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Privacy-Preserving Social Login with Hypersign | Introduction
Access to websites today, is increasingly filtered through what are called ‘Social Logins’ — Sign in with Facebook, Google, Amazon and so on. These are becoming an increasingly common mechanism for authentication to provide increased levels of of security and convenience for both, the website [also known as service providers]as well as the users.
The benefits to both parties are numerous such as, enabling service providers to quickly onboard users without requiring them to go through cumbersome registration processes whilst offering a smooth, safe and familiar user experience whilst freeing the users from wasting precious time entering personal details over and over for each website they visit. Moreover, the users are also saved from remembering multiple usernames and passwords to each website they need access to.
Finally the cherry on the cake goes to the service providers as they get access to personal user data directly from social login providers (also called Identity Providers or IDP) to build user profiles in their internal databases.
However, not all is hunky dory in the world of Social Logins, theres two major challenges that have been identified with this mechanism. Most of the social logins providers [like Facebook, Google amazon] rely on password-based authentication; and we are well aware of the problems with passwords, such as forgetting passwords, password hacks and so on.
The identity provider stores the personal data of millions of users and that becomes a honeypot for hackers.in addition, the identity provider also has the ability to [intentionally or unintentionally] misuse user data without the their consent.
Data mining is a process to turn raw data into useful information. By using software to look for patterns in large batches of data, businesses can learn more about their customers to develop more effective marketing strategies, increase sales and decrease costs. Data mining depends on effective data collection, warehousing, and computer processing.
Data mining involves exploring and analysing large blocks of information to glean meaningful patterns and trends. It can be used in a variety of ways, such as database marketing, credit risk management, fraud detection, spam email filtering, or even to discern the sentiment or opinion of users.
The Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal is a public matter and not really a secret. Millions of Facebook users were compromised by Cambridge Analytica, predominantly to be used for political advertising by accessing user data and injecting messaging and advertising to sway voters.
Imagine the of impact this has on our lives, it does not just affect a service provider but can even dictate the future outcomes of a nation and it is clear that this phenomena is here to stay.
Cambridge Analytica harvested around 1.5 million Facebook users personal information without their knowledge or consent. This is a serious issue for conscious users who are concerned about privacy and protection of their personal data as they have to fully trust Identity Service Providers on how they store and manage data.
“Facebooks knows that buying a ticket using ‘MakeMyTrip’ or even shopping on ‘Amazon’, and that becomes a privacy concern for users”.
The Enterprise and Social Logins
When it comes to businesses, social logins are not the most popular form of verification as it does not clearly identify the person accessing the sites. This can be due to various reasons such as a user who has shared their credentials with a family member and now the family member is also using that credential. In another scenario, the credential may have been compromised and now and the hacker is logging into the website. Enterprises need to be very clear about who is accessing their applications as it is mandated by law for them to know their users.
In order for the enterprises to be compliant with the laws of a country and allow users to access their sites; there needs to be a minimum criteria that needs to be satisfied. The law dictates that in order for a user to be able to lawfully access a business’s website, there needs to be at-least three information criteria that needs to be fulfilled to allow a user to log into a website:
What you know ? — There must be a ‘shared secret’ [like a password] between the user and the business. What you have ? — The user needs to prove that they really are the real owner of the the log in credentials. Who you are ? — Using personalised verification tools like biometrics or even facial recognition to allow authentication.
Additionally, the business also have to add another layer of authentication such as OTPs (One Time Passwords) for increased security.
There are other risks involved for business such as simply way too many users trying to access the IDP system causing it to crash as it is unable to support a large number of verification requests at once.
There are a multitude of challenges related to authentication, specially related to social logins and its cost to the service providers — a user loss is a loss in business.
Considering a a user might not be able to use the service if they are not able to authenticate to the IDP. Imagine an e-commerce site where a user wants to log in to shop, however is unable to, due to some reason or the other, if the user is unable to log in, how much can it impact the user experience and consequently the business ?
Problem Statement
There are two sides to the story:
Problem for the End-user :
Control : Users have no control over their personal data. Although users create their own credentials, the actual data resides with the IDPs which gives them the ability to misuse user data.
: Users have no control over their personal data. Although users create their own credentials, the actual data resides with the IDPs which gives them the ability to misuse user data. Consent : These IDPs more often than not, do not have the consent of the user before sharing their data. i.e. case of Cambridge Analytica.
: These IDPs more often than not, do not have the consent of the user before sharing their data. i.e. case of Cambridge Analytica. Tracking: IDP providers can even track where and what user is doing
Problem for the Service provider :
High trust : The Service providers have to trust IDP with how they store and manage their users’ data.
: The Service providers have to trust IDP with how they store and manage their users’ data. Too much dependency: The provider has to be dependent on the Issuer because the issuer needs to be online when a user trying to access the provider’s system.
There has to be a concrete solution to these kinds of problems, where such entities who do not respect the privacy and have no intention to protect user data.
On the flipside, not all identity providers are evil, they ask for user information in order to provide a better user experience, for example, no registration required every time a user access a new application.
It is not that we can remove the IDP completely (that’s what we had right? before the times of the SSO [Single Sign On]). The role of IPDs is crucial since they verify data and as a result, the service provider gets pre-verified data hence both SP and user need to go through the verification process again. But the question is :
“Can we provide a seamless user experience whilst keeping better security and privacy measures in mind?”
Hypersign
Hypersign is a privacy-preserving protocol to protect user data and mitigate risks of data breaches. The protocol built using the latest technology stacks like advanced Public Key Cryptography and Blockchain to provide secure, scalable, and tamperproof solutions to the end-user as well as the service provider. The Hypersign protocol works on the concept of the Issuance-verification paradigm which can be fit into many different use cases. One such use case is identity and access management.
Most of the concepts are self-explanatory in the above figure. Notice, the user directly shares his data (step 5) with the service providers, from the user-agent (such as mobile device), as opposed to earlier where IDP used to share that. This gives full control to the user about his data. Moreover, this data is verified by IDP (step 2) hence the provider can trust the data as long as he trusts the provider. Finally, data are cryptographically signed not just by the issuer but also by the provider (steps 2 and 4) which gives a guarantee about the data authenticity and integrity to the provider.
Hypersign-Superhero integration for Single Sign-On
Although Hypersign comes with its own mobile authenticator app, we wanted to prove that how easily the protocol can be implemented with existing solutions so that they can leverage the benefits of Hypersign protocol in their ecosystem without making any changes. Hence we integrated with Superhero.
What is Superhero?
Superhero is a decentralized social networking web application built on top of AeTernity blockchain. In Superhero, a user can make posts and curate others’ posts if they like using cryptocurrency. Think of Facebook on the blockchain with a tipping feature instead of likes. Because Superhero is a decentralized application, it comes with a Superhero mobile wallet where an end-user can store their private key use it to sign transactions on the blockchain when they curate any content.
Architecture
Let us understand the above architecture with the user journey below.
User journey
Once Hypersign is integrated, two new features get added to the Superhero wallet, profile, and credentials. A user downloads the wallet and enters his details on the profile page. The userData goes to the Superhero server.
HOME PAGE
PROFILE PAGE
The Superhero server verifies the user-data, say by sending an email or sending OTP on phone depending on what data needed to be verified. In this step, the Superhero server acts as a stateless server — meaning it does not store the user data . Based on this data, the Superhero server issues a cryptographically signed document (called SuperheroAuthCredential ) to the user via email.
— meaning it the . Based on this data, the Superhero server issues a cryptographically signed document (called ) to the user via email. The end-user downloads SuperheroAuthCredential from his email into the mobile app by scanning a QR code. Further, the end-user can view the credential detail in the app itself.
CREDENTIAL LIST PAGE
CREDENTIAL DETAIL PAGE
Now, whenever the end-user wants to authenticate himself into a website, he can use this credential to be able to login into the website using a QR code scanning mechanism. He can further use the same and different credentials to login into more than one website hence using an SSO environment. Take a look at the figure below.
BEFORE LOGIN
AFTER LOGIN
Key differentiator
Conclusion
We eliminated passwords, so no password related problems at all.
Users now being able to share the verified data directly with the service provider. Hence privacy is protected .
. The IDPs verifies user data and provide credentials without storing any user information hence data is protected as the IDP system can not become a honey pot for hackers.
as the IDP system can not become a honey pot for hackers. The user still be able to log in even though the IDP system is down or not working as the issuer can verify the issued credentials on its own hence the system is scalable .
. No multi-factor authentication complexity is required because the private key in a wallet does answers the question of What I have?. Further, if biometric is implemented in the mobile app then it also answers the question Who I am?. Hence the system is secured .
. Finally, a user feels confident in using the authentication mechanism, hence the system is trustworthy.
— — — — — -
Follow us
Telegram: https://t.me/hypersignchain
Twitter: https://twitter.com/hypersignchain
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
Hypersign is a product of Hypermine Labs
Authors:
Vikram Bhushan
Vishwas Anand
Irfan Khan
About Hypermine:
Hypermine is an avant-garde technology and research organization that is dedicated to building trust and transparency in the real world.
Using ‘Distributed Ledgers’ as our core technology coupled with ‘Machine Learning’, we are creating digital economies to create a new world for enterprise, government, and consumers.
Our vision is to create a world where privacy is a fundamental right, where our data is secure and belongs to us. A global currency that has real value; where piracy does not exist and freedom of expression is encouraged. Where wealth is shared to reduce poverty and all governance is transparent and trusted to make life better for everyone.
This document is copyright and belongs to Hypermine ©, 2020.
All Rights Reserved.
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#authentication #verification #digitalsignature #authorization #decentralization #rsa #encryption #blockchain #bitcoin #cryptocurrency #crypto #btc #ethereum #defi #crossