 By Sara Bareilles... I dare you not to love this song..🤣😂😂
It is a lovely song...😍😍
Okay, now read this as you listen to that song.....🎼🎼🎼🎼🎼🎼🎼🎼🎼🎼 Who cares if you disagree?🎼🎼🎼🎼 Nice beat...😂😂😂
You will always understand a passage of Scripture better if you carefully attend to its connection.😊
The habit of picking out portions from the Bible and separating them from their context may be carried a great deal too far and in the process the reader may miss the mind of the Spirit and force the words a meaning of his own.😏
If we were to treat people's books as we do God's Book we would probably be judged to be insane.😒
It is indeed, a wonderful book to bear such mangling! Every sensible person will see that it must always be wise to study the context, for it is likely enough to cast a light upon the passage at hand.🤷🏿♂️
Job, in the verse before you, is answering Bildad the Shuhite.👳🏿♂️
Now, this Bildad on two occasions had described Job as a hypocrite and accounted for his dire distress by the fact that, though hypocrites may flourish for a time, they will utterly be destroyed.
In the two bitter speeches which he made, he described the hypocrite under the figure of a tree which is torn by the roots, or dim even down to the root.☺️
In his first address, in the 8th chapter and 16th verse, he says of the hypocrite, "He grows green in the sun, and his branches spread out in his garden. His roots wrap around the rock heap. And look for a place in the stones. If he is destroyed from his place, then it will deny him, saying, 'I have not seen you.'"😅
Explanation: Even the very root of the hypocrite was to be pulled up, so that the garden in which he once flourished should not remember that he had ever been there! 🤣🤣
Pleased with his metaphor, Bildad, in the 18th chapter, uses it again. He says, in the 14th verse of the chapter, "He is uprooted from the shelter of his tent, and they parade him before the king of terrors..his roots are dried out below, and his branch withers above."
This then, was his mode of attacking Job. He set forth, by the emblem of a tree, the state and fate of the false-hearted----they might flourish for a time, but they would wither at last, even down to the very root, dried up and blasted by the justice of God.🙂
The inference he meant to draw was this,----"You, Job are utterly dried up, for all your prosperity is gone and, therefore, you must be a hypocrite!" 😌
The assault was very cruel, but the sufferer successfully parried it.
"No," says Job, "I am no hypocrite. I will prove it by your own words, for the root of the matter is still in me and, therefore, I am no hypocrite. Though I admit that I have lost branches, leaves, fruit and flowers, yet I have not lost the root of the matter, for I hold the essential faith as firmly as ever, and therefore, by your own argument I am no hypocrite.
You should say, "Why do we persecute him, seeing the root of the matter is found in me?"😉
So you see...there is a something in true religion, which is its essential root.🤷🏿♂️ It has fundamental matters which cannot be dispensed with under any circumstances.
There is a something which is vital, without which there is no spiritual life.🙏
Banange, you can be wealthy. You can be the wisest person. You can be the most influential person on earth.....but without this.....hmm....🤦🏻♂️
We are not left in the dark as to what this essential matter is! If we read the verse in its own connection, apart from any extraneous suggestion, there will be no doubt about its meaning.
Start at the 25th verse and read on as Job spoke. He tells us plainly what is "the root of the matter."
Here it is---"For I know that my Redeemer lives, and he shall stand at last on the earth; and after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God. Whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!
😂😂😂
This knowledge of the Redeemer is evidently the root of the matter.
Selah.
Back to "King of Anything" by Sara Bareilles....it is a nice song....🎼🎼🎼🎼🎼🎼🎼
Yours truly,
H.K. 🇳🇱
Recommends "King of Anything," by Sara Bareilles.😂
12/07/20 | https://medium.com/@hkholland/the-substance-of-christianity-5b4c64ddf44d | ['H.K. Holland'] | 2020-12-08 00:25:37.950000+00:00 | ['Bible', 'Religion And Spirituality', 'Religion', 'Christianity', 'Church'] |
DYOR Audit — Value Added Services | DYOR Audit — Not your average audit firm!
It’s been a great journey this far. We’ve been progressing at a steady pace while we set-up our Audit Yield Farm with a flawless user experience that not only offers farmers the $DYOR Token with an actual use case but also a feature rich experience along with the DYOR Audit Team’s dedication at accomplishing feats that one would never expect from an audit firm!
Presenting DYOR Audit — Value Added Services
Thanks to our determined focus on bringing in legitimacy into the Crypto & DeFi space, we have been able to amass a decent community as well as building new partnerships that we plan on revealing at an appropriate juncture.
During the course of our development stage, we were approached by other legitimate projects to help them build and deploy various features that they require to scale and achieve targets set in their respective road-maps.
We were delighted to know that the DYOR Audit Team could be of great relevance in establishing a variety of services all under one roof!
Our list of Value Added Services include:
Smart Contract Creation & Deployment — We create Smart Contracts for any type of DApp or Custom Function that you may require. From DEXes (Decentralized Exchanges), NFTs, to games, token creation, pre-sales and deployment of Smart Contracts, you name it. We’ve got you covered. DEX Design & Development — Building DEXes (Decentralized Exchanges) is one of our specialities. After successfully building multiple DEXes in the past and onto our very own Audit Yield Farm, we’re bringing that experience to you to build unique and safe DEXes that stand apart from other copies. UI/UX Architecture & Inception — Our UI/UX designs have been tailor made to each client, promising to make a new experience with every project so that no two projects look the same. Our years of experience in this field sets our work apart from all our competitors such that they won’t be able to emulate our style and flair. Custom Blockchain Solutions — With our extensive knowledge and experience in the Blockchain industry, we can build any project onto any chain you like or even Multi-Chain deployments to target a larger audience to help scale as per your requirements. Audits & Reviews — Our mission is to clean up the Decentralized space from scammers and one way we can contribute is by doing top notch Audits and reviews that will not allow any bad code or exploits to scam new users. Any websites or smart contracts that have been audited by us will not be cleared unless they are 100% clean and genuine.
Require our services? E-mail us today at [email protected]
Now that you know we aren’t just your average audit firm, feel free to get in touch with us over e-mail at [email protected] or contact us in our Telegram Group — https://t.me/DYORauditGroup to know more! | https://medium.com/@dyoraudit/dyor-audit-value-added-services-5225ef2ed18e | ['Dyor Audit'] | 2021-08-25 17:41:33.681000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'UI Design', 'Smart Contracts', 'Decentralized Exchange', 'Ui Ux Design'] |
Announcement: Relaunch of Private Sale Round | Hey everyone, we’d like to announce that we are relaunching our Private Sale round for our project. After much deliberation, we felt that this would be in the best interest of our project and investors as we go forward. There are some changes to take note in light of this new and exciting news:
The Private Sale will start on May 21st and run until a Hardcap of 15 million MVU tokens. The Public Sale has thus been been moved to September 10th, 2018 and will run until October 22nd, 2018. There will be 45 million tokens allocated for the Public Sale. The pricing structure and official start time can be found in our updated Whitepaper found (HERE). MeVu will hold back a total of 44 million tokens at the end of the sale. Of the 44 million, 3.6 million will be reserved for referral and ranking rewards, 2 million will be reserved for bounties, an additional 6 million will be reserved for the advisory team, 2 million allocated for the founding team subject to an 18-month vesting schedule. 4.6 million will go to a user adoption fund, 13 million will be reserved for partnerships and 13 million will go to the treasury. There will be a special campaign associated with the FIFA World Cup. Users who participate in our Beta and correctly predict the World Cup game will be rewarded MVU tokens.
All in all, we couldn’t be more grateful to our community for their understanding and support as we continue to work to make MeVu the absolute best it can be. Stay tuned for more updated as we move along and be sure to follow us on all our social media accounts: | https://medium.com/mevu/announcement-relaunch-of-private-sale-round-ca2d9fa1c27 | [] | 2018-05-17 23:43:25.992000+00:00 | ['Decentralization', 'Sports', 'Blockchain', 'Ethereum', 'Betting Tips'] |
Walmart-Sales Forecasting. Sales are the lifeblood of a business… | Sales are the lifeblood of business. With an accurate sales forecast in hand, one can plan for the future wisely. If the sales forecast predicts that during March, one could make 30 percent of one’s entire yearly sales, then production needs to be ramped up in September itself! Perhaps a smarter company would also invest in more seasonal salespeople.
In this specific project, Walmart is seeking help from the Kaggle community to better forecast sales for 45 stores located across the USA. Each store is home to several departments, and this challenge requires us to project the sales for each department in each store, for all 45 stores. To add to the challenge, selected holiday markdown events are included in the dataset which is known to affect sales.
1) Dataset Understanding
We are provided with three tables namely: Sales, Features, and Stores.
Sales:
Store — the store number
Dept — the department number
Date — the week
Weekly_Sales — sales for the given department in the given store
IsHoliday — whether the week is a special holiday week
Sales.csv
Features:
Store — the store number
Date — the week
Temperature — the average temperature in the region
Fuel_Price — the cost of fuel in the region
MarkDown1–5 — anonymized data related to promotional markdowns that Walmart is running. MarkDown data is only available after Nov 2011 and is not available for all stores all the time. Any missing value is marked with an NA.
CPI — the consumer price index
Unemployment — the unemployment rate
IsHoliday — whether the week is a special holiday week
Features.csv
Stores :
Store — the store number
Type — three types of stores ‘A’, ‘B’ or ‘C’
Size — the size of a store
Stores.csv
2) Data Cleaning
In time-independent data (non-time-series), a common practice is to fill the gaps with the mean or median value of the field. However, this is not applicable to time series. For example, we expect the temperature value of January to be very far from its value in July. Imputing the missing temperature values in July using the mean or median value in January doesn’t seem to be a wise option. Following Time-Series specific methods do work well but have their caveats:
Last observation carried forward (LOCF)/Next observation carried backward (NOCB) — These methods perform poorly when data has a visible trend
— These methods perform poorly when data has a visible trend Linear interpolation/Spline interpolation — These methods work well for data with a trend, but do not work well when there is a presence of strong seasonality.
— These methods work well for data with a trend, but do not work well when there is a presence of strong seasonality. Seasonal Adjustment + Linear Interpolation — This method works well for data with both trend and seasonality
CPI & Unemployment values are available for dates between 2/5/2010 and 4/26/2013 but are missing between dates 5/3/2013 and 7/26/2013. We can also observe an upward trend in CPI, a downward trend in Unemployment. Missing values for both these features can be imputed using methods such as rolling average, interpolation techniques (using interpolate method in python) & ARIMA. For our analysis, we use rolling average to impute missing values (ARIMA code for imputation attached for reference).
3) Feature Engineering
Feature engineering, also known as feature creation, is the process of constructing new features from existing data to train a machine learning model. This step can be more important than the actual model fitting step because a machine learning algorithm only learns from the data we give it and creating features that are relevant to a task is absolutely crucial.
Do we need to scale features? In general, algorithms that exploit distances between data samples, such as k-NN and SVM, are sensitive to feature scaling. Graphical-model based classifiers, such as Fisher LDA or Naive Bayes, as well as Decision trees and Tree-based ensemble methods (RF, XGB) are invariant to feature scaling. Random Forest/Boosted trees use the Information gain/Gini coefficient inherently which will not be affected by scaling. In the model fitting phase, which we will explore in the further sections, we fit tree-based models and hence normalizing/scaling features is not required.
In general, algorithms that exploit distances between data samples, such as k-NN and SVM, are sensitive to feature scaling. Graphical-model based classifiers, such as Fisher LDA or Naive Bayes, as well as Decision trees and Tree-based ensemble methods (RF, XGB) are invariant to feature scaling. Random Forest/Boosted trees use the Information gain/Gini coefficient inherently which will not be affected by scaling. In the model fitting phase, which we will explore in the further sections, we fit tree-based models and hence normalizing/scaling features is not required. Do we need to address the issue of multicollinearity? Multicollinearity occurs when independent variables in a regression model are correlated. Multicollinearity between quantitative (continuous) variables can be detected by reviewing scatterplot, correlation matrix (heatmap), Variance Inflation Factor (VIF). Categorical features like sex (male or female), season (summer, winter, spring, fall), are represented by dummy variables — variables containing values such as 1 or 0 representing the presence or absence of the categorical value. By including the dummy variables in a regression model, one should be careful of the Dummy Variable Trap. The Dummy Variable trap is a scenario in which independent variables are multicollinear. In order to avoid the dummy variable trap, we always declare one less dummy variable (n-1) than the categorical values (n). In the above case, we have four categorical values (summer, winter, spring, fall). So we can have only 3 Dummy variables instead of 4.
3.1) Categorical Encodings
One hot encode “Type” categorical feature since it contains more than 2 levels (A/B/C)
Label encode the “IsHoliday” categorical feature since it contains just 2 levels (True/False)
Create new features namely — “IsSuperbowl”, “IsLaborday”, “IsThanksgiving”, “IsChristmas” to identify the type of holiday
3.2) Datetime Features
Date fields are rich sources of information that can be used with machine learning models. However, these date-time variables do require some feature engineering to convert them into numerical data. We extract new features from “Date” feature such as year, month, week of the year, week of the month, day, etc
3.3) Featuretools
Typically data scientists spend the majority of their time finding features to improve the accuracy of their models. Undoubtedly this is a tedious manual process and requires a lot of intuition, data manipulation and extensive knowledge of the domain itself. Automated feature engineering aims to help the data scientist by automatically creating features out of a dataset from which the best can be selected and used for training. Featuretools is a framework that automatically creates features from temporal and relational datasets.
3.4) Features from sales value
Lag features can be extremely beneficial for time series forecasting. Creating lag features is a classical way of transforming time series forecasting problems into supervised learning problems. A key function to help create lagged features from time-series data is Pandas shift(). Here we create a few lagged features:
· Previous year sales for each store+dept combo for the current week i.e. lag of 52 weeks
· The exponentially weighted mean value of previous year sales for each store+dept combo for the current week
Aggregated monthly sales values for each store+dept combo
4) Supervised Learning model
If we optimize the model for training data, then our model will score very well on the training set but will not be able to generalize to new data, such as in a test set. When a model performs highly on the training set but poorly on the test set, this is known as overfitting, or essentially creating a model that knows the training set very well but cannot be applied to new problems, essentially reducing its flexibility. An overfit model may look impressive on the training set but will be useless in a real application. Therefore, we tune hyperparameters while performing cross-validation.
Using Scikit-Learn’s RandomizedSearchCV method, we can define a grid of hyperparameter ranges and randomly sample from the grid, performing K-Fold CV with each combination of values. The most important arguments in RandomizedSearchCV are n_iter, which controls the number of different combinations to try and cv, which is the number of folds to use for cross-validation (we use 10 and 5 respectively). Increasing n_iter will cover a wider search space, whereas increasing cv folds reduce the chances of overfitting, but raising either one of them will increase run time.
Machine learning is a field of trade-offs, and model performance vs computational fidelity is the most fundamental one.
4.1) By Store & Department combination
My approach involved fitting one model per store-department combination (so about 3300 simple models). The following store-department combos are present in the test set but not in the train set: 5–99, 9–99, 10–99, 18–43, 24–43, 25–99, 34–39, 36–30, 37–29, 42–30, 45–39
For any newcomers to programming, object-oriented programming allows us to write code in a slightly different way than we would write if we didn’t have object-oriented programming. The syntax for object-oriented programming or to define a class in Python is to type out a keyword class, and then the name of your class. Inside the class, you can define a special function called the __init__ (constructor). So this function name is very important, and it has two underscores at the start and two at the end. There’s one more thing you can do which is going to simplify your life greatly, and that is the main point of object-oriented programming, which is to define methods (functions defined inside of a class) inside the class. Methods will take self as a parameter. When you call a class, an object is created and python will automatically call the init method for you. Then whenever you want to call other methods, all you have to do is type out the “object_name.method_name”.
In the code below, we create a class TrainByStoreDeptCombo, that allows one to define methods (such as __init__, train_predict). This cuts out redundancy as we won’t need to write the same method ten times if we wanted to invoke ten different regressors. For hyperparameters associated with each algorithm, refer to the documentation on the official Sklearn website, where one can find an entire host of other useful parameters that one can play around with.
5) Time Series Modeling
In total there are ~3300 store department combinations.
The training data has gaps in dates. For any store department combinations that have missing dates, I simply used 0 for weekly sales and make sure that any store department combinations has 143 weekly dates.
5.1) Prophet
Create a holidays dataframe with two columns (holiday and ds) and a row for each occurrence of the holiday. It must include all occurrences of the holiday, both in the past (back as far as the historical data go) and in the future (out as far as the forecast is being made).
5.2) ARIMA
6) Stacking models
After the feature engineering and modeling stages, we finally arrive at a crucial point of this article: how to champion any Kaggle competition.
(Hint: It involves the word “averaging”)
As you can see, we have averaged predictions from two models: RF and Prophet. Of course, we could easily add more models into the mix.
7) Conclusion
Several of these tidbits that I have learned so far have helped me gain a wealth of knowledge, especially related to improving the quality of forecasts and demonstrating how feature engineering can potentially lead to improved estimates.
Uploading the average sales predictions from Random Forest and Prophet in Kaggle, I achieved a WMAE score of 2543 with a rank of 12!! Using a hybrid approach of statistical time-series analysis and machine learning methods resulted in a more robust model. | https://medium.com/@abhishek.palle123/walmart-store-sales-forecasting-d15a205e3348 | [] | 2020-03-04 07:43:56.171000+00:00 | ['Time Series Forecasting', 'Imputation', 'Data Science', 'Machine Learning', 'Prophet'] |
Handling Static and Dynamic Test Objects | Introduction
Test Objects are one of the most crucial parts of building a successful automation project. Some of them are static (do not change at all) and some of them are dynamic (they are dependent on some dynamically changing parameters). This tutorial shows you different approaches for handling different types of test objects.
Requirements
You should be able to write your tests in the Script view. You should also know the basics of Java/Groovy.
Static objects
Static objects are very easy to handle. Just go to Object Repository, choose New Test Object and use your favorite selector (I prefer XPath, so all my examples will be for XPaths, but the approach is the same also for other selectors). Save your element and use Katalon static built-in method findTestElement(String pathInRepository) to get your Test Object.
Dynamic objects
Dynamic objects are a bit trickier to deal with than static objects, but it is not so difficult as it may look like. There is a Katalon way to handle parameterized objects, but I want to introduce other possible approaches.
Define your test object directly in a test case
The easiest way to define a test object. See a sample code below:
import com.kms.katalon.core.testobject.ConditionType
import com.kms.katalon.core.testobject.TestObject
import com.kms.katalon.core.webui.keyword.WebUiBuiltInKeywords as WebUI String dynamicId = ‘Katalon123’
String xpath = ‘//div[@id=”’ + dynamicId + ‘“]’
TestObject to = new TestObject(“objectName”)
to.addProperty(“xpath”, ConditionType.EQUALS, xpath)
WebUI.click(to)
Without counting the import statements, the first two lines are simple — create a String variable dynamicId and put it into another String — xpath. The magic is happening on the next two lines. You create a new instance of TestObject (let’s call it to). Then, you assign your selector to this new test object using method addProperty(String selectorType, ConditionType type, String selectorValue). Finally, you use the test object directly in the default Katalon keywords. For details on ConditionType, please refer to API documentation.
Easy, isn’t it? Well, yes, but there are also cons of this solution. It is hardly maintainable, especially when your XPath changes often and when you create the same test object in multiple test cases.
Create a separate keyword for dynamic selectors
A better way to handle dynamic selectors is to extract them into separate keywords. You can have several keywords in your test project, one for a single page or so. It is up to you.
I will show a simple keyword holding dynamic selectors.
package mypackage public class MySelectors {
public static final String dynamicIdPath = ‘//div[@id=”%s”]’ }
As you can see, there is the same path as in previous example, but there is a small difference. Instead of using a variable, I use %s wildcard for the String.format() method. Let’s update our original test case accordingly.
import com.kms.katalon.core.testobject.ConditionType
import com.kms.katalon.core.testobject.TestObject
import com.kms.katalon.core.webui.keyword.WebUiBuiltInKeywords as WebUI import mypackage.MySelectors String dynamicId = ‘Katalon123’
String xpath = String.format(MySelectors.dynamicIdPath, dynamicId)
TestObject to = new TestObject(“objectName”)
to.addProperty(“xpath”, ConditionType.EQUALS, xpath)
WebUI.click(to)
As you can see, the only change is on the line defining xpath. If you are not familiar with String.format(), please refer to Java documentation.
Alternatively, you can use your own wildcard in the selector value. Then, use String.replace() rather than String.format().
public static final String dynamicIdPath = ‘//div[@id=”<<dynamicId>>”]’
// a line in test case:
String xpath = MySelectors.dynamicIdPath.replace(“<<dynamicId>>”, dynamicId)
The advantage of storing dynamic selectors in separate keywords is that you keep all selectors in one place. When a selector changes, you change only one place instead of all tests where you use it.
Create a method which returns a dynamic test object
Now we extend the MySelectors keyword by adding a new method to return TestObject. This will eliminate a few lines of code in your test case, making it more maintainable.
package mypackage import com.kms.katalon.core.testobject.ConditionType
import com.kms.katalon.core.testobject.TestObject public class MySelectors {
public static final String dynamicIdPath = ‘//div[@id=”%s”]’ public static TestObject getMyTestObject(String selectorType, String selectorValue) {
TestObject to = new TestObject()
to.addProperty(selectorType, ConditionType.EQUALS, selectorValue)
return to
}
}
And our test case will look like this:
import com.kms.katalon.core.testobject.ConditionType
import com.kms.katalon.core.testobject.TestObject
import com.kms.katalon.core.webui.keyword.WebUiBuiltInKeywords as WebUI import mypackage.MySelectors String dynamicId = ‘Katalon123’
String xpath = String.format(MySelectors.dynamicIdPath, dynamicId)
WebUI.click(MySelectors.getMyTestObject(“xpath”, xpath))
As our new method returns TestObject, we can call it directly using the default Katalon keywords. In the test case, you do not have to worry about creating a new instance of TestObject. You can customize it however you want, you can add more parameters into this method (i.e. ConditionType), or simplify it to pass only a TestObjectProperty instance.
Conclusion
The main point of this tutorial is that there are several different approaches to deal with dynamic selectors. This tutorial presents a few examples (more or less difficult) which can help you with this topic. I am 100% sure that there are even more effective ways how to do it, I will be glad if you share your own approach.
For further reference, refer to Top 10 API Testing Tools in 2020 or Best Automation Testing Tools 2020 Review.
About the author
Marek Melocik is currently working as Test Automation Engineer in Brno, Czech Republic. He has been working in QA industry since 2014.
Meet Marek at www.linkedin.com/in/marek-melocik | https://medium.com/katalon-studio/handling-static-and-dynamic-test-objects-f49d04667e9d | ['Katalon Studio'] | 2020-07-01 07:10:21.389000+00:00 | ['Continuous Integration', 'Software Development', 'Testing', 'Programming', 'Web Development'] |
10 Craziest Historical Facts That You Never Knew | Daily Pakistan News
The stuff that you learn from school are quiet common and everyone knows that, but history is different from that typical information.
The facts of history that many people don’t know the specific knowledge.
For example: did you know that Hitler helped design a vehicle that we still drive today?
History makes you wonder that how many things you know about the world.
So, prepare yourself to be amused & amazed with these top 10 craziest history facts that you don’t know now.
No # 1: Alexander the Great was buried alive- accidentally
Alexander the Great
At age 32 when he died, Alexander the Great had conquered and created the largest land-based empire the world has ever seen. It stretched from the Balkans to Pakistan.
In 323 BC, Alexander fell ill and, after 12 days of excruciating pain, he seemingly passed away.
However, his corpse didn’t show any signs of rot or decomposition for a whole six days.
Modern-day scientists believe Alexander suffered from the neurological disorder Guillain-Barré Syndrome.
They believe that when he “died” he was actually just paralyzed and mentally aware. Basically, he was horrifically buried alive!
NO # 2: The world’s most successful pirate in history was a lady.
The Pirate Queen of the East
Named Ching Shih, she was a prostitute in China. This was until the Commander of the Red Flag Fleet bought and married her.
But rather than just viewing her as a wife, her husband considered her his equal and she became an active pirate commander in the fleet.
Ching Shih soon earned the respect of her fellow pirates. So much so that after her husband’s death she became the captain of the fleet.
Under Shih’s leadership, the Red Flag Fleet consisted of over 300 warships, with a possible 1,200 more support ships. She even had a possible 40,000–80,000 men, women and children.
They terrorized the waters around China. The Red Flag Fleet were such a fearsome band of raiders, that the Chinese government eventually pardoned Ching Shih and her entire fleet — just to get them off the high seas!
NO #3 : Julius Caesar was stabbed 23 times.
Julius Caesar is probably the most iconic name associated with the Romans. Likewise, his assassination and death are also highly notorious.
Due to his coup d’état of the Roman Republic and his proclamation of himself as Dictator for Life, along with his radical political views, a group of his fellow Roman senators led by his best friend Brutus assassinated him on March 15th, 44 BC.
During the assassination, Caesar was stabbed at least 23 times, before finally succumbing to his wounds.
He passed away with fabled words to his former best friend Brutus, allegedly being “you too, sweet child?”
NO # 4 : The Colosseum was originally clad entirely in marble
Colosseum
It was named the Colosseum because it was next to a statue called the Colossus.The stone exterior appears to be covered in pockmarks all across its surface.
Whilst you might assume this is just degradation of the material due to its age, it is actually because it was originally clad almost entirely in marble.
The reason for the pockmarks is, after the fall of Rome, the city was looted and pillaged by the Goths. Yes that’s right, the Goths!
They took all of the marble from the Colosseum, and stripped it (mostly) down to its bare stone setting.
The holes in the stone are from where the iron clamps and poles attaching the marble cladding to it have been ripped out.
NO # 5 : Rasputin survived being poisoned and being shot.
RASPUTIN
Grigori Rasputin was a Russian mystic and supposed holy man. He became friends with the last Russian Tsar and Tsarina.
Over time, he came to influence the Russian royals much to the displeasure of many members of the Russian nobility.
This, combined with his drunkenness and lechery, led to several Russian nobles forming a plot to assassinate the man.
They invited him over to one of their houses, gave him cakes and wine laced with cyanide all to no effect, and then shot him in the chest.
To their horror, Rasputin started to cough and they realized he was still alive!
How did they fix the problem? The nobles shot Rasputin two more times — once in the head. Finally they threw his body into the frozen Malaya Nevka River.
N0 # 6 : The Vikings were the first people to discover America.
Vikings
Half a millennium before Christopher Columbus “discovered” America, Viking chief Leif Eriksson of Greenland landed on the Island of Newfoundland in the year 1,000 BC.
The Vikings under Leif Eriksson settled Newfoundland as well as discovering and settling Labrador further north in Canada.
You may also like these history facts about The Vikings.
NO # 7 : In Ancient Asia, death by elephant was a popular form of execution.
As elephants are very intelligent and easy to train, it proved easy enough to train them as executioners and torturers.
They could be taught to slowly break bones, crush skulls, twist off limbs, or even execute people using large blades fitted to their tusks.
In some parts of Asia this method of execution was still popular up to the late 19th century.
NO # 8 : When Marcus Crassus died, molten gold was poured down his throat.
Marcus Licinius Crassus was known as the wealthiest man in Rome during his life.
The son of a Consul of Rome, Crassus fought in Sulla’s Civil War, played a key part in defeating Spartacus and ending the Third Servile War, and formed the first Triumvirate with Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great.
A shrewd man, throughout all he did Crassus accumulated more and more wealth — and it was his thirst for wealth that would eventually lead to his downfall.
Leading his troops in an ill-fated conquest of Parthia (modern-day Iran), Crassus and his forces were brutalized and bested by the Parthians time and time again.
After an unsuccessful parley for peace with the Parthian leaders, Crassus was killed. The Parthians poured molten gold down his throat, as a symbol of his thirst for wealth.
Some even say that his gilded head and hands were sent to the Parthian King to keep as trophies of his victory against Crassus and Rome.
NO # 9 : Cleopatra’s reign was closer to the moon landings than the Great Pyramid being built.
Cleopatra
This is one of those facts that gives you some impression of just how expansive the life of the Egyptian Empire truly was.
Cleopatra reigned from 51 BC to 30 BC, roughly 2,500 years after the Great Pyramid of Giza was built (between roughly 2580 BC — 2560 BC), and roughly 2,000 years before the first lunar landings in 1969.
NO # 10 : During World War I, the French built a “fake Paris”.
Fake Paris in WW I
Complete with a replica Champs-Elysées and Gard Du Nord, this “fake Paris” was built by the French towards the end of WWI. It was built as a means of throwing off German bomber and fighter pilots flying over French skies.
It also even had a fake railway that lit up at certain points to provide the illusion from above of a train moving along the tracks! | https://medium.com/@pakistannews231/10-craziest-historical-facts-that-you-never-knew-b67df11a4ba5 | ['Daily Pakistan News'] | 2020-04-15 22:13:23.185000+00:00 | ['History', 'Mindfulness', 'Heroes', 'Facts', 'World'] |
KyberSwap integrates with leading token trading analytics platform DEXTools | KyberSwap integrates with leading token trading analytics platform DEXTools
DEXTools: Ultimate Hub and Defi App For DEX trading
DEXTools provides real-time analysis for crypto assets trading on decentralized exchanges to millions of users. It is a must-use tool for any trader swapping tokens on-chain. DEXTools enables users to monitor big spreads on pool pairs, anticipate market movements by following whale wallets, and perform many other useful trading functions; thereby allowing users to anticipate and develop better trading strategies.
KyberSwap’s Integration with DEXTools
Both DEXTools and Kyber Network understand the importance of quality trading and analytics infrastructure in the DeFi space; and both have continued to contribute to the on-chain infrastructure in impactful ways, most recently with the launch of KyberSwap last week. With this in mind, Kyber looks forward to a long term cooperation with DEXTools to continue to support and develop the on-chain infrastructure and tools that provide the best trading solutions for users.
With this integration, KyberSwap users will now have access to comprehensive live charts of all popular trading pairs; and KyberSwap itself gains more exposure to DEXTools’ enormous user base of seasoned traders.
To mark the occasion, both teams seeded a DEXT-KNC pool to support DEXT and KNC token trades on Binance Smart Chain (BSC). Users who add liquidity to this pool can earn proportional fees on pool trades. With KyberSwap’s capital efficiency, this new pool addition also means that DEXT traders can swap DEXT with lower slippage and better rates.
KyberSwap was selected to be part of the DEXTools ecosystem given its alignment on multi-chain strategy, the reliability of its technology, and its convenience as a go-to place for token traders to experience the best rates. KyberSwap also has a Dynamic Trading Routing feature that allows users to source liquidity across different decentralized exchanges to help achieve the best prices for any token swap, on any supported network.
Other advantages of KyberSwap include:
Amplified Liquidity Pools to achieve high capital efficiency; where less tokens are required to achieve better liquidity and rates compared to standard AMMs
Dynamic Fees that react to market conditions and optimize returns for LPs
Better Reliability & Security as audited by Chain Security and insured up to $20M by Unslashed Finance
KyberSwap: Key Building Block for DeFi
For any developers that want to integrate KyberSwap into their own DeFi Dapps, whether for enhanced decentralized trading, liquidity provision or yield farming, check out our KyberSwap documentation here.
