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What I learned from my first Hackathon project | In the week of Nov 2, I joined my first hackathon project at Microsoft. There were more than 30 people getting involved in this project across multiple teams. In the short five days, I have learned so much about cross-team collaboration, a deeper understanding of Diversity and Inclusion, how to get my voice heard, and many more!
This project was created to deepen our understanding of how different demographics experience our projects and services. We had in total 7 tracks and each track targeted a research question. In my track, we focused on the correlation between the usage of office products and demographics data. We found many interesting insights: customers in some specific age/gender groups use a product more often than other age/gender groups; the engagement and retention rate is skewed towards a specific age/gender group, etc. Those insights help us better understand our customers’ experiences and improve our products & service. Diversity and inclusion have been our company-wide shared core priority and value. This project is a great practice of the value and also the Microsoft mission — empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
When I was working on this project, I also had my day job to finish and was struggling over the priorities. Not only myself, but also my teammates were trying hard to balance the project, day jobs, and other urgencies as well. When I was busy with my day job, my teammates would continue the work that I had been working on. I never imagined that the collaboration could be so smooth!
In addition, I learned that the key to team success is leveraging the strengths of each other. For example, I am proficient in data visualization so I immediately volunteered to take on the visualization part of the project. It was a great opportunity for me to practice and apply my expertise in a new business scenario, and I feel more confident about my expertise after this hackathon.
Another key to the success of completing a task in a very short time period is taking accountability. I never felt the accountability so strong in my work before, as my day job did not directly rely much on other colleagues’ work. However, every piece of the work in this hackathon project is closely connected: someone needs to pull the aggregated data together; then another one creates the visualization and reports; next, someone will take a close look at the reports to generate insights and provide feedback to the first and second person to make further changes.
Lastly, I learned some good practices of leading a team by observing how leaders managing the whole team with 30+ people. It is a great idea to split the team into smaller teams/tracks and nominate leads for each track. Also, timely communication is important, especially for tackling blockers and challenges. In addition, the expectation set at the beginning may not be met due to data access or other issues. When it happens, the leaders’ ability to adjust the expectation will save lots of time and make sure that a desirable outcome will happen.
It was an amazing experience! I want to quote my own words in the final team report to end this article:
“This is my first hack project and I love my team so much! We maximize each other’s strengths to achieve a shared goal. We, as a team, are actually practicing diversity and inclusiveness in this hack, and also help Microsoft’s products embrace D&I! This spirit and practice will continue in my daily work :)” | https://medium.com/@yayunjin/what-i-learned-from-my-first-hackathon-project-2abaa89b9534 | ['Yayun Jin'] | 2020-12-08 05:37:05.087000+00:00 | ['Microsoft', 'Hackathons', 'Professional Development'] |
“Gas Farming” has nothing to do with farts, but it does smell bad for Ethereum. | “Gas Farming” has nothing to do with farts, but it does smell bad for Ethereum. WhatIfIToldYou Jan 23·4 min read
A Gas Farming bubble is coming, it has not yet started, in fact it is probably months away from even appearing on the radar of the wider crypto community, but it is coming.
Here we discuss how the tokenomics around some new projects point towards the inevitable, and why gas fees will become higher than we could ever imagine.
Ethereum transaction fees are the biggest thorn in the side for the DeFi space. Many transactions are simply not worth spending the gas on and this is killing innovative projects where non-profitable transactions deem contract interactions financially unviable.
Yes solutions are on the way and we see a tangible future approaching where these issues are mostly solved.
In such a fast paced industry however, innovation waits for nothing. Blockchain developers are finding solutions we can use right now but are these solutions sustainable?
Band-aid solutions
Chi GasToken
Last year we saw 1Inch introduce the Chi Gastoken. Innovative? Yes, but at its core it is essentially an exploit of a mechanism on the Ethereum network that exists to incentivise developers to clean up/destroy unused contacts. Not exactly good for the network, but does provide some relief to users while we wait for ETH 2.0 and other solutions to mature.
Ethanol Token
More recently we have seen some new and innovative “band-aid” solutions that aim to solve the issue for now, but these are potentially a lot more damaging to the network than the Chi Gastoken. Ethereum users can definitely benefit greatly in the short term but these solutions are simply not going to be sustainable.
In late November 2020 we saw the launch of Ethanol Token, a smart contract that offer holders USD equivalent cash back on their Ethereum transaction fees.
Ethanol rewards you with up to 100% of your gas spent on each transaction forever in ethanol tokens.
UniDexGas Token
UniDexGas Contract was launched in January 2021 by the team who developed UniDexBot, a tool for high volume traders to automate the trading of percentage based buy and sell cycles and more. High transaction fees however, significantly reduce the opportunities on small percentage price swings.
Hence the development of the UniDexGas project, which copied the concept employed by the Ethanol project but improved upon the tokenomics. The Ethanol team have since revised their tokenomics and now both projects are very similar.
What is Gas farming?
As of right now, If you were to hold both Ethanol and UniDexGas tokens, it is possible to earn back more than you spend on transaction fees, incentivising you to make pointless transactions with high fees applied. At the end of each day claim all your fees back in both Ethanol and UniDexGas.. Rinse and repeat this and you will be “Gas Farming”.
If we only had one project that offers a rebate on gas fees then this COULD be sustainable, at least for a while. However, if you know the crypto space then you know that when something works others will either want to do it better or simply make cheap clones, and more clones, and more clones.
(edit: new project - GasGains)
(edit: new project - GascashbackToken)
(edit: new project - Gasify)
(edit: new project - Fintex)
How the gas farming bubble will happen
In a scramble to avoid the rising gas fees, Ethereum users are going to have little choice, either be sucked in to the gas rebate vortex or be excluded from the network due to the insane fees.
Once more similar projects begin launching (which is already happening), the incentive to create bots to farm this gas rebate exploit will become greater and greater. Imagine bots creating 100’s of expensive transactions a day and then claiming 10 times that back in gas rebates from numerous projects similar to ENOL, UNDG, GASG, GCB, etc.
When there are gains to make, there is little regard for the consequences.
Obviously this article is neither an endorsement, nor a tutorial on Gas Farming, which is why I have left out the details of how the tokenomics work in any great depth. The intention of this article is to simply raise awareness and provide a warning of what is to come. I do not see any way out of this other than to let it ride its course, and eventually become another event we look back on for years to come. If anything, I can only hope the bubble comes and goes quickly and eventually leads to the fast tracking of more legitimate solutions. | https://medium.com/@m8trix/a-gas-farming-bubble-is-coming-b6c73b11f48f | [] | 2021-02-20 06:15:39.186000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Uniswap', 'Defi', 'Smart Contracts', 'Ethereum'] |
Give me enough space to sort my shit | The security area of airports is maybe one of the most frustrating and stressful experiences that exist out there. There are long lines. You are scared that you’ll do something wrong. There is police everywhere. And if you want to check your bag you just don’t have space for it.
One of the London Airports fixes in part this very frustrating experience. Before the security area, they have a so-called “Preparation area”.
There, travelers have desks where they can put their pieces of luggage, open them and verify if they don’t have items which won’t pass the security. If it’s the case, enough trash bins are available. And there are even tips and guidelines shown on the walls to help travelers sort their shit out.
One spot of the preparation area in a London airport with tables to sort your shit out
A smart Service Design piece
This little “Preparation area” is a smart piece of Service Design. Usually, people sort their stuff out in the security line or just in front of the security line on the ground. This creates a bit of a sense of chaos and shows to other people that going through security is shitty.
By adding a specific space for preparation it makes the security line smoother and there aren’t crowds of tourists on the floor with open luggage.
Make everyone pass through it
Everyone has to pass through this preparation area. And that’s smart too! As you’ll pass through the area you’ll see other travelers sorting their shit out wish reminds you that you maybe forgot a bottle of water in your suitcase too.
What does it mean for you?
There are experiences which can be difficult for people. Usually, you have to jump right into these experiences. There is no “preparation area” before.
Think about what parts of your service are usually stressful for your users. How could you help them to prepare themselves by giving them either mental or physical space for it? | https://service-design.co/give-me-enough-space-to-sort-my-shit-b07bce00741a | ['Daniele Catalanotto'] | 2019-06-06 04:01:00.903000+00:00 | ['Travel', 'Customer Experience', 'Airport', 'UX', 'Service Design'] |
Case Studies in Squarespace: Pros Outweighed by Cons | Case studies have become an essential (if not the essential) means by which UI & UX designers showcase their work. As I mentioned in my last posting gone are the days of in-person hardcopy portfolio reviews. So I’ve had to adapt my methodology & work to reflect this.
Of course it makes sense that potential employers & clients would want a proper case study; ideally they show both your work & your process. In fact it’s become a bit of an art form itself, in that there are various schools of thought as to whether ‘step-by-step’ or ‘problem solving’ are the best way to approach them.
There are several apps and platforms such as UX.folio that are based almost entirely on presenting case studies. I’ve found several to be far superior to my current app, Squarespace. I’ve been able to work around it’s limitations to a great degree, but am now at the point that I have to decide whether or not I tweak and adapt my current site or abandon it entirely and go the UXfolio etc. route.
First off the pros of Squarespace, at least as I see them:
• engaging if somewhat simplistic templates
• relative ease of use
I’ve found the following cons to far outweigh those however:
• limited ability to build a new page, tab, or case study
• very limited styles; often the templates don’t allow for separate fonts, spacing, & especially alignment. I’ve had to redo entire sections because the template limits the ability to do centered headers over left aligned body text.
So it seems I’ll be using my current site until I’m comfortable enough with the case study-based apps to switch over. Moving forward I would recommend skipping Squarespace entirely & going straight into UXfolio & other UX apps. | https://medium.com/@danielmcardlesea/case-studies-in-squarespace-pros-outweighed-by-c-777052e8e6d1 | ['Daniel Mcardle'] | 2020-12-18 17:47:18.673000+00:00 | ['Squarespace', 'Case Study', 'Ux Folio'] |
Why I’m Raising My Kids in an East Bay Cohousing Community | “The boys are peeing in the yard again,” I say to my neighbor one spring morning. It’s 2006, just a few years into our community-living experiment in the East Bay, and the yard is one we share. She’s got four kids, and her youngest is in between my two: the dynamic-trio ages of four, five and six.
Apparently, they think it’s funny to find special spots around the property at which to let loose. Not the worst problem, but probably one worth addressing.
“Do we care?” she asks.
It’s a great question.
“Well, in terms of the ongoing young-children-socialization project, we should probably talk to them about it, don’t you think?” I asked.
We come up with a party line, gather the boys and lay down the law. No peeing in the yard. I’m not sure if our little chat is effective, but at least my neighbor and I present a united parental front.
The boys are now 17, 18 and 19, and they’ve grown up in this unusual environment called cohousing. We’re a group of nine households — singles, couples and families — in Oakland’s Temescal Commons cohousing development, which came together in 1997 with the idea that we would build a community and therefore share our lives in meaningful ways. That means tangible resources, like cars, tools and laundry machines, as well as work, like property maintenance. But it also means our spiritual paths, health challenges, careers and extended families and, of course, the rearing of our children.
In our 20s, my husband and I thought cohousing would be a great way to live our ideals about real commitment to a wider neighborhood, a lighter impact on the earth and partnership from our cohousing partners on our life paths.
We all have fully functional homes, but we also have a shared common house with a kitchen, and part of our community life includes two meals a week together and monthly workdays. And although my neighbors and I are still in the minority when it comes to choosing this lifestyle, we do have company: There are 165 communities like ours in the US (at least 14 in the East Bay alone) and 140 forming, according to the Cohousing Association. People may pursue cohousing because they want to avoid the increasing isolation that’s common in American culture, to live more sustainably or, like us, to raise their children with the support of other adults.
When we moved into our homes in the spring of 2000, there were seven kids among us, ranging from my newborn son to 11-year-old twins; to that pack we added another two babies and two teenagers who came to live with their parents for brief periods of time. Now we’ve got a new cohort developing: three girls, ages five, two and eight months.
In our 20s, my husband and I thought cohousing would be a great way to live our ideals about real commitment to a wider neighborhood, a lighter impact on the earth and partnership from our cohousing partners on our life paths. I wanted to be able to watch and learn from my neighbors as they parented their older kids, to talk through knotty decisions and to get support when things got rough.
I’m an introvert, and the stress of trying to figure out care for and the feeding of a newborn was blowing all my social-energy circuits.
It sounded great on paper, but once we were all settled — and I was trying to learn how to be part of the community in a way that felt healthy to me, not to mention how to take care of a baby — things got tricky.
I’m an introvert, and the stress of trying to figure out care for and the feeding of a newborn was blowing all my social-energy circuits. My neighbor with the four children is an extrovert and spent her days in and out of her house, her front door open; often her kids milled around, doing their own thing, and sometimes I found myself supervising them more than I wanted to just because I was also outside with my kid. At the time, I didn’t know how to talk to her about it, so instead I let myself sink deeper into resentment.
The truth is that I’m raising my kids in cohousing in part because it challenges me to become a better advocate for myself and for them — to speak up calmly but with conviction when something bothers me.
I’m ashamed that in our beginning years—hell, probably last week too — I judged my cohousing comrades when they were experiencing something with their kids that I was not. In those early days, I hadn’t yet learned that if it’s not your kid today, it will be soon. (I take comfort in the sure knowledge that my cohousing parent comrades have judged me too.) We’ve lived our parenting conflicts in public, so to speak, in a way that perhaps a typical suburban family does not. And the thing is, you have to work through it because common meal is tonight, and sure, you can skip it, but you’re going to see that neighbor tomorrow, so you might as well deal with it now.
The truth is that I’m raising my kids in cohousing in part because it challenges me to become a better advocate for myself and for them — to speak up calmly but with conviction when something bothers me. And even though there have been intensely uncomfortable moments over these past years when parenting styles clashed, I would not trade for anything the opportunities I’ve had to observe my neighbors raising their children, because it’s given me a bigger array of tools for my own parenting than I would have had if I had just used the set I got from my family of origin.
I’ve witnessed my beloved neighbors cope with a child’s debilitating depression, a persistent marijuana habit, toxic friends, faltering sibling relationships, totaled cars and stolen bikes. I’ve talked through how to handle high school parties (yes, my child, you do need to check if there will be an adult there, and by the way, what’s the parent’s name so I can give her a call?) and how to best discuss drug use (don’t do it, but if you do, you can always call for a ride home). And constantly there has been the at-times contentious urban-school conversation: how to get our kids what they need while balancing spiritual, financial and social-justice metrics — factors that each family weighs differently.
But however challenging it has been at times to live in close community with other families, the benefits to my boys have been legion. Because they’ve grown up around a passel of kids and adults in a more intentional way than they might have in the setting of a neighborhood of single-family homes, they’ve gotten lots of chances to practice resolving conflict, learned from a variety of “aunties” and “uncles” things that my husband and I don’t know how to do — like beekeeping and golf and tennis and sculpting — and practiced being of service by helping with common meals or monthly workdays.
As far as I know, no one pees in the yard anymore. But the parenting experiment continues as we watch our children try to find their way as young adults, going to college — or not — experiencing committed loving relationships — or not — and figuring out how to make a living. And despite our diverse parenting styles, what remains for me after all these years is a fierce respect for my fellow cohousing parents. If it really does take a village to raise a child, I wouldn’t have it any other way. | https://thebolditalic.com/why-im-raising-my-kids-in-an-east-bay-cohousing-community-12f3b50bf130 | ['Kate Madden Yee'] | 2019-04-29 16:31:02.716000+00:00 | ['Bay Area', 'Community', 'Parenting', 'Cohousing', 'This Just In'] |
Linking Trade Data to Company Information | Making smart business decisions is dependent on a company’s ability to use its data effectively.
While internal company data has a lot to offer, in a world of complex connections with a fast-growing ocean of accessible data, it is naïve to think that useful and competitive information can be harvested without benefiting from external data sources. As more and more data becomes available, businesses are developing a new way of thinking:
Every piece of the puzzle is needed in order to see the big picture.
Matching these external sources to internal data becomes an entity resolution and data linkage question, and it’s one that businesses in every industry are struggling to answer. At ThinkData, we help businesses find and leverage new sources of data and match them to their own.
For example, one of our banking clients is interested in ingesting new streams of import/export data that we provide on Namara. By linking this external import/export data to their internal client data, the bank will be able to uncover new client trade activities that were otherwise unknown, identify true wallet size, investigate trade trends, monitor growth, map clients, and ultimately gain insight into a previously opaque part of their business.
Every one of these advantages is dependent on linking the bank’s internal client data to the external data feed provided by ThinkData.
UK Companies Data on Namara
To link this valuable export/import data feed to the bank’s internal client data, a third external data source is needed. This third data feed is an extremely useful public repository of all businesses in UK which can be linked to external trade data feeds. This connection provides us with the key we need to connect to the bank’s internal data. This data set was harvested and organized by ThinkData and can be accessed on Namara.
The UK companies data set has about 4 million rows of company registration information in 55 columns including basic information such as company names and addresses. Since some of the companies appear in more than one row with similar information, the data set needs to be deduplicated. After omitting the repetitive information, we can then assign a unique ID to each company in this data set. This unique ID can be used later in connecting to the import/export data.
Global Exports Data Feed
Let’s consider a scenario in which we want to use the export data feed, filtered on UK based companies, and connect this data to the UK companies information on Namara. First, let’s take a look at this data set. A sample of this data feed contains various trade information in 20 columns, such as:
Date Exporter information (name, ID, address) Consignee information (name, ID, address) Information on exported goods (weight, quantity, value, etc.) etc.
Note that not all of the columns are populated for every record. This plays an important role in choosing the columns we want to use for the matching exercise.
Results: Connecting Global Export Data to UK Companies Data
Since both the global export data and UK companies data are missing information in some columns, we decided to use the company name field in the UK companies data and the consignee name (representing UK companies involved in the deal) field in the export data feed to make the connection.
Since these two columns are always populated in both data sets, the first attempt in connecting these data sets was based on matching these unstructured text fields. An unstructured text field could contain anything and is not necessarily cleanly recorded company names.
The first step is performing the required preprocessing steps to make these data sets ready for the matching pipeline. We designed and performed a fuzzy matching algorithm which includes the following steps:
An indexing algorithm is used to extract a good subset of similar fields. This helps with the performance of the algorithm and saves time by choosing pairs from two data sets that are more likely to be a match. The candidate pairs are then processed by the text-matching algorithm. Our approach breaks down the names and takes into account many different scenarios in which a specific name can appear. This algorithm computes a score of match for each record in the global export data set to its closest match in the UK companies data. The generated scores reflect the probability of the match which then is used to extract the most likely matches. The final result would be the global export data set with an extra column which has the unique ID of the corresponding company in the UK companies data set.
The following image shows 20 randomly selected records with the corresponding match score. We can see that the score appropriately reflects the level of confidence in match and the matching algorithm has a good tolerance for small typos and variations.
Based on this ID, the two data sets are then linked and ingested to Namara. The resulting data set can then be used by the banking client to merge this information with their own internal client data.
This process adds new transaction level data to the bank’s internal data, providing them with competitive and valuable information on their current and prospective clients — information that was not available before linking to external trade and company data sets on Namara. It helps them understand not only who’s linked to trade and where they are, but what they’re importing/exporting, and how much.
Data-Driven Value
For modern companies, data is the key to unlocking major opportunities, better understanding your market, and developing advanced analytics. As we move toward AI and ML-driven tech, the quality of insight will be reflected in the quality of the data that is being used. By enriching internal company data with external feeds of data, fast-moving businesses are establishing a pipeline that can deliver them actionable information on demand, giving them the time and resources needed to grow their business. | https://medium.com/thinkdata/linking-trade-data-to-company-information-e9520f37993c | ['Thinkdata Works'] | 2019-08-08 15:17:18.382000+00:00 | ['Big Data', 'Machine Learning', 'Entity Resolution', 'Data Refinery', 'Entity Framework'] |
Ringing in a new era of police surveillance? | Ringing in a new era of police surveillance?
Notes: This post was written for an assignment in Harvard Kennedy School course, Digital Government: Technology, Policy, and Public Service Innovation, taught by David Eaves.
In September 2020, the Chicago Police Department began a partnership with Ring on a pilot basis. For the purposes of this assignment, I am assuming that this partnership has not occurred and am analyzing the merits of embarking on one, as described in the prompt.
Issue:
Should the Chicago Police Department (CPD) partner with Ring for increased surveillance aimed at improving security and reducing crime?
Background and Context:
Crime in Chicago
Crime in Chicago has been declining since 2014. Overall crime (which includes murder, criminal sexual assault, theft, and more) declined by 9% between 2019 and 2020. Compared to 2018, overall crime fell 17% in 2020; compared to 2017, it fell 25%.
Crime down in Chicago between first half of 2020 and equivalent period in 2019. Source
Yet, on an absolute level, Chicago is still considered one of the “most dangerous cities in America,” according to a CBS news who ranked it #31 on its most dangerous cities list based on the rate of violent crime relative to other US cities. In fact, the first half of 2020 saw an increase in murders in Chicago (compared to the same period in 2019) at a rate higher than the national increase.
Chicago Police Department
After the NYPD, the CPD is the largest police department in the United States with ~12,000 officers. In 2017, the Justice Department found that the CPD used excessive force and violated civil rights after a multi-year investigation in response to the shooting of Laquan McDonald, a 17-year-old black boy, by a white officer. The DOJ report called for reform of the CPD, citing that “it has never been more important to rebuild trust of the police within Chicago’s neighborhoods.”
In response, the CPD committed to a number of reforms to “become more accountable to the community”, some of which are outlined in its strategic plan and include: protecting the city and its residents with proactive, focused crime-fighting strategies, and strengthening community relationships to build trust and respect.
In assessing a potential partnership between the CPD and Ring, it will be important to understand whether, and to what extent, such a partnership would further these strategic priorities of the CPD.
Ring — How it works:
Source: Ring website
Ring, owned by Amazon, has a suite of products, including doorbells and security cameras, for home surveillance. Ring users are notified when someone rings their doorbell or when security cameras sense motion. Users can then view a live feed of their surroundings and, if they desire, upload the recording to Neighbors, a social networking app that Ring developed to enable communities to share, discuss, and report suspicious activity happening around them.
Partnering with Ring enables police departments to request video footage recorded by Ring cameras; homeowners have the right to accept or decline these requests. Police do not need to obtain a warrant to make these requests for footage. Notably, Ring cameras are powerful enough to capture footage from neighboring homes “across the street and down the block,” suggesting that the property and surroundings of non-Ring customers could also be available for police to view. Thus far, Ring has partnered with over 1,300 police departments to date, according to Gov Tech.
Police Departments that partner with Ring for surveillance, 2019
Ring does not currently employ facial recognition software, though some speculate that Ring will integrate facial recognition software, like Amazon’s own Rekognition, into its offering. This would enable Ring to “compare subjects on camera with members of a database of suspicious persons,” according to Vice News.
Given the research that shows that facial recognition is significantly less accurate at identifying people of color, it would be important to consider the discriminatory effects of using Ring for law enforcement purposes and the risk of perpetuating inequality in doing so.
What problem are we trying to solve? What does success look like?
According to the CPD’s 2022 Strategic Plan, metrics of success for the CPD are:
Reducing shootings, homicides, and other violent and property crimes
Improving community sentiment
Improving clearance rate (i.e., number of crimes for which a charge is made divided by the total number of crimes recorded)
Given that the city of Chicago’s spending on police has increased over the last ten years and that Chicago spends 14.5% of its annual budget on the CPD (compared to 6% that NYC spends on NYPD), the city may also have an interest in improving CPD efficiency through reductions in cost and reductions in the burden on officers.
Though these are some of “success metrics” that the CPD and Mayor may have top of mind (as opposed to “success metrics” for the CIO), they are relevant to the CIO for understanding why the CPD and Mayor may been keen on this partnership in the first place.
Where does this all fit into the CIO’s priorities?
The Chief Information Officer of a city has two top priorities. At the most fundamental level, he / she must “keep the lights on” by ensuring that the city’s basic technology infrastructure and the applications running on that infrastructure are running and are secure. More strategically, the CIO seeks to find ways that technology and digital solutions can enable the goals of the city.
In doing so, the CIO should strive to meet the below principles:
Put the customer at the center: As Chicago’s former CIO Danielle DuMerer put it, “focus on your users — how do residents want to interact with government? What would make it easier for city employees to deliver services?” In considering implementing products and services, CIOs should consider the value created for their users and what problems are being solved.
Protect citizen privacy: Another priority of the CIO is to protect citizen privacy and ensure that robust informed consent mechanisms are in place when citizen data is being shared. Protecting citizen privacy is especially important for building trust in government, which, studies have found, is a helpful prerequisite for the adoption of social policies.
Achieve digital inclusion / equality: Chicago has been working hard to address digital inequities through initiatives like Connect Chicago and Internet to Go. New solutions that the city implements should be in line with the city’s goals of promoting equality and should be assessed to determine who wins and who loses as a result of the technology.
Ensure security of data: A survey of more than 100 US city and county CIOs and CTOs found that 93% of them consider cybersecurity and data loss a key priority for the upcoming years. CIOs must ensure that the right tools are in place to protect their citizen’s data, and the data of their city. In this case, it would be important for the CIO and his / her team to understand the security vulnerabilities associated with Ring and the ways Amazon and law enforcement can mitigate them.
In outlining the pros and cons of the CPD’s potential partnership with Ring, it will be important to understand how the partnership would advance or hinder the above principles.
Key stakeholders involved
Below is a map and a table of key stakeholders who would affected by a CPD-Ring partnership and their interests.
Stakeholder map for those affected by a CPD / Ring partnership
Key interests of each stakeholder
What conditions does a city need to have in place to successfully deploy this service?
Product adoption / penetration: For this partnership to be successful, there must be a significant number of Ring devices being used in Chicago so that police can gather useful data. User trust: Ultimately, users have the right to choose whether or not data from their Ring devices can be accessed by the CPD. Therefore, the effectiveness of the partnership is dependent on users allowing the CPD access to their footage, which is reliant on user trust in government, law enforcement, and technology companies. Robust cybersecurity: Robust cybersecurity measures must be in place to prevent bad actors from hacking into Ring and accessing the video footage of millions of homeowners. A police force that is on board: Success of the program depends on the CPD’s support of it and willingness to commit to using it to further their law enforcement efforts. Oversight mechanisms: The city must have strong management and oversight capabilities to monitor how the technology is being deployed and utilized to ensure there is no misuse, discrimination, or other issues.
The next section will analyze the above criteria, and others highlighted previously in this memo, to assess the main benefits and risks associated with the CPD’s potential partnership with Ring, especially one that may include a facial recognition component in the future.
Pros and Cons:
Pros:
Potential to improve efficiency of the CPD:
According to the Senior Research Director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, “there is a large body of evidence that conclusively shows that more police resources and manpower does reduce crime.” With access to the footage that Ring captures, the CPD would save time from not having to go door-to-door canvassing for information, effectively increasing their “manpower.”
Would complement existing efforts and practices:
Even without the Ring partnership, the city of Chicago has the “largest network of surveillance cameras in the country,” according to the Chicago Sun Times. Citizens and businesses are already able to feed video from their network of 45,000 cameras to the CPD for crime fighting purposes. Therefore, some could argue that a partnership with Ring wouldn’t be all that different from current practice and simply serve to enhance the processes that are already in place.
National surveys indicate some public support:
According to a 2019 survey by Pew Research, “more than half of U.S. adults trust law enforcement to use facial recognition responsibly,” suggesting potential public support for a CPD-Ring partnership, even if facial recognition is ultimately integrated into the existing technology. However, while 56% of US adults say they trust law enforcement agencies “a great deal” or “somewhat” to use facial recognition technology responsibly, only 36% trust technology companies to do the same. Therefore, Amazon’s involvement in this process may detract from public support.
Financing mechanism may make this cost effective for the CPD and the city:
Based on the stats mentioned earlier about the relatively high proportion of Chicago’s budget going to the CPD, it is in the best interest of the city to find solutions that are cost-effective. A CPD-Ring partnership may be one. The business model is such that the financial burden is on citizens themselves to purchase the cameras and surveillance system, not the police, which could save the city money. Of course there are potential financial costs for the city associated with the partnership (e.g., cybersecurity, legal), which are discussed in the “cons” section.
Could help facilitate a culture of collective crime prevention:
Radd Rotello, an officer in Frisco, Texas’s Police Department, has attributed Frisco’s partnership with Ring with increase awareness and vigilance for crime prevention. The same pattern could occur in Chicago, which, in the long-run could help reduce crime by creating a culture of vigilance.
Cons:
Ring’s partnerships with other police departments reveal potential for public backlash:
As mentioned earlier, in response to backlash the CPD has received over the years, the CPD has committed to a number of reforms to “become more accountable to the community.” This partnership has the potential to worsen the CPD’s relationships with the community. In other cities that have partnered with Ring, there has been public backlash. Media coverage with headlines such as “Amazon Is Coaching Cops on How to Obtain Surveillance Footage Without a Warrant” and “Amazon is more cozy with the police than you might realize” doesn’t help. However more worrying is the long-term implications of public backlash on trust in government. Deteriorating trust in the city government could make it extremely difficult for Chicago to roll out public initiative in the future, especially those that rely on citizens to adopt them to be effective. Nationally, trust in government has been declining at alarming rates. In 1972, 70 percent of Americans expressed a “great deal” or “fair” amount of confidence in the federal government on managing domestic problems. In 2019, the figure was between 40–50%. In 2020, a Pew study found that only 20% of U.S. adults say they trust the government to “do the right thing” just about always or most of the time. In this environment, it would be particularly risky to implement programs that the public may see as infringing on their rights.
Partnership risks threatening civil liberties; infringes on privacy and informed consent:
The CPD would not need a warrant to request footage from Ring cameras. Further, police can get footage of people who don’t even own Ring based on their neighbors’ feed. This raises questions about whether the CPD would be bypassing regulation (i.e., the need to obtain a warrant) that is aimed at protecting citizens’ civil liberties. Further, it would be important to understand what policies the CPD has in place to ensure that the police are not using the data they receive for purposes beyond solving crime to mitigate the risk for “scope creep.”
Too much power to Ring?:
As David Eaves has stated, “whoever controls the servers, controls the government.” This may hold true in Ring’s partnerships with police departments. In working with police departments, Ring has implemented strict guidelines about what police departments can and cannot do and say. There is a strict PR arrangement in which police department communications about Ring have to be approved by Ring first. Ring provides police departments with “standardized comments… and scripted responses.” This type of relationship is dangerous for Chicago’s integrity and is worsened by the fact that regulating tech platforms (like Neighbors) is extremely difficult.
Risk of perpetuating discrimination and racial inequity:
Who is worse off as a result of this partnership? One group may be people belonging to minority groups. According to Vice news, “racial profiling is prevalent on Neighbors,” on which people of color are disproportionately tagged as “suspicious” by users based on analysis by Motherboard. Further, given the research that shows that facial recognition is significantly less accurate at identifying people of color, the integration of facial recognition technology could worsen the discriminatory effects of using Ring for law enforcement purposes and the risk of perpetuating inequality in doing so.
Provides a surface area for cyberattacks:
Ring is considered an “Internet of Things” (IoT) product. Deploying hundreds of thousands of cameras in a given city increases the potential surface area for attack. Dave Maass, senior investigative researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said “We’ve seen over the years that IoT devices — specifically web cameras and CCTV cameras — have proven very rich targets for malicious actors.” Further, the Unit 42 IoT Report of 2020 (which analyzed 1.2 M IoT devices across the US between 2018 and 2019) found that “98% of all IoT device traffic is unencrypted, exposing personal and confidential data on the network,” and “57% of IoT devices are vulnerable to medium- or high-severity attacks, making IoT the low-hanging fruit for attackers.” If the CPD is dragged into the aftermath of a hack on Ring devices in Chicago, it could have high costs for the city — financial and reputational.
Opens up the CPD to legal action:
As of October 2019, 30 civil rights organizations demanded that mayors and city council members “require their local police departments to cancel their Ring partnerships.” In subsequent months, and especially if / when facial recognition technology is added into the equation, the CPD could face more scrutiny and legal pressure based on their relationship with Ring. These litigations could cost the city millions of dollars; in 2018, Chicago spent more than $113M on lawsuits related to police misconduct.
Open questions and hypotheses to test:
Before reaching a final decision, I recommend that the office of the CIO return to a few questions raised earlier in this memo and test the following hypotheses:
Hypothesis 1: There are a sufficient number of Ring users in Chicago to make a partnership worthwhile / useful for the CPD.
How to test? Though Ring has millions of customers nationwide, understand the magnitude of Ring usage in Chicago by either asking Ring for the data, or extrapolating based on data from other large cities.
Hypothesis 2: Chicago residents approve of and are excited about the CPD’s partnership with Ring. They trust the CPD and Ring with their data.
How to test? This can be done through direct conversations with end users through interviews, for example. In the case of the potential CPD-Ring partnership, the “users” from the CIO’s perspective would be Chicago policemen as well as Chicago residents. It may also be helpful to speak with residents and policemen from other cities which have partnered with Ring to see how their experience has been.
Hypothesis 3: The CPD has a robust process in place for storing Ring data securely and deleting it at regular intervals. There are oversight mechanisms in place to prevent misuse of data.
How to test? Review of past, comparable digital projects that the CPD has undertaken. How was citizen data stored and privacy upheld? Does the CPD have a track record of success in this space? Are there open questions?
Hypothesis 4: A CPD-Ring partnership would lead to a reduction in crime and improvement in CPD’s ability to fight crime. This last hypothesis is more in the purview of the CPD (as opposed to the CIO), but it would be important to understand the effectiveness of Ring and its potential future facial recognition capabilities on reducing crime (which is one of the CPD’s strategic priorities, as discussed earlier).
How to test? Analyze data from comparable cities whose police forces have embarked on a partnership with Ring. Did they experience reductions in crime or improvements in the clearance rate of crimes after working with Ring? Were changes attributable to Ring with a medium to high degree of confidence?
Recommendation:
Based on this assessment I would recommend that the CIO does not support a partnership between the CPD and Ring, as the cons outweigh the pros. To be more specific, there are a few “killer” cons, which lead to my recommendation of “do not pursue,” which are: the risk of perpetuating discrimination, the potential infringement on civil liberties, and the increased power that Amazon would hold over the CPD (and therefore the city of Chicago). Further, given that the CPD is trying to mend its relationship with the public and foster trust and transparency, a CPD-Ring partnership could have an especially detrimental affect on the CPD’s vision of becoming a “model police agency for the nation.” Of course, the results from the hypothesis testing would be important to consider, though I do not believe they will tip the scale in favor of pursuing the partnership.
Implementation:
Successful implementation of this recommendation entails the CIO effectively convincing the CPD and the city not to pursue this partnership. This will require a few immediate actions for the CIO: | https://medium.com/@lara.mitra.11/ringing-in-a-new-era-of-police-surveillance-c6fe813f3939 | ['Lara Mitra'] | 2020-12-14 14:32:32.911000+00:00 | ['Facial Recognition', 'Digital Government', 'Amazon', 'Police'] |
What Tic Tac Toe Can Teach You About Life | A similar scenario can be seen in real life, where a person or a business tries to do their best in reaching a goal. Then there is another person or another business who tries to block whatever the other person is trying to achieve. Thus, the game changes and becomes a neverending series of interactions between the 2 parties, whose goals are now to make sure that the other party is not winning. Both players shifted their objectives and lost track of what the real goal is.
If we look back at the TTT game, the reason why players have to block each other is that there is only a limited amount of boxes that both players can fill out in one game. Thus, blocking each other becomes a very interesting move. Another reason why blocking is a compelling move is because of the time horizon of the game that is also limited to only 9 moves in one game. With these limitations in place, both players have to block each other in order to survive and continue on to the next round by getting a tie.
In real life, however, it should not be the case. As humans, we are eager to always compare our lives with other people. When a person is successful or trying to be successful, there will be others who try to bring them down. Why? Because people think that there is only a limited amount of time and there is only a limited amount of fish out there. Thus, bringing a competitor or other people down would bring a significant personal gain. Let me tell you, it is simply not true.
If we go back to the game one more time, after the first block, the first-mover objective would also shift to also blocking the second-mover simply to not let the other player win. So, we can expect a similar reaction in real life that blocking would lead to another blocking by that same player or others. Thus, the game also becomes a neverending cycle of war. | https://medium.com/@louisriantan/how-tic-tac-toe-can-teach-you-about-life-bdeee1ea3c9 | [] | 2020-09-08 02:49:48.009000+00:00 | ['Lifestyle', 'Game Theory', 'Life Lessons', 'Competition', 'Social'] |
Design your productivity: A procrastinator’s survival guide | Photo by Mitchell Luo
Is there a better pair out there than Motivation & Self Discipline? Well, there is a more romantic one for sure: Motivation & Procrastination. Α relationship doomed to fail, the Romeo & Juliet of our modern lifestyle. They will never ever end up nowhere together, let’s face it already — and probably one of them has to die first, for the sake of our sanity.
Don’t want to generalise much, but I would dare say that we grew up in a generation thinking we can become anything, if we just try hard enough. We have listened to so many motivational videos, we have read so many success stories of people who made it despite all hardships, while their lives were a living hell or at least they were working in a garage, like c’mon! We have set our standards so high, that we may end up feeling unfulfilled, or failing, in various parts of our lives, whether that is career, relationships, whatever that is. We are not easily satisfied with what we have accomplished so far, and to be honest, if we were, we might as well be dead already (Hi Darwin!), or blissful human beings that do not need to read a line more of this article.
And really, there is nothing to blame in wanting to become a better version of ourselves. The real problem occurs when you suffer more than what you gain out of it, especially if you procrastinate, which leaves you more or less with… gaining nothing — except experience and anxiety, of course.
Now now, let’s start with some possible aspects of why you have not accomplished that thing yet (yes, That Thing, the one you keep postponing but keeps bothering you). It obviously may be more than one (if you are a master procrastinator), but let’s focus our energy on That One, your biggest dream or obstacle, the one that you think will make your life so much better or meaningful (whether that holds true or not is another story that you can figure out by self-reflecting, discussing or — or you will never know till you actually do it).
The difference between a dream and a goal, is a plan
Photo by Miikka Luotio
A goal without a plan, is just a wish, they say. So first you need to check, is your goal SMART?
SMART stands for goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (its criteria are attributed to Peter Drucker’s “Management by Objectives” concept).
In other words, you need to know:
why you want to accomplish something (an explanation that, to me, needs to be a bit deeper than the “I have to” reasoning, as outside motives are weaker and may put us into pressure instead of focus),
what do you define as a successful result (some may say that it’s the journey that counts!),
how exactly it is possible for you to do it (if you dream of being a pilot while you are afraid of heights, let’s say you will have a hard time at the very least)
is the timing right (not talking about the “my muse left me uninspired” excuse here, but more about whether now is the right time for you to do The Thing, if you feel prepared or capable enough, if you have other priorities at the moment etc.) and if it is worth the trouble, the heartache and your time of course. And, last but not least,
when are you going to do each little task that will lead to accomplishing your goal within the timeframe that you have set (hello Procrationation my old friend).
Photo by Brett Jordan
While viewpoints and solutions from others may be more of a placebo that a cure for each personal unique case, I believe that it doesn’t harm to try other people’s ways. After all, wanting to create your own self-made plan may actually make you procrastinate even more (one more to-do for your list — if you even have one of those). That being said (and the disclaimer that I am no phycologist or anything of the sort), I will share what has worked for me in managing to become a little better that the worst unorganized version of myself (now that’s a measurable goal!), with the hope that this might be of use for someone else out there as well.
The most important thing that I had to realise the hard way, is that no, it’s not an eternal trap that you are caught in with no light at the end of the tunnel. You have exits and they are three and very specific (no methodology here, just my point of view, so keep that in mind):
Just Do That Thing
1.1 Do it as is (using plans, using help of other people that can keep you committed, using help of people that can contribute, using whatever means you have)
1.2 Come up with an alternative approach to reach the same goal, without necessarily having to do the exact thing. Just be aware, that if you reject a socially acceptable path to accomplish something (e.g. be certified to be recognized as being able to do something), you may need to be prepared to put in 2x the effort to prove yourself, with no certain outcome, and you may also need to face the practical or even emotional barrier of others not approving your way. Put That Thing aside and stop worrying about it
(in a backlog list of items that you have decided to deal with later, due to prioritization of Other Things that are more important at the moment, that either are prerequisites of doing it, or are unrelated but you would risk failing both and being overwhelmed if you kept both at the same time) Abandon ship and drop That Thing into the abyss
That may be the toughest decision, but still. Nothing can drag forever, especially That Thing. At some point you will need to face the reality of the situation — do you even have enough acceptable reasons to put it aside for so long, and even if yes, do you realistically have the chances to get back on track (try to not make such a decision unless you are in a clear state of mind and it’s not the negativity speaking— as in the case where something unfortunate happened to you, you may need to settle/resolve that first and decide afterwards). In any case, you need to be honest with yourself and conscious about the fact of our mortal, time-constrained lifespans. You need to either do something about it, pause it temporarily (careful there) or decide to withdraw from it, if it is something that bothers your quality of life on an everyday basis.
If you chose curtain 1 (hooray!), or even 2, there are practical ways and planning methods that can bring you to the driver’s seat, instead of watching your dreams go by as time flies. What works for me is a to-do list (no surprise there) that my business coach and I have compiled together, and we evaluated it and tweaked it again and again for months to make sure it worked — and by “worked” means me becoming consistent on checking and updating it and making sure to keep crossing things off the list on a daily basis, rain on shine. It’s a lot tougher than it sounds, so what I learned through the process is:
Photo by Danielle MacInnes
A. It needs to be a method that relates to the way you think and to your habits. For my case, we combined the facts that I am a designer, a perfectionist, I am very analytical and I hate deadlines, with my familiarity to the agile software development model, and it clicked to me. In other words, I have to launch a redesigned product — (which is the Me.2) that has some features (which are my goals).
B. You need to get into the mindset of the required effort & pain it takes to change your toxic habits, and be understanding to yourself for some failures here and there, till you get there. After all, if That Thing was easy, you would have already done it by now! Negativity, lack of trust in yourself and regret maybe your unannounced guests, but it’s fine, as long as they do not overstay their welcome.
“Today is a new day. Your future does not equal your past” ~ Michael Hyatt
It all started when, after self-reflecting and realising that if I wanted to accomplish demanding goals -both personal and work related ones-, I should be much more organized and disciplined than trying to save the day last moment, I got coaching support (grateful that the company I work for was willing to invest in us enough to provide us with business coaching). To this day (seven months later), my coach still assists me in this battle with procrastination (checking on my progress by asking all those cruel questions, like “Have you done it, yes or no?”, and trying to refine our model if the answer is no), just to give you a sense of how difficult change habits can be. So, what we did after recognising an area that could be improved AND I was willing to do so, we gradually came up with a (personalized) plan that could be phrased like this:
Photo by Slidebean
Start with all your high level goals, or areas of focus (specific goals or whole categories like “health”, “career”). Big goals need to have a roadmap with milestones, and milestones have tasks that will lead to accomplishing the goal. From the remaining tasks, the ones that are too big to accomplish in a week, need to be further broken down to sub-tasks. You now have a big list of tasks. If you can manage to approximately estimate the total time that you can afford for your tasks in a weekly basis, plus the approximate time of completion for each task and each tasks’ priority, you can select the tasks for this week (and this month, if you want to be proactive). If estimation is a headache for you or you think this is too complex, you can select the tasks based on your gut feeling (like cooking without measuring) and get better at it week by week, with trial and error. Tasks, especially repeated ones, ideally get timeboxed, using e.g. recurring calendar meetings (with yourself). Even in the case where this does not go as planned, and you still end up postponing “that meeting”, if you keep being engaged & persistent & do not miss the deadline, you will eventually get it done (which is a progress compared to “someday”). After the selection, the remaining tasks go to a “backlog” list, where they are not tied to any date or plan. They will stay there till they are selected to be moved to a weekly “sprint”. Last but not least; using this method, the plan needs to be agile and re-evaluated on a weekly basis (e.g if a task doesn’t make it this week, it moves to the next. If too many tasks were moved to the next, the estimation was probably incorrect or you were not persistent enough — in that case, you should note down the incident with date, what happened and why it happened, as this will help you foresee & avoid similar cases in the future, or even make you re-evaluate your whole strategy).
This weekly plan needs to live somewhere where you can easily access it and cross-off tasks (it can even be hand written notes, I prefer a simple app that I have both in my phone & laptop). If you check it daily for 5 mins or so, along with something pleasant like having your coffee first thing in the morning (tip from my mentor) and being consistent with it, some magic starts to happen:
Anxiety, uncertainty, and that dark cloud over your head is significantly reduced. You now know that you do not have to constantly think about all those things daily, and you do not need to worry you may forget something, or feel overwhelmed about what to do first, as long as you commit on checking and updating your list for few mins every day. That way, you can focus the rest of your energy solely on getting today’s task(s) done. Your progress may not always be a straight line, and there may be ups and downs to the success rate of the plan from week to week (or day to day), but that’s why your plan is agile; so that it can withstand such fallbacks.
And the way to think about it really is simple to the core of it: Some people are natural at this, they do not need any assistance to stay productive and organized (they may be few, but still!). That shouldn’t stop us -common mortals- from trying to become better versions of ourselves, even if we never manage to become natural at this. Right at this moment, I am writing in a language that is not my mother tongue, I just learned how to do it. And, I may never be as fluent as a native, but that doesn’t need to stop me from using it, does it? Same with using productivity tricks, even if you wouldn’t call yourself a master of productivity.
What keeps you on track with your goals? I would love to hear your own approaches in the comments! | https://uxdesign.cc/design-your-productivity-a-procrastinators-survival-guide-100fb463c55 | ['Hara Ledaki'] | 2021-01-25 22:22:02.539000+00:00 | ['Agile Methodology', 'Planning', 'Time Management', 'Ux Process', 'Procrastination'] |
Best robot mops: We review the most scrupulous scrubbers for your home’s hard surface floors | Best robot mops: We review the most scrupulous scrubbers for your home’s hard surface floors Ebony Dec 8, 2020·5 min read
As hated household chores go, mopping is probably despised more than even vacuuming (though let’s agree cleaning toilets tops the list). The dirty water, the back-aching labor, and the fact that most homes have far less moppable flooring than they do carpeting makes the job all too easy to neglect.
As with vacuuming, though, robotics has come to rescue. Robot mops don’t require cumbersome buckets or ringing out filthy mop heads. All you need to do is fill their tank with water, set them on the floor, press the start button, and get out of the way. Some will even vacuum or sweep the floor first, relieving you of that chore as well. They won’t eliminate the need to use an old-fashioned stick mop from time to time, but they can make the floor significantly easier to clean when you do.
Here are our current top picks for robot mops. This is an evolving category— manufacturers are still experimenting with what makes a good robot mop—so there can be a significant variance between products in terms of features and functions. Still, there are some basic things to look for and we’ve included them below our picks to help guide you if our top picks don’t meet your unique needs. Or you can click here to skip to our latest robot mop reviews.
Updated November 20, 2020 to add our Samsung Jetbot Mop review. This robot can't map your room, so it's not as sophisticated as some of the other devices in this category, but it is unique in that you can lift the 6-pound device off the floor and use it to scrub your walls and windows.
[ Further reading: The best robot vacuum cleaners ]Best robot mop iRobot Braava Jet m6 Read TechHive's reviewSee itThe iRobot Braava Jet m6 is an excellent robot mop with plenty of smart features for automating a hated household chore. It's ideal for homes with lots of hard floors.
iRobot’s Braava Jet m6 knocks its smaller sibling—the Braava Jet 240—from its perch as our favorite robot mop. This bigger unit can not only clean larger areas, it can work in tandem with selected Roomba robot vacuums, so that one cleans up particulate matter and then signals the other that it’s time to scrub. Yes, it’s an expensive one-two punch, but it sure beats manual labor.
Runner-up iLife Shinebot W400 floor-washing robot Read TechHive's reviewSee itThe iLife Shinebot W400 diligently scrubs away stains from your hard floors. But it can't get under most cabinets and between tight spaces, so it's less than ideal for small bathrooms and kitchens.
The iLife Shinebot W400 uses a unique four-step mopping method that moistens the floor with clean water to loosen dirt and stains, scrubs them free with a microfiber roller brush, sucks the dirty water into the robot, and scrapes off any residue left behind. It also keeps clean and dirty water in separate tanks to avoid cross-contaminating your floors. The results come pretty close to what you would get using a push mop. The Shinebot w400’s bulk can be a hindrance in small spaces, though, so it’s best suited to homes with lots of wide-open floors.
Best vacuum/mop hybrid Roborock S6 Read TechHive's review$599.00MSRP $599.00See iton EbayThe Roborock S6 is a fantastic robot vacuum with mopping capabilities that should be considered alongside bigger-brand-name alternatives.
The Roborock S6 combines a top-shelf vacuum with a better-than-most mopping function. As with most vacuum/mop hybrids, you attach a reservoir to the bottom for mopping, but the S6 allows you control how much water it dispenses with a simple switch. That makes it equally effective for light maintenance mopping and tackling stubborn stains. Plus, you get the advantage of the S6’s superb laser navigation and voice control, courtesy of Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.
What to look for in a robot mopDedicated floor mop or vacuum/mop hybrid: At their heart, all robot mops function similarly: You fill a tank with water, and the water is dispensed as the robot navigates across your floors, using an attached cloth/pad to scrub dirt off your floor.
The robots, however, generally come in two types. Models like the iRobot Braava Jet 240 and the iLife Shinebot W400 can’t vacuum your floors (though the former can do a dry sweep of debris) before mopping.
Vacuum/mop hybrids are essentially robot vacuums that come with an attachable water reservoir. When you want to mop, you fill this small-capacity tank with tap water, attach a microfiber cloth to it, and slot it onto the bottom of the vacuum.
Michael Ansaldo/IDG The ability to program the amount of water dispensed on the floor is one of the reasons we’re such fans of iRobot’s Braava Jet 240.
There are no hard and fast rules regarding which type of robot mop is better, but we have observed some general trends. Hybrid types tend to be more likely to come with features like app control and smart home integration. And, of course, they give you the advantage of tackling two chores with one device. We’ve found, however, that their method of dragging a damp microfiber cloth across the floor isn’t the best for tough stains. Dedicated robot mops usually spray water directly on the floor to soften gunk and stains and apply some agitation via a scrubbing pad or brush. In our tests, these have brushes consistently been more effective on deeper dirt.
Navigation: Like their vacuuming counterparts, robot mops navigate around furniture, walls, and other obstacles using a collection of sensors. Some hybrid models also take advantage of mapping technology. Most of the ones we’ve tested, though, can’t tell what type of floor surface they’re on. That presents potential problems if the floor you want to mop adjoins a carpeted room, as kitchens and bathrooms often do. Fortunately, many robot mops come with some kind of virtual barrier you can position between hard flooring and carpeting to keep the robot out of trouble.
Battery Life: Battery life correlates to how much a robot mop can cover in a single charge. We’ve found one hour to be the sweet spot for most apartments and condominiums, but a minimum of 90 minutes is recommended for larger homes. It’s also important to remember that mopping will use more battery life than vacuuming, so if you go with a hybrid model, expect to get less than the manufacturer’s claimed run time when using the mopping function.
Our latest robot mop reviews 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/@ebony62930109/best-robot-mops-we-review-the-most-scrupulous-scrubbers-for-your-homes-hard-surface-floors-ebee58976507 | [] | 2020-12-08 20:07:25.392000+00:00 | ['Deals', 'Security Cameras', 'Consumer', 'Connected Home'] |
12 Awesome GitHub Repos Developers will Love in 2021 | GitHub is the largest and most advanced development platform in the world. Millions of developers and companies build, ship, and maintain their software on GitHub and there are also thousands of repositories related to development resources, collections, demos, etc. You can find almost anything in GitHub these days. In this article, I will share some of the awesome GitHub repositories with you and I will recommend all developers to start exploring and following these repositories in 2021.
In this modern era of web development, we have many backend and frontend technologies available to choose from. Developers always wanted to see how a particular backend and framework will work together with a real-world demo app. Most of the demos provide an excellent overview of a particular technology or framework capability but they don’t convey the full picture required to actually build a real application. This is where, a comes to the rescue. The creators of this repository claim that this is “ The mother of all demo apps “. You can choose any frontend e.g. React, Angular, etc., and any backend e.g. Node, ASP.NET Core, Rails, etc. and see how they power a real-world application.
Awesome is, without a doubt, the most popular repo that curates all topics from software development to content management systems to hardware to business. It has more than 150,000 stars on Github at this moment, and we can easily spend days and nights browsing it. This is your one-stop-shop, if you want to learn something new.
Public APIs is an amazing list of free APIs that you can use for your projects and applications. It covers various topics such as business, games, social, communication, news, finance, and more. You will find all type of APIs in the list ranging from some fun APIs which return random pictures of cats or dogs to more advance machine learning APIs. I am sure, you will find an API for your next app or project in this list.
This awesome collection contains free programming books, online courses, interactive programming resources, podcasts, and programming playgrounds in many different languages. It has grown to become one of Github’s most popular repositories, with 160,000+ stars, 6000+ commits, 1600+ contributors, and 39,000+ forks. You will find free books and resources on almost any programming language, framework, or technology in the world.
Developers and Open Source authors now have a massive amount of services offering free tiers, but it can be hard to find them all to make informed decisions. This is a list of software (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, etc.) and other offerings that have free tiers for developers. This repository has 42k+ stars as of this writing.
This fantastic repository basically is a collection of tutorials on how to build your own technology. There are examples of how to build a command-line tool, an operating system, a search engine, a 3D renderer, and many, many more. Have you ever wanted to create your own programming language? Or your very own search engine or operating system? Then this is the right repository for you.
If you want to prepare yourself for a job interview in tech then you must visit this repository that contains carefully curated content to help you ace your next technical interview, with a focus on algorithms. You will find interviews related cheat sheets, interview formats and even resume tips in this repository.
Have you ever asked yourself what you need to have or test in your web application before launching it? The Front-End Checklist repository has you covered. The Front-End Checklist is an exhaustive list of all elements you need to have/to test before launching your website/HTML page to production. The table of contents includes:
Head
HTML
Webfonts
CSS
Images
JavaScript
Security
Performance
Accessibility
SEO
Translations
If you are Node.js developer then this is repository is a great source of information for you. It is a comprehensive collection of various best practices regarding Node.js development. It currently consists of more than 80 best practices, style guides, and architectural tips. It covers topics such as:
Project Structure Practices
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Testing And Overall Quality Practices
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Security Practices
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HTML5 Boilerplate is a professional, and one of the most popular, front-end templates around the web. It helps you build fast, robust and adaptable websites or apps. This project is the product of over 10 years of iterative development and community knowledge. Some of the key features include:
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Placeholder Open Graph elements and attributes.
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An optimized version of the Google Universal Analytics snippet.
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If you are JavaScript developer then you will love this repository. The Airbnb JavaScript Style Guide is one of the most popular and commonly used style guides out there. It helps you write better JS code. This guide is available in multiple languages and covers almost everything related to JavaScript.
This repository contains a long list of (advanced) JavaScript questions, and their explanations. No matter, you are a beginner or an advance level JavaScript developer, if you want to refresh your knowledge a bit, or prepare for your coding interview then this is your go to repository. You will find multiple choice questions on almost any topic related to JavaScript. | https://medium.com/@ezzylearning/12-awesome-github-repos-developers-will-love-in-2021-a97906bfced6 | [] | 2020-12-29 14:43:00.345000+00:00 | ['2021', 'Awesome', 'Github', 'Repositories'] |
Audeze LCD-1 planar-magnetic headphone review: The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth | Audeze LCD-1 planar-magnetic headphone review: The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth Kayleigh Jan 16·9 min read
Audeze is one of the only headphone makers devoted exclusively to using planar-magnetic (PM) drivers in its products. The company offers a wide range of models, from reference over-ear designs to gaming-specific cans to in-ear monitors, all of which are based on PM technology.
I have little experience with planar-magnetic headphones. Many years ago, I reviewed the Stax SR-007 MK2 electrostatic headphones, which use a somewhat similar technology, but they require a special amplifier and are extremely expensive. But I’ve never spent any quality time with PM headphones. So, when I got the opportunity to review the Audeze LCD-1, I jumped at the chance—and now that I’ve given them a good listen, I’m very glad I did.
This review is part of TechHive’s coverage of the best headphones, where you’ll find reviews of the competition’s offerings, plus a buyer’s guide to the features you should consider when shopping for this type of product.Planar-magnetic technologyMost headphones use dynamic drivers to generate sound waves. In these drivers, an electrical audio signal is sent through a coil of wire—the voice coil—which creates a magnetic field around the coil that oscillates according to the waveform in the signal. The oscillating magnetic field interacts with the static field of a permanent magnet mounted nearby, which pushes and pulls on the voice coil, causing it to vibrate in response. The voice coil is attached to a diaphragm, which vibrates along with it, sending sound waves into the listener’s ear.
Vendor-provided art. Audeze wraps the headband and earcups of its LCD-1 planar-magnetic headphones in super soft lambskin.
Planar-magnetic drivers are similar in principle but different in implementation. Instead of a voice coil, the diaphragm in a PM driver is directly embedded with a flat conductor that snakes back and forth across its entire surface (see Fig. 1). That conductor carries the audio signal, and the oscillating magnetic field interacts with the static field of permanent magnets mounted very close to the diaphragm. That causes the diaphragm to vibrate according to the audio signal, generating sound waves that enter the listener’s ear.
Vendor-provided art. In this rendering, you can see the “voice coil” (labeled “circuit trace pattern”) on the ultra-thin substrate of the diaphragm. You can also see a magnet and Fazor on both sides of the diaphragm, but the LCD-1 has a magnet and Fazor only on the inner side of the diaphragm.
In this “exploded” rendering of an Audeze earcup, you can see the circuit-trace pattern (aka, “voice coil”) on the diaphragm. You can also see the magnet and Fazor structures, which are discussed in the next section.
Mentioned in this article iFi Audio hip-dac Read TechHive's reviewSee it The main difference is that a PM driver has no separate voice coil per se; the “voice coil” and diaphragm are a single component. As a result, the entire diaphragm vibrates more uniformly than a dynamic diaphragm, which is pushed and pulled at its center by the voice coil.
Also, the magnets in a PM driver are generally larger than those used in dynamic drivers, because they must be roughly the same size as the diaphragm. That makes planar-magnetic headphones generally larger and heavier than dynamic designs.
So, what are the advantages of PM headphones over dynamic cans? Generally speaking, planar-magnetic headphones tend to have tighter, more accurate bass response. And because the entire diaphragm moves uniformly, the planar soundwave creates a better soundstage with a more immersive quality, and there tends to be less distortion at high levels. For these reasons, PM headphones are often preferred by critical listeners such as recording engineers and audiophiles.
Audeze Audeze planar-magnetic headphones are well known among recording engineers for their neutral, revealing sound quality, a legacy that the LCD-1 easily upholds.
Audeze LCD-1 featuresThe LCD-1 is an open-back, circumaural (over-ear) headphone. It’s more compact than many PM headphones and weighs just 8.8 ounces. It sports memory-foam earpads and headband covered in lambskin leather and comes with a nice carrying case into which the headphones fold. The included premium braided cable terminates with a 3.5mm connector, and a 1/4-inch adapter is included.
[ Further reading: The best high-res digital audio players ]Interestingly, the plugs for each earcup are TRS (tip-ring-sleeve), which I thought might mean that the drivers are wired for balanced operation. But I was informed that they are not balanced; instead, the three-conductor connectors are used to automatically determine which signal is left and right, so it doesn’t matter which one is connected to each earcup. Clever!
Audeze An ingenious design means you can plug either cable into each earcup, and the left signal will be played by the left earcup and vice versa.
With an impedance of 16 ohms, sensitivity of 99 dB/mW (calculated at the eardrum), and a power-handling capacity of 5W RMS, the maximum sound output is rated over 120dB SPL with THD less than 0.1% at 100dB SPL. The frequency response is specified from 10Hz to 50kHz (no tolerance given).
Audeze designs and builds its headphones in the United States and touts several enhancements it has made to planar-magnetic technology. One of them is its ultra-thin Uniforce diaphragms, which are very lightweight, presenting very little resistance to movement for improved transient response. And its large size of 90mm in diameter facilitates deep bass reproduction.
The company makes all its drivers in its Southern California facility, using a vacuum-deposition process to coat the diaphragm film with conductive metal that is then etched to form the “voice coil” on the surface. To achieve a uniform magnetic force across the entire surface area of the diaphragm, Audeze actually varies the width of the voice-coil tracing depending on the strength of the magnetic field at different locations.
Vendor-provided art. The LCD-1 earcups fold so the headphone fits in a small, hard-shell travel case.
According to the company’s website, “Audeze uses ‘a genetic algorithm-based heuristic optimization technique together with magnetic simulations to optimize trace widths to achieve Uniforce.’ For those of us who don’t speak Martian: we use advanced computing techniques to get the most uniform distribution of force possible on the diaphragm.”
Another Audeze innovation is its Fluxor magnets. The description on the company’s website gets pretty technical, which I won’t go into here; if you want to dig deeper, click here. Suffice to say that Fluxor neodymium magnets increase the magnetic field strength at the diaphragm without adding more weight to the assembly.
In the company’s flagship headphones, each diaphragm is suspended between two Fluxor magnet structures, as seen in Fig. 1. But in the LCD-1, there is only one magnet in each earcup, located between the ear and the diaphragm. This is less efficient than a double-sided design, requiring more amp power, but it allows the headphones to be lighter. And the Fluxor magnet is more efficient than a conventional magnet, focusing more of the magnetic field toward the diaphragm.
Why place the magnet between the ear and diaphragm rather than the other way around? Two reasons—to protect the diaphragm and to allow damping material to be placed on the other side.
In most planar-magnetic headphones, including those from Audeze, the magnet is a slotted structure that allows sound to pass through the slots. As you might recall from basic physics, when waves pass through parallel slots, they cause interference patterns (see Fig. 2), which can degrade the sound quality. Audeze solves this problem with its Fazor waveguide attached to the magnet structure. According to the company, this eliminates the interference patterns, corrects the phase response, and improves the acoustic impedance. For more on Fazor technology, click here.
Audeze As the diaphragm vibrates, it sends sound waves through the slots of the magnet structure, causing interference patterns as they emerge. Audeze’s Fazor waveguides eliminate this interference. In this generic diagram, there are magnets and Fazors on both sides of the diaphragm, but in the LCD-1, they are on only one side of the diaphragm.
Without the Fazor waveguides, sound waves emerge from the slots and interfere with each other, degrading the sound quality. The Fazor waveguides eliminate this interference. In this diagram, there are magnets and Fazors on both sides of the diaphragm, but in the LCD-1, they are only on one side.
PerformanceThe LCD-1 is quite lightweight, and the earpads are very comfortable; my ears fit nicely in them, and they are super-soft. The earcups provide a surprising sense of isolation, despite being their open-back design. My only complaint here is that the headphone feels a bit flimsy.
As usual, I played high-res audio files from the Tidal Master library on my iPhone XS, using the iFi hip-dac (reviewed here) as the DAC/amplifier. First up was “In Too Deep” by Jacob Collier from his most recent album Djesse Vol. 3. The vocals are accompanied mostly by synths with some super-low bass, all of which was rendered beautifully by the LCD-1—clean and clear with an open soundstage and natural, present vocals. The deep bass was exceptionally well represented without bloat or congestion, and it balanced the rest of the spectrum perfectly.
I haven’t seen Pixar’s latest movie Soul yet, but the soundtrack album is now streaming from the Tidal Master library. I listened to “Collard Greens and Cornbread Strut,” a very short but hard-bopping piece played by a jazz combo of piano, bass, drums, and horns, including a smokin’ tuba. It sounded clean and open on the LCD-1; I could hear each instrument clearly within a unified whole.
This year, composer Max Richter wrote and recorded a haunting musical backdrop entitled All Human Beings meant to accompany the reading of the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. On his album Voices, the piece begins with Eleanor Roosevelt reading the Preamble in a 1949 recording, after which many other modern voices continue reading the Declaration in a wide variety of languages. It’s a lovely tribute to basic human rights that are all too often ignored in today’s world.
In addition to Voices, Richter also released a related album called All Human Beings, which includes a six-minute version of the piece played five times. Each one starts with the Eleanor Roosevelt recording that morphs into a modern voice reading Article 1 in one of five different languages—English, Spanish, German, French, and Dutch. (I wish he had included some languages from places other than western Europe.) I listened to the English version on the LCD-1, which sounded gorgeous, with a wide soundstage for the orchestra and choir, and the voiceover sounded completely natural and present.
Vendor-provided art. The Audeze LCD-1 planar magnetic headphones are quite transparent in their audio reproduction.
Next up was “Starlight” by guitar legend Lee Ritenour from his album Dreamcatcher. Most of the album is simple solo guitar—in this case, an acoustic guitar tuned quite a bit lower than normal. The folky, fingerpicked piece sounded clean, open, and well-balanced on the LCD-1, with a wonderful low end and no hint of congestion.
For some throwback fun, I listened to “Money For Nothing” from Dire Straits’ 1985 album Brothers in Arms, which was just released in MQA format. The LCD-1 presented a big, open soundstage in which the stereo drums really bounced around. Once again, the sound was clean, and I could hear each instrument and voice clearly, including Sting’s unmistakable guest vocals.
Lately, I’ve been listening to a lot of The Manhattan Transfer, one of my favorite vocal groups, so I cued up “Cantaloop (Flip Out!)” from The Junction. The music is based on the classic Herbie Hancock tune “Cantaloupe Island” with lyrics by Us3. It’s a richly produced track and a wonderful mix with deep bass and an infectious groove. As I had come to expect, the LCD-1 did it full justice with a clean, open sound. The deep bass was perfectly balanced with the rest of the ensemble without becoming overbearing.
I always include some classical music in my review listening. This time, I started with the first movement of Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for String Orchestra in C Major, Op. 48, from the album Serenades by the Zürcher Kammerorchester under the direction of Daniel Hope. Once again, the sound of the LCD-1 was clean, open, and well-balanced. The strings sounded vibrant, and I could clearly delineate each section within a cohesive whole.
Finally, I listened to the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92, as recorded by the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Lahav Shani. The LCD-1 had a nice, open, wide sound with excellent balance.
Vendor-provided art. Most people will use the 3.5mm cable, but Audeze provides a 1/4-inch adapter in the box as well. | https://medium.com/@kayleig24712454/audeze-lcd-1-planar-magnetic-headphone-review-the-truth-the-whole-truth-and-nothing-but-the-1cf94fc03965 | [] | 2021-01-16 03:26:08.327000+00:00 | ['Consumer Electronics', 'Cutting', 'Music', 'Mobile'] |
How to Rank your Website Better in Google — The SEO Guide | SEO constantly goes through changes. SEO has become such a great tool that we cannot imagine a better online marketing strategy without it. In order to stay ahead in the competition, one needs to make use of best and updated practices.
We are all aware how rapidly today’s digital world is changing. It has become imperative to keep yourself up-to-date with the latest trends and updates in the SEO world. What may have served you best in SEO a couple of years ago may have become out of date now.
Here is how to rank better in 2018:
1. Engaging content:
Google uses various algorithms to sort out the search results. These algorithms measure how the users on the internet are interacting with the search results and give them rating accordingly. These ratings are given by taking two things into consideration:
share of people that visited your website
amount of time they spent on your website
If more amount of people are spending considerable amount of time on your website, this shows your website has engaging content, and that is naturally bound to get higher ratings from Google.
2. Mobile optimization:
With the increasing number of Smartphone users, the importance of mobile friendly website cannot be ignored. If your website is well optimized for mobile devices and search engines, you will definitely get a boost in your search rankings.
Things you can consider:
Reduce size of the images for faster loading
Make sure all your web pages are mobile responsive
Use structured data with rich snippets
Use separate/parallel site for mobile users
3. Compelling titles and meta-descriptions:
Titles and Meta-descriptions are HTML attributes that provide brief summaries about the web pages. Searchers simply click on the links that are satisfying their curiosity without having to think about it. It happens so quickly that many of them won’t even notice them making a decision. Hence, it’s important to make sure your titles and meta-descriptions are creative and compelling enough to your prospects, while keeping the focus on your keywords.
4. Relevant content:
In order to optimize your site better, it is highly important to understand what your audience is looking for. Just creating a keyword rich content will not let you win the race. You will need to focus more on the relevancy of your content along with keywords, through the understanding of age-group, location and likes of your target audience to make a better impact on them.
5. Authoritative backlinks:
Along with content, backlinks are also essential for SEO. If your website if associated with trustworthy sites through backlink, it also makes your site trustworthy to the search engines. Google keeps track of the sites having quality backlinks with the help of PageRank. Increase in the inbound links can improve your credibility and tell Google that your content is informative to its users.
Want to know more about how we can increase your brand’s reach and help your business grow? Visit our 7P Digital SEO section for more information.
Read Full Story… | https://medium.com/@7pdigital/how-to-rank-your-website-better-in-google-the-seo-guide-8027d0edbf1d | [] | 2019-03-08 09:20:47.683000+00:00 | ['Search', 'Marketing', 'Noida', 'SEO', 'Company'] |
Thoughts on a medical mystery | Thoughts on a medical mystery
How brains learn diseases, and their cures
My father is a pediatric neurologist, with a speciality in epilepsy. He’s always loved the kids he worked with, and treated them like family. Whenever one of his patients died, he’d bring me and my sisters to their funeral. Some I’d known for years from tagging along on rounds, or having watched them grow up through the quanta of Christmas cards and back-to-school photos. I remember the funeral of a girl my age, who had been far more outgoing and lively than me, her now-dark face caked in yellow makeup. Though they’d never found a drug that could control her seizures, she’d seemed otherwise healthy and normal, and her death had come as a total surprise. This was my first brush with Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP). SUDEP is the most common cause of death in patients with refractory seizures, and remains one of the most devastating mysteries in the field of epilepsy. There are currently no known biomarkers to identify patients at risk for SUDEP — hence the Sudden, hence the Unexpected.
Having come to neuroscience by way of physics, I confess I often forget a crucial point: neurons are cells, not just immutable contact points on a circuit board over which voltage plays in prescribed patterns. Not only is the circuit board layout shifting, always rewiring itself in learning, but activity sets off internal programs within cells, making them more or less active, or plastic, tuning their metabolism and protein production. Furthermore, at the gross level, the brain isn’t a black box sealed in the skull, but exerts its influence on every conceivable bodily process. Neurological disorders are rarely, if ever, confined to the brain. This may seem obvious, but it bears consideration. When brain areas are over or under-active, this can reverberate through other somatic systems, causing plastic changes in all manner of body parts: neurons love to learn. In fact, non-neuronal cells learn too: signals like oxygen or nutrition levels can alter a cell’s transcriptional landscape, resulting in tissue remodelling, for example.
Epilepsy is particularly interesting, as it’s a prime example of a learned disease. “Kindling” is a common idea in the literature: once someone has had one or more seizures, they’re much more likely to become epileptic, as the brain learns this problematic activity pattern. Some epileptic patients report that they’ve discovered certain thought patterns that help them control or minimize an oncoming seizure (these patients feel a pre-ictal ‘aura’ that clues them in), so we know there may be conscious strategies which certain patients can use to volitionally control their disease. But I’d argue that neural circuits may have evolved or learned other, less helpful ways of suppressing disease-related activity—in the case of uncontrollable epilepsy, through depriving the brain of oxygen, thereby quenching activity. I posit we might use this framing of brains and bodies ‘learning’ their own cures to better understand common comorbidities of neurological disorders.
SUDEP is a big clue in this. It’s increasingly evident that cardio-pulmonary issues underlie a majority of SUDEP cases. While most SUDEP events go unwitnessed, in a retrospective study of observed SUDEP cases caught while patients were in the hospital, researchers found that patient breathing ceased before heart failure in all 16 observed events (Rivlin et al., 2013). There is no doubt that SUDEP involves a complex network of effects, but the effect of repeated exposure to low oxygen levels (chronic intermittent hypoxia) is consistent with many of the known abnormalities of SUDEP patients (Giaccia, Simon, & Johnson, 2004). Hypoxia has a profound effect on tissues, from altering the physiology of certain ion channels in the heart and lungs to long-term changes in genetic transcription and vascular remodeling (Kemp & Peers, 2007; Ling et al., 2001; Nei, 2009; Richerson, 2010). Up to 40% of SUDEP cases present cardiac fibrosis in autopsy, which can be a result of chronic intermittent hypoxia (Ling et al., 2001; P-Codrea, et al., 2005), and damage was most commonly found in the heart structure most vulnerable to ischemic damage (the subendocardial myocardium, for the keen). SUDEP patients also tend to have had post-seizure cerebral depression, which is also strongly linked with hypoxia (Takano et al., 2007). All of this suggests that recurring low oxygen levels might be the cause of the myriad tissue and neural remodeling events that ultimately result in patient death.
The link between epilepsy and breathing problems is well documented, but not well understood. In some patients, epileptic activity may simply affect brain stem circuits controlling breathing. Every patient has a different locus of seizure activity — the part of the brain a seizure plays out on. But SUDEP doesn’t only happen in patients whose seizures originate in the part of the brain that controls breathing. There may be a more fundamental physiological link underlying seizures and breathing: blood acidification, as happens in hypoxic conditions, is anti-convulsive. Thus, the hypoxic response may not simply be a direct effect of a seizure on the brain stem, but an evolved mechanism, or one learned by neural circuits, to shut down epileptic activity during otherwise intractable seizures [1]. This then leads to a vicious cycle: breathing circuits are plastic throughout life, and strongly shaped by hypoxia (So, 2008), so even if a patient’s seizures never directly reach the brain stem, their chronic seizures could still cause a gradual degradation of the neural circuits controlling breathing through repeated hypoxia [2]. The brain, then, might be learning activity patterns that help control a particular disease state, which is adaptive in the short term but ultimately deleterious: a drastic stop-gap to manage otherwise intractable epilepsy.
The brain is sometimes too good at doing its job. Many neurological diseases involve some component of being ‘learned’ by neural circuits: chronic pain, neuropathy/neuralgia, and migraine all come to mind. When considering how to find predictive biomarkers for neurological conditions, or how to address their symptoms, it’s crucial to remember that neurological diseases don’t live in the brain alone. They can affect all body systems, and some of the most deleterious symptoms might result from the brain attempting to ‘medicate’ itself with whatever other systems it has control over. Studies with this framing in mind might help lead to the discovery of simple interventions, and further refine our understanding to identify functional and molecular biomarkers of medical mysteries such as SUDEP [3].
Notes | https://medium.com/the-spike/thoughts-on-a-medical-mystery-ced1cb1b3545 | ['Kelly Clancy'] | 2019-06-13 12:26:36.896000+00:00 | ['Neuroscience', 'Health', 'Science', 'Psychology'] |
Do I Need A Ph.D. To Land A Job In Quantum Machine Learning? | Do I Need A Ph.D. To Land A Job In Quantum Machine Learning?
Do you want to get started with Quantum Machine Learning? Have a look at Hands-On Quantum Machine Learning With Python.
Image by author
Last week, I had two interesting conversations with fellow quantum machine learning students. Interestingly, they shared one major concern: “Will my efforts in learning quantum machine learning be recognized? Do I need a formal certification or even a Ph.D. to land a job in quantum machine learning?”
Of course, it would be presumptuous to claim I knew what exact formal qualification is required to land a job in quantum machine learning. After all, I am not a recruiter in the field.
Therefore, all I can give is my two quanta.
The expression “my two cents” is shorthand for “my two pennies worth.” It is a way of offering one’s opinion and saying that it is only worth two pennies. While I like this humble way of valuing an opinion at only two cents, it is inappropriate in the context of quantum computing. For a quantum (plural quanta) is the smallest possible discrete unit of any physical property, I believe “my two quanta” is a better measure of my opinion.
Coincidentally, I recently read an article that sheds light on quantum computing companies' struggles to find appropriate candidates and why they are looking for Ph.D.s. Understanding what employers are really looking for is your advantage in landing a job.
Note: passages formatted as citations are directly or indirectly taken from that article.
“Employers need quantum employees with interdisciplinary skills: on top of a background in quantum physics, some sort of experience with data analysis, engineering, modeling, or programming, among other things, will also be a must-have. That level of specialisation isn’t common; in fact, it mostly exists at the PhD level.”
If we read this quote attentively, it clears up a widespread misconception. (Good) employers do not look for a formal qualification for the sake of it. They need someone who’s up to the job to be done. Formal qualification is a means because they found it to correlate with good candidates. What they really need is candidates specialized in a specific set of interdisciplinary skills.
Bachelor's and Master's programs usually focus on a certain discipline, such as physics, math, or computer science. But we do not yet have those programs that teach the required mix. But as a Ph.D., you usually define your own specific scope. And, it is the scope you set for yourself that employers are looking for. It is not that one piece of paper with your name on it.
So, the important question is not whether you have a Ph.D. Instead, the question is whether you can demonstrate this specialization in the right mix of skills.
“Finding someone with the right skill mix is the biggest challenge,” Ross Duncan, the head of quantum software at Cambridge Quantum, tells ZDNet. “It’s happened only a handful of times among the people that we hired to get someone who was ready to start when they walked in the door.”
As someone interested in entering the field, the best you can do is to develop these skills. So, the first step is to become clear about the skills you need. Then, do a self-assessment. Which skills do you already have, and which skills are you short of? Finally, you need to fill the gap.
As simple as this sounds in theory, it can be pretty tricky in practice. And, I don’t even refer to the actual learning. The real tricky part is how to demonstrate that you filled the gap. Again, it circles back to formal education. Nowadays, not only universities provide diplomas. Almost any online course offers some certification.
But what if you prefer reading a good old book? Maybe, you even read a whole bunch of books. You may have invested a lot of time into learning. But you won’t get a diploma or a certificate. So does it mean all your efforts are worthless for landing a job?
I can completely understand the longing for a formal certificate to prove your abilities. But if we think about it, I’d really doubt that formal certificates prove anything. I believe you can get a lot of certificates without really mastering the respective fields.
So, let’s look at it from the recruiter’s perspective again. The recruiter is looking for a person with extraordinary abilities in an interdisciplinary field. She knows about the specificity of her demand. There’s no blueprint for what she’s looking for. Consequently, she has to evaluate each candidate individually. Of course, she may reject candidates that have absolutely no education right away. But if you have a computer science degree from a university, I’d think you are qualified for further consideration.
Don’t get me wrong. By further consideration, I don’t mean you got the job already. I don’t even say she will invite you for an interview. But, I’d say she checks your CV to see what you have to offer.
Now, you need something to stand out. This is your chance to demonstrate your specialization in the right mix of skills. But I doubt a list of certificates will do.
Instead, I’d follow a simple rule:
Show, don’t tell.
Preferably, you demonstrate that you did not only clicked through an online course, but you’re able to apply your knowledge.
It is good practice to have a portfolio of your work in other disciplines, such as software development or data science. It showcases the projects you have worked on. Desirably, these are real cases. But quantum machine learning is a new field. So, you should be fine showing how you applied your knowledge on open-source datasets and exemplary problems, too.
A portfolio is your chance to creditably demonstrate how you filled the gaps in your formal education. In addition, it offers a path to building trust with a recruiter — beyond formal certificates.
Keep in mind quantum machine learning is an emerging field. There is no typical qualification yet. This is not only a problem for candidates but also recruiters. As a substitute for the one and only qualification, recruiters ask for the next best thing to look for in a candidate — a Ph.D.
So, my recommendation is not to get intimidated by too specific formal demands. And, don’t get obsessed with certificates, either. Instead, make sure you master the demanded skills. Do this in any way that suits your personal way of learning. But, make sure to demonstrate what you’ve learned.
Estimates predict the quantum computing industry will be a $65 billion market by 2030
If that prediction is even close to the truth, the demand for skills will exceed the demand for formal titles.
And with businesses set to be fighting over quantum-qualified job seekers in the near future, now might be the right time to start studying.
Do you want to get started with Quantum Machine Learning? Have a look at Hands-On Quantum Machine Learning With Python.
Get the first three chapters for free here. | https://towardsdatascience.com/do-i-need-a-ph-d-to-land-a-job-in-quantum-machine-learning-328aeea4a0c6 | ['Frank Zickert', 'Quantum Machine Learning'] | 2021-09-14 12:37:31.386000+00:00 | ['Computer Science', 'Programming', 'Quantum Computing', 'Careers', 'Machine Learning'] |
How Bitcoin Could Save Us from Hyperinflation | The COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic has brought large parts of the global economy to a standstill. For the better part of two months, factories in China were shuttered, disrupting supply chains and offering a glimpse of what was to come. Across many countries, businesses have been ordered to shut down, and economic activity has slowed to a trickle. And just as the United States now takes the leading global COVID-19 cases, the US Congress has passed a a multi-trillion dollar economic stimulus package, which has raised fears of future hyperinflation.
Fire Up the Printing Presses!
When central banks increase the money supply by printing more bills, it leads to an increase in the price of goods and services over time. But if for some reason they print enormous quantities of cash very quickly, it can cause hyperinflation and the currency can lose it’s value.
Historically this has been done to pay for government spending during times of crisis. In the event of mass unemployment or shutdown of essential services, governments may feel that a breakdown of social disorder or violence could occur. Faced with these problems, it can seem like a rational solution to fire up the printing presses.
Printing more money can work in the short term, but if the crisis continues or gets worse, it can create a downward spiral where the cure was worse than the disease.
The biggest examples in modern times were Germany during and after World War I, or Zimbabwe in the early 2000s. A more recent example would be Venezuela, which was once the richest country in South America. Venezuela was heavily dependent on oil exports to fund government spending, and as long as it remains profitable to export oil, the good times continued…
But in 2013 when oil prices collapsed, the government faced a sudden loss of revenue, and decided to just print more money to pay for state spending. Doing so rapidly devalued the bolivar (the national currency) and led to a catastrophic increase in consumer prices. According to that country’s own central bank, the inflation rate rose 53,798,500% between 2016 and April of 2019.
One coffee? That’ll be 100,000,000 bolivars, please. (Image source: Bloomberg)
Bloomberg actually created a “Cafe Con Leche Index” as a tool to track Venezuelan hyperinflation. It simply measures how the price of a cup of coffee in Venezuela’s capital city has changed over time. Right now, it’s about 100,000,000 bolivars (less than $1 USD).
Is it any wonder that cryptocurrency adoption in Venezuela is soaring? There’s really no other choice.
What about the US Dollar?
The US has racked up trillions of dollars in debt over the past 20 years and seems to print money like it’s going out of style. The latest example is the $4 trillion coronavirus economic relief bill which offers $1,200 to every American adult and billions of dollars in bailout money for struggling corporations, among other things.
However, the US dollar is a different case than the other currencies mentioned due to its status as a global reserve currency. Over 60% of foreign bank reserves and 40% of the world’s debt is denominated in USD. The US dollar is perceived as a stable store of value, and is a standard against which all other fiat currencies are measured. This allows the US to get away with exorbitant spending that would devalue many other national currencies pretty quickly. As long as the US dollar remains the dominant global reserve currency, that probably won’t change.
But can this go on forever? The dollar is no longer backed by gold, and in the wake of this latest round of massive spending the yield on 1-month and 3-month treasury bonds has dipped below zero. If other countries begin to lose confidence in the dollar, this would endangered its’ reserve currency status, and suddenly the bill would come due for the federal spending party.
Could a Venezuela-like scenario happen in the US? It’s not likely to happen next week or next year, but many in the cryptocurrency space believe that as long as the Fed continues “Unlimited QE”, it’s not impossible.
With a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin that can never happen. With an algorithmically limited supply, it is simply impossible for a central bank to devalue your money though reckless printing. And unlike the USD, which continues to lose purchasing power over time, BTC has consistently gone UP in the long term.
For people in countries with unstable fiat currencies, bitcoin has already proved to be a stable alternative for preserving wealth. The day may come when even people in wealthy countries with strong currencies may have to make a similar move. While we don’t think even the most passionate crypto enthusiasts want the dollar to fail, BTC will be ready and able to fill the void should it happen.
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Try Faast today and experience the best non-custodial crypto trading tool available to the public. | https://medium.com/faast/how-bitcoin-could-save-us-from-hyperinflation-521a11afdc93 | [] | 2020-03-27 17:30:28.386000+00:00 | ['Hyperinflation', 'Us Dollar', 'Covid 19', 'Bitcoin', 'Coronavirus'] |
Can Cannabis Help Me Sleep at Night? | In today’s modern society, we have a number of things that keep our minds racing as we try to go to sleep at night. From wondering if we got all, or enough of our work done during the day, to the anxiety of living in a COVID-19 world and wondering if someone we know might get sick, let alone ourselves. Not to mention our blue lit screens that we can’t seem to unplug from.
Can Cannabis Help Me Sleep at Night?
These, along with many other things, have made more and more people develop sleeping disorders. And while there are many ways to combat a sleeping disorder and help you to get more sleep, many people wonder if turning to cannabis can help them. Before turning to this as an alternative, you should always consult your doctor first, as long-term sleep alternatives vary and are not for everyone.
Choosing Your Strain
One thing you want to do first, is select the right type of strain. To do this, you need to know a little bit more about the science behind marijuana.
Cannabidol or CBD, is a non-psychoactive cannabinoid that has many health benefits to it. It’s counterpart, tetrahydrocannabinol or THC, is the psychoactive cannabinoid that gives you that “high” feeling when smoking or ingesting marijuana.
Along with knowing a bit about the cannabinoids behind the scenes you should also know about the different strains; Indica, Sativa, and Hybrids.
Indica strains are known for their calming effects while Sativa’s tend to make you feel more energetic and happy. A Hybrid is just as it sounds, a hybrid mix between the two. These are typically something developed by the dispensary and will have percentages and milligrams noted on the packaging to let you know exactly what you are getting.
Something that may seem counter intuitive is that when choosing a strain to help you sleep, you actually want something that has more THC. Especially for those that may suffer from PTSD, choosing a strain that has more THC will help you to get into a deeper sleep with less dreams or nightmares.
However, Dr. Tishler, a Cannabis Specialist, suggests choosing a strain with less than 20 percent THC. He states that anything more could make it harder for you to fall asleep and could potentially leave you feeling groggy the next day.
What Type of Cannabis to Consume
Once you know what strain you want, it’s time to think about how you will ingest your marijuana to help you sleep. While smoking may not be something you like and can damage your lungs, smoking marijuana is one of the quickest ways to start feeling it’s effects.
Edibles might also be of interest to you, but it’s hard to know exactly when their effects will kick in. Since they have to fully digest through your gut and liver, you could be waiting hours before you start to feel their effects.
Another alternative is using tinctures. These are droplets that you put under your tongue that can take about 15 minutes to kick in. You can also add them to a beverage of choice.
Conclusion
It all goes back to doing what is best for you and your body. Be sure to consult a doctor before deciding to use cannabis as a sleep aid. For other forms of relaxation before bed to help you sleep, try cannabis topicals and oils for instant relief and a calm mind. | https://medium.com/@fromtheearth7/can-cannabis-help-me-sleep-at-night-a6462ad2850c | [] | 2020-12-24 12:08:35.031000+00:00 | ['Cannabis', 'Marijuana'] |
Soft skills in a video resume; do they matter? | When hiring a new employee for your company, there are many aspects for you to consider. There are too many to list, but experience, education, talents, and skills are some of them. The list goes on and on. When you really break it down, it’s really just about their hard and soft skills. Obviously, hard skills are measurable, but what about soft skills? Do they matter? What if employers can have a look into the soft skills of their candidates? It would be valuable to get a sense of skills such as confidence, the ability to connect with others, judgment, and many others before narrowing down the resume. It will save you time when choosing the most appropriate applicants to interview and advance to the next steps of the hiring process. Let’s uncover a few insights into this topic.
Culture fit and job fit
If a candidate is a great cultural fit as well as job fit, they will be less likely to leave the company soon. Employee longevity is essential to run a business smoothly. Therefore, when hiring for a full-time position, it is important to look for signs that tell you how long the applicants are going to stay in the company. If the candidates show their motivation, passion, commitment, and innovative ideas, they will be an asset to your company.
Dependability
It’s crucial to know how much you can rely on your employees. Trustworthiness and the ability to meet deadlines play a vital role in the company. When an applicant presents themselves via video, it is easy to watch and get a better read on their dependability.
Team spirit
It is important to understand if new applicants can work collaboratively with the team. A truly collaborative person would not just show off their ability to work with colleagues, but also demonstrate through their actions. Having a video in hand makes it much simpler to choose the right candidates.
Communication
A video is a great opportunity to understand job seekers’ communication skills. The way they present themselves, how they deliver their message, how they will interact with your clients in virtual meetings, and how they show off their talents and skills. Put simply, the way they present themselves is enough to understand their communication skills.
Anything else?
The number of soft skills is countless. For example, attention to detail, adaptability, creativity, leadership, empathy, positivity, time management, work ethics, and so on. Although it is a long list, hiring managers should have a good understanding of what skills should be considered for the position.
No matter what type of soft skills you are looking for, short videos or video resumes are one of the best methods to evaluate the top talents for your business. If you are not aware of this new trend, try Unnanu Hire, the best method to hire outstanding candidates with many features that streamlines hiring with an integrated job board, applicant tracking system (ATS), and on-boarding. Post unlimited jobs. Hire the best talent. Add great value to your company with our flexible pricing. Get started by subscribing here. | https://medium.com/unnanu-blog/soft-skills-in-a-video-resume-do-they-matter-e22334fabb99 | ['Unnanu Blog'] | 2020-12-12 01:16:11.196000+00:00 | ['Resume', 'HR', 'Hiring Tips', 'Soft Skills', 'Videos'] |
How To Test A Chatbot? | Just like any other software product, chatbots require thorough testing. A bot can communicate with lots of customers simultaneously, but the value of this communication will depend on a number of tech aspects and overall usability. So to make sure the chatbot satisfies your business expectations, a project team will need to work on well-thought-out business logic, accurate implementation, and provide professional QA services.
Frequent Chatbot Issues
Chatbots allow optimizing the work of customer support. Automating frequent queries helps to reduce the time of response and contact human specialists only in difficult cases. However, there are issues that undermine these plans and expectations. The most common issues are:
Broken scripts.
Long pauses before answers.
No connection to other business channels.
Too many tasks for one bot to cover.
Lack of utterance and/or accuracy.
Lack of margin for error.
Poor navigation and/or conversation design.
Testing Checklist: Features and Cases
Every chatbot will require a custom strategy based on project requirements. Nevertheless, I decided to break down chatbot testing and share several examples — a type of testing you may need to run and test activities that fall under this category.
Functional Testing
The purpose of functional testing is to validate the software behavior against the requirements. In other words, QA engineers look up into the project documentation and check if a chatbot behaves as planned. Some of the features we check at this stage are:
Slot filling. A chatbot needs to know the basic lingo of the niche it operates in. These entities are programmed at the early stages, before developing conversation scripts.
A chatbot needs to know the basic lingo of the niche it operates in. These entities are programmed at the early stages, before developing conversation scripts. Validating inputs. If a chatbot accepts inputs like email addresses, phone numbers, and zip codes, it is critical for the system to recognize a correct data format.
If a chatbot accepts inputs like email addresses, phone numbers, and zip codes, it is critical for the system to recognize a correct data format. Error handling. It is necessary to investigate the boundaries of the programmed logic and make sure the bot has decent responses to the inputs it doesn’t understand.
Test case #1
Run tests using domain-specific lingo to find out if the bot is familiar with the main entities. For example, if we have a coffee shop chatbot that lets users place orders, it should understand entities that denote a type of coffee, sugar options, a number of sugars, a customer’s name, etc. In other words, inputs like “A cappuccino with one sugar and a no sugar cold brew for Ben” should be clear for the bot.
Test case #2
Feed the chatbot email addresses, phone numbers, and zip codes in different incorrect formats. It can be an email address without @ symbol or with spaces in it, an incorrect number of digits in a zip code or a mobile number, etc. Thus, you will learn how the system accepts invalid data and what responses it shows when receiving incorrect data.
Test case #3
Run exploratory tests to learn how a chatbot handles non-standard inputs, like casual conversations, meaningless sentences, obsolete words, offensive messages, and different kinds of errors in the test.
GUI Testing
Chatbots often show buttons with response options, provide links to a brand’s website or other resources, have cards with embedded information or other images. All these elements should be functional — links lead to the correct sources, images optimized and displayed correctly, all the chains of responses connected so that a conversation doesn’t stop abruptly.
Test case #4
Check the entire communication flow to find broken links, graphic elements, etc., and also detect gaps in logic.
Compatibility Testing
Make sure that a chatbot looks properly on different devices, especially if it pops up on a website instead of a messenger app.
Test case #5
Check how a chatbot window looks on different devices, browsers, and OS versions. Resize a browser window on the computer screen to make sure that the graphics appear undistorted and the layout isn’t broken. Texts should remain readable and not overflow out of the boundaries.
UX Testing
Conversation flow is one of the most obvious aspects of a chatbot to check. UX testing is based on both business requirements and users’ personal experience. Make sure that a chatbot generates correct and accurate responses.
Test case #6
Run different queries mimicking the behavior of a user who sees your chatbot for the first time. The following questions will help to evaluate usability:
Does the chatbot understand the questions?
Does it provide instant responses to those queries?
Is the information relevant, accurate, and useful to a user?
Does a user journey require more or fewer steps to finish?
Is it engaging for users? Do they tend to abandon a chatbot?
How can we make the conversation more engaging?
Performance Testing
People using chatbots expect to get accurate responses instantly. Therefore, chatbot performance testing is essential. Make sure it takes up to 2–3 seconds for a chatbot to retrieve the response and display it.
Test case #7
Check different queries that cover small and large dialogues and feature different types of content. It should take the same time for each response to appear on the screen, regardless of its place in a user journey and featured content.
Integration/API Testing
As a rule, a chatbot doesn’t function on its own — it becomes an integral part of the company’s digital ecosystem. That is, you’ll eventually need to connect it to the official website, a social network account, messenger, application, or another digital medium.
Test case #8
If you use bot building software, you are likely to find an API that allows connecting a chatbot to your system and run API tests. If you use a custom solution, it is essential to run integration tests to check how a bot and other system features behave when connected.
Localization Testing
Last but not least, run the check for chatbot’s literacy and multilingual features. Avoid errors in responses — spelling, grammatical, lexical, any errors. If a website is multilingual, it makes sense to create a chatbot that is multilingual as well. Keep in mind that localization encompasses other aspects as well — time zones, currencies, metric systems, and more.
Test case #9
Check the responses for spelling, lexical, and grammatical errors, punctuation, and cohesion. Make sure the formatting is correct, too. If the chatbot is multilingual, it should be able to access the default language settings or start the conversation flow by specifying these details.
To Sum Up
These are just a few of the QA activities that will bring you closer to releasing a smart and functional bot. You can learn more about chatbot testing tips in our blog. Just remember: while it is relatively simple to inspect and improve the communication flow on your own, testing the user interface, response speed, error handling, and other tech aspects is a task that will suit better for a professional software testing company. | https://medium.com/@kate-ponomarenko/how-to-test-a-chatbot-189c7b2f74bf | ['Kate Zalozna'] | 2021-01-21 14:00:33.313000+00:00 | ['Software Testing', 'Chatbot Testing', 'Chatbots', 'QA'] |
The Best Career Advice I’ve Ever Heard | I’ve been a straightforward person my entire life, and I always jokingly say that if you don’t want the truth, don’t ask me what I think. I’m also very decisive, and that has positioned me — for as long as I can remember — as the friend that you go to when you need advice, direction, and sometimes tough love. In my previous role as the social media personality, DKNY PR GIRL, I used my platform to mentor young professionals around the world. That ultimately led to my career advice book, Leave Your Mark.
This past spring, I bumped into a friend at an event who asked me to be on her podcast. She then proceeded to ask me why I don’t have a podcast. It was a random question that prompted me to go home that night and google how to do a podcast. I had no idea what I was doing — or how much work and self-teaching it would involve — but I decided that it would be a great extension of the lessons of my book, and I am so happy that I took the plunge and did it.
Out of a 15 episode season, I was amazed at how many of my guests shared the same mantra of, “Say yes and figure it out later.” So many people suffer from imposter syndrome, and that fear can be paralyzing. Practicing this mantra allows for stretching beyond where you’re comfortable, and that’s when the magic happens.
Financial expert Nicole Lapin said “yes” to a business news anchor role without a finance background. Influencer Tina Craig said “yes” to designing a bag collection without any design experience. Writer, producer, and now actress Jill Kargman said “yes” to doing scripted television for the first time at 40. They, and so many others, embraced the opportunities presented to them without fear of failure or the plaguing insecurity of believing that they weren’t capable.
When I heard all these inspiring and successful women share that they embarked on projects that they had no clue how to do, it was enlightening and refreshing. In my career, I have sometimes felt that if I didn’t already have 100% of the experience needed to take on a role, then I was not qualified. Still, the truth is that you’re supposed to learn as you go — and if you’re not learning on a job, then you are not growing professionally. But unless you are brave enough to say yes, you have no idea what that experience could lead to and the doors that it could open. Sometimes when we see successful people, we assume that they have it all covered, but in reality, they are figuring it as they go too.
Producing this podcast was me living this mantra, and it was so ironic to hear it on each episode. I’m sharing this advice with others now, because I want people to take chances and not let the fear of failure stop them from pursuing exciting new opportunities. For me, I have started to embrace this idea as a pillar of my professional life. If we are curious and open to exploring new paths, we can learn and do anything. | https://medium.com/wake-up-call/the-best-career-advice-ive-ever-heard-cf0a29e32458 | ['Katie Couric'] | 2019-12-02 10:01:02.218000+00:00 | ['Careers', 'Women', 'Workplace', 'Culture', 'Career Advice'] |
Interactive Visualization with Plotly and Dash | For around 3 years of my experience I was using matplotlib for visualization, around 2 months back following an advice of my colleague, I gave a try to plotly and dash. I was so impressed from the library that I have posted tutorials about these libraries on my YouTube channel “when math’s meets coding”. Today I am going to share my experience with these libraries this may motivate others to give a try to Plotly and Dash.
Check out Complete video Tutorial for Plotly and Dash
Plotly have a clear advantage over matplotlib when it comes to the interactivity, reason is simple it is written in plotly.js which is built in d3.js. editing or modifying plots is as simple as writing a CSS code. Plotly with Dash is a complete capsule solution for visualization in python. with help of plotly and dash you can develop a complete visualization application with a singe page script in python.
Dash is another open source library with inbuilt flask application which permits you host your plots on provided web address or IP.
All the codes and article are available on GitHub. After gaining basic understanding of such library its best practice to solve some problem with help to underlying library. In this article I will try to give basic introduction of plotly and dash components then try to make a simple dashboard.
Idea over here is to create a dashboard with interactive drop-down menu with below steps
Create a random data-generator with numpy and pandas Create layout of dashboard with drop-down menu Create a category column in the random data-set with three inbuilt category “good”, “bad” and “worst” now put these category in the drop-down Once user select any category from drop-down apply filter for that category in the data-frame and plot filtered data in the dashboard
Lets understand these components with coding
Install dependencies
pip install plotly
pip install dash
Importing all required libraries
import plotly
import dash
import plotly.offline as pyo
import plotly.graph_objs as go
import numpy as np
import dash_html_components as html
import dash_core_components as dcc
from dash.dependencies import State, Input, Output
import pandas as pd
Random data Generating function
Writing a random data-frame generating function whose data utilized to create dashboards
global cat_g ,sample_type
cat_g = ["good","bad","worst"]
def datagen():
my_sample_data = np.random.random_sample([100,3])
sample_Cat = [cat_g[np.random.randint(0,3)] for i in range(100)]
Base_Data = pd.DataFrame(my_sample_data,columns=["val_1","val_2","val_3"])
Base_Data["sample_Cat"] = sample_Cat
return(Base_Data)
DataFrame Generated by function
Our Objective to develop a dashboard which will look like this
Final script result dashboard hosted with dash
Dash Core components
Dash core components are drop-down, Slider ,range-slider etc you can put all these component with small script for details about these components visit below page
Values and Labels
You need to create values and label dictionary to use dash core components, label will come on the UI and values will be forwarded to the function which user interact with the dashboard this can be done as below.
cat_g = ["good","bad","worst"] ## Creating values and labels for drop-down
options_list = []
for i in cat_g:
options_list.append({'label': i, 'value': i})
Here “good”, “bad” and “worst” will be seen on the dashboard and passed to the figure generating function.
Figure Generator Function
You need to write a function which will generate figure based on given filtered data, here is the sample code for it
def fig_generator(sample_data):
sample_data = sample_data.reset_index(drop=True)
sample_data.head()
plot_data =[] for i in range(1,4):
plot_data.append(go.Scatter(x=sample_data.index, y=sample_data['val_'+ str(i)], name = 'val_'+ str(i) ))
plot_layout = go.Layout(title = " This plot is generated using plotly ") fig = go.Figure( data = plot_data ,layout = plot_layout) return(fig.data,fig.layout)
Dash Html component
For creating a web based application you need html components. Dash provides these html components like Div tags Header. For more information about Dash Html components check out below link
Defining Dash Layout
You need to define a layout for dash in which you can provide styling with css components, do not forget to provide id’s to all html components. Id’s are the reference for these placeholders , For changing anything inside the placeholder you need to create a call back function then by giving the reference id’s.
Callback Function in dash
For any change based on users input given in drop-down you need to create a call back function all input and output components id’s you need to provide as arguments of the callback function here is the call back function used in our code.
[Input("drop_down_1", "value")])
def updateplot(input_cat):
df= datagen()
sample_data = df[df["sample_Cat"] == input_cat ]
trace,layout = fig_generator(sample_data)
return {
'data': trace,
'layout':layout
}
if __name__=='__main__':
app.run_server() @app .callback(Output("plot_area", 'figure'),[Input("drop_down_1", "value")])def updateplot(input_cat):df= datagen()sample_data = df[df["sample_Cat"] == input_cat ]trace,layout = fig_generator(sample_data)return {'data': trace,'layout':layoutif __name__=='__main__':app.run_server()
Complete Script
Here is the complete script that can be utilized to generate such dashboard in python. | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/interactive-visualization-with-plotly-and-dash-f3f840b786fa | ['Jay Shankar'] | 2020-01-30 04:35:34.299000+00:00 | ['Dashboard', 'Data Visualization', 'Dash', 'Plotly', 'Python'] |
Helping The Homeless | Helping The Homeless
Photo by Chris Murray on Unsplash
There are so many people who are homeless
It is sad to see the homeless living on the streets. There are some who have little colonies where they have set up small tents with groups of them living in the same area. There are some who sleep on cardboard on city sidewalks. Homeless people are regularly sitting or standing by streets and begging for a little money. It is a sad plight to be homeless. Winter is hard for them. Life is difficult.
As the winter weather is coming in full force during the month of December, it presents more problems for the homeless. Staying safe and warm is difficult unless they are able to find temporary relief in a homeless shelter.
A neighborhood message came on social media from the city council in my area the other day. It read: Hello neighbors — Today we approved a temporary land use declaration for a temporary winter shelter at xxxxxxxxx. If opened, the property will provide 100–120 beds to the state’s homeless resource system through April 15, 2021.
There are government agencies, civic groups, and individuals who are trying to help the homeless. They do need more help and resources as the snow, rain, and cold become more prevalent.
One wonders where the families of these homeless people are. Maybe they have lost contact and are looking for them. Families are normally there to help each other when needed. It is sad that so many people are homeless and on their own without the support of a family.
We can help by providing some food and money for them when we see the homeless. We can donate to causes which help them.
Anyone reading this surely has a home and the basic necessities of life. We should be grateful for we are blessed. | https://medium.com/illumination/helping-the-homeless-fbff3fbeafde | ['Floyd Mori'] | 2020-12-14 18:50:40.149000+00:00 | ['Winter', 'Gratitude', 'Family', 'Homeless', 'Helping Others'] |
World Cup sample dapp on MOAC: from start to finish | in In Fitness And In Health | https://medium.com/moac/world-cup-sample-dapp-on-moac-from-start-to-finish-13e3ef83617c | [] | 2018-07-31 06:54:48.405000+00:00 | ['Dapp', 'Blockchain', 'Moac Technology', 'Moac'] |
instagram founder year | Instagram, the image sharing app created with the aid of using Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom from Stanford University, spins the story of achievement capitalized the proper manner. Launched manner again withinside the 12 months 2010, Instagram nowadays boasts of seven hundred million registered customers, with extra than four hundred million human beings touring the webweb page on a everyday basis. Out of the seven hundred million customers, round 17 million are from the UK alone! When the 2 founders began out speakme approximately their concept, they quick realised that they’d one purpose in mind: to make the biggest cell image sharing app. However, earlier than Instagram, the 2 had labored collectively on a comparable platform referred to as Burbn. For Instagram to work, Krieger and Systrom determined to strip Burbn right all the way down to the naked necessities. Burbn became pretty just like Instagram and had functions which allowed customers to feature filters to their pictures. The social networking webweb page Instagram reached 1000000000 energetic customers in 2019. The US-primarily based totally video and image-sharing app is a achievement tale that has spread out because its release in October 2010 with the aid of using Stanford University college students Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom. Systrom majored in control technological know-how and engineering, at the same time as Krieger studied symbolic systems — a department of pc research mixed with psychology. When the 2 founders met, they began out discussing their concept for a brand new app and realised they shared a purpose: to create the world’s biggest cell image-sharing app. Budding entrepreneur Fellow college students recalled Systrom as being clearly gregarious and a budding entrepreneur from a younger age. He in short ran a market that became just like Craigslist for fellow Stanford college students. Krieger had exclusive capabilities and one in all his college tasks were designing a pc interface that could gauge human emotions. Prior to Instagram, that they’d collaborated on a comparable platform referred to as Burbn. They determined to strip it down and use it as the premise for Instagram. Burbn had functions that enabled customers to feature filters to their photographs, so the duo studied each famous image app to peer how they might development further. Eventually, they determined it wasn’t operating and scrapped Burbn in favour of making a totally new platform. Their first attempt became Scotch, a predecessor to Instagram, however it wasn’t a achievement, because it didn’t have sufficient filters, had too many insects and became slow. Once Instagram became launched for Android phones, the app became downloaded extra than 1,000,000 instances a day. Interestingly, the web social media platform became ready to get hold of an funding of $ 500 million. Furthermore, Systrom and Zuckerberg had been in talks for a Facebook poised takeover. In April 2012, Facebook made a proposal to buy Instagram for approximately $ 1 billion in coins and stock, with the important thing provision that the enterprise could continue to be independently managed. Shortly thereafter and simply previous to its preliminary public offering, Facebook received the enterprise for the whopping sum of $ 1 billion in coins and stock. After the Facebook acquisition, the Instagram founders have completed little to alternate the consumer phase, sticking to the simplicity of the app. The remarkable upward push of Instagram’s recognition proves that human beings agree with in actual connections as opposed to the ones primarily based totally on simplest words. Since the acquisition, Instagram’s founders haven’t made many adjustments to the consumer experience, who prefer to paste to the app’s simplicity. Its upward push in recognition proves that human beings revel in the manner the app works and just like the image-primarily based totally connections it provides. One of the maximum essential instructions of Instagram’s achievement is that the founders didn’t waste time seeking to keep their authentic concept, Burbn. Once they determined it wasn’t going to work, they moved on quick and invented Instagram. Systrom stated its call became primarily based totally on “immediate telegram”. The app became released at simply the proper time — and with simplest 12 personnel initially, the consumer base had increased to extra than 27 million earlier than Instagram became offered to Facebook. Today, maximum celebrities use it as a platform for promotions and with 1000000000 customers, it keeps to head from power to power. | https://medium.com/@jacobs-ronin/instagram-founder-year-5786a17bcf38 | ['Ronyan Jacobs'] | 2020-12-16 08:09:58.468000+00:00 | ['Technews', 'Success Story'] |
Unreliable Sources | I’ll do my research.
That’s the sentence being thrown around like a beach ball in a music festival. But the truth is not everyone who claims to be doing their research is doing their research.
Thanks to the internet, the sea of information seems to be rising above its sea level and the detriment has never been direr than with the coronavirus pandemic. Everyone now has something to say, from Dr Fauci to Bill Gates, to the average Tiktok user. Vaxxers and anti-vaxxers, theories and tweets, Facebook videos and government reports. Who do you believe?
To some, it’s a no brainer. They believe the health officials because these professionals can never be wrong. who wouldn’t choose your doctor over a viral tweet from Nicki Minaj?
For some, they’re uncertain. They don’t know who to believe. They’ve gotten some pretty good life hacks from TikTok, and the current TikTok video they just saw that condemned the vaccine was made by a doctor, or at least that was who he said he was.
And then there are the no-brainers again. But these are sure that the vaccine is bad. The vaccine makes your arm magnetic. This is a big “plan-demic.” And big pharma is behind all these.
I know how easy it is to think anyone in a camp other than yours is stupid but you really can’t blame people for what they choose to believe. Taken popular opinion or facts with a pinch of salt is a norm that experience has imposed on us all.
And those who are certain the government and health officials aren’t lying have chosen to overlook the times they did lie. To believe government agencies and experts is by no means a small fit. Because time and time again, those we hold as the pillars of truth in society have been weakened with accusations and indictment of falsehood right before our eyes.
After over two years of investigation, the Washington Post has exposed that senior foreign policy officials in the White House, State and Defense departments have been aware for some time that the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan was failing.
According to interview transcripts from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction obtained by the Post after many lawsuits, for 18 years, these same officials have lied to the public that the intervention was succeeding.
And this is not the first time. In 1971, the Pentagon Papers, a classified study of decision-making about Vietnam, was leaked and published and it showed that the U.S. government had systematically lied about the reality that the U.S. was losing the Vietnam War.
Also, who can forget the famous words of President Nixon, “I am not a crook.” Or those of President Clinton, “I didn’t have sex with that woman!” And it’s a given that those statements were lies.
So forgive anyone who has lost trust in the government. You might argue that the government won’t do the same with the health sector but when politics is involved, such a guarantee is impossible. What would be the incentive for such a lie? Well, I wouldn’t know but the damage has already been done, a huge shadow of doubt has been cast on the credibility of the government and no agency is exempted, not even the CDC.
Sadly, the public is not doing their research, because that’s not a thing for just anyone. You have to be a trained professional in the field, and you will need the time and resources to carry out the required research.
But instead, what we have are smart devices and the internet. And with these, we have accessed a portal of conflicting information from experts both critically acclaimed and self-acclaimed. And the facts or theories they postulate are extremely difficult to ignore. Whatever direction you choose to go, you have an arsenal of experts at your disposal.
This is the world we now live in, where each one of us is like the main character in a mystery novel and the golden rule is, trust no one. | https://medium.com/@ihuoma-stephen/unreliable-sources-fa800d5cc24 | ['Ihuoma Stephen'] | 2021-10-12 03:49:10.616000+00:00 | ['Afghanistan', 'Antivaxx', 'Unreliable Sources', 'Vietnam', 'Reliable Sources'] |
A teacher to his student | True, we met.
But know that the mountain you are climbing, I am descending from it. I know the heights of it, the steepness of it. So when I tell you about it, you laugh. I smile a modest smile. For someone also did the same when I was you, when I was climbing and when I was learning, yet I boasted of being nothing. Now when we part and move in our ways, and you will face those arduous slopes where a single step up becomes tough to take, then you will remember my smile and that will move you.
If ever I had forced you to accept, though truth, you would have refused then and forgotten me the moment we parted.
But the truth came to you and you remembered me, remembered that someone has stepped there before and moved to a height where your heart spaces fear and freedom, skies and the earth, hate and love all in one place. That kept you going.
Soon the time will come that you will have to descend from the heights to smile at everyone who comes in your way back, to tell them about the path they are heading, though they won’t accept it, just like you didn’t.
But they too will remember you at those difficult times which no one can skip, for they are the attributes of the mountain, not the path.
No matter which way you climb it, you have to face the slope to reach a height. | https://medium.com/@darmuneeb322/a-teacher-to-his-student-293f050d4340 | [] | 2020-12-25 00:31:08.366000+00:00 | ['Knowledge', 'Teachers', 'Philosophy'] |
Lost Faith in Eldorado | Lost Faith in Eldorado
Muslim scholars struggled for a long time to come up with a ruling on hijrah from Muslim countries to non-Muslim countries. Arguments on the moving side comprise of the necessity of spreading Islam through migration and assimilation in other societies. The “remain” camp brings up the issue that this might endanger the intellectually weak Muslims who would jump the bandwagon of the non-believers.
The question after world war 1 became more severe when the intermingling between the Christian world and Muslim world happened under a very different power relationship that Muslims were used to for centuries. This means their subjugated colonized reality would have very little against its encroaching and aggressive invader. This was inevitable and Islam had to move out of Arabian peninsula. It was religion for eternity and it had to pick up the gauntlet.
Luckily, Islamic tradition and its philosophical superiority had proven itself in academic spheres and triumphed in earlier encounters with the christian world when great feats like defeating Greek philosophy were pulled by Imam Al-Ghazali RA along with many others. This left us a great tradition of Kalam and logical reasoning that western world claimed itself to have mastered.
They have upped their game a notch since then. Now the western world has reconstructed not only its despicable religious history with another abominable theory called Secularism, they want it enforced. This time around its not an academic debate. It’s more of a hostile takeover with ideas shoved down the throat if they aren’t palatable in their raw form.
The corollary isn’t very different from what scholars had anticipated. The weaker and conniving took the bait and along came a generation that was quick to sell their souls for their masters’ leftovers. This ensured their smooth career progression in the courts of the English. Lepel Griffin wrote a fantastic book called Chiefs of Punjab where he lists all the influential court jesters that fought with their kinsmen for scraps of gold, water wells, a hand of villages and an annuity.
Not surprisingly the ‘false’ Prophet Mirza Ghulam Ahmed Qadiani came from a family with a long history of betraying the freedom fighters in colonial India. No wonder the masters shout about their ‘rights’ the most. Ironically they are more true to their salt then the turncoats.
Given the situation, a consensus was reached. People who are influenced easily by the foreign intrusion and give up their customs must stay in Muslim countries. They are safer at home. The ones who neither change nor influence others to convert can be allowed to migrate. Lastly, people with great influence and academic abilities must go to non-believing communities and convey the message of Prophet SA.
Gold diggers have their own reasons and they live in an aura they build for themselves. This catch 22 situation where glitter and faith presented a mutually exclusive choice, they chose the darkness. All kinds of irrelevant, cherry-picked verses were furnished from Quran to justify their avarice. Only half a century later this is where we are. In 2011, Muslims for Progressive Values appointed Imam Daayiee Abdullah as its Director for their “LGBTQ Outreach Program.”
The third generation of these sellouts has become a fearless and brazen version of their own opportunist selves. They have Islamic names, Asian tones, inspired accents and distorted identities. In order to appease their antagonist host cultures, they can go to great lengths and betray their own religion, history, parents and countries with remorse.
List only starts here. There is a British Muslims for Secular Democracy, Imaan, a group of LGBT Londoners, The Inner Circle, that claims to have first gay imam and all kind of sects one can think of. A generation raised by its enemies who eventually went off like a ticking bombing on the same people who incubated them. Swerving between embarrassment and shame some exasperated parents erupt into a desperate honor killing episode others abandon them into seclusion.
The legend of Zipa of the Muisca people in Colombia still lives today. Many Spanish conquistadors have searched for the lost city and have lost their lives in the quest. The word has it that the King arranged a huge initiation ceremony where he was to be crowned. This was once in a lifetime event, so he came up with an idea to make it an everlasting saga.
He covered himself with golden dust as an ostentatious display of his immense wealth while his attendants threw trinkets made of gold, emeralds, and precious stones into the lake and he submerged in the Lake Guatavita, a fabulous lake amidst the Andes, 50 km from Bogota. People eventually found out and rallied towards this magnetic and exotic land filled with gold and women.
Conquistadors centuries later, eventually did find silver in South America and it has ever since become one of the poorest regions in the world filled with disease, penury, violence and woe. For some reason, Muslims in the west don’t appear to be very different than the Muisca King. | https://medium.com/minhaajmusings/lost-faith-in-eldorado-f6bec8c08ccb | ['Minhaaj Rehman'] | 2016-10-10 20:16:21.737000+00:00 | ['LGBT Rights', 'Islam', 'Colonialism', 'Muslim', 'Europe'] |
One person IS important | Earth’s people have so many needs it can seem impossible to believe our efforts can make a meaningful difference. As soon as we clean up or improve one problem, another one pops up. You and I are only here for a short time. We barely make a dent.
When I was in college I worked evenings at the Des Moines Register. The desk I shared with one of the reporters had this story about saving the starfish taped to her computer. I never forgot this story and it has helped me persevere through times when compassion fatigue or burnout have overwhelmed me. This story helped me focus on the importance of one person. One person is not as overwhelming as billions of people.
You are hearing multiple sound bytes that Christmas is going to be even worse than Thanksgiving with COVID deaths. I am writing to you who are on the fence now about whether you should throw your hands up and say “my doing this isn’t making any difference” or if you can muster up the perseverance to buckle down during this time. I am giving you encouragement to call up within you the courage to do the right thing for the one and for the many.
I KNOW you are missing your pre-COVID life. I am missing pre-COVID life, too.
You are making a difference when you wear a mask when you visit your family. You are making a difference when you insist on social distancing during a holiday gathering. You are making a difference if you step aside for this year’s family celebrations.
That effort is going to help more than you realize. Yes, some of your friends and family are doing to do whatever they want. And your loneliness or need to please them may agonize you about doing the right thing. They may outright ostracize you for taking these measures. I understand. I truly understand.
But saving one person is significant. Even if that one person is random to you, that one person has and is important to someone else.
Here is the story of the starfish. Maybe it will inspire you like it has inspired me.
The Star Thrower
Once, on ancient Earth, there was a human boy walking along a beach. There had just been a storm, and starfish had been scattered along the sands. The boy knew the fish would die, so he began to fling the fish to the sea. But every time he threw a starfish, another would wash ashore.
An old Earth man happened along and saw what the child was doing. He called out, “Boy, what are you doing?”
“Saving the starfish!’ replied the boy. “
“But your attempts are useless, child! Every time you save one, another one returns, often the same one! You can’t save them all, so why bother trying? Why does it matter, anyway?” called the old man.
The boy thought about this for a while, a starfish in his hand; he answered, “Well, it matters to this one.”
And then he flung the starfish into the welcoming sea.” ― Loren Eiseley, The Star Thrower | https://medium.com/@brendahenning/one-person-is-important-7cb21de93094 | ['Brenda Henning'] | 2020-12-18 23:35:21.142000+00:00 | ['Covid 19 Crisis', 'Courage', 'Integrity', 'Masks', 'Motivational'] |
What to Do About Columbus? | Christopher Columbus — Discoverer of America?
America is stitched together. We do not really have a deep and long cultural foundation to stabilize our society. We are a bunch of disparate groups who came to America to find freedom and liberty. We have stitched this all together into a quilt we call the United States of America.
America as a society and a culture is really a quilt. Is Christopher Columbus part of that quilt? Yes, but is he as big a part as we have made him out to be in the past? Perhaps not, though he and his legacy cast a long shadow. I probably do not like seeing statues of Columbus too much. I am all for referendums on such things, but to allow mobs of people to decide is a VERY BAD precedent.
We don’t need to tear him out of the quilt. We need to broaden the quilt. We need to add some squares. Let us have ourselves a national quilting bee. We need to recognize these other contributors to our legacy. I do believe that we do better by adding some more squares. Let us have the discussion.
This discussion may become uncomfortable, but we should be earnest. I do not think the Spanish or the Italians or the Portuguese hold the same place in the “discovery” of the Americas as we originally thought. We can add the Vikings or possibly the Templars or the Phoenicians or the Chinese to our quilt. Of course, the indigenous peoples are a huge part of the story.
Huge is the contribution of indigenous people, but were they “first”? Is their such a thing as “first”? As we look at human history now going back many more thousands of years than we originally thought. We are beginning to understand there have been huge upheavals over the millennia. These events have caused enormous refugees flow at different times over different continents.
Let us talk about this stuff and not riot about it. This quilt is our nation. Who else should we remove? If we tear up the quilt we do not have a nation. It really is simple as that.
We are on the brink. We are in danger of falling into something akin to civil war or the Age of Terror during the French Revolution. America is such a patchwork quilt, it is amazing we have gotten this far. However, the patchwork quilt is as American as it gets. The stitching together of all of these odd squares should not have worked.
We are unlike the Japanese or the Jews or the Chinese or the Greeks or the Persians. Their cultures have remained homogeneous for centuries, even millennia, if you listen to them tell it. There is a strong and long-lasting fabric which shields these societies. This natural homogeneous bond provides protection against these societies turning on themselves.
America does not have this strong natural homogeneous fabric to tie us together. We have this “quilt” we have stitched together. This quilt nurtures us and keeps us together in times of trouble. If we tear at the squares of the quilt we will have nothing. Some of the squares have stains but they are part of the fabric of who we are. We must recall who we are. We are this great imperfect patchwork quilt.
What do I mean in practical terms? Well, I think there are squares in the quilt which are stained. I KNOW they are stained; badly stained. It is part of the patchwork which we are made up of though. America has always been about redemption. A vast country to give you a second chance to make good of your life.
Sure some of squares are stained, but they provide too much other strength to the quilt to be torn from our blanket. They are flawed, they are stained, but they are part of the fabric which holds us together. I am going to toss them out here in no particular order or priority really. There are so many stained squares in the quilt I need not ruminate on the idea for very long.
Malcolm X — Should we not have a statue for Malcolm X or read his writings because he was racist and violent in his youth? Honestly, he sounds like a violent racist in his youth so we should not have this square in the quilt…it is too stained. Yet, this square is SOOO important. Malcolm X is a story of redemption. A story of finding love in spirituality, specifically the spirituality of Islam. At this moment, at this time, the life of a man driven by violent racism at the beginning and moved by love, compassion and brotherhood at its end, is a square we MUST have in the quilt.
Geronimo — Geronimo is a stained square in the quilt for sure. He was a terrible hateful racist. Geronimo’s hatred toward Mexicans NEVER wavered throughout his life. The fact is indigenous people were fighting the Americans, the Canadians and the Mexicans in North America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Mexicans had killed Geronimo’s first wife and children. He never forgave them. He also killed his share of Americans, but he also was an honorable representative of the plight of the Apache. His leadership and dignity in the face of insurmountable odds is as American as it gets…or it is what we like to think about ourselves.
Junipero Serra — The statue of Father Serra was toppled at the California Capitol recently. There is little doubt the Catholic padre had caused a lot of suffering among the Native Californians. Nonetheless, I feel he also provides a strong connection to the Latinx heritage of the state AND the country. He is one of the founding infrastructure builders in the western United States. He had founded a string of missions before the United States had won the revolution. He represents a testament to the hard-working, god-fearing Hispanic heritage of the country. (remember I am a pagan, so I am simply acknowledging another square in the quilt.)
George Washington — The first president of the United States is clearly a stained square in the quilt of America. When one truly understands his slave holding history, one grows angry. When I visited Mt. Vernon and found the unmarked graves of the slaves, I was mortified. George Washington was an extremely religious man, so for him to bury them in unmarked graves demonstrated the low regard he had for them. It was a terrible realization for me. However, despite this stain on his square, George Washington also represents civilian government. He chose not to be king. He chose not to be a dictator by any name. He chose to step down. On top of that as he stepped down, a former military man, he turned over the mantle of power to a civilian, John Adams. John Adams had NO military background and had not fought in the Revolutionary War. A civilian government and civic elections to select the leadership are a key contribution of Washington’s square to the quilt.
Woodrow Wilson — Personally, I really find this person to be reprehensible on a number of levels. His racism was incredible. He represents a time when the Ku Klux Klan had a parade in Washington, DC. There is so much to hate about Woodrow Wilson, but his square represents a number of things for our quilt. The most important being the idea of global cooperation to prevent war. He fought to create the League of Nations a VERY necessary body. This was made clear by the rise of Hitler after the United States spurned membership in the league. Wilson’s dream became the United Nations after WWII due to our recognition of the need after rejecting it earlier. We definitely need this square to be represented at this time in our history, stains and all.
Thomas Jefferson — The author of the Declaration of Independence has quite a large role in American history. The Jefferson Bible is definitive proof many of the Founding Fathers were for the most part simple deists and not terribly religious. Jefferson is on the paper money and the coinage. Only Washington and Lincoln get this honor along with Jefferson. I would in fact probably say I think it might be too big an honor for a slave holder and perhaps a hypocrite. I wonder what Sally Hemmings would say about her “husband” and father of her children. His square is stained, but he also represents some of the strongest ideas about the dignity of the individual against the state. He also represents the broadening of the quilt. He brings Sally Hemmings’ square into the quilt.
I hope my country can see what a story of love, reconciliation and forgiveness the Jefferson-Hemmings square adds to our quilt. It strengthens our quilt as it strengthens their descendants. This square is stained for sure but it also a square which represents love and reconciliation. We choose the interpretation of the squares in our quilt and we can choose to rip them from the quilt. What will this nation choose? | https://medium.com/libertarian-socialism-american-style/what-to-do-about-columbus-7b17978ed091 | [] | 2020-10-12 16:14:36.812000+00:00 | ['Columbus', 'Indigenous', 'American History', 'Cancel Culture', 'Tolerance'] |
The Empowered Trans Woman Holiday Wish List | The Empowered Trans Woman Holiday Wish List
All I Want For Christmas Is You!
A personal note from Cassie Brighter
Thank you so much for following this effort. I’m glad my Facebook posts have inspired you. I’m glad my Medium stories have resonated with you.
I am building a strong community. I need MOMENTUM. I need you.
All I want for Christmas is for you to raise your hand and be counted.
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Happy Holidays! Thanks for being here. 😊
Happy Holidays from EmpoweredTransWoman.com
I have to add a note about the image:
I found this play on words on Facebook and I thought y’all would find it funny. Someone wrote me, saying that one does not need to be on HRT to be trans.
I want to make it very clear here — however you express your gender identity is up to you. However you choose to cope with gender dysphoria is up to you. If HRT helps you lead a happy and successful life, you should be on it. If you choose not to be on hormone replacement, you do you, boo. These are deeply personal choices and should be made by each individual. | https://medium.com/empowered-trans-woman/the-empowered-trans-woman-holiday-wish-list-2fe6aa4c7a05 | ['Cassie Brighter'] | 2019-12-23 05:01:27.642000+00:00 | ['Transgender', 'Transwoman', 'Diversity', 'Inclusion', 'LGBTQ'] |
The Art and Joy of Recutting Gemstones | A Chinese translation of this article was originally published in Jewelry World Vol. 92, November 2019
Over the past few years, the demand for well-cut gemstones has increased dramatically. Due to the large amount of commercial-quality material whose original cut was solely meant to retain weight as opposed to maximizing beauty and color, the international gem trade has seen a huge demand for recutting, not only in the American and European markets but in Asia as well. Recutting is the process of taking a poorly cut stone and turning it into a well-cut stone, and is a great way to add value to a gemstone so that you can resell it for profit.
The art of the recut is not for the faint of heart. It’s a skill that requires an experienced eye and an experienced cutting hand. The first thing a customer will ask you is “How much weight will you lose?” If you don’t have enough cutting experience to answer this question then don’t take the job. Recutting takes a lot of practice to learn the technique, to understand the various issues that come up during the recutting process, as well as seeing what your final carat yield is over the course of dozens, if not hundreds of recuts.
The recutting of this Burmese spinel improved a poorly shaped outline as well as closing the window in order to improve the color and brightness. Before 2.03ct. After 1.38ct.
The foundational skills are able to be learned. The first thing you have to do is get the cut stone on the dop in a way that is oriented correctly to lose the least amount of weight. Before you can even get to the actual cutting though, you need a plan. This is where the experience comes in. When you first look at a cut stone you need to be able to identify what problems the cut is giving the stone and if it’s possible to solve them in a reasonable way. This kind of identification takes experience so it’s best to practice on low value stones while you learn exactly how to improve a lackluster cut. If the stone belongs to a customer, they usually have an idea on what they want to change; maybe they want to close a window, fix the proportions, change the shape to something more pleasing to the eye, or change the faceting pattern in order to transmit more light and color. There are many reasons to do a recut, but there are as many times when recutting doesn’t make financial sense.
Recutting always involves a lot of math because you need to understand how much your stone is worth before the recut and how much it’s going to be worth after you lose 10–50% of the stones weight to fix its problems. If you don’t understand these numbers then don’t take work from a client. Practice on cheap stones to start to get an idea on how much weight you lose when you repolish, when you close a window, when you have to touch the girdle. You can’t responsibly accept a client’s stone if you can’t tell them (with some degree of certainty) that you can fix the problem within a certain percentage of the original weight.
Most of the excitement in recutting is figuring out how best to change the design. Sometimes the stone just needs a slight adjustment of angles and sometimes you need to completely change the shape and cutting style of the stone. The cutters knowledge comes into play a lot in this step because if you don’t know how a Step Cut can affect the color and light return of a stone versus a Portuguese Cut then you won’t have all the tools that you need at your disposable. You need to be able to judge the original facet angles and figure out how to adjust them to make better proportions as well as how to adjust angles on the fly. The original cut is probably not symmetrical, so aside from adjusting the cut style, you will have to deal with different facets at different angles. Depending on the value of the stone, it’s not always possible to cut all the angles exactly the way you’d like to. You need to be able to improvise and adjust as you go. That’s part of the fun.
By removing some of the unnecessary bulk from the pavilion of this blue-green Tourmaline, the cutter was able to adjust the angles to bring out the blue color and minimize the green color as much as possible. Before 26.02ct. After 21.78ct.
I have to admit though, the best part of recutting is when you finish the stone and compare your work to the original cut. There is nothing like it. Cutting from rough never gives you the same feeling because you never quite know what the potential of a stone is until it’s been at least preformed. With a recut, you can clearly see what the potential was for one cutter and then you get to see the upgraded potential from your own hands and skills. It’s a great feeling as an artist and it’s an even greater feeling when you sell the stone and realize that its value has increased, despite the fact that its carat weight decreased.
About the Author
Justin K Prim is an American lapidary and gemologist living and working in Bangkok, Thailand. He has studied gem cutting traditions all over the world as well as attending gemology programs at GIA and AIGS. He is currently working on a book about the worldwide history of gemstone faceting. He works as a Lapidary Instructor for the Institute of Gem Trading as well as writing articles, producing videos, and giving talks about gem cutting history. You can find him on Instagram at @justinkprim | https://medium.com/justin-k-prim/the-art-and-joy-of-recutting-gemstones-964c4c315c33 | ['Justin K Prim'] | 2021-05-09 07:32:08.076000+00:00 | ['Jewellery', 'Jewelry', 'Gem', 'Cutting', 'Art'] |
Top 11 Benefits To Choose Full-Stack Developer To Build Your App | Like other spheres, business tends to globalization and unification, thus the idea of full-stack developer became one among leading concepts on modern web/mobile development market. Actually, under full-stack developer we mean a person who is experienced and flexible enough to take almost any position in application development. The profound knowledge of the sphere together with vast skill set make such experts must-have for any company.
In this post, OpenGeeksLab ponders upon key characteristics a professional developer possesses, and 11 main reasons to hire a full-stack developer to participate in your project.
Full-Stack Development Market State
Trend on full-stack development has emerged several years ago and still gains popularity. Full-stack developer’s profession has entered the top three high-ranked jobs 2019 by Indeed. The demand for multiskilled developers has grown more than by 200% in period from 2015 till 2018. This leap was triggered by increasing unification tendency claiming all-inclusive solutions a must for businesses that develop.
High demand triggered intense development of the sphere, causing appearance of more full-stack frameworks that enable overall developer retraining and full-stack technologies evolution. Besides, high versatility level and the ability to replace two or three regular developers make full-stack programmer a valuable team member with salary reaching worldwide up to 5 thousand dollars per month.
Key Challenges a Developer Should Deal With
1. Frontend Code Optimization
Frontend optimization stands among most challenging project features a full-stack programmer meets while working on website or application. frontend basically concerns interface solutions, that emerge while developing mobile/web project. Coding frontend, such programming languages as CSS, JavaScript, HTML, etc. are commonly used.
2. Backend Development
Backend is a second basic part of full-stack developer’s skill set. Under backend one usually means website’s/application’s logic, that manages user authentication and data processing. Designing web/mobile project’s backend part, developers use programming languages like Java, Python, Node.js, PHP, C#, etc.
3. Databases Management
Apart from frontend and backend knowledge full-stack specialists should understand how databases function. They must distinguish between various database relations and be aware of cloud technologies. Positive experiences within MySQL and MongoDB are usually welcomed.
4. API Integration
API implementation and third-party services became almost as vital as frontend or backend in modern website/mobile development. Companies or developers using these technologies enjoy co-partnering benefits instead of wasting time while designing own solutions.
5. Profound Infrastructure Knowledge
Among other characteristic features of proficient developer general system knowledge takes an important place. Due to deeper understanding of infrastructural connections developers easily detect problematic issues and turn project disadvantages into its benefits.
6. Hardware Solutions
A modern vision of proficient developer covers not only different software experiences (e.g. frontend, backend, websites, mobile applications, etc.) but also opportunity to work with hardware. Having experienced full-stack specialist in company prevents delays connected to hardware failures.
7. Project Control & Basic Client Management
One more feature full-stack developers should possess concerns organization and administrative skills. They are to find approach to clients or colleagues taking maximum advantage out of current project. Besides, such developers can perform project/sales manager’s functions in case of emergency.
8. Security Issues
Apart from pure development and basic administration, professional full-stack developer is capable of ensuring company’s or project’s security on basic level.
Besides, an experienced developer should take care of:
working within various full-stack web application frameworks like Node.js, Django, etc.;
understanding hybrid forms of mobile development;
administrating media queries or single page websites/applications;
easy switching between different domains without delays;
having relevant information and upgrading own knowledge to keep up with modern technologies.
Still hiring full-stack developer, business runner should understand that a real person cannot correspond to ideal developer picture presented above and be prepared to meet minor hardships accompanying profits of full-stack development technology.
11 Benefits While Hiring a Full-Stack Developer for Your Project
1. Competent Partnership
Productive partnering stands among key reasons to hire an expert proficient in full-stack coding. For business owner who expects to get maximum out of bare concept, it becomes an efficient way-out, because proficient developers can design a complete project from scratch. Besides, developers taking care of full-stack startup are usually aware of current market state, thus they can calculate all possible scenario for final product and come up with innovations that will take off.
2. Multiple Proficiency
Being a developer in full-stack company means primarily having knowledge and skills across diverse technologies. While coding full-stack projects developers use different programming languages, e.g. Java, Python, HTML, Node.js, PHP, JavaScript, etc., and have efficient experiences with several full-stack frameworks. The more various technologies are presented in developer’s portfolio, the better.
3. Flexibility
Full-stack technologies imply programmers not only being aware and skillful in several coding languages, but also flexible while working in diverse conditions. Developers working with full-stack are equally proficient in working as frontend or backend developers. Under backend development one usually means the app’s architecture and its ‘logic’, while frontend developers struggle for uniting bare code with interface via technologies like HTML, JavaScript, CSS etc., thus bringing the project to its market version.
4. Wider View
Dealing with full-stack software leads to broaden views and wider perspectives during workflow. Developers occupied in creating a full-stack web application or mobile full-stack application tend to look for different angles and unusual outcomes to make final product unique. Diverse experiences in website/mobile application development and accomplished projects of various kinds contribute to developer’s versatility. Thus, he or she can actually take any position or replace anyone in development team in case of emergency.
5. Additional Skills
Hiring a full-stack web designer or developer one gets a worker capable of executing and management as well. Programmers working within full-stack frameworks usually meet problems of workflow organization or optimization. Besides, they are to conduct the project on all stages themselves, thus they acquire basic management skills. Nevertheless, hiring multiskilled developer cannot fully replace professional project manager and may turn time-consuming on particular stages.
6. User-Friendly Approach
Interface and design play an important role in building positive user-experience, thus to attract customers full-stack web designers/developers pay much attention to current trends in UI/UX standards. While developing a full-stack web application, developers claim the interface design being user-friendly and intuitive. They go for innovative functions implementation guaranteeing product’s uniqueness and accessibility.
7. Effective Troubleshooting on Time
Effective troubleshooting depends on two different factors. First one concerns detecting drawbacks during development process itself and finding relevant solutions as quick as possible. Second one is about post-release maintenance and updates, as problems may occur out of nothing due to external reasons. To hire a developer skilled in full-stack coding solves two issues at once, as such experts are usually aware of both factors and have already elaborated productive algorithms to deal with either problem kind.
8. All-In-One Solution
As far as full-stack experts possess practical knowledge in diverse spheres of development process, they can not only lead a project, work as a team part or implement innovations, but also represent a final product. A lot of useful data concerning current full-stack app make developers important participants of conferences, as they can help sales managers giving convincing arguments to stakeholders.
9. Cheaper Solution for Better Result
Very often SMEs cannot afford spending much money on full-stack startup, though have promising idea relevant on modern market. Hire freelance full stack developer or full-stack company as a cost-effective way-out then. Due to vast practice they can conduct all project stages from initial idea till final project presentation alone. Business owner does not need to hire a whole development team to roll out a product in time, that much reduces expenses preserving profit from project release.
10. No Delays
Full-stack developer skills can become handy even on project planning stage. Being equipped with diverse experiences, developers analyze different cases and correct working plan. They can also help in sharing responsibilities among all development team members or coordinating the workflow. Including actual developers’ experience to optimize development process help avoiding delays and usually reduces total working hours spent onto project.
11. High Responsibility Level
Hiring full-stack expert is a good idea at any stage of project development process. Experienced programmers can conduct project development from beginning till end, despite the period they join in. If business owners hire a developer in the middle of workflow, they may be assured of newcomers quickly adapting to team and implementing quality-directed offers to get successful output in shorter period.
Bring Your Project to Life Today!
Full-stack development is an upcoming trend offering a lot of advantages both for startups and developed companies. Hiring full-stack developer is an excellent budget-friendly strategy for your project being executed on time by high-qualified experts.
OpenGeeksLab does not stand apart modern trends — our experienced full-stack developers are always ready to productive partnership doing their best to find end to end software solutions that perfectly fit your business case. Do not hesitate! Drop us a line and use your opportunity to get a vision that is more compelling than your wildest dreams could have ever conjured. | https://medium.com/@opengeekslab/top-11-benefits-to-choose-full-stack-developer-to-build-your-app-457af1c269a5 | ['Dmytro Dvurechenskyi Opengeekslab'] | 2020-02-24 13:30:34.460000+00:00 | ['Web Development', 'Full Stack', 'Mobile App Development', 'Apps', 'App Development'] |
UITableViewDiffableDataSource | Probably everyone that used UITableView before iOS 12 crashed their apps at least once. It's very easy to delete or add an element and forget to sync the tableView and it's dataSource .
What was the problem?
UITableView has a property called dataSource . It's a type that conforms to UITableViewDataSource protocol. It's responsibility is provide to tableView some infos like the number of sections, number of rows per section and which cell will be used by tableView on a specific indexPath . Doesn't matter where the dataSource gets these infos, it's responsible to provide them to tableView . The mandatory methods of UITableViewDataSource are:
func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, numberOfRowsInSection section: Int) -> Intfunc tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> UITableViewCell
When we update the tableView removing or updating a row, for example, we need to make sure that dataSource is in sync with tableView , removing this element as well. Otherwise, we're out of sync, and it can leads to a crash.
tableView.deleteRows(at: [IndexPath(row: 0, section: 0)], with: .automatic)
//If the dataSource doesn't update it's data, we'll have a crash later :(
The crash message is similar to the message bellow. In my case I had a section and three rows. I removed the first row without updating my array of elements, where my dataSource was getting the data.
Terminating app due to uncaught exception ‘NSInternalInconsistencyException’, reason: ‘Invalid update: invalid number of rows in section 0. The number of rows contained in an existing section after the update (3) must be equal to the number of rows contained in that section before the update (3), plus or minus the number of rows inserted or deleted from that section (0 inserted, 1 deleted) and plus or minus the number of rows moved into or out of that section (0 moved in, 0 moved out).’
The solution
On WWDC 2019, Apple presented a safer and simpler new API, for UITableView and UICollectionView . With this API, we can update and animate our tableView in a simpler way and with less chances of crashing our app. We're using UITableView , so let's use UITableViewDiffableDataSource .
Instead of creating a project using UITableViewDiffableDataSource , I though that would be better for understanding if I created a project using UITableViewDataSource , and switch later to use the new API.
If you want to read about this project that I created, click here.
If you prefer skip this part and code with me right away, you can download the project in the link bellow.
UITableViewDiffableDataSource
First, we need to change the dataSource .
Open the DiaryViewController file and delete the dataSource assignment…
tableView.dataSource = self
… and the implementation of the protocol.
//Delete the extension and it's content
extension DiaryViewController: UITableViewDataSource {
}
Let's check some methods from dataSource:
open class UITableViewDiffableDataSource<SectionIdentifierType, ItemIdentifierType> : NSObject, UITableViewDataSource where SectionIdentifierType : Hashable, ItemIdentifierType : Hashable public typealias CellProvider = (UITableView, IndexPath, ItemIdentifierType) -> UITableViewCell? public init(tableView: UITableView, cellProvider: @escaping UITableViewDiffableDataSource<SectionIdentifierType, ItemIdentifierType>.CellProvider)
It's a generic type. SectionIdentifierType and ItemIdentifierType should be Hashable , because sections and elements must be unique.
It's init gets a tableView and a cellProvider as parameters. The cellProvider returns a cell (like cellForRow , right?).
Now let's implement the dataSource !
NSDiffableDataSourceSnapshot
If you try to run the project, you'll notice it's still not working. tableView is still empty, right? That's because dataSource updates the tableView through NSDiffableDataSourceSnapshot .
All we need to do is just apply a snapshot on dataSource . Then the dataSource verifies the last snapshot state and make a diff with this new snapshot . With this diff, it's able to properly updates the tableView .
Easy, isn't it?
As we don't have a initial snapshot , tableView keeps empty. In order to create a snapshot , we need the following steps in our project:
Init NsDiffableDataSource . It's a generic type, like the UITableViewDiffableDataSource . Add the main section and the notes in it. Apply the snapshot on dataSource .
If you're asking yourself why we passed animatedDifferences as false , you're really a focused reader! This parameter as false means that we don't want the tableView getting animated in this snapshot .
In fact, we don't want to animate at the first iteration. We want the first elements already in the tableView , not seeing them getting added on it.
Done! Now can run the app, and everything is working again, right?
No, it's not :(
Something is wrong. When tapping on edit , we can't delete or move our cells.
And worst. If we try to create a new note, the app will crash.
In part 2 of this study, I teach how to fix that!
Check the part 2 here!
Start project
Final project
See you there! | https://medium.com/my-ios-studies-en/first-steps-with-uitableviewdiffabledatasource-part-1-a70f12dfd5c9 | ['Roberto Sampaio'] | 2021-04-16 12:18:49.643000+00:00 | ['iOS App Development', 'Swift Programming', 'Ios Development', 'iOS', 'Swift'] |
First steps with GraphQL | https://thegraph.com is a decentralized protocol for indexing and querying data from blockchains.
Right now, it works with Ethereum only but there are plans to implement it to another blockchains. The Graph is invented to help dApps to query data which could not be simply obtained using blockchain node.
Queries could be done using GraphQL API. There is Playgrounds feature in every subgraph presented in explorer https://thegraph.com/explorer/. You can try to execute queries using GraphQL API. I would recommend to check Uniswap V2 subgraph firstly: https://thegraph.com/explorer/subgraph/uniswap/uniswap-v2. It was provided as example in Curators Kickoff Stage 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noH_33MsXQc and you should watch.
Let us try to execute some queries in Uniswap subgraph.
There is example:
It should output: the first five uniswapFactories and its fields: id, pairCount, pairs, and the first five tokens and its fields: id, symbol, name, decimals. But if we try to execute it, we get the error
Yes, example is incorrect! Most likely the team will fix it soon. What is the problem? On the right side you can see the schema of the subgraph
Let’s click on UniswapFactory:
We see entities of UniswapFactory and as you can see there is no field ‘pairs’. But we asked subgraph to output this entity for UniswapFactory. That is the problem. If we try to execute the query:
we see the valid result:
So, in common case if you want to query something using subgraph, first you should look at subgraph’s schema and its entities. Take entity interesting for you e.g. ‘token’ and add it to the query schema. If you want to query a single token, you use ‘token’, but if you want to query all token entities you should use ‘tokens’.
Further I provide more complicated example of the query:
In ‘pairs’ entities query we see:
skip: 10 — means that we ask to skip the first 10 entities
first: 5 — as we know it means that we ask to output only the first 5 entities of collection (but after skipped ones)
where — is filter and in {} we define its condition, in our case reserve ETH should be more than 100000 (_gt — prefix which means ‘greater than’, and there are other prefixes which you can see in the docs)
In ‘tokens‘ we see interesting condition for filtering: ‘symbol_in: [“USDT”,”USDC”,”USDT”]’, prefix _in means that its entity should be equal to one of the values defined in the array […]
That’s all! I hope this tutorial would be useful for you. Go on Astronauts! | https://medium.com/@ffflashhh/first-steps-with-graphql-5e43d3fd59a2 | ['Алексей Колмаков'] | 2020-11-16 12:09:40.605000+00:00 | ['GraphQL', 'Crypto', 'Graph'] |
Outlander Season 5 Keeps The Adventure Brewing | Outlander Season 5 Keeps The Adventure Brewing
Outlander is available to watch on Prime/Starz. The first five episodes of season 5 have forged their way into Series streaming history, like their predecessors.
Medium Templates/www.pinterest.com (Catriona Balfe/Sam Hueghan in Outlander)
Like all other seasons, the mastermind behind the streaming show, Ronald D. Moore, ensures it is rife with violence, shock, vile language, realistic but not over the top explicit and sensitive scenes, and more.
Do not let the kiddies watch Outlander!
Caitriona Balfe, like other women in the series, seems to have with-gone as many nude scenes, and such fully visual sex scenes since the “me too” movement took its wonderful stronghold on entertainment, two years ago.
Not to suggest that is the reason at all, or the driving force of less of those sometimes necessary, and perfectly filmed attributes of the show.
I just watched the entire 4.5 seasons in the past three weeks. It sucked me into its ridiculously phenomenal portrayal of an era, from the history of my own Scottish heritage, I’d never known.
Beside the fun of repeating every Scottish character’s line back with their voice and brogue, learning how to speak with the accent well, I became mesmerized with the intricately beautiful and amazing dialogue.
Even more so, I am enchanted with the elite acting abilities that emote from every single person on camera. Give or take a few of those pesky extras that look uncomfortable in the background, rarely.
As has been custom, Jamie (Sam Heughan) and Claire Fraser’s chemistry is every romanticists’ dream. You would probably be happy, if it were just them in the whole series. Alas, we need a story, and oh what an epic one it is.
I’d be punished, to be sure, if I didn’t speak of Sam Heughan’s raw, uncanny, sexy and solid performances. He is just as deserved of the awards and acclamations he’s piled up in his young career, as Balfe has earned herself.
Seemingly, unlivable or unsurvivable situations are overcome over and over again, and although you’d expect to say, “that’s just too much”, or laugh at something amiss, it never happens.
Every moment of every scene is carefully and methodically directed by several directors, and adapted by many writers, from the books written by Diana Gabaldon, so that nothing stretches the possibilities, imagination or even poetic license, further than your mind can accept.
No. In fact, you will bawl, laugh, whimper, sob, smile, and feel incredible joy, as if you were on a very long and windy rollercoaster.
Most series, even movies have those snore moments, but not this one! I’d start watching 8pm and next thing I’d know, it’s 4:42am.
I am not one to tell the story or plot in my reviews.
If you are looking to get away, vacation in your mind, experience another time deep in your heart and soul, desire romance, English, French, Scottish, Irish and other ear-tickling accents, this might be your way to pass the time and clear your mind.
You will learn from Outlander many, many, very important lessons about life. You will be reminded of what really matters in life.
Take the adventure of a lifetime with Claire and Jamie, and see their smitten love for each other (former real-life mates), whether you’ve never seen the series or are in the middle of it.
Meet incredible characters like none you’ve ever known and be ready to be shocked, no matter your level of life experiences.
I guarantee ye. Ye never seen living like this.
I dinna ken if ye will love it as much as I, but if yer heart is as big as mine…I can only say…wow!
You will fall in love with these characters.
To think that Caitriona Balfe was once one of the top elite models in the world. Now, she is definitely one of the top, if not greatest actors I’ve ever been lucky enough to watch perform at a level of truth to herself and her character, that it is oddly baffling to see.
Outlander boldly deserves:
🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈 | https://medium.com/rainbow-reviews/outlander-is-available-to-watch-on-prime-starz-a1651cee798a | ['Colin Munro Wood'] | 2020-05-24 15:25:35.058000+00:00 | ['Outlander', 'Movies', 'Streaming', 'Love', 'Binge Watching'] |
A poem about the natural, the beautiful and the often hidden – | A poem about the natural, the beautiful and the often hidden – WritingSophie ·Dec 20, 2020
Beware of the unshaven vagina
‘What are other women really thinking, feeling, experiencing when they slip away from the gaze and culture of men’ – Naomi Wolf
she pulled the hair out of her skin
a razor each time
weeding out her womanhood
as if femininity herself
walked across rose gardens
and asked them to strip their thorns
as if the very state of being a woman
is only complete with a decoration of softness
s.c | https://medium.com/@sophiecook2710/a-poem-about-the-natural-the-beautiful-and-the-often-hidden-53794e3cc0a2 | [] | 2020-12-20 05:38:28.830000+00:00 | ['Women', 'Feminism', 'Body', 'Image', 'Poetry'] |
Dialogues With My Self | Dialogues With My Self
Photo by Form on Unsplash
Careful observations of my mind and actions have led me to believe that I am not one but many in a seemingly unified whole. This has to be true because at any point in time, at least some parts of me are always at war.
For example, yesterday, for the first time, and again this morning in my yoga practice, I was able to graze the wall with my foot in my attempts to get to Pincha Mayurasana. The exhilaration of this event is still ringing in parts of me, while other parts are chiding me for my arrogance, and still other parts are outright jealous or even regretful that this has not happened sooner.
Having realized I am essentially many and not one, the study of my self -of my mind, body and spirit — has become even more complex and contradictory. Where and how do I establish a method in this madness is the central question I’m trying to figure out. Any methodical approach, by definition a scientific pursuit, needs at its foundations, well, a method. The methods I employ are yoga and writing.
My yoga practice demands of me a lot of faith, perhaps because in most aspects, I begin from a level below zero with no glimmer of improvement over phases that feel like eternity. The parts of me that subscribe to faith and tradition have always been in conflict with the parts of me that subscribe to doubt and reason. The only point they seem to agree upon is that any practice worth undertaking should only be undertaken for the highest of goals, for the absolute Truth, for Samadhi. What else is worth waking up for?
Once when I asked John outright at a discussion group, “How do I knowyoga will lead me to Enlightenment?”, he said to me something along the lines, “I hope you find enough reasons in what you get in class to keep up a faithful practice”. When you look at it that way, faith and reason do not seem that contradictory. In fact, they could be claimed to be quite complementary notions. The evidence my reasoning accepts fuels my faith, and my faith in keeping to the practice provides me more evidence.
I keep a keen eye out for nuggets of such evidence — like a toe off the floor in Bakasana, that affirms the faith that I won’t fall on my face, like a sole on the wall in Pincha Mayurasanathat has found enough reason to believe my chest will withstand the expansion, like the face of a long-lost friend glimpsed in dhyanamaterializing at my doorstep — coaxing me to toy with the idea that I might just be in alignment with the Universe after all. | https://medium.com/@Anjali_Sarkar/dialogues-with-my-self-df91ce629649 | ['Anjali A. Sarkar'] | 2019-02-07 15:04:17.666000+00:00 | ['Enlightenment', 'Journal', 'Yoga', 'Reflections', 'Philosophy'] |
Morpheus Labs | An Update On Token Movement | Since late September 2020, the Morpheus Labs team has committed to publishing a bi-monthly token movement update to our token holders and community members. In order to facilitate transparency and progress of the project, we will also be making use of this opportunity to address queries on the existing and upcoming developments with regard to Morpheus Labs and our flagship product — Morpheus Labs SEED (BPaaS Version 2.0).
Welcome to our December 2020 Token Movement Update.
Overview
Morpheus Labs takes a very long term view with respect to the success of our ecosystem and our role in supporting it. Since our last Token Movement Update, we have made rapid progress in the background with developments that not only strengthen our product, but have also ensured that our Education campaign for the broader community is on track to realization.
Importantly, our immediate goals with our stake are to help ensure the liveness, utility and security of MITx. Our secondary goal is to promote the growth of new applications and use cases on the platform.
Company Token Wallet Updates
Earlier in September, we published our Tokenomics update to provide an insight to the token distribution and our committed token burn schedule until 4th October 2022.
Key Metrics
MITx (ERC-20 )Contract Address: 0x4a527d8fc13c5203ab24ba0944f4cb14658d1db6
Circulating Supply (1st Dec 2020): 391,903,057 MITx
Total Token Supply (1st Dec 2020): 746,999,995 MITx
Total Token Supply (4th Oct 2022): 700,000,000 MITx
Total Token Burn (4th Oct 2022): 300,000,000 MITx
*Burnt tokens split into Burn Address I (Pre-2019) and Burn Address II (Post-2019)
Company-held wallets (and Balance as of 1st Dec 2020)
Reserve I and Reserve II (7.9% — 79,000,000 MITx)
Team (10% — 100,000,000 MITx)
Foundation (10% — 100,000,000 MITx)
Platform/Treasury (1.28% — 12,818,575 MITx)
Listing (3.4% — 33,999,995.7642 MITx)
Back in October 2020, we initiated the process of splitting our Listing Wallet into 2 wallet addresses. The primary reason for splitting them into 2 separate cold wallet storage, is to ensure the security of the company-held holdings, as well as facilitation of upcoming usages, as in the case of the Listing wallet.
Today, the original Listing I (3.4% — 33,999,995.7642 MITx) and new Listing II (1.7% — 16,686,218.33 MITx) wallets are allocated, with the former being the wallet preserved for tokens that are meant for upcoming token burn.
With our Token Burn Schedule well under way, 33,999,995.000 MITx of the remaining tokens meant for token burn has also been moved into the Listing I wallet.
Since September 2020, the company has withdrawn 25,410,722.87 MITx from the Listing wallet allocation for marketing and development expenditures. This amount includes 13,000,000.00 MITx tokens which were sent to the eater address for our 30th September 2020 token burn.
Going forward, we are accelerating the push for the adoption of MITx as well as Morpheus Labs SEED. Tokens from the Foundation and Listing wallets will be used to execute our upcoming platform development, campaign and promotions.
We will use tokens:
To participate in consensus and assist in securing the network, though our tokens will never represent more than 49% of the circulating supply. Tokens are routinely redistributed among nodes to maintain voting at the appropriate level;
To provide incentives to contributors and application developers through token grants, competitions, and investments;
To assist in the development of the financial ecosystem by encouraging growth and liquidity through the support of partner solutions including market-making.
In addition:
We will re-balance our accounts from time to time, creating new addresses or removing old addresses, and update this page as needed.
We anticipate selling some MITX from time to time through third party run, structured selling plans to fund development initiatives. Details on any sales will be published in future transparency statements.
These points are important as you may see tokens move and our total stake fluctuate as we provide support to the community. We will publish a periodic summary of token movement in addition to wallet updates to ensure transparency.
Community, Partnerships & Exchange Listings
In an effort to add further customization capabilities for our SEED users, we are excited to work closely with our strategic partners to make it increasingly easier for users and enterprises to build easily and effectively. We are also in our final stages of discussion with prospective partners, enterprises and organisations. We are grateful that as the blockchain ecosystem continues to see huge transformation in 2020, more entities have recognised and are looking to deploy blockchain-based applications for their respective businesses.
Finally, we have completed our marketing planning, assessment and research with a strong focus on our community growth and product awareness for Q4 of 2020 and beyond. We are also in our final stages of shortlisting the next exchange to list MITx for our existing and the broader community. More information will be provided soon.
That sums up our Bi-monthly update of December 2020. We are eager to hear feedback and suggestions from our community. Please email [email protected] for general inquiries/comments, or engage with us in our official Telegram group (https://t.me/morpheuslabs) | https://medium.com/morpheus-labs/morpheus-labs-an-update-on-token-movement-f6f0b3e70d52 | ['Morpheus Labs Team'] | 2020-12-02 10:03:06.092000+00:00 | ['Developer', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Technology', 'Blockchain'] |
何栢良指檢疫反映「慢三拍」問題 | A columnist in political development in Greater China region, technology and gadgets, media industry, parenting and other interesting topics. | https://medium.com/@frederickyeung-59743/%E4%BD%95%E6%A0%A2%E8%89%AF%E6%8C%87%E6%AA%A2%E7%96%AB%E5%8F%8D%E6%98%A0-%E6%85%A2%E4%B8%89%E6%8B%8D-%E5%95%8F%E9%A1%8C-fd415b449d8 | ['C Y S'] | 2020-12-18 03:44:44.238000+00:00 | ['Government', 'Politics', 'Hong Kong', 'China'] |
It’s Time to Vote… On a Book Cover! | Hi friends!
I am coming to you on a Saturday to ask for your help. Yesterday, I got back some cover mockup designs for my upcoming book Nobody Left Out: Jesus Meets The Messes.
Since it’s election season anyway, I figured I’d put it to a vote! :) I would love to get your opinion on these. Here are the options:
Cover #1:
Cover #2:
Cover #3:
Cover #4:
Cover #5:
So, what do you think? Let me know which one you like best!
Thanks! | https://medium.com/nobody-left-out/its-time-to-vote-on-a-book-cover-4b5143062dbf | ['Michael Murray'] | 2020-10-31 18:08:21.334000+00:00 | ['Jesus', 'Christianity', 'Religion', 'Spirituality', 'Faith'] |
Sexxxy Sharon | Sexxxy Sharon
A true story of falling in lust
photo by author
Wanna know why the Feds came after me so hard? Because they knew that stories like the following were actually true! And they wanted me to pay for all that fun! In truth, my job was 95% work and frustration and only 5% fun. But the Feds didn’t know that. Sitting in their offices slaving away while I was having a party and making much more than they were didn’t work for them! Busting my ass did!
It was like a dream cum true when Alexis, one of my most loyal clients called with a deal I simply couldn’t refuse.
“Billy! I have a girl who wants an internet ad. Come! And I want you to do a session with Sharon ’cause I need a free Press ad. Please…please…do this for me. You know you want Sharon,” she insinuated, playing on the testosterone that at this point only occasionally rages through my body.
What Alexis didn’t know was I’d been fantasizing about making love to Sharon almost from the day I arrived at “Sexy Bodywork” (one of the nastiest whore houses in all of NYC) to take her pictures a couple of years ago.
While the place and its owner were horrible, Sharon shone as one of the brightest stars on the New York incall beat. Blessed with hypnotic hazel eyes, creamy cafe au lait skin tones and a gorgeous, brown and very round Dominican booty, she was definitely the girl to turn a gay man straight or make a dead man cum.
Several times since that day, I’d run into Sharon at a garden variety of houses, always to be reminded of her infinite blessings. Just for example, I was hanging at Peaches ’n’ Cream one day in the girls’ lounge when Sharon rose from the couch and leaned over a table to pick up a magazine.
The room stopped and all eyes were on Sharon’s butt. “Damn! Look at the ass on Sharon,” a fresh Amer/Asian hoochie mama mused in total jealousy. “Billy! I wanna have a butt like Sharon’s. Do you know any doctors who do butt implants?”
Anyway…back to the point! When the opportunity to essentially get laid free (factoring in the commission from the internet sale virtually equaling my cost for The Press ad) with someone I’d been thinking about for a long time availed itself, the answer was clearly in the affirmative.
When I arrived at the hotel, Alexis, Nadya (Sharon’s sister) and Sharon were sitting on the beds and all looking very beautiful.
“Billy! I wanna watch,” were the first words out of Nadya’s mouth when I entered. “I wanna see Billy naked,” she continued.
Now I know that with this particular madam, the girls watch each other fuck the clients because it’s a hassle to go hang out in the lobby downstairs when one of the girls is working. But that’s not the only reason. If they ain’t fuckin’, they can at least be watching! These girls are horny like that!
As disappointed as I knew Nadya would be (yeah right), I declined the offer to put on a show. First, I’m not really that kind of guy. And second, as I’ve said, I’d been waiting for an opportune moment to make love to Sharon, and I didn’t need an audience to facilitate the blessed union. (And as it turned out, Nadya got to see me naked anyway.)
OK! So I got the other girls out of the room. And by the time I’d returned from ushering them out the door, Sharon already had that unmistakable predatory working girl game face on that so many pros exhibit when they’re about to turn a trick out.
We began with a sort of standing, gyrating lap dance during which Sharon backed her sumptuous butt against my loins, initiating a soft grind as I kissed her shoulders and stroked her hair. My fiance purred her approval as if to say “finally…a trick who knows how to handle a woman.” Quickly, the Governor began to expand and within a minute or two was aching to bust out of my trousers. And Sharon could feel it.
“Billy! Get comfortable,” she requested. Excellent! It almost looked like I wasn’t the only one who wanted to get busy. Once we wore nothing but our birthday suits, I lay Sharon down on the bed and began massaging her breasts and stomach and neck as she gently stroked and stretched my hovering hard-on, squeezing the shaft to make the head even more bulbously delicious.
It was a very sensuous and erotic show…mostly because of how beautiful Sharon is. Beauty and the Beast notwithstanding, she dressed me in latex very quickly and began sucking me softly and gently with the tender loving care of a woman in love (even if she wasn’t).
Not being the kind of guy who loves a “covered” blow job, I pronounced “I’m ready” to signify my ultimate desire to be inside Sharon’s seething folds.
First, a generous handful of KY which my heartthrob administered to my cock by gripping me with just the perfect amount of pressure. My manhood swelled with pride waiting to fill Sharon’s loveliness. After rubbing my helmet around her phat pussy for a few seconds to steel herself for the entry, the diva slid me in with a sigh and began that heavenly pumping action we dogs all live for. And it was a top ten lifetime moment, stroking Sharon’s velvety insides as I kissed her neck and forehead.
“Spank me…I’m your white boy slave,” I baited her to get rough and really fuck me good. That was all she needed to hear. Our bodies rammed against each other as with each downstroke, Sharon whacked my ass to bring us even closer physically and spiritually. A smile of empowerment lit Sharon’s face as she watched her slave pounding in and out of her raging, soaking womanhood.
By the time we’d worked our way around to doggie-style and female superior (on top), the phone rang. “It must be Alexis,” she said matter-of-factly. Still engaged, she picked up the phone and told her boss in Spanish that we were fucking as they talked. That phone call is the rough equivalent of a knock and I knew it was time to unload before Alexis barged into the room and demanded that I cum then or not at all.
It was no problem for me. I was already bone-tired from being ravaged by a way-out-of-my-league erotic monster and pounded her for all I was worth until I exploded gobs of Billy goo inside her. And as with all working girls (I love this part) when I withdrew, her fingers made their way down to the end of the rubber to digitally inspect how much fluid lay in the receptacle.
“Ooh, Billy. You came a lot,” she moaned exuding heat at the realization that her hot sensuality had ravaged a man and made him cum gallons. After collecting ourselves, the love twins adjourned to the shower for some watery afterplay involving lots of soap and hugs.
Clearly, Sharon and I had interfaced successfully both physically, emotionally, and however else we possibly could have. Before our session, we were friends. After…we became lovers, friends and soul mates — for about a minute.
I think we had one or two more sessions after that. And then the luster wore off and it was onward and upward. Like buses, there’s always a new woman coming around the bend. At least there was back then. Not so much now, though! | https://medium.com/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-escorts-but/sexxxy-sharon-2882682e8f36 | ['William', 'Dollar Bill'] | 2020-12-08 15:32:11.615000+00:00 | ['Culture', 'Escorts', 'Sex Work', 'Lifestyle', 'Memoir'] |
Some Notes On Life. Just some notes from various books… | What we feed the body?
Less Processed is better. Seasonal takes the cake. Diversify food on your plate like your assets. More color better it is. Sugar is the enemy. I know the blueberry cheesecake. Have it. Don’t become a slave to it. Salt? Anything in excess is bad. Water. Stay hydrated.
Sweat it out
Less Time? Do Seven minutes of exercise. More Time? Yoga, Gym, Cycling, Jumba, etc. Whatever you prefer. Working out at home saves time. Get a mat. Lift weights. Dumbell, kettlebell. You get the drift. Keep it simple. Take a walk. Fitness over everything else. If you are healthy, you can take care of rest work, family, and commitments.
Mind
Photo by Lesly Juarez on Unsplash
Meditate. Start small. 1 min, 3 min, 5 min,… 20min. Small is the key. Gratitude. Every day find things you are grateful for. Food on your plate, the cheerful auto-rickshaw driver, your family, your irritating friends etc. Write it down, even better. Make a gratitude diary. App or get a diary. Communicate. If you don’t like something don’t act out. Speak up, no one is a psychic. Giving. The most selfish thing you can do is to give. Such a good feeling. Donate, you got lucky enough to be in a place where you can. Communicate II. Tell people you like something about them. Try new things. Learn a language, learn a musical instrument, learn to sketch, learn trading, etc. . If you never try, you will never know.
“A person doesn’t know what he can do unless he tries. Trying things is the answer for find your talent. “ — Howard Finster, the legendary artist who discovered he could paint at 59
Read.
This is almost equivalent to cheating. So much knowledge distilled in a consumable form for you.
Again, diversify like your portfolio. Read fiction, classical fiction, mystery, business, psychology, startup, self-help, rocket science, research papers, history. Make a routine. Make it easy. Read one page daily.
Stillness
Stop being too busy. Ask the correct questions. Why you don’t have time for ‘X’? I like going to the movies but I don’t have time for them. Take a walk. Walking solves problems. Take thinking breaks.
Writing
I got the opportunity to read a few writing books. On Writing and Bird by Bird
Practice. No escape there. Writing brings order to your thoughts. Write your fears, likes, thoughts. Write about what you are learning. Teaching is the best form of learning.
Sleep
It is your superpower. Sleeping helps consolidate what you have learned. Helps in forming long-term memory. The body needs its to share of rest. Healing. Protect it at all costs.
The average person spends about 26 years sleeping in their life which equates to 9,490 days or 227,760 hours. Surprisingly, we also spend 7 years trying to get to sleep. That’s 33 years or 12,045 days spent in bed! — Source
Get a routine, stick to it. Seriously, early to bed and early to rise takes the cake. Darkroom helps. Dim screen light at night. Stay away from your phone when going to sleep. Separate working and sleeping area. Invest in a good pillow and mattress. You are going to sleep a lot in your life. No tea, coffee, or nicotine late at night.
Work/Life Balance
I am planning a post on this. As Dirk gently famously said
If you liked it, then share it with a friend. | https://medium.com/an-idea/some-notes-i-have-been-collecting-e9bd412d5a60 | ['Sunny Aditya'] | 2021-01-04 05:42:12.426000+00:00 | ['Sleep', 'Notes', 'Life Lessons', 'Healthy Lifestyle', 'Mindfulness'] |
Chaos-MainNet is launching tomorrow, here’s what you need to know | Tomorrow will be a huge day for Swingby. The protocol that we have been building for the last few years will finally launch. If you’re following our updates live, here is a list of steps that we have to perform before we can finally start using the bridge with real crypto funds:
Step 1: Network Rollout
We’ve received many applications from people who want to run metanodes, and every single one of you will have the chance to do so, provided that you meet the requirements.
We have realized that it will be challenging to coordinate the rollout with all 60+ applicants on the day since there is such a varied level of knowledge, experience, and hardware configuration.
For this reason, we have selected 30 partners and private investors who will help us deploy the initial network. Once the bridge is live and tested, we will begin helping other community members “churn in” their metanodes individually.
Please join our Discord group for support during this process if you wish to run your own node. And if you still wish to apply to join the network and earn rewards in BTC, you can apply here.
Step 2: Key Generation
The Skybridge network generates a distributed private key that consists of individual key shares, where a threshold of 32 nodes is required to sign transactions.
Once the private rollout has been completed, and we have at least 32 metanodes online, we will begin key generation. This event will last up to 24 hours. During this period, the 32 nodes will communicate back and forth, re-generating their key shares. This process is a lengthy one and intends to ensure that the key shares are generated as securely as possible, and there is never a ‘trusted dealer’.
Don’t worry! Later on, when your metanode joins the network, it will participate in a similar ‘churning’ event to obtain its own share of the key.
Step 3: Synchronizing Chain Data
Since the WBTC <> BTC Skybridge metanodes require both a Bitcoin node and an Ethereum node, critical syncing is done when the nodes first come online. While it is tough to estimate how long this may take as it depends on many different factors such as network speed and hardware resources, it is expected to take between 3 to 4 days.
Step 4: Live Testing
Once all nodes are synced up and operating smoothly, the Swingby team would like to reserve 24 hours to perform automated tests on the live network to verify that everything is working as expected.
Step 5: Explorer Deployment
Once everything has been tested and verified, the team will begin the next steps to open up the network for use. Our shiny new Skybridge explorer will be deployed to skybridge.info and pointed to our Chaos-MainNet environment. Meanwhile, the current explorer, that is currently pointed to the testnet, will be moved to the subdomain testnet.skybridge.info.
Step 6: Open for Use!
Hurray! You can now pool your liquidity, swap your BTC/WBTC, and view the bridge analytics in real-time.
Step 7: Churn-in Public Metanode Operators
Swingby superheroes, we haven’t forgotten about you. You are the most important part!
Now that everything is running smoothly, the team will begin helping Metanode applicants set up their own nodes and begin churning into the network. Once again, we recommend that you join our Discord group!
Step 8: Happy New Year 🎉
This year has been a demanding yet exciting one for our team, and it has, of course, brought many challenges for all of us. We sincerely hope that 2021 brings us all good fortune, and we are thrilled to have our network become live in the final days of 2020 as Bitcoin reaches new all-time highs.
FAQ
When can I start swapping my BTC to/from WBTC?
Due to the syncing process, key generation, and final testing, we estimate that the bridge will be live for users to start swapping their bitcoins within the next 2–3 days following the launch.
Why is it called “chaos-mainnet”?
The initial launch has been dubbed “chaos”, commonly referred to as “beta”, due to the absence of an official security audit. Obtaining an official security report can typically take between 6–12 months due to the complex nature of the project. The team is working with multiple auditing firms to carry out this task, but until then swap transactions will be capped to a max size of 1 BTC, “stop-world” triggers will be integrated into the core node code and the bridge will be referred to as “chaos”-mainnet.
When can I start swapping my BTC to/from WBTC?
Due to the syncing process, key generation, and final testing, we estimate that the bridge will be live for users to start swapping their bitcoins within the next 2–3 days following the launch.
When can I start running my Metanode?
After step 7, we will begin working with you to help you get up and running.
When will the network go live?
The network will go live tomorrow, and the nodes will start to communicate together. But a few more steps are needed to be done before real funds can start being swapped.
How many confirmations are required before Skybridge processes my swaps?
2 for Bitcoin and 12 for pegged assets on the Ethereum network.
Thanks for reading!
There’s 1 more day to go before we change DeFi forever, and we can’t wait to do it together.
Thank you for your trust and support. We wish you and your families a Happy New Year! Let’s get ready for some awesome crypto action in 2021. | https://medium.com/@swingby/chaos-mainnet-is-launching-tomorrow-heres-what-you-need-to-know-9bdcc05bbe7c | [] | 2021-03-02 11:13:23.616000+00:00 | ['Defi', 'Ethereum', 'Crypto', 'Blockchain', 'Bitcoin'] |
Managing v. Leading: What Confidence Intervals Can Teach Us About Game 4 of the World Series | Managing v. Leading: What Confidence Intervals Can Teach Us About Game 4 of the World Series Doctor_McMullen Oct 25, 2020·2 min read
During my doctoral work, I had to take a Quantitative Research class. Among a variety of topics, we learned about Confidence Intervals. The Confidence Interval is a range of values around a statistic that are believed to contain, with a specific probability, the true value of that statistic. We were taught that 95% was the most common Confidence Interval. Essentially, if I conducted 100 experiments, 95 would come back with sound data. We also learned that there are occasions where we could test at a 99% Confidence Interval, but should never test with anything higher. Simply put, we always had to leave a 1% cushion for random-chance. There are many classifications for this 1% anomaly: random-chance, outlier, luck. As leaders, no matter how hard we work to mitigate certain outcomes, we are always one moment away from something unexplainable. The last play of Game 4 of the World Series was that 1% anomaly.
Dave Roberts and Kevin Cash are both in unique positions. They are clearly in leadership positions but have both been given the formal designation of “Manager”. In a sport that has become dominated by quantifiable statistics, positioning, and match-ups, where do the lines between leader and manager begin and end? How do they find balance between quantifiable statistics and human emotions? How do they balance staying loyal to key players that might be slumping and playing match-ups with less experienced players? They must navigate the same issues that all leaders face: decision-making, execution, performing under pressure, putting the team in the best position to succeed, keeping emotions under control, and most importantly, accepting responsibility when things do not work. That is the unwritten contract of the best leaders: give up the credit when things go well, accept responsibility when they don’t. Is this always fair, of course not, but that is how leadership works.
As viewers, we can often forget that we are watching human beings. The managers, coaches, and players have the same fears, doubts, and insecurities we all do. However, in the most important moments, great leaders have the ability to lift a team up after an emotional loss, or bring a team back down to earth after an unthinkable win. With three games left, Dave Roberts and Kevin Cash have an enormous challenge ahead. In fact, it is the same challenge that all great leaders face: find the balance between leader and manager. | https://medium.com/@doctormcmullen27/managing-v-leading-what-confidence-intervals-can-teach-us-about-game-4-of-the-world-series-fe6daa43c28d | [] | 2020-10-25 20:47:36.608000+00:00 | ['Leadership', 'Managing', 'Baseball', 'World Series'] |
R comes to oil & gas | Tools capable of producing rich analytic reports and data visualizations are a valuable resource for decision makers in any field. Dash is an open-sourced based framework for building dynamic web applications that seamlessly integrates interactive graphics and tabular data summaries, serving as a catalyst for data-driven decision-making.
Several features of Dash contribute to its demonstrated success as an analysis and data presentation tool within the oil and gas industry. These are briefly discussed here, but for an even sharper picture of what the framework can do, visit our Dash gallery (which also links to sample code in both R and Python).
Operationalizing traditional techniques and modern, interactive visualizations
Analysts working in the energy sector frequently leverage industry-specific, proprietary algorithms and computation packages. While these tools are often tailor-made for the application at hand, post-processing and plotting are often performed using other software, which may prove problematic for real-time data analysis needs.
Dash permits analysts to operationalize these proprietary tools in a user-friendly web application, facilitating both data exploration and collaboration, allowing you to truly leverage the power of R.
To demonstrate how a simple application interface can help make complex comparisons quick and easy, check out the Oil and Gas Ternary Map demo in Plotly’s Dash Gallery:
This application combines a map-based selector with tools to drill-down by operator, or compare shale mineralogy, well counts, and annual production, all in a single browser window.
Support for highly customized data visualizations
In many cases, oil and gas applications require specialized figures, such as vertical well log charts.
These figures are straightforward to produce with Plotly and are effortlessly combined with tabular summaries using Dash Table to rapidly produce flexible, highly customized reports, as seen in the LAS Report feature in the Gallery:
Beyond ternary, well log, or even polar coordinate charts, there is a wealth of figure types available in Plotly.js, and the list of supported chart types continues to grow.
In addition, embedding Plotly figures or graphs produced with ggplot2 in Dash apps is straightforward thanks to the plotly package. The Graph component in Dash Core Components accepts objects produced using either the plot_ly or ggplotly functions via its figure property.
Bringing it all together
Aside from interactivity and leveraging industry-specific tools and modern visualizations, it’s hard to discern a Dash app from a full stack web application assembled by a team of professional developers. For enterprise customers, Plotly offers Dash Design Kit, which makes it even easier to arrange, style, and customize Dash apps.
Big Data
Data analysts in the energy sector frequently explore massive volumes of data, whether from equipment sensors or other sources. Support for caching, task queueing, and databases such as Redis and PostgreSQL enables Dash apps to easily scale according to the resource needs of virtually any application.
The New York Oil and Gas Production Overview app demonstrates how Dash can combine clean styling with intuitive interfaces, and provide a pleasant and productive experience for users and developers alike — and offers a glimpse of what a parsimonious design can do for analyses at any scale:
Harnessing the power of Dash to produce insightful, interactive web applications with real time data is not only easy but bridges the gap between data scientists and the realm of full stack application development. For more information about Dash and our enterprise product offerings, click here. | https://medium.com/plotly/r-comes-to-oil-gas-99d3f9de3405 | [] | 2019-09-10 23:41:53.648000+00:00 | ['Data Visualization'] |
The Soothing Calmness of Biden’s Cabinet | Our country is collectively descompressing.
Photo by Suzy Brooks on Unsplash
Ahhh… how relaxing it is to watch the evening news show President-Elect Joe Biden’s first round of cabinet secretary choices. So nice to see people with experience in the agencies as well as career backgrounds in public service. The country is already calming down. I can’t be the only one who’s noticed the lack of notable organized violence after the election, in a huge contrast to the past few months. One might even observe that when the candidate with the most votes actually wins, things feel more peaceful.
It’s such a relief after Trump’s tumultuous one and only term, which the administration kicked off by naming a veritable “swamp” of industry insiders to all the agency posts after promising to do the opposite. For example Stephen Mnuchin, secretary of the treasury department that would oversee the mortgage companies he made his fortune from. Or, as in the case of education secretary Betsy Devos, absolutely no connection whatsoever except for having donated millions to the Republican party. Remember when we were grateful for the tiny morsel of having a person as normal and experienced as James Mattis for Secretary of Defense?
With the incoming Biden administration comes a newly created position in the National Security Council: Climate Czar. It’ll be filled by war-hero, former senator, and former secretary of state John Kerry.
As we appreciate and enjoy the fact that our new federal government actually views the climate emergency as something to take care of, it’s easy to remember trying desperately to think about how to save the planet by planting trees. It was alarming to watch the National Park Service be forced to set up an “alt” Facebook account due to censorship by the Trump administration and its first secretary of interior Ryan Zinke, who had a career background in things like oil pipelines. A memo was sent out which required park employees to notify supervisors in the administration before communicating with other agencies. The various proposals about which staff were restricted from commenting could include permission for oil and gas companies to drill on public lands bordering our parks.
Biden seems to be making good cabinet decisions with both policy and politics. It’ll be hard for senate Republicans to argue against the non-controversial nominees he introduced this week. He’s also being keeping in mind the increasingly influential left wing of the Democratic party by making choices that please everyone in the left from Bernie Sanders’ campaign manager to the director of the group Justice Democrats to Senator Elizabeth Warren.
What better choice for chief of staff could there be than the guy who oversaw the deflection of Ebola from our shores, Ron Klein? And how could anyone claim Linda Thomas-Greenfield, former US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs and form US ambassador to Liberia doesn’t have sufficient experience to handle the post of ambassador to the United Nations?
In Janet Yellen for treasury secretary, we get the progressive endorsement of Robert Reich, as well as a proven track record at the fed. Even Wall Street seems to approve. From the other end of the political spectrum, Gary Cohen, one of Trump’s economic advisors plucked from Goldman Sachs, commented that she is an excellent choice to oversee the treasury department.
It would be stupid to assume the Republicans in the senate are going to honestly evaluate the nominees and screen them out based on the usual things such as weeding out conflicts of interest and making sure they know their craft. Even so, the quality and appropriateness of everyone so far is sure to make it hard for them to find anything the public can actually see as bad about them. Also, 22 senate Republicans, some in swing states, will be competing to save their seats next election. That’s compared to the 12 that Democrats will have to defend.
Considering the current political climate, I can’t see appointee obstruction working extremely well for the Republicans this time. Americans are tired of drama in the federal government. Government officials as well as the general public have grown weary of Trump and his family. They also seem to be showing signs of disillusionment with industry beneficiaries in positions of authority over the industry in which they made their fortunes. They realize the “swamp” Trump claimed to be draining four years ago had not even been created yet. And now that it’s been created, they’re anxious to be rid of it.
Americans are sick of Friday Night Massacres, immediate family members doubling as advisors, firings by tweet, “alternative facts”, ambassadorships left unstaffed, and “acting” secretaries who would have be confirmed if they just didn’t have such obvious conflicts of interests. The electorate is tired of having to worry about what next “first” will happen in the way of unconstitutional power grabs. The country is sick of worrying that the tax-payer funded justice department is being used for the president’s defense in his personal lawsuits. People are sick of having a president who’s been sued thousands of times and is under investigation for tax fraud and financial crimes.
The experiment of having a bankrupt reality tv star as president is over. Democracy survived a failed coup, and the hypothesis that our country can be successfully run by a businessman looking out for his own profits turned out to be not only unworkable but unpopular as well. People are ready to get back to having a president with no emoluments and a cabinet full of boring bureaucrats with successful experience as public servants. | https://medium.com/the-polis/the-soothing-calmness-of-bidens-cabinet-199a3d50c4dd | ['Carolyn Bertolino'] | 2020-11-25 09:42:54.698000+00:00 | ['National Security', 'Election 2020', 'News', 'Politics'] |
Recharge | Recharge
Sometimes you win. And sometimes…you still win. Know that when something works out differently than you had anticipated it doesn’t mean you lost, but likely just means you had the wrong idea about what winning looks like. Today a friend of mine posted an outline for an autobiography in five chapters. In the first three the protagonist made the same mistake, described as falling in a hole. In the fourth they walked around it, and in the fifth they chose another street. I would argue that in each chapter she was still winning, she just couldn’t tell yet because she hadn’t made it to the end.
The title of Kudzanai-Violet Hwani’s painting is “Eve on Psilocybin.” The figure appears under a sky filled with potentially psychedelic flowers of differing shapes, sizes, and forms. As she lays contemplating what can be seen and known, the idea of both when we can see and know what is is likely also a consideration. | https://medium.com/@heidizuckerman/recharge-7e7de400caae | ['Heidi Zuckerman'] | 2020-12-17 17:24:13.978000+00:00 | ['Art', 'Life', 'Wisdom', 'Connection', 'Love'] |
How to Install Security Cameras | Today an ever increasing number of individuals want to figure out how to introduce surveillance cameras and surveillance camera frameworks in their home or business. This is on the grounds that wrongdoing is on the ascent and DIY surveillance cameras and surveillance camera frameworks have gotten higher in quality, increasingly reasonable and simple to buy. Since you never again need to employ an expert to introduce surveillance cameras, it is conceivable to have your home or business under observation in the blink of an eye at — without anyone else’s input, and at a reasonable cost. Here is some assistance and a few hints on the best way to introduce your very own surveillance cameras.
Guidance Manual, Tech Support and Warranties
The principal thing you’ll have to do, before you buy any hardware, is to ensure that the framework you pick accompanies a guidance manual. Not all surveillance camera frameworks for home and organizations accompany a full printed clients manual that will walk you through how to introduce your framework. Likewise it’s a smart thought to just buy a camera framework that accompanies free boundless specialized help in the event that you have questions or run into issues. Only one out of every odd organization offers free technical support with the acquisition of their cameras and camera frameworks. Likewise, verify whether it accompanies a guarantee on all equipment.
There are essentially three bits of hardware you’ll be working with: the cameras, collector/DVR and the screen.
Surveillance Cameras
A surveillance camera framework will incorporates at least one cameras. The cameras accompany a few highlights along these lines, before you buy a framework, you’ll need to comprehend what your needs are. Following are a few inquiries to pose to yourself, that will help control you.
• Will you place the cameras inside or outside? In the event that you’ll be setting cameras anyplace outside you’ll require cameras that are fabricated harder than common indoor surveillance cameras. Open air cameras will be presented to vandalism and the components, for example, wind and extraordinary warmth or cold. There are numerous open air cameras accessible that are worked to withstand all these outside conditions.
• Do you need shading or highly contrasting cameras? On the off chance that there are sure circumstances where it is essential to record subtleties, for example, shade of hair, vehicles or dress, you’ll need shading cameras. Highly contrasting cameras are ideal on the off chance that you need higher goals and for the most part are more affordable than shading. They additionally are ideal on the off chance that you will utilize infrared in no light or low light conditions.
• Do you incline toward wired or remote cameras? Designed Camera Systems are more dependable than remote will necessitate that you drill gaps into dividers to mount cameras and to sustain wires through the dividers. Remote Security Camera Systems utilize radio recurrence through the air from the camera’s transmitter to a collector. The beneficiary gets the sign and moves it to a TV or Monitor or Digital Video Recorder. So no wiring is required. Remote cameras are a lot simpler to introduce and can be mounted anyplace and can be moved around without hardly lifting a finger.
• Is there a characteristic light source and will you use them in haziness? Infrared cameras are an unquestionable requirement on the off chance that you will screen any zones that are in all out obscurity or have low light circumstances at various occasions.
• what number cameras do you need? Choose what number of areas you need observed, for example, entryways, windows, carport and so on. This will give you a thought of what number of cameras you will need remembered for your security framework. Most surveillance camera frameworks accompany a couple of cameras. In the event that you may need to include more cameras, ensure the framework you pick is equipped for including more cameras later.
Mounting Your Cameras
Initially, plan your precise surveillance camera seeing region. This will enable you to choose where you will put the camera or cameras. On the off chance that your cameras should be mounted on a divider or other structure hold them in the position and stamp the spot before mounting the section set up. On the off chance that you are utilizing a wired framework, choose which zones are ideal to bore openings in the divider for links. Attempt to uncover as meager of the wiring as conceivable so as to forestall vandalism. On the off chance that you are utilizing remote cameras you don’t have to stress over this.
Beneficiary/DVR
Next, interface the camera to the collector or DVR as indicated by the headings. Remote cameras utilize no links however remember that they should be set inside scope of the beneficiary for it to get transmission.
Checking
After you wire the cameras to a transmitter or recording gadget, you will at that point need to interface the chronicle gadget to a screen for survey. There are a few checking choices accessible. A few frameworks enable you to effortlessly associate the camera to an average screen or to a TV. With others you can utilize your phone or PC as a screen.
Alerts
Home surveillance camera frameworks are not equivalent to home security caution frameworks since they don’t alarm you if there is a gatecrasher. Along these lines, surveillance camera frameworks are frequently utilized related to home security frameworks.
Please visit our website for more tips on Alpha Security Cameras, security system Baltimore. | https://medium.com/@cameras196/how-to-install-security-cameras-a513c8161809 | ['Alpha Security Cameras'] | 2019-12-02 07:15:02.044000+00:00 | ['Security System Baltimore', 'Security Cameras', 'Alpha Security Cameras', 'Security System'] |
Beauty and Tragedy in Kantemir Balagov’s Beanpole | Beanpole is a visually beautiful film. It is full of saturated color and warm light, but from the first seen to the last, it presents one heartbreaking tragedy after the next, it’s relentless. Even with this overwhelming amount of pain and misfortune, the film is not melodramatic or overwrought, but the sheer density of terrible occurrences strains credulity.
The movie takes place in Leningrad after World War Two. Two women, Iya and Masha have returned from the front badly traumatized. Now back home, they work as attendants in a hospital for recovering veterans.
The Soviet Union lost 26 million people in the war. More people than you will ever see, meet, hear of, or are even capable of imagining. You could wipe out the entire population of New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Dallas, Houston, Boston, San Fransisco, New Orleans, Memphis, and Phoenix and you still wouldn’t reach 26 million. It’s impossible to fathom living in such a time, but Beanpole presents the audience with a profound sense of emptiness. Everything is hollow, hollow of meaning, and hollow of feeling. People are just going through the motions of their lives.
Masha has a horrible smile that she wears throughout most of the film. It is completely unnerving. It doesn’t change with the surrounding context. Whatever happens around her she has the same expression. It looks as if she is about to burst into something like tears or rage but she just continues to smile.
Iya has suffered serious head trauma and simply isn’t all there. She’s stilted and foggy and prone to seizures where she freezes and stays unreachable for unpredictable amounts of time.
Most of the characters have lost interest in anything that requires trust or vulnerability, but Iya has a little innocence left in her, even with the never-ending barrage of horror that comes her way.
Beanpole was directed by Kantemir Balagov in 2020. It was based on a collection of oral histories collected by Svetlana Alexievich. Balagov and his cinematographer Ksenia Sereda render the film in red and green. There are a few notable exceptions where everything is white but otherwise red and green are present in every frame.
The presence of the colors gets stronger and more evident as the movie progresses until it is stylized and symbolic like a Peter Greenaway film. The meaning doesn’t seem to be explicit but the colors are complementary which is close in meaning to the opposite. There were painters in the nineteenth century who believed that if you balanced a painting properly you could stimulate the entirety of the brain.
The craftsmanship and quality of Beanpole are impeccable, but the intensity is too high. Even with the consummate acting, the sparing use of dialogue the striking compositions, and the color the plot involves such a grotesque parade of the worst possible situations and worst possible consequences that it’s hard to stay invested. Maybe my American constitution isn’t strong enough to withstand the severity of Russian tragedy. It is unlikely I will have ever have to endure what the Soviets endured during the first half of the Twentieth Century but even with all its beauty and skill Beanpole seemed exaggerated.
This specific criticism aside the two lead characters are very compelling. Iya is well over 6 feet tall, hence the title of the movie. Her presence on screen is gripping. She has bright blonde hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes and seems otherworldly. We are never sure what is going on in her head. We want to protect her innocence but we don’t fully understand her.
Masha loves Iya but Masha’s desire to get pregnant has reached the point of depravity and she is willing to sacrifice anything or anyone, including Iya, to have a baby. The relationship between the two of them runs the gamut of emotions, from rage and bullying on both sides to the deepest intimacy and sympathy for the other.
Beanpole is a memorable film, it leaves an indelible mark. I tender my criticism with reservations. My incredulity over the level of tragedy depicted in the film may simply come from living a far more comfortable life.
If you enjoyed this article you might also enjoy one of these - | https://medium.com/@36toesproductions/beauty-and-tragedy-in-kantemir-balagovs-beanpole-d8e600ebda9a | [] | 2020-12-19 18:38:46.389000+00:00 | ['Film', 'Movie Review', 'Film Reviews', 'Movies', 'Cinema'] |
How To Construct Your Own NFT Real Estate Marketplace? | The NFT domain is evolving, as a result, it’s paved the way for several sorts of NFT marketplace for Real Estate and crypto protocols. Development platforms like the NFT Real Estate marketplace may be a new entrant into the evolving NFT ecosystem.
We at Brugu dedicate ourselves to developing a top-tier virtual NFT Real Estate marketplace for our customers.
What Is Virtual NFT Real Estate?
The concept of NFT is extremely simple, non-fungible tokens are digital assets that are traded on a decentralized exchange platform, since they’re built on blockchain technology, they will verify the ownership of the digital asset for the customer, and secure transaction details.
NFTs have the potential to represent physical assets as digital assets, like video clips, audio clips, trading cards, and even Real Estate assets. The evolution of non-fungible tokens has unlocked many exciting opportunities and features for business models who have an interest in elevating their businesses to subsequent levels. The important estate domain is that the new addition to the NFT field. The important estate assets are often also represented as NFTs.
Brugu may be a world-renowned NFT marketplace development company. Within the past, we’ve developed numerous marketplaces for our clients and therefore the key benefits of availing of our NFT Real Estate marketplace development services are, | https://medium.com/@ssam.gaipp/how-to-construct-your-own-nft-real-estate-marketplace-8f39a789c790 | ['Ssam Gaipp'] | 2021-12-29 12:45:49.209000+00:00 | ['Nft', 'Nft Marketplace', 'Blockchain', 'Business'] |
From evolution of species to upgradation of species | This essay is dedicated to biology teachers I met in my school days. Their passion and love for wonders of nature was so infectious and contagious that it left lifelong indelible impressions on students.
Background
Tracking evolution of species has always ignited interest of inquisitive minds. Sages, philosophers and scientists have deliberated on topic of evolution over millennia.
In ancient world, depending on place and environment of origin, two major concepts of evolution of life evolved.
On a major portion of the earth, life survived against all odds as nature was monotonous and harsh, either icy cold or inferno hot. Civilizational thoughts here started believing that only a divine intervention could have created and sustained life in such conditions, which would abruptly end through same divine intervention. That progressive evolution from lower to higher form was also possible, was not pondered upon.
On another part of the earth, nature existed with all possible manifestations indicating rich diversity. There were repeat cycles of seasons. There were species of plants and animals that were beyond compilation. Here another civilizational thought took roots. It found a rhythm in these cyclic processes of nature. A concept of cyclic time (kalpa) that contained iterative events of creation and destruction developed here. Modern biologists believe in life’s origin in water as simpler form and later evolution to complex forms on land. Incidentally, concept of Dashavtar, evolution of life, in form and consciousness, from water to land also originated here.
Theories of Evolution
In post renaissance Europe, two theories of evolution, still being read by every school going child, were proposed. In 1802, French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, after observing life around, proposed theory of acquired inheritance of evolution. This was first such attempt to understand organic evolution of life from most primitive organisms to most complex ones. Though he left the question of origin of life unattended.
Five decades later, in 1859, British naturalist Charles Darwin again proposed another theory of evolution in The Origin of Species. He again left the question of origin of life unanswered. Darwin proposed that natural selection was responsible for evolution of species from one type to other. Over thousands of generations, useful traits helping in survival of a member of species, pass on, leading to better and different species. This evolution of different species happened from a common ancestor through natural selection.
Curtsey scientific progress made in biology, transgenerational epigenetic inheritance, the transmission of epigenetic markers from one organism to the next (i.e., from parent to progeny), affects the traits of offspring without altering the primary structure of DNA.
So Lamarck and Darwin were both right in proposing two different theories for evolution of species. Nature was using both mechanisms, passing on acquired inheritance and genetically better characteristics to next generations.
It is quite surprising why schools world over keep teaching students that Darwin proposed correct theory and Lamarck was wrong.
Evolution in 19th and 20th Century
In their long walk on evolutionary trek, humans must have faced frequent incremental challenges and infrequent yet powerful transformational challenges. Some of these challenges must have posed risk to their very existence. One well documented transformational challenge was 1918 influenza pandemic. It is also known as Spanish flu. As the severest of pandemics in recorded history of humans, it wiped out between five to ten percent of world population. As Darwin would have observed, those who survived this pandemic came out better and fitter of species through natural selection.
In 1796, Edward Jenner inoculated for first time, a thirteen year old patient with smallpox vaccine. In 1856, Louis Pasteur patented the process that became famous as Pasteurisation, a method of killing germs and micro-organisms in food, which helped humans avoid life threatening infections. In 1927, Scottish microbiologist discovered first broad spectrum antibiotic penicillin that further helped humans come out of bacteria induced critical illness. Since these initial progress, many antibiotics, vaccines, sterilisation, pasteurisation methods were developed to save humans from microbes.
Evolution in 21st Century
In the game of survival and evolution, humans and microbes have used strategies to outdo each other. Slowly antibiotic driven human evolution started ignoring long term signals embedded in theories of Lamarck and Darwin. However the new game seemingly reached penultimate round in year 2009. Overcoming all possible spectrum of antibodies modern medicine practitioner has in his/her arsenal, a superbug bacteria (NDM-1) was reported in hospitals and operation theatres. This virtually signalled clear defeat of humans by this single cell species in new game of forced evolution.
The story of pasteurisation is at least equally interesting if not more. As humans started storing food for utilisation in scarce times, need to preserve it from rotting appeared. So long as pasteurisation was limited to traditional processes of heating/cooling or adding excess sweet/salt, food remained harmless for both humans and other species. But new pasteurisation techniques involving liberal use of chemical preservatives and feeding antibiotics to animals used as food source killed microbes residing in human intestine. Some of these microbes were considered good for health. As a result, a generation of people grew, who would not think of drinking water directly from a natural spring. Unless this water is collected, pasteurised, bottled as spring water, it remains unpotable. This is second impending defeat of humans in trying to be driver of evolution.
A far more interesting is the third story of viruses when compared to stories of microbes. Viruses are tiny particles siting over the fence where life and death intersect. Since the use of first vaccine by Edward Jenner against smallpox virus, derived from cow (cowpox), innocuous virus as vaccination became norm. Vaccination helped humans fight viruses that caused serious illness. Scientists understood that human immune systems have deep memory and ability to build response to new viruses provided they were forced exposed to weaker form of viruses. Again, viruses slowly became more virulent, and human immune systems became more learned.
21st century has also displayed restlessness of humans as species. A new Windows operating system arrived a bit faster than earlier version. A new model of iPhone arrived in market faster than earlier models. Taking a cue, some American virologists attempted similar faster upgrade in field of virology. For this they needed to bypass, traditional game of one step a time, played by viruses and human immune systems. They forced faster evolution (upgrade) of human immune system by creating and releasing a virus that moved multiple steps in a move instead of one at a time. This event can be compared to a hypothetical situation where Microsoft upgrades users’ computer with Windows10 directly from Windows millennium, without users’ consent. As a result many computers would crash due to legacy hardware in use.
Similarly this forced upgradation exercise of virus, which virologists gave fancy name of gain of function research, has resulted in death of millions of weaker humans and forced survival of fittest ones. To their further astonishment, these much traumatized and upgraded survivors learnt that virus has already upgraded (mutated) to next level. A recently upgraded immune system stood a bit outdated in a matter of some weeks.
This story of gain of function experiment, which hardly led to any (in)visible gains, while losses are stark naked, is the most intriguing and the most interesting one about the evolution of species in the 21st century. | https://medium.com/@pankaj-prasad-in/from-evolution-of-species-to-upgradation-of-species-c9f9df605e4f | ['Pankaj Prasad'] | 2021-08-19 11:34:16.627000+00:00 | ['Microbe', 'Évolution', 'Darwinism', 'Virus', 'Lamarck'] |
Introduction to Livestreaming Music | With tours canceled and businesses closing their doors in the wake of a global pandemic, many musicians are left wondering what their next steps are. Maybe they’ve tried uploading videos or pushing out audio recordings and find they just aren’t gaining traction. Maybe they miss the energy of playing music in real time for an audience.
For those in this camp, read on since there are other options for performers who want to capture the spirit of live performances, gain fans, and earn money without ever having to leave the house. In this blog we’ll go over some of the technical aspects of getting a stream off the ground, and how StreamElements can help take it to the next level.
Streaming music has allowed me to live my dream of creating an experience people love to watch. — Mrgregles
We have a video version as well!
Musicians have been streaming virtual shows to global audiences for years now and doing incredible things on streaming platforms - gaining global fan bases, crowdfunding projects, equipment and travel, streaming in between tours, raising money for charitable causes, some even earning enough revenue to support themselves entirely by sharing their music online.
“Streaming brings all the aspects of creativity together that I thrive on,” said Twitch partner Mrgregles, who found his niche on the platform streaming full time as a drummer.
“The ability to perform live for a great audience on an instrument I adore while designing graphics and working with tech — that forms a more unique experience compared to just playing live on a stage. Streaming music has allowed me to live my dream of creating an experience people love to watch.”
Whether you are a singer/songwriter, instrumentalist, DJ or producer, you too can connect with fans online and engage with them like never before. You just need the right tools, and to learn a few new skills.
