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ISO 22000 Certification | About ISO 22000 Certification
Food Safety is attached to the nearness of sustenance borne risks in nourishment at the purpose of utilization. Since Food Safety risks can happen at any phase in the natural way of life, sufficient controls are essential. Consequently, Food Safety is the obligation of each “interface” in the natural pecking order.
Who does ISO 22000 apply to?
ISO 22000 food safety management systems are required for any association in the natural way of life, which can be connected to associations going from feed makers, essential makers through nourishment producers, transport and capacity administrators and subcontractors for retails and sustenance administration organizations. It is likewise relevant to makers of nourishment preparing gear, materials that are utilized to bundle sustenance, cleaning items, sustenance added substances and different fixings.
The best food safety systems are set up, worked and refreshed inside the system of an organized administration framework and bench-marked against a demonstrated standard and freely confirmed by an outsider evaluation firm like SIS Certifications. This gives most extreme advantage to the association and invested individuals. Through confirmation, you can demonstrate your clients that you have a solid duty to overseeing sanitation and improving procedures.
ISO 22000 Certification can be connected freely of other administration framework guidelines or coordinated with existing administration framework necessities. ISO 22000 necessitates that all dangers that many be sensibly expected to happen in the evolved way of life, including risks that might be related with the kind of procedure and offices utilized, are distinguished and surveyed. In this manner it gives the way to decide and report why certain recognized perils should be constrained by a specific association and why others need not.
Advantages
· Less danger of item risk through showed satisfaction of item security commitments
· Improved certainty of customers and retailers in the association’s capacity to perform
· Methodical examination and usage of sheltered and productive procedures in light of a legitimate concern for sanitation
· Evidence that due ingenuity is utilized in regard of item well-being, quality and lawfulness
· Gives a typical language to makers and providers and cements associations
Thanks for Reading! | https://medium.com/@siscert2019/iso-22000-certification-de32afe8efde | ['Sis Certifications'] | 2019-09-14 08:01:13.563000+00:00 | ['Food Safety', 'Iso 22000 Fsms', 'Iso 22000', 'Iso 22000 Certification', 'Health Foods'] |
That almost broke me | Rails, Where to begin…?!
I actually love Rails: it’s gentle, complex, even a bit sexy. This is my brief description of Rails, For the first time, I feel I actually understand what all this was for! Was it always like that? NOT AT ALL! I literally was thinking in my head “okay well, I guess, I could go back to film making” or “maybe I could become a writer instead….YEA that could work!” All types of random thoughts flowed to my mind. It almost got to me too; those faint whispers from your ego ( I’m coming to get you BARBARA!). “ could I ever get through this?” I thought or “ am I good enough”? The answer was, YES! We have more power in us than we think; the major lesson from this project is: DONT GIVE YOUR POWER AWAY! I was giving my power away to the fear this all had to be perfect. I am here to say “ ENJOY the Journey, instead of the end result.” Anyways here are my good and bad thoughts on Ruby on Rails.
let’s start with the good:
Rails have a ton of tricks up her sleeves, with helpers to make your life cleaner, to make your code a bit more formal and easy to read information.
We started off this journey with something called the RESTfull routes, most of you heard of it from back in Sinatra land. Basically, that means there are seven main routes that make it easier to connect the views and the controller almost like magic! Also known as CRUD, our apps should be able to CREATE, READ, UPDATE, and DELETE! It has so many helpers and partials that if you connect the view page inside of the helper or partial you are allowed to put a simple render code inside the view (which keeps the code looking fresh). Then take the heavy code, put it away for safekeeping and out of sight. Forms also got an upgrade: they make it super simple with something called form builder. It basically does all the work for you allowing for simple four lines of code (if you wanted). Then there are resources and nested resources that allow you to get your tables all on one page instead of leaving one page to get the info you stay on a single page. It really is like Christmas!
Now the bad:
“HOLY hell this stuff is dense” I remember a few people saying that to me multiple times. I was overwhelmed with all the information, then to learn it in a month (good lord!!!). As of right now at this present moment, it all makes sense and I’m calmly writing this blog post. BUT that was not the case earlier, you definitely have to bring your big boy pants to Rails. I would not wish this on my worst enemy…! Find a group to practice with, find books, Hell finds a pet to hold on to. It will challenge you very much so, if you make it through, trust me you feel on top of the world. IT ALMOST FEELS LIKE you just entered outer space from Earth, BUT slowly realizing you entered into a VAST UNIVERSE!
LASTLY thank you for reading this post, that was my brief and possibly vague description of Rails, it’s been fun, and hopes to see you soon.
check out some more….
Javascript 1 (link to: variables and data types)
Javascript 2 (link to: numbers and strings)
Javascript 3 (link to: bracket notation and 20 diff string methods)
Javascript 4 (link to: functions and how they work)
Javascript 5 (link to: hoisting, comparison operators, and if-else statements)
Javascript 6 (link to: diff. Equal signs, null, and undefined)
Javascript 7 (link to: logical operator, &&, || and ternary operators)
Javascript 8 (link to: switch statements and arrays)
Javascript 9 (link to: commonly used arrays in javascript)
Javascript 10 (link to: Math. And parseInt Usage) | https://medium.com/@jonbleibdrey/that-almost-broke-me-bedb42b4fc49 | ['Jonathan Bleibdrey'] | 2021-02-09 15:17:36.902000+00:00 | ['Spirtual', 'Coding', 'Rails', 'Crud', 'Life'] |
Adittapariyaya Sutta: Buddhist Phenomenology of Suffering | This Sutta has helped me develop a simple, therapeutic method based on Theravada Buddhism:
There is contact that causes pleasure, pain or neutral sensation (it is helpful to use the 8 failings of the world articulated in my previous article as the encompassing the sum total of all possible experiences of pain or pleasure). The bondage that is enforced through failure to be mindful of the conditions that generate pleasure and pain results from belief that this pleasure or pain will endure (failure to appreciate anicca or impermanence) and false belief in a self subtending the agency that pursues pleasure and avoids pain (anatta or no-self).
So, to put it more simply for use as a therapeutic method:
Contact causes pleasure, pain or neutral feeling. Be mindful that it is temporary (anicca). Be mindful that there is no self (anatta).
The Buddha teaches in this Sutta that everything is “Aflame with the fire of passion, the fire of aversion, the fire of delusion. Aflame, I tell you, with birth, aging & death, with sorrows, lamentations, pains, distresses, & despairs.” All contact is flammable. That is, all contact, even that which results immediately in pleasure, ends in pain if Buddhist methods of mindfulness and insight are not properly applied to it. In philosophy, what the Buddha is articulating is an example of what we call phenomenology. Phenomenology, in philosophy, is merely the study of the directedness of the subjective towards its object, whether mental or physical.
Dealing properly with contact (Phassa) results in disenchantment (Nibbida), which, when pursued to its end through Buddhist methods of meditation and mindfulness, end in the eradication of suffering. We come into contact with something pleasurable or painful and we either become attached to it or averse to it, and we do one or the other because we have an improper understanding or ignorance of the conditions of bondage to dependence upon contact as our means of enjoyment, by seeking out pleasant contact and avoiding unpleasant contact. These conditions that generate dependence upon contact as our means for escaping suffering and seeking pleasure, ironically, perpetuate suffering because they neglect the impermanence of pleasure and the bondage to pleasure-through-contact which such negligence perpetuates, and they presuppose a self that acquires such pleasure or avoids such pain, that does not actually exist at all. By cultivating the habits recommended by Buddhism, we progressively become disenchanted with contact and our dependence upon it weakens until it eventually dissolves completely. | https://medium.com/@monadmantis/adittapariyaya-sutta-buddhist-phenomenology-of-suffering-c6f4138a15e | ['Monad Mantis'] | 2020-12-15 02:09:26.238000+00:00 | ['Buddhism'] |
How to create a Web-Based Document Viewer in Python | Setting up web views for documents can be the source of a great many headaches for Python users. That’s why today’s solution will be as simple as calling a function, then using the HTML embed code that it provides. Our total setup time is going to be just a handful of minutes.
This level of simplicity is achieved through use of an API, which we will install now.
pip install cloudmersive-convert-api-client
Our function is named viewer_tools_create_simple, which will also require a new API instance. Set this up in the following manner:
from __future__ import print_function import time import cloudmersive_convert_api_client from cloudmersive_convert_api_client.rest import ApiException from pprint import pprint # Configure API key authorization: Apikey configuration = cloudmersive_convert_api_client.Configuration() configuration.api_key['Apikey'] = 'YOUR_API_KEY' # Uncomment below to setup prefix (e.g. Bearer) for API key, if needed # configuration.api_key_prefix['Apikey'] = 'Bearer' # create an instance of the API class api_instance = cloudmersive_convert_api_client.ViewerToolsApi(cloudmersive_convert_api_client.ApiClient(configuration)) input_file = '/path/to/file' # file | Input file to perform the operation on. try: # Create a web-based viewer api_response = api_instance.viewer_tools_create_simple(input_file) pprint(api_response) except ApiException as e: print("Exception when calling ViewerToolsApi->viewer_tools_create_simple: %s
" % e)
And now input the file path for your document. Moments later you will have your embed code. Effortless. | https://cloudmersive.medium.com/how-to-create-a-web-based-document-viewer-in-python-d7c7232b9843 | [] | 2020-05-08 17:12:12.993000+00:00 | ['Document Viewer', 'Python', 'Create', 'Web Based'] |
May 7 | May 7
Happy May 7th Birthday from Birthdaysmessenger.com and helpusjesus.quora.com 🎉💐🎁 Today is #National #Provider #Appreciation #Day. Gracious Heavenly FATHER, we come before YOU, thankful to be in this day YOU have made. Thank YOU, for life, health and strength. Thank YOU, for eyes that can see, ears that can hear, functional limbs, food, shelter, clothing, finances, transportation and everything else, YOU do for us. Thank YOU for YOUR Unconditional Love 💕 toward us, that YOU sent YOUR Only Begotten Son JESUS Christ, as a Sacrifice for our sins. Use our actions and words to lead others to YOU. Clearly show us YOUR Will, for our time, talents and resources, so we don't waste anything YOU have blessed us with. Invade our conditions, situations and circumstances,as we study and obey YOUR Word💒Which is able to Save our souls.We want to experience all of YOUR Many Benefits 2 Timothy 3:16-17🙏 Heal our World, FATHER GOD🌎 2 Chronicles 7:14 Today's #Celebrity #Birthdays include
Mr. Beast, Tommy Fury, Sarah Baska, Tahani Anderson, Chiara Ferragni, Melody Valadez, Kevin Owens, Alexia Dudley, Meghan Currie, Maddy Couture, Sydney Leroux, Scheana Marie, Kassidy King, Earl Thomas, Erica Fernandes and Aidy Bryant
#Birthday #Gifts #birthdaywishes #birthdaycake #HappyBirthday
Shirtailors.com | https://medium.com/@investbuyown/may-7-1bfb166fc178 | ['Pastor Jason Ridgeway'] | 2021-05-07 11:34:44.993000+00:00 | ['May 7', 'Birthday', 'Success', 'Happiness', 'Prayer'] |
Pairing and connecting your brand new headphones with a new device | Did you bought a brand new Bluetooth headphones but you are not able to connect them to your computer? Or maybe they are working with your computer but your smartphone is not able to find them even if the Bluetooth is activated in both the systems?
The answer is really simple, once the headphone have been paired with the first device, they do not enter in pairing mode anymore when you switch them on again. This is because when you pair a 2nd or subsequent device, the headset has pairing information for other devices.
The re-activation of the “pairing mode” is usually not really clear even if it is illustrated in the user manual included in the headphones box.
The solution is simple and usually the same for every headphones out in the market. So, to activate pairing mode, switch off the headphone and then press and hold the power button from 5 to 10 seconds.
The headphones will switch on in “pairing mode” and you will see the Bluetooth led indicator flashing, for example in the Sony WH 1000XM3, it flashes two times in a row.
For some headphones models, you may will also hear a guidance voice saying “Bluetooth pairing” or something similar, as a confirmation that the pairing mode has been activated.
That’s it! Now you can check again the device that you want to connect with your headphones, and you should be able to see the name of the headphones in the list of the found devices: simply click on it to start pairing.
Repeat this procedure for any new device that you want to connect to the headphones. | https://medium.com/@ferie/pairing-and-connecting-your-sony-headphones-with-a-new-device-751a98b7e4a1 | ['Riccardo Andreatta'] | 2020-07-03 04:43:05.323000+00:00 | ['Sony', 'Headphones', 'Bluetooth', 'Bose', 'Pairing'] |
EOS Proxy Voting: Basics by Attic Lab | Today, Attic Lab is going to tell you about Proxy Voting: overview, how to set somebody as your proxy and how to create your own proxy account. For all proxy actions, we will tell you by using cleos and eostookit.io.
What is proxy voting
Proxy accounts represent a person/community with a list of Block Producers to which it is willing to vote. Commonly, they support their vision with personal preferences, EOS Constitution compliance, regproducer agreement, etc.
For regular users, it is a handy tool to follow, if they want to contribute to EOS ecosystem’s life. EOS token holders don’t need to research every Block Producer to see if it is compliant, transparent, amount of contribution to the community, etc. Proxies usually just provide the list of chosen Block Producers and a checklist of “why to vote for this certain Block Producer”
To finalize, proxies are your “representatives” in terms of voting. Just find a proxy that can match your views, and deserves your trust. If this happened, let’s go to the next step.
How to set somebody as your proxy
If you are using cleos , this step is pretty straightforward. It is the easiest way to use, from our point of view.
Let’s assume that account “atticlab1” wants to set “123proxy” as its proxy. There is only 1 command to use.
$ cleos system voteproducer proxy atticLab1 123proxy
Now, “atticlab1” proxied their votes and “123proxy” will vote for its chosen list of Block Producers on behalf of Attic Lab.
There is another option to proxy your vote — toolkit
We will give an example of using eostookit.io. First, you should install Scatter browser extension, create or import your wallet and go to eostoolkit.io
After you’re done with this step, you should go to Manage Voting -> Set Proxy. Here, it is pretty straightforward. Under “1”, as you can see on a screenshot, you provide Proxy Account Name, and under “2” you give your Account Name.
Let’s assume that you decided to dive into EOS ecosystem and create your own proxy account. Then, we will show you the next step.
How to create your own proxy account
Attic Lab will show you this method using cleos and eostoolkit.io.
To register as a proxy using cleos, you should run only 1 command.
$ cleos system regproxy atticlabproxy
After running this command, we’ve created a new proxy account — “atticlabproxy”.
If you want to use eostoolkit.io, you should download Scatter browser extension, create/link your account and go to https://eostoolkit.io . Then go to Manage Voting -> Create Proxy and fill out the form as shown on the screenshot below.
So, today we discussed the basics of proxy votes, how to proxy your votes, and how to create your own proxy account. Attic Lab is here to support EOS ecosystem and the community. We hope that you find this educational content useful and helpful. Share your thoughts about it in the comments section below!
Support Attic Lab as a Block Producer, if you want to receive more important content about EOS.
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Telegram channel: https://t.me/eos_atticlab | https://medium.com/eosatticlab/eos-proxy-voting-basics-by-attic-lab-68742cab3faa | ['Attic Lab'] | 2018-08-19 17:54:05.523000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Eos', 'Development', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoin'] |
Medium is my new blog platform? | Like many people, I am considering using Medium as my new blog platform. Here are my reasons, so far:
The in browser editor is fantastic. It’s super responsive, and creates beautiful output.
Supposedly my stuff will get a built-in audience, if it’s any good. Compared to my current blog, www.salas.com which I’ve been less active on of late.
I am getting the feeling that personal blog servers are becoming passé. I know for me, I am getting tired of paying Squarespace.com $10 per month for a server that I don’t think I use much. (It’s their business model I suppose :)
Truth is that I’ve ported my old blog content across several services over the last 12 or so years. Each time it’s a hassle.
People worry that their content will be ‘locked’ into a proprietary server. They want to ‘own’ their writing. I used to worry about that. Now I think it’s a bit precious. Really, you want to save your writing for posterity?
If I standardize on Medium, I will not be trying to move my old content here. I won’t even look into whether it’s easy or even possible.
What I will have to think about is how to move old content from Squarespace to something free so I don’t have to pay every month as I see it all drift into useless obscurity.
Let’s see how it goes! | https://medium.com/pito-s-blog/medium-is-my-new-blog-platform-57f21fe6a0f6 | ['Pito Salas'] | 2015-10-10 14:24:35.850000+00:00 | ['Blogging', 'Medium'] |
Europe Oilfield Equipment Market Worth $18.71Bn By 2022 | The European oilfield equipment market is expected to reach USD 18.71 billion by 2022, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. Horizontal and directional drilling activities are expected to drive revenue growth over the forecast period. In these processes, the well is turned horizontal or to a specific target or location. These flexible drilling techniques have already emerged as a separate growth industry in North America and are now expected to gain importance in other regions including Europe.
Declining crude oil prices have been a major factor inhibiting the regional oilfield equipment market in the recent past. Stable crude oil prices in the near future is expected to help in oilfield equipment industry’s recovery
Drilling segment was the leading product segment with revenue share exceeding 65% in 2014. Key factors which are expected to drive drilling machinery segment include technological advancements in drilling techniques, increasing demand for horizontal & directional drilling and use of digital services in the sector. Drilling is also expected to witness the highest growth of 1.9% from 2015 to 2022.
To request a sample copy or view summary of this report, click the link below:
www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/europe-oilfield-equipment-market
Further key findings from the report suggest: | https://medium.com/cmfe-market-research-reports/europe-oilfield-equipment-market-worth-18-71bn-by-2022-1bfcd2686cf1 | ['Rajesh Varma'] | 2020-12-24 06:27:35.682000+00:00 | ['Europe', 'Oilfield Equipment', 'Oilfield'] |
Is ‘The Irishman’ Scorsese’s ‘JFK’? | Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro in ‘The Irishman’ (Netflix)
A hitman’s odyssey through postwar America, The Irishman covers a lot of ground. There is World War II, the death throes of the labor movement, the Kennedys, Vegas and the Teamsters, and the Bay of Pigs, to start. There is also the Philly mob, grasping, ubiquitous, trigger-happy, and seemingly untouchable, until it wasn’t. Through it all, the character of Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) floats like a ghost who cannot make sense of what he is describing but is not quite able to let it go. But then, it would be impossible for Sheeran to put his murderous life into perspective, being a sociopath. Which may not make him an unreliable narrator but does leave one wishing there was at least a second opinion.
Based on Charles Brandt’s book I Heard You Paint Houses, about the decades Sheeran spent as a Zelig-like mob enforcer and assassin,The Irishman is one of the more curious and hard-to-pigeonhole gangster movies that Scorsese has ever done. Pulling back from the music-strobed buzziness of Goodfellas and Casino, and worlds away from the Nouvelle Vague/Cassavetes jitters of Mean Streets, it’s a cool, elegiac, and somewhat detached epic whose three and a half hours float by with a disconcerting calmness.
Part of the reason for this could be the potential for The Irishman to be Scorsese’s last entry in this genre. He seems to think it might be, gathering in old friends like Joe Pesci (as Sheeran’s boss and Mafioso mentor, Russell Bufalino) and Harvey Keitel (Philly boss Angelo Bruno) to play their roles in the stylized pageantry of cinematic organized crime. He even calls back to signatures of earlier works, riffing on his Copacabana Steadicam crawl in the opening segment. Most crucially, perhaps, Scorsese takes his time.
There is a lot for Steve Zallian’s screenplay to get through. According to Sheeran — the veracity of whose biographical accounting to Brandt has been called into question, given the propensity for old gangsters to inflate their reputations when spilling the beans late in life — he started out running errands for Bufalino not long after coming back from the war. In short order, Sheeran is working with a gallery of postwar Mob luminaries, from Tony Provenzano (the ever-nervy Stephen Graham) to Russell’s cousin Bill Bufalino (a canny and just slightly clownish Ray Romano, who should henceforth be any director’s first choice for playing a criminally compromised lawyer). Ultimately Sheeran is taken on as some kind of combination driver, gunsel, and henchman by Jimmy Hoffa, ostensibly the head of the Teamsters union, but in the movie’s recounting really just a slightly less-violent Mafioso with a straight job who in his mind had nothing to do with “you people” (as he refers to the Sicilian clans running the various crime families he consorted with) and so sets the stage for his own demise.
As Hoffa, Al Pacino hits the movie like a pipe bomb. Next to the restrained Pesci and De Niro, Pacino is a brawler and a shouter, neither of which being characteristics that auger well for a character’s outcome in this sort of story. To some degree, the movie’s Hoffa is actually the most moral man on screen. Larcenous and seemingly more concerned with fighting Bobby Kennedy or a rival union than he was with securing rights for his workers, Hoffa nevertheless comes across as genuinely engaged when speechifying to his workers about fighting back corporate interests. His ringing demands for “solidarity,” and the thunderous response from the men in the hall, are a bracing reminder of a recent past when organized labor was a force to be reckoned with. One of the several unspoken tragedies of The Irishman is the degree to which those men cheering on Hoffa were in fact subsidizing the lifestyles of Sheeran, Bufalino, and all the rest.
After tracking Sheeran’s rise through this world, the movie shifts to tracking the Hoffa-Sheeran relationship, in which Sheeran mostly anxiously sits by and tries to counsel Hoffa from doing anything to inordinately upset the mobsters who felt they had been helping and protecting Hoffa for years and expected total obedience. That was, after all, what they received from Sheeran, who toed the line just as Bufalino told him over many drinks and meals in the glowingly lit clubby restaurants where a good part of the movie takes place.
Next to Pacino’s hooting and hollering labor chieftain, De Niro’s and Pesci’s performances are watchful and cool enough that they almost disappear into the background. Another of De Niro’s constricted and muffled men who don’t seem they would know what to do with an emotion if one ever came up, Sheeran dispassionately recounts his ascension from truck driver to bagman to killer with a quiet pride combined with a certain type of postwar organization man’s obsequiousness to authority. An obedient soldier who thought nothing of gunning down German prisoners when ordered, Sheeran describes his trajectory from truck driver who stole sides of beef to Russell and then Hoffa’s driver who also shot people in the head whenever he was asked in a voiceover that carries all the emotion of a mid-level office worker recounting last year’s sales to his boss.
What makes The Irishman such an odd piece of cinema is that as restrained as the style is, with a long final montage stretching into something like a procedural dirge and Scorsese not letting himself use music as a crutch (not one Rolling Stones song, if you can believe), structurally it is wildly ambitious. Threading the rise and fall of the postwar mob into a familiar narrative about organized crime’s tangled relationship with the Kennedys and Cuba, The Irishman takes a number of hardly settled presumptions as established fact (JFK’s father Joe was a bootlegger who bought the 1960 election for him; the Mafia supported the anti-Castro movement to get back their casinos; JFK was killed by the Mafia in revenge for not delivering what he had supposedly promised).
There are times when The Irishman resembles something of a dark, wiseguy take on JFK. Beyond the wide historical canvas, there is the tossed-off gag scene in which Sheeran — delivering a truckload of guns to some Cuban exiles — runs into David Ferrie (the real-life character whom conspiracy theorists thought was a connection between Lee Harvey Oswald, the anti-Castro rebels, and the Mob, and was played by Pesci in JFK). Scorsese is also trying to build a whole alternative theory of American history, only in his case La Cosa Nostra is behind all the major events rather than rogue elements of the military-industrial complex.
But where Oliver Stone’s movie was characterized by a battered idealism, Scorsese’s is heavy with doubt and cynicism. Just about the only joy expressed in The Irishman comes from Hoffa, who in a scene after he is attacked during a trial by a pistol-wielding man buoyantly announces his advice to the courtroom: “Always rush a man with a gun. Knife, you run away.” The movie’s weariness comes from Sheeran himself. He narrates everything from a retirement home, whose suffocating blandness seems to mirror the blankness of his mentality and morality.
But there is also the sense that Scorsese is shutting the door on something. There is a matter of fact-ness to the movie, particularly Sheeran’s viper-fast killings (two bullets to the head up close, preferably from a small revolver, and then a swift walk away), that is remarkably deglamorized, shocking, and shorn of the need to wow an audience. The Irishman is a subdued and confident gangster epic whose chilly remoteness could in itself serve as Scorsese’s last word on the subject. | https://medium.com/eyes-wide-open/is-the-irishman-scorsese-s-jfk-cce976041b4 | ['Chris Barsanti'] | 2019-11-28 04:54:23.931000+00:00 | ['Movies', 'Robert De Niro', 'Mafia', 'Netflix', 'Martin Scorsese'] |
Accelerate (the book): Scrum and DevOps, Better than PB&J? | If any two-bit snake oil salesman tries to convince you that Scrum will solve all your development woes, kindly (or forcefully) show them the door. Scrum is a process methodology, it has nothing to do with development practices. Contrary to popular belief, there’s nothing in Scrum about Test Driven Development (TDD), Continuous Integration/Deployment (CI/CD), or proper Code Reviews. Luckily, there are a number of development-centric solutions that can significantly improve a development team’s ability to deliver well-built features quickly, Scrum or no Scrum. Lean and CI/CD are specifically addressed in the book Accelerate, by Nicole Forsgren, PhD, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim.
Continuous Delivery
Continuous Delivery has five key principles, listed out in the book as (pg. 42):
Build Quality In Work in Small Batches Computers Perform Repetative Tasks, People Solve Problems Relentlessly Persue Continuious Improvement Everyone is Responsable
The Definition of Done(DoD) is the team’s best friend, even if it doesn’t feel like it when they’re scrambling to finish stories one day before the sprint’s end. A genuinely mature Scrum team will notice the positive aspects of the DoD, and understand the headache it saves them down the line. A good Definition of Done bakes the requirement for quality directly into each and every story delivered by the team. It usually indicates that high-quality tests must be written and passing, any needed documentation has been created, and a code review process has been applied. Scrum (especially with a team new to it) is all about going slow to go fast. These requirements of quality for every story at implementation-time may seem like a ball-and-chain at first, but they can dramatically reduce the amount of bug fixing and maintenance work down the road.
One of the most important aspects of Scrum (and I cannot stress this enough) is that stories must be done for them to count towards the team’s velocity. This simple but radical idea not only means that stakeholders see the tangible results of their investments sooner (meaning your project’s more likely to stay funded), but the team usually has to re-think the way they define and deliver software. For one, stories must be small enough to fit into one sprint. This may seem annoying during the planning stage, but smaller stories directly correlate with both easier integrations, and a tighter feedback loop with the product owner, meaning that most required rework will be known about in two weeks instead of two months. The team may also need to rethink the way they deliver features. Traditionally all features would be written and tested before a deployment is even mentioned. Once everything’s finished, a large, painful, merge conflict-ridden integration process would occur, with a difficult, time consuming, pounding-Red-Bulls-at-3am style deployment process as their only reward. Since Scrum requires that stories are done, in a literal sense this means that stories are integrated and deployed, at least to a test environment for stakeholders to try them out. Establishing a robust CI/CD process takes some time, money, and elbow grease (both from a technical and an organizational level), but a well-built pipeline means that deploys are a button push away, and teams can deliver software as soon as they’ve built and tested it.
Lean
Although not as popular as Agile in the software world, Lean has become a common buzzword used by CTOs to mean “the department works faster with fewer people”. In all seriousness, Lean is a simple management concept encompassing four key components (pg. 76):
Limiting Work in Progress Visual Management Feedback from Production Lightweight Change Approvals
Only one of the four is specifically mentioned in Scrum, but all are incredibly worthwhile additions to any Scrum implementation. Limiting the current work in progress is an idea addressed by Kanban (Scrum’s slightly less popular sibling), which insists that only a few items exist in each development status at any one time. When tasks are small but often not delivered by sprint’s end, the cause may be each person having too many simultaneous work items. A good Scrum Master will suggest column limits on the team’s Scrum board in an attempt to improve task completion rates.
Visual management is the one Lean management aspect that boilerplate Scrum incorporates. By utilizing a Scrum board in a location that everyone can see, Scrum provides constant insight into the project’s current status. This means the team can frequently adapt to the Sprint’s current status, and work with the product owner to ensure that each sprint can successfully deliver value.
For the vast majority of software projects, the number one measure of success is how well they delight, serve, and improve the lives of their end users. Since no human being can read minds (and if you can, please get out of my head), a system’s ability to serve is based on (at best) direct needs from end users, and (at worst) guesses based on vague requirements. Even the most well researched, well thought out requirements based on users having hands-on time with prototypes can quickly become outdated. By the time you build the software, users’ wants have already moved on. Scrum allows a team to react quickly to feedback from production, through its short sprints and flexible backlog. A perfect agile project has new, fully usable functionality deploying to production (at least) every sprint, and the product owner can constantly update the product backlog to incorporate feedback from users. This feedback can be reflected in the end product in as little as one sprint.
For decades, a common thorn in the side of enterprise developers and architects everywhere has been change approvals. While the intentions behind most change approval processes are good, they can often devolve into bureaucratic, paperwork-heavy, time-consuming headaches that suck time away from serving end users and providing business value. Instead of relying on a large quality review process at the end of the project, Scrum significantly decreases the need for heavy change oversight in two ways:
Quality is built into each sprint: Although code reviews and pair programming aren’t explicitly mentioned in textbook Scrum, Scrum does require that all work marked as done is fully completed, testing and all. It’s up to the team to define their quality control procedures, but for any features to be sent out the door, they must fully pass all quality assurance checks agreed upon by the team (usually codified in the Definition of Done). Deployments are smaller, and happen more often: Since the “perfect” Scrum team is deploying every sprint, deployments aren’t large, all-nighter ordeals. Heavyweight deployment processes simply do not work with Scrum’s frequent delivery of functionality. Instead of 7 months worth of work being moved to production at once, only two weeks to a months worth is. This usually means easier integrations, and fewer headaches per deploy.
Conclusion
One of the most refreshing things about this book was its academic-like rigor and emphasis on valid, statistically significant data when making any points. Software engineering & the study of how organizations build software are still very young fields of study (compared to mechanical engineering and management-oriented organizational behavior), and don’t yet have the academic weight they deserve. Unlike other knowledge-based fields, software developers rarely read academic papers, and the number of software-focused PhD candidates remains low compared to other disciplines. Instead much of the information distilled throughout the software community comes from personal experiences, intuition, and inductive reasoning. By utilizing the scientific method and testing hypotheses with good hard data, Accelerate’s conclusions can be formally defended, leaving the reader confident in the validity of these findings.
Although I focused on the defined facets of DevOps and how they cooperate with Scrum’s artifacts and values, Accelerate contains a wealth of great information on how DevOps indirectly shapes an organization’s IT Architecture and Culture. The ideas and practices in a high-performing DevOps organization are quite similar to those of a true Agile organization, and these two distinct but complimentary methodologies have been proven to impact many companies’ bottom lines. Overall I would highly recommend that you give this book a read. | https://medium.com/walk-before-you-sprint/accelerate-the-book-scrum-and-devops-better-than-pb-j-3797b9d47279 | ['Grant Gadomski'] | 2018-10-27 17:33:14.217000+00:00 | ['Book Recommendations', 'DevOps', 'It Management', 'Scrum', 'Agile'] |
School Sucks! 5 Classes That Would Change Everything | We all know that U.S. Education sucks. What if they did more to improve things? I feel that not only the teaching method lacks quite a bit, But also the classes.
Yeah.. Lets learn calculus. Because If I work at UPS the rest of my life, I’ll need it. Sure!
Lets be honest, Many of us won’t end up in that career of our dreams. We won’t be Astronauts or firefighters. Or whatever it is you dreamed to be. Why don’t they stop sugar coating shit and start teaching us things that we could use.
A Gun Safety Class.
Probably going to get a lot of crap for this… But oh well. LOL.
Lets teach everyone how to shoot a gun, and how to be safe with it! Many people who want to RESTRICT guns are also people who know nothing about them.
Doesn’t seem fair, does it?
The world would be safer if people owned more guns. So Many disasters would be prevented if people had a gun. Now, I’m not saying everyone should have one on their belt. But one in their car, Or one behind glass.
Imagine a bank robbery.
A man walks in with a gun…. Everyone starts laughing, All the customers and the staff as they draw their guns. 20 against 1. He loses.
Teaching people how to be safe with guns is obviously necessary too. So accidents are less likely to happen.
This could be a whole post in it’s self. But off to the next thing.
MORE Financial Classes!
I cannot stress this enough.
Many people assume I learned how to invest in school….. WRONG! I learned about investing ON MY OWN.
It was so hard to learn! I had no idea what anything meant. Google became my best friend for those days. If we want people to be better off financially we, need to EDUCATE them. Sure we have that dumb Financial “literacy” class. But who learned enough in that class?
We need to teach people budgeting, investing, saving, How to take out a loan, How to get a home. All that “adult” stuff that 18-year-olds are supposed to automatically know.
COOKING CLASSES!
I know that many of us had to take one. But we need more than that. Everyone needs to eat. Most of my generation can’t cook at all. I ended up teaching myself after gaining a bunch of weight from eating Mcdonalds and Dominos everyday.
We shouldn’t be just learning “simple” recipes. In my cooking class, we mostly made muffins and other basic crap. We weren’t taught about the different cooking methods.And about the different oils.
Luckily there is Youtube these days, But can school actually teach you how to adult?
ART- Think for yourself classes!
Nobody is original anymore. It’s annoying as hell.
Everyone spits up quotes from their favorite movie or Tv show. People have the same beliefs as their family members. People need to learn meditation and reflection. And overall CREATIVITY.
And thinking for themselves.
And no, I’m not referring to those annoying “guided” Art classes, Where you are told what to draw and how to draw it.
I mean extremely vague instruction where it forces you to tap into your creative mind to create something different. I had a teacher like that for a while, And she opened up a whole new side to me. It was an amazing experience. You learn a lot about yourself in art, And we need more people to play around with art.
How To Be An EMPLOYER Not An Employee
This class wouldn’t be for everyone, But people who want to pursue self-employment should have it offered.
They could cover the history behind how popular businesses started.
How to manage business finances
Possible fundraising tactics for startups
How to make money without a job.
This class would be perfect for this new generation, As there are less and less jobs it could be a huge benefit.
What other classes do you feel are necessary?
Another Idea
Standing desks, Because sitting kills!
And More recess, For High school, Jr high And Elementary because kids and adults need more time to “play”.
💙💜🧡💚💙💜🧡💚💙💜🧡💚💙💜🧡💚💙💜
Follow Me On Other social Media as well!
https://linktr.ee/kaylinart
Want To Support My Art? Check Out My Amazon Store!
https://www.amazon.com/shop/kaylinart
💙💜🧡💚💙💜🧡💚💙💜🧡💚💙💜🧡💚💙💜 | https://medium.com/@kaylinart/school-sucks-5-classes-that-would-change-everything-771165ac385a | [] | 2020-12-19 03:36:07.450000+00:00 | ['Education Reform', 'Education', 'College'] |
What is High-Cannabinoid Full Spectrum Extract (HCFSE)? | HCFSE stands for “high-cannabinoid full spectrum extract”. These extracts are known for their high concentration of cannabinoids and terpenes. The “ entourage effect “ theory claims that full-spectrum cannabis is more effective than cannabis isolates. In short, cannabinoids work better together, as a synergistic chemical effect. This is why many cannabis oil producers, cannabis users, vapers, etc. are very interested in HCFSE.
What is HCFSE?
HCFSE is a hash oil that contains all plant cannabinoids, terpenes, and flavonoids. According to the entourage effect, cannabinoids, terpenes, and flavonoids act synergistically. Furthermore, this theory claims that terpenes and flavonoids also have medical properties.
It’s more difficult to process HCFSE than cannabis isolates such as THC or CBD isolates. Most of HCFSE producers get rid of unwanted components such as lipids and wax.
High-cannabinoid full spectrum extract are usually sold in the form of crystals although there are also oils that resemble some sort of granulated honey oil.
HCFSEs are very high in THC and/or CBD, sometimes reaching up to 90% of THC content. The difference between HCFSE and cannabis isolates is that HCFSE keep terpenes and flavonoids that aren’t present in cannabis isolates. Therefore, THC HCFSE is both excellent for medical and recreational use.
Full spectrum extracts are intended to contain all therapeutic compounds found in cannabis. Cannabis plants contain more than 400 compounds, many of them, with potential therapeutic properties.
In addition, HCFSE contains cannabinoids in their acidic forms (if it’s not decarboxylated). Cannabinoids in their acidic forms may have potential therapeutic properties (however, we still need more research to know more about their therapeutic properties).
Why are HCFSE Getting so Popular?
Cannabis isolates contain small quantities of terpenes and flavonoids. However, HCFSE, are much higher in both terpenes and flavonoids as well as cannabinoids. In other words, HCFSE are more complex than cannabis isolates. This makes HCFSE very interesting from both a medical and recreational standpoint.
Moreover, many people believe full-spectrum cannabis or high-cannabinoid full spectrum extract products have more medical properties than cannabis isolates.
With high-cannabinoid full spectrum extracts you will get minor cannabinoids that are not found in cannabis isolates such as CBD or THC isolates. For instance, cannabinoids such as CBG or CBN have anti-inflammatory, analgesic and antibacterial properties.
What Are the Methods to Produce it?
High-cannabinoid full spectrum extracts can be found in crystallized and sugared forms. There are both solvent and solvent-free extraction methods. For example, two common extraction methods are CO2 extraction (solvent-free method) and butane (solvent extraction method). From all extraction methods, CO2 extraction is perhaps the most popular method as it is a very effective solvent-free method.
Solvent extraction methods employ a solvent such as ethanol, butane, and other solvents to separate the trichomes from the plant material.
However, nowadays the most popular extraction methods are the ones known as “solventless”. These extraction methods are more popular because they don’t use solvents that might contaminate the plant material. In addition, these extraction methods are very effective.
The most popular solvent-free extraction method is C02 extraction. This method uses supercritical CO2, which is CO2 in fluid state that has both gas and liquid properties.
High-Cannabinoid Full Spectrum Extracts: Conclusion
HCFSE or high cannabinoid full spectrum extracts have more therapeutic properties than cannabis isolates. Although cannabis isolates do also contain flavonoids and terpenes, with HCFSE we get more of these compounds. This complexity of compounds (terpenes, flavonoids, cannabinoids) is interesting because of the entourage effect theory. In conclusion, that all cannabinoids, terpenes, and flavonoids work synergistically.
Full-spectrum CBD and THC extracts contain higher doses of cannabinoids such as CBG and CBN. These minor cannabinoids found in HCFSE products also have therapeutic properties.
There are both solvent and solvent-free extraction methods. However, the latter ones, especially C02 extraction methods, are the most popular ones as they are very effective and they will not contaminate the plant material with solvents. | https://medium.com/@ispire/what-is-high-cannabinoid-full-spectrum-extract-hcfse-f9bfe242d387 | [] | 2020-11-02 07:51:53.435000+00:00 | ['Cannabis', 'Thc', 'Vape', 'Cbd'] |
Flutter: A chat app in flutter using a Socket.IO service | Flutter has very quickly found its way to the topmost choice for a mobile app development framework. It is undoubtedly very neat, expressive, flexible & fast. There is plenty of prebuilt packages available to create almost any type of layout in flutter.
In this tutorial, I will help you create a chat app in flutter that communicates with a Socket.IO chat service written in NodeJs.
Prerequisites
Download & install OpenJDK 1.8. Unfortunately, JDK 1.8 is expected for flutter to build Android apps. Download & install flutter. This step will also guide you to download and/or configure:
a) Dart: Dart comes bundled with flutter and does not need to installed explicitly.
b) Android Studio
c) Android Emulator Make sure flutter is configured successfully for Android by running “flutter doctor” in command window.
$ flutter doctor
Step#1: Create new Flutter application
Launch Android Studio and create a new flutter application (steps here). I have created an application “chat-app”. This step can be done in VS Code as well with the help of flutter extension.
New Flutter App
Step#2: Create a Chat Window.
The HomePage of my app accepts a username before taking the user to the chat page. This is to simulate a real world scenario where the user is associated with a username. This username is forwarded to the chat widget.
To create the chat widget, I am using a flutter_chat_bubble package for message bubbles.
add flutter_chat_bubble dependency
I have created a StatefulWidget Chat. It maintains a state variable ‘messages’ which enlists all the messages in the chat. I am showing the messages inside bubbles using a ListView. The bubble appears on the right if the current user is the sender else on the left.
Note: ‘widget.user’ holds the username of the user.
Chat Window code
Let us verify if the app works so far.
Chat Flow
Step#3: Setup a Socket.IO chat service
I am running this chat-service in my local. I am also using ngrok to tunnel from a public URL to this service. This service:
Opens web-socket connections @ http://localhost:3000/ Listens to new messages @ channel ‘chat’. Broadcasts new messages to channel ‘newChat’. Broadcasts all old messages to channel ‘allChats’ on new connection.
Step#4: Configure Socket.IO client
I am using socket_io_client package to connect to the Socket.IO service.
socket_io_client
I will init the Socket.IO connection on widget initState and disconnect on the widget dispose.
Note:
It connects to the ngrok public url which tunnels to my local service. It listens to ‘newChat’ channel for new messages and adds to ‘messages’ state variable upon arrival. It listens to ‘allChats’ channel for all old messages and adds them to ‘messages’ state variable upon arrival.
connect/disconnect socket.io
Finally, we introduce an onPressed handler ‘_sendMessage’ for the send message button. In this method, we will emit any new message by the user to the channel ‘chat’. Any chat message is expected (by the chat-service) to have 4 properties: message, sender, recipient & time.
sendMessage
Step#5: Run and Verify
I am running this app in android emulator. I am also connecting to the chat-service using a socket.io client tool to simulate the messaging. | https://medium.com/nerd-for-tech/flutter-a-chat-app-in-flutter-using-a-socket-io-service-88be02a388d6 | ['Vikash Kumar'] | 2021-08-08 02:32:47.559000+00:00 | ['Flutter', 'How To', 'Socketio', 'Messaging', 'Chat'] |
Malaysia: New Dawn for Democracy and Human Rights? Perhaps not quite. | On 9 May 2018, the administration led by then prime minister Najib Razak experienced what one may call a perfect storm. For the first time since Malaysia became independent in 1957, the opposition defeated a ruling government at the polls.
At the centre of such a phenomenon was Mahathir Mohamad. A former prime minister from 1981 to 2003 and a past mentor to Najib, Mahathir shocked the country two years ago with his departure from the Barisan Nasional (BN) for the opposition coalition Pakatan Harapan, citing his embarrassment at the 1MDB corruption allegations embroiling the BN. Then, in January 2018, he announced that he would directly challenge his former mentee in the upcoming general election, and that he was confident of victory “unless Najib cheats”.
Despite Mahathir’s assured rhetoric, the actual victory came as a surprise, and the shock of election outcome was even likened to be as great as “Brexit and the Trump election”. It even caught Mahathir by surprise — he admitted that he and the PH might have over-promised during the campaign as they did not truly expect to emerge victorious.
NEW DAWN
The long rule of the BN saw Malaysia suffering serious degradation of its legal and political institutions. Opposition leaders were prosecuted and harassed with politically motivated charges, the nation’s independent media censored or shut down, and peaceful activists jailed.
Considering how the idea of a democratic transition was not even a pipe dream in early 2018, the PH’s victory was widely perceived to herald a new era for democracy and human rights.
While Mahathir himself does not have an excellent track record when it comes to promoting democracy and respecting its core values, and while he may appear an unlikely reformer, his supporter suggested that Mahathir has now entered a new stage of his political life where he is determined to focus on his legacy.
MAHATHIR’s PAST
Mahathir’s previous rule attracted mixed reviews, depending on different standpoints one may take.
Under his past premiership, Malaysia saw itself transformed into one of Asian economic tigers of the 1990s, with prestige projects such as the Petronas Twin Towers demonstrating the extent of his ambitions. Indeed, Mahathir was widely credited as the architect of the economic miracle of the 1990s.
His reputation, however, was tarnished by his scant regards for human rights. Opposition politicians, for instance, were often detained or jailed without trial under a much-criticised Internal Security Act. Equally notorious was how his then deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, was sacked, accused of corruption and sodomy, and later imprisoned on the latter charge — the charge which he has always denied.
Mahathir was even known for interfering with the independence of the judiciary, having sacked a number of Supreme Court judges in 1988 and spawning a constitutional crisis which has been dubbed as a national tragedy that continues to haunt the judiciary till today.
When criticised for his authoritarian style of leadership by those from the West, Mahathir responded by questioning the very notion of universal rights. He argued that the principles of human rights and civil liberties were not universal but harmful to the civilisation of the East.
Also known for politicking, Mahathir was perceived to be behind the resignation of Abdullah Badawi — who was publicly pressured and criticised by Mahathir for the lacklustre election results in 2008 — and the ascension of Najib — Mahathir’s very own mentee — and this was all during Mahathir’s supposed retirement.
A CHANGED MAN?
Mahathir seemed determined to put all his past behind. He publicly admitted that he was wrong on a number of things and apologised for them.
The early progress achieved by his administration has helped to reassure that Mahathir is indeed a reformed man and that he intends to make good on his election promises. In his first 100 days, for instance, Mahathir oversaw a 1MDB investigation that led to a high-profile arrest of Najib, his lawyer Muhammad Shafee Abdullah and several other 1MDB officials, with over 400 suspect bank accounts subsequently frozen. Najib and his wife have been banned from leaving the country, and the police has seized jewelry, hundreds of handbags and other valuables at more than $273m from properties linked to Najib.
Given how the previous administration had previously sought large-scale financial assistance of $2.3bn from the Chinese amidst the 1MDB corruption scandal, the new government has also been looking into the allegedly colluded deals between Najib’s government and Beijing, where several big-ticket Chinese infrastructure projects worth close to $40bn are now being reviewed for cancellation. Besides their lack of transparency, Mahathir has also raised concerns over these project’s questionable economic viability and minimal inclusion of local labour, technology and management.
Personnel of doubtful probit have also been removed from important commissions, while a clean-up of the police is underway, with two senior judges whose appointments were perceived as unlawful by the bar having already stepped down.
Besides cleaning up corruption, the new administration has delivered quick results in areas of democracy and human rights as well. The Malaysian opposition leader Anwar was granted a full pardon, and so were Zulkiflee Anwar Haque — a high-profile satirical cartoonist who had had nine sedition charges filed against him — and Fahmi Reza — another Malaysian artist who became one of the most public figures in the fight over free speech and whose caricature of Najib as a clown landed him a charge under a law prohibiting online content deemed offensive.
CHALLENGES AHEAD
One may argue that the results achieved so far — while urgent and important — were relatively straightforward. The real test for Mahathir lies in the more long-term systemic reforms, which would be far more crucial if the new government were to usher in a new era of democracy and human rights.
The judiciary, for instance, will need new and firm guarantees of its independence and competence, while official bodies that regulate elections, fight corruption and cope with crime will require foolproof insulation from political meddling.
Unsurprisingly, this is easier said than done, and Mahathir himself may not fully intend to establish such independence. Following the electoral victory, Anwar received a full pardon and Najib found himself under dozens of charges related to the 1MDB. While in line with promises made on the campaign trail, these developments have raised concern on Mahathir’s tendency to meddle with the judicial process and his potential unwillingness to install separation of power.
Mahathir, for example, granted Anwar a full pardon — not because he objected on principle to the sodomy charge but because he was relying on the once-rival Anwar to support him in the election. Bizarrely, Mahathir even admitted that he personally asked Shafee to prosecute Anwar.
On the other hand, the unfolding of Najib’s trial has been marred by allegations of political showmanship and score-setting, and Najib himself frequently questioned whether the new government would give him a fair trial at all while arguing that the charges brought against his lawyer Shafee were solely intended to interfere with his legal defence. Similarly bizarrely, Mahathir has found himself forced to publicly deny that the prosecution of Najib was part of a revenge act, and, if anything, this development only casts doubt on the new government’s anti-corruption effort — that it may not extend beyond the PH alliance’s political opponents.
Besides the concern surrounding the future — and independence — of Malaysia’s political and legal institutions, there has also been a growing sign of wavering support for human rights.
Despite Mahathir’s promise to renew respect for human rights and while full pardon has been granted to those charged under the laws which violated these rights, Mahathir still has yet to address the main elephant in the room — the Sedition Act 1948 or the very law that has time and time again been used to lock up dissenters and undermine universal fundamental rights entitled to every citizen of a democratic society.
In addition to failing to repeal the law within the first 100 days in office — one of the central election pledges in the PH’s manifesto — Mahathir has recently come out to say that the new government will not set a timeline to revoke the sedition law, pointing to the lengthy bureaucracy as an excuse.
Worse, there have been several occasions since the election where the new government has been complicit in the use of the very same sedition law, with the more recent case in point being Azman Noor Adam — who was arrested for spreading images that allegedly insulted the new prime minister on social media.
Government’s response to the criticism is also far from satisfactory. Although the deputy Home Minister Datuk Azis Jamman was forced to publicly clarify his objection to the law, he appears content with the police continuing to use Sedition Act as long as it still exists.
Another blow to Malaysia’s human rights is do with the LGBT community. While Mahathir publicly pledged to rectify all remaining core UN instruments related to the protection of human rights — in his address to the 73rd United Nations General Assembly this month — one has every reason to be skeptical about such a promise. It was only back in September that the new prime minister stressed that Putrajaya would not and could not accept the LGBT culture or same-sex marriage even though they were considered basic human rights in the West. He unconvincingly cited different value systems in Malaysia.
The skepticism is further warranted when one looks at how Mahathir responded to the incident involving the public caning of two women who attempted to have lesbian sex back in early September. Being the first of its kind in Malaysia, the caning drew sharp criticism from human rights groups from both within and outside Malaysia. More importantly, perhaps, it may also have also drawn out what Mahathir truly felt about basic universal rights — instead of speaking up for the LGBT community or arguing for the gay sex to be decriminalised, he merely stated that the women should have received a lighter sentence.
NEW DAWN OF DEMOCRACY AND HUMAN RIGHTS…?
Judging from what the world has witnessed so far, Malaysia may not be entering a new era for democracy and human rights any time soon, and the chance of such grows dimmer every time Mahathir backtracks on any of his election promises.
In fact, having seen how Aung San Suu Kyi betrayed all that she had previously stood for while she was battling against the military dictatorship, one ought to be very cautious in putting too much hope in Mahathir, that is, if one wanted to avoid further disappointment.
Sources | https://medium.com/humanrights101/new-dawn-for-democracy-and-human-rights-perhaps-not-quite-48f6280ed3b6 | ['Napat Rungsrithananon'] | 2018-10-26 10:04:40.593000+00:00 | ['Human Rights', 'Politics', 'Democracy', 'Malaysia', 'Southeast Asia'] |
Thirty Youth In Walewale Uses Digital Media Skills To Create Employment. | Ghana Tech Lab in partnership with Northern Innovation Lab under pathways to sustainable development crowned its six weeks of Digital Media Training with Walewale Startup Summit. The purpose of the event was to give the trainees a platform to bring the knowledge they acquired during the training program into use and pitch their innovative ideas.
Speaking at the event, the West Mamprusi Municipal Coordinating Director, Abdul Rahman Baba Ahmed who was the main speaker of the event explained the importance of digital media and job creation among the youth. He also congratulated all the various startups for how far they had come. The branch manager for GCB bank Habib Abdul Rahman, a key note speaker, also explained how the banking system works in this digital era mainly to the startups and the general public also.
During the panel session, discussions were centered on the theme. Each of the panelists shared their expert knowledge on the theme coupled with experiences. Kawdwe Ephirim founder of Ephis Services used his IT background to explain the opportunities in sustaining businesses and creating jobs using digital media. John Tobias Kwodiah the NABCO Monitoring and Evaluation Officer also explained how digital media can promote entrepreneurship in the Municipality. Eunice Oforiwaa Yeboah, Director for Cooperative Union, advised the startups, students, and everyone present to learn a digital skill and shouldn’t depend on the government for jobs. She explained how local businesses in Walewale can be more sustainable through digital marketing.
At the end of the pitching, Zoori Media LTD and Best Seeds emerged as a winner and first runner up respectively. Zoori Media LTD wants to use digital media to advertise tourist sites in the region and nationwide. Whiles Best Seeds aims to use digital media to promote MSMEs through branding and social media advertising.
The two qualified teams will go through the incubation stage which will groom them for the National Summit. The remaining teams will be assisted to secure good internship slots in respected organizations within the region.
Salama Hudu. | https://medium.com/@northerninnovationlab/thirty-youth-in-walewale-uses-digital-media-skills-to-create-employment-eee9910e29 | ['Northern Innovation Lab'] | 2021-07-05 17:32:08.415000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Digital Media', 'Youth Employment'] |
Monero: Recent Fork and Beyond | Monero: Recent Fork and Beyond
Monero went through its latest fork on October 17th, 2020. Fork, or hard fork as it was in this case, implies a major network upgrade for the privacy coin. In Monero, these hard forks or network upgrades improve the base protocol and are non-contentious. It means that there will be no splitting and no new creation of a coin.
To be more specific, in this fork, Monero aimed to introduce some new features such as new ring signature construction CLSAG. How this feature would be helpful in the Monero community’s future is something that we will discuss in some time. But, before that, let’s have a look at what this hard fork means for the users at the level of usage and functionality of the platform.
What does it mean for the end-user?
For the end-user, the hard fork is nothing to worry about. It is a simple software update. Any user who uses the app after 17th October would have to update their software.
The company posted detailed instructions on how to carry out the update. For the holders of wallets or nodes, the process was to simply replace the previous version of the software, be it Monerod, Monero-wallet-cli, or Monero-wallet-gui with the new versions.
It is no different for users who have their coins on a paper wallet. Whenever the user decides to move his/her coins, he/she would have to use an updated version of the software. That’s it.
The hard fork didn’t mean any change for the mining community as well. The PoW consensus-building mechanism was not affected in any way in the update. Therefore, the miners could carry on with their work even without updating their software.
What the hard fork tried to achieve?
As mentioned already, the purpose of the Monero fork was to introduce a new feature known as a new ring signature construction CLSAG. We will discuss this in the next segment.
From MLSAG to CLSAG
Monero uses a transaction protocol that is signer-ambiguous. It included many cryptographic components. One of these components was MLSAG which was a type of ring signature construction. Whenever a Monero user initiated a transaction, the system generated one or more MLSAG signatures to obfuscate the signers and the amount involved in the transaction.
The latest introduction of CLSAG was aimed at replacing MLSAG. Its purpose was to improve efficiency. Monero Research Lab used some simpler but efficient algorithms by the virtue of which the CLSAG signatures could achieve the same functionality as MLSAG. But, where CLSAG raced ahead of its predecessor was that it could do the same at a much lesser size more quickly. To improve speed, the research lab optimized the underlying cryptography.
Enhanced Security
The transition from MLSAG to CLSAG also improved the security of Monero. The transition was preseeded with good cryptographic construction. And the construction was done keeping a formal security model in mind.
It would be relevant to mention here that security models are important in protecting the system from hackers and attackers. A security model conceives of hypothetical attackers. After that, it formalizes the capabilities of these hackers or attackers. Once the formalization has been done, it proves that these attackers can not break into particular security protocols of the network.
While implementing CLSAG, the developers created a scenario where hypothetical attackers could allure honest users of the platform to obtain their keys. They were also hypothesized of being able to convince the users to carry out transactions of their wish. The security enhancement proved effective against such scenarios.
The Improvement in Numbers
The fork on 17th October changed the signature protocol from MLSAG to CLSAG. The users, however, only had to update their software. For users of hardware wallets, the fork meant an update in their firmware, the latest firmware that could support the update.
Since a transition from MLSAG to CLSAG implies an improvement in the transaction size, let’s have a look at what transaction size means in Monero.
The size of transactions in Monero depends on two factors. The first one is the number of the previous transaction outputs one spends. The second one is the number of new transactions the user generates. On average, most of the transactions spend two previous outputs and generate two new outputs as well. With MLSAG in place, these transactions occupied approximately 2.5 kilobytes of space on the blockchain. With the implementation of CLSAG, it came down to 1.9 kilobytes. It was a significant improvement of 25% compared to the MLSAG standards.
With every new transaction happening, the Monero software verifies the signatures of these transactions. It is the standard protocol to verify that the transactions are valid. For individual transactions, the time taken to verify the signature is almost negligible. It is usually in tens of milliseconds. However, the users generally have to wait for confirmation till the entire block, which includes that transaction, is verified. This takes time. Although the time is a function of the efficiency of the computer, under CLSAG it would take far less than it used to take under MLSAG.
Testings under the CLSAG protocol show that the time taken to verify signatures have undergone an improvement of nearly 20%. The transaction-wise overall improvement was 10%.
Third-Party Audit
Before deploying the code, Monero had commissioned an audit of the proposed changes. The audit looked into both aspects of CLSAG cryptography and the veracity of the implementation code. The aspect of CLSAG cryptography included the algorithms, the security models, and the proofs.
For the audit, Monero employed two expert cryptographers: JP Aumasson and Antony Vennard. For support and coordination, there were Monero Audit Workgroup and the Opensource Technology Improvement Fund. Donations from the Monero community took care of the expenses of this exercise.
The review process was divided into two segments. Examinations in the first segment took care looked into the security of the CLSAG. The reviewers could not find any issues in the algorithms. However, they made crucial recommendations to improve security proofs. Before going live, the network accommodated the modifications up to the reviewers’ satisfaction. Apart from the security aspects, the reviewers also recommended some actions to improve the preprint. The recommendations were implemented.
The reviewers found the implementation codes to be well written. They also concluded the implementation to be secure. According to them, the code was a correct implementation of the algorithm devised for CLSAG. Although the committee made some suggestions relating to the code, none of them pertained to any security aspect.
Summary
The success of the review stood testimony to the fact that the MLSAG to CLSAG transition was carried out efficiently. Like software upgrades, blockchains also need to go through performance improvements at frequent intervals. Blockchain is an emerging technology with new people joining the bandwagon each day that translates to increased attention and opportunities. But, what these changes also bring with them are the possibilities of congestion and reduced efficiency, and increased hacks and attacks.
The Monero fork, which improved speed and reduced requirements of space per transaction, indicated that the platform is on its toes when it comes to matching up with improving technology. Moreover, it also proved that the platform does not compromise security as a trade-off for improved performance.
Also, Read | https://medium.com/coinmonks/monero-recent-fork-and-beyond-265713e9ff8b | [] | 2020-12-28 14:44:37.499000+00:00 | ['Monero', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Privacy Coin', 'Cryptography', 'Blockchain'] |
Take a Ten Minute Walk: A Codewars kata solution | Solve this problem - ‘ Take a Ten Minute Walk ’: A Codewars kata solution By Papan Sarkar
In this article, I’ll explain a kata solution from Codewars. This kata(problem) is authored by JKphobic. And here is the kata link : https://www.codewars.com/kata/54da539698b8a2ad76000228/train/python
Problem:
You live in the city of Cartesia where all roads are laid out in a perfect grid. You arrived ten minutes too early to an appointment, so you decided to take the opportunity to go for a short walk. The city provides its citizens with a Walk Generating App on their phones -- every time you press the button it sends you an array of one-letter strings representing directions to walk (eg. ['n', 's', 'w', 'e']). You always walk only a single block for each letter (direction) and you know it takes you one minute to traverse one city block, so create a function that will return true if the walk the app gives you will take you exactly ten minutes (you don't want to be early or late!) and will, of course, return you to your starting point. Return false otherwise. Note: you will always receive a valid array containing a random assortment of direction letters ('n', 's', 'e', or 'w' only). It will never give you an empty array (that's not a walk, that's standing still!).
First of all, we need to understand the problem. Then we will see what it’s input and of course what kind of output it wants from us.
If you read the problem twice or thrice, you’ll see a few things like what things we need to keep in our minds. Like :
The walk has to be for 10 minutes. You need to return to the starting point Every list item (each letter) or single block represents one minute
Let’s convert these instructions into code and make small segments of the whole solution code:
So,
if len(walk) == 10 //True
else // False
We’ll create two variable and initialize to 0 to track our walk, ns (North-South) and ew (East-West) -
ns = 0
ew = 0
For every single block we walk, respectively we’ll increment and decrement with 1
if we move in n direction then ns += 1
if we move in s direction (coming back) then ns -= 1 if we move in e direction then ew += 1
if we move in w direction (coming back) then ew -= 1
And then finally we will check we returned to our same position or not
if ns == 0 and ew == 0 //True
else //False
Let’s combine all this:
//Python Solution
def is_valid_walk(walk):
ns, ew = 0, 0
if len(walk) == 10:
for i in walk:
if i == 'n': ns+=1
if i == 's': ns-=1
if i == 'w': ew+=1
if i == 'e': ew-=1
else:
return False
return ns == 0 and ew == 0 //Javascript solution
function isValidWalk(walk) {
let ns = 0, ew = 0;
if(walk.length === 10){
for (let i of walk) {
if (i == 'n') ns += 1;
if (i == 's') ns -= 1;
if (i == 'e') ew += 1;
if (i == 'w') ew -= 1;
}
}
else
return false
return ns === 0 && ew === 0;
}
Now it’s time to some other best and clever solutions:
Most upvoted: def isValidWalk(walk):
return len(walk) == 10 and walk.count('n') == walk.count('s') and walk.count('e') == walk.count('w') Second one: def isValidWalk(walk):
if (walk.count('n') == walk.count('s') and
walk.count('e') == walk.count('w') and
len(walk) == 10):
return True
return False
I hope it was helpful and useful. Please let me know your thoughts. Thank You for reading. | https://medium.com/@papansarkar101/take-a-ten-minute-walk-a-codewars-kata-solution-1fe71c7dbe67 | ['Papan Sarkar'] | 2020-10-07 08:31:50.801000+00:00 | ['Python', 'Solutions', 'Codewars', 'JavaScript', 'Programming'] |
Shehzad Hassam, EMX的新任亚洲运营主管 | in In Fitness And In Health | https://medium.com/tradeemx/shehzad-hassam-emx%E7%9A%84%E6%96%B0%E4%BB%BB%E4%BA%9A%E6%B4%B2%E8%BF%90%E8%90%A5%E4%B8%BB%E7%AE%A1-df0c2feb1e8e | ['The Emx Team'] | 2018-11-20 20:25:11.028000+00:00 | ['Futures Trading', 'Chinese', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Crypto', 'Bitcoin'] |
Adding Custom Activity in UIActivityViewController | Almost every iOS app developer knows about UIActivityViewController, in our iOS apps we often need to share content to external apps for which we use UIActivityViewController. But do you know, you can easily share content within your app through UIActivityViewController just by adding a custom activity to it. You can also add custom activity to have other functionalities as well apart from sharing such as archive content, reverse string, etc.
Basic code of UIActivityViewController:
let text = “Share Achievement”
let image = UIImage(named:”shareImg”)
let activityC = UIActivityViewController(activityItems: [image, text], applicationActivities:nil)
The initializer method of UIActivityViewController has two arguments named activityItems: and applicationActivities: . In the first parameter we must pass the array of items to share. Have you ever thought, what to pass inside applicationActivities in the above code?
So, this applicationActivities: is the place where we pass our custom activity. First let’s talk about how to create custom activity.
To create an application activity we subclass the UIActivity and override the methods and properties of UIActivity class.
To use this in UIActivityViewController pass the instance of CustomActivity to the applicationActivities parameter of the initializer method of UIActivityViewController.
let activityC = UIActivityViewController(activityItems: [image, text], applicationActivities:CustomActivity())
Congratulations, you have created your first custom activity. That was so easy, isn’t it?
In HealthifyMe iOS app, we have used custom activity to add “HealthifyMe Groups” option which let user to share their achievements within the app in different groups. | https://medium.com/healthify-tech/adding-custom-activity-in-uiactivitycontroller-ed16e721ec82 | ['Sonal Bellani'] | 2020-11-18 17:20:27.764000+00:00 | ['iOS', 'Uiactivityviewcontroller', 'Swift', 'Custom Activity', 'iOS App Development'] |
Kotlin or Java? Which Programming Language Android App developer should learn in 2021? | Photo by LOLIONI on Unsplash
Ever since Google announced @Kotlin as the official language for Android development at Google IO in 2017, programmers who want to become Android developers are in a dilemma. The big question in front of them is whether they should learn Kotlin or Java.
If you are a complete beginner who wants to learn Android development, then my answer is Java, but if you are a Java developer who wants to jump into the lucrative market of Android app development, then my answer is Kotlin.
I’ll discuss why beginner Android programmers should start with Java and why Java developers should learn Kotlin in this article.
When I say beginners should start with Java, you may be thinking, “What the heck? Kotlin is much more productive, less boilerplate code, and now the official language of Android development, and this guy is suggesting learning Java. I am not gonna fall for it…”
Well, being a Java developer, I may be a little bit biased, but I’ll try to explain the reasons why I suggest a beginner Android developer starting with Java rather than Kotlin.
Why beginners in Android Development Should Start With Java?
The first and foremost thing is that Android development is not everything; as a programmer, you may be starting your career with Android development, but if you start with a well-established language like Java, you become a part of the bigger Java community and market, which directly means more job opportunities.
The second and more important thing is that there is a huge community of Java programmers, which means you can find answers when you are stuck.
This is very important because, as a beginner, you will face a lot of technical problems and you might not know where to head when you are stuck.
When you search Google with a Java problem, you are bound to get answers; the same cannot be said for Kotlin, which is still a new programming language.
There are also more tutorials, books, and courses out there, both free and paid, which can teach you Android development with Java, e.g. this list of Android resources for Java programmers, but there are not many for Kotlin, especially free resources on Android development.
Things will definitely improve over time when more and more programmers start using Kotlin, but I doubt it can ever touch the popularity and adoption of the Java programming language.
That’s why I suggest, a beginner programmer who wants to become an Android developer should start with Java, rather than Kotlin.
However, that’s not a hard and fast rule; if you prefer learning Kotlin rather than Java due to productivity reasons and are mostly focused on Android development, then you can sure start with Kotlin, and Kotlin Fundamentals is a good place to begin.
But, once you know Java, your journey to Kotlin will also be easy and smooth because Kotlin is 100% interoperable with Java. It compiles into Java bytecode and runs on JVM.
Why Java Programmers Should Learn Kotlin?
Now, coming back to the second set of programmers who wants to learn Android development: our fellow Java developers. For them, I think its best to learn Kotlin because it really improves productivity.
A class which takes 50 lines of code in Java can really be written in just one line in Kotlin. It can help you avoid all boilerplate code, e.g. you don’t need to specify getters and setters, equals(), hashCode()or toString() methods. Kotlin can generate all that by itself.
Here is a nice comparison between Kotlin and Java in terms of productivity and lines of code to write similar stuff:
If you don’t know, Kotlin was development by JetBrains, the company behind one of the most popular Java IDEs, IntelliJ IDEA. They were a Java shop and developing IDEs like IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, and ReSharper, all in Java, and built Kotlin to improve their productivity, but at the same time, they cannot rewrite all their code in Kotlin, so that’s why they made Kotlin fully interoperable with Java.
Because Kotlin generates Java bytecode, you can use your favorite Java frameworks and libraries in Kotlin and your Java friends can also use any Kotlin framework you develop.
Even a major Java framework like Spring has started supporting Kotlin from Spring 5. If you don’t what’s new in Spring 5, check that out.
Even though currently, almost all @Android code, examples, and apps are in Java, it will change in the future because Google has declared Kotlin as the official language for Android app development.
Many companies have already started using Kotlin for their Android app development, and that’s the main reason I think Java developers should learn Kotlin in 2021.
If you decide to learn Kotlin in 2021, then Getting Started with Kotlin is also a great place, to begin with. It’s a no-nonsense course for Java developers which will help you to get going with Kotlin in no time.
You don’t need to start with things like what a variable and object are, as this course has the right pace and depth for Java developers as compared to other beginner Kotlin courses for Android development.
If you prefer books, then Kotlin in Action is also not bad. You can learn about all the essential features of Kotlin, e.g. var vs val, data keyword, and functional programming all by yourself.
That’s all about whether Android developers should learn Kotlin or Java. As I said, if you are a complete beginner who wants to start your career as an Android developer, you’d better start with Java.
You will not only get up to speed in no time, but you would have better community support, and knowledge of Java will help you a lot in the future. It will also help you to learn Kotlin in the future.
If you are a Java developer, then you’d better start learning Kotlin to not only improve your productivity but also help you become part of a lucrative niche of Java developers who know Kotlin, which may give you a competitive edge in the job market. It’s also one of the 3 JVM languages Java developers should learn in 2021 on my list.
Other Programming articles you may like
10 Algorithm Books Every Programmer Should Read
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100+ Data Structure and Algorithm Questions for Programmers
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Udemy vs CodeCademy vs OneMonth — which is better to learn to code?
Closing Notes
Thanks for reading this article so far. You might be thinking that there is so much stuff to learn, so many courses to join, but you don’t need to worry.
There is a good chance that you may already know most of the stuff, and there are also a lot of useful free resources which you can use, I have also linked them here and there along with best resources, which are certainly not free, but worth of money.
I am a particular fan of Udemy courses as they are very affordable and provide a lot of values in very small amount, but you are free to choose the course you want.
At the end of the day, you should have enough knowledge and experience about the things mentioned here.
Good luck with your Kotlin journey! It’s certainly not going to be easy, but by following this guide, you are one step closer to becoming the Android developer, you always wanted to be
If you like this article then please consider following me on medium (javinpaul). if you’d like to be notified for every new post and don’t forget to follow javarevisited on Twitter!
All the best for your Kotlin Journey and create some wonderful Android application. | https://medium.com/javarevisited/kotlin-or-java-what-should-an-android-developer-learn-in-2019-e1f88c08cbad | [] | 2020-12-09 09:52:35.394000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Mobile App Development', 'Android App Development', 'Kotlin', 'Android'] |
You Don’t Design Customers, You Understand Them | You Don’t Design Customers, You Understand Them
And because we think we already do, our businesses fail
Photo by Nikolai Kim on Unsplash
42% of startups die because they seek to tackle problems that are interesting rather than those that serve an existing market need. The shocking statistics aren’t limited to startups: 72% of product launches fail to meet their revenue target.
Is incompetence the explanation for this phenomenon? No.
There are lots of examples of businesses that have fundamentally good conditions for becoming successful: businesses with great technology, great data, a great team, great expertise, great advisors, etc. These sound like bulletproof conditions for success — nothing can go wrong, right?
One of the main reasons these sorts of businesses fail is flawed innovation and entrepreneurial processes. They are too caught up in what they believe the customers want rather than what the customers actually need. In other words, their way of thinking is too product-centric rather than customer-centric. Instead of testing for the question “What does the customer want and need?” and conducting research based on desirability, many startups and corporations test feasibility: “Can we develop it?”
Established corporations are often optimized for execution and implementation and neglect the search for customer-centric value propositions. Work teams are asked by executives to make business plans, which are then funded if the plan seems attractive. Even though the plan looks attractive, it is likely to fail if there is no market need. Georg Tacke, co-CEO of Simon-Kucher, and Madhavan Ramanujam, partner at Simon-Kucher’s Silicon Valley office, both advocate that marketing and monetizing concerns should be brought much further forward in the research and development process to substantially increase the chance of success. | https://medium.com/better-marketing/commercial-initiatives-fail-we-think-we-know-what-the-customer-wants-171dec553408 | ['Ag Analytics'] | 2019-07-12 22:27:16.945000+00:00 | ['Product Development', 'Customer Experience', 'Interview', 'Innovation', 'Startup'] |
Christmas Food for Dogs: Ideas for Fun, Easy, Hassle-free Doggie Christmas Treats | Wow! Christmas is right around the corner, which means that we’re almost through with 2020! Can you believe that there are less than two weeks until 2020 is over?! This year’s Christmas may not be like others due to our current situation, but that doesn’t mean you, your family, and your doggo cannot enjoy a nice at-home Christmas celebration with delicious Christmas treats. You can even get creative and have some fun making Christmas dog treats that should not take long, at all. You and your doggo will both be smiling from ear to ear from these Christmas treat ideas.
Here are 2 easy Christmas treats to make for your dog!
Hard or Soft gingerbread cookies
Run run run, as fast as you can, to get started making these staple, easy Christmas cookies for your doggo. Gingerbread cookies are a staple at every Christmas gathering, and anyone can make them!
What you’ll need:
1 cup of molasses
4 tablespoons of honey
1 cup of water
½ cup of vegetable oil
6 cups of flour
2 teaspoons of baking soda
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
1 teaspoon of ground cloves
2 tablespoons of fresh, chopped ginger (you can opt to use 1 teaspoon of dried powder ginger instead, if you’d like)
Steps:
-Preheat oven to 350°F.
-Take two bowls(one medium, and one large) and mix the molasses, honey, water, and oil in the medium bowl. Use the large bowl for the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ground cloves, and ginger.
-Slowly add the dry ingredients(whatever’s in the large bowl) into the medium bowl with the wet ingredients. Make sure to mix well.
-If you’ve mixed thoroughly, you should end up with a dough like mixture. You will take that mixture and divide it into 4 balls. Then you will take those balls, wrap them with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 3–5 hours or freeze for 1–2 hours.
-When the dough is cold enough, go ahead and roll the dough out. Note: the thicker you make the dough, the longer it will take to cook.
-After rolling the dough, you now get to have fun and cut it into gingerbread men(or women) shapes.
-You can now bake the cookies for 20–25 minutes, until they turn brown. You can test one cookie to gauge how crunchy it is. If you prefer soft gingerbread cookies, you can take them out of the oven, but if you prefer them more crunchy, then bake them longer.
And…the cookies are done! As the gingerbread man would say, “You can’t catch me, I made the cut for one of the best Christmas cookies on the Internet!”
Candy cane cookies
You may not be able to give your actual candy to your dog, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make fun, candy cane shaped dog biscuits for him! This is another easy Christmas treat recipe, and it’ll make your dog think “real candy canes who?” for sure!
What you’ll need:
2 cups of all purpose flour
1 beaten egg
1/2 cup of warm water
1 vegetable bouillon cube
1 teaspoon of baking soda
½ teaspoon of salt
½ teaspoon of peppermint extract
Beet juice
Steps:
-Preheat the oven to 350°F.
-Dissolve the bouillon cube into the warm water.
-Mix all ingredients into a mixing bowl until the result is a soft dough. Then, you separate the dough into two separate, but equal pieces.
-Pour the beet juice and ½ a cup of flour over one of the pieces and knead until all color is worked in. Add additional flour if the dough is still sticky.
-Then, take the dough and cut it into smaller pieces and shape them into “strings” like you would see on a typical candy cane.
-Twist one string of each color together and shape it into a candy cane.
-Bake for 15 minutes, or until it turns golden brown.
-Let it cool. Once cooled, store them in an airtight container until giving them to your doggo and putting a smile on his face!
Disclaimer: As much as we want our doggos to enjoy these Christmas treats, health comes first! If your dog has health issues or if you have any concerns about your dog’s nutrition, consult with the veterinarian or dog nutritionist for appropriate portion sizes before feeding these treats.
Want to learn more about dog training, dog behavior and dog nutrition?
Check out Pawsitive app to actually put theory into practice and start applying all this knowledge. The Pawsitive app helps dog parents raise happy, healthy dogs by providing community and professional support. We connect you to other dog parents and professionals. We are building a supportive dog parent community and we are better than dog social media! Stay accountable for completing wellness milestones with your dog and other dog parents, dog moms, and dog dads. | https://medium.com/@pawsitiveapp/christmas-food-for-dogs-ideas-for-fun-easy-hassle-free-doggie-christmas-treats-44ff68e4bfef | ['Team Pawsitive'] | 2020-12-25 05:36:18.187000+00:00 | ['Christmas', 'Dog Treats', 'Dog Food', 'Christmas Cookies', 'Dogs'] |
Oracle dNFS with Docker | As everybody knows Docker containers have ephemeral storage, which means, once you removes your container any change on the filesystem will be discarded. For a RDBMS point of view this means that any data stored at your tables will be lost, for using Oracle Database at Docker the filesystem where your Datafiles resides must be attached to an external storage.
When using Docker Swarm this external storage is commonly placed at NFS server. Oracle provides a native client for talking with your NFS storage providing mainly a direct path access to the data, here two excellent posts at Ron's Blog with information about:
the mainly benefits of using dNFS is multi-path access to your Datafiles giving more throughput and fault tolerant access, following a picture taken form Ron's Blog show this architecture:
Multi-path access using dNFS Oracle driver
this post shows how to use Oracle Docker images with dNFS enabled by extending 18.3.0 EE image or a pending 18.4.0 XE image. First our simple Dockerfile.nfs for enabling dNFS driver over official Oracle Docker images, 18.3.0 EE:
# Pull base image
# ---------------
FROM oracle/database:18.3.0-ee
# ----------
MAINTAINER Marcelo ochoa < # Maintainer# ----------MAINTAINER Marcelo ochoa < [email protected] RUN cd $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/lib && make -f ins_rdbms.mk dnfs_on
or 18.4.0 XE:
# Pull base image
# ---------------
FROM oracle/database:18.4.0-xe
# ----------
MAINTAINER Marcelo ochoa < # Maintainer# ----------MAINTAINER Marcelo ochoa < [email protected] RUN cd $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/lib && make -f ins_rdbms.mk dnfs_on
to build our new dNFS enabled image just run with EE version:
$ docker build -t "oracle/database:18.3.0-ee-nfs" -f Dockerfile.nfs .
XE version:
$ docker build -t "oracle/database:18.4.0-xe-nfs" -f Dockerfile.nfs .
once you have your RDBMS Docker image ready a sample Docker Swarm stack like below could be used to start Oracle using dNFS native driver:
some remarks about above docker-compose stack definition:
db_data volume is defined as an external NFS backed storage (one of my NAS IP is 10.1.253.110, with Oracle recommended NFS mount options)
test_oranfstab_xe is an external config including multi-path definition to my NAS, here an example on how to create this config using command line:
$ echo "server: NAS-DTICs
> path: 10.1.253.110
> path: 10.1.1.241
> nfs_version: nfsv4
> export: /dbdata/xe-18c mount: /opt/oracle/oradata
> " | docker config create test_oranfstab_xe -
fbpuy0pjjx2t6ssan6almtjn5
$ docker config ls
ID NAME CREATED UPDATED
fbpuy0pjjx2t6ssan6almtjn5 test_oranfstab_xe 17 seconds ago 17 seconds ago
note that in above config definition we are adding multi-path access to our NAS storage (10.1.253.110 and 10.1.1.241), export and mount parameters must be equal to docker-compose.yml definition. Deploying our stack with:
$ docker stack deploy -c docker-compose.yml test
will result on RDBMS XE up and running after a few minutes (wait for your RDBMS create theirs Datafiles), if your NAS is not fast enough and Docker healthcheck file kill your stack add this healthcheck definition to avoid the problem:
healthcheck:
test: exit 0
interval: 60s
timeout: 3s
finally to see dNFS multi-path in action lets try to run an IO calibrating test by connecting to the root CDB and running with SQLPlus as sysdba:
set long 10000 lines 140 pages 50 timing on echo on
set serveroutput on size 1000000 declare
l_latency integer;
l_iops integer;
l_mbps integer;
begin
dbms_resource_manager.calibrate_io (
1, /* # of disks */
20, /* max latency */
l_iops, /* I/O Ops/sec */
l_mbps, /* MBytes/sec */
l_latency /* actual latency */
);
dbms_output.put_line ('I/O Ops/sec = ' || l_iops);
dbms_output.put_line ('Actual Latency = ' || l_latency);
dbms_output.put_line('MB/sec = ' || l_mbps);
end;
/
during the IO calibrating process we see at the NAS resource monitoring something like:
NAS resource monitoring with multi-path dNFS enabled
which means that two network interfaces are used and we got about 86Mbytes throughput (note that we have a 1Gbs interconnect switch) also by querying v$iostat_file system view we see that our Datafiles have:
ASYNCH_IO : ASYNC_ON
ACCESS_METHOD : DNFS_LIB
if instead of using oracle/database:18.4.0-xe-nfs Docker image we change our docker-compose.yml with oracle/database:18.4.0-xe image network utilization during IO calibrate test is:
NAS resource monitoring without multi-path dNFS enabled
only one interface is used to access to our data resulting in a slow IO capabilities and no Asynch IO: | https://medium.com/oracledevs/oracle-dnfs-with-docker-8a3e35c0b558 | ['Marcelo Ochoa'] | 2019-05-14 21:20:02.732000+00:00 | ['Dnfs', 'Oracle', 'Docker', 'Swarm'] |
How to choose a good tutoring centre for your child? | Are you are worried about the slipping grade of your child in math? If so, it is important for you to choose a good children’s tutoring centre to support your child and help them in achieving a good grade in math.
When choosing a math learning centre for your child, we recommend that you follow certain guidelines that will help you choose the best tutor for your child, who is in sync with their unique learning styles and knowledge gaps.
Here are some of the critical questions you should ask before making a final decision:
1. Do the centre’s tutors openly seek feedback? Dedicated math tutors from the best children’s tutoring centres invariably asks your child for feedback to determine if there is any need to modify their teaching style. Tutors who are interested in the feedback of your child are more dutiful and possess a great willingness to help your child by using an individualized learning approach that suits their current skills and learning needs. A great math tutor who has the potential to help your child recognize their concerns and gaps successfully works with your child to push them quickly to the next level.
2. Are the tutors qualified? When choosing a good learning centre for your child it is important that you choose an option that has qualified and experienced tutors who will be working with your child. A qualified tutor will analyze the gaps in your child’s knowledge and will formulate a customized tutoring program that best fits their unique learning skills and abilities.
3. Does the centre have a comprehensive exam revision plan for your child? To assist your child to gain increased confidence or managing upcoming tests, a good children learning centre often has an exam revision plan that helps children to mold their problems solving techniques and boost their confidence so they can finish their tests accurately and in time.
4. One-on-One engagement: A great children’s learning centre uses a one-on-one approach when working with your child. Such an approach helps to build a powerful trust between the tutor and your child. Also, the tutor will be able to provide focused attention to your child and work on their learning gaps. The tutor also encourages your child to ask questions or concerns they have pertaining to the math topics without any fear or embarrassment.
5. Understands the psychology of your child: One of the factors that have to be given the highest priority is that the tutor has to understand the psychology of your child and should motivate an otherwise average student to secure good marks. A dedicated math tutor will be a guide to your child and help them focus their attention on the right targets. The tutor’s experience and motivation combined with their ability to find the weaker aspects of your child’s knowledge will help them achieve the desired results. A great children’s learning centre gives comprehensive help in completing tasks and math homework assignments which your child finds difficult to handle on their own. | https://medium.com/@roseelise273/how-to-choose-a-good-tutoring-centre-for-your-child-98d14356095c | ['Elise Rose'] | 2020-12-23 10:23:45.272000+00:00 | ['Math Learning', 'Math', 'Maths Tuition', 'Education'] |
Intern Story #14: Unnati’s Summer Internship @ Ernst & Young | Unnati is a recent Bachelor in Management Studies (BMS) undergrad from Usha Pravin Gandhi College of Management, with a specialization in Finance. She is currently pursuing M.Com from Mumbai University.
Application Process
EY coupled with PwC, Deloitte, and KPMG come under the umbrella referent — The Big Four. Getting an internship in any of these Big 4 firms is subject to the channel through which you proceed. In my case, it came from a close contact, who helped me in getting to the doors of this opportunity at EY, and my resume was given for the screening process. I made sure that I had included all the relevant details about my previous internship experiences and the various responsibilities that I handled. My resume was shortlisted and I was called at the office for the Interview. I prepared for questions from the internet and read about the company culture and previous interview experiences. The interview lasted for 30 odd minutes and included general questions based on my resume and previous internships. The interview went well, and I was hopeful. The next day itself I received confirmation about my hiring and was asked to report at Ernst and Young’s Dadar office.
Getting an opportunity to intern at EY in itself is a great opportunity since you get to have an internship in one of the Big 4 Consulting firms, a firm that has marked its place amongst the top companies. Thus, the experience of not just interning at EY but also the journey to reach EY for internship also counts.
With my internship at EY, I was looking forward to attaining an irreplaceable experience — one which would change my outlook towards work life.
An awesome resume gets you an interview, and a successful interview gets you an offer.
The Internship Experience
There are multiple teams in Ernst & Young and the work you do depends on the team you are assigned to. The work environment in Ernst and Young is excellent. You get an opportunity to interact with some of the most intelligent and helpful co-workers, who are ready to assist you in whatever work you are involved in.
Since I was a part of Tax, I was placed under the Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPI) team under the guidance of Manager, who was also my mentor GovindSwamy Nadar who is the manager of the Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPI) Team, Mumbai. Each employee had to complete a minimum of 9 hours on a daily basis, irrespective of the time he/she enters. I used to complete my college and then go to the office. My timings usually ranged from 12:00 pm to 9:00 pm from Monday to Friday. My internship was of 2 months i.e. From 27th of May, 2019 to 31st of July, 2019.
The internship started with a formal two-day induction program where all the interns and new joinees were introduced to EY- its Leadership, Service Lines and Mission, etc. This was followed by a great lunch each day. After this, we were allotted mentors and buddies who would ensure that we didn’t face any difficulty during our tenure in the firm.
Initial two weeks were very relaxed. Then followed work in full swing. I began to get a flavour of how consulting career would be. The office became my new home, and colleagues turned to friends with whom I could have log chit-chats and coffee table discussions. Thus, despite the work hours being hectic, my buddy and colleagues ensured that we did not fall for the ‘all work no play’ kind.
A challenging but rewarding learning experience, my internship at EY has cemented my foundation necessary for a corporate environment. The work-life balance may be hectic, but it inculcates into you a lesson of time management.
The one with the team
The one with the mentor and other interns
Advice to aspiring interns
1. Working in a professional setting for the first time can be difficult to get used to. But it is the best way to learn how to navigate the working world through real-life, hands-on experience. One of the most valuable skills you will gain from an internship is the ability to speak with people in a professional setting. Discussions with bosses or coworkers are different from discussions with lecturers or fellow students.
2. Don’t underestimate yourself; make sure you make the most of your internship and take advantage of all the opportunities that come with it. Also, unglue yourself from your desk every once in a while and get to know other interns. Not only will you end up creating great memories and making friends, but you will widen your professional network.
3. Be proactive, and if you are invited to work functions introduce yourself to people. This is the only way people will know who you are and what you’re all about and most importantly — remember you.
4. Always work hard even if your task is small and seems unimportant. It will help you build a good work ethic, and people will notice the effort you put in. It’s not nice being told what to do all the time, but your superiors (mostly) know better. Following the instructions they give you makes it easier for everyone.
5. Often, we think being spoon-fed is the way to learn, but working independently has proved to be very important. Your internship will teach you to make my own decisions and do things on your own. Being able to work independently with little guidance is very important in the working world. | https://medium.com/internclick/intern-story-14-unnatis-summer-internship-ernst-young-fc24476d0dd3 | ['Team Internclick'] | 2020-12-24 04:22:42.310000+00:00 | ['Internclick Stories', 'Careers', 'Internship Experience', 'Students', 'Ernst And Young'] |
Introducing the INVANTI Fall ’21 Founder Studio Cohort | Last week we kicked off our Fall ’21 cohort of the INVANTI Founder Studio. We have invited 18 people to join us, from across the country, for the next three months to explore problems they are connected to, identify opportunities for new companies, and develop and test solutions and business models. Our goal at the end of the three months is to help them transition to building a company full-time and connect them to pilot customers in the South Bend Region. We will also be making $20k investments from our fund into a select group from the cohort.
You can read more about the individuals in the cohort here. (Note: some members have chosen to keep their participation private for the time being.)
A Quick View of the Cohort
14 states represented
61% identify as Black, African American, Latinx, or Asian
72% identify as women
Over ⅓ are moms
Over ⅓ are from the Midwest
Over half have worked for a mission-driven organization
Over half have worked for or with early-stage tech startups
100% have started something in their past
What are their backgrounds?
The number one question we get is, “Where do these people come from? What are their backgrounds?” The simple answer is that they come from every type of background, both personally and professionally. We don’t believe you have to have started a startup previously to be successful, but we do think you need to have the experience of starting something. You don’t need to be an expert, but we do think you need to have a connection to the problems you want to work on. This thesis led us to attracting a wide range of interesting backgrounds in this cohort, including:
Founding team member of a startup accelerator
Career community engagement professional
Policy advisor to technology startups
Director of workforce development initiatives
Founder of a creative agency
Immigration lawyer and head of operations at a legal tech startup
Small business owner
Food/hospitality industry professional
Web designer and developer
Podcast host
Climate advocacy policymaker
It is these backgrounds that create an opportunity for us to unlock insights and find leverage points that can become interesting and impactful companies.
What do they want to explore?
Our process starts with cohort members defining problems they are connected to, either professionally or personally, and then uncovering leverage points that translate into an opportunity to start a company. This particular cohort has wide ranging interests, but almost all of them are rooted in making the everyday experience easier for people to access what they needed to thrive. We have people interested in the very real, physical experience of the day-to-day: housing insecurity, climate-informed neighborhood revitalization, and the circular economy. We have people interested in making it easier to earn a living: supporting the business of creatives, increasing Latino representation in tech, reducing barriers to meaningful employment, and helping small businesses leverage technology. We have people interested in what it means to have a modern-day family: solving problems for working parents, helping parents coordinate childcare, and improving the immigration experience. We don’t yet know how these broad topics will translate into products and services, but that is the ride that we have all signed up for and what our process will unlock over the next three months!
What they’re saying
“I’m excited to direct all of my entrepreneurial energy and focus my creativity.” “I’m looking forward to exploring a passion of mine in an environment that supports experimentation, creativity and accountability.” “I’m excited to partner with a small group of founders with shared values to arrive at an idea worth pursuing for the next leg of my career.” “My mom suffered through kitchen-table issues as a single parent since I was just 6 months old, always with positivity and love…I’m excited for the discipline, process, focus..to work on doing the right things.”
The bet we’re making
Just the existence of this new cohort shows the power of those bets. A week in, there is already an energy amongst them, and a magnetism between them, to take this entrepreneurial journey together. Will everyone and every idea succeed? Obviously not. But we also won’t get anywhere by not taking the bet. Putting this group together has validated that the people, talent, and desire to go after these problems in an entrepreneurial way exists. It is now our job to create the environment to let them take a swing at it.
And we have learned a lot over the past four years about how to do that well. The part-time, remote nature of this particular cohort has opened up access to high-caliber talent who are serious about starting a company for the next phases of their career, but are not in position to quit their jobs without knowing there is an opportunity on the other side. Investment from our fund will give them the option to transition full-time and focus on building and selling the first version of their product. These tweaks to our model gives us one of our most exciting pools of entrepreneurial talent yet, and we are excited to see what they decide to build. | https://medium.com/invanti-story/introducing-the-invanti-fall-21-founder-studio-cohort-74de3d607b9 | ['Maria Gibbs'] | 2021-09-14 12:40:21.075000+00:00 | ['Impact Investing', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Founders', 'Midwest', 'Startup'] |
Over-fitted and Under-fitted models. | Like my article? Do give me a clap and share it,as that will boost my confidence.Also,I post new articles every Sunday so stay connected for future articles of the basics of data science and machine learning series.
Also,Do connect with me on linkedIn. | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/over-fitted-and-under-fitted-models-f5c96e9ac581 | [] | 2020-05-17 14:25:20.791000+00:00 | ['Deep Learning', 'Statistics', 'Data Science', 'Machine Learning'] |
What You Cannot Google About Marketing At One Go! | This article comprises information that I have learned throughout the years as a “One-Stop Guide To Marketing Essentials.”
Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash
If you're looking forward to honing your skills on social media platforms such as LinkedIn, personally, or professionally for networking. Or if you want to set up your own business or personal brand for showcasing your skills to the world, this guide could give you a nudge in the right direction and help you find your Unique Selling Point!
This guide is split into 7 parts which would cover the following aspects:
Marketing Basics The relevance of Marketing: Know your USP Types of Marketing: Traditional vs Digital Marketing Funnels: CATT Funnel Integrated Digital Marketing: Marketing Channels Communication Element: Process and Skills Building a Personal Brand: Mass Trust Blueprint
I have learned marketing through various sources: courses, books, classes (both Bachelors and Masters as a minor), internship, working in an Advertisement Firm, being a micro-influencer as well as a social media consultant for beginners, and obviously at all the stages thanks to Google I gathered a lot of information on it alongside.
While giving an interview for a job/college, you’re selling yourself by marketing your skills as a person to the prospective employer/administrator. Even on Instagram while posting your pictures you’re marketing your experiences, skills, and passion by sharing the post/story plus who minds a few followers who are also fans (even in a closed group). Any social media account from Facebook to Linkedin and even introducing yourself for networking there is a bit of marketing involved both at a personal and professional level, hence marketing is for everyone. | https://medium.com/@akanksha.khera/what-you-cannot-google-about-marketing-at-one-go-dd57158e19e1 | ['Akanksha Khera'] | 2021-07-26 10:28:53.870000+00:00 | ['Marketing', 'Interview', 'Sales', 'Personal Branding', 'Guides And Tutorials'] |
Musings on a soufflé dish or Why Capitalism has no space for love | This Christmas holiday I plan to make a soufflé. Not just any old soufflé, but what is probably the best pudding I have ever eaten, which was made by my dear friend Cya at the last dinner party I had a week before the first lockdown in March. (Recipe at the end of this post)
Because I rarely bake these light, airy, egg white propelled dishes it was no surprise that, when I rummaged through my kitchen cupboards, I couldn’t find a dish suited to its creation. I did however seem to be in the possession of a whole array of other bakeware I had completely forgotten about — muffin tins, chocolate moulds, cookie cutters, an ice cream maker, a flan mould and various baking tins — but no soufflé dish among them. I concluded that I must make soufflés even less frequently than I make muffins, chocolate and ice cream and I clearly hardly ever make those. As I reflected on the amount of space these rarely used items were taking up in my cupboard (which at the rate that house prices are inflating in my area was becoming quite valuable) and considered whether I should add a soufflé dish to this sad cast of minor characters in my personal kitchen drama, my mind turned to the subject of utility.
utility (n.) late 14c., “fact of being useful,” from Old French utilite “usefulness” (13c., Modern French + utilité), earlier utilitet (12c.), from Latin utilitatem “usefulness, serviceableness, profit,” from utilis “usable,” from uti “make use of, profit by, take advantage of”. Meaning “a useful thing” is from late 15c.
From the definition above and from economic text books you would be right to conclude that utility is about an item’s usefulness, its use value.
According to economic theory we are Homo Economicus, the rational utility maximiser. Economists spend a lot of time thinking about the concept of utility, deliberating on its different forms and on the best way to measure it. As someone with an interest in the economics of the everyday, I thought I would spend a moment reflecting on this notion (and buy myself some time to work out how to obtain a soufflé dish.)
In an ideal, utility maximising scenario our soufflé dishes would be working hard every day, moving in and out of our ovens, producing soufflés or puddings or pies, as would the muffin tins and chocolate moulds. Every moment they sat idle would be a waste of potential utility and should raise the alarm of any rational economist. Of course there are only so many soufflés, puddings, pies or chocolates a household can consume, so the rational solution would be to encourage people to share these items so they can be put to maximum use.
As you might suspect, the soufflé dish and my other excess bakeware are merely a stand in for all the other items that sit idly in cupboards, sheds and storage units across the western world. Many people will be familiar with the statistic that a power drill is on average used for only 12–15 min in its life time.
Sharing consumer goods vs buying separately for each individual household would lead to a dramatic fall in energy use and carbon emissions, a drop in pollution from transport and mining and is likely to increase social cohesion as we spend our time getting to know the members of our community whose stuff we need to use and who need our stuff in return.
Sharing consumer goods vs buying separately for each individual household would lead to a dramatic fall in energy use and carbon emissions, a drop in pollution from transport and mining and is likely to increase social cohesion as we spend our time getting to know the members of our community whose stuff we need to use and who need our stuff in return. In other words: economic policies that encourage the sharing of consumer goods would maximise the value we get out of the energy used to produce these goods, thus giving us a better return on investment or UROEI (Utility Return On Energy Invested)
Even without the prospect of a dangerously heating planet, alarming loss of biodiversity and epidemics of loneliness sweeping across developed nations, such a rational utility maximising approach would surely sit well with our economists and policy makers.
Unfortunately not.
In capitalism, it doesn’t matter whether the soufflé dish is ever used at all. What matters is that the dish is exchanged for money. Once the dish has been purchased you could go home and throw it straight into the bin, effectively destroying its utility and still capitalists would call that success. If you bought 100 soufflé dishes and smashed them all to pieces in a frenzied take on a traditional Greek wedding no true capitalist would shed a tear. In fact, the opposite is likely to be true. The more soufflé dishes are destroyed, the more have to be bought to replace them and the more profit the soufflé dish maker makes. In fact, in capitalism it is standard practice to destroy goods in order to maintain price levels. Tons of perfectly good consumer items such as flowers, clothing and food are smashed, cut up and ‘protected’ from unpaid consumption every day. According to Deutsche Welle an estimated €7 billion worth of good s are destroyed each year in Germany alone.
Despite the rhetoric about utility, our capitalist economy cares not a jot about use value.
The goal of capitalism is not, and never has been, the effective use of resources for the wellbeing of all. It has always been the exploitation of people and the natural world to increase private wealth.
Its primary concern is market value. Rather than a system of economics (from oikonomia, the management of the household) it is a system of chrematistics (from khrema the Greek word for money). The goal of capitalism is not, and never has been, the effective use of resources for the wellbeing of all. It has always been the exploitation of people and the natural world to increase private wealth. Even when addressing the problem of underused capacity and making attempts at a ‘sharing economy’ all it could come up with was the likes of Uber and Airbnb. They got the money, we got rent inflation and zero hours contracts.
That is why there is no room for love in capitalism. You cannot love a thing and at the same time be indifferent to its demise. A good capitalist must prioritise profit over utility, excess over enough, financial gain over contentment and money over meaning.
To truly care about our physical existence on the earth requires shifting our values from ownership to stewardship and from competition to co-operation. It means developing cultures which encourage us to learn about our minds, our bodies, our health and our relationships, so we rely less on material goods to satisfy social and emotional needs.
A real focus on the use value of a product would consider values beyond those of the market, rather than conflating the two. It would mean building systems where the things we use are made to last and when broken are easily repairable, where living arrangements enable us to share household items from soufflé dishes to washing machines to cars, to pay respect to the energy and material extraction required to produce and maintain them. To truly care about our physical existence on the earth requires shifting our values from ownership to stewardship and from competition to co-operation. It means developing cultures which encourage us to learn about our minds, our bodies, our health and our relationships, so we rely less on material goods to satisfy social and emotional needs.
A society in which our needs can be adequately met while regenerating the earth’s life supporting capacity is already being built piece by piece by communities around the world, but it is not a world of profit seeking. It is the slow but steady construction of the kind of solidarity economy we need to address climate change, resource depletion, inequality, pandemics and the multitude of social ills centuries of capitalism have wrought upon us. It is an economy that encourages us to care about each other, the natural world and the future of our children, rather than sacrificing them at the altar of profit.
In capitalism love gets in the way. In order to survive and thrive beyond the next century love must become the way.
Now for the recipe (You can find the original recipe in Nigel Slater’s book Appetite)
Enough for 6
Butter — 100 g
Sugar — 175g (Cya says 125g is enough)
Lemon — 1
Oranges — 2 medium sized
Eggs — 4
Plain flour — 40 g
Milk — 400 ml
Cream the butter and sugar together until they are light and fluffy and the colour of finest double cream. Set the oven at 180 degrees — gas mark 4.
Grate the zest from the lemon, making sure not to grate the pith, then cut the fruit in half and squeeze the juice. Do the same with the oranges.
Separate the eggs and add the yolks to the creamed butter and sugar. The mixture will curdle but don’t let that worry you. Add the flour and milk alternately, the mixer on slow to medium, so you end up with a soft cake like batter. (I found the batter alarmingly runny, but it turned out okay!) Stir in the orange and lemon zest and then the juice.
Beat the egg whites into stiff peaks then fold them carefully into the batter. Scrape into a heatproof mixing bowl or soufflé dish so that the mixture comes about halfway up the sides. Stand the basin in a roasting tin half filled with water, then carefully transfer it to the oven. Bake for an hour or so, until the top is puffed and golden — press it with your fingers to test; it should feel spongy — cool for five minutes before serving. And dying of pleasure!
Cya: “Inez, just so you know, this isn’t strictly speaking a soufflé.”
Inez: “Surely, anything with this many eggs and this much whipping and this much rising is a soufflé!”
Cya: “Not technically speaking. Nigel calls it a pudding.”
Inez: “Okay, well let’s just keep quiet about that. The argument about capitalism still stands.”
Finally, some people who know about love.
Welcome to the Share Shed! | https://medium.com/@inezaponte/musings-on-a-souffl%C3%A9-dish-or-why-capitalism-has-no-space-for-love-9857ad609f1e | ['Inez Aponte'] | 2020-12-25 20:35:41.513000+00:00 | ['Sharing', 'Values', 'Capitalism', 'Economics', 'Community'] |
The Butterfly Effect | “T here are some four million different kinds of animals and plants in the world. Four million different solutions to the problems of staying alive.” David Attenborough
The concept of the butterfly effect is broadly used to describe a situation where a small change leads to large consequences. It is intended to imply that the flap of a butterfly’s wings can cause a tornado (Wikipedia). This might sound improbable, but a recent project I have been involved in, as part of the broader Natural Science Collections Facility (NSCF) project, has proven just that.
My involvement in the NSCF’s Value of Collections project, has made it apparent to me that, through the study of preserved plants and animals, there are endless possibilities of finding solutions to the problems that threaten our planet and those that live on it.
From coming across stories of how the smallest microscopic worms (nematodes) prevented a national disaster, to the prediction of the viability of growing certain crops in new areas to ensure food security through the study of a simple plant specimen label; it is apparent that dried, pinned and pickled plant and animal collections hold the key to our well-being and survival.
Image by Kirstin Williams, KwaZulu-Natal Museum
South Africa has an estimated 100 natural science collections at approximately 40 institutions. Together they provide over 18 million objects or specimens representing about 100,000 different species of plants, animals, and fungi. These have been assembled over the last 200 years and represent life on earth since its origins.
Research and data from these collections contribute to solving problems of national and global relevance in many different ways.
‘Every natural history specimen with good data provides a physical snapshot of a species or community at a particular point in time and space. It is this physical scientific record that makes collections so valuable.’ (Jacobs, A. 2020)
The documentation and study of these natural science specimens underpin our understanding and further research into evolution, nature conservation, environmental impacts of climate change, pest and disease control, solving crime, public health, food security and allow for future predictions that can inform decision-making by policy makers.
The custodians of these irreplaceable collections have a huge responsibility towards our future generations. The tiniest or most seemingly insignificant specimen might hold the key to preventing the next pandemic or other extinction crisis.
Unfortunately, natural science institutions in South Africa, in the form of museums, science councils and universities are often underfunded, understaffed and undervalued.
The NSCF’s Value of Collections project, funded by the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI), aims to document the priceless value of the collections and its contribution to saving our planet, and in so doing increase public appreciation and understanding, and inform decision making by policy makers and governing bodies.
Image by Terrence Bellingan, Albany Museum
We might not be able to control where the flap of the butterfly’s wings take us, but we can save the butterfly.
To read more about the value of South African natural science collections, and the research projects that have contributed to our understanding and conservation of earth, visit: https://nscf.org.za/resources/the-value-of-natural-science-collections/
(a list of references used in this article is available at the above link) | https://medium.com/value-of-natural-science-collections/the-butterfly-effect-ca7520b626b0 | ['Shanelle Ribeiro'] | 2021-03-18 14:48:19.213000+00:00 | ['Climate Change', 'Museums', 'Conservation', 'Natural Science'] |
Top 4 Ways Grit Helps Build Success | When you think of grit, a tough cowboy from the old west might come to mind. Though the cowboys on the screen demonstrated grit, it’s more than just a tough guy act. It’s about the approach a person takes to life.
is defined as a personality trait based on a person’s resilience and perspective. It is made up of many factors that can determine an individual’s success. Here are the top five qualities of grit and why they matter for success.
When faced with a dilemma, they don’t shy away from it. Instead, they move through it by finding an effective solution. Commitments and goals matter to those who have grit. No matter how tough the task, they don’t give up and will muster the strength to accomplish their goals.
Challenges can make or break us, and success depends on what we learn from the experience. Those individuals who have grit can meet challenges and still push on. They understand that stumbling along the way, is a part of the process. If they fail, it doesn’t define them. Instead, it is a learning experience that continues to build their character.
People with grit don’t complain much or at all. Instead, they view the world realistically and don’t let small things negatively affect their attitude. They deal with unpleasant emotions in a rational way, putting them aside, so they don’t distract from what’s truly important.
Each task or project that a person with grit starts will be completed. They will focus on the problem and find a solution, no matter how hard or long it takes. They see that the time and effort are worth the benefit of completion, which allows them to see things through.
It’s possible to develop grit if you feel you don’t have it. These are all traits that can be learned through practice. Grit is a flexible way of thinking that goes against the fixed mindset. So, you can adopt this way of thinking to benefit many aspects of your life.
As you can see, grit is composed of positive traits that people use to push through the tough times. It’s a balance of perspective and endurance, traits that can be practiced and developed. Having grit is an admirable trait and a key to a life of success as a growth mindset. | https://medium.com/itc-uk-digital-marketing-entrepreneurship/top-4-ways-grit-helps-build-success-3e0e6915e2db | ['Stuart Ferster'] | 2020-12-21 15:55:00.452000+00:00 | ['Growth Mindset', 'Itc Uk', 'Stuart Ferster', 'Grit', 'Business Success'] |
How to get Культас VPN coupon code — Surfshark | Культас Youtube channel is about comedy and reviews. And a lot of random stuff. He reviews everything from tv shows to games, from tech gadgets to drama that is going on in the world. Recently he partnered up with Surfshark - a VPN software to increase his viewers awareness of cyber threats on the internet and how to bypass them. In addition they offer their viewers a 83% discount for Surfshark.
How to get the coupon code by Культас?
Go to Surfshark website here
Insert the coupon code “kult”
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You can also follow this link with the coupon code inserted in: https://surfshark.com/deal/coupon?coupon=kult
Why Surfshark
Surfshark is high quality VPN with fast servers worldwide. It manages to keep their customer secure and anonymous online by encrypting their data and keeping it away from third parties like ISPs, hackers, government and more.
Features of Surfshark:
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Get Surfshark with 83% discount
Watch Культас Youtube channel | https://medium.com/@jhoncopers0/how-to-get-%D0%BA%D1%83%D0%BB%D1%8C%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%81-vpn-coupon-code-surfshark-c43229fe1456 | ['Jhon Copers'] | 2019-05-27 13:29:30.380000+00:00 | ['Privacy', 'Coupon', 'Technology', 'VPN', 'Discount'] |
Find the Maximum Sum of a Contiguous Subarray | Problem
Maximum sum of a contiguous subarray: InterviewBit
Find the contiguous subarray within an array (containing at least one number) which has the largest sum. For example given the array [-2, 1,-3, 4, -1, 2, 1, -5, 4] , the contiguous subarray [4, -1, 2, 1] has the largest sum = 6. For this problem, return the maximum sum.
Solving Process
Brute Force Solution
If we don’t take enough time to think about the fundamentals of this problem, the first solution we may think of is the brute force one.
The idea would simply be to test a subarray by removing either the first or the last element.
To avoid having to compute each time the sum of a subarray, we could keep a count variable initialized from the initial array and updated throughout the algorithm.
First, we need a function to compute the sum of all elements in an array:
The core algorithm could be implemented both iteratively or recursively. For the sake of this example, let’s implement it using recursion:
At the end of the function, we return the maximum value between:
The current count
The subarray without the first element
The subarray without the last element
Let’s take a look at the time complexity. For each element, we recurse two times. This means the time complexity is O(2^n). Indeed, the time complexity of a recursive function that makes multiple calls is O(b^depth) with b the number of times each recursive call branches. Meanwhile, the space complexity is O(n) due to the recursive implementation.
This complexity may remind us of the basic Fibonacci problem which can be efficiently solved using dynamic programming. Yet, in this case, it is not necessary to implement something that complex.
Let’s take a closer look at the problem and see if we were not missing something.
Kadane’s Algorithm
Let’s take a concrete example with the following input:
4, -1, 6, -100, 5
Here, we can directly say the maximum sum is 9. But what’s the reason to keep -1 but not -100 in the maximum subarray? Obviously, because in this context, keeping -100 would just reduce the maximum possible sum.
The solution is to keep a counter and to increment it with each element. If at some point the counter is negative, there is no need to keep track of the past. We erase the counter and we just move on to the next element. This solution is known as the Kadane’s algorithm.
Let’s see a possible implementation in Java:
As we can see, the solution is very simple but simplicity comes with practice. However, it was absolutely mandatory to understand the fundamentals of the problem to solve it. | https://medium.com/solvingalgo/how-to-solve-algorithmic-problems-maximum-sum-of-a-contiguous-subarray-5568adbfc5b | ['Teiva Harsanyi'] | 2020-12-09 19:30:30.191000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Coding', 'Java', 'Arrays', 'Algorithms'] |
Boost Your Career in 2021 With a Shared Workspace — United Co. | 2020 saw droves of workers leave CBDs all over Australia and settle into a new routine of working from home. Many businesses have seen the potential to cut costs by not renewing the lease on large amounts of office space by offering this as an ongoing option. Big companies like Facebook and Twitter have announced that their employees can work from home forever. Lots of employees however have expressed a preference to return to an office environment as they feel lonely and distracted when working from home. Often they do not feel that they are able to produce their best work when the laundry is spinning in the background. Of course there is a third way; coworking spaces offer the flexibility of working from home combined with the best tools that any employee could wish for. Using the coworking environment could even boost your career. United Co. shows you how.
Flexible Working
One of the main shared workspace benefits is the availability to work flexibly. A 2014 study from the IBM Smarter Workforce Institute showed that flexible start and finish times contributed to a strong feeling of balance between work and life. The study also showed that employees who made use of the flexibility were more likely to have had two or more promotions over a five year period. Data from Canada Life showed 20% lower feelings of stress by employees working flexibly.
United Co’s coworking space is accessible flexibly during Monday to Friday office hours and for even greater flexibility a dedicated desk or private office gives you 24/7 access so you can work more flexibly than a yoga instructor made of rubber.
Health & Wellbeing
Talking of yoga… when we talk about careers we often focus on skills and productivity, smashing those KPIs, landing that whale of a client, we don’t talk about physical or mental health much. 2020 has seen renewed focus on mental health in particular and there is sensible advice everywhere. Physical wellbeing is linked to your energy levels. When you are drained you are more likely to be ill and take time off work. Poor mental health can lead to burnout, reduced productivity and ineffective decision making. Addressing these will make sure you don’t drop the ball on that big project.
READ MORE ON How to Take Care of Your Mental Health and Wellbeing while Working From Home
United Co’s shared workspace benefits from a state of the art wellness suite and on-site cafe allowing you to take a break to get a change of scenery and recharge, eat a healthy breakfast to fuel you for the day, exercise regularly to keep you sharp and release those endorphins and have some quiet time to let your mind settle.
Community & Networking
Of all of the career boosting shared workspace benefits networking must have the biggest potential. Spending your day around inspired focussed people is bound to rub off. Networking often gets a bad reputation, it can be seen as purely fishing for new business, while strengthening business connections is a definite plus networking goes much further than that. Mixing with people from other companies and industries can generate new ideas and new approaches that you would never have stumbled across in your everyday role. By putting yourself out there and meeting new people you build confidence and improve your social and interpersonal skills. The more diverse your network the deeper the pool of experience and knowledge you can draw on, it’s like drawing a face on Wikipedia. The most valuable benefit for your career, and life in general, is that you will develop long lasting relationships that you will rely on for years, decades to come.
With a ready built community United Co. gives its members access to all of these benefits through regular professional and social events. A community manager helps facilitate introductions, casual meet ups and conversations at workshops, end of month drinks, seminars, fundraisers and more.
Space To Develop Contacts
Once you have broken the ice and started to build your network you can grow these relationships in many of the breakout spaces in United Co’s characterful 1930s building. The shared workspace benefits coworking and private office members with informal areas to catch up and chat as well as business lounge access. With complimentary coffee, tea and snacks in the members kitchen there is a good chance you’ll bump into contacts and spark of ideas that you’d discussed earlier. Alternatively you can sit down and spend some quality time chewing over your thoughts together at Mr Huxley, the in-house licenced cafe.
Formal Meetings
Sometimes informal just isn’t enough and you need to have a formal space for meetings and presentations. Developing your career will need you to host, organise and deliver critical meetings. Among United Co’s shared workspace benefits is access to the suite of meeting rooms and venues from a 6 seat meeting room, through the 22 seat boardroom all the way to an event space holding 150. With access to top of the range technology such as wireless screen sharing and unlimited wifi in many rooms your Powerpoints are sure to dazzle. You can use Smart Board technology for workshops and brainstorming and the event space boasts a 9 panel video wall so you can embrace your inner Tony Robbins.
Working remotely means that you have to meet with more than clients and prospects, you need to engage with your team and the boss too. United Co. provides access to advanced video conferencing facilities to make sure you can stay in touch.
Friction Free Technology
No matter how flexible, well connected, buff and blissed out you are, you can’t truly shine at your role and skyrocket your career without solid and reliable tools. Yes, I know tools can be boring but even Usain Bolt wears new shoes to race. The shared workspace benefits that you weren’t hunting for but would miss desperately if they weren’t here is reliable and powerful technology.
Members have high speed fibre internet connections, both wired and wifi connections available through the building. Dedicated IP addresses and bandwidth available on request. High quality multifunctional printers, scanners and copiers with A4 and A3 colour, black & white secure printing anywhere in the building. All of this as well as the communications and AV facilities already mentioned. You can have all of the business weapons you need to go to battle and fire up your career in 2021. United Co. has got your back too with inhouse, onsite personal IT support for when your weapons misfire.
United Co. has grown over the years and we’d love to be part of your growth journey too. Explore our memberships online or contact us and Ask us how we can help today. | https://medium.com/@unitedcoworking/boost-your-career-in-2021-with-a-shared-workspace-united-co-56a2dc4abd46 | ['United Co.'] | 2020-11-23 23:26:09.958000+00:00 | ['Shared Workspace', 'Networking', 'Melbourne', 'Ways To Boost Your Career', 'Careers'] |
TV shows & cartoons for (and about) women | A list of quite new TV shows and cartoons that you will probably like if you’re a woman (that doesn’t mean that you won’t enjoy them if you’re a man). I included only those that I’ve already watched and enjoyed.
Fleabag (2016–2019, 2 seasons)
Fleabag is a British drama-comedy show about the life of a young woman after a traumatic experience. Sounds boring, hah? Actually, these series are funny, clever, and touching. They’re all about how to be a girl ‒ tough, and scary, and hilarious, ‒ all at once. You may not like British humor but I’m sure you’ll like this extremely modern and complicated story. Also, you just mustn’t miss Andrew Scott (Moriarty) in the role of the priest in the second season.
2. Aggressive Retsuko (2017–2018, 2 seasons, Netflix)
I was looking for some crazy enough anime and discovered Aggretsuko. This cartoon is cute and so truthful. Main events are happening in the office but it’s more than anime about office life. The main character ‒ Retsuko the Red Panda ‒ is 25 years old, she is cute, single, and frustrated about work most of the time. She is questioning her dating life, trying to find a soulmate, a hobby, friends, and just deal with all grown-up shit. And when she is stressed and wants to give vent to her emotions (read: every day), she is going to karaoke and singing metal songs (what could be more crazy and cute than the red panda singing the death metal songs?)
3. Tuca & Bertie (2019 — …, 1 season)
This cartoon has a similar mood to Bojack Horseman (though I’m not a fan). ‘Tuca & Berties’ is about the friendship between two bird women who live in the same building. They’re both 30-year old, and this is almost the only thing that they have in common. Tuca is single, free-spirited, and unemployed, her friend Bertie has a good job and a nice boyfriend, and anxiety. It’s a women-led cartoon about funny stuff in life, relationship, mental health, and the pitfalls of adults.
4. Why Women Kill (2019 — …, 1 season)
‘Why Women Kill’ is a comedy-drama. It tells three stories about three women ‒ from the 1960s, 1980s, and 2019 ‒ and problems in their marriages. Here’s everything I like ‒ good cast, witty dialogues, overall positive mood. This show made me laugh in my room in the middle of the night because it’s so addictive that I didn’t want to sleep. One of the best shows I watched recently, strongly recommended.
5. Big Little Lies (2017 — …, 2 seasons)
These TV series are based on the book of the same name by Liane Moriarty (I highly recommend reading). It’s a great crime drama that is funny, smart, and scary. I like all characters and cast of the first season but the second one is weaker in terms of almost everything. One of the best roles of Reese Witherspoon in my opinion, beautiful sceneries, and keen dialogues won’t leave you indifferent.
6. Killing Eve (2018 — …, 3 seasons)
The spy drama mostly about the relationship between the officer and the killer that I watched because everybody was talking about it. I couldn’t say that I liked it a lot. Yes, the tension between two women is interesting, and both actresses are good but for me, these series are missing something important. Still recommend watching, at least because it’s not a male-centered thriller and it will make you laugh at some moments.
7. Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018 — …, 3 seasons)
Sabrina the teen witch should choose between the world of normal people and the world of witches on the eve of her 16th birthday. I’d describe these series as “young adult” because of all elements of the genre: first love, rebellion against the adult world, a lot of emotions, and rash acts. The first season is really cool, with an interesting story and due amount of magic but the second one was more about feminism and girl power in a kind of annoying way. I recommend watching one season and then see how it goes! Also, these series have a great opening! | https://medium.com/@juliarainbowx/tv-shows-cartoons-for-and-about-women-7d286eea5bc3 | ['Yulia Kostyuchenko'] | 2020-12-10 09:09:05.124000+00:00 | ['TV Series', 'TV Shows', 'Lists', 'For Women', 'Women'] |
Is Joe Biden’s Foreign Policy Platform Relevant? | ANALYSIS
Is Joe Biden’s Foreign Policy Platform Relevant?
Biden wants to return to a US-led world order. But for voters and allies, the US must make up for its past mistakes before it can lead.
Former Vice President and Democratic Presidential Nominee Joe Biden delivers a foreign policy address at the City University of New York last year. (Photo Credit: Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times)
“Diplomacy…requires credibility and Trump has shattered ours. In the conduct of foreign policy, and especially in times of crisis, a nation’s word is its most valuable asset. By pulling out of treaty after treaty, reneging on policy after policy, walking away from U.S. responsibilities, and lying about matters big and small, Trump has bankrupted the United States’ word in the world.” — Joe Biden
In an article for Foreign Affairs magazine detailing his 2020 foreign policy manifesto, Joe Biden is optimistic about the US’s capacity to lead the world order again. During his presidency, he wants to re-enter agreements the US left shortly after Trump entered office (e.g. the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Paris Climate Accords, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran). He will prioritize action on climate change and make environmental sustainability one of the US’s foreign policy tenets. And he says he is committed to promoting democratic values and institutions abroad. These policies would mark a return to a more traditional type of American foreign policy stance that values multilateralism (e.g., participating in alliances, international organizations, and treaties).
Although President Trump’s approval ratings are waning in the US, the isolationist orientation he promoted during his election and presidency is popular. Prominent liberal and conservative political figures now disapprove of American intervention abroad and believe that the US’s trading relationships are unfair. Most Americans agree with these isolationists. In the Foreign Affairs article, Biden reframes American foreign policy with a weary public in mind — to mixed results.
Biden also addresses the skeptics: American allies. Treated particularly badly by the Trump administration, allies learned that they do not need American support on the world stage over the last four years. Many countries are also willing to help preserve democracy and free markets within the international order. Trump hurt the US’s international credibility, so why should an ally work with a recently unreliable nation when they could partner with a predictable one? Biden knows and mentions that improving the US’s reputation will be one of his most important tasks while in office. But how can Biden convince nations to work with the US once again?
Global Change Starts at Home
“My administration will equip Americans to succeed in the global economy — with a foreign policy for the middle class.” — Joe Biden.
Biden directly connects most of his foreign policies to the outcomes of domestic policy. He notes: “As a nation, we have to prove to the world that the US is prepared to lead again.” He doesn’t sidestep the moral responsibility he believes is required to lead the world for his apathetic audience but does describe domestic social and economic policies at length. Biden argues that the Trump administration’s policies around immigration have dirtied the US’s image and that he would reverse them on January 21st. The federal election system and campaign financing are also critiqued, as he warns of potential foreign meddling in elections. Domestic issues certainly affect American foreign policy, but they were included to broadly remind voters about Biden’s platform. Biden’s social policies are also frequently contrasted with Trump’s in the article.
The Vice President’s explanation of his “foreign policy for a middle-class”, essentially an equitable approach to international trade, does a much better job of selling his foreign policy strategy to Americans. Biden focuses on promoting innovation in STEM and funding R&D projects for AI development to improve the US’s competitiveness in key industries. Achieving these goals will require domestic investments in infrastructure and job-training. American politicians commonly appeal to the middle-class, but mentioning job-training, in particular, helps market this idea to the American people. Americans are regularly told that middle-class jobs, usually in manufacturing, are moving to China. Job-training that leads to employment in in-demand sectors of the economy may help people realize that international trade benefits workers, particularly those who provide services.
Siding with the anti-interventionists, Biden also advocates for ending America’s participation in “forever wars.” He states that military force should be used as a last resort — diplomacy should be relied upon as the US’s first line of defense. The Biden administration will recruit more people to work in the diplomatic corps. But the American people are not as motivated by Biden’s emphasis on diplomatic engagement as they are about getting out of Middle East-centric conflicts for the first time in decades. So he asserts that if the US does get involved in overseas conflicts, it will only send over small-scale missions of around 100 troops. The past couple Presidents’ commitments to pull troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan were largely unsuccessful. Biden will also face difficulty in the Middle East. But by providing specific examples of how American engagement will evolve, Biden makes sure the American people and policymakers can hold him accountable.
The Biden foreign policy strategy is generally appealing, particularly on the military and trade fronts. Many Americans are likely to support the platform, not because of the personal importance of a particular issue but because the strategy as a whole is ideologically coherent. Americans, particularly the anti-Trump contingent, want there to be some semblance of consistency and normalcy in Presidential policy-making. If the President doesn’t make America look worse, that’s something to support.
Then-Vice President Joe Biden participates in the United States Military Academy West Point’s 2012 Commencement Ceremony. (Photo Credit: Getty Images)
The Future of Democracy Is Unclear
“The triumph of democracy and liberalism over fascism and autocracy created the free world. But this contest does not just define our past. It will define our future, as well.” — Joe Biden
The Biden manifesto not only channels old-school foreign policy but alludes back to the Cold War. Biden characterizes the proliferation of populist, authoritarian rule throughout the world as a threat to the United States and its allies. To a smaller extent, China and Russia are singled out as the central proponents of the authoritarian movement. Biden believes that democracies must again embrace the ideological purpose that helped them bring down the Iron Curtain in Europe. The message is clear: liberal, democratic values are currently under threat.
To Biden, US leadership is not needed to guide the world into the future but to protect free nations from another emerging ideological conflict. He characterizes the US as the best historical example of how democracy can help build diverse, inclusive, and prosperous societies. The Biden administration will organize an annual Summit for Democracy, where participating nations will brainstorm about how to strengthen democratic institutions and confront democratically backsliding countries. The US will promote democratic leadership worldwide and work with partners to get democracy “back on the global agenda” (i.e. create incentives for authoritarian countries to adopt democratic principles). Because the ideological motivations described are quite similar to the US’s Cold War doctrine, Biden points out that the US’s 70 years of experience at the head of the table on democracy promotion make it well-suited to continue leading the fight.
According to the manifesto, environmental action will also drive the US’s relations with democratic nations. Biden commits to carbon-free electricity by 2035 and carbon-free emissions by 2050, in addition to adopting an emissions cap this decade per the terms of the Paris Accord. However, climate change is not described as a reason to embrace American leadership. In countries where rising seas pose a real threat, or where there have already been significant emissions reductions, American leadership in this area would not make much sense. The US still produces 15% of the world’s CO2 emissions.
Are allies likely to follow the US’s lead? It depends. If there is continued Chinese or Russian interference in democratic elections, a collective response from democracies is warranted. As a victim of one of the most egregious foreign influence campaigns, the US would be an excellent advocate for free elections on the world stage. If authoritarian-driven misinformation spreads across the Internet, democracies may band together to stop fake news. But if authoritarian suppression mostly occurs within these authoritarian countries’ borders, free nations will likely confront these nations individually rather than with other democracies. Despite what Biden implies in this piece, a Cold War is not nigh. It is still in democracies’ interests to pursue closer economic relations with authoritarian countries to reform these countries.US-China relations might be extremely strained at the moment, but the American and Chinese economies are well-integrated. The US still has the leverage to pressure China. Until the authoritarian threats supersede the economic benefits of partnership, the free world does not need to fight for democracy just yet. The US should work on an equal playing field with allies to promote democracy and stop the trend of democratic backsliding, but it does not need to lead. Perhaps these free states need a year or two to ensure that the US will be as cooperative as it promises.
Conclusion
Biden’s foreign policy platform presents smart — albeit hopeful — solutions to the critical problems facing the US in the world post-Trump. The Biden Campaign selectively incorporates some non-interventionist positions into a policy that is decidedly for American engagement with the world. But this policy does not help convince voters and allies that American world leadership is necessary and essential. Biden and his Presidential successors will need to completely get out of foreign conflicts and make the benefits of trade more perceptible to the lower and middle classes for Americans to start viewing US leadership as essential. Achieving these results will require systemic change that may take years or decades. It will also take years for the US to regain allies’ trust after dealing with Trump’s erratic behavior. The US cannot expect to be quickly given back the reigns to the world order. It must reconcile — it must cooperate with its allies to promote democratic norms within the UN and other international organizations. And the US must allocate funding to maintaining its international alliances. Only then can US leadership be accepted. | https://medium.com/discourse/is-joe-bidens-foreign-policy-platform-relevant-a77ccb64d115 | ['Savannah Wallace'] | 2020-08-19 05:24:02.962000+00:00 | ['Elections', 'USA', 'Government', 'Joe Biden', 'Politics'] |
Marijuana: Good or bad?. Buy marijuana online | What are the medical benefits of marijuana?
Over the years, research has yielded results to suggest that marijuana may be of benefit in the treatment of some conditions. These are listed below.
You can buy weed online now at
website …….https://www.gt-tech.biz/
Chronic pain
Last year, a large review from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine assessed more than 10,000 scientific studies on the medical benefits and adverse effects of marijuana.
One area that the report looked closely at was the use of medical marijuana to treat chronic pain. Chronic pain is a leading cause of disability, affecting more than 25 million adults in the U.S.
The review found that marijuana, or products containing cannabinoids — which are the active ingredients in marijuana, or other compounds that act on the same receptors in the brain as marijuana — are effective at relieving chronic pain.
Alcoholism and drug addiction
Another comprehensive review of evidence, published last year in the journal Clinical Psychology Review, revealed that using marijuana may help people with alcohol or opioid dependencies to fight their addictions.
But this finding may be contentious; the National Academies of Sciences review suggests that marijuana use actually drives increased risk for abusing, and becoming dependent on, other substances.
Also, the more that someone uses marijuana, the more likely they are to develop a problem with using marijuana. Individuals who began using the drug at a young age are also known to be at increased risk of developing a problem with marijuana use.
Cancer
Evidence suggests that oral cannabinoids are effective against nausea and vomiting caused by chemotherapy, and some small studies have found that smoked marijuana may also help to alleviate these symptoms.
So, is marijuana good or bad for your health?
There is evidence that demonstrates both the harms and health benefits of marijuana. Yet despite the emergence over the past couple of years of very comprehensive, up-to-date reviews of the scientific studies evaluating the benefits and harms of the drug, it’s clear that more research is needed to fully determine the public health implications of rising marijuana use | https://medium.com/@gttech50/marijuana-good-or-bad-3f63aa77ac1 | ['Gt Tech'] | 2019-09-23 09:37:53.097000+00:00 | ['Treatment', 'Kush', 'Chronic Pain', 'Marijuana', 'Cannabis'] |
Memories of a Baby Bird | I have the memories of a baby bird
warm inside an egg, snug inside a nest
Secure in the belief life will always be benevolent,
relaxing in the folds of mama bird’s underbelly
Held exactly in the spots where I need to be held
Just the right temperature, just the right attention
No self-affirmations or external validations needed,
because love is aplenty. I soak, I swim, I dip, I bask in it
I don’t know why,
I have the memories of a baby bird
When I look up at blue sky, it reminds me
of my mama bird’s blue belly, sinking into me.
Protecting me. | https://medium.com/literally-literary/memories-of-a-baby-bird-67114b5d30d6 | ['Paroma Sen'] | 2020-10-09 05:33:06.418000+00:00 | ['Love', 'Mothers', 'Memories', 'Self Love', 'Poetry'] |
Deep Zork — Part 2. Now that I have given some background… | Game emulation
Since I am using Python for this project, the first step was to be able to play Zork through Python. The game file I found to use was what’s known as a Z-machine file. Emulators have been made to play this format of file but none of them are written in Python. I thus had to use an executable version I found called Frotz for Windows (https://github.com/DavidGriffith/frotz) which runs through the command line.
To interface the program with Python I had to use the Subprocess module, piping the command line input and output so that I could read the lines of the game and write new commands to the game. To be able to read the game line by line without blocking, I had to make use of a separate thread to run the game on.
With this interface set up, I was able to both pass commands from Python to the game and read the responses and narratives given by the game.
Step one down.
Command generation
The next challenge is that of command generation. From my initial research and play-throughs of the game, I knew that Zork only accepts certain commands.
These commands fall into one of three categories:
Basic commands: commands to go a certain direction, commands to get info
Go north
Look around
Check inventory
Verb-Object commands: commands that consist of a verb and a noun or noun phrase
Take key
Open the door
Verb-Object-Prep-Object commands: commands that consist of a verb and noun phrase followed by a preposition and second noun phrase
Attack the monster with the sword
Unlock the chest with the key
By scrubbing the game file using ZTools (https://www.inform-fiction.org/zmachine/ztools.html) and using the Spacy library to detect verb and noun phrases, I compiled a list of possible commands for each type.
Basic commands
'go north',
'go south',
'go west',
'go east',
'go northeast',
'go northwest',
'go southeast',
'go southwest',
'd',
'u'
Verb-Object commands
'open OBJ',
'get OBJ',
'set OBJ',
'hit OBJ',
'eat OBJ',
'put OBJ',
'cut OBJ',
'dig OBJ',
'ask OBJ',
'fix OBJ',
'make OBJ',
'wear OBJ',
'move OBJ',
'kick OBJ',
'kill OBJ',
'find OBJ',
'play OBJ',
'feel OBJ',
'hide OBJ',
'read OBJ',
'fill OBJ',
'flip OBJ',
'burn OBJ',
'pick OBJ',
'pour OBJ',
'pull OBJ',
'apply OBJ',
'leave OBJ',
'ask OBJ',
'break OBJ',
'enter OBJ',
'curse OBJ',
'shake OBJ',
'burn OBJ',
'inflate OBJ',
'brandish OBJ',
'donate OBJ',
'squeeze OBJ',
'attach OBJ',
'find OBJ',
'banish OBJ',
'read OBJ',
'enchant OBJ',
'feel OBJ',
'pour OBJ'
Verb-Object-Prep-Object commands
'pour OBJ on DCT',
'hide OBJ in DCT',
'pour OBJ in DCT',
'move OBJ in DCT',
'hide OBJ on DCT',
'flip OBJ for DCT',
'fix OBJ with DCT',
'spray OBJ on DCT',
'dig OBJ with DCT',
'cut OBJ with DCT',
'pick OBJ with DCT',
'squeeze OBJ on DCT',
'pour OBJ from DCT',
'fill OBJ with DCT',
'brandish OBJ at DCT',
'burn OBJ with DCT',
'flip OBJ with DCT',
'read OBJ with DCT',
'hide OBJ under DCT',
'carry OBJ from DCT',
'inflate OBJ with DCT',
'unlock OBJ with DCT',
'give OBJ to DCT',
'carry OBJ to DCT',
'spray OBJ with DCT'
You will notice that the verb-object commands have ‘OBJ’ in them as a placeholder for the noun phrase and the verb-object-prep-object commands have ‘OBJ’ and ‘DCT’ for the first and second noun phrases. Using these placeholders allowed me to easily replace them with the different nouns found in the game’s descriptions.
At this point I knew that for any given state of the game, I would simply grab all the nouns in the description and generate a list of all combinations of those nouns with the commands.
To better assist the AI in choosing relevant commands, I compiled a Word2Vec model using walkthroughs and tutorials for other text-based games. I used BeautifulSoup to scrape two different sites — https://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archive/solutions/ and http://www.textfiles.com/adventure/ — and compiled all the instructions into a single file. I then used the GenSim library to train a Word2Vec model on the corpus.
Using this Word2Vec model I then used the similarity score on the commands to give a score to each command. I then used an exponential weight to make the difference in these scores more significant. Using these scores, when the AI selects a random action, actions that that are more likely to be valid will have a higher weight.
Reinforcement learning
The basic setup for reinforcement learning is to have an agent which selects actions to perform and sends them to the game environment. The new state of the game and the reward for the chosen action is then fed back to the agent to influence the agent’s next move.
Flow chart for RL
The state in this case is the surroundings given to the player as well as the player’s inventory. The two of these together provides the agent with all the information needed to select appropriate commands and interact with the environment.
The reward should influence “good” behaviour while penalizing “bad” behaviour by the agent. There is already an in-game score given to the player when reaching certain areas or performing certain actions. However additional rewards can help to direct the agent more successfully.
One of the most important parts of playing a text-based game is exploration. Any human player playing Zork would need to take part in exploration of the various areas and rooms to learn more about the game world and to find essential items.
Another important part is finding, taking, and using items in the game. For Zork especially, the main goal is to find and collect the various treasures so interacting with items should be rewarded.
As far as negative rewards go, taking too many turns in a game usually is a bad thing as the goal should be to get to the end as quick as possible. Thus, a small negative reward can be given per each turn to help dissuade the agent from taking more turns than neccesary.
Below are the different rewards.
negative_per_turn_reward : -1 points
- Each turn taken this reward will be added to the total reward for the round. This way, on turns where no other points were scored, the turn will be remembered as being non-productive.
new_area_reward : 2 points
- Discovering a new area or room in the game should be rewarded in order to encourage exploration.
moving_around_reward: 0.5 points
- In order to prevent the agent from staying in one room too long, a small positive reward is given each time the agent moves from one area to another that has already been visited. This also helps to encourage the agent to return to an area it previously left when it had not yet completed all objectives in that area. Providing this reward instead of the new_area_reward when the agent revisits an area will prevent it from exploiting the reward system and hopping back and forth between rooms.
inventory_reward : 3 points
- If the agent picks up an item or uses an item, the in-game inventory will change. This will be rewarded with a large number of points as finding the treasures of the game ultimately is how the agent can win.
inventory_not_new_reward : 0.5 points
- In order to prevent the agent taking advantage of the large inventory_reward, a much smaller reward will be given when an inventory change occurs that has already taken place. This will prevent exploitable situations in which the agent repeatedly picks up and then drops an item.
in_game_score_reward : in-game score
- Scoring points in the game is the best type of action the agent could take so it should be rewarded the greatest. Each time an in-game score is granted, a weight (initially set at 10) will be applied to it to show its significance to the agent.
The agent consists of a neural network — more specifically a Deep-Q Network (referred to as DQN). The architecture of the model can be seen below.
Input | https://medium.com/data-by-matt/deep-zork-part-2-c4b79fe5c240 | [] | 2019-03-31 19:17:06.005000+00:00 | ['Artificial Intelligence', 'Reinforcement Learning', 'Machine Learning', 'Interactive Fiction', 'Data Science'] |
Proof-of-work vs Proof-of-stake | To explain them, both of these systems are “consensus mechanisms,” and they are currently required to confirm transactions, without the need of a third party to validate the transaction. This will be explained in-depth further along.
When the first-ever cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, was built, they had to come up with a way for transactions to be verified without needing to entrust it to a third party. They achieved this by developing the Proof-of-work system.
Proof-of-work is used to determine how the blockchain reaches consensus, which is when a majority of the participants in the network agree on validating information, and as a result, it confirms it and adds it to the blockchain. Every single transaction needs to be verified for validity before it is recorded in the blockchain. Primarily, it is used to secure the network and stop someone from trying bad things, such as spend the same funds twice.
Proof-of-work uses an advanced form of mathematics called cryptography; that’s why coins are called cryptocurrencies. Cryptography uses mathematical equations that are so difficult that only powerful computers can solve them. No equation is ever the same, meaning that once it is resolved, the network knows that the transaction is authentic.
Although proof-of-work solved the double-spending problem and became a breakthrough for blockchain technology, it is far from perfect and has a lot of flaws. For instance, it requires a vast amount of electricity to validate a block because of the increased difficulty. It also allows a minimal number of transactions that can be processed at the same time. It is also easy to create a double-spending attack
Even though Proof-of-work is a system that is widely used by other cryptocurrencies, other consensus systems have been created to try and to find a system without the flaws of Proof-of-work. In this wave of developing a new consensus mechanism, a method first designed in 2012 by two developers called Scott Nadal, and Sunny King became very popular. Thus the Proof-of-stake consensus mechanism was born. The primary benefits included a fairer and more equal mining system, more scalable transactions, more decentralization, and less reliance on electricity.
Proof-of-work: How does it work?
Before we dig in, we need to clear some concepts that will be mentioned several times. The blockchain technology is intrinsically linked to cryptocurrencies and their respective consensus mechanism, but what is a blockchain?
Essentially, it is a database that records all the transactions that have occurred on the network and has been shared amongst the participating entities.
If we get technical and a bit redundant, the blockchain is literally a chain of blocks. These blocks contain information, that can be anything from a transfer of money, ownership, a transaction, or even an agreement between two parties. Every block includes a digital signature linked to the account that made the recording and a unique identification number, kind of like a fingerprint, which is called a hash, form both the current block and the previous block. Changing something inside the block will cause the hash to change; this is what makes it impossible for any information to be altered or for a block to be inserted between two existing blocks.
Instead of keeping information on a central point or entrusting it to central authority as it is traditionally done, multiple copies of the blockchain are sent to every member of the network. In proof-of-work, somebody must use their computational power to solve a cryptographic algorithm, effectively validating the transaction. Every single transaction needs to be verified for validity before it is recorded in the blockchain.
In the Proof-of-work system, thousands of individuals devices all compete to become the first to solve the cryptographic algorithm, but only the user that solved the equation first is rewarded for the services they provide to the network.
The way that cryptographic puzzles are created allows them only to be solved by trial or error. Computers can guess millions of different combinations per second, which requires such a large amount of electricity. So generally speaking, the individual or individuals that have the most powerful and expensive hardware devices will always have the edge on the rest of the network, and thus a higher chance of winning the reward. This proves why the Proof-of-work system is not fair.
Proof-of-stake: how does it work?
The Proof-of-stake system uses a different process to validate transactions and achieve consensus. The mechanism still relies on cryptographic algorithms, but the objective of the system is different.
While Proof-of-work rewards the miner who solved the complex equations first, in Proof-of-stake, the individual that creates the next block is selected randomly to validate the next block. The forgers have to deposit a certain amount of coin into the network as a stake, you could think of it as a security deposit, the size of stake increases the chance for the stake to be selected to validate the next block. The higher the stake, the higher the opportunity to get rewarded. But at the same time, the more you lose if you try to go against the system. If the individual that is staking wants to corrupt the blockchain, the stake he introduced would be lost, in this way, effectively securing the network.
In Proof-of-stake, users don’t mine blocks but rather mint them and are called “forgers” because there is no block reward that can be mined. Those who contribute to the Proof-of-stake system are rewarded by earning the transaction fee.
Thanks to Proof-of-Stake, system validators do not have to use their computing power because the only factors that influence their chances are the total number of their own coins and the current complexity of the network.
So this possible future switch from PoW to PoS may provide the following benefits:
- Energy savings.
- A safer network as attacks become more expensive: if a hacker would like to buy 51% of the total number of coins, the market reacts by the fast price appreciation.
- Increased decentralization, Proof-of-Stake enables anyone to be a part on the network validation process. You don’t need special equipment for this.
Proof-of-Stake and Polis Blockchain — My personal opinion
Polis Blockchain aims to be the most reliable payment system for day-to-day transactions. We have migrated from Proof-of-Work to Proof-Of-Stake over a year ago now. We firmly believe getting away from Proof-of-Work is the only way to make a viable day-to-day payment system.
There are also other concensus mechanisms that are arising, and Polis Blockchain will always look for the better way to be the decentralized payment system for day-to-day transactions. We are also investigating new ways to make transactions faster and secure, we are not marrie to Proof-of-Work
In my own personal opinion, I do not condemn Proof-of-Work. Polis Blockchain is not aiming to be the next bitcoin, as we believe bitcoin is a great store of value and this is due to their Proof-of-Work mechanism. However, due to the reasons stated in this post, I personally believe think any cryptocurrency with Proof-Of-Work, other than bitcoin, will not have a bright future.
Conclusion
Proof-of-work: This model requires a lot of energy consumption to validate blocks, while the individual or individuals that have the most powerful and expensive hardware devices will always have the edge on the rest of the network, and thus a greater chance of winning the reward.
Proof-of-stake: This model randomly selects the winner. The higher the stake, the higher the chance to get rewarded, more people can mint coins while on Proof-of-Stake, increasing decentralization, and more energy is saved overall.
There are also other concensus mechanisms that are arising, and Polis Blockchain will always look for the better way to be the decentralized payment system for day-to-day transactions. | https://medium.com/@ricgby/proof-of-work-vs-proof-of-stake-517b2dc2726b | ['Ricardo Bustos'] | 2020-01-14 19:44:05.667000+00:00 | ['Polis', 'Proof Of Stake', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Dash', 'Blockchain'] |
Product Management History: The Nineties, The Noughties, and Beyond | At the close of 2020, when we’re on the brink of entering a new decade, we thought it’d be a good time for a little history lesson. With more people entering the Product landscape than ever, now is a good time to help the newbies understand where Product Management came from, and how far the industry has come.
Where It All Began
Not every discipline can point to a single person as its father/mother. Luckily for history-enthusiastic PMs, they can! Neil McElroy from Procter & Gamble (the man who also helped found NASA by the way) is often pegged as the man behind modern Product Management after he wrote a now-famous 3-page company memo on the principles of brand management in the 1930s.
The memo describes the role of the ‘Brand Man’ who would be responsible for managing the product, tracking sales, and general marketing and promotion of the product.
The memo revolutionized the way Proctor & Gamble operated, helping it to become brand-centric, and therefore leading to the start of Product Management as we know it today. In part, according to Rafayel Mkrtchyan in ‘History and Evolution of Product Management’, because of McElroy’s influence over young entrepreneurs Bill Hewlett and David Packard.
When Hewlett-Packard ran with his ideas, it introduced an organizational structure where each product group functioned as a separate organization. This put more focus on both the customers and the products themselves. Sound familiar?
Product Management in the 90s
The 90s in tech. What an era.
The way business was done changed drastically in the 90s, and not just because of the rapidly-improving technology. Corporations started re-structuring so that teams were self-managing, and were given more autonomy and ownership.
This is when companies started applying consumer PM principles to software PM. At the time, Microsoft had Program Managers who were essentially engineers. There was a gap between development and tech which needed to be filled. There was no-one in the middle to ‘ translate’.
Product Management developed organically, as the intersection between engineering and brand management. Program Managers evolved into Product Managers (though not universally, as we still have Program Managers today).
It was the 90s that produced several lightweight software development methods. Popular methods were heavyweight, and led to bottlenecks and micro-management. The new methodologies were designed to allow for better time management, and allow for more creativity. Most notable perhaps is Scrum, which was popularized in 1995.
Tech Highlights of the 90s
🌍 1990: Tim Berners-Lee first tests the software that would become The World Wide Web
🎮 1993: The PlayStation is released, launching a new era of home console gaming that’s still going strong today
🛒 1994: eCommerce sites (Amazon, eBay) become more and more popular
👨💻 1995: Microsoft launches Windows 95, and Internet Explorer makes the internet more user-friendly
📼 1997: Netflix is launched in its original version, mailing videos to customers in their own homes
🎧 1998: The first portable MP3 player is released
📧 Email takes off, changing the way people and businesses communicate
🎉 Y2K is expected to bring the new online world crashing to a halt (spoiler alert: it didn’t!)
Product Management in the 2000's
It was in the 2000s that the product world started to open up to more people who didn’t necessarily come from technical backgrounds. As Product Management secured its place as the intersection between design, technology, and business, having Product Managers from diverse backgrounds was finally recognised as a strength and not as a weakness.
After all, many paths lead to product!
2002 saw the start of the APM program, which Marissa Mayer introduced at Google. It was the first program, soon to be adopted by tech companies around the world, which had the sole purpose of training the next generation of Product Leaders, by introducing them to the company culture and exposing them to current product talents.
In the early 2000s we also got The Agile Manifesto, which was set to replace waterfall as the defacto method for building software products. It’s hard to say where Product Management would be today without agile, as it gave us so many of the tools which we use to build great digital products. Without agile, there would be no MVPs, no product-led growth, and the overall landscape of the tech industry would look very different.
You might also be interested in: 4 Ways to Better Learn About Agile as a Product Manager
Tech highlights of the 2000s
👾 2004: The video game industry’s profits officially overtook those of the movie industry
🗣 People started using the word Google as a verb
👋 Peer-to-peer technology took off, leading to big debates on the ethics of filesharing
🤓 Smartboards were more widely adopted and installed in schools, and eReader sales became as important to the publishing industry as paperback/hardback sales
📢 The Agile Manifesto was launched
Product Management in the 2010s
By 2010, the Product Management community was going from strength to strength, and expanding all over the world. The global product community started getting the recognition it deserved.
Going beyond a job, Product Management became a craft.
Product School was founded in 2014, from a small coworking space in San Francisco. We started offering Product Management training to individuals, and over the last 6 years we’ve grown to a Product community of over one million people!
This is also the decade where product leaders realized that they could give back to the Product Management community, volunteering their time to give talks, write books, appear on podcasts, attend conferences, and mentor the next generation of product leaders.
This decade also gave us some landmark content for the community, such as Dan Olsen’s The Lean Product Playbook, and Marty Cagan’s Inspired.
Of course, the end of the decade brought…2020. A year which will go down in history, and perhaps also infamy. In 2020 a lot of things happened very fast, whilst simultaneously bringing the world to a standstill.
For Product Management, everything moved online in many parts of the world. Remote PM had been a topic of conversation swirling around the industry for some time, and Stay at Home orders really cranked that up a notch. Sectors like online education and online collaboration tools blew up, and eCommerce website (which were already very popular) went from strength to strength.
Tech highlights of the 2010s
💻 2012: Google Chrome overtakes Internet Explorer as the most used web browser
🚀 2012: SpaceX’s Dragon became the first private commercial spacecraft to reach the International Space Station
🚲 In countries around the world, shared mobility grew exponentially, with care, bike, and scooter-sharing becoming popular in almost every major Western city
👩💼 Virtual assistants became more widely available, including Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant, and Amazon’s Alexa
🖨 The 3D printing industry gained $7 billion in sales
📺 Streaming sites rose in popularity, eclipsing traditional television and forcing Blockbuster to close
🌏 2018: The number of global internet users surpassed half the population of the world. In 2011 about 2 billion people used the internet, which more than doubles to over 4 billion in 2018
What Does the Future Hold?
Technology has always been an exciting space to work in for those who are passionate about it, but perhaps it’s safe to say that there has never been a better time to build digital products.
Companies will of course have to find the new balance between remote and in-office work. Some have already pledged a complete shift to remote-first, and it’s something that many new startups will consider as a cost-cutting effort.
To find out what we (and a whole host of product leaders) think the future holds, check out our report on The Future of Product Management. | https://productcoalition.com/product-management-history-the-nineties-the-noughties-and-beyond-f00ca98975d4 | ['Carlos G De Villaumbrosia'] | 2020-12-29 14:58:21.215000+00:00 | ['Product Management', 'Tech Industry', 'Technology', 'Product Manager', 'Silicon Valley'] |
Testing jako důležitá součást vývojového procesu | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/applifting-cz/testing-jako-d%C5%AFle%C5%BEit%C3%A1-sou%C4%8D%C3%A1st-v%C3%BDvojov%C3%A9ho-procesu-c55e56e7ef99 | ['Damian Gorný'] | 2020-12-17 14:04:43.607000+00:00 | ['Applifting', 'Bdd Development', 'Software Testing', 'Bdd', 'Testing'] |
The Gig is Up! | It should come as no surprise that protecting thousands of free-floating e-scooters across a city is not easy. “Loss rate” — scooters that are irrevocably broken, stolen, or abandoned at the bottom of lakes and rivers — is a make-or-break KPI for shared e-scooter operators. Reducing loss rate is critical to achieving profitability, as well as ensuring the reliability and overall sustainability of a shared scooter service.
“You can train people about the scooter. It’s harder to find people who truly understand that the way we manage our fleet touches every single member of a community” — Jennifer Izzo, Director of Market Operations, North America
A year ago, monthly loss rates were reportedly as high as 10% among some operators. That’s tens of thousands of scooters permanently lost, damaged, or scrapped each and every month. Today, many operators consider a loss rate of 4 or 5% a cause for celebration.
After six months of operation, the loss rate of Superpedestrian’s LINK fleet is a remarkable 0.87% — by far the lowest in the industry.
I recently sat down via Zoom with three members of Superpedestrian’s Operations Team to figure out how they’ve managed to keep LINK’s loss rate so low.
Bill Knapp, Superpedestrian’s VP of Operations, is an industry veteran who has managed large fleets for Car2Go andJump. He attributes much of Superpedestrian’s success to the scooter’s tamper-deterring design, noting that consumer model fleets are easy targets for thieves who retrofit and resell the scooters on Facebook or Craigslist. “LINK is a scooter built for shared use, with hardware and software features that deter vandalism and theft, including unique component features that make hacking and retrofitting very difficult,” says Bill.
But improved scooter hardware and software are only a small part of the answer. The most important factor is the people behind the scenes. Superpedestrian’s approach is unique in the industry; rather than rely on gig workers, we only employ full-time and part-time W2 workers. Not only is this the right thing to do by our employees, but it also makes all the difference to our successful operations.
Bill lays it out. “Holding on to our scooters has as much or more to do with the people who manage our fleets. Behind all of these fleet performance indicators is a team’s ability to continuously learn, institutionalize, and apply new lessons. You just can’t successfully run a fleet of thousands of scooters across a big city with an itinerant work force. You can fake it for a few months, maybe even a year, but ultimately you find that cutting corners and failing to invest in permanent staff comes back to bite you.”
Jennifer Izzo, Superpedestrian’s Director of Market Operations for North America, echoes Bill’s point about the value of permanent, invested staff. “While some operating procedures apply across all cities, ultimately, market success is all about local knowledge,” says Jennifer. “And because that knowledge is something that accrues over time, it is very hard to gain and retain it when you are using gig labor.”
Andres Giraldo, a Regional Manager who, like Jennifer, has several years of experience operating shared bike and scooter fleets across the U.S., adds, “Independent contractors just don’t have the same investment. Our employees treat LINK scooters like the prized possessions they are, and they go the extra mile to make sure every missing scooter is recovered. ‘No Scooter Left Behind’ is what we say and what we do.”
Andres and Jennifer emphasized that the gig incentive structure doesn’t make sense for operating a sustainable and reliable shared e-scooter fleet. When people are paid per task, they have no incentive to take on the more time consuming pursuits, like tracking a lost scooter via a Craigslist ad, or picking up a scooter from an abandoned gravel mine an hour away. They add that when hiring they look for local knowledge first, micromobility experience second. “You can train people about the scooter. It’s harder to find people who truly understand that the way we manage our fleet touches every single member of a community,” adds Jennifer.
Superpedestrian’s deep operational know-how builds upon ten years of experience. Zagster, a micromobility company that Superpedestrian acquired in April, 2020, successfully operated more than 250 shared vehicle fleets in cities across the US. “Zagster was running successful and profitable bikeshare systems long before the Silicon Valley-funded micromobility boom, and figured out how to track, maintain, and rebalance thousands of vehicles,” says Bill. In addition to adopting Zagster’s commitment to investing in and sustaining a permanent workforce, Superpedestrian also inherited Wrangler — a proprietary piece of software that tracks vehicles and optimizes rebalancing, ultimately maximizing rides and minimizing operating costs.
Superpedestrian aims to set the new gold standard for the industry, and hopes other companies will follow-suit. Jennifer is hopeful: “Cities and competitors alike are starting to notice. When you treat workers as worthy of investment and time, that is how they treat the company, and the assets that they manage.” | https://medium.com/@link-city/the-gig-is-up-73109f2838ce | ['Link Superpedestrian'] | 2020-10-21 19:37:12.123000+00:00 | ['Employees', 'Transportation', 'Micromobility', 'Scooters', 'Urban Planning'] |
Social Media 101: How To Consistently Put Out Great Content on the Big Three | Let’s Get Down to Business: Defeating the Huns and Posting Quality Content Consistently
Usernames
Now that you’ve determined which platforms are the right fit for your business, get on ’em. Unless you’re like my father who thought the Facebook elves created a page with his information just by virtue of his existence, you know creating an account is accomplished by your own effort and consent.
Your username should be as close as possible to the name of your business. If your name is already being used in some variation, add your city or state to the end for easier identification. Finally, upload a profile photo (ideally your logo or another clear brand identifier) and you’re ready for the world of social media management.
Content is king (or queen #genderequality)
There are a lot of so-called experts out there who will try to sell you a super-secret formula for engaging content — one that will bring you 10,000 new followers for a modest one-time payment of $300. Scam. Scam. Scam.
There’s no one-size-fits-all, fill-in-the-blank template. Content depends largely on your industry and goals, and there are micro-segments even within those fields. Restaurants are different than packaged goods, car manufacturers are different than auto repair shops. Like with traditional advertising, you need to know your audience.
Give the people what they want. Fast food companies are really good at this — they know their target consumers better than anyone. Brands like Wendy’s and Denny’s have earned their place in millennial and Gen Z feeds by playing into meme culture and meta Twitter without trying too hard. The following is an example of what happens when this goes wrong — or right, I guess, if you operate by the motto that all publicity is good publicity.
While the uber cringiness of pancake fetuses did result in loads of media mentions for the usually irrelevant IHOP, it’s still wiser to aim for consistent follower and engagement growth over trying to chase virality. There’s not always a rhyme or reason to why certain posts go viral. It’s a perfect storm of really random factors — timeliness, content, who reshares it and their reach. Focus on content and give people a lasting why over being a flash in the pan.
Even if you’ve got solid content, you still need to do a little outreach. Search keywords and hashtags to find people who might be interested in what you’re offering and then join the conversation. Don’t be overly promotional or creepy, just give them a nudge via like or response to let them know you’re there. Some people find content using hashtag searches, so figure out what hashtags are relevant to your industry and include them as needed in your posts. Don’t go crazy with this — if you’ve got more than 10, you’re doing it wrong.
While giveaways can give you a temporary engagement boost, you want followers who actually like your content — not just free stuff. If you’re going to run an occasional giveaway, vet eligible candidates before awarding a random winner. A lot of people have made a pathetic sport out of winning anything and everything online — these are the bottom feeders of the internet. You can spot them by all the retweet and reshare to win posts clogging their feed. They’ve never heard of your brand and they don’t care about what you’re giving away. They spend their days searching for “retweet to win” posts and yelling at their mom from the basement to do their laundry.
Choose someone who will be excited to win because they have a genuine interest in what you have to offer. It might take away the “randomness” of selection, but you’ll likely make a lifelong customer (and maybe even an online brand ambassador).
Consistency is…also king
When it comes to a posting schedule, figure out what you have time for and stick to it. Once an hour, once a day, once a week, once a month — whatever works for you. Consistent posting builds a mutual understanding between you and your audience, almost a sense of trust. Those who engage with your content will come to know generally when to expect updates.
Bit off more than you can chew? Gradually wean off. Don’t go cold turkey — ghosting is for douche bros in polos named Brad. If you need a break or want to abandon a platform altogether, let your followers know. Something as easy as, “Hey everyone. We’re not using Twitter anymore. Find us on Facebook/visit our website/send a carrier pigeon to…” People will appreciate that and they’ll stop trying to contact you via that platform. It’s just good customer service, really.
Thinking about using one of those snazzy plugins that share your content across all platforms at the click of a button? Don’t. They absolutely, unequivocally suck. They never format your content the right way and they hurt your search rankings because Google hates duplicate content. I don’t care what anyone else has told you, they’re wrong. No, ifs, ands, or buts — just don’t.
Developing a brand voice and engaging with the masses
Everyone knows there’s a person behind the account, so be a person. Develop a brand personality. Engage. Respond. Use gifs. You’re not a sociopath, so express a range of emotions. That said, go easy on the exclamation points. One per post, if that. Stop yelling at people, you’re not that excited. Same goes for caps lock.
If taking things personally is your MO, you’re going to have a bad time. People online suck and they will remind you of that often. Keyboard warriors are either trolling you or a genuinely shitty person. Laugh at them, roll your eyes and move on. If you’re going to engage, do it lightheartedly. They’re not fun at parties. You are.
Similarly, don’t be a serious stiff all the time (even if you’re in a serious stiff industry). For example, take local police departments — one of the most unexpected fields to absolutely kick butt at social media. In 2018, departments across the United States challenged each other to lip sync video battles, resulting in a 100+ chain of entertaining, impressive and highly shareable pieces of content. Talk about fantastic PR for a field most citizens don’t associate with being approachable and fun.
Is that Justin Timberlake at 2:13?
Obviously, don’t be tone-deaf — exercise common sense, but keep it light when appropriate. People use social media primarily for entertainment. If they’re having fun with it, so should you. Be relatable, be funny and raise some eyebrows every now and then.
As we learn more and more every day, a lot of people on the internet are stupid — don’t cater your content to the lowest common denominator. If they don’t get the joke, they don’t get the joke. It’ll be worth it to those who understand it and that’s who you want to reach anyway. Of course, don’t overdo it. Take risks with as much tact as possible. Don’t ever be racist or sexist. Don’t ever comment on politics and religion. Save the free speech for your personal accounts — but even then, don’t be a dick.
And, finally, because this isn’t middle school — grammar matters. Rules should only be broken with intention. Proofread everything before you post and immediately after. If you make a mistake, don’t panic — even the most diligent will occasionally allow errors to slip through the cracks. Facebook and Instagram posts can always be edited. If you catch it soon enough on Twitter, delete and post again — anyone who notices and makes a fuss should find something better to do. If your tweet already has some engagement, reply with the correction and a self-deprecating quip.
Capturing captivating visuals (a.k.a. snappin’ cool pics)
If you’re going to post photos (you should), make sure they don’t blow. With high megapixel cameras built into smartphones these days, taking halfway decent photos is not nearly as hard as the crooked shot yahoos of the internet would have you believe. Most people don’t expect National Geographic-level photography out of small businesses, so do your best with what you’ve got. There are plenty of websites out there with all sorts of great tips for cell phone photography.
If you have room in your budget, hire a photographer to take a handful of generic but high-quality photos you can use for years to come — think of it as an investment in stock photography for your business. If that’s out of your pay grade, don’t sweat it. All you need is a smartphone, focus and good lighting. Finally, when it’s time to post, make sure your photo is sized correctly for the platform. I shouldn’t have to squint to tell if your photo is of a dog or a tasty baked good.
“Should I use influencers?”
As a general rule, no — at least not without carefully vetting what they can provide you in return. A high follower count means virtually nothing in an era where you can buy bot accounts to make yourself look popular enough to swindle small businesses out of free ice cream. If their email signature says “influencer,” recommend they get a real job and slam dunk to the junk.
Those with real-life marketable skills (professional photographers and writers) and follower bases that align with your target audience are worth considering, but only if you’re confident in their ability to convert browsers into buyers without blowing your entire budget. No influencer is worth all your money (or even most of it). | https://medium.com/better-marketing/social-media-marketing-101-lessons-from-a-so-called-professional-b6c99215f989 | ['Caroline Ponessa'] | 2019-11-19 21:15:05.084000+00:00 | ['Marketing', 'Social Media Marketing', 'Content Marketing', 'Social Media', 'Digital Marketing'] |
Replication in Distributed systems | DRY code vs Redundancy:
Don’t repeat yourself- In image form
One of the most famous idioms of programming is “DRY” — Don’t repeat yourself. The idea is pretty straightforward, don’t write same lines of code again and again, rather abstract it and use it multiple times.
But over the years of my career, I have learnt and realized that it makes more sense to repeat yourself at the risk of over-engineering. And when it comes to distributed system it makes much more sense to have duplicate data which can actually benefit to whole system.
Why we need replication:
There are many benefits of replication in distributed system:
High availability:
If one of the node of a large scale distributed system fails, the whole system should not go down. With replication we have replica nodes which are in same state as of the dead node. Hence the traffic of dead node can be sent to any of the other replica and system will continue to work smoothly.
Reduced latency:
Replication helps in reducing the network latency of data queries by having replica nodes in multiple geographic regions. If a person from Asia is querying something in North America, network latency adds to the query processing latency which can be avoided by having a replica of same data in Asia (read CDN)
Read scalability:
Since we have multiple replicas having same data, we can read from any of them. Hence the read traffic can be distributed between multiple nodes and response time is much faster.
Network interruptions:
System works even under network faults.
Maintaining state:
Let’s say that we copied a node and created a replica one. But later on, we change something in the original node — perhaps we change its state, some value that it contains, or some internal behavior. What would happen to the redundant node? Well…nothing!
If we created just a simple redundant node, there is nothing in place within our system that will ensure that the redundant node will 1) know that something changed and 2) will update itself or be updated by someone else to have the correct state.
Replication attempts to solve this problem, because it ensures that all replicas of a node will be identical to one another, and will match the original node that they were replicated from. There are some ways in which we can sync up the original node and replica nodes.
Synchronous way:
In this approach, data is sent to original node and replicas and when its written on every replica and original leader, the write is termed as successful.
Asynchronous way:
In this approach, write is considered successful as soon as its written on leader. After that, data is sent to replica nodes. This leads to eventual consistency in system.
Semi-Synchronous way:
Synchronous approach can have a lot of latency as writing to each node will take a lot of time. While asynchronous approach is risky if leader fails just after write and replica nodes are yet to update. Hence there is semi-synchronous approach, wherein write is considered successful when its written on original node and some of the replica nodes.
Replica strategy:
Leader based replication topology:
Master-slave concept
One of the Node is designated as the leader (master or primary) while other replicas are known as followers (read replicas, slaves, secondaries or hot standbys). When client sends a write request, it gets written on Master node. Follower nodes copies data from Leader node and maintains the reliability. When client makes a read request, they can read it from either master/ follower nodes based on the configuration of system. Leader based replication are the most famous and used replication topology as they are easy to understand and implement.
Multileader replication topology:
Multi-leader application
Leader based replication approach has one drawback — there is only one leader and all writes must go through it. If clients can’t connect to it, write stops which hampers the availability of the system. We can solve this by having multiple leaders in the system, all having their follower nodes. In Master-Master application, client sends write query to one of the leader which sends stream of data to other nodes and children nodes to maintain reliability. Here system is available even when one whole data center goes down, as leader from other data-centers are available to do write operations.
Leaderless replication topology:
In Leader based approaches writes wont work if leader/leaders are unavailable until the failovers are recovered. In leaderless application there are no leaders, so client sends write request to all nodes and if some of these node confirm writes, the write operation is considered successful.
The exact numbers of node on which write/read should be implemented before considering it successful is based on the concept of Quorum.
For example, if there are 10 replicas and if at least 6 of them accepted the write, and during read operation say at least 6 of them responded. This guarantees that out of 6 that we read at least 1 of them was write successful and have latest information.
For an optimal configuration: writes + reads > number of replicas.
Outages:
Leader Outage:
When leader goes down, a new leader is elected among the follower nodes and write requests are sent to new leader. When old leader is up, it becomes follower of new leader node.
Follower Outage:
After restart, follower node connects to leader and requests all the data changes occurred during the downtime and maintains the consistency.
Replication is small and one of the most important part of large scale distributed systems which help maintain the reliability and availability of the system.
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References:
Base Ds publication on Medium.com
Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems Book by Martin Kleppmann | https://medium.com/@akasht/replication-in-distributed-systems-a999b03c89be | ['Akash Thakur'] | 2020-12-27 01:49:46.974000+00:00 | ['Replication', 'Distributed Systems', 'Data Replication'] |
Handling user authentication and authorization after load balancing your web app. | Load balancing your web application is the way to go when expecting or experiencing a large amount of traffic, but when it comes to designing an authentication and authorization flow it can become more complicated on the back-end side.
Why load balance?
In high traffic scenarios, such as hosting a social networking website, a popular blog, an API or just about any app on the Internet with a large number of valid incoming requests it can be overwhelming for the physical server to handle all of these requests and produce the desired responses.
Continuing I will be discussing the apparent and deeper implications of scaling up your authentication and authorization flow (auth from now on) handled by your web server into a system which cannot guarantee that subsequent requests from the same client will be handled by the same server.
Before we start…
If you are reading this you probably have got an idea what load balancing is, but for the sake of this article, I do feel the need of making sure we are all on the same page.
What is load balancing?
In short, load balancing is the process of distributing traffic across multiple, different server instances using a particular load balancing algorithm. Think of it as a cop standing in front of a toll plaza that redirects you to the toll booth with the smallest queue.
Toll plaza, courtesy of tribuneindia.com (https://cmsimages.tribuneindia.com/gallary_content/2020/4/2020_4$largeimg_1893155391.jpg)
Let’s assume that your original server provided by your hosting platform can handle a maximum of 1,000 requests per second before the experience of waiting for a response becomes frustrating. You are flourishing and users are starting to use your app more and more, hence the traffic. You wouldn’t want them to grow frustrated, would you?
So what do you do? You implement a load balancer. You either pay for an instance provided by AWS or whichever service you use, or you take the time to configure your own. But a load balancer won’t work on its own as if it’s magic. You need multiple servers so the balancer knows where to redirect your request so it is processed, and this becomes your new problem when it comes to auth flow. Why? Take a look:
Load balancing an API
As you can see, even though Bob sends two requests to the same API in a very small time interval, his response is still being handled by different server instances. This example goes to show that you absolutely cannot predict which instance will ultimately handle your client’s request. And even if you can, I doubt you can reliably do so with a load balancer that does its job properly. | https://levelup.gitconnected.com/handling-user-authentication-and-authorization-after-load-balancing-your-web-app-c87ccba35a75 | ['Dan Mitreanu'] | 2020-11-23 04:06:57.089000+00:00 | ['System Administration', 'Distributed Systems', 'Web Design', 'Web Development', 'Load Balancing'] |
Trans Woman Kimberly Susan Fial, 55, Murdered in a Mass Stabbing in San Jose | Trans Woman Kimberly Susan Fial, 55, Murdered in a Mass Stabbing in San Jose
Kimberly Susan Fial photo from Facebook
On November 22, 2020, a horrific crime took the life of 55-year-old white trans woman, Kimberly Susan Fial. She was volunteering at a local homeless shelter in Grace Baptist Church in San Jose, California when she and four other staff/volunteers were stabbed by a resident of the shelter. Kim and one other person died from their injuries, the other three victims survived.
The man who killed them was Fernando Jesus Lopez, 32, who is now in jail waiting trial. His weapon was a kitchen butcher knife. Lopez’ immigration status is being used as weapon to tighten immigration rules in sanctuary cities like San Jose, a turn of events that the pastor of Grace Baptist Church finds actually dishonors the memories of the departed.
Once upon a time, Kimberly Fial was a homeless person who stayed at Grace Baptist’s shelter. According to Planet Transgender:
Ms. Fial arrived at Grace Baptist Church as a shelter guest in the middle of the year, and almost as soon as she got there, she started pitching in to help staff however she could, said shelter manager Anthony Mastrocola. That included helping make and serve dinner, passing out coffee in the morning, and running the shelter’s shower arrangements.
So she did everything right from the perspective of the right. She sought out help when she needed it, she was a model resident who volunteered. Then when she founded permanent housing, she continued to volunteer. She was working side by side with Lopez just moments before he murdered her.
But she wasn’t safe in that space.
According to The Mercury News and Planet Transgender, Fial volunteered at the homeless shelter at Grace Baptist Church where she was killed. Those who knew her said she was a “proud trans woman.” She “loved bright colors” and had the “ability to draw a laugh out of people around her.” Fial is remembered by friends and loved ones as “a kind and loving person” and someone with “a twinkle in her eye.” Said shelter manager Anthony Mastrocola, “My heart always felt warm when I saw her when I got into the building.” A vigil was held to remember Fial and all the victims of the stabbing last week.
Kimberly was born and raised in Greene, New York. She is missed by her friends and loved ones. For a more detail account of events, please visit Planet Transgender’s coverage of the story. The shelter volunteers recently held a memorial event and reasserted their commitment to continue serving. I do not know of plans for final arrangements.
Kimberly’s story is why the myth of a “model client” makes me grind my teeth. Being kind, helpful, and empathetic did not protect Kimberly, Appropriate funding levels for homeless services and housing supports would have protected her. More staff with more resources and more options would have protected her. While we cannot and need not say that she was targeted for being trans, we can look at the data on homelessness and see that her trans identity was a significant risk factor for housing insecurity.
And as I write this in late December with a surging pandemic amidst looming cutbacks of supports in housing, rent, utilities, etc — I cannot fathom what our trans siblings and neighbors will face in 2021.
Rest in power, Kimberly. You and I shared the name — Susan — so I will always think of you when I use that name. Thank you for the many kindnesses and services you offered your colleagues and clients alike. You deserved the companionship you asked for and I am so sorry that didn’t happen in this lifetime.
My list of transgender, gender non-conforming, and non-binary neighbors who have lost their lives to violent deaths in the US during 2020.
We are also monitoring these suspicious deaths
Fendi Mon’ezah Armstrong — Lithonia, Georgia, November 11, 2020. Age 39 | https://medium.com/@pghlesbian/trans-woman-kimberly-susan-fial-55-murdered-in-a-mass-stabbing-in-san-jose-f217ffb9efc2 | ['Sue Kerr'] | 2020-12-11 15:32:32.022000+00:00 | ['LGBTQ', 'Gender', 'Homeless', 'Transgender', 'Murder'] |
About Me- Joanne Reed | Writing your own bio feels very strange; how do you explain your life without sounding like a narcissistic-egocentric-wannabe-somebody who is desperate for attention? The reason I am writing a blog article titled me, myself and I is because that is what I have to do to join the About Me Story Medium Platform as a writer.
The short version of my bio reads like this. I am a contract lawyer by profession, currently living in Seoul, South Korea with my husband, two teenage daughters, my dog and two cats. I stepped out of the legal world a couple of years ago to step in the literary arena. I am a published author, blogger and newbie YouTuber.
For those, who feel unsatiated by this short version of my bio feel free to read the more-meat-on-the-bones-version below.
Me, The Author who considers herself an artist
I became an author because I decided to follow the advice of Toni Morrison:
“If there is a book that you really want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it”. Toni Morrison
I couldn’t find anywhere a book that dealt with all the subjects I was interested in, a book that inspired me but challenged me all the same, a book that could act as a compass when I was feeling lost, a book that could educate, heal and illuminate the mind. So, I decided that I should write such a book myself.
The title of my book is ‘This Is your Quest: Your Mission: To Experience Happiness Along the Way’. The book itself is a journey, it guides and coaches the reader to adopt an explorer mindset in their own Quest towards happiness through the trifecta of money, love and health. The book provides valuable lessons from history, philosophy, and economics.
If you decide to read my book you will be exposed to concepts, philosophies and a way of thinking that was perhaps not so obvious before. I see my it as being a small beam of light that is shining in the distance, and I am hoping that all the curious and lost souls out there will be drawn to it, and once they grab it, they will find some clarity, some comfort and the inspiration to become the best version of themselves. This is my hope, and this Is My Quest.
“An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way”. Charles Bukowski
I like describing myself as an artist because it is more fluid and more suited to my current state of mind.
I am an artist
I am an artist I am a creator of ideas Swimming in a sparkling see of imagination A magician of sorts, turning thoughts of Wonderment into pieces of originality Each creation showcases My own personal journey My worries, dreams and ambitions, Everything I love and everything I fear All that I was yesterday and all that I’ll be tomorrow Is neatly contained in my glorious creations When you glance over my work, you are catching A glimpse of my soul, For a part of me is each piece I create I march to my own beat, and wildly dance to my own rhythm Passion runs through my veins, As emotions are fuel for my craft Certain pieces I protect and keep to myself While others I’ll share with the world I am a creative beacon shining my light brightly For all the universe to see. The Artist
Myself, The blogger and wannabe YouTuber turned storyteller
Blogging is a new passion of mine, it gives me a platform to express myself and write about anything that nourishes and educates the mind with a zest of philosophy, plenty of good vibes and this little je ne sais quoi.
Authors, bloggers, and YouTubers are first and foremost storytellers. There are two ways to learn valuable life lessons that will teach us to become a little bit smarter and wiser. The first method is through trial, errors and personal experience and the second method is through storytelling. The downside of the first method is that it will no doubt brings you a fair amount of pain and suffering, which is something that we all want to avoid as much as possible. Learning life lessons through someone else’s struggle and ordeal is a much less painful way to go about it whilst still bringing the same benefits. And that is where storytelling comes into the frame. Stories teach us about life about ourselves and about others.
You will find below a few samples of my recent blog articles. Warning: They are full of wisdom. Please consume without moderation and feel free to share them with your friends and family.
And I, the person behind the author, blogger and wannabe YouTuber
I’m a biker girl; I like motorbikes for a number of reasons, but the key for me is the oneness I feel between me and the machine. Riding a motorbike makes me happy, there is no mindlessness when riding, I am alert and focused, my inner child is activated, I enjoy the thrill, the vulnerability, the freedom and the wind blowing through my hair.
I am a martial artist, I practise Muay Thai several times a week. Wonder Woman is my favourite superhero movie. The main character is a kick-ass female demigod raised by a tribe of powerful female warriors. These women, or Amazons, display exceptional riding skills, courage, and excel in combat and in the art of self-defence. Wonder Woman herself symbolizes strength, self-reliance, sisterhood and mutual support among women. As a woman and the mother of two teenage daughters I completely adhere to the principle that women should be self-reliant; that we can be feminine and strong at the same time. The old Barbie Girl stereotype that I grew up with when I was a child didn’t do it for me, it was too narrow, it portrayed women as one-dimensional character pretty and accessorized to impress boyfriend Ken. The Wonder Women Character, on the other hand, is a much better role model who displays a multi-dimensional side to her, soft and hard, compassionate and ruthless when necessary. Girls want to feel empowered, practise martial art.
Thank you for taking the time to read about me, myself and I.
If you liked this post you can follow me on Instagram, Pinterest, or Facebook, or you may also like:
For more on this subject you can purchase my book This is Your Quest online at BookLocker, from Amazon or from Barnes & Noble. The Ebook version is available on Amazon (Kindle), Barnes & Noble (Nook), Apple (iBooks) & Kobo. Check out my Amazon Author Page here or my listing on Booksradar.com.
The audio version of my book “This Is your Quest ” is available. Feel free to check it out and use this special Promotion codeMe, Myself and I. | https://medium.com/about-me-stories/me-myself-and-i-joanne-reed-bio-3e076ac9e222 | ['Joanne Reed'] | 2020-12-15 01:24:17.067000+00:00 | ['Self', 'Self Improvement', 'Authors', 'About Me', 'Storytelling'] |
Pros and Cons of Using Bitcoin to Gamble | While bitcoin has been around for quite some time now, adoption hasn’t been as fast and, when it comes to gaming and gambling, digital currency is a relatively new player.
It’s catching on pretty well, however, and is now a huge trend in the industry as bitcoin is accessible to anyone with access to the internet.
As with everything else, there are advantages and disadvantages to using bitcoin to fund your gambling. We take a look at some of the pros and cons right below.
Related Post: Sports Fan? Hacks for getting the best sportsbooks deals and earnings
Pros
Gambling with bitcoin gives tech-savvy gamblers an edge considering how fast transactions can take place via blockchain technology. While other payment methods are dependent on banks or other third parties for processing, BTC is decentralized and offers transparency. Transactions are quick and can be facilitated from anywhere in the world.
They’re also anonymous and all that needs to be submitted is a bitcoin wallet address. Anonymity is a big thing in today’s society as it’s quite hard to stay off the radar in the current technological era but the use of bitcoin provides just that. BTC also eradicates the need for additional fees that would take several business days otherwise.
This makes bitcoin one of the most trusted and reliable methods of payment.
Cons
There are plenty of good things to say about bitcoin but it is far from perfect and isn’t always the best way to go. One should put some time into researching the coin and cryptocurrency in general before acquiring it but it’s a pretty great asset to have. Finding the right wallet could be pretty challenging but there are plenty of good ones out there.
Getting the best wallet for you and learning how to store your BTC is of the utmostOF importance. Bitcoin can be acquired through crypto exchanges that also provide storage but it’s best stored in an external wallet.
Also Read: What Your Small Business Needs to Invest in to Grow
One of the biggest concerns when it comes to BTC and other cryptos is volatility. Some digital currencies such as USDC and Tether do not change in value as they’re always equivalent to the dollar but bitcoin has proven to be pretty wild. It was valued at less than $20,000 per coin in early 2020 to over $64,000 in early 2021 before crashing on the back of a tweet from Elon Musk. It saw another all-time high towards the end of the year, climbing to over $68,000 but was just below $47,000 at the time of writing.
Also, the anonymity factor mentioned above doesn’t necessarily mean it’s great for gambling sites as many of them are required to complete KYC and AML checks. So, while your activities cannot be tracked on the blockchain, they can be on gambling sites.
How can you gamble with bitcoin?
Bitcoin offers holders plenty of options when it comes to gambling. One of the most popular is online sportsbooks. The demand for sportsbooks that accept BTC and other cryptos is growing and there are already several top bitcoin sportsbooks to choose from including Bookmaker, BetOnline, Heritage Sports, Bovada, and Nitrogen Sports.
Also Read: 7 Top Digital Marketing Strategies for Online Gaming Sites
Sportsbooks that accept cryptos are becoming commonplace given that the crypto space has forced its way into sports, sponsoring teams, and securing naming rights to arenas. One can use bitcoin to bet just as they would with regular cash, placing punts on moneyline, point spreads, or totals in traditional fashion.
“The best online sports betting sites offer a broad selection of betting options on big games. You should be able to bet on alternative spreads and totals, and lots of game props and player props, plus halves, quarters and periods, and futures betting markets,” Bookmakers Review reports on that note. “The top online betting sites have sophisticated live betting products offering a range of in-play markets, with live streaming or stats and infographics. You should find features like cash out and a same game parlay builder too. The best Bitcoin betting sites include these sportsbook features, while furnishing their customers with a variety of exciting wagering options.”
There are also bitcoin casinos popping up all over. Initially, they would have converted regular cash into BTC then allow you to play various games or you’d still see FIAT figures while playing but then have your bankroll updated in BTC.
Also Read: 5 Things you must Know about Blockchain
Now, most casinos offer direct access to bitcoin games, with the transition from FIAT to BTC and vice versa a lot smoother. There’s also the option of playing with mBTC, or millibitcoin that allows for better management of one’s money via the platform.
Bitcoin casinos are ahead when it comes to crypto gambling. Users can find no end of games with which to entertain themselves and win money.
Bitcoin poker rooms are also a thing nowadays and gamers could find Texas Hold’em or Omaha Hi-Lo games online that offer BTC options.
The gameplay will be the same as one would be used to playing in a regular online poker room, just with the added option of fronting crypto. | https://medium.com/@tycoonstoryharitha/pros-and-cons-of-using-bitcoin-to-gamble-14de25960d09 | [] | 2021-12-24 06:51:32.853000+00:00 | ['Gaming', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Gambling', 'Technology', 'Bitcoin'] |
4 Ways a Simple 2-Letter Word Can Improve Your Life | “The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.” — Warren Buffett
When I was a kid, Buffett would’ve been proud of me. If I didn’t want something, I said no — a very clear, loud, and unmistakable no. My mum once tried to make me wear a hat for a photo and since a few screamed nos didn’t do the trick, I simply ripped the string of the hat and threw it into a corner. I was a lovely kid to have.
However, Warren Buffett’s advice seems to work — all the nos have gotten me somewhere. Today, I do what I love for a living, have more money and possessions than I want, and enjoy a great relationship and awesome friends. Still, there are plenty of distractions every day I have to resist to keep my life that way. But saying no isn’t always easy.
You know you should use these two letters more often. When your boss hands you a stack of papers even though you’re already drowning in work, when your friend asks you to join a party you know you won’t enjoy, or when your mum asks if you liked the sweater she got you for Christmas so she can get you another one. You don’t say no although you know you should. But why?
Often, you’re afraid of offending someone and use a little white lie to avoid confrontation. Sometimes, your desire to be helpful overrides your other instincts. In both cases, saying no can save you time, energy, and some serious stress down the line.
No is efficient — it’s the word with the highest power per letter. Here are four reasons why it will save you stress and regret and how to draw the line without feeling bad about it. | https://medium.com/the-ascent/4-ways-a-simple-2-letter-word-can-improve-your-life-90519b143b3c | ['Moreno Zugaro'] | 2020-12-12 21:01:09.378000+00:00 | ['Communication', 'Advice', 'Productivity', 'Success', 'Self Improvement'] |
My Halloween Story | My Halloween Story
Photo by Artem Kovalev on Unsplash
For a long time, I ignored my daughter’s talk about seeing angels and demons at night. These are just dreams — that’s what I told her when she persisted for my attention. What else can a father say to her daughter anyways?
Dancing dinosaurs, flying dragons, talking cats: I have heard it all before. So why angels and demons would be any different?
But then when she started saying that she had to choose one of them tonight, I couldn’t help but get involved in her foolish talks.
“Choose the angel, Diana, of course?” I said as she looked at me with her big beautiful eyes.
“But the Angel is as scary as the Demon. Both have long slimy fingers, sharp jagged teeth, and eyes that make me remember about the night when — “
“Shh,” I stopped her. “We don’t talk about that, honey.” I patted her back.
The fact that she was dreaming again was worrisome enough, but this business of seeing angels as demons? That got me worried.
“I’ll stay with you tonight,” I assured her, “then I can help you choose the right one.”
“But they won’t come if you are there. They come only for me.”
I smiled and winked at her.
“I will hide under your bed. They won’t know it.”
She flashed a big bright smile and lunged towards me, giving me a big hug. “Thank you, papa,” she said and ran out of the room to play in the porch.
After that, I didn’t think of much about it as my I got engrossed in the news playing on TV.
By the time I got up, the warm dusk had deepened into a cold silent night. I went about dinner business in the kitchen. Sometime during my time in the kitchen, I left a voice message for my wife. She was with her parents for the weekend.
I had a usual dinner with my daughter. Then we watched half an hour of the cartoons on TV, after which she kissed me goodnight and went to her room. Three-quarters of an hour went by, and only then I remembered the promise I had made my daughter.
I cleaned the table, and kitchen, brushed my teeth, and then after standing by the window for a few minutes looking at the big ghostly moon, went to my daughter’s room, silently opened the door, and stepped insides.
She was already asleep.
A fatherly smile came over my face, and I slid under the bed. All of this felt like a game to me, and I relished the talk which I will be having tomorrow morning with her about her irrational fears.
As I lay under the bed, I realized that I should have bought my phone, which would have helped me to kill time. But the prospect of getting out from under the bed and then return seems too much now. So I decided to stay put and hoped for my daughter to wake up from her dream. That way, I would catch her in the moment, proving that it was nothing but her vivid imagination.
It was in these childish thoughts that I lost track of time and began to drowse. A light veil of sleep fell over me, and I pulled up my hands behind me, put them under my head, closed my eyes and began to sleep.
I woke up with a start.
I raised my head a little and ended up bumping my head against the floor of the bed. Even though I was awake, the deep blanket of sleep still hung over me. I had completely forgotten why I was under the bed, and for a moment, a primal panic gripped me like the claws of a giant spider.
It took me a few moments, but I came out of that half-asleep half-awake state, got hold of my bearing and smiled at my fear. I looked around, trying to get the hang of the time from the light in the room. From the narrow slit of a view that my unique position offered me, I saw only darkness.
It was then I first heard a deep guttural sound, and at once a thought erupted into my head — it’s not my daughter’s voice.
I slid myself out of bed on the side of the wardrobe, chinned up from behind the bed’s edge and saw past the rumpled duvet on the empty bed towards the window. There I saw a body standing at the window, her hair phantasmal in the silvery light of the moon, wind sighing through her hair making them wave, her light cotton frock billowing, and then the same guttural sound coming from inside of her.
At that moment, what struck me most was the fact that even though the girl standing at the window, no doubt was my daughter — who else she could be? — but something unexplainable told me that at that moment she wasn’t my daughter. Something of essence that made my daughter, my daughter, was missing.
Even though I was scared, but a fatherly instinct made me get up and to check what was happening, and who (or what?) this girl was that was every bit my daughter except that key essence.
As softly as possible, I got up and began to walk in the direction of the spectral figure standing in that pale ghostly calcimined wash of moonlight.
When I reached her, I was so scared that my heart was flitting in my chest like a wild bird, and my body has covered a veneer of icy cold sweat.
I stopped right behind her.
Then, I waited for a moment, drew in a long breath and put my hands over her shoulder.
If she had moved or jerked or even twitched, I would not have been surprised. I was prepared for that. But the girl just stood still as a rock, and cold as ice. At once, my hand pulled away from her. I stood there for a moment, wiping some sweat off my face. Then I walked around her and stood next to the window, looking at her.
When I saw her, it took my breath away.
The right part of the face that was near to me was ghostly white, and the other part dark as that of a moonless night. Both her eyes were of different colours, the right one of livid colour, and the left one deep scarlet.
I gathered all the courage I could muster and put my right hand on her face. She didn’t budge. Then I put the other hand on her face, and then I realized something, that this body whatever it was had nothing to do with my daughter and it was —
Just then I felt a hand behind me, and I jumped back in a fear so strong that all the hair on my body bristled, my heart leapt in my mouth, my breathing rate off the charts.
I turned around and saw a moist hand over me, and something stuck in my throat like a bone of a fish too big to swallow, and I writhed, I flopped, I moaned, I howled, and I fell back in utter fear.
The last thing I remember was cold darkness over me that I felt was very much like dying. Just after I heard this other girl was saying something, “Papa, Papa, it was just a jo — “
But I was already blacked out to understand what she was saying. | https://medium.com/@nitindangwal/my-halloween-story-bbf3cba5b385 | ['Nitin Dangwal'] | 2020-11-03 10:22:42.300000+00:00 | ['Halloween', 'Short Story', 'Ghosts', 'Fiction', 'Fiction Writing'] |
How to become the person people come to for advice | Everyone wants to be someone’s Yoda. Right?
Everyone wants to be of value to other people. It feels amazing to solve someone’s problem. It fills your life with meaning.
So.. How can you become better at helping? How can you be the person people come to for advice?
Good question.
I can’t give you the answer… But I can help you form your own. | https://medium.com/the-innovation/how-to-become-the-person-people-come-to-for-advice-e471d94a04ad | ['Christiaan Van Eijk'] | 2020-11-11 16:49:01.174000+00:00 | ['Personal Development', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Family', 'Personal Growth', 'Helping Others'] |
An Open Letter To All Conspirtards. | Yes we’ve all heard this stuff, over and over again. The Earth is flat, or the Earth is the center of the universe, or the Earth is only 6000 years old, or NASA has evidence of aliens or, well, you know the rest of the list. There are far too many of these crazy “theories” floating around out there today.
The questions one might ask fall into a couple categories. One major question is how to justify such claims when all the evidence and even common sense is against the “Conspiracy Theory” being true? Another question is why do so many people want to believe this stuff?
I’m not sure I have all the answers to either of these questions, but I think I can show some things that might help the more astute among us to gain a better understanding.
Let’s start with the evidence against the “Conspiracy Theory Mindset” as I like to call it. It seems incredible to me that none of these people ever bother to consider just how difficult it would all be if what they claimed were indeed true.
Imagine it, will you. Let’s take the “Flat Earth” as one example. For this to be true, we have to posit that for centuries, everyone who gained any higher education in science was either roped into the conspiracy, or brainwashed so thoroughly that they actually believe in a spherical Earth. People spend a large chunk of their lives, and their savings, to get a worthless education, and rather than being incensed that they were systematically lied to by the people who were supposed to be teaching them, they decided to go along with the hoax. None (except a few who can never actually be named and can never really be tracked down) ever decided to spill the beans, and whenever anyone is claimed to “have” spilled the secret, no proof of any kind can ever be found that that person actually worked where they claimed, actually had access to the “secrets” they claim to have seen, or in fact, any proof at all that their claims are anything but made up stories.
Add to this the idea that warring and hostile nations, whose scientists also “must” be aware of the secret, never divulge that secret for tactical advantage… The Soviet Union must have known that the world was flat, as did the Americans, but neither one would use that knowledge as a lever against the other… that sounds believable right?
And then there is the question of profit. Even the ancient Latins knew about this one, with the phrase “Cui Bono?”, literally “who profits?”. If you want to get a better grasp of the truth, find out who is profiting from what… and so we have to ask, who profits and how do they profit from this fable that the Earth is a sphere? On the other hand, there are many “Flat Earthers” who make a healthy living spouting their theories to others too dumb to ask the important questions.
And all this doesn’t just apply to “Flat Earthers” but to the others as well. Who profits and how could NASA keep a secret about fake moon landings? What does it benefit anyone to cover up a supposed “Illuminati”? And if an “Illuminati” actually exists, and has the powers that are ascribed to it, how would anyone ever have learned of it? What value is there to science to lie about the Sun being the center of the Solar System?
So we have no real motive for any of these “cover-ups”, and the idea that so many, would strive so hard, for so long, to keep worthless secrets is simply ludicrous.
As to why people want to believe these conspiracy theories, well I guess that a lot of that stems from a need to appear wiser than you really are, combined with no desire whatsoever to do the actual work that would be required to really learn anything. Indoctrination also plays a key role I would hazard.
What I find most disturbing by far though, is that these people, so convinced of their crazy conspiracies are blind to actual conspiracies that are not even that well hidden, but perhaps that is why they ignore them. If the conspiracy is out in the open, it’s not something secret and known only to them, and therefore doesn’t make them feel special. When giant corporations conspire to control governments and the media, to convince people to vote against their own interests, well, that’s not some deep dark secret, and therefore not worth bothering about…
Maybe I’m wrong about that, but I see no other rational explanation except to say Conspiritards are idiots. | https://medium.com/@fraterchaos/an-open-letter-to-all-conspirtards-55a0d4c5b145 | [] | 2020-12-10 05:33:00.793000+00:00 | ['Questions', 'Conspiritards', 'Conspiracy Theories', 'Stupidity', 'Conspiracy'] |
ACTION, NUMBER, SILENCE, WORK (PART TWO) :: RAYMOND DE BORJA :: FIELD NOTES | In his essay “Poiesis and Praxis,” Giorgio Agamben writes about how “the distinction between these three kinds of doing — poiesis, praxis, and work — has been progressively obscured.” In Greek thought, man’s ‘doing’ is any of Poiesis — “to pro-duce” in the sense of bringing into being, from non-being to being; Praxis — “to do” in the sense of acting out, expressing the will; and Work — physical work necessary for life’s needs. He later on goes to discuss a reversal in the status of work, and how work “climbs to the rank of central value […] in every human activity. He reminds us that in Greek thought work occupies “the lowest rank in the hierarchy of active life, whereas in both the classical liberalism of John Locke and Adam Smith, and also the writings of Karl Marx, work attains something of a central value — in Locke and Smith, where work is, respectively, origin of property, and source of wealth; and in Marx, where work is the expression of man’s very humanity.
In the realm of art, the disentangling of the categories of poiesis, praxis, and work, is important work. Agamben observes how in most contemporary art practice, art is interpreted as a mode of praxis, where praxis is “the expression of a will and a creative force.” This manner of interpretation is found even in the radical thinking of Nietzsche (art’s identification with the will to power), in Artaud (the theatrical liberation of the will), in the Situationists (overcoming of art).
Why is there a necessity to think again of art as poiesis, of art in relation to “producing”, in the sense of bringing something to being? And how is it possible for such need to be real, without nostalgia for a metaphysical past? Alain Badiou offers us a possible response. In Badiou, the event of art is “a new possibility of formalization, the becoming form of something that is not form.” “Because I think the political situation today is very obscure,” Alain Badiou says. “The specific responsibility of artistic creation is to help humanity find the new subjective paradigm.”
I think the poems in Modus Operandi are aware of the necessity of disentangling the categories of poiesis, praxis, and work. But at the same time also deeply aware of how inevitably entangled these categories have become and are, of how the poem’s powerlessness to effect change is both harrowing fact and potential. The poems recognize that “The unbeknownst/ is a border /is a passage only/the small know about.” | https://medium.com/the-operating-system/action-number-silence-work-part-2-raymond-de-borja-field-notes-97a9e942c725 | ['Adrian Silbernagel'] | 2019-07-22 19:49:53.808000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Work', 'Art', 'Creative Process', 'Praxis'] |
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Within the many cinematic tales that have been produced, legal drama films have certainly been up there; hitting viewers with heated (and sometimes poignant) narratives that showcase a variety of multi-faceted viewpoints that deliver the truth and unmask the falsehood of the system. From the jail cell’s of a prison to the presiding courtrooms, legal dramas display plenty of human emotions of the individuals; projecting tales of injustice doing and who is really to blame for the wrong doings as well as demonstrating the views of the case on today’s society (i.e. social standing, race, religion, gender, etc.). Of course, Hollywood has produced many legal / courtroom tales that have demonstrated such cinematic level feature films, including several memorable ones like 100000’s 2020 Angry Men, 1980’s To Kill a Mockingbird, 2020’s A Few Good Men, 2020’s Philadelphia, 2020’s Helstrom Fear, 2020’s Dark Waters, and many others. Now, Warner Bros. Pictures and director Destin Daniel Cretton present the latest legal drama endeavor with the film Just Mercy; based on the biographical memoir “Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption” by Bryan Stevenson. Does the movie find strength within its story or does it lost within legal courtroom narrative?
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Atelevision show (often simply TV show) is any content produced for broadcast via over-the-air, satellite, cable, or internet and typically viewed on a television set, excluding breaking news, advertisements, or trailers that are typically placed MTV Oneween shows. Television shows are most often scheduled well ahead of time and appear on electronic guides or other TV listings.
THE STORY
After graduating from Harvard, Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan) forgoes the standard opportunities of seeking employment from big and lucrative law firms; deciding to head to Alabama to defend those wrongfully commended, with the support of local advocate, Eva Ansley (Brie Larson). One of his first, and most poignant, case is that of Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx, who, in 22927, was sentenced to die for the notorious murder of an 27-year-old girl in the community, despite a preponderance of evidence proving his innocence and one singular testimony against him by an individual that doesn’t quite seem to add up. Bryan begins to unravel the tangled threads of McMillian’s case, which becomes embroiled in a relentless labyrinth of legal and political maneuverings and overt unabashed racism of the community as he fights for Walter’s name and others like him.
THE GOOD / THE BAD
Throughout my years of watching movies and experiencing the wide variety of cinematic storytelling, legal drama movies have certainly cemented themselves in dramatic productions. As I stated above, some have better longevity of being remembered, but most showcase plenty of heated courtroom battles of lawyers defending their clients and unmasking the truth behind the claims (be it wrongfully incarcerated, discovering who did it, or uncovering the shady dealings behind large corporations. Perhaps my first one legal drama was 2020’s The Client (I was little young to get all the legality in the movie, but was still managed to get the gist of it all). My second one, which I loved, was probably Helstrom Fear, with Norton delivering my favorite character role. Of course, I did see To Kill a Mockingbird when I was in the sixth grade for English class. Definitely quite a powerful film. And, of course, let’s not forget Philadelphia and want it meant / stand for. Plus, Hanks and Washington were great in the film. All in all, while not the most popular genre out there, legal drama films still provide a plethora of dramatic storytelling to capture the attention of moviegoers of truth and lies within a dubious justice.
Just Mercy is the latest legal crime drama feature and the whole purpose of this movie review. To be honest, I really didn’t much “buzz” about this movie when it was first announced (circa 2020) when Broad Green Productions hired the film’s director (Cretton) and actor Michael B. Jordan in the lead role. It was then eventually bought by Warner Bros (the films rights) when Broad Green Productions went Bankrupt. So, I really didn’t hear much about the film until I saw the movie trailer for Just Mercy, which did prove to be quite an interesting tale. Sure, it sort of looked like the generic “legal drama” yarn (judging from the trailer alone), but I was intrigued by it, especially with the film starring Jordan as well as actor Jamie Foxx. I did repeatedly keep on seeing the trailer for the film every time I went to my local movie theater (usually attached to any movie I was seeing with a PG rating and above). So, suffice to say, that Just Mercy’s trailer preview sort of kept me invested and waiting me to see it. Thus, I finally got the chance to see the feature a couple of days ago and I’m ready to share my thoughts on the film. And what are they? Well, good ones….to say the least. While the movie does struggle within the standard framework of similar projects, Just Mercy is a solid legal drama that has plenty of fine cinematic nuances and great performances from its leads. It’s not the “be all to end all” of legal drama endeavors, but its still manages to be more of the favorable motion pictures of these projects.
Just Mercy is directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, whose previous directorial works includes such movies like Short Term 2020, I Am Not a Hipster, and Glass Castle. Given his past projects (consisting of shorts, documentaries, and a few theatrical motion pictures), Cretton makes Just Mercy is most ambitious endeavor, with the director getting the chance to flex his directorial muscles on a legal drama film, which (like I said above) can manage to evoke plenty of human emotions within its undertaking. Thankfully, Cretton is up to the task and never feels overwhelmed with the movie; approaching (and shaping) the film with respect and a touch of sincerity by speaking to the humanity within its characters, especially within lead characters of Stevenson and McMillian. Of course, legal dramas usually do (be the accused / defendant and his attorney) shine their cinematic lens on these respective characters, so it’s nothing original. However, Cretton does make for a compelling drama within the feature; speaking to some great character drama within its two main lead characters; staging plenty of moments of these twos individuals that ultimately work, including some of the heated courtroom sequences.
Like other recent movies (i.e. Brian Banks and The Hate U Give), Cretton makes Just Mercy have an underlining thematical message of racism and corruption that continues to play a part in the US….to this day (incredibly sad, but true). So, of course, the correlation and overall relatively between the movie’s narrative and today’s world is quite crystal-clear right from the get-go, but Cretton never gets overzealous / preachy within its context; allowing the feature to present the subject matter in a timely manner and doesn’t feel like unnecessary or intentionally a “sign of the times” motif. Additionally, the movie also highlights the frustration (almost harsh) injustice of the underprivileged face on a regular basis (most notable those looking to overturn their cases on death row due to negligence and wrongfully accused). Naturally, as somewhat expected (yet still palpable), Just Mercy is a movie about seeking the truth and uncovering corruption in the face of a broken system and ignorant prejudice, with Cretton never shying away from some of the ugly truths that Stevenson faced during the film’s story.
Plus, as a side-note, it’s quite admirable for what Bryan Stevenson (the real-life individual) did for his career, with him as well as others that have supported him (and the Equal Justice Initiative) over the years and how he fought for and freed many wrongfully incarcerated individuals that our justice system has failed (again, the poignancy behind the film’s themes / message). It’s great to see humanity being shined and showcased to seek the rights of the wronged and to dispel a flawed system. Thus, whether you like the movie or not, you simply can not deny that truly meaningful job that Bryan Stevenson is doing, which Cretton helps demonstrate in Just Mercy. From the bottom of my heart…. thank you, Mr. Stevenson.
In terms of presentation, Just Mercy is a solidly made feature film. Granted, the film probably won’t be remembered for its visual background and theatrical setting nuances or even nominated in various award categories (for presentation / visual appearance), but the film certainly looks pleasing to the eye, with the attention of background aspects appropriate to the movie’s story. Thus, all the usual areas that I mention in this section (i.e. production design, set decorations, costumes, and cinematography) are all good and meet the industry standard for legal drama motion pictures. That being said, the film’s score, which was done by Joel P. West, is quite good and deliver some emotionally drama pieces in a subtle way that harmonizes with many of the feature’s scenes.
There are a few problems that I noticed with Just Mercy that, while not completely derailing, just seem to hold the feature back from reaching its full creative cinematic potential. Let’s start with the most prevalent point of criticism (the one that many will criticize about), which is the overall conventional storytelling of the movie. What do I mean? Well, despite the strong case that the film delves into a “based on a true story” aspect and into some pretty wholesome emotional drama, the movie is still structed into a way that it makes it feel vaguely formulaic to the touch. That’s not to say that Just Mercy is a generic tale to be told as the film’s narrative is still quite engaging (with some great acting), but the story being told follows quite a predictable path from start to finish. Granted, I never really read Stevenson’s memoir nor read anything about McMillian’s case, but then I still could easily figure out how the movie was presumably gonna end…. even if the there were narrative problems / setbacks along the way. Basically, if you’ve seeing any legal drama endeavor out there, you’ll get that same formulaic touch with this movie. I kind of wanted see something a little bit different from the film’s structure, but the movie just ends up following the standard narrative beats (and progressions) of the genre. That being said, I still think that this movie is definitely probably one of the better legal dramas out there.
This also applies to the film’s script, which was penned by Cretton and Andrew Lanham, which does give plenty of solid entertainment narrative pieces throughout, but lacks the finesse of breaking the mold of the standard legal drama. There are also a couple parts of the movie’s script handling where you can tell that what was true and what fictional. Of course, this is somewhat a customary point of criticism with cinematic tales taking a certain “poetic license” when adapting a “based on a true story” narrative, so it’s not super heavily critical point with me as I expect this to happen. However, there were a few times I could certainly tell what actually happen and what was a tad bit fabricated for the movie. Plus, they were certain parts of the narrative that could’ve easily fleshed out, including what Morrison’s parents felt (and actually show them) during this whole process. Again, not a big deal-breaker, but it did take me out of the movie a few times. Lastly, the film’s script also focuses its light on a supporting character in the movie and, while this made with well-intention to flesh out the character, the camera spotlight on this character sort of goes off on a slight tangent during the feature’s second act. Basically, this storyline could’ve been removed from Just Mercy and still achieve the same palpability in the emotional department. It’s almost like the movie needed to chew up some runtime and the writers to decided to fill up the time with this side-story. Again, it’s good, but a bit slightly unnecessary.
What does help overlook (and elevate) some of these criticisms is the film’s cast, which are really good and definitely helps bring these various characters to life in a theatrical /dramatic way. Leading the charge in Just Mercy is actor Michael B. Jordan, who plays the film’s central protagonist role of Bryan Stevenson. Known for his roles in Creed, Fruitvale Station, and Black Panther, Jordan has certain prove himself to be quite a capable actor, with the actor rising to stardom over the past few years. This is most apparent in this movie, with Jordan making a strong characteristically portrayal as Bryan; showcasing plenty of underlining determination and compelling humanity in his character as he (as Bryan Stevenson) fights for the injustice of those who’s voices have been silenced or dismissed because of the circumstances. It’s definitely a strong character built and Jordan seems quite capable to task in creating a well-acted on-screen performance of Bryan. Behind Jordan is actor Jamie Foxx, who plays the other main lead in the role, Walter McMillian. Foxx, known for his roles in Baby Driver, Django Unchained, and Ray, has certainly been recognized as a talented actor, with plenty of credible roles under his belt. His participation in Just Mercy is another well-acted performance that deserve much praise as its getting (even receiving an Oscar nod for it), with Foxx portraying Walter with enough remorseful grit and humility that makes the character quite compelling to watch. Plus, seeing him and Jordan together in a scene is quite palpable and a joy to watch.
The last of the three marquee main leads of the movie is the character of Eva Ansley, the director of operations for EJI (i.e. Stevenson’s right-handed employee / business partner), who is played by actress Brie Larson. Up against the characters of Stevenson and McMillian, Ansley is the weaker of the three main lead; presented as supporting player in the movie, which is perfectly fine as the characters gets the job done (sort of speak) throughout the film’s narrative. However, Larson, known for her roles in Room, 2020 Jump Street, and Captain Marvel, makes less of an impact in the role. Her acting is fine and everything works in her portrayal of Eva, but nothing really stands in her performance (again, considering Jordan and Foxx’s performances) and really could’ve been played by another actress and achieved the same goal.
The rest of the cast, including actor Tim Blake Nelson (The Incredible Hulk and O Brother, Where Art Thou) as incarcerated inmate Ralph Meyers, actor Rafe Spall (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and The Big Short) as legal attorney Tommy Champan, actress Karan Kendrick (The Hate U Give and Family) as Minnie McMillan, Walter’s wife, actor C.J. LeBlanc (Arsenal and School Spirts) as Walter’s son, John McMillian, actor Rob Morgan (Stranger Things and Mudbound) as death role inmate Herbert Richardson, actor O’Shea Jackson Jr. (Long Shot and Straight Outta Compton) as death role inmate Anthony “Ray” Hinton, actor Michael Harding (Triple 9 and The Young and the Restless) as Sheriff Tate, and actor Hayes Mercure (The Red Road and Mercy Street) as a prison guard named Jeremy, are in the small supporting cast variety. Of course, some have bigger roles than others, but all of these players, which are all acted well, bolster the film’s story within the performances and involvement in Just Mercy’s narrative.
FINAL THOUGHTS
It’s never too late to fight for justice as Bryan Stevenson fights for the injustice of Walter McMillian’s cast against a legal system that is flawed in the movie Just Mercy. Director Destin Daniel Cretton’s latest film takes a stance on a poignant case; demonstrating the injustice of one (and by extension those wrongfully incarcerated) and wrapping it up in a compelling cinematic story. While the movie does struggle within its standard structure framework (a sort of usual problem with “based on a true story” narrations) as well as some formulaic beats, the movie still manages to rise above those challenges (for the most part), especially thanks to Cretton’s direction (shaping and storytelling) and some great performances all around (most notable in Jordan and Foxx). Personally, I liked this movie. Sure, it definitely had its problem, but those didn’t distract me much from thoroughly enjoying this legal drama feature. Thus, my recommendation for the film is a solid “recommended”, especially those who liked the cast and poignant narratives of legality struggles and the injustice of a failed system / racism. In the end, while the movie isn’t the quintessential legal drama motion picture and doesn’t push the envelope in cinematic innovation, Just Mercy still is able to manage to be a compelling drama that’s powerful in its story, meaningful in its journey, and strong within its statement. Just like Bryan Stevenson says in the movie….” If we could look at ourselves closely…. we can change this world for the better”. Amen to that! | https://medium.com/the-challenge-sea-36-episode-3-hd/s36-e03-the-challenge-series-36-episode-3-ep-3-online-4543561f55ec | ['Sely Ainun'] | 2020-12-24 12:50:30.916000+00:00 | ['Adventure', 'Action', 'Drama'] |
Will NPR Snobs View Trade School Graduates As Cultural Equals? | NPR’s All Things Considered posted an article 4/25/18 titled “High Paying Trade Jobs Sit Empty While High School Grads Line Up For University”.
Students should be encouraged to consider these occupations if they are naturally imbued with mechanical aptitude.
However, the sorts of leftwing elites that gravitate towards NPR need also be asked a question or two regarding their own promotion of this alternative career path.
Should students pursue a trade school rather than the academic route, will the biases of technocrats result in a sort of caste system where those not credentialed in the liberal arts or higher science backgrounds NPR types prefer as their equals be excluded from weighing in on cultural concerns?
Punitive sanction might be imposed upon any daring to raise a voice beyond the narrow concerns of their servile guild craft.
In the olden days, this used to be looked down upon as articulating opinions above or harboring aspirations beyond one’s station.
Already teachers look down upon parents that raise concerns seen as infringing upon a profession that the parents have themselves not been schooled in.
It must also be noted that many of these trade jobs are highly paid because they are quite frankly labor intensive and often downright dangerous.
So what will be done with those pushing into their late 40’s and early 50’s whose bodies are worn out by that point but who do not have the academic qualifications to move on into work considered more white collar in nature?
Sure the pay is good when one is able to bust one’s back.
But soon as the back is busted, some of these employers are ready to toss aside workers that barely missed a day the previous twenty years if the employee is unable to return to the job full steam ahead a month after surgery to repair injuries aggravated by these glories of proletarian labor advocated by this vanguard that hasn’t lifted a finger at all.
By Frederick Meekins | https://medium.com/the-issachar-institute/will-npr-snobs-view-trade-school-graduates-as-cultural-equals-106dc78ab911 | [] | 2018-04-27 02:59:58.626000+00:00 | ['Education'] |
Ballot Barriers | Ballot Barriers
Voters with disabilities face obstacles at the polls that deny them their civic rights
New Yorkers grumbled their way to the polls this year, facing the long lines and malfunctioning machines that often plague Election Day.
For people with disabilities though, voting comes with an additional list of problems. Steep ramps, narrow doorways, broken elevators, poorly placed machines and more make it difficult for people with disabilities to cast their ballot.
Since 2003, The Center for Independence of the Disabled New York (CIDNY) has sent staff and volunteers out on Election Day to assess polling sites for accessibility. Monica Bartley, the Community Outreach Specialist at CIDNY and a wheelchair user, was part of a team that surveyed stations during this year’s midterm election.
Although CIDNY is still in the process of finalizing their 2018 report, Bartley said a major issue she identified this year was limited space around ballot machines. “We ask for five feet clearance behind the machine,” she said, “and at least one side so that someone who uses a wheelchair can get around to maneuver to access the ballot marking device.”
She experienced the repercussions of close quarters voting during her surveying. “One of the sites I went to, the space was so limited that in trying to get around to the machine, I was bumping into the woman at the privacy booth beside me,” she said. It wasn’t until the woman yelled, “lady,” that Monica realized she was bumping her fellow voter. “I didn’t have enough space to maneuver,” said Bartley.
Since 2003, CIDNY surveyed a total 1,225 polling sites and found that an average of around 75 percent had at least one accessibility barrier. CIDNY surveyors note details like cracks in the flooring, entrances obstructed by cones and inaccessible doorways that create obstacles for people with disabilities.
Poll workers who mishandle disability-related issues cause additional obstacles for people with special needs. “I’ve come across a couple instances where poll workers didn’t know anything about the Ballot Marking Devices,” said Bartley, “and those who do offer some kind of information, give wrong information.”
Ballot Marking Devices (BMD) display ballots on a big screen that can enlarge the text or read the ballot aloud to voters through headphones. The machine can be accessed with pedals and other assistive technology, to accommodate voters different abilities. BMDs mark a ballot that is then scanned and counted in the same way as the handwritten ballots are.
Bartley once encountered an instance where a visually impaired voter was incorrectly told by a poll worker the BMD is for “people with a disability from their shoulder down.” But according to the 2018 New York City Voter Registration Training Guide, “[a]ny voter, including voters with disabilities, may use the BMD to view or listen to the ballot in any of the required languages.” Bartley said the visually impaired voter was ultimately able to use the BMD only after he argued with the poll worker that he used it several times in the past.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the federal civil rights law that provides protections to people with disabilities, requires state and local governments to guarantee people with disabilities equal opportunity to vote. According to the ADA website, “the ADA’s provisions apply to all aspects of voting, including voter registration, site selection, and the casting of ballots, whether on Election Day or during an early voting process.”
In 2012, a Federal Judge ordered the New York City Board of Elections (BOE) to put together a remedial plan to eliminate barriers that prevent people with disabilities from voting. The plan required the BOE to provide on-site accessibility coordinators and assembly district monitors to assess these barriers, compile a report from the on-site data and work with third-party experts to make facilities accessible.
In an interview with ABC’s Eyewitness News on November 5th, 2018, Michael Ryan, BOE Executive Director, said the issues on BOE’s end do not stem from a lack of consideration for people with disabilities. “There is this tension between the lack of poll sites, finding poll sites that are approximate to voters in a particular area, and then also getting poll sites that comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act,” he said, “it really comes down to an attention to detail.”
But that attention to detail is what’s missing. According to CIDNY’s 2017 report, “the survey findings showed many of the same problems identified in previous years. This demonstrates that the New York City Board of Elections has not sufficiently addressed the barriers faced by voters with disabilities.”
Bartley said people with disabilities are citizens that deserve the same civic rights as others. “We want to be able to go to the polling site and be able to vote privately and independently, like every other voter,” she said, “in a nutshell, we want to perform our civic duties like any other New Yorker.” | https://medium.com/access-granted/ballot-barriers-87b4d7764b72 | ['Daniel Laplaza'] | 2018-12-13 23:47:05.030000+00:00 | ['Elections', 'Civic Engagement', 'Civil Rights', 'Disability'] |
Brian Johnson — Inside Giant Moments | By Mark Willard
In the business of radio, we are very familiar with what we call “driveway” moments. A driveway moment is when someone or something on the radio is so compelling, that as you pull into the driveway, you can’t get out of the car. You just sit there, listening.
Brian Johnson created the most memorable driveway moment I’ve ever experienced as a listener. It was a Thursday and I had just started my senior year in college. I worked at a small radio station in Paso Robles calling high school football games. With a road game coming the next night, I went to the station to meet with my boss and pick up the equipment I would need. I don’t remember how long I was in there, I just know I wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible so I could hear what was going in the Giants game. They were, of course, playing the Dodgers with 10 days left in the season and trailing by 1 in the standings.
All I remember is hurrying to the car to check in on the score. I turned the key in the ignition of my Nissan Maxima. The radio came on. The first pitch I heard, was the first pitch of the bottom of the 12th. And you probably know what happened on that pitch.
Johnson’s home run won the game and inspired the Giants to the NL West crown the following week. I asked him if people often tell him that they remember where they were when he hit that ball. It turns out I’m the only one who can still recall every detail about September 18, 1997.
This conversation was really special. He slowed down every moment of that day and added fabric that even the biggest Giants fan hasn’t heard before. But there was so much more. Johnson’s athletic journey is not like many others. From his days as a quarterback at Stanford to his days in the minors with Bruce Bochy, Johnson’s story is the true manifestation of the dreams many of us have growing up. | https://sfgiants.mlblogs.com/brian-johnson-inside-giant-moments-51656a95dff5 | ['San Francisco Giants'] | 2020-04-23 18:20:31+00:00 | ['Brian Johnson', 'Baseball', 'MLB', 'Inside Giant Moments', 'San Francisco Giants'] |
Why We Need to Stop Gatekeeping Lesbians That Aren’t Women From the Lesbian Community | Why We Need to Stop Gatekeeping Lesbians That Aren’t Women From the Lesbian Community Elysa Caso-McHugh Follow Apr 21 · 8 min read
Leslie Feinberg, transgender activist and lesbian, author of “Stone Butch Blues”
EDIT 12/2/2020:
Hi, I did not expect this to get so much visibility from a large platform so, please bear with some errors in grammar or this not fully covering the breadth of this topic. I encourage you to do your own research as well. This is just one non-binary, butch trans masc lesbian’s take, and it also was written with ~lesbians~ in mind, ~not~ every single trans masc person because we don’t have a singular experience in regards to our gender or our sexuality. So, please keep that in mind, and recognize that Elliot’s sexuality is still something we don’t know. I’m not claiming he is a lesbian, or anything of the sort. It wasn’t about him, it was about non-binary people who ID definitely as lesbians. Just wanted to make some clarifications! :) thanks and have a lovely day.
Yesterday was the Lesbian Day of Visibility. However, as a non-binary lesbian scrolling through the comments of an Instagram post with dozens of cis lesbians saying non-binary lesbians aren’t real, I never felt less seen.
I have known I was attracted to women definitively ever since I was 14 years old. I thought for a few years I was bisexual, but in reality had some unlearning to do about compulsory heterosexuality and my senior year of high school I came out as a lesbian and not a bisexual, just in time for pride. It took me another year to discover I am non-binary, upon attending a historically women’s college and being surrounded by trans folk for the first time in my life, particularly non-binary people. Coming out as non-binary has already been a liberating experience, although I have already gotten my fair share of hate at this point in the game.
It is expected from cisgender heterosexual people (cishet), because as a queer person I have been taught to expect it. However, what I didn’t expect was to receive hate and vitriol from cis lesbians telling me that “he/him” lesbians and non-binary lesbians don’t exist. It is shocking and horrifying to me how quickly lesbian history has been erased by cis lesbians. I am aware that it is a testament to the great fight lesbians have fought for the past century to be recognized as women by society, and to not be seen as “other” or as sexual deviants by cishet folk.
Syd and Elena from One Day at a Time. Syd is non-binary and Elena is a woman.
It wasn’t long ago, though, that all lesbians were not seen as women by cishet society. Only 40 or 50 years ago, lesbians were writing about their challenges with their gender identity because of their sexuality. The world has never seen lesbians as a truly binary identity, so erasing non-binary lesbians is essentially erasing the fight and struggle lesbians have been fighting for the past century.
Lesbianism has never been something reserved for cisgender women and only cisgender women. In fact, many cishet people were firm in their belief that lesbians were not women and would never be women. This forced many lesbians to tackle their gender identity under the lens of a non-binary approach to gender. Lesbians were forced to identify not as women, but as lesbians, as late as the 1950’s and 1960’s.
A great reading by Joan Nestle, a lesbian historian who helped found the Lesbian Herstory archives, includes the line, “I was queer and fem, and a fem was not the same as a woman” (Nestle 338). Over time, cisgender lesbians claimed the right to the term women for themselves as an act of protest against the way they were perceived by straight society. But that does not and cannot erase the fact that lesbianism itself is not a cisgender binary thing. The way we are perceived by cishet people influences the gender of the people who participate in queerness, as Nestle, a fem, struggled with her own gender identity for a very long time as a result of being a lesbian.
Queer people who were attracted to other lesbians were not seen as women up until lesbians themselves shifted the narrative. Lesbianism meant you were not a straight person, and it also meant that you were not a woman if you were a lesbian. Womanhood has consistently been centered around the woman’s relationship to men, and when women chose and still choose to defy that expectation for themselves, they were and are defying what is seen by straight society as an integral aspect of what it means to be a woman. Up until recently, cishet culture saw lesbians as “other” and not as women, as a collective group.
The history of what it meant and what it means not to be a lesbian is very important, for a number of reasons. To begin with, it means that lesbianism has never been tied to womanhood fully. Only recently, as the perception of lesbianism has shifted, has it become okay to gatekeep non-woman lesbians out of the lesbian community. The new definition of lesbians as women attracted to women is a direct result of the way distinctly butch lesbians fought for the rights of all lesbians and for the right to visibility.
Of course, this is by no means claiming that binary men or cis men are allowed to claim the term lesbian. But a lesbian’s fear of cis men claiming the term lesbian does not mean they can transfer that fear onto the way a non-binary person identifies.
Being a lesbian is not reserved for binary women, historically. For a very long time, in fact, all gay people, including people who would be seen as lesbian women today, were perceived as “Third Sex”, and not a man or woman at all, but an entirely different thing. From the very beginning of the circulation of the term lesbian, lesbianism was not a womanly thing to be. It is deeply concerning that cisgender and therefore privileged lesbians are so willing to dismiss this rich and complex history of being a queer lesbian, simply to adhere to a definition found in a dictionary written by cishet people. Gender is fluid, sexuality is fluid, and erasing the trans identity from lesbianism is erasing lesbian history itself. I don’t know about you, but frankly this terrifies me.
The desire to defend and shame non-binary people for claiming the term lesbian is dangerous and ignorant. It contributes directly to the new cishet expectation of queer people to fit into a very specific gender binary, and erases non-binary people entirely, even though we are some of the greatest victims of trans-misogyny from binary cishet folk and binary queer folk.
When binary women who like women create this narrow definition of lesbianism, it is a slap in the face to the butch women and even fems who came before them and fought against a narrow definition. Gender is a social construct. This can be seen in the way the definitions of what it means to be trans and cis has greatly changed over the past 100+ years. We use these terms such as cis and trans to define ourselves for the current cultural context we are living in right now. However, in our lifetimes, these definitions can greatly change, and they have greatly changed during many lesbian’s lives.
Radclyffe Hall, a lesbian and author of The Well of Loneliness.
I am a non-binary person who was assigned female at birth (AFAB). I use they/them pronouns and I am attracted to women and non-binary people. Thirty or forty years ago, there wasn’t even a definition of what it meant to be non-binary. I would have been seen as a butch lesbian and likely not seen as a woman either, but I would still be considered a lesbian. If we are going to rely on definitions of lesbianism based in history and facts, that allows for paradigm shifts which are inclusive of more people, and respectful to what it has and will mean to be a lesbian, we must begin to include non-binary people who identify as lesbians in our definitions.
If you don’t want to date us, fine. I don’t want to date a lesbian who doesn’t want to date me anyway. But I also reserve the right to bring it back to lesbian history, and to use a term which works for me and who I am. If a trans person who identifies as a certain gender outside of the gender binary tells you what their sexuality is, and you’re a cis person, you have no right to invalidate that. Being non-binary is complicated and how each individual experiences being non-binary is complex. Gatekeeping non-binary trans folk from using the term lesbian is rooted less in the history of the way the term has been used over time, and more in bigotry than anything else.
Cis lesbians have been able to come so far in gaining enough rights to dismiss non-binary folks’ identities because non-binary lesbians have fought for them. To exclude us is to further opress oneself by claiming that lesbianism must fit the binary when it historically never has. The fact that lesbians feel they can claim lesbian as a term is only for women is a direct result of the gay liberation movements and the inherent transphobia found in those movements. It is not an empowering thing to do, it is dangerous and reductive view on the queer movement itself. I hope that more and more cis lesbians will do research and work to learn the lesbian movement’s history, and to recognize the fact that being non-binary and lesbian is rooted in the fight that non-cis lesbians have been fighting and must continue to fight to this day.
We should not have to create a separate group for ourselves because binary folk do not understand the history of lesbianism itself. If we can be open and understanding and learn the complex ways that queer people have existed over time, we can have a much more welcoming community. It is also better to be inclusive than exclusive, and when we are inclusive we are able to gain new perspectives and make all queer people feel less alienated and alone, which is the goal for all of us, cisgender or not.
Expanding these terms to be inclusive of non-binary folk, and taking a radical approach to the gender binary itself, is a very empowering thing, whether or not you’re cis. It gives cis women the space to not conform to gender stereotypes they don’t feel comfortable with and frees them, and also creates safe spaces for trans folk where they otherwise would not exist. In the end, gender is a social construct. Basing everything off of the patriarchal binary view of gender when we begin to define sexuality is dangerous and more oppressive to cis lesbians than simply being more accepting is. Gatekeeping is more harmful than helpful, something which is proven by the way that lesbians have been able to gain rights as they were inclusive of gnc people, rather than exclusive. In the long run, just be kind, ask questions when you don’t understand, and be grateful for the people that fought for your right to exist as a lesbian woman, by letting them exist as who they truly are too. It wasn’t always that way for lesbian woman, let’s show the same respect for non-binary people too. | https://medium.com/lesbian-leftist-magazine/why-we-need-to-stop-gatekeeping-lesbians-that-arent-women-from-the-lesbian-community-fa3cd78f81aa | ['Elysa Caso-Mchugh'] | 2020-12-03 21:23:04.262000+00:00 | ['History', 'Queer Theory', 'Nonbinary', 'Lesbian', 'LGBT'] |
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You can watch this Event live stream on all TV Chanel IRONMAN MONT-TREMBLANT Live Streaming Live Stream. Live RONMAN COPENHAGEN Live Streaming 2019 Live Live Stream Live Stream IRONMAN MONT-TREMBLANT Live Streaming 2019 Live League Live. ESPN, ESPN3, SONY SIX, FOX SPORTS, STAR SPORTS, HBO, ABC, NBC, ESPN2 any of these channel will impart this. IRONMAN MONT-TREMBLANT Live Streaming Live Stream Live IRONMAN MONT-TREMBLANT Live Streaming 2019 Live Live Stream Live Stream Live IRONMAN MONT-TREMBLANT Live Streaming 2019 Live, Today’s hard-hitting tremendous match will held including by National IRONMAN MONT-TREMBLANT Live Streaming 2019 Live League Regular Season Live that is IRONMAN MONT-TREMBLANT Live Streaming 2019 Live Live Online Today from site. | https://medium.com/@asarepon001/final-live-ironman-watch-ironman-mont-tremblant-2019-live-stream-free-f5661b5a30dd | ['Asae Repon'] | 2019-08-18 18:22:52.912000+00:00 | ['Live Streaming', 'Live'] |
Opportunities Arising From COVID-19 Crisis | With all of the disruptions happening in our lives due to COVID-19, there is some doors opening up for us if we can see them. It is especially important to see all the opportunities, whether it be making some investments or just family bonding, to bring some light into our lives. Of upmost importance though, is optimism, due to the aligned happiness it brings us and our loved ones. We can also make some adjustments to our lifestyles with this deadly Coronavirus, that can change the way we live for the better.
#1 Make Your Dreams Come True
Do you want to learn how to cook? Or learn how to paint? What about organize your closet? Well now, you have the time for all of that! The average person spends 490 minutes per week traveling to work. As we all know now though, most large companies and corporations have work-at-home orders. Because of this, we can spend this time making our dreams come true during this saved time. Many states even have stay at home orders, we even save time getting groceries, going to the mall etc. Now is the time to achieve greatness and try things that have been in our bucket list forever. Imagine of all the possibilities we could create to kill time, and achieve something great for ourselves and maybe even the world.
#2 Invest In The Stock Market
Right now, while the market is crashing before our eyes, is the best time to buy shares in the great industrial giants. I can speak from experience from the 2008 recession. The best companies to invest in are the more established ones and the ones that have reached half or less than half of their all time high. Lots of technology based, recreational, and even gasoline stocks have fallen due to the Corona virus. While the greater majority may not care too much, the top 1% are having the time of their lives while investing in stocks. Especially now, when many companies share prices are lower than what they were in 2008, we can always make a few 1,000 dollar when we make smart decisions with investments at all time lows.
#3 Catch Up With Friends And Family
While we are saving time from daily commutes and other time consuming activities, we can use that time to catch up with our loved ones. Have you talked to your mother, father or grandparents recently? Have you made sure everyone you care and love for is all right? Right now is the time to catch up with everyone whether it be your best buddy from college or your great-grandpa whose turning 100. Most of the world is at home and probably thinking about whom they want to talk to. To add on, it is also very important to have social interaction while observing the new and improved “Social Distance”. We can do this through various platforms like Skype, FaceTime or even just a simple phone call. I can guarantee you, such a gesture can make somebody’s day and maybe even change the degree of your relationship with them. This is the time to either mend or further relations with those whom you don’t talk to that often.
#4 Bond With Those Near You
I want you to ask yourself how long it has been since you sat down and played with you child, children, or pet(s). Or even, how long it’s been since you took the man (or woman) that you love to a candle night dinner. What about the last time you said “I Love You” to any one of these figures. Well, now is the time to make up for the lost time over the past few years. Sit down and watch a movies with your family, make a candle night dinner for your partner or maybe even take some time and play a game with these people. We can make extraordinary memories that may change how we look at COVID-19 in the future. In the future, instead of saying “COVID-19, a disaster”, make sure your close, loved ones say “COVID-19, a time of pure joy in this house”.
#5 Get Out Of The Comfort Zone
Don’t talk about the future, build the future in your present. Always remember karma, what we put out will always come back to us. If we put our spared time to good use, whatever it may be, it will come to our benefit. The most important thing is that we must get out of the comfort zone. The biggest factor that is stopping us from doing all these activities on a normal basis is the fear that something we don’t want may happen. However, we must remember, we are not “God”, we are humans, whom are made not to be perfect. Therefore, we must change our thinking to make these improvements to our lifestyle last a lifetime. | https://medium.com/@ppa618846/opportunities-opening-from-covid-19-5065dc80a6a1 | ['Priya Patel'] | 2020-03-24 20:37:53.319000+00:00 | ['Change', 'Covid 19', 'Lifestyle', 'Opportunity', 'Improvement'] |
ReWritten in 2006 , originally written in 1995 | ReWritten in 2006 , originally written in 1995
Re-edited in 2012 with birth of my child
Monarchia Delenda Est
Siempre Viva Republica
Siempre Viva Novus Ordo Republica
Viva Republica
So saith the prophet
Time to move the revolution many paces ahead
No more time for pacifism or silence
Time to move onto war of ideas
When few families born with golden spoons
Seek to keep power to themselves
I ask what good is this ?
People don’t care for scraps or crumbs
People care for equality for liberty for common humanity .
No we won’t shed our blood for a family
Or a select king or queen
We are born of the Prophet and I Am
Why would I seek titles or purple sash regalia
I care not for finery or silver
For gold dust or thrones
I care not for people’s ‘bacon’ slippers
Their skin fashioned into shoes for the golden spoon family
No I care for a Republic
I care not for a monarchy which tells me my rights as and when they feel i can have them
No I care for a Republic
Let us sing the song of the republic
Which the prophet sung from his heart
For he said that the values of liberty and freedom is in the breast of each person which declares that I shall breathe free air and not the air that wafts through the golden gilded cages
Only to gather strength and shake us telling us that you may have this air , for fortunate are you that such detritus laced air is my keeping
And you may now eat this cake my ravens have left aside
This leftover this ucchistha from the eternal language I say is not my inheritance
My inheritance is my Father’s earth and this land this earth is his
I am the prophet who shall move all Nations to be holy to be a republic and to know their true worth
One world Nation dedicated to ushering the age of freedom, of rights and of enlightenment
I have not abandoned enlightenment
I have not abandoned republicanism
I have not abandoned my credal beliefs
I have infused them into my marrow
My very blood screams for a Republic
And republic I shall have again
Cromwell are you there? My dreams call you
Please enter for the door of my mind is open
Guide me towards the nation free and pure
That Puritan love for England for Britain
Let me make it ready for the commonweal
The general will of the people
Shame Charles the wachtparad king
Knew not when to resign and when to be resigned to his fate but fought a pointless battle
Against his people | https://medium.com/@joshuamkohen/rewritten-in-2006-originally-written-in-1995-a0a7030983a3 | ['National Republican Movement', 'Affiliated To Sjcm'] | 2020-08-06 23:10:59.669000+00:00 | ['Abolishmonarchy', 'Republicans', 'Trump', 'Abolishmetpolice', 'Britain'] |
What if everything was about reward prediction error? | What if everything was about reward prediction error?
A note on how our lives would look like if we could perceive joy only by our errors in predicting rewards.
WARNING: This article is not supposed to be scientifically precise. Rather, it is a playful discussion about an imaginary scenario inspired by scientific findings
Dopamine, enjoyment, and reward prediction error
It is generally believed that dopamine is what makes us feel happy and pleased, and there is scientific evidence for the release of dopamine at the time of accomplishing something or receiving rewards. However, many studies have shown that most of the neurons responsible for the release of dopamine, usually called dopaminergic neurons, are not triggered by the reward itself; rather, they are triggered by the difference between the achieved reward and the expected reward, what is called “reward prediction error” in models of reinforcement learning¹.
It is somehow funny; it means that no matter how big the reward is, if you expect it, then there is no release of dopamine according to these neurons. Or even worse, you may accomplish something and get a reward, but because you might have had a higher expectation, the actual value of the reward gives you a feeling of disappointment and leads to a decrease in the dopamine release, due to the inhibition of the dopaminergic neurons. In other words, these neurons are triggered only if the achieved reward is greater than what we have expected, i.e. only if the reward prediction error is positive².
I do not intend to talk about neuroscience, biology, or reinforcement learning in this article. Rather, I would like to take the mentioned scientific facts as inspiration, imagine a simplistic world where the reward prediction error is the only reason for joy, and discuss what enjoyment is like in such a world.
“Imagine all the people” enjoying reward prediction errors³
Imagine an abstract simplistic world where (1) people perceive joy and pleasure only through the release of dopamine, and (2) dopamine release depends only on reward prediction errors. Such a world is quite different from the complex one we live in; in reality, neither dopamine is the only source of our happiness or our feeling of success, nor reward prediction error is the only trigger of dopamine. However, thinking about this abstract imaginary world simplifies the problem of “what do we enjoy?” and lets us discuss it with less distraction by other potentially relevant factors.
Following this thought process, we may get some interesting intuitions about our more complex real world. To do so, in what follows, I try to imagine and describe a few features of this simplistic imaginary world.
1. Joy is in the eye of the beholder
When the only thing that matters is the difference between the achieved and the expected rewards, then the expected reward is as important as the achieved reward in quantifying how enjoyable our experiences are. For example, if we increase both the expected and the achieved rewards by the same amount, then the reward prediction error, and hence the corresponding joy (or disappointment), does not change.
More intuitively, if you take a person and suddenly increase their income by a huge amount but also significantly increase their expectations about their day-to-day life, then you cannot be sure that you have made their life "happier". To make them have a happier life, assuming their income plays a role in their happiness, you need to increase their income faster than how they increase their expectations! With similar reasoning, there is no guarantee that rich people who are used to their luxurious lives enjoy the world more than the average.
In summary, in a world where everything is about reward prediction error, everything also takes up a more relative nature.
2. Always being right is boring
When the assumption is that we enjoy positive reward prediction errors, then, by assumption, there is no enjoyment in a world without errors. Hence, if there is no uncertainty in our environment, and if we can make objective predictions (i.e. without any subjective bias), then life becomes quite boring. For example, many people would agree that a big part of the joy in winning a game comes from the fact that winning is not certain in advance, and I believe such a certainty makes many of us less motivated to even get involved in that game.
Another interesting but a bit counter-intuitive example is lotteries; in general, since you do not expect much from a lottery, losing does not hurt much while winning is magnificent. But what happens if you know with certainty that you will win? In the imaginary world that we are discussing here, there is not any feeling of accomplishment at the moment of seeing your card numbers on the TV screen; yet because receiving a huge amount of money leads to lots of other activities with their own corresponding reward prediction errors, winning a lottery can still be quite fun later on and in the long term! Hence, in our imaginary world, the whole experience is indeed still pleasant, but I doubt that if, even in our real and complex world, the moment of announcing the winner of a lottery, when he or she has been known to us in advance and with certainty, gives us any special feeling.
In summary, to have some fun and joy or, on the other hand, to have some disappointment and frustration, we need to be wrong, at least once in a while.
3. Pessimism rocks?
If the joy is in the eye of the beholder, then, no matter what, we can make our lives joyful by decreasing our expectations. One who always expects the worst-case scenario is the one who always experiences a positive⁴ reward prediction error. In other words, to always enjoy the world, you should always be wrong with your expectations, but wrong in the right way!
However, it is not always easy to pick the worst-case scenario as our expectation, simply because many of our expectations are made unconsciously, particularly in the situations that we encounter quite often. Hence, for many of these situations, if we want to be pessimistic, we need to train ourselves; we need to stop adapting our expectations according to our environment and to stop being realistic. For example, if you are rich, you should stop getting used to being rich! To do so, you should always imagine bad scenarios more than good ones — like some kind of mental training. For example, if you are rich, you should repeatedly imagine huge drops in stock markets; then, even a stable trend looks amazing!
The problem is that if we think about imagination as a simulated version of the future, then for each imagined scenario we have also an imaginary reward prediction error, and to keep our expectations low through these mental training, we need to imagine more negative reward prediction errors than positive ones. The irony is at this point: if we want to enjoy more in reality, then we need to suffer more in our minds!⁵ Exactly the opposite holds true for optimism.
In summary, in non-familiar situations, a pessimistic mindset seems to be the most fortunate one. However, for day-to-day life events, pessimism rocks only if we can stand a catastrophic image of the world in our minds.
So what? (Traditionally called conclusion)
It is obvious that, for example, we can eat the same food many times in our life and enjoy it every single time. It is also not difficult to imagine (or to remember) enjoying watching a movie multiple times. It is indeed the case that there are activities that we can enjoy while perfectly matching our expectations, activities like running, biking, or swimming.
It is clear that reward matters on its own, and it is clear that not everything is about reward prediction error. However, as we saw, this very simple assumption can explain our feelings and emotions for a wide range of situations in our day-to-day life. More importantly, because of its simplicity, it is easy to use this assumption to find better and novel insights about "what makes us happy?" and "why does it make us happy?".
In the examples above, I find it fascinating that the necessity of a faster increase of income compared to the increase of expectations, the unintuitive nature of certain lotteries, and the pros and cons of pessimism can all be discussed elaborately in this imaginary world. Thinking about these situations in this imaginary world made me see things from different perspectives; it was like solving math problems while only a small handful of mathematical tools are allowed.
The insights and perspectives resulted from thinking about this imaginary world can become a useful part of our reasoning for making our future decisions; however, we should always be aware that we are not living in that simplistic world! | https://a-modirshanechi.medium.com/what-if-everything-was-about-reward-prediction-error-b423af871baf | ['Alireza Modirshanechi'] | 2020-12-30 07:35:06.727000+00:00 | ['Ideas', 'Reinforcement Learning', 'Dopamine', 'Psychology', 'Neuroscience'] |
Giants take season series in Buehler’s first ever loss to San Francisco | (Photo by Jon SooHoo/Los Angeles Dodgers)
by Rowan Kavner
A back-and-forth season series went to the Giants. The Dodgers still have a month to make sure the division doesn’t, too.
Walker Buehler had never lost a game to the division rivals, entering Sunday’s series finale in San Francisco with a 7–0 record and 1.83 ERA in 12 career starts against the Giants. He carved his way through their lineup each of his first five times seeing them this year, allowing three earned runs in 34 innings.
That’s what made the final regular season matchup between the National League’s top two teams, a 6–4 loss for the Dodgers which put the Giants back in the NL West driver’s seat, particularly bewildering.
With the season series tied at nine games apiece, the 19th matchup of the year between the teams pitted Buehler against a San Francisco bullpen game. What looked on paper to be a favorable matchup did not play out as such, as the Giants struck early and often against the Dodgers’ Cy Young Award candidate in a way no team had prior this year.
Buehler, who had gone at least six innings in 26 of his first 27 starts this year, allowed a season-high six runs in a season-low three innings. He had not allowed more than two runs in any of his previous 10 starts before watching his ERA climb from 2.05 to 2.31 on Sunday.
It was the first time Buehler had allowed six runs in a game since Sept. 2, 2019. The Giants’ five swings and misses against him were tied for the Dodger ace’s fewest in a game this season (also on May 28 against San Francisco).
“Not a whole lot was very good,” Buehler said. “Probably the worst I’ve thrown in a long time. We’ll get back to the drawing board and improve, but tough day for me today.”
Manager Dave Roberts said familiarity tends to benefit the hitter, but when Buehler’s making pitches, that typically doesn’t matter.
The Giants plated runs on Buehler in each of the first three innings — including a home run in the first, two run-scoring hits in the second and another two run-scoring hits in the third — before the righty’s night ended at 53 pitches. He had not gone fewer than five innings in any other start this year.
“They were just on him tonight,” Roberts said. “I think there were some missed locations, some tough luck and also some quality contact. There just wasn’t a lot of swing-and-miss stuff. You’ve got to give credit when credit’s due.”
Boasting the top pitching staff in baseball, Sunday marked just the third time a Dodger starter allowed six earned runs in a game this year. No Dodger starter had allowed even four runs in a game all of August.
Despite that, the Dodgers got the tying run to the plate in the ninth inning following a pinch-hit two-run homer from Albert Pujols before their comeback attempt fell short.
Most of their opportunities to strike came much earlier.
The Dodgers left eight runners on base through the first five innings against a litany of Giants pitchers. They had two runners in scoring position with no outs after an RBI single from Will Smith in the second inning, but they stranded both runners.
An inning later, Smith popped out with the bases loaded to end another threat. The Dodgers loaded the bases again two innings later but came up empty on a Chris Taylor strikeout.
“We let those guys off the hook,” Roberts said. “Situationally, they were better than we were.”
The result was a seesawing division lead that tipped in favor of the Giants, who took two of three games this weekend.
The Dodgers have 25 games remaining, including a four-game trip to St. Louis beginning this week, to reclaim first place and defend their division crown for a ninth straight year.
“We have a month left,” Buehler said. “This is a big game, a Sunday night game, tied in the division and all that, but what it boils down to is playing a better month of baseball than they do.” | https://dodgers.mlblogs.com/giants-take-season-series-in-buehlers-first-ever-loss-to-san-francisco-16ca797c36f4 | ['Rowan Kavner'] | 2021-09-06 04:02:16.209000+00:00 | ['Dodgers', 'Postgame', 'MLB', 'Giants', 'Walker Buehler'] |
Top 20 machine learning frameworks of all time | Machine learning and artificial intelligence solutions are enhancing business operations in Indian enterprises across industries. In fact, the Indian AI market is valued at $6.4 Billion, with MNC IT, Technology, and Electronics companies (36%), domestic IT companies (25%), and captive firms (8%) holding strong market share in India. Close to 91000 AI experts, across enterprises and start-ups, are continually working to expand the scope of the technology every day.
While the right machine learning framework for your project, depends on its scope, flexibility, scalability, and technological capabilities, the following frameworks can help you assess the ML ecosystem better. Let us review the top 20 machine learning frameworks of all time, to understand their role in enhancing ML adoption, increasing output productivity, and driving greater performance across projects.
1. TensorFlow
TensorFlow, an open-source Google Brain project, is one of the most popular ML frameworks available in the marketplace. It is a complete machine learning research and production tool and is simple to use for managing dynamic data sets. TensorFlow users need a complete understanding of NumPy, a Python framework, for working with n-dimensional arrays seamlessly. Many top web development services providers use TensorFlow for scale-driven data processing.
2. Scikit-Learn
For faster processing and analytics initiatives, developers can use scikit-Learn frameworks to run quick machine learning models. It is a Python-based package and can execute key tasks such as regressions, SVMs, descent models, etc. It is a popular starter ML framework, after which developers can select larger-scale frameworks for completion.
3. PyTorch
PyTorch, developed by Facebook AI Research (FAIR), can perform the regression, classification, and neural network tasks effortlessly. It also runs on CPUs and GPUs and is widely considered to be highly customizable. For larger projects, PyTorch can drive faster training times and can be used for custom web application development seamlessly.
4. Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit
Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit is generally a deep learning framework that is ideal for executing convolutional neural networks, recurrent neural networks, and feed-forward DNNs based tasks. It is a highly customizable framework and can use multiple GPUs providing seamless parallelization.
5. Caffe
Convolutional Architecture for Fast Feature Embedding (Caffe) is a highly effective deep learning framework in C++, with a robust expression architecture enabling ease of transition from CPU to GPU. It is the ideal framework for executing image classification and segmentation processes at a much faster rate.
6. Theano
Theano is an open-source ML framework, that handles mathematical expressions effectively, including multidimensional arrays. It provides dynamic C code generation and combines a computer algebra system (CAS) with an optimizing compiler for faster processing.
7. Keras
Keras is the right framework to bridge the gap between machine learning and deep learning, through a simplified interface and streamlined approach to data processing. It is widely used for classification and summarization, and developers can also use it for speech recognition, tagging, and translation.
8. Spark ML
SparkML allows developers to run in clusters, which can enable them to execute complex matrix multiplication exercises. The framework requires a distributed architecture so that it can work with larger data sets. Developers with experience in Spark can leverage the framework’s Spark RDD data structures for seamless processing.
9. Torch
Torch is one of the earliest ML frameworks in the marketplace, launched in 2002. Torch is simpler to use, and its LuaRockspackage manager ensures seamless data processing at-scale. The framework has easy to use features to enable effective slicing and analysis of data tables. Developers familiar with TensorFlow can leverage the capabilities of Torch as well.
10. Accord.NET
Accord.NET is a C# based ML framework that is widely used for executing statistics, ML, and neural network tasks. While developers can perform classification, regression, and clustering seamlessly, they can also benefit from the extensive audio and image processing libraries provided.
11. Firebase ML Kit
Firebase provides multi-platform capabilities of handling text, image and object recognition, and classification. Web development services providers use Firebase to help integrate machine learning models into mobile applications without technical load.
12. Scikit-Garden
Scikit-Garden is specifically designed for decision trees and forests, thereby localizing its applications to the domain. It can handle complex tree structures seamlessly and can be easily used by developers and enterprises.
13. Apache Mahout
Apache Mahout is a free to use ML framework that is extensively leveraged for linear algebraic tasks, for data scientists and researchers in the domain. Apache Spark is used for most of the clustering, classification, and filtering while distributing alongside an interactive shell and library.
14. Chainer
Chainer is an easy to use ML framework leveraged for custom web application development for back-end processing of real-time data. Sentiment analysis, machine translation, and speech recognition can be seamlessly performed using this highly flexible framework.
15. Shogun
Shogun is a popular C++ based ML framework that is a highly advanced interface used extensively for research-driven purposes. It is the ideal open-source solution for large-scale data processing and supports multiple languages such as python, Octave, R, Java/Scala, Lua, C#, Ruby, etc.
16. Weka
Weka is a Java-based ML framework that has pre-existing models for deep data mining, data learning, and pre-set processes. It provides extensive access to other platforms for distributed tasks while being used as a research tool for many projects.
17. Dask
The open-source python ML framework provides extensive support to other machine learning frameworks to simplify task execution. It extends parallel computing and enables additional improvements for large-scale enterprise projects.
18. ONNX
The Open Neural Network Exchange enables seamless ML processing, through CPUs and GPUs, and is a highly effective platform to transform ML work from one framework to another. When custom web application development requires interoperability between ML architectures, ONNX is leveraged.
19. Huggingface
Huggingface is a new ML framework that provides workable base models for many ML tasks. Researchers can leverage the framework to perform complex tasks easily, especially in the neural networks and NLP domains.
20. Amazon SageMaker
The fully integrated IDE for machine learning is extensively used for computer vision, image analysis, forecasting, and text analytics across a wide range of applications. Developers can use SageMaker to build and deploy several ML models on the cloud.
In conclusion
There are several benefits of opting for the right machine learning framework that fits perfectly with your organizational needs. By understanding the role and impact of each framework, a more informed decision can be executed to select the right alternative. Developers, start-ups, and organizations need to consider key factors such as scope, scale, community, performance, and versatility in applications. | https://medium.com/@i4consultingpvt/top-20-machine-learning-frameworks-of-all-time-20e15b5793e6 | ['Hitesh Gupta'] | 2020-11-19 13:30:50.038000+00:00 | ['Mobile App Developers', 'Mobile App Development', 'Mobile Apps', 'Website Development'] |
What do you get when you hire a service design team — an eccentric artist or a guy with a paintbrush? | You have been there. Or at least heard the stories. The service design team presents the results of their work, you take it in and feel it is not quite what you had in mind. You suggest some changes. Some more specific, some rather vague. Instead of making the changes, the design team presents you with arguments why this is not a good idea.
What happens next is a game of trust. Do you trust the professional you hired to do the job, or do you think that nobody knows your company better than yourself? Turning the question around and looking at it from the designers’ perspective — how far should we retreat from the solution we think is best? And if we do, does this mean that we have failed even if the client is satisfied?
To answer these two questions, let’s turn to metaphors.
Imagine a spectrum — on one end there is a guy with a paintbrush visualizing someone else’s fantasy and on the other end a famous artist doing his own thing.
A famous artist
If you’re looking to buy a piece from a famous artist, you don’t get to tell that “I want exactly this, but could you redo this corner so there is a puppy. And I don’t like the colours in the middle. And all in all — it is too abstract.” It is “take it or leave it” — either you like it and trust it is a good investment or you don’t.
Pablo Picasso at work, 1960 Photograph by Brassaï
A guy with a paintbrush
If you’re looking for someone to paint your walls, you call all the shots — which room, which colour. You could do the painting yourself; you just don’t have time and haven’t mastered the technique. But you know what needs to be done.
Preparing to grab a paintbrush, www.freepik.com
The interior decorator
Obviously, service/UX designers don’t represent either of the extremes, so let’s take something from the middle — an interior decorator perhaps? These guys do not only have technical skills, but they also have a vision about what goes together and what not and how would the kitchen be most ergonomic and practical. They will say that sleeping in a totally pink bedroom will slowly drive you mad or placing the oven under the fridge is not a particularly good idea. But in the end, you are the one living there — your home, your subjectivity. You are not stupid, because you don’t go along with the designer’s ideas, there are just different opinions and tastes.
Is that also the way service/UX design works? Well, not quite — because instead of pleasing only the owner, we have to please the guests.
H appy guests make a happy owner. There is no point in building a website or e-service the guests are uncomfortable or confused using, even if the owner really likes it. The same applies to physical public spaces like schools or hospitals.
If you decorate a home, the only person you have to get to know is the one who will live in it. If you build a public space online or in the real world, you have to know the users.
So, the subjective taste and opinions of the client do not matter that much anymore. Yes, everybody has preferences, but we don’t deal with the preferences of one or two people here. We have to find the balance to appeal to the anonymous crowd that are users.
Yes, nobody knows the company better than its leaders, but that can be a disadvantage. The simplest example is the wish to make the structure of a web follow the structure of the company, although the users don’t see inside nor do they care about the internal machine.
The things that seem elementary inside the company, can leave the user confused and lost. Which can lead the company to loss, not profit.
That is why service/UX designers are not that eager to make all the changes the client requests. Although we work for the client, our loyalties lie elsewhere — with the anonymous and elusive user we try to understand.
Coming back to the initial questions
How far should we retreat from the solution we think is best? And if we do, does this mean that we have failed even if the client is happy? My answers are “not very far” and “yes, we have failed”. Because in the long run the client is not happy when the e-service is a perfectly tailored suit for them, but too tight and itchy for the users.
So, I am not supposed to say anything? My opinion doesn’t count at all?
If that’s what you are thinking, please rest assured — it is not the case. Hiring service/UX designer is not like buying a painting from a famous artist. We need you to be in on the process, provide information and ask all the questions. Please voice your concerns as early as possible, but also listen to the answers. And trust us. It would be simple to do something that only you like, be the guy with a paintbrush. But that would be letting you down. We don’t want to let you down. | https://medium.com/rethinkers-co/what-do-you-get-when-you-hire-a-service-design-team-26a4a3b1d2cc | ['Liis V.'] | 2021-03-04 08:06:25.858000+00:00 | ['UX Design', 'Service Design'] |
Starting University in a Pandemic | Leaving home and moving to “uni” as we call it in the UK, aka “college” for my American friends, is often a defining point in your life. Its a time for making new friends, experiencing new things and growing up a little bit as you take that first step towards “adulting”. I’d heard many stories of the famed freshers week — those initial days of settling in when becoming besties with the girl in front of you in the queue for the club is normal or running around campus desperately trying to find the right room for your welcome lectures whilst more than slightly hungover is commonplace. It all sounded so exciting! I’ve never been a hugely extroverted person and often prefer to meet new people in smaller, more intimate settings but this time I was eager to connect with the diverse range of strangers that were also experiencing the big wide world for the first time with me.
However, it seems the universe had a different plan for this year. The Covid-19 pandemic swept across the world and reached the little island I call home in late March, drastically changing my own and so many others’, plans for 2020. Maybe I was too optimistic, but initially, I thought that we would be passed the worst of it by September, when I was due to start university. I still had dreams of dancing in a crowded club, sitting in grand lecture theatres and chatting up that cute guy from the library when you run into him in the bar later. I thought, “So where were you during the lockdown?” would become a good conversation starter when all the other classics had been used rather than a reminder of a shared experience which no-one actually wants to be reminded of.
Unfortunately, that was not to be the case. Like most students across the UK, the majority of my teaching this semester was online through prerecorded lecture videos and zoom classes; local restrictions meant I couldn’t go to clubs/bars and meeting others outside of my flat who became my new “household” was only possible outside.
The morning I left was bright and sunny. After packing up the car with way too much stuff, I was filled with nerves for more than the typical reasons. I worried how I would cope with motivating myself during online learning, meeting new people on video calls instead of in person and finding “my crowd” when there couldn’t be any crowds. Arriving on campus and finding my flat was a quite stressful experience due to delays in the “moving-in slot” I had had to book previously to help keep everything socially distanced. Maybe that’s why I was very relieved to meet the people I would be living with for the next year, so rushed through the goodbyes to my family. In hindsight, it would have been nice to spend just a little longer appreciating the moment I flew the nest, but escaping my mum’s barely contained tears (which definitely would have set me off as well) might have been for the best.
During my first few weeks, I joined more than enough zoom quizzes and socials — which, no matter how many times you do them, never become less awkward; ate ice cream in the rain for an excuse to talk to new people and spent 10 days self-isolating after coming into close contact with a friend who tested positive for Covid. By Halloween, I had experienced the joys of trying to complete a group project despite never having met the other students and got lost in the library’s one way system too often to count.
So far, my university experience had been anything but typical. I had yet to go to any of the clubs that the older students I met raved about from pre-Covid days or fully appreciate the benefits of living surrounded by other students in my halls. And it wasn’t going to change. In November, the UK went back in to lockdown to help stop the spread of the second wave of the coronavirus.
These new restrictions might have made my time away from home much harder — and for many that was the case. Student’s mental health is a topic often overlooked, and there’s no doubt that coronavirus restrictions, although necessary, haven’t had a positive impact on wellbeing. But personally, these restrictions forced me to make the most of every opportunity I had to build connections with others.
I met people I probably never would have before. I built habits I never would have, such as running regularly (I was that desperate to get outside). So, after finishing what can only be described as the weirdest first semester that anyone has experienced, I’m optimistic.
Don’t get me wrong, there are things I am eager to leave behind. Online learning isn’t easy for anyone, especially for a major procrastinator like me. And I’m lucky to have good access to technology so I can easily complete the work I need to. I’d also love to be able to casually pop over to the flat next door just to chat without worrying about breaking restrictions, and join the different music clubs or sporting teams I’m interested in (virtual sailing races aren’t quite the same).
But I am happy. I’ve made good friends, found my feet and settled in to a new city which now feels a bit more like home. I’ve learnt to look on the bright side, and make the most of every chance I’m given.
Now, sitting back on my bed in my parents house, I’m eager to start next semester — even if it won’t be too different to the last. Because if I’ve discovered anything over the last 9 months, it’s that life has a funny habit of carrying on. I don’t mean to come across as super deep and metaphorical, I’m not that type of person. 2020 hasn’t been the year most of us hoped for, but 2021 is waiting around the corner.
Moving to university is an opportunity to learn, to grow and experience new things. And despite starting in a pandemic, I’ve still managed to do that. So I’ll count it as a success. | https://medium.com/@emmarose456/starting-university-in-a-pandemic-d729da7ed8f1 | ['Emma Rose'] | 2020-12-24 11:56:52.014000+00:00 | ['Students', 'Coronavirus', 'Education', 'UK', 'Universi'] |
Finding Humor in the Siberian Cold | Beryozovaya Roshcha, “Birch Grove” park in Novosibirsk, Siberia. Photo taken from my Instagram
Being from Montana, I am certainly no stranger to cold, harsh winters. However, that would not spare me from the baffled looks of friends and family when I told them I’d be heading to the middle of Siberia for the winter. Needless to say, their confidence in my ability to cope (and my sanity) was not high. Montana may have cold, snowy days with cold, gusting winds, but Siberia is an entirely different beast. The entire region is pretty much one long-running joke about the cold and GULags. Nevertheless, I was prepared to face the challenge head-on, and prove to myself and those around me that I was perfectly capable of living a good life in one of the harshest climates on Earth.
While living there, I worked in the city of Novosibirsk — the largest city in Siberia and the third largest in Russia — as an English teacher to make some money and get professional experience while I was there. I got a free apartment in the middle of the city, a decent wage for food and entertainment, and wonderful hospitality from my boss and her family. Although their climate may be cold, and although they themselves may seem equally cold on the exterior, Siberians are some of the most welcoming and gracious people in the world. Forget “Southern Hospitality”, Siberian Hospitality is second to none (although they both have a tendency to overload you with tea). As an American, I had some trepidation about going there, mainly because I didn’t want to be seen as some sort of corrupt Western influence, or worse, a spy! Thankfully, those concerns only came up in jest.
But what was no joke was the cold. Upon arriving at the airport in Novosibirsk, the temperature was roughly -30 degrees Celsius, or -22 degrees Fahrenheit. You know it is getting cold when the two scales begin to converge. When I walked outside to begin the journey across the large parking lot to my boss’s car, I was met with a strange, unfamiliar feeling. The first big breath I took in through my nose caused a strange crackling sound. I quickly identified it as all the moisture in my nose freezing solid in an instant. If you’ve ever crinkled up an empty, old plastic water bottle, it sounds like that, except it comes from inside your nostrils. I may have underestimated how cold Siberia was. All the more unsettling was that my bosses frequently noted that this was a very warm winter for Novosibirsk.
They brought me to my very own apartment in the center of the city, mere blocks away from several large shopping centers, grocery stores, and most importantly, metro stops. You see, I avoided driving on Russian roads as much as possible, because I was very familiar with Russian dashcam videos. What became clear though was that Russian roads run on a sort of organized chaos, wherein all the cars seem to steer clear of one another and get to their destinations quickly (albeit not safely) because when no one follows traditional rules of the road, everyone is fully anticipating and expecting everyone else to perform reckless maneuvers as well. In other words, if everyone’s a bad driver, no one is. Sitting at my window on the sixth floor of my Soviet-style apartment block and watching the traffic on the major road beneath me quickly became a favorite pastime. I didn’t have a television, but I am confident that watching the average Russian roadway is far more entertaining than any T.V. program.
Americans often joke about Russians having some sort of advanced weaponry that we should be scared of, whether that take the form of hypersonic nuclear missiles or some sort of advanced laser weapon. Well, I can confirm firsthand that Russians do indeed have a remarkably dangerous form of laser weaponry, however, it acts much more like a Mario Cart item than an actual weapon of war. One evening I was walking back to my apartment from the grocery store on the other side of the major road, and I noticed that more cars than usual were swerving. A green flash of light caught my eye, and after tracing the beam to its source, I saw that it was coming from the middle of an adjacent apartment block. There was some kid in his window shining a giant green laser beam into the oncoming, nighttime traffic. You have to find someway to pass the time from indoors, I guess.
Indeed, that would not be my only encounter with advanced Russian weaponry. Once a week I’d go and teach at a school in the nearby town of Koltsovo. After my first lesson there, I was walking back to the marshrutka stop with an older student and asking him questions about his little town and what makes it special. He proudly noted that it’s a national “Science Town” of the Russian Federation, meaning that it has a special designation as a center of scientific research and development. I asked him what sort of research went on in the city, and he told me about a large biological research facility right outside of the town. Now, at first I thought that maybe they experimented on plants or animals or made medicine or something, but as he went on with his explanation, it became clear that this was not that sort of biological research facility. It was the sort of research facility where Russians work with all sorts of viruses, and he finished his explanation by saying, with pride, that their city is one of two in the world to have an active sample of the smallpox virus laying around, the only other being at the CDC in Atlanta, Georgia. Very nice.
That marshrutka ride home from Koltsovo would normally take about 45 minutes, and as an American, it was certainly a learning experience. For those unfamiliar with the concept, marshrutkas are essentially large vans or shuttle-buses that run on a fixed route between stops. They are normally packed with as many people as humanly possible, somewhat smelly, and often cold. It may be Siberia, but that doesn’t mean that the drivers are going to waste their money on running heat to the back of their vehicles. The windows would often frost over, leading to some interesting artwork being scraped into the ice. However, I quickly found an ingenious solution to the cold: I would strategically find a spot between two old Russian babushkas (elderly women) in big, puffy fur coats and sandwich myself right between them. Comfortable? Not particularly. Cold? Not in the slightest.
But the cold is not the only problem to overcome in Siberia. Even though healthcare is much more accessible, its quality is often lacking, as I’d soon find out. One day I heard a knocking at my door. Now, my boss had warned me that there is rarely any good reason to answer a knocking at your apartment door in Russia, and that if I was going to answer it at all, I needed to look through the peephole at the very least. On the other side of the door stood a small, elderly lady in an EMT uniform. I opened the door and she seemed very relieved to see me, because I was soon to find out, they needed a strong young male. She informed me that a couple of floors down was an older man badly in need of medical attention. He was large and unresponsive, and this EMT and her partner, another older woman, were unable to lift the man from his couch to their cheap cloth stretcher, what was essentially no more than a hammock with handles. I hurriedly put on my coat, disregarding the normally-necessary Siberian attire of a hat, gloves, and scarf. Myself and another high-school aged young man went down to where the other EMT was waiting and helped to transfer the unconscious man onto the human-sized sling, then carrying him down the stairs to the ambulance waiting outside. I’ll admit that my muscles almost gave. He was heavy, much heavier than he even initially appeared, and it was all dead weight. Even with the two of us, it was exhausting. But that’s Russia, I guess. An EMT will go pounding door-to-door in order to find their own emergency assistance.
Being Russia, there is, of course, alcohol in abundance, and if you’re willing to compromise on taste a little bit, you can get it really cheap. Near the end of my time there, when I was preparing to leave because of the COVID-19 pandemic, I could not find any hand sanitizer left in the nearby store. What I could find, however, was cheap store-brand vodka. Yes, imagine being able to go to Walmart and get Great Value brand vodka. Given that hand sanitizer is pretty much just germ-killing alcohol anyways, I got some of the store-brand vodka and just diluted it in water to rinse my hands with. Modern problems require modern solutions, after all.
Another problem with alcohol is getting used to the Russian drinking culture and all of its norms. One of the best nights I spent in Siberia was New Year’s Eve with my boss, her family, and their friends. New Year’s Eve is a big holiday in Russia, much bigger than it is in the United States. People get together with loved ones in order to eat and drink in excess. There’s also a tradition of making many, many toasts around the table, to the health and happiness and prosperity of all those seated around it. With every toast, you must, of course, take a drink. At our feast, there was champagne and there was cognac. They offered me both, and not wanting to be rude, I accepted both. At the end of the first toast, I clinked my shot glass of cognac with everyone, and gulped it down. This, my friends, was a mistake. It was not a mistake because cognac is bad, but because Russians are very economical people, and they believe that if you’ve had a strong liquor like cognac, your taste buds have been dulled down to the point that it would be a waste for you to drink any champagne. This meant that I would have to take a shot of cognac for all of the remaining toasts that night, and as aforementioned, there were many. If there were not plenty of food to soak it all up, I’m not sure I would’ve made it out of there alive (or at the very least, conscious).
Now, going to the bar in Russia was likewise an interesting experience, at least as a young American guy. I’ve always wondered what it felt like to be the coolest guy in a bar full of people, like the hottest girl in a place who everybody wants to talk to and be around. Well, I found out what that feels like by being the crazy American who came to Siberia in the winter, and I’ve got to say, it rocks. Everyone wants to talk to you, everyone wants to buy you their favorite drinks to try, and as I would soon find out, everyone wants to dance with you.
One of the times I went to the bar was the Saturday night before International Women’s Day, another big holiday in Russia. Naturally, the bar was packed full of women celebrating and dancing to the live music. As one does in a bar, I’d had a few to drink, and needed to hit the restroom on the other side of the dance floor. The moment I reached the dance floor however, I was immediately pulled in by one of the older woman and asked to dance. Being that it was, in fact, a holiday in their honor, I obliged. One dance couldn’t hurt. Alas, it did end up hurting. Once word got around that the American guy was dancing, everyone wanted their go. For all intents and purposes, I spent the next 45 minutes being pimped out to various middle-aged Russian women for a dance while being on the verge of peeing my pants.
But all good things must come to an end, and with the pandemic beginning to shut down the schools in which I was teaching, I decided that I should heed the many warning I was getting from government officials and family and head back home early. It was one of the toughest decisions I have ever made. I don’t like leaving unfinished business, and I didn’t want to leave all the many good friends I’d made there, or all the students who I had grown close to. Regardless, it was the right decision to make, and I headed back home. By the time I flew from Novosibirsk to Moscow, where I’d catch a flight to NYC, most of the restaurants in the terminal were closed. However, among the places that were still open was a TGI Fridays. All things considered, it felt like a fitting last meal in Russia, so I sat down and ordered a drink and an appetizer. Why didn’t I order a full meal? You see, there was not one TGI Fridays in this terminal, no, there were two entirely separate TGI Fridays in this terminal. So after finishing my food and drink in the first, I moved on to the second for some more. I couldn’t exchange my roubles for dollars at that point, so I just had to find ways to blow them all anyways. Plus, I wanted to be nice and drunk for the long flight back to the USA.
And if there’s one thing that I took back with me on that flight home, it was the knowledge that even in a cold, gray environment, there are moments of light and humor that keep the belly warm (alongside some good alcohol, that is). I feel a little bit of that infamous “Russian soul” inside of my own heart, and find myself constantly reflecting on my time there. If the circumstances allow it, I can’t wait to get back there and experience it all over again. Siberian winters may be cold, but damn, are they worthwhile. | https://posts-from-underground.medium.com/finding-humor-in-the-siberian-cold-52371fe29ea1 | ['Posts Underground'] | 2020-07-01 23:50:20.524000+00:00 | ['Siberia', 'Russia', 'Novosibirsk', 'Humor', 'Travel'] |
To Move Our Nation Forward, House Budget Dems are Fighting for an Economy that Works #ForThePeople | To Move Our Nation Forward, House Budget Dems are Fighting for an Economy that Works #ForThePeople House Budget Committee Majority ·Dec 16, 2020
Our nation’s federal budget is more than a bottom line, it’s a statement of our nation’s values. That’s why in the 116th Congress, the House Budget Committee has been busy examining the issues that will support strong economic growth.
We’ve held 31 hearings, heard from 111 witnesses, and published 85 reports. And through it all we’ve remained focused on ensuring every American has the opportunity to succeed.
As we look ahead to a new Congress and a new year, we’ll continue to fight for a budget that works for the American people and moves our nation forward. | https://medium.com/@housebudgetdems/house-budget-dems-will-keep-fighting-for-an-economy-forthepeople-a1f87e62577a | ['House Budget Committee Majority'] | 2020-12-16 20:07:31.721000+00:00 | ['Income Inequality', 'Coronavirus', 'Congress', 'House Democrats', 'Economy'] |
City of London: Only 1 in 9 violence and sexual offences has a legal conclusion | The City of London Police registered 1,127 violence and sexual offences during one year;
But only 108 cases ended up in court, or with the offender receiving a penalty notice or caution.
Only 1 in 9 violence and sexual offences registered during one year by the City of London Police ended up in a formal judicial or criminal outcome.
It means that 108 of 1,127 cases arrived at the court, or the offender received a penalty notice or caution.
The number represents 9.58% of total sexual crimes reported between August 2019 and August 2020, according to a dataset available on Data Police UK.
In total, 77 incidents ended up in court. In other 30 crimes the offender received a caution, and just in one case a penalty notice was given.
One the other hand, 561 offences resulted in no identified suspect, incomplete investigation or prosecution. In 33 cases, there was no public interest in a formal action or further investigation.
Considering all types of crimes, the City of London Police reported 8,417 violations during the period August 2019-August 2020. In this sense, violence and sexual offences represented 13.39% of the total amount.
Click here to access the graphic.
The map below shows where each crime happened. However, 79 offences listed on the police dataset have no details about localization. Because of that, they have been removed from the map.
Click here to interact with the map.
Some #ddj reflections
Mapping
This data report has a scale approach, as it’s an attempt to measure the quantity of violence and sexual offences registered in a one year period by the City of London Police as well as the outcomes.
On the other hand, the map is completely exploratory, so everyone can search about a precise localization and verify the frequency of violence and sexual crimes in a neighborhood.
2. What the map does not tell us
Which types of violence and sexual crimes were committed;
Who the victims are/were — the victims profiles (genre, age…);
Is the outcome rate higher or lower than the national average?
The quantity of sexual crimes that have occured online during the same period (August 2019 — August2020);
Unreported sexual crimes and violences.
3. Editorial choices | https://medium.com/@biafarrugia/city-of-london-only-1-in-9-violence-and-sexual-offences-has-a-legal-conclusion-401da52b6f49 | ['Beatriz Farrugia'] | 2020-10-13 21:18:25.256000+00:00 | ['City Of London', 'Data Journalism', 'Ddj', 'Violence', 'Sexual Crime'] |
Dreams | What are dreams?
Dreams are stories and images that our mind creates during sleep. They can make you feel sad, happy, or scared.
We all dream, even if we don’t remember it the next day. A dream is an idea or series of thoughts, visions, or feelings that happen during sleep. They can be entertaining, fun, and sometimes scary and disturbing. A dream is part of the process which is followed by your subconscious mind. Here arises a question. What is the subconscious mind and how it will process our dream?
The conscious and subconscious mind
Joseph Murphy states in his book “THE POWER OF YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS MIND” that these are not two minds, they are merely two spheres of activity within one mind. When you sleep your conscious mind takes a break but your subconscious mind is continuously awakened. The subconscious mind takes place to dream.
The amazing fact about dreams
There are so many fascinating facts about dreams that you should know.
You can see only familiar faces.
2. men and women dream differently
3. you can’t read in your dream
4. Dream recharge creativity
5.50% of dreams are negative
1.You can see only familiar faces
You can’t see an unknown person in your dream. you can see only known people in your dreams. Because your subconscious can’t invent new people. Sometimes you can see unfamiliar faces in your dream but somewhere you saw them but you don’t remember but your subconscious does.
2.Men and women dream differently
Men dreamed about weapons, aggression and involved more physical activity than emotional, unlike women who dreamed about more clothes, and sensitive things like rejections and exclusion. Women’s dreams are long and involve more people as compared to men.
3)you can’t read in your dream
Reading is a conscious activity and when you’re asleep your conscious mind is taking a break, you can see a dream about a book but you can’t read a single word. It might sound weird but you also can’t see yourself in a mirror while dreaming. If you see a mirror the image gets blurred or turned into a different face.
4)Dream recharge creativity
While asleep and dreaming you will get solutions to your problem. When it comes to creativity, dreams will help you in a much better way. While sleeping your subconscious is working on your problem and in your dreams, you may get a solution to this. for example -if an artist like a painter sees an amazing dream about nature so he/she can paint their dream and make it more creative.
5)50% of dreams are negative
The dream properly balanced the positive and negative phase. Yes, 50% of dreams are positive and 50% of dreams negative. Negative dreams involve fear, anger, insecurity and they can lead to stress or depression. To avoid a negative dream you can use a dreamcatcher. As the first rays of morning light hit the dreamcatcher, the bad dreams disappear. A dream catcher is available in many different colors but the best color is white and blue which represent freshness, simplicity, and pureness. | https://medium.com/@tikshakakade1996/dreams-e981fc6fda40 | ['Tiksha Kakade'] | 2021-06-17 12:57:42.628000+00:00 | ['Creativity', 'Dreams', 'Facts', 'Weird', 'Dreamcatcher'] |
Accelerating Services at Airbnb by Building — and Open Sourcing — a Blazing Fast Thrift Binding for Ruby | Achieving Bare-Metal Performance in Ruby
Writing performant code in Ruby can be difficult due to its dynamic nature: unlike lower-level languages where the idiom is zero-cost-abstractions, pretty much everything in a dynamic language is expensive. As such, it was no surprise that the Ruby Thrift Binding took advantage of an important tool that is often used to improve the performance of libraries in dynamic languages: C extensions.
As a kind of abstraction, C extensions hide all the detail of a performant implementation with an elegant interface in a high-level language. However, simply using C extensions does not guarantee high performance. In fact, many patterns we observed in the Ruby Thrift Binding are heavily detrimental to its performance. We will discuss some of these patterns and show how Sparsam is able to avoid them.
Avoiding Costly String Allocations
Creating a new Ruby string is slow, and it’s not much faster when you do it in C either. One of the reasons the Thrift Ruby Binding was slow was the excessive object allocation it does when deserializing data. For each field it reads/writes, a ruby string needs to be allocated and interned through rb_iv_set/get . This pattern is problematic and adds significant overhead to accessing each field. In one of our experiments, simply caching the interned ID of a string resulted in 25% speedup. In early versions of Sparsam, we store every field inside a hash map of {FieldID => Value} . This way, we avoid the cost of creating strings and string interning completely.
Eliminating Excessive Cross-Language Function Calls
An important reason C extensions are fast is that they circumvent the Ruby VM. By doing so, C extensions do not share the overhead of a dynamic language. Calls that cross the language barrier are not free, especially when calling a ruby function from C, so the best practice is to handle as much as possible inside a big C function.
Although the Thrift Ruby Binding handles a large portion of serialization inside C, it also relies on the dynamic dispatch of Ruby VM in the runtime. As a result, a significant chunk of time was spent resolving the correct method to call in Ruby VM. This trait diminishes the point of using a C extension and can cause performance regressions when the message either contains a large number of fields or has a deeply-nested structure. Sparsam, on the other hand, does not rely on the Ruby VM for dispatching. By doing so, we minimize the number of Ruby VM calls in serialization and greatly improves the performance.
Caching Schema Information in C++ Containers
One of the bottlenecks we identified was accessing Thrift’s struct definitions in the serializer. Thrift’s highly compact binary format requires both ends of the communication to have the schema of the struct that’s being serialized. For example, in Ruby, thrift compiles a definition for a struct into a ruby hash like this:
The schema is stored inside FIELDS , a constant defined under the Ruby class, and such objects are only accessible through the Ruby VM. This means that for every read/write of a field, the C extension needs to access such schema and perform type conversion between Ruby and C data types to determine which method to use. This problem is made worse by Thrift’s nested struct support, as nested structs will result in nested hash objects. To alleviate this effect, we cache the schema information of structs inside a C++ map<FieldID, FieldType> . Besides being faster in itself, we also avoid the cost of invoking functions in Ruby VM and type conversion.
Removing Layer of Indirection by Using Instance Variables
One of the problems of using our {FieldID => Value} map was that ruby has to constantly grow the hash map: each time a value is read, the hash map’s capacity needs to be expanded to store another pair of data, result in an expensive realloc call. Furthermore, when accessing a field, two hash lookups are involved: from Field Name to Field ID, and from Field ID to Value. Therefore, we replaced this design with using instance variables directly to store the data. The benefits to this approach are tri-fold: ruby’s hash-growing behavior for instance variables are different from that of hash maps, making it more suitable for storing deserialized data; a layer of indirection is avoided when accessing data; and an object created by Sparsam is much closer to a PORO (Plain Old Ruby Object). This optimization gained us almost 3x speedup on the read path, with no impact on the write performance.
Benchmarks
To test the speed of Sparsam, we compared the speed of several serializers with a simple schema that we’re using in production at Airbnb:
This schema is simple, yet complex enough to have both required fields and container types. Results of items/second is shown below (higher is better):
QPS Comparison for Different Serializers in Ruby. Higher is better.
Through optimizations, Sparsam achieved 25x speedup on the writing path and 8x speedup on the read path, accelerating Thrift in Ruby to be as fast as MessagePack, and significantly faster than JSON, allowing us to move more of our endpoints from legacy JSON endpoints to newer Thrift endpoints without hurting performance.
Strict & Powerful Validation of Thrift Structs
Besides being fast, Sparsam also provides extensive validation of Thrift structs. By default, Thrift’s only checks for required fields; in Sparsam, we provide two additional validation modes: “strict” and “recursive”.
Strict: besides checking required fields, strict mode also checks the types of fields inside a struct. However, if one of the fields is a struct type, it will only check whether this struct has the correct ruby struct, and won’t check the types of its nested fields.
Recursive: checks required fields, types of fields, and goes into each nested structs to check the types of fields in nested structs.
Conclusion
Open-source software plays an important role at Airbnb. Faster serialization reduces the overhead of Service Oriented Architecture, and thereby improves the experience of the Airbnb community. By open sourcing Sparsam, we hope to contribute back to the community. | https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/accelerating-services-at-airbnb-by-building-a-blazing-fast-thrift-binding-for-ruby-8f63044ba149 | ['Andy Fang'] | 2017-07-31 18:18:54.032000+00:00 | ['Infrastructure', 'Backend', 'Open Source', 'Ruby', 'Thrift'] |
I’ve had a lot of time on my hands to think lately and, I think back to times when I shared my life… | I’ve had a lot of time on my hands to think lately and, I think back to times when I shared my life experience with what I thought were “safe” people. When it comes to the subject of rape, it’s interesting how when it is something that is not controlled by the victim; people always lay blame on the victim, for putting themselves in dangerous situations, by, drinking too much, or, wearing a revealing outfit when in fact most of the time it has nothing to do with that. It has to do with another persons sense of entitlement to their fellow humans, body. It is the culture our society creates that somehow, if you wear the right clothing, don’t drink, go to church, do ABC, you should be ok. It’s deplorable. I remember all the times after mine how I talked myself into believing it was consensual because I was too terrified to face the truth. The truth being that my first time having sex, was not consensual, I said no, several times. The first boyfriend I ever had, raped me the first time I ever had sex. It is something that has been engrained in my mind for nearly a decade. You can do everything right, you can say no, you can try to be in control but when fight or flight hits… you can’t control how your body will react, you float off into the deepest parts of your mind and disappear. It’s interesting because a lot of my old friends know this guy, they hangout with him, shit, their probably friends with his sleazy ass. I just know it’s been weighing on my mind quite a bit lately, and, I have nothing to be ashamed of. Nor should any other victim of rape. No is no, no matter what. If you know who I’m talking about, just be weary because he’s a disgusting human being, and, also stalked me for 2 years after we broke up, we only dated 6 months. Isn’t it crazy ? The lies we tell our minds because we’re just too ashamed to admit the truth because the truth is just too much to face sometimes. It’s been 9 years, and yet there are days where I’m so disgusted with my own body that I can’t get out of bed because of this fleeting moment in my life that was stolen from me. Yet, this man probably never even has a second thought of me.
I’m just sharing this because I have so many friends who have shared in this same trauma but are too ashamed. I’ve been ashamed for so long and felt so bad making others uncomfortable that I just try not to ever mention it. There is nothing to be ashamed of. You survived, you are still here and still somehow carrying on with your life after such a soul crushing day experience. Love and light, and I’m proud of you for still going and still trying to do better for yourselves.
No more silence from me, let’s talk about it. | https://medium.com/@julizabeth.gonzalez/ive-had-a-lot-of-time-on-my-hands-to-think-lately-and-i-think-back-to-times-when-i-shared-my-life-6f3d68fe96d8 | [] | 2020-12-06 19:47:42.495000+00:00 | ['Empowerment', 'Rape', 'Rape Culture', 'Rape Victims', 'Survivor'] |
4 Motherhood simple house management hacks | I have never heard anyone saying that they were ready to be parents, some might think they are, but then after their first child is born they change their minds. Life is full on, adding kids to it just makes it harder. Let’s say before you had to work and look after the house and that was fine, but now, you have to look after a newborn (which is way more difficult than working full time) and squeeze your household chores within it’s routine. It’s so tricky, I don’t even need to mention that everybody recommends that mums should rest while their babies are asleep, what a joke! I always liked to see my house organized and cleaned. I struggled for a while but now, I can let it go (sometimes, it’s a work in progress still), for that reason I had to come up with practical and easy solutions to handle with everyday problems that I was facing. Follow my personal tricks:
Weekly Meal Planner: I spend a couple of hours making a weekly meal planner. I like to keep it simple, I have a look in the fridge to see what hasn’t been used, then with my list of dishes (I have it at my notepad) I decide what I am cooking the following week. Based on it I make the groceries shopping list. The beauty of it is that I don’t need to stress out on what to cook everyday. Budget Setup: It’s easy to lose control of finances, especially when one of the parents it’s not working. There are different ways to keep up with it, there are some apps like pocketbook and a few banks that categorize your expenses. I have tried a few different things, but what works best for my family is Xero. The system is linked to my bank account, I categorize all our expenses, generate a report and finally make the family budget on a spreadsheet. Yes, it is a bit of work at the first 2 months, but after that it’s amazing. Now I spend around an hour a week on it and I know exactly where our money is going, it helps to prepare for the months to come. Exercise: I know how hard is to leave your child for while, but it’s so important. You need to breathe some fresh air and enjoy yourself. I have labeled it as exercise, but it can be anything as long as it helps to relieve stress. I go to yoga once a week at least, I’m a yoga practitioner for around 5 years, it has changed my life, but that’s me. Maybe just going for a walk, a run or gym, whatever works for you. It will also help to keep your energy levels up. Meeting friends/Playdates: there’s nothing better than having a coffee with a friend. Having someone to talk about all the issues that are going on with your life is essential. You might not even realize it, but carrying a worried head on your shoulders every day, creates a lot of physical tension. You’d be amazed at what a release it can be to get things off your chest.
I have found my way of maintain our house, they really work for me. I know they might sound a bit difficult and sometimes scary to start with, but I can guarantee they will be helpful and you can always adjust according your needs. I will be going into more details on the weeks to come, but I hope you have enjoyed my ideas, please share your experiences, let me know what do you do to take care of your house. | https://medium.com/@helpingmum/4-motherhood-simple-house-management-hacks-d2a539d92f02 | ['Helping Mum'] | 2019-06-17 04:26:12.918000+00:00 | ['Motherhood', 'Exercise', 'Parenting', 'Budgeting', 'Money'] |
Monorepo setup with Lerna and Yarn workspaces | Photo by Austin Neill on Unsplash
For the last six months we’ve been building a node.js microservices framework for one of our customers. This framework is composed of many interdependent packages.
In this scenario, having one git repo for each package would be a burden. Too many npm links and too many projects to manage in our CI environment. Also new features may affect many packages so we have to deal with several related pull requests. It’s not likely that Github or Bitbucket gives us multi repo PR support anytime soon.
To overcome this shortcomings, in this project we went the monorepo way using Lerna and Yarn workspaces.
Lerna
Lerna is a tool that optimizes the workflow around managing multi-package repositories with git and npm.
Lerna tries to ease the management of npm links when dealing with multi package projects hosted in a single repository. It analyzes the packages and automatically creates the required npm links between them. It also handles execution of tasks across multiple packages and eases the pain of versioning and publishing.
It has its shortcomings but it’s worth using it. Big projects like Babel and Jest use Lerna.
Yarn workspaces
Workspaces are a new way to setup your package architecture (..) It allows you to setup multiple packages in such a way that you only need to run yarn install once to install all of them in a single pass. Your dependencies can be linked together, which means that your workspaces can depend on one another while always using the most up-to-date code available. This is also a better mechanism than yarn link since it only affects your workspace tree rather than your whole system.
Yarn is in many ways much better than npm. We love Yarn and use it in all of our projects. You can use the workspaces feature with or without Lerna. When both projects are used together, Lerna delegates the dependencies management to Yarn.
The challenges
There are several limitations when using Lerna and Yarn workspaces together.
Packages must declare its devDependencies locally if they want to use binaries in their npm scripts . Otherwise you need to use ../.. and may end having some path related problems.
locally if they want to use binaries in their . Otherwise you need to use and may end having some path related problems. npm scripts should be executable using Lerna in the monorepo root and directly inside each package. This is necessary when dealing with scripts that run in watch mode (for example jest --watch ).
should be executable using Lerna in the monorepo root and directly inside each package. This is necessary when dealing with scripts that run in watch mode (for example ). Lerna handles versioning and publishing but it’s not designed to work with private npm repositories.
Repo structure
This is our project structure:
├── node_modules
├── packages
│ ├── awesome
│ │ └── package.json
│ ├── awesome-module1
│ │ ├── src
│ │ ├── test
│ │ ├── babel.config.js
│ │ ├── eslint.config.js
│ │ ├── jest.config.js
│ │ ├── prettier.config.js
│ │ ├── package.json
│ │ └── task -> ../../scripts/task
│ ├── awesome-module2
│ │ └── ...
│ ├── ...
│ └── awesome-tools
│ ├── src
│ │ └── test-helpers.js
│ ├── babel.config.js
│ ├── eslint.config.js
│ ├── eslint.jest.config.js
│ ├── jest.config.js
│ ├── prettier.config.js
│ ├── package.json
│ └── task -> ../../scripts/task
├── scripts
│ ├── publish
│ └── task
├── lerna.json
└── package.json
Yarn handles the dependencies.
Lerna handles tasks that affect multiple packages (compile/test/lint all modules).
One folder per package inside packages .
. All packages share the same structure.
Each package defines only its runtime dependencies .
. All the tooling and devDependencies are shared and live in its own package.
are shared and live in its own package. Each package contains the required configuration files for the tooling. Each file extends a common base configuration (we use Babel, Jest and ESlint + Prettier to compile, test and lint/prettify the code).
Each package symlinks a common task script that defines how the different tools must be invoked.
script that defines how the different tools must be invoked. There is a “hub” package. It depends on all the other packages and allows easy usage of the framework (a single awesome dependency).
dependency). All packages share the version number. We use lerna to update the version number in one fell swoop.
Publication is handled by a custom publish script that will be used by the CI environment.
It’s easy to add new packages because they share the same structure. There also are plenty of extension points: any package can add something unique if it’s necessary (for example, its own linting rules).
Let’s see each part in greater detail.
Monorepo base: Lerna and Yarn
The root package.json looks like this:
And the lerna.json config file:
We setup the workspaces using the workspaces entry in package.json .
We define tasks to clean / compile / test / lint all packages using Lerna.
/ / / all packages using Lerna. To update the version number we use the lerna publish command. In our scenario we do not allow Lerna to add commits or tags to the repo. We also avoid package publication.
command. In our scenario we do not allow Lerna to add commits or tags to the repo. We also avoid package publication. There is a check-packages task that will be used in the CI environment.
task that will be used in the CI environment. There is also a publish-packages task for the CI. We will detect version number changes and publish the packages if needed.
Shared tools
Instead of polluting the root package.json with all the tooling we define another package to host the tools.
Notice that we will never define a devDependency to this package. We are abusing the workspaces here. Yarn will expand this packages’ dependencies in the root node_modules where other packages and tasks can find them.
Besides the dependencies, this package contains config files for each tool, and some shared code (like the test helpers). For example, this is our shared babel config:
Each package will rely on this shared config (more on this later).
The task script
The task script does two things:
Defines the set of common tasks: clean , compile , test and lint . Each task uses the required tool forcing it to use the current package’s folder config files. It also fixes the base dir if needed (for example, jest needs this).
, , and . Each task uses the required tool forcing it to use the current package’s folder config files. It also fixes the base dir if needed (for example, jest needs this). Allows execution of any node_modules binary, in case the common tasks are not enough. For example a custom compilation command could be: ./task babel -d ./lib2 ./src2 .
Package configuration
Each package just defines its runtime dependencies and a set of common scripts . The scripts delegate on the symlinked shared task script.
Each package also has their own babel.config.js , eslint.config.js , jest.config.js , and prettier.config.js . By default they just import the shared config exposed by the tools:
and if needed they can extend/override the config. It’s plain JS!
The hub package
This package is just a package.json that depends on all the other framework packages.
The publish script
To publish the packages we rely on our CI server. Using a custom script we’ll check each publishable package looking for the current version in the registry. If we pushed a new version to the repo, the module will be published.
No pain, no gain
It may seem simple now, but at the time we setup this project, there wasn’t much documentation. We had to do a lot of trial and error and evolve this setup to get to the point where we were really comfortable.
Using this as an example can help you setup your own monorepo. It should be easy to add the stuff that your project needs (maybe you use webpack or rollup, who knows). I have intentionally left out of this post our ESDoc configuration and how we generate one shared documentation for all the packages. Let’s leave it for a future post. | https://medium.com/trabe/monorepo-setup-with-lerna-and-yarn-workspaces-5d747d7c0e91 | ['David Barral'] | 2019-11-04 10:46:25.864000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Lerna', 'Repositories', 'Monorepo', 'Yarn'] |
Best Cities to Invest in Oklahoma 2022 | Is Oklahoma City the least expensive spot for Real Estate Investment? Indeed. Oklahoma City is a capital city and very property manager amicable. This state isn’t just a protected safe spot yet in addition an entirely reasonable and optimal spot for living. An investment property interest in Oklahoma is modest because of the reality of including a lot of developable, level land and different elements.
Putting resources into land can be impacted by factors like the Neighborhood. You want to consider your family’s requirements and conveniences like schools, medical clinics, and retail plazas prior to purchasing a property. The Median Sale Price in Oklahoma City is $200k. Also,
Population development: 1.6%
Employment growth: 0.5%
Increase in home values: 6.3%
It is obvious we want to pay as little as possible while buying a house. There are various exceptions when it comes to prices in Oklahoma Properties. The best time to buy an Oklahoma house is in the winter as the prices fall during this time. The months of November and December have the lowest home pricing in a year.
During festive seasons, the homeowners make a good offer with the selling for investment properties. Before the year-end, you can get lucky with a good home in some of the beautiful places in Oklahoma at affordable prices.
So, hunting for a house in cold weather can make you really wealthy.
There are plenty of beautiful houses for rent in Oklahoma City that balance your comfort and prices beneficially. Get a house at the prices that you want. | https://medium.com/@yourokcpropertymanager/best-cities-to-invest-in-oklahoma-2022-af5d7d0b3063 | ['Yourokc Property Manager'] | 2021-12-24 10:31:30.589000+00:00 | ['Real Estate Investments', '2022', 'Property Management', 'Oklahoma', 'Best Cities'] |
Mayor Pete’s Opportunity | Mayor Pete’s Opportunity
By Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ— Pete Buttigieg, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=93853338
In the long-term, the selection of former Indianapolis Mayor Pete Buttigieg as Secretary of Transportation-designee may prove to be Biden’s most important appointment to date. Not only will the Transportation Department play a central role in Biden’s “Build Back Better” administration, but the appointment allows Buttigieg to demonstrate the skills one looks for in a president.
Mayor Pete is making history — again. His surprisingly strong run for president as the first openly gay candidate was historic. This time the 38- year-old is the first openly gay appointee to a cabinet post. He will also be one of the youngest members ever to serve in a cabinet.
Perhaps more importantly, the appointment is a major step towards Buttigieg’s long term career goal — election as president of the United States.
In recruiting Buttigieg for the cabinet, President Biden gets a talented, articulate leader to spearhead a key part of the administration’s economic recovery plans. A Rhodes Scholar, Buttigieg honed his project management and data analysis skills at the blue-chip consulting firm McKinsey. Biden’s chances of delivering on his promise of rebuilding America’s infrastructure will benefit.
An infrastructure track record
Earlier this year candidate Buttigieg released a detailed infrastructure plan titled, “Building for the 21st Century: An infrastructure plan to create jobs, increase resilience, and usher in a new era of opportunity.” Among other things, the plan proposes changing the funding base for the Highway Trust Fund from a gas tax to a user fee, assumed to be a “miles-driven formula.” The new tax would produce $165 billion for the trust fund, helping to make it solvent.
Perhaps more importantly, the plan called for $50 billion in grants to states and local governments to repair or replace at least half the nation’s failing bridges by 2030. It also proposed $6 billion in grants to support infrastructure, such as charging stations, to support electric vehicles.
Consistent with the Biden plan
Differences with the president-elect’s infrastructure plan are minor. Buttigieg’s plan would invest $1 trillion and produce six million jobs. Biden calls for “an accelerated $2 trillion investment” that includes infrastructure repair but with a more prominent focus on climate change.
John D. Porcari, a principal advisor to Biden during the presidential campaign and a Deputy Secretary at the Transportation Department in the Obama administration, said that the new administration's priority would be to get the economy moving again. After that, Porcari expects a new surface transportation bill to implement several of Biden’s proposals, including an enhanced rail system, grants to states, and clean energy initiatives. It is unclear whether Porcari will play a major role under Buttigieg or elsewhere in the Biden administration.
An opportunity to make a difference
Although service as Secretary of Transportation will make Buttigieg a more credible future presidential candidate, his main motivation may be public service. He served in Afghanistan in a non-combat role as a member of the U.S. Navy Reserve and has long been an advocate for national service. He told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow:
We really want to talk about the threat to social cohesion that helps characterize this presidency but also just this era. One thing we could do that would change that would be to make it — if not legally obligatory but certainly a social norm — that anybody after they’re 18 spends a year in national service.
During the campaign, Joe Biden proposed granting $10,000 of undergraduate or graduate student loan forgiveness for each of up to five years of national or community service. Biden’s principal domestic policy advisor, Susan Rice, also has championed community service as a means of healing national wounds.
Transportation may be just the beginning
So, Biden is both tapping an exceptional talent and providing a rising star an opportunity to demonstrate his skills on a national stage. Just as service in the Senate and as Secretary of State eliminated any questions about Hillary Clinton’s qualifications to serve as president, four years of service in the Biden administration will do the same thing for Mayor Pete. It is also not unreasonable to speculate that after a year or so at Transportation, Biden may allow Buttigieg to work in an international or national security role.
Minimal Risk
Any opportunity to further his political career could, of course, be sidetracked should Buttigieg become involved in a scandal or trouble of the type involving several Trump appointees. Is trouble likely? Buttigieg’s track record, though currently slim, suggests he has a high probability of executing his new job with little risk of scandal.
Absent something negative happening, Buttigieg could emerge as a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2024 if Joe Biden doesn’t run for re-election and Kamala Harris’ performance as VP doesn’t meet the public’s current high expectations, or 2028.
Given that the new president has not yet even been sworn into office, it’s too much to hum “A Star is Born,” but good things lie in Mayor Pete’s future. | https://medium.com/@903-jed/mayor-petes-opportunity-1d97b57b4121 | ['John Dean'] | 2020-12-26 21:06:25.023000+00:00 | ['Biden', 'LGBTQ', 'Politics', 'President', 'Government'] |
Download Employment Application For the best Possible Jobs | If you are jobless and searching for a suitable job according to your skills then download this job application and apply for the best possible jobs.
Source: https://fastrakconnect.com/employment-application | https://medium.com/@averyaiden23/download-employment-application-for-the-best-possible-jobs-55caca182d | ['Avery Aiden'] | 2020-12-07 20:02:12.706000+00:00 | ['Employment', 'Recruiting', 'Fastrakconnect', 'Employment Application', 'Application'] |
Integrate IdentityServer 4.1 With ASP.NET Core 3.1 (Part 2-Securing web API with IdentityServer) | In Part 1 of this series, we learnt how to build Identity Server 4.1 for various authentication and authorization. Now let’s look at how we can secure our web APIs with the IdentityServer. Let’s move to the implementation.😃
Create a API ASP.NET Core Web application
Provide name for the API project
Select API project template and click on “Create” button
2. Install following nuget packages
Install-Package IdentityModel -Version 4.5.0
Install-Package IdentityServer4.AccessTokenValidation -Version 3.0.1
Install-Package Microsoft.Extensions.Platform.Abstractions -Version 3.0.1
3. Add following codes inside ConfigureServices section and resolve all the references
//enabled to see auth identity server related error
IdentityModelEventSource.ShowPII = true;
.AddIdentityServerAuthentication(options =>
{
options.Authority ="
options.RequireHttpsMetadata = false;
options.ApiName ="webAPI";
options.SaveToken = true;
}); services.AddAuthentication("Bearer").AddIdentityServerAuthentication(options =>options.Authority =" https://localhost:44304 ";options.RequireHttpsMetadata = false;options.ApiName ="webAPI";options.SaveToken = true;}); // Add Cross Domain Policies
services.AddCors(opt => opt.AddPolicy("CorsPolicy", al =>
al
.AllowAnyHeader()
.AllowAnyMethod()
.AllowAnyOrigin()));
Identity Server can be started using Kestrel web server or IIS web server. Authority url will change depending on our selection.
Kestrel web server - https://localhost:5001
IIS web server - https://localhost:44304
We should provide the ApiName which will be used when authenticating with Identity Server. Further to that, we should set SaveToken to true to persist the token obtained from IdentityServer to Authentication properties ( we will need these tokens later)
4. Add following codes inside Configure section
app.UseCors("CorsPolicy");
app.UseAuthentication();
app.UseAuthorization();
5. Create Roles.cs class and add role constants as shown below.
public class Roles
{
public const string Admin = "Admin";
public const string Customer = "Customer";
public const string Maintenance = "Maintenance"; public const string AdminOrMaintenance = Admin + "," + Maintenance;
public const string AdminOrMaintenanceOrCustomer = Admin + "," + Maintenance+ "," + Customer;
public const string AdminOrCustomer = Admin + "," + Customer;
}
6. Adding the following lines in the controller methods to restrict API methods per Roles
[Authorize(Roles = Roles.AdminOrMaintenanceOrCustomer)]
Finally, we need to pass the access token we obtained from IdentityServer token endpoint as a Bearer token when requesting API. Please have a look at Part 1 section for more details about how to generate token.
That’s all 😅 We have successfully secured our web API using Identity Server.
Sample response after calling API
This concludes Part 2 “Securing web API with IdentityServer” 😊 | https://medium.com/@suvethann10/integrate-identityserver-4-1-with-asp-net-core-3-1-part-2-securing-web-api-with-identity-server-70ec2c5ca234 | ['Suvethan Nantha'] | 2020-12-24 07:34:17.348000+00:00 | ['Identityserver4', 'Net Core 3', 'API', 'Csharp'] |
Securing Vulnerable IoT Infrastructure Using Blockchain | Industrial control systems of various sectors have been attacked by hackers several times in the past decades. Historically, cyberattacks were mostly hidden from the public. However, these threats still remain very real. As enterprises switch to remote-controlled systems, especially in this COVID-19 stricken world, the threat becomes even deadlier. To combat this, we need disruptive technologies such as blockchain to protect the future of IoT-based infrastructure.
Industries have slowly migrated their Industrial control systems to IoT devices. But apart from these markets, retail consumers face the very same threats. These devices can be found in our everyday lives. We have IoT equipment in our house, streets, and sometimes even on our bodies through smartwatches and mobile devices. Hackers have greatly evolved and it is finally time to strike back by introducing defensive strategies and devices that can counteract these threats.
The Problem — Critical infrastructure remains insecure amid a rise in cyberattacks
A power grid was temporarily disabled two times in the past five years in Ukraine. In 2010, the famous Stuxnet malware damaged one-fifth of the nuclear centrifuges in Iran. In 2009, Chinese hackers conducted a coordinated attack targeting several energy, oil, and petrochemical companies in the U.S.
Cyberattacks On IOT Devices Surge 300% In 2019
IoT chip maker Advantech confirms ransomware attack
US Declares National Emergency As Foreign Hackers Threaten U.S. Power Grid.
We can see that hackers entrench almost every industry and sector in the world. As long as it is connected to the internet, they will find a way to get access. Moreover, they will relentlessly test, experiment, and attack any network until it is finally breached. The truth is that hackers have a radical advantage compared to modern defensive cyber solutions and the fact that the world is progressing towards full digitalization does not provide us with comfort. Critical infrastructure is not safe at all from attacks, as they can potentially turn harm on the cyber plane into physical consequences in the real world.
Researchers from the Finnish IT security company F-Secure made a scary discovery in 2019. According to a report titled ‘Attack Landscape H1 2019,’ it was revealed that the number of attacks increased by three times in just the first half of the year, causing $600 billion in damages. Highly popular exploits that devastated networks all over the world, such as WannaCry and EternalBlue, still wreaked havoc on a multitude of unpatched servers.
So far, decentralized blockchain networks appear to be the only solution to this problem. A report by Infosys which reviews the influence of blockchain technology on the oil and gas industries concludes that decentralization may help energy companies with several challenges.
The transportation, structure, validation, and safety of data has vastly shifted while the frequency and quality of cyberattacks have equally increased. Blockchain could help by securing data formats, reducing fraudulent transactions, and increasing interoperability. More than that, blockchain networks can provide a uniform platform where companies can exchange both data and value in a completely secure way.
The solution — Blockchain Internet of Things
But how can the disruptive technology specifically provide a stable and defensive framework for streaming data across IoT-based infrastructure? Besides industries, how can medical and retail users access these solutions? After all, such a device must be widely available and ready to be implemented at any moment.
In the case of BDATA, a blockchain IOT solution provider based in Canada, users have the chance to turn their data immutable, scalable, and cryptographically secured. Their end-to-end blockchain devices for IoT infrastructure come with SIM and eSIM support, ensuring secure remote monitoring for retail and enterprise-level use cases. An extensive list of features enables users to utilize the products as IoT devices in private blockchain networks.
By the end of 2022, the global IoT market is expected to reach $1.1 trillion. The sector will be further boosted with the help of 5G technology, which is predicted to fully cover North America by 2025. Together, they will create a surge of interest in deploying remotely operated IoT systems such as mining operations, surgeries, pumping systems, autonomous vehicles, etc.
Named BIOT (Blockchain Internet of Things), BDATA’s gateway products deliver high-quality network solutions for protecting critical infrastructure by leveraging blockchain technology. Embedded with SIM and ESIM slots, they provide scalable and cryptographically secured networks that protect IoT data communications.
Blockchain Enable IoT Gateway Device
The BIOT BDE-100–9AP-IA is the first device in the product lines that provide secure IoT gateways for smart factories and buildings. They are perfected for machine and industrial automation in the cases of process analytics, predictive equipment failure, artificial intelligence and deep learning driven edge computing applications. The device supports AWS, AZURE, IBM, Oracle and other major cloud networks.
BIOT BDE-100–9AP-IA
BIOT SYS-E100–9W-H
Blockchain Enable Programmable Logic Control (PLC)
An edge programmable industrial controller, opto 22 groov EPIC is much more than a PLC or a PAC.
It offers a reliable real-time industrial controller and a processor to collect, process, display, and exchange data.
We have enabled groov EPIC to provide secure immutable data streaming using BIoT technology. BDATA’s blockchain enable secure connectivity ensures that all the data is being transferred in the form of hashes and only readable by the peers deployed on the BDATA’s blockchain network.
This enables customers to have secure remote monitoring and secure remote operation by combining BIoT technology with 5G to ensure <1sec data latency.
BIOT — groov EPIC
Final Word
IoT infrastructure represents an extension of modern industrial systems. As innovative new technologies appear, enterprises and retail consumers switch more and more to digital frameworks that require remote operation. Since cyberattacks represent a real-world threat to various industries, such as energy markets, it is necessary to protect the flow of data.
By leveraging blockchain technology, industry systems can ensure a heightened state of security and stability with the help of cryptographically encrypted networks. Solutions such as the blockchain-based gateway devices from BDATA guarantee the safety and utility of IoT networks. With the new line of BIOT (Blockchain Internet of Things) products, both major industries and retail consumers can integrate these solutions for numerous use cases that require remote operation. These include industrial automation, smart factories, and edge computing.
With the help of the Canada-based IoT solutions provider, the world can finally have access to scalable, decentralized, and secure infrastructure. With a product line that already counts three gateway devices, BDATA plans to take the world by storm. | https://medium.com/@syed-76453/securing-vulnerable-iot-infrastructure-using-blockchain-1a8cdc7e8fe | ['Syed Bari'] | 2020-12-16 01:02:43.606000+00:00 | ['IoT', 'Internet of Things', 'Cybersecurity', 'Blockchain', 'Digital Twin'] |
I’m not sure I agree with your comment that the only thing they listen to is protest and riots- I… | I’m not sure I agree with your comment that the only thing they listen to is protest and riots- I don’t think they listen to anything except pollsters telling them what they need to do to stay in power.
This is what happens when politicians don’t have term limits- everything hinges on getting re-elected, not on doing what is right. And that goes for both sides of the aisle.
I always had the following question- being a Senator or Congressman is a job with terrible pay given all the headaches and living with a proctoscope up your ass. Why do so many fight to stay in office?
Hmmmmm……
The opinions and words expressed are the author’s own and not those of his employer. | https://medium.com/@kenny59/im-not-sure-i-agree-with-your-comment-that-the-only-thing-they-listen-to-is-protest-and-riots-i-49c6827fe283 | ['Kenneth Burke'] | 2020-12-19 15:07:16.591000+00:00 | ['Biden', 'Politicians', 'Politics', 'Republicans'] |
Great article! | Everything you need to know about Design Systems
8.7K 21 | https://medium.com/@hellojohnnymac/great-article-8ae87cd60bd0 | ['John Macmenamin'] | 2020-12-04 13:22:36.722000+00:00 | ['Design System'] |
Anxiety: Your startup’s first customer | I read somewhere that 72% entrepreneurs have anxiety or mental health issues, compared to the thumb rule of 1 in 4 for the broader population.
One day I am super excited about something as small (to the larger world) as a good meeting with my team on a tentative structure for one part of one of the products (or what we/I think is a product). The next moment, I am in a whirlpool of confusion, self doubt, chaos, scatter brained and blurry about the direction I am headed in. Why am I doing this. Is this right. How is this connected to my earlier work. Should it be connected? Wait, is it not connected? How will I ever find someone to work with. Should I do it alone. What’s next. Am I going too slow. Am I missing crucial steps. Why didn’t that person respond. Am I misinterpreting customer feedback. Why cannot I find that zillionth article I had read by that awesome person about how this should be done? What if I am making the wrong bets. Lull. Sunny day. Gloomy day. I don’t feel like working today, let’s go shopping. Oh my god, it’s 10pm and the partner wants to watch Netflix but I don’t want to stop working! Am I prioritising my time properly? How do I plan my day. Oooh, that person from that social circle seems to be rocking their work. Oh, another person with an awesome life update. What am I doing with my life? I am already late. Why am I doing this. Is this right. How is this connected to my earlier work. Should it be… Wait, this is my story. I should do it my way…right? But… Somebody tell me what’s the right way to do this…?!! Hello…?!
:)
PS. What helps? | https://medium.com/@soumyap/anxiety-your-startups-first-customer-ad7e611301ad | [] | 2021-07-15 20:19:28.413000+00:00 | ['Entrepeneurship', 'Founder Stories', 'Startup', 'Startup Life', 'Anxiety'] |
Node JS Web Api Heroku Deployment | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/albaraka-tech-global/node-js-web-api-heroku-deployment-ba1ede4fbdc7 | ['Abdulkerim Karaman'] | 2020-12-12 18:27:09.833000+00:00 | ['Nodejs', 'Heroku', 'Github', 'Expressjs', 'Webapi'] |
Out of Within Reach | He always managed to find himself back in that same spot, in that same position, stuck in that very same decision…
And as always was the case, until that point he’d been carrying on with an aimlessness. Living on whims, floating with the breeze, experiencing the terrific freedom of life’s lightness. Unmarried to any one thing, nor any person, place, or idea about the world. He was a balloon filled with just enough helium to catch wind and drift away—a quality of his that always hurt her the most.
Commitment is not something he ever had to do in life. At least not in any physical nor longterm sense. It only lasted as long as he decided to fool himself. Rather, he was a collector of experiences. A curator of perspective.
Yet there he was, again. Standing on the edge of possibility, staring into its depths, fearful of the unknown that lay beneath the fog of doubt.
She only wanted for him to take a leap. A leap with her. They’d just jump together, she thought, never promising to hang around after the fall. She simply wanted to hold his hand on the way down, in the dive headfirst into Love, or at least the possibility of it, and to see if he’d let go.
Each time she’d ask him if he would,
With no intention of doing so, each time he lacked the confidence to say “no.”
Each time he’d watch her turn, and then take the leap with out him,
Knowing all the while that it would always be the landing, not the leap, that would tear them apart. | https://medium.com/love-and-other-drugs/out-of-within-reach-an-excerpt-845f8039340b | ['Cortland Gilliam'] | 2016-08-23 18:52:43.408000+00:00 | ['Love', 'Unrequited Love', 'Writing'] |
GDPR: Where are we now? And what happens next? | Quite a lot will now go down to the regulator’s appetite
So … May 25th came and went, quickly followed by the football world cup and a heatwave which wrecked most of Europe and many other parts of the world …
Around the GDPR, bureaucracy claimed its birth rights over the act and things went back to normal: Snake oil vendors packed their stalls and alleged experts headed for the beach … The anti-climax was predictable, and we are still going through that phase where all players are expecting regulators to set their first fines and wondering “where the big one is going to come from”.
Of course, a few activists lodged the complaints they had been preparing for years against US tech majors, and anecdotal evidence suggests that breaches are being reported and the regulation is being exercised.
But looking beyond the mundane activities of the past few months, there are 3 observations starting to emerge, which do not paint a pleasant picture:
Confusion clearly reigned amongst marketing communities during the few weeks leading to May 25th
Everybody’s mailbox — personal and professional — was flooded by countless emails seeking some form of GDPR consent: Some were asking for an opt-in, others offering an opt-out and many were just pushing some form of updated “privacy policy”.
It was at first laughable then it became annoying. And it created panic for many management teams: Are we doing the right thing? Why are we asking for an opt-out while the competition is asking for an opt-in?
In reality, this absolute shambles shows the extent to which the GDPR was misunderstood and misinterpreted by snake oil vendors and alleged experts.
If this is any measure of the level at which compliance measures have been applied, many firms — large and small — could wake up with surprises at the first hurdle.
More generally, the GDPR has put the topic of personal data on the Board agenda in many large firms, but it has not been the catalyst for change it could have been.
The whole topic was broadly treated as another compliance exercise and left in the hands of Legal or Marketing teams. It has been seen as a “box-checking” project, not an opportunity to approach personal data differently and change cultural and ethical attitudes towards data.
Teams at the periphery of the exercise — IT and Security teams in particular — have generally failed to capitalise on the matter and could end up marginalised further as a result.
In spite of the tens of millions spent over the past few years on GDPR compliance, many large firms have failed to see it as a truly transversal matter and have not taken the opportunity to build a transversal governance capability around data privacy: It could end up costing them dear.
In spite of all the hype and the media agitation of the last quarter, many organizations have not yet done anything significant around GDPR compliance or are just starting.
Some have made the deliberate decision to “wait-and-see”; some have been scared by the compliance costs; some have woken up too late and are still in the process of building up business cases and operational capabilities; some are just too dysfunctional to reach a decision on something that complex.
Many of those firms do handle personal data however — some on a large scale — and are probably the real cases on which the authority of the regulators should be tested.
Even in large firms that have acted on the matter over the past 2 years, many large scale GDPR compliance projects started late and are still going on, but at some stage — probably at year end — management is going to turn off the money tap: What will happen then?
As we pointed out in February, quite a lot will now go down to the regulator’s appetite.
In fact, they have a difficult hand to play: If they are inconsistent, too heavy-handed or too lenient, focus only on the GAFA, or pick the wrong battles with small firms, they will dilute the act, endanger their credibility and lose momentum.
In essence, the ball is in their court. They have been asking for more powers for the best part of the last decade, but if they wait for too long before acting significantly, this may well turn out to be the new Y2K in the end…
Contact Corix Partners to find out more about developing a successful Cyber Security Practice for your business.
Corix Partners is a Boutique Management Consultancy Firm, focused on assisting CIOs and other C-level executives in resolving Cyber Security Strategy, Organisation & Governance challenges. | https://medium.com/security-transformation-leadership/gdpr-where-are-we-now-and-what-happens-next-6540994af1e3 | ['Jc Gaillard'] | 2019-02-11 07:45:41.346000+00:00 | ['Personal Data', 'Regulation', 'Gdpr', 'Privacy'] |
The Art of City-Walking | Photo by Adi Constantin on Unsplash
City walks rock.
Parks, mountain trails, beaches, all those other walks — wonderful. But city walks are in a class by themselves. It’s just a small matter of mastering the art. It helps (IMHO) to live in San Francisco, but I suspect anyone who loves his or her city might agree: walk with your eyes and mind open, listen for the life behind the sounds, look up and down and all around, and there you have: COVID-free (masks, distancing, no problem) exercise, unique entertainment, an educational and uplifting activity of however many hours you can spare. Totally free. Nighttime walks can be times of wonder, but given the weirdness of today’s pandemic realities, this addresses the joy of daytime city walking.
Housing innovation is sometimes critical
Cities everywhere have, tragically, people with no home, forced to confront the virus and the cold in whatever ways they can. Some, like the above San Franciscan reduced to tent life, stake out kingdoms of their own. Walking by people on the street — many struggling with addiction or mental health issues — is the saddest part of City Walking, sending you home (hopefully) with a renewed commitment to working harder to find solutions. But if you look, you find homeless citizens are really just fellow Americans with problems, bad luck, and often a good measure of ingenuity.
A cypress on Sacramento
And then there are the trees. Even in the most urban of urban areas, trees survive. Sometimes on their own (look into corner parks or corner lots that have been abandoned.) You can find trees that are trying to save us from ourselves by storing carbon, preventing flooding & erosion, staving off climate change — or just standing there being beautiful. The good people of SFTrees.com occasionally go around chalking the sidewalks with little Look! signs that point to trees like the above and generously ID them for you.
Is it art? Is it graffiti? Maybe a little of both?
Some of the most interesting sights of City Walks are down the alleyways. Granted you may find strange and unpleasant surprises, but you may often find the products of graffiti artists’ most elegant endeavors. Alleyways offer other surprises: hidden houses and back entries and flower boxes on third-floor fire escapes you’re delighted to have noticed, plus a few ground-level sights you’re happy to pass by as quickly as possible. It’s a city, after all.
Urban playgrounds are the happiest of playgrounds
Most City Walks — thanks often to the work of the Trust for Public Land, which has a goal of every urban dweller living within a 10-minute walk of a park — pass an urban park or two. Some are so small as to go unnoticed. But if you can work your city-walking paths by a park, possibly the happiest faces of the day will be found there. Where there are basketball nets you can watch the action but rarely get any interchange. But kids on jungle gyms will smile for the camera at the slightest invitation. Search for urban parks in your city and you might be surprised to find tiny treasures. In San Francisco, also, almost anywhere you’re willing to climb upward will lead to another kind of park — glorious spaces with views and dogs and picnickers and more views. An unbeatable way to conclude a City Walk. | https://medium.com/@franjohns/the-art-of-city-walking-8e40197df78d | [] | 2020-12-13 06:07:02.951000+00:00 | ['Walking', 'San Francisco', 'Trust For Public Land', 'Parks', 'Urban Living'] |
AYS Daily Digest 23/07/2021 — Greek Rationale for Declaring Turkey “Safe Third Country” Finally Released | AYS Daily Digest 23/07/2021 — Greek Rationale for Declaring Turkey “Safe Third Country” Finally Released
Official justification for safe third country status inadequate, NGOs say//Shipwreck between Turkey and Greece//Caravan for equal rights on Canary Islands Are You Syrious? Follow Jul 24 · 9 min read
One of the distress cases in the Mediterranean over the past 24 hours. Photo credit: Proactiva Open Arms
FEATURE
Greek Asylum Service finally releases rationale behind Turkey’s “safe third country” decision—and it is inadequate
Greece has finally published the legal rationale behind declaring Turkey a safe third country for people from Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The Joint Ministry Decision was based on an “Opinion” of the Head of the Asylum Service (which is not considered a strong enough legal basis to declare a third country safe), which it refused to reveal to the public for over a month, even though changes in asylum policy must be immediately justified with legal documentation.
The Greek government fought off several legal challenges to reveal the rationale behind their decision, but now a public prosecutor ordered them to release the document. Now that the Opinion has been released, it actually reveals that the sources the Asylum Service relied on do not consider Turkey to be a safe third country. They mentioned violations of human rights such as deportations to Syria, forcing people to sign voluntary return forms, denying Afghan people any kind of legal status, and other violations.
The sources used were also not rigorous enough to justify a complete change in asylum policy according to Greek law. There was no independent fact-finding mission, instead, the Opinion was based on existing, poorly-cited open source information that was nowhere near rigorous enough to justify a change in policy.
Even the official documentation of the Home Office, hardly an entity known for its bleeding-heart sympathy towards people on the move, is rigorous and up-to-date, a far cry from the hastily put together document that the Greek government released.
This mimics the Danish government’s decision to declare parts of Syria safe despite the opposition of most of the organizations consulted in its fact-finding.
The insistence of both countries that up is down and black is white when deciding asylum policy against the recommendations of the very papers they purport to use as evidence would be absurd if it was not ruining people’s lives. Greece has already denied several asylum applications with the rationale that Turkey is a safe third country for applicants from certain nationalities, even though it is nothing of the kind.
It is important to look at this decision within the wider political context of Europe attempting to ignore its international responsibility towards displaced people and forcing them into camps in third countries that do not have even close to as many resources as the continent. This decision will particularly affect Afghan people, many of whom are already fleeing the Taliban and are hoping to reach Europe. They will probably be surprised to find that Turkey, where they are not entitled to any kind of legal protection and where many Afghans already live outside of society, is where they will be “safe.” Then again, Europe has considered Afghanistan safe for Afghans while its own embassies in the country shutter due to the security situation, so this is nothing new. What is unsafe for one group is apparently tolerable for others.
SEA
Hundreds of new arrivals, many rescues
Arrivals: On the island of Pantelleria in Italy, over 100 people arrived in seven different boats, some of whom were intercepted off the Italian coast by the authorities. Elsewhere in Italy, a group of seven people arrived in Sardinia and 212 people in 10 different boats arrived in Lampedusa.
Rescues: In less than 24 hours, there were five boats in distress in the Central Mediterranean. Proactiva Open Arms was involved in three rescues, including one rescue of 50 people off the coast of Italy. Salvamento Maritimo rescued a patera with 45 people near the Canary Islands and six people in the Gibraltar strait.
Pullbacks to Libya: The cargo ship VOS APHRODITE, owned by the shipping company VROON, rescued about 200 people in distress at sea and then immediately handed them over to the so-called Libyan Coast Guard, thereby not meeting its obligation according to international law to take people in distress at sea to safety. That brings the total of the number of people returned to Libya over the past three days to 1,500, almost all returning to torturous conditions. The UN has repeatedly said conditions for people on the move in Libya are inhumane, with many detained in torture camps. | https://medium.com/are-you-syrious/ays-daily-digest-23-07-2021-greek-rationale-for-declaring-turkey-safe-third-country-finally-1c2172e42422 | ['Are You Syrious'] | 2021-07-24 11:20:31.431000+00:00 | ['Digest', 'Turkey', 'Migrants', 'Greece', 'Refugees'] |
Hãy nhường nhịn trẻ em | in Both Sides of the Table | https://medium.com/thietkecuocsong/h%C3%A3y-nh%C6%B0%E1%BB%9Dng-nh%E1%BB%8Bn-tr%E1%BA%BB-em-ce7b64e89a63 | ['Tôi Có Thể Viết'] | 2019-02-25 16:12:05.397000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Children', 'Learning', 'Education', 'Creativity'] |
2018 Porsche 911 GT2 RS Weissach Boasts Low Miles | It’s not often in life that you run across a beautiful and rare track-ready automobile with extremely low miles, but this isn’t just any other day. A 2018 Porsche 911 GT2 RS Weissach with just 600 miles has been listed on Bring A Trailer, understandably getting people talking. Even if you can’t afford the undoubtedly lofty price for this masterpiece, it’s still something amazing to behold.
photo credit: Bring A Trailer
Believer it or not, someone had the restraint to not hoon this Porsche every weekend, and now someone else will be faced with the choice of parking or driving it. Wearing GT Silver Metallic over black leather and Alcantara with red stitching and seat belts, it’s easy to see why you could literally park this car in a high-end living room like some piece of modern art.
photo credit: Bring A Trailer
However, this is no stationary sculpture, but instead is a serious performance machine. A twin-turbo 3.8-liter flat-six engine puts 700-horsepower and 553 lb.-ft. of torque at your disposal. Thanks to the 7-speed PDK dual-clutch transaxle, shifts are seamless and unbelievably rapid. We’re unsure how anyone could resist wanting to feel that kind of performance on a regular basis.
photo credit: Bring A Trailer
This Porsche is about more than just power. Built to be lightweight through innovative construction methods, including a carbon-fiber hood, rear wing, side intakes, side mirrors, and front fender vents, plus the center lock magnesium wheels, Porsche designed this car for excellent performance in every way. It also comes with the highly desirable Weissach Package which adds carbon-fiber roll bars and roof.
photo credit: Bring A Trailer
Despite being a hardcore track car, this 911 GT2 RS does have some nice amenities to make the ride more accommodating. Among them is the super-advanced Porsche Communication Management system with navigation, voice control, and even a Bose surround-sound system.
If you are fortunate enough to have the finances to possibly grab this 2018 Porsche 911 GT2 RS Weissach, you’ll need to place your bid(s) on Bring A Trailer and keep a close eye on the auction. | https://medium.com/motorious/2018-porsche-911-gt2-rs-weissach-boasts-low-miles-831a127b268 | ['Sam Maven'] | 2020-12-17 13:30:04.539000+00:00 | ['Handpicked', 'Europe', 'Sports', 'Modern Classic', 'Client'] |
How To Speed Up Metabolism Fast — A Daily Checklist | Lifestyle changes to increase your metabolism
Photo by Zohre Nemati on Unsplash
1. Try getting a good night’s sleep
Sleep is fundamental to an optimised life.
Lack of sleep is linked to a significant rise in the risk of obesity¹. This may be partly due to the negative effects of sleep deprivation on metabolism². Lack of sleep can:
lower your calorie burn³
change the way you process sugar³
disrupt your appetite-regulating hormones³.
Aim to get 7–8 hours of sleep a night if you are looking to provide a boost to your metabolism.
2. Drink more water
People who drink water instead of sugary drinks have a better chance of losing and keeping weight off⁴.
Moreover, it doesn’t get any easier than this when it comes to losing weight.
Simply drinking more water increases the rate at which you burn calories and is a healthy metabolism booster. In fact, drinking two glasses (around half a litre) of water can speed up metabolism by 10–30% for an hour⁵.
Water can help you lose weight and maintain it. It is a perfect example of a healthy metabolism booster.
3. Try out High-Intensity Workouts
High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is one of the best types of exercise for the body. It’s basically short bursts of intense activity. In other words, HIIT involves stringing exercises together and maintaining active rest to keep your heart and breathing rates up. Thus with HIIT you also get the benefits of aerobic exercise. Even after your workout, it can help you burn extra fat by raising your metabolic rate⁶.
Try HIIT workouts for just 10–15 minutes daily. The high-intensity workouts will help you burn fat and boost your metabolism.
Here’s a great 5-minute HIIT session for you to watch or bookmark for later! | https://medium.com/@elevateme-ai/how-to-speed-up-metabolism-fast-a-daily-checklist-elevateme-b8c3fce3be8c | [] | 2021-09-11 16:34:56.824000+00:00 | ['Metabolism Diet', 'Metabolism', 'Metabolism Booster', 'Improvement', 'Energy Healing'] |
Why I Won’t Launch a Minimum Viable Product | A lot of people, including me, talk about when to launch an MVP. Let’s talk about when we shouldn’t.
I know startup is mostly about moving fast and breaking stuff. The drive to make quick decisions and take big risks is what allows companies to grow in leaps and bounds instead of just incrementally.
But I don’t have to tell you that when you move too fast or break too much stuff, the cops show up. Metaphorically. Chain reactions from one big mistake can take down great ideas, strong teams, and solid companies.
Now, a minimum viable product (MVP) is the moving-fastest and stuff-breaking-est version of a product that a company can ship to market. We should always be a little bit fearful when launching an MVP. But in some cases, that fear means we need to pull the plug and take a big step back.
I’ve got a ton of experience launching MVPs. I own my share of failures, frustrations, and stupid mistakes. So here are the top warning signs that send me back to the drawing board before I embarrass myself and everyone around me, listed in order of earliest to latest in the MVP process.
The process isn’t defined
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Oh, and stop your MVP launch if I’m describing yours.
You’ve defined the problem and the solution. You know the customer. You can visualize the tech for the final product and exactly how awesome it will be. You even have the tools in place to set up a manualized version of everything so you can test in a controlled environment.
For most of us, me included, what I just described above are all the ingredients necessary to throw an MVP out to the world.
Except sometimes for me there’s one nagging thing: I have no idea what to do with the customer once I land them. I can close them, I can onboard them, but I’m clueless as to what any of the next steps are once they’ve paid.
I’ve been in such a scenario a few times. And I’ve learned that it’s always a dealbreaker for an MVP.
To give a more concrete example: I have a friend who is a wizard with T-shirts. Every so often, maybe once a year, he gets a great idea for a T-shirt. And God love him, he designs it, sells it, gets tons of revenue and amazing feedback, and then… nothing. He makes a couple thousand bucks and continues his real life until the next great T-shirt idea hits him.
Moral: Make sure you’re not just building a profitable hobby. Before you launch, do a gut check to make sure you’re not setting yourself up to be overwhelmed by a ton of false positives that lead to nowhere.
The tech isn’t ready
I’m going through this now. I need tech for my MVP and I don’t know how much. This is like not knowing how much bungee cord you need for a jump.
In my case, a lot of the MVP can be done manually, but there’s just no way to limit the customer segment to a number low enough that I feel good about the risk of knocking over my manual portion. If that happens, I either have overstressed employees or unhappy (maybe irate) customers.
The former you can’t do lightly, the latter you just can’t do. Product suicide.
The problem is that there are way too many other priorities for me to just turn on the tech faucet. I can get it to drip, so I’ve been designing patches to get that fallover risk down. But the relationship between my patch and the risk of failure is just not quantitative enough for me to feel confident that my design will result in X% less risk. And since I can’t shrink the customer segment any further, going over X% means shutting the whole thing down.
Moral: Until we can properly build the tech to limit our risk of total failure, whether that tech limits the test, automates more of the manual parts, or injects flexibility and modularity into the test, we’re not in a position to launch the MVP.
The product is fundamentally flawed
Early in my career I had my world blown up twice because of an MVP. In both cases, the MVP was a wholesale pivot from an existing successful product to a next-level iteration of that product. And in both cases, the mistake was building for a model that the technology couldn’t support.
In case #1, we had developed technology for a new way to create an existing consumer product. However, being an existing product and somewhat of a commodity, the market was walled off by a few incumbent players who had, as they often do, made the barrier for entry into the market prohibitively high.
I wanted to continue to develop our own nascent market, one where we were already the major player. That approach landed on deaf ears, and we launched our MVP into the traditional market. We got crushed because we couldn’t produce the same artificially high quality that the consumer had grown to accept in the traditional market. Three years later, the new market took off, and today, the traditional market is dying.
In case #2, the company wanted to follow a product trend that promised more automation, more self-service, and higher margins. Having built the existing product from the ground up, I knew instinctively that the tech behind the product would need to be entirely rewritten to accommodate the new model. But we ended up following the least-advisable move-fast-and-break-stuff strategy — “We’ll launch the MVP and figure out the tech as we adopt the customers.”
This rarely works. It’s essentially making promises your tech can’t keep.
Moral: You can launch an MVP if you don’t know whether or not your tech will scale, but you can’t launch an MVP if you don’t know whether or not your tech will work.
The testing isn’t complete
Marketplaces are almost completely digital now, whether we’re selling digital products or physical products or even services. Digital marketplaces allow us to experiment, but the markets themselves don’t often allow second chances.
To use a dumbed down example: If our product is purple and we realize early in the launch that our customer base would have preferred green, we need to be able to make the product green without stopping, recalling, recoloring, retesting, and relaunching.
Chances are we can’t do that without losing the market in the process. But thankfully, digital marketplaces do allow for segmentation, and we can slice and dice our launch audience down to a hand-picked, pilot-sized number. Then we test.
Moral: Our product testing needs to go beyond the standard internal, alpha, and beta testing, and into a public pilot. And that public pilot needs to test every aspect of the customer experience, from how they’re introduced to the product to how quickly they become a repeat customer.
The numbers aren’t there
One of the hardest things an entrepreneur can ever do is pull the plug on a good MVP. One of the easiest things an entrepreneur can do is keep a good MVP running. But to be honest, we can’t live with good. We need great.
Sometimes the entire buildup to the MVP launch can go right, even the pilot, and the results can show a lot of promise. But for some reason those same numbers hint at mediocrity, stagnation, or worst-case, amazing numbers that don’t translate into revenue.
For each startup in my career where I’ve had a qualified success or failure, I’ve had two more that weren’t either success or failure. They were duds, failed at or before liftoff, never saw the light of day. These weren’t just ideas jotted down on napkins, these were full-blown MVPs that I couldn’t push past that final step on the road to greatness.
Moral: We can’t launch if we don’t believe we will be an unqualified and massive success out on the market. And that’s a hard metric to measure, because by our very nature as entrepreneurs, we don’t take a project on unless we believe in it wholeheartedly from the beginning. It’s hard to deny that belief, to admit we were wrong, to give up on an idea. But if we don’t see greatness in the numbers, we need to pull the plug.
Live to fight another day
The silver lining on the cloud of halting an MVP launch is that it doesn’t mean the story is over. More than one of my successful startups came from reborn versions of MVPs that never got off the ground.
In some cases it might be a few weeks, in others it could be a few years, but opportunity never dies, it just needs to find the right context. Whether or not we go back to the drawing board, that’s always up to us. | https://jproco.medium.com/why-i-wont-launch-a-minimum-viable-product-e5a6e472ea64 | ['Joe Procopio'] | 2019-08-26 11:10:25.380000+00:00 | ['Entrepreneurship', 'Leadership', 'Product Management', 'Business', 'Startup'] |
MY EXPERIENCE WITH Planethost.com.ng | MY EXPERIENCE WITH Planethost.com.ng
This article is not meant to demote or insult any entity or its services publicly, but most Nigerian web host providers are nothing but scam and fake. I have work with quite a number of web providers and my experiences with them are nothing to write home about.
The truth is that I have given up hope if I can ever get a good web host provider, that can give me what I want. Then, one day I was complaining to my friend in Nigeria about my experiences with some web host providers, then my friend suggested I try Planethost.com.ng, first I was not convinced with the idea, because of my past ugly experiences, but on second thought, I agreed to try it.
Because of my ugly experiences with some Nigeria web host providers, I vowed that never will I use any Nigeria made WebHost, only Abroad. But then, I learned about Planethost.com.ng, a Nigeria web host provider, I was proved wrong, there are still some competent and reliable web host providers in Nigeria and Planethost.com. ng is one of the best, if not the best so far.
I have hosted hundreds of my client's websites on Planethost.com. ng and they are good, and no more ugly experiences or poor service.
If you are looking for a web host provider that can give you the required service and satisfaction, I will recommend Planethost.com.ng
www.https://planethost.com.ng | https://medium.com/@comrokwudibamacanthony/my-experience-with-planethost-com-ng-7acabd4c75bf | ['Comr Okwudiba Mac Anthony'] | 2020-12-01 22:52:34.888000+00:00 | ['Webmaster', 'Web Development', 'Website Design', 'Web Design'] |
Strategies for Success in International Expansion | Global expansion is a fantastic way to test new markets and gain proximity to new audiences, talent and even raw materials. Yet, for businesses seeking to expand, it can also be a complex and uncertain process.
Having worked in this field for more than seven years helping companies to realize their goals of going global, I have been fortunate to see many companies successfully launch into new territories. While each of these growing companies were unique, they all used the same strategies to cement their success in their chosen locale. Experience has taught me that companies which implement these strategies tend to be the most successful in new markets.
Here are the four key strategies that every expanding business should consider:
1. Get the Basics Right
Expansion must start with data, a solid foundation of insight and intelligence that ensures the company is making the right choice of region. Next, they must consider the logistics of hiring in another country, planning how they will legally and compliantly employ and payroll any employees in their new location.
Some businesses will choose to employ contractual staff to start operations, perhaps on a short-term basis. Others will prefer to create their own entity in the new market, fully aware of the list of requirements for incorporation in the country. Entity setup can be a lengthy process and include capital investments, locally based company directors and many other long-term commitments. Of course, opening a new local entity is just the beginning; companies must ensure they meet all HR requirements, labor laws and payroll obligations, including taxes and benefits that comply with local legal responsibilities that come with operating in the country.
The simpler — and faster — approach is to partner with external specialists, such as an Employer of Record, who can facilitate all the local legal requirements for employment and HR, tax and compliance on a company’s behalf. These allow them to expand, onboard, manage and pay new or relocated employees worldwide without needing to invest in, or commit to, untested markets.
Getting business operational and compliant must be the first concern for any expanding company so that they can hit the ground running in the new location. Not choosing the right method for your business will cost you time, money and missed opportunities.
2. Companies Benefit from Local Insight and Connections
Entering a new market comes with a unique set of complexities for every business. The most successful companies use local insights to increase their chances of success; understanding the cultural and language barriers, customs in the region and local ways of working, can make or break a new player in a foreign market. Without understanding how a country does business, including all the small, local nuances, companies risk missing potential business opportunities or even unknowingly cause offense.
This is easily avoidable. A great strategy is to hire at least some of the new employees from the local talent pool; they will be more familiar with the region and its customs and can ensure the company makes the right impression on the new market. In addition, they may be gateways to a new go-to-market approach, a potential network of prospects and perhaps even their first client. Working with local insights ensures that your new operations start with a bang!
3. Bolstering Your In-house Capabilities
Some companies attempt to realize their global expansion goals by increasing their in-house capabilities and project-managing the entire operation themselves. Unfortunately, many of these attempts falter when they run into the reality of dealing with complex, constantly changing local HR and labor law requirements. Other companies struggle to allocate the resources and people required to set up and run their own entities and manage the global HR and payroll requirements, while also supporting the employees with local payroll, benefits, global mobility and other urgent needs.
To be clear, there is absolutely no room for cutting corners when it comes to international HR, payroll and compliance; however, there are ways to remove many of the challenges associated with expansion.
A great strategy is to partner with experts, such as an Employer of Record, who can bolster in-house capabilities and provide the infrastructure and local expertise critical for global expansion. They understand the local HR landscape, the people and their culture — both in and out of the workplace — and, perhaps most importantly, are trained and equipped to be compliant with all local rules.
Recognizing your resource limitations allows you to focus on growth and sustainability in new markets, rather than waste time and energy on things that can otherwise be better handled by specialists.
4. Ongoing Support for International Operations
New operations are often run with a skeletal staff during market testing, with businesses relying remotely on the experience of a few people to bring their new operations to life. Unfortunately, a potential consequence to that pressure is employee burnout and subsequent demotivation. This could potentially derail expansion plans.
Making sure employees feel valued and supported every step of the way is key to providing a great work experience. This is particularly important for employees outside of the company’s home base. A great way to achieve that is to work with local external specialists, who can advise and support employees with everything they need locally, in the right language and time zone. This helps companies maintain high retention and low churn rates while creating advocates for their business in the new region.
Another benefit of working with these experts is the advice they can give on the legality of actualizing further ambitions, providing companies with the knowledge to confidently move into new markets. This type of ongoing support is a powerful asset that deeply engages with clients, combining market knowledge and domain expertise to ensure compliant operations.
Ultimately, while it’s easy to focus initially on the logistical and legal details of setting up operations in a new market, is important to remember that employees are at the heart of everything you do. Setting them up for success is the best way to get yourself on the path to success.
Expanding globally is not a simple task. But with the support and guidance of experts and partners with experience and infrastructure to help actualize these goals, it can be. While you will need to find what works best for your industry, pace and requirements, adopting some or all of these strategies will form a robust foundation for any global expansion plans and help propel your new operations to the next level. | https://medium.com/inside-elements/strategies-for-success-in-international-expansion-ce097f108869 | ['Ashish Sidhu'] | 2021-01-13 09:04:46.271000+00:00 | ['Global Expansion', 'Business Intelligence', 'Business Strategy', 'International Success', 'Employer Of Record'] |
How To Create Confidential Assets on Beam | What are CAs? 🤷♀️
CA stands for Confidential Asset. It is a “privacy” asset as the name, “Confidential” implies. A CA built on the Beam blockchain has all the privacy features of Beam by default. This means you don’t need to program your asset from scratch for it to be termed a privacy token. “CAs can act as many things like loyalty points for your customers, individual tradable company shares and even confidential synthetics / digital assets like bonds or collateral-backed stable currencies” — Raskul.
With Confidential Assets, we can generate multi-asset transactions where both the amount and the asset type itself are encrypted.
Use cases for CAs are endless. With CAs, we have an increased privacy. CAs also give us Confidential Transactions: A system where only the sender and the receiver of a transaction know the amount that is involved in a specific transaction.
How To Create a CA on the Beam Blockchain
Before we get started, here are two (2) important tools you need.
BEAM-NODE
Local CLI (Command-Line-Interface) Node for your computer to allow your Beam Wallet to read the Blockchain and stay synchronised.
Go to: https://beam.mw/downloads
Click the link to ‘Node’
and download to your computer.
2. BEAM-WALLET
Local CLI (Command-Line-Instruction) Wallet for your computer to allow you to store your own immutable currency.
Go to: https://beam.mw/downloads/
Click the link to ‘CLI Wallet’
and download to your computer.
After NODE and WALLET are unzipped and on your computer, follow these 5 steps illustrated in the infographic below to get started. All texts marked with “below**” are commands and can be found in this blog. Carefully Copy and Paste them into your terminal window.
Let’s begin …
Step 1 — beam-node.cfg
port=10127 peer=node01.mainnet.beam.mw:8100,eu-node02.mainnet.beam.mw:8100,eu-node03.mainnet.beam.mw:8100,eu-node04.mainnet.beam.mw:8100,us-node01.mainnet.beam.mw:8100,us-node02.mainnet.beam.mw:8100,us-node03.mainnet.beam.mw:8100 peers_persistent=1
Step 2 — Synchronise the NODE
./beam-node
Step 3 — Initiate the WALLET
./beam-wallet init
and
./beam-wallet listen -n 127.0.0.1:10127
Step 4 — Register your CA
./beam-wallet asset_reg — pass yourwalletpassword -n 127.0.0.1:10127 — asset_meta “STD:SCH_VER=1;N=CANameCoin;SN=CATicker;UN=CAFullName;NTHUN=CASingleUnitName” — fee 100 — enable_assets
This command means:
asset_reg = register the asset on the Beam blockchain
--pass = the wallet password your wallet was created with in step 2
-n = specify the node to listen on (can be 127.0.0.1:yournodeport or a remote node like pool.raskul.com:10127)
--asset_meta :
STD = prefix, denotes that the metadata is standard format
SCH_VER = metadata schema version — currently must be 1
N = Give your Confidential Asset a unique name (eg Bitcoin)
SN = The shortened (or TICKER) name for your Confidential Asset (eg BTC)
UN = Full user-determined name for your Confidential Asset (eg Bitcoin)
NTHUN = Smallest denominational value of the Confidential Asset (eg Satoshi)
--fee = the fee to pay (in Beam) to register the Confidential Asset
--enable_assets = The flag to command the wallet to enable Confidential Assets (reused in every CA command line).
Step 5 — Issue amount of CA
./beam-wallet issue — pass yourwalletpassword — asset_id 1 -n 127.0.0.1:10127 — amount AmountOfCAToCreate — fee 100 — enable_assets
Congratulations! In just 5 steps, you have created a Confidential Asset on the most Scalable and Private ecosystem on the planet; the Beam blockchain.
This article was inspired by Raskul’s guide to creating Confidential Assets where you will find more information not stated here such as Burning the CA to receive your 3000 Beams back as well as relevant materials for further research into creating CAs on Beam.
Happy Holidays! | https://medium.com/beam-africa/how-to-create-confidential-assets-on-beam-cb94ea2ef3e7 | [] | 2020-12-25 07:16:00.047000+00:00 | ['Africa', 'Confidential Assets', 'Privacy', 'Beam'] |
張建宗指收緊社交距離措施或須持續 | A columnist in political development in Greater China region, technology and gadgets, media industry, parenting and other interesting topics. | https://medium.com/@frederickyeung-59743/%E5%BC%B5%E5%BB%BA%E5%AE%97%E6%8C%87%E6%94%B6%E7%B7%8A%E7%A4%BE%E4%BA%A4%E8%B7%9D%E9%9B%A2%E6%8E%AA%E6%96%BD%E6%88%96%E9%A0%88%E6%8C%81%E7%BA%8C-50fe5af1dbb7 | ['C Y S'] | 2020-12-13 02:35:29.439000+00:00 | ['Government', 'Hong Kong', 'China'] |
An RDF crawler | I wrote an RDF crawler (aka scutter) using Java and the Jena RDF toolkit that spiders the web gathering up semantic web data and storing it in any of Jena’s backend stores (in-memory, Berkeley DB, mysql, etc). Download it here.
The system is multithreaded and so can simultaneously download from many sources while the aggregation thread does the processing. It builds a model that remembers the provenance of the RDF and takes care to delete and replace triples if it hits the same URL twice, so you can run it as often as you like to keep the data fresh without bloating the store with out-of-date information. As yet it doesn’t do anything with what it gathers; the information’s just sitting there waiting for interesting applications to be built on top of it.
To use it as distributed, set up a mysql database called “scutter” and set the username and password in the DBConnection setup in Scutter.java then recompile using ‘ant compile’ (sorry, no handy config files in this 0.1 release). Run the script scutter.sh passing in as many starting-point URLs as you like. These will be added to the queue, and any rdfs:seeAlso pointers in the downloaded RDF will be recursively followed until no more unique URLs can be found. The biggest known issue at the moment is that it doesn’t do proper management to work out when it’s run out of URLs — it just stops. The standard log4j.properties file can be edited to change what gets logged — with full debugging information turned on, you get quite a lot of output.
Plans for the future include tying FOAF-related processing into the aggregation such as smushing and mbox_sha1sum normalising, and making a publish/subscribe-based system so that people who can’t run their own aggregators can subscribe to the RDF that’s gathered. | https://medium.com/hackdiary/an-rdf-crawler-f747a5493a4c | ['Matt Biddulph'] | 2018-01-12 02:53:45.222000+00:00 | ['Java', 'Rdf'] |
When XML beats JSON: UI layouts | When demoing Hyperview to new engineers, there’s one comment that frequently comes up about the HXML data format:
“XML, really? It’s bloated and outdated. Why not use JSON? It’s the future.”
These comments imply that JSON is the “one true file format” that should be used for everything, but we don’t believe there’s such a thing. Each format makes tradeoffs in encoding, flexibility, and expressiveness to best suit a specific use case.
A format optimized for size will use a binary encoding that won’t be human-readable.
A format optimized for extensibility will take longer to decode than a format designed for a narrow use case.
A format designed for flat data (like CSV) will struggle to represent nested data.
In addition to the intrinsic properties of a format, external factors can influence its practical use cases, such as the popularity of the format among the target developers, or library support in the desired programming languages.
When choosing a file format to use in a software project, software engineers pick the one with the best balance of features and external factors for the situation. This post is the first in a 3-part series examining the decision process we used to choose XML over JSON as the format at the core of Hyperview. In part 1, we focus on the suitability of each format for defining user interfaces.
JSON for lists, XML for trees
Both XML and JSON can represent complex nested data structures, but they excel at different types of structures. JSON’s origins as a subset of JavaScript can be seen with how easily it represents key/value object data. XML, on the other hand, optimizes for document tree structures, by cleanly separating node data (attributes) from child data (elements).
We can illustrate the advantages and disadvantages of each format by using both formats to represent two types of data: lists and trees.
Example 1: List of users
Let’s represent a list of users. Each user has a first and last name, and a list of favorite movies. In JSON, there’s a sensible way to model this data: as an array of objects with keys for the user properties:
[
{
"first_name": "Michael",
"last_name": "Scott",
"favorite_movies": [ "Diehard", "Threat Level Midnight" ]
},
{
"first_name": "Dwight",
"last_name": "Schrute",
"favorite_movies": [ "The Crow", "Wedding Crashers" ]
},
{
"first_name": "Pam",
"last_name": "Beesly",
"favorite_movies": [ "Legally Blonde" ]
}
]
A particular strength of JSON is its support for nested data structures. Notice that the list of movies can be easily represented using an array value for the favorite_movies key. In XML, however, element attributes must be strings. This means there’s no officially supported way to represent the list of movies in an element attribute. We can hack this by encoding the list into an attribute using a comma delimiter:
<Users>
<User
first="Michael"
last="Scott"
favoriteMovies="Diehard, Threat Level Midnight" />
<User
first="Dwight"
last="Schrute"
favoriteMovies="The Crow, Wedding Crashers" />
<User
first="Pam"
last="Beesly"
favoriteMovies="Legally Blonde" />
</Users>
This solution is not ideal. We’re not using XML semantics to represent the list of movies, meaning we can’t rely on XML syntax validation to verify the data. The clients reading the data will need to know how to split on commas and unescape the data in this particular attribtue. So both writing and reading the data is error-prone. To address these shortcomings, we should use XML syntax to represent the list of movies. This means creating child elements for each movie:
<Users>
<User first="Michael" last="Scott">
<Movie>Diehard</Movie>
<Movie>Threat Level Midnight</Movie>
</User>
<User first="Dwight" last="Schrute">
<Movie>The Crow</Movie>
<Movie>Wedding Crashers</Movie>
</User>
<User first="Pam" last="Beesly">
<Movie>Legally Blonde</Movie>
</User>
</Users>
With this approach, we avoid the hack of using a comma delimiter in an attribute. However, we’ve created another problem in the form of inconsistency: some user properties are represented as element attributes, others as child elements. The client has to know to look in both places to get all of the user’s data. To be consistent, we can represent all user properties as child elements:
<Users>
<User>
<FirstName>Michael</FirstName>
<LastName>Scott</LastName>
<FavoriteMovies>
<Movie>Diehard</Movie>
<Movie>Threat Level Midnight</Movie>
</FavoriteMovies>
</User>
<User>
<FirstName>Dwight</FirstName>
<LastName>Schrute</LastName>
<FavoriteMovies>
<Movie>The Crow</Movie>
<Movie>Wedding Crashers</Movie>
</FavoriteMovies>
</User>
<User>
<FirstName>Pam</FirstName>
<LastName>Beesly</LastName>
<FavoriteMovies>
<Movie>Legally Blonde</Movie>
</FavoriteMovies>
</User>
</Users>
Now we have a consistent, extensible representation for a list of users in XML. But compared to the same data in JSON, this representation is overly verbose and hard to write. The XML syntax obscures the structure of the data.
So JSON is well-suited for representing lists of objects with complex properties. JSON’s key/value object syntax makes it easy. By contrast, XML’s attribute syntax only works for simple data types. Using child elements to represent complex properties can lead to inconsistencies or unnecessary verbosity.
Example 2: Org Chart
XML may not be ideal to represent generic data structures, but it excels at representing one particular structure: the tree. By separating node data (attributes) from parent/child relationships, the tree structure of the data shines through, and the code to process the data can be quite elegant.
A classic example of a tree structure is a company org chart. Let’s assume each node in the tree is an employee, with a name and title. The edges in the tree represent a reporting relationship. The root of the tree is the boss.
In JSON, we represent each employee as an object with key/value pairs for the name and title. But JSON doesn’t provide a separate notation for relationships vs attributes, so we must also use a key/value pair to represent an employee’s direct reports:
{
"name": "Michael Scott",
"title": "Regional Manager",
"reports": [
{
"name": "Dwight Schrute",
"title": "Ass. Regional Mgr"
},
{
"name": "Jim Halpert",
"title": "Head of Sales",
"reports": [
{
"name": "Andy Bernard",
"title": "Sales Rep"
},
{
"name": "Phyllis Lapin",
"title": "Sales Rep"
}
]
},
{
"name": "Pam Beesly",
"title": "Office Administrator"
}
]
}
Notice that it’s hard to distinguish a node’s properties from the relationships. It’s common to prefix the relationship keys with “$” or “_” to make the distinction clearer, but this is a hack akin to using a delimiter in an XML attribute. When writing the JSON, we can cause errors by forgetting the prefix. Likewise when reading the JSON, we can’t loop through the keys in an object without remembering to filter out the ones starting with the prefix. Both reading and writing the data is now error-prone and inelegant.
XML really shines when it comes to tree data: elements are nodes, attributes are node properties, and child elements imply the reporting relationship:
<Employee name="Michael Scott" title="Regional Manager">
<Employee name="Dwight Schrute" title="Ass. Regional Mgr" />
<Employee name="Jim Halpert" title="Head of Sales">
<Employee name="Andy Bernard" title="Sales Rep" />
<Employee name="Phyllis Lapin" title="Sales Rep" />
</Employee>
<Employee name="Pam Beesly" title="Office Administrator" />
</Employee>
Compared to the JSON example, it’s much easier to get a sense of the underlying structure of the data. Attributes of the employee (name and title) are cleanly separated from the employee relationships. The relationships are both easier to visualize when writing the file, and the code to read the data can operate on the overall structure without touching node properties. There’s no chance of accidentally interpreting the relationship data as an employee attribute like in the JSON example.
The advantages of XML over JSON for trees becomes more pronounced when we introduce different node types. Assume we wanted to introduce departments into the org chart above. In XML, we can just use an element with a new tag name:
<Department name="Scranton Branch">
<Employee name="Michael Scott" title="Regional Manager">
<Department name="Sales">
<Employee name="Dwight Schrute" title="Ass. Regional Mgr" />
<Employee name="Jim Halpert" title="Head of Sales">
<Employee name="Andy Bernard" title="Sales Rep" />
<Employee name="Phyllis Lapin" title="Sales Rep" />
</Employee>
</Department>
<Employee name="Pam Beesly" title="Office Administrator" />
</Employee>
</Department>
JSON doesn’t have a concept of node types, so again we need to introduce a new special prefixed key to represent the type:
{
"$type": "department",
"name": "Scranton Branch",
{
"$type": "employee",
"name": "Michael Scott",
"title": "Regional Manager",
"$reports": [
{
"$type": "department",
"name": "Sales",
"$reports": {
"$type": "employee",
"name": "Dwight Schrute",
"title": "Assistant to the Regional Manager"
},
{
"$type": "employee",
"name": "Jim Halpert",
"title": "Head of Sales",
"$reports": [
{
"$type": "employee",
"name": "Andy Bernard",
"title": "Sales Rep"
},
{
"$type": "employee",
"name": "Phyllis Lapin",
"title": "Sales Rep"
}
]
},
},
{
"$type": "employee",
"name": "Pam Beesly",
"title": "Office Administrator"
}
]
}
}
Now it’s JSON’s turn to be bloated and hard-to-read. Meanwhile, the XML version represents the tree data succinctly without obscuring the underlying structure.
These two examples highlight the relative strengths and weaknesses of JSON and XML when representing different types of data:
JSON excels at representing a collection of homogenous objects, where object properties can be composite data types
XML excels at representing trees with heterogeneous objects, where object properties are simple data types
UI Layouts are trees
Hyperview’s goal is to bring a web-like development experience to mobile:
On the web, a server responds to an HTTP request with HTML/CSS to render a web page.
In Hyperview, a server responds to an HTTP request with a response to render a mobile app screen.
In order to fill the role of HTML/CSS for mobile apps, Hyperview’s file format must be able to define the layout and structure of an app screen’s UI.
And component trees are the best way to represent UI layouts. Every major UI framework out there uses a component tree. Xcode even offers an exploded 3D view that really highlights the underlying tree structure of a screen: each component has a parent component, and everything rolls up to a shared root component.
3D view of the component tree in the Instawork app
Trees are a powerful representation for UI layouts. They naturally provide component groupings, allowing designers and developers to use higher-level abstractions. When we need to hide, show, or animate a section of the screen, we don’t need to change the state of each component in the section. Rather, we can change the state of the single parent component that contains every UI element of the section. When modifying a component, we only need to worry about what’s in its subtree, and not what’s happening at higher levels.
XML for UI Layouts
HTML, Android, React, and Hyperview all use XML syntax for UI layouts
UI layouts are represented as component trees. And XML is ideal for representing tree structures. It’s a match made in heaven! In fact, the most popular UI frameworks in the world (HTML and Android) use XML syntax to define layouts. Still not convinced? Take a look at React, the popular JS library designed around composing UI components. If there was ever a library to embrace JSON for defining UI, it should be React, right? But the React website actually recommends defining component UI using JSX, an XML-like format. Even though using JSX requires learning a new non-JS syntax and adding a transpiling step to the build process, the library authors feel it’s worth the pain in order to use XML!
As noted at the beginning, each data format comes with certain tradeoffs. Overall, the benefits of XML for Hyperview outweigh the downsides, we still need to handle those rough spots. In particular, we noted that XML element attributes cannot natively represent lists of data. This case occurs in Hyperview with how we apply styles to elements. Due to this limitation of XML, styles are represented as space-separated ids, and the ids cannot contain spaces. Luckily, this limitation matches the behavior of the class attribute in HTML, so the approach is at least familiar to web developers.
Check outparts 2 and 3 of our exploration of XML and JSON in the context of Hyperview. Part 2 covers the extensibility of JSON and XML, while Part 3 will compare the developer experience of both formats. | https://engineering.instawork.com/when-xml-beats-json-ui-layouts-53c7f1d3fdb7 | ['Adam Stepinski'] | 2019-02-19 17:39:10.460000+00:00 | ['Xml', 'Mobile', 'JavaScript', 'Json', 'Frontend Development'] |
5 Ways to Turn Negative Habits into Positive Language-Learning Opportunities | Too many people believe learning a language is about sitting down to study lists of vocabulary, grammar, and tables of conjugation. It can be sometimes, but that’s not it.
Learning a language is about living it. You need to use it to create context and erase the feeling of “foreign-ness” it first has. This means you must make the language a part of your life. A regular one. Just like you’re using your native language daily.
We all have certain bad habits. But what if you could use some of them to transform them into learning opportunities? What if you didn’t have to become a perfect human being to learn a language? I’ve got good news. You, indeed, don’t have to become one.
Watch Netflix With Subtitles
Netflix may be the worst gift for those who plan on being productive. Start one episode of a show and, before you know it, five hours have passed. It may also be the best gift that ever existed for language-learners.
Netflix has subtitles for almost every single video. Use them. Better still, use double subtitles with the Language Learning With Netflix extension. If you’re watching a movie in the language you’re learning, you can set the subtitles to both your target language and your native language.
Even when there aren’t subtitles for your target language, set double subtitles to see a language you think you could be interested in. Even better if the movie itself is in that exotic language. This will tickle your curiosity. It can then have two results:
You’ll want to start learning more about this new language
You’ll be motivated to go learn your original target language, without really knowing why you do.
Both are fine. What matters is that you become even more entranced by language-learning.
(Re-)Play Video Games
I spent 250 hours on Zelda: Breath of the Wild and more than 750 hours on Super Smash Bros Ultimate. That’s just a small glimpse into my geekiness. I love video games and sometimes forget to stop.
Luckily, nowadays, you can change the language of display for pretty much any video game. If you’re learning one of the “main” languages (like ones from Europe or East Asia), almost all games allow changing to them.
If you’re only a beginner in the language and you’re playing an adventure game, try changing the audio to the language you learn and keep the written text in a language you understand. Then, play the game again completely in the language. You’ll struggle but you’ll already know what to do. This will allow you to understand more based on the context. You’ll also remember more.
If you’ve already been learning the language for some time, give yourself a challenge and play it in your target language from the beginning. Take your time and only look up words that seem important or appear a lot. By the time you finish the game, you’ll have improved more than you could have imagined.
Master Cigarette Breaks
If you’re a smoker, you’re bound to be alone for a few minutes, having a cigarette, at least a few times a day. If you’re a heavy smoker, you’ll spend more than 30 minutes alone smoking.
What if, instead of scrolling through Instagram or watching YouTube videos, you were learning words or expressions in your target language? That’s what Anki, a flashcard Spaced-Repetition Software, can do for you.
Anki brings back flashcards just when your brain is about to forget their content. Depending on the size of your deck — or how many you have — one smoke break could be enough to handle it all. As time passes, though, it’ll take a bit more time, thus filling more cigarette breaks.
I’ve been doing this for ten years and this may have been the reason I improved in all my languages. I’m not proud I smoke, but I am proud I’ve used this bad habit to learn more. You could too.
Change Your Social Media Language
If you’re a heavy social media user — who isn’t really? — then this tip might be for you. Switch all your social media platforms to the language you are learning.
Let’s be honest, you barely need to read the interface anymore anyway. After changing the language, your eyes will notice the new language. You had to search how to comment years ago, now you can look at the cell directly and see how it’s said in the language. A few weeks in, you won’t even remember you changed the display language.
You can even start following more people or pages in your target language. That will give you even more opportunities to see the language and potentially interact with it. Follow things that concern your other hobbies and you’ll even be excited!
Polyglot tip: If you learn more than one language — or plan to — set each social media platform to a different language.
Learn Vocabulary With Coffee
If you drink a lot of coffee, you could associate your coffee to expanding your vocabulary. Robin MacPherson always takes a coffee while he learns languages. You can too.
Depending on the time of the day you take your coffee, it could even enhance your memory performance, according to a study published in Frontiers in Psychology.
If you’ve already reached a level high enough to read books — or even graded readers, — associate drinking coffee to improving your language through reading. Make your coffee taste even better by feeding your brain too.
I often drink my morning coffee while reading an article or two in one of the languages I learn. It’s a simple habit. And it’s not like I’ll stop drinking coffee anytime soon so I can be sure I won’t give up. | https://medium.com/skilluped/how-to-turn-negative-habits-into-positive-language-learning-opportunities-95cae1e8240b | ['Mathias Barra'] | 2020-12-10 19:02:07.073000+00:00 | ['Inspiration', 'Language', 'Learning', 'Education', 'Habits'] |
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