Learn more about DEXTools and follow their channels for the latest updates:
Website | Twitter | Telegram | Telegram Announcements | Discord | Medium | Youtube | https://blog.kyber.network/kyberswap-integrates-with-leading-token-trading-analytics-platform-dextools-213a2d2f569d | ['Kyber Network'] | 2021-12-28 04:51:12.936000+00:00 | ['English', 'Blockchain', 'Featured'] |
9 Most Popular New Year’s Resolutions | 9 Most Popular New Year’s Resolutions
Photo by Lidya Nada on Unsplash
As the new year 2021 is almost here, take a look at some of the most common New Year’s resolutions.
The start of a new year allows you to look back on the past year and think about the life changes you would like to make. This period of reflection helps you to reassess how you spend your time and the choices you make. A better sense of clarity of our goals will help you successfully plan for the future. So yes, New Year’s resolutions are a way to help you set goals, but how often do you achieve them?
Here are the top 15 New Year’s resolutions and some tips for actually achieving them.
Get in shape and lose weight
The most common resolution has to do with getting in shape, and lose weight. If you’re trying to hit the gym to get your health up or tone your physique, you can avoid slacking off by enlisting a friend, or a family member to exercise with you. Fitness technology can help you stay on track. Trackers can monitor so many aspects of your health from sleep to steps, and so many others, and they do not need to be expensive these days. All of the information can help you be more aware and get closer to your fitness and health goals.
Photo by Derek Owens on Unsplash
Avoid spending to much time online comparing your journey with others. We are all unique individuals, so our journeys are as well. We know that the key to weight loss lies in diet and exercise, we need to keep positive about it, and reduce the negativity , and negative influences surrounding us.The truth is exercise only accounts for a small portion of daily calorie burn. The main thing: If you want to lose weight, focus on cutting calories, eating healthy, and keep a life long healthy life stile, not a diet every other month. Small steps, lead to massive results.
Save more, spend less, enjoy it more
After the holidays, you’re probably looking to spend less to save more, or even before(so you get more gifts money). To get your finances in order, consider setting a budget and then looking for ways to cut costs or make some extra money. Buy and sell clothes at consignment stores, consider refurbished electronics, buy produce when it’s on sale, and bundle your car, home, and life insurance. I find it very motivating watching some budget planning gurus online for tips and tricks.
Photo by Micheile Henderson on Unsplash
Your unhealthy habits may be costing you allot. There are some gurus out there that can teach you how to save money a lot quicker then you can imagine , from your dream vacation, to even putting a deposit down for a house. Sky is the limit.
Spend more time with loved ones
Spending time with loved ones is great for your mental health and well-being, that is one of the important lessons 2020 has given us. Set aside time each week to either call or meet up with a friend or family member, even if it is online using zoom or any other app. Take turns hosting dinner, or just get together for a walk. I’ve made more meals online with friends this year then at any other time in my life. Human connection is important for mental health, for happiness, or any other name you want to call it.
Get organized
Getting organized is a noble goal, do a hard one. You’re going to need some strategies to follow through on this one. It is fully doable, and again so many gurus that you can learn from. Take your time, and implement slow new changes to your habits every week, this way you can make sure you will end up successful in your journey of becoming more organized.
Travel more
Many of the most successful resolutions require planning and finding ways to stick to your goals. So if you want to travel more in 202, be specific about where you want to go, when you want to go there, and what you’d like to do when you get there. Then start researching to find out what the restrictions are, if you need a visa, what it’s going to cost, what you’ll need to bring, and how much time you’ll want to spend.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
From there, you can start creating a budget, start a travel fund. Letting others in on your plans will help keep you accountable, making make a goal board that you hang in your kitchen, bedroom, or office to entice you on keeping up.
Eat at home more
If you’re hooked on home delivery /takeout, it’s probably taking a toll on your budget and your health. Cooking at home is cheaper and better for your health than ordering in or then eating out since you’re in charge of the ingredients.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
Then, stock your kitchen with the right tools and have some go-to weeknight recipes, this way you can work on your organization skills by preparing a meal plan every week, and treat yourself with an increased budget at the end of the month, or of every week depending how you keep it in check. Make it fun, involve everyone in your house, this way it will be more then a task. It will be a pleasure. You can even try new recipes you always wanted to, who knows, maybe you will end up a master chef.
Quit smoking
No matter how many times we are told our health is at risk from this nasty habit, we will not quit until we find a good motivation for it. So look for that one reason that will make you quit. For my husband it was me having a breakdown one night thinking he is more at risk during this pandemic, and that I might loose home, and I might be left alone with our little one. The thought of not being there to see our little girl grow up, has been the one motivation he needed. Next step will be the ‘’how??’’. That is another easy one, not everyone can do it could turkey, so you can go to your health care provider for help and support. They will have many, many ways to help you.
Photo by Andres Siimon on Unsplash
And the last step will be : Talk with the group of people that surround you that smoke as well, and tell them about your goal.
Reduce stress
I now what you are thinking,’’ You must be joking’’.
If you’re resolving to reduce your stress in the New Year, you might try this resolution: priorities yourself. Setting aside a few minutes a day to meditate, or journal, you can make real progress by doing this. It will make you see life a bit different, and it will help you take a step back from the negative and stressful events and people in your life.
Get more sleep
Good sleep is essential to overall health, so resolving to sleep better is wise. First, try to go to bed at the same time every night, so your body will get used to the routine and naturally start to wind down. Avoid caffeinated drinks after midday, and have your last alcoholic drink at least two to three hours before your bedtime. Make your bedroom a sleep haven, with comfortable bedding, a soothing color scheme, and limited distractions, such as screens, or phones.
Photo by Jonathan Fink on Unsplash
Create your end of the day winding down routine, that you will use every night to get ready for bed.
If you read all this list, you might have noticed how most of them are connected with one another. The goal is to improve your life, and end up with a happier, healthier you.
Good luck to all of us. | https://medium.com/@georgygeorgiana/9-most-popular-new-years-resolutions-e8d620411ca3 | ['The Writing Bug'] | 2020-12-24 23:37:41.400000+00:00 | ['New Years Resolutions', 'Positive New Year Goals', 'Popular New Years Goals', 'How To Keep New Goals', 'New Years Goals'] |
Ansible: Setting up Hadoop cluster using ansible playbook | Introduction:
Ever thought setting-up Hadoop cluster will be so simple? Like you just need to run an ansible play-book, that’s it!. Yes, today we are going to learn how we right from installation and configuring hdfs-site.xml and core-site.xml file in both master and slave nodes, create hadoop cluster within a few seconds of time.
So lets get started….!
Setting-up inventory file: Add IP addresses of Master node and slave node:
Below is the image where we have created .txt file in which host-name [Master] and [Slave] is created.
Now in this file we need to add ip address, username of system where you are configuring master node and password of that system and as we are configuring a linux system, connection protocol used is ssh.
To get more details about how we can configure ansible, read my blog, Ansible: Configuring httpd inside docker container. In this blog I have explained the pre-requisites.
Let us check whether JDK and Hadoop are present on the manage nodes or not:
Now let us design ansible playbook:
Master code: Explanation..
Slave Node : Explanation…
***Note that above two pictures are just for easy illustration, both master and slave are included in one single play book***
Now let us run the playbook, and see what happens….
Command: ansible-playbook hadoop.yml
Here, the master has configured successfully…..
Here the code execution has completed successfully….!
Now let us check JDK and Hadoop are installed or not:
As you can see both JDK and Hadoop has installed successfully…!
Now let us check whether Master node/Name node and Slave node/ Data node has started or not:
First we will check whether Master node/Name node has started or not:
Lets check Data node as well:
Great..! So now next step is to check connection:
So here we have successfully connected Data node with Name node..!
Thank-you..! | https://medium.com/@oswalyashraj07/ansible-setting-up-hadoop-cluster-using-ansible-playbook-7617a18b57be | ['Yashraj Oswal'] | 2020-12-16 16:45:53.247000+00:00 | ['Vimal Daga', 'Ansible', 'Arthbylw', 'Hadoop Cluster', 'Righteducation'] |
Death or Public Speaking? | “There are only two types of speakers in the world. 1. The nervous and 2. Liars.”
-Mark Twain
Asked to rank their fears over different activities, people will almost always place the fear of public speaking above the fear of death.
Think about that.
Most people would LITERALLY prefer death over speaking in public.
Next to speaking in public, I would personally place writing for public consumption.
With thirty years of teaching, I did eventually, sort of, kind of, mostly, controlled my fear of public speaking. With difficulty. I tremble the first time in front of a class. The fear disappears quickly but it’s still there at the start. I am still reluctant to speak at full staff meetings. Faculty level is fine but then you are talking 15 at faculty and 80 at full staff meetings. I have conducted whole school assemblies plus formal assemblies such as graduation.
But the fear at the beginning is always there.
Until this year I have never written for public consumption. I am, of course, excluding Facebook and a couple of letters to the editor of the newspaper.
I am, for your information a Mathematics teacher. Numbers over words. I was never good at writing essays in high school or university.
Reading Medium inspired me to do it. In particular, one individual on Medium and for that I thank her. I have written a couple of pieces, but I have to tell you it still scares me.
The advice is always ‘just write’, ‘Write every day’, Over the long haul I will improve and that is what I believe. So have I been writing everyday? No. Still struggling with my demons. But I will persist. It will happen.
I would like to finish off by saying that the monthly subscription to Medium has been my best expenditure this year. Thank you to every contributor.
Still learning. Keep safe everyone. | https://medium.com/@freddelpin/death-or-public-speaking-44d6ab77ffc0 | ['Fred Del-Pin'] | 2021-12-20 22:40:09.847000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Medium', 'Public Speaking', 'Passive Income', 'Goals'] |
How to estimate data requirements | Traffic Estimates
Hint #3: Build upon established numbers.
When thinking about expected traffic, this is how you should be thinking:
OK, we have 500m users per month — how many is this per day? Of course, it’s not 500M / 30 days. How are these users geographically spaced? Are they all over the world are they all on the same continent? When do they use the app? Are they all using it at the same time, at 5:30 PM when they come from work?
Since we already went to the trouble of figuring out the 1.5 billion image uploads per day — this is the number we should lean on.
For simplicity, let’s say these uploads will be perfectly distributed over the whole day. This gives us:
uploads = (1.5 * e9 images / day) / ( 24h ∗ 60m ∗ 60s )
≅ 17 000 images / s
17K images are uploaded every second, but each of these images is also viewed v times. This is a photo-sharing app, so for every upload, there is going to be v viewings. Let's say that on average every image gets viewed ten times. This means 170 000 requests per second:
requests = 17 000 images / s ∗ 10 req / image
= 170 K req / s
170 K req / s ∗ 1 MB / req = 170 GB / s
This means that our servers need to serve 170 GB/s.
Servers are limited by two things: the number of concurrent connections and the bandwidth.
What’s a reasonable number of concurrent connections for a server? I’ve no idea. It depends at least on the server’s spec and the kind of processing we will be doing for each request. The only way to answer this would be to look at the statistics of some actual servers, of which there seem to be very few on the internet.
How are we supposed to continue with no data from here on? I don’t know. Can one server deliver 1Gb of data per second (that is 8,000 000 Kb/s)? I don’t know. Maybe it is closer to 0.1 Gb/s, maybe it is 0.01 Gb/s.
Everything up to here was speculation, but everything from here on would be pure imagination! I presume there are some specialists somewhere, who deal with these numbers all the time. Better ask them! | https://medium.com/better-programming/how-to-estimate-data-requirements-868ec07db831 | ['Ines Panker'] | 2019-10-21 22:01:45.120000+00:00 | ['Software Development', 'Software Architecture', 'Interview Questions', 'Traffic Estimation'] |
#BUIDLonFANTOM: Fantom Developer Contest Results | The #BUIDLonFANTOM Developer Contest we launched in November of last year has produced some great additions to the Fantom ecosystem, with several of the submissions gaining daily users and becoming integral tools for the community.
We’re thrilled to announce the winners of the development bounties today, and give an overview of the winners’ submissions:
block42 (validator 14) — FantomStaker
FantomStaker was one of the first community tools for the Opera mainnet, initially offering a hub to identify validators by name, logo and contact details; giving delegators the ability to complete due diligence on validators and get in touch before pulling the trigger and staking with them.
Next, the team added metrics related to the FTM reward unlock: percentage of FTM staked, the minimum staked percentage for reward unlock, and the amount of FTM burned to date from the pending rewards of those unstaking early.
Their work inspired various features we’ve since incorporated into our Fantom Vision explorer, so a huge well done and thank you to block42.
Prize: 950,000 FTM
FantomScan is an explorer for those who like as much data as possible. With a tab dedicated to charts that show how delegations, unique wallet addresses and transaction volume have changed over time, it adds value to the ecosystem in a unique way.
As with block42, FantomScan kept building and evolved the product to meet community demand. Many of our token holders enjoy the security of hardware wallets, so we offered a solution to stake FTM via MyEtherWallet that involved some extra steps when the Opera mainnet was first released. While we’ve been working on native ledger support for the FTM token (coming soon!), FantomScan used some clever problem-solving to take advantage of MyEtherWallet’s existing codebase and provide easy point-and-click staking for MEWConnect and Ledger users.
We’re also working with FantomScan to implement additional features to our own tools — stay tuned!
Prize: 950,000 FTM
Matt Prime & Bitcoin Alchemist — Meme of the Day
Meme of the Day in its current form is a fun social platform that allows users to upload, vote & comment on memes. Unlike traditional social platforms, however, it’s possible to verify the first uploader of the meme.
While the current iteration is focused on memes, we can see the general principles being extended to intellectual property of other forms.
Keep on building and we hope to see more from you guys in the future!
Prize: 200,000 FTM
GoFantom (validator 17) — Fantom Rocks
GoFantom started their Opera development journey with SpeedTX — a demo to show your friends the power of Fantom technology, by propagating a transaction and seeing it confirmed on-chain in real-time.
They then stepped it up a gear and increased the number of transactions propagated at once with Supercharge (20 tx’s per click), which Opera is able to handle with no problem at all!
After working together with the GoFantom team to co-ordinate Supercharge’s increased transaction throughput, we found they were a pleasure to work with and had the skills and experience to add enormous value to the team. As many of you will be aware, we decided to hire the team earlier this year and they’ve been working at Fantom full-time since!
FantomVision, our new explorer, has recently been released along with an improved API by the GoFantom team. They’re now finalizing the work to bring native Ledger support and Metamask-like functionality to FTM. Both of these steps will improve efficiency in the ecosystem and allow other developers to build on Fantom seamlessly.
Prize: Full-time contract at Fantom
We’d like to thank all the developers that made submissions and we’re excited to see you, and others, building more valuable applications on Fantom in the future!
Official Links for Fantom:
Official Email Address: [email protected]
Official Website Link: https://www.fantom.foundation
Official Discord Discussion Group: https://discord.gg/6V42Gs8
Official Telegram Announcements Channel: https://t.me/fantomfoundation
Official Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/FantomFoundation/
Official Twitter: https://twitter.com/FantomFDN
Official Medium: https://medium.com/fantomfoundation
Official Github: https://github.com/Fantom-foundation
Official YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/fantomfoundation | https://medium.com/fantomfoundation/buidlonfantom-fantom-developer-contest-results-8f5de094631c | ['Connor Hughes'] | 2020-04-17 12:31:55.964000+00:00 | ['Crypto', 'Consensus', 'Development', 'Blockchain', 'Cryptocurrency'] |
Spatial partitioning based on homogenous features | Working for Sonder Inc, developed a bespoke clustering algorithm to partition geographic space into homogenous neighborhoods based on arbitrary input features. Can’t really say much more than that… =)
Data-driven partitioning of San Francisco | https://medium.com/paololucchino/spatial-partitioning-based-on-homogenous-features-87e2204286b9 | ['Paolo Lucchino'] | 2018-11-30 14:46:19.582000+00:00 | ['Heatmap', 'Machine Learning', 'Work', 'Spatial Analysis'] |
Street Life After Retail: 5 Scenarios That Imagine the Future | Street Life After Retail: 5 Scenarios That Imagine the Future
A visual tour of how e-commerce and digitization might impact city streetscapes — for better or worse.
This post was co-written with Planning and Development Director Johanna Greenbaum and Director of Design Jesse Shapins.
Early last week, Apple’s senior vice president of retail, Angela Ahrendts, proclaimed that the company’s stores aren’t stores at all any more: “We call them town squares.” That association isn’t especially new. Since the dawn of the pre-industrial city (think the agora in Ancient Greece), street-level commerce has been a key component of vibrant urban life. But Apple’s announcement does reflect the way urban retail is currently undergoing a significant transformation.
Over the last decade, the meteoric rise of online shopping has disrupted the day-to-day operations of brick-and-mortar retail across the U.S., affecting the viability of small mom-and-pop shops as well as giants like Barnes & Noble and McDonald’s. In some cities, the impact of e-commerce, long-term lease agreements, and soaring rents — which incentivize landowners to hold out for high-value retailers — have led to the papered windows and vacant streetscapes now characteristic of retail blight.
A strikingly different landscape of physical retail feels more inevitable every time we click on our carts. But in some places and sectors, retail footage is actually growing, as companies pivot to prioritizing the retail “experience” of the store, or the service it provides, over pushing products alone. From pop-up shops to maker spaces to local artisans, retail’s impact on the city is changing dramatically.
This shift could be a good thing, provided the new retail “experience” is less theme park and more 21st-century agora. After all, lively streets are the hallmark of great cities. The sidewalk is where people converge, converse, and exchange — not just goods and services but ideas and opinions. In an age when digital echo chambers threaten to undermine our openness, finding ways to enhance social cohesion and personal interaction on city streets has never been more vital.
So how can cities retain the vibrant street and sidewalk life that define great neighborhoods in a future when traditional retail, as we know it, may no longer exist?
To explore this question, we embarked on a thought experiment around how increasing digitization in the retail realm might impact urban streetscapes. We examined how innovation has changed the urban retail experience over time—from covered arcades to supply-chain logistics to the rise of suburban malls — and teased out the trends that could potentially reshape it moving forward. We explored old technologies and new, and considered how, as future technologies change the physical form of these new spaces, their relationship to the street will change, too. Using the principles of Design Fiction, we extrapolated these technological and social trends, paying close attention to “weak signal” behaviors and existing frictions, and imagined provocative near-future states.
What emerged from this exercise were five scenarios for the future of urban retail. These scenarios are not meant to predict the future but rather to spark conversation and debate: some are whimsical and exciting, others are unnerving, a few are both (as the future may well be). All potentially reflect a new normal. Ultimately, we hope they push cities and companies to think carefully about what the retail experience could become in the digital age, and about how to shape it for the good of the urban environment. | https://medium.com/sidewalk-talk/street-life-after-retail-5-scenarios-that-imagine-the-future-c7135f99dc15 | ['Eric Baczuk'] | 2017-09-22 17:08:43.496000+00:00 | ['Future', 'Retail', 'Cities', 'Sidewalk Labs', 'Street'] |
How To Be Vulnerable | How To Be Vulnerable
It’s Time to Open Up
Photo by Genessa Panainte on Unsplash
I cry a lot.
Nobody knows. Because I don’t want anyone to know. I don’t want anyone to comfort me. I don’t want anyone to console me. I don’t want anyone to touch me when I am sad. I like to feel sad. It reminds that I am still here. But it also f*cking hurts.
I bury myself in work. I hibernate in an Internet cocoon. I lay comfortably behind a screen. I unravel. I stop myself from crying. But it all builds up. And one day the dam will break. I will like it when it does.
I lose myself in fatherhood. I lose myself in loss. I lose myself in ego-spirals. I lose myself because of a broken world. Sometimes I want to lose myself. Sometimes it’s an excuse to hide. It is an excuse. But I don’t know what I’m scared of.
Maybe I’m scared of dying. Maybe I’m scared of losing someone I can’t live without. Maybe I belong alone. Maybe I am unlovable. Maybe I use maybe as yet another excuse not to say yes to everything.
I love myself more than I hate myself. I have no reason to hate myself, but still, some days I walk by the mirror and call myself a name. I don’t know why. I am objectively a good person, even to myself. I don’t know if I want to be more or less. Or to just disappear.
I think about how I was holding my mother’s hand when she took her last breath. I was 20. I think about how I was holding my father’s hand when he took his last breath. I was 33. I wonder what I’d be like if they were still here. I wonder what my kids would be like with them in their lives.
It’s easier for me to open up online. My friends don’t read this. I wouldn’t care if they did. They probably know all this. My oldest friends know me. They know me when I am pretending I am ok. I am not ok. I am rarely ok. But I am always stable.
Being vulnerable feels good. But the Internet has made vulnerability a commodity. There are people on this site who use it as a crutch. As a content churn. That is really f*cking sad. And messed up. But it’s real.
Sometimes I feel like I deserve bad karma. There is literally no reason for this. I’ve lived a fairly pristine existence, but for a few minor anomalies. It’s almost as if I want to be bad, but I can’t be. Because I know that inside, I am good. And I would be uncomfortable being bad.
I hold doors. I say thank you to everyone. I pay attention to people. I haven’t left my house much since March. Like, less than you. I can’t tell if I hate it or love it. Or if my existence right now is so static, I am in a simulation of myself. I am static.
It’s hard to be vulnerable. People judge your vulnerability. God forbid you admit that you are not ok. Diagnosis. Medication. Hospitalization. For some people, all of those are relevant and important and life-saving. But for some people, it’s ok to just feel like hurting yourself. Even if you never plan on doing it. Admitting it isn’t always a sign of more.
It’s ok if you want someone to break up with you because you don’t think you deserve them. It’s probably not healthy, but it’s ok. A lot is ok. It’s ok to feel like the world has failed you. What’s not ok is to act like an entitled prick all the time. Yeah, there are too many of those people.
Do you ever wonder what the point of someone who plagiarizes is? Is it that they are so desperate for attention that will do something that is so easy to figure out? Do you ever wonder if Internet sites truly care about ethics? Or is literally everything in our lives fully commercialized?
Some days I want to punch a wall. I don’t even know why. I am completely calm all the time. I think my insides hold some mild rage. Maybe because of all I’ve lost. I miss them. I miss being a son. I miss my mommy. I miss my daddy.
I cry a lot. Like, more than you would expect. I cry watching The Good Doctor. I cry watching A Million Little Things. I cry listening to Shallow. I’m kind of an emotional basket case. But no one knows. I am not embarrassed in the slightest bit. I like crying. Just not around anyone else.
I want to crack myself open and lay threadbare on a spool for the world to see.
I want to lay in a forest for eight hours. On the ground. I want to stare at the sky and the trees. I don’t care if a bird sh*ts on me. I want to breathe in the crispest air in the world. I want that air to cleanse me and make me feel better. Part of me doesn't want to feel better.
People used to say I moped around a lot. I did. I was lonely. I think I wanted to be held more than I was. I still mope around, but it’s different. Now I just see time slipping through my fingers while I stand in one place. My feet are cemented. I’m bored.
I’ve never been addicted to anything. I can stop doing anything. I don’t feel like I need anything in my life. Besides my kids. And that’s a problem. Because I probably need love. Like a lot of love. Better love. A different kind of love. From someone who actually gets me.
I think I deserve that, but in the same thought, I like to tell myself I am fine being alone. That solitude suits me. And in a lot of ways it does. But it’s because I am numb. The pins and needles of my life don’t allow me to feel enough. I’m scared to feel something. I’m scared to lose something.
I think about dying a lot. I worry that my kids will be lost without me and the next second I worry that they will be fine without me. And what was I here for anyway? Some days I wonder if I am really good at anything. Even the stuff I know I am good at.
I think someone will read this and suggest I get on some medication. I think that sounds stupid. Because the act of spraying vulnerable thoughts on a wall is not a defect. It’s just an emotional brainstorm. It feels good even when it feels bad.
I used to be rigid. Then I realized I had an appetizer portion of Asperger’s. A lot of people don’t believe that. They think it’s an excuse I use to make the fact that I don’t want to emote or connect or go to parties more palatable. I don’t give a f*ck what they think anymore. I fall where I fall. Sometimes I want to fall down and then stay there.
I’ve never heard voices. I wish I did. And that they were my mom or dad. Sometimes I see birds near my garage and I think they are them. I don’t care how that sounds. I miss them. I don’t think I’ve recovered from their deaths. It doesn’t matter how old I am. I can’t recover.
If I hadn’t found writing again a few years ago, I know I would have a lot more anger inside of me that would be constantly festering. If I hadn’t found meditation a few years ago, I may have had a heart attack. Or panic attacks. Or an overload of stress. Mindfulness and awareness are what makes me breathe. And get up in the morning. And my kids. Even when they don’t want to talk to me. I still love them more than I could possibly ever love anything.
I wonder if other people get tired of reading the same story from the same writers, in a different form, every other day. The same narrative. The same. The same. The same. The same. Different headline. Different paragraph structure. Same. Sh*t.
I like writing whatever the f*ck I want to. Including the * that I put in all the curse words in here except for prick. Because prick looks better and is contextually accurate without an *. I may be the only writer who doesn’t care if you read me. Or follow me. Or follow me just because you want something. I am oblivious. You can stop. I don’t notice. I don’t care.
I wonder what it would feel like to love someone like I love my kids. That would be nice. But I wonder if it wouldn’t be as nice as I think. Because I think I love my kids too much sometimes. And it causes pressure for them. And then I feel bad about myself, as if I can’t do anything right. Even when it comes to unconditional love.
Do you ever just want to spill your darkest secrets onto this screen? I don’t have many, but this is what it is to me. To be vulnerable. This is how to be vulnerable. This is how to stop caring about what everyone thinks. Or what comes next. Or what this will mean. Or anything.
These are just words. They come from the inside of my heart. But they are still just words. But when the words you write can touch someone else, even for a second, you have achieved something. It’s why I write poetry. Well, I have to write poetry.
It spills from my arm and eyes and ears and my mouth. It has to come out. But what I’ve come to find is that the less I care about who reads it, the more meaningful it is when someone does. And when it hits them straight in the chest. The biggest compliment I can get is a tear. Not a word. Emotion from my words. That is pure.
I cry a lot.
It feels good. Maybe one day I will be bold enough to cry with you. But until then, my words are my tears. | https://medium.com/assemblage/how-to-be-vulnerable-473977fa525f | ['Jonathan Greene'] | 2020-12-19 04:36:02.362000+00:00 | ['Personal Growth', 'Self', 'Mental Health', 'Vulnerability', 'Writing'] |
How UX and design education changed my life | Photo by Dylan Gillis on Unsplash
What is this UX thing that everyone’s talking about?
The first time I came across the term “UX Design” was in a conversation with one of my colleagues. We discussed how we could improve the quality of our work. I talked about design, he talked about user experience – we both talked about education.
That happened about six months after I graduated from university. I was working as a graphic designer and was still relatively new to the company. My colleague, an expert from the digital department, had already gained many years of experience and he told me about UX design.
User experience sounded like something that could definitely improve the quality of our products and services. It aroused my curiosity from the very first moment. I wanted to know more.
That’s when I came across the Interaction Design Foundation (IDF), a non-profit educational organization.
Learning with the Interaction Design Foundation
When I discovered the Interaction Design Foundation on the internet and signed up for a membership almost a year ago, I didn’t know much about user experience design and its potential. But the IDF’s offer sounded very promising:
online instructor-led UX courses of Ivy League quality
course material combining the insights and know-how of both academia and high-tech industry
a more than fair price (even if I’m no longer a student… hey, who says no to affordable education?)
and very important for someone who likes to be in control of everything: When and how intensively I work on a course is entirely up to me.
Apart from the courses, IDF offers a lot of open-source material and the possibility to join their open-minded and inspiring community.
The human side of design
First, I took the course Web Design for Usability. Every week I was given access to a new lesson with instructive video content (there are also courses with text-based content or a mix of both). I learned a lot, right from the very first week.
Shortly afterwards, I started taking more UX courses.
The UX design field is incredibly large. It's more than just graphic and user interface design – UX is research, conception, management, development, prototyping, testing, ... and above all: UX without users is not UX. It's all about users. Unfortunately, in our economically driven world, this usually goes unnoticed.
My second course UX Management also taught me this: the whole UX thing, the user-centered design approach, has a remarkable value for the company and the whole business.
Signs of progress
By now, I have completed three more UX courses (including Accessibility: How to Design for All, Mobile UX Design and Conducting Usability Testing) and I am enrolled in many more. I have fully dedicated myself to user experience and my work as a graphic designer has changed a lot ever since.
“True user experience goes far beyond giving customers what they say they want, or providing checklist features.” – Don Norman and Jakob Nielsen
My awareness of user experience has increased. Empathy, usability and a user-centered design approach are now an integral part of my work.
When I design a website now, I always have the user in mind. And I work together as closely as possible with our research and development teams.
The power to make a difference
I am someone who believes that even with the smallest action, you can make the world a little bit better. That’s why I started sharing in my company what I learned from the IDF.
In the beginning, user experience was quite new for all of us. Now, we are taking the first steps towards a UX culture.
The processes have changed (for the better), from first sketches and early prototypes to the finished website. At our company, we now even do usability testing.
UX Design has given my work a new meaning and inspired many of my colleagues to take a new approach. We have the vision to take our work to the next level and offer our customers and our users the best experience they can imagine.
It is an important message: The user is the center of our design and development processes. It is the goal to identify the users’ desires and motivations and to develop a product or service that meets their needs – or better yet: surpasses.
How to stay focused while learning online
UX has become an essential part of my job – and somehow of my life. Still, there’s a lot to learn. How do I motivate myself to keep moving forward? Here are my top three tips:
1. Set a schedule. When you start a UX course from the Interaction Design Foundation, you can decide for yourself when you want work and how much time you want to spend on it. If you are not immune to procrastination (like me), try to set a schedule – and stick to it.
2. Take notes. Every video or text of every single lesson contains an enormous amount of valuable information. It can be hard to soak up that much concentrated knowledge like a sponge. I always take notes and summarize the essential findings. This helps me not only to answer questions, but also to internalize what I have learned.
3. Learn to celebrate every little success. There is no teacher or personal trainer who pushes and praises you. But that doesn’t mean your improvements aren’t worth appreciating and celebrating. The best motivator is yourself. With every lesson, with every question or every discussion within the community, you get closer to your goal of learning something new. At the end, any progress feels like a small success.
Remember: You do this voluntarily – that alone deserves great respect.
The result: It’s just the beginning
Within ten months at the Interaction Design Foundation, I successfully completed five courses, answered 420 questions, collecting 1,676 of 1,702 possible points. (And I must admit: the incorrectly answered questions taught me the most.)
It was a year full of new insights, inspiring thoughts and a lot of valuable knowledge.
The best thing about it: There’s a lot more to learn and to discover. | https://blog.prototypr.io/how-ux-and-design-education-changed-my-life-6ca02a4c19eb | ['Isabel Riedel'] | 2019-04-08 07:59:08.458000+00:00 | ['User Experience', 'Learning', 'UX', 'Education', 'Interaction Design'] |
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