How are musicians using livestreaming?
Streaming offers artists flexibility and endless opportunities for creativity. By learning how to produce your own show, you take control of the schedule, format and content.
Here are just a few examples of how creators are using livestreams:
Alternative to a traditional live show (performing a set list)
Taking song requests in real time
Music improvisation/practice sessions
Writing sessions/trying out new material
Music production/recording sessions
Learning new skills/instruments
Streaming live shows from venues
Additionally, many streamers broadcast a variety of content to connect with their audience. They might log on to chat with viewers, play a video game, cook, create art — these days there’s a category for pretty much anything. Check out the Twitch directory to get an idea of what’s out there.
How does it work?
In a nutshell, a streamer uses software to broadcast live content in real time to an audience who tunes in, chats and interacts with the broadcaster and each other. Most streamers set up extra tools to enable viewers to tip them, request songs and more.
Instead of feeling the energy of the crowd, you see the energy of the chat. Livestreaming feels more personal than a venue does, even though you might be alone in the streaming room. — MikeTheBard
It’s not the same as playing a live show in a venue. But many find that streaming can provide an intimate environment to share themselves and their music in a way that a venue can’t. And they’re often performing for viewers across the globe, some who might not be able to ordinarily attend shows due to physical distance or disability.
MikeTheBard, a musician and partnered Twitch streamer who has been paving the way for nearly eight years, has experience with music performance in both settings.
“Livestreaming music has similar elements, with the added complexity, usually, of doing most of the technical setup and live sound work yourself,” he explained. “Instead of feeling the energy of the crowd, you see the energy of the chat. Livestreaming feels more personal than a venue does, even though you might be alone in the streaming room.”
Getting Started
Choose a Platform
First things first, you’ll need a site to stream to. There are many platforms to choose from, but for this guide we’ll talk mostly about Twitch.
There are other platforms with music sections, and many of them share similar features, such as a chat feed and different ways to encourage monetization through platform royalties.
Whichever platform you get started on, odds are there are plenty of guides from the company or established creators that take deep dives into the particulars. If there’s one thing many creators across the board seem to share, it’s enthusiasm about their craft and an eagerness to impart their knowledge with aspiring broadcasters.
Set up your Profile
Create an account and familiarize yourself with channel settings. This is where you’ll upload photos, include a bio, adjust privacy settings and more. Here’s a handy guide with more information about setting up a channel on Twitch.
Pay special attention to the information panels section of your profile. This area can be as simple or creative as you want, and is very useful in telling your audience more about you. From here, you can link viewers to your website, social media pages, and your StreamElements tipping page.
An example of very detailed information panels on Twitch. twitch.tv/Mrgregles
Spend time as a viewer to understand the experience
Whatever platform you choose, it’s always a good idea to familiarize yourself with it before going live.
Learning more about the existing community will help you understand the culture of the platform and ways you can be proactive in setting yourself up for success.
For Twitch, this would mean exploring the Music & Performing Arts Category as well as the site’s tagging system to get a better handle on how to sort content and enhance recommendation of your channel within the website.
The Twitch Music & Performing Arts category houses musicians with varied skill sets and genres.
Make the rules, set the tone
Familiarizing yourself with the moderation tools offered by StreamElements and the respective platforms will ensure your channel is inclusive and welcoming, which are key for cultivating a positive community.
You can also enlist the help of a friend or supporter to learn with you and help moderate your channel. Moderators are the backbone of a good stream. They help greet viewers, answer questions when you’re busy performing, keep bad actors at bay and much, much more.
Explore and Network
Visit other channels, gain inspiration, become a fan and make friends. Don’t be overwhelmed by elaborate setups with fancy lights, cameras and audio equipment. Many musicians have been livestreaming for years, and most probably started with a simple webcam and mic.
What kind of gear do I need?
If you already do some type of home recording, chances are you have many of the things you need already, including, but not limited to:
A Computer with internet access
While it’s possible to stream from a mobile device, your stream quality will likely be much better from a computer. Specifications will vary, and there are lots of ways to troubleshoot if you need help keeping your stream smooth and stable. More on that later.
An Audio Source
This will vary quite a bit depending on the type of instrument and setup. While acoustic singer/songwriters can often get away with a single large diaphragm condenser mic, a live band or DJ will likely require a much more complicated setup.
A popular basic option is an audio interface or multi-channel mixer with an XLR Mic that can connect to your computer through USB, or a simple USB Microphone.
A Camera
An external webcam is a popular choice, as it is usually a big step up from built-in computer cameras, but not as steep of an investment as a camcorder, mirrorless camera or DSLR. If you have a digital camera you’re hoping to use, there are products on the market that help make it easier to capture a camera feed into your streaming software.
Streaming Software
Once you have all the required hardware for streaming, you’ll need a way to transmit your broadcast to the internet. That’s where streaming software comes in.
Streaming software is what you use to produce and broadcast your live stream. This is where you’ll route audio and video, and set up overlays containing graphics and alerts — all the extra bells and whistles of a live stream. We recommend OBS.Live.
OBS: Open Broadcaster Software is the industry standard, and it’s also free to download. OBS.Live takes it a step further by integrating streaming software with StreamElements as well as your streaming platform. The benefit is it keeps everything in one spot so you can broadcast with ease.
Gaming Careers overview and tutorial of OBS Live.
We won’t dive into the technical setup here, but check out this tutorial for getting started with OBS.Live, as well as these tips to optimize settings for your computer.
Customize your channel with StreamElements
Visit almost any streamer’s channel and you’ll probably notice they use graphics, alerts, chat bots and other neat tools.
StreamElements is an entire suite of free streaming tools designed to help you enhance your stream quality, engage with your audience, and earn money.
After you’ve set up your profile on Twitch or elsewhere, connect your account to StreamElements. This is where the fun begins.
There’s a lot you can do with StreamElements with the following being a few of the features you should check out:
Overlays
An overlay is a graphic or web source that is applied as a layer to your main video stream. This is how you display information to your viewers.
With the StreamElements overlay editor, you can use various widgets to design a space unique to you. Customize alerts, display goals, add a chat feed — the sky’s the limit.
Using the overlay editor means that you won’t have to add each visual element one-by-one into your streaming software and risk losing it if your computer ever crashes or you want to stream from a different machine.
Adding each element one by one in OBS Sources.
Instead, your design will be saved to the cloud. All you’ll have to do to retrieve your assets is copy and paste one source link into OBS.
Using the overlay editor saves information in the cloud, keeps visual elements in one spot, and requires only one browser source link in OBS.
Not a designer? No problem. We’ve got you covered with a free library of pre-designed overlays called SuperThemes to get you started. SuperThemes are a complete set of 5 overlays (such as Starting Soon, Be Right Back, and Stream Ended) that will enable you to have an overlay for all of the stages that generally happen during a stream.
Check out this helpful video tutorial that explains how to set up and use overlays here.
Alerts
Alerts allow you to display different types of support and activity on screen. They help you keep track of what is happening in real time by alerting you to new followers, subscriptions, tips, hosts, raids, etc.
A ThatViolinChick subscriber triggers an on-screen alert.
Viewers love to be part of the show, and alerts help encourage support and interaction. You can set up alerts in the overlay editor widgets.
Add and customize alerts within the Overlay Editor Widgets.
Once you add an Alertbox, you can leave the widget as-is (it will default to a pre-designed alert), or customize the settings to specify which images, sounds, fonts, and messages appear when a particular event triggers the alert. You can even get creative and upload your own photos, gifs, and sound effects.
If you opt to use a SuperTheme, alerts are already included in the overlay and designed to match the theme’s layout and visual elements.
Chatbot
Chat is a huge component of livestreaming. At a venue you’ll hear applause, but during a stream, your audience expresses their appreciation through follows, hosts, raids, tips, subscriptions, and lots and lots of emotes.
Using bot commands in chat is also a way that viewers might request songs or find out more information about your channel.
Chatbot allows you to set up custom commands and timers.
The StreamElements chatbot can be used to help moderate chat activity, as well as automate messages through customized commands and timers used to advertise important information.
Tipping Page
Fans love to support artists, but without Affiliate or Partner status on Twitch, a broadcaster is unable to collect platform royalties. They also don’t offer a first party tipping app. This is why setting up a tipping page is important. Not only does it allow you to accept payment, but it can be set up to trigger alerts on your overlay.
An example of a tipping page. twitch.tv/Leland
StreamElements has both PayPal integration as well as its own built-in tipping service, SE Pay.
Design & sell merch with SE.Merch Hub
With SE.Merch, you can start selling merchandise in minutes. It’s free to use, easy to set up, and carries the highest profit margin in the industry.
After creating your shop, simply upload your designs and specify which products you’d like to carry and edit them as you like.
Upload your design > launch your store > sell merch
After that, the hub will guide you through promoting it with chat commands and timers, generate graphics you can add to your information panels, and set up a sleek final product for your viewers to browse.
aRcA1000000’s StreamElements merch store
StreamElements is working with companies like Bella & Canvas and Independent Trading Company to make sure your loot is ethically sourced and made from high quality material. Feel free to check out this FAQ for more info.
You can do it!
While setting up a livestream is a multifaceted venture that requires some initial legwork, the potential is huge. Fans love having new ways to connect and enjoy live music, and producing your own live show offers a myriad of opportunities for creativity and growth.
If you love what you do regardless if you are a beginner player or a master, the joy will attract the people who thrive on viewing it — Mrgregles
MikeTheBard acknowledged how difficult it seems to get started, but suggests taking advantage of the resources that are already out there.
“There are many guides now online to help set up streaming software, alert tools, and on how to integrate a music setup with livestreaming,” he said. “Livestreaming musical performances, in my experience, has been worth the investment of time and in the equipment needed.”
Mrgregles encourages streamers to focus on what they are passionate about.
“Streaming itself is a journey and something you should do for the passion,” he said. “If you love what you do regardless if you are a beginner player or a master, the joy will attract the people who thrive on viewing it.”
Twitch Partner ThatViolinChick reminds aspiring streamers that it’s okay to keep things simple at first.
“Get a feel for streaming and then build up from there rather than trying to start right off the bat with a fancy setup that can be overwhelming,” she said. “And touch base with good streaming companies like StreamElements.”
Everyone starts somewhere on their streaming journey, and there are great resources out there and a lot of support along the way for those willing to research and reach out. I encourage you to browse StreamElements video tutorials and join our community of streamers on Discord, where you can also access free support 24/7.
DISCLAIMER: This article contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links and buy a product, I receive a small commission. I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. | https://blog.streamelements.com/introduction-to-livestreaming-music-74d8c77ea963 | [] | 2020-05-14 08:03:15.392000+00:00 | ['Streamelements', 'Twitch', 'Music', 'Community', 'Live Streaming'] |
College Scholarships For High School Students 2021–22 | Grab Yours Now | Good news! Scholarships For High School Students are announced. If, you’re a high school student and you’re looking for scholarships to help pay for school your first year of college and beyond. This is the best time to search for scholarships For High School Students. Since scholarships for high school students are the most popular kind. Many scholarships for high school Students providers give big awards to students. In beginning on in their academic careers, possibly even assist you in funding your education at your dream school. With federal financial aid limits such as smaller student loans and later disbursement dates placed on aid for college freshmen, all that scholarship money can really help.
Also Visit: Scholarship | Study in Canada Without IELTS
Most of these scholarships for high school students will be easier to get if you start preparing early in high school, by marking your calendar with upcoming scholarships and start preparing for scholarships to attain the maximum eligibility criteria and some competitions allow you to enter before your senior year of high school, So try to start the final search for scholarship opportunities that much easier for students who have planned their career ahead. Scholarships for high school students are probably the most popular category of scholarships by grade level. High school students are planning on starting college for the first time and at the same time don’t have the resources to study at their dream college.
Scholarships for high school students, therefore, are making an investment in a student right at the beginning of his or her academic career and are providing funding in order to uplift the youth in the building of society with highly intellectual students. You’ve done our free scholarship search already in the article above and now you’re even reading more about scholarships for high school students in our Resources section. Your skills to-do research like this is why will make you win your scholarship soon. What you’re about to read is a shortlist of really great college scholarships for high school students hand-selected by the experts here at hexscholarships.com from our extensive database of college scholarships and grants.
Here is the list of college scholarships for high school: Click at links, find out more and start applying!
List of College scholarships for high school students
1) ACF Andrew Piech Memorial Scholarship
Program: Automotive technology and related applied technologies
Award: $2,200/ year
Deadline: Summer 2022
Scholarship Overview:
Many scholarships are announced by ACF each year to New Mexico graduating high school seniors and continuing college students. Applicants must pursue a degree or certificate from a nonprofit or public school. it should be an automotive or technical vocational institution including community colleges. The student may attend school full or part-time.
To be eligible for a scholarship Applicant must be:
A current or past resident of New Mexico city.
Should be graduating high school senior OR a new/returning college student
Must pursue a certificate or degree in an automotive or technical vocational studies
Attend a two or four year college, university or community college
Attend school full-time or part-time
Attend a nonprofit or public educational institution.
Apply Now: Colleges scholarship for high school student ACF Andrew Piech Memorial
2)ACS Scholars Program
Program: Undergraduate in Chemistry descipline
Award: $5000/ Year
Deadline: March 1, 2022
Scholarship Overview: Over $1,000,000 in scholarship funds are awarded to 300+ students per year. The ACS Scholars Program awards renewable scholarships to undergraduate students from historically underrepresented groups in the chemical sciences, majoring in chemistry-related disciplines, and thinking to pursue chemistry-related careers. Selected recipients are awarded up to $5,000* per academic year. To date, over 3,500 students have won funding from the ACS Scholars Program.
Apply Now: ACS Scholars Program
3) Alfred State Academic Distinction Scholarships
Program: Freshman College Students
Award: $4,000
Deadline: March 01, 2022
Scholarship Description: $4,000 total value Scholarship offered to first-time freshmen students who carry an 87% or better cumulative high school average through the end of their 1st year. At least 1140 combined reading/writing and math SAT or 23 composite ACT score is needed. Applied to non-tuition costs. Multiple scholarships are available for qualified students who are admitted and provide official documentation of meeting the necessary criteria by March 1. Students must maintain the required GPA to secure funding in subsequent semesters. Students are challenged to earn a cumulative 2.5 GPA each semester in order to sustain this scholarship.
Apply Now: Alfred State Academic Distinction Scholarships
4) AQHA Excellence in Equine & Agricultural Involvement Scholarship
Program: Undergraduate Degree
Award: $25,000
Deadline: December 01, 2021
Scholarship Description: Preferred candidates are current AQHA or AQHYA members who show the characteristics of leadership and excellence acquired through participation in equine and or agriculture activities. The candidate should have a minimum cumulative 3.5-grade point average demonstrating academic proficiency and does not compete in AQHA-approved shows. Member must apply during their senior year of high school or while enrolled at an accredited college or university. Current or previous AQHF scholarship participants are not eligible to win this scholarship. Funding for this scholarship will be applied to a four-year undergraduate degree program of the student’s choice.
Apply Now: AQHA Scholarship
5) AMS Scholarship Program
Program: Air and Waste Managment
Award: $25,000
Deadline: 18 March 2022
Scholarship Description: The Allegheny Mountain Section of the Air & Waste Management Association is gratified to announce its yearly scholarship program for college students. The Allegheny Mountain Section Air & Waste Management Association grants undergraduate scholarship(s) for students seeking an environmental profession, including a career in environmental science, engineering, or law at a scholastic level beyond work. Awards are based on academic background, plan of study, career aims, recommendations, and extra-curricular exercises without consideration of sex, class, national origin, financial need, age, or physical disability. The Allegheny Mountain Section of the Air & Waste Management Association is pleased to advertise its annual scholarship programs. Details are contained in the Announcement, Instructions, and Forms linked below.
Apply Now: AMS Scholarship Program
Plan Ahead: Juniors interested in scholarships and proceeding a career in Environmental Science, Engineering or Law at an academic level beyond work should contact: Member Services at 1–800–270–3444
List of Eligible Colleges
Allegheny College Boyce Community College Bucknell University Butler County Community College California University of Pennsylvania Carlow College Carnegie Mellon University Chatham College Clarion University Community College of Allegheny County Community College of Allegheny County, Boyce Dickinson College Duquesne University: Law School & Environmental Science and Management Edinboro University of Pennsylvania Gannon University Geneva College Gettysburg College Grove City College Indiana University of Pennsylvania Juniata College LaRoche College Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania Lycoming College Mansfield University of Pennsylvania Mercyhurst College Penn State University Penn State University at Erie Point Park College Robert Morris College Saint Francis College Saint Vincent College Seton Hill College Slippery Rock University Susquehanna University Thiel College University of Pittsburgh School of Law University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health University of Pittsburgh at Bradford University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown Villa Maria College Washington and Jefferson College Waynesburg College Westminster College Wilson College York College of Pennsylvania Bethaney College Salem-Telkyo University Bluefield State College Fairmont State College Shepard College West Viriginia State College West Viriginia University West Virginia Institute of Technology West Virgina Wesleyan College Davis & Elkins College State College System of WV Concord College Glenville State College West Liberty State College University of Charleston
Also Hit: University of Manitoba Scholarships in Bachelors, Masters, Ph.D. Program $18000
These were the scholarships for high school students. best of luck with the scholarships. Apply for as many scholarships as you can in order to achieve a higher probability of selection.
Click here For: Free Scholarships Online | https://medium.com/@hexscholarships/college-scholarships-for-high-school-students-2021-22-grab-yours-now-9ac1ea637641 | ['Hex Scholarships'] | 2021-11-28 12:41:49.012000+00:00 | ['Study Abroad', 'Scholarship', 'Study Abroad Scholarships', 'College Scholarship', 'High School'] |
Marshal Law Doesn’t Matter On January 2021 | A Short Lesson On Civics
On January 2021, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris becomes President, and the Vice President of the United States of the America.
At that time martial law doesn’t matter because there’s no civil rebellion.
Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the elections ended on December 14, 2020, the electoral college in all of the states certified the presidential election. On January 6, 2020 the congress will verify the presidential election. It’s a done deal. Nothing could happened to changed the outcome. It’s official…
Martial Law
Martial law involves the temporary substitution of military authority for civilian rule and is usually invoked in time of war, rebellion, or natural disaster. Abstract: When martial law is in effect, the military commander of an area or country has unlimited authority to make and enforce laws.
State of Emergency
The United States Constitution
The United States Constitution implicitly provides some emergency powers in the article about the executive power :
Congress may authorize the government to call forth the militia to execute the laws, suppress an insurrection or repel an invasion.
Congress may authorize the government to suspend consideration of writs of habeas corpus “when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.”
Felony charges may be brought without presentment or grand jury indictment in cases arising “in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger.”
A state government may engage in war without Congress’s approval if “actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.”
Under any unforeseeable outcome of the certification of the election it will need the congress to change the outcome, but currently the Democrats control the congress, so the likelihood of a different outcome is likely.
The importance of civics in our school system are definitely needed at a time when democracy is being challenged. What are your thoughts on this very important matter? | https://medium.com/@gab1930s/marshal-law-doesnt-matter-on-january-2021-a83cb1dfc1a9 | [] | 2020-12-15 19:09:16.475000+00:00 | ['Electoral College', 'Elections', 'Law', 'President', 'Civil Rights'] |
Rescue Fantasies | Rescue Fantasies
I was at a dinner for the staff and crew who worked the conference circuit. We were somewhere in Florida, when I had a job on the conference circuit, when a married father of one seated to my left announced that he “would never understand how some women have rape fantasies.”
It was, admittedly, an extraordinarily heavy topic, especially in a conference room with views of palm trees and one of five swimming pools, but this particular member of the production crew was known for being blunt — and drunk — at these events, and he also worked a great deal on true-crime documentaries, which were, admittedly, screwing with his head.
“I don’t understand how any woman could want that, or think that’s sexy,” he pressed on. “Now that I have a daughter, hearing about the things women go through seems ten times worse, and I can’t understand how anyone would want that. Really, if someone could explain it to me, that would be great, because it’s sick, is what it is. I don’t know anyone who would ever have them.”
I raised my hand.
“Jesus,” another guy said, and I realized why he was surprised.
“No, I don’t have them!” I snapped. “But you asked if someone could explain. And I read Dorothy Allison in college.”
The magnificent Miss Alison has a short story called “Rape Fantasies,” which reveals a group of girlfriends revealing their secret sexual fantasies. The fact of it all, of course, is that the “rape” isn’t in fact unwanted, and the rapists don’t employ viciousness or violence. The root of the fantasy involves being overpowered, but willfully so, thus negating the non-consent element. It’s definitely a story built for feminist, sex-positive academia, and it had sparked plenty of discussion, the highlights of which I shared with my co-worker in the hopes of spreading the good feminist word.
“It’s a power fantasy, like the teacher/student or the boss/employee,” I explained. “It’s like BDSM — scary from the outside, but ultimately the ‘weak’ one is in control. If you read Dorothy Alison’s story, the scenarios read much more like a porn scene then a Law and Order one.”
“So it’s not really rape then.”
“Right. It’s play acting.”
He seemed understanding enough of this, to the point I hoped we could move onto something lighter.
But in that pause in the conversation he turned to look at me without saying a word. I could tell he was past tipsy into drunk, and I chuckled and said “what?” to which he responded “what?”
“You’re looking at me funny,” I said, and he snorted.
“I’m looking at you funny. Like I would want to look at you. Yeah, you’re really something in that floral dress.”
I what the helled? at the utter disgust in his voice. I certainly didn’t think I’d implied that “looking at me funny” meant he was attracted to me, or that my long-sleeved, high-buttoned dress was somehow a vehicle of sexual temptation. It was new, my dress, a dark navy with small white and orange flowers, selected for me by a far more fashionable friend. It was shorter than I normally wore, but I liked the dress. I could relax in it without worrying I was showing too much boob for a work event, and it slimmed in on my waist while allowing plenty of room for my hips. I’d felt good in it, the way clothes that fit make you feel — not a tempting bombshell by any means, but business-casual for sure. I had been flown in to work a major event for a major company, and I wanted to present as professional.
I also couldn’t wrap my head around how such an in-depth feminist conversation with a perceived “ally” had suddenly turned to another man insulting another woman’s looks without thought. I’d thought I was promoting the cause, engaging with a genuinely curious peer. I was revealing State Secrets and glad to do so, thinking it would further his understanding.
I’d cast myself in the role of strong, empowered, yet approachable female, but the second I was lobbed a softball insult, I clutched my glove and went home.
Back in my room, I cried, partly from hurt, even more from anger and frustration. At this point in my life, armed with endless hours of therapy, bolstered by medication, professional, semi-accomplished, I wanted to believe I’d react with cool, steely confidence, and calmly and methodically put him in his place. The fact that he’d flustered me enraged me at myself, as did my failure to anticipate the coming insult. It’s a bizarre protective measure, but I sort of pride myself on thinking of all the terrible things someone could say about me, so that if someone were to say them, I wouldn’t be taken by surprise, but could smugly say “yeah, I know.” It felt like punishment, having worn a new dress, one I liked a great deal, and felt good in, and now I was being punished for my moment of confidence.
This also made me angry, that in the face of someone being rude, my first instinct was to retreat right back into old ruts and say well, it was my fault. I said something. I was being vain. I was engaging a person who was known to be rude, and only got worse the deeper he got in his cups. I puffed up like a pigeon and a great big pin came along and popped me.
That just wouldn’t do. Still tipsy but edging toward sober, I sat down and started an e-mail that would take him to task. I write a lot of emails I never send, or I only ever wind up sending tiny pieces of, so my Drafts folder is unusually full. It’s my own little safe space, where I can wail away all my hotblooded Italian fury, and then, the next day, copy and paste “let’s discuss further in person,” the rage dissolved.
But I didn’t want to senselessy rage — I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, to break down the moment he reached for an insult as the exact problem he’d so eagerly and genuinely wanted to discuss. I made you uncomfortable, and your first thought was to reach for a hurtful comment on my appearance. You wanted it to be clear that you find me unattractive, because in our society, an ugly woman is a powerless one. The greatest gift you could give your daughter is to learn to stay your hand, so she never overhears her father degrading a woman’s looks just because he didn’t like something she said.
All that therapy had done something, as had all that higher education. But as with all emotional upset, having clarity in the mind didn’t necessarily connect to the heart. I cried when I packed the dress away, and I cried in the shower, feeling grotesque and angry at myself for letting some drunk-ass get to me that way.
The note sat in my inbox, where I edited and re-edited, but the moment had passed, and I already knew what the excuse would be — I don’t remember that. I was drinking. If I pressed the issue, I’d just be the stuck-up feminazi who couldn’t take a joke, or let a bro off the hook. I couldn’t address it in person, knowing for sure I’d cry, then hate myself for crying, which would make me cry farther, the fastest and easiest way to wipe the shit out of your credibility.
Then work happened, hard and fast, and I didn’t have time to look over what was in my Inbox. When I saw him across a room I nodded, but made no efforts to be friendly other than to smile when gave a casual wave. Work has always been a balm on a bruised ego, and after ten plus hours of it, I didn’t have the energy to reignite the rage.
In truth, I was too scared to send it. I was scared it would lead to a confrontation: or worse, it wouldn’t: that instead, it would be mocked by the mostly male staff behind my back, and scared that he’d corner me drunkenly at the next dinner and berate my over-sensitivity. I was scared that someone who barely knew me had landed such a perfect and direct hit, and I knew I’d need time, and my Drafts folder, to craft a worthy response.
When the work week ended and the crew boarded celebration shuttles to an off-site party, I wasn’t on them. I bought a half-bottle of white wine, put on sweats, and watched videos on Youtube while sharing Real Housewives gifs.
At the airport the next morning, I read and re-read my e-mail. With the promise of distance between us, it seemed easier to send my rebuke. I admired those who stood up for what they believed, even when they were afraid, and if I were to call myself a feminist, and ardently work for the cause, shouldn’t I attempt to state my belief and challenge sexism where I saw it? Isn’t the pushback part of the struggle? Didn’t our foremothers face far worse berating than the inevitable half-assed apologies of a habitual drunkard?
I didn’t care about this man’s opinion, but I was still frightened of him and his emotional bullseye. I’d dared to feel good about myself in my clothes, a rarity, and even only knowing me casually, he’d known exactly where and how to knock the confidence out of me. If he could do that in a drunken state, what could he do in a sober one? And how did I emotionally guard against it? And why had I assigned myself the role of feminist madonna when he had plenty of women in his life to call him to Jesus?
I thought again of his daughter, and Dorothy Allison, and all my male bosses, and then I copied and pasted the latest draft of the email and sent it to my therapist, with a note “remind me to discuss.” Then I stood for boarding, feeling hesitantly confident in my new jeans. | https://medium.com/the-pink/rescue-fantasies-6fb0d8737c92 | ['Laurel Bowery-Hill'] | 2020-12-06 06:52:45.192000+00:00 | ['Rape', 'Feminism', 'Depression', 'Personal Essay'] |
Planning to Create Your Own Netflix? | The business and the technical side of creating a streaming platform like Netflix!
Netflix is, by far, the most popular streaming platform available in the market. With over 192.95 million paid subscribers from all over the world, it is definitely leading the market of OTT apps.
So it makes sense when questions like how to create a streaming app like Netflix pops into an entrepreneur’s mind, like yours.
In this article, I will be talking about different aspects of how to create a streaming app like Netflix. I have covered both the business & technical sides of creating a streaming app like Netflix. The topics covered in this article are:
How Netflix Makes Money — Revenue Model
The USPs of Netflix
Tech Stack of A Streaming App Like Netflix
How Much Does It Cost To Make A Streaming App Like Netflix?
Let’s begin!
How Netflix Makes Money — Revenue Model
The first thing that comes to the mind of any entrepreneur when thinking of how to create a streaming app like Netflix is its revenue model.
How will your streaming app like Netflix make money?
To answer this question, let’s look at the revenue model of Netflix and how it has changed over the years.
Netflix was initially launched in 1997. So it is obvious that over time it had to modify its business model according to evolution in tech and market demand.
In its initial years, Blockbuster — a provider of home movie and video game rental services was the biggest competitor of Netflix. This is how Netflix looked like in its beginning years.
So, the revenue model of Netflix, even in its beginning years, was a subscription-based model. Over the year, Netflix has aced predicting its market which has made it a successful $195 billion dollars company within just 23 years.
From just a per-DVD subscription-based model, Netflix evolved its revenue model to a monthly subscription — from $15.95 per month with late fees to $19.95 per month without late fees.
The current revenue model of Netflix is also a subscription-based model. The three streaming plans Netflix offers are — Basic ($8.99/ month), Standard ($12.99/ month), and Premium ($15.99/ month).
Note that the premium plan that Netflix currently offers is almost the same as its initial monthly subscription plan, back in 2000.
Keep in mind that the cost of these subscription plans changes for different countries and demographics.
The idea of showing the revenue model of Netflix and how it has evolved through the years was to tell you that the understanding of your target audience plays a key role in defining the revenue model when creating a streaming app like Netflix.
Currently, the app has built a huge user base by spending on quality content to operate profitably just on its subscription-based model. According to analysts, Netflix will spend over $17 billion on its content in 2020.
Besides this, there are multiple other things that Netflix spends on — marketing, server costs, production, etc.
Having said that, you cannot spend a huge amount of money on content when creating an app like Netflix, at least not initially.
You can solve this problem by combining two or more business revenue models when creating an app like Netflix — such as the Freemium + Ad-based model, Or Subscription-based model combined with any other revenue model.
The USPs of A Streaming App Like Netflix
The second most important thing when planning to create a streaming app like Netflix is to decide its Unique Selling Points (USPs). The current streaming app market, like most of the markets, is highly competitive.
So, what would be the USPs to focus on when creating an app like Netflix?
Most of the competitors of Netflix are apps owned by big enterprises. A few alternatives of Netflix are Amazon Prime Video — owned by Amazon, Hulu — owned by Walt Disney Direct-to-Consumer & International, and HBO Max — owned by HBO.
So, when thinking of how to create a streaming app like Netflix, the USPs of your app must be well-defined to stand out in a highly-competitive market.
Some of the Unique Selling Points (USP) that make Netflix one of the most used streaming apps in 2020, and that you can adopt from when creating an app like Netflix, are:
No Ads
Ads are high-paying but, to be frank, are annoying to your users. We all have experienced this with YouTube. Netflix operates successfully without showing any ads to its users because, well, it has a different revenue model altogether.
You can use this when wondering how to create a streaming
app like Netflix too. When making a streaming app like Netflix, you can start with the Freemium Model with ads for a limited amount of content. This will ensure that you get paid for streaming on your app while incentivizing & thus, increasing your paid subscribers.
Ease of Usage
The UI/UX of Netflix is simple and yet, looks & feels quite elegant. Even if a user has just installed Netflix and even has never used a streaming app before, they can quickly learn how to use it. That’s something you should aim for when wondering how to create a streaming app like Netflix.
This is another learning that you should take into account when planning to create a streaming app like Netflix. Invest in the UI/UX design of your streaming app. It definitely pays off!
Accessibility
Netflix is available on all platforms — iOS, Windows, Android, and the web. It is accessible across all platforms.
So, when thinking of how to create a streaming app like Netflix don’t just limit your content to just your app. Make sure that it is available across all platforms.
Recommendation Algorithm
When wondering how to create a streaming app like Netflix, its recommendation algorithm is something worth spending your money over.
The recommendation algorithm of Netflix is super-strong. If you finish watching a series or a movie, it starts playing another movie/series that you might like, right away.
Besides, if you search for a movie or series that isn’t currently available on that platform, the app recommends similar movies/series. This is something you should include when thinking of how to create a streaming app like Netflix.
The recommendation algorithm is an important area to invest in when creating an app like Netflix. It plays a crucial role in defining & increasing the average session time per user.
For instance, Cindy Holland (VP, Content Acquisition / Original Series at Netflix) said in a 2019 interview that Netflix subscribers spend 2 hours per day watching content on the app!
Unique & Quality Content
Netflix understands the importance of quality content and how to keep users hooked. It spends a fortune on quality content. As mentioned earlier, Netflix will spend over $17 billion on content for its platform.
When thinking of how to create a streaming app like Netflix, it is important to build a well-defined strategy on the type of content you want to stream through your platform.
The better the content, the higher will be the growth rate of paid subscribers.
Development Architecture & Tech Stack of A Streaming App Like Netflix
Now that we have covered most of the business aspects of how to create a streaming app like Netflix, let’s look at its technical side. People love talking about Netflix shows and web series.
But what most don’t realize is how strong its tech stack is.
According to a survey, users view 140 million hours of content on Netflix per day. This comes to around 15% of global bandwidth. Imagine doing this for high-quality video/audio, without delay, and at a fast loading speed.
Well, Netflix is doing that.
If you are planning on how to create a streaming app like Netflix, you have to pay extra attention to its technical specifications. A low-performing tech stack for your streaming app like Netflix can undermine your app’s reputation and seriously damage its user base.
In this section about the technical aspect of how to create a streaming app like Netflix, I’ll list down the technologies, frameworks, business tools, and DevOps that Netflix uses.
Netflix to Cloud — The Use Of Microservices
At the beginning of it all, Netflix had a monolithic tech architecture. In simple terms, the functionality of the entire streaming app depended on a single (large) codebase with multiple different modules.
A Monolithic Tech Architecture has a single deployment binary. This basically means that to do even a minor change, you have to keep in mind how it will impact other aspects of the mobile/web app and modify other aspects as well to run successfully.
Netflix started the cloud migration of its entire platform in 2008 which finally completed in 2016. Most people didn’t even think that moving completely to the cloud was even possible but Netflix did it.
This journey also brought another transition in Netflix — moving from Monolithic Architecture to Microservice architecture.
Currently, Netflix runs on 1000+ microservices — each of which controls the functionality of different parts of its platform. It is now impossible that the entire Netflix platform stops functioning at once!
When planning to create an app like Netflix, you can take such cues and implement what Netflix has implemented to make its platform completely seamless.
Today, most big companies you know have moved to the cloud and the use of microservice architecture has played a significant role in it. Well, remember that Netflix started it!
Cloud Services like AWS will play a significant role when wondering how to create a streaming app like Netflix.
For Application & Data — Tech Stack of Netflix
Netflix offers seamless streaming and a great UI/UX to its millions of subscribers because it uses the right development frameworks and technologies. And you should too when creating an app like Netflix!
You need a similarly strong tech stack in your streaming app like Netflix because it’s 2020 and the attention span of users is significantly low.
Even a sec delay in the loading time of the web & mobile app will account for poor UX and can put off thousands of users!
Here are a few major technologies you will need when wondering how to create a streaming app like Netflix for its application & data.
Python — Flask
Node.js
Java
MySQL & PostgreSQL
React
Amazon EC3 — Cloud Hosting
Amazon RDS and Amazon DynamoDB (Database)
Pig — For analysis of large data sets
winjs by Microsoft — UI Toolkit for browsers
DevOps — Tech Stack of Netflix
DevOps plays a significant role in aligning development and IT operations when creating an app like Netflix. To ensure constant communication and delivery of changes at a fast pace, Netflix uses the following for DevOps.
Git & GitHub — Version Control & Collaboration
Version Control & Collaboration Jenkins — Continuous Integration Server
— Continuous Integration Server Sumo Logic & Apache Mesos — Cloud Log Management & Server Management
— Cloud Log Management & Server Management Crittercism — Mobile App Performance Management (APM) for iOS, Android, HTML5, and Windows Phone 8
— Mobile App Performance Management (APM) for iOS, Android, HTML5, and Windows Phone 8 AWS CloudTrail — For Recording AWS API Calls & Delivering Log Files
These are just a few DevOps tools used by Netflix. You can choose your own DevOps tech stack when creating an app like Netflix as per your organization’s development culture & methodologies.
Business Tools — Tech Stack of Netflix
When making a streaming app like Netflix, you need business tools for better management and organization. Here are a few business tools that Netflix uses that you can adapt from when creating an app like Netflix.
G-Suite — Team Communication & Collaboration
Ping Identity — Identity Management Platform
Confluence — Team Communication & Collaboration
HubCommander — Identity Management Platform
Business Tools allows your team to communicate, manage, & collaborate for efficient & productive development, maintenance, or upgrade when creating an app like Netflix.
Besides using these tech stacks, Netflix is known for tech innovations for streamlining content delivery and thus, improving user experience.
For instance, Netflix announced, back in 2018, the usage of Dynamic optimizer — an AI-powered perceptual video encoding optimization framework that reduces memory usage without sacrificing video/audio quality.
How Much Does It Cost To Make A Streaming App Like Netflix?
When wondering how to create a streaming app like Netflix, it is important to create elaborate documentation of key features you want in your app. The cost of developing an app like Netflix depends on the features & integration you want in your app.
Here are a few features a typical streaming app like Netflix has.
Access Control — Using OTP, Email ID, Social Media
Using OTP, Email ID, Social Media Basic Features — Content Search, Newsfeed/Activity Feed (Continue Watching, My List, etc.), Settings, etc.
— Content Search, Newsfeed/Activity Feed (Continue Watching, My List, etc.), Settings, etc. External Features — OTP Reading, Secure data Travel, Third-Party APIs
— OTP Reading, Secure data Travel, Third-Party APIs Payment Gateway Integrations
App Interaction — Deep Linking, Social Sharing, etc.
— Deep Linking, Social Sharing, etc. Advanced features — Data Sync, Geolocation, Push Notifications
— Data Sync, Geolocation, Push Notifications Interaction with Cloud
Admin Panel for User Control, User Analytics, etc.
Now the development & integration of each of these features come with a cost. An expert mobile app development company can give a rough estimate if you approach them with your app features.
The MVP development of making a streaming app like Netflix will cost you around $70,000 (including 2 native apps for iOS & Android and server cost).
Final Words: Creating Your Own Netflix
A streaming app is more than just a mobile app. You are offering a streaming experience to your users in a competitive market. Every aspect of creating an app like Netflix — from market research to development, testing, & launch must be on point!
Now that you have a basic outline of how to create a streaming app like Netflix, what are you waiting for?
Resourcifi is an award-winning staff augmentation company. Contact us to know more! Want to know how much you can save by setting up your development team at Resourcifi? Use this savings calculator to find out now! | https://medium.com/resourcifiinc/planning-to-create-your-own-netflix-a5cecb4754cb | ['Praveen Mishra'] | 2020-12-10 08:32:06.645000+00:00 | ['How To', 'Netflix', 'Apps For Business', 'Mobile Apps', 'Mobile App Development'] |
Taking a Collaborative Approach to AML Compliance | For regulators, money laundering remains a pivotal issue. Indeed, as money launderers become exposed to new technologies and acquire sophisticated ways to move illegally obtained money, governments and regulators are tightening the noose around obligated entities. Over the years, the European Union has passed a series of stringent anti-money laundering directives; the United States, too, is cracking the whip, given the spate of recent changes to the country’s existing anti-money laundering regulations. Consider FinCEN’s new customer due diligence rules which require financial institutions and other regulated entities to not only identity beneficial owners of business entities, but also verify their identity.
These changes to Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations are certainly a step in the right direction; however, as the seventh annual Basel AML Index finds, governments today are still not doing enough to combat money laundering. While regulations might be sufficiently stringent, in practice, AML measures have much room for improvement. This becomes manifestly clear given the hefty fines that have been levied on financial institutions for their compliance-related lapses.
To some extent, the wheels are already turning, with the United States government announcing new measures to help financial institutions adopt more effective solutions to fight fraud, and keep bad actors from exploiting their services. A few months ago, United States Justice Department announced that it would take a special interest in fighting terrorist organizations and criminal syndicates by undermining their efforts and blocking the flow of money to fund their illegal activities.
AML compliance, here, is a key factor, and the Justice Department realizes this. It has launched new AML compliance training programs to ensure that regulated institutions operate within the bounds of the law. It also updated policies on the selection of corporate monitors for large-scale compliance failures to ensure they are selected ethically and not as political favors. The goal is to further refine the components that determine whether a monitor, or a corporate compliance enforcement officer, is needed to observe a company, as well as clarify the monitor selection process.
The authorities have also taken cognizance of how smaller community banks struggle to keep up with changing regulations due to their lack of expertise in compliance. As part of a broader effort to strengthen anti-money laundering defenses across the U.S. financial system, the federal depository institutions regulators and the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued a statement, allowing community banks and credit unions to collaborate on certain anti-money laundering resources. Sharing resources allows banks and credit unions to increase operational efficiencies, reduce costs and leverage specialized expertise.
In the highly competitive financial industry, banks can’t afford to be careless about compliance. To stay plugged into newly released regulations and eliminate the risk of compliance fines, many financial institutions have looked into leveraging AML compliance processes to help better manage their customer relationships. In today’s strict regulatory environment, it has become evident that implementing a layered approach to AML compliance is no longer necessary, but crucial to improve AML compliance processes. | https://medium.com/the-regtech-hub/taking-a-collaborative-approach-to-aml-compliance-aebe0051c075 | [] | 2019-06-17 23:17:07.060000+00:00 | ['Compliance', 'Money Laundering', 'Regtech', 'Aml', 'Customer Due Diligence'] |
Space Probe Will Search Venus for Life in Fortuitous Flyby | by Joel Hruska
It’s a storybook meet-cute that transcends culture: She’s a toxic hellstew with a surface temperature that could melt lead. He’s a half-European, half-Japanese satellite on his way to somewhere else entirely. Despite the promises he’s made, despite his previous feelings, that “somewhere else” suddenly feels very far away. Together, they fight crime could prove the existence of life — or at least phosphine — in Venus’ atmosphere.
A few days ago, news broke that phosphine has been detected in Venus’ atmosphere (just in case you missed that bit). Phosphine is an unusual chemical signature to detect on Venus because, on Earth, it’s only produced in two ways: Man-made chemical reactions and via decaying organic matter. Off-planet, we only know of one other source: Deep inside gas giants.
There’s a distinct lack of humans performing advanced chemical engineering on our sister planet, which seems to knock out #1. Venus, as you are likely aware, is also not a gas giant. The presence of decaying organic matter on the surface also seems unlikely, given that Venus’ atmosphere is so thick, there are no asteroid craters smaller than 3km. Incoming objects less than 160 feet /50m in diameter burn up before reaching the ground. Venus’ atmospheric pressure is so high, it creates types of lava flows not seen on Earth: so-called “pancake domes.” Toss in the balmy 880F (471 C) temperatures, and the surface isn’t what you’d call “friendly” to life. In short, we don’t have a good explanation for where the phosphine could be coming from, or even confirmation that it exists at all.
But that’s where BepiColombo might be in a position to do the world a favor. The Mercury-bound probe is about to slingshot past Venus on October 15, 2020. The first time it flies past, it’ll be fairly distant, at 10,663km above the surface. In August 2021, however, BepiColombo will be much closer — as close as 550km.
Image by the ESA
There’s an instrument on BepiColombo called MERTIS (Mercury Radiometer and Thermal Infrared Spectrometer). It’s designed to study the surface composition of Mercury by measuring the content of the light reflected off the surface. In theory, BepiColombo might be able to use this instrument to check for phosphine in Venus’ atmosphere.
“There actually is something in the spectral range of MERTIS,” says Jörn Helbert from the German Aerospace Center, co-lead on the MERTIS instrument. “So we are now seeing if our sensitivity is good enough to do observations.”
The second flyby next year is expected to have a much better chance of detecting phosphine than the first will. “We possibly could detect phosphine,” ESA’s Johannes Benkhoff, BepiColombo’s Project Scientist, told Forbes. “But we do not know if our instrument is sensitive enough.”
According to the scientists, this detection attempt will be at the very limit of what MERTIS is designed to do, meaning even a negative result won’t necessarily mean phosphine isn’t present. But BepiColombo is the only spacecraft in the area that’s equipped to attempt to check for phosphine, and it can do so before any probe we could launch from Earth.
If BepiColombo verifies that there’s phosphine in Venus’ atmosphere, it wouldn’t automatically mean the phosphine was coming from an organic source. But it would be confirmation that a chemical reaction we can’t easily explain is occurring in a place it shouldn’t be. If the cause turns out to be the results of a previously unknown chemical process — possibly one unique to the environment of Venus — that would be exciting. If it turned out to be caused by some kind of life, it would mean we weren’t alone in the universe.
The chances that we’ll find microscopic life living in the clouds of Venus is remote, but it’s not zero. A lot of eyes are going to be trained on BepiColombo as it shoots past Venus in October, and again when it returns on August 10, 2021.
Now Read: | https://medium.com/extremetech-access/space-probe-will-search-venus-for-life-in-fortuitous-flyby-7f8137015282 | [] | 2020-09-23 12:35:40.863000+00:00 | ['Venus', 'Space', 'Science', 'Aliens', 'Solar System'] |
A Voice for Veterans on Capitol Hill: Q&A with Terri Tanielian | Terri Tanielian’s research has helped bring posttraumatic stress disorder and other “ invisible wounds” of war out of the shadows. It has helped get military caregivers the support they so desperately need. And it has shown how the American health care system too often fails veterans, especially those in suicidal distress.
Tanielian is a senior behavioral scientist at RAND, an internationally recognized expert on military and veteran health, and a frequent witness at congressional hearings. Earlier this year, she completed an assignment that allowed her to more directly inform good policy. She embedded full-time with the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs as a six-month fellow.
She was there to provide nonpartisan support to the committee, to help it pursue policy ideas backed by evidence. She worked with staff to help inform the committee’s agenda for the current congressional session, including the chairman’s signature legislative proposal, the ACCESS Act. It would ensure all veterans get access to mental health care, regardless of their discharge status.
RAND funded the fellowship as a pilot project, with the help of philanthropic support, and is considering whether to expand the fellowship to more congressional committees, and more fields of research expertise, in the future.
How did this fellowship opportunity come about?
I had testified in May 2019 about some of RAND’s research and analysis on suicide prevention for veterans and service members. I was in the audience for another hearing on suicide prevention, and a member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee approached me. She said, “I saw your testimony. Our chair has actually made suicide his №1 priority for this session of Congress, and we’re thinking of bringing in a fellow. Would you be interested?” So we teamed up with RAND’s Congressional Relations team and RAND leadership to figure out how we could make something like this work.
What were you hoping to accomplish?
The original intent was to produce a report for the committee, with a framework and some recommendations for how it could consider evidence-based policy solutions. But the committee members and staff wanted to move more quickly. So I became very much involved in crafting a strategy for the committee, producing real-time guidance and educating the members.
How did that impact the committee’s work?
I outlined what committee staff should be doing to gather more information, what policy solutions they should be considering based on the evidence. When I drafted the framework, the staff said, “This is excellent. We need to brief the chairman” — who quickly said, “We’re going with it!” The committee sent out a press release about how the committee’s activities would be organized around this framework and its commitment to push forward with comprehensive suicide prevention legislation.
We need to lean further in if we’re going to make strides in reducing the number of suicide deaths among veterans.
Do any moments really stand out to you?
I helped name the Veterans’ Acute Crisis Care for Emergent Suicide Symptoms — or ACCESS — Act, one of the main pieces of legislation the chairman introduced. I then went with staff to drop it in the “hopper” for new legislation in the U.S. Capitol. That was a memorable “pinch-me” moment. I also got to sit behind the members and write questions that hearing witnesses would have to answer. I was really humbled by the seriousness and the passion that the members of the committee and staff had for this topic, and their willingness to listen to what I could share about what would work, what the evidence says.
What happened with the legislation you worked on?
COVID-19 hit during my fellowship, and that really slowed things down. The intent had been to push forward quickly on these bills on a bipartisan basis. But then work stopped for a couple of weeks, and when it resumed, the focus was really on the VA’s role in response to the pandemic. The committee had a hearing in September 2020 to get formal feedback and discussion on the ACCESS Act, as well as 30 other pieces of legislation, all of them focused on suicide prevention and mental health.
What are you working on now that you’re back at RAND?
I’m trying to get some more work off the ground around helping military caregivers. I’ve also been looking at how we can deepen and expand our work on reducing veteran suicide risk.
Has your fellowship experience inspired any of that work?
I’d say I’m emboldened by it, more greatly impassioned that we need to lean further in if we’re going to make strides in reducing the number of suicide deaths. I’ve been doing mental health research for 25-plus years, but now I’m thinking about how we could be working in more interdisciplinary ways — not just through the lens of “get more people into mental health care.” We need to think about it through the lens of ending discrimination, promoting economic opportunities and access to health care, enacting smart gun policies. All of those things are essential components of comprehensive suicide prevention. So I want to make sure I’m focusing on research that’s really going to propel those policy solutions. | https://medium.com/rand-corporation/a-voice-for-veterans-on-capitol-hill-q-a-with-terri-tanielian-c942e4523ec9 | ['Rand Corporation'] | 2020-11-11 21:25:50.855000+00:00 | ['Suicide Prevention', 'PTSD', 'Mental Health', 'Suicide', 'Veterans'] |
Zoom Call Rules For The Signing Of The Declaration Of Independence | Zoom Call Rules For The Signing Of The Declaration Of Independence
Thomas Jefferson sent a WhatAp to remind the guys of the rules to follow…
From: Jefferson, Thomas
To: #Dec of Indy Congress
07/03/1776
Subject: Ye ZOOM CALL RULES for ye signing Declaration of Independence (#DECofIND)
Ye guys
Sadly, the Cathay Plaque means we cannot meet f-2-f so the #DECofIND will need to be signed virtually. I can’t tolerate delay, as everyone will be off for the long holiday weekend and I want this on the front pages of their news sheets.
THIS MEETING WILL BE RECORDED.
It is vital that ye all understand this: Assuming we are not all slaughtered in our beds by Redcoats before the end of next week, this is going to be big news, not only here, but this is the ‘Zoom that will be heard around the world’: So, we need to get it right.
Sorry that some of this is a bit personal, but seriously, ye guys, people are going to be talking about this for a long time: And as Louis XVI said to me recently: “Ye only get one chance to make ye first impression.”
· Clean-shaven, clean shirt and fresh periwig please, and that means ALL of ye.
· No ‘top dressing’ for Zoom: Just because we can only see you from the waist up does not mean ye can be in ye linen under-britches from the middle down.
· John and cousin Samuel Adams, OK we can’t smell it, but we can SEE and HEAR that ye have been on the ale. Be very careful; history is currently more likely to remember ye for the alcohol than the aptitude
· Roger Sherman, if ye cat wants to sit on ye lap during the call, will ye just let it? It is more comfortable and more dignified than fighting it, ye should take my word for it
· John Hancock, when ye mute the sound, this does not mute the camera, so we all saw ye hand down ye britches. Please, we want Hancock to be remembered, not Handcock. No more Giuliani moments, ye capeesh?
· Alexander Hamilton, ye infernal jigging and the ridiculously fast speech will play very poorly over Zoom — ye’ll just strobe like crazy. Pack it in, will ye?
· George Washington: I admit I smiled, we all did, when we saw ye had created a Zoom backdrop mocked up to look like ye toilet of King George III and ye sat ‘enthroned’ — hahaha. However, this is serious business, and we can’t get distracted, so…
· Also Robert Livingston: Yes, ye are very funny replacing ye image with a turnip, but will ye please get it sorted before the call tomorrow — posterity calling, ye understand?
· Finally: Benjamin Franklin, ye know I can’t be in Philadelphia, for obvious reasons, but I hear on the grapevine that ye have attached a line and kite to the spire on the top of Independence Hall. Ye want to liven things up, I hear? If ye burn down the damned building before ye #DECofIND is signed tomorrow, ye will live as the villain through history! Ye damned experiments! Ye’s not big, and ye’s not clever.
Let’s get focused and have a great call. And please, remember to tell ye families what we are up to — funny though it may be, no more wives running naked to ye bathhouse through the back of the shot, hey? | https://medium.com/the-haven/zoom-call-rules-for-the-signing-of-the-declaration-of-independence-39ebdfcfafbf | ['Andy Killoran'] | 2020-11-29 20:08:29.795000+00:00 | ['Funny', 'Humor', 'Slack', 'Independence', 'Rules'] |
A Heavy Black Cloud on Women | Women are not victims but they are hurt, abused, killed on purpose in a big context of a planetary war against them, to prevent them to deploy their own power, by altering their life and their powerful sexuality.
They have a strong awakening tool through their rich sexuality and the shakti fire well directed is able to change this world without words and from within just by heightening consciousness frequency.
An egregore
There is a big black cloud hovering over women: an egregore made of many clichés, that weights over feminity.
Some saying show how misogynistic is our society and how the public space is closed to women and a dangerous territory. We could hear yesteryear a saying in France, the fox is on the prowl, keep your chickens at home.
A negative egregore here is a corpus made up of crystallized thoughts around a lie enforced by syllogisms.
This negative egregore is integrated in subconscious and becomes a unquestionned worldview seeded in our reptilian brain, an automatic behavior like when we drive a car.
From this worldview, victims become guilty. A woman alone becomes a prey in the street and even at home.
Governments
Why women have so little protection? How many feminicides by husbands that could be prevented? How many native women abducted and killed with not much reaction even in what we call democratic countries? Governments often don’t do anything till big and general demonstrations take place or big media are zooming on the problem. There is never any money to protect them.
As COVID-19 spread out in the word, magically, we observe money spent by billions without any question while there was no money to help entire families living in the streets and prevent them to loose their house or appartment, to help students to pay their abusive debts, to protect women against violence.
Why this difference of treatment? Because the disease may affect the relatives of all those at the helm.
Shakti
Spirituality may be only intellectual et emotional, but as soon as it expresses in life and in sexuality, its power to do a revolution is amplified greatly.
There are several ways to express sexuality:
Satisfy a need and get children,
Satisfy a desire,
Satisfy someone we love,
Share an intimate experience with someone we love,
Share a mystical experience with the shakti awakening.
Here I will just speak about the last way and talk about the mystical experience. Sexuality is very connected to the whole being and to the whole cosmos. Shakti is life energy, cosmic energy, a conscious energy.
Shakti means power, energy, or force, and represents the divine feminine transcending gender. Kundalini-Shakti is this energy coiled at the basis of your spine, Shakti may rise or come down. Goddess go through every chakra, rising our consciousness frequency in what we call the awakening. She has to power to change this world concretely with this great and conscious energy. Our power is from inside out.
We have all the possibility to transcend our traumas and our limits and become the real actors on Gaia who welcomed us.
Please tell us stories you went through because of being a woman or please develop reflections about the status of women or about how women may change our world… | https://medium.com/queen-s-children/a-heavy-black-cloud-on-women-976b21a5e243 | ['Jean Carfantan'] | 2020-11-29 08:12:24.423000+00:00 | ['Sacred Feminine', 'Shakti', 'Prompt', 'Newsletter', 'Inner Power'] |
CodeFest 2018 | Our guys visited one of the biggest IT conferences in the Russian Federation — Codefest. It is held every year and always pleases with a big number of captivating and inspirational sessions and a warm-hearted atmosphere.This time wasn’t the exception.
There were 6 sections which touched upon different topics such as QA, Back end, Front end, Mobile, and Management.
At Codefest there were more than 2 000 people. It is hard to imagine the place where so many developers and designers could gather together, here in Russia. Our team members were there at the 6th time: met new people, got new knowledge and positive emotions.
Codefest amazes with the quality and a number of reports every year. This time you could listen to the speakers from Google, Twitter, Booking.com, Samsung, and many different Russian companies which you may have heard about — 2GIS, Vkontakte, Beeline, etc. It was really an outstanding opportunity to be on their sessions.
Our guys stayed under a great impression of the lectures’ level. Thanks to all Russian IT-community.
There was a lot of fabulous information but several sessions made the guys’ brains reel.
For example, they learned about Web view and its opportunities, the speaker from Samsung told about Intersection Observer (we all will definitely hear about this tool in the future), also, there was the discussion about React.js and Vue.js pros and cons.
“A visit to Codefest always charges me with motivation to my work for the next months. The atmosphere of the event, people and sessions give this effect. So, knowledge is not only one reason why we go there”, — said Denis, team lead at ADCI Solutions.
But guys brought from Codefest not only knowledge. Free sticker packs, free T-shirts, free pens and other free stuff were there for all participants. Who would refuse the sweet gifts for memory? Nobody, of course.
At the end of the 2nd conference day, there was the blithesome party where you could speak with other developers, discuss sessions, have fun and dance! | https://medium.com/drupal-stories-an-insiders-view/codefest-2018-4220287d8a25 | ['Adci Solutions'] | 2018-04-17 10:53:36.683000+00:00 | ['Conference', 'Web Development', 'Drupal'] |
The Infamous Rape Case That Caused An Uproar In Korea | The Assault
In the morning, Nayoung was walking to school and she came across Cho who was drunk. They were complete strangers to each other. He kidnapped and dragged her to a nearby church.
He pulls her to a bathroom stall and nobody was around. He tried to rape her but Nayoung was fighting back as she was trying to escape. Cho didn’t like the way she behaved. He fought back by punching her several times which caused her to cry. He viciously bit her cheek to the point that it was swollen and almost falling out. He strangled her until she was unconscious. Cho tore her clothes and raped her in her private areas and her ears.
There is no doubt that there are surveillance cameras everywhere in Korea that provides pieces of evidence of this crime. However, he believed that a way to remove some evidence is by removing his DNA from her. So, he grabbed a plunger and used it on her. This caused severe ruptures on her lower intestines which ended up slipping out of her body therefore Cho just placed her intestines back to their position.
He assaulted her once more and tried to drown her. He left the cold water running to remove his DNA and left the scene.
She regained consciousness and crawled out of the bathroom. The neighbors found her and immediately helped her to go to the hospital. She was in surgery for 8 hours and the doctors tried to repair the damaged organs but it was too late as the color of her organs were black.
To this day, her organs still don’t work and require medical assistance. It was stated that it took 8 months of intense treatment. The damage was categorized as third-degree disabilities.
Two days later, the police arrested Cho as they found fingerprints and blood stains in the crime scene. Cho claimed that he was drunk the day before therefore he can’t remember any details of what happened that morning.
When the police were questioning the 8-year-old Nayoung, they were doing it in front of other patients in the hospital room which should be done privately. Unfortunately, the police made Nayoung go to the police station and interviewed her for hours. This is because they forgot or didn’t know how to use the recording devices therefore they had to do the interview 4 more times. In addition, they made her sit in an uncomfortable hard chair when she just had surgery done in the lower half of her body and had bodily bags attached to her.
The Trials
The police believed that Nayoung should testify in front of her attacker because it was difficult to know how much to charge someone with limited evidence so this testimony was the only way. This caused anger in the community because she was only 8 years old. Nayoung was still in her recovery period where a hole was drilled in her stomach and 80% of her organs were actively bleeding. She wore garments to help her but they were soon soaked in blood.
In the trial, the defense attorney asked her, “Did you smell alcohol on him?” Nayoung honestly answers, “Yes.”
This caused a reduction in his sentence.
A law in Korea states that if you are physically and mentally weak/disabled, you will not be punished for a full sentence. This includes being drunk. This suggests that when you are under the influence of alcohol and you commit a crime, you will receive a shorter sentence compared to a person who was sober.
Initially, Cho received a life sentence. This is because of this assault and his previous crimes. He had 17 arrests in his criminal record, he served 3 and a half years for rape and assault, and 7 and a half years of his other crimes. Cho demanded a retrial and so it was given to him. His defense attorney kept defending him about how he was very drunk. Cho defended himself by saying,
“I am not the type of sick monster who rapes an 8-year-old girl. I was under severe influence of alcohol. It destroyed me.”
Eventually, the judge stated that he was mentally and physically too weak from alcohol. His sentence is now 12 years in prison and will be released in December 2020. | https://medium.com/@ameliaz/the-infamous-rape-case-that-caused-an-uproar-in-korea-77feea294cce | ['Amelia Z'] | 2020-11-11 20:46:42.708000+00:00 | ['Rape', 'Culture', 'Korea', 'Crime', 'Storytelling'] |
Polk Audio’s $250 React soundbar packs Alexa | The makers of the first soundbar with built-in Alexa are back with a new model, and unlike many budget-priced models, this all-in-one soundbar can actually be upgraded with wireless surround speakers and a subwoofer. Don’t expect Dolby Atmos, however.
Mentioned in this article Polk Audio Command Bar Read TechHive's reviewMSRP $299.00See it Slated to go on sale today for $249, the Alexa-enabled Polk React from Polk Audio comes equipped with a four-driver array, including a pair of 96- x 69mm mid-range drivers and two 25mm tweeters. Two 110- x 100mm passive radiators supply the low-frequency effects.
Now, the Polk React’s predecessor, the Polk Audio Command Bar, came with both built-in Alexa and a separate wireless subwoofer, which generally delivers better bass compared to a built-in subwoofer. That said, the Polk React can be upgraded with not only a wireless sub (the $199 React Sub), but also a pair of wireless surround speakers (the SR2 kit for $249) for true surround sound. The Polk Command Bar, on the other hand, didn’t support wireless surround speakers at all, making it a strictly what-you-hear-is-what-you-get affair.
[ Further reading: The best soundbars ]Besides its support for wireless surround speakers, the Polk React comes with built-in Alexa, complete with a telltale blue indicator light and a four integrated far-field microphones for voice pickup. As with any other Alexa-enabled speaker, you can use voice commands to ask Alexa for news headlines, local weather reports, or what’s next on your agenda, and you can also control your compatible smart home devices and place free phone calls to numbers in the U.S, Canada, and Mexico.
Polk Audio The Polk React can be paired with the optional React Sub ($249) and/or the SR2 wireless surround speaker kit ($199).
The Polk React supports Alexa voice commands for some “basic” soundbar features, including adjusting the volume and subwoofer level. You can also pair Alexa on the soundbar with Amazon’s Fire TV Stick, allowing you to play TV shows and movies without a remote, or connect the Fire TV Blaster for hands-free control of TVs, cable boxes, and other IR-enabled components. Finally, the React supports Alexa's multi-room audio functionality, meaning you can add it to Alexa speaker groups.
The Polk React comes with a standard set of sound modes, including Movie, Music, Voice Adjust (for boosting the sound of dialog) and Night modes. Both Dolby and DTS audio are supported, but not 3D sound formats such as Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, or DTS Virtual:X.
In back of the Polk React is a single HDMI-ARC port (no eARC support for lossless Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio, but that’s no surprise given the React’s budget price point), along with an optical (Toslink) input.
We’ll have a full review of the Polk React once we properly wring out a review unit.
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/@matt20034742/polk-audios-250-react-soundbar-packs-alexa-c50d5cf5161 | [] | 2021-01-27 19:03:07.727000+00:00 | ['Connected Home', 'Music', 'Deals', 'Gear'] |
The Ultimate Step-by-Step Guide to Making Decisions in a Pandemic | The Ultimate Step-by-Step Guide to Making Decisions in a Pandemic
A framework from two epidemiologists
People enjoy the beach amid the coronavirus pandemic in Huntington Beach, California on April 25, 2020. Photo: APU GOMES/Getty Images
Co-authored by JoLynn Montgomery, PhD, MPH
In many communities in the United States, government restrictions designed to curtail the spread of Covid-19 are being lifted, despite rising rates of infection. Many of the messages to the public about how seriously to take Covid-19 and how to stay safe are confusing. Some people are returning to their activities as if the pandemic is over, while others are avoiding in-person interactions. How can you make sense of it all and figure out how and when to safely proceed with your life?
Recently, several visual guides have been circulating on social media in an attempt to provide some instruction. These images show various in-person activities ranked from low risk to high risk. Unfortunately, these rankings are of limited use because they don’t address the specific circumstances of the activities that might make them risky. Furthermore, the rankings don’t provide any guidance about how to reduce your risk while doing these activities.
For example, in one ranking, “going to the beach” is listed as a moderate risk activity. But going to the beach is not always risky. The level of risk is directly related to how crowded the beach is. The more crowded, the more risky. It is misleading to rank all beach outings as moderate risk. What might really help is some guidance about how to have a safer beach outing.
These rankings are just one example of information about Covid-19 that is leaving many of us overwhelmed and unsure of what to do. What we need are tools we can use to make decisions about participating in specific activities and reducing the risk of catching or spreading Covid-19.
“Risk reduction” is the idea that a person can change or skip specific activities in order to lower their risk of infection. This is different from “risk elimination,” which is the idea of completely avoiding all in-person activities to remove any risk. The task of eliminating all in-person activities is difficult in the short term and nearly impossible in the long term. Experts predict that Covid-19 will be part of our lives for the foreseeable future, so risk reduction is a more realistic long-term approach.
This framework will empower you to make informed choices about your daily life during the Covid-19 pandemic just like the experts do.
A recent article in the Washington Post presented information about how each of six health experts (including Dr. Fauci himself) apply risk reduction to their daily activities in order to more safely interact with others. Although their approaches depend on their personal and local circumstances, they all used the process of critical thinking to reduce their risk of Covid-19.
We are two infectious disease epidemiologists who are currently writing a book about how people can use critical thinking skills to better understand health information. Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have been working to effectively communicate uncensored information about Covid-19 to the public. We have developed a 5-step framework, based on the critical thinking process, that everyone can use. This framework will empower you to make informed choices about your daily life during the Covid-19 pandemic just like the experts do.
One quick caveat of importance: It is critical to note that anyone who has Covid-19 should not participate in any in-person activities until their health care provider says it is safe to do so. This population includes:
People who have been diagnosed with Covid-19
People who have recently been told that they are infected with the virus that causes Covid-19, whether or not they have symptoms
People who have symptoms, whether or not they have been tested for Covid-19
People who have been exposed to someone with Covid-19 and have been advised by local public health officials and/or a physician to quarantine themselves for a specific period of time.
The 5-Step Framework
This framework is intended to be used for one activity at a time. It will lead you through a series of questions so that you can assess the following:
the risk that Covid-19 will spread during the activity
the negative consequences of Covid-19 to you and others
the importance of the activity to you
Ideally, this process will enable you to prioritize your choices and activities during this long-term pandemic. Finally, the framework will help you identify adjustments to make a given activity less risky.
Step 1: Identify an activity that involves in-person interaction.
Step 2: Assess the risk that Covid-19 will spread during this activity.
Step 3: Assess the negative consequences of Covid-19 transmission for you and the people around you.
Step 4: Weigh the importance of participating in the activity against the risks and negative consequences.
Step 5: If you decide to go ahead with the activity, identify adjustments that will reduce your Covid-19 risk.
Step 1: Identify an activity that involves in-person interaction
You can choose to focus on an in-person activity that you are currently doing, or you can choose an activity that you aren’t doing because of the pandemic, but that you want to resume.
Examples include:
Going to work in-person
Traveling by airplane
Staying overnight in a hotel
Using public transportation
Eating in a restaurant
Getting together with friends
Seeking social services
Allowing children to get together with friends
Sending children to daycare, school, or college
Attending a religious service
Going to a bar or nightclub
Visiting an elderly relative
Attending a live event
Going to a salon or barbershop
Hugging, kissing, or shaking hands
Exercising at a gym
Going to a non-urgent medical or dental appointment
Attending a wedding or funeral
Remember that the framework is intended to be used for one activity at a time.
Step 2: Assess the risk that Covid-19 will spread during the activity
In general, risk refers to how likely something is to happen. Risk that Covid-19 will spread depends on whether or not an uninfected person will come into contact with the virus during the activity.
Remember that Covid-19 is spread when virus particles in the mucus or saliva from a person with Covid-19 enter the mouth, eyes, nose, or lungs of a person without Covid-19. To do this, the virus particles have to successfully travel from one person to another.
Questions to help you make this assessment:
1. How many people are involved in the activity?
The more people involved in the activity, the more likely it is that at least one is infected with Covid-19. If one person is infected, there is a risk that Covid-19 will spread.
2. How close are people to each other during the activity? Will it be crowded?
The smaller the distance between people during the activity, the more likely it is that Covid-19 can spread from one person to another.
3. How long does the activity last?
The longer the activity lasts, the more likely it is for Covid-19 to spread from one person to another.
4. Does the activity occur indoors or outdoors?
Covid-19 is more likely to spread during an activity that takes place indoors.
5. Does the activity involve people exhaling forcefully?
During certain activities, people exhale more forcefully than usual, for example when they are yelling, singing, coughing, or exercising. The harder you exhale, the farther virus particles are able to travel, which increases the risk that Covid-19 will spread.
6. Does the activity involve touching shared surfaces or objects?
When someone with Covid-19 exhales, heavy droplets that contain the virus fall to the ground or other surfaces. The virus can live on surfaces for hours or days, depending on the type of surface. For a person to become infected by a contaminated surface, they have to touch that surface with their hands and then rub their eyes, nose, or mouth. Generally, handwashing solves this problem.
7. Are any of the activity participants, including you, infected with Covid-19?
Anyone might have Covid-19, even if they don’t have any symptoms. Some people are at higher risk than others if they regularly come into contact with people who have Covid-19.
For example, health care workers may be at higher risk because they regularly see patients who are infected with Covid-19. Some people may be at higher risk because they spend a lot of time in crowded places. Some people may be at lower risk because they have spent very little time around other people.
The only way to be certain about a person’s infection status is for that person to have been very recently tested. Unfortunately, most people don’t know if they are infected because they haven’t had a recent test.
County-level information gives a much better sense of active transmission in a community than state-level information.
8. Is the activity taking place in a community where Covid-19 is spreading?
The Covid-19 infection status of every person involved in an activity is often unknown, but the number of new cases in the community can provide a sense of whether Covid-19 is actively spreading.
There are many sources of information about the amount of Covid-19 in different geographic areas. However, these sources do not always provide the information needed to answer this question. We recommend the “Pandemics Explained” website from the Harvard Global Health Institute, which shows the daily number of new cases per 100,000 people for each county in the United States.
County-level information gives a much better sense of active transmission in a community than state-level information. When using the website, we always make sure the ‘counties’ button is selected so that we can see information for the county we’re curious about. Each county is color-coded, representing the level of Covid-19 spread. Green indicates the lowest level of transmission, followed by yellow, orange, and then red, which indicates the highest level of transmission. The greater the level of spread in an activity participant’s county, the more likely it is that they are infected with Covid-19.
We don’t work with the creators of the site, but we find this site to contain the most accessible source of relevant information. If you are in a country other than the United States, you will need to find a different source of local-level information.
9. Does the activity take place in a community in which there is an effective Covid-19 vaccine available?
As of early July 2020, an effective vaccine has not yet been developed. Remember that when an effective vaccine does become widely available, it will reduce people’s risk of infection, but it won’t eliminate all transmission.
Step 3: Assess the negative consequences of Covid-19 transmission for you and the people around you
One of the negative consequences of Covid-19 transmission is the development of severe disease, which can lead to death. Another consequence is that one person’s severe disease impacts the lives of the people around them. A third consequence is that one person infected with Covid-19 can spread the virus to many people, and each of these people can spread it to many more.
Questions to help you make this assessment:
1. What is your risk for severe Covid-19?
If infected, everyone is at risk for severe Covid-19 or death. Older people and people with certain underlying medical conditions are even more likely to get very sick or die. Check with your medical provider to get more information about your personal risk of severe Covid-19.
2. What is the risk for severe Covid-19 of the other activity participants?
You may not know the risk for severe Covid-19 of the other participants. If you don’t have this information, you should assume that Covid-19 could have severe health consequences for them.
3. If you get infected, who might you infect? Are they at high risk for severe disease?
Think about the people with whom you spend time. Any of these people could be infected by you. Some of them might be at greater risk for severe disease than others.
4. If you take care of other people and you get sick, who will take care of them?
You might be responsible for people who cannot take care of themselves — children, elderly individuals, and people with disabilities. If you get sick with Covid-19, you might not be able to continue to care for your dependents. That could result in serious consequences for them.
5. If you get sick, who will take care of you?
You might have a spouse, friend, adult child, or parent who can take care of you, but caring for you would be a burden on them. If you don’t have someone to take care of you, the strain of being sick may become more serious for you.
6. Is the medical system in your community able to handle additional cases of Covid-19? Or is it already overwhelmed?
People who get very sick from Covid-19 require medical attention. Doctors, nurses, and hospitals are easily overwhelmed when there are many cases of Covid-19. If medical care is limited due to an overwhelmed system, you and the people around you might not be able to get the care you need.
7. Are effective treatments for Covid-19 currently available?
As of July 2020, there aren’t enough effective treatment options available for people who have Covid-19. Remember that even when effective treatments are more widely available, some people will still experience severe disease.
Step 4: Weigh the importance of participating in the activity against the risks and negative consequences
Participating in an activity may initially feel very important to you. However, it is the overall relative importance of this activity, considering both the risk of Covid-19 spread and the negative consequences, that should determine how you will proceed.
Questions to help you make this assessment:
1. Why do you need to do the activity?
Different activities meet different needs. For example, you might participate in an activity to obtain money, food, health care, or housing. You might participate in an activity to develop or maintain personal connections, to have physical contact, or to express yourself and your beliefs. Your specific needs depend on your personal circumstances.
2. Can you simplify the activity?
Identify the component of the activity that meets your needs. If possible, simplify the activity to focus on these important components.
3. How urgent is the activity?
Some activities are more urgent than others and some are urgent because they can only happen right now. Your sense of urgency may increase the activity’s importance to you.
4. What is the relative importance of the activity?
Consider whether the activity is still important to you, even after you weigh importance against risks and consequences. For some people, activities with any risk of Covid-19 transmission and/or any negative consequences will have lower relative importance.
5. Do you plan to go ahead with the activity?
Now it is time to decide whether or not you will participate in the activity.
If you decide that the RISK IS TOO HIGH, then you should NOT DO THE ACTIVITY.
If you decide that there are TOO MANY NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES, then you should NOT DO THE ACTIVITY.
If you decide that the activity is NO LONGER IMPORTANT, then you should NOT DO THE ACTIVITY.
If you DECIDE TO GO AHEAD WITH THE ACTIVITY, then you should IDENTIFY ADJUSTMENTS that will make it safer.
Step 5: If you decide to go ahead with the activity, identify adjustments that will reduce your Covid-19 risk
Here’s where you get creative! There are many adjustments that can make activities safer from Covid-19.
Some adjustments involve changing something about the activity itself. These types of adjustments work well when you have enough control over the activity to change it. Other adjustments involve changing your behavior during the activity.
It is important to identify adjustments that will allow the activity to still meet your needs. Some adjustments may be easier to incorporate than others, and some may have a bigger impact on risk than others. The best approach is to consider all adjustments.
Remember that, even with adjustments, there is still some risk that Covid-19 will spread when you choose to pursue a social activity.
Let’s look at some sample adjustments for specific activities.
The activity lasts for more than a few minutes
Activity adjustment: Shorten the amount of time the activity lasts
Behavior adjustment: Limit the amount of time you spend participating in the activity
The activity involves more than one other person
Activity adjustment: Reduce the number of people participating in the activity at the same time; reschedule the activity to a time when there are fewer participants
Behavior adjustments: Reduce the number of people with whom you come into contact during the activity
The activity puts people in close proximity to each other
Activity adjustments: Space people farther apart; move the activity to a larger venue; install a physical barrier between people; reschedule the activity to a time when the venue is less crowded
Behavior adjustments: Take a few steps back to increase the distance between you and others; wear a mask or face shield to provide a protective barrier between you and others; go to an alternate venue where other people are making the same adjustments you are
The activity takes place indoors
Activity adjustment: Relocate the activity outdoors
Behavior adjustments: Open windows and doors; wear a mask or face shield to provide a protective barrier between you and others
The activity involves people exhaling forcefully
Activity adjustments: Space people farther apart; move the activity outdoors; move the activity to a larger venue
Behavior adjustment: Take a few steps back to increase the distance between you and others
The activity involves surfaces and objects that are touched by multiple people
Activity adjustment: Minimize the use of shared surfaces and objects
Behavior adjustments: Avoid touching shared surfaces and objects; decontaminate shared surfaces and objects; wash your hands
These adjustments apply to almost all activities:
Stay home if you are sick
Advocate for your safety by asking others around you to make adjustments to the activity as well
Call your state, local, and other relevant government officials to advocate for testing
Ask activity organizers for information about adjustments being made
Wash or sanitize your hands often
Cover coughs and sneezes
Minimize touching your face around others
Get a Covid-19 test to know your status
Some activities can easily be done over phone or video. And you can always delay certain activities. For ongoing activities, you can also choose to participate less often.
For handwashing to be an effective adjustment, you must use proper handwashing techniques:
Wet your hands with clean, running water
Lather your hands with soap
Scrub your hands with the soap for at least 20 seconds
Rinse your hands well under clean, running water
Air-dry your hands or dry them with a clean towel
For wearing a mask to be an effective adjustment, you must use proper mask wearing techniques:
Wash your hands before and after touching your mask
Touch only the bands or ties when putting on and taking off your mask
Make sure the mask fits to cover your nose, mouth, and chin during the activity. If you adjust the mask to cover those areas, wash your hands before and after
Make sure you can breathe and talk comfortably through your mask
Wash reusable masks after each use. Discard disposable masks when they are visibly soiled or damaged
Adjusting Real-Life Situations
What do these adjustments really look like?
Let’s go back to the examples of in-person activities suggested in Step 1. For each activity, imagine that you have worked through the framework and decided to go ahead with it. Here are some adjustments to consider for each activity. Please note that we have not listed all possible adjustments, and remember that not all adjustments make sense for all personal circumstances.
Going to work in-person
Maintain a distance of at least 6 feet from others
Avoid socializing closely with people during breaks
Spend your breaks outdoors
Wear a mask
Install, or ask your employer to install, a plexiglas shield between you and others
Stay home if you are sick
Traveling by airplane
Choose an airline that limits airplane capacity
Choose a flight with open seats remaining
Choose an airline that is requiring customers to wear masks
Wear a mask
Limit eating and drinking during the flight so that you don’t have to remove your mask
Don’t interact with other people on the airplane
Wash or sanitize your hands regularly
Instead of flying, drive and minimize stops
Stay home if you are sick
Staying overnight in a hotel
Minimize the number of nights you stay
Don’t spend time in the lobby when there are lots of other people around
Use the least busy entrance to the hotel
Maintain a distance of at least 6 feet from others
Choose a hotel where the staff is wearing masks
Wear a mask when around other people
Forgo the daily cleaning service
Taking the bus
Take a less busy bus route
Stand or sit away from others
Wear a mask
Wash your hands when you get off of the bus
Walk or ride your bike instead
Eating in a restaurant
Skip dessert and coffee to shorten your stay
Limit the number of people at your table
Choose a restaurant where tables are spaced far apart
Go to the restaurant at a time when it is less crowded
Choose a restaurant where you will be able to eat outdoors
Wait outdoors for your table to be ready
Wear a mask when you aren’t eating or drinking
Choose a restaurant where servers are wearing masks
Order your food to go
Going to a coffee shop
Limit the amount of time you stay
Go to the coffee shop when it is less crowded
Wear a mask when you aren’t eating or drinking
Order your coffee to go
Choose a coffee shop where you can use the drive-through window
Getting together with friends
Limit the amount of time you spend
Limit the number of friends
Maintain a distance of at least 6 feet from others
Get together outdoors
Wear a mask
Socialize with friends who are making the same adjustments as you
Going to a social services office
Go when it is less crowded
Stand as far away from others as possible
Wear a mask
Make an appointment so you don’t have to wait as long
Allowing your child to play with friends
Limit the amount of time children are together
Limit the number of friends included
Encourage play that involves distance between children
Have the children play outdoors
Require your child to wear a mask
Encourage play that minimizes touching shared surfaces and objects
Encourage your child to play with friends who are making the same adjustments
Sending your child to school
Encourage your child to put space between themselves and others
Give your child a mask to wear and explain proper mask wearing techniques
Explain proper handwashing techniques and encourage your child to wash or sanitize their hands often
Encourage your child to cover coughs and sneezes when they are not wearing a mask
Encourage your child to minimize touching their face at school
Ensure that your child has back-up masks, tissues, and hand sanitizer
Educate yourself and your child about the adjustments the school is making or requiring
Call your school superintendent and your state and local government officials to advocate for testing all school staff and students
Do not send your child to school if they are sick
Attending a religious service
Attend a shorter service
Attend small religious study groups instead of large services
Go to a less crowded service
Connect with others in small groups
Go to a service outdoors
Go to a service where others are wearing masks
Wear a mask
Attend a service online
Going to a bar
Limit the amount of time you stay
Keep some distance between you and others
Choose a bar that is less crowded
Choose a bar where others are wearing masks
Sit in the outdoor area of a bar
Wear a mask
Ask the bartender to turn down the music so people don’t have to yell
Ask about the sanitization process for drinking glasses; if inadequate, drink from a bottle
Wash your hands after you leave the bar
Get tested for Covid-19
Wait until a later date to return
Visiting an elderly relative
Limit the length of the visit
Keep some distance between you and your relative
Visit from outdoors while your relative is indoors
Wear a mask
Give a mask to your relative
Have the visit by video call
Wave hello and goodbye instead of hugging or kissing them
Attending a sporting event
Choose an event where you can sit farther away from others
Stay as far away from others as possible
Choose a sporting event that is held outdoors
Wear a mask
Limit yelling
Going to a salon for a haircut
Maintain a distance of at least 6 feet from other customers
Go at a time when it is less crowded
Wait outdoors for the previous client to finish
Wear a mask
Choose a salon where the hairdresser is wearing a mask
Make your appointment shorter by washing your hair before you go and drying it yourself at home
Shaking hands
Wave or bow instead
Use words instead
Exercising at a gym
Limit the amount of time you stay
Choose a gym where people are staying more than 6 feet apart from each other
Stay more than 6 feet apart from others
Exercise outdoors
Choose a gym where the windows are open
Choose a gym where people are wearing masks
Wear a mask
Disinfect the weights and machines before and after you use them
Wash your hands when you are done exercising
Going for a dental cleaning
Wait in the car instead of the waiting room
Brush your teeth at home instead of when you get there
Call ahead to see what safety protocols the office is implementing
Attending a funeral
Allow only a small group at the burial
Limit the number of people you hug
Keep distance between you and others
Drive to the funeral in a separate car
Hold the service outdoors
Wear a mask
Attend by video call
Delay the memorial service, wake, or post-funeral reception
Final Takeaways
Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, everyone has had to make difficult decisions about whether or not to participate in various in-person activities. We all continue to make these tough decisions on a daily basis.
As infectious disease epidemiologists, we have discussed our decisions with each other and our colleagues. We have realized that epidemiologists make these decisions using a critical thinking approach that we realize may, at first, appear daunting. Learning to use this framework may take some time and effort, but the process will get faster and easier as you go. It is now so familiar to us, as we rely on it day in and day out. Two real-life examples from our worlds follow.
JoLynn wanted to host her neighbors at her house for a potluck. Her county was at level green, indicating that the risk of Covid-19 transmission was relatively low. However, one of her neighbors is in his 80s, so JoLynn decided that the negative consequences of Covid-19 spread were too high to justify an indoor potluck. Since she still wanted to see her friends, she adjusted the activity. Instead of having a usual potluck, everyone brought and ate their own food, and sat spaced apart outdoors.
After several months of no in-person interactions, Kristi’s teenage daughter wanted to see her friends. Their county was at level orange, indicating that the risk of Covid-19 transmission was relatively high. Even though no one in her household was at high risk for severe disease, Kristi decided that close, crowded interactions were too risky. Since it was extremely important to Kristi for her daughter to feel connected, she agreed to let her see one friend. The two girls went for a walk and agreed to stay outside, wear masks, and keep at least six feet apart at all times. Before they left for the walk, Kristi showed the girls what six feet apart looks like with two yardsticks.
We hope this framework provides clarity about how to make safer decisions in your life, and the flexibility to make adjustments that work for you. If you put some thought and creativity into how to prioritize and simplify your interactions, you may find that you feel more confident in your decisions and your pandemic life becomes a little easier. We also hope that you feel a sense of empowerment and relief knowing that you now have the tools to think critically about your actions and their impact on others.
Special thanks to Michele Jonsson Funk, PhD and R.J. Quirk, and the members of the “Public Health Rock Stars” Facebook group. | https://elemental.medium.com/the-ultimate-step-by-step-guide-to-making-decisions-in-a-pandemic-e1a57645417a | ['Kristi Mcclamroch', 'Phd'] | 2020-08-07 17:36:28.017000+00:00 | ['Life', 'Covid 19', 'Epidemiology', 'Pandemic', 'Coronavirus'] |
Is Chris Tucker the Only Black Officer I will get to see on TV? | Is Chris Tucker the Only Black Officer I will get to see on TV?
Wondering aloud about Jacob Blake from India
Playing the same old black record. Photo by author.
Ever since I got a color TV all I can see is color. Rodney King, Ahmed Arbury, George Floyd, now Jacob Blake. Prime time news in India.*
If a black officer decides a black man needs to be shot, it is a different story. If the shooting officer is white, it is a completely different story.
How many black police officers does America have? Is the percentage of black officers the same as the percentage of black citizens?
Please enroll enough black policemen to increase the percentage of black policemen up, to match the percentage of black citizens.
Otherwise the percentage of citizens will go down, to match the percentage of black officers.
More black policewomen as well.
This article is about how our country handled a problem, by first admitting the problem.
If this article on Race Gap in America’s Police Departments in the New York Times 2014, updated 2015, is still true, then you had it, my black international siblings!!!
This FACT TANK Pew Research article has 10 points of research, about what White and Black officers think. Usually Black officers support black victims — not always — but 58% do.
The police is an alluring government job with benefits. Why not enroll?
Who’s President wouldn’t matter, if every white police officer had a black mate. | https://medium.com/illumination/is-chris-tucker-the-only-black-officer-i-will-get-to-see-on-tv-2ab3d5b499bb | ['Tooth Truth Roopa Vikesh'] | 2020-08-27 13:46:41.032000+00:00 | ['Religion', 'Ethnicity', 'Racism', 'Casteism', 'Police'] |
My First Love Just got Engaged | December 8th, 2020. I have been praying for this man for as long as I could remember. I recollected memories of him, pieced together stories, and dreamt dreams in deep fondness sprinkled with a chemistry-like magic. I knew I was always one degree too far removed from him to know whether this was real love, or just a kamikaze of lust, idolization, and delirium but today I found out. Because the bomb finally combusted, and all of the shrapnel is in my body. I feel like the way I’m writing sounds overdramatic. If you knew just how little I knew of this guy, just how short our lives intersected, maybe you would agree. But, it still hurts.
I don’t think it hurts because it was Michael. I think it really hurts because I believed he was my future husband. I had prayed, and hoped that God would make something of this desire and when that didn’t work, I prayed that God would take the desire away altogether. And when that didn’t work, I was convinced that it was a God-given desire.
More than anything I am shocked to find out that he was never God’s intended for me. This opens up so many opportunities, so much white space, so much possibility, so much left unsaid, unwritten, and unknown. It all makes me excited and so deeply afraid.
Michael was safe because I already knew him. I felt like since I knew him, and he knew me. We could then just know each other the way God knows us. Easy. It makes sense, but its still unexpected. Perfect. It was something I could see happening and at the same time something that would impress and amaze my friends and family, and hopefully allow them all to witness the great mystery and wonder of the Great I am.
How could I think that my idea fantastic is the same as my God’s? How could I think that something I could expect would equate to God’s mystery and wonder?
Truth is, there is no mystery, no wonder. And the way I see it, no way this was something that was God glorifying in my life. If anything it took attention away from Him and placed it on a man.
How could I think that something that was never God-glorifying would all of a sudden be God-approved? Maybe I thought that because He turned my situation with my job around. My job was never God-glorifying, but when I wanted to walk away. He made a miracle.
As I am nearing the end of my covenant devoted to God, I feel both ready and not ready to “get back out there”. I feel God’s support and I definitely feel like this was His loving nudge to let me know its OK, I can let go and go out there now. But at the same time, I don’t want to. If anything this makes me want to just stay nearer to God and love the things I love harder, and hold them tighter than before. But now with Michael gone, my heart is big and empty and ready to love. And I guess I can even say its ready to love someone without compromising my love for God, because my love for God rests in another heart, a bigger one. I don’t really know if I will go back out there and start dating again, or if I should try or if I should really do anything. I don’t know.
So I guess that leaves one last question. My dear husband, who are you? | https://medium.com/@joanne328/my-first-love-just-got-engaged-4978f5fb3429 | [] | 2020-12-08 06:01:02.607000+00:00 | ['Romance', 'Love', 'Prayer', 'God'] |
Value failures of high-minded righteousness. | From the mouth of a Vegan wearing Doc Martens.
Drop into to my Sunday late afternoon: I am on my phone, thumbs burning up the Googling on a random research project. This particular evening, we find ourselves with your fair heroine HOT on a search for the ideal Vegan beauty routine. This involves search for said brand, cross referencing with PETA, search the product selection, filling the cart, reading reviews of my selections, pausing and doing the same with the numerous other brands. I love these kinds of worthless endeavors.
Hours pass and so I raise my head, eyes crossed and deeply consumer-satiated — without a penny spent … yet, and also very anxious. Why? Because I like my current, not environmentally egregious, routine. Yet, I am deeply shamed as is, upon an early deep research project that occurred earlier that day, on animal exploitation and beauty industry exploitation.
That is where the trouble lies. Yes, there is issue and crime with animal cruelty, but bigger and more how I am, in this very honest instance, choosing to track myself against the moral thermometer of an external arbiter. As if another entity holds the keys to my alignment AND that there is no room for variance. Sheep shearing is horrific, but so is binary rigidity and self-punishment.
OK, on that — I hold a truth deep in the better parts of my soul that ills are not to be compared. Each of us experiences disparity in line with and too beyond the bounds of the terms of our lives. There is violence that measure high about inconvenience. Narrative comparisons are not the point here — what is, is this: I need to lay the Hell off or I might miss why and how I am giving a shit in the first place.
It is about wanting to be good without knowing what “good” is in the first place. Interesting, huh? That even in saying that I am inferring that “good” is a very specific thing. Like the end of a moral equation, an answer acquired via a series of invariable steps. Oh, and too that it is only one thing that is “good” in the first place?! As if geography, history, chronology, identity have no impact — “good” is an imperial thing complexly free of context. In that, unbelievable logic: “Good” is not killing animals and recycling. For shame: caring for a family farm, Kosher living, Indigenous heritage and traditional living, Benedict’s need for minerals and the health benefits of an omnivorous diet, not to mention maintaining the health of captive Wildlife or Wildlife in general, lifesaving medicine — and maybe even my lipstick.
Let us take this discussion from “good” on to “success”. How does that land with you? What about the “right” way to do an interview or a “proper” resume? Marketing strategy, content composition, networking, social media and whatnot. Funny, huh, that generally the only folks who say so are those presenting you with a service menu to address and training you on the above? Words like “confidence” come in to play. As that being “a thing” you will gain once you have taken on said professional processes, products, and thereby execution. Whew, all done! You’re good. What?! Don’t have a job or enough clients to keep you out of you parent’s pocket? What?! Could it be that “right” or “good” or “success” is not at all a linear thing. That results are not in marriage with properness?
Well, true. However, it should be noted industries and kindnesses hold influence expectations upon discourse. It is not appropriate to apply with a resume on a napkin, or to an executive post in an industry of which you have no experience or seek to cover a professional service you need licensing for but do not hold. These “hoops” are cultural, and safety inspired. To ignore them is not experimental, it is straight up disrespect. Likely that goes without mentioning, nevertheless it is best to reign things in as we move to talk about “rouge within reason”.
That comes down to technique — learning the standards and rituals but being open to finding one’s way within them. This comes down to respect. For instance: I respect Veganism and animal rights justice. I can learn about the “rules” held by aligned and foundational organizations and persons. Add to that, I can lend the same respectful scrutiny to my present and historical choices. Why do I shop where I do and on what? That lipstick, a consumer and beauty hack, what’s up with my loyal (or causal) wearing of it? Do I know any thing beyond its marketable attributes? Or its origin and production? Could I investigate that -since I am still here as the sun sets and I turn my tea over for wine, the future of the evening still steered to ardent web searching — without the bias? Oh whoa! Well, Hell no, right? PETA, you have all my grace and judgement-free acceptance, for you live in a World beyond my insular consciousness. Looking to myself I measure and evaluate and curse and blame the failures or over emphasize the wins.
“Is my resume good enough?”
“How is my pitch deck?”
“Website?”
“Pricing structure?”
I get those questions all the time. Hitting back, I ask: You tell me? Or, why are you asking? Have you not been hired? Did a client or pal give feedback, and did it seem applicable to you? Where are YOU in those documents? Do they seem like you?
Sure, I will point out inaccuracies but beyond that, everything I will speak to falls under believability. Does it sound like you? Is this the professional I know that I see in these pages? That is why it is so damn important for a coach to be a deft and expert assessor of the person behind the professional that hires them. Not your shoe size, but the why and wherefores of you and your approach to your work. Why YOU do or seek to do this thing, and if we don’t know what the “thing” is, who is the “you” that seeks to do anything at all? Add to that, we need to kind of dig on each other. I am not talking cuddling, per se, but believe and trust. On both sides.
Back to the lipstick: downstairs, my husband starts grumbling about dinner and Netflix options. Could I like this woman seeking to hurt less and be more courteous? Could I appreciate her desire to live tenderly towards others, and too be reasonable and look good? If I did, might I ask her to step back from the damn lipstick? Say: “Hey, what about we look at choices in general and your person beyond one small tube. Are you seeking to get off the hook for assumed cruelty by picking the proper matte? Or is this one of many representative purchases that might fall under a larger appreciation of alignment?” Over-focusing can create blindness and trying as cavalier living. Tunnel vision anyone?! You bet!
Your resume could be more representative, branding altered to meet a trend, sure. These are all relatively minor choices. The bigger view is who is the person making them and to what end. There is the market and there is the us — get what you want from that discourse and know the marketing is doing the same of you. In that the REAL task is to seem to be true. If you dig on that Natural but not Vegan choice — the question comes down to ethics. Not “right” or “sinful” but ethical in the totality of the person who washes her hands and starts washing vegetables, saying over her shoulder out of the kitchen, “Yeah I know it is 9. Come on man, it’s Sunday! You want a beer or something? Add a goodie to the queue, grub ETA 30 minutes!”
From the den: “I’ll be two in by then.”
“Start your engines.” | https://medium.com/@tracy-sdyd/value-failures-of-high-minded-righteousness-f2df6a65ffcc | ['Tracy Bullock'] | 2020-12-19 20:33:12.968000+00:00 | ['Creativity', 'Writing', 'Professional Development', 'Personal Growth', 'Coaching'] |
Elective AML-KYC and the MonetaryCoin Series | AML-KYC stands for Anti-Money Laundering Know Your Customer, a series of best practices applied by financial institutions to reduce crime.
After the KYC feature is released, the MonetaryCoin series (MERO and MCHI today) stakeholders may elect to add or subtract AML-KYC information to a MonetaryCoin wallet address. It then falls to the receiving party to verify the accuracy of the personal information. Most parties insisting on AML-KYC are regulated financial institutions with verification and record keeping processes.
If you ran an ICO without gathering and securely storing AML-KYC information about your investors, fiat banks may refuse to open an account for your company. In future, when banks begin to more commonly trade crypto, transaction by transaction AML-KYC data may be required in some cases.
MonetaryCoin Series AML-KYC data are not visible on the blockchain because they are encrypted and stored off-chain. This feature reduces the potential network drag caused by each address carrying increasing amounts of otherwise irrelevant data. A hash of the AML-KYC data is stored on the blockchain but only the recipient address owner can attach the hash to the off-chain data and decrypt its content. This reduces the risk of exposing sensitive information to unrelated parties. To restore anonymity, a sender may abandon its wallet address and create a new one after the transaction.
Abandoning a wallet reminds me of Jaqen, the faceless man, from HBO’s hit series, Game of Thrones. Jaqen mystically changes faces at will, though he does possess an original identity. When the wallet identity is no longer useful, simply abandon it similar to the way Jaqen changes faces.
Jaqen gives his coin to Aya Stark in HBO’s hit series, Game of Thrones
Their are plenty of ways to be anonymous in crypto, a MonetaryCoin can do that too — or it can be a way to self-identify without permanently identifying. The choice is yours. | https://medium.com/monetary-protocol/elective-aml-kyc-and-the-monetarycoin-series-ef681f8f59ee | [] | 2018-08-16 06:12:31.847000+00:00 | ['Monetarycoin', 'Blockchain', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Ethereum', 'Bitcoin'] |
Setup pgbouncer-rr for PostgreSQL on AWS EC2 | This Blog has been moved from Medium to blogs.tensult.com. All the latest content will be available there. Subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated.
Have you ever wanted to split your database load across multiple servers or clusters without impacting the configuration or code of your client applications? Or perhaps you have wished for a way to intercept and modify application queries so that you can make them use optimized tables add security filters, or hide changes you have made in the schema?
The Pgbouncer rr project is based on a pgbouncer, an open-source, PostgreSQL connection pooler. It just adds two new features:
Routing: Intelligently send queries to different database servers from one client connection; use it to partition or load balance across multiple servers or clusters.
Rewrite: Intercept and programmatically change client queries before they are sent to the server; use it to optimize or otherwise alter queries without modifying your application.
Pgbouncer-rr works the same way as pgbouncer. Any target application can be connected to pgbouncer-rr as if it were an Amazon Redshift or PostgreSQL server, and pgbouncer-rr creates a connection to the actual server or reuses an existing connection.
Setting up the EC2 Instance
Here I just created a VPC with 3 subnets: 1 public and 2 private subnets. I attached EC2 instance to the public and the RDS attached to the private subnet. The AMI I’m using here is CentOS 7. In the security group, I opened up the following port numbers 5432 for PgSQL and 5439 for pgbouncer.
Getting Started with Configuration
Install
Download pgbouncer-rr by running the following commands (Amazon Linux/RHEL/CentOS):
# install required packages
sudo yum install libevent-devel openssl-devel python-devel libtool git patch make -y
# download the latest pgbouncer distribution
git clone https://github.com/pgbouncer/pgbouncer.git
# download pgbouncer-rr extensions
git clone https://github.com/awslabs/pgbouncer-rr-patch.git
# merge pgbouncer-rr extensions into pgbouncer code
cd pgbouncer-rr-patch
./install-pgbouncer-rr-patch.sh ../pgbouncer
# build and install
cd ../pgbouncer
git submodule init
git submodule update
./autogen.sh
./configure …
make
sudo make install
Configure
Create a configuration file, using ./pgbouncer-example.ini as a starting point, adding your own database connections and python routing rules / rewrite query functions.
When checking the configuration file you can see the following parameters: listen_port
It’s a command to set the listen port, listen_aadr- its command to set the listen to that particular address.
authtype=
auth_type
How to authenticate users.
pam
PAM is used to authenticate users. This method is not compatible with databases using the auth_user option. Service name reported to PAM is “pgbouncer”. Also, pam is still not supported in the HBA configuration file.
HBA
Actual auth type is loaded from auth_hba_file. This allows different authentication methods from different access paths. Example: connection over Unix socket use peer auth method, connection over TCP must use TLS. Supported from version 1.7 onwards.
cert
A client must connect over TLS connection with valid client cert. Username is then taken from CommonName field from a certificate.
md5
Use the MD5-based password check. auth_file may contain both MD5-encrypted or plain-text passwords. This is the default authentication method.
plain
Clear-text password is sent over the wire. Deprecated.
trust
No authentication is done. Username must still exist in auth_file.
any
Like the trust method, but the username given is ignored. Requires that all databases are configured to log in as a specific user. Additionally, the console database allows any user to log in as admin.
pool_mode
Specifies when a server connection can be reused by other clients.
Session
The server is released back to pool after client disconnects. Default.
Transaction
The server is released back to pool after transaction finishes.
Statement
The server is released back to pool after query finishes. Long transactions spanning multiple statements are disallowed in this mode.
pgbouncer rr currently works as a daemon in the Linux Operating System so we are required to manually start the daemon using the following command pgbouncer -d “configuration filename”. Like a normal process, we cannot restart the pgbouncer daemon using the command systemctl restart “service name”. As of now, to review the changes we need to manually kill the pgbouncer process and need to restart the pgbouncer daemon.
Let’s discuss the EC2 instance setup:
Launch Pgbouncer rr
Run pgbouncer-rr as a daemon using the command line pgbouncer <config_file> -d . We need to start pgbouncer as a daemon in Linux machine. To do that we need to use the following command -d to start as a daemon,
pgbouncer -d config.ini -v. -d
to start as a daemon and -v is for verbose. Check whether pg bouncer is working.
Note: When you get some errors on starting pgbouncer you need to kill the pgbouncer daemon from PID. You can use the command
sudo lsof -i : port number
to identify the pid. Use the command sudo kill -9 PID.
Connect to RDS
To connect to the RDS use the following command
psql -h *Host address -U pguser -d pgbouncerDB1 -p 5439
As you can see in the above screenshot, you are now connected to the RDS and start working. | https://medium.com/tensult/introducing-pgbouncer-rr-for-postgresql-198a3596ac2e | ['Nidhin Manjaly'] | 2019-12-09 13:00:42.377000+00:00 | ['Database', 'Postgresql', 'Pgbouncer', 'Proxy', 'AWS'] |
Migrating Data from Legacy Systems Using Akka Streams and Alpakka | Migrating data from old applications can be a pain. This is especially true for legacy applications with a lot of data. Although data extraction is straightforward using database backup programs or an application’s built-in data export feature, shaping the extracted data into the format you need can be difficult, especially for large data sets. The extracted data may be incomplete, or may not be packaged in a structure required by your migration workflow. To address these challenges we created a utility that makes the data migration process as efficient and painless as possible. This blog describes how we did this using Akka Streams and Alpakka.
Use Case
Our legacy product (which we’ll call Source App ) is an on-premise Java EE application that contains a large amount of data in a SQL database. Our goal is to extract that information and transfer it over to our cloud-based solution (which we’ll call Target App ). The product’s main feature is to analyze business data and detect fraud and anomalies on a scheduled basis. Analysis data is modelled as Analytic Tables which belong to one or more Analytic Projects. Also belonging to Analytic Projects are Analytic Scripts which contain sets of SQL-like operations to be executed on Analytic Tables.
An Analytic Project contains Analytic Tables and Analytic Scripts
These objects are stored in the Source App database in a single denormalized table — audititems , with every item having a reference to its parent item, which itself is in this same table. Each table record has metadata columns describing the item’s ID, name, type, parent ID, etc. The relationship of these objects and their metadata are the things we’re interested in transferring into its successor product ( Target App ).
Source App’s audititems table
To import this data, we will use Target App ’s import feature which can ingest data from compressed files with data laid out in a predefined structure. This structure organizes data per Analytic Project with its name and contents derived from Source App 's database.
Example folder structure for Target App’s import feature
Source App has an archive feature available that can be used to extract data, but its output format does not match what’s needed for Target App ’s import feature. In order to migrate data from the old application, customers usually engage our consulting team to conduct a migration process which involves manually archiving every Analytic Project and placing the archive outputs in folders representing the relationship of the extracted items. This is a time-consuming process and can take up a large portion of time in the consulting engagement that could otherwise be spent on adding more value to the customer.
What we wanted was a standalone data extraction and transformation utility that can be used to get data out from Source App to be loaded into Target App without a lot of manual work. This tool should make the extraction and packaging of old application data much easier and reduce the overall time needed to complete the migration.
Options Considered
First we considered modifying the existing archive feature from Source App to export data in the format we need for the migration process. However, development and testing can be challenging for a legacy application — software frameworks and libraries become outdated and existing functionality can be hard to extend. The process to deploy this new feature is also time consuming as the upgrade involves running installer software directly on the server, often requiring additional planning and access rights.
Another option we considered was to extract the data directly using database backup programs or dump utilities and format the data with custom shell/SQL scripts. This would be an efficient way to extract the needed metadata, but a fair amount of work would be needed to derive the relationship of the extracted objects (some of which are stored as XML data that must first be parsed) and place them in the correct paths in the required structure. Also, much of this work is specific to the customer and may not be easily reusable.
A Streaming Solution
To cut out all the custom work, we decided on building a simple standalone streaming solution utilizing Alpakka to connect to the legacy application database with the Slick JDBC connector — Slick is a database access library for Scala. We’ll use basic linear stages from the Akka Streams library to process elements and construct the destination output files that we need.
Each step in the migration process is expressed by a processing stage. These are put together to compose a processing pipeline capable of extracting and transforming large data sets into files of the expected format, which are then compressed. By using the database connectors from Alpakka and the fluent DSL provided by Akka Streams, we get many of the benefits of streaming including ease of use, reusability, and composability. Best of all, we do not need to worry about running out of memory processing large data sets as we would with a non-streaming solution. By using Akka’s high-level, explicit API we enjoy these benefits without having to manage the complexity of streaming ourselves. Aside from the aforementioned benefits of going with this approach, this was a good opportunity to work with a fun and new way of programming a solution that doesn’t involve working with large objects in memory.
Here are the steps — to be described in detail with code later:
Establish a connection to Source App ’s database using Alpakka’s Slick connector for PostgresSQL. Create a Source with Slick.source from the results of a database query to extract the records we’re interested in as AuditItem elements from Source App . Use Akka Stream’s linear stage processing to transform elements into our desired data type Project ( Source App ’s Analytic Project). Create a Flow that creates directories from the paths constructed from Project elements and writes the project content out into the directories using Akka Streams’ FileIO. Compress the entire output folder.
The Code
The steps to our solution can be expressed simply with a single statement of code that ties everything together. We’ll go over the implementation by covering each of these steps in detail next.
Establish a Connection
Before we can run the code shown above, we need to first configure a database session. In our standalone tool written in Scala, we create a database session with an instance of SlickSession defined in the application.conf with profile and db properties for declaring database connection settings. The following is for PostgreSQL, but other database connection types can be added by substituting the profile and driver :
In our case, database connection settings are available from Source App in the form of an encrypted XML file. Username and password entries are decrypted and used to create a database session. Note that the constructed config overrides settings loaded from application.conf . This gives us flexibility in how we can create this config object.
Create a Source
Once a database session is available, we can create a Slick Source that emits elements from the results of a SQL query. We now define the auditItems value that you saw in the first code block. The SQL query retrieves data from Source App ’s audititems and audititemsdata tables using Slick’s plain SQL / String Interpolation. This returns a result set of the AuditItem class representing the data we’re extracting from the database. The data for our pipeline comes from this Source.
Transform Elements
Using the Source map operator, we transform elements from the auditItems Source defined above into the expected data type — from AuditItem elements to Project elements. The following code illustrates how .map(auditItem => Project(auditItem)) performs the conversion using the apply factory method.
Create a Flow
Then, using an Akka Streams Flow Stage, we process all of the Project elements received from the auditItems Source after the transformation step above. In this stage, we’ll first create the file along with its full path based on the attributes of the Project element and then write to this file with data contained in the Project element’s content field representing the Analytic Project. The writing of data is done using Akka Stream’s FileIO with IOResult as the return type. Each element is processed asynchronously and in parallel using the mapAsync operator with parallelism set to 4.
Compress the Results
Finally, we construct the processing pipeline and materialize the stream. For simplicity, the IOResult elements emitted downstream after the steps above are discarded in Sink.ignore, though you can make use of them using other Sink operators. The extract and transform phases are expressed in a clean and concise manner. Upon completion, the expected files and folders have been created and the remaining task is to compress the whole path in the expected layout for importing into Target App .
Summary
We demonstrated how the integration connectors from Alpakka and the operators provided by Akka Streams can make implementation of a streaming data extraction and transformation tool quite simple and straightforward. With much of the complexity of streaming managed by Akka, we can easily build applications capable of handling large amounts of data that are efficient and easily extensible. Adding support for customers with Oracle databases, for example, only requires the use of a different Alpakka integration connector with slight changes to the config. This tool has a small memory footprint for the amount of data that it can process and its implementation was made simple by the libraries that Akka provides. There’s a lot of potential to extend the capabilities of this tool as well, as Akka Streams offers a vast array of operators that we can add to our processing pipeline to manipulate elements as needed. | https://medium.com/galvanize/migrating-data-from-legacy-systems-using-akka-streams-and-alpakka-90db4ba2eab4 | ['Samuel So'] | 2020-06-02 12:56:00.996000+00:00 | ['Software Development', 'Akka Streams', 'Scala', 'Database', 'Alpakka'] |
Agile Principle #3: Deliver Working Software…a Lot. | Agile Principle #3: “Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.”
Before agile and Scrum became the way hyper-efficient software development teams operate, waterfall project management philosophies were rampant, most likely an artifact of industrial and manufacturing industries that fueled the economy before the digital revolution. On these projects, large phases of Analysis > Requirements Specification > Design > Development > Testing & Integration > Deployment were commonplace. Engineers were often handed 100+ page specification documents that took months of research and iteration to complete, even longer to code, and several more months to test and deploy. It was not uncommon for the entire software development lifecycle to take 8–to-12+ months (true story — I have personally worked at a very large industrial organization that struggled to release new code to production just once per year).
Image courtesy of prodigi.io.
Given the fast-paced nature of web-based technology, waiting even a couple of months before users experience new functionality can be catastrophic to a project’s success. Markets shift, user preferences change, businesses reprioritize their strategic focus, original assumptions are proven inaccurate, etc. Agile software development represents a paradigm shift away from old-world project management thinking toward delivery of large projects in small chunks of work in an effort to dramatically reduce the risk of project failure.
Deliver working software…
The software you deliver on a regular cadence must work (duh), but what does work mean? This entirely depends on your team’s Definition of Done, which represents the minimum set of requirements that must be met by the work you do before releasing it to a production environment. This definition is applied to the context in which your team operates, but typically includes things like all acceptance criteria have been validated, unit test coverage is at least 80%, code is merged and all unit/functional/etc. tests are passing, the product owner has validated and approved the work, etc. Whenever possible, don’t deliver half-done software, which implies that technical debt has been accrued that must be paid at some point in the future — the code produced each sprint should be production-ready and just plain work with no further action required on behalf of the development team.
…frequently…
Delivering software frequently enables short feedback loops whereby new functionality is incorporated into the product in smaller increments, significantly reducing the risk that large, expensive changes are introduced late in development.
Image courtesy of aayushjain.com.
Reducing the size of the “leap of faith” is key to how agile helps reduce risk compared to traditional methodologies. Further, by introducing change frequently, organizations signal that they are listening to their users and value their opinion by engaging them as active participants in the product development process.
…from a couple of weeks to a couple of months…
With the recent evolution of DevOps and CI/CD technologies, this portion of the 3rd agile principle seems a bit dated. Deployment timescales have shifted away from months or even weeks toward continuous deployments — often several times a day for the most efficient organizations. In general, the shorter the timescale, the smaller the “leap of faith” and lower the inherent risk of failure by introducing new code that needs to be fixed, functionality that users don’t like, etc. Combine this with advanced A/B and canary testing and the risk is nearly eliminated.
…with a preference to the shorter timescale.
The shorter the timescale, the sooner in the software development process we are able to receive feedback from real users. The sooner we get this feedback, the sooner we can incorporate changes into the product to optimize their experience. The more optimized the experience, the more likely they are to stick around, tell friends, etc. and help your organization succeed.
“Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.”
While a vast majority of engineering teams operate within the Scrum framework and execute sprint after sprint (after sprint), it’s important that we take a step back to understand the bigger picture — the path to success more closely resembles that of a marathon. Winning this race requires constant close collaboration with your users as frequently as possible. While iterating quickly means shipping new features more often, it’s important to understand all of the levers available to you get there and the impact they have on delivery speed and throughput. In this marathon, every small optimization counts toward increasing the frequency at which you can iterate and ultimately help your organization succeed in the long run. | https://medium.com/swlh/agile-principle-3-deliver-working-software-a-lot-c199919b279 | ['Goodspeed'] | 2020-11-05 20:43:00.503000+00:00 | ['Software', 'Agile', 'Scrum', 'Development', 'Software Development'] |
Ruby on Rails Vs. PHP: Which One’s Right For Your Project? | If we look at the Ruby on Rails vs. PHP, there is a clash of titans; Basecamp & Airbnb vs. Yahoo & Facebook! The first two giants are developed with Ruby on Rails, whereas the latter are built with PHP.
Aren’t you wondering who’s right?
Let’s take into consideration more context related to our topic. Let me make the blurry difference between RoR and PHP clear. Rails is only a framework that is built with Ruby programming language, while PHP itself is a programming language.
Then, why are people so confused about this topic? Let’s clear the confusion;
What is Ruby on Rails?
RoR or Ruby on Rails is a framework that is written in Ruby language. It is developed for making coding faster, easier, and more convenient for web programmers.
There are various quality practices in RoR such as DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) that allows programmers to reuse blocks of code.
Ruby on Rails has powered around 824 thousand websites worldwide, becoming one of the most popular technologies. That stimulates more and more businesses to choose Ruby on Rails development company for their web development.
Ruby was ranked #13 in the list of most popular programming languages in the StackOverflow survey.
In the most popular language list, as per the TIOBE Index, Ruby on Rails got the place in the top 20 most popular technologies around the world.
What is PHP?
PHP is a scripting language that is considered as one of the most renowned technologies. It was developed with the aim of delivering web applications and websites in real-time. PHP is It is currently used by 79% of all the existing websites. Initially, Facebook was developed in PHP and then translated to C++.
Ruby on Rails vs. PHP: Which one’s right for your project? — A face-to-face shootout
Ruby on Rails vs. PHP — User Interface
Ruby on Rails is famous for enhancing the user experience while delivering polished and shining websites. It is born after the UX principles, and this modern technology fully backs the development of user-centric websites.
PHP comes with a strong background for being the tool to connect websites with databases. PHP still needs the support of other technology such as JavaScript to deliver an exceptional user experience.
Verdict: Ruby on Rails outruns PHP.
Ruby on Rails vs. PHP — Architecture
RoR forces users to follow the best practices for developing applications, as it has adopted the Model-View-Controller paradigm. Thus, this framework has a stable and well-performing architecture.
With programmers building their own stack of technologies, PHP usually used saute. PHP gives freedom to developers for delivering unstable architecture and messy code though the quality is only dependent on developers’ skills.
Verdict: RoR outperforms PHP.
Ruby on Rails vs. PHP — Speed of coding
Ruby on Rails development allows programmers to perform what is best at — coding, because of the Convention over configuration forced and DRY principle.
RoR development helps to reduce the time, which is generally wasted for tedious work of delivering a programming environment and configuration.
PHP does not have any tools to speed up configuration or any other aspect; therefore, it falls short. Thus, it can give a headache while implementing the end solution even though it is relatively easy.
Verdict: Better luck next time PHP.
Ruby on Rails vs. PHP: Speed of coding
RoR is elegant and fast. Ruby on Rails offers good performing code backed by reliable architecture and good programming practices. The latest version of both PHP and RoR runs on a JIT engine that improvises the speed.
PHP 7.0 comes with built-in web building capacities that amplify the performance without gobbling up more memory, and this is the thing that makes it a powerful server-side scripting language.
RoR also speeds through the performance, but it leads to the high consumption of memory. And to offset this, programmers are required to change the runtimes to compensate for the slowdown.
Verdict: No definite winner can be declared here as both PHP and RoR comes with their own pros and cons.
Ruby on Rails vs. PHP — Community & support
There is a huge demand for PHP coders as it is a venerable, unsinkable, rustproof, and renowned language.
PHP has been here since 1995, and therefore there is a massive library of already solved problems, questions & answers, and tricks. Besides on Stack Overflow and Github, there are numerous PHP developers for help out of any issues and problems.
On the other hand, Ruby on Rails is much newer technology having a thriving community. Still, it is difficult for RoR to outrun the experiences of PHP since 1995.
Verdict: Many Times, nothing can beat experience, so PHP is the winner.
Ruby on Rails vs. PHP — Stability
Ruby on Rails offers stability with the DRY paradigm and MVC. And developers can also make sure of zero hidden dependencies or hard coded information that needs to be inserted as a variable by reusing blocks of code
On the other hand, there is total freedom with PHP. It includes the freedom to create as well as to destroy. As there are not any imposed rules, stability heavily depends on the programmer skills. And that’s something that makes the stability a matter of concern in the PHP.
Verdict: Ruby on Rails seems to be a better choice here.
PHP vs. Ruby on Rails — Learning Curve
In comparison with other programming languages, PHP is relatively easy and simple for beginners to pick up. It’s a different picture with RoR because it is more complicated than PHP. Therefore, it’s more difficult for one to become fluent in Ruby on Rails than PHP.
Verdict: Hats off to PHP here
Final Verdict
Here we have seen the thorough comparison of Ruby on Rails and PHP. So, we can say that there are always different technologies for different projects and different requirements, and there are no bad technologies. Based on the discussion, Ruby on Rails is the first pick in terms of speed and quick launches. You can also identify your requirements and hire Ruby on Rails developer for your project development. | https://medium.com/devtechtoday/ruby-on-rails-vs-php-which-ones-right-for-your-project-16712e9eaacc | ['Bharti Purohit'] | 2020-05-21 11:50:43.325000+00:00 | ['Ruby on Rails', 'PHP', 'Development', 'Ruby On Rails Development', 'Software Development'] |
Why I’m grateful I lost my festive spirit this year. | (Credit: GPOINTSTUDIO, Getty Images)
It goes without saying that this year was a year unlike any other. Lockdowns, isolations, fear, anxiety, and illness all played central parts in sculpting the way we will remember 2020 for the rest of our lives. That’s why I, like countless others, struggled to find my Christmas spirit- but I’m grateful for it. Here’s why.
Normally, my family, and I’m sure this goes for the majority of people, rarely all find time to be together. Work, school, timetables, meeting up with friends, going out at night, and many other things mean that we would never find time for the four of us to eat dinner together. Things got so bad that my parents decided to take the dining table and chairs to the local tip and turn the dining room into a second living room so we could relax while someone else was watching a film in another room. Pre-covid, we would eat meals alone or in pairs at the two-seater bar. Between March and September, we had nothing to do but start to share similar eating schedules; instead of eating when we came home from work/school at varying times of the afternoon or evening, we automatically began to cook dinner at the same time. We still don’t have a dining table, but the patio table from the garden has become a staple piece of indoor furniture that we can sit around. For seven months, the four of us would eat at least one meal a day together (getting my younger brother out of bed before midday is a challenge no mortal man could accomplish, so we very quickly gave up on eating breakfast together), and this became our new normal. I know that “new normal” has been a phrase used so often this year that it’s essentially lost all meaning, but doing my university work alone up in my room and knowing that I would be having a real face-to-face connection with my family in the evening helped keep me motivated. Part of my Christmas excitement each year is the anticipation of eating a home-cooked dinner with my immediate family, normally for the first time since the Christmas before. This year, I’ve become so accustomed to eating dinner with my family, telling them all the small things I accomplished or found interesting that day, and hearing about the small things from their lives, that the momentous occasion of a ‘proper family dinner’ has become normal. It’s no longer something rare that I need to feel excited about- isolation has brought us all closer together as a family, and now we value our time spent together as work and school slowly returns to pre-covid normal.
Another reason I’m grateful not to feel festive is that it shows an acknowledgment that things are still very much abnormal. It’s ordinary to get excited about Christmas and think of the childlike wonder I used to feel for it when I was younger, but this year has been extraordinary. Of course Christmas films and Mariah Carey and Whamageddon have made the anxiety from this year a little less all-consuming- and I’ve enjoyed numerous rewatches of Love Actually and National Lampoon’s: Christmas Vacation as much as the next person- but Covid and tier 4 restrictions have been a sobering reminder that we aren’t out of the woods yet. I had all of my presents bought and wrapped by the start of December in case all of the shops had to close, and our Christmas dinner shopping was finished far earlier than usual in anticipation of stricter lockdown rules. I still had a wonderful time watching my parents open the presents my brother and I had picked for them, and the Christmas dinner was still my favourite dinner of the year: my lack of festive spirit simply means that there was a part of my brain reminding me to be grateful for every second of it, now knowing how easily normality can change. I still sang the lyrics to Step Into Christmas obnoxiously loudly and out of tune, but at the same time I knew how precious it was that the four of us were here to be yelling the words with no attempt to harmonise. If this year has taught me anything, it is that every moment of happiness and every moment shared with our loved ones truly is a blessing that is unparalleled by anything else.
To summarise why I’m not bothered that I wasn’t feeling festive this year: it’s because I was so enormously, immensely grateful that I was here today with my family that my excitement could never hope to outweigh the gratitude. Every smile from behind opened presents, or the sound of laughter from cheesy Christmas cracker jokes was something I wasn’t certain at the start of Covid that I would be blessed enough to experience again, but I’m so, so lucky that I did. | https://medium.com/@holly-berry24/why-im-grateful-i-lost-my-festive-spirit-this-year-712053a01d7 | ['Holly Berry'] | 2020-12-25 21:17:56.309000+00:00 | ['Christmas', '2020', 'Covid 19', 'Family', 'Gratitude'] |
Deploying /Hosting Kotlin-React App | Creating app with kotlin is no doubt easier than any of the other technologies out there !! But To Deploy it to the internet is something that can get really tricky . When I first tried to host my kotlin website I First Thought of Firebase hosting as it is so easy to use with angular and react JS But it didn’t quit work the way I expected ! so I used the second best Option (Now It’s it has taken the lead though) was HEROKU🎈 . So Here I have step by step mentioned on how to host your kotlin/js app using heroku :
1.Setting Up : In Order to start using heroku we first need to sign up to heroku services which is nothing so that you need a guide for so I assume that you managed to do that yourself and then you need to set up heroku cli to your computer by first downloading heroku cli and then logging in via your cli simply by command “heroku login” !! remember that you don’t need to buy any plans in order to get started with heroku (you don’t need to enter any credit card info also) the first five deploy with heroku are totally free of cost but if you want to use some additional features or services of heroku then that may cost you accordingly but for starters i recommend using free heroku plans . 2.Make Your App A Git Repo : Now In order to publish you kotlin js app you need to first make it a git repo by navigating to the folder and using command “git init” this will turn your app root folder into a git folder and after that you could simply run “heroku create” which will create an app in your heroku dashboard and will give a git repository link also . This git link is really special as now you can just push new changes to it’s remote heroku master branch and it will automagically update your web app on the internet (amazing isn’t it?) and then just add and commit the everything in your app root folder .
heroku create …👆git repo
git init
heroku create
git add .
git commit -m "Your commit message"
NOTE : -> Now heroku might give you some weird name to your app which is something you don’t want as the app name will effect domain name of site .
Like heroku might give you name like “Jummpy-frog-112” which when you will publish your app your web link will be like “https://Jummpy-frog-112.herokuapp.com/”
and that’s not cool at all but you can surely fix it by renaming your app name to something cool like “medium” and your web link will then look something like “https://medium.herokuapp.com/” . To change the name just type following commands :
heroku apps:rename --app "old-app-name" "new-app-name" Like in our case : heroku apps:rename --app "Jummpy-frog-112" "medium"
You can see the app name change in your heroku dashboard too ..
3. Adjusting build packs : Unlike other jvm applications like spring or ktor kotlin js app generates some static pages and js files so heroku need to be configured for that which is really easy to do with heroku by just few of the commands like :
in order of our heroku/gradle buildpack to run our gradle needs to have a stage task which is what we generally know as build task , stage task and build task are equivalent but heroku use stage task so we need to add 2 more lines of code to our “build.gradle.kts” file
kotlin{
.....
} // This 👇
tasks.register("stage") {
dependsOn("build")
}
4. Adding static.json file to root of our project : We are almost there !! just one more step that is we need to configure our buildpack-static by adding a new json file “static.json” in the root folder of our project and add a root property in that file :
static .json
in the static.json give following property :
{
"root": "build/distributions"
}
5. Deploying Your App To The world : Congrats now all that left to do is to deploy your badass website to the real world which is just to commit the changes we did so far and then pushing it to remote heroku’s master branch
git add -A
git commit -m "your commit message "
git push heroku master
And BOOM !!🎉 heroku will do rest of the work and at last it will return you your badass web app link which would be somewhat like “https://YOUR APP NAME.herokuapp.com/”:
Done ❤
Thanks For Reading ❤ , | https://medium.com/@aryeahtyagi/deploying-hosting-kotlin-react-app-7c3b28e992fe | [] | 2020-11-16 09:53:24.738000+00:00 | ['Publishing', 'Heroku', 'Kotlin Js', 'Kotlin Multiplatform', 'Deployment'] |
The Next “Moonshot” Race? | Over fifty-three million Americans watched the grainy, black-and-white footage of the Apollo 11 lunar landing vessel as it landed on the moon on July 20,1969. Neil Armstrong emerged from the vessel, floated down to the moon’s surface, and said one of the most famous sentences ever recorded: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
The lunar landing occurred during one of the tensest periods of the inter-continental rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union. Both countries invested huge amounts of money in their respective space programs with the goal to send humans to the moon. The Soviet Union was the first country to send a satellite, Sputnik 1, to orbit Earth on October 4, 1957. This was followed on August 19,1960 by the Soviet Union who launched a rocket with two dogs into space. The rocket orbited the Earth for twenty-four hours before returning safely to Earth. Less than one year later, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was the first human to enter space in a Soviet Vostok Spacecraft.
The Soviet Union launching Sputnik has since been referred to as the “Sputnik moment” for the US This moment, and the following string of successes by the Soviet Union, signaled a challenge to the US. The US drastically increased the funding and focus of NASA on a mission to be the first country to send a rocket with humans to the moon. The space race between the US and the Soviet Union represented, more than anything, a battle for global technological supremacy.
Now there is a new battle between the US and China. This time, the US could lose if it doesn’t get more serious about autonomous vehicles as a key technology. Driving a vehicle is one of the most complex human activities. Developing the automated driving system wich can drive these vehicles safer than humans represents a monumental undertaking. Other than the vehicles themselves, the core machine learning technology which allows them to function has virtually limitless applications. The technology has already been used for things like educational aids, medical equipment, agriculture, mining, and in the military for things like drones. There also needs to be policy enacted to support this effort.
This is how my book The Future is Autonomous: The U.S. and China Race to Develop the Driverless Car begins. The purpose of this introduction is not to describe an exact parallel between these two “races.” For the race to send humans to the moon, the “winner” would simply be the first to send a rocket to the moon and have it return with a crew that was (hopefully) still alive to Earth. I open my book with this scene mainly to describe the tension between the world’s two wealthiest and most powerful countries, the U.S. and China. That tension is fueled by a competition that has a strong technological component. I wanted to introduce autonomous vehicles as a key technology in the new “battle” for global technological supremacy.
This effort to achieve supremacy in the field of autonomous vehicles was described more clearly in my book’s Conclusion by my friend Sven Beiker..
In my interview with Dr. Sven Beiker, Founder and Managing Director of Silicon Valley Mobility, LLC, he described that it is actually much bigger than sending a rocket to the moon and returning afterwards. He said, “This is much more like, how can we create a system? A living system, a sustainable system that requires much more than a couple of people. In our case, a couple of vehicles.” He said a more appropriate analogy would be to colonize the moon. This would require many different government departments. These departments would include the Department of Transportation, Department of Labor, Department of Commerce, and the Department of Justice.
In my introduction, I mentioned that it would need the work of everyone, including engineers, technology experts, policymakers, and different government agencies all working together to develop and produce autonomous vehicles. For my book, I talked to professors, engineers, people involved in the policymaking process at both the state and national level, strategic consultants, and people in the automotive industry. They are all working on the promotion and development of autonomous vehicles. Just like it takes a village to raise a child, it takes many different people to develop and produce a vehicle that drives itself.
This is just the beginning of an article series with pieces from my book. In this article series, I will discuss the problems of building consumer trust and acceptance of autonomous vehicles in the U.S., basic technological information about how exactly a vehicle can drive itself, a view from abroad at the autonomous vehicle industry in China, new business models deployed by companies in both countries, and much more! So stay tuned, the best is yet to come!
Intereste in the competition to develop and produce autonomous vehicle? Read more by purchasing my book The Future is Autonomous: The U.S. an China Race to Develop the Driverless Car on Amazon today!
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08PVRL38J?pf_rd_r=70B17WVD9FACW96BGA5E&pf_rd_p=9d9090dd-8b99-4ac3-b4a9-90a1db2ef53b&pd_rd_r=54425aaa-03dc-4e42-a949-b286f4f683e5&pd_rd_w=JSQyQ&pd_rd_wg=IVSr3&ref_=pd_gw_unk&fbclid=IwAR2X2q27UbbQ57pvUYqSpXyGy_TRGM821ZdYF25KaioWAqQEo91yXyNkCTQ | https://medium.com/@phillip-wilcox/the-next-moonshot-race-732babd7e74a | ['Phillip Wilcox'] | 2020-12-08 13:31:31.253000+00:00 | ['Self Driving Cars', 'Geopolitics', 'Autonomous Vehicles', 'Us China Relations', 'Technology'] |
Who Should Get the COVID Vaccine First? | Drug developers’ frantic hunt for vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 has finally begun to bear fruit, with several vaccines recently receiving nods from regulatory bodies worldwide. Several more are in various stages of development.
Given that for now, the supply of approved vaccines is extremely limited, the question faced by public health authorities is this — who should receive the first wave of vaccines? Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have created a tool to help make informed decisions around this: an online risk calculator for estimating COVID-related mortality.
The calculator, described in an article in Nature Medicine, is powered by an algorithm that draws from data generated by a plethora of COVID-19 studies into risk factors such as age, gender, sociodemographic factors, and the presence of underlying diseases.
“Our calculator represents a more quantitative approach and should complement other proposed qualitative guidelines, such as those by the National Academy of Sciences and Medicine, for determining individual and community risks and allocating vaccines,” said study lead and biostatistics expert Nilanjan Chatterjee.
One of the most striking characteristics associated with COVID-19 is how the disease experience varies significantly between different groups — children often get off with very mild symptoms. In contrast, the elderly can face serious and life-threatening complications as a result of infection. Public health researchers have also noted demographic influences at play in the risk of mortality. For instance, Black and Latinx communities in the U.S. are more likely to die from COVID symptoms than white patients.
“Although we have long known about factors associated with greater mortality, there has been limited effort to incorporate these factors into prevention strategies and forecasting models,” explained Chatterjee.
According to Chatterjee and colleagues, their risk calculator determined that only around four percent of the U.S. population is in the high-risk category (around five times greater than the average risk). This small proportion of individuals contribute to almost half of all COVID-related deaths. The risk was also found to vary greatly between geographical regions.
“For example, the percentage of the adult population exceeding the fivefold risk threshold varies from 0.4 percent in Layton, Utah, to 10.7 percent in Detroit, Michigan,” said Chatterjee.
The calculator, which is updated weekly, could form an integral part of the decision-making process for resource allocation, particularly for supplies such as vaccines and N95 masks in short supply. For now, frontline medical workers and those with pre-existing medical conditions will likely be brought to the front of the line for a vaccination.
“People may understand broadly that with a preexisting condition such as obesity or diabetes, for example, they are at higher risk, but with our calculator, they should be able to understand their risk in a way that takes multiple factors into account,” Chatterjee added.
Sources: Nature Medicine, EurekAlert! | https://medium.com/@tlfern/who-should-get-the-covid-vaccine-first-c6c0a46989b4 | ['Tara Fernandez'] | 2020-12-15 18:35:52.651000+00:00 | ['Covid Vaccine', 'Health Technology', 'Public Health', 'Covid 19', 'Community'] |
Tracing Water | You and your team discovered something interesting about Austin-area springs and streams. What did you find?
We studied the chemical composition of a watershed in Northwest Austin called Bull Creek to try to understand the effect urbanization is having on the natural water system. In doing so, we found a significant amount of municipal water ending up in area springs and streams.
By municipal water, I’m referring to the city-supplied water that comes to and from our homes — the water that comes out of our taps and faucets. We hypothesized that this was because of failing infrastructure. We wanted to know exactly how bad it was: how much leakage was happening, where it was happening, and how this leakage might impact the sensitive aquatic ecosystem. Our concern is that the amount of municipal water getting into these springs and streams — namely wastewater — will degrade the habitat for many species, endangered and otherwise.
Why this location?
A watershed is essentially an area of land where all the water drains to a certain point. It’s a feature of the land because of its topography.
If you look at Bull Creek watershed, there’s an interesting pattern: the southwest portion is almost entirely undeveloped, but the northeast part that runs along the spine of Highway 183 is densely urbanized. There was this stark contrast. That was one reason we picked this watershed. We wanted to see processes that result from urbanization at their most fundamental level, and the way to do that is to do it in a watershed where there are very few variations aside from the extent of urbanization. The soil types, the bedrock geology, the rainfall are all the same. Any differences we determine are likely the result of urbanization.
The Bull Creek watershed comprises both rural and urbanized areas in Northwest Austin and drains into the Colorado River.
The Bull Creek watershed comprises both rural and urbanized areas in Northwest Austin and drains into the Colorado River.
What did you look at to determine if the water was municipal water or rainfall?
We started by using the element strontium as a natural tracer — looking for it in rainfall, the soil, the bedrock, and dissolved in the spring and stream water. We do this by measuring the amounts of the different isotopes of the strontium contained in these waters. Isotopes are naturally-occurring forms of the same element that have a different number of neutrons. It turns out that the amounts of the different isotopes vary depending on the original source of the water. So, in this sense, the strontium isotopes in a water sample gives it a “signal,” something we can use to trace the water back to its original source.
Strontium-87 is an isotope produced by natural radioactive decay, and in general it’s present in high levels in really old rocks. The Llano River northwest of Austin drains into the Colorado River, which serves as Austin’s municipal water supply. When a river like the Llano drains a terrain with such old rocks, it dissolves strontium that carries a signal of this high strontium-87.
We can deduce, therefore, that municipal water has relatively high levels of strontium-87. By comparison, water in Austin’s local creeks, which drains a terrain comprising younger limestones, bears a lower level of strontium-87.
“Interestingly, though, we also find some potential positive unintended consequences… If there’s a way to actually keep the water flowing — like through this leaking infrastructure — that may be an unintended positive consequence of the failure of the municipal infrastructure because water stays available to these plants and animals even in times of drought.”
This high-versus-low level of strontium-87 is a valuable tool. It can be used to infer how much water is derived from natural water flow and how much is municipal water leakage and irrigation. The more developed parts of the Bull Creek watershed showed higher levels of strontium-87 because of leaking municipal water and irrigation, and both are a result of urbanization.
Should we be concerned that strontium is in our soil and water?
Strontium is merely an element, and it’s there all the time. It’s not harmful in the amounts that we find it in these streams. We shouldn’t be concerned about it. What we should be concerned about is that it indicates that municipal water — including wastewater — is getting into these streams, which can degrade the ecosystem and recreational areas.
How is municipal water ending up in our springs and streams?
In the Austin area, we rely on Austin Water utility for our drinking water, and that comes from the Colorado River. We pump it from the river to a treatment plant to clean it and make it drinkable, then we pump it from the plant to our homes. On both the supply and return side — so when it comes to our homes and when it makes its way back to the wastewater treatment plant — significant amounts of water leak from the pipes and get into the natural environment. Almost every infrastructure system anywhere in the United States, and the world, has some leakage associated with it.
“It’s really the wastewater part of it that is most concerning. The last thing we want to do is degrade water quality, so this is something we should really be taking a careful look at when we decide how we design the residential and industrial development of watersheds.”
When there’s a major leak, like a broken water main, it will flood the streets and we can watch it happen. But for every one of those floods that we see, there are many more that we don’t see leaking slowly underground. The losses are on the order of about 10 or 15% of the municipal system a year, and that’s not unusual for a large city in North America. This is something very common to urban environments, but it’s a problem because the losses are costly, and wastewater at least is harmful to the environment.
According to your findings, more than half of spring and stream water at some urbanized sites in the Bull Creek watershed originates from municipal water. That seems like a lot of leaks — a lot of water getting out.
Absolutely. It kind of surprised us that it was that high.
Based on what you found in Bull Creek, can you infer that other Austin-area watersheds have similar levels of municipal water in them?
You can infer that. In other watersheds in the city, where we see similar extents of urbanization, we see high strontium-87 levels from municipal infrastructure leakage and irrigation. These data are consistent with the hypothesis that with increasing extents of urbanization, more municipal water is getting into these natural water systems.
Why should we care about this? What is the impact of having this municipal water in our springs and streams?
That’s a really important question to consider. One can make the case that, if we were just looking at municipal supply water leaking, well, that water is good enough to drink, so it might not be too harmful to the plant and animal life in the watershed. But waterfront or ‘riparian’ ecosystems depend on the water resource of the stream and springs.
Visiting undergraduate research student Rosemary Burkhalter-Castro collects water samples from Bull Creek. Photo courtesy of Jay Banner.
If the quality of that water degrades, then the plants and animals that live in the ecosystem along the water will be endangered. If we introduce harmful levels of bacteria that come from wastewater — the water that runs down the drain in our sinks and toilets that may include human waste, cleaning chemicals or other toxins — that will degrade the habitat dramatically.
It’s really the wastewater part of it that is most concerning. The last thing we want to do is degrade water quality, so this is something we should really be taking a careful look at when we decide how we design the residential and industrial development of watersheds.
Interestingly, though, we also find some potential positive unintended consequences. Projections for Texas in the 21st century are that we will have longer and more intense droughts than those that we’ve seen historically, which is a real cause for concern. If that happens, those riparian ecosystems could face a real struggle to survive. If there’s a way to actually keep the water flowing — like through this leaking infrastructure — that may be an unintended positive consequence of the failure of the municipal infrastructure because water stays available to these plants and animals even in times of drought. With these positives and negative results from leaking municipal infrastructure, the question is, “How do we weigh which is more important?” It really depends on what we value.
How so?
As long as we’re thinking big, perhaps we can design a municipal water system that’s more leak-proof and that includes valves so that, at the discretion of people who manage the watersheds, we can actually open those valves during times of drought and have what might be the biggest drip irrigation system in the world. And still be able to go out in our streams and creeks without fear of being exposed to health hazards.
For citizens, is there a way to notice just by sight how much water entering the stream is wastewater or clean municipal water? How do we know if the water we’re swimming is the same water we’d drink at home or something dangerous?
Right. If I knew in Waller Creek, say, that all the leakage was just drinking water, I would be in there having a good time! So it’s a really important question: can we tell the difference? The strontium isotope tracers I mentioned give us a way to know how much of a watershed is municipal water, but that doesn’t tell us how much is safe, drinkable water — the water coming into our homes — or wastewater — the used water leaving our homes. We could use a number of other tracers to determine that, though. For example, we could look at bacteria in the water — things like fecal coliform and E. coli. Also, we do measure high levels of chloride and sodium in wastewater. We did see these wastewater signals in our study, so we know there are components of both — waste and supply water — leaking into these natural systems. But no, unfortunately, it’s not something you can see with your eyes in otherwise clear, running water.
We’re working on a new project now looking at the rings of the trees that grow along these creeks to determine when, exactly, the municipal infrastructure failed — was it sudden, or did it happen slowly and steadily over time? To reconstruct such a history, we will examine individual tree rings, which act as a sort of visible and chemical record of the water amount and water quality over time.
Jay Banner and UT geoscience student researchers core baldcypress trees along Austin’s Waller Creek to see how municipal water runoff and leakage is affecting the local ecosystem.
What’s the solution to this? Could this research help design the water system of the future?
We know there are two areas where we can take action. One, we could take existing leaky watersheds and restore them, and that’s a very significant undertaking. You have to investigate the entire network, which is a real engineering challenge. It can be done, but it would take a lot of time and resources.
The second area where this knowledge can potentially be applied is looking at all the new landscapes and watersheds that will be developed in the future. By new, I mean not previously extensively urbanized or built out. We are going to have to build a lot to accommodate twice as many Texans by 2050. So, perhaps knowing the impacts of urbanization ahead of time, we can design the infrastructure to be more leak-proof and to be monitored more carefully. In the most ideal scenario, it could be made to be much more resilient.
In either the case of restoring existing watersheds or planning the development of new watersheds, it’s an important consideration. A leaky system costs us money. If our municipal water supply is leaking, that means we have to pump even more water to our homes to account for the amount that leaks out before it gets to our taps. That means we’re using more water and more energy, and that’s a bigger carbon footprint. A tighter municipal pipe network is more resilient. It saves us resources and money and also protects our watershed habitats and recreational areas. | https://medium.com/planettexas2050/tracing-water-cbbf70608705 | ['Planet Texas'] | 2020-05-28 17:22:43.017000+00:00 | ['Ecosystem', 'Austin', 'Watershed', 'Water Pollution'] |
Under Control: Empowering Disturbance Observer Controllers with the Fourier Transform | As modern society progresses, and automated systems become more sophisticated and complex, the importance of designing advanced and reliable controllers skyrockets. Controllers monitor system variables and ensure that processes and machines operate stably within defined limits. Over the last two decades, controllers based on the disturbance observer-based control (DOBC) theory have become increasingly popular. These controllers measure external disturbances affecting the system and compensate them as necessary in order to keep the system stable. However, existing implementations of this theory can only manage periodic disturbances, which greatly limits their applicability — in the real world, disturbances can take many forms and are usually nonperiodic.
In a recent study published in IEEE Access, a pair of Korean scientists tackled this problem through an innovative approach: combining the DOBC theory with a powerful mathematical tool called the Fourier transform. Dr Han Sol Kim from the National Korea Maritime and Ocean University explains their reasoning: “The Fourier transform can be used to represent a nonperiodic disturbance as a sum of infinite periodic disturbances. Then, by selecting the most dominant periodic disturbances only, we can design distinct DOBCs that compensate for each one.”
To achieve this, the scientists began with the Takagi–Sugeno fuzzy model, an approach that represents complex nonlinear systems — which describe many real-world dynamic systems — as linear subsystems. By combining a slightly modified version of this fuzzy modelling method with the DOBC theory and applying the Fourier transform, they managed to design a controller with a better response compared with other state-of-the-art methods, as shown through simulations.
This controller design could be particularly useful for modern technological systems such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones. The performance of UAVs largely depends on how well they can automatically handle external disturbances such as the wind and changes in air resistance. In this regard, Dr Kim remarks: “Without properly compensating for disturbances, UAVs can cause accidents, harming people and destroying property. I believe that our method will be an efficient solution for UAV systems because it can guarantee robust performance against disturbances.”
Their approach is purely theoretical so far, but they plan on implementing it in a real hardware platform in the near future. If all goes well, we might just have a new effective method for keeping our machines under control. | https://medium.com/@nkmo-uni/under-control-empowering-disturbance-observer-controllers-with-the-fourier-transform-29c9bcf087d7 | ['Korea Maritime', 'Ocean University'] | 2020-11-25 05:27:34.932000+00:00 | ['Controller', 'Fourier Transform', 'Science', 'Drones', 'Technology'] |
ROS in Windows — Publisher, and Subscriber using Python | We have seen how to install ROS in Windows in this article. Also, I’ve suggested you to go through this article to learn how to write HelloWorld using ROS and C++ in Windows.
In this article let us see how to create Publisher, and Subscriber using ROS and Python in Windows.
I hope you have installed Gedit (if you have gone through HelloWorld article: There the configuration of Gedit is given).
What is a Publisher?
A ROS publisher is a ROS node that publishes a specific form of ROS message on a given ROS topic.
What is Subscriber?
It is also called as “Interested” node. This node can access the published ROS message on a given ROS topic.
In brief, Publisher, and Subscriber are two ROS nodes that interact in a unidirectional communication (from Publisher to Subscriber).
Let's create the package 1st. I hope you have already created the catkin workspace (if you have gone through HelloWorld article). Open the shortcut of ROS Command Prompt (ROS_Noetic as mentioned here). Go to the catkin workspace directory.
C:\Windows\System32>cd C:\opt\ros
oetic\catkin_ws
If you’ve practiced HelloWorld, inside of catkin workspace directory you can see \src directory along with \build and \devel directories. Or else, create it.
C:\opt\ros
oetic\catkin_ws>mkdir src
Inside src directory create a new package.
C:\opt\ros
oetic\catkin_ws\src>catkin_create_pkg talker_listener std_msgs rospy
Have you noticed that in HelloWorld article we’ve used roscpp and here we used rospy? We wrote the node in HelloWorld package using C++. In this article, we are going to use Python, so that we used rospy as a dependency. Note that we can also add any other dependencies if needed. The syntax to create a new package can be written in this way.
catkin_create_pkg [PACKAGE_NAME] [DEPENDENT_PACKAGE_1] ....[DEPENDENT_PACKAGE_N]
Then the necessary files will be created inside \src like this.
Inside the package, in Windows, it will create \src. But in Python, we use \scripts in common. So we can create a new directory inside the package we created.
C:\opt\ros
oetic\catkin_ws\src\talker_listener>mkdir scripts
Now, we have to write the nodes inside \scripts. You can create a python file inside \scripts like this.
C:\opt\ros
oetic\catkin_ws\src\talker_listener\scripts>gedit talker.py
You can ignore the texts that appear in ROS_Noetic command prompt. A new window will open in Gedit and you can write the talker node in it as follows.
The very first line tells that the node will be executed as Python script. We will use this line in every Python nodes we write in ROS.
#!/usr/bin/env python
In C++
#include "ros/ros.h"
(You can see all other conventions of C++ in HelloWorld article or any other documentations.)
Then we have to import rospy and std_msgs.msg. We import std_msgs_msg to use a simple string container std_msgs/String message for publishing.
import rospy from std_msgs.msg import String
Then we define that this node is going to send String message type values to the chatter topic.
pub = rospy.Publisher('chatter', String, queue_size=10)
The queue_size argument is new and used here to limit the amount of queued messages if any subscriber is not receiving them fast enough. You can simply avoid this in older versions.
Then we inform the name of our node to rospy.
rospy.init_node('talker', anonymous=True)
Note that rospy won’t be able to communicate with ROS master if it doesn’t know this information. anonymous = True ensures that the node has a unique name by adding random numbers to the end of ‘name’. Then we define the duration of each iteration along the loop.
rate = rospy.Rate(10)
It means at each second, there will be iterations. Make sure that our processing time does not exceed 1/10th of a second.
Next, we have to construct our loop. We use is_shutdown() to check if your program should terminate/exit (e.g. if there is a Ctrl+C or otherwise).
while not rospy.is_shutdown():
This ensures the loop continues until a termination happens as Ctrl+C or otherwise. Then we define the string message.
hello_str = "hello world %s" % rospy.get_time()
Then we add
rospy.loginfo(hello_str)
to perform 3 tasks.
To print the message on the screen To write Node’s log file To write in rosout
We publish the string to chatter topic like this.
pub.publish(hello_str)
The loop calls rate.sleep(), which sleeps just long enough to maintain the desired rate through the loop.
When we execute termination keys (Ctrl+C or otherwise) rospy.Rate.sleep() and rospy.sleep() can throw rospy.ROSInterruptException exception. So we use the following codes.
try: talker() except rospy.ROSInterruptException: pass
So the complete code will be like this.
#!/usr/bin/env python3 import rospy from std_msgs.msg import String def talker(): pub = rospy.Publisher('chatter', String, queue_size=10) rospy.init_node('talker', anonymous=True) rate = rospy.Rate(10) while not rospy.is_shutdown(): hello_str = "hello world %s" % rospy.get_time() rospy.loginfo(hello_str) pub.publish(hello_str) rate.sleep() if __name__ == '__main__': try: talker() except rospy.ROSInterruptException: pass
You can close the talker.py and just press enter in the same ROS_Noetic command prompt. Now we can write listener.py in the same way.
C:\opt\ros
oetic\catkin_ws\src\talker_listener\scripts>gedit listener.py
# !/usr/bin/env python3 import rospy from std_msgs.msg import String def callback(data): rospy.loginfo(rospy.get_caller_id() + 'I heard %s', data.data) def listener(): rospy.init_node('listener', anonymous=True) rospy.Subscriber('chatter', String, callback) rospy.spin() if __name__ == '__main__': listener()
Now we have to edit our CMakeList.txt file inside the package.
C:\opt\ros
oetic\catkin_ws\src\talker_listener>gedit CMakeLists.txt
In CMakeList, go to the Install section and modify as follows (It may be commented, uncomment it, and edit).
catkin_install_python(PROGRAMS scripts/talker.py scripts/listener.py
DESTINATION ${CATKIN_PACKAGE_BIN_DESTINATION}
)
You can edit the package.xml as needed.
C:\opt\ros
oetic\catkin_ws\src\talker_listener>gedit package.xml
After that go to catkin workspace directory and execute catkin make.
C:\opt\ros
oetic\catkin_ws>catkin_make
It will take a few seconds, wait for the successful completion.
If you get an error, debug it, or delete \devel and \build and recreate the package and files as mentioned above. Open another ROS_Noetic command prompt and execute roscore;
After that execute the following command.
C:\opt\ros
oetic\catkin_ws>rosrun talker_listener scripts/talker.py
You may get an error as this.
You’ve to source the setup.bat. You might have seen this in HelloWorld article too. In Windows, we can source the setup.bat as this;
C:\opt\ros
oetic\catkin_ws>devel\setup.bat
Execute the rosrun again.
C:\opt\ros
oetic\catkin_ws>rosrun talker_listener scripts/talker.py
The publisher has started to publish the string to chatter topic. Now you have make the listener catch these messages. Open another ROS_Neotic command prompt, go to the catkin workspace and rosrun the listener as follows.
C:\opt\ros
oetic\catkin_ws>rosrun talker_listener scripts/listener.py
There also, you may get an error for not sourcing.
Execute
C:\opt\ros
oetic\catkin_ws>devel\setup.bat
and rosrun the listener.py as follows;
C:\opt\ros
oetic\catkin_ws>rosrun talker_listener scripts/listener.py
You can see the talker (in left here) is publishing and the same data accessed by listener (in right here).
Note that if you stopped the listener (Subscriber node) the talker (Publisher node) won’t stop publishing.
But if you stop publishing, the subscriber will also stop as it won’t be able to receive any message from the publisher.
We have done Publisher and Subscriber nodes using ROS and Python in Windows successfully. If you want to do it in C++, refer this article.
Try to send and receive different data across the chatting topic.
Have fun with ROS in Windows 10!! | https://medium.com/@himnickson/ros-programming-in-windows-publisher-and-subscriber-using-python-f21184e4142b | ['Nickson Joram'] | 2021-01-03 16:00:16.963000+00:00 | ['Python', 'Robotics', 'Robotics Operating System', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Windows 10'] |
The devil is in the detail | Time in
Over many years, the founders, and the key executive within Thuso have built up an impressive amount of experience in building businesses and backing people. “We feel that we are very good at identifying and partnering the right people,” Carlo concurs.
“In this programme, most of the partnerings, less so with Vuna, come about, where, for the first time, two or three people that work in the same organisation work together,” he continues. “It’s a marriage. We say it’s a marriage because we’re in it together for the long term. So, we have got to be keenly aware and acutely focused on the personalities. We’re almost like forensic psychologists if only because we spend a lot of time focused on our processes, getting to know the intended or potential incubatees, and we observe them in action.
“When they’re engaging with us, we’re very quickly able to pick up who is the stronger personality, who is the weaker personality, and invariably you’re going to have personalities that differ. Where there is a significantly stronger personality versus the weaker, we get a bit concerned, because it could result in a damaging situation later and what we’ve seen happen before. So, we must get the balance right, based on our internal observations, and it becomes a blend of science and art.”
It’s a testament to what Vuna will experience as the business grows and the onboard personnel because the nature of their business is long term, hence anyone they bring into the organisation that investment is great in time. “They have to be acutely aware of what type of person and personality they’re looking for, what sort of skills they’re looking for, and whether it will gel with them, as founders,” Carlo points out. | https://medium.com/@thusopartners/the-devil-is-in-the-detail-c3369ba34c00 | ['Thuso Partners'] | 2021-11-30 15:15:55.138000+00:00 | ['Support', 'South Africa', 'Case Study', 'Partnerships', 'Private Equity'] |
Beyond simple OCR: an outlook of modern AI vision for insurance automation | Our mission at Zelros is to bring Artificial Intelligence to insurance companies, and enable them to offer a better service to both the insurers and their policyholders. In fact, even if the digital area has already started to reshape the insurance industry, many processes still require heavy human interventions, from underwriting to claim handling. Of course, reaching a full automation rate by AI algorithms often is an unreachable goal, but being able to automate certain parts of the processes with high levels of confidence allows to reduce processing delays. AI becomes an additional tool to strike the right balance between repetitive low-valued tasks and complex high-valued tasks. Insurers can automate parts of them, while focusing on the other ones that require full human experience and knowledge.
Zelros Documents2Insights is a module of our platform to perform processing automation of all the pieces of legal documents that are commonly handled in the insurance industry: national ID cards, driving licenses, car registrations, insurance statements, tax notices, …
Optical Character Recognition (also known as OCR) is a Machine Learning subfield, in which models are given an image as input and are asked to predict what is the textual content displayed on the image :
A typical OCR example
If OCR is obviously one of the main pillars in order to automate the parsing of such documents, it is worth mentioning that many other ML tasks are also crucial when analyzing these documents. Here are a few examples of the Computer Vision problems we work on at Zelros:
Checkboxes analysis
Is the checkbox ticked or not?
Detection and recognition of signatures
Is the document correctly signed? Does the signature correspond to the user database-registered signature?
Forgery detection in order to prevent fraud automation
Observe how characters seem to have been software edited
Drawings classification
Were the two vehicles riding in the same direction? Did one of them cross a white line?
Automatic image processing in order to remove non OCR-friendly artefacts
The new French driving license encapsulates fields with this weird symbol, known as the “Alien character”. While it is an effective way to prevent forgery, it will also confuse most OCR systems, as they will try to interpret it as a regular character. Here, ML algorithms have been used to remove them before going into OCR
An example of french redemption request in which the strokes that are printed on the form ruin the OCR prediction, typically interpreted as ‘I’ or handwritten characters continuation. Removing them with Computer Vision methods leads to an increased OCR accuracy
Out of all the documents that are handled during insurance processes, we chose here to discuss in more detail how we tackled the problem of the European Accident Report automation. In Europe, when two drivers are involved in an accident, they must fill in a form describing the circumstances of this accident and provide some information about both drivers.
It is an interesting piece of document because it is very rich from a Computer Vision perspective. It features both typed and handwritten, structured and unstructured fields, along with drawings, checkboxes and signatures. Also, even if insurance companies can decide freely of the content and aspect of this document, it has been normalized so that differences between companies and countries are often minor. In France, it is estimated that 5 million accident reports are produced each year, which represents a huge volume.
In this blog-post series we will discuss more specifically about how we succeeded to automate the checkboxes analysis, that is, predict whether the checkboxes are ticked or not. This is an easy task to understand, and that is also encountered in many other kinds of documents. In fact, the methods we will present here have also been applied with success for other insurance forms, from both subscription and claims.
The checkboxes analysis will serve us as a pretext to discuss various general Machine Learning concepts: | https://medium.com/@zelros/beyond-simple-ocr-an-outlook-of-modern-ai-vision-for-insurance-automation-b1e6ab90c1a7 | ['Zelros Ai'] | 2021-02-05 10:14:22.271000+00:00 | ['Insurtech', 'Insurance', 'Computer Vision', 'Automation', 'Deep Learning'] |
Step by Step guide for Installing or Upgrading Python Environment on macOS | Stepwise Procedure to Download & Install Python on macOS
Now if you are familiar about how Python works, let’s look at the 18 steps you should follow to install and upgrade Python on Mac OS.
Step 1: Open terminal
Step 2: Here, check if your mac has a Python environment or not.
Step 3: If you want to download a new version or haven’t download yet then open google and write download python.
Step 4: Click on the first link which will display on your screen, i.e. Download Python | Python.org
Step 5: Click on Download Python with the latest version.
Step 6: After you opt to download Python, your mac asks for your permission to download. Here, click ‘Allow’ on your mac to download.
Step 7: After you download the installation file, double-click the downloaded file as shown in the image below.
Step 8: After you open the file a dialog box will appear with a welcome note. Here, click on “Continue”.
Step 9: You can read the description and important information of Python then click on “Continue”.
Step 10: Usually, people tend to skip the information part of the dialog box because of which you may be unaware of some terms and conditions. So to avoid that, do read the History and License carefully.
Step 11: After reading all the software license agreement, click “Continue”.
Step 12: Click “Agree” if you are satisfied with the terms and conditions of the software license agreement.
Step 13: Now, select Macintosh HD location to install and click on “Continue”.
Step 14: After that, you can proceed to click on “Install”.
Step 15: As shown in the image below, you need to enter your username and password to install the software.
Step 16: When you provide the requirements, it will start to get installed. Wait for 2–3 minutes for Installation.
When you take this step of installing, your screen will display the dialog box as below.
Step 17: Open the Python Finder.
Step 18: Open idle.
Finally, now you are ready to start your project on Python. | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/step-by-step-guide-for-installing-or-upgrading-python-environment-on-macos-3f54d856c8f8 | ['Positive Stud'] | 2020-11-07 17:57:24.432000+00:00 | ['Installation', 'Python Programming', 'Macos', 'Install', 'Programming'] |
Top 5 Mobile Interaction Designs of February 2021 | It has been quite the start to the year. From extreme weather to political unrest to the ongoing pandemic, it is a lot to manage. In order to take your mind away from it all and get those creative juices flowing, we’ve put together our monthly installment of the best mobile interaction designs. Read on below to see our picks for February.
Weather apps are typically quite plain, but this mobile interaction design approaches the utility app with style and plenty of motion. First, as the temperature is calculated, the numbers tick up until they land on the current temperature. The air quality measure also ticks up along with the meter itself, moving from left to right until it lands on the correct PM2.5 level. This mobile interaction design even makes it fun to track weather in other areas, with animated cards to swipe through and click on to see how the weather is in a different location.
Staying up to date with politics is an important way to be an informed citizen of the world. This app combines the ability to register to vote, explore the latest in political news, and read up on candidates for local races. The bright yellow grabs attention and encourages users to take political action. There are a ton of smooth motions for designers to enjoy when it comes to mobile interaction design. On the home screen, users can tap into political candidates, and their background and positions on important issues such as education and the economy quickly appear below. The app implements an effective cascade of options so that users can view as much or as little information as they like using arrows that switch directions to indicate if there is more content below.
Drones are all the rage, and mobile apps are often needed to manage them. This mobile app interaction design helps users understand the features of their drones and keep track of battery power and flight history. We especially appreciate the care they put into showing multiple drone angles to fully convey the wingspan. Besides, the way that content blocks file onto the screen in order from top to bottom is a nice motion that draws the eye to those sections in the order that the creator intended. Lastly, call to action buttons expand and contract quite effectively. This gets users to take action to get started and advance in their education about their drone with simple changes to the size and copy of buttons.
Retail apps are forever upping their game to provide sleek and new mobile experiences. This one, in particular, offers smooth motions to swipe through shoe options and product images quickly. We especially enjoy the simple size selection that involves swiping left to make squares with larger sizes appear on the conveyor belt of options. Adding the pair of shoes to a cart has a slightly different flow than other retail apps: first, a user taps on the right size, then tapping on the cart icon in the bottom right corner adds the item. The icon jumps up and changes from a gray cart icon to an orange circle with a “+1” inside it to acknowledge the new addition.
Lastly, we have a micro-microinteraction design, if you will. We’re always interested in redesigns of features that we all know, love, and use each day. Here, Dmitry takes a look at the search bar. In his reimagining of it, one tap expands the magnifying glass icon and inverts the colors. While it expands, the “x” button does a somersault to allow the user to close out at any time. Next, the user can tap in what they want to search, and the search options tumble down below. | https://medium.com/@protoio/top-5-mobile-interaction-designs-of-february-2021-8c3fbbd2d2d9 | [] | 2021-03-01 14:36:05.430000+00:00 | ['UI', 'Mobile Apps', 'Ui Ux Design', 'Animation', 'Interaction Design'] |
Put That On Your Playlist: A Bad Note | Song: A Bad Note
Album: Idlewild
— — —
If you thought we were kinda harsh on what’s ultimately a fairly enjoyable and harmless song in When I Look In Your Eyes, just sit back and relax.
A Bad Note is the lone track №25 on any OutKast album and therefore makes the playlist by default. It’s messy and, frankly, simply not good. At eight minutes and 47 seconds, it’s also a chore to get through.
That’s all we have to say about it and that’s all we’ll say about it.
— — —
Beat: 4/10
Lyrics: 4/10
Overall: 4/10 | https://medium.com/amanmusthaveacode/put-that-on-your-playlist-a-bad-note-7f4b40f8cebf | ['Charles Blouingascon'] | 2020-12-19 12:47:26.331000+00:00 | ['Music', 'Culture', 'Outkast', 'Rap', 'Hip Hop'] |
Here’s Why We Don’t Have Enough Educators of Color (And What We Can Do About It) | Introduction
Teacher racial diversity is one of the most discussed issues in education. Nationally, approximately 20 percent of educators identify as People of Color while the remaining 80 percent of educators identify as White. Despite the relatively low percentage of teachers of Color across the U.S., states have seen a significantly higher increase in the number of teachers of Color than White teachers due to a variety of recruitment initiatives and programs. They, however, are more likely to leave the teaching profession and often work in low-performing, underfunded schools. While a history of racially-biased hiring practices has contributed to the shortage of educators of color, challenging work conditions and unsupportive school environments have prevented schools from making any significant progress in expanding teacher racial diversity.
History and Context
In 1953, a Black Kansas-based educator named Darla Buchanan received a letter from Topeka, Kansas Superintendent of Schools Wendell Godwin stating:
“If the Supreme Court should rule that segregation in the elementary grades is unconstitutional, our Board will proceed on the assumption that the majority of people in Topeka will not want to employ Negro teachers next year for white children. It is necessary for me to notify you now that your services will not be needed for next year.”
This letter was a preemptive measure in anticipation of the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision. The ruling ushered in an era of mandated school integration — meaning intentionally racially segregated schools were no longer permissible in the eyes of the law.
Prior to this landmark case, approximately 82,000 Black teachers worked in legally segregated schools located predominantly across the south. After the Supreme Court’s decision, more than 38,000 Black teachers lost their jobs.
Retrieved from https://blog.simonsays.ai/miss-buchanans-period-of-adjustment-revisionist-history-podcast-transcript-b4c65731f73c
Many people may assume issues with teacher integration resided solely in the southern states. Beyond the South, however, one of every seventy-two teachers identified as Black compared to nearly one of every five teachers in the southern segregated states.
The negative consequences of school integration not only affected Black classroom educators but Black school leaders as well. Newly integrated school systems predominantly led by White educators fired and demoted thousands of Black principals. Without the presence of Black leadership at the system level, Black students possessed few advocates who could influence systemic change.
Following Brown v. Board, the majority of segregated school districts did not develop any type of plan to fully integrate students. Considering many Black school leaders no longer possessed influence in school districts, no internal force existed to pressure schools into creating a plan for desegregation. Instead, many districts closed Black schools and sent Black students to White schools with a predominantly white staff.
Beyond Brown v. Board and the context of the South, American schools struggled to respond to increasing diversity as more immigrants entered the country. Schools during this time focused heavily on Americanization as they forced immigrant students to assimilate to mainstream American culture. This along with restrictive policies, ill-advised beliefs, and significant barriers kept other communities of color from accessing teaching as a profession.
In the 1980s, the Ford Foundation and Dewitt Wallace Reader’s Digest committed more than $60 million to support teacher preparation programs and recruitment for teachers of color. The initiatives that were developed in the next decade focused on recruiting teachers of color to work specifically in schools with a high population of students of color.
Today, more than half of the states have teacher recruitment policies or programs targeting underrepresented populations. Despite these ongoing reports, however, many commentators see little success, claiming that, if anything, the student-teacher diversity gap has widened.
In 2014, a majority of students entering U.S. public schools were of African-American, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American descent — a monumental first in U.S. history. Despite the growing number of students of color, the number of educators of color only has hovered around twenty percent.
Retrieved from https://www.apmreports.org/story/2017/08/28/why-so-few-black-male-teachers
To exacerbate the issue, educators of color also leave the education profession at a higher rate than their white counterparts. If teachers of color already make up a small share of the education workforce and leave the classroom in higher numbers, few ultimately become local and national education leaders.
To address this issue, we must create inclusive spaces in the schools, agencies, and organizations that value the rich diversity of our nation. We must also make empathy a critical component of every approach to develop culturally responsive schools. It is imperative we intentionally cultivate a leadership pipeline that reflects the racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds of our students. We can no longer stand aside and hope it’ll all work itself out nor can we sit hopelessly wringing our hands because we think it’s impossible. We need a proactive approach that centers collaboration and values strong relationships.
This article originally appeared in the Center for Collaborative Education’s blog. | https://medium.com/got-equity/heres-why-we-don-t-have-enough-educators-of-color-and-what-we-can-do-about-it-d9128c793275 | ['Carlon Howard'] | 2020-12-11 15:50:28.853000+00:00 | ['Equity', 'Teachers', 'Inclusion', 'Diversity'] |
Wireframes are becoming less relevant — and that’s a good thing | Over time I’ve found wireframes to be less and less useful, and I don’t think I’m alone. Because the term is somewhat loosely defined, it’s probably important to be specific. While there are many types of prototypes that examine levels of fidelity across various dimensions, I’d like to focus on the specific variant that most immediately comes to mind when hearing the word wireframe. It’s not a sketch or a fully realized mockup but rather the typical “middle” state —digital artifacts left intentionally unstyled and made to represent the “skeleton” of a full page in black and white. The prototypical wireframe attempts to be an accurate representation of layout and information architecture while intentionally avoiding high visual fidelity and sometimes high content fidelity as well.
Behold the drab, spindly splendor of a wireframe in its natural habitat
I’ve been surprised to hear wireframes are still posited as an essential step in the process of design. This attitude seems to be on the decline, but I’ve still heard everyone from early career designers to industry leading agencies insist on the necessity of a “wireframing phase”. The argument typically looks something like this:
⦁ Wireframes focus attention on usability instead of aesthetics. They prevent stakeholders derailing meetings over irrelevant details like button color, and they allow user testing to focus on interactions instead of visuals. ⦁ Wireframes are faster to create. They keep things conceptual and avoid the risk of getting too invested or attached to a particular direction. ⦁ Wireframes can be a tool for detailed documentation of interactions without the additional overhead of visual design.
That doesn’t mean that everyone actually makes wireframes, but when someone admits they don’t it’s often in a hushed tone and without a lot of eye contact. They would like to make wireframes. It’s just that the constraints of their organization, stakeholders, or project prevent that from always being possible. But the mindset that they are essential may be misguided. While I won’t deny that wireframes are ever useful, nowadays they’re valuable only in limited circumstances. And those circumstances are narrowing by the day. There are a number of shifts in industry practices that are contributing to this change and that are worth examining.
Shifting product development methodologies are changing how design gets done
Agile product development encourages less linear process. If you’re new to the idea of agile I wrote an article explaining it here. Instead of starting with foundational elements across an entire product and then building layers on top of that foundation, the focus has shifted to smaller, more frequent delivery of fully realized “vertical slices”.
A vertical slice also includes fully realized UI design, making it important to consider visuals, information architecture, and interactivity simultaneously. On an agile team, where your next iteration is coming in days or weeks rather than months or years, the extensive up-front mapping phase that so often gives birth to wireframes is less likely to have a place.
Lean UX is an accompanying process shift that is gaining traction as well. In Lean, heavy design artifacts are de-emphasized or omitted entirely in favor of directly collaborating on the product whenever possible. Lean also provides a rebuttal to the idea of wireframes as a documentation tool. It suggests that the layout of screens in an actual product can serve as their own documentation. Design artifacts you create can instead become more temporary items — to be put aside as soon as the information they contain exists (in an accessible way) within the actual product. Other relevant context might still be documented but only at or after the point of implementation.
Usability and information architecture don’t exist in a vacuum
At the risk of stating the obvious, the visual presentation of elements in an interface affects how they’re perceived. A drop-down that resembles a form field may have its function misinterpreted. A menu header that doesn’t stand out from a menu item may be missed. Color and contrast play huge roles in directing visual attention. If you do usability testing on a wireframe the test is going to lose a lot of its value when you ultimately change how everything looks. You’re also probably going to have to make even more layout changes at that point to better accommodate your visuals. Users might get fixated on visual elements, but they’re not wrong to do so, and making everything grey-scale doesn’t necessarily reduce that risk. Issues with usability or information architecture are better exposed through comprehension questions and task completion tests than verbal comments anyways. Input on a concept can be achieved with any level of fidelity as long as you set expectations well and pay attention to how you solicit feedback.
Wireframes are rarely effective for stakeholders
I get it. It can be incredibly frustrating to have a stakeholder get fixated on the color of a button or a piece of copy in a meeting. But by intentionally avoiding higher fidelity visuals and putting lorem ipsum everywhere are you really solving that problem? Or are you just deferring it? Do you like low fidelity because it makes things easier for people to understand and give input on? Or is the truth that it makes things harder for others to understand and that we like that because it allows us to lord our expertise over others and avoid criticism? If a stakeholder isn’t interested in commenting on the IA and cares more about other things closer to their expertise, then why are you trying to fight that? You’re the expert on information architecture, not them, and any changes needed to layout should become clear through testing with users.
It’s getting faster and easier to approximate high fidelity visuals
Years ago photoshop was the UI design king and everyone was in an arms race to see who could add the most detailed, photo-realistic texture to a given page. Back then there was a valid argument for the time saving benefits of wireframes, but today our tools are purpose built for UI design (Think Sketch, Adobe XD, or Figma) and make it significantly quicker and easier to manage and update styles globally. Changing layout “after” the visual style is “set” shouldn’t be any harder than changing it early. And for those at design-mature organizations the combination of design systems and component libraries supporting those systems pretty much remove any excuse. Even if you aren’t at at a mature organization you probably still have access to UI kits that match the UI frameworks available to your developers. It also helps that even the most visually complex aesthetics today are still relatively simple. If your button is just going to be a blue rectangle with round corners, then how much time are you really saving by intentionally making it grey?
Does wireframing ever make sense?
It can—in the right situation. For example, you might create wireframes because:
⦁ You really do have a product that will be visually complex (like a mobile game) and need to work out the interaction independent of an unavoidably long art process. Even if this is the case you can still do your best to approximate style.
⦁ You’re using them as an exercise to help someone learn about information architecture in isolation (hopefully a one-off rather than a recurring part of real product development).
⦁ You want to map out or test information architecture but have a dependency on someone else for visual design (not ideal!) or are limited in some way by the visual capabilities of the tools available to you, or by your own skill-set.
⦁ You’re in a dated waterfall or agency environment and don’t have yet have much autonomy over your process. This isn’t great, but may be outside of your control.
I’m sure there are plenty of other possible scenarios and exceptions, but I would argue that they are likely infrequent for most designers operating today. If you think of traditional wireframes as a tactic to be employed only when really suited for the problem, then you’ll probably find that they can often be avoided— and that’s OK. | https://seandexter1.medium.com/wireframes-are-becoming-less-relevant-and-thats-a-good-thing-e66b30724a27 | ['Sean Dexter'] | 2020-10-27 17:49:20.779000+00:00 | ['UX', 'Design Process', 'Web Design', 'User Experience', 'Design'] |
Nonbinarism as Linguistic Activism | Nonbinarism as Linguistic Activism
illustration by Ash Fisher-Tannenbaum
In the last few years, much to my delight, I’ve developed the magical power to grow facial hair. For a long time I couldn’t, and for various reasons most of my friends can’t. So it feels like a secret, exclusive skill. A cool trick my body can do.
Different people’s bodies have different abilities. Lots are superficial, like facial hair or the flexibility of being double jointed. Some are much more substantive, like being nearsighted or having the ability to give birth.
People have different needs and wants based on their body and its powers. You wouldn’t give beard-trimmers to someone who can’t grow a beard. But you also wouldn’t give beard-trimmers to someone with a beard who didn’t want to shave. Some people with breasts use bras, some people without breasts use bras, and many people with breasts don’t use bras. The size of your breasts, comfort, preference, and identity all play a role here.
Conversations about the blurriness between the two genders seem to elicit a sense of dystopian fear in some people: What happens if we forced everyone to take birth control pills? What if we forced everyone to pee in urinals? In actuality, no one wants that.
When we talk about “the two genders,” we utilize a powerful linguistic tool: binaries.
Binaries are one of the cornerstones of communicative language. We can only recognize “groups” in comparison to “individuals.” “Heat” only makes sense in the context of a world that also has “cold.” But all binary labels are relative. Seventy degrees is “hot” in the first summer days of New England, but would be a “cool” respite from the near one hundred degree days of Thailand during the same time of year. And even though we use the words “hot” and “cold” to comment on our comfort in a space, temperature is not the only defining quality of climate. Ninety humid degrees in the tropics actually dehydrates our bodies faster than one hundred dry degrees in the desert. But if I say “the desert is hotter than the beach today,” you might fairly assume that it would be more comfortable to exercise on the beach than in the desert. But you’d be wrong, tricked by my words.
While language gives us a way to communicate complex ideas, such as our comfort in a climate, it can also be limiting; once we have a word for something, it’s hard to resist seeing it as fixed and definite. Even though all binaries describe relatives, if I told you to picture a hot place, even without comparing it to a cold or less hot place, you’d probably be able to conjure an image (for me, it’s a desert — with a tumbleweed). Language trips us up when we forget that all words are context specific, and meaning does not exist on high in a vacuum.
There are contexts in which it can be useful to observe that some people have vaginas and others have penises (though it matters far less frequently than our culture brings it up). The problem is, culturally, when we say someone has a vagina, we often make many other assumptions: they can have children, periods, minimal body and facial hair, etc. We have been taught that if you have one of these traits, you should have all of them. I can grow facial hair, and so I am part of the overarching category “man,” and should have all the things that come with it (penis, deep voice, aggression, etc.). When we use the words “man” and “woman,” we are not just observing someone’s current physical traits, but making assumptions — which are often incorrect — about their hidden traits and body’s past and future.
There are groups of people with breasts who menstruate, but also groups without breasts who menstruate, and groups with breasts who don’t menstruate. The members of each of those groups could fall on either side of the boy//girl binary. Many of those people could even be cis (as in they identify and feel comfortable with the gender identity they were assigned at birth). Some cis men have larger breasts than some cis women. And while they might get teased for physically deviating from a norm, no one is kicking them out of their respective category of man/woman. In mainstream America, women with thick leg hair are not told that they aren’t women, just that they could be better women if they shaved their legs. By observing that someone has a “wrong” trait for their gender, we’re able to imagine an ideal, “correct” definition of that gender, through which we define and reinforce the gender binary.
Biological gender, or “sex,” then, is a limited and artificial concept which fails to capture the true shades of grey of the human bodily experience. But, because so many of us believe gender to exist as two rigid camps, we have made it real with the power of language.
In addition to our physical/biological misconceptions about gender/sex, our society has introduced a host of cultural traits: girls like princesses, girls like sewing; boys like soldiers, boys like science. We have raised people in two different worlds to the point where, growing up, I was literally unsure if there was a biological difference in the brains of the two genders because their thought patterns, interests, and social behaviors seemed to differ so starkly (a thoroughly debunked idea called “neurosexism”).
Today, I have a hard time crying because of the culture I grew up in. I have a hard time putting on makeup. Nothing about my body makes those things tricky (even if we’re talking about estrogen levels for crying — which, hey, don’t make assumptions about my estrogen levels). I have the urge to do both, but feel so much cultural shame and judgement around those habits that I have been conditioned, or socialized, to suppress the urge.
Socialization is the often unconscious lessons we learn while growing up that tell us how our culture expects us to behave. “Boys will be boys” is an erroneous idea because it implies a biological justification for people with penises to be cruel and inconsiderate. The idea of “toxic masculinity,” on the other hand, is undoubtably real; it observes that people raised as men are conditioned with certain harmful behaviors that people raised as women largely don’t learn. Once our language cemented the two different camps of “men” and “women,” our society began treating those two camps differently, and so a tangible behavioral difference was enforced between two largely arbitrary groups.
My friends and I often imagine a world where, regardless of our bodies and their special abilities, we were all socialized the same. Some of us could pee standing up, some of us could give birth, but we could all like sports and put on dresses. But we are not there today. We cannot wave a magic wand and ignore socialization. We have to actively work to unpack the toxically masculine and toxically feminine behaviors that we as individuals were raised with. We have to actively acknowledge and give space to those on the “other side” of the binary who have been raised with vastly different norms.
But will that be true for my kids, my grandkids? I honestly hope not, and I think we can move in the direction of a world without gendered socialization. What follows is a celebration of one tool that can help us chart that course. | https://medium.com/@kobyleff/nonbinarism-as-linguistic-activism-92c28116ef15 | [] | 2020-10-02 23:13:07.182000+00:00 | ['Nonbinary', 'Linguistics', 'Queer', 'Pronouns', 'Gender'] |
ドローン週報⑱ | 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/furuhashilab/%E3%83%89%E3%83%AD%E3%83%BC%E3%83%B3%E9%80%B1%E5%A0%B1%E2%91%B1-d09bbfb4ffe8 | ['Ran Matsuyama'] | 2020-11-16 06:02:12.136000+00:00 | ['Drones'] |
.Net Core Developer Roadmap in 2021 | How .NET 5 Can Make Your Life Better
.Net 5 will offer everything that you would expect from the .Net core while making it suitable for Mobile and IoT… | https://medium.com/developers-cafe/net-core-developer-roadmap-in-2021-7d3300006100 | ['Adem Zeina'] | 2020-10-30 18:58:22.940000+00:00 | ['Development', 'Dotnet', 'Roadmaps', 'Programming', 'Technology Trends'] |
A Inteligência Artificial está fadada a ser racista e sexista? | Is AI doomed to be racist and sexist?
Once upon a time, humanity was using bias to survive — to assess potential dangers and keep us safe from the big wide… | https://brasil.uxdesign.cc/a-inteligencia-artificial-esta-fadada-a-ser-racista-e-sexista-f32d6cefa9dc | ['Lia Rodrigues'] | 2020-07-20 19:20:09.867000+00:00 | ['Inteligencia Artificial', 'Bias', 'Preconceito', 'Ux Translations', 'UX'] |
Workswell is offering four different cameras for thermal drones | Type no. 1: Fully radiometrics thermal cameras
WIRIS Pro and WIRIS Pro SC are thermal cameras (or infrared cameras) for thermal drones used in the area of industrial inspections, technical diagnostics etc.
WIRIS Pro — thermal camera for industrial inspections
Type no. 2: OGI camera (Optical Gas Imaging camera)
GIS-320 is a optical gas imaging camera for UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles)
Thermal camera GIS-320 for optical gas imaging
Type no. 3: Security camera
WIRIS Security is a thermal camera for night vision drones, mostly used in the area of search and rescue.
WIRIS Security — thermal camera for night vision drones
Type no. 4: CWSI casmera
Our portfolio also includes a very special thermal WIRIS Agro R camera, which is designed for drones in the field of precision agriculture. This thermal camera responds to the issue of water management research but camera also include standard funtions of radiometrics thermal camera.
WIRIS Agro R camera designed for drones in the field of precision agriculture
Follow us on Twitter for more news in the area of thermal drones. | https://medium.com/@jansova/workswell-is-offering-four-different-cameras-for-thermal-drones-4b3a58f14b94 | ['Jan Sova'] | 2020-12-04 22:07:06.467000+00:00 | ['Tech', 'Thermal Camera', 'Drones', 'Technology', 'Engineering'] |
How I wrote my first Medium post. | I have wanted to share things on the web for a long time. I had ideas and several experiences to share. But I was quickly confronted to the challenges of formalizing, starting, organizing, or simply writing… I finally managed to bring this project to life and now I can share how I wrote my first post.
Photo by Adolfo Félix on Unsplash
I proceeded in 8 steps:
Write down every idea Write the introduction Write clear sentences Tell a story Re-read and adjust Publish Analyze and adjust regularly
Write down every idea
I always have a notebook with me (or I can use my phone) where I write down various ideas. I usually note the following things:
Topics that cross my mind and that I would like to write about
Ideas from others that make me react
First, I write them in bulk without specific organization. I do this quite often. In fact, as soon as I have an idea that comes to me.
After a while, I get enough material, usually on several topics. Then, when I have more spare time, I read my notes and I organize them in a digital notepad. For that, I use oneNote but you can use any other tool, or even just a notebook.
Once I’m there, I start writing step by step.
Write the introduction
Among my notes, I choose the theme that strikes me as the most interesting at the time, and I try to write a first version of my article’s introduction.
For this, I read or re-read several examples of introductions. This enables me to find inspiration and select styles or syntax that I like, but also to avoid those I do not like.
Write clear sentences
Well, now that I have an introduction, it’s time to write the rest.
For this, I re-read my notes and sort them out, using a mind-mapping for example. Sometimes I do several mind-maps when the subject is complex, or when there are several approaches.
I choose the structure that I like the most, the one that makes the most sense to me. Then I try to write detailed sentences for each branch of the mind-map. I often write several sentences with different style and I chose my favorite.
I re-read the elements that I have selected from time to time in order to refine them.
Tell a story
Now that I have well constructed and clear sentences to explain my ideas, I use them to build a consistent story. I regroup them into paragraphs and try to draw a structured summary by ideas/theme or timeline.
Once this work is done, I look for links between the sentences and write every necessary transition.
Here, my article is almost complete. I just need to read it one last time before publishing.
Re-read and adjustment
This step is sometimes very short but it is necessary (at least for me).
I re-read the whole article carefully to correct the spelling mistakes, and to make sure that everything is consistent. If I have the opportunity, I have my text re-read by other people.
I adjust my introduction if necessary and I also make some final arrangements to my text.
Publish
Well here it is, time to publish the text (it takes some courage)!
Analyze and adjust regularly
Once the article is published, the work is far from being finished. For a while (I use this “while” very loosely for now because of my lack of experience), I read the statistics and comments about the article.
Based on this, I correct and adapt the text and then republish it instantly.
Sometimes, following a content that strikes me, I make corrections, add images, links and republish.
Thank you for reading, good luck and see you soon … | https://medium.com/ideas-by-idean/how-i-wrote-my-first-medium-post-52a6fb15f949 | ['Thomas Valette'] | 2019-10-09 14:58:11.358000+00:00 | ['Médium', 'Methodology', 'Writing'] |
Space Ride | Credits — Pexels
“It doesn’t seem right to land over here,” said the blue creature to her friend.
It’s been five earth days, and COM-1 and KREI-3 are still travelling through deep space searching for the so-called “Earth.” They’ve just encountered a blue planet, but it looks very blue indeed. They could even see some faint but smudged white lines on it. What do you think it could be? Could it be the Earth? They have only enough fuel for checking out a few other planets. Why take the risk when there is no green on this planet?
We call COM-1 and KREI-3 as aliens on our planet. Wonder what they’ll call us as they are yet to find us. COM-1 is a blue creature, and she chose her lousy but smart friend KREI-3 as her partner. He is indeed brilliant but foolishly sarcastic.
COM-1 and KREI-3 had enrolled in a competition on their home planet. The competition is about finding an exoplanet. The winner gets a new rocket to travel in space. The spaceship that they possess right now is a MattWan 34. It’s 15 Earth years old. They got it for a cheap bargain. However, the new spaceship is state of the art MattWan 78, the most advanced vehicle. COM-1 has laid her eyes on it since its release, and she will do anything to win it. KREI-3 might just ruin her plans. He is a jokester, but at times, he proves himself to be extremely helpful. He won the Planetaria Award for his contribution to adding the humour element to a robot. If you were wondering, no the Planetaria Award is not equal to the Nobel Prize on the Earth. It is more like an Oscar for film critique. Yes, that Award does not exist.
KREI-3 finished eating a capsule when COM-1 finally found what they were looking for. There seemed to be a blue and green planet this time.
“We’ve found it!” exclaimed COM-1, and KREI-3 couldn’t believe his eyes.
He studied this extensive planet and said “Gosh, our planet is so much better. I feel like we can rule these Earthers.” KREI-3 was ecstatic, and he was sure that they were going to win the competition.
As they went closer to this round mass, strange metal items were visible. Here on Earth, we call them satellites and some others as space debris. They are plenty of them. On COM-1 and KREI-3’s planet, if there are metal objects around something, it is said to be infected with a computational disease. It is advised to stay away from something like that. It is their equivalent of the Earth’s viruses. It would be a massive disaster if they were to bring back disease to their home.
Now, they could not use Earth as their exoplanet discovery. This dejected COM-1 and KREI-3 to their core. They had intelligence that this planet had life, and they travelled huge distances to come over here. They only have fuel left to return now.
KREI-3 was adamant that they should go back. But COM-1 had other plans. She still insisted that they check this planet out. Something in her alien heart made her believe that they could find something here that they could take back to their home planet and win the competition. But KREI-3 thought otherwise.
He said, “But we don’t have enough capsules should something happen to us, and are put in isolation.” COM-1 felt irritated that she chose him as her partner. There is nothing else that they could do right now. It’s not worth the risk.
When they returned and reported their findings, COM-1 got a call from the superiors. She was excited. What if they had won? Both of them got down to the headquarters, but something, on the contrary, had happened. The superiors had told them that the Earth was a perfectly fine planet. The prospectus that they received had mentioned this. But who was supposed to read this part? KREI-3. And, what’s more? KREI-3 had deleted the path data to save up some space for his music. Now, they could never find the Earth again easily. That’s it. COM-1 was furious. They were forbidden to take part in any space programs or competitions for a year.
Sadly, a smart alien-like COM-1 had to suffer due to the mistakes made by the idle KREI-3. But if you think about it, they were saved from disease. I won’t say which one, because you obviously know about it. It’s still not known if it would infect them, but who knows? | https://medium.com/@sahiti.satti/space-ride-ddf90b0eb1ae | ['Sahiti Satti'] | 2020-12-21 06:32:20.993000+00:00 | ['Fiction', 'Aliens', 'Competition', 'Fiction Writing', 'Space'] |
Does Facebook Facial Recognition Violate the Law? Class Action Suit Moves Forward | The case against Facebook for use of biometric data is moving forward. An Illinois judge dismissed Facebook’s plea to toss it. The class action suit –ispotentially worth billions if successful. Illinois law can tag each violation with fines up to $5,000.
Illinois has a law called the Biometric Information Privacy Act. In short, the Act says businesses must get prior consent before collecting biometric data. Proponents argue that Facebook violates Illinois law by using facial recognition for photos.
If you are a Facebook user, you’ve no doubt had the experience where you go to post a picture and it somehow knows who is in it and suggests their name. The social network is accessing and storing the biometric data to accomplish this, which the suit says violates the Illinois law.
One of Facebook’s claims is that there has been no allegation of harm in the way it uses the data. Last month, however, an Illinois Appellate Court reversed a lower court ruling on a similar issue. A tanning salon in Illinois used fingerprint data and biometric identifiers for users to gain entry to the salon. The suit, Sekura v. Krishna Schaumburg Tan, Inc., claims the company stored the data, failed to provide disclosures and required written release, and disclosed the fingerprint information to a third-party vendor. The lower court had dismissed the suit on the grounds that there was no provable harm. The appellate court held that you can sue for a violation of the law without proving additional harm.
The Internet Association — which represents a range of some of the biggest names in tech — filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting Facebook. The organization worries about the chilling effect the case could have on future tech developments.
“Biometric technologies serve many useful purposes in our society — from providing new authentication features that enhance security (like the ability to unlock one’s phone with a fingerprint), to facilitating the organization and sharing of photographs (like the ability to quickly retrieve photographs stored in a private account), to promoting health and wellness (like allowing for digital patient check-ins at the emergency room)…These are applications that millions of people already enjoy, and that offer great potential in the future. It is in no one’s interest that the lawful development and use of biometric technologies be artificially chilled.” — The Internet Association in its court brief
In December, Facebook announced that it will notify users if someone uploads a photo with you in it (whether the user tags you or not). That gives users the option of tagging it themselves, refuse to be tagged, or report the photo. That’s still not prior notice in this case, though, because the facial recognition used to identify you had already occurred prior to the consent.
How To Disable The Tech
If you want to stop Facebook from looking for you with facial recognition, The Verge has a good article on the steps you need to take to disable the tech.
Facebook can also gather additional data from photos that are uploaded, according to PetaPixel:
location from geotag data
date
device ID of your phone
cellular/Internet service provider nearby Wi-Fi Beacons/cell towers (which can be used to triangulate locations)
battery level
cell signal strength
A portion of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act:
No private entity may collect, capture, purchase, receive through trade, or otherwise obtain a person’s or a customer’s biometric identifier or biometric information, unless it first: (1) informs the subject or the subject’s legally authorized representative in writing that a biometric identifier or biometric information is being collected or stored; (2) informs the subject or the subject’s legally authorized representative in writing of the specific purpose and length of term for which a biometric identifier or biometric information is being collected, stored, and used; and (3) receives a written release executed by the subject of the biometric identifier or biometric information or the subject’s legally authorized representative. No private entity in possession of a biometric identifier or biometric information may sell, lease, trade, or otherwise profit from a person’s or a customer’s biometric identifier or biometric information.
You can read the initial ruling as well as arguments by both sides here.
Tagging Image By Jimmy answering questions.jpg: Wikimania2009 Beatrice Murchderivative work: Sylenius (Jimmy answering questions.jpg) [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) or CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons | https://medium.com/digital-vault/does-facebook-facial-recognition-violate-the-law-class-action-suit-moves-forward-8ba1a97f8bfd | ['Paul Dughi'] | 2018-10-18 16:15:17.164000+00:00 | ['Tech', 'Facebook', 'Privacy', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Biometrics'] |
How to take care of hair for girls The most practical hair care methods to learn | How to take care of hair for girls The most practical hair care methods to learn Qtfn Dec 27, 2021·3 min read
Hair quality if not care, and often perm and coloring, which will create the hair becomes worse and worse, dry frizzy breakage and other kinds of So, how do girls care for hair daily? Hair care how often to do a good? What do women eat to nourish their hair? Girls who love beauty, may as well come to know about hair care methods!
How to care for hair for girls
1, the use of wide-tooth wooden or keratin comb, not easy to generate static electricity plastic comb. The natural downward direction of the hair section combing. Segmentation means combing the far end of the hair section first, and finally combing the hair near the proximal root, and can release the tangle.
2、It is recommended to try not to perm or dye your hair, or at least increase the interval time and reduce the number of hairdressing.
3, shampooing should face up, preferably not face down shampooing (face down shampooing hair is not easy to rinse clean, easy to breed dandruff, and a long time face down shampooing is likely to lead to facial skin relaxation, will also lead to the appearance of head lines)
4, after washing the hair will be wrung out (without vigorous wringing, slightly squeeze the hair can be), the conditioner wiped on the tips of the hair, do not wipe on the scalp, will clog the pores (can be wrapped on the insurance film). Stay on the head for 3 minutes (wrap the cling film stay for a quarter of an hour)
How often is it good to do hair care
Generally three to four days can care once. If your hair is more severely damaged, then once every three days is more appropriate, to do a deep level of care and moisturization. If the damage is average, four days to a week will do. In addition, if you do not choose to go to a professional hairdresser to do deep-level care, daily hair care, like conditioner can be used every day.
What women eat to nourish their hair
Eat more food rich in protein, such as milk, eggs, fish, etc. In addition, you can also eat vegetables and fruits with high vitamin content, such as spinach, celery, apples, black sesame, black beans, black rice and other black foods rich in minerals and anthocyanins, etc., are helpful for hair care.
Dietary nutrition is the basis of hair beauty, such as protein, vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E, vitamin C, B vitamins and minerals such as iodine, copper, zinc and calcium are closely related to hair quality. If you want to take care of your hair through diet, you can eat more food rich in the above nutrients.
Food rich in protein, such as milk, eggs, lean meat, fish, etc., because protein is the element of hair growth need to eat vegetables and fruits with high vitamin content, such as spinach, celery, apples, loquat, etc., because vitamins can promote hair growth, make hair luster natural; need to eat food containing zinc, such as animal liver, dried fruit food, because zinc can improve hair tissue, enhance hair elasticity and luster.
Black foods such as black sesame, black beans and black rice are rich in minerals and anthocyanins, which can make hair beautiful; animal foods such as beef, eggs and milk, which are rich in high quality protein and minerals, are also beneficial to hair beauty. | https://medium.com/@qtfnhair/how-to-take-care-of-hair-for-girls-the-most-practical-hair-care-methods-to-learn-f374ecfbd468 | [] | 2021-12-27 09:57:07.511000+00:00 | ['Hair', 'Hair Salon', 'Hair Care', 'Hair Loss'] |
‘Less is Now’ | In an era where brands, content providers, news outlets and tech all compete for our oversaturated, tired attention, “less is more” is a mantra that comes in like a giant breath of fresh air.
In the spirit of keeping that true, I’ll go straight to the point: I am 29 days into my 30-day decluttering challenge and I just can’t get enough of it.
Here in the UK, this is our third lockdown and one many of us seem to struggle with most. And with very few distractions around, I decided to sink into it (challenge accepted!) and find treasure troves within.
Firstly, things I found really help include:
A structured routine, with a commitment to kick-start each day with self-care — physical and mental. Even if it’s only a 10mins stretch.
Keeping real about how I’m actually doing and feeling. Here goes: “how are you today?” — “so-so/struggling/I feel like shit”. The simple, liberating truth.
Intentionally directing my mind to achievements and gratitude, as I wrote a few weeks back.
But what has been novel and exciting to me started after watching the documentary “Less is Now”, as an experiment into Minimalism.
Looking inwards.
What I am exploring here, is how to regain control of my home — and life. Decluttering (we do need so little to live happy, healthy lives) by examining and deciding what actually brings value to my life.
For all those who have said at some point “we have so much stuff we don’t need!” you will love this. Everyone who “feels stuck” or heavy, tired, unmotivated — this is for you.
Letting go, one step at a time.
A powerful concept which resonates in KonMari (only keep what sparks joy), sustainable consumption (summarised by Vivienne Westwood as “reduce, choose well, make it last, quality not quantity”) as well as Buddhist values.
We’re so used to accumulating things as proof of social status, wealth, success or sadly at times, our own value.
Decluttering goes much further when we let go of our attachment to things—or thoughts, feelings, plans or the way we think plans should unfold — and just let them be. | https://byrslf.co/less-is-now-fd3586b367cf | ['Allie Lambert'] | 2021-05-08 09:40:37.509000+00:00 | ['Minimalism', 'Sustainability', 'Personal Growth', 'Decluttering', 'Beyourself'] |
The Imbecile | The Imbecile
A story of ideological possession
The Young Joseph Stalin
I first met the mild mannered Poe at the bus-stop near the University where where we both worked. We had a lot in common. He was a teacher and a writer — an intellectual of sorts. He was from a small town in Ireland and we talked about Irish writers like Joyce and Becket.
It turned out we were neighbours, and glad to meet and talk ideas, we went out to the pub for a few pints. I told him that I had been conceived in Dublin and had an Irish grandmother, and I liked to think that my Irish roots ran deep. We got along like a house on fire. In the dim light I saw Poe’s true Irish colours — he could certainly drink me under the table.
I first pegged Poe as a typical leftist when he started talking politics—which weren’t really my thing. He talked about American imperialism, class struggle, the Palestinian occupation—the usual grab bag of leftist concerns. However, there was something different about Poe: he didn't look like the usual hipster leftist but more like an old school revolutionary, with his tweed cap, red tie, and suit jacket.
The conversation took a bizarre turn when he began to talk about Joseph Stalin in glowing terms—Stalin the statesman, Stalin the poet he called him. The 5 to 60 million corpses (take your pick) were merely imperialist lies, he told me. The Gulags were actually nice reform camps.
Poe had some weird ideas—to understate the case. His version of history was quite different than anyone else’s I knew—he lived in an alternative universe. Historical record didn’t really exist in his world — all that was made up by the imperialists. He believed himself to be in possession of the truth, the real story.
Where did he get his alternative information? I wondered. How could a smart guy who had read Michel Foucault and who spoke several languages really believe this stuff? What caused him to be engaged in such diabolical research? His whole world seemed quite intricate and uncanny to me, like a dark Alice in Wonderland.
After a couple of pints we took the conversation over to his place, and he pulled out the Irish Whiskey. We talked late into the night, and I am ashamed to say I got totally wasted that night—in a way I hadn’t been since I was a student. I’m sure I made a pretty sorry impression on his attractive young lawyer wife, when she came home and found her husband’s new friend passed out on the couch.
The wife was kind enough to drive me home, and I found out that she was not a ‘revolutionary’ like Poe but a seemingly ordinary woman. She was a bit concerned about her husbands revolutionary fervour. Therapy might be a good thing for Poe, she told me. They had a young boy who was four years old, and I imagine she was worried about his future.
My memory of that night is a bit wobbly, but I do recall a dark and slightly comical feeling rising up in me when Poe talked about ‘the true science of socialism’. Perhaps my puking in the toilet may have been more than a just a reaction to the cheap whiskey. There was something unwholesome about Poe—a dark aura that surrounded him. | https://andrewpgsweeny.medium.com/the-imbecile-dd3718868688 | ['Andrew Sweeny'] | 2020-06-05 09:13:51.809000+00:00 | ['Literature', 'Ideology', 'Short Story', 'Psychology', 'Politics'] |
Fragile Heart | Apart from the fact that we believe we are never wrong,
We also emphasise that come what may, we’ll deal with it, we’re strong!
The point is not everything demands to be fought for or explained or accepted,
The beauty lies in letting go when required and holding in when emotions are reflected.
But how do we know when to choose one path from the other,
Some say “Just leave things to the heart,let it decide for you, don’t shudder!”
The problem here is, we’ve all faced the fragility of our hearts,
We’ve seen things get messy,complicated and horrifying,amongst other emotions on the cards.
Sometimes its someone in particular or sometimes it is just a place which brings back so many memories,
The images line up one by one, how much ever we try moving out of the galleries.
Then you want us to trust the heart with all major decisions, believe in its power to be unbiased and fair,
The heart is too messed up with issues of its own,trying hard to fix broken hopes,infact , too busy to care. | https://medium.com/@scribbles-and-wobbles/fragile-heart-4cb2d83e4ed2 | ['Shweta Choudhury'] | 2021-04-09 15:13:42.866000+00:00 | ['Heart', 'Break', 'Human Behavior', 'Emotions', 'Fragile'] |
Giri Devanur Of reAlpha: Five Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Became A CEO | Giri Devanur Of reAlpha: Five Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Became A CEO reAlpha Dec 27, 2021·2 min read
Giri Devanur is the founder and CEO of reAlpha, a cutting-edge technology company with a plan to empower everyone to invest in the $1.2 trillion short-term rental market. Prior to founding reAlpha, he served as the President and CEO of Ameri100 Inc. and scaled Ameri from $0 to $50M in revenue and completed the IPO on Nasdaq in under 4 years. Giri was awarded the E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year in 2017 and authored a book titled “Nothing to Nasdaq”.
Giri has more than two decades of experience in the information technology industry. He successfully founded WinHire Inc. and Ivega Corporation. Ivega merged with TCG in 2004, creating a 1,000+ person focused differentiator in the IT consulting space.
Giri has an M.S. in Technology Management from Columbia University and a B.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of Mysore, India. He also attended Executive Education programs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Law School.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
I have been an entrepreneur in spirit for a long time. I studied in a high school in remote India. There I was running a newspaper route with my brother. I realized that early on, I wanted to be an entrepreneur and run my own businesses. Then when I was 15 , I saw the first computer and immediately I knew I wanted to be in the computer industry. I did my bachelor of engineering in computer science. After that, I took my first flight ever in life straight to LA with only a few dollars in my pocket and started my entrepreneurial journey in the US!
Read more… | https://medium.com/@realpha/giri-devanur-of-realpha-five-things-i-wish-someone-told-me-before-i-became-a-ceo-429dde1404fe | [] | 2021-12-27 09:20:52.279000+00:00 | ['Real Estate', 'Real Estate Investments', 'Airbnb'] |
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