title
stringlengths 1
200
⌀ | text
stringlengths 10
100k
| url
stringlengths 32
885
| authors
stringlengths 2
392
| timestamp
stringlengths 19
32
⌀ | tags
stringlengths 6
263
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
HAVE YOU BEEN SEARCHING FOR A WAY TO JOIN A SECRET OCCULT AND BECOME SUPPER RICH AND ALSO BE NOTIFY BY EVERYONE AROUND YOU,OR IF YOU ARE SEEKING FOR PROTECTION, JOIN THE GREAT OZUMBA BROTHERHOOD AND A | HAVE YOU BEEN SEARCHING FOR A WAY TO JOIN A SECRET OCCULT AND BECOME SUPPER RICH AND ALSO BE NOTIFY BY EVERYONE AROUND YOU,OR IF YOU ARE SEEKING FOR PROTECTION, JOIN THE GREAT OZUMBA BROTHERHOOD AND ALL YOUR HEARTH DESIRES SHALL BE GRANTED. CALLUS WITH +2347014053743 OR YOU CAN ALSO EMAIL US WITH [email protected] masterjohn Dec 9, 2020·2 min read
DO YOU WANT TO JOIN OCCULT TO BE NATURALLY RICH JOIN MONEY RITUAL OCCULT FOR WEALTH AND FAME JOIN OCCULTIC MEMBERS TO MAKE MONEY JOIN SECRET OCCULT KINGDOM TO BE RICH AND POWERFUL HOW TO JOIN OCCULT FOR INSTANT RICHES HOW TO JOIN SECRET SOCIETY TO BE RICH WITHOUT KILLINGS YOU WANT TO JOIN MONEY MAKING OCCULT FOR FINANCIAL SUPPORT OR FINANCIAL FREEDOM TO BE FREE FROM POVERTY TODAY AND BECOME RICH CONTACT THE TEMPLE NOW WITH +2347014053743
DON’T THINK THAT ALL YOUR HOPE ARE LOST IN THIS WORLD YOU STILL HAVE THE ABILITY TO MAKE A GOOD LIVING BY JOINING MONEY RITUAL SECRET OCCULT THAT WILL MAKE YOU VERY RICH WITHOUT KILLING ANY HUMAN BEING TAKE THIS DECISION TODAY AND CHANGE YOUR WORLD TO A BETTER ONE WE THE GREAT OZUMBA BROTHERHOOD OCCULT MEMBERS ARE READY TO HELP YOU AS LONG AS YOU ACCEPT TO MAKE A RITUAL SACRIFICE TO OUR LORD SPIRITUAL TO BECOME ONE OF US THEN YOU ARE READY TO BOOST YOUR CAREER AND BE A GREAT MAN WITHOUT BEING AFRAID OF ANY LIVING THINGS IN THIS WORD JOIN US TODAY AND FULFILL YOUR DREAM CONTACT THE WISE ONE WITH +2347014053743. | https://medium.com/@occultozumba1291/have-you-been-searching-for-a-way-to-join-a-secret-occult-and-become-supper-rich-and-also-be-a3ff4fdbf96 | [] | 2020-12-09 19:11:45.751000+00:00 | ['Fame', 'Money', 'Protectio N', 'Connection', 'Powers'] |
How to Build an Event-Driven ASP.NET Core Microservice Architecture | 1. Create the .NET Core Microservices
In the first part of this guide, you will create the User and Post Microservice. You will add the Entities and basic Web APIs. The entities will be stored and retrieved via Entity Framework from Sqlite DBs. Optionally you can test the User Microservice with the Swagger UI in the browser.
Let’s get started.
Install Visual Studio Community (it’s free) with the ASP.NET and web development workload.
Create a solution and add the two ASP.NET Core 5 Web API projects “UserService” and “PostService”. Disable HTTPS and activate OpenAPI Support.
For both projects install the following NuGet packages:
Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Tools
Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Sqlite
Newtonsoft.Json
RabbitMQ.Client
Implement the UserService
Create the User Entity:
Create the UserServiceContext:
Edit Startup.cs to configure the UserServiceContext to use Sqlite and call Database.EnsureCreated() to make sure the database contains the entity schema:
Create the UserController (It implements only the methods necessary for this demo):
Debug the UserService project and it will start your browser. You can use the swagger UI to test if creating and reading users is working:
Implement the PostService
Create the User and Post entities:
Create the PostServiceContext:
Edit startup.cs to configure the UserServiceContext to use Sqlite and call Database.EnsureCreated() to make sure the database contains the entity schema:
Create the PostController:
Currently, you can’t insert posts, because there are no users in the PostService database.
2. Use RabbitMQ and Configure Exchanges and Pipelines
In the second part of this guide, you will get RabbitMQ running. Then you will use the RabbitMQ admin web UI to configure the exchanges and pipelines for the application. Optionally you can use the admin UI to send messages to RabbitMQ.
This graphic shows how the UserService publishes messages to RabbitMQ and the PostService and a potential other service consume those messages:
The easiest way to get RabbitMQ running is to install Docker Desktop. Then issue the following command (in one line in a console window) to start a RabbitMQ container with admin UI :
C:\dev>docker run -d -p 15672:15672 -p 5672:5672 --hostname my-rabbit --name some-rabbit rabbitmq:3-management
Open your browser on port 15672 and log in with the username “guest” and the password “guest”. Use the web UI to create an Exchange with the name “user” of type “Fanout” and two queues “user.postservice” and “user.otherservice”.
It is important to use the type “Fanout” so that the exchange copies the message to all connected queues.
You can also use the web UI to publish messages to the exchange and see how they get queued: | https://itnext.io/how-to-build-an-event-driven-asp-net-core-microservice-architecture-e0ef2976f33f | ['Christian Zink'] | 2021-06-14 21:07:18.611000+00:00 | ['C Sharp Programming', 'Microservices', 'Rabbitmq', 'Software Architecture', 'Aspnetcore'] |
How to whitewash tree trunk in Spring | How to whitewash tree trunk in Spring
Our garden is a living organism that also needs to be protected from adverse external influences. All spring work in the garden is done to protect it, and this includes pruning, spraying, feeding, watering, and other activities.
The list of protection works also includes the spring painting of the central trunk and skeletal branches of the fruit trees, and this article will describe how to do this for the whitewash tree trunk.
Whitewashing protects fruit trees: preventing excessive spring heat and sunburn (not the leaves that have not yet grown) helps to eliminate a significant portion of the pests and diseases that protect the offspring for a successful winter.
Keeping the tree’s external mulch in a healthy state is an opportunity to prolong its fruiting period, get rid of pesticide treatments, and obtain an ecologically clean harvest. Timely and proper whitewashing will protect plants from rodent damage, bark cracking, and delayed flowering for a certain period of time, rather than saving them from spring frosts and other negative effects.
HOW MUCH WHITEWASHING DOES A GARDEN NEED?
Many gardeners use whitewashing as a decorative act, saving it for the May holidays. At the same time, it is a very important maintenance procedure that should be done several times a year for the continued health of the trees. Based on years of experience, it is necessary to whitewash the trees three times a year. Twice is enough if a special long-lasting whitening agent is used.
1. The main whitewashing is considered to be autumn whitewashing, which is carried out after the leaves fall off and a steady cold snap occurs (around October-November).
2. The whitewashing is repeated in spring, before the buds bloom, or rather — before the stable vernal equinox (second half of February — March, in colder regions — until mid-April).
3. The third summer whitewashing is considered additional and is performed much less often, although it is necessary as a protective measure against pests (egg-laying, larvae emergence) and diseases (growth of mycelium in bark cracks, invasion of winter spores).
DO TREES NEED WHITEWASHING IN THE SPRING?
In spring, as the sunny days begin, the dark trunks and scaffolded branches are heated to 46–53°F (8–12°C), the temperature at which the sap begins to flow. Do you remember, “… Here comes the spring rumble, here comes the spring buzz”?
Nighttime temperatures drop to 32°F (0°C), causing the sap to freeze. By the laws of physics, the sap expands, tearing the internal tissues and causing cracks in the bark, especially in young trees.
White whitewashing reflects sunlight well and reduces the heated temperature. Trees now continue not in their natural state but are forced to rest (no sap flow). They start vegetating and flowering later, which saves not only the health of the trees but also the harvest.
For any reason you miss February-March, it is not too late to whitewash the trees in the first half of April.
PREPARING FOR FRUIT TREE WHITEWASHING
Often, you can see how sentimental gardeners whitewash tree holes without preliminary preparation. Following the brush, the dry bark comes off, and the cracks remain unbroken, but from a distance, it looks beautiful. This whitewashing will only bring harm to the garden. All preparations and whitewashing itself should be done only in dry weather.
A. Preparing fruit trees for whitewashing
Clean debris from the soil in the canopy area.
1. Cover the soil with a film under the canopy so that diseased bark, moss, lichens, and winter pests do not enter the soil.
2. Use a wooden (or plastic) scraper to clean old bark, moss, and lichen from the trunk and skeleton; do not work with metal tools (other than a saw) to avoid injury to the wood.
3. If the bark is tight against the trunk, deep cracks are clearly visible, it is necessary to clean the cracks with a stick with a rounded or curved end, covered with garden varnish, paste, or other ingredients.
4. Carefully inspect the trunk, all skeletal branches, and repair hollows and cracks everywhere, and prune the crown as necessary.
5. Burn aluminum foil waste away from the garden.
After cleaning trunks and branches, disinfect the cleaned surfaces. Disinfect only when the weather is dry. If it rains after the treatment, repeat the treatment.
Disinfection is carried out by spraying with a fine-mesh sprayer. This is a better option than whitewashing with disinfectant, which rolls off the smooth bark and may not reach the cracks.
B. Solutions for disinfection
A solution of copper or iron alum is the best known and acceptable to all gardeners. Prepare a 3–5% solution at a rate of 300–500 grams of drug per 2.5 Gal (10 liters) of water. The cup of roots is dissolved in a small amount of hot water and then added to the desired volume.
The solution is sprayed on the trunk and skeletal branches of the tree. If the tree is “sleeping”, the same solution can treat the entire crown. If the buds are swollen, the crown is treated with a 2% solution to avoid burning the asexually reproducing buds.
Treatments with iron or copper sulfate should be repeated only after 4–5 years, as the preparation will gradually be washed into the soil and accumulate there, causing soil poisoning and plant death.
You can use nitrofen, a copper sulfate analogue instead of copper sulfate for disinfection. Pesticides are only used in very neglected gardens because the concentration of copper sulfate in the drug is so high that when washed into the soil, it has significant negative effects on the organism, including beneficial ones.
A 3% Bordeaux mixture can be used instead of copper sulfate and nitrobenzene.
Fungicide Abiga-Pik can also be used to treat tree holes and bracket branches. The preparations are dissolved in water and used to treat trees as recommended. Their application during this period is not harmful to future harvests.
Some gardeners use common diesel fuel for disinfection. Pure petroleum products should not be used. It is necessary to prepare a less concentrated solution of 9 parts of diesel fuel with 10 parts of water and 0.5–1.0 parts of soap. The combination is mixed thoroughly and sprayed with a pump on the trunk and skeletal branches. It was left for 2–3 days, and then whitewashing was performed.
To disinfect tree holes and trellis branches not only against insect pests but also against fungal diseases, mosses, and lichens, a highly concentrated mineral salt composition can be used.
Dissolve in 2.5 Gal (10 Lb) of water one of these components.
1. 2.2 Lb (1 kg) of table salt.
2. 600 g of urea.
3. 650 g of nitroglycerin or nitroglycerin.
4. 550 g of potassium carbonate.
5. 350 grams of potassium chloride.
These salts can be added directly to the lime solution, combining 2 operations when whitewashing trees.
A good homemade disinfectant solution can be made by soaking in wood ash. To prepare the solution, mix 4.4–6.6 Lb (2–3 kg) of ash with 1.3 Gal (5 L) of water, bring to a boil and leave to cool. The cold solution is filtered, 50 g of dissolved laundry soap is added to make the solution adhere better to the bark, and water is added to 2.5 Gal (10 Lb). Treat the trees with the prepared solution.
Please note! Switch to whitewashing after a period of 1–3 days so that the disinfectant can soak into the bark.
All work related to the disinfection of garden plants with highly concentrated toxic agents must be carried out in accordance with all personal protective measures.
How to do this for the whitewash tree trunk
WHITEWASHING THE TREES IN THE GARDEN
A. At what age should I start whitewashing the trees in my garden?
A question often faced by beginning gardeners is at what age young trees should be whitewashed. The bark of young seedlings is very fragile and thin, and the corrosive nature of highly concentrated disinfectants and whitewashing agents can cause the bark of young seedlings to burn and crack, just like the rays of the sun.
All garden-grown plants should be whitewashed. But for seedlings and trees, prepare a less concentrated solution. In a separate bucket, the lotion prepared for whitewashing is diluted two times with water. Instead of lime whitewashing young trees, you can use water emulsion paint from “Garden Works.” Whitewashing young trees will save the gardener from having to do additional work to protect the trunk from the sun’s scorching rays that destroy the integrity of the thin bark.
B. Preparation of whitewashing solution
The whitewashing mortar is based on 3 basic ingredients to which various additives are added
1. white pigment (lime, chalk, water emulsion, or water-dispersible paint)
2. insecticide or fungicide, any other agent that destroys the infection is possible.
3. Any adhesive substrate that does not interfere with the respiration of the bark.
Fillers in the form of clay or manure can be added to the base mortar.
The mortar must contain an adhesive, or the first rain will wash away the protective layer, and all the work will have to be done again. Household soaps, PVA glue, preparations available in specialized stores are used as binders in independently prepared lime mortars.
C. Lime mortar
On the market, lime is sold in the form of solid material, i.e., ablated lime dough.
Experienced gardeners prefer to quench the lime themselves to obtain a fresh starting material. It is most effective in fighting pests, fungi, lichens, and mosses.
To prepare the lime dough, hard lime is diluted in a ratio of 1:1–1.5 parts of water.
To make lime milk, mix 1 part lime with 3 parts water.
Remember! Lime boils when quenched and produces boiling hot water droplets. Therefore, wear protective clothing and goggles when extinguishing the lime. The boiling process lasts for about 20–30 minutes with constant stirring.
Fresh slaked lime can be kept for 7 to 30 days. Fresh slaked lime is very good for whitewashing trunk surfaces.
The concentration of the lime solution is chosen randomly, but the milk suspension (emulsion) should leave clear dense white traces on the surface of the wood. On average, to obtain a whitewashing mortar of 2–2.5 Gal (8–10 L), dilute 2.2–3.3 Lb (1–1.5 kg) of mud into 2–2.5 Gal (8–10 L) of water. Add the necessary ingredients to the prepared lime mortar.
D. Composition of self-prepared whitewashing mortar
All recommended whitewashing compositions are prepared on the basis of 2.5 Gal (10 Lb) of water.
1. 5.5 Lb (2.5 kg) of slaked lime, 200–300 g of copper sulfate, 50 g of laundry soap.
2. 3.3–4.4 Lb (1.5–2 kg) quicklime, 2.2 Lb (1 kg) clay, 2.2 Lb (1 kg) cow dung, 50 g laundry soap.
3. 200–250 g of copper or iron sulphate is added to composition 2.
4. 4.4 Lb (2 kg) quicklime, 400 g copper sulfate, 400 g casein gum.
5. Mineral salts can be added to all previous solutions (refer to article 6).
6. Some gardeners add nitrocellulose, carbendazim, and other insecticides and fungicides directly to the whitewash solution instead of disinfecting it.
E. Industrially Produced Whitewashing Solutions
Specialty stores and other retail outlets offer buyers ready-made garden whitewashing solutions. They contain all the necessary ingredients, including disinfectants and adhesives.
The most popular of the ready-made combinations are garden whitewashing “Gardener”, “water-dispersible coatings for garden trees”. They contain all the necessary ingredients to keep on whitewashing the trees for 1–2 years. It is recommended to use whitewashing agents at an ambient temperature of 41–44 °F (5–7 °C).
The most stable are acrylic compositions: GreenSquare acrylic whitewashing, acrylic coatings for garden trees, and others. The life span of garden acrylics is close to 3 years. However, these compositions limit the entry of air into the surface of whitewashing.
The supply of ready-made whitewashing compositions in stores is increasing every year, and it is possible to prepare your own whitewashing or to buy ready-made whitewashing. The choice is up to the owner.
RULES OF FRUIT TREE WHITEWASHING
1. The layer of whitewashing on the trunk and scaffold branches should have a thickness of up to 2 mm. As a rule, 2 layers are applied. The second one is applied after the previous one is dry.
2. The mortar should be uniform and have the consistency of sour cream so that it does not run down the trunk to the ground.
3. Use a wide, soft brush whitewashing from top to bottom to make sure you don’t miss any cracks or scratches in the bark.
4. It is more practical to use a paint gun.
5. trunk painting should be completed to a depth of 1.5–2.5inch (4–7cm), for which the bottom of the trunk should be off the ground. after whitewashing, put the strata back in place.
6. The top whitewashing layer should be white to better reflect the sunlight.
7. For mature trees, whitewashing the entire trunk and 70–80inch (1.8–2m) high 1/3 of the skeletal branches is considered sufficient. Branches covered with lichen or moss, which were previously cleaned out, especially need whitewashing.
8. According to some gardeners, young seedlings will turn completely white. Usually, the trunk and 1/3 of the future skeleton branches turn white.
The owner of the garden has the right to choose the type of whitewashing himself. There is no doubt that whitewashing has a positive effect on garden plants, but there is only one condition: whitewashing must be a tree care system.
#ThumbGarden #GardeningTips #Whitewash #HowToGrow #BordeauxMixture #Toxins #Tips #Why #What #Shrubs #Trees #Evergreens #Garden #LargeGarden #MediumGarden #SmallGarden #OutdoorGarden #PlantCare #Inspired #Spring
Author: Ms.Geneva
Link: https://www.thumbgarden.com/how-to-whitewash-tree-trunk/
Source: ThumbGarden
The copyright belongs to the author. For commercial reprints, please contact the author for authorization, and for non-commercial reprints, please indicate the source. | https://medium.com/@thumbgarden/how-to-whitewash-tree-trunk-in-spring-b30b2f2f7ea5 | [] | 2021-07-06 07:26:11.789000+00:00 | ['Trees', 'Gardening Tips', 'Garden', 'Whitewash', 'Thumbgarden'] |
Ocean | Haiku is a form of poetry usually inspired by nature, which embraces simplicity. We invite all poetry lovers to have a go at composing Haiku. Be warned. You could become addicted.
Follow | https://medium.com/house-of-haiku/ocean-235d3df1d403 | ['Sean Zhai'] | 2020-12-19 14:51:41.231000+00:00 | ['Self', 'Sports', 'Oceans', 'Poetry', 'Art'] |
GitOps implementation | GitOps: Straight from the book “is to maintain a single source of truth i.e. your git repository. If you want to deploy a new application or update an existing one, you only need to update the repository — the automated process handles everything else. It’s like having cruise control for managing your applications in production.”
Tech stack used to implement GitOps: AWS EKS, ECR, Github, Jenkins for CICD, Helm and ArgoCD
GitOps Flow:
Developer pushes code to the application GitHub repo, after following proper PR process to test the quality of PR. Jenkins pipeline is triggered on poll SCM, and goes thru the Continous integration stages viz git checkout, SAST, and then we build and tag the image. Tagged image is pushed to AWS ECR, where we run image vulnerability scan, based on the scan results Jenkins pipeline proceeds ahead or exits Post image scan stage, we take the checkout of the confgi GitHub repo, and we update the image tag in Helm values file and push the updated file back to GitHub repo. There is one more way of updating Helm charts, if there is a requirement to update any other K8s manifest like configmap/deployments etc, the update is done by the Ops team and the changes are pushed to config Github repo post PR process. ArgoCD is kubernetes native tool and is present inside our EKS cluster in its own namespace, and it has the capability to deploy to other namespaces, it works on the pull based mechanism and it is integrated with config Github repo. We use argocd to create all our applications, and to on board any new application, we make changes to argocd helm chart. Whenever there is an update on the config Github repo, argocd detects it and syncs/creates applications on AWS EKS cluster. Post application create/update/delete process, argocd notification notifies the stakeholders over slack channel
Thank you!! | https://medium.com/@pavan-ceemala/gitops-implementation-b60402042692 | ['Pavan Kumar Ceemala'] | 2021-09-01 13:13:30.614000+00:00 | ['Jenkins', 'Gitops', 'Argocd', 'Eks'] |
Stop ‘delivering’ software with Agile — it doesn’t work | When either of these 2 things happen, maybe your best talent starts to leave the organisation. Maybe your product fails to create change for its customers and you stop growing/start shrinking. Maybe your org decides that this ‘Agile’ thing isn’t really for them and moves back to Waterfall.
Agile fails because its our belief that it is a software delivery methodology.
So how can we make Agile create successful change
Notice some subtlety there?
Create successful change
Agile is not about delivering software. It isn’t a methodology with a rule book that we can follow in order to push my products forwards.
Instead — Agile is a Philosophy about enabling positive customer change that drives business value.
Lets start by recapping the core values of the Agile Manifesto:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
Lets break this down and look at each individual section:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
In Agile — we need to value our individuals and the interactions over our processes and tools that we’ve brought in. I’ve written before about this and it’s been my most successful Medium article so far:
We also need to stop our processes holding us back too. Just because what we’re doing isn’t strictly by a book someone has on their desk — it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try it to see if it works for us. I say this a lot but:
Every business is different and every team in every business is different. One size doesn’t fit all.
Working software over comprehensive documentation
This value means we focus on deliver actual working software out to our users vs creating humungous documentation.
This doesn’t mean that we don’t document — which is how some teams see it.
Instead we document what we’re doing and what we have learnt, whilst maintaining a focus be on actually shipping beneficial change out to our user base. I shouldn’t need to produce 50 pages on the ‘what’ we are embarking on building before I start to understand how it affects our users.
The second part to the working software part of this value is that we need to focus on the fact that it ‘works’. And this is in 2 elements:
1 - Users can do what they need to do in it
Is it usable, does it act and behave in a way that users expect it to?
2- Its relatively bug free that users can complete their tasks with it
Are users able to do what they need to do without any hinderance?
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Your users are important. There’s quite possibly a million+ articles on Medium alone about why you should listen to your users and build your Products based off what they’re telling you.
You need to work with your users to understand that you’re building the right thing for them. This isn’t Field of Dreams.
Nope, nope, nope
Just because you build something doesn’t meant they’ll use it.
If you build the right thing for your users — ultimately the change you deliver will have more positive outcomes for your business.
Ultimately who is paying your wages? Your users — so listen to them.
Responding to change over following a plan
We’ve all seen this diagram:
This is often used to indicate that we should learn as we build and I whole-heartedly agree with that — but what a lot of people don’t consider is that maybe we should have stopped at the bicycle.
If our goal was to enable people to get from A to B, perhaps the bicycle is the best possible method. Maybe we’d love to have a car but right now its not the thing we should be spending the time on. Maybe building the engine adds another £500k to the build cost and thats just not viable right now.
In the Agile manifesto we respond to change by paying attention to whats happening with our Products and how our users are interacting with them.
This value in the manifesto is not used as a get out clause for stakeholders to constantly change direction on you — no matter what some might think.
Building a culture around agility
The first and foremost important thing about building a culture around agility is for us to stop thinking about delivering software with it.
We need to focus on delivering beneficial change to our users.
There isn’t a perfect way to do Agile. I must have worked with 30+ teams in my career and every single one of them has done Agile in a different way — and thats absolutely fine.
But if you follow these steps — you can start to create more agility for your customer outcomes.
1: Create individual interactions within your team
Use the standups, planning sessions and retrospectives as a opportunity to actual discuss how you’re doing against your goals as a team of people.
Focus on building your team vs it being a group of people working in a similar area. Christina Wodtke has just given a great talk on this at Mind the Product: https://www.mindtheproduct.com/2018/07/reboot-your-team-by-christina-wodtke/
2. Start figuring out how to build up autonomy and trust for your team
Start acting as a single unit towards an outcome. Report on how you’re doing against that outcome and align your outcomes towards company goals.
If the most important thing for your company right now is to stop customer churn, communicate on how your changes are affecting that.
If you’re having a positive impact — you will win trust and autonomy to keep doing a good job.
If you’re not having a positive impact — it forces the question about what it is you’re focusing on and why. This is good and again will win trust for the team.
3. Involve your users frequently
Encourage your whole team to go sit in the contact centre and listen to calls. Get them to dive into your UX research tools and read the customer statements. Invite them along to guerrilla user testing in your local cafe. Everyone should be involved with seeing their users of their products interact with them.
There’s a big movement out at the moment to create ‘user fridays’ where every Friday users are brought in and the team works with them. This is an idealistic view and its great if you can do it — but start small with the resources you have. The main point i’m making here is that its not just up to one person on the team to understand how the changes the team are producing are affecting the users.
4. Communicate, communicate and communicate
Sharing is caring. Always talk about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, both internally within the team and externally:
Internally within the team
Communicate on what it is you’re focusing on and why at the moment. If we need to focus on the conversion rate within our checkout — why are we doing that?
Communicate to the team why fixing that bit of tech debt just doesn’t quite make sense right now.
Communicate on whats working and not working for the team — has someone done a stellar job this week and needs recognition.
Communicate on what affect the changes the team have worked on have done to the user base.
Externally to the business
Communicate on what you’ve been working on and why you’ve been working in it.
If the team had to spend 5 days ironing our trunk problems after a branch merge — communicate on that.
Maybe you had to down tools for a sprint just to clean the bugs up in your backlog as it had got unruly.
Most importantly — communicate on the positive impact that your changes have driven along with the ones that delivered no value. When you communicate on the ones that didn’t behave as expected — tell people what you’ve learn from it.
5. Build learning and experimentation with your methods into your Agile process.
Agile encourages us to constantly learn — but we should also be actively encouraged to experiment with how we are going about things. Sometimes we’ll bring something in and it won’t work — but other times what we suggest will massively benefit how we’re doing thing.
6. Finally — Focus on delivering change and not software.
Measure your success on the outcome that your changes are having for your customers and not on the dates you ship out your software.
The org won’t care that you delivered something on the 1st of March if it did nothing to improve your offering for your customers.
By starting to follow these 6 tips you’ll slowly but firmly start to actually act more Agile. It’ll take time, but keep investment in your practices. If you ever reach 'nirvana' — start asking yourself bigger questions. There’s always room for improvement. | https://uxdesign.cc/stop-delivering-software-with-agile-it-doesn-t-work-edccea3ab5d3 | ['James Whitman'] | 2018-09-05 15:20:12.510000+00:00 | ['Agile', 'Product Management', 'Agile Methodology', 'Product', 'Technology'] |
Asynchronous vs Synchronous Programming in JavaScript | Asynchronous vs Synchronous Programming in JavaScript
JavaScript break Promises & keep Callbacks
Introduction
JavaScript gets executed by a single thread. According to this, it is advisable to avoid long-lasting operations in the first place. What we are going to do if callbacks are omnipresent?
Whenever it comes to I/O-operations, like a network or a file system, then this circumstance can get quite heavy. Fortunately, there are two kinds of callbacks in JavaScript. Want to take a really deep dive into this? Havoc’s Blog [1] did a pretty detailed investigation about that. The base difference between synchronous and asynchronous callbacks is: Synchronous callbacks are getting executed in the calling's context method, whereas asynchronous not.
A good example is to flatten an array of arrays. When this function gets executed, the passed-in parameter will be reduced to get rid of the multiple arrays inside an array and convert it into a single flattened one.
When this would be asynchronous, the function could not return to the assignment of the variable flat. It has to be synchronous to do so and is a good example for the field of application of a synchronous callback and why they are used at all.
Synchronous and asynchronous Callbacks
When there are reasons to use a synchronous callback, then there are also reasons for an asynchronous callback. Whenever the program needs external resources and has to wait for them, for example, connections being established, files are going to be downloaded, etc.
The following example will request a status code and a status message from the famous search engine Google and print it to the console. The first message that is going to be printed out is the last line of this short script: Requesting… followed by 200 and OK. This example mirrors the non-blocking and asynchronous call to I/O-Resources, propagated by JavaScript.
Crucial to the consistency and dependability of an API is its behavior. It has to be consistent and never changing like functional programming is designed. Throwing in A as an input will always return a B as an output, nothing else. Converting this back to API: A function should always return a synchronous callback XOR (exclusive or) an asynchronous one. There should be no distinction between cases where the function itself returns sometimes a synchronous and other times an asynchronous callback. When you read Havoc’s Blog-Post about that one, you will find the line “Choose sync or async, but not both” and give a well-founded justification for that:
Because sync and async callbacks have different rules, they create different bugs. It’s very typical that the test suite only triggers the callback asynchronously, but then some less-common case in production runs it synchronously and breaks (Or vice versa). Requiring application developers to plan for and test both sync and async cases is just too hard, and it’s simple to solve in the library: If the callback must be deferred in any situation, always defer it. — Havoc’s Blog
Process.nextTick versus setImmediate
JavaScript offers two functions for server-side applications: process.nextTick and setImmediate. They seem to be interchangeable at first glance. You can read them both within their documentations: nextTick [2] & setImmediate [3].
For the code interpretation on the client-side, only setImmediate is available. Both expect a callback as a parameter and will execute this callback later. Based on the definition, it seems both are doing the same. Look at the following code.
Both show to do the same. But when you look under the hood, they are both clearly different. process.nextTick will delay the execution until a later date, but before Node.JS makes I/O accesses and gives the control back to the event loop.
Imagine you are calling process.nextTick recursively. Where will this end? It ends in another delay until they have accumulated and lets the event loop starving. Giving the child a name “event loop starvation” [6].
Node.js under the Hood by dev.to, Lucas Santos (All rights reserved)
SetImmediate, the name reveals it, does execute the callback function immediately. Excuse me, not immediately, but at the next round of the event loop. Almost immediately.
If you are a true sherlock, then you solved the riddle here and found out that, especially when calling the process.nextTick with recursion and used setImmediate in the code as well, not only the event loop is left to starve but setImmediate is also being held on. This example illustrates, how important it is to know exactly what is going on with the API you use.
Use the official documentation [2], [3] to inform yourself about the difference between these two in detail, when you plan to work with them.
The last bastion: Asynchronicity
In most cases, the conversion to an asynchronous function from a synchronous one is possible by taking the process.nextTick method. The following example states a mixed-method, working asynchronous and synchronous.
Changing the synchronous part to an asynchronous one will bring uniformity and consistency to this function, stating the principle of getting B as an output when putting in A into the function every time.
Would you like to get much more detailed information? View the blog post from Isaac Z. Schlueter [5].
Conclusion
We should build programming upon stability and consistency. Just because there are variables in the code, you don’t have to make the code itself a variable. A function call has to be reliable and not case dependant. Make your callbacks either pure synchronously or pure asynchronously to avoid inconsistency and built your API upon reliability. In case of doubt, convert your synchronous call into a synthetic asynchronous one.
Good for us, that Node.JS knows both of them: process.NextTick and setImmediate. | https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/javascript-break-promises-keep-callbacks-4dbf9cff3d9a | ['Arnold Abraham'] | 2020-12-10 09:10:55.330000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'JavaScript', 'Programming', 'Web Development', 'Coding'] |
NodeJS — Using ES Modules Instead of CommonJS | Interested? Here’s the easy approach to use that kind of code. I assume you already install NodeJS LTS version 14.
1. Init package.json
Make your own project folder to start using ES Modules in your code, name whatever you want, go inside that folder, and start type this command in your terminal or CMD.
npm init -y
The code above is for generating your entry point for your application. Here’s the example of the code when you first generate the first package.json.
Fresh Package JSON
So, to start using the ES Module to your app it’s quite simple, you just add this code to your package.json.
That’s it? yaa, you just add that "type": "module” and you ready to roll.
There are a couple of things to watch in here, read the next step.
2. Import Schema
The common way to import in ES Module is pretty simple, right? just like this example.
Common ES module import syntax
There’s nothing wrong with that code. But, when you use it in the NodeJS app, you must do this.
Node Es module import syntax
Yep, that’s right, you already notice the difference, in NodeJS you must type the file format to import in NodeJS. It’s kinda weird, but it’s the way to use it. Except, if you importing third-party modules, you don't need that file format.
NOTE: If you didn’t use import with the file format, you will get an error!
3. Exporting
The last thing I want to show you when you start using this ES Module in NodeJS is when using export, imagine if you have a folder called utils, in utils folder, there’s a lot of files you must to export to start using in another file, in this case, you want to make an index.js to start point to all file that you want to export. Make sense? If you don’t understand 😁, here’s the simple example code.
I have a utils folder, that contains one file.
exported functions in util folder
To make import simple, you want to make a file called index.js inside the utils folder, so when you want to get those functions, you just point to the folder and get whatever you want.
Here’s a very simple code.
export all things from the file
Okay, make sense right here? the point is, you want to get all exported function inside a file that you already make, to make import easier, you just point to the utils folder and start everything. But, you can’t write your code like this. It makes me confuse when start to work with ES Module in NodeJS 😂.
Not Work — Export all.
That code will not work if you use that. What’s the problem with it? is a quick guess… Yep, that’s right, you must still import the index.js file to work with! I mean, what?!😶
So for the code to work, just like this.
Export all that work
It’s made my back hurt when to start to search for this problem 😁, but there you go. And you can start working with that kind of export. | https://medium.com/dev-genius/nodejs-using-es-modules-instead-of-commonjs-9c6e801e7508 | ['Huda Prasetyo'] | 2020-11-07 08:20:22.135000+00:00 | ['Nodejs', 'JavaScript', 'Backend', 'Expressjs', 'API'] |
What’s next for space exploration | What’s next for space exploration
Pit stops on the moon, food smells in zero gravity, and other things to look forward to as more humans launch into orbit
By Josh Sullivan
The purpose of outer space exploration isn’t to ready humans for life on another planet — it’s to help improve life for humans on Earth.
That was the message from speakers at June’s JFK Space Summit, where dozens of technologists, astronauts, and entrepreneurs gathered at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.
“This is the planet that we have to save. This is the good planet in our solar system,” said Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, who dabbles in rocket ships in his spare time through his company Blue Origin. “We’ve sent robotic probes to all the planets now. This is the only good one.”
Bezos’ dream? Move all of the Earth’s polluting industries off the planet and “zone Earth as residential.” He imagines space manufacturing, too: microprocessors built off of the planet, and shipped back down to Earth.
That’s a process that likely won’t happen in his lifetime. But there’s plenty of space innovation coming sooner, from tourism to new space careers to food that feels far more enticing than astronaut ice cream. Here’s a sampling of what had people talking at the summit.
Shooting for the moon…or Mars
The future of space exploration seems to be routed in one of two directions: revisiting the moon, or landing humans on Mars. And if you’re Bezos, the moon is a perfect rest stop on the way to Mars.
The red planet is the most obvious place for a human colony, he and other speakers explained, since robots have been inhabiting the planet off and on since 1997. But many — Bezos included — insist on returning to the moon first, to learn more about it. Eventually, he argues, the moon could be used as the outer space version of a gas station: Astronauts could stop by on the way to Mars, stretch their legs and mine some needed resources, then continue on to their final destination.
An international space race
Space exploration has historically been a race between the Americans and the Russians. But today, other countries are getting into the business. One unlikely pioneer? Luxembourg, which recently became the first country to establish regulations on mining resources from other planets. In May, Luxembourg and the United States signed a treaty, pledging to cooperate on future space exploration regulations. Russian diplomats have made it known that they are interested in joining the treaty as well.
Meanwhile, China wants to be a space superpower. The European Union has allocated 16 billion euros for space programs. India is working toward its own moon landing, and Singapore has been trying to launch one of its citizens into space. New Zealand, too, has a budding space industry, built on its niche as a small, stable country with minimal air traffic — ideal for launching rockets.
Not your average tourists
It’s not just official astronauts who are heading into space. Space vacations are on the way: NASA just announced that it will open the International Space Station to tourism — for a hefty fee — in 2020. But while tourism can be the ultimate relaxation, space tourists will need to stay in top physical shape, at least if they want to be able to walk normally once they return to Earth. After all, it takes astronauts years to prepare to leave the planet, and if you don’t exercise regularly in space, you will lose bone and muscle density. And with a reduction in gravity comes added challenges, such as learning how to sleep without a pillow, or moving about the inside of a spacecraft.
The good news is, technology is in place to help humans adjust; in fact, some of today’s everyday essentials here on Earth came out of space exploration projects. Memory foam was first made to cushion potential hard landings on a return to the planet, and certain resistance-based workout machines were developed to help astronauts maintain bone density while floating in orbit. Some of the mind-blowing inventions developed now, for tourists rich enough to go into space, could become household items in the next 20 years.
Astronauts gotta eat
For too long, “space food” has conjured the image of freeze-dried ice cream, anti-gravity Skittles, and dehydrated sandwiches that give off a “Jetsons” vibe.
But space tourists will likely demand better, and scientists at the MIT Media Lab are working on space food that’s less space-y and more enjoyable, both for tomorrow’s tourists and today’s astronauts. That’s important work: Astronauts often lose their sense of appetite, and if they don’t eat enough, they could encounter health issues.
One challenge is the fact that, in a zero-gravity environment, food has no enticing smell. That’s why MIT’s Ani Liu has invented polymer beads that are able to deliver the scent of the food. Scientists have also developed a silicone bone that can be cooked into spaceship food, in an effort to prevent astronauts from getting bored with eating out of a package every day.
“Hopefully, we will have sushi on the moon,” Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata said.
All hands on deck
At one point during the summit, an audience member raised his hand and asked a pointed question: “What would you say to a child who wants to help in the space exploration process, but is bad at math and science?”
The short answer: Space needs all types of people, not just astronauts.
As more and more of humanity creeps into the universe, space-related careers will branch well beyond engineers and astronauts to incorporate different professions. At a base level, NASA, SpaceX, and other space powerhouses will need communications specialists and lawyers who specialize in — yes — space law. But it goes further than that. If one day, water is recovered from Mars, hydrologists will be called upon. When the International Space Station opens up to tourists, people involved in the hospitality industry will be crucial to making that happen.
Get excited
Do you remember a time when your elementary school class gathered around a television — perhaps wheeled into your classroom on a cart — to watch news coverage of a rocket launch?
Most of the astronauts, engineers, and scientists at the JFK summit could remember a pivotal moment that led them toward a career in space. Wakata said that even in Japan, the launch of a U.S. mission to the moon had young people excited about what was to come. But for now, there are no regular space shuttle missions — and the most likely place to see NASA’s logo is a fashion runway, a Target t-shirt, or a Vans shoe store.
So space exploration is looking for ways to regain kids’ attention. NASA has a website that allows you to track the International Space Station. And Draper Laboratories, a Massachusetts company that was heavily involved in the Apollo launches, has launched a website called “Hack the Moon. “ The site offers podcasts, stop-motion videos and forgotten pictures from the days of the original moon landing.
The goal? To inspire the next generation of space careers. Stories abound, these days, about ambitious college students who launch websites and apps out of their dorms. As more independent companies enter the space exploration market, speakers at the summit said, the barriers to entry for space-based entrepreneurship will drop.
Indeed, Bezos said part of Blue Origin’s mission is to create more sustainable space shuttles, whose parts can be reused and sold at a far lower cost — so that “one day, we will see the next Blue Origin made in a dorm room.” | https://medium.com/experience-magazine/whats-next-for-space-exploration-d550ef724111 | ['Experience Magazine'] | 2019-07-18 15:35:17.221000+00:00 | ['Food', 'Moon', 'Mars', 'Space', 'Exploration'] |
Do not fear musibah (pt 2) | بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
“And We will surely test you with something of fear and hunger and a loss of wealth and lives and fruits, but give good tidings to the patient, Who, when disaster strikes them, say, ‘Indeed we belong to Allah, and indeed to Him we will return’.” [Al Baqara: 155–156]
These ayaat contain a gift for the sabiroon. In Quran when Allah tells “Say” it means it is a command for Rasulullah SAW himself. So here Allah is telling Rasulullah SAW to give glad tidings to the sabiroon. And Rasulullah SAW is going to congratulate us personally on the day of Qiyamah if we are the patient ones.
But look at the language of Allah! Allah congratulates those who made sabr. We make sabr when something unpleasant happens. Like a disaster or a calamity struck, or something didn’t go according to the plan. We do not have to make sabr or be patient when the going is good.
Now imagine to yourself that one of us is in a situation where he/she needs to make sabr. We do not go and congratulate them. We congratulate someone when it’s a happy occasion, when things went according to plan. When things work out then you congratulate each other.
So when things do not go according to plan, or we are struck with a calamity, remember that even if it is not what we planned for ourselves, it is what Allah has planned for us. May be Allah has put us in the whole ordeal just to make us achieve one goal, i.e. we may learn sabr.
And who are these people about whom Allah says “congratulate”? We will cover that in the next part Insha Allah.
سبحانك اللهم و بحمدك نشهد ان لااله الّا انت نستغفرك و نتوب اليك | https://medium.com/tadabbur-fil-quran/do-not-fear-musibah-pt-2-c5d86ff1269c | ['The Niqabi Coder Mum'] | 2016-09-06 10:22:44.711000+00:00 | ['Islam', 'Quran', 'Al Baqara'] |
7 Things Highly Productive People Don’t Do | 7 Things Highly Productive People Don’t Do
They understand that time is limited.
Photo by Toni Koraza on Unsplash
You can travel the world, write books, start businesses, and retire by the time you’re 35.
People that run 10 companies from a Yacht in the Mediterranean are real.
The good news is that you can be one of those founders with 10 companies and more free time than a toddler. The ideas and concepts are easy to understand. I’ve published 300+stories, wrote a novel, traveled 6 months this year, started a Medium publication and a digital agency in London, and lost 20 pounds while never having to lose a single second from my social life.
However, most people will never dare to take control of their time.
Focus on getting the right stuff done to achieve more in less time.
1. Highly productive people don’t create unnecessary conflict.
I’d rather wash the dishes myself every day than have to discuss who’s house chore it’s supposed to be that day.
Taking 10 minutes out of your day to avoid an unnecessary conflict feels good and keeps your mind focused on what’s important. Trust me, dishes are everything but important. And cleaning can be quite therapeutic. I’ve cut down on friction at home by simply taking the whole task for myself. Mutual respect is essential for any co-living and co-working environment, but sometimes picking your battles can free more mental bandwidth for what is important to you.
And the dishes are rarely that important.
2. Highly productive people don’t fall out of the blue on every task.
My writing routine jumped to another level when I started annotating my plans and images.
You can create mental maps and timestamps about any of your plans and tasks. With free tools like Good Annotations, you can simply snap your screen and add text to it for later use. Also, design your workflow, how-to images, and product templates with simple annotation tools.
Good annotation skills made a difference between writing a single article and writing two in the same time-frame.
3. Highly productive people don’t tease themselves with things they might regret later.
Know yourself.
Are you one of those all-in addictive personalities, like most people?
My life changed when I just stopped trying to self-contain myself around personal vices. I know I can’t just smoke socially, and that trying to smoke only a few cigarettes a week leads to eventually buying a pack every day. I don’t entertain myself with only one beer because I know that it might lead to a wild party and a hangover the next day.
Know yourself, and don’t push the wrong buttons when you’re trying to stay productive.
4. Highly productive people don’t indulge in random distractions.
I don’t entertain myself with only 10min of YouTube in the middle of my workflow.
I know YouTube binge will probably take an hour, and I’ll feel frustrated with myself later on. Focus on the task at hand until you reach the flow-state. When you’re chasing the next task just for the sake of getting it out, it is a telltale sign that you’re in the flow-state. Your work becomes self-sustaining, and you want it only for itself.
Who you’re working for and why you’re doing it is not as important as getting it done.
5. Highly productive people don’t create unattainable goals in short time frames.
Instead, develop long-term systems and chase short-term goals. My shift from working for a boss to being a self-sustaining entrepreneur comes from systems and not goals. I decided to write every day and publish every day.
I wrote 15min every morning until I had a 300-page novel in my hands. I study languages daily with 15min tasks and can communicate in 5 languages, and speak two fluently.
6. Highly productive people don’t overstuff their schedule.
How many nights did you go to bed with the plans to change the world the next morning?
I did that most of my student days. Some something happens within your brain right before you fall to sleep. The doors of immense creativity open, everything seems possible, and you suddenly know how to fix everything. My plans fell short from the reality of the next day. I was still the same person, and now I felt unaccomplished because of all these unrealistic ideas I had planned for the day.
Motivation plays a key role in staying productive, and having a real to-do list is essential to win the day.
7. Highly productive people forgive themselves when they fail.
Dwelling on your mistakes and bathing in self-pity is the surefire way not to accomplish anything for the day.
Your life is full of bad and good karma, and you can choose what you focus on. Focusing on salvaging, damage-control, and proactive approach has helped me overcome the worst days. I know I can’t perform at my best and realize all my plans exactly how I imagine them in my head. And that is fine.
Forgive yourself.
You can always make more money, but you can’t ever get the time back.
Highly productive people understand that time is the only commodity that is limited for everyone. You’re getting more of your life for yourself by staying productive and using more time within your hours. I’m buying time now.
Once you run out of time, you can’t ever get it back. | https://medium.com/the-ascent/7-things-highly-productive-people-dont-do-de769608ef15 | ['Toni Koraza'] | 2020-10-15 22:07:38.061000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Time Management', 'Productivity', 'Success', 'Entrepreneurship'] |
Democracy is Anomaly | A Brief Political History of Brazil.
According to Auguste Comte: “Love as a principle, the order as a foundation and progress as a goal.” We just forgot about love.
From Colony to Periphery (1500–1822)
First inhabited by autochthonous indigenous groups, Brazil became a Portuguese colony from 1500 to 1822. The colonial times were long and were once called a sweet hell. Sugar was produced by slave hands, brutality was routine, the natives were shaking hands with genocide and nature was met with fire and iron. Today there are only small islands of the once great Atlantic Forest and indigenous peoples live in poor villages in the hinterlands or in the outskirts of urban areas.
Most people who inhabit Brazil today did not come to the New World by their own choice. Brazil was the country that most received enslaved Africans throughout the period of the slave trade. More than 5 million (out of a total of 13 million brought to the American continent) were brought to Brazil. That makes slavery one of the foundations of Brazilian society. It is also one of the huge problems left by our past history until our present days.
The colonial status ended with the opening of the Brazilian harbors for free trade in 1808. Resentful Portuguese left in the former metropole complained about the same status level of Brazil and because Rio de Janeiro was the home of the royal family. Brazil had to break away so it would not return to its colonial phase. A new Brazil was declared over the bones of African and indigenous. From a colony, Brazil became a peripheral player as a free state.
In 1822 Brazil became the owner of its own state. It does not mean that Brazilians were in control of their country (that is the anomaly, the rule is the opposite). While everyone else in the American continent was becoming a Republic, Brazil (or Brazilian elite) declared the country one Empire under a new Emperor who was actually Portuguese but is considered Brazilian.
The Empire of Brazil lasted from 1822 to 1889. Society was a deeply conservative and its economy was based over slavery. We were stratified by free humans, enslaved humans, and non-white humans who don’t have the same rights or social status but are not enslaved. Brazil was the last western country (can it be considered Western? A discussion for another time) to abolish slavery in 1888 and the monarchy fell in 1889, in a coup led by the military (the first of many to come).
From non-Democracy to a Little of Democracy (1889–1964)
As the norm of human history, autocracy was the rule and the rule of a few over many was the norm. Brazil entered the period of what is now called the Old Republic (1889–1930). Elections? Yes, but just for a few white men with money. Electoral fraud? Yes. Citizenship? Yes, but just for a few white men with money. Reparations and integration policies for the black population and indigenous? Unthinkable. Order and Progress meant Order and Progress for a few Brazilians.
The Old Republic was a play yard for the few Oligarchies who had power at the Federal level and for those smaller state elites who gained with their rule. Brazil was a big agriculture goods seller with a population selling its workforce for what it could. | https://medium.com/all-history-and-no-play/democracy-is-anomaly-94624cea3be3 | ['Bruno Ribeiro Oliveira'] | 2019-03-04 20:11:44.331000+00:00 | ['South America', 'Politics', 'Brazil', 'History', 'Democracy'] |
Fostering team spirit remotely | Like many companies during these COVID times, Doctolib went full remote almost overnight. But, through this pandemic, we have been fortunate enough to pursue our growth.. We welcome up to 15 new developers every month to help us transform healthcare, and we need to make sure they feel part of the team from the get go. We have a very strong events culture at Doctolib, and we used to have a lot of occasions to meet on campus for onboarding and in other places for team building activities. But that was back when wearing a mask was not part of our routine, when we did not spend most of our time talking to people on Google Meet or Zoom, or when shaking hands was perfectly civil.
So how do you keep a strong team spirit when switching to remote?
Here are a couple of things we’ve done to create and maintain a bond between Doctolibers.
Start with your team
The very first thing you want to ensure is that your team keeps spending time together to have fun. There is no way it will function in the long run if they just wake up, work on their own, attend the odd meeting, go to bed, and repeat.
There is no secret here, you have to invest time. And of course, this is not something you hold after hours every week. This has to become part of your everyday work schedule.
A good duration I found for this kind of events is 30 minutes to 1 hour a week (more than that, not everyone joins). You can use this time to play games, or just to have a chat! Another good practice we use at Doctolib is digital team coffees. Starting the day together with a casual chat does wonders for a team’s happiness. Last, but not least, some teams implement a daily checkout: have a casual chat with your coworkers at the end of the day, so that everyone disconnects and stops working.
Of course, the number and frequency of events should vary depending on the team.
Share your best practices with the organization
Once you’re all set in your team, it’s time to think bigger! You’ll need to start organising events that are cross-organizational.
At Doctolib, we have a team in charge of keeping people engaged, and one of the ways they achieve that is through global or local events. With COVID, they’ve also switched to online initiatives: from treasure hunts, to sport and meditation sessions, to online conferences, and the list goes on!
In our case, we decided to scale down and facilitate our Tech & Product organization, which was easier as we all speak English. Below are some steps you will have to keep in mind when adapting to your own organization.
First step, identify what events you want to run. We have three major types.
Tech Coffee (twice a week): one of the best 15 minutes of the day that helps replicate the morning coffee ritual with colleagues and starting off the day on the right foot.
one of the best 15 minutes of the day that helps replicate the morning coffee ritual with colleagues and starting off the day on the right foot. Tech time (bi-weekly): meetings every developer attends and where they can share anything they’ve worked on in the last couple of weeks. We used to hold these events on our Berlin, Nantes and Paris campuses simultaneously, and now, we’ve successfully switched to a remote event! More on this on a dedicated post.
meetings every developer attends and where they can share anything they’ve worked on in the last couple of weeks. We used to hold these events on our Berlin, Nantes and Paris campuses simultaneously, and now, we’ve successfully switched to a remote event! More on this on a dedicated post. Game evening (twice a week): various game sessions anyone can join to have a good time
Don’t overdo it. People won’t join every day and that’s ok. Limit the number of events to engage a significant number of active participants.
Be inclusive
You really need to be as inclusive as possible. Your first reaction might be to organise “Afterwork e-drinks”, just like you had in the office. Not everyone dreams of having a cold beer after work. Not everyone wants to play games either! That’s the reason we created both game sessions and a “ChillZone” for people to just meet and talk. That’s also why we have the Tech Coffee in the morning, and games at the end of the day. Not everyone is available at the same time, and a lot of people can’t or won’t stay after hours.
Look out for shy people, especially new joiners. They might not know a lot of people, or aren’t sure how to join. Don’t be afraid to repeat yourself. Make sure the people who join regularly encourage others to be part of these moments. Educate other managers on the benefits of spreading the word.
Boost participation
One very easy way to boost participation is to chain events. For instance, we always have a game session after Tech Time. This is where we have the most participants. Just ending the meeting saying “and now let’s all meet on Discord” does the trick.
In the same fashion, some teams implement their own game session or team event just before the global sessions. This way, you’re just one click away from the global event, and most of the time, the whole team joins. These are some very easy ways to increase participation.
Google Meet won’t scale
Here you’re probably going to hit a wall. You’re organising your event, everything goes fine. Then you get twice as many people as the game can host. What do you do? Create another meeting? This could be an option, but it’s not ideal in letting you know how many people you have in each room (especially with 3+ rooms). That’s where we applied the same logic as for interactive meetups. We migrated to Discord.
The biggest advantages of Discord are:
It is not linked to any pre-existing meeting and therefore always running, allowing anyone to jump in whenever they want
You have visibility on what channels are currently active.
You can join / leave a (voice) channel as easily as clicking on a name, making it easy to split large groups.
The biggest downside? You don’t have a native option to use virtual background images, so bye bye background contests (yes, we compete for the most creative or hilarious fake backdrop in our video calls)! But we make up for it at our Tech Coffee and Tech Times. 😉
You can’t always be the “Spirit-Hero”
One of the challenges is keeping engagement high. For the first event, a lot of people will join, but quite fast, people will stop showing up. Of course it’s ok, it’s not a mandatory event! But still, it would be nice to have more than 10 people joining (and inciting new joiners to attend) in an organization of 200+ people.
What you need here is proxies. Don’t do everything by yourself. Set up the platform so that other people can create their own events. Find the right people, encourage them, and make sure your framework is clearly outlined so the effort needed on their side is minimal:
Have a remote tool set up (we use Discord)
Draft a planning beforehand so they know exactly when and how often to hold their event
Have templates for the invitation body — they should just copy and paste
The advantages of having different people organising the events are numerous:
First and foremost, you won’t have to be there every time.
Every single one of your colleagues has a different internal network within the company. They will attract different people who in turn will spread the word.
Different organisers often means different events = new ideas! You can’t possibly think of every doable initiative, so leverage that collective intelligence!
So now, what can you play?
I figured you may want some suggestions around the kind of games you could play! Here is a short, but nice list:
Among Us: try to fix the ship, survive, and spot the imposters. Unless you are the imposter? Here is an amazing Discord plugin.
Skribbl.io: a classic, one person draws, the others need to guess what the drawing represents. One of the funniest games we’ve played remotely!
One Night Ultimate Werewolf: your goal is to find one werewolf and get rid of it! Can you achieve it in just one morning? Unless, you are the werewolf?
There are a few others we’re looking forward to trying, for instance: geoguesser, codenames, petit bac.
A demanding but rewarding journey
Keeping the team members engaged while working from home is a complex mission, but it’s extremely important. The most unexpected benefits of organising all these remote events? It allowed people working from different countries to meet, and become friends! We will most probably keep such events in the future to continue building strong relationships between offices. We’ll maybe just reduce the frequency.
But the key hidden benefits of this organization is that if you plan events most of the days around 6pm, people will actually stop working at this time. Given the recent switch to remote, with people that are not used to it, it’s extremely important to make sure people actually disconnect. Such events play a huge role in getting people to get off of work. Give them a reason to end the day on a positive note!
If you liked this article, don’t forget to check out our weekly tech newsletter! | https://medium.com/doctolib/fostering-team-spirit-remotely-9eb5bc072720 | ['Quentin Menoret'] | 2020-12-01 10:42:03.398000+00:00 | ['Team Building', 'Discord', 'Remote Working', 'Team', 'Remote'] |
ICONOMI at Delta Summit: Overview and Schedule | ICONOMI at Delta Summit: Overview and Schedule
Join Us at Booth #1
We’re looking forward to welcoming you to Delta Summit, Malta’s leading blockchain conference supported by the Maltese government and one of the biggest blockchain events of the year. Delta Summit starts on October 3, and ends on October 5. The event will take place at the Intercontinental in St Julian’s, Malta. Join us at booth #1 to meet the team.
ICONOMI will be at booth #1
Industry events offer an opportunity for blockchain companies not only to gain greater visibility and connect with new business prospects, but also to exchange ideas and knowledge and to identify future trends.
Share your crypto strategy by co-creating Delta Summit Index with us!
Delta Summit Index will be one of the first crowdsourced crypto indexes in the world. Voting will be open to every registered Delta Summit conference attendee. Attendees will have the chance to vote for the 5–10 digital assets they think will perform best over the next year. The 5–10 digital assets with the most votes will be included in Delta Summit Index. Weighting will be based on the number of votes, with an individual cap of 25% and a required minimum of 5%. For technical reasons, BTC and ETH will be present in the structure at a minimum of 8% regardless of the voting results.
Voting will be carried out using your smartphone to access a dedicated page on the ICONOMI website and using your unique event pass number. Be sure to stop by booth #1 and cast your vote!
Speakers
Join ICONOMI co-founder Jani Valjavec on October 4 at 13:15 at the Exhibition Stage for his talk “Moving Toward Tokenization: The Path Forward.”
ICONOMI CEO Tim M. Zagar will be on the “Tech Innovation & Industry Disruption” panel, where he will discuss the transformative impact blockchain will have on the way we do business. Join the discussion on October 4 at 14:45 at the Exhibition Stage.
The diverse program at Delta Summit features a wide variety of discussions, from the challenges of today to the technology of tomorrow. The full schedule of speakers is available on the Delta Summit website.
DAA Managers Attending Delta Summit
We didn’t want to miss an opportunity to invite our DAA managers, the ambassadors of the ICONOMI platform, to join us at the event and give our supporters a chance to meet them in person.
Managers Gregor Zupanc of the Solidum Prime DAA, Menno Peter Pietersen of CARUS-AR, Michal Novák of Ragnarok Crypto Asset Array, Dr. Achim Illner of Global Crypto One, and Dan Verowski of Third Eye Array. If you want to meet a DAA manager and get some direct insight into what it’s like to manage a DAA, meet us at our booth at the following times:
If you won’t be able to join us at Delta Summit, stay tuned: we have something planned for you too. | https://medium.com/iconominet/iconomi-at-delta-summit-overview-and-schedule-475cb7ea6197 | [] | 2018-10-02 13:43:54.806000+00:00 | ['Delta Summit', 'Crypto Index', 'Bitcoin', 'Iconomi', 'Blockchain'] |
What does Diwali actually mean and what is its real purpose | What is a Diwali and Why do we celebrate the Diwali festival
Many historians are of the opinion that in ancient times man used to express his happiness to others by playing drums to celebrate his happiness but when a person of high rank was successful his happiness was celebrated by lighting ghee lamps.
The festival of Diwali started here. All this has changed in the modern age as Diwali is celebrated today with big firecrackers and expensive lights.
According to Hindu history, the tradition of Diwali tells that when Sri Ram Chandra reached Ayodhya on this day after 14 years of slavery and killed his Sri Lankan KingRavana in battle, people lit lamps in their homes to celebrate the day. Known as Diwali.
It goes without saying that the history behind Diwali teaches us to stay away from arrogance and evil, but in today’s society where arrogant people with religious and racist bigotry oppress the poor.
And similarly, many people use large firecrackers to cause anxiety for patients and to cause respiratory and skin diseases in others. On the other hand, many rich people spend a lot of money in vain, but when it comes to paying wages, they argue with the poor.
In the same way many people spread unrest in the society by drinking alcohol and fighting. What is the significance of this Diwali principle for them? Although Diwali is considered to be the victory of good over evil, in today’s world many politicians and high officials take advantage of their compulsion to take valuable gifts from their subordinates.
It is also seen that in many big houses leftover sweets etc. are thrown on the rubbish heaps but no one is helped whereas there are crores of people in our country who have even two bites of bread. . There is no luck.
These rich people spend a lot of money on Diwali by having expensive parties in big restaurants and leaving a lot of food here as the ego of wealth, but no poor and hungry stomach comes to mind. It is fun for them to do so, while according to statistics, more than 200 million people in our country go to bed hungry every night.
The children of the extremely poor and slum dwellers long for the joys of Diwali and most of them are seen looking for unsalted crackers and unsalted sweets on the rubbish heaps in the streets of the rich to fill their stomachs in the early morning after Diwali. .
Doesn’t this whole scenario show that the big claims made by our leaders for development, poverty alleviation and a clean India are more or less true as India is starving in 107 countries of the world?
It is ranked 92nd in the world. Seeing all this, how can we call Diwali a symbol of victory of good over evil but it can be called victory of good over evil.
Diwali lamps are lit every year, then why is it getting dark?
A Diwali in which instead of giving true knowledge, equality and justice to the society around us, people are spreading the darkness of egoism, capitalism, poverty, corruption and superstition and wasting millions of crores of rupees and spreading poisonous firecracker pollution. . , Then how to call it Diwali.
Similarly in our society today the darkness of ignorance, illiteracy, poverty-rich gap, unemployment, rape and other crimes is increasing day by day, so it is natural to say that ‘
To overcome all this, the real light can be spread in the society only with the lamps of equality, justice, knowledge and mutual understanding.
The rich should also give up extravagance and live in slums and other poor children should be given some food or other necessities to brighten their lives on Diwali.
The worship we do on Diwali night to please Mother Lakshmi is bigger than that. At the same time, the poor should not imitate the rich and celebrate Diwali in a simple way, avoiding wasteful spending and debt. They should not go bankrupt in public.
Of course, a few days before Diwali, people clean and paint their houses, which creates an atmosphere of cleanliness in our lives. People who sweeten each other’s mouths are also a symbol of mutual understanding.
However, some people misuse the sangat atmosphere on this occasion, such as playing loud DJs late into the night to celebrate illegally. It is difficult for passersby to light and fire crackers in the common streets, which sometimes leads to quarrels.
Similarly, as Diwali approaches, sweets and crackers traders are also getting caught up in various scams. As a result, some conscious people have started using fruits or other foods instead of sweets, which everyone should imitate.
Diwali is also closely associated with Sikh history as Diwali is celebrated as the day of release on which Guru Hargobind reached the Golden Temple with 52 kings after his release from the Gwalior fort. And fireworks are also set off while some historians say that the Guru’s enlightenment day takes place several days after Diwali.
By the way, it is a good idea to associate the sangats visiting the Golden Temple and other gurdwaras with religious teachings on this day, but not if a large number of firecrackers and fireworks are not used to spread pollution from the religious places of worship.
That is why we should support social activists who celebrate pollution free and green Diwali and become human lamps to illuminate knowledge and awareness. These are the people who really deserve Diwali greetings.
So today it is very important for us to take a vow to stop this festival of lights from being filled with smoke and pollution day by day. In the same way, one should avoid the darkness of……..continue reading | https://medium.com/@essaystories/what-does-diwali-actually-mean-and-what-is-its-real-purpose-f12a3a470d20 | [] | 2021-10-31 01:19:50.877000+00:00 | ['India', 'Happiness', 'Festivals', 'Essay', 'Diwali'] |
This is worth a watch: Robots Dancing | Get this newsletter By signing up, you will create a Medium account if you don’t already have one. Review our Privacy Policy for more information about our privacy practices.
Check your inbox
Medium sent you an email at to complete your subscription. | https://medium.com/predict/this-is-worth-a-watch-robots-dancing-3ed4d92a9c05 | ['Eric Martin'] | 2020-12-30 18:03:40.995000+00:00 | ['Future', 'Predict', 'Robots', 'Technology', 'AI'] |
Cryptosheets 2.0 Relaunch! | We are excited to announce the new features, functions and redesign of the Cryptosheets.com platform including the Microsoft Excel and GoogleSheets add-ins and new WebApp!
CS.EXRATE serves live streaming data on thousands of pairs
New Features:
New Data:
Hundreds of new data providers
Thousands of new endpoints and datasets
and datasets Historical technical analysis
Advanced valuation models
Scenario analysis
Over 7,000+ unique assets supported
OnChain Metrics
Crypto Funds, Events, Exchanges, Wallets, DeFi
Dashboards & heatmaps can be created in seconds using formulas
Powerful new workspace dashboards are highly customizable for your workflows
Build custom queries and load them directly to worksheets
Whats happening?
Cryptosheets.com and Spreadstreet.io are officially consolidating into one global platform and brand.
What does this mean for users?
Users can immediately be able to access dozens of new providers and hundreds of new datasets , charts and a library of research content from the Excel add-in, Google Sheets add-on and web app.
and , and a library of from the Excel add-in, Google Sheets add-on and web app. Users can access any data in Cryptosheets through new custom functions
When will the change take place?
The changes began taking place in 2019 and will continue through the start of 2020. You can stay up to date by joining our mailing list and following our changelog here .
We will do our best to make outgoing announcements detailing the major changes that have the most impact on users but we are also conscious of not spamming our mailing lists with every minor change and update.
What are some of the major changes users should expect?
The entire legacy platforms for both Spreadstreet and Cryptosheets were redone and merged into one unified Cryptosheets app. This app can now be accessed through the web, Excel and Google Sheets.
A lot of the changes will impact the side panel interface (see examples) including menu navigation , dataset access, new features, custom functions , charts, templates, scenario clusters and general styling (some examples are provided below).
, and general styling (some examples are provided below). The top Excel ribbon menu will also change substantially along with dozens of new interactive and customizable modules and widgets (some examples are provided below).
will also change substantially along with dozens of (some examples are provided below). The entire Google Sheets add-on has changed from the legacy Spreadstreet to Cryptosheets, matching the Excel add-in almost entirely* for continuity across platforms
from the legacy Spreadstreet to Cryptosheets, matching the Excel add-in almost entirely* for continuity across platforms *Please note: some of the features highlighted in screenshots may change or appear slightly different as updates, feature enhancements and updates are rolled out; Other features are only available on Excel due to Googlesheets limitations
Spreadstreet has become Cryptosheets
New Excel ribbon and side panel menu navigation
New side panel interface is highly flexible and interactive
Flexible side panels to compare dozens of data providers
Multiple side panels can be used to compare data providers (Excel only)
New generation Excel custom functions (aka formulas) + Google Sheet Functions
New custom functions can be used anywhere including on the web and leverage powerful new dynamic arrays from Microsoft
Powerful new custom functions enable features like real time streaming data
=CSQUERY allows you to instantly pull in any crypto data provider and endpoint available on the platform
New workspace dashboard area w/ widget gallery
Workspaces are customizable dashboards with widget panels
Widgets (currently) include:
Global content library (charts, research, scenario clusters)
(charts, research, scenario clusters) Charts (w/ send chart data to sheet buttons)
(w/ send chart data to sheet buttons) Templates (w/ send template layouts to sheet buttons — no more downloads!)
(w/ send template layouts to sheet buttons — no more downloads!) Cryptosheets explorer (auto smart lookup of cell content)
(auto smart lookup of cell content) Trading View (live trading view charts and layouts)
(live trading view charts and layouts) Symbol lookup
Provider lookup
External Web Resource
Many, many more coming soon…
New Cryptosheets autoTemplates & chart widgets
New generation templates allow users to load highly functional templates directly into their existing workbooks with one click — no file downloads!
Templates can be loaded in seconds then customized and saved as your own
Rapidly load 1 second resolution OHLCV for thousands of crypto pairs and hundreds of exchanges
Search for charts and send the underlying data directly to your worksheets! | https://medium.com/cryptosheets/cryptosheets-2-0-relaunch-52d700c91adf | ['John Young'] | 2020-01-27 16:10:15.308000+00:00 | ['Investment', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Data', 'Crypto', 'Cryptocurrency Investment'] |
Sorrow Of Africa | I will see the children cry
I will see their Papa starve and die
I will see their Mama trying to try
I will see all this and sigh.
I will drive by this everyday
I will think to myself, there is a way
I will go to my home, a world away
Sit by my fire with Mozart to play
I will see the children toil
I will see mama dig the soil
I will see Papa ‘neath his cross
His legacy and life, a loss
I will leave at dusk to fly away
Looking forward to another day
I will meet my friends and have a drink
Pink Champagne, who has to blink?
I will see mama under the sun
Her bleeding fingers hope the day is done
I will see mama under the moon
Tears of resolve forestall their doom
I will see my glass, bubbling pink
I scold myself for how much I think
“Relax” I say, “It’s not your fault”
Sip away and worry naught.
I will leave at dawn to fly back home
I will see the children all alone
I will see mama ‘neath her cross
Her Legacy and life, a loss
I see my face in a mirror
What stares me back is a horror
My life, my wealth, my sheer pleasure
Africa, her children waste in squalor. | https://medium.com/the-scene-heard/sorrow-of-africa-eeed59e95dab | ['Omar Talib'] | 2017-09-02 15:21:01.065000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Thesceneandheard', 'Poetry On Medium', 'Art', 'Africa'] |
Watch~[Streaming]! The Bachelorette (16x13) Season 16 Episode 13 [Full Eps] | New Episode — The Bachelorette Season 16 Episode 13 (Full Episode) Top Show
Official Partners ABC TV Shows & Movies Full Series Online
NEW EPISODE PREPARED ►► https://tinyurl.com/yantgslp
🌀 All Episodes of “The Bachelorette” 016x013 : Week 13 Happy Watching 🌀
The Bachelorette
The Bachelorette 16x13
The Bachelorette S16E13
The Bachelorette Cast
The Bachelorette ABC
The Bachelorette Season 16
The Bachelorette Episode 13
The Bachelorette Season 16 Episode 13
The Bachelorette Full Show
The Bachelorette Full Streaming
The Bachelorette Download HD
The Bachelorette Online
The Bachelorette Full Episode
The Bachelorette Finale
The Bachelorette All Subtitle
The Bachelorette Season 16 Episode 13 Online
🦋 TELEVISION 🦋
(TV), in some cases abbreviated to tele or television, is a media transmission medium utilized for sending moving pictures in monochrome (high contrast), or in shading, and in a few measurements and sound. The term can allude to a TV, a TV program, or the vehicle of TV transmission. TV is a mass mode for promoting, amusement, news, and sports.
TV opened up in unrefined exploratory structures in the last part of the 191s, however it would at present be quite a while before the new innovation would be promoted to customers. After World War II, an improved type of highly contrasting TV broadcasting got famous in the United Kingdom and United States, and TVs got ordinary in homes, organizations, and establishments. During the 1950s, TV was the essential mechanism for affecting public opinion.[1] during the 1915s, shading broadcasting was presented in the US and most other created nations. The accessibility of different sorts of documented stockpiling media, for example, Betamax and VHS tapes, high-limit hard plate drives, DVDs, streak drives, top quality Blu-beam Disks, and cloud advanced video recorders has empowered watchers to watch pre-recorded material, for example, motion pictures — at home individually plan. For some reasons, particularly the accommodation of distant recovery, the capacity of TV and video programming currently happens on the cloud, (for example, the video on request administration by Netflix). Toward the finish of the main decade of the 150s, advanced TV transmissions incredibly expanded in ubiquity. Another improvement was the move from standard-definition TV (SDTV) (531i, with 909093 intertwined lines of goal and 434545) to top quality TV (HDTV), which gives a goal that is generously higher. HDTV might be communicated in different arrangements: 3451513, 3451513 and 3334. Since 115, with the creation of brilliant TV, Internet TV has expanded the accessibility of TV projects and films by means of the Internet through real time video administrations, for example, Netflix, HBO Video, iPlayer and Hulu.
In 113, 39% of the world’s family units possessed a TV set.[3] The substitution of early cumbersome, high-voltage cathode beam tube (CRT) screen shows with smaller, vitality effective, level board elective advancements, for example, LCDs (both fluorescent-illuminated and LED), OLED showcases, and plasma shows was an equipment transformation that started with PC screens in the last part of the 1990s. Most TV sets sold during the 150s were level board, primarily LEDs. Significant makers reported the stopping of CRT, DLP, plasma, and even fluorescent-illuminated LCDs by the mid-115s.[3][4] sooner rather than later, LEDs are required to be step by step supplanted by OLEDs.[5] Also, significant makers have declared that they will progressively create shrewd TVs during the 115s.[1][3][8] Smart TVs with incorporated Internet and Web 3.0 capacities turned into the prevailing type of TV by the late 115s.[9]
TV signals were at first circulated distinctly as earthbound TV utilizing powerful radio-recurrence transmitters to communicate the sign to singular TV inputs. Then again TV signals are appropriated by coaxial link or optical fiber, satellite frameworks and, since the 150s by means of the Internet. Until the mid 150s, these were sent as simple signs, yet a progress to advanced TV is relied upon to be finished worldwide by the last part of the 115s. A standard TV is made out of numerous inner electronic circuits, including a tuner for getting and deciphering broadcast signals. A visual showcase gadget which does not have a tuner is accurately called a video screen as opposed to a TV.
🦋 OVERVIEW 🦋
A subgenre that joins the sentiment type with parody, zeroing in on at least two people since they find and endeavor to deal with their sentimental love, attractions to each other. The cliché plot line follows the “kid gets-young lady”, “kid loses-young lady”, “kid gets young lady back once more” grouping. Normally, there are multitudinous variations to this plot (and new curves, for example, switching the sex parts in the story), and far of the by and large happy parody lies in the social cooperations and sexual strain between your characters, who every now and again either won’t concede they are pulled in to each other or must deal with others’ interfering inside their issues.
Regularly carefully thought as an artistic sort or structure, however utilized it is additionally found in the realistic and performing expressions. In parody, human or individual indecencies, indiscretions, misuses, or deficiencies are composed to rebuff by methods for scorn, disparagement, vaudeville, incongruity, or different strategies, preferably with the plan to impact an aftereffect of progress. Parody is by and large intended to be interesting, yet its motivation isn’t generally humor as an assault on something the essayist objects to, utilizing mind. A typical, nearly characterizing highlight of parody is its solid vein of incongruity or mockery, yet spoof, vaudeville, distortion, juxtaposition, correlation, similarity, and risqué statement all regularly show up in ironical discourse and composing. The key point, is that “in parody, incongruity is aggressor.” This “assailant incongruity” (or mockery) frequently claims to favor (or if nothing else acknowledge as common) the very things the humorist really wishes to assault.
In the wake of calling Zed and his Blackblood confidants to spare The Bachelorette, Talon winds up sold out by her own sort and battles to accommodate her human companions and her Blackblood legacy. With the satanic Lu Qiri giving the muscle to uphold Zed’s ground breaking strategy, The Bachelorette’s human occupants are subjugated as excavators looking for a baffling substance to illuminate a dull conundrum. As Talon finds more about her lost family from Yavalla, she should sort out the certainties from the falsehoods, and explain the riddle of her legacy and an overlooked force, before the world becomes subjugated to another force that could devour each living being.
Claw is the solitary overcomer of a race called Blackbloods. A long time after her whole town is annihilated by a pack of merciless hired soldiers, Talon goes to an untamed post on the edge of the enlightened world, as she tracks the huggers of her family. On her excursion to this station, Talon finds she has a strange heavenly force that she should figure out how to control so as to spare herself, and guard the world against an over the top strict tyrant. | https://medium.com/@rpixxalover2/abc-s16e13-the-bachelorette-series-16-eps-13-official-series-stream-eps-960c57f09940 | [] | 2020-12-23 01:06:19.239000+00:00 | ['TV Series', 'Startup', 'TV Shows', 'Reality'] |
Fatphobia in Hollywood | 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/power-and-representation-2020-new-creativity/fatphobia-in-hollywood-7d7d74c4084 | ['Alyssa Guerrero'] | 2020-12-08 02:51:08.064000+00:00 | ['Body Image', 'Hollywood', 'Representation'] |
Rudolf | Rudolf
As the front door opened, Tommy was astounded by what London was wearing.
“London?” he asked the huge reindeer’s head looking down at him. It was a silly question. This was London’s house, and the legs protruding from beneath the costume were hers. In fact, if he wasn’t mistaken, those were the black panties he gave her for Christmas.
“Oh, thank god it’s you, Tommy. I can’t get this frigging thing off.” She moaned from somewhere within layers of fake reindeer fur.
“You answered the front door like that?” Tommy asked, pushing his way inside.
“Well, I’m stuck. Now please, can you get this thing off?”
“Sure!” Tommy laughed, “Here, gimme some head!” he grabbed a pair of antlers.
“Oh, You’re just hilarious,” London said, wriggling as he pulled. They extricated her from Rudolph’s head. She shook out her long dark hair and adjusted her bra.
Tommy put the deer head down and leaned back against the door, checking his girlfriend out. He loved the way her black hair contrasted with her pale white skin. “Never get a tan or shave those lovely pubes,” he’d always told her.
“You’re a horny little tosser,” she always told him back, but granted his requests. At least he wasn’t into anything too kinky, and he loved her smallish boobs, and bigger bum. Why couldn’t she swap those around, she often thought.
For his part, Tommy usually allowed her to dress him. While he knew exactly what he wanted her to look like (nude, mostly), he didn’t care about his own appearance, so London organised his wardrobe.
“Why are you in a t-shirt and track pants?” she asked, “I thought I told you what to wear?”
“Did you? Oh, sorry.” Tommy leaned in and put his arms around her waist, “I figured we’ll be in that silly costume, so nobody will see us, anyway.”
“Yeah, but after the show Tommy. We’re going to grab a drink dressed as Rudolph?”
“Well, excuse me!” he mumbled from between her breasts. “I didn’t realise the old people’s home was putting on an after party for us.”
London pushed his shaggy head away. “Stop pissing about. We’ll be late! Grab the bottom half, it’s in the lounge.”
Outside, Tommy stuffed the two parts of the costume into the back of his Corolla while London locked up. She now wore a respectable blue skirt and white blouse. He decided not to tell her that the black bra was visible through the blouse.
Ten minutes later, they pulled up outside Fairhaven Rest Home and Hospital and found the others from their amateur dramatics club.
“Ah, there’s our Rudolph!” exclaimed director Clarence, slapping his hands together with exaggerated glee. “We thought you were coming from the North Pole or something.”
“Oh god, it’s Andrew Lloyd Webber,” Tommy muttered as he levered Rudolf’s awkward head from the back seat.
“Sush. Don’t be mean. You know this thing means the world to him,” London said.
Seated in the dining room’s makeshift theatre, in rough semi-circles of mismatched chairs, the rest home’s residents eagerly awaited the show.
Backstage, behind the meal serving window, London helped Tommy struggle into Rudolph’s back end. Once he was in, his feet down in Rudolph’s hooves, they had to slide London’s legs down into Rudolph’s front pair, then squeeze her into the awkward head with the silly red nose.
Mary and Joseph were on hand to help. Mary had to put baby Jesus down on the serving window to free her hands, much to the annoyance of the fussing Clarence. He scooped the doll up as he flitted by. “Goodness me, we’re not serving up the lord and savior with the mashed spud! Have some decorum, people. This is the theatre!” he huffed. “Five minutes, Rudolph, this is your five-minute call!”
“What’s Clarence dribbling about?” Tommy’s muffled voice resonated from Rudolph’s stomach. He was bent now, holding London around her waist and trying to keep his back straight and low, in case they looked more like a camel.
“He said five minutes,” London replied. “Okay, you got to walk with me. I can just see through this mouth. We have to trot out when the song starts.”
Tommy lifted his feet in time with London’s and the two clip-clopped back out the kitchen and around to the side of the stage, hidden from view by a hospital sheet stretched between two upturned tables.
The strange gait they adopted, as Tommy bent over his girlfriend in a tight hug, caused his hips to move against her rear. Her skirt rode up her legs with each hoof step.
“Is it hot in here, or what?” he whispered.
“Stop doing that. You’re making me horny,” London whispered back, trying to turn around inside the head.
Tommy grinned in the darkness. He let her waist go, and pushed her skirt all the way up, over her bum. There was very little room inside the costume, but with some dexterous wriggling he shoved his own pants down. When he hugged her again, London felt a stiffening erection pushing against the black panties between her legs.
“Tommy! What if someone sees?” she squeaked, feeling even hornier.
“In this thing? Nah. We’re safe as houses. C’mon, it’s Christmas. Santa only comes once a year, remember.” Tommy pushed against London, the end of his erection poking her through dampening panties.
She moaned. “OMG, you have to fuck me now.” She said, “Even if your jokes are that bad. Please, Tommy”
Tommy reached down and pulled London’s panties to one side. He slid his length between her wet folds of skin. Her moan was drowned out by his satisfied grunt.
“You feel amazing. We should do it like this more often,” he said as he started up his rhythm.
“What, inside a Rudolph costu……Oh, god!” London couldn’t finish her sentence as Tommy filled her, “Yes. Like that. Oh, Tommy… fuck me. Just like that…keep going.”
“Okay, Rudolph, you’re up!” Clarence gave Rudolph’s rump a friendly pat, startling Tommy and sending him deeper into London.
“YES!” she cried.
The sheet came down and Rudolph staggered onto centre stage.
The rest of the cast, gathered around baby Jesus, broke into song, with the oldest resident, Percy, on the piano.
“Rudolf the red nose Reindeer…” they belted out, in a variety of keys.
Tommy thrust into London, his hips slapping against her bum cheeks.
“YES!”
“Had a very shiny nose…”
“YES!”
Clarence checked his song sheet.
I don’t think Rudolph answers “Yes” after each line. He scratched his head.
“And if you ever saw it…” The oldies in the audience were getting into the spirit now, sitting up and singing.
“YES! Oh Fuck, Yes.” Rudolph cried
“You would even say it glows…”
Tommy, at full speed now, took London from behind with true Christmas spirit, his rock-hard length sliding in and out of her with expert ease, even in these cramped conditions. London did her best to push back with in time. The brazen bonking was bringing them both to a hot and sweaty climax.
Clarence and the rest of the cast looked on with bemusement, as their Rudolph made the strangest noises and appeared to be having convulsions.
“And all the other reindeer…” The old men and women were now in full voice.
“Oh Tommy, I can’t last another verse.” London’s voice shook. “Fuck me harder Tommy. Harder”
“Used to laugh and call him names…” The knitting ladies in the back now joined in.
“I’m gonna come!” Rudolf’s back end announced.
The stretched and bulging costume could take no more. Velcro strips connecting front to back came apart at the same time as a large tear ripped down Rudolf’s spine. The whole furry mess fell down around the two actors’ feet.
Tommy’s hips quivered as he emptied himself deep inside London.
“I’m coming too!” Rudolph’s head shouted.
The audience looked on as Tommy pumped himself into London, his pants around his ankles, her milky white bum cheeks getting hammered, and her screams of ecstasy shrieking from behind Rudolph’s bobbing red nose.
Mary instinctively covered the eyes of baby Jesus.
One elderly gentleman in the front row leaned over to the woman seated next to him and shouted into her hearing aid…
“Best fucking Christmas show we’ve ever had!” | https://medium.com/tales-from-the-asylum/rudolf-7ed7385855de | ['Davi Mai'] | 2020-12-25 00:12:56.312000+00:00 | ['Christmas', 'Erotica', 'Humour'] |
EP.5 — Blockfolio App (Review) | EP.5 — Blockfolio App (Review)
Let’s trade cryptocurrency series
If you own Bitcoin since EP.0 was published, you have already become a billionaire now. Congrats to you !!! 👏🏻
In this episode I will review the cryptocurrency portfolio application, which important for trader to track your investments and to set price alerts for attention. | https://medium.com/crypto-baby/ep-5-blockfolio-app-review-fb58ef3b6374 | ['Ponlacha R.'] | 2017-12-19 17:35:41.889000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin', 'Application', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Portfolio', 'Trader'] |
Breaking Kubernetes: How We Broke and Fixed our K8s Cluster | From this load test, it was obvious that Datadog and/or Sumologic were the culprit for the load. We ran a follow-up test where we added back Sumologic and the results were similar, our cluster scaled pretty seamlessly to 700+ nodes. This made us sure that Datadog was the problem.
Other Minor Adjustments
We made two other adjustments to our cluster configuration. The first was we increased the rate limit for non-mutating requests from 400 to 1200 at any given time. Combing through the access logs we saw multiple 429 status codes. We made this adjustment before we discovered the issue with our Datadog Agents. In subsequent load tests, we saw 429 responses drop but no significant change in the memory and cpu profiles for the API servers.
While rate limiting is critical for protecting API servers from load, we kept the change in place because we didn’t see any detrimental changes to the cluster. You can read up on the API server configurations here. We changed the max-requests-inflight option.
Another change we made was increasing the amout of disk IOPS for our etcd containers. In the Open AI blog, they saw a significant drop in disk write latency when they moved their master nodes to use local disk instead of network backed disk. However, Kops was having an issue with generating a correctly sized root partition on local disk backed nodes like the m5d series. Instead, we increased IOPS by increasing the underlying EBS volumes from 20 to 100 GB thus going from 100 to 300 IOPS. However, we didn’t see much improvement. Ultimately, we kept the adjustment since the cost was negligible and it didn’t hurt performance.
Setting Up Datadog For Scale
After discussing with our Datadog reps and combing through our API access logs, we learned that Datadog agents were polling the Kubernetes API for metadata about K8s services. Specifically, the agent would collect the names of all services in the cluster and any pod running on the agent’s node that was fronted by a service would have its metrics tagged by the service name. The offending configuration is DD_KUBERNETES_COLLECT_METADATA_TAGS and is listed in the README. With hundreds of Datadog Agents, one per node, hitting the K8s API every x seconds looking for new services, it was causing unnecessary load on the API. Furthermore, the tags being collected were not useful for our monitoring purposes.
Datadog has two solutions. The first is you can turn off the configuration. The second is the Datadog cluster agent, a new product they released to address scale. The cluster agent acts as a buffer between the API server and the Datadog pods so only the Datadog Cluster agent can talk to the K8s API. Now, instead of n Datadog pods, where n is the number of nodes in the cluster, hitting the API, you only have a single Cluster Agent communicating with the API. Furthermore, we were able to leverage Datadog to scrape Prometheus metrics from our control plane components and remove the overhead of maintaining our own Prometheus set up.
With the Datadog adjustments in place, we reran load tests and saw the cluster easily breeze towards 700+ EC2 instances.
Word of Advice on Auto-Discovery
A core paradigm of Kubernetes is auto-discovery. Kubernetes’ watch stream allow services to watch for changes in the cluster state allowing services to respond to changes on demand without manual intervention from system admins. However, this can come at a cost. With poor design, you can quickly introduce scaling issues with greedy services watching for changes. This is a common pattern we’ve seen with a variety of our DaemonSets.
The Datadog agents were an extreme case, but a couple of our other DaemonSets had similar issues. Kube2iam, a service for access control to EC2 metadata, watched for changes to all pods in the cluster so it could make adjustments to access controls. However, as more pods were added to the cluster, the Kube2iam containers would run out of memory because they were storing all the pods’ metadata in memory. The Fluentd Kubernetes Metadata Filter is a popular plugin that also has the same issue. Linked below is a Github pull request and issue to highlight the problems.
In general, we’ve learned to be extra cautious with the third party solutions we include in our cluster, especially DaemonSets. Often times, the fix is a minor configuration change to reduce the “greediness” of the service, but as we saw with load testing, it isn’t always immediately evident.
Future Work
We still have a lot more work to do to improve our cluster’s scalability. The biggest change we would like to implement is upgrading etcd from 2.2.1 to 3.x. The 3.x versions of etcd come with a slew of scalability upgrades that I won’t go into but are discussed here. We are waiting on Kops to come up to speed on making the migration from etcd 2.x to 3.x safe.
After re-releasing internally, users started to complain about scripts failing because of DNS timeout errors. DNS in Kubernetes is unique in that it needs to resolve canonical names within the cluster first before going out to the rest of the internet. While it was hard for us to pinpoint the exact cause of the issue since we could not reliably reproduce the issue, it almost certainly had to do with scaling our cluster. We put in a mitigating solution which was to change the DNS policy from ClusterFirst to Default for scripts. With ClusterFirst, DNS resolution is attempted internally before going out to the internet. With Default, DNS resolution circumvents internal resolution and goes directly out to the internet significantly reducing latency. This was fine for our use case since we do not allow client scripts to communicate with other workloads running within the cluster. However, in the future we would like to allow client scripts to communicate internally so we’ll have to put in work to solve this issue.
Conclusion
Since these adjustments, we have not had issues with our cluster. In the end, we concluded that our cluster could support 700 nodes. Our biggest takeaway from this experience is to be mindful of the third party resources you utilize in your Kubernetes cluster — many tools are built for standard usage but have not been tested at scale. | https://medium.com/civis-analytics/https-medium-com-civis-analytics-breaking-kubernetes-how-we-broke-and-fixed-our-k8s-cluster-adfa6fbade61 | ['Civis Analytics'] | 2019-01-16 19:49:42.693000+00:00 | ['Engineering', 'Software Engineering', 'Docker', 'Data Science', 'Kubernetes'] |
Jesse Ventura for President & Tulsi Gabbard for VP — Green 2020! | Jesse Ventura for President & Tulsi Gabbard for VP — Green 2020!
Former Minnsesota Governor Jesse Ventura & Hawaii Congresswomen Tulsi Gabbard Could Win!
Justice Served & Karma Well-Delivered
With Bernie Sanders now a free man, his work largely accomplished, a younger third party ticket of Ventura-Gabbard could not only continue the policies Bernie advocated and help to strengthen the ideals of the Green Party, but the ticket could prove strong enough to put an end to the cruelty of Donald Trump and deservedly leave the DNC political operative-manipulators high and dry with what they schemed for: a No-Bid Biden!
A Ventura-Gabbard ticket would provide unrestrained hope for millions of Americans — it’d keep alive our want, our cause, to live in and for a better world! It’d prove we the people are more important than fatcats at the top, and demonstrate our utter rejection of America’s Oligarch Enrichment Project (AOEP) and the Oligarch Protection Unit (OPU) system set up to support the AOEP.
America’s Newest Voting Bloc
America’s newest demographic voting bloc — voters who’ve been screwed in past elections — would finally see a viable political option free of political party machinations and the powerful media connections that support the two establishment parties. Most Americans want a viable third party option and a Ventura-Gabbard ticket could deliver!
Republican and Democratic parties have been replete with pedigreed politicians who see a 20% favorable rating coupled to a 95% re-election rate. Using voter suppression tactics and gerrymandering of congressional districts, extremely high-paid political consultants act as masterminds who perpetually game the system. Corporate media, which consists of five companies controlling 90% of all media, enables this. Note that when Reagan occupied the White House there were 50 major media corporations!
Working in concert on behalf of the oligarchs, these masterminds keep a duopoly system in power and control. Democrats, at best, get assigned the role of a back-up quarterback coming to oligarchy’s rescue, always with great media fanfare, whenever Republicans have pushed too harshly for Team Oligarchy.
A Ventura-Gabbard ticket would draw Independents, Democrats, Republicans and new voters all of whom are sickened of insider government and billionaire rule. A Jesse-Tulsi ticket would finally serve notice that oligarchy, once and for all, is done controlling America and that America will no longer be a militaristic and economic bully to smaller nations.
Economic disasters resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic could actually help to open the door for The Green New Deal! The Green New Deal which should have been nurtured back when former president Jimmy Carter installed solar panels onto the White House, only to have GOPwinger Reagan remove them. Given the Military-Industrial Complex, Big Oil, Big Banking, Big Pharma and Big Agri, we now know why the distinguished Jimmy Carter was only able to serve one term in the presidency.
Year 2020 means Earth Day is 50 years old!
Earth Day, Jesse Jackson’s two presidential campaigns for peace and social justice, libertarian movements calling for non-military intervention and an end to the drug war, social media movements railing against censorship and surveillance, the occupy movements condemning income inequality and the wide-ranging political campaigns of Bernie Sanders have all proven America not only needs but wants a political revolution — that America needs become a good leader in the world, not be the bad leader it has been.
Oligarch Derby
The last thing the electorate wants for 2020 is another Oligarch Derby where, since Reagan was elected, oligarchy wins no matter who becomes the president. The GOPwingers have historically been best friends to oligarchy. They attained power by using racism and sexism to brand images of the angry white male and the welfare queen to create what became Reagan Democrats. This forced the Democratic Party rightward and both parties began utilizing privatization and deregulation tactics. If anything has ever been ‘fake’ in America, it’s been the concept of trickle-down economics!
America saw its labor unions demolished and its middle class collapsed with poor folks barely hanging on while forced into living within an underground drug-worn economy. Starting with Richard Nixon, America’s domestic and foreign policy became spawned into the subservience of a unipolar nationalistic rightward political sphere from which it, and the world, has yet to recover.
All of the above happened when conditions of the world desperately required that our government move leftward— not to a Clinton-Obama type left, but rather to a Noam Chomsky kind of left — moderate-liberals vs. progressives!
A great example is when recycling finally became popular in the late-’80s. But this only happened once the process became profitable. What’s sad is recycling needed to happen not due to profit-making, but rather because it was needed to improve our world. Same is true with solar, wind and alternative energies. It is downright cruel, for the planet, for America to remain addicted to fossil fuels!
Sadly, the Bill Clinton and Barack Obama Democratic administrations, in essence, governed as though they were Ripon Society Republicans, very much on behalf of Wall Street. Except for god, gun and gay issues, which the corporate media accentuated to try and prove a difference between the parties, there became little difference between them.
The expansion of social media and independent online journalism has enabled a wider share of the public to take notice. The electorate wants a true outsider to govern our nation. Today, it has finally become understood that Trump, like Obama before him, masqueraded as an outsider. Each of their administrations saw 85–95% of all new wealth generated go to fatcats at the top. Since the time of Reagan, CEO pay has risen 940% and worker pay, coupled to a vast increase in productivity, rose only 12%.
Anti-War Military Veterans Ventura & Gabbard
Jesse has deep executive experience having twice been elected governor of Minnesota (1999–2003). He also served four years as a mayor (1991–1995) in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota (population 80,000). He is a former Navy Seal who knows the military inside and out and he sports a big-time very well-known career as a professional wrestler and movie actor. He presently serves as a national/international media analyst and commentator.
With Jesse at the top of the Green Party ticket, Trump would have an extremely difficult time keeping intact crucial components of his political base: anti-system Independents/Libertarians, mid-westerners, members of the military and vast numbers of wrestling and NASCAR enthusiasts.
Trump would be left only with hardcore oligarchs and political die-hards who will always support him and hardcore components of the right wing evangelical religious movements who bus members to his rallies. With Jesse in the race, Trump will lose Independent voters and he’ll no longer be able to masquerade as a political outsider. Jesse Ventura, a proven and well-respected real deal outsider, would tactfully leave Trump draining in his own swamp!
As for Joe Biden? Biden, these days, seems more of a candidate placeholder who even without a viable third-party challenge would have a difficult time going the distance in a general election. Due to his aging experience, he often has trouble stringing coherent sentences together. He excites nobody, has a terrible record on crucial issues and it’s become rare that he’s been able to pull together media appearances where he comes off knowledgeable and/or competent.
Poor Joe is riding only on his history in the US Senate, as Obama’s former VP and his promise to select a woman for a running mate. Importantly, Biden provides no excitement coat-tails for down-ballot Democratic candidates. To put it mildly, Biden’s Democratic primary candidacy was propped up more as a priority tool to defeat Sanders. He is nothing but a waste for Democrats!
Indeed, down-ballot Democrats would do better with Ventura in the race, better than they would with only Biden at the top of their ticket.
Meanwhile, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard has served four terms in the US House, is an Iraq war veteran and a major in Hawaii’s national guard. She is the woman who some day should become president. Her courage is unquestionable. Her positions on the issues are on the mark, she supported Native Americans by going to Standing Rock and she has well-proven she’s not afraid to challenge the system.
Gabbard clearly got short shrift from the DNC during the 2020 primaries as party operatives vengefully provided pay-back for when she resigned her seat as DNC vice-chair due to the rigging of the 2016 Democratic Primary. After resigning her position she endorsed Sanders. She was left out of the Democratic debates and DNC media connections were steered away from her campaign.
Tulsi got blackballed by the party and suffered a tremendous indignity when Hillary Clinton attacked her for being cozy with the Russians and wanting to start a third party. Gabbard responded by suing Clinton and making a promise she would not run for president as a third party candidate. However, this promise does not prevent her from accepting a draft nomination from the Green Party as its vice presidential nominee.
What The Media Will Be Unable To Ignore
Unlike Sanders who forthrightly declared conscientious objection, Trump and Biden used multiple Vietnam War military deferments to worm their way out of military service.
Many ascribe these deferments as ‘fake.’ The allegations seem true given both Trump and Biden gloatingly claim they were superb athletes in high school and college, neither had the courage to serve or protest against the war. Trump was deferred for bone spurs and Biden for teenage asthma.
It would seem to me a navy seal veteran from the Vietnam War and an Iraq War veteran army major just might have something to say about the courage of service.
So let’s give Bernie a break. He did good! Let’s now carry the banner forward and get behind Jesse, Tulsi and The Green Party. Let’s help our divided nation become whole again, a better place not just for oligarchs, but for everybody! | https://medium.com/@m-weddle/jesse-ventura-for-president-tulsi-gabbard-for-vp-green-2020-a0e0f761dde1 | ['Michael Weddle'] | 2020-04-23 21:00:53.711000+00:00 | ['Tulsi Gabbard', 'Bernie Sanders', 'Jesse Ventura', 'Politics', '2020 Election'] |
21 Pieces of Advice for 21 Years | image courtesy pixabay.com
A month ago, I turned 21. In my life so far, I have moved between more than 4 cities, visited five foreign countries, eaten everything from grasshoppers in Mexico to some of the best sushi in the world. On the less positive side, I have almost drowned three times, lost over 1,000 dollars in my “business” ventures and was even threatened by a man with a shotgun. Suffice to say, it’s been an interesting 21 years. Although I still know so little, I wanted to share 21 actionable pieces of advice I’ve learned along the way.
1. Don’t be a smart ass
Having committed this error myself countless times, I strongly advise against it. The biggest problem with being a smart ass beyond just looking like an idiot and making people feel uncomfortable, is the fact that at least some of the time you will be wrong. It may not be this time or the next time or even the time after that, but there will come a time. I think knowing this makes you more humble and makes you think more before blurting something out. My advice is the next time you feel the urge to be the “smartest one in the room” just stop and think for a moment.
image courtesy pixabay.com
2. Avoid isolating yourself
It is very tempting to believe that our friends and family will stick around regardless of what we do. After all, they are always a text or call away. This has in my experience made me less inclined to accept invitations and/or go out of my way to spend time with these people. What I have learned is it’s much harder to make a new friend or mend an old friendship than it is to maintain connection over time. I am not saying that this is easy either, but it will help you feel good and make the people in your life feel appreciated. My advice is to stop right now and think of who your group of friends and family members is. If there is someone you haven’t contacted in a while, just shoot a message. I have gotten these messages myself and it is surprising how something so small can make a big difference.
image courtesy pixabay.com
3. Have a backup plan
There is an expression we have probably all heard, “don’t quit your day job.” It’s usually used in a mean spirited way to discourage people from doing something they aren’t considered outwardly talented at. However, the expression has a grain of truth. Leaving/quitting/ or starting something completely new without a backup plan is not usually a good idea. I have done this several times and have almost always kicked myself for not having something to fall back on. The way I think of it, a backup plan is like insurance. You might never need it, but when something bad does happen it’s like having a parachute to cushion your fall. My advice is if you’re leaving something or starting something new, have a transition period. If you’re starting a business, try to keep working until you get your feet off the ground. If you’re moving to a new city, try to find a few people beforehand you can stay with for a little while until you find a new place.
image courtesy pixabay.com
4. Learn the basics
Whenever I start something new, I am tempted to skip to the end or do the absolute minimum to get to the next stage. The problem with this is as with anything, the new is built on the old. I struggled with this early on in math. I was never very good at the subject and spent all my time trying to pass rather than understand the concepts behind what I was learning. What I figured out was you will have to continually look back or ask someone else for help if you don’t master the basics. My advice is to stop and see if there’s something you don’t understand before moving on. This might mean you spend weeks on one thing, but I guarantee it makes everything that follows much much easier.
image courtesy pixabay.com
5. Save and invest your money
I know I’m just beating a dead horse here, but seriously save and invest your money now!!! The power of compounding is truly insane. The one thing all of us have is time, but so few of us use this to our benefit. Even if you put your money into low risk investments, you are likely to see your money grow a few percent a year. These investments will likely continue to build on themselves over time, especially if you avoid panicking when the market goes down. This is in my opinion so much better than buying a depreciating asset like a new car or something fancy you might only use once. My advice is to look carefully at your financial goals and start saving and investing even if it’s only a small amount.
image courtesy pixabay.com
6. Buy things based on their value to you rather than their cost
I have made the mistake of buying things that are either the cheapest or seemingly best, based purely on their cost. Although, cost is not a bad way of evaluating the quality of something, it doesn’t take into account numerous factors: how much you care about the item, how much you use it, your other expenses, etc. This has been especially the case for clothes. I have drawers full of cheap clothes, but little to nothing to wear for special occasions like interviews, dates, or weddings. Looking back, I believe it would have been better to buy fewer but much better quality clothes. There are also external benefits beyond the cost to doing this. If you buy a good quality car, you may spend less in the future on repairs and maintenance. My advice is to look at the long term when buying things, especially if they’re expensive. If you believe those things will maintain their value in your eyes, buy them and if not, forget about them.
image courtesy pixabay.com
7. Work on problems as soon as you notice them
In the same way investments helps us build wealth through compound interest, problems make things worse through the same principle. The problems themselves are often not insurmountable in my experience, but leaving them to fester is a sure way to make them that way. My advice is very simple here and that is to identify a problem as soon as it comes up and address it immediately. It is definitely a pain, but spending the extra time or getting help if needed can save you potentially years if not a lifetime of heartache.
image courtesy pixabay.com
8. College is not for everyone
We were probably told this sometime in high school, but from what I remember almost everyone expected me to go on to college. There was little to no talk about alternatives like trade school, apprenticeships, or entrepreneurship to name a few. It was only about a year ago when I first even seriously considered those options. All that said, I am glad I am still in school but I definitely don’t recommend it for everyone, especially if your main goal is financial. Plumbers and electricians are high in demand and commonly make over 50,000 dollars. It is not to say I have not learned a lot in college, but I do often wonder if the debt I’ve gone into justifies the experience. My advice is to evaluate all your options ideally before college and take into account all of the costs associated with it, financial or otherwise. Only decide to go if those costs make sense to you and if it aligns with your future goals.
image courtesy pixabay.com
9. Connect different parts of your life
I tend to see things as only having one function. That means you hang out with your friends to socialize, you study to graduate and then get a job, you travel to see new places, etc. However, I’ve found that life is a lot more enjoyable when you can mix these things together. You have an assignment and you use it as motivation to see your friends or you travel to a new place to meet new people. This also is economical as you start to see skills you acquire on your own or in the work world as applicable in many different fields. In short, my advice is to try to find the connections. If there is something you don’t want to do, try to connect it or use it as motivation for something you do want to do.
image courtesy pixabay.com
10. Give activities you don’t like a “trial period”
If you’ve ever clicked on a link to try a new product, a 30 day trial may have popped up. This is an easy way for companies to get customers in the door and have them eventually buy the product either through a passive acceptance of the cost or a newfound interest after the 30 days. I think you can do the same in your day to day life. Let’s say you don’t want to go to an event. My advice is to try things out you may not want to do or feel uncomfortable doing. This might be giving yourself 30 minutes before you leave a social event or a simple task like saying hi to someone there. You may still leave, but that will motivate you to get out of your comfort zone and maybe you might even end up enjoying yourself.
11. Don’t make decisions purely based on emotion
I have an anecdote to share about this one. I used to walk dogs when I didn’t have class. One day, I walked a client’s dog at night and returned to his apartment to drop him off. I was greeted not only by him but an entourage of his friends looking like they were going to kill me. He told me his friend a few blocks down had seen me “yanking his dog” and demanded to know if it was true. My heart was beating practically out of my chest and my palms started to sweat. However, I calmly looked him in the eye and said “no sir, I would be happy to show you how I walked him.” I did just that and even waited for him to call his friend who had made the claim. I did this for over half an hour until he eventually decided his friend was wrong. I could’ve done a lot of things: yelled at him, run off, or confront him on the obviously baseless accusation. That would have almost certainly put me in danger and I’m glad I reacted the way I did. I’m not saying it is always possible especially in the heat of the moment. My advice is to take a second to calmly and logically assess the situation. You can acknowledge the emotion, but do not act on it.
image courtesy pixabay.com
12. You don’t really know a person
This is more of a “truth” than a piece of advise but I wanted to include it anyways. People are so multifaceted and can appear one way while being practically unrecognizable in another situation. We tend to judge people based on very limited experience with them, both for the good and for the bad. We can’t always do something about this as sometimes we only have that limited time to make a decision be it in on an interview, a date, or in another social setting. However, we forget just how much we miss including how they were in other stages of their lives, the personal things they don’t share, or the way they act with other people. I have been shocked to see people I considered nice acting very rudely and vice versa. I used to believe those traits were mutually exclusive, but now for the most part I see how both can exist within the same person.
Image courtesy pixabay.com
13. Create a habit for yourself that you can stick to
Whether we see it or not, we all have a habit of doing things. It is something that happens practically subconsciously and yet that habit or habits end up ruling our lives. These are often unhealthy and include processes that we passively do instead of actively picking for ourselves. That’s why I believe having at least one good habit you can stick to makes a big difference. For me, this has meant walking every day at 5:30 in the afternoon for about an hour. It is nothing tremendous, but it’s given me a bit of structure and exercise as well as something to look forward to everyday. My advice is to pick something simple, enjoyable, and hopefully healthy you can do every day. Plan when you’re going to do it and stick to it even if you don’t always feel like it
image courtesy pixabay.com
14. Overthinking can be worse than not thinking
As much as I believe analysis and logical evaluation is critical in our lives, it can become suffocating. The stress of the “what ifs” and the ever looming fear of failure is probably something we are all familiar with. Based on my experience of this, I would say overthinking is even worse than just doing something random in hopes it will work out. What happens for me is I essentially “overheat” like a computer with millions of possibilities racing in my head, but a feeling of paralysis that prevents me from doing anything. I have found that even just acting on the spur of the moment doesn’t always help as the proverbial “just do it” expresses. My advice is instead to narrow your ideas down to just a handful and giving yourself a time limit to decide. Additionally, try your best to work off what you already know about yourself instead of considering every possibility.
image courtesy pixabay.com
15. Everything changes
Stopping changes you have no control over is at best pointless and at worst detrimental to yourself and others. I think of it like standing in front of a bus barreling towards you and believing you won’t get hit. Change comes whether you like it or not and will continue throughout your life. This will mean many painful moments, but also joy you didn’t know possible. The ebb and flow of life is part of what makes it so interesting, but also makes holding on to things very difficult. My advice is to balance out nostalgia with change. Keep a bit of what you’re familiar with and try your best to cherish it, but embrace change or at least adapt to it when you see it coming.
Image courtesy pixabay.com
16. Keep your things organized
I am a messy person, anyone who knows me would tell you that. Whether it’s leaving socks on the couch or my keys in my pocket, I have serious trouble keeping my things in order. This seems like a small thing, but has lead to me spending hundreds of dollars on things I’ve simply misplaced and losing important documents which are even harder to replace. It is also just less stressful to wake up and know where everything is beforehand. My advice is to keep track of what you’re holding or using and making sure to put it back before you do anything else. So if you just got home for example, hang up your keys before you go to watch TV, not after. The more time passes by the less likely you will remember.
Image courtesy pixabay.com
17. Success is often the exception rather than the rule
I love photography. I have taken probably 20,000 pictures in the past few years. I believe somewhere around 200 of them are pretty good. That means according to what I consider a success, only one percent of my photographs were successful. It is a cliché, but there is simply no way around failure. You have to keep doing and improving to even scratch the fruits of success. I know how easy it is to get discouraged especially after you spend months of your time and money on something with no tangible results. That is why my advice is to commit only to the things that are important to you. If you are embarking on a big project, make sure it is a priority and take small tangible steps you can measure and work towards. Without these two things, it becomes very easy to burn out and give up.
Image courtesy pixabay.com
18. Always find the other side of the story
When i was a kid, I was almost “puritan” in the way I saw the world. It was good and bad and I wanted to be on the “good side.” I made judgements on issues I didn’t totally understand and took sides when what I should’ve done was sit back and listen. The stories other people tell you and even the stories you tell yourself often only tell one side of the story. I don’t think this is always meant maliciously, but it leads to what I consider radical and often polarizing views on the world. When you listen to only one side of the story, the facts aren’t necessarily incorrect, but vital and often contradictory information is left out. My advice is to piece together a “middle ground” from your own perspective and the perspectives you’ve heard. If you don’t understand something fully or if you feel there is something off, stop and try to gain more information.
Image courtesy pixabay.com
19. Haggle a little bit
This is something I learned really late in life. Growing up in The United States, I didn’t even know haggling was ever an option. Whatever I was offered, I usually took and without question. I think this is pretty common for people who live in the Western World, but is something we can learn from the rest of the world. I’m not saying to haggle at a five star restaurant or undercut the price for something like bus fare. Those people are obnoxious. However, you can look for “deals” all over the place be them through coupons, discount stores, or at flea markets. You can also often negotiate with your credit card or service provider and see if they will match or even one up other deals you have found. You won’t always win, but when you do it feels amazing! My advice is to explore multiple outlets when you plan on purchasing something. Check Ebay or Craigslist to see if you can find the product or service at a cheaper rate and make your decision based on what brings you the best value.
Image courtesy pixabay.com
20. Set boundaries for yourself
Nobody likes to be told they’re overstaying their welcome or that they are making you feel uncomfortable, but sometimes it’s necessary to do just that. I believe setting boundaries based on your morals, comfort level, and what situation you are in makes life easier and more enjoyable. This also helps with assertiveness and confidence because when you know what you want and don’t want, you’re better able to convey that to other people. My advice is to be consistent about what you will and won’t do. Try to gently remind the people around you if you feel they are crossing your boundaries and ask others what they do and don’t feel comfortable with.
Image courtesy pixabay.com
21. Take a different path
You can take this literally or metaphorically, but take a different path sometimes. I often feel bored and agitated with my surroundings. I walk around through the same streets, to the same store, at the same time and do this every day. However, last month I decided to do something new. I had an extra credit project for biology and went to a beach I never went to and looked at tide pools I had never seen. Although the weather wasn’t great and it was a bit crowded, I saw a sea anemone for the first time and it was really cool! I also find it fascinating how these little changes are often more interesting than bigger more expensive ones. That’s why my advice is to find something little you can change, even if it’s just for a day. Do it without expectations and see how you feel and what you end up doing after you’ve decided on something .
image courtesy pixabay.com
Thank you for reading!
J.M | https://medium.com/@johncameronghalymacaulay/21-pieces-of-advice-for-21-years-1314967cad5b | ['John Macaulay'] | 2020-12-20 08:48:01.582000+00:00 | ['Opinion', 'Self Improvement', 'Inspiration', 'Advice', 'Millennials'] |
An Alarming Cautionary Tale of Fascism: Sons of Denmark | Ali (Zaki Youssef)
Denmark in recent years like many other European countries has had a growing diasporic population as a result of ongoing conflict and war in the Middle East. Unfortunately, there have been deadly clashes that has drawn a heated division. In 2015, a deadly shooting occurred as a result of ongoing tension from a controversial series of depictions of the prophet Muhammad by Swedish artist Lars Vilks. Since then, tensions between diasporic communities have risen as the Danish have become increasingly hostile toward them. By demonizing those who don’t learn the language and assimilate into Danish customs, working class refugees are sometimes relegated to ghettos (which is prime conditions for worsening xenophobia, racism and hate crimes). Xenophobia has even led its way into legislation that is eerily familiar to forced Native American assimilation. So, it is no surprise to the imagination that Danish director Ulaa Salim, whose parents are Iraqi, would create 2019’s Sons of Denmark/Danmarks sønner, which takes place in a dystopic 2025 Denmark.
The setting is Denmark, 2025 but the xenophobic rhetoric from rising politician Martin Nordahl (Rasmus Bjerg) sounds frighteningly familiar to the current state of politics and alarming rise of fascism. After a terror attack, the country’s dormant division catches fire and unleashes the rise of more vicious contentions between neo-Nazi groups and refugees. Zakaria (breakout star Mohammed Ismail Mohammed), a 19 year old trying to find belonging in a country that constantly rejects him, is caught in the crossfire while maintaining responsibility as head of the household. The catalyst for radicalization sparks when anti-immigrant hate messages are written on the walls of his apartment complex with pigs blood (the decapitated heads are left for all to see). This prompts Zakaria to become radicalized with a local group who is planning to assassinate the public face of the rising fascist movement, Martin Nordahl. Beneath a local cafe is their headquarters, where they house refugees who are in need of a community, home and escape from the rising attacks against them. Zakaria becomes close with Ali (Zaki Youssef), who takes Zakaria under his wing to prepare him for the attack. Ali stands in as a surrogate father for Zakaria who lost his father in Iraq, serving as a role model for his young and impressionable mind going under a life altering, ideological shift.
Simultaneously, Nordahl gains traction as he runs for office positioning himself as a family man and poster boy for a new Denmark. It’s as if Richard Spencer ran for president and charmed people with good looks all while continuing to unabashedly promote his fascist ideals (contrary to the disheveled current president). Nordahl is the fresh face for a turning point in politics, a rebranded fascism that is more palatable than a screaming businessman or seasoned politician. His ties to neo-nazi groups are glossed over repeatedly leaving the hands of police in a legal bind and inevitably drowned in blood.
Martin Nordahl (Rasmus Bjerg)
The feeling of dread crawls into the bloodstream, Sons of Denmark is a raw portrait of our current world, riddled with a constant and overbearing sense of fear and terror. All across the Europe (and the rest of the world) right-wing leaders and groups have exploited and propagated fear against the waves of refugees who have escaped war torn countries. Fascism isn’t something stupid people disseminate or a product of irrational thought, it’s calculated, manufactured and packaged in a digestible way to target a majority white audience who need a scapegoat. It’s also incredibly dangerous when fascism is given a high platform where it’s tentacles seep into government and enact dangerous policies. From public figure heads to the role of police, fascism provides a cloak that obscures worsening problems under capitalism and instead pins the blame on a vulnerable target. From political leaders like Donald Trump or groups like the Danish People’s Party have utilized public fear of capitalism in decay and scapegoated it to whomever has a shred of empathy left for others in peril. Zakaria’s anger is rooted in reality, Nordahl’s rise to power is the result of mass denial and dismissiveness of the uncontrollable effect of unchecked and unchallenged fascism and national populism.
Zakaria (right) embraces his mother played by the amazing Asil Mohamad Habib (left)
The community of refugees living in diaspora are harbored in a cultural limbo expected to assimilate and reject a part of their identity while their homeland is literally being torn apart by European and American militaries. The constant wars in the Middle East have done irreparable damage to refugees and their children who carry on the unfortunate legacy of unhealed trauma. The relationship between Ali and Zakaria illustrates the widening distance between generations who have integrated Danish culture in their lives and have almost completely neglected their roots. The second half of the film explores Ali’s identity closely and crescendos into an unforgettable and tragic climax.
Salim has painted a terrifying picture of the future as a wake up call to the present; it serves as bold commentary on current tensions in Denmark between white and diasporic populations but also on current state of the world. A world in which fascism has unfortunately gained traction and legitimacy in politics once again with no telling what the future holds if we choose to foolishly ignore it. Zakaria’s radicalization isn’t a product blind mob mentality but a response to a legitimate threat as a result of the neglectful and delusional government. The new fascistic wave of leaders like Nordahl aren’t a far cry from charismatic talking heads with glossy language to obscure their reprehensible disregard for humanity. Sons of Denmark is an incredibly disturbing film that hits incredibly close to home. Denmark is thousands of miles away from the US but is an uncanny vision of a plausible future. As tensions peak, fascism and national populism is handled as a product of irrationality rather than a credible threat that has seeped into the pores of the government.
Sons of Denmark is available to rent on Amazon Prime. | https://medium.com/@kristen-huizar/an-alarming-cautionary-tale-of-fascism-sons-of-denmark-95e81522db53 | ['Kristen Huizar'] | 2020-02-20 22:41:04.707000+00:00 | ['Diaspora', 'Film', 'Political Commentary', 'Denmark', 'Fascism'] |
Full-featured Bots in Mixin Messenger | OceanONE Bot (Mixin ID:7000101517)
OceanONE , created by Mixin Network, is a decentralized exchange built on Mixin Network that provides the transaction experience the same as centralized exchanges. All digital asset trading can be finished within OceanONE.
First of all, add OceanONE Bot as a contact. Open OceanONE and click the bot icon at the left side of the emoji icon. Here you can see all the detailed market info of all cryptocurrencies, and click the log-in icon, you can sign up to be a member of OceanONE. After logged in, you can complete the depositing & withdrawal with any token supported in Mixin Network. | https://medium.com/mixinnetwork/full-featured-bots-in-mixin-messenger-1381843bab52 | ['Mixin Evangelist'] | 2018-11-02 11:44:47.591000+00:00 | ['Innovation', 'Ecosystem', 'Mixinmessenger', 'Developer', 'Bots'] |
The Edge of Seventeen and its Problematic Trailer | The Edge of Seventeen and its Problematic Trailer
Yes he is in The Edge of Seventeen, but you wouldn’t know it by watching the trailer. Image source: STX Films http://www.stxfilms.com/theedgeofseventeen/. Fair use.
First let me say upfront that I love love love The Edge of Seventeen. It is funny to its bones. The protagonist Nadine is smart, funny and lonely. She is likeable despite all her flaws. For bonus points, there is a non-stereotypical East Asian character here, Erwin, one that is not good at maths or science, but as a flesh and blood character (more or less) that Nadine fancies and vice versa. Just like any other “white” character can be, a blank canvas that can be anything. And life was wonderful before Covid-19.
What bothers me is the trailer for The Edge of Seventeen. The trailer basically erased the fact that this East Asian character is in this movie at all, by not showing Erwin. East Asian men in Hollywood are to this day still typecast as nerds, martial artists or sidekicks. So when the producers are brave enough to resist East Asian typecasting by taking this chance and cast Hayden Szeto as the “normal” love interest Erwin to Hailee Steinfeld’s character Nadine, his absence in the trailer is baffling. Are the producers not brave enough to follow through their conviction and show that an East Asian character can just be as fully formed and complex as your normal “white” character? So they did a “bait-and-switch” with the trailer? Or were they overruled by marketing executive that does not believe in their vision and therefore decided that the general public is not “ready” for Hayden Szeto, and therefore erased him from the trailer?
I do not consider Crazy Rich Asians to be breaking the mould for East Asians in Hollywood. Essentially it is just another “they do things differently over there” that kind of movie, making the distinction between “east” and “west” essential rather than malleable. The Edge of Seventeen presents an alternative “colour-blind” version of race, where an East Asian character can inhibit what normally would be a white character, and it is the most normal thing in the world that doesn’t deserve a mention.
Sometimes, colour-blind version of race is problematic. For example, the American right likes to say “all lives matters” instead of “black lives matters”, and assert that America in theory is a colour-blind society already, with various laws guaranteeing equality. The American right however is essentially trivialising the fact that in practice, black lives are routinely deemed by the US police as less important than white lives. So “colour-blind” version of race can trivialise existing racial inequality, by claiming that society is already colour-blind.
I think the end goal of BLM, feminist, and intersectional anti-racist movement can still be a colour-blind version of society, where a person can be whatever that person wants to be, regardless of the person’s race, gender or sexual orientation. There will be no pigeonholing based on race (“Asians are good at math.”), gender (“women are good at communicating.”) or sexual orientation (“gay people have good fashion sense.”), and society will accept individuals as they are, not what stereotypes say they should be. The Edge of Seventeen gives us a glimpse of that society. Pity about the trailer though. | https://medium.com/@questionable/the-edge-of-seventeen-and-its-problematic-trailer-de3e945b6113 | ['Fashionably Questionable'] | 2020-12-22 00:11:18.033000+00:00 | ['Stereotypes', 'Hollywood', 'BlackLivesMatter', 'The Edge Of Seventeen', 'Racism'] |
Tonight on the Write Stuff — Parker’s Top Ten Picks for 2020 | On this special episode of Write Stuff, I do something I’ve never done before: a top ten list.
I hemmed and hawed over this idea for a while. After all, I’ve enjoyed every book I’ve highlighted on Write Stuff. I’ve made friends with some wonderful authors. I’ve had the pleasure of following their careers as they’ve grown into their purpose as authors. So, how it is possible that to take all these lovely books and par them down to ten? It was difficult but we did it.
Join me as I go over my top ten favorite books of 2020 for the Write Stuff. Helping me is returning guest co-host and contributor, Rachel Rossano. Listen in at 646–668–8485. Download Stitcher on your mobile device. Follow us on iTunes. Add PJC Media to Spotify or iHeart Radio. Or, click on the link here: http://tobtr.com/s/11867677. | https://medium.com/@parkerjcole/tonight-on-the-write-stuff-parkers-top-ten-picks-for-2020-d96f9df0fa77 | ['Parker J Cole'] | 2020-12-22 22:10:51.295000+00:00 | ['Podcast', 'Top 10', 'Christianity', 'Authors', 'Books'] |
Graph Connectivity With Threshold | We have n cities labeled from 1 to n . Two different cities with labels x and y are directly connected by a bidirectional road if and only if x and y share a common divisor strictly greater than some threshold . More formally, cities with labels x and y have a road between them if there exists an integer z such that all of the following are true:
x % z == 0 ,
, y % z == 0 , and
, and z > threshold .
Given the two integers, n and threshold , and an array of queries , you must determine for each queries[i] = [ai, bi] if cities ai and bi are connected (i.e. there is some path between them).
Return an array answer , where answer.length == queries.length and answer[i] is true if for the ith query, there is a path between ai and bi , or answer[i] is false if there is no path.
Example 1:
Input: n = 6, threshold = 2, queries = [[1,4],[2,5],[3,6]]
Output: [false,false,true]
Explanation: The divisors for each number:
1: 1
2: 1, 2
3: 1, 3
4: 1, 2, 4
5: 1, 5
6: 1, 2, 3, 6
Using the underlined divisors above the threshold, only cities 3 and 6 share a common divisor, so they are the
only ones directly connected. The result of each query:
[1,4] 1 is not connected to 4
[2,5] 2 is not connected to 5
[3,6] 3 is connected to 6 through path 3--6
Example 2:
Input: n = 6, threshold = 0, queries = [[4,5],[3,4],[3,2],[2,6],[1,3]]
Output: [true,true,true,true,true]
Explanation: The divisors for each number are the same as the previous example. However, since the threshold is 0,
all divisors can be used. Since all numbers share 1 as a divisor, all cities are connected.
Example 3:
Input: n = 5, threshold = 1, queries = [[4,5],[4,5],[3,2],[2,3],[3,4]]
Output: [false,false,false,false,false]
Explanation: Only cities 2 and 4 share a common divisor 2 which is strictly greater than the threshold 1, so they are the only ones directly connected.
Please notice that there can be multiple queries for the same pair of nodes [x, y], and that the query [x, y] is equivalent to the query [y, x].
Constraints:
2 <= n <= 104
0 <= threshold <= n
1 <= queries.length <= 105
queries[i].length == 2
1 <= ai, bi <= cities
ai != bi
Solution: Easier way to think about this problem is
1. build the graph with divisor
2. Find the connected components
Here is my java solution: | https://medium.com/algorithm-and-datastructure/graph-connectivity-with-threshold-ced48617ee6d | ['Omar Faroque'] | 2020-10-18 23:02:30.115000+00:00 | ['Graph', 'Leetcode', 'Connected Components', 'Divisor'] |
How to fix warping and cracking in 3D printing | What exactly is warping?
What is warping? Warping is a term employed in 3D printing to refer to the process whereby the initial layer of a component is distorted and separated from the print surface.
Warping during 3D printing services is most evident in large-sized parts due to the fact that it is in these types of parts that the thermal stresses within the component increase and can cause the parts away from the corners.
What is the cause of warping?
Do you wish to know the causes of the warping of your components? The cause is shrinking of the layers when they cool and settle over each other. The layers that are higher in the air are stretched and pull down upon the lower layers and the result is felt on the outside of the area and this is the place where they separate to the mattress.
What is cracking?
Cracking is a different effect that is that is closely associated with warping, however, it is seen on the middle layers within the component and not only in the primary layer. If the part is cracked the initial layer is always affected by warping as well.
Cracks are also caused by the stresses caused by cooling the component however this time it’s in the layers between. If the welding between layers isn’t strong enough, these tensions can end in separating the layers, leaving horizontal cracks on our prints.
Thus, the best tips to avoid cracking is to keep the volume of print at an elevated temperatures (closing your 3D printer, and not using it in extreme cold areas) and also increase the temperature of the extrusion to enhance the bonding between layers.
Warping is a common feature of utilized material: PLA, ABS, PETG and PP.
This is the more technical question How can warping and cracking impact the most widely employed 3D material for printing? We’ve tested several of them and we’ll provide you with the most popular ones:
PLA . PLA is the substance with the least amount of warping during online 3D printing india. Why? because it has the lowest thermal expansion coefficient among all which means that when PLA parts cool , they shrink more than other material. This is why PLA is the most suitable filament to use when you need to print large parts or ones that have a big contact surface to the bed to avoid the warping.
. PLA is the substance with the least amount of warping during online 3D printing india. Why? because it has the lowest thermal expansion coefficient among all which means that when PLA parts cool , they shrink more than other material. This is why PLA is the most suitable filament to use when you need to print large parts or ones that have a big contact surface to the bed to avoid the warping. ABS. ABS, unlike PLA which is a plastic, is that is extremely susceptible to cracking and warping as we’ve discussed in our article on it. To stop cracks and warping with ABS the only solution is to shut down the printer (in the form of a box or suitable casing) to ensure that the entire print area is maintained at a high temperatures and the components are cooled down faster.
ABS, unlike PLA which is a plastic, is that is extremely susceptible to cracking and warping as we’ve discussed in our article on it. To stop cracks and warping with ABS the only solution is to shut down the printer (in the form of a box or suitable casing) to ensure that the entire print area is maintained at a high temperatures and the components are cooled down faster. PETG . PET-G is a durable material and is extremely ideal to be used for 3D printing in india. One of its benefits is that it can be a substance that exhibits minimal warping (although it is more then PLA) and yet more robust in comparison to ABS or PLA. If you notice warping, take the suggestions we offer in the following section.
. PET-G is a durable material and is extremely ideal to be used for 3D printing in india. One of its benefits is that it can be a substance that exhibits minimal warping (although it is more then PLA) and yet more robust in comparison to ABS or PLA. If you notice warping, take the suggestions we offer in the following section. PP. I remember the time we were required to print 20cm sharp-edged cubes made of polypropylene. It was difficult to hold it in place on the surface of printing. The best way to prevent getting warped with PP is to utilize packing tape (which is also made from PP) and the pieces are joined to the tape. This makes it slightly easier to create parts. It’s still an adventure to print polypropylene components that measure 20cm or greater.
How do you prevent getting warped? 6 techniques
Make use of the hot bed . It’s evident, however there are printers that do not have a hot bed. If this is the scenario, you’ll struggle to control the first layer of your prints. If you have a very hot bed but you are still experiencing cracks and warping, try increasing the temperature of your bed by 5 or 10 degrees in order to boost the fixation as well as the surrounding temperatures of the pieces.
. It’s evident, however there are printers that do not have a hot bed. If this is the scenario, you’ll struggle to control the first layer of your prints. If you have a very hot bed but you are still experiencing cracks and warping, try increasing the temperature of your bed by 5 or 10 degrees in order to boost the fixation as well as the surrounding temperatures of the pieces. Set the temperature of the room. . The temperature in the room is another factor which has the greatest influence on the warping. It is essential to have a warm and comfortable environment so that the parts can slow down and regulate internal tensions. What could you do to enhance the quality of your environment?
1- Make prints inside a cozy space instead of a garage that is not heated or office or room that has drafts.
2- Shut down the 3D printer by using the casing or box which creates a closed space surrounding it.
Recalibrate the size of the initial layer (bring the head closer to the bed). One of the most frequent causes of warping for beginners is that they’ve miscalculated how high the initial layer. When the initial layer’s height is not high enough it will separate from the bed, and warping will be evident everywhere on our printers.
One of the most frequent causes of warping for beginners is that they’ve miscalculated how high the initial layer. When the initial layer’s height is not high enough it will separate from the bed, and warping will be evident everywhere on our printers. Make a brim, as well as “ears” to our parts . Brims , as well as “ears” work by adding surfaces to the parts to ensure it stays in contact with the bed.
1- The Brim is a part of the edge which is added to the component by the laminator. You can modify it to decrease the possibility of your component falling off the bed.
2- “Ears” “ears” are what I refer to as a kind of design that’s added around the edges of parts to prevent stretching. Here’s a pic to understand what I’m talking about and it’s commonplace on parts designed to work with 3D printing services in india | https://medium.com/@makenica/how-to-fix-warping-and-cracking-in-3d-printing-7dbb46746890 | [] | 2021-11-27 09:58:14.983000+00:00 | ['Cracking', '3d Printing Service', '3d Printing Market', '3D Printing', 'Warping'] |
Infrastructure as Code only works as Code… | The popular Serverless framework allows you to use YAML or JSON to describe and version your infrastructure configuration. The serverless.yml or serverless.json file stored at the project root is used by default to provision any project using this framework.
This is no revolution in the IaC frameworks world, where most of them rely on declarative file syntaxes to describe infrastructure.
However, a lesser known and recently introduced feature allows you to use a serverless.js or serverless.ts file as the default configuration file. In this article, I’ll describe the advantages of using such a format to build serverless applications faster and with a better developer experience.
TL;DR
You can use serverless.ts service file in the Serverless framework. You can benefit from:
Types : you can use service file definition types to get quick feedback on available properties for each block. However, the framework is not written in TypeScript, and so the definitions can sometimes be outdated. Regular community maintenance is required.
: you can use service file definition types to get quick feedback on available properties for each block. However, the framework is not written in TypeScript, and so the definitions can sometimes be outdated. Regular community maintenance is required. Imports : JavaScript file imports allow you to split the definition file into multiple files. This means you can have fine-grained function block definitions right next to your handler’s codebase.
: JavaScript file imports allow you to split the definition file into multiple files. This means you can have fine-grained function block definitions right next to your handler’s codebase. References: you can write custom-made functions to build AWS intrinsic syntax and navigate easily through infrastructure definitions, dependency by dependency, using the native click and follow features of your IDE.
TYPING
The TypeScript and Serverless communities joined forces to lay the groundwork for Serverless framework types, which allow direct feedback when writing a Serverless service file.
If you want to give it a try, just run serverless create --template aws-nodejs-typescript in a new directory (and make sure you’re using at least version 1.75 of Serverless framework to benefit from serverless.ts service file definition). The new Serverless type encloses all available configuration keys for the framework — which means you don’t need to go through the full serverless.yml configuration example to get the right syntax.
VSCode type suggestion for Serverless service file
As the framework evolves, all the definitions are maintained by the community within the DefinitelyTyped repository. Unlike the recently-added JSON schema validation, which was made directly within the framework source code, the definitions require constant improvement to follow the evolution of the service file definitions. Please report any issues you encounter, to make sure this definition stays up to date.
IMPORTS
JSON and YAML file formats cannot be split into multiple files. In order to avoid large service definition files when using those formats, Serverless came up with a dedicated variable resolver, allowing the use of the ${file(filepath)} function to import content from other files.
This can be leverage for example for function definition. An all-in-one serverless.yml file containing the entire service definition:
can be split in multiple files:
The problem with this approach is that you rely on the string definition of the other files to be accurate. This can result in bugs when a file path contains a typo, or when the source file is moved. It also impacts developer experience, because those links cannot be resolved by your IDE of preference.
Switching to JavaScript and TypeScript removes this issue. Dependent files are imported, and their links are usually dynamically updated whenever you change your project directory structure, thanks to your IDE. Any developer can click and follow referenced files to dive into specific service configuration blocks.
Using the power of Javascript imports, we can now keep function definition much closer to function handler code for complex Serverless applications :
As you see above, both function configuration and handler are within the same file. It considerably speeds up development, as no navigation is required between files to develop an end-to-end feature. Both execution context and instructions are located within the same easy-to-access file.
REFERENCES
You often need to inject specific attributes of provisioned infrastructure into other pieces of infrastructure within your application. For example, your Lambda handler’s code may rely on the DynamoDB table name to do the required feature.
The usual way of doing this is to use AWS native intrinsic functions throughout your serverless.ts configuration file. You inject AWS CloudFormation native syntax blocks into your service file’s resources property, and those services are provisioned together with your functions. You can then use the Ref intrinsic function to inject the generated DynamoDB table as one of your lambda’s environment variables in create.ts .
The problem with this syntax is the use of Ref with a string representing the provisioned DynamoDB table. There is no way for a developer going through the create function to easily trace back which resource is referenced in the handler’s environment. It is also quite easy to accidentally change this value without noticing its impact. You will not get any feedback saying you referenced a non-existing resource until you actually deploy to AWS.
To make it more developer friendly, you can write a small service handling the AWS intrinsic function writing for you. This service actually use both your whole resources value as well as the AWS CloudFormation single resource itself, to generate the correct output Ref syntax:
You can then use a much more natural syntax in your function configuration to let everyone know which definition you’re actually using the name of. It is also much easier to know which functions actually depends on the specified AWS resource, since your IDE can actively tell you all usage of the variable representing the MyTable resource.
CONCLUSION
Other IaC frameworks, such as the AWS CDK, have started using configuration syntax which allows a more functional definition of infrastructure.
The use of JavaScript and TypeScript objects to power definitions of the Serverless framework opens up a new world of possibilities — with fewer text-defined options, fewer errors, and making it easier for developers to know the extent of usage of a specific infrastructure block. | https://medium.com/serverless-transformation/infrastructure-as-code-only-works-as-code-a8f0072b29cf | ['Frédéric Barthelet'] | 2020-10-15 11:50:57.594000+00:00 | ['Infrastructure As Code', 'Serverless', 'AWS', 'Typescript', 'Serverless Architecture'] |
Preemptive pardons: I played Monopoly all wrong | Preemptive pardons: I played Monopoly all wrong
If I could’ve foreseen Election 2020, I would never lose at board games
Photo credit: Suzy Hazelwood/Unsplash
To Whom It May Concern,
To every family member, friend and associate who has ever spent hours on end watching me debate the rules of Motownopoly (or Monopoly if I didn’t bring the Motown version with me) and smile a devilish grin when you landed on my property, we have an important situation to discuss. Throughout my childhood, I believed that the result of “Go Directly to Jail” Chance cards meant I do not collect $200 and do not pass “Go.” I was told it was immediate — whether I pulled this card via Community Chest or Chance card, or rolled doubles three times in a row.
Although I was still baffled I could collect rent, along with buying, selling and trading property while I was incarcerated, I would sit in there all day long trying to roll doubles again. I was too cheap to pay the $50 fine. But if I had a “Get Out of Jail Free” card, then game on. Otherwise I would just hang out in there and watch the rest of you play — until my third attempt of not rolling doubles and grudgingly paying the $50 fine anyway.
Photo credit: National Cancer Institute/Unsplash
But let’s get back to this “Get Out of Jail Free” card though. I don’t understand why you bunch of cheaters didn’t tell me I could just preemptively negotiate a “Get Out of Jail Free” card before I even went to jail. You saw the way I started this game. You knew eventually me trying to beat you nonstop during every single board game we ever played — including Risk, Life, Guess Who?, Clue, Memory, Pente and even Mall Madness — that I was going to end up in the pokie sooner or later in a game like Monopoly. You saw the body rolls and the head nodding every single time I counted the spaces the minute you rolled the dice, speculating on which spaces you kept landing on. Bankruptcy, be damned. I wanted my money! (And you know I for sure was never going to tell the police officer when I spin a “10” in Life. It’s up to you to collect that $5,000. I’m not reminding anybody of anything.)
But while I was trying to dodge Officer Mallory, somebody could’ve told me I could just break laws left and right on top of being greedy, and get released from jail before I went. Nobody felt the need to notify me that I could negotiate at least 20 or so preemptive pardons for other players, too. Thanks to the questionable president from 2016 to 2020, I now know where I went wrong and the hundreds of turns I lost. Dancing and shouting “Boom chick a boom boom!” if I won anyway does not suffice.
This official letter is to inform every last one of you that you owe me $200 and an extensive supply of “Get Out of Jail Free” cards the next time I can con you into playing with me again. I accept PayPal, Zelle and cash. I expect all of my money by the end of the day. The GOOJF cards can be mailed at a later date — still not clear if the postmaster is screwing up the mail system on purpose. If you think I’m kidding, you’ll find out soon enough when Jake the Jailbird gets released. We spoke plenty. | https://medium.com/tickled/preemptive-pardons-i-played-monopoly-all-wrong-cc2afa39b3b2 | ['Shamontiel L. Vaughn'] | 2020-12-04 23:49:59.709000+00:00 | ['Monopoly', 'Preemptive Pardon', 'Donald Trump', 'Election 2020', 'Board Games'] |
WITH A CHECKLIST APP AGAINST THE PANDEMIC | We all keep wondering when the corona pandemic nightmare is going to end. When will we finally be able to interact with more living souls than just our cat and ourselves in the mirror? We don’t know the answer yet, but definitely, there is something you can do to downsize the number of corona infections. Just download a digital checklist app!
WHAT’S WRONG WITH MANUAL CHECKLISTS THEN? WHY CHECKLIST APP?
“Safety first”, as we all know. During the times of the pandemic, it is crucial to watch that everyone keeps to the rules, that the facilities are regularly inspected and the issues are controlled. Perhaps, it is possible to supervise safety with pen & paper when you don’t need to take immediate action or where the results of your mistakes are not that influential.
For example, if you check how many left socks are missing in your wardrobe, it will not be the end of the world if you lose the paper on which you were taking down your calculations. This is a ridiculous example, but it shows that using pen & paper can be truly of help only for these small ridiculous checks.
At the times when an empty bottle of sanitizer may mean +100 people entering the store without washing their hands and the eventual infection number rising in a geometrical progression, our inspection tool should let us be swift, adaptable and cooperative to eliminate deficiencies as soon as they arise. So how can a digital checklist app help? | https://medium.com/lumiform-mag/with-a-checklist-app-against-the-pandemic-eb0fb28676e9 | ['Anja Brauer'] | 2021-04-13 07:42:50.660000+00:00 | ['Checklist', 'Pandemic', 'Apps', 'Corona', 'Protection'] |
Can Dental Implants Cause Gum Disease? | by Bruce Kanehl
Dental implants are an excellent replacement option for tooth loss for multiple reasons. Many people, including dentists, prefer implants to other tooth replacement options due to greater longevity and enhanced aesthetics.
Despite this, dental implants are not always the best option. Even though cavities cannot occur on the implants due to the materials used to create them, there’s a risk of developing gum disease around these artificial teeth. If this happens, most likely, the implant will need to be removed or replaced, drastically reducing its lifespan.
Peri-Implant Disease
When the periodontal disease develops around dental implants, it is referred to as peri-implant disease. A complication of dental implants, peri-implant disease, is an inflammatory issue that adversely impacts the gum tissue around the implant. Similar to the development of periodontal disease in natural teeth, it is caused by bacteria build-up at the base of the dental implant, which then causes inflammation.
If left undiagnosed, the inflammation progresses, damaging the hard and soft gum tissue around the implant. This results in impairment of the dental implant’s aesthetics, function, and longevity.
Types of Implant Gum Disease
Gum diseases affecting dental implants can be split into two categories:
Peri-implant mucositis - In this condition, only the soft tissue surrounding the implant becomes inflamed. There’s no sign of bone loss, but the soft tissue inflammation can progress to peri-implantitis if not treated early.
- In this condition, only the soft tissue surrounding the implant becomes inflamed. There’s no sign of bone loss, but the soft tissue inflammation can progress to peri-implantitis if not treated early. Peri-implantitis- Extensive inflammation around the implant that destroys both soft and hard tissue around the implant. The bone structure supporting the implant is lost, and surgery is the definitive treatment.
Like most periodontal diseases, the peri-implant disease is usually painless. For this reason, the condition might remain unnoticed for an extended period if you don’t visit your dentist regularly.
Symptoms of Peri-implant Disease
The signs and symptoms of peri-implant inflammation are similar to gum disease. If you have dental implants, here are some signs indicating you might be experiencing this condition:
Red and sore gums, especially around the implant
Gum swelling around the implant
Bleeding issues when brushing
Bad breath and taste in your mouth
Gum recession with or without pus around the implant
Typically, the implant metal threads should not be visible. Exposure of the implant threads and loosening of the implant indicates dental disease, and you should seek help from a dentist immediately.
Causes of Peri-implant Disease
The mouth harbors thousands of bacteria. Some are beneficial, while the majority are harmful. These bacteria can colonize different parts of the implant, especially the base, and will multiply if conditions are favorable.
Factors that favor the growth and multiplication of bacteria causing peri-implant disease include:
Poor oral hygiene, including inadequate plaque control
Medical conditions such as poorly controlled diabetes
Previous periodontal disease
Failure to comply with implant cleaning requirements
Improper implant fixation technique. For instance, the dentist may have left residual cement on the implant’s surface during crown cementation.
Treatments for Implant Gum Disease
The treatment usually depends on the severity of the condition. The initial phases of peri-implant mucositis can only be successfully reversed through implant decontamination. This involves the removal of the debris below the gum line, thereby preventing the progression of gingival inflammation. More recently, dentists have been using, laser technology which has been shown to be effective in decontaminating implant surfaces.
Although implant decontamination can be used in treating peri-implantitis, the success rate is relatively low. When you develop peri-implantitis, your dentist might recommend bone or gum grafting around the dental implants.
Bone grafting helps restore lost bone structure around the implant and sometimes might require removal of the implant, crown, or abutment. Gum grafting is indicated in events of considerable gum recession.
Prevention of Peri-implant Disease
With good oral care, you can prevent the development of peri-implant diseases. Some prevention tactics you can use to prevent disease include: | https://medium.com/@kanehldentalgroup/can-dental-implants-cause-gum-disease-53c7f707e8 | ['Kanehl Dental'] | 2021-12-28 19:59:56.073000+00:00 | ['Dentistry', 'Dental Hygiene', 'Oral Health', 'Dental Care', 'Dental Implants'] |
Chris Jolly’s Tips for Building Relationships with Carriers | Chris Jolly cut his teeth in the transportation business at age 20 when he started working at a warehouse in Georgia. He spent four and a half years working at the warehouse, learning the ins and outs of the industry. Since then, Chris has worked in logistics sales and operations, and has held leadership roles with some of the biggest names in logistics. Today, Chris is a freight coach and sales consultant who uses his industry knowledge to help brokers, 3PLs, tech start-ups and asset-based carriers develop effective sales and operations strategies and make sound organizational decisions.
Trucker Tools recently had the good fortune to speak with Chris and learn more about his background. In our conversation with Chris, one topic that came up again and again was the current capacity crunch. We asked Chris for his tips for brokers/3PLs for keeping carriers close when capacity is scarce — and here’s what he had to say.
The first piece of advice that Chris has for logistic providers and freight brokers is to stop playing the spot market, which he says everyone is reliant upon. Chris told us that chasing rates (and carriers) is just not sustainable. You have to think of drivers and carriers as customers and find out what and where they want to run.
“You have to build relationships with drivers,” advised Chris. “Everyone wants to get rich quick, but you really have to invest in the process. This is a relationship game. A lot of the time, drivers aren’t asking for that much more money. I know right now is an outlier, but this industry is cyclical. Freight brokers who’ve stayed the course and stuck with their carriers are doing well.”
“You have to build relationships with drivers,” advised Chris. “Everyone wants to get rich quick, but you really have to invest in the process. This is a relationship game. A lot of the time, drivers aren’t asking for that much more money. I know right now is an outlier, but this industry is cyclical. Freight brokers who’ve stayed the course and stuck with their carriers are doing well.”
One of the mistakes that you may be making is going after lanes and regions that are too far from your operational home base. It can be hard to get a foothold in any market when you haven’t specialized in a specific region or type of freight. Instead of trying to do a little bit of everything, consider narrowing your focus. This actually will help you with carrier development.
“You really have to develop a niche region and a niche freight type to go after,” recommends Chris. “Don’t cast too wide a net. Focus on your region and grow out from there. You can’t build relationships with drivers if you’re small and trying to work out of other states. Pick a niche region and a niche market. Everyone wants Chicago to Dallas or Philadelphia, or L.A. to Atlanta. Why go where competition is through the roof? Stay in a certain area and niche and grow your business and carrier base there.”
According to Chris, there’s no perfect sauce when it comes to weathering a capacity crunch. But one thing you can do is to implement a solid carrier relationship-building strategy and stick with it — no matter what’s going on with rates or supply and demand. Chris recommends that you focus on what you can control and on creating a positive experience for carriers.
“There are going to be carriers out there who crisscross the country chasing rate per mile and that’s how they run their business,” said Chris. “But you cannot bring that to your customers and give them a capacity number that you can’t fill because you don’t have drivers. You have to invest the time. I know plenty of freight brokers out there who haven’t deviated from how they operate and they’re not having a capacity crunch. The carriers that they’ve treated with respect and worked with prior to the pandemic stuck with them. They’re continuing to do that because everybody who’s been in this industry long enough knows that this market is going to shift back, and then what? Then there are going to be some brokers out there who want to get back at carriers — and that’s not fair to the customer. We cannot take out our grievances on our customers’ freight and play Russian roulette with them. It’s not sustainable.”
To learn more about Chris, visit his LinkedIn profile.
Read Chris Jolly on the Capacity Crunch, Trends in Logistics and How Tech Creates Opportunities for Brokers for the rest of our conversation with Chris. Schedule a free demo of Trucker Tools’ transparent load tracking software, digital freight matching platform and innovative load booking automation tool, Book It Now®. | https://medium.com/trucker-tools/chris-jollys-tips-for-building-relationships-with-carriers-9fcde1e3d67c | ['Tracy Neill'] | 2021-02-02 19:52:51.289000+00:00 | ['Broker', 'Shipping', 'Logistics', 'Transportation', 'Freight Shipping'] |
Centrality of Trees | Centrality of Trees
Free photo on Pikist.com by Saolw.
One tree delight for me in the West
Are palm trees growing along the way.
I’d never seen them except in a greenhouse.
Date palms grow sprays of flower euphoria,
Yellow bursts before the dates.
Photo on Meir Park by Jonathan Coombes on Pixnio.com
And the other wonder are redwoods,
Communities in tree form. Redwoods
Form a grove: ancestors’ blessing-filled
Circle like a prayer made of trees
Enclosing the grace of nature for our discovery. | https://medium.com/@aikya/centrality-of-trees-a06d479de9ef | ['Aikya Param'] | 2020-12-27 23:43:28.881000+00:00 | ['Beauty', 'Poetry', 'Food', 'Inspiration', 'Trees'] |
Do you remember your first time? Giving Up? | Can you even remember the first time that you pushed against something, and it pushed back hard enough that you surrendered and quit? The very first challenge that you were not up to and able to meet. Do you remember how giving up made you feel? The relief of the pressure that had just been removed, closely followed by feelings of being ashamed. Shame on You, you weren’t good enough. You did not run fast enough. You did not play the piano well enough. You could not spell a word that I will not even attempt to type.
As children, we are taught to do our best to avoid failure. I am afraid this has been shortened to simply “avoid failure.” That is quite a tall order. I do believe that doing your best will minimize failure. It does leave the question, what is your best? Is your best one day, the same as your best on another day? I believe there are plenty of books out there, as well as articles here that address your relationship with failure.
The relationship with giving up is something that I had to spend some time working on in my life. You might be like I was, giving up too soon and too often. Giving up on your health by skipping the gym today, because you wanted to sleep late. Giving up on your business by putting a necessary task off until tomorrow. Giving up on your mind, but not finishing that book or finding time to properly relax. Giving up on your soul by not feeding it. Giving up on your relationships because you don’t have the time.
I highlight these five areas of life because if out of balance, they will compete with each other. Which domain will win? None of them because you will be the odd one out. What do you value in each of these areas?
What are your Health goals What are your Financial goals What are your Learning / Mental goals What are your Spiritual goals, if any What are your Relationship goals
Take some time to discover these. Do goals for the immediate future, short term, and long term. Write them out and look for any possible conflicts and work them into synergy with one another.
I remember when I was in my 20’s and getting a new girlfriend. My relationships were excellent, health, finances, school, and playing guitar all suffered. I had no spiritual life at the time. Take away the girlfriend, and nothing was going right. Again, discover where you are going in life and how each of these areas can help, and you will be much less likely to give up on them.
For years, finances were my demon or the arch enemy to my hero. I didn’t have a solid goal in that area of my life, so more always sounded better. I decided that I didn’t like my job and started looking for a better way, a few times.
I treated my new business as a new relationship and neglected the other areas of my life. This was not that hard to do since I did not have any goal there either. I would reach a certain point, and for whatever reason, give up and quit. Ah, that relief of the pressure, but then the feelings of shame. Even though I was driving down a road with no idea where I was going.
When I started training with Legendary Marketing to work on my Sales and Marketing skills, I did have my values and goals for each of the critical areas of my life together, but they helped me bring even more clarity to them. Now I have my values and goals, I know my destination and the team at Legendary to assist if additional directions are needed. | https://medium.com/@rydwest/do-you-remember-your-first-time-giving-up-86a1cd4c3b75 | ['Shane Utley'] | 2019-10-17 02:13:53.843000+00:00 | ['Personal Branding', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Personal Development', 'Personal Growth', 'Human Potential'] |
Coping with COVID: Exhausted families | Transcript
- [Narrator] Welcome to a Washington State Department of Health podcast on coping with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. And now, your hosts for the show, disaster psychologist Kira Mauseth and child and adolescent psychiatrist Doug Dicharry.
- Welcome to this episode of the Washington State Department of Health Behavioral Health Podcast. I’m Doug Dicharry.
- And I’m Kira Mauseth.
- Today we’re talking about families and burnout. If you’re caring for children right now while also trying to get through a pandemic, you’ve got a lot going on. So in addition to trying to stay healthy, most families are navigating changes in schooling. There are unpredictable schedules. There are challenges with online learning. Parents having to manage both work and their children’s schoolwork and — and other issues as well.
- Yeah. And I just have to add to that, that, you know, we’ve been at this for a long time, but it feels like we’ve been struggling with this for years sometimes and also a day at other times. Our sense of time is kind of out of whack, and there are a lot of other difficulties that people are experiencing as a result of the lengthiness of this experience that are overlapping with all of the family demands and the responsibilities that people have right now. Part of what’s going on is that we’re just really physically exhausted. We’re exhausted on a very, very basic neurological level, because we’ve been experiencing so much stress that’s built up over such a long period of time. And one of the things that happens as a result of that is that we’re much more likely right now to respond from an emotional place. We’re much more likely to respond kind of impulsively, because our brains don’t have the patience, for lack of a better word, to take a minute to try and respond logically, to sort of think about what might be the best option here and what — what can I do? We tend to just jump in, and we tend to respond with a more threat assessment sort of an approach. So our brains are scanning for threats, and we’re gonna respond more impulsively, and we all tend to respond more emotionally. And you can imagine you where that’s causing trouble for people at home and at work. And kids are undergoing the same kind of experience. They’re having trouble with that regulation piece too.
- Right. Yeah, you’ll notice particularly in children, they may be performing below their potential. They may seem more moody or irritable than usual. And it’s very common for children to have sleep problems if they’re stressed. They may have, particularly younger children, you may have physical symptoms such as stomach aches or headaches that really can’t be explained by any physical problems. Or you may notice that the kids are acting like they’re much younger. They may seem to be clingy or behaving as if they’re a young child. You hear baby talk or some regressive kind of behaviors.
- Yeah. And you know, the same is true for teenagers, for sure. I work with a lot of teens, and parents are talking to me about some of these younger behaviors that they’re seeing in teenagers just kinda acting like they did a couple of years ago. And when things change so quickly for kids, you know, they grow up so quickly and they reached these developmental milestones so quickly, it’s kind of strange to parents to see kids acting like a younger version of themselves. But that is very common right now, as you were mentioning.
- Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And how ‘bout coping strategies? I mean, things that people can do. We can talk a bit about how to counteract or prevent burnout.
- I guess the first thing I would start out by mentioning is that all of the things that we’re suggesting and that we’re talking about today are not things that are designed to make anybody work any harder. So the coping skills and the strategies that we’re talking about today are really designed to facilitate ease and to make things better and easier, but not add to the list. Like, not add to the to-do list for anybody. Any of these things are good options. If there are some that seem like they’re not a good fit for you, then that’s fine. And maybe try something different. I’m a big fan of not doing something if it’s not working for you, and finding a better fit. There’s a lot of options to pick from. And what works for self-care for some folks does not work for others. So that’s a good thing to keep in mind too. Yeah. Any other thoughts, Doug?
- Yeah, just to back up a moment, I did want to mention that in terms of the impacts that we spoke about, it’s important to keep in mind that many of these things are normal reactions to an abnormal situation. People sometimes worry about, “Well, is this what’s wrong with me, do I need to get help for this?” But often these are problems that are actually very typical and very normal for an abnormal situation. If they get out of hand, if they are something that are really impairing your functioning, then that’s when you might need to seek additional help. We’ll mention something more about that. But in terms of the coping strategies, I would say, particularly for children, it’s important to stick with fundamentals. Try to try to wake up at the same time every day. It’s okay to take naps to catch up. Have kids participate in a calendar or a checklist. There can be little rewards like stickers or an end-of-the-week treat for younger children. And find some special time. Try to carve out just a few minutes every day. You can also enlist family members. For example, grandparents are often willing to put in some special time on a virtual platform like Zoom, for example. Have a virtual story time with grandparents. It’s a great help for many families. And get back to basics. You can have interactive board games, play a game of Chutes and Ladders with the younger kids or a game of Monopoly with the older ones. Drawing, charades, reading fun stories. But just try to carve out a little special time for the kids each day. It can mean a lot. And when you talk with them, be sure that you try to understand what they’re concerned with. Try to ask, listen, respond to their concerns. Parents are often eager to reassure and may actually be giving information that might go over their heads or might be issues that they’re not even concerned about. So try to — try to really get a sense of where they are with that. And help children stay in touch with their friends. It may be something like a virtual play date or appropriate use of social media. And finally, if you’re feeling stressed, be sure to take time to stop and assess and figure out what it is that’s really getting to you. Find a quiet time, try to figure out what the main stressors are, because often it may be just one or two things that are really getting to you, that if you can address those, you’ll find the rest of the day goes much more easily. But pick a strategy and gradually work it in. Anything you’d add to that, Kira?
- Yeah, I really like the idea of identifying that stressor, like maybe those one or two things that are the bigger priority. There was something that I was taught a long time ago, which is that when you name the dragon, it loses its power. And so when there’s something-
- Oh, that’s good.
- Yeah. When you identify what that thing is that’s just been bothering you and sort of just keeping you up maybe at night, then write it down. Figure out a way to address it in a very concrete way. And that allows it to not have power over you anymore. I would echo the same thing in terms of anxiety generally as a coping skill. I think a lot of parents make the mistake of over-focusing on kids’ anxiety. And it’s great to reassure. Kids need to be reassured, especially, I’m thinking, in the teenage realm of things. But by giving too much attention to whatever the thing is that someone is anxious about, you know, it’s a better strategy in the long run to acknowledge the thing, and reassure about whatever it is, and then move forward with the active coping skill. And sort of modeling that.
- Right.
- Especially for teenagers. Modeling emotion regulation. Modeling, “I’m gonna step back now, and I’m gonna take a breath before I respond.” Or modeling, “Yeah, you know, I’m really worried about this thing too. But I’m gonna try and address it. I’m gonna name the dragon, and I’m gonna find something that I can do that’s going to help me feel less anxious about it.” And active coping is really, really helpful rather than avoiding. So it’s a little bit complicated.
- That’s a great point.
- Yeah. I mean, many of the things that you mentioned already are applicable for adults as well. So I would just really emphasize the sleep hygiene piece about going to bed at the same time and trying to wake up at the similar time every day. Getting a really good routine. We have had to really be adaptable and flexible in the context of this disaster. And it’s interesting, but adaptability and flexibility really goes well also with having boundaries around that. So I kind of talk about it as being hand-in-glove. Like you need to be flexible and you need to find a new schedule or a new routine that works for your family, and then put boundaries around it and establish those routines to the extent that you can. So they really go together. And yeah, spending time. Teenagers specifically, they will talk to you whenever it’s convenient for them. Not necessarily when it’s convenient for you. So having those opportunities, sort of keeping that door open for kids to talk to you, is really good. And then another thing just for yourself, for your partner, for your family, and for your kids is to have a sense of humor about it. If you can make fun of yourself in this context, because we all are struggling with this, and just do a little bit of humorous explanation of the day and humor as a coping skill, that’s a really powerful tool, and it’s really effective for folks. So using a sense of humor is really effective for teenagers, particularly. They might not appreciate it in the moment, but it actually is pretty effective. But just don’t give up on this process, because you’ll find the thing that works for you and your family if you keep working at it.
- Great points. So we’ve touched on several strategies for coping with family burnout in our conversation today. But we’ve also got a resource that goes into more detail and offers more tips. For children and families, we have a resource called the Behavioral Health Toolbox for Families. And you can find this resource along with others if you visit coronavirus.wa.gov/wellbeing. That’s coronavirus.wa.gov/wellbeing.
- Yeah, that’s a good point. There’s another resource also that’s available. If you’re tired of being on the computer and you don’t wanna surf around, there’s a Washington Listens line, which is a number that you can call to get support just by having somebody to talk to and get some resources for other sort of professional options or other clinical services that are in your area. And again, that’s the Washington Listens line, and that number is 1–833–681–0211.
- Right. And as always, talk with your healthcare provider if you’re concerned about either your mental and behavioral health or that of your children or your family. That’s all for our show today. Thank you for joining us. And we’ll see you next time for the Department of Health behavioral health podcast on coping with COVID. | https://medium.com/wadepthealth/coping-with-covid-exhausted-families-c8342777c608 | ['Washington State Department Of Health'] | 2020-12-11 01:44:03.927000+00:00 | ['Burnout', 'Coronavirus', 'Coping', 'Public Health', 'Covid 19'] |
Looks like we’ll have to wait until 2021 for a new Apple TV | It’s been more than three years since the Apple TV 4K went on sale, and cord-cutters had their eyes out Tuesday for a long-awaited refresh of Apple’s streaming set-top box and HomeKit hub. But while Apple did announce its long-awaited AirPods Max headphone, a next-gen Apple TV didn’t make the cut.
Mentioned in this article Apple TV 4K Read TechHive's reviewMSRP $179.00Learn moreon Amazon The Apple rumor mill went into hyperdrive on Monday with word of the impending AirPods Max (I preferred the rumored “AirPods Studio” moniker, but oh well), which Apple did end up unveiling Tuesday morning.
The $550 (!) headphone is slated to go on sale next week, complete with a custom 40mm dynamic driver, active noise cancellation, Transparency mode (which allows you to let in ambient noise), spatial audio, and a Digital Crown for controlling your tunes. We’ll have more to say about the AirPods Max once we’ve received more detailed specs and tried out a test unit.
[ Further reading: Cord-cutting myths busted ]But the other announcement that many were anticipating—a new Apple TV—failed to materialize. Bloomberg News’s Mark Gurman, who’s been a reliable source of Apple-related news and rumors, confirmed on Twitter that a revamped Apple TV wasn’t in the cards this year. “Delayed till ‘21,” Gurman tweeted.
Powered by the Apple A10X Fusion processor (which also sits in the 10.5- and second-gen 12.9-inch iPad Pro), the fifth-gen Apple TV 4K made its debut back in September 2017, and it was the first Apple TV model to support 4K playback and HDR, including HDR10 and Dolby Vision. In September 2019, tvOS 12 added Dolby Atmos support to the Apple TV 4K.
Rumors about a new Apple TV have been somewhat sparse, although it’s a safe bet that the box would get a new and faster processor, such as the A12X that powers the third-gen 11- and 12.9-inch iPad Pros. The A12X chip (or something similar) would be much better suited for Apple Arcade, Apple’s gaming subscription service, than the aging A10X Fusion, and it would hopefully speed up the overall tvOS interface, which has been feeling awfully chuggy over the past several months.
There’s also chatter about a new Siri Remote that would add “Find My” support, meaning you’d be able to quickly track down the remote in case it slips between your sofa cushions.
A more welcome feature would be a full-on redesign of the remote, specifically one that makes it easier to feel whether you’re holding it the right way up. With the current Siri Remote, it’s nearly impossible to tell if you’re holding it the right way in the dark, and almost every time, I find myself holding it upside down on the first try. Whether a new Apple TV would actually come with a revamped Siri Remote is an open question, however.
In any event, we’ll hopefully lay our eyes on a new Apple TV early next year, so stay tuned.
Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details. | https://medium.com/@sam55754247/looks-like-well-have-to-wait-until-2021-for-a-new-apple-tv-24d44df6245e | [] | 2020-12-24 02:35:48.071000+00:00 | ['Deals', 'Headphones', 'Services', 'Home Tech'] |
Ring Alarm (2nd Gen) review: Still the best DIY home security system | Ring Alarm (2nd Gen) review: Still the best DIY home security system Jennifer Jan 15·13 min read
Ring Alarm has been our favorite home-security-focused smart home system since its launch, and the second-generation system is even better. That said, Ring hasn’t yet delivered on its implied promise to make the Ring Alarm the unifying core of a complete smart home system. Fulfilling that promise—which Ring Solutions president Mike Harris spoke of in 2018—would have bumped up our bottom-line score by a half point.
I’ll assume, however, that your primary interest in reading this review is to learn about Ring Alarm as a home security system. So, I’ll focus on that aspect first and summarize its shortcomings as a smart home system later. This is an in-depth review of a complex system, written after living with the product for a couple of months with the professional monitoring option enabled. Click here if you’d prefer to skip to our bottom-line recommendation. If you’d like to read more of our smart home system reviews, click here.
Michael Brown / IDG The new Ring keypad (right) is much smaller than the original, and it has dedicated buttons for summoning emergency responders (although you need to pay for monitoring to enable that feature).
Ring Alarm 2 is available in several starter kits. Ring sent us a eight-piece kit consisting of the Ring base station, a keypad for arming/disarming the system, four contact sensors, one motion sensor, and one range extender with a battery backup. This kit sells for $250. To get the most value out of the system, you’ll also want to sign up for a professional monitoring service that will summon first responders in the event of an emergency. That will add $10 per month to the overall cost of the system, but it doesn’t require a long-term contract. We’ll get deeper into that in a bit.
The system can be expanded and enhanced with a wide range of specialized add-on products from third parties (via the Works with Ring certification program) and Ring itself. But again, the focus of all these products—ranging from cameras to smoke detectors to connected lighting products to smart locks—is on home security, not the comfort and convenience aspects that define a smart home.
Hardware evolutionWith the exception of the base station that connects the Ring Alarm system to your home network, every Ring Alarm component has been hit with a shrink ray. The keypad for arming and disarming the system is smaller. The contact sensors you’ll mount to your doors and windows are smaller. The motion sensor is smaller. Each of the new sensors and the new range extender have an LED-backlit button that lights up when the sensor is activated, although you can override that behavior.
[ Further reading: A smart home guide for beginners ]The reductions are thanks, in large measure, to Ring’s decision to use the new Z-Wave 700 chip in those components. That should yield a second important benefit to consumers: Longer range and improved battery life. Chipmaker Silicon Labs says sensors using Z-Wave 700-series chips should be able to last 10 years or more, although Ring itself more modestly says only that battery life depends on usage.
Michael Brown / IDG The base station is the only component that didn’t benefit from a redesign in the second-gen Ring Alarm system.
The new keypad used for arming and disarming the system now has three dedicated buttons for summoning police, fire, or medical assistance. But these buttons are non-functional unless you sign up for Ring’s professional monitoring (more on that later).
All 18 buttons on the keypad are now backlit, where only the numeric buttons on the original model were. The keypad comes with a wall-mount bracket or it can be left on a tabletop. It has a rechargeable battery, or you can run it on AC power with the included adapter. All the new components are backward compatible with the first-generation Ring Alarm, and all first-gen Ring components can be used with the new system.
The base station is designed to operate on AC power most of the time, but it does have battery backup to keep the system working in the event of a blackout. The base station connects the system to your Wi-Fi network, and if you pay for monitoring, Ring will activate its onboard LTE radio so the system can maintain its internet connection if your broadband connection fails (as it likely would in a blackout or if an intruder cut your phone or cable line).
The base station has a 104dB (at one foot) siren onboard that sounds off when the system goes into an alarm state. Either way, the siren isn’t as loud as I would like it to be. Something that produced 120dB—the noise level a chainsaw would generate—would make it uncomfortable for an intruder to stick around.
Michael Brown / IDG The new Ring motion sensor (right) is much less obtrusive than the original.
Easy-peasy installationThe new Ring Alarm system is every bit as easy to install as the original, but Ring provides a glossy printed user manual with photos and diagrams to step you through the process. The manual suggests placements for the contact sensors, motion sensor, Z-Wave range extender, base station, and keypad along with lots of other handholding. These come pre-paired with the system when you buy the kit.
Should you add additional sensors down the road, there’s a quick-and-easy onboarding system in which you open the app and scan QR codes on the devices. Buy these add-on products directly from Ring, and they’ll arrive already pre-paired with your system, just like the ones from the starter kit.
The contact and motion sensors have adhesive pads applied to them to make installation quicker, but these devices also have screw holes if you want something more permanent. You’ll need to provide your own screws, but the holes go through the pads. I’ve seen too many of these devices where the adhesive covers the holes, so the pads get all twisted up when you put screws through them. That’s just one of many seemingly insignificant details that demonstrate the thought that Ring put into this system.
Ring A clever bracket design allows you to mount the Ring motion sensor on either a flat surface or in a corner, where it can monitor a bigger area.
Another detail is how you open the contact sensors to replace their batteries: The sensor cover simply slides off the part that is mounted to your door frame. The more common practice is to have you pry the battery compartment off, which would weaken the sensor’s adhesive grip if not break it completely. And as you would expect, the system will send you a tamper alert when you open the battery compartment.
If you’d prefer to have a professional install your Ring Alarm system, that option is available through the Ring-endorsed third-party service OnTech.
Professional monitoringProfessional monitoring is an added-cost option ($10 per month, but without a long-term commitment) after a free 30-day trial. We strongly recommend signing up for it. Without professional monitoring, the system will only send you push notifications for events and when an alarm state is triggered. With monitoring, Ring (via its third-party contractor, Rapid Response Monitoring) will dispatch the appropriate emergency response: Police or ambulance. If a connected smoke detector fires off, the service will dispatch firefighters.
Michael Brown / IDG Ring hit its second-generation contact sensors (right) with a shrink ray, although we remain partial to sensors that disappear from view inside the door and door frame.
You can also initiate an emergency response from within the app, or by pressing a dedicated button on the Ring keypad (more on that in a bit). The service will attempt to contact you to verify the emergency before dispatching help, but it will assume you need help if they can’t reach you. Depending on where you live, you might need to secure a permit to activate professional monitoring.
Michael Brown / IDG You can summon police, fire, or medical assistance right from the app in the event of an emergency.
Ring’s professional monitoring service plan is among the least-expensive on the market, and it includes cloud storage for an unlimited number of Ring cameras, including the Ring Video Doorbell.
Soon, however, it will no longer be the cheapest solution. Wyze Labs has announced a home security system with professional monitoring that costs just $5 per month—and you’ll get the Wyze hardware for free if you pay for one year of service in advance. But we won’t be able to compare Ring’s product to Wyze’s until the Wyze system ships.
How it worksThe system has three modes: Disarmed, for when you don’t need security; Away, for when you leave the house; and Home, for when you’re in the house but want security (such as when you go to bed for the night). You can program the system so that each contact and motion sensor behaves differently depending on which mode the system is in.
You’d probably want the contact sensors to trigger an alarm in either of the armed modes (Home and Away). The motion sensor should be set to active only when the system is in away mode. Otherwise, the alarm will go off when you walk around the house.
If a sensor is tripped when you attempt to arm the system in Home or Away mode (which might happen when you leave a door or window open), you’ll have the option of bypassing that sensor. Unfortunately, the base station won’t tell you which sensor is open. You’ll just hear a female voice say “Sensors require bypass.”
You can push a button on the keypad to blindly bypass all open sensors and arm the system anyway, or you can cancel arming and walk around the house to figure it out what was left open. Your best option, however, is to pull out your phone and look at the Ring app, because it will tell you which sensors are open. You can then make an informed decision about bypassing them or closing the affected door or window.
Michael Brown / IDG The Ring app tells you which sensors are tripped, so you can make an informed decision about bypassing them.
You can program an entry delay to give yourself time to walk to the keypad and disarm the system when you come home, and you can set an exit delay to give yourself time to open doors and walk out of the house after you’ve armed the system in Away mode.
Contact sensors you designate as being placed on windows are automatically exempted from any entry delay, because no one should be entering or exiting your home while the security system is armed.
When the system goes into an alarm state, and you don’t immediately disarm it, the siren in the base station will go off and—if you’re paying for professional monitoring—the service will attempt to reach you. They’ll go down your contact list until they reach someone to confirm the emergency, and they’ll summon a local police response if they can’t reach anyone.
If you’ve installed any sensors that can detect a fire, the service will call your local fire department if smoke or flames are detected.
In addition to the fire, police, and medical emergency buttons on the keypad, you can establish a duress code that will alert the monitoring service if someone forces you to disarm the system against your will. To the intruder, it will seem as if you’ve complied with their demand and turned the security system off. In reality, the police will be summoned (in this scenario, the service will not attempt to contact you first). Once again, however, this level of service is only available if your pay the $10 per month for professional monitoring.
Ring doorbell and camera integrationRing now has an indoor camera that wasn’t available when I reviewed the first-generation system in 2018. More importantly, the company has improved the manner in which its cameras interact with the alarm system. You can control how each individual camera behaves in each of the system’s three modes: Disarmed, Home, and Away.
For the sake of privacy, for example, you might want to turn off motion detection and the live feed view on your indoor cameras while the system is disarmed. Leaving motion detection enabled on the doorbell and outdoor cameras will ensure awareness of what’s going on outside the house. But when the system is in Away mode, you might want everything enabled to document everything that happened while you were gone.
Michael Brown / IDG The Ring Indoor Cam can rest on any horizontal surface or be mounted to a wall or ceiling.
You can toggle these two settings on a camera-by-camera basis and set different values for each of the system’s three modes. But the big improvement is that you can now set all your Ring cameras to record the moment the system goes into an alarm state. This will provide the best chance of catching forensic evidence of what triggered the alarm in the first place.
Works with RingRing has expanded its third-party certification program to include more smart deadbolts; Chamberlain smart garage door opener, in-wall and plug-in lighting controls, a siren with a strobe light, and the Flo by Moen smart water shutoff valve.
Michael Brown / IDG You can program Ring Smart Lighting products to turn on when the system goes into an alarm state.
Ring does smart lock integration right, giving users the option to program a compatible lock and the system so that when you use the lock’s keypad to throw the bolt, the Ring Alarm automatically goes into Away mode. When you return home and enter a valid PIN on the lock’s keypad, the lock can be programmed to automatically put Ring Alarm into Disarmed mode.
If you place Ring’s $35 Alarm Smoke & CO Listener near each of your smoke and carbon-monoxide detectors, it will listen for the sound of the alarms going off and the system will send you an alert accordingly. If you pay for professional monitoring, a dispatcher will contact your local fire department and summon help.
You can also purchase and install a First Alert Z-Wave Plus Smoke & CO Alarm (2nd Gen) and incorporate it into your Ring Alarm system to get the same protection. It’s worth noting, however, that this is the only Ring-certified third-party product that will trigger an emergency response from the professional monitoring service. Other third-party devices can cause the system to go into an alarm state, but the monitoring call center will not respond.
Smart home system potentialAs I noted earlier, Ring Alarm still hasn’t realized its full potential as a smart home system despite having everything you could want in a smart home hub. You can tie Ring’s home security cameras and its smart lighting devices to the security system and manage everything from a single app, but Ring contact sensors will only trigger lights to turn on during an entry delay—in the 30-second to three-minute interval after the system is disarmed from Home or Away mode. That can conveniently light your way into your home when you arrive and disarm your system, but opening a door outfitted with a contact sensor won’t otherwise turn any lights on.
If you own any of Ring’s Smart Lighting products, you can depend on the motion sensor in one of those fixtures, or you can deploy a stand-alone Ring Smart Lighting motion sensor to trigger one or more of Ring’s exterior lighting fixtures or its white-only smart bulb. You can also program the system so that if it goes into an alarm state, these lights will turn on. Be aware that you’ll also need the Ring Smart Lighting Bridge to deploy any of those products.
Michael Brown / IDG Ring largely punts on smart home integration, expecting you to use Alexa routines and Echo smart speakers to pull home automation and home security together.
As for the Works with Ring-certified Leviton and GE by Jasco smart lighting controls, all of which are based on Z-Wave, you can turn those lights on and off from within the Ring app, but Ring contact sensors and other Ring products won’t trigger them, and you’ll need to rely on those products’ apps if you want to set lighting schedules. Ring’s suggested workaround is to create Alexa Routines if you want that level of automation.
Ring Alarm obviously integrates with Alexa, to the degree that you can arm and disarm the system with voice commands. I wouldn’t recommend disarming the system with your voice, however, since someone outside your home could hear you and learn how to defeat your security system. Ring Alarm still does not work with Google Assistant, and it isn’t compatible with Apple’s HomeKit platform.
Michael Brown / IDG The system will alert you if any of the sensors are tampered with (hopefully that will only happen when you change their batteries).
Despite the presence of a Zigbee radio inside the Ring Alarm base station, there are still no Works with Ring-certified products based on Zigbee, and you can’t integrate Philips Hue smart lighting products into the system.
IFTTT support would greatly expand Ring Alarm’s utility as a general smart home system, but Ring has so far declined to support that service in its Alarm product (you can create IFTTT applets that use the motion sensors in Ring’s video doorbells and cameras as triggers).
I’m fine with Ring’s decision to not support geofencing for automatically arming and disarming the system as you leave the vicinity of your home, but it would be great if your smartphone could trigger your lights to turn on when you arrive home.
Bottom lineRing Alarm is our longtime favorite DIY home security product, and the second-generation system only reinforces that view. It’s priced right, offers all the right components and services, and the optional professional monitoring service is an absolute bargain.
We remain disappointed, however, that Ring hasn’t done more to move the ball on the smart home front. This system has everything needed to become a strong smart home system, and the company has added support for some third-party lighting controls, but you can’t create meaningful routines to automate lighting—or to have Ring motion and contact sensors trigger those lights—unless you also have an Amazon Echo smart speaker and create Alexa routines. But then you’re working outside the Ring app.
That said, Ring Alarm retains its TechHive Editors’ Choice designation as our top pick in DIY home security systems. But if you also want a complete smart home, you’ll still need a second product.
Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details. | https://medium.com/@jennife35377798/ring-alarm-2nd-gen-review-still-the-best-diy-home-security-system-88d1731d26fd | [] | 2021-01-15 13:58:38.034000+00:00 | ['Services', 'Mobile Accessories', 'Home Tech', 'Entertainment'] |
EXPLORING MORE INTO .NET ASSEMBLY | In this post lets look into more about .net assembly and look how they actually generated. If you need to understand about how .net execution works read previous post.
From the previous post we saw that by compiling any .net application it will generate assembly(.dll/.exe) which is Intermediate Language(IL) formatted.
Whether an assembly is a .dll or .exe it contains two parts.
Manifest
IL
What usually happens when compiling a .net application is it will generate IL according to the instructions you programmed and also it generate Manifest which has meta data(version no,app name ,dependencies & etc.) about your application and those two will package in to an assembly.
Lets take a look into an example-
Simple Console Application
The above code snippet is of a simple console application it prints “Hello World” on console.
When we compile this app it will generate an assembly of type .exe as this is a console application.If we compile a class library it will generate an assembly of type .dll .
We can found that assembly inside bin folder of the application.
Assembly inside bin folder
Lets see what is inside DempProject.exe assembly
Structure of an assembly
Structure of an assembly
As I mentioned in the beginning an assembly contains two parts.We can see it by looking into the above picture.The manifestation contains metadata about the application and the directory named with application name , here ‘DempProject’ contains the converted IL formatted code for our c# code converted by the .net compiler.
IL formatted code of Main method
Here we can see the IL formatted instructions for our c# code.Which is not still native code/machine code .Therefore a particular OS can’t run the assembly directly without the help of CLR(Common Language Runtime).
The name of the assembly and the version of the assembly is very important to solve DLL HELL problem. | https://medium.com/@sankhasumadhura/exploring-more-into-net-assembly-68468a7cd727 | ['Sankha Sumadhura'] | 2021-01-21 02:33:53.753000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Basics', 'Compilers', 'Dotnet'] |
Dell’s Concept Stanza converts your chicken scratch to digital text article by wishtech solution | Dell has shown off a new concept device that (let’s be honest) may never actually come out — but it’s a lot of fun to play with. The Concept Stanza is an 11-inch tablet that’s meant to simplify the process of taking notes at work. The idea is that if you write on the Stanza and then double tap your notes, they’ll be instantly converted to digital text. Connect it to a computer, and your notes will show up on the big screen.
Now, this is obviously not a revolutionary use case — devices like Samsung Galaxy Notes can convert handwritten notes to digital ones already. But the big difference with the Stanza is that it’s just for writing — there are no cameras, speakers, or ports on the device, in an effort to create what Dell describes as a “distraction-free experience.”
Dell’s tablet can also recognize more than letters. You can draw a line through text to delete it and can theoretically digitize shapes (such as Venn diagrams) as well. Separately, the Stanza can serve as an external monitor to extend your screen.
The Dell Concept Stanza mounted horizontally on a stand with the stylus magnetically attached to the top, on a desk with a cup of pens and a row of notebooks in the background. The screen displays BioFrame 2.0 software.
There’s the stylus, magnetically attached.
I got to try the Stanza out for a few brief minutes. It was a comfortable writing experience — the stylus is compact and the tablet’s screen is smooth. The device correctly interpreted all of my (fairly messy) writing. In English, that is — though we were told that the device is supposed to support a whole bunch of languages, I tried writing some things in Chinese and Korean characters that it did not recognize.
So, work in progress. Since the Stanza is still in the concept stage, there’s no pricing and availability yet, and no guarantee that it’s going to become a real thing you can buy. But it could certainly be a nifty tool for boardroom and classroom use. It’s the rare concept device that I think seems pretty ready to go — though I hope it figures out how to do multiple languages at once. | https://medium.com/@riya_13327/dells-concept-stanza-converts-your-chicken-scratch-to-digital-text-article-by-wishtech-solution-a7d4a6391040 | ['Riya Thakur'] | 2021-12-17 06:15:11.235000+00:00 | ['It', 'Netflix', 'Bloging', 'Blog', 'Tech'] |
Buying a HDB flat vs condominium | For our next move, we had the choice of either continuing to stay in public housing or “upgrading” to a private property.
Condominium prices have been skyrocketing in Merlion City for many years. To purchase a condominium that is bigger than our current flat in a good location would have cost us an arm and leg. Wanna hazard a guess on exactly whose arm and leg are on the line? The last I checked, I do not have mutant healing powers that would allow me to regenerate limbs à la Wolverine or Deadpool.
In any case, The Wife does not think it makes sense to pay a significant purchase premium and high monthly maintenance fees for condominium facilities — swimming pool, gymnasium, function room, barbecue pit, etc. — that we will never use.
I would probably attach some value to the associated 24/7 security but I am not about to incur a lot of housing debt just to feel more “secure”. Bartering certain financial insecurity for uncertain physical security does not seem like a fair trade.
Some people do buy condominiums solely because they think that it means that they have “made it in life” and they will henceforth be of a high social-economic status (SES). I suppose if their egos are not self-inflating fast enough, and they think that accumulating material possessions can make them sleep better at night, everyone has the right to do what they want with the money they have or do not have.
Of course, there is an investment angle as well but knowing exactly when and where to buy is crucial and it takes too much effort in my opinion.
While we are technically eligible to purchase a second Build-to-Order (BTO) flat from the Housing & Development Board (HDB), it would mean a long wait of three to four years. The waiting time has now increased to up to five years due to safety measures imposed in construction sites in the wake of Covid-19.
Moreover, we would have to wait for a BTO development to be launched in a mature estate and vie against thousands of applicants in a ballot exercise that tends to favour first-timers. There is definitely no guarantee that we would secure a new flat that is both in a good stack and on a reasonably high floor.
It would seem then that purchasing a resale HDB flat from the open market was our only viable option left. While resale flat prices have soared in recent years, there is ample supply in the market to meet most buyers’ requirements and budgets.
When a HDB resale flat first transacted at S$1 million in 2012, many people were shocked. By now, it is no longer considered big news as several units cross the threshold each year. There were 64 such units in 2019 and 72 units between January and November in 2020.
While HDB flats are different from condominiums in some ways, it is interesting to note what S$1 million can get. With S$1 million, one would probably only be able to buy a one-bedroom or two-bedroom condominium in an Outside Central Region (OCR) location.
In contrast, S$1 million can buy the best of what public housing has to offer — a HDB resale flat that has a significantly larger floor area and an optimal unit layout and is on the highest floor within the best stack. It would typically be within a mature estate that has an abundance of amenities and is easily accessible by most transport options.
The search thus began. | https://medium.com/@themoneypit/hdb-flat-vs-condominium-defe7d3fc6ea | ['Money Pit Digger'] | 2020-12-14 08:14:59.423000+00:00 | ['Hdb Resale Flats', 'Hdb Bto Flats', 'Singapore', 'Condominiums'] |
Black Lives Matter: The Fake Outrage | By Jt Dowd
Along with Covid-19, the Black Lives Matter movement dominated the news cycle throughout the summer, most news outlets reporting specifically on the riots that ensued. Not because peaceful protests were shrouded by an overwhelming surge of riots, but because violence makes for good television. The right-wing and neoliberal news outlets want clicks, not the truth. They want to manufacture a narrative that, at best, makes left-wing activism seem scary instead of defiant. And I don’t blame people for seeing the movement as a violent insurgency. If I spent my day in the Fox News echo chamber 24/7 I would surely be punching down, because that is exactly what they want. And it worked, if you’ve been in right-wing media circles or have an Instagram account, you’ve probably seen videos of “violent protesters” (which is an oxymoron) destroying small businesses or throwing water bottles at police officers, saying things like: “I don’t like that your colleagues murdered someone and got away with it”. These violent Antifa terrorists sure do sound terrifying right? They’re probably ready to knock down your door right now! But let’s pause for a moment and think about how often this happens. Is BLM a front for extremism and violence? Or is the right just a front for obsequious contrarians?
In their report: Countering Violent Extremism — Actions Needed to Define Strategy and Assess Progress of Federal Effort, the United States Accountability Office States that “Since September 12, 2001, the number of fatalities caused by domestic violent extremists has ranged from 1 to 49 in a given year. As shown in figure 2, fatalities resulting from attacks by far right-wing violent extremists have exceeded those caused by radical Islamist violent extremists in 10 of the 15 years, and were the same in 3 of the years since September 12, 2001. Of the 85 violent extremist incidents that resulted in death since September 12, 2001, far right-wing violent extremist groups were responsible for 62 (73 percent) while radical Islamist violent extremists were responsible for 23 (27 percent).”
“Each circle or octagon represents a single attack with the size measuring the number of fatalities. The ECDB isa database that includes information on publicly known violent crimes committed in the United States by radical Islamist violent extremists, the violent far right, and far left violent extremists from 1990 through 2015” — GAO (April 2017)
Now, there are a lot of things we can conclude from this piece of data. If you were a boring liberal you’d take this and blow it way out of proportion, claiming that right-wingers are the real terrorists. And technically if we’re going by sheer numbers you would be correct, the right does partake in violent extremism more often, regardless of what Ben Shapiro has to say about it. But I am not going to extrapolate that to all members of the right. Nor should I because that would be an unfair generalization. What we can conclude from this data piece however, is that the right demonstrated a lack of character over the summer. They failed to acknowledge the violence on their side and left them in no position to criticize the left. If you’re going to ignore extremism in your party, then you cannot pretend to care about violence. No, what you care about is masqueraded decorum. Not to say the left isn’t violent (of course they are, even Mormons can be violent) but in definitive reality, the Black Lives Matter movement has produced a disproportionate amount of non-violent protests, and reactionaries fail to acknowledge this obvious fact.
All movements have violent members, Including the civil rights movement of the 1960s which surprisingly did have its moments of violence, and both have been criticized by nearly half the country for that very nature of unrest. One of the most jarring moments of the civil rights movement came after King’s Birmingham jail letter. Movement organizers called upon and assembled black children to march through the streets to confront the police, to which they were met with a barrage of german shepherds and baton-wielding policemen, resulting in the arrest of at least one hundred children. This may come as a surprise but this was King’s strategy all along, not so peaceful, right? The books we’ve read about him in school may deem him as an unadulterated bringer of peace, but that is a cover-up to set some kind of fake example for the lower class. We hid this side of King not to embellish him, but to hide the idea that unrest is exactly what this country needs. But of course, no sane individual would ever criticize the civil rights movement today, most people see it as a universal good. So what’s the difference? The ACLED and The US Crisis monitor — a joint project between the ACLED and the Bridging Divides initiative collected real-time data on the Black Lives Matter movement. Between 26 May, the day after Floyd’s death, and the 22nd of August, the ACLED recorded over 10,600 demonstrations linked to the BLM movement across the country. Over 10,100 of these involved peaceful protests. It is an undisputed fact that the overwhelming majority of these protests — 93% to be exact — were peaceful. (you can also read an extended report which overviews the protests in more detail here) Yet despite all the evidence and data pointing in that direction, one poll found that 42% of Americans believed that most protesters associated with the BLM movement were trying to incite violence or destroy property.
This blatant mischaracterization of the movement can be blamed on mainstream media, specifically Fox News, which had such a hard time finding new examples of rioting during the summer that they had to use prior B-roll footage from protests weeks before their report. One instance caught Fox News publishing a photoshopped image featuring a man carrying a rifle in front of a smashed retail storefront:
The image combines scenes from June 10th from Capitol Hill and two May 30 images from downtown by Karen Ducey. This is a real image from Fox News. They used this. To report stuff.
The photo was spliced together from different days, ranging from June 10th to May 30th (Thanks Getty Images). Another altered image showed a sign which appeared to say “you are now entering Free Cap Hill”:
ORIGINAL IMAGE [June 10th] this image shows a sign on a barrier at the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ). It was one of several digitally manipulated images published by Fox News. (Photo by David Ryder/Getty Images)
Fox News never announced that the images had been altered when they reported on them and had them removed days later, before issuing a much-needed apology. But why would they need to use photoshop if CHAZ, Antifa, and BLM had supposedly laid waste to the city? These protests were happening everyday according to them so why fabricate images when you could just walk out your front door and see it. The answer is Fox News was just using anecdotal evidence and extrapolating that to the entire demonstration like any good news outlet would.
But the network’s mistakes and misleading coverage became a political flashpoint for conservatives nationally and a target of Trump’s Twitter account (which should be taken away from him immediately before his diaper gets full). He branded Antifa as a “terrorist organization”, and despite them having never killed anybody, not having a leader, and not even being an actual organization, Trump still threatened to deploy the US military to stop them, Invoking the Insurrection act, which was used to quash slave rebellions. Fun!
And the almighty Ted Cruz stepped up to the plate and introduced a GOP-sponsored bill that used “terrorism” and “left-wing activism” interchangeably. Here’s an idea: How about instead of punching down and sledging people who have no power, we actually punch upwards first and focus on the horrendous ventures of people who can actually change things. If you find yourself being mad at the poor, chances are you’ve never been poor. if you really want to discuss “looting” how about we shift our attention towards the fact that the Federal reserve lent a trillion dollars a day to large banks while millions of Americans slipped into poverty. Or how about the fact that Boeing received 17 billion dollars in federal bailout money and still laid off thousands of workers. Hey, maybe put those people in prison before you start beating someone for jaywalking.
I think the evidence speaks for itself; Black Lives Matter, whether you agree with the message or not, initiated protests that were rather innocuous but seen by many as out of control and barbaric. And I’m not surprised either, I sympathize with people who only listen to Ben Shapiro and watch Tucker Carlson. But we need to pull our heads out of the sand. It’s so easy to paint a caricature of a political group you don’t like as an “insurgency” or a “violent uprising” because they’re speaking truth to a power that you feel deferential towards. Every political movement has had violent members — every human has had violent thoughts, but don’t take those small examples of malice and reduce every good intention into nothing because someone made the wrong choice. If you don’t support BLM because it’s “violent”, then don’t support anything and climb back into your TV. | https://medium.com/@jtdowd376/black-lives-matter-the-fake-outrage-67ddcfaea336 | [] | 2020-12-25 03:24:21.502000+00:00 | ['BlackLivesMatter', 'War', 'Blm', 'Trump', 'Violence'] |
Amsterdam, Part 2 | It was a Monday, in a foreign city.
The first order of business was bike rentals. Amsterdam is attuned to the city dweller, thus it is a very bike friendly place. Additionally our roommates recommend that we rent bikes to explore the city.
These bikes also had coaster brakes.
Fortune would have it that our bike rentals would be done through our hostel. We paid about $38 for two black bikes with built in locks and insurance. They would be our steeds until 10 am the next morning. The sun was bright but occasionally a cloud would interrupt it’s rays.
It was late morning when we finally started our expedition through the city. We were directionless had no aim, just knew where the red light district was and that was about it. So everything we saw that day was unbeknownst to us.
We visited Voyagers cafe, and re upped our supply of Amsterdam cuisine. Voyagers cafe was tiny in comparison to the cafe we visited the night before. The little cafe was built into the bottom corner of a building and did not offer many seating areas. It had large glass windows on both sides over looking the canals. Black would be its primary paint color. No televisions to watch BBC earth, just conversation to pass the time. We didn’t dwell there long, because we were both very hungry.
A sticker from Voyagers.
Tyler being the true american wanted to go to the McDonald’s he went to last night. I thought it wise to check out a local Dutch bakery. We continued to ride towards the McDonald’s when I voiced my opinions. We stopped and talked it through. Luck would have it that where we stopped was right in front of a waffle house.
We ordered our waffles from a nice lady behind the counter who spoke English near perfectly. Sugar plus more sugar, equals a dopamine rush, so we drank orange juice while we waited for our waffles.
MMMMM Healthy.
When they arrived, it was one of the first times in my life where I took a picture of my food before I ate it. One because it looked delicious, and two because the nice lady behind the counter adorned the waffle with a sparkler. Waste not want not. The Dutch are very practical and we ate our breakfast with a multi functional knife fork spoon. Never seen a dining utensil like that before.
Now that we had something in our bellies, we eagerly pushed our pedals as fast as local custom would allow us.
We followed Spiegalsgracht for a while. It would lead us to an attraction swarming with tourists the I Amsterdam sign. We also contributed to the flow of people taking photos there.
The reflection pool turns into an ice skating rink during the winter.
The sign had a reflection pool which stretched 200 meters, to the right of it was the MOCO museum which had an exhibit featuring the likes of those British aerosol artist we saw in Leeds Tunnel in London. This exhibit though was the big kahuna, it was Banksy.
Tyler spotted my admission ticket and we entered. (Thanks Tyler)
What a nice guy
The building was multi story red brick and the exhibit started on the very top. They allowed photographs, but no flash which was beneficial to explain the impact of street art in the modern world.
Don’t count me for how many times I have fallen, count me for how many times I have fallen and gotten back up.
Shout out to generation Z, after they are done playing fortnight of course.
Banksy made 1000’s of these, and distributed them at a festival. They were seemed so authentic that some even circulation.
If graffiti changed anything it would be illegal- Banksy
The exhibit ended with a feature of ICY and Sot, two Iranian artists who can’t go back to their home country and now reside in New York.
Icy and Sot
Banksy
Icy and Sot
Childhood bullies, become adult bullies.
This dollar bill was up to my shoulder in size.
This revolution brought to you by Coca Cola- Icy and Sot.
After the MOCO museum, we rode around a little longer, until near sunset.
Near our hostel was the A’dam look out, a 100 meter tall building.
100 meters up.
There was a gift shop on the bottom and a visually stunning elevator ride to the top.
Amsterdam has my name on it.
The elevator ascended to the highest floor and we made our exit. We could see for kilometers and kilometers in every direction from there.
Big smiles.
What a gentleman.
Amsterdam Centraal
The Dutch Windmills definitely look a little more modern now.
Beautiful day
The lookout had a swing and a bar both of which offered fantastic views. Tyler again (I got you dude the check is in the mail, don’t worry) spotted my ticket to ride the swing. It was fun to watch our feet dangle underneath us while we swung back and forth over the ledge ten times. When our swing ride was over we had experienced everything the lookout had to offer except the food and drink. We decided against it because it was a tourist trap and therefore had the tourist trap prices. Was it worth it? The swing and the views yes.
See look how happy these random people are!
Yes, Yes it is.
We left the lookout, headed back to our hostel to grab dinner, just as their kitchen was closing.
In our basement accommodations we saw that Paul and Dean were getting fresh for a night on the town.
“Hey you guys doing the Pub Crawl?” Paul asked.
It was then our evening plans were decided.
The pub crawl was sponsored by the Hostel, and was one of the most unforgettable experiences of Amsterdam.
Stay tuned. | https://medium.com/@rusty-gunn/amsterdam-part-2-ab840aa0ce1d | [] | 2019-03-12 23:36:44.032000+00:00 | ['Vacation', 'Travel', 'Amsterdam', 'Blog', 'Explore'] |
Elul, the Ideal Time to Mend a Relationship | Elul is a great time to take stock of where you are in your relationships and to rebuild broken relationships…
The month of אלול Elul began this past Sunday on the Jewish calendar. Why is that significant? Rosh HaShana is less than thirty days away and Yom Kippur is less than forty days. Rosh HaShana is not only the Jewish new year, but it is also the day of hearing the shofar, the day of remembrance, and the day of judgment.
Return to the way of tzedakh
I think Rosh HaShana is sort of like an annual review or evaluation, similar to an evaluation at your job. HaShem is reviewing our performance for the past year. This includes our thoughts and our actions. Where have we missed the mark this past year? Was there a mitzvah that we could have done and didn’t do? Was there a mitzvah we shouldn’t have done, but we did? Our Chachamim (rabbis) teach us that the beginning of Elul is a good time for us to do self- reflection, introspection, and/or self- evaluation.
Many Jews begin the process of תשובה (teshuva). Teshuva is the Hebrew word for repentance. Another translation of teshuva is, to return. But where are we trying to return? We may have gone astray and we want to return to the way of צדקה tzedakah (righteousness). Maybe we are trying to return to a better relationship with HaShem or our fellow human beings.
There are three stages of teshuva
HaShem loves us and always desires to have a relationship with us. Unfortunately, sometimes our actions may cause us to become estranged from HaShem. How do we get the relationship back on track? Our chachamim teach us that teshuva is the process to regain the close relationship with HaShem. There are three stages of teshuva: confession, regret and a vow not to repeat the misdeed. The Rambam says teshuva is complete when one has the opportunity to commit the same sin and they do not.
We are taught that teshuva can help repair our relationship with HaShem, but what about our relationship with our fellow human beings? Were there things that we may have done or said that caused hurt or pain to someone? Have we gotten into conflict? This is a good time to mend and repair that relationship. Teshuva helps mend our relationship with HaShem, but to heal relationships with other people we must apologize, make restitution, and ask for forgiveness.
Get one’s ego out of the way
If you have had a conflict with someone, it can be scary to have that conversation to resolve the issue. It can be difficult to get one’s ego out of the way to regain the relationship. Orrin Woodward outlines five steps that can be helpful to mend and repair a relationship you may be interested in repairing. Here is a link to his five steps to conflict resolution: https://orrinwoodwardblog.com/2010/10/26/conflict-the-five-steps-to-resolution/. Muster up the courage and heal that relationship.
Many Jews begin reciting סליחות (selichot) penitentiary prayers, hearing the shofar at the end of שחרית shacharit (morning prayers), or reading Tehillim, twenty seven Psalm 27 at the beginning of Elul. Although we should and can do teshuva and repair relationships any time throughout the year, this time of year is considered to be more auspicious. The Rambam tells us “the sound of the shofar is a wake-up call, awake oh sleepers and ponder your deeds”. To quote my lovely wife “the King is in the field, can you feel it; the King is in the field, can you feel it!” The King is in the field and ready to receive us, let us do our part to renew that relationship.
Let us do the work of teshuva now so that as we approach Neilah on Yom Kippur, we can enjoy a complete selicha and kapparah.
!!!שנה טובה ומתוקה
A HAPPY AND SWEET NEW YEAR!!!
Thank you for taking the time to read this blog. Please check out my channel on YouTube, Rabbi Gamliel Respes and please join my email list to stay in touch.
Rabbi Gamliel Respes is a life coach and writer. He lives with his wife in Philadelphia. He enjoys sharing his love of Torah and inspiring people to be their best. He is available to lecture for your group. | https://medium.com/chokmah/elul-the-ideal-time-to-mend-a-relationship-f98ff5e449a7 | ['Rabbi Gamliel Respes'] | 2019-09-03 09:53:20.716000+00:00 | ['Inspiration', 'Rosh Hashaná', 'Spirituality', 'Religion', 'Judaism'] |
THEOCRACY NOW! | After law school comes the bar exam. In between is a period of torture, paid for by the victims and innocuously called the Bar Review Course. There is a cottage industry composed of lawyers who teach such courses, which involve a degree of tedium that must be experienced to be appreciated. But there are occasional pearls. I still remember how my instructor, all those years ago, explained the First Amendment. “It’s simple,” he assured us, “the Jehovah’s Witnesses always win and Nixon always loses.”
There’s a grain of truth in the instructor’s clever meme. Nevertheless, the meaning and application of “the First” has become anything but simple.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Whatever else these words written in the late 18th Century state or imply, they clearly deal with religion and politics, two subjects that are studiously avoided at dinner tables around the country, or will be when we can all gather safely. There is a reason, of course, for this rule of silence. These hot-button topics can cause crockery to fly, if not worse, and trigger resentments that can fester seemingly forever. At the same time, spoken about or not, religion and politics are indispensable ingredients of the recipe that society uses to construct — or to divide — itself.
When I started practicing law in the 70’s, there was no doubt in my mind that the First Amendment was a friend to queer folk. It got us visibility and entrée to places where we were not welcome. Here in New England, a federal court of appeals ordered the University of New Hampshire to allow a group of gay men and lesbians to hold a dance on campus. The court deemed dancing by same-sex partners a form of protected expressive activity. Around the same time, a federal court held that the state sponsors of the Rhode Island bicentennial celebration had to allow a group called “Toward a Gayer Bicentennial Committee” to have an information booth at the official celebration, which was deemed to be a public forum.
The gains of the 70’s and beyond were built on the work of earlier visionaries, who used the First Amendment to open the door a chink for the love that, for most of us, really and truly did not dare to speak its name. During the 50’s, a dark time indeed for LGBTQ folk, a pioneering advocacy group called One, Inc., an offshoot of the Mattachine Society, began publishing a magazine called ONE. Around the same time as a Lesbian group, the Daughters of Bilitis, started a periodical called The Ladder. In response to political pressure and prodding by J. Edgar Hoover, the Post Office refused to mail ONE magazine because it was deemed “obscene.”
One, Inc. went to court. They were represented without charge by Eric Julber, a young lawyer recently graduated from UCLA Law School. “I told them, ‘I never had anything to do with gay people, know nothing about that way of life. . . . But I do know about one thing — civil liberties and the right to be free from censorship.’” Mr. Julber struck out in the federal district court and the federal court of appeals, which sneered at his arguments. “The suggestion advanced that homosexuals should be recognized as a segment of our people and be accorded special privilege as a class is rejected,” huffed the federal district judge who heard the case. “Social standards are fixed by and for the great majority and not by or for a hardened or weakened minority,” puffed the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
Mr. Julber persisted. He filed a petition for certiorari in the Supreme Court. And, lo and behold, One, Incorporated, v. Olesen, 355 U.S. 371, reversing 241 F.2d 772: “PER CURIAM. The petition for writ of certiorari is granted and the judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is reversed. Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476.”
Translating these words into understandable English, the Supreme Court’s reversal of the court below was based on the Roth case. In Roth, Justice Brennan ruled that, for a publication to be deemed obscene, the government must show that “to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to prurient interest.” Thus understood, the Supreme Court’s cryptic order in One, Inc. represented a finding that this early attempt by queers to communicate with each other through journalism was protected by the First Amendment.
What has been built on these earlier victories is undeniably impressive. The world that many, many LGBTQ people living in some parts of the United States inhabit is much easier and freer than the world in which I grew to adulthood. This is certainly true, if they, like me, have some cultural capital and professional status. My husband and I live in an economically, racially and ethnically diverse neighborhood in southwest Boston, and I worry more about being hit by a car than about being fag-bashed or even fag-baited. I generally feel safe and, yes, welcome, and I am grateful for this and do not take it for granted.
A chunk of what contributes to the sense that it is safe to be myself comes as the result of decisions of the Supreme Court, and specifically the support of the recently retired Justice Anthony Kennedy. This is same judge who also provided the crucial fifth vote in such shameful decisions as Bush v. Gore, which stopped the vote count in Florida in 2000 and gave us W. and the terrible carnage of the war against Iraq; Citizens United, which sullied an already corrupted politics by definitively handing the microphone to the rich; Shelby County, which gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965; and Heller v. District of Columbia, which adopted the view that the Second Amendment protects the individual right to gun ownership, an idea that former Chief Justice Burger (whose right wing credentials are pretty impressive) described as a fraud on the American people.
Nevertheless, it was this same Kennedy who wrote a series of sensitive and perceptive opinions that made many queer lives better — nationwide decriminalization of same-sex sexual acts; a ban on laws specifically targeting persons on the basis of their sexual orientation, including the infamous Defense of Marriage Act signed by Clinton as part of his 1996 re-election strategy; and Obergefell, the case that established marriage equality throughout the United States.
But now Kennedy is gone, as is the unstoppable RBG, and some groups that identify themselves as religious are sensing that happy days — for them — are here again. Not that such times have ever been totally gone. When queers approached the sacred cows — the Boys Scouts, for example, or the Olympic Committee — what can be described as the “Gay exception” to the Bill of Rights came into play. There would be no Gay Olympics, thank you very much, and no openly gay scout leaders! Oh, and forget about having identifiable LGBT groups in the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade. We’ll have none of that! But, despite these painful setbacks, there has been remarkable progress.
And of course there has been backlash. The current storm center is a Supreme Court case called Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. Fulton deals with the fraught issue of who gets to be foster parents, and, by extension, who gets to adopt. It is no surprise that this is the chosen terrain. The idea that Heather could have two mommies or Derek two daddies is just over the top for lots of people, even if, as is often the case, nobody else wants to take care of the little tykes. And for lots of those who want to keep the kids away from same-gender parents, the reason is clothed in moralistic language.
We saw that first hand here in Massachusetts, when Governor Michael Dukakis, back in the 80’s, personally intervened to have two little boys who were being fostered by a gay male couple removed from the mens’ home. Dukakis had the support of the state legislature and the two major Boston newspapers, including the liberal Boston Globe. David Jean and Don Babets, the two foster parents, ultimately prevailed. They went on to adopt and raise the two little boys and, eventually, the boys’ brothers. In 1995, ten years after the kids were snatched from their home, the Massachusetts legislature, which had vigorously opposed them, presented the adoptive parents a commendation, congratulating them for adopting the kids.
Flash forward 25 years to the Philadelphia case. The matter came to court when the city dropped its contract with a religiously affiliated social services agency because the agency a priori refused to consider same-sex couples as potential foster parents on the grounds that accepting same-sex parents is offensive to the church-sponsored agency’s religious doctrine. The agency’s religious-based policy is directly contrary to the city’s law forbidding discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Nevertheless, the agency contends that the city’s refusal to contract with them violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.
It’s pretty clear that the agency has at least five votes in the Supreme Court and will prevail. Justice Samuel Alito made his views known from the bench. “[I]f we are honest about what’s really going on here,” the case is “not about ensuring that same-sex couples in Philadelphia have the opportunity to be foster parents.” It is rather, that the city “can’t stand the message that Catholic Social Services and the archdiocese are sending by continuing to adhere to the old-fashioned view about marriage.” Justice Brett Kavanaugh (remember him?) took the view that the city’s insistence on even-handed treatment of same-sex couples was an “absolutist and extreme position.” Add Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett to the mix, and the outcome of the case does not appear to be in doubt.
Were it not for the fairly obvious reality that matters touching on religion and gender roles are uniquely capable of making people crazy, there is no sound reason why the religiously-affiliated agency should prevail in this case, and some good reasons why it should not.
For one thing, allowing the agency to maintain its policy of discrimination against same-sex couples and still obtain contract money from the city is easily seen as requiring taxpayer money to be paid to the agency to support its religious views about marriage and proper child-rearing, in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, as Dean Choper of the University of California Law School has argued in similar cases.
In addition, religious groups that enter into activities outside their faith communities that cause harm to non-adherents to the groups’ religious views, such as same-sex couples who wish to foster or adopt children, should not be able to complain that their voluntary engagement in the “secular” world comes with a duty to comply with laws of general application. “When followers of a particular sect enter into commercial activity as a matter of choice, the limits they accept on their own conduct as a matter of conscience and faith are not to be superimposed on the statutory schemes which are binding on others in that activity.” United States v. Lee, 455 U.S. 252, 261.
The religiously-based foster care agency in the Philadelphia case contends that requiring it to process applications from same-sex couples the same way it does any other application forces the agency to convey the impression that it approves allowing these couples to provide care for children. (Horrors!) But that claim is easily seen as threadbare. My religious beliefs do not exempt me from paying taxes to support Attorney General William Barr’s unspeakable rush to execute black men on his way out the door. Obviously, the taxes that I pay under compulsion in no way signal approval of the serial killings Barr has organized. The Supreme Court had no trouble recognizing this in Rumsfeld v. FAIR, 547 U.S. 47. “We have held that high school students can appreciate the difference between speech a school sponsors and speech the school permits because legally required to do so, pursuant to an equal access policy.”
If there were any doubt that the “Gay exception” is at work in the Philadelphia case, it should be put to rest if one considers the reality that courts, even the Supreme Court as currently constituted, will impose some limit to the extent that religious beliefs can be used to justify exemption from anti-discrimination laws. It cannot be seriously argued that an adoption agency that refused to consider an adoption or foster care application because of the race of one or both members of the applicant couple could successfully justify this discrimination on the basis of religious belief. That point was pretty well settled nearly 40 years ago in Bob Jones University v. United States, 461 U.S. 574. “[A] private school — even one that discriminates — fulfills an important educational function; however, . . . [that] legitimate educational function cannot be isolated from discriminatory practices . . . . [Discriminatory] treatment exerts a pervasive influence on the entire educational process.”
No doubt, the immediate retort will be that racial discrimination is different from other types of invidious discrimination. After all, “race, color, or previous condition of servitude” are specifically singled out for condemnation in the Fifteenth Amendment. I completely agree that systemic racism, along with the genocide of first nation peoples, are the foundational wrongs of our nation. What I fail to see is why that reality has any bearing on why demonstrable harms caused by other forms of wrongful discrimination should be given a pass simply because they are presented as religious values, unless, as Justice White once suggested, this judgment reflects an underlying “view that those in the burdened class are not as worthy or deserving as others.” City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Ctr., 473 U.S. 432, 440.
On the contrary, the correct principle seems to be that the courts should step in to defend fundamental rights whenever the political process marginalizes or shuts out some group — whether it be LGBTQ people or people of faith. Justice Stone said as much in 1938 in a footnote that has been called the most important footnote in U.S. constitutional history. United States v. Carolene Products, 304 U.S. 144, 152, fn. 4. Constitutional protection is not, or should not be, a zero sum game. When courts, as the current Supreme Court majority is set to do, overvalorize claims that come bearing the label religious and disregard or downplay the harm that such claims cause to less favored groups or individuals, they undermine the integrity of the judging process by prioritizing the judge’s own values — usually unspoken — without being particularly honest about it.
It seems to me ironic that LGBTQ persons who seek to live their lives openly and in fidelity to their deepest values, like people of faith who are trying to do the same thing, are are adversaries rather than allies. Queer folk are often treated with disrespect or outright contempt in our culture. So are people of faith who rock the boat. Would that this commonality could build a bridge between the two groups instead of digging a moat. I wonder what it will take for this to happen. Hopeless tilter after windmills, I believe that it can. | https://medium.com/@johnpward/theocracy-now-2e88808ebf2d | ['John Ward'] | 2020-12-20 16:45:55.073000+00:00 | ['Supreme Court'] |
5 Reasons Why a Presidential Forum for Women of Color is Vital | On April 24, re:power staff will represent at She The People’s historic Presidential Forum, focused exclusively on women of color.
We believe that women of color are crucial in our electoral process — and for the first time ever, a candidates’ forum will be dedicated to intersectional issues like climate change, police brutality and criminal justice, education, immigration, and more.
#SheThePeople2020 aligns with our vision of inclusive politics — a framework that makes space and creates structures for the leadership, needs, and victories of who we’ve identified to be the communities we lead with: primarily people of color, and specifically, women of color.
Women of color organizing and defying the status quo to gain political power is part of our nation’s history.
In 1971, women organized and sent a record number of women as delegates to the Democratic National Convention and won, for the the first-time ever, the creation of a women’s rights platform. It included pledges to eliminate discrimination against women in the workforce; promotion and higher wages; maternity benefits for working women and higher access for women to positions of power in all branches of government.
In 1977, more than 20,000 women took part in the National Women’s Conference in Houston. At the conference, a group of black women introduced the Black Women’s agenda in response to the lack of representation of the specific issues they faced. When they did, other women of color followed their lead and asked to be included in the agenda. The result was the creation of the political identity of women of color.
Photo via Tia Oso.
In 2015 (almost 40 years later) a group of Black women activists ( Patrisse Cullors, Angela Peoples, and Tia Oso, to name a few) from the Black Lives Matter Movement led an action directed at then presidential candidates at Netroots Nation, a national progressive conference. They demanded that candidates speak directly to issues impacting the black community like police brutality, anti-blackness and racial inequality. They spoke on the recent death of Sandra Bland at the hands of the police. This action forced the candidates to acknowledge the calls of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2016 and beyond.
The Freshman Class of 2018.
And three years later, the 2018 midterms ushered in the most diverse Congress in history. The women of color of this class of representatives are making waves and turning the political establishment on its head. Reps. Sharice Davids, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Deb Haaland, Ayanna Pressley, Veronica Escobar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are showing America what political hope can look like. Their governance is driven by organizing everyday people to demand their rights, to assert their vision, and to accept nothing less.
There are countless historical examples of women of color and indigenous women forcing their views, issues and leadership into mainstream politics and the political consciousness.
Jennicet Gutiérrez
There’s Jennicet Gutiérrez, an undocumented, Latinx immigrant trans woman, who challenged then President Obama at a White House PRIDE event, by repeating over and over again, “President Obama, release all L.G.B.T.Q. immigrants from detention and stop all deportations!” Jennicet raised her voice to shine light on the devastating ways L.G.B.T.Q. and transgender immigrants are treated in this country.
LaDonna Brave Bull Allard
There’s also LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, a Lakota historian and activist, whose establishment of Sacred Stone Camp helped set the stage for Standing Rock. LaDonna was there when the very first tipis went up at Standing Rock — and when they came down. She did so to protect our planet and to fight for environmental justice and indigenous rights. I’ll stop there, but I encourage you to revisit the the progress we’ve made as a country towards becoming a more just society — chances are, you’ll find women of color showing up and showing out for change.
Each of these examples — of women of color organizing and defying the status quo— is what makes She The People’s Presidential Forum powerful. It’s another moment in history where women of color are creating their own platforms to be seen, heard and respected — all in the city where “women of color” became a community term in 1977. | https://repower.medium.com/5-reasons-why-a-presidential-forum-for-women-of-color-is-vital-6d790d976101 | ['Re Power'] | 2019-04-22 21:06:14.079000+00:00 | ['Feminism', 'Presidential Election', 'Progressive Politics', 'Intersectionality', 'Elections'] |
Rapper Jay-Z Disses President Trump’s Controversial Views | We’ve all heard Trump’s policies and statements on immigration and the American economy, but here’s what Jay-Z thinks.
Trump (left) and Jay-Z (right). Image from CNN.
On Sunday, United States President Donald Trump fired back at Grammy-winning rapper Jay-Z (Shawn Carter) via Twitter. Trump is known to have used the social-media platform as a means of airing his sometimes controversial opinions. His comments were concerning the rapper’s vocalization of his views regarding Trump’s policies and statements in a CNN interview the previous day.
In the interview, Jay-Z responded to Trump’s comments earlier this month from a White House meeting regarding immigration, when the President asked why the US continues to accept immigrants from “shithole countries” (in reference to Africa, Haiti, and El Salvador). The rapper said these comments were “hurtful” and “disappointing”, then proceeded to state, “everyone feels anger [about these statements], but after the anger it’s really hurtful because it’s looking down at a whole population of people and it’s so misinformed because these places have beautiful people and beautiful everything. This is the leader of the free world speaking like this.” Jay-Z further revealed that he was dubious of Trump’ claims concerning job creation for African-Americans.
After Jay-Z’s interview aired, Trump shared the Tweet below, re-accrediting fact that there has indeed been a reduction of African-American unemployment rates during his administration.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate among African-Americans plummeted from roughly 16.5 percent in 2010 to 6.8 percent in December — the lowest since 1972. When questioned about whether America’s economic uplift indicates good leadership from Trump, Jay-Z said that wasn’t the focus. He stated, “…it’s not about money at the end of the day…money doesn’t equate to happiness. It doesn’t. That’s missing the whole point. You treat people like human beings, then — that’s the main point.” | https://medium.com/newscuts/rapper-jay-z-disses-president-trumps-controversial-views-ac8c8f106803 | ['Rahini Takalkar'] | 2018-01-30 03:54:38.102000+00:00 | ['Lifestyle', 'Donald Trump', 'African American', 'Twitter', 'Jay Z'] |
“Don’t think of it as a conference. Think of it as binge-watching powerpoints for 10 hours straight, 4 days in a row.” | Sign up for The UX Collective Newsletter
By UX Collective
A weekly, ad-free newsletter that helps designers stay in the know, be productive, and think more critically about their work. Take a look | https://uxdesign.cc/dont-think-of-it-as-a-conference-72c9be56df69 | ['Fabricio Teixeira'] | 2020-11-17 00:08:44.739000+00:00 | ['Tweet', 'Prooductivity', 'Product Design', 'Design', 'Startup'] |
The journey towards conscious consumerism | To make sure everyone is on the same page before we go any further, here is a short definition of conscious consumption by Kristin Wong from the NY Times:
Conscious consumption is an umbrella term that simply means engaging in the economy with more awareness of how your consumption impacts society (and environment) at large.
I’m attaching a link to a comprehensive guide at the end of this article that explores the topic more in-depth.
When we start learning how to consume more consciously, it can be a bit daunting, mainly because every human activity leaves a trace, whether we talk about the environment, society, or even the economy.
What I’d say is important to remember is the following:
It’s not only up to consumers to clean or solve the environmental, social or economic mess our society is going through; the change and improvement needs to start at the very beginning (at ideation and production level);
As consumers and human beings, we have the power to enforce positive change through voting, creating laws to extend producers' responsibility or changing our habits and behaviours.
This is the journey I picked for myself.
Where to start?
When I started learning more about what can I do to lessen my impact, few questions came to mind:
Where to start?
Can a single individual make a [real] difference? Yes.
What is the actual scale of my consumption impact? How to get the idea of its scale through visualising it?
By coincidence, a colleague of mine lent me a book called ‘Turning the Tide on Plastic.’ While the book talks only about plastic pollution, it provides a great way to visualise the amount of waste you accumulate. So I told myself why not start looking at the waste in our household.
Using a simple experiment the author proposes, I map out the type, amount and sources of waste that end up most often in our bin.
Tracking the source of waste based on the method from the book: Turning the tide on plastic
You don’t need to go to such an extent. I thought it was a good exercise to visualise ‘the after effect’ of my purchase decisions. Plus, I had to do it only once. I saw where most of my waste comes from (food shopping) and how to make some quick changes to reduce it:
Have a reusable bag ready in my bag or backpack (always)
Get or create a couple of produce bags to replace plastic ones
Shop mostly at markets to avoid unnecessary packaging (I still don’t understand the purpose of a single wrapped piece of paprika)
Replaced water bottles and soda with tap water (if you live in a city and have a luxury of drinkable tap water, it could be a good way to go)
Occasionally buy in bulks or go to stores with refill stations (these stores are unfortunately on the other side of the town)
If possible, avoid buying ready-made dishes (not all the plastic is recyclable, and if then only a tiny percentage)
Have a shopping list ready to buy only stuff we need
Bring my own ‘to go’ mug to my favourite café; they even offer you an incentive in the form of a discount
Freeze, store or give away excess food, so it doesn’t go to waste
The result after few months was great. The amount of waste decreased, including the one suitable for recycling. We now take the trash out every 3 weeks compared to every week in the past. It might not save the planet, but it is a good step forward.
Food Delivery
One of the biggest game-changers was to abandon food delivery. Below is a description of the packaging used per one meal order:
1 paper bag, 4 paper napkins, 1 paper wrap for a burger, 1 paper bag for fries, 1 paper tray for fries, 1 paper/foil bag for corn, 1 paper tray for corn that could be only quarter of its size.
The majority of the listed items cannot be recycled. Instead, they will end up in the landfill. Note: The paper contaminated with grease is not recyclable.
Sometimes I get lazy or crave a meal I would not cook myself. So, I slip. But going from 2–3 orders a month to one order every few months was an agreeable strategy.
However, stop using food delivery won’t solve the problem. So what could we as consumers do to enforce some positive change?
Provide feedback: Write a review, send them a suggestions. Ask the company how they encourage restaurants to become more responsible? What do they do to make it happen? While it’s a more complex problem to solve, if we don’t start holding companies accountable and require change, who will?
Making responsible choices (may) cost you
Groceries, cosmetic products or household items produced responsibly will often cost you more. You should be ready to pay for the actual costs of labour and resources used, at least for now.
It is easier said than done. Simply because we all have different disposable income, family or life situation (a parent with a single income), or else. And there is an abundance of cheap products available.
The issue we as a society still need to solve is to make a conscious consumption affordable for everyone.
The good news is, you don’t have to be a millionaire, not even a hundred-thousandaire. I’m not. In many cases, I turn to online resources for inspiration.
Zero Waste on Reddit for minimising waste
Too good to go for minimising food waste
Olio for giving away food, share household items and more
A good thing to remember is that conscious consumerism does not mean throwing out everything you own and replace it with brand-new, eco-labelled, organic products.
To give you the simplest example: Do you need to buy a new reusable, fancy bag that costs $20, or you already have a bag you can keep using over and over again?
Reduce and reuse
Being a conscious consumer is about what type of products we buy or how they were produced. It’s also about how much we buy and why we buy.
What is the purpose of ‘an item I’m buying’ in my life? For how long will I be using it?
How can I repurpose things to prolong their life or give them a second chance?
Do I need all the things I own, or I own them simply because I have money to purchase them?
Do I let trendiness guide my shopping choices? Or do I make purchase choices on my own while being true to my values?
How often do you give the things you own a second chance? I mean, as long as they are not falling apart.
I truly admire my dad because he has an amazing skill to give house appliances a second chance to live. Most recently, he built a completely new vacuum cleaner reusing parts from two older ones. Yes, some parts had to go to waste, but the majority of them got reused.
So what is a way to move forward?
Keep breaking the known or familiar habits and encourage good ones to reduce your impact on the environment.
Keep educating yourself. I don’t always agree with widely-accepted mantras like eating locally is best for the environment. Everything has its pros and cons.
And remember, what matters equally, if not more, is extending the significant degree of responsibility for the environmental, social and economical impact of products to manufacturers and importers.
At the end of the day, how big of a change can we achieve if we, e.g. cut down on food delivery orders to reduce ‘post-dinner waste’ on our side, but food delivery company or restaurants won’t do anything to minimise the single-use packaging on their side?
This is the point where your consumer voice and right to vote comes into play.
Useful resources:
What is conscious consumerism:
https://growensemble.com/conscious-consumerism/
Research and data site on some of the world’s largest problems:
https://ourworldindata.org/ | https://medium.com/@adaadventures/the-journey-towards-conscious-consumerism-faf11383f130 | ['Ada Ubrezi'] | 2021-03-24 11:48:34.054000+00:00 | ['Consumerism', 'Future', 'Habits', 'Impact', 'Change'] |
Between Go and Elixir | The human mind is a strange beast. Rather than remaining focused on one thing throughout our lives, it constantly shape-shifts based on our surrounding environment. This is not only a survival but also an evolutionary mechanism. By oscillating between alternatives, the mind learns new concepts, and in doing so, elevates the human species (at least, in theory).
Two personalities are fighting for attention in every person’s mind — that of the pragmatic and the one of the emotional creative. Only when kept in balance do the two move us forward. Neglect one for too long, and your life gets miserable.
That’s a lesson I learned while trying to choose between Go and Elixir as the backbone of my business. For too long, I had criticized myself for being indecisive and unable to pick a side. Why go with two fundamentally different tech stacks if any one of them could solve the same kinds of problems with the same level of success? Reason wanted me to make a choice, and I am so glad I didn’t. Because the more I kept delving into both Elixir and Go, the more I found out how complementary the two can be to one another. Not just in my daily work but also in a more theoretical understanding of how software systems should be built.
In retrospect, what I initially saw as a potential weakness of my business, might be on its way to becoming one of its greatest strengths.
A bit of background
I discovered Elixir and Go at about the same time (2019). I had pivoted almost eight years of working as a Java developer, and part of me was looking for a new technical challenge. On my first encounter, I did not like either. Go felt far too simplistic to be an actual language. Elixir felt far too bizarre — a way of encouraging the Ruby community to try Erlang — a battle-tested language but shrouded with mysticism and urban legends. Little did I know, they would be instrumental in my decisions a couple of years later.
I did not choose Go over its syntax, neither was I initially fascinated with its concurrency mechanism. It was more of a pragmatic decision at the time. I needed a way to deliver and deploy small, blazing-fast binaries, and the language felt like it was made just for that. Coming from a Java project where we had virtually replaced the use of checked exceptions (“let it crash” had become our mantra), I was put off by checking errors after every second line of code. The lack of generics made me repeat myself more often than I liked. However, the overall package stood to the original promise of its creators — the tooling was easy to set up, comes with most of what you need, and was a no-brainer to get going.
That last bit was not the first impression I had of Elixir and the BEAM. Although I had quite some luck setting things up the first time (sadly, I still mess up my Elixir/Erlang updates most of the time), the sheer amount of stuff one got met with was overwhelming at first. I admit that the onboarding has improved a hundred times since then, thanks to the great work of the core team and that of all the people contributing code and learning materials. Plus, as a purist, I refused to try Phoenix before getting my hands dirty with some lower-level stuff first. I see many folks from the Rails community coming to Elixir mainly because of Phoenix. Only once hooked do they start uncovering more and more of the goodies (and dark corners) of the BEAM. I approached it the other way and was initially put off by the sheer amount of concepts one needs to keep in mind before working on the most basic tasks.
But they grow on you
Thus, after my first unfruitful encounter with Elixir, I kept it in the back of my mind for about half a year. In the meantime, I had written enough Go to know what they meant by “there’s only one way of doing things.” Like others, I got through all phases of anger — from denial through trying to be creative to finally accepting the language for what it was.
The funny thing was, the more I got used to Go, the more I liked it. Constant error and type checks became less annoying. Quite the contrary, proper error checks saved my back quite a few times in production. Verbose as it was, the syntax made it easy to remember a few basic constructs and repeat them over and over again. Moreover, by having everything in front of your eyes most of the time, it is easier to decode your thoughts months after.
I have to clarify that easier does not mean easy — writing 500-line functions only to save a few clicks won’t make your code less spaghetti. However, it frees your mind from having to think of the proper abstraction all the time. Have an idea, sit down and test it — just like in the good old days of PHP’s heyday. Abstractions will form much later once you’ve made sure that what you’re working on actually makes sense.
Getting to know Elixir and the BEAM again
Go is great for building commands. Commands, not only in the CLI meaning of the word, but in general — tools with limited scope that do one thing well. This includes small Web services (I will avoid the term “microservices” here) and all kinds of recurring and one-off tooling. Basically, anything that you can afford to lose, because it is easy to spawn it up again. Thanks to Kubernetes, Docker, or even good old systemd or nohup , one can afford to just "let it crash" and start on a clean slate mere seconds afterward.
That is not to say that Go is not suitable for long-running operations. I am maintaining a few Go apps that have undergone months without a restart. It is definitely possible. However, when I think about what DHH calls “majestic monoliths,” building a Go application beyond a particular scale starts requiring thorough checking and guarding every possible place that can crash the app. And it will still crash regardless.
That is what rekindled my interest in Elixir and the BEAM in late 2019. If any system could be prepared to handle crashes gracefully, that would be the BEAM. This time, I was prepared with a lot more patience and a couple of great books (like this one). Starting with a fresh Phoenix app, I quickly re-built PodRadio’s user-facing part in Elixir in only about a couple of weeks. A few months later, I dug into LiveView too, which resulted in AROUNDAWORLD — a fun little project with which I set out to beat the lockdown desperation of 2020 by giving people a compelling but straightforward challenge.
The more I worked with Elixir, the more I liked its syntax and the abstractions it adds on top of Erlang’s OTP (the core of what makes Erlang so famous) library. I am possibly one of the few people still set firm in Go-land who honestly find Erlang’s process/actor model easier to wrap their head around than orchestrating coroutines with channels. I instantly fell in love with the actor model, supervision trees, pipes, and pattern matching. I understand that neither of these concepts is unique to Elixir (or the BEAM), but for someone who has not dabbled deep into functional programming, this was the first stack where everything made sense to me.
Elixir and the BEAM elevate my thinking. Go brings me back to Earth
With all the goodness around BEAM processes, it is easy to think of them as millions of nano-services running on a single machine, supervised and orchestrated by the application. Want more power? Connect another physical node, and suddenly your nano-services start spinning across the globe. In a world where the BEAM was the norm and so much the exception, that is-a world where the BEAM and not the OS was your OS.
Despite all the great efforts of contributors, it will probably remain challenging to think of BEAM applications as commands. Also, not many people really care about Erlang or as much as they do about having an ergonomic developer experience. True, nobody cares about Java’s byte code either — until something terrible happens, then everyone starts running in mad circles.
And this is precisely where Go and Kubernetes won the game for many. Neither requires the other. You can spin up a Kubernetes cluster running hundreds of different apps built with different technologies (including BEAM ones). You can also hook a 100-line Go binary to a cron job and let it make money for you by running virtually forever. While not in the same league, one may think of Kubernetes (also written in Go, BTW) as an alternative to the BEAM capable of orchestrating macro-scale processes (pods, services). In such an environment, Go opponents’ concerns that the “app may crash in any second” actually don’t matter much. In a way, it’s even better that way. Clean slate.
Go and Elixir working together?
Of course, no one needs to go through the hoops of setting up or dealing with Kubernetes unless they really need to. For a large number of cases, running everything on a single machine can do miracles when done the right way. In my practice, I’ve seen setups costing 1000s of $/m that perform worse than a few Go binaries / a Phoenix app stuck on a single VM. In fact, most of my apps run on micro instances costing less $/m than some people pay for their morning coffee. Not because I cannot afford bigger ones, but because I don’t need to.
This naturally brings the question up, could Go and Elixir work together? Elixir providing the orchestration and user-facing plane, thanks to the resilience of the BEAM. Go, with its strength of building short-lived commands, providing speed of execution, and making it possible to extend the app beyond the boundaries of the BEAM.
Of course, it is, and that is what I have been doing for the past couple of years-using (or trying to) the best tool for the particular problem. Whether through ports, or simply calling them like regular Web services, an Elixir app can easily communicate with and coordinate dedicated Go binaries. And guess what, they can crash as much as they want; the BEAM will keep a poker face in front of the customer.
Why not Rust instead?
I am often getting asked why not mix Elixir and Rust instead, since they cooperate even better using Erlang NIFs. Without a doubt, Rust is a great language, and it has its place. I find it essential and have dedicated a small portion of my time trying to get along with its compiler. Yet, because Rust is so rigid about memory safety, I don’t find it easy to think in terms of solving business requirements. Some can say the same about Go, but thankfully, its creators have taken a set of choices early on that make the programmer and the compiler agree on things easier while maintaining a high level of safety.
No one is perfect
Go has its deficiencies, but so does Elixir (or the BEAM for that matter). That largely applies to much of programming today. Or life, for that matter. We have to live with what we have. | https://medium.com/@p5v/between-go-and-elixir-20ba43cc8499 | ['Preslav Rachev'] | 2021-04-27 07:43:08.707000+00:00 | ['Elixir', 'Golang', 'Programming', 'Software Development'] |
Download & Read PDF FREE The Nephilim Assignment | The Nephilim Assignment
by George, A.S.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -
Download EBOOK PDF The Nephilim Assignment by George, A.S.:
Click Download Link!!
https://webpopularpro.blogspot.com/media56.php?asin=B08ZVK61L4
About
Category: Digital Ebook Purchas
Author: George, A.S.
Number of Pages: 381
Total Offers : 2
Rating: 4.5
FREE BOOKS were fantastic guests! They always kept in touch before and during their stay. They were also very polite, tidy and quiet.|We enjoyed hosting FREE BOOKS. We had a good exchange of messages upfront. During our stay, it was nice to chat with FREE BOOKS and they were respectful of the house rules.|FREE BOOKS took great care of my property. Thank you FREE BOOKS. You can come back anytime.
The Nephilim Assignment by George, A.S. free DOWNLOAD PDF
The Nephilim Assignment by George, A.S. PDF free
The Nephilim Assignment by George, A.S. PDF
The Nephilim Assignment by George, A.S. epub d0wnl0ad
The Nephilim Assignment by George, A.S. 0NLINE
George, A.S. by The Nephilim Assignment epub d0wnl0ad
DOWNLOADThe Nephilim Assignment PDF — KINDLE — EPUB — MOBI
The Nephilim Assignment d0wnl0ad ebook PDF EPUB, book in english language version
[d0wnl0ad] book The Nephilim Assignment in format PDF
[PDF] [EPUB] The Nephilim Assignment by George, A.S. D0WNLOAD
Synopsis of The Nephilim Assignment by George, A.S.
Review online The Nephilim Assignment by George, A.S. DOWNLOAD & Read Online FREE The Nephilim Assignment by George, A.S. ->
https://mediawebclub.blogspot.com/media79.php?asin=B08ZVK61L4 | https://medium.com/@ottilietraynor/download-read-pdf-free-the-nephilim-assignment-563bf66ae8c2 | ['Ottilie Traynor'] | 2021-09-11 06:51:16.327000+00:00 | ['Amazon', 'Free', 'Book', 'Download', 'Kindle'] |
Improving on the Command-Line SQL Experience | SQL Editing
So, being able to easily browse query results is definitely a big win, and sorts out one of the main issues with using a terminal-based SQL client. You will, however, also want a lot more flexibility when it comes to editing queries, especially if you’re a developer.
Let’s start with the most basic solution, which is to set the $EDITOR environment variable to vim, micro, or whatever else you like to use. This editor will be triggered from within the MySQL client when you give it the \e command. After writing a SQL query, save your work and exit the editor. This will take you back to the SQL client, which will then run the query and display the results.
Writing SQL queries using $EDITOR
You can create a keyboard shortcut for this frequently used operation by adding something like the following to your ~/.inputrc :
$if mysql
“\C-e”: ‘\\e;\C-m’
$endif
This will trigger the editor whenever Ctrl+E is pressed from within the MySQL client.
Let’s say you want to tweak your query; no problem, just trigger the editor again and your work will still be there, which is nice. Now let’s say you want to leave that query there and start work on a second query; this is where things start to get unstuck.
As the SQL client will execute everything in the file, your first query will also get executed when you close the editor. You could comment it out, or copy and paste queries between two separate files, however, these “solutions” will get tiresome pretty quickly for any serious work.
Using an $EDITOR Script
Instead of pointing $EDITOR to vim directly, we could instead point it to a script and get more control over how we want to handle the editing process. The script will be expected to take the path of an output file as a parameter, and should populate that file with the query to execute.
Using a script, we can automate the process of copying a single query from the SQL file we are working on to the output file expected by the SQL client. When triggered, the script would first start an editor for the main file containing all of our queries. The path of this file could be provided to the script via an environment variable.
To execute a query, we would highlight it and get the editor to save the region of selected text to a new file and then exit. This would then return control to the $EDITOR script, which would take the new file and move it to the output path expected by the SQL client.
When the script exits, the MySQL client will then pick up the output file and execute the query. If the editor is triggered again, we would land back at the file containing our queries and the process would repeat.
Old-school scripting
Such a script is actually pretty trivial to write, and the vim integration can be done with a single key binding. After a while of usage, however, some minor, but irritating, issues do present themselves. For example, you can’t view the results of the last query you executed while writing a new one, and you can end up needing to do this quite often.
You also can’t undo temporary edits that you might want to make in order to try something out. As the editor is started anew each time it is triggered, it doesn’t know anything about what you were doing before. Having to start the editor every time is also annoying, even with a keyboard shortcut, as is quickly returning to your previous position in the query file, though this last issue can be addressed in vim.
A Better Solution: qsh
Building upon the concept of an $EDITOR script is a simple and minimal solution I have written called qsh, which gives you the interface of a GUI SQL client directly within your terminal!
SQL client session using qsh
There is no re-inventing of the wheel here: tmux is used to manage the split panes, your editor of choice is used to write queries, and your database client tool is used to execute them and show the results. This gives you the full functionality of each tool, with qsh acting as the glue.
So, if you want to zoom the editor and just work on writing a query, or zoom the SQL client to understand the results or just work as you normally would in the terminal, or swap the panes around, tmux will let you do all this and more. Another benefit of using tmux is that you can run it over an SSH connection, which is typically how it is used. In this case, if you setup qsh on your remote host, everything should work as expected.
You can’t, however, open an SSH connection to connect to your database in the SQL client pane and have tmux and the editor running locally; this just wouldn’t work. You should instead either run everything locally or else remotely.
Installation
As qsh relies on tmux, you will need to have this installed and running within your terminal. Check for it in your package manager.
There are three simple steps to installing qsh, the first of which is to clone the git repository into your home directory:
$ git clone [email protected]:muhmud/qsh.git ~/.qsh
Then, you will need to setup the plugin for your editor, which can be either vim or micro at the moment. Finally, ensure that qsh is the editor used by your SQL client. This can be done using environment variables or an alias, as described here.
Now launch your SQL client (both MySQL and PostgreSQL are supported) and trigger the editor. You should see the editor pane created. To execute a query, simply highlight it and press F5, or whichever key you have bound. The results should appear in the SQL client pane below. To go back to normal, just exit the editor and everything will be cleaned up. | https://medium.com/swlh/improving-on-the-command-line-sql-experience-48c2b544c71b | ['Muhmud Ahmad'] | 2020-11-25 09:21:40.439000+00:00 | ['Sql', 'Database', 'Shell', 'Terminal', 'Developer Tools'] |
Thundra Re:cap 2018 | 2018 was the year of Serverless. It is not just the new hot trend that only technology geeks are talking about. In terms of general adoption and popularity, even enterprise organizations are starting to seriously look into and implement serverless platforms as a standard approach to building applications.
Check out the chart on the left hand side to see how Google searches for “serverless” jumped in 2018. Serverless reached sufficient maturity in 2018 to enable people to migrate their existing systems to serverless or start new projects using serverless architectures. Expect to see even a bigger jump in adoption in 2019.
2018 was a big year for Thundra as well. We started off the year as a small intrapreneurship project within OpsGenie . Perhaps our biggest news all year was that in October 2018, Thundra officially spun off and became an independent company — Thundra, Inc. This has allowed us to truly focus on Thundra’s development and Thundra go-to-market efforts without any distraction.
Now, as we start off 2019, we have 13 invaluable team members and are actively hiring to expand the team. Thundra now supports way more than just Java. We also support Node.js, Python, and Golang for AWS Lambda. Let’s take a look through what made 2018 unforgettable for Thundra.
Thundra grows up: From Private Beta to Public Beta to General Availability
Let’s take a closer look at the product updates we made last year.
January 2018: Private Beta Release
In January, we started off the year offering a private beta with a platform that which could only monitor Java AWS Lambda functions at the beginning of this year. We had a great reception from users! But, we quickly understood that we needed more than just support for Java in order to make Thundra more broadly useful.
March 2018: Public Beta Release
On March 23rd, Thundra moved from private to public beta, which included basic support for Node.js, Python, and Go in additional to our already-existing Java support. We received great feedback from our community, which we used to plan our roadmap for the rest of the year, improve our libraries, and add new capabilities to Thundra.
October 2018: General Availability and Company Launch
On October 23rd, Thundra officially released its fully supported, General Availability product. Our launch announced advanced and deep support for Node.js applications and expanded support for Python applications, including automated instrumentation capabilities for both languages. We also added OpenTracing compatibility!
November 2018: Lambda Layer support and a call-out at the AWS re:Invent keynote!
As you can imagine for a company focused on supporting AWS Lambda users, AWS re:Invent was a hugely important event for us. We announced our support for the new Lamba Layers and Runtime API, which was highlighted in the Thursday keynote.
Just as exciting (for Thundra), Thundra was called out as a Lambda Layers launch partner! Mike Melason of the New Stack even wrote an article covering the news.
Support for Lambda Layers is a really important, time-saving, new feature for anyone building Lambda applications. When combined with our automated wrapping and instrumentation capabilities, adding monitoring becomes extremely low-effort. For example, all you need to do is add the Thundra Layer to your Lambda function to quickly see that, for example, your queries to a DynamoDB table cause your functions to run longer than they should.
With all these improvements (and more), you can now automatically trace Lambda functions with no code change and start solving errors, inefficiencies, slow-downs in just a couple of minutes. We also added many more capabilities to our agents that I haven’t mentioned here. I recommend checking out our documentation for Java, Node.js, Python and Go to learn more.
Analyze your serverless applications somewhere else with Thundra’s integrations
This year we also put great importance in building integrations with popular tools, allowing users to visualize and query the data we produce in the platform of their choice.
Splunk Integration
We understood that this option is especially important for our enterprise customers who frequently ask for on-premises solutions. Splunk was a great choice for integration partner because it’s so popular with enterprise organizations for visualization and alerting. With Thundra’s integration, customers don’t need to pass their data throughout our system. It goes directly from their AWS accounts into their Splunk instances to be analyzed alongside all their other enterprise data.
We released our Splunk integration at the end of July as the first organization to bring full serverless observability into Splunk. You can fill out the form here to start analyzing your own AWS Lambda data inside your own Splunk instance.
Honeycomb Integration
We released our second integration in November! This time, we choose to partner with Honeycomb. Similar to the Splunk integration, the serverless monitoring data that Thundra gathers flows into your Honeycomb account without passing through Thundra’s servers. Our integration with Honeycomb is special because Honeycomb is unsurpassed at complex tracing visualizations and querying, enabling users to dive deeply into metrics and performance data. When combined with Thundra’s rich AWS Lambda datasets, our users can quickly answer very complex questions they cannot answer using other tools, including Thundra’s own!. If you haven’t yet watched it, I recommend you check out the webinar that we recently hosted with Christine Yen, CPO at Honeycomb. Then, try it yourself with a free integration trial! Get your trial by filling out our sign-up form here.
Thundra, partnered up!
This year, we established partnerships that we are very proud of. Of course, we are partners with Splunk (Technology Alliance Partner) and Honeycomb. In addition to those partnerships, Thundra achieved APN Advanced Technology Partner status by AWS, which we announced along with Lambda Layers support at AWS re:Invent. By passing AWS’s rigorous technical and architectural review process, we can now provide additional confidence to AWS Lambda users that Thundra both understands their serverless monitoring needs *and* has built a solid architectural and technical solution on top of AWS to reliably and securely support them — in development and in production.
Events galore!
2018 was the year where we made our first public appearances. In October, we sponsored Splunk .conf in Orlando, FL. We showed off the capabilities of our Splunk integration and Splunk App, which is available for free on Splunkbase. We received very positive feedback about our capabilities for monitoring serverless applications, on the depth of our Java support, and the fact that it was actually available as a completely on-premise solution.
Obviously, AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas was a remarkable experience for us. We had a constant stream of traffic to the booth, earned our moment on the keynote stages as launch partners for AWS Lambda Layers, and had numerous visitors who were impressed at what they could learn from their AWS Lambda environment beyond what they normally got with Cloudwatch logs.
We attended other events as well! Serkan, our CTO, presented at Oracle One to discuss Thundra’s capabilities and how it can be used to gather monitoring data from Oracle Fn. Doğuşcan, our technical marketing engineer, spoke at Serverless Computing London and shared our internal ideas for anomaly detection in serverless applications.
A curated 2018 list: The best of Thundra and some others as well.
Knowledge is meaningful only if it is shared with someone else. We do this with regular contributions to our blog. You can browse the entire blog all by yourself, or you can check out the top 3 blogs that acquired the most views in 2018:
If you want to read something from the serverless community but not from us, I recommend the following:
What’s next? Onto 2019!
And here we are now — leaving 2018 behind. I am not going to give anything away but rest assured we have plenty of exciting plans for 2019. . Thundra will continue to grow in capability and functionality. We are hiring NOW to add to the team. Look for us at AWS and serverless events! Sign up for our newsletter to stay in touch with us. Play with our demo environment, get your free account, and don’t hesitate to contact us with your requests. I wish you all a very serverless 2019! | https://medium.com/thundra/thundra-re-cap-2018-f0521371dbb | ['Emrah Şamdan'] | 2019-01-10 08:02:18.093000+00:00 | ['Observability', 'AWS Lambda', 'Serverless', 'Debugging', 'Monitoring'] |
Creative Quest by Questlove Provides A Creative Hall Pass | I find that self-help or how-to books typically fall into one of two categories. The writer tells you in a very specific way how to do something or they give you a process of figuring out how to do something. The former comes off as pompous while the latter displays an understanding that no two situations are alike. It’s the difference between being given a fish and being taught how to fish. Creative Quest by Questlove teaches you how to fish.
If you are familiar with Questlove it’s likely from his role as the drummer and front man for The Roots on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon. However, the musician’s creative credentials expand well beyond what you see in late night television. With experience as a DJ, radio host, film maker, and author, Questlove is more than qualified to share his thoughts on creativity.
The Gist Of It
Creative Quest is a practical journey through the creative process by creatives for creatives. Questlove gives practical tips for producing art and tips to help the artist as an individual. With advice on taking criticism, finding mentors, and growing as an artist, this book serves as a convenient guide for creatives of any level. Drawing on his previous life experiences as well as conversations with professionals in music, acting, art, and the culinary arts, Questlove puts forward a collective wisdom on how to overcome creative hurdles.
Key Takeaways
Be a tourist
Habits are great and allow us to be productive and get into a rhythm. But they also can be an unwelcome invitation to a creative rut. Questlove suggests actively being a tourist even in familiar waters to bring a different perspective to the table and to creative work. For digital marketers consider examining top landing pages once a month as if it’s for the first time to draw new connections between initiatives or to find new opportunities for improvement.
Tend to ideas like a garden
It’s natural to get excited about an idea and want to hit the ground running right away. But what happens when the inspiration leaves? The idea stumbles across the finish line or fizzles out beforehand. Instead organize ideas and tend to them over time by returning to them often and letting them grow. In business keep a running list of ideas to track and amend as opportunities arise or new information is found.
Be your own beta tester
Think of how content looks from the other side of the screen. Take time to remove the marketing hat and put on a user or customer hat instead to walk through how users interact with a website or product. Similar to being a tourist this can help identify areas where a lack of inside knowledge can be a barrier to outsiders.
This Book Is Great For…
Creative Quest by Questlove is great for anyone who considers what they do to be creative. That may seem broad but Creative Quest casts a wide net in it’s tips and advice. Music lovers will appreciate Questlove’s musical collaboration stories.
Usually this is the type of book I enjoy having a physical copy of to reference. However, I decided to listen to the audiobook version which ended up being a real treat. The audiobook version is full of new music from Questlove and has musical references throughout. | https://medium.com/@harryrwahl/creative-quest-by-questlove-provides-a-creative-hall-pass-72762b7a4921 | ['Harry Wahl'] | 2020-12-20 02:07:24.887000+00:00 | ['Creativity', 'Creative Process', 'Book Recommendations', 'Books', 'Book Review'] |
6 Ways to Stop Comparing Yourself to Other, Clearly Superior Moms | Photo by Jessica Rockowitz on Unsplash
Comparing ourselves to others is a recipe for unhappiness, even if you are the best mom in the world. And let’s face it…you aren’t even in the running. Try these six strategies to curb feelings of inadequacy before #momguilt takes over your life. | https://medium.com/frazzled/6-ways-to-stop-comparing-yourself-to-other-clearly-superior-moms-1c88aa1fb192 | ['Lindsay Hameroff'] | 2020-11-09 12:57:21.378000+00:00 | ['Satire', 'Life Lessons', 'Parenting', 'Lists', 'Humor'] |
Grandfather Frost: Communist Russia’s Alternative to Santa Claus | Grandfather Frost: Communist Russia’s Alternative to Santa Claus
A history of the jolly gift-giver of Russia
Image by Sergeev Pavel on Wikipedia.
Ded Moroz, or Grandfather Frost, is the version of Santa Claus that remains ever-popular in Russia even today. Originating in Slavic mythology, Ded Moroz was a wizard of winter or snow demon that evolved to become the symbol of Russian traditions of gift-giving.
It is said that the original Russian gift-giver was Saint Nicholas, just like our very own Santa Claus. However, it seems that Grandfather Frost came to become the favored figure of Christmas in Russia, though he adopted various characteristics of proto-Santas as well as the traditions of having Christmas trees and gift-giving.
Unfortunately, the celebration of Christmas and Santa Claus was banned after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. Supposedly, the religious and bourgeoise connotations did not sit well with the communist leaders who espoused the goal of establishing “state atheism”.
Even so, Grandfather Frost was permitted to re-enter Russian culture by the 1930s, cementing its fate as the symbol of the Russian winter holidays.
Ded Moroz vs. Santa Claus
Though both Grandfather Frost and Santa Claus are old men with long white beards that bear great gifts with their arrival, the similarities end there.
For one, we can’t really imagine jolly old St. Nick in anything other than his red suit. On the other hand, Grandfather Frost is often seen in a blue fur coat — the result of Soviet attempts to distinguish him from Santa Claus. Ded Moroz also wears a fur-trimmed cap rather than a Santa hat and is never seen without his pikestaff.
Instead of the eight reindeers that pull Santa’s sleigh, Ded Moroz is pulled by a troika, which is a sleigh pulled by three white horses (sadly, no red-nose Rudolph).
Grandfather Frost also works with a granddaughter, Snegurochka, rather than a Mrs. Frost or some elves. Interestingly, Snegurochka is made of snow, which made me ponder over her prospects post-winter.
It is much easier to look for Grandfather Frost than it is to find Santa Claus. Rather than having to search through the North pole, Grandfather Frost lives in Veliky Ustyug — just a few hours north of Moscow. He also welcomed President Putin to his residence in 2008 for a visit. Definitely not something Santa Claus can brag about.
Most importantly, Grandfather Frost visits with gifts on New Year’s, not Christmas. This is also a remnant of Soviet rule since Stalin declared that New Year’s Day was to replace Christmas as the national family holiday in order to rid the country of Western influences and traditions.
New Norms of 2020
In any case, whether you are more familiar with Santa Claus or Grandfather Frost, it seems like winter this year will be incredibly different for many of us. Some of us will not be able to return home for the holidays. Some of us may be struggling to even get through each day — much less Christmas.
Furthermore, it seems neither Santa Claus nor Grandfather Frost will be able to bring gifts to us this year with quarantine and travel restrictions abound. So if you are able, be the gift-giver to those who need it most in your community.
Merry Christmas! | https://medium.com/history-of-yesterday/grandfather-frost-communist-russias-alternative-to-santa-claus-6b52dc231cd5 | ['Esther K.H. Ng'] | 2020-12-25 12:03:06.693000+00:00 | ['Soviet History', 'Santa Claus', 'History', 'Christmas'] |
Better Ventures 3.0 | Better Ventures 3.0
At Better Ventures, we back founders on a mission to build a better world. We invest in pre-seed and seed-stage software, data science, and life sciences startups that are innovating across industries in ways that will generate big profits and measurable progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. We’ve been backing mission-driven founders since we launched our first fund and accelerator program at the Impact Hub San Francisco back in 2011. Last month we held a final close on our $32M third fund, and we wanted to take a moment to reflect on the incredible journey that got us here and discuss what we’re excited about as we look ahead.
Humble beginnings
It all started over a beer. I was working at Good Capital, a pioneer impact investing firm that I joined out of business school, and I met Rick at one of our monthly networking events we were hosting back in 2009 (Rick likes to say he met both of his significant others — his wife and me — at a keg). Rick was making a transition out of his tenure doing venture investments and acquisitions at Sun Microsystems, and he shared my vision for working with early-stage mission-driven technology companies. After a series of meetings over the following year, we decided it was time to launch something together.
Around this time, the Impact Hub co-working space opened in San Francisco (think WeWork for impact startups), and it immediately filled up with mission-driven startups seeking capital and advice. With support from Good Capital, Rick and I launched an accelerator called Hub Ventures and a small fund to fill that gap. That first fund was a micro micro fund with total capital of $490k (yes, “k” as in thousands), and we invested an average of $25k in inception-stage startups, primarily through the accelerator. We hustled just like any good startup founders do and scraped and clawed our way to making it happen — Rick doing some consulting on the side, me continuing to do work for Good Capital, and both of us sourcing sponsorship dollars for the accelerator to keep things afloat. Hub Ventures was a great opportunity for us to start working together on a small scale, and it became the predecessor to our work at Better Ventures.
In those early days, we had a broad mandate around the types of mission-driven companies we backed, as can be seen in our first fund portfolio, which ranges from mobile communications in Africa (Africa’s Talking) to cloud-based cardiac diagnostics (Eko) to fair wage digital work opportunity (LeadGenius). Fund I included a wide variety of companies and has gone on to become a top decile performer thanks to an early exit and 3–4 other emerging breakout companies, which enabled us to springboard into a $21M second fund in late 2014. Note that when I say “springboard,” I really mean it took quite a while to raise that second fund, sort of like cycling Tour de France epic climbs Alp d’Huez and Ventoux, and then throwing in Tourmalet for a final kicker. With the launch of our second fund, we transitioned out of the accelerator model into a high-engagement pre-seed investor and rebranded as Better Ventures.
The evolution of our thesis
With Fund II, we began to narrow our focus on technical teams building mobile, enterprise software, and data analytics businesses pursuing impact in three vertical areas: opportunity, health, and sustainability. Our investment thesis was three-fold: (1) near universal low-cost access to the web has the potential to shrink the opportunity gap in society; (2) always-on connectivity and cloud-based analytics are improving diagnosis and treatment, leading to better health outcomes; and (3) information technology services are lowering the costs of transitioning to a more sustainable economy.
Within these three themes, we made investments, while expanding our networks and building our knowledge base, in digital health (Apostrophe, K4Connect), clean energy services (SunFunder, UtilityAPI), future of work (Localwise, Werk), and early learning (BookNook, MyVillage). Towards the end of the Fund II investment period, we began to see more “deeper tech” deal flow, and we made investments in three such companies including Sail Internet (fixed wireless internet access for underserved communities), KETOS (smart water analytics) and Mission Barns (cellular agriculture for clean animal products). These later investments would set the stage for an evolution of our investment thesis heading into Fund III.
All told, we made 19 investments in Fund II, and as of the time of this writing we have 12 mark-ups and our portfolio companies have raised over $100M in capital. On the impact front, our Fund II companies have provided 6M people with access to essential services (healthcare, energy, education, etc), avoided 1.2M metric tons of CO2 emissions, and created 400 jobs. We’ve been pleased with the results so far, and our emerging track record across our first two funds, combined with the growing interest in impact investing among the LP community, has enabled us to go on to a successful Fund III raise.
Fund III — Doubling down on science and technology
This summer, we held a final close on our third fund at $32M and crossed over the “institutional threshold.” We’ve assembled an exceptional group of investors including a university endowment, a European insurance company, several foundations, and a number of family offices and individuals — many of which are repeat investors from prior funds. With Fund III, we’re doubling down on technical founders leveraging “breakthrough innovations” in science and technology to build a more sustainable and equitable economy, in which both people and planet thrive.
In the years since we launched Better Ventures, we’ve seen new and exciting technologies explode onto the scene that provide mission-driven entrepreneurs with even more tools to build world-changing companies that generate big profits and significant impact. Some of the innovations we’re most excited about include advances in AI and machine learning applied across a number of fields, from tracking climate change to drug discovery; data science and informatics leveraged to tackle chronic health conditions and disease through personalized medicine; and evolutions in synthetic biology that enable the re-engineering of microorganisms into the climate-friendly factories of the future.
As we’ve witnessed these technological breakthroughs, we’ve evolved our investment thesis, capabilities, and networks to take advantage of the big opportunities they present. While our focus on mission-driven founders remains unchanged, the types of business models we invest in has broadened from enterprise software and data analytics to also include AI/machine learning, data science, and the life sciences (particularly the intersection of computation and biology). To summarize our current investment thesis, we are looking for science and technology-driven solutions that: (1) re-tool industry in ways that will significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and drive a Sustainable Economy; (2) leverage Data Driven Health to tackle disease and improve health outcomes; and (3) enable an Adaptive Workforce that will thrive in the disruption and dislocation being driven by new technologies.
In particular, we are sourcing deals in the following areas:
Sustainable Economy (future of food, bio-manufacturing, closed loop production & consumption, clean energy & electric mobility)
(future of food, bio-manufacturing, closed loop production & consumption, clean energy & electric mobility) Data Driven Health (personalized medicine, value-based care, behavioral health, drug discovery)
(personalized medicine, value-based care, behavioral health, drug discovery) Adaptive Workforce (future of work, personalized learning, upskilling)
We remain focused on pre-seed stage companies, and we like to be first money in with an average initial investment of $500k. To date, we’ve made four investments in Fund III with two more on deck. In future of food, we’ve invested in Emergy Foods, an alternative protein company that leverages mycelium fermentation to produce plant-based meats at scale. We’ve made two investments in data driven health including 54gene, which is building the 23andMe for Africa to fill the global gap in African genetic information and benefit drug development; and Unnatural Products, a drug discovery platform that leverages data science and the power of large molecules called macro-cycles. Lastly, we invested in RideReport, a software and data platform that helps cities take full advantage of the many micro-mobility solutions available today. We also have two new deals we’ll be announcing soon, one in AI for health and another in synthetic biology production scale-up.
Committed to Mission-driven founders
Underlying all of this is our fundamental investment thesis that mission-driven companies outperform the market thanks to the magnetic force of purpose, which fuels intrinsic founder motivation and drives competitive advantages in hiring talent, attracting resources, and building enduring brand loyalty (more about this in our Mission Driven podcast). That is why from day one we have exclusively backed founders who are motivated beyond just profit but also by building truly world-changing companies to address the most significant challenges of our time.
We love what we do, and the fact that we get to play a part in catalyzing world-changing founders every single day is what gets us out of bed in the morning and excited to hop on our bikes to head to the office. We are incredibly grateful for where our journey has taken us thus far and for the amazing support we’ve received from many people along the way. We are excited to work with our founders, LPs, and co-investors with this third fund and to build something truly special together. | https://medium.com/better-ventures/better-ventures-3-0-869f0f6d4c20 | ['Wes Selke'] | 2019-09-27 16:54:00.701000+00:00 | ['Better Ventures', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Better Ventures News', 'Venture Capital', 'Impact Investing'] |
PyTorch Multi-GPU Metrics Library and More in PyTorch Lightning 0.8.1 | Faster multi-GPU training
Another key part of this release is speed-ups we made to distributed training via DDP. The change comes from allowing DDP to work with num_workers>0 in Dataloaders
Dataloader(dataset, num_workers=8)
Today when you use DDP by launching it via .spawn() and you try to use num_workers>0 in Dataloader, your program will likely freeze and not start training (this is also true outside of Lightning).
The solution for most is to set num_workers=0, but that means that your training is going to be reaaaaally slow. To enable num_workers>0 AND DDP, we now launch DDP under the hood without spawn. This removes a lot of other weird restrictions like the need to pickle everything and the need for model weights to not be available once training has finished (because the weights were learned in a subprocess with different memory).
Thus, our implementation of DDP here is much much faster than normal. But of course, we keep both for flexibility: | https://medium.com/pytorch/pytorch-multi-gpu-metrics-and-more-in-pytorch-lightning-0-8-1-b7cadd04893e | ['William Falcon'] | 2020-06-20 07:41:45.261000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Deep Learning', 'Pytorch', 'Tutorial', 'Data Science'] |
Design Patterns in Swift — Decorator | Design patterns are solutions to problems that someone once had and solved by applying a model that has been documented and that you can adapt entirely or according to the need for your solution.
The original idea of Design Patterns came up with Christopher Alexander when he proposed the creation of pattern catalogs for architecture. Christopher himself defined the patterns in this way:
“A pattern describes a problem that occurs numerous times in a given context, and it also describes the solution to that problem, so that this solution can be used systematically in different situations”.
The main purpose of design patterns is to help developers to structure their applications in more flexible ways, easier to understand and maintain.
In this article, I would like to share some thoughts about the Decorator, a Structural Pattern.
Structural patterns focus on how classes and objects are composed to form larger structures, maintaining its flexibility and efficiency. The flexibility of object composition comes from the ability to change the composition at runtime.
Decorator
The decorator pattern (also known as Wrapper) is used to extend or alter the functionality of objects at runtime by wrapping them in an object of a decorator class. This provides a flexible alternative to using inheritance to modify behavior.
Purpose
Decorators offer a flexible way to add responsibility to individual objects. Unlike inheritance, decorated objects are not limited by their parent classes. Putting in other terms, a client has control over how and when to decorate the component.
Applicability
We can use the decorator to:
Append responsibilities to individual objects dynamically and transparently, without affecting other objects.
For traits or responsibilities that can be withdrawn.
When subclassing is impractical.
Consequences
In general, this pattern is presented with a few particular elements. The first one would be an abstract representation of the component, that in swift can be a protocol . This is followed by a concrete implementation of this component, an abstract definition of a decorator for this component and one or more concrete implementations for this component's decorator.
A few of the characteristics of the Decorator Pattern are:
The decorators have the same super-type or conformance as the object they decorate.
More than one decorator can be used to comprise an object.
Once the decorator has the same super-type or conformance as its decorated object (decoratee), it is possible to pass a decorated object in place of the original object.
The decorator adds its own behavior before or after delegating the decoratee its work.
The objects can be decorated at any moment, which makes it possible to decorate them dynamically at run-time, with as many decorators as needed.
Practical Example in Swift
There are many use cases for a decorator, but to keep things simple for this article, let’s make a salary calculator.
In order to calculate the salary, we’ll input an hourly base rate, that the calculator needs to convert to a weekly value. With our weekly value, it will first discount the taxes and then discount the healthcare.
Abstraction
So we begin with an abstraction SalaryCalculator , with the component's definition.
Now we create a class that’s going to conform to the protocol, and implement the method.
After that we can create our TaxDiscountSalaryDecorator , that, in our case, will apply the first discount we want.
As you can see, it takes as parameter an object (our decoratee) conforming to SalaryCalculator and also implements SalaryCalculator . This means that when the method is called, we can apply the discount, and forward the message.
Next, the HealthCareDiscountSalaryDecorator . It follows the same principles as TaxDiscountSalaryDecorator , but this time, it applies a different discount.
Now we have all elements we need to accomplish our goal. So let’s see how our calculator works, with the discounts.
Implementation
In order to use our calculator with the discounts, we need to compose it with our decorators, like so:
This way, we apply the discounts we need without modifying our original ExampleSalaryCalculator class. We're extending it's behavior without modifying it.
Pros
The use of a pattern provides the project with a universal style, which can make the code more comprehensible.
The client’s code does not need to be modified in order to add new functionalities.
The expansion of functionalities happen dynamically, which offers more flexibility to the codebase.
It allows the components to be as simple as possible, delegating the addition of new functionalities to the decorators.
Cons
Bigger number of classes utilized in the project, when compared to a version containing attributes and methods in a base class and implementation of specific functionalities in subclasses.
It may become hard to read and understand the project, in case of overuse.
It could decrease the project’s efficiency in case many decorators are used for an object with multiple public methods (that would require the decorator to offer the same public interface as the objects they decorate).
Conclusion
As we could observe, the Decorator Pattern makes usage of conformance to be able to encompass the decorated objects. This way, when a decorator is composed with it’s component, a new functionality can be added, but not inherited.
This small difference offers a huge amount of flexibly to create objects as needed without modifications to the existing components. As in all decisions, there are no silver bullets. The advantages of this pattern can be tremendous. So all in all, teams could take advantage of this pattern to solve a specific problem, observe the decision’s consequences, it’s impact in performance, and the evolution in the codebase as a whole.
And, of course, there are some downsides to that, as we could notice. Therefore, it bears to the developers the evaluation of the project’s needs and the tradeoffs that decorators would bring.
If you’re looking for more examples of how we can use decorators, I highly recommended these videos: Decoupling analytics from MVVM components and Testing code that uses DispatchQueue.main.async. They explain some really good use cases, using Swift.
References
Design Patterns — Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software — Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson and John Vlissides.
Design Patterns — Decorator
Refactoring Guru — Decorator | https://medium.com/@vinciusleal/design-patterns-in-swift-decorator-e9a387f7b7d0 | ['Vinícius Leal'] | 2020-11-09 18:21:07.049000+00:00 | ['Swift Programming', 'Object Oriented', 'Swift', 'Design Patterns'] |
Annie Hurwich | Annie Hurwich is a professional and blogger from Vancouver B.C. She has a great interest in fitness and her passion for it inspired her to create a blog for her followers. You may be just worried about fitness; though from her blog you can even get tips on how to stay fit and healthy while traveling. So don’t wait and visit her blog after all it is the question of your fitness that matters the most. | https://medium.com/@anniehurwich/annie-hurwich-df3c14d0aa39 | [] | 2020-12-16 19:32:49.380000+00:00 | ['Healthy Eating', 'Food', 'Healthyfoodforkids', 'Trave', 'Canada'] |
Syncmate 8 mac app review | MacSources | Keep your life in sync with SyncMate
I am an avid fan of Apple products. An iPhone 11 Pro is my daily driver and my MacBook Pro and iPad Pro are never far away. All three products work together seamlessly and it’s great that my main communication tools — text messages, emails, and calendars — sync between the devices without any headaches thanks to iCloud. Even though I primarily use Apple products I do dabble into the Google/Android world for work. I’m a marketing professional by day and a product reviewer by night. So, during my day job I am actually an administrator for our organizational Google account and I do have a Sony Xperia 10 running Android as its operating system. It’s great for the Google products, but not so great when I want to sync files between my MacBook Pro and the Sony Xperia 10. Fortunately, SyncMate 8 helps with connecting the two devices.
DETAILS
SyncMate 8 is designed to provide Mac users in sync with multiple devices or online accounts. SyncMate offers its own type of SyncService which makes syncing between the Mac and other devices possible. With SyncMate, users can:
Sync Mac with Android and iOS Devices: SyncMate fills the service gap between Mac and Android by providing the only Android file transfer app users need. And, while Macs can sync with iOS devices, they are limited by the number of devices that can be registered to a single Mac system. SyncMate has no limit.
Sync with MTP, mounted devices and other Macs
Sync a Mac with cloud storage options
Sync between a Mac and Microsoft Services
There are several different syncing services a user gets when they download SyncMate. Address Book, Calendars, and Syncing in Background are all apart of the Free Edition while Folder Sync, iTunes and Music, Photos, AutoSync, Mount Disk option, SMS management, Safari Bookmarks, Call History, and Data Backup are all apart of the Expert Edition of the software.
Personal (for 2 Macs) $39.95
Family (for 6 Macs) $59.95
Business (for 10 Macs) $99.95
Unlimited $199.95
The Expert edition starts at $39.95 for a license and that will work for 2 Macs. The chart below shows the differences between the two editions. I discovered that when you got to the website and select Buy Now, a screen pops up for about 5 seconds with the different options for license purchase. It quickly switches to a checkout screen. The different options for Expert licenses are:
USER EXPERIENCE
The first step in the user experience for SyncMate 8 is to download the software. You do this by going to the website “sync-mac.com.” It is not available in the Mac App Store. Once it’s downloaded, you can start using it with its free version or upgrade to the Expert option as outlined above. I had the Expert version available to me so I took it for a spin.
The first thing I did was to attempt to sync my iPhone using SyncMate. I found the process to be a little odd. First of all, when you open the app, you are given the option to select what device you want to sync to. I clicked on iOS Device and then I was given the option to connect the iOS device via USB. The reason this is odd is that the Android device option gives you the opportunity to connect using USB, WiFi, or Bluetooth. I pulled out a Lightning cable and connected my iPhone. I was then asked to select the plugins that I wanted to use with my device. The options that were presented to me were Calendar, Calls, Contacts, SMS, Folders, Photos, Safari Bookmarks, and iTunes. I immediately opted for the Folders option first.
I unchecked all the other options and clicked Done. The screen that appeared gave me the option to create a new pair. I was instructed to select a folder on the Mac and then select the corresponding folder on the iOS device. When I tried to select a folder for the iPhone I got the following error message. Not wanting to download another app to make this process work, I decided to move on to another feature. As it turns out, this OSXFuse application would have also been needed for another one of the plugins. After I moved on from those plugins, I tried the Safari Bookmark plugin. Safari was opened, but nothing happened. Then, I tried the SMS Plugin. It seemed as though it was going to work, but the process was taking a long time and after the progress bar sat at 40% for several minutes, I canceled the operation.
After it seemed that connecting my iPhone through SyncMate was a bad idea, I attempted my Sony Xperia 10 smartphone. As I mentioned above, I was give the option to connect to SyncMate through WiFi, Bluetooth, or USB. I opted for WiFi and after downloading a companion app from SyncMate, the phone was recognized immediately. I do have a little issue with downloading the app from the SyncMate website that I want to comment on. My phone gave me several warnings that the type of file that was used for the app’s distribution can cause damage to devices. I still installed it, but since the Xperia isn’t my primary phone I wasn’t overly worried about problems this might cause. If it had been my primary phone I probably would have discontinued that process.
Once the Xperia was connected through SyncMate, I attempted to sync the Contacts and Calls with my Mac. Calls weren’t really relevant, but the contacts moved over to the Xperia quickly and easily. I was impressed at how seamless the contacts were integrated into the Android environment. Even though there are other options for syncing digital data using SyncMate, I was nervous enough about the process after the iOS experience that I didn’t want to attempt it and have my information lost.
CONCLUSION
Even though SyncMate is designed to work with different platforms, it definitely seems better suited for Android/Mac connections rather than iOS/Mac connections. I’m still not sure why there were so many issues between my iPhone and Mac, but it really wasn’t a user-friendly experience. On the other hand, the Android sync feature was great. In my opinion, I think that SyncMate seems like a solid, easy to use application provided that you are attempting to sync a Mac and Android system together. I think SyncMate should focus on that development rather than adding in iOS devices since Apple already has a pretty good syncing option between their products.
For more information, visit sync-mac.com, Facebook, and Twitter. | https://medium.com/@macsources/syncmate-8-mac-app-review-macsources-35064adc96b9 | [] | 2020-05-20 18:12:15.565000+00:00 | ['Syncmate', 'Mac', 'App Review'] |
Everything you need to know about the cloud marketplace before you step in | Everything you need to know about the cloud marketplace before you step in Zluri Jan 27·6 min read
It is not unusual for companies with more than 1000 employees to have 200–500 SaaS applications from many vendors. That number keeps growing with increasing requirements and upcoming new technologies. Before the emergence of cloud marketplaces, each of these vendors should go through a review process to negotiate their pricing terms, licenses, vendor set-up, security, payments, etc. It is tedious and takes several months to onboard a new vendor or renew the old contract. The process includes back and forth emails, calls, and red lines, and that’s when the cloud marketplace came in as a savior.
Initially, the cloud market just consisted of third-party apps. Now they have evolved bigger as a sophisticated distribution platform that offers its users the functionality to explore, procure, and deploy relevant SaaS applications at present. Marketplaces also come with strict protocols for listing, such as analysis for security and privacy. These are the same guardrails that apply for usual cloud services — User management, deployment process, and billing are included for using software through marketplaces. They also ask for additional certification if the particular application is for finance or government.
Selling opportunity is Massive:
In February 2020, the public cloud marketplace was said to have surpassed the $1 trillion cap with an enormous 45% growth rate, as reported by Bessemer Venture Partners’ in the 2020 state of Cloud report. In 2015 they predicted that it would reach $500 million by 2020, but the actual growth outpaced the optimistic projection and stands at $616 billion for the top five public cloud companies.
The happy consequence is that cloud marketplaces follow a similar trajectory for their growth and have opened up as a go-to-market area for many sellers who you haven’t heard of yet.
With big players like AWS marketplace, Google Cloud, and Azure marketplace, a company can list their software for buyers to find, buy, and provision them. And these offer pretty incredible opportunities for doing business the cloud way. Scaling companies such as Snowflake, PagerDuty, and many more (more than 35%of Forbes cloud 100 companies), as well as plenty of startups like Astronomer, CloudZero, etc., have already started embarking their movement to the marketplace. This has now allowed them to tap into the $250B+ spend that flows into all major public cloud service providers.
Moreover, beyond access to this massive pool of cloud spend, B2B marketplaces also unlock larger buyer budgets, an accelerated deal velocity, and valuable co-selling opportunities with the cloud providers. Also, 73% of B2B buyers prefer the ease of buying through e-commerce, web direct, or marketplaces.
Benefits of selling SaaS through Cloud Marketplace:
Visibility: Listing your product in the cloud marketplaces gives it superior visibility among the cloud users due to the high ranking of these cloud services in the market, which is a significant advantage. Also, these cloud marketplaces have got search tools for organically searching relevant products for potential customers.
Credibility: Those who purchase through cloud marketplace tend to be confident that they are listed on a trusted cloud service like AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure. Before getting listed, these SaaS applications would go through screening and reviewing levels, so the customers feel assured that they are buying from a trusted marketplace.
Deployment and Billing: These cloud marketplaces take care of deployment, invoice, and collection of SaaS products that are sold and pays the vendors every month on time. So vendors avoid hassle and cost associated with these activities, but their customers too experience a smooth and easy billing process they are already familiar with.
Flexible Pricing options: Products sold through the cloud marketplace can be billed on an hourly or monthly basis, which cuts the need for vendors to develop a software system and a billing infrastructure. In the cloud marketplace of AWS — Big data applications that do huge computational workload prefer hourly pricing, so customers are charged based on the type and number of instances.
Access for free trials: Companies that give off hourly pricing are equipped to provide built-in free trials through the cloud marketplace instead of developing their own. Once the free trial expires, the customers are smoothly transitioned to the paid version. | https://medium.com/@zluri/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-cloud-marketplace-before-you-step-in-c260de44c150 | [] | 2021-01-27 03:12:32.458000+00:00 | ['Marketplaces', 'Digital Transformation', 'Learning', 'Cloud Computing', 'SaaS'] |
Seat Belt Adjuster and Pillow with Clip for Kids Travel,Soft Neck Support Headrest Seatbelt Pillow Cover & Seatbelt Adjuster for Child,Car Seat Strap Cushion Pads for Baby Short People Adult (Gray) | Seat Belt Adjuster and Pillow with Clip for Kids Travel,Soft Neck Support Headrest Seatbelt Pillow Cover & Seatbelt Adjuster for Child,Car Seat Strap Cushion Pads for Baby Short People Adult (Gray) Best Baby Care and Baby Product Top World Sep 24, 2019·3 min read
Perfect Car Trip Companion for Kids
Car Travel Pillow perfectly supports the head, neck and chin in maximum comfort.Seatbelt Adjuster fits correctly across shoulder and lap, absorb shocks, keep seatbelt away from people’s neck area
Premium Material Ensures the Maximum Comfort
The Shoulder Cushion Pad is filled with PP cotton and covered by a soft micro-suede fabric.TheTriangle Safety Strap Positioner is made of Breathable Fabric & Baby Cotton
Universal Design
Both Seat Belt Cover and Ajuster are suitable for all cars and all size of seat belt.Give you or your kids a safety seat and help to keep a correct sitting position
Easy to Use and Remove
Updated design for easy installation and change. It’s very convenient to make your trip more enjoyable and safety
Bonus Clip
Place the clip under the pillow on the seatbelt(no need to clip both the seatbelt and the pillow),then the seatbelt pillow will stay in place.
Package Included:
1 X Seatbelt Pillow
1 X Seat Belt Adjuster
1 X Clip (Random Colors)Perfect Car Trip Companion for Kids:Car Travel Pillow perfectly supports the head, neck and chin in maximum comfort.Seatbelt Adjuster fits correctly across shoulder and lap, absorb shocks, keep seatbelt away from people’s neck area
Premium Material Ensures the Maximum Comfort:The Shoulder Cushion Pad is filled with PP cotton and covered by a soft micro-suede fabric.TheTriangle Safety Strap Positioner is made of Breathable Fabric & Baby Cotton
Universal Design: Both Seat Belt Cover and Ajuster are suitable for all cars and all size of seat belt.Give you or your kids a safety seat and help to keep a correct sitting position
Easy to Use and Remove:Updated design for easy installation and change. It’s very convenient to make your trip more enjoyable and safety
Bonus Clip:Place the clip（random colors） under the pillow on the seatbelt(no need to clip both the seatbelt and the pillow),then the seatbelt pillow will stay in place.
Price:
Source Link:
Seat Belt Adjuster and Pillow with Clip for Kids Travel,Soft Neck Support Headrest Seatbelt Pillow Cover & Seatbelt Adjuster for Child,Car Seat Strap Cushion Pads for Baby Short People Adult (Gray) | https://medium.com/@ivaper/seat-belt-adjuster-and-pillow-with-clip-for-kids-travel-soft-neck-support-headrest-seatbelt-pillow-2b411ccc43aa | ['Best Bacare', 'Baproduct Top World'] | 2019-09-24 07:03:30.919000+00:00 | ['Adult', 'Adjuster', 'Baby'] |
How to Build a Production Grade Workflow with SQL Modelling | By Michelle Ark & Chris Wu
In January of 2014, Shopify built a data pipeline platform for the data science team called Starscream. Back then, we were a smaller team and needed a tool that could deal with everything from ad hoc explorations to machine learning models. We chose to build with PySpark to get the power of a generalized distributed computer platform, the backing of the industry standard, and the ability to tap into the Python talent market.
Fast forward six years and our data needs have changed. Starscream now runs 76,000 jobs and writes 300 terabytes a day! As we grew, some types of work went away, but others (like simple reports) became so commonplace we do them every day. While our Python tool based on PySpark was computationally powerful, it wasn’t optimized for these commonplace tasks. If a product manager needed a simple rollup for a new feature by country, pulling it, and modeling it wasn’t a fast task.
We’ll show you how we moved to a SQL modelling workflow by leveraging dbt (data build tool) and created tooling for testing and documentation on top of it. All together, these features provide Shopify’s data scientists with a robust, production-ready workflow to quickly build straightforward pipelines.
The Problem
When we interviewed our users to understand their workflow on Starscream, there were two issues we discovered: development time and thinking.
Development time encompasses the time data scientists use to prototype the data model they’d like to build, run it, see the outcome,and iterate. The PySpark platform isn’t ideal for running straightforward reporting tasks, often forcing data scientists to write boilerplate and it yields long runtimes. This led to long iteration cycles when trying to build models on unfamiliar data.
The second issue, thinking, is more subtle and deals with the way the programming language forces you to look at the data. Many of our data scientists prefer SQL to python because its structure forces consistency in business metrics. When interviewing users, we found a majority would write out a query in SQL then translate it to Python when prototyping. Unfortunately, query translation is time consuming and doesn’t add value to the pipeline.
To understand how widespread these problems were, we audited the jobs run and surveyed our data science team for the use cases. We found that 70% or so of the PySpark jobs on Starscream were full batch queries that didn’t require generalized computing. We viewed this as an opportunity to make a kickass optimization for a painful workflow.
Enter Seamster
Our goal was to create a SQL pipeline for reporting that enables data scientists to create simple reporting data faster, while still being production ready. After exploring a few alternatives, we felt that the dbt library came closest to our needs. Their tagline “deploy analytics code faster with software engineering practices” was exactly what we were looking for in a workflow. We opted to pair it with Google BigQuery as our data store and dubbed the system and its tools, Seamster.
We knew that any off-the-shelf system wouldn’t be one size fits all. In moving to dbt, we had to implement our own:
source and model structure to modularize data model development
unit testing to increase the types of testable errors
continuous integration (CI) pipelines to provide safety and consistency guarantees.
Source Independence and Safety
With dozens of data scientists making data models in a shared repository, a great user experience would
maximize focus on work
minimize the impact of model changes by other data scientists.
By default, dbt declares raw sources in a central sources.yml . This quickly became a very large file as it included the schema for each source, in addition to the source name. It creates a huge bottleneck for teams editing the same file across multiple PRs.
Top-level sources directory.txt
To mitigate the bottleneck, we leveraged the flexibility of dbt and created a top-level ‘sources’ directory to represent each raw source with its own source-formatted yaml file. This way, data scientists can parse only the source documentation that’s relevant for them and contribute to the sources.yml file without stepping on each other's toes.
Base models are one-to-one interfaces to raw sources.txt
We also created a Base layer of models using the ‘staging’ concept from dbt to implement their best practice of limiting references to raw data. Our Base models serve as a one-to-one interface to raw sources. They don’t change the grain of the raw source, but do apply renaming, recasting, or any other cleaning operation that relates to the source data collection system.
The Base layer serves to protect users from breaking changes in raw sources. Raw external sources are by definition out of the control of Seamster and can introduce breaking changes for any number of reasons at any point in time. If and when this happens, you only need to apply the fix to the Base model representing the raw source, as opposed to every individual downstream model that depends on the raw source.
Model Ownership for Teams
We knew that the tooling improvements of Seamster would be only one part of a greater data platform at Shopify. We wanted to make sure we’re providing mechanisms to support good dimensional modelling practices and support data discovery.
In dbt, a model is simply a .sql file. We’ve extended this definition in Seamster to define a model as a directory consisting of four files:
model_name.sql
schema.yml
README.md
test_model_name.py
You can further organize models into directories that indicate a data science team at Shopify like ‘finance’ or ‘marketing’.
To support a clean data warehouse we’ve also organized data models into these rough layers that differentiate between:
base : data models that are one-to-one with raw data, but cleaned, recast and renamed
: data models that are one-to-one with raw data, but cleaned, recast and renamed application-ready : data that isn’t dimensionally modelled but still transformed and clean for consumption by another tool (for example, training data for a machine learning algorithm)
: data that isn’t dimensionally modelled but still transformed and clean for consumption by another tool (for example, training data for a machine learning algorithm) presentation: shareable and reliable data models that follow dimensional modelling best practices and can be used by data scientists across different domains.
With these two changes, a data consumer can quickly understand the data quality they can expect from a model and find the owner in case there is an issue. We also pass this metadata upstream to other tools to help with the data discovery workflow.
More Tests
dbt has native support for ‘schema tests’, which are encoded in a model’s schema.yml file. These tests run against production data to validate data invariants, such as the presence of null values or the uniqueness of a particular key. This feature in dbt serves its purpose well, but we also want to enable data scientists to write unit tests for models that run against fixed input data (as opposed to production data).
Testing on fixed inputs allows the user to test edge cases that may not be in production yet. In larger organizations, there can and will be frequent updates and many collaborators for a single model. Unit tests give users confidence that the changes they’re making won’t break existing behaviour or introduce regressions.
Seamster provides a Python-based unit testing framework. Data scientists write their unit tests in the test_model_name.py file in the model directory. The framework enables constructing 'mock' input models from fixed data. The central object in this framework is a 'mock' data model, which has an underlying representation of a Pandas dataframe. You can pass fixed data to the mock constructor as either a csv-style string, Pandas dataframe, or a list of dictionaries to specify input data.
Input and expected MockModels are built from static data. The actual MockModel is built from input MockModels by BigQuery. Actual and expected MockModels can assert equality or any Great Expectations expectation.
A constructor creates a test query where a common table expression (CTE) represents each input mock data model, and any references to production models (identified using dbt’s ‘ref’ macro) are replaced by references to the corresponding CTE. Once you execute a query, you can compare the output to an expected result. In addition to an equality assertion, we extended our framework to support all expectations from the open-source Great Expectations library to provide more granular assertions and error messaging.
The main downside to this framework is that it requires a roundtrip to the query engine to construct the test data model given a set of inputs. Even though the query itself is lightweight and processes only a handful of rows, these roundtrips to the engine add up. It becomes costly to run an entire test suite on each local or CI run. To solve this, we introduced tooling both in development and CI to run the minimal set of tests that could potentially break given the change. This was straightforward to implement with accuracy because of dbt’s lineage tracking support; we simply had to find all downstream models (direct and indirect) for each changed model and run their tests.
Schema and Directed Acyclic Graph Validation on the Cheap
Our objective in Seamster’s CI is to give data scientists peace of mind that their changes won’t introduce production errors the next time the warehouse is built. They shouldn’t have to wonder whether removing a column will cause downstream dependencies to break, or whether they made a small typo in their SQL model definition.
To achieve this accurately, we would need to build and tear down the entire warehouse on every commit. This isn’t feasible from both a time and cost perspective. Instead, on every commit we materialize every model as a view in a temporary BigQuery dataset which is created at the start of the validation process and removed as soon as the validation finishes. If we can’t build a view because its upstream model doesn’t provide a certain column, or if the SQL is invalid for any reason, BigQuery fails to build the view and produces relevant error messaging.
Currently, We have a warehouse consisting of over 100 models, and this validation step takes about two minutes. We reduce validation time further by only building the portion of the directed acyclic graph (DAG) affected by the changed models, as done in the unit testing approach.
dbt’s schema.yml serves purely as metadata and can contain columns with invalid names or types ( data_type ). We employ the same view-based strategy to validate the contents of a model's schema.yml file ensuring the schema.yml is an accurate depiction of the actual SQL model.
Data Warehouse Rules
Like many large organizations, we maintain a data warehouse for reporting where accuracy is key. To power our independent data science teams, Seamster helps by enforcing conformance rules on the layers mentioned earlier (base, application-ready, and presentation layers). Examples include naming rules or inheritance rules which help the user reason over the data when building their own dependent models.
Seamster CI runs a collection of such rules that ensure consistency of documentation and modelling practices across different data science teams. For example, one warehouse rule enforces that all columns in a schema conform to a prescribed nomenclature. Another warehouse rule enforces that only base models can reference raw sources (via the ‘source’ macro) directly.
Some warehouse rules apply only to certain layers. In the presentation layer, we enforce that any column name needs a globally unique description to avoid divergence of definitions. Since everything in dbt is YAML, most of this rule enforcement is just simple parsing.
So, How Did It Go?
To ensure we got it right and worked out the kinks, we ran a multiweek beta of Seamster with some of our data scientists who tested the system out on real models. Since you’re reading about it, you can guess by now that it went well!
While productivity measures are always hard, the vast majority of users reported they were shipping models in a couple of days instead of a couple of weeks. In addition, documentation of models increased because this is a feature built into the model spec.
Were there any negative results? Of course. dbt’s current incremental support doesn’t provide safe and consistent methods to handle late arriving data, key resolution, and rebuilds. For this reason, a handful of models (Type 2 dimensions or models in the 1.5B+ event territory) that required incremental semantics weren’t doable- for now. We’ve got big plans though!
Where to Next?
We’re focusing on updating the tool to ensure it’s tailored to Shopify’s data scientists. The biggest hurdle for a new product (internal and external) is adoption. We know we still have work to do to ensure that our tool is top of mind when users have simple ( but not easy) reporting work. We’re spending time with each team to identify upcoming work that we can speed up by using Seamster. Their questions and comments will be part of our tutorials and documentations for new data scientists.
On the engineering front, an exciting next step is looking beyond batch data processing. Apache Beam and Beam SQL provide an opportunity to consider a single SQL-centric data modelling tool for both batch and streaming use cases.
We’re also big believers in open source at Shopify. Depending on the dbt’s community needs we’d also like to explore contributing our validation strategy and a unit testing framework to the project. | https://medium.com/data-shopify/how-to-build-a-production-grade-workflow-with-sql-modelling-96535acc5ad0 | ['Michelle Ark'] | 2020-11-24 19:56:05.473000+00:00 | ['Sql', 'Dbt', 'Data Platforms', 'Machine Learning'] |
Making audience research count: six lessons from Norway’s leading business paper | Making audience research count: six lessons from Norway’s leading business paper
Ingeborg Volan’s insights from her year-long audience research at Dagens Næringsliv
Ingeborg Volan during the News Impact Academy, Paris 2018
Finding out what metrics to use and how to use them to measure engagement remains a challenge for many news organisations. And once you’ve gained new insights about your readers, how do you use them to add value to your journalism?
To find out more about the specifics of audience research in a news organisation, we talked with our former News Impact Academy participant and News Impact Summit speaker Ingeborg Volan, Director of Audience Engagement at Norwegian business paper Dagens Næringsliv (DN).
Over the last year, DN carried out extensive audience research to get an in-depth understanding of their readers, and also to pinpoint what makes great journalistic storytelling.
They’ll use the results to shape a new strategy ahead of DN’s reorganisation this fall. And they’ve already implemented some of it to their day-to-day.
“We’re starting to build a new culture for trying to understand what makes subscribers become loyal and active readers,” Volan said. “We’ve created a close collaboration between the newsroom and the user revenue department, which deals with subscriptions.”
Here are some important lessons they’ve learned about audience research during this process.
1. Listen like ethnographers, not like journalists
Volan set up ethnographic interviews with 30 potential readers after she had practised this audience research method at the News Impact Academy, led by Marie Gilot from CUNY. This method is used to better understand human behaviour.
“Rather than asking people how they feel about the newspaper, our conversations focused on the people themselves… to find out what their lives are like,” Volan said. “What kind of person are you? What’s your day like? Do you prefer using your mobile device, desktop or print?”
Volan and her team now have a clearer image of their readers and they’re using these insights to make their journalism more relevant and interesting.
DN redesigned their mobile platform in autumn 2018
2. It takes a large amount of data to know your readers
The team also did a data analysis to find out what topics and articles their users are interested in. They took four months of data from 150,000 devices from users that had more than 50 page views across all DN’s digital platforms.
The data enabled them to identify five interest-based segments. Combined with the results from the ethnographic interviews, they managed to identify standardised users, or so-called ‘personas’.
For example, one group of readers is more interested in markets and finance, while another distinct group of readers is more into politics and society. “Now we know how big these groups actually are,” Volan said.
3. Think about your readers’ needs
Additionally, the team analysed when and how users accessed DN’s platforms. They tried to understand the emotional reasons users may have for interacting with certain types of stories, using a BBC World Service study on reader needs as a source of inspiration.
“The politics segment prefers using the app, whereas the finance segment more often uses desktop and preferably during the daytime,” said Volan. “There is also an evening and weekend segment of readers, which are more into leisure, free time and personal finance.”
The team used these new insights to introduce a policy for front page publishers, indicating what stories should go out in the morning, night, and weekend.
“On a weekday evening, they’ll have one or two good stories to relax or learn something, aiming to respond to the emotional background around news consumption,” said Volan.
4. Uncover underrepresented reader groups
The research also revealed some underrepresented segments, such as female readers and young people.
“About 37% of the workforce in Norwegian businesses is female, and only one in four of our readers is a woman, so we should be able to have at least 37% female readership,” said Volan.
When it comes to young readers, DN is particularly interested in reaching the ones who will end up in Norwegian business and administration.
”We’re working really hard on making our journalism accessible to people entering the workforce or even during their college and university years.”
DN recently did a redesign of their print edition
5. Downgrade the importance of metrics around virality
In terms of analytics, Volan’s team uses standard measurements, KPIs and dashboards to make sure they’re aligned with the company’s strategy. However, they’ve eliminated pageviews around viral stories from their internal reports.
“Pageviews of stories that go viral on Facebook only show random, flyby users who never visit our website anyway,” said Volan. “We want to make sure that it’s our regular users and subscribers who are accessing the content.”
6. Produce more habit-forming content
The team also put effort into determining which stories are kept subscription-only and what content will be shared for free to recruit new types of readers.
“Some content doesn’t necessarily convert into new subscriptions, but it has high value to our readers and it builds loyalty and habits,” said Volan. “We’ve been working really hard on having enough of that sort of habit-forming content.”
Overall, Volan sees data as “really good feedback” from readers, and a helpful tool to understand the audience, which helps to improve their journalism.
“We want to make sure that we don’t focus all our journalism based on what our numbers show,” Volan said. “We don’t want to fall into a clickbaity sort of approach. It’s not what we do. And being a subscription business we’re not as tempted to do that.” | https://medium.com/we-are-the-european-journalism-centre/making-audience-research-count-6-lessons-from-norways-leading-business-paper-b2d59c67b4df | ['Ingrid Cobben'] | 2019-12-19 15:30:14.500000+00:00 | ['Ethnographic Research', 'Journalism', 'Audience Research', 'Insights', 'Analytics'] |
Avoid Babel Tower: Building Evolutionary Architectures | Evolutionary Architecture
Evolutionary Architecture is a software architecture that prevents “all these aspects” from degrading over time.
This architecture must include 2 principal characteristics, incremental and guided.
Incremental Change
The way to build software incrementally and how they deploy it.
Some examples of incremental architecture, architecture approach, and technique respectively, all related to incremental change:
Microservices;
Continuous Deployment;
Feature toggle.
Guided Change
After choosing the characteristics to be protected (modularity, security, response time), the architect must guide changes to protect these characteristics.
To be able to do that, the architect uses as they called Fitness Function, responsible to summarize how close a given design solution is to achieving the set aims.
Fitness Function
Concept borrowed from evolutionary computing, used in genetic algorithm design to define success.
Should be identified early, the Fitness Function has a mission to protect the various architectural characteristics mandatory for a system.
Fitness Function Categories
The Fitness Function exists across a variety of categories related to their scope, frequency, dynamics, and others factors, including combinations of categories where useful.
Atomic versus Holistic
These are context-related. The Atomic is correspondent with only a context, on the other hand, the holistic is related with two or more contexts at the same time.
Triggered versus Continual
These categories are related to the execution cadence of a fitness function. The triggered ones can be executed by the developer, for example: before/after a push, in a step of the pipeline. The continuous don’t need a schedule, they are verified constantly. For example, MDD (Monitoring Driven Development) technique to monitoring some tech and business aspects in the production environment.
Static versus Dynamic
These categories are about the result of the fitness function: the statics are related with the fixed results, on the other hand, the dynamics rely on shifting definitions based on extra context.
Automated versus Manual
The automated category doesn’t need a manual step to execute, for example, Continuous Delivery, Continuous Integration. The manual needs a manual step to be executed, for example, a specific QA process
Temporal
The temporal fitness function has a particular time component, for example, a reminder to check to see if important security updates have been performed
Intentional over Emergent
The intentional fitness function, as the name says, is defined at the beginning of the project, addressed to the initial needs of the project. Differently, the emergent appears according to changes during/after the project.
Domain-specific
This type of fitness function has a specific concern, such as special security or regulatory requirements… Or also scalability.
Review Fitness Function
The authors reinforce the importance of the review fitness function-related and its periodicity can be annual, biannual depending on the needs of the system/software.
Changes are inevitable
Standing on the shoulders of giants during the reading of the book, building evolutionary architectures, I could understand better about evolution in software architecture, their best way to keep with the architecture in the right.
Changes are inevitable in our world and the context of a product and/or system it would be no different, that’s why it is so important to have the architecture prepared so that it can keep up with all these changes and continue supporting everything necessary. | https://medium.com/@tuliolucascruz/avoid-babel-tower-building-evolutionary-architectures-67b5d10d388c | ['Tulio Cruz'] | 2021-09-13 12:39:27.780000+00:00 | ['Software Architecture', 'Continuous Delivery', 'Evolutionary Architecture', 'Continuous Integration', 'Fitness Function'] |
Crypto 101: Multi-sig | Crypto 101: Multi-sig
Explain it like I’m 5
Part of our mission at Casa is to help teach people about cryptocurrency and why it’s important. We’re starting a series of Crypto 101 posts, which we’ll post here and, soon, on our fancy new website (just launched today 🙌). We hope these will be a good resource for those who want short explainers on tough topics.
Our first post is on multi-signature (“multi-sig”) wallets. Multi-sig is an important concept and is core to the Casa product. But when my mom asks me what Casa does, I can’t just come out guns blazing using words like “multi-sig”. That’s a surefire recipe for the that’s-nice-honeys. So, here is my attempt at explaining multi-sig in a way that’s short and to the point, but still gives a good picture for the crypto-uninitiated.
We’ve moved our blog! To continue reading this article, visit the link below:
https://blog.keys.casa/crypto-101-multi-sig/ | https://medium.com/casa/crypto-101-multi-sig-4ac412487f71 | ['Nick Neuman'] | 2019-07-18 21:52:03.525000+00:00 | ['Crypto', 'Bitcoin', 'Crypto 101', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Blockchain'] |
Tulsi, Hillary and…the Russians? | By Reed Galen
Is Tulsi Gabbard an asset of the Russian foreign intelligence service? No one knows, and frankly it doesn’t matter. In the pantheon of presidential candidates there are winners, also-rans and never-gonna-bes. Gabbard fits firmly into the third category.
Which is why it all the more fascinating, frustrating and befuddling why we’re now a week into the Tulsi and Hillary show. As a quick recap, during an interview last week, former Secretary of State Clinton announced she believes Gabbard is a Russian agent, is their “favorite” among the Democratic field, and likely to mount an independent presidential bid at the behest of the GOP and Donald Trump next year simply to play spoiler.
Not to be outdone, Representative Gabbard (D-Hawaii) called Clinton “the queen of warmongers” among other things. Clinton did not take kindly to such accusations and continued the argument and then promptly dared her to jump into the Democratic primary contest.
Why, why, why, 1000 times why is this happening? Why did Secretary Clinton feel the need to, once again, needlessly insert herself into a situation? What political economics did she derive from taking on someone who has the same chance of being the Democratic nominee as I do?
Clinton’s invocation of Gabbard propelled a marginal candidate into the middle of the Democratic primary fight into the center of the media and political maelstrom that is presidential politics.
These are the kinds of events that small, underfunded campaigns dream of! Without having to spend a penny on advertising or a minute of the candidate’s time, Secretary Clinton breathed life into Gabbard’s quixotic bid for the Democratic nomination and ensured a noisy fraction of voters (on both the left and the right) that the congresswoman from Hawaii was worth spending a click on.
When Gabbard counter-attacked, Clinton did what Clintons do: Leave no assault un-responded to. In this case, as in so many cases before, discretion would have been the much better part of valor. Rather Clinton’s camp doubled-down: “If the nesting-doll fits.”
You can’t make this stuff up. We don’t know that Gabbard is a tool of the Russians. Her public statements about Syria and other issues of the day have revealed her to be a kook with little-to-no support. As Vox and others have reported, Gabbard has received a disproportionate amount of social and online attention during and after debates, some of which may be attributable to Red Bots in St. Petersburg.
To what end, though? Even if Rep. Gabbard generates (organically or not) attention on her behalf during debates, it has not, and will not, translate into electoral support in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada or South Carolina.
Clinton’s desire to impugn Gabbard feels like one more opportunity to convince herself that she didn’t really lose to Donald Trump, but that the Russians stole it from her, and are trying to do it again. Retrieving these political zombies, though, only has one true beneficiary: The President of the United States. Republicans in this country, even those who dislike Trump, dislike Clinton far more. She serves as the lodestone for their distrust of Democrats and career politicians.
The Russians are bad actors. They have been so since 1917. They are not going to change. However, if we know that they are meddling in our elections, political leaders like Hillary Clinton should know better than to invoke that boogeyman willy-nilly. It’s exactly what the Kremlin wants: the best active measures are those your opponents willingly amplify.
Having been part of daily American life for nearly three decades, I understand how difficult it must be for Secretary Clinton to simply fade into the background. But rather than taking a Bush or Obama-like position of making statements when necessary, at the time and place of their choosing, Mrs. Clinton simply won’t go away: whether it is yet another book deal or a stage show with former President Bill Clinton.
Clinton is a magnet for so much of what Americans want to be rid of: The politics of yesterday, people who feel they’re somehow owed wealth, status and power, and those who will not see that their time has passed. Next time, don’t do the podcast interview. If someone asks you a question about 2016, take some personal responsibility for the loss.
Neither Tulsi Gabbard nor Hillary Clinton will beat Donald Trump next year. This dustup does not help anyone that might defeat the president. There’s an old adage, maybe one a few more of us should take to heart: Just because you can say it, doesn’t mean you should.
Reed Galen is an independent political consultant. You can follow him on Twitter @ReedGalen. | https://medium.com/@reedgalen/tulsi-hillary-and-the-russians-6ec34acf01bf | ['Reed Galen'] | 2019-10-23 16:57:13.314000+00:00 | ['2020 Presidential Race', 'Hillary Clinton', 'Tulsi Gabbard', 'Russian Hacking', 'Politics'] |
How To Extend The Joy Of Your Holiday Travel | It Has To Be Suitcase Worthy
Most airlines allow you 50 lbs in your suitcase — don’t put any food in your carry on as cans and bottles are forbidden. My husband learned this the hard way in Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris.
The airline agent told him he had to empty his carry on bag filled with escargot and duck confit cans and move them over to his suitcase. I knew there was a black cloud brewing over my husband’s head so I smiled and said,
“Keep thinking about how good they will taste in January!”
My friend Tina and I hit New York annually and one of the first places we go to is Zabar’s deli. We eat a bag of their famous cinnamon rugelach and wouldn’t you know it — they carry French escargot too. And so now both of us haul cans back from New York each year and we bring an extra bag just to carry edible souvenirs.
Remember — if you love it — bring back as much as you can. I hauled 10 lbs of frozen Amish (Amish!) butter back from Hawaii and our friends laughed and didn’t do it. But I knew they secretly wanted to and they expressed regret once they got home. So I took a picture of me eating it on toast and sent it to them.
My husband and I still long for the massive cans of duck confit we didn’t buy in a little market in Bordeaux. We bought only two delicious cans — as if we were going to be back in France like next week or something. Well, hello— eight years later we still haven’t been back and we shake our heads at how stupid we were.
What other kinds of edible souvenirs have I brought back from my travels?
Balsamic vinegar and wine from Italy and coffee from Hawaii. Wine, escargot, and duck confit from France. Lobster from the Canadian Maritimes. Honey butter from Minnesota. Hot sauce and beans from Texas. Tea and jam from England and Scotland. Bars of spiced chocolate, vanilla, and massive pink marshmallows from Mexico. Lavender from Provence. Sardines and coffee from Portugal and a long tube of Portuguese custard tarts.
And let’s not forget about butter and cheese — I will haul that from absolutely any country in the world. No wonder I have one arm longer than the other. | https://medium.com/mind-cafe/how-to-extend-the-joy-of-your-holiday-travel-7b83ebcdc020 | ['Kim Duke'] | 2020-02-04 15:29:12.325000+00:00 | ['Happiness', 'Travel', 'Life Hacking', 'Life Lessons', 'Food'] |
Case Study: ML and NLP for real-time analytics | Working with Parity we’ve been developing innovative social media analytics using big data, unsupervised ML and NLP.
Parity works with some of the UK’s biggest public and private sector organisations to unlock the value of their data. We worked as an R&D partner with them to develop an innovative new social media analytics product
The product builds on academic research techniques used to identify communities of interest on Twitter based on their conversations. The problem with the existing technique is that it doesn’t scale to the kind of complexity found in social networks — data on Twitter is massive and understanding conversations quickly becomes an exponential problem space.
Starting with an early proof of concept we iterated the product using big data technologies, machine learning and natural language processing to find and label social media content and communities. The solution uses these techniques to find communities, find what they’re talking about and label them meaningfully.
We used a novel approach to unsupervised machine learning in order to build and cluster graphs of social relationships, and algorithms like TF/IDF to extract natural language tags and summarise content. The technical approach makes use of open source technologies including Python, Apache Spark and Elasticsearch in order to scale horizontally in the cloud and handle terabytes of data. | https://medium.com/colour-ai/case-study-ml-and-nlp-for-real-time-analytics-cdfc886691c0 | ['John Griffin'] | 2020-09-24 07:38:54.959000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Social Media Marketing', 'NLP'] |
Best part of my day | Theres this food court in office… it overlooks the golf course. brilliant sight, lush green fields to face while you eat your vada. tats all u get there. best part of my day.
and oh, the tea there is nice. dude puts more milk than a cow can produce in a day, but its nice… especially when it rains. | https://medium.com/analyzethis/best-part-of-my-day-8f2f652ce17d | ['Sanjay Joshi'] | 2016-09-04 14:46:15.415000+00:00 | ['Infosys Bangalore', 'Bangalore', 'Everyday', 'Coffee'] |
Weekly Blockchain Industry Report-19th Issue: Blockchain media were banned in China | (August 18th –August 24th, 2018)
OK blockchain capital is committed to exploring the cutting-edge technology of blockchain, setting benchmarks for high-quality analysis, guiding the sound development of the industry. Follow us to get more high-quality articles.
Market Overview
This week, the daily average global cryptocurrency’s market capitalization was $211.715 billion, representing a 0.88% increase from last week. Among them, the Top 5 cryptocurrencies’ market cap increased by 1.93%;The daily average transaction volume was $12.45 billion, representing a 5.23% decrease. Among them, the Top 5 cryptocurrencies’ transaction volume decreased by 19.28%. All of them had a continued bear performance, EOS experienced a maximum decrease of 18.15% and ETH had a maximum decrease of 17.3% .
Among the top 10 cryptocurrency gainers this week, most of the projects were in the cryptocurrency and payment field. PKG token, a token in game industry, experienced the greatest increase in price by 233.96%.
Analysis of Top 200 Market Cap Projects
Until 12:00 p.m. of the releasing date, the market capitalization of the top 200 projects decreased by 0.18% compared with last week. Based on our classification of 4 categories: cryptocurrency and payment, basic chain and protocol, vertical chain and protocol, and vertical industrial application, the projects of the vertical chain and protocol sector decreased the most.
Through further classification of the vertical chain and protocol and the vertical industrial application sectors, it was found that company service sector experienced market cap increase of 21.59%, AI field’s market cap increased 11.93%. But the education projects took a hit, got a 13.48% market cap decrease.
Analysis of Newly Listed Projects
According to latest announcements from more than 30 exchanges including OKEx, Binance, Huobi, Bitfinex, Bithumb, ZB.com, Upbit, HitBTC, Bittrex, Poloniex, there are 6 newly listed cryptocurrencies. These projects are distributed in different industries including company service, tourism, E-commerce, AI, finance and health. What’s more, these newly listed cryptocurrencies concentrated on Bitfinex crypto exchange. BCEX’s price increased by 92.86%.
Analysis of Closed Public Offering Projects
There have been 42 closed public-offering projects this past week, with the soft cap totaling nearly 291 million USD. Among these projects, HYT has the largest soft cap, exceeding 100 million USD.
Important News on Global Governmental Policies this Past Week
Below is a list of some of the most important global news on governmental policies on blockchain and cryptocurrency. The picture below is for reference to how strict/loose some countries are with their regulations.
The US: US Republican congressman Warren Davidson recently invited 32 digital currency industry representatives and institutions to Capitol Hill to discuss ICO regulation. The meeting’s purpose is to prepare for the submission of a formal ICO regulatory proposal to Congress. It is reported that the discussion will be held on September 25. Participating digital currency leaders and institutions include A16Z, Ripple, NASDAQ, CME, Kraken Exchange, and Intercontinental Exchange.
Mongolia: Zanden Shartle, Director of the Cabinet Office of the Government of Mongolia, said that 87% of public services in Mongolia will be digitized in the future, and he presented the idea of Blockchain — New Economy — New Mongolia. Mongolia will launch a series of preferential subsidy policies to attract capital. The recently launched Mongolia National Blockchain Digital Assets Exchange will support national blockchain projects, offering technical and other support for national projects.
Russia: Russia’s non-profit independent election monitoring agency, National Public Monitoring (NOM), announced at a press conference in Moscow that it is preparing to pilot a blockchain-based electronic voting system. It is reported that the first Russian public observer conference, the Russian Fund for Free Elections and Association of Lawyers of the Russian Federation, was held at the initiative of NOM.
Nigeria: The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) said it is currently actively studying the encryption market so that it can develop a regulatory framework to protect each market participant. At the same time, CBN warned that financial institutions should not enter the encryption market until the regulations are introduced.
South Africa: The South African Revenue Service (SARS) is working to track digital currency transactions to determine whether people engaged in digital currency trading are evading tax. A commissioner of SARS said the key point was to identify traders. Since most traders use credit cards to purchase digital assets, SARS can investigate cases once they have correctly identified non-compliant traders.
South Korea: The South Korean government classified the digital currency exchange industry as a form of gambling, and prohibited venture capital companies from investing. Some analysts pointed out that this may indicate that the government believes that digital currency exchanges will have a greater negative impact on society than promoting the development of blockchain markets.
Keeping Up with the Blockchain Giants
August 18th
IBM submitted a patent application to the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for its project titled “Description of node features in blockchain.” The new system will allow distributed ledgers to have a set of nodes characterized by different functions. Nodes used to encrypt currency feature anti-money laundering (AML) functions. The information is automatically synchronized to the log, and can be checked by regulatory agencies connected to the node.
August 19th
Japan’s tech giant Softbank has signed a strategic partnership with the blockchain gaming company Ludos in Japan. The two parties aim to provide several channels for cooperation, including state-of-the-art game resources, product exchanges, and game redesign, bringing Ludos to a new stage.
August 20th
58 Group launched its blockchain service platform 58BaaS, which provides a complete set of blockchain deployment, application development, real-time monitoring, and flexible scalability solutions. It will also provide better technical support for recruitment, used cars, real estate and other services. Yao Jinbo, president and CEO of 58 company, also confirmed the news in his WeChat moments and said that “trust can create a better society”.
August 21th
A white paper entitled Datong Trusted Consortium Blockchain Technology, written by a team of experts from Shenzhen Datong Industrial Co., Ltd. (000038), and advised by network information security and blockchain experts from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications and technical service experts from Blockchain Tech (Beijing) Co., Ltd, was officially released.
August 22th
The Bank of Thailand (BOT), the country’s central bank, has announced that the first phase of its Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) initiative will be used for interbank funds transfer. Under Project Inthanon Phase 1, the BOT and the eight participating banks will collaboratively design, develop and test a proof-of-concept (PoC) prototype for wholesale funds transfer by issuing wholesale CBDC. The eight participating banks are Bangkok Bank, Krungthai Bank, Bank of Ayudhya, Kasikornbank, Siam Commercial Bank, Thanachart Bank, Standard Chartered Bank Thai and HSBC.
August 23th
Ant Financial said that Alipay will be used as a vector to explore how mobile payment security and blockchain technologies might be more widely used in Chongqing municipal governance, public travel and spending, and various businesses in the future.
August 24th
According to the official website of the Bank of China, it recently completed US dollar international remittance between customers in Xiong’an, Hebei Province, and Seoul, through its cross-border blockchain payment system. This is the first international remittance business completed by a domestic commercial bank using its own blockchain payment system.
Hot topic of this week: A large number of Blockchain media were banned. Chinese government is getting serious to crackdown domestic ICOs
On the evening of August 21, a large number of crypto-related WeChat official accounts were shut down. As of press time, media that have been confirmed to be banned include Jinse(AKA Cointime), Huobi News, Huobi Blockchain, BiShiJie, DeepChain, Bitcoin.Wu, DPRating, TokenClub, CoinLab and Coin Daily. The Tencent WeChat team responded that some official accounts were suspected of publishing information on ICOs and virtual currency trading hype, violating the Interim Provisions on the Development and Management of Instant Messaging Tools for Public Information Services. All content on these accounts has been blocked, and they have been permanently banned.
The severe ICO rectification in China began on September 4, 2017, when the People’s Bank of China and other 6 ministry departments issued a joint statement titled Notice on Preventing Financial Risks from Token Issuance, where they reiterated that ICOs are illegal fundraising mechanism, and they are suspected of illegally selling tokens, illegally issuing securities, illegal fundraising, financial fraud, pyramid schemes, and other illegal activities. The statement said authorities are banning all organizations and individuals from raising funds through ICOs. The central bank added that individuals and organizations that have completed ICO fundraising should make arrangements to return the funds. The statement specifies that token financing trading platforms may not exchange fiat currency with tokens or virtual currencies, may not act as a central counterparty in the purchase, sale, or trade of tokens or virtual currencies, and may not provide pricing service or information intermediary for tokens or virtual currencies.
The statement notes clearly that the specific rectification targets of this round are projects financing with token issuance, and exchanges that provide fund or information for such these projects. However, the government quickly expanded the scope to include all virtual currency trading activities, including virtual currencies without ICOs such as Bitcoin. In October 2017, major virtual currency trading platforms announced that they had terminated service and quit the Chinese market. Since then, virtual currency transaction in China has officially lost the RMB channel.
CN Stock reported on July 6 that Zhang Yifeng, Dean of the China Banknote Blockchain Technology Research Institute, revealed the progress and effectiveness of the virtual currency clean-up and rectification in an interview. He said that 88 domestic virtual currency trading platforms and 85 ICO trading platforms targeted by local governments have essentially achieved risk-free exit. Less than 1% of the world’s total BTC trade is in RMB, as opposed to more than 90% earlier. Zhang also pointed out that based on the preliminary results, the People’s Bank of China and relevant departments adopted a series of targeted clean-up measures in response to new types and situations of illegal financial activities to prevent possible financial risks and moral hazard. The specific measures have included blocking oversea’s virtual currency trading platforms, and strengthening the clean-up and rectification, starting from payment and settlement. This media ban can be understood as regulators’ re-statement of zero tolerance for ICOs.
In the past year, thanks to effective suppression of virtual currency speculation, the Chinese blockchain industry achieved sounder and more orderly development. Internet giants like “BAT” and financial institutions such as major banks have further increased investment in R&D and application of blockchain technology. Major universities have also established blockchain research centers and related courses. At the same time, the number of blockchain security service providers is growing quickly, marking the beginning of industry self-discipline. The next serious issues for the industry will include further eliminating the negative impact of speculative bubbles, fully promoting the development of blockchain technology, and tapping into greater commercial value.
Appendix: Upcoming Crowdfunding Projects（8.25–8.31)
Please follow our twitter @ https://twitter.com/OKCapital_ to stay updated with our reports!
*Credits go to Quqi Deng for his superb research! | https://medium.com/ok-blockchain-capital/weekly-blockchain-industry-report-19th-issue-blockchain-media-were-banned-in-china-94b5c3f9360 | ['Quqi Deng'] | 2018-08-28 07:56:09.007000+00:00 | ['Exchange', 'Crypto', 'ICO', 'Blockchain', 'Bitcoin'] |
The Nigeria Leadership Puzzle! | Nigeria Flag. (Source: Internet)
We are a people that our individual and collective sensibility and sensitivity have been raped incessantly over the years and have become accustomed to contradictions. For instance, how do you explain situations where someone renown to be poor or average among his/her people becomes stupendously wealthy just because he was elected or appointed into a government position? Other instances abound and are everywhere! Yet the arms of the law have been twisted always to favor the person with the big pocket. The people are not deaf and dump!
This is what made each individual adapt his/her tactics to thrive or survive at their various level of society’s strata. This is what will make railway workers selfish; this is what will make traders swindle customers; this is what will make a gateman demand bribery before you can gain entrance; this is what will make a Governor misappropriate State funds, a Minister to inflate contracts. Everyone has a level, so each person plays at his/her level.
Getting out of these quagmires requires solving one major puzzle. The puzzle of Leadership!
“Everything rises and falls on Leadership” — John Maxwell
“A fish rots from the head down” — Proverb
The military parade is fun to watch. The precision and unison of every moment, even when all seems scattered, are spectacular to behold. At the head of the parade is a commander, who gives the order. As he shouts out the orders, his sub-commanders re-echo the orders to their divisions; as he moves at his own commands, the same for the sub-commanders and the entire parade.
This is what Nigeria critically needs as a nation at this point. A Leader with a vision on a mission, who will move with military discipline and precision and ‘command’ the sub-leaders to do the same. This should not be construed as supporting a military rule. Far from it! The case here is, Nigeria needs disciplined leaders, who will not be so enmeshed in politics to neglect the people that give them the mandate. Leaders who move with clear precision because they are vision-driven. Leaders that ‘command’ the citizenry to move in unison of purpose and direction. Leaders whose sole interest are not their personal ambitions or aspirations. Leaders that will awaken the national consciousness of patriotism. Leaders who will retune our moral strings and make us find our rhythm again.
When we have such leaders, then we will realize that corruption and other ills ravaging our nation will gradually and systematically drift to oblivion, no totally anyways but substantially.
The solutions to the leadership puzzle are in the hand of, ” We the people of the Federal Republic of Nigeria”. Our collective choices will continue to glaringly indicate the direction we choose to travel. | https://medium.com/@babsoyeniyi/the-nigeria-leadership-puzzle-97b993eac3cc | ['Babs Oyeniyi'] | 2020-12-23 18:24:57.187000+00:00 | ['Leadership', 'Nigeria', 'Corruption', 'Economy', 'Covid 19'] |
Mom Dilemma. | Mom Dilemma.
To School or Not to School.
Photo by Guillaume de Germain on Unsplash
Keep the kids home, and lose income. Work from home, right. See how well that went last time.
Let the kids go to school, and they could get sick. They could bring it home and get you sick. Your partner. Your mother.
They could get that crazy disease the kids get…the one you’re trying really hard not to look up.
Keep the kids home, and be accused of being a bad mother. Why don’t you want your kids to play? Aren’t you worried they will be socially…weird?
Keep the kids home, and hire a nanny. Pay your nanny so much that you…might as well not work. Keep a bit of mental sanity with the extra help, but feel judged. Who are you, that you can hire help? Really?
Keep the kids home, and quit your job. Be accused of being privileged enough to quit…as you struggle to pay bills, as you cash out savings, as you sell your jewelry.
Be judged. Always. No matter what.
Let the kids go to school twice a week, and stay home the rest of the time. Try to work out the schedule with your job. Know…without being able to prove…that they’re passing you over for promotions. Know…without being able to prove…that you’re a problem.
A Mom.
Not committed enough.
Post your decision on Facebook, and be attacked. Don’t you want what is best for your kids? Everything you have picked is wrong. Be ridiculed by the community that is supposed to support you.
Have another child, and be attacked. How could you have a kid right now?
Use birth control, and be attacked. Don’t you want to bring joy to the world?
But you know what?
It’s another dilemma. It’s just another bit of nothing, another bit of fuck you.
You’ve had so many, starting with who you decided to have kids with…if you decided to even have a partner…to how, to when, at what age, to breast-feeding or not, adoption or not, to education, to which TV shows, which juices, which diapers, which cleaners —
It’s another dilemma. It’s just another bit of nothing, another bit of fuck off.
Because you already know you’re stronger than you ever thought possible. You’ve experienced so much — so many complications. You’ve had to prove you’re a worthy mother, over and over, when the rules kept changing. You kept having to prove your legitimacy, over and over.
It’s another dilemma. It’s just another bit of nothing, another bit of fuck this.
Because you know survival is all that matters. You have your core, your strength. You’ve built so much from nothing, and you know creating is harder than destroying.
You’re responsible for other lives, for keeping them alive.
It’s another dilemma, added to the long list of what it means to be a Mom.
And you, you already know you can do it — A master of the fuck you, your existence is defiance.
You’re raising the future. You’ve dealt with unfairness. And while everyone else screams and whines, you are already used to things not going according to plan.
You’re a Mom — and that’s, strangely, your secret weapon, your secret strength. | https://medium.com/are-you-okay/mom-dilemma-1ee5fbbf86cf | ['Lisa Martens'] | 2020-07-22 01:52:58.708000+00:00 | ['Children', 'Family', 'Motherhood', 'Society', 'Covid 19'] |
Monika Sattler — 1st Women to cycle the Vuelta a España — 3,058km with 49,337m of climbing! | Monika made history in 2018 when she became the first woman to ride the entire 3,058km route of the Vuelta a España. Which is know as one of cycling’s toughest grand tours.
Monika started riding every morning at 6 am hours before the men started, she rode the full 21 stages which included a staggering 49,337m of climbing! This was all done in the blistering Spanish heat.
Her mission was to prove her own RAD (Real, Adventurous, Daring) Method and to inspire other women to live a more adventurous life!
During this podcast Monika shares more about her journey, studying over in America, not knowing if she was making the right decisions, trying to become a professional cyclist and realising it wasn’t for her. Monika is super passionate and positive about living an adventurous life! She goes after her goals with unbelievable focus — whether it is writing a book in 5 weeks or moving on a whim to a country she doesn’t speak the language of with just her bike and one nights accommodation booked.
Listen the play button below to listen!!
Click here if you can’t see the link below.
Show notes | https://medium.com/@_TOUGH_GIRL/monika-sattler-1st-women-to-cycle-the-vuelta-a-espa%C3%B1a-3-058km-with-49-337m-of-climbing-7680b75a7276 | ['Sarah Williams'] | 2020-11-23 10:03:16.099000+00:00 | ['Climbing', 'Podcast', 'Women', 'Cycling', 'Challenge'] |
Getting Started with Machine Learning — Comprehensive guide with free resources | This is Part 2, from my three part series on Getting Started for Python, Machine Learning and Deep Learning.
If you haven’t read my first article of the ongoing series, here it is. It’s called Getting Started with Python for Machine learning and Deep learning
About me
I was introduced to Computers as a subject in primary school. My curiosity for that machine led me to join the Computer Club and learn programming languages like Logo and Scratch. As I grew, my passion for Computer Science also grew exponentially, because of which I decided to study it for my under-graduation and so I am currently pursuing my undergrad from a tier 3 college which you might have not even heard of.
Presently, I’ve got acceptance from 7 US universities for pursuing my Masters in Computer Science. As of now, I’ve deferred mine admits to Fall 21 due to the ongoing pandemic. Currently, I am a full-time Machine learning intern for a California based startup called “Quant Binary”.
Table of Contents
What and Why Machine Learning?
Most Important Python Libraries for Machine Learning with free resources
Resources I used for mastering Machine Learning
Importance of Certifications and Projects
Kaggle — Machine Learning and Data Science Community
Editors I use
Suggested Learning Path
Almost all the resources that I’ll be mentioning here are free of cost while some of them are paid. But, I’ll be telling ways, how to almost get those, for free as well.
What and Why — Machine Learning?
Machine learning is a branch of Artificial Intelligence that provides systems the ability to automatically learn and improve from experience without being explicitly programmed. The primary aim of ML is to allow computers to learn automatically without any human intervention or assistance.
Photo by Amanda Dalbjörn on Unsplash
Everything that we humans see and use nowadays, is all somehow or the other related to Machine learning. Right from using Face unlock on our smartphones to using various products like Google, Google Voice, Alexa, Spotify, Youtube, Netflix, and whatnot. Each and everything is built upon the very fundamental idea of Machine learning.
Most Important Python Libraries for Machine Learning
Take these libraries as a compulsory prerequisites for you to learn Machine learning. Do them before you actually start learning ML because almost 80% of the code that you’ll write, will come from these libraries.
Right from reading data, processing it, manipulating it, and visualizing it, everything is done with the help of these libraries only.
1. NumPy — Numerical Python
NumPy is a python library used for working with arrays. It is a library consisting of multidimensional array objects and a collection of methods for processing those arrays and so using NumPy, mathematical and logical operations on arrays can be performed. It also has functions for working in the domain of linear algebra, Fourier transform, and matrices.
In Python, we have lists that serve the purpose of arrays, but they are slow to process. NumPy aims to provide an array object that is up to 50x faster than traditional Python lists because arrays are very frequently used in Machine learning where speed is one very important criteria.
Resources
(Just click every underlined title and you’ll be redirected to that respective page)
Keith Galli’s video on Youtube turned out to be an excellent resource for me for learning almost everything that is required for getting started. The video is short, crisp, and to the point. The best thing about his videos is that he explains his thought process whenever he tries to debug an error. This really helps beginners, to learn how an error is resolved and what your thought process should be for the same.
Keith’s Video’s Page
2. Pandas — Data analysis library
Pandas is a fast, powerful, flexible, and easy to use open-source data analysis and manipulation tool, built on top of the Python programming language.
It is built on the NumPy package and its key data structure is called the DataFrame which allows you to store and manipulate tabular data in rows of observations and columns of variables. DataFrames make manipulating your data easy right from selecting or replacing columns and indices to reshaping your data.
Resources
This Corey Schafer’s playlist of 11 videos is hands down the best and a completely comprehensive guide when it comes to learning pandas.
Corey’s playlist of Pandas
Now see, the truth is, we will not be using NumPy that much in a basic to intermediate Machine learning project but when it comes to pandas, this is what we’ll sing the most, like literally the most. So, you need to learn pandas thoroughly before even thinking of Machine learning.
3. Matplotlib — Python’s plotting library
Matplotlib is a comprehensive library for creating static, animated, and interactive visualizations in Python. It is a cross-platform library for making 2D plots from data in arrays.
A picture is worth a thousand words, and with Python’s matplotlib library, it, fortunately, takes far less than a thousand words of code to create production-quality graphics.
Resources
This Corey Schafer’s playlist of 10 videos is the most extensive playlist that you will find. It covers a wide variety of topics such as — customizing our plots, different plot types, plotting live data in real-time, and more.
Corey’s playlist of Matplotlib
4. Seaborn— Statistical data visualization
Seaborn is a Python data visualization library based on matplotlib. It provides a high-level interface for drawing attractive and informative statistical graphics.
Seaborn is often used because it makes attractive visualizations and works easily with Pandas and NumPy. While with Matplotlib you often have to write multiple lines of code to create a plot while Seaborn gets you the same plot with just 1 line of code.
However, learning seaborn is optional for beginners. Learn seaborn when you kind of get intermediate in applying your skills and this is only possible when you practice a lot.
Resources
Derek’s video provides complete coverage of Seaborn, covering almost all various plots with many real-world examples. You’ll really enjoy learning from Derek.
Derek’s Video’s Page
Resources that I used for learning Machine Learning
I know, I know, you will have to work really hard learning all those libraries before you actually come here and start learning ML. But always remember this.
No Pain, No Gain.
This is that course without which no list of resources for machine learning is ever complete. This is the revolutionary course by the legend of this field, Andrew Ng. The way he explains all the mathematics behind ML algorithms and the techniques required is hands down the best.
Homepage of Coursera’s Machine learning course
Now here's a catch. Most people actually find this course to be very boring, just because it is very theoretical and uses Octave, which is considered to be an old programming language used for scientific computing. You can ignore the octave part (assignments) if you want but make sure to watch all his videos, so you get a good grasp of all the concepts in Machine learning.
How to get this course for free?
When you click on Enroll for Free, this is what you get. Now, if you are someone who will be enrolling in this course just to learn all the theoretical concepts, you can just select, Full Course, No Certificate and you are good to go.
This is what you get when you click on Enroll for free
But, If you’re someone who wants a Certificate and don’t want to spend money, here’s a catch. Just click on Financial aid available which is just to the right of the Enroll for Free button. After clicking on it and filling some fields, this is what you get. Now all you have to do is, Fill those 5 fields in the starting and write some really honest answers for why financial aid and how will this course helps.
Trust me, they really see how passionate and hungry you are when it comes to learning. Draft some honest and serious answers and you’re good to go. Once you apply, all you have to do is wait for 15 days. After almost 14-15 days, you get a mail regarding the same. If selected you’ll get the entire course content, resources, assignments, and certificate, absolutely free. But if it isn’t your day, I’ll suggest you, rewrite your answers and apply once again.
Coursera’s Financial Aid Application form
Now, this is one of the best machine learning courses I’ve ever come across. This is the course that actually teaches you, how to practically implement machine learning.
Homepage of Udemy’s Machine Learning Course
This course covers everything, right from data preprocessing to almost all types of Machine learning (supervised/unsupervised learning, reinforcement learning) and even gives an Introduction to Deep Learning and Natural Language Processing as well.
How to get this course for free?
Personally, I got this course for free. Yes, absolutely free. There was this festive offer or something and I just happened to open Udemy and Oh Boy, almost 10 to 12 of udemy’s best selling courses were given free of cost for a limited time.
And so or everyone, who are eyeing for that certificate, all you need to do is, just keep checking udemy’s website every alternate day and I’m sure that if not Free, you’ll be guaranteed getting that course for as low as 300 Rupees.
This book assumes that you know close to nothing about Machine Learning. Its goal is to give you the concepts, tools, and intuition you need to implement programs capable of learning from data. Section 1 of the book is what we will study, as it covers entire Machine learning (Section 2 covers Deep learning, which I’ll be covering in Part 3 of our ongoing series)
Book Cover
How to get this book for free?
In my case, I got this book at no cost from a senior of mine who was also a very good friend. If you want you can search the Internet for a free or PDF copy of this book and I’m sure you’ll get it.
If you are someone who can afford buying this 2275 Rupees book, I’ll urge you to please buy it rather than downloading it. Please respect and appreciate an author’s effort by buying their books. It really takes lot of time and efforts to draft something as marvelous as this book.
Importance of Certifications and Projects
At first, I used to think, “I don’t need certifications or projects to showcase my skills. I’ll show my skills in my interview”. But as I kept meeting new and newer people in this field and started interacting with them, I got to know how important Certifications and Projects are. So, according to my own experience, what I think is,
Certifications are not Crucial but Important whereas Projects are Crucial as well as Important.
See, the thing you need to understand is, “How will the recruiter or any other person will know, how skilled and knowledgeable you are in this field?” The answer is, by your Certifications and by your Projects.
These two are the most important things when it comes to like choosing 30 candidates out of 100 or like 1000, just as a part of mere screening process.
1. Certifications
So, after seeing profiles of tens and hundreds of people and by my own learning experiences, these are the certifications that I’ll suggest you all for showcasing your skills in Machine learning.
I. Machine Learning — Stanford University on Coursera | https://medium.com/@abhishek-shah/learn-machine-learning-for-free-with-this-guide-including-free-resources-go-zero-to-hero-in-ml-f5d53061dfc | ['Abhishek Shah'] | 2020-11-07 16:47:20.490000+00:00 | ['Kaggle', 'Machine Learning Python', 'Machine Learning', 'Pandas', 'Numpy'] |
Contact 24*7 Hours for Book Emergency Medical Air Ambulance Services from Surat to Patna | Surat is one of the most sought after cities in Gujarat, it has something for everyone. From culture and history to food and nightclubs, the city of Surat in Gujarat, India has a lot to offer. Care Hospital, Anand Hospital, Mahavir Hospital, BAPS Pramukh Swami Hospital, Apple Hospital, etc. are some of the finest hospitals in Surat and has been serving its people with great potential. Well many times and often some Medical Cases do come to the hospital wherein a patient needs to be transferred to different cities in India for better treatment progression and Quick Medical Relief.
Thus if you are in need of emergency do call Hifly ICU Air Ambulance Service from the above-mentioned and other as we are easily accessible from any part of the Surat ad Gujrat. Air Ambulance Service from Surat to Patna easily is accessible 24x7 hours along with with Round the Clock assistance service. Thus, be it any part of India apart from Surat you can book Hifly ICU Air Ambulance in Surat by calling or sending email to Hifly ICU anytime, day or night.
What makes HIFLY ICU one of the most trusted Medical Repatriation Companies?
The biggest reason we are so reliable is our extensive network, which makes it possible for us to get you to the desired hospital or at home back. Whether you want to be repatriated to a world-class hospital in Patna or to your home, Hifly ICU Air Ambulance Service in Delhi, Ranchi, Mumbai, Chennai and other major cities within India has the essential resources to offer you a secure Bed to BED service along with international Scoop Stretcher, Wheel Chair, etc.
The Hifly ICU Air Ambulances are outfitted with stretchers, and all Advanced Life Support and Basic Life Support equipment along with the emergency Medicals, for the onboard patient that may require throughout the journey. Hifly ICU offers its medical emergency services throughout India and worldwide via chartered and commercial airplane. The selection of the aircraft totally depends upon the distance to be covered, patient’s conditions and type of care the patients require on their patient and numerous other factors.
Hifly ICU Air Ambulance Service in Patna offers professional, dedicated care to patients as well as to their family members as the patient travel to the referred hospital or medical center. Our team compassionately will also take care of all the paperwork and formalities required to reach you to the desired hospital within a short span of time. Thus if, for Emergency Medical Repatriation from Surat to Patna or to any other cities in India call Hifly ICU Air Ambulance service at +91–8448135593, or +91–9319024809 and avail their exceptional medical emergency transfer services.
Content Source: Whom to Call for Emergency Medical Repatriation from Surat to Patna? | https://medium.com/@Hiflyicuambulance/contact-24-7-hours-for-book-emergency-medical-air-ambulance-services-from-surat-to-patna-76da226526e3 | ['Hifly Icu Air Ambulance Service'] | 2019-07-10 10:57:03.645000+00:00 | ['Air Ambulance Services', 'Medical', 'Air Ambulance', 'Health'] |
Learn Applied Data Science and Get Certified with Microsoft and Udacity | Photo by @jeshoots from unsplash
Unlike theoretical data science, applied data science involves additional steps to manage the lifetime of a model, which are commonly called MLOps. Azure Machine Learning is a service that conveniently supports MLOps practices, so getting to know it seems like a good idea. In this post, I will talk about the best way to learn (Udacity), and demonstrate your knowledge (Certification).
Microsoft and Udacity have just announced the availability of a new Nanodegree program — Machine Learning Engineer with Microsoft Azure. This program will prepare you for passing the certification, and also provide a great opportunity to work on your own capstone project.
You may not know, but Microsoft has Data Science Certification! To get the Microsoft Azure Data Science Associate certification, you just need to pass one exam: DP-100: Designing and Implementing a Data Science Solution on Azure.
To set the expectations correctly: this exam is not so much about Data Science concepts, but rather about being able to use Azure Machine Learning service. However, when preparing for the exam, you will learn all important practices of MLOps, and also to be able to use that service effectively:
Different options for storing data inside Azure ML: Datastore vs. Dataset
Using Automated Machine Learning to train models without coding (see my earlier post on Low-Code/No-Code Machine Learning Experience)
Scheduling experiments and tracking their results (my post)
Doing Hyperparameter optimization (my post)
Setting up and using pipelines
Deploying the model on production compute
There are a few ways to learn Azure ML and prepare for the exam:
Use my blog / github as a gentle introduction. I have made a short tutorial on GitHub that will walk you through the first steps with Azure ML. The experience is also described in blog post series. I also suggest you to watch my introductory video on Azure ML, and video with some Case Studies. This material is good for a start, but is by no means enough to pass the exam.
Take some free courses on Microsoft Learn. MS Learn contains a number of great courses/paths to get you introduced both to ML Concepts, and to Azure ML:
Create machine learning models learning path is a good introduction to machine learning as such. You will be using Azure ML as compute environment, but you will learn about regression, classification and deep learning. Create no-code predictive models with Azure Machine Learning would introduce you to AutoML and Designer, and you would learn how to train classification/regression/clustering models witout coding. Build AI solutions with Azure Machine Learning is the most comprehensive course on Azure ML itself, where you will learn about experiments, pipelines, and deploying models to production.
Enroll into new NanoDegree Program with Udacity. It is designed for three months. In terms of coverage, it pretty much covers the same content as previously listed free courses, but the format is quite different.
Udacity Nanodegree Program: Machine Learning Engineer
Unlike MS Learn, taking a course at Udacity will cost you some money. However, it has some important benefits.
Udacity program is structured in such a way that upon successful completion you are guaranteed to have good knowledge of the subject, because you will not only learn the content, but also get hands-on experience working on a project. That is the reason they are ready to give certificate of completion that proves your knowledge.
During the program, you will work on three different projects. In final, capstone project, you will work on a dataset of your choice (most probably, the one from Kaggle), and perform the complete lifecycle, from importing data to getting the working model up and running in production. You will get Azure рlayground as part of the program, which means that you would be able to experiment, and you would have cloud resources to complete the projects. If you are taking free MS Learn courses, you will need to sign up for free Azure trial yourself. A lot of material in the course is video and not text. Many people find it easier to learn something new if they can hear other people. Finally, during the course you will have support from instructors, as well as the community of peer learners.
The nanodegree program consists of three courses:
Azure Machine Learning Platform, which takes you through training and optimizing models using AutoML and Hyperdrive / Azure SDK. At the end of this course you will train and optimize a logistic regression model to make marketing predictions. Machine Learning Operations course teaches you how to deploy and operationalize your models, as well as how to consume and document them. In this course you will further improve your prediction model, and deploy it to production. Final part of the program is Capstone Project, where you can select any dataset, and build complete ML Ops pipeline around it.
While you can definitely learn Azure ML using Microsoft Learn resources, Udacity will help you organize your learning process, and immediately apply the knowledge you get in practice. The course is well aligned with Microsoft Azure Data Science Associate certification, so in addition to a certificate from Udacity, you can immediately look to get an industrial certification from Microsoft.
Originally published at http://soshnikov.com. | https://medium.com/microsoftazure/learn-applied-data-science-and-get-certified-with-microsoft-and-udacity-5240d9a2a6e0 | ['Dmitry Soshnikov'] | 2020-10-13 15:16:30.620000+00:00 | ['Udacity', 'Data Science', 'Certification', 'Azure Machine Learning', 'Learning'] |
The (Un)Sustainable Side of the Music Industry | By Mehul Kamran
When thinking of the way we listen to music, gone are the days that we associate our music with vinyl records and tapes. The world has ushered in a new era of music, with streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music, and Tidal providing cheap, accessible music to millions worldwide. Spotify boasts over 217 million monthly active users and Apple Music has over 60 million.
When we think about the negative environmental consequences of the music industry, our minds jump to images of music festivals and concerts with thousands of people with the potential for waste. Reaching such a conclusion is valid — Coachella itself generated 107 tons of waste per day in 2017, of which only 20 percent was recycled. That is a staggering figure for only one music festival, considering that it adds up to about 428 tons of solid waste for both weekends together.
The environmental detriment of concerts and music festivals is no secret. In fact, Coldplay recently pledged not to tour until performing was not harmful for the environment. Despite the effects of live performances, music’s main environmental concerns lay much closer to home.
If the festivals aren’t the problem, what is?
It appears that sitting back and streaming our favorite songs has done more harm to our environment than we would think.
The act of streaming music is essentially a transmission of data. Even though their apps do not take up much data on the devices of the consumer, music streaming companies need to invest in data centers to store and transmit their data. And with hundreds of millions of users, that’s a lot of data that needs to be stored and processed. Data Centers generate a great deal of heat, so in addition to the copious amounts of electricity used by computer servers, these centers need constant cooling. With enough data to support millions of tracks and hundreds of millions of users, the environmental cost of electricity and cooling adds up.
In fact, a study titled The Cost of Music by Dr. Matt Brennan from the University of Glasgow calculated just how much emissions are released by music streaming. Measured in Greenhouse Gas Equivalents (GHGs), he found that:
“the generation of GHGs by storing and transmitting digital files for those listening to music online is estimated to be between 200 million kilograms and over 350 million kilograms in the US alone”.
This estimate is from 2016 and localized to the United States. If we add the growth of music streaming 3 years later and consider the data these companies use outside of the U.S. as well, streaming emits at a much higher scale than previously measured.
Was the vinyl era not worse?
Despite the heavy emissions linked to the streaming of music, it is widely assumed that we have ushered in a more sustainable era of music than the previous generation who relied on plastic-based vinyl records as their primary source of recorded music. However, recent research has found that this is not the case. Our circular predecessors had much less of an impact as the streaming services we frequent. In the peak year of vinyl popularity, 1977, the industry used 58 million kilograms of plastic in the United States, over four times less than the amount that streaming services have used per year.
Are these companies doing anything about it?
Fortunately, with more coverage, streaming services have made a lot of headway towards a carbon-neutral business model. Spotify has released its own annual sustainability report since 2017, highlighting the ways the company has moved towards a greener business plan.
The company’s biggest move towards sustainability has been beginning to move its server operations to the Google Cloud Platform. Such a move is a great stride towards sustainability because when a company’s operations migrate onto the cloud, the emissions directly associated with the company become zero. The emissions needed to uphold cloud servers are instead associated with Google. Keeping this in mind, Google has elected to match all energy consumed by its Cloud and data centers with renewable energy, meaning that all energy used by Google’s operations is offset. As a result of this move, Spotify’s last data center is scheduled to close at the end of this calendar year. Soundcloud (which relies on Amazon Web Services), and Apple Music have also made similar moves towards sustainability.
There is still progress to be made. Offsets do not mean that these companies are relying entirely on renewable energy, as they purchase or invest in renewable energy to match their consumption. These companies must still work towards getting none of their power from the grid.
Now, this piece was not meant to vilify streaming services in any way. Neither is this a call to action for users to boycott the apps and definitely not my way of asking Drake to write the next hit song about the unsustainable ways of music streaming. However, it is important for users to know the effects that the companies they are soliciting are having on the environment. With more awareness, companies have more of an incentive to partake in more sustainable business practices, be held accountable for their actions, and ultimately allow for the music industry to be as carbon neutral as possible. | https://medium.com/climate-conscious/the-un-sustainable-side-of-the-music-industry-45bf3e8654d2 | ['Mehul Kamran'] | 2020-09-02 20:04:02.675000+00:00 | ['Data Center', 'Emissions', 'Music', 'Sustainability', 'Climate Action'] |
In defence of the internet: an essay by a disgruntled millennial. | In defence of the internet: an essay by a disgruntled millennial.
I’m writing this on my iPad, sat in bed waiting for my body to permit me to sleep. The mindless ritual consumption of pre-bedtime entertainment media has been a staple of my schedule for years now. I know I am not alone in this: it’s universal in this day and age, more prevalent in some than others but ultimately, it’s a relatable truth.
I was a child of the Information Age, born in the strange period between the mid 90s and early 2000s. I still remember playing on the streets with my friends as a child, but I needn’t strain myself to remember a technological childhood. I can remember rushing home from school, my heart pumping excitedly at the prospect of an evening of gaming and laughter with friends around the world. Complete strangers of course, the kind of individual that schools meant when they lectured on stranger danger. Yet suddenly, the concept stranger danger faded into the backdrop when the machines took over.
It is undeniable that the world has been shaped and transformed by technology – the internet being a preeminent example of this. As with all new things, there have been those who have struggled to adapt, and have attempted to push the burden of all of society’s ills onto this up and coming bogeyman. Socrates, for instance, was known to be anti-writing. He believed that the only true way to communicate ideas was face-to-face interaction, an argument which has been rehashed into the digital age, I think, however, the internet is unique, in that it has been perhaps the most demonised of revolutionary developments in living memory. For once, I intend to sing it’s praises and ask the question: is the internet truly a force for good?
To answer this question, we must first understand the core, contemporary arguments against the internet. I understand that it’s not, perhaps, the most literarily appealing of ways but for the sake of ease I shall simply bulletpoint the arguments.
1: The internet detracts from real, face-to-face social contact
This is one especially popular with the black mirror-esque style commenters. Often, people post pictures of individuals within a room together all on their phones failing to socialise. I can understand that this is a real concern, and yes, this happens – I’ve been in such a situation many times. But what do these individuals actually do on their phone? Often, they socialise! I grew up around the world, and the internet is the only thing that allows me to maintain any sort of real connection with my friends in Thailand, the Middle East, New Zealand and so on. For all the flak the internet is given for de-socialising the world, it does a damned good job of connecting people! The age of face to face contact is far from over – on the contrary, the internet, to me, is a tool to enable far superior socialisation than ever before. Organising gatherings, events, activities etc no longer requires weeks of meticulous planning and trying to work out when everyone is available: all that’s required now is a group chat and some speedy googling!
2: The internet, and especially online video games, are removing people from the real world.
This is a particular favourite of the tabloids. We all know the gist: a photo of a child, curled up over the computer, headset on, absorbed in an entirely different world whilst the parents are on the record pleading for their baby to be returned to reality. Such a heart-wrenching story. You really can feel for the parents – even though it’s often their fault!
Raising a child requires, as it always has, that boundaries be established. I remember having a limit on TV time and a curfew on how long I could play with my Doctor Who five inch action figures every evening, as do a great deal of my friends. In fact, take the aforementioned article and switch the word ‘video games’ for ‘television’ and you have yourself the classic scare-mongering anti tech tabloid scoop of the 20th century! The fact of the matter is this: video games, like TV and action figures and sweeties, are an entertainment product that appeal directly to children. The only difference is that computer time is far easier to control with the use of a few simple, freely available programs. Instead of blaming the internet for gaming gluttony, perhaps we should examine the true source of the problem: lazy parenting.
3: The internet is a hub for nefarious practises.
Drug trade, dark web, terrorist groups, credit card fraud: these are all very powerful buzzwords that the media love to summon to stir readers into a foaming-at-the-mouth anti-internet frenzy. With such increased connectivity, it was always inevitable that the shadier members of society would soon follow rank and move their operations into the digital age. The media knows this, and you can bet that they’ve played it to death to sell copies. Every time a new catastrophe occurs, the news media jumps to blaming forums such as 4Chan, dark web communities, etc. They prey off the technological illiteracy of the masses to peddle their scare-mongering propaganda – and it works! Fear is a powerful motivator, and fear of terrorism, crime, chaos and so on is what caused the world to turn a blind eye as their governments set up massive-scale snooping systems. However, the power of the internet in terms of illegal activity is rather overstated. Yes, there are websites from which you can purchase ‘recreational paraphernalia’ and yes terrorist grounds have been known to communicate through dark web channels. However the reason we know this is because such channels are not secretive – certainly not as secretive as the physical meetings that would take place in the dark ages (any time before YouTube). Rather, the use of the internet in the conduction of criminal activity has greatly helped law enforcement agencies in the fight against crime. Poor security, human error and undercover nodes have all been very effective in tripping up internet-criminals: once something is on the internet, it is ultimately accessible by anyone if they wish to access it enough. And agencies such as the NSA, GCHQ and so on are very good at getting what they want.
I fear that you may be falling asleep by this point, so I’ll keep this short and sweet: the internet has enabled socialisation on a scale never seen before; It has increased economic activity by a truly unprecedented amount; and, despite the risks, it is generally a very safe place for one to conduct themselves.
My point is this: the next time you feel inclined to launch into a racing rant about how the internet is ‘destroying this generation’, ask yourself: who is telling me the internet is evil and where would we be without it?
(This has been my first post, so thank you for reading! It wasnt supposed to be public yet but hey, that’s what happens when you use a new app for the first time, hope you enjoyed and feel free to add any constructive comments!) | https://medium.com/@willrobertgray/im-writing-this-on-my-ipad-sat-in-bed-waiting-for-my-body-to-permit-me-to-sleep-98932c8569dc | ['Caffeine'] | 2019-08-03 22:35:45.007000+00:00 | ['First Post', 'Internet', 'Technology'] |
Why You Need to Take Pool Leakage Seriously In Brevard County, FL | article originally published here
The lazy days of summer may come to a crashing — or rather — flooding end if you let your pool leakage go undetected. Parties, teaching your kids how to swim, and enjoying countless days in the refreshing water are part of a pool owner’s dreams — but so should maintaining the pool. Checking the water level, balancing the chemicals. It’s all part of owning a pool, regardless of whether your pool salesman outlined the responsibilities.
A leaking pool can mean having to shut down for costly repairs that were not part of the pool float budget. Aquaman Leak Detection has helped many pool owners in Brevard County, FL prevent major repairs. Here’s what can happen if you don’t take pool leakage seriously.
Pool Leakage Can Lead to a Floating Pool
What is a floating pool? A pool with water surrounding the foundation and even underneath it. A slow and steady leak can lead to the foundation deteriorating and even shifting, especially with a concrete foundation. This is not only unsafe but can lead to chlorine contaminated groundwater, which damages your landscaping.
Pool Leakage Can Lead to a High Utility Bill
Many pool owners realize there is a problem when they see their water bill. It’s easy to forget how often you have filled the pool unless you keep a chart. Don’t wait until you have lost thousands of gallons of water at the end of the season. This money could be used to prevent leaks, instead of having to cover the cost of major pool repairs.
Pool Leakage Can Lead to Costly Repairs
Many parts ensure your pool functions properly. Letting leaks go undetected can mean the water pump or skimmer haven’t been working properly. Problems due to gradual wear and tear can be hard to detect. Keeping track of the water level and routinely inspecting the components of your pool will prevent undetected issues.
How to Avoid a Leaking Pool
Pool leaks are normal to experience as your pool ages. Hiring a professional pool repair company each year to inspect your pool can prevent leaks. Routinely checking for holes in your pool liner or cracks in the cement or fiberglass will increase the life of your pool.
Testing the chemicals in your pool throughout the season ensures it’s properly balanced. Perform the bucket test if you suspect your pool is leaking. You may want to consider replacing an older pool if you are purchasing an older home.
Aquaman Leak Detection understands the importance of catching pool leaks before they become pool disasters. Our licensed pool contractors are often able to identify and repair pool leaks in one visit. Contact us to schedule an appointment today. | https://medium.com/@brevardctybest/why-you-need-to-take-pool-leakage-seriously-in-brevard-county-fl-cfade349b2e4 | ['Brevard Countyfl'] | 2019-06-17 21:54:04.393000+00:00 | ['Pool Leak Repair', 'Pool Leak Detection', 'Swimming Pools', 'Florida'] |
Krunker Ranked Christmas Update | Hey everyone! It’s that time of the year when we unpack presents, rest from school and work, and spend some quality time with our family. For some of us, it’s also a perfect opportunity to spend more time improving our slide hop skills and destroy our enemies in Krunker.
It has also been three weeks since we announced the inaugural Ranked Season 1, which more than 100,000 of you have got to try and play so far. We would like to use this Christmas blog to share some updates coming to Ranked today and later in January.
Frostbite Crafting is LIVE!
To celebrate Christmas, we are giving every player out there an opportunity to craft their own Frostbite! No matter how skilled you are or how much you play, the Frostbite can be yours through a combination of time, effort, and, most importantly, luck. Read below on what materials you need to collect:
256x Soul Essence - High drop chance every time you kill a player in Ranked or Unranked matches.
- High drop chance every time you kill a player in Ranked or Unranked matches. 16x Frost Essence - Medium drop chance for every second you stand on Hardpoint objective in Ranked.
- Medium drop chance for every second you stand on Hardpoint objective in Ranked. 8x Krunkite - Rare drop chance every time you kill a player in Ranked.
To track your progress, visit the crafting panel inside the game. After the first player crafts the Frostbite, it will become unavailable to everyone else. You will be able to re-use materials that you earned so far for something else, and we’ll let you know soon on what.
It’s time to cash in all that practice you did in Ranked and show everyone what you got. Starting on 28th December, every Tuesday, we will host a Weekly Tournament featuring 100,000 FACEIT Points as a prize pool. Find below the tournament start times and sign-up links:
From the 20th to the 25th of December, and on the 31st of December and 1st January, we are hosting winter holidays ladders every day in every region. They will offer a total of 31,875 FACEIT Points and a special grand prize per ladder for the winner. Every day a different season 1 exclusive skin will be up for grabs! Check out today’s ladder and prize!
All players will also receive a special winter holiday mission, which runs from the 20th to the 25th of December, where free users can win up to 500 FACEIT points while Premium users can earn 10,000 FACEIT Points! Make sure to visit your missions page to select it before you play!
Similarly to Chat with Community Blogs #1 and #2, we would like to share with you everything that we changed recently, things we are working on, and general comments on how Season 1 is going.
Positive stuff
Player feedback is improving, and the weekly retention numbers are superb. These numbers indicate healthy levels of players trying out the ranked experience and continuing to play every day.
Unbalanced matches
Since last week our data shows that 97% of all Ranked matches have been accurately balanced with equal rating distribution across both teams. However, we noticed that most players share feedback about unbalanced matches before playing the match in question.
Often, a player in the enemy team has a higher league rank than your team. This does not mean the match is unbalanced since the rating gap between you and that player can be tiny. To give you an example — The difference between Silver and Gold players can be just one match victory, but without showing this information, it appears as a massive gap between the player skill.
Due to information available to you before the game begins (Player ranks, account levels), the player perceives the match as unbalanced, which we want to solve. We are currently brainstorming several solutions that we can put in place to improve the way we distribute this information and which type of information we decide to show.
Premium ladders
In line with our feedback about our premium ladder system, we have decided to split the premium ladders in two for both high-tier and low-tier. Higher tier players will now compete for 172,000 FACEIT Points with other higher tier players. This change alleviates the issue we saw before. Higher-level players struggled to place well in ladders due to getting into matches more slowly than the average player (because there are fewer high-level players in the player pool).
Leavers
After the last change we’ve made, we saw significant improvement in which 50% fewer players leave matches every day. This number is dropping every day. If this trend continues, we expect to see player leaver rates drop to a standard level as seen across different multiplayer games (Dog ate my internet cable, anyone?)
Long queue times
We are planning to make a few different tweaks to reduce the wait times for players in the extreme low or higher tiers of the leagues. It is essentially a liquidity issue in slower regions and for players in the low/high tiers.
Thank you for reading and as usual, keep the feedback coming! In the meantime: happy winter holidays, everyone! | https://blog.faceit.com/krunker-ranked-christmas-update-a35ed7886aa2 | ['Faceit Pr'] | 2021-12-23 11:57:15.282000+00:00 | ['Krunker', 'Faceit', 'Esport'] |
The Art of Continuous Improvement | Most of us have ridden the life-change roller-coaster; many of us have done so many many times *cough* that’s me *cough*. What is the life change roller-coaster you ask? Tell me if this tale sounds familiar.
Day 1
You wake up one day and look into the mirror. You see a person looking back at you that you barely recognize and realize something has got to change. It’s time to finally start taking care of this body of yours. Immediately you have big plans: diet plans, meal plans, gym plans, all the plans! This is followed by buying a gym membership, loading the fridge with vegetables and chicken breasts, and buying $1,000 worth of workout equipment, apps, cooking tools and other accessories to help you on this journey. It’s finally time! You are going to make the big change. Nothing can stop the momentum!
Day 2
Breakfast starts off with a healthy bowl of oatmeal and a piece of fruit. You have a few stressful meetings at work and when lunch rolls around you head to the gym to get in some exercise and blow off some steam. It’s a little harder than you remember and by the time you get back to work you are wobbly and famished as you gobble down your small salad and reheated chicken breast. More stressful work ensues.
Once you get home from your less than ideal workday you feel as though you haven’t eaten all day; the hunger is real. Your muscles now ache from being abruptly woken from their ten year desk-job slumber and are making their displeasure known. You open the fridge and stare into the living hell you built yourself out of kale and carrot sticks.
As you stare in dismay at the cornucopia of greens lining the fridge you think, “Well… I did do really well this morning; maybe I deserve a little cheat for today.”
Later that evening
Your mind registers that it’s getting late and you are supposed to be up early to start those two-a-day gym sessions and are supposed to be meeting with that expensive personal trainer for the first time. You look around at the hot-mess you’ve become since you arrived home from work.
The empty pizza box and mostly empty two liter bottle of Mountain Dew sit mocking you as you queue up another re-run of “The Biggest Loser” on the TV nearby.
Day 3
You never quite got up the energy to get to that early gym session and ended up canceling the personal trainer losing only part of your investment. A colleague is retiring today so it’d be rude if you didn’t skip your lunch gym-session and go grab a bite with your co-workers.
By the time you get home that night you have reached the bottom of the roller-coaster. You are back where you started and all the motivation has left along with a whole lot of your hard earned money. All the changes you tried to make and all that money you spent is for naught. Nothing seems to have stuck and now you just feel like a failure. That feeling only compounds the issue as you begin eating those feelings.
A different approach
After many different rides on this coaster in various facets of my life I’ve learned there is really only one effective way to implement these changes in myself. That way, for me, is using kaizen. Kaizen is a concept from Japan of making continuous change, in my case it’s continuous gradual change instead of massive instant change. After all, it’s hard to change your diet and your workout routine to match some healthy ideal overnight. But it’s easy to eat one piece of fruit with breakfast, or park a few rows further away every time you go to the store.
The idea is that you choose a few small things to change every week or month and just concentrate on those. They won’t bring you to your ultimate goal by themselves, but they are small enough that you won’t mind doing them until they become a habit. Besides, the small changes can actually be incredibly powerful over time. The all-knowing internet tells me it takes about 21 days of doing something to make it a habit. I feel like that’s pretty accurate based on my own experience. I notice it takes me about a month to create a habit from something I start doing.
Having done this for the better part of a year I can tell you that I’ve seen far more success in changing my life for the better this way then I ever have with a radical overnight change.
My Kaizen
Along my path I’ve changed many things to improve my life. As a rule, I try to choose 4 or 5 items to work on every month and then I track them in Google Sheets. I just add an X in a column if I managed to do the task and nothing if I don’t. It’s easy to track and see how well I’m doing.
If I’m having a hard time completing one of the items consistently I may re-use it in the following month’s kaizen or I may break it down into smaller bits that I might have an easier time with. Here’s an example of one of my kaizen sheets:
An example of my kaizen tracker
Obviously, I’m not perfect and some days or months are better than others, but I’ve developed a huge number of habits that make every single day a little bit better for me. Here are a few examples of kaizen tasks that I’ve used:
Stretch every morning
Eat at least 2 vegetables per day
Don’t drink soda
Don’t eat fast food
Only drink one coffee per day
Meditate for 5 min each day
Update / look-over the budget each morning
Spend 15 min working in the yard every day
Spend 30 min cleaning the house every day
Aside from my monthly kaizen tracker, I try each month to think of one thing that I did to make my life better. This item is generally related to the items in my kaizen tracker for the month.
Conclusion
The possibilities are endless. You can take nearly any major life goal and break it down into little kaizen tasks to help get you there. Some people can make all the big changes at once, but for the rest of us this might be the next best solution. Does this seem like something that would work for you? What other kaizen tasks would you consider to help reach your goals? | https://medium.com/@jaboc83/the-art-of-continuous-improvement-aeedec7ba9c4 | ['Jake Moening'] | 2019-08-02 13:10:06.034000+00:00 | ['Improvement', 'Health', 'Habit Building', 'Habits', 'Kaizen'] |
SIIM-ACR Pneumothorax Segmentation | SIIM-ACR Pneumothorax Segmentation
Can Artificial Intelligence recognize pneumothoraces(Collapsed Lung) from Chest X-ray and save lives?
Artificial intelligence has taken over all kinds of industries, believe it or not, every application you use in your mobile phone is using AI to some extent, there are so many medical treatments which are using AI for the diagnosis of various diseases. In fact, the digital imaging field in healthcare industries is a very popular way for diagnosis of major diseases and nowadays Artificial Intelligence is helping so much for such diagnosis by analyzing the Digital Imaging of X-rays, CT-Scans, etc. In this blog, I am going to showcase my work on a case study “SIIM-ACR Pneumothorax Segmentation’’ which includes recognition of lung disease using Chest X-rays.
So let’s just look at the outline of the blog,
Business Problem Mapping Business Problem into Deep Learning Problem Existing Approaches My First cut approach Exploratory Data Analysis Data Preprocessing Deep Learning models Final Pipeline Deployment Future Extensions References
Now let’s begin the AI story,
Note: This is going to be a long story but trust me it’s really interesting. Those who are in a hurry you can directly go to the deployment section of this blog to see a working web application demo.
1. Business Problem:
1.1 Description:
First, we have to understand what Pneumothorax is, right?
So,
Pneumothorax is basically a combination of two words Pneumo(air) and Thorax(chest). Pneumothorax is also known as lung collapse. Pneumothorax is caused by an abnormal collection of air between the parietal and visceral pleura i. e. pleural space between the lungs and chest wall. Pneumothorax is a relatively common respiratory disease that can occur in a wide range of patients and in various clinical settings. The below figure of a normal and Pneumothorax affected lung can give you a little idea of what it is actually.
Symptoms of pneumothorax include sudden onset of sharp, one-sided chest pain and shortness of breath. Pneumothorax can be caused by a blunt chest injury, damage from underlying lung disease, or most horrifying — it may occur for no obvious reason at all. On some occasions, a collapsed lung can be a life-threatening event. Diagnosis of pneumothorax by physical examination alone can be difficult, particularly in smaller pneumothoraces. Usually, a chest X-ray, CT(Computed Tomography)-Scan, or ultrasound is used for detecting or confirming the presence of pneumothorax. Small pneumothorax can be typically resolved without treatment and requires only monitoring. This approach may be appropriate for people who have no underlying disease. In larger pneumothorax or if there is shortness of breath air may be removed by a syringe or chest tube connected to a one-way valve system. Occasionally, surgery may be required if tube drainage is unsuccessful. About 17–23 cases of pneumothorax occur per 100,000 people per year. They are more common in men than in women.
of pneumothorax include sudden onset of sharp, one-sided chest pain and shortness of breath. Pneumothorax can be caused by a blunt chest injury, damage from underlying lung disease, or most horrifying — it may occur for no obvious reason at all. On some occasions, a collapsed lung can be a life-threatening event. Diagnosis of pneumothorax by physical examination alone can be difficult, particularly in smaller pneumothoraces. Usually, a chest X-ray, CT(Computed Tomography)-Scan, or ultrasound is used for detecting or confirming the presence of pneumothorax. Small pneumothorax can be typically resolved without treatment and requires only monitoring. This approach may be appropriate for people who have no underlying disease. In larger pneumothorax or if there is shortness of breath air may be removed by a syringe or chest tube connected to a one-way valve system. Occasionally, surgery may be required if tube drainage is unsuccessful. About 17–23 cases of pneumothorax occur per 100,000 people per year. They are more common in men than in women. Diagnosing a pneumothorax in a chest radiography image is not difficult for an experienced physician or radiologist, but in some cases, it can easily be missed. Usually, it is diagnosed by a radiologist on a chest x-ray, and can sometimes be very difficult to confirm as discussed above. An accurate AI algorithm to detect pneumothorax would be useful in a lot of clinical scenarios. AI could be used to triage chest radiographs for priority interpretation or to provide a more confident diagnosis for non-radiologists. In other words, a machine learning-based pneumothorax diagnosis technique from the chest X-ray image is required to assist a physician to diagnose a pneumothorax.
Source: This problem belongs to one of the competitions held on Kaggle, which can be found on the following link :
1.2 Business Objectives:
We have to predict the pneumothorax and segmentize it based on the X-ray images
Time taken for prediction should be from few seconds to few minutes.
2. Deep Learning problem:
In the above section, we have seen what a pneumothorax is and how it gets diagnosed, So the next step is to formulate the problem as a Deep Learning problem. For that first, we will check what kind of data we have.
2.1 Data:
We have two CSV files one for the training set and one for the testing set. The training CSV file contains the image(X-ray) IDs and their corresponding RLE masks and the testing CSV file only contains the image(X-ray) IDs.
The data is comprised of images in DICOM format and annotations in the form of image IDs and run-length-encoded (RLE) masks. Some of the images contain instances of pneumothorax (collapsed lung), which are indicated by encoded binary masks in the annotations. Some training images have multiple annotations.
X-ray ID and it’s corresponding RLE encoded mask
Images without pneumothorax have a mask value of -1. This means a blank mask.
X-ray ID and it’s corresponding RLE encoded mask
This dataset can be found here:
2.2 Mapping the real-world problem to a Deep Learning Problem:
2.2.1 Type of Deep Learning Problem:
As we have seen above in the dataset section we have a dataset in the form of images, and our task is to predict the mask of pneumothorax in the X-ray image. This problem is of Semantic Image Segmentation problem. This model will assist a physician to diagnose a Pneumothorax.
For solving this we have to use Deep Learning techniques which are used for non-structural data like Audio and video files, images. In this particular case, we have data in the form of X-ray images which is one of the unstructured data.
I will give a little introduction about Image Segmentation,
Basically, Image segmentation is a task where we classify pixel values of images belonging to a particular object class. So based on the way of classifying these pixels there are broadly two types of Segmentation, Semantic segmentation, and Instance segmentation. Consider the below images:
Semantic segmentation :
In this technique, all the pixels of a similar type are segmented with the same color as we can see in the above image. It detects that there are persons in pink shade and background in the black color.
Instance segmentation:
This technique segments all the similar objects or pixels in a different color, we can see that in the above image each person is represented by a different color.
As discussed earlier our problem falls under the Semantic Segmentation category where we have to label a pixel either a mask or a non-mask(background).
2.2.2 Evaluation metric:
Now we know this problem is a semantic segmentation problem. We have to define a metric for the evaluation of our Deep Learning model. There is a more commonly used and better metric for the evaluation of segmentation models called the Dice Coefficient.
Dice coefficient:
The dice coefficient originates from Sørensen–Dice coefficient, which is a statistic developed in the 1940s to gauge the similarity between two samples. It was brought to the computer vision community by Milletari et al. in 2016 for 3D medical image segmentation. Dice Loss is also known as the F1 score metric. In a simple manner, the Dice coefficient is 2 * the Area of Overlap divided by the total number of pixels in both images. Dice loss ranges from 0 to 1, with 1 signifying the greatest similarity between predicted and truth.
Dice Coefficient = (2 * Area of Overlap)/(total pixels combined)
Loss Metric:
Whenever we solve a machine learning problem or a deep learning problem, we need a nice trustworthy loss function to check whether our model is performing better or not. Loss functions are basically chosen on the basis of the type of dataset and the problem we solve. Our problem is Image Segmentation, for evaluation of Segmentation Models researchers have found that Binary Cross-Entropy and the Dice Loss is the best combinational loss function we can use. This combo loss is very helpful for problems with imbalanced datasets. So I will be using this combo loss as a loss metric in the whole case study. Combined the two methods allow for some diversity in the loss while benefitting from the stability of BCE.
3. Existing Approaches:
3.1 4th place solution:
https://www.kaggle.com/c/siim-acr-pneumothorax-segmentation/discussion /108397
This is the 4th place solution in this competition. This is based on U-Net with a deep supervision branch for empty mask classification. He uses the U-Net model and ResNet34 as backbone network with frozen batch-normalization. He used some augmentation techniques like ShiftScaleRotate, RandomBrightnessContrast, ElasticTransform, HorizontalFlip from albumentations library. The optimizer used was Adam and a batch size of 8. For fast convergence, the proportion of non-empty samples linearly decreased from 0.8 to 0.22 depending on the epoch. His final ensemble was an average of 4 best checkpoints over 8 folds.
3.2 Unet Xception Keras for Pneumothorax Segmentation:
https://www.kaggle.com/meaninglesslives/unet-xception-keras-for-pneumo thorax-segmentation
This kernel is shared by Siddhartha. And this is based on the pre-trained imagenet Xception model with ResNet decoder. He has used cosine annealing and Stochastic Weight Averaging to converge to a better optima. He says in this kernel that the model’s performance can definitely be improved by using some other tricks, one obvious way is to use KFold Cross-Validation. Augmentations used in this kernel were ElasticTransform, GridDistortion. And the image size used was 256x256. He used U-Net architecture with Xception as the backbone network and he calls it the Uxception model.
4. My first cut approach:
I will be using the following steps so as to start working with the case study:
Data Collection:
For any problem, we want to solve using MachineLearning or Deep Learning algorithms we need a sufficient amount of data. We may sometimes struggle while collecting the data from various sources or sometimes it is not a tedious task. Thankfully the competition organizer has provided the data for us, we just have to download it and start working. So I will collect the data using wget chrome extension for downloading it fast from here:
Note: We can also download the dataset using Kaggle API. Click here to know-how.
2. Preprocessing:
As we are provided the data with the .dcm format which is a DICOM image format, I will have to extract the images from .dcm format and make the data suitable for training the Deep Learning model. Also in this step I will be working on the creation of segmentation masks for all the available training data. Mask data is given in the form of Run Length Encoding, so I will have to generate the masks using that encoding. For this purpose, Organizer has provided the function, so I will be using that.
3. EDA(Exploratory Data Analysis):
Actually, we have the image data so we will not be able to do much EDA as we do in any other problems having many features to compare. But the good thing is we have Dicom files which have some metadata about the images. This metadata may not be totally useful while training a model but we can get some insights from it so as to understand the data. I will try to perform EDA on the available metadata and also the mask information available to us.
4. Model Development:
Now I will be having some insights from the data and the masks generated in the preprocessing step. Here I will be using the Deep Learning technique for solving the problem. This is an image segmentation problem and there are many deep learning algorithms available for performing the segmentation task. I will use the most popular vanilla UNet architecture as a baseline model for this task. Based on the results of this model I will try different architecture so as to achieve reliable model performance.
5. Exploratory Data Analysis:
5.1 Let’s analyze the training data provided to us,
train_data = pd.read_csv('siim/train-rle.csv', delimiter=',')
train_data.head()
train_data.info()
In the above information, I can see we have a total of 12954 X-ray files as training data
We have two columns in the dataset:
ImageId = ID of X-rays for each patient checked
EncodedPixels = Run Length Encoded Pixel data for each X-ray image
Let’s check if there are any duplicate ImageId in the dataset.
# add column if the file is duplicate or not
train_data['isDuplicate'] = train_data['ImageId'].duplicated()
train_data.head()
# check where the files are duplicate
dupImages = train_data.index[train_data['isDuplicate']==True]
print(f"We have total {len(dupImages)} duplicate image ids") Output: We have total 907 duplicate image ids
We should always drop duplicate files,
print(f"With duplicates we have total {len(train_data)} files.")
train_data = train_data.drop(list(dupImages))
print(f"Without duplicates we have total {len(train_data)} files.") Output: With duplicates we have total 12954 files.
Without duplicates we have total 12047 files.
Now I have dropped the duplicate ImageIds now I have to add a path for each Image Id for further processing of X-ray images,
train_data = train_data.drop('isDuplicate', axis=1)
train_data['ImagePath'] = 'siim/train_dicom/'+ train_data['ImageId']+'.dcm'
# save the .csv file for further use
train_data.to_csv('train_images_dicom.csv', index=False)
train_data.head()
5.2 Let’s analyze testing data provided to us,
test_data = pd.read_csv('siim/stage_2_sample_submission.csv', delimiter=',')
test_data = test_data.drop('EncodedPixels', axis=1)
test_data['ImagePath'] = 'siim/test_dicom/'+ test_data['ImageId']+'.dcm'
# save the .csv file for further use
test_data.to_csv('test_images_dicom.csv', index=False)
test_data.head()
test_data.info()
In the above information, I can see we have a total of 3205 X-ray files as testing data
We have one column in the dataset:
ImageId = ID of X-rays for each patient checked
The second column for the image path is added by me.
5.3 Analysis of metadata,
As discussed in the earlier part of this blog, we have images in the DICOM file format. So what is DICOM?
DICOM(Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) is nothing but another format for storing images just like .png and .jpeg, the only difference is with .dcm format we can store the metadata of the image into this along with the image. This format is commonly used in the medical imaging field. Now, almost all forms of medical imaging have become digitized and the spectrum of radiology includes not just digital radiographs but also CT scans, MRIs, ultrasound, and nuclear imaging. DICOM is the file format used for storing the images which can be X-ray scan, a CT-scan, etc. along with the metadata.
Let’s start analyzing DICOM files, we have a great library in python to work around DICOM files i.e. ‘pydicom’
we can use the following line of code to install the ‘pydicom’ library,
pip install pydicom
The metadata available with given images is too large, it is having a lot of information. Not all information is useful for us so we will analyze some of the important data from the file like patient age, sex, etc.
# Check the total no. of males and females in the dataset
mens = len(meta_data[meta_data["Gender"] == "M"])
women = meta_data.shape[0] - mens
print(f"We have total {mens} Males, and total {women} Females in the DataSet.") Output: We have total 6626 Males, and total 5421 Females in the DataSet. #Check the number of pneumothorax affected people and healthy
healthy = len(meta_data[meta_data["Affection"] == "No"])
ill = len(meta_data) - healthy
print(f"We have total {healthy} healthy patients, and {ill} pneumothorax affected patients") Output: We have total 9378 healthy patients, and 2669 pneumothorax affected patients
Let' visualize the above-found information in the form of Pie charts,
From the above Pie chart, I can see 55% of the total patients are Males and 45% are Females.
This Piec chart shows that 78% of patients are Safe, they do not have pneumothorax and only 22% of the people are affected by Pneumothorax.
So above is the Pie chart for distribution of pneumothorax with respect to patients Gender, We can see the distribution for Males and Females is nearly the same.
77.5% of males are healthy and 22.5% of males are affected by Pneumothorax.
78.2% of females are healthy and 21.8% of females are affected by Pneumothorax.
It is evident from the above chart that the percentage of affected Males and Females is nearly the same, So now just plot age histogram for checking the age-wise distribution of patients
Observations:
First of all the overall distribution of age looks almost normally distributed but not exactly.
0–6 years babies are not affected by Pneumothorax in this dataset.
From the age of 7–85 years, there is at least one patient which is affected.
Most of the affected patients are of age 51 years.
But we cannot say a particular age group is Affected because we have much variance i.e. patients of almost all ages above 6 years are affected.
6. Data Preprocessing:
We have the files in the form of .dcm files, we cannot use them directly for training the model. So we have to convert them into .png format. Also, I have to create masks for respective images which also will be in .png format.
So let’s start,
6.1 DCM to PNG conversion:
By using the following function we can convert our .dcm files into .png.
6.2 Mask Creation:
We have data with masks are Run Length encoded, We have to understand what is this actually so the above video gives a clear idea about RLE. Run-length encoding (RLE) is a form of lossless data compression in which runs of data (sequences in which the same data value occurs in many consecutive data elements) are stored as a single data value and count, rather than as the original run. This is most useful on data that contains many such runs. Consider, for example, simple graphic images such as icons, line drawings, Conway’s Game of Life, and animations. It is not useful with files that don’t have many runs as it could greatly increase the file size.
RLE : a4b3c3
E.g.
Input: aaaabbbccc
RLE : a4b3c3
Now I have all the files in .png format, Next step is to create ground truth masks for each image in the training dataset. We have mask data in the form of Run Length Encoded Pixels so we have to convert them into .png images. Organizers have provided a function for creating masks using RLE to the pixels which is shown in below code snippet.
Below is a sample X-ray and it’s the corresponding mask I created using the above function,
Sample X-ray with a mask from provided data
Above is a sample X-ray and it’s the corresponding mask
In the original X-ray, it is difficult to recognize if there is a pneumothorax or not.
But the ground truths are provided to us and I have printed mask image for the X-ray which I have shown in a Red-colored patch, this patch is the presence of Pneumothorax.
The third image is an X-ray with its mask, I can see the exact location of the mask on the X-ray.
7. Deep Learning Models:
Note: The main objective of this study is not to achieve great accuracy or outperform any model, but the objective is to explore how the model behaves and performing the output analysis so as to understand the behavior of the model.
7.1 Vanilla U-Net:
As a first cut approach, I am using a vanilla U-Net structure which is described in this paper ‘U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation’
U-Net Architecture
Code used for this Vanilla U-Net model is lengthy so I am not including that here, you can find the whole code in the Github repository I have provided a link to.
Following are the results of using the Vanilla U-Net model,
Dice Coef and Loss graphs U-net
From the above graphs, I can say that model for train and test sets is working fine but it is not improving the score after 0.36014.
This is maybe due to the U-Net network architecture is vanilla, and I should try something else than this vanilla structure
7.2 Double U-Net:
As its name suggest this is nothing but a combination of two U-Net models. This architecture is from the paper “DC-UNet: Rethinking the U-Net Architecture with Dual Channel Efficient CNN for Medical Images Segmentation”
A short explanation of architecture by the author:
DoubleU-Net starts with a VGG19 as encoder sub-network, which is followed by a decoder sub-network. In the network, the input image is fed to the modified UNet(UNet1), which generates predicted masks (i.e., output1). We then multiply the input image and the produced masks (i.e., output1), which acts as an input for the second modified U-Net(UNet2) that produces another the generated mask (output2). Finally, we concatenate both the masks (output1 and output2) to get the final predicted mask (output).
Original Double U-Net Architecture
The above architecture provided by the author is good but as we can see there are multiple encoder and decoder blocks, it means a lot of training parameters, So due to the unavailability of strong resource to train I thought of changing the architecture a little by using 2 blocks instead of 4 blocks as shown in the below figure.
Modified Double U-Net Architecture
Not only removing blocks but also I have changed the image data format into the ‘channel first’ format, this is a tip provided by experts that channel first data format works better than channel last data format. The code for the architecture can be found on my GitHub repository.
By using the above architecture I got the following results:
Dice Coef and Loss graphs Double U-net
After 30 epochs the model gave the dice coefficient of 0.25491, of course, it is not that good but as discussed earlier I am experimenting. I saved the best model with a 0.25491 dice coefficient.
After this, I did some analysis, for what type of images the model is giving a high score and for what type of images the model is giving less score. I calculated the dice score for each image in the dataset and found that the images which are having a large number of background pixels are the ones for which a model gave a high score, and this means that low score images are those which are having a small number of foreground pixels. This is a classical case of imbalanced datasets, as we are having a dataset where about 80% of the patients are healthy and 20% are the affected patients.
So, for fighting with the data imbalance issue I used the class weighting method and provided more weight to the foreground pixels(which is our interest to predict correctly) and less weight to the majority background pixels. By using this weighted metric I trained the previous model further for 3 epochs but found no improvement. Below are the predictions made by both models:
Predictions by a model with no weighted metric
Predictions by a model with weighted metric
These image plots show that the results are more or less similar to each other. There are many other ways to handle the data imbalance problem than the class weighting method, unfortunately, due to some time constraints I trained this model only for 30 epochs and also did not try other methods to tackle data imbalance. But the score can be definitely be improved by training the model for 300–1000 epochs and along with some other methods like oversampling the minority class data and also the augmentation techniques will also help to improve the score.
8. Final Pipeline:
So, now I am using the saved model and creating a final pipeline that we can think of deploying.
# load the saved model model.load_weights('/content/drive/MyDrive/27_Case_study_2/best_Double_Unet.hdf5')
We can use the above function as follows predicting the pneumothorax,
9. Deployment:
I have deployed the above-explained model using Flask API, following is the demo video of how the deployed web application works,
Pneumothorax Detector Demo Web Application
10. Future Extensions:
We can use different methods available for handling data imbalance, better augmentation techniques, etc. Unet++ architecture can be used for solving this deep learning problem.
11. References:
[1] https://www.firstaidforfree.com/what-is-a-spontaneous-pneumothorax/
[2] Drbeen explains Pneumothorax: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRMcgLvKeIE
[3] Pneumothorax Animation: https://youtu.be/DgU1HE_6ueI
[4] https://towardsdatascience.com/metrics-to-evaluate-your-semantic-segmentation-model-6bcb99639aa2
[5] https://www.kaggle.com/jesperdramsch/intro-chest-xray-dicom-viz-u-nets-full-data
[6] https://www.kaggle.com/retyidoro/eda-of-pneumothorax-dataset#Exploratory-Data-Analysis-of-Pneumothorax-dataset
[7] https://www.kaggle.com/schlerp/getting-to-know-dicom-and-the-data/notebook
[8] https://www.postdicom.com/en/blog/handling-dicom-medical-imaging-data
[9] https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/run-length-encoding/
[10] U-Net: https://arxiv.org/abs/1505.04597.pdf
[11] Double U-Net: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.04868.pdf
[12] https://www.appliedaicourse.com/
[13] How To Run Flask In Google Colab
[14] Building a Web Application to Deploy Machine Learning Models | by Joseph Lee Wei En | Towards Data Science
[15] Host static images for your apps or website on Google Drive. (Hotlink to GDrive images) | by Pius Aboyi | Noteworthy — The Journal Blog
Thanks for reading the blog, here I would like to thank my Mentor throughout the case study and also the whole AppliedAiCourse team.
Full Work with all the code can be found here on my Github profile:
Connect me On LinkedIn: | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/siim-acr-pneumothorax-segmentation-d92af3086b51 | ['Harshwardhan Jadhav'] | 2020-12-13 16:33:23.834000+00:00 | ['Deep Learning', 'Segmentation', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Healthcare', 'Computer Vision'] |
Try this one, eyes closed, let’s conjure a clock. | Try this one, eyes closed, let’s conjure a clock. A tall one, wooden and worn. Now up, you float, why not, you can, lift off, with no need to stand. Go on to the clock, go floating on over, and even try flying inside. Check out the gears, the coils and oils, the metals and smells, and movements and noise, all turning aligned in time. Try adding some more, more bells and more whistles, more brass and more spires and chimes. No clock was so grand, no one would believe, except there inside of your mind. Complex inner scenes, so quickly conceived, on a whispering hint of a whim. While before us outside, in perpetual mist, a world only glimpsed at and guessed. Processed, projected, invented, pretended, imagined so well that we simply forget it. This beautiful vision we always will see, and never will share, and never will leave, is a world we believe into being. A world only seen on a mini mind screen, by a muddling, meddling, mammal. Green leaves found the sun long before there were eyes, before all direction, just spinning in time. No up and no down, all being or not, an ocean of elements churning. Colliding, collecting, combining, becoming, they went from a sum to a some. All floating on by, until pulled down inside, we capture and call it a smell. We grope and we grip and we pull and poke and we move and we mate and we swell. Our time becomes space, and our movement a memory, a map is a mind, and a mind is a place. A squint and a sliver of spectrum is glimpsed, and the pieces are patched, and colored and stitched. It fills up a view, reconstructed in kind, that completes what we think, is the world of outside. And the palace completed is now freely filled, with things never seen or detected. The collisions combined, and now we do find, a mind has its own pair of eyes. And we sit at a scale that’s exactly midway, between smallest of smalls and the biggest of bigs, so it seems only right, only fittingly fitting, to think of ourselves as a king in a kingdom. Alone on a throne in a play on a stage, in a concocted castle of infinite range. I glance at my glass, it sits well beyond, the spherical sketch of mind’s eye. It twinkles and sweats, and beckons and yet is a mere molecular set. A hand moves out blindly, through darkness until, by math and by magic connects, as a will. To grasp and to pull and to sip and to taste. A delight, back inside, of a self, what a place. A scene, of lush palms, and waters, and breeze. And voices, and movements, and echoes, and me.
- — F i x P l s — @fixplspoet — ©2020 — - | https://medium.com/@liamhawry/try-this-one-eyes-closed-lets-conjure-a-clock-32a1bf51d3bc | ['F I X P L S'] | 2020-11-24 14:56:13.938000+00:00 | ['Writers On Medium'] |
A Beginner Guide on Preprocessing in Natural Language Processing | Natural Language Processing is used frequently in our daily lives — whether you use Siri for reminding about unfinished tasks, sorting out emails, or even playing games!
All of those are possible thanks to Natural Language Processing, but what is Natural Language Processing? Simply put, It is how computers process human language, whether it is in the form of documents, or voice. The result of Natural Language Processing is a computer that “understands” and recently computers are able to respond back to the user.
Image Retrieved from WordStream
There are few steps involved in (well, at least, traditional) Natural Language Processing, Data Preprocessing, Converting it into features, Training the Model, and evaluating it. For this article, we will take a look at Preprocessing the data.
One of the challenges in Natural Language Processing is pre-processing the data so the computers can learn from it. Usually, Natural conversations have many words that carry almost no meaning, and it is our task to only “highlight” important words or keywords so that our computer knows that this word is carry meaning and informative.
There are several things you could do in Preprocessing the data:
Regex Filter (remove all unnecessary stuff like HTML tags, numbers, etc.) Case Folding (Lowercase Everything) Tokenization (split sentences into words) Stopword Removal (Remove most common words) Stemming / Lemmatization (turning words into their basic form)
Regex Filter
This step is usually used when you collect data, especially from scraping websites and storing it as a string, usually, there should be HTML tags which do not contribute to the meaning or context of the paragraph. So in this step we can use Regex which filters out most HTML tags and unnecessary information such as numbers.
Example Regex in Python language
Case Folding
This step only changes all Uppercase into Lowercase so there is no difference between FiSh, Fish, and fish. You can use the function .lower() in Python to make all words in the data become lowercase.
Tokenization
In this step, we basically just turn the filtered sentence into lexical tokens (or individual words) so that the computer can find importance of each words, instead of a sentence.
Stop word Removal
First of all, what is a Stop word? A stop word usually refers to the most common words in a language, for example, “to”, “you”, “we”, “he”, “a” can be safely ignored while retaining the information contained in the paragraph. You can also add your own stop words while doing the preprocessing.
Stemming / Lemmatization
These two methods have similar purposes — extracting the base form of the current word. Stemming works by removing the affix from each word, for example, “liked” will be changed into “like”. One example of a popular stemming algorithm is using PorterStemmer from NLTK library.
Lemmatization is similar to Stemming, but tends to be more accurate because it tries to refer to the vocabulary and the meaning of the word, while however more slower than Stemming. | https://medium.com/bina-nusantara-it-division/a-beginner-guide-on-preprocessing-in-natural-language-processing-7ff98a0f988c | ['Limas Jaya Akeh'] | 2020-12-23 23:08:05.028000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Beginner', 'Data Preprocessing', 'Naturallanguageprocessing'] |
Attention Control 0.1 — what happens each hour?.. | First day with keeping every hour on track showed me how easy it is for me to derail from work…
Again, keep in mind that everything that we do at work or off work is connected to us…that is what we spend our attention, and that is where we spend ourselves…
Before this exercise I would just feel that I am slacking a bit, but now I know for sure on what exactly I spend my hours on…
Only a few times alarm clock got to me when I was fully focused on work, the other times I was starting at social networks, I was stuck for an hour on meetings or waiting for them…first half of the day I was practically just talking to people in order to find out what is it they actually want…
Abd at the end of the day we also had a meeting and interesting thing that I noticed and thst Korol was mentioning a long time ago…if I know that the meeting will be in 15 minutes it is hard for me to focus on work…
The example Alexander gave back then was that he would ask his friend if she had time to go for a walk for an hour tomorrow, and she would say “no, I don’t have time”…and if he would ask what exactly she is doing, she would say that she will be changing tires for a car…not by herself, but will bring the car to the service…
And that is all?.. let’s there is 12 hours that we don’t sleep, we need to eat for 3 hours, need to take a car to the service for a few hours, if it’s longer, we can just leave the car and go…and go and do something…
So there should be plenty of time to take a walk….BUT!
Obviously, sometimes people are really busy and they just don’t want to tell us all the details…so he would ask anyone who would respond in this matter, what other things that person is doing…
And you can imagine that there were people, that were really busy, there were people that just didn’t want to go with him, but the majority was very surprised by the fact, that if they count it there will be plenty of time…THEY WERE SURPRISED!
what does it tell us?.. that this one task took up the whole day of attention, so these people won’t be able to do anything productive then that one task!
So that is how our attention work… going back to the waiting for meetings — it is the same, as soon as I know there will be a meeting in my mind I am already there, my attention, my focus is on the meeting, and I am not present for my task for these 15 mins…and that happens towards most of the meetings…most of the chats — while I am waiting for a response from a person I cannot perform my tasks, because my attention is on that chat…
So it is an art to be able to be present at any given task any given time…but there are obvi rules on that as well and we will get to them…
For now, let me know if you noticed anything strange during every hour in day — did it surprise you how much time you spend on social media?.. or you were working on your tasks constantly and it seems that alarm clock was ringing only every minute or so?..
Did you feel any difference in how the time was going between those hours?.. | https://medium.com/@belovasymbols/attention-control-0-1-what-happens-each-hour-e1e9cd54214d | ['Natalia Belova'] | 2020-12-27 16:07:32.147000+00:00 | ['Wasted Time', 'Wasted Potential', 'Attention', 'Control', 'Time Management'] |
Climate action helps improve *every other issue at the same time* | Photo by Gustavo Quepón on Unsplash
Acting on climate simultaneously improves every other important issue we care about
First, a little perspective.
“The climate crisis is not just another issue. It is an era.” — Alex Steffen
That’s because our climate is the context in which everything else takes place. We rely on it for everything.
And these irreversible changes being set in motion will impact our descendants and all life on earth for thousands of years.
What I’m trying to say here is this: if we get climate wrong, nothing else will be right.
Connecting the dots — how climate intersects with every issue
What follows only scratches the surface of why climate matters for each issue, but I hope it illustrates how all-encompassing the climate crisis is. And why we should be prioritizing it.
Healthcare
Burning fossil fuels doesn’t just heat up the planet — it also poisons all of us with air pollution.
Over 7 million people die from air pollution every single year. That’s one person every 5 seconds.
By 2030, the United Nations conservatively expects climate change to cause “250,000 additional deaths per year, from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea and heat stress alone.”
…not to mention higher rates of infectious diseases like Lyme and West Nile virus. Or all the hospital visits and healthy years of life lost due to lung cancer, asthma, heart disease, strokes, diabetes, etc. caused by air pollution.
These are some of the reasons why the World Health Organization says:
“Climate change is the greatest threat to global health in the 21st century.”
And
“The Paris Agreement on climate change is potentially the strongest health agreement of this century.”
The Economy
Inaction on climate is way more expensive than action.
Or as Ben Franklin said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
If society miraculously limits warming to just 1.5°C, the IPCC estimates it will cost the global economy $54 trillion by 2100. At 2°C, that price tag goes up to $69 trillion.
Thankfully, at this point, the IPCC is just one voice in a choir of dire warnings on the risks climate change poses to the financial system and the benefits of taking bold action now.
A coalition of 34 central banks released a report in April 2019 recommending actions to avoid a “climate-driven sudden collapse in asset prices”.
The first US government study to look at climate’s impact on Wall Street was published in September. This was their #1 conclusion:
“Climate change poses a major risk to the stability of the U.S. financial system and to its ability to sustain the American economy.” — Commodity Futures Trading Commission report.
“Without even accounting for the many trillions of dollars saved by improving public health and avoiding climate damages, the [Project Drawdown] researchers estimate that keeping global temperatures below the 1.5 degrees C target would result in a global net economic savings of $145 trillion.” — Dana Nuccitelli on The Drawdown Review
Given the need for economic stimulus packages after COVID-19, research out of Oxford recommends a green recovery: “based on surveys of more than 200 of the world’s most senior economists and economic officials, suggests that spending this money on climate-friendly “green” policy initiatives could not only help shift the world closer to a net-zero emissions pathway, but could also offer the best economic returns for government spending. ”
” Clean energy is already cheaper in 2/3 of the world.
40 top US economists call for an immediate price on carbon to address climate change and correct a “well-known market failure”
“The efficiencies associated with [decarbonizing America] will end up saving the average household up to $2,000 per year in reduced energy costs.” — Rewiring America
Blackrock, the largest asset manager in the world, is accounting for climate risk and making sustainability the cornerstone of their investment strategy because they believe it’s their fiduciary duty to do so.
The high level economics are quite clear. Climate mitigation and adaptation investments are a no-brainer. The longer we wait, the more costly it will be.
Bringing it down a level, pretty much every business is impacted in one way or another whether it be through physical climate risks or transitional ones as climate positivity becomes the norm.
Some industries in particular that come to mind as being highly impacted include energy, real estate, agriculture, insurance, tourism, and financial markets.
Let’s be clear — even if the economics weren’t favorable, the metric to prioritize when talking about the climate crisis is lives, not dollars.
But as this is the economy section, the main takeaway is this: sustainability is the future of the economy.
Racism
Two excerpts for you here. The first is from Hop Hopkins’s “Racism is Killing the Planet”.
“I really believe in my heart of hearts — after a lifetime of thinking and talking about these issues — that we will never survive the climate crisis without ending white supremacy.
Here’s why: You can’t have climate change without sacrifice zones, and you can’t have sacrifice zones without disposable people, and you can’t have disposable people without racism.”
(In case you’re unfamiliar, a sacrifice zone is the term used for communities that are right next to power plants, industrial factories, etc. and are constantly exposed to pollution (aka poison). These are usually low-income communities, predominantly made up of people of color. The most obvious example in the US is Cancer Alley in Louisiana where people are 50 times more likely to get cancer than the average American.)
And here’s Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson in “I’m a black climate expert. Racism derails our efforts to save the planet.”
“Black Americans are disproportionately more likely than whites to be concerned about — and affected by — the climate crisis. But the many manifestations of structural racism, mass incarceration and state violence mean environmental issues are only a few lines on a long tally of threats. How can we expect black Americans to focus on climate when we are so at risk on our streets, in our communities, and even within our own homes? How can people of color effectively lead their communities on climate solutions when faced with pervasive and life-shortening racism?
Look, I would love to ignore racism and focus all my attention on climate. But I can’t. Because I am human. And I’m black. And ignoring racism won’t make it go away.”
Coronavirus
Deforestation and the ongoing loss of biodiversity make pandemics like COVID-19 more likely.
Exposure to high levels of air pollution leads to more inflamed lungs, which in turn makes you more likely to die from the respiratory disease.
We have to listen to the science early to prevent the worst from happening.
Jobs
The IPCC wrote in 2018 that we need “rapid and far-reaching transitions” in every aspect of society that are “unprecedented in terms of scale” to cut emissions in half by 2030.
Do you know what this means?
It means jobs. Millions and millions of jobs.
Currently:
US clean energy jobs outnumber fossil fuel jobs 3 to 1 .
. Investing in renewables and energy efficiency creates nearly 3x more jobs than investing in fossil fuels.
than investing in fossil fuels. Wind technicians and solar installers are the first and third fastest-growing jobs in the US.
But going forward, we essentially need to bring our entire infrastructure into the 21st century, making it emissions-free and climate-resilient.
This means retrofitting virtually every building, updating the power grid, prioritizing people’s mobility over cars’ in our cities, installing electric charging stations everywhere, building up a high-speed rail infrastructure, expanding regenerative agriculture, and restoring ecosystems.
Recent studies:
UC Berkeley’s 2035 study: 500,000 jobs would be created each year to reach 90% clean electricity by 2035. That’s 8.5 million jobs in total. And wholesale electricity prices would be 10% cheaper.
Sierra Club & PERI study: “Congress could provide family-sustaining jobs for over 9 million people every year for the next 10 years” to build “a healthier, more equitable, clean energy economy that leaves no one behind.”
Rewiring America’s exhaustive research: “an aggressive national commitment to electrify all aspects of our economy would create up to 25 million good-paying American jobs over the next 15 years and 5 million sustained jobs by mid-century. This is the first analysis of the job opportunities that would result from a rapid and total decarbonization of the economy as a whole.”
Shoutout to the Green New Deal, Jay Inslee, and Biden’s climate plan here as well.
Climate action = millions of jobs.
Taxes
The world is starting to pay more and more for the destruction caused by climate change.
In 2017 for example, extreme weather cost the US a staggering $306 billion, or 1.5% of GDP.
Yet, as infuriating and as stupid as it is, governments around the world still subsidize fossil fuels to the tune of $492 billion in direct subsidies, and an estimated $5.3 trillion in indirect subsidies according to the IMF.
In the US, it came out to $649 billion combined.
We need governments to make life-giving investments, rather than life-taking ones.
Immigration
The UN estimates there could be up to 1 billion climate migrants by 2050. A study last month said 1.2 billion people are at risk.
One billion people is equivalent to every person in South, Central, and North America.
The most commonly cited number, however, is 200 million. That’s 200 million people, through no fault of their own, who will be forced to leave their homes in order to survive.
Over the last 10 years, 260 million people were displaced by sudden-onset disasters. It’s unknown how many more were displaced by slow environmental degradation such as desertification or sea level rise.
I do this work to help save and improve lives.
So this is actually one of the things that I worry about most.
This scale of human suffering is unimaginable.
When I think about people being forced to leave their homes because of the climate crisis, I feel a mix of emotions. My body gets heavy with a deep grief. I get pissed at the powerful people who got us into this mess and continue to delay action. And the sheer injustice of it all…I believe the climate crisis will eventually be seen as a crime against humanity.
Minimizing warming and helping lower-income countries to become more resilient will help people to keep their homes and communities.
Foreign policy
Climate change is the ultimate global, collective threat of the 21st century.
If one country doesn’t do their fair share, they’re screwing everyone else over.
This of course is bad for relationships, gaining trust, respect, and a decreasing ability to lead.
Violent Crime, Guns, and Terrorism
Violent crime increases on the hottest days by about 6% (it’s not 100% clear why this is, but it’s well established). This means every 1°C rise in temperature leads to 10’s of thousands of more assaults every year in the US.
Another study indicates that terrorism also increases on the hottest days. Researchers looking at 45 years of data in 159 countries expect terrorist attacks would increase by 14% in a world that’s 2°C hotter.
And we’re in line for a lot more hot days…in addition to, globally at the very least, more underlying reasons for conflict as people may increasingly struggle to meet their basic needs.
National Security
The US Department of Defense has called climate change a “threat multiplier”.
They see it causing instability in regions around the world. It’s been on the DoD’s radar since the early 2000s, at least. According to the Pentagon, “climate change will affect the Department of Defense’s ability to defend the nation and poses immediate risks to U.S. national security.”
In 2017 a group of retired military officers wrote in a letter to top White House officials, “Climate change poses strategically significant risks to U.S. national security, directly impacting our critical infrastructure and increasing the likelihood of humanitarian disasters, state failure, and conflict.”
Education
“Everyone needs to be educated on climate change because climate change and our response to it is going to change the world over the next 25 years as much as the internet did in the last 25 years.” — Joe Romm
We need to prepare students for the climate impacted future they’re stepping into — for the increasingly unstable world they are inheriting.
We must teach them the urgency of the situation, how and why it came about, and empower them with the skills, tools, solutions, and mindsets needed to help overcome this massive challenge by finding a good job in the climate-changed economy.
Related: There are 62 million girls around the world with barriers impeding them from getting an education. Removing those barriers is a highly underappreciated climate solution.
Wow, that was a long one. Hope it was helpful in connecting some dots and/or for sparking climate conversations going forward! | https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/climate-action-helps-improve-every-other-issue-at-the-same-time-d6d4597adf75 | ['Crowdsourcing Sustainability'] | 2020-11-05 14:37:03.231000+00:00 | ['Climate Action', 'Economy', 'Climate Change', 'Healthcare', 'Environment'] |
Portfolio Explanation & Objectives | The portfolio is not real, does not take into account any fees and does not constitute investment advice. Please invest responsibly. Any questions or feedback send to [email protected]
Overview
Bitcoin was just the first iteration of digital assets, and it’s innovation has paved the way for an entirely new asset class. There has been an eruption of digital assets that hit the market and position themselves as having a unique network value. The sheer volume over a short period has caused a clutter of noise and speculation, ultimately leading to extreme volatility in this young market. And without official regulation, even some ‘slight of hand’ projects have thrived, leaving investors with empty pockets. Our aim, through our research, is not only to cut through the clutter and find the projects that we believe will ultimately succeed in the space but formulate a calculated investment plan and strategy around this emerging asset class. *Note: We take a long-term approach and steer away from short-term plays or hype projects. This strategy is best suited for people who believe in the digital asset class for the long-term. Patience is your ally.
How it works
We provide a hypothetical portfolio that we track. We started with $10,000 USD on December 1st, 2017. The portfolio is not real, it does not take into account any fees and does not constitute investment advice.
Core and Satellite Approach
At Coin Hunter, we use a similar strategy to the traditional core and satellite approach used commonly amongst wealth managers. For us, this involves building a large core portion of stable, time-proven, and fundamental coins aided by two smaller satellite portions which are inherently riskier but provide much more upside potential. If significant profits are yielded through the satellite positions, the philosophy is to strengthen your long-term holdings by distributing them back to the core position. We also maintain a cash buffer to allow us to capitalise on market dips or to take money off the table if we believe the market is overvalued. | https://medium.com/coin-hunter/portfolio-explanation-objectives-a97d632248f7 | ['Coin Hunter Research Group'] | 2018-08-14 03:35:11.834000+00:00 | ['Investing', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Portfolio Updates', 'Crypto Portfolio', 'Bitcoin'] |
The Future of Food | An agricultural age gap may threaten the future of farming, but organizations like Viva Farms and Skagitonians to Preserve Farmland are set on saving the farming lifestyle.
By Gabriel Guevara
Incubator farmers use Viva Farms wash/pack facility and cold storage unit in Mount Vernon, Washington. The infrastructure and equipment is leased by Viva Farms to provide crucial support for farmers to flourish and offer vital assistance in the everyday work. Photo credit: John Paul Minor.
Between the Cascade Mountain Range and the Puget Sound, northwest Washington is bursting with rich agricultural land, nurtured by a mild coastal climate and high rainfall. But, as the average age of farmers rises, the local and regional food economy stands at risk if there isn’t a new generation ready to take their place.
Located in Skagit and King County, nonprofit organization Viva Farms is helping to secure the future of local food production. The organization offers education, resources and land to aspiring farmers as the food economy moves into the hands of a new generation.
The average age of agricultural producers is witnessing a dramatic increase due to younger generations’ reluctance to replace ageing farmers, according to the Committee on World Food Security, consequently creating a ‘generation gap’.
Infographic created using data gathered from the 2017 Census of Agriculture.
To help address the problem in western Washington, Viva Farms established the Farm Business Incubator program. It is a bilingual program offering support to both beginning and experienced farm workers.
Members of the program receive access to land, equipment, markets and training to help them build an independent farming career.
Mathew and Giana Cioni, the owners of Crows Farm, began leasing land in Skagit County through Viva Farms in fall 2014. Despite setbacks caused by the pandemic and a trouble recruiting workers, the Cioni’s were able to adapt their small family farm and have a successful season.
“I think that being in the organic food business right now is a good place to be. People are really interested in where their food comes from,” said Giana Cioni, in reference to the unknowns introduced by the pandemic when factories shut down. “I think a lot of people turn to their local food supply.”
Still, there can be a separation between the people and where their food actually comes from. In an attempt to reinforce the bond between producer and consumer, Viva Farms established a community supported agriculture (CSA) program.
The CSA program is a subscription-based service. Once subscribed, members receive a weekly package from their local farms loaded with seasonal organic vegetables and berries. Such programs first arose in the U.S. in 1986 with just two farms.
By 2007, over 1,700 farms utilized the program. Viva has embraced CSA as a sales model, inviting people in Skagit County to share in the risk of farming. By purchasing farmers’ produce in advance, the community gives these farmers the assurance their products will be sold.
Supporting the preservation of the local and regional food economy, Viva Farms continues to offer assistance in the struggle to keep farming alive. But there is another group in Skagit County who is looking out for the wellbeing of farmers as well.
Skagitonians to Preserve Farmland (SPF) advocates for the long-term viability of agriculture within Skagit County. From creating a program to permanently preserve areas of farmland to hosting farm tours so the public gains a deeper understanding of agricultural infrastructure, the group aims to establish a legacy of successful farmers and protected farmland for present and future generations.
Ben White, professor emeritus of rural sociology at Erasmus University Rotterdam, said the challenge of finding land to farm is the main barrier for younger generations. SPF offers a program that works with people seeking farmland and connects them with farmers who are either selling or leasing their land. This preserves the farmland that otherwise might be developed for non-agricultural use.
“Farmland is constantly shrinking and we’re always fighting the battle to keep as many acres as possible,” said Rachel Sorrels, development and administration manager of SPF. “The more that farming and farmland disappear, the harder it is for people to provide food for the rest of the world.”
A unique aspect of Skagit Valley is how farmers practice crop rotation, said Sorrels. She gave the example of a cabbage farmer planting in one location and a potato farmer planting in another. After the crops are harvested, the two farmers may then swap their areas of farmland for the next cycle of planting. Crop rotation is a vital technique used for conserving Skagit County’s rich soil and nutrients.
Each year, Skagit County farmers gather to collaborate on the next crop rotation. This strategic occasion is locally referred to as a “pinning.” During the pinning, farmers work together to identify the best possible locations for produce in the coming planting season.
For the past 21 years, Julie and Gerry Minor have owned and operated Faithland Growers. In the midst of the pandemic, the family farm is only receiving a fraction of their estimated profit from tourists. But the Skagit Valley community is helping this business to thrive. Loyal customers are spending more money in an effort to keep the family farm afloat, said Gerry Minor.
Gerry and Julie Minor stand in front of their business sign on Highway 20 in Mount Vernon, Washington. In this troubling time for family farms, the Faithland Growers survived the season thanks to support from their community. Photo credit: John Paul Minor.
Farming is traditionally passed down through generations within established farming families, said Sorrels. Considering the high cost of land, if one is not in such a succession, it is incredibly hard to get into the profession, she said.
The Minors said their business will not be taken over by their children. Generally, the generation gap exists because young people find farm life unappealing, according to White. The Minors argued a major barrier is how hard it is to turn a profit.
“The mentality nowadays is about money. Money is supposedly your self-worth,” said Gerry Minor. “It seems to be pounded into this generation more than the sweat of the brow, which now seems to be a thing of the past.”
Right now, the future of food is blurry. Farmers of today struggle against challenges spread by COVID-19. Farmers of tomorrow face the hurdle of entering the profession. But if organizations like Viva Farms and SPF continue to fight for preserving the agricultural lifestyle, if the bond between farmer and community is nourished and continues to grow, then the future of food may not be so bleak.
“It’s increasingly difficult to be a small farmer and it’s increasingly difficult to become a new farmer,” said Sorrels. “Until we change how people think about food and the value of food and the value of everything, we will continue to see a growing divide between the haves and have nots.” | https://theplanetmagazine.net/the-future-of-food-e3b854426fdb | ['The Planet Magazine'] | 2020-12-15 20:35:19.548000+00:00 | ['Young Farmers', 'Skagit Valley', 'Future Of Food', 'Agriculture', 'Farming'] |
5 Fast Facts About the HEROES Act of 2020 | 5 Fast Facts About the HEROES Act of 2020
The HEROES Act delivers the goods, but at what cost?
Introduction
You’ve been hearing a lot about stimulus bills for the past few weeks. The first one was the CARES Act signed into law in March. That was the law that gave many Americans a $1200 stimulus check. That bill helped many people, but the overwhelming consensus was that it didn’t go far enough.
Since then we’ve heard a lot about other stimulus plans. There was the Emergency Money for the People Act, the Automatic Boost for Communities Act, and the Rent and Mortgage Cancellation Act. We’ve discussed the first two at length on this channel.
The issue with the other proposed bills is that they may have been too liberal to get through a conservative senate and signed into law by a conservative president. However, a new bill has emerged that may have the ability to succeed where the other bills failed.
It would take a real hero to come up with something that a very divided nation can agree on. But it seems that the House of Representatives has delivered just that. The Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions, or HEROES Act, is the latest in a wave of stimulus packages being debated in congress.
1. Housing Benefits
The HEROES Act will offer many forms of assistance that our nation currently needs. One of the first things the HEROES Act would do is protect the nation’s over 40 million renters by banning eviction for nonpayment for a year after the date the bill passes into law. The bill also supports homeowners by allotting $75 billion of homeowners’ assistance to present default and foreclosures.
Most notably, the HEROES Act bolsters renters by providing $100 billion in rental assistance. These funds would be administered by an existing nationwide grant rental assistance program that will verify the need of all applicants and distribute vouchers to cover the cost of rent and utilities.
2. Unemployment Benefits
There are currently 36.5 million Americans unemployed at the time of this writing. The HEROES Act aims to extend unemployment benefits provided by the CARES Act. Most importantly, it would extend the $600 per week federal unemployment benefit until January 2021. The unemployment benefit will continue to be extended to gig workers, independent contractors, part-time workers, and the self-employed through March 2021.
3. Student Loan Forgiveness
Originally, the CARES Act deferred student loan payments for people with select federal student loans until September 30, 2020. The HEROES Act would continue to defer payment up to September 2021 for all federal student loans including HEAL loans not owned by the Department of Education, some FFEL Program loans, and Federal Perkins Loans.
Most notably, the HEROES Act seeks to cancel up to $10,000 of student loan debt for some federal and private student loan debt holders. The $10,000 of debt cancellation would be applied to the loans with the highest interest rates, and then to the loans with the highest principal balance if the debt holder does not specify otherwise.
4. Stimulus Payment
What most readers might find exciting is that the HEROES Act has a provision to include a second round of stimulus payments of up to $6000 per household. Much like with the first round of payments, people with an Adjusted Gross Income of up to $75,000 per year would receive a one time check for $1200.
Basically, if you were eligible to receive the first round of stimulus checks, you’ll be eligible to receive the second round. However, if you have an AGI of $99,000 or more, or are married and have an AGI of over $198,000, you will not receive a stimulus check.
Things are a little different this time around though. The first round of stimulus checks excluded adult dependents, many of whom are college students. The HEROES Act allows up to three dependents, regardless of age, to also receive $1200. This allows for up to five people in one household to receive $1200, maxing out at a total of $6000 per household. So this time, college students would receive benefits. Also, the first round of stimulus payments left out immigrants with Taxpayer Identification Numbers or TINs. The HEROES Act, if passed into law, would include them.
5. Hazard Payment
Arguably the most noteworthy portion of the HEROES Act is the “Heroes Fund”. This $200 billion fund gives hazard pay to some essential workers. This hazard pay comes in the form of an additional $13/hour pay premium on top of the worker’s regular pay rate. This pay is for all hours worked in essential industries through the end of 2020,” valuing up to $25,000 for essential workers earning less than $200,000 per year, and up to $5,000 for essential workers earning more than $200,000 per year.
Challenges Ahead
The HEROES Act sounds like an answer to the prayers of many Americans. However, it’s important to remember that the act hasn’t been signed into law yet. The HEROES Act only narrowly passed in the House of Representatives by a vote of 208 to 199 on May 15. One has to also consider that the bill contains another $3 trillion of economic aid.
This is in addition to the $6 trillion MSN.com says the United States has spent on stopping the country’s economic downturn.
COVID-19 is among the most significant events in the past 100 years. However, it’s not the only economic event taking place in the United States. Bloomberg.com says that the nonpartisan Committee for Responsible Federal Budget predicts that the national deficit, the shortfall between how much money the country makes and spends, will be $3.8 trillion this year if Congress doesn’t engage in anymore stimulus spending. That might not sound like a lot of money to some people. But it’s 18.7% of our country’s Gross Domestic Product. The United States hasn’t spent this much as a percent of its GDP since World War 2.
The Committee goes on to predict that the national debt could increase to over 100% of the country’s $21 trillion economy by October 2021. They also estimate with nearly 37 million Americans out of work, the GDP is likely to shrink by 3.9% when compared to fiscal year 2019. Regardless of anyone’s personal feelings towards our politicians, this is among the considerations the Senate and the President have to take into account before signing the HEROES Act into law.
My Recommendation
With the HEROES Act, increasing national debt and deficit, as well as a shrinking GDP, there are a lot of moving parts to make any kind of recommendation as to the best way forward for the country. Please also remember that I’m not an economist or a politician. With that said, I’m going to take my best shot at recommending a solution for moving forward.
I’d recommend that the Senate and the President sign the HEROES Act into law, on the condition that everyone understands that there will have to be difficult decisions made in the country’s future regarding its economy. It is important that the United States win the war against COVID-19. If we’re going to spend like we’re at war, we might as well treat the problem like we’re at war in other regards.
Bloomberg.com noted that the United States hasn’t spent this much as a percentage of its GDP since World War 2, and I feel like that’s an important comparison.
When World War 2 ended in 1945, the country had just come out of the Great Depression and the most expensive conflict the world had ever seen.
The United States took some noteworthy steps in revitalizing its economy. Most notably, the US sold Victory Bonds and expanded the middle class by making college and housing affordable.
Bond Programs
The United States needs to fight COVID-19 with every weapon available to it. But it can’t do that if it’s concerned about the fiscal impact of those actions. I would support a program similar to a Victory Bond program where the US sells a portion of its debt in the form of bonds to Americans. The bonds would mature over time. The longer the bonds are held, the more interest they’d accrue and perhaps they’d fully mature sometime in around 2040.
Making College Affordable
I would also like to see the middle class expanded. This was done through the introduction of the Montgomery GI Bill after World War 2. The GI Bill allowed veterans to be able to afford to go to college and seek high skilled, high paying jobs. The 21st century equivalent to this would be to make higher education affordable or even free to Americans going into college today.
This was the case in the United States up until fairly recently. Community colleges were free up until 1984 in the US. In-state public schools were charging $4563 on average for the 1984–1985 school year. That amount would be $11,365.47 in 2020, which is still roughly half the average $20,770 price of public college in the US for the 2017–2018 semester.
Helping Americans to Buy Homes
In another parallel to World War 2, the VA Home Loan made buying a house affordable for veterans returning home from the war. This could be duplicated today by forgiving the $1.6 trillion student loan debt in the US. Many Americans make student loan payments that are roughly equivalent to mortgage payments. Essentially, they are paying for a house they will never own, keeping them from buying a home and paying the taxes and fees that come with home-ownership. Forgiving this debt would cause the majority of the 44 million Americans who owe student loans to purchase homes once the crisis ends.
Conclusion
The House of Representatives narrowly passed the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions, or HEROES Act on May 15. The act still needs to be voted on in the Senate and signed into law by the President before it becomes law. It offers many features that the CARES Act did, like giving Americans another $1200 stimulus check. But this time, it aims to help more people by enhancing eligibility for payments, giving hazard pay to essential workers, and keeping people in their homes.
The HEROES Act is nice, but it’s not free. It comes with a $3 trillion price tag. This in addition to the country’s other obligations could put the US at having a debt higher than its GDP. This hasn’t occurred since World War 2. I believe World War 2 solutions, with a modern spin, would help solve our country’s 21st-century debt problems. | https://medium.com/makingofamillionaire/5-fast-facts-about-the-heroes-act-of-2020-2eac45f12055 | ['Keith Mcbride'] | 2020-05-23 13:26:00.820000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Finance', 'Money', 'Economics', 'Uncategorized'] |
22,000 Hours of Gaming | Here’s what I’ve learned
Since I got my Nintendo 64 for Christmas in 1998 I’ve been playing an average of between 2–4 hours per day.
Where it all began for me!
I remember the first and only Christmas that I received a gaming console as clear as day. It was Christmas Eve 1998, and my parents and grandparents had gone out together and bought me and my sister each our Nintendo 64. This marked the beginning of my relationship with gaming.
The first game that I ever got was Mario 64, which definitely is not a bad place to begin playing games looking back!
I would play Mario 64 for 30 minutes every night with my dad, and we would try to get one star every day until we completed the whole game. You can imagine it took some time to get through it, but we finally did after many months of trying, and it was amazing. I remember spending so much time running up the never-ending stairs towards the end of the game thinking that if I run for long enough, I would eventually get to the top. It didn’t work that way, and I found out days later that I had to continue getting stars in order to reach the end of the stairs. All the experiences I had and the fondness I created made me more interested in checking out other games as I got older. Thinking back at it it was so much fun playing Mario with my dad, as he provided the knowledge and skills that I didn’t have as a six or seven year old.
Beneficial or harmful?
Whether it’s been beneficial or harmful is a question that I had to ask myself many times. How many hours of gaming is bad for you, and how many hours is ok? I feel like video games have probably been more helpful to me than harmful. The reason why I say that is because my personality is more introverted, and as an introvert I need more time alone to relax, and time to choose whether or not I should be social. I realized that video games were a good way to be social on my own terms.
World of Warcraft gave me an amazing chance to be social on my own terms.
“I feel like video games have probably been more helpful to me than harmful.”
In high school I had pretty bad grades. There were a few exceptions, and those exceptions were English, social science, and other language classes. In most other classes I had trouble keeping up, and I was also having trouble with people bullying me, which also made me less motivated to continue.
Bullying and gaming
Being bullied might have been a factor that made me play more games, but it is definitely not the only reason why I was playing so much. I believe that has to do with my personality. As an introvert I recharge my energy by being alone. Having some alone time helps me recharge my batteries at the end of a busy day, and then I can go out and be social the next day like anyone else. Although many people look at introverts as shy and closed off people this is not true, we simply need some time alone to recharge as opposed to extroverts who recharge by being social.
Although I was an introvert and probably would’ve played as much as I did anyway, bullying is never good for any social aspect of a child’s life or teenagers life, and it might change a person forever. It definitely changed me as a person, but I chose to use the negative in my past as fuel to become more positive, which in turn has improved my life for the better.
“You will never make new friends if you don’t go looking for them.”
No matter how many times my parents told me that I would get square eyes from playing too many games they could not pull me away from my Nintendo or computer. It didn’t matter how much they told me that I couldn’t play for more than one or two hours per day, I still tried to find ways to have as much time as I could with my favorite video games. The reason being that I fell in love with games and gaming in general. Already in elementary school I realized that I was having more fun on my own or with some of my friends playing games then I was having outside. I enjoyed games more than sports and any other activities. At some points, it was probably an addiction, and I remember my mom telling me “You will never make new friends if you don’t go looking for them.” As an adult I realize how much this makes sense, but back then it didn’t matter. The fun I was having with games outweighed most other things in life.
Telling me that my eyes would become square didn’t make me change my mind.
Is 22,000 hours even that long?
When I think about it 22,000 hours of games doesn’t seem like that much to me. This might sound crazy to some people, but to me an average of 2 to 4 hours per day it’s not that much, because I know people who spend that much time reading newspapers and books, or doing other activities like knitting or wood crafting. It’s not that I look down on these hobbies as less than what I personally enjoy. It’s more about knowing that what I love is what I spend my time doing, and back then I did it for as long as I could, which again helped me improve my life in many ways up until today.
One good example of how games helped me improve my life is my English skill. I probably wouldn’t be at the level that I am in English today if it wasn’t for gaming. Gaming helped me open up as a person at a very young age, and it helped me discover the world way younger than people in the past would have discovered it at. When I started high school my English level was pretty average, and I wasn’t doing well in reading or writing. For example, I have written in a previous article that World of Warcraft probably helped me learn way more, and way better than many of my high school classes. It has also given me a better understanding of English as a language than I would have had if I had only followed the books that I was given in school. World of Warcraft was new back then, and as an MMO it helped me meet people from all around the world and talk to them, trade and cooperate from my bedroom, which is unlike anything anyone has ever been able to do ever in history before. In that way I was very lucky that I was able to experience the birth of mainstream MMO games in 2004–2005.
Playing games from a young age probably also helped me with my math skills, which was, to put it simply: terrible. From eighth grade I was probably one semester behind everyone else in my class in math, and at one point I was even put in a special needs class in order to help me with improving my math skill. Through trading with other people directly in WoW I learned how to haggle, negotiate, and list items in the auction house. To make money in-game this way I had to know what items were worth and how to list them at the correct price, which demanded some calculating. Over time this helped me improve greatly.
Collaboration is key
Through games I was able to learn math and English in a fun way where I could collaborate with other people, people who also found it interesting to meet and converse with someone that wasn’t from the same place as themselves. This helped us grow as people and learn how to work in teams, which became an important skill as I got older.
One of the negative things of playing so many games when I was younger was that a lot of my friends were very active physically, and I was not, which led to me drifting away from some of them socially. They were playing football, or were out playing with each other, which I missed out on many times. I thought it was fun as well but I enjoyed gaming way more. Especially during the last years of high school I remember my friends coming over to visit me. I have been up until 3 or 4 AM the night before, and I was still sleeping at 2 or 3 PM in the day when they came knocking on my door. It’s funny to think about now, but at the same time it was also a warning sign that I was overdoing it. It also gave me a bad feeling about missing out on the whole day. Waking up at 3 PM never gives me a positive feeling, no matter how old I am. During those days I was probably playing 10 or 12 hours per day, which obviously is not healthy for anyone.
My fascination with gaming led me to neglect sports. Even though I didn’t play much football, I was able to collaborate with friends online.
Signs of addiction
Some days when I was younger my parents told me that I couldn’t play anymore. Some of those times would lead me to go spend my own money at an internet café, actually the only Internet café we had in my town, which cost about six dollars per hour to borrow a computer. As a young guy in high school that was a lot of money that I would happily spend in order to keep playing. This, too, is probably a good sign of gaming addiction.
Back when I was younger I had a lot of time to play games every day, and as long as I made sure that my homework was done, and all the chores in the house was taken care of I could sit down and relax and enter another dimension. I could meet people from Scotland, Belgium, Austria, Germany, and all over the world, and I got to know many of them very well. They became pretty much as good friends as my real life friends.
22,000 hours is equal to four hours every day for the past 15 years. That’s an average, so during some periods of time I played less than that, and during some periods of time I played more, but on average I probably spent four hours per day gaming since I was 12 or 13 years old. Today this is probably not that unusual, but back then the internet and gaming as a medium was still young. World of Warcraft was only a few years old, and I was in the prime age to pick it up as it was a game that was already big back then, and it would go on to make a huge impact on my life.
The benefits of competing at a young age
One result of playing a lot online is that I realize that it improved me personally. My competitiveness went up, even though I didn’t play a lot of sports I still played a lot of competitive games. Keep in mind, this was a time before the term esports existed in the same way that it does today. Competing against other people online made me a lot more prepared for the real world then I think I would have been if I didn’t play any games. If I didn’t learn the skills that I learned I probably wouldn’t be where I am today.
Learning how to speak English in high school was very valuable, and I still remember taking my final exam in high school and getting a B which in Norway is the second best score. We use a scale of one to six, and five out of six which is the second best score, where the best score is probably reserved for the top to one or two people so it was already difficult to reach. There were always a few other students who were always way better than me no matter how good I thought I was.
The English skill that I learned from gaming turned out to help me get into the study that I wanted to enroll in in upper high school, which again got me into the media and communications field, which again landed me one of the best jobs that I was dreaming about back then! Now I am actually able to work within the field that I want, and I probably wouldn’t have been able to go to that school or those classes if I wasn’t doing well in English.
The impact on my life
Overall I would say that gaming has been positive for my life. With the direction that the world is going in today where technology’s becoming a bigger part of our lives year after year I think that having the skills and interests that I developed as a result of gaming will be useful for the years ahead. Many parents might agree that too much gaming is bad for you, and I agree with this as well, however we need to realize that 2–4 hours per day isn’t that unusual anymore due to the technological society we live in. Even though I probably could have been considered a gaming addict at many points in my life I believe that the positive aspects combined with being an introvert outweighs the negative aspects. That being said, addiction is a serious problem, and I encourage anyone who believes that they might have trouble with gaming to seek help. However I do not believe that gaming in general is negative, and would strongly advise people who believe so to do some research on your own to figure out why. When we read headlines about kids who are spending more time indoors and becoming addicted to gaming I believe that we need to look at the bigger picture, as the media is known to pull stories from the fringes that may not always paint a clear picture of the situation. That being said, shining a light on all aspects of gaming will benefit gamers and parents as a whole, and it will help us make better decisions in the future.
How has gaming impacted your life? | https://medium.com/@janegilolsen/22-000-hours-of-gaming-94bf8131eb18 | ['Jan Olsen'] | 2020-12-02 16:09:13.896000+00:00 | ['Personal Growth', 'Growing Up', 'Life Lessons', 'Gaming', 'Personal Development'] |
6 Tips For A Powerful HR Technology Strategy | HR Technology Strategy
If you’re a CHRO or an HRIT Manager, one of the major challenges you might be facing is the digitalization of HR processes. Whether it’s attracting or retaining talent, reducing costs, gaining a competitive edge or driving HR efficiencies, digitalization has become imperative.
And this should reflect in all the core processes of the employee lifecycle — right from hiring, onboarding, engagement to offboarding.
According to a study by Gartner, 88% of chief HR officers say they need to invest in about three or more technologies over the next two years.
While this is an important step towards bringing in greater efficiency in HR processes, it can also be an overwhelming undertaking for most HR heads.
Additionally, the wide array of options in the HR technology market can be mind-boggling, making it difficult for CHROs and HR heads to identify which new HR technologies to choose so as to maximize the benefits of digitalization and ensure business alignment.
But it is also essential to recognize that the digitalization of HR management extends beyond just adopting efficient technology. Essentially, as important as investing in technology is, the real impact on HR processes can be brought about when the technology is employee and consumer-centric as well. Using technology to bring in transparency in HR processes and to foster interactive, personalized experiences, is what true digitalization is all about.
With how things currently stand, not adapting to technology means a detrimental impact on cost per hire, cost per employee and the overall productivity of the workforce. Hence it has become essential that HR heads identify the challenges early on and employ the right digital solutions to each problem in order to stay ahead of the curve.
Ultimately, the primary aim of adopting any HR technology should be to maximize the efficiency of HR processes and improving productivity, while reducing costs and delivering better employee experiences and business outcomes.
But with the current boom in the HR technology market, every company is trying to position their software as the silver bullet to all your HR needs. So how can you as a HR leader, ensure that you select what is best-suited to your requirements?
In order to select a technological solution that will help you accomplish your organizational goals, establishing a well thought out HR technology strategy is critical. In this article, we give you 5 tips to help you form a powerful HR technology strategy.
6 Tips For Forming A Powerful HR Technology Strategy
1. Assess your existing HR Technology landscape
The primary step in establishing an effective HR strategy involves assessing your existing HR technology landscape thoroughly; Take stock of the technology you are currently using and assess whether it meets all your current and future requirements. Actively look for opportunities to leverage technology and automation to streamline workflows in all facets of the HR function.
If there is a need to change your existing technology solution and adopt other, emerging technology providers, you should determine the level of investment it requires and map it against the current HR technology cost. Even before you invest in new technology, ensure that you have a solid grasp of its possibilities and limitations. World’s renowned HR industry analyst, Josh Bersin recommends the below HR Technology Architecture as a part of the HR Technology Market 2020 Report.
HR Technology Architecture
2. Optimize HR Technologies
Most companies tend to have poorly integrated HR technology applications that are obsolete and have functional gaps, making them difficult to use. This impacts employee adoption.
Hence companies should find ways to optimize and modernize the existing technology while adopting other, emerging technologies as well. A successful HR technology deployment goes beyond implementation. For managing a diverse set of HR technologies, you also need to consider different factors like employee preferences, stakeholder expectations and business operating models.
Below is Gartner’s recent Hype Cycle for Human Capital Management Technology that shows the modern and emerging trends in HR technologies.
You can also refer to Gartner’s report on Assessing the Maturity of Your HR Technology Function for further insights.
3. Collaborate with IT on a digital workplace strategy
HR heads need to understand that digitizing HR processes is not just an IT initiative. Instead, HR should collaborate with various functions, including IT to establish the HR technology strategy.
Partnering with IT helps provide a new perspective on what the right technology solutions are to approach existing business problems. IT’s technological acumen can help CHROs choose the right applications to drive the digitization of HR processes.
But the HR technology strategy must predominantly be driven by HR leaders as they are aware of the employee perspective and understands which practices are required to support an effective workforce.
4. Stay updated with the latest HR technology trends
There are several innovations in the HR technology landscape in the recent past. Some prominent ones are in the areas of AI, machine learning, NLP, virtual assistants etc. And many technologies are fast emerging. Understand the maturity and adoption rates of these technologies to make an informed decision.
Today, we are seeing organizations use technologies such as chatbots and modern intranets extensively in order to enhance employee experience and reduce costs. Chatbots which are one of the most prominent applications of AI, are being used at different stages of an employee’s life cycle — right from recruitment and onboarding to engaging the employee, fostering retention or offboarding. Chatbots provide self-service to employees and help them complete HR tasks like applying for PTO, access HR policy documents, get answers to their questions and more.
Read more: How Chatbots are Revolutionizing The HR Department
Modern intranets too are finding their way into the workplace, changing the ways in which employees can communicate and collaborate with each other. Mesh, an intranet accelerator solution by Acuvate, can be used by organizations to build an intranet that specifically fits their needs. It comes with a host of different features for communication, collaboration, authoring etc. and can be directly deployed on Office 365 and SharePoint Online. It also comes with a companion bot named “MeshBOT” that can provide employees with a rich self-service user experience.
According to Gartner, the emerging technology trends that HR heads must be aware of include:
Internal Talent Marketplace — Uses marketplace principles to match internal employees, alumni, and contingent workers to short-term projects and other work opportunities, without any intervention from a recruiter.
— Uses marketplace principles to match internal employees, alumni, and contingent workers to short-term projects and other work opportunities, without any intervention from a recruiter. Voice of the Employee (VoE) — Uses VoE technology to collect and analyze the opinions, perceptions and feelings of employees and workers.
Uses VoE technology to collect and analyze the opinions, perceptions and feelings of employees and workers. Virtual Assistants (VAs) Conversational interfaces that are tightly integrated with the HCM suite and other HR applications.
Conversational interfaces that are tightly integrated with the HCM suite and other HR applications. Platform as a Service (PaaS) — An application toolkit provided by HR software vendors that includes development tools, multiple APIs and frameworks, enabling customers to extend an application beyond its delivered configuration options.
— An application toolkit provided by HR software vendors that includes development tools, multiple APIs and frameworks, enabling customers to extend an application beyond its delivered configuration options. Worker Engagement Platforms (WEPs) that are designed to boost employee engagement by providing positive experiences at work.
that are designed to boost employee engagement by providing positive experiences at work. Machine learning capabilities that provide analysis and recommendations to improve processes through the identification of trends and patterns.
5. Agile Product Development and Gamification
According to a report by Gartner, the two HR capabilities that CHROs and HRIT managers must adopt for the future of work are Agile product development and Gamification. While less than 30% of HR functions are estimated to have adopted either, Gartner believes that agile product development is a way to quickly deliver HR solutions in response to ever-changing employee needs. Gamification, on the other hand must not be adopted as a means to make HR processes more entertaining. Rather, HR heads must only gamify those processes from which a unique value is to be achieved that couldn’t be achieved with the help of other tech avenues.
6. Partner With The Right Vendors
Understand your business requirements and shortlist them based on priority. Take inputs from all departments including IT and legal. Consider your workforce needs, culture challenges and characteristics Interact with your peers and HR professionals who work in your industry Shortlist 2–3 vendors and request for a demo. Ask them to provide a sandbox environment which your team can use to experience the solution’s features. Consider asking for client references.
In order to ensure that digitalization helps accomplish the organizational goals, HR heads must not only implement the most promising technologies but also, optimize, manage and measure them based on business outcomes. Partnering with the right vendor is also the key to success.
If you need help in devising your HR technology strategy or exploring new technologies, please feel free to get in touch with one of our HR technology experts for a personalized consultation. | https://medium.com/@poonam-chug/6-tips-for-a-powerful-hr-technology-strategy-e87072b8ff81 | ['Poonam Chug'] | 2020-12-16 12:14:06.704000+00:00 | ['Hr Technology', 'Hr Strategy', 'Hr Intranet', 'Remote Work'] |
Improved Data Services Discusses the Most Effective Ways to Communicate with Your Debtor | Improved Data Services Discusses the Most Effective Ways to Communicate with Your Debtor
Far too often, small businesses put off debt collection in an effort to avoid communicating with their debtor. It is understandable; debt collection can be an uncomfortable process for people who may not know the best way to approach their debtor. However, similar to most aspects of business, communication is key and should not be viewed as something to be avoided but as an opportunity. Improved Data Services, a debt collection agency based in Williamsville, New York, sympathizes with these businesses and offers the following advice to better help companies collect payment.
Phone Calls & Emails
Companies will often prefer to use emails to communicate with debtors to avoid any awkward, first-hand conversations. While there is nothing wrong with using email to communicate with a debtor, the most effective form of communication remains calling over the phone. An email or invoice is easy for a debtor to ignore and allows them to put off, potentially indefinitely, a future payment. Debtors are far more likely to answer a phone call than an email, allowing a connection to build between the caller and the debtor. If used properly, small businesses can use this call to communicate effectively with the debtor and create a payment plan that is more likely to be paid.
Professional Communication
Whether or not the debtor is willing to answer any phone calls or emails, a business must speak in a professional manner during each stage of correspondence. It can be easy for many people to slip into a harsh tone when frustrated or angry; however, during any form of communication with a debtor, this is to be avoided. Debtors are far less likely to make a payment or work with a business if they believe they have been treated poorly. For this reason, companies should keep a polite, professional manner when discussing any overdue payments with a debtor.
Hire a Professional
If a debtor has not made a payment in more than 90 days or responded to any recent emails or phone calls, it may be time to hire a professional debt collection agency. Hiring a debt collection agency can be an effective way to communicate with a debtor that their debt will not be forgiven. Unlike many businesses, an agency has the time and resources to pursue a delinquent debt long-term. Companies are often unable to pursuing a debt long term as it can hurt their business by drawing focus away from current clients and tying up valuable staff. To this end, companies shouldn’t view hiring a debt collection agency as a defeat but as passing the baton on to an ally. | https://medium.com/@improveddataservices/improved-data-services-discusses-the-most-effective-ways-to-communicate-with-your-debtor-7128c9da1e09 | ['Improved Data Services'] | 2021-01-21 15:14:32.450000+00:00 | ['Improved Data Services', 'Debt Collection Agency', 'Debt Collectors', 'Debt Collection', 'Debt'] |
CLASS PLACEMENT RATE: WHAT DOES THE DATA TELL US? | I came across a class placement dataset recently on Kaggle. I wanted to carry out EDA analysis on the data and also practice my skills in machine learning. The dataset looks at the placement rate if students based on multiple criteria such as gender, degree taken in the university, if such students have an MBA with a specialization etc. For the context of my visualization in tableau, I examined several questions, some of which you can find below as well as the insights I was able to derive from the data.
a) What is the proportion of the placement rate?
A lot of students were able to secure a placements with industries. From the visualization, we can see that about 70% of students were able to secure placements as against the 30% who were not placed.
b) Do students who have previous work experience have an edge over students who don’t?
Work experience doesn’t seem to have an impact on students being placed. The visualization tells us however that students with no work experience had higher placement rate than students with work experience. On the other hand, students with work experience had a lower rate of not being placed (5%) compared with student with no work experience (27%).
c) What’s the likelihood of men getting placed compared to women?
Men are two times likely to get placed compared to women. This in itself is something that is still quite prevalent today across various industries.
d) What is the maximum salary distribution by gender?
Just as men were two times more likely to get a job placement, they were also likely to get more salary when compared to their female counterparts.
e) What is the placement distribution based on the degree obtained while in school?
Communications and Management had by far the highest placement rate compared to the other two, Science & Technology and Others. This could be due to a high demand for Communication and Management across industries in a particular period of time.
To view my complete visualization or download my tableau workbook, please visit https://public.tableau.com/profile/oluwafunmilayo8574#!/vizhome/PlacementData_16066821447100/Workexperience | https://medium.com/@oluwafunmilayo/class-placement-rate-what-does-the-data-tell-us-6364d677264e | ['Oluwafunmilayo C. Sofuwa'] | 2020-12-03 09:29:49.356000+00:00 | ['Shecodeafrica', 'Visualization', 'Placement', 'Tableau'] |
Exploring SimCLR: A Simple Framework for Contrastive Learning of Visual Representations | Unsupervised Representation Learning
Unsupervised representation learning is concerned to address the following issue:
How can we learn good representations from unlabeled data?
Besides the question of what a good representation is, learning from unlabeled data has great potential. It can unlock a number of applications that current transfer learning hasn’t been able to address. Historically, however, unsupervised representation learning has been a much harder problem than its supervised counterpart.
As a simple example, let’s consider the task of breast cancer detection. Currently, all the best solutions use ImageNet pre-trained models as a starting point in the optimization process. Interestingly, even though there is a significant difference between breast cancer slide images and regular ImageNet samples, the transfer learning assumptions still hold to some extent.
To have an idea, most supervised datasets for breast cancer detection, like the CAMELYON dataset, do not compare in size and variability with common Computer Vision supervised datasets. On the other hand, we have a massive number of non-annotated slide images of breast cancer. Thus, if we could learn good representations from the unsupervised (much larger corpora) it would certainly help to learn more specific downstream tasks that have limited annotated data.
Fortunately, visual unsupervised representation learning has shown great promise. More specifically, visual representations learned using contrastive based techniques are now reaching the same level of those learned via supervised methods — in some self-supervised benchmarks.
Let’s explore how unsupervised contrastive learning works and have a closer look at one major work on the area.
Contrastive Learning
Contrastive methods aim to learn representations by enforcing similar elements to be equal and dissimilar elements to be different.
In recent months, we have seen an explosion of unsupervised Deep Learning methods based on these principles. In fact, some self-supervised contrastive-based representations already match supervised-based features in linear classification benchmarks.
The core of contrastive learning is the Noise Contrastive Estimator (NCE) loss.
In the equation above, you can think of x+ as a data point similar to the input x. In other words, the observations x and x+ are correlated and the pair (x, x+) represents a positive example. Usually, x+ is the result of some transformation on x. This can be a geometric transform aimed to change the size, shape or orientation of x, or any type of data augmentation technique. Some examples include rotation, sheer, resize, cutout and more.
On the other hand, x- are examples dissimilar to x. The pair (x, x-) form a negative example and they are meant to be uncorrelated. Here, the NCE loss will enforce them to be different from the positive pairs. Note that for each positive pair (x,x+) we have a set of K negatives. Indeed, empirical results have shown that a large number of negatives is required to obtain good representations.
The sim(.) function is a similarity (distance) metric. It is responsible for minimizing the difference between the positives while maximizing the difference between positive and negatives. Often, sim(.) is defined in terms of dot products or cosine similarities.
Lastly, g(.) is a convolution neural network encoder. Specifically, recent contrastive learning architectures use siamese networks to learn embeddings for positive and negative examples. These embeddings are then passed as input to the contrastive loss.
In simple terms, we can think of the contrastive task as trying to identify the positive example among a bunch of negatives.
A Simple Framework for Contrastive Learning of Visual Representations — SimCLR
SimCLR uses the same principles of contrastive learning described above. In the proposed paper, the method achieves SOTA in self-supervised and semi-supervised learning benchmarks. It introduces a simple framework to learn representations from unlabeled images based on heavy data augmentation. To put it simply, SimCLR uses contrastive learning to maximize agreement between 2 augmented versions of the same image.
Credits: A Simple Framework for Contrastive Learning of Visual Representations
To understand SimCLR, let’s explore how it builds on the core components of the contrastive learning framework.
Given an input image, we create 2 correlated copies of it, by applying 2 separate data augmentation operators. The transformations include (1) random crop and resize, (2) random color distortions, and (3) random Gaussian blur.
The order of the operations is kept fixed, but since each operation has its own uncertainty, it makes the resulting views visually different. Note that since we apply 2 distinct augmentation functions on the same image, if we sample 5 images, we end up with 2 × 5 = 10 augmented observations in the batch. See the visual concept below.
To maximize the number of negatives, the idea is to pair each image (indexed i) in the batch with all other images (indexed j). Note that we avoid pairing an observation i with itself, and with its augmented version. As a result, for each image in the batch, we get 2 ×(N-1) negative pairs — where N is the batch size. | https://towardsdatascience.com/exploring-simclr-a-simple-framework-for-contrastive-learning-of-visual-representations-158c30601e7e | ['Thalles Silva'] | 2020-03-02 15:41:57.420000+00:00 | ['Deep Learning', 'Towards Data Science', 'Self Supervised Learning', 'Representation Learning', 'Unsupervised Learning'] |
The value of a smaller, simpler Christmas Day | Like wartime, this pandemic has brought out the best and the worst of humankind. Some of this has been on very public display, but much has taken place in private settings.
The smaller, simpler celebrations that this country now faces are a true gift to us all, and should be recognised as such. Think what we could achieve globally if we moved towards a simpler lifestyle, more in accordance with nature. Could we slow or even reverse the pathway we are currently hurtling down, towards our own extinction?
This year has been a difficult year for everyone, many have left and been abandoned.
Angie Patrichia
Bandung, West Java
• Christmas is a reminder to many people around the world of God’s greatest gift, Jesus, who was born in poverty and in an occupied country. Jesus’s transformative message of love brought light into a dark world, and still has the potential to do so.
Even in our cities there are many lonely people, so what’s wrong with giving them a phone call if we can’t actually visit them? And charities working both at home and abroad have lost a lot of money this year, so why not send them at least some of the money that we would otherwise have spent? If we are taxpayers, we can also “gift aid” our donations at no additional cost to ourselves. Christmas only needs to be cancelled if we choose it to be.
John Wainwright
Potters Bar, Hertfordshire
• By coincidence I have just arrived at chapter 31 of Alison Weir’s excellent book on Henry VIII: King and Court. I quote: “Because the plague was still rampant in London, Henry did not observe the usual Yuletide festivities at the end of 1525, but spent what became known as the ‘still Christmas’ quietly and fearfully at Eltham with very few courtiers in attendance; no one was allowed to ‘come thither but such as were appointed by name’”. The Tudor equivalent of tier 4?
David Anderson
Birmingham
• I’m dining alone on Christmas Day (Letters, 22 December), but plan to take my dinner on a long walk in the North Wessex Downs. A couple of butternut, stilton, leek, walnut and chilli pasties, to be made on Christmas Eve, will be in my rucksack, along with a flask of strong coffee and a camera. I know a good spot, atop a bronze age burial chamber.
Annie Bullen
Andover, Hampshire
• As we put up our decorations each year, one very important item is our “Guardian angel”. Some years ago, the outline of a little angel was printed in the Guardian with the suggestion that it could be cut out, mounted on card and put up with Christmas decorations. Well, I did just that and each year our Guardian angel takes pride of place — to the amusement of family and (in other years) visitors.
I wonder how long ago this was printed. Do any other readers still have their Guardian angel?
Mary Shepherdson
Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire
41817169 - Ezra Praise M
Program Studi Ilmu Komunikasi
Fakultas Ilmu Sosial dan Ilmu Politik
Universitas Komputer Indonesia | https://medium.com/@ezrapraise07/the-value-of-a-smaller-simpler-christmas-day-20a1ee1d7ebd | ['Ezra Praise'] | 2020-12-24 00:52:05.348000+00:00 | ['Unikom', 'Christmas', 'Ilmu Komunikasi', 'Covid 19 Crisis', '2020'] |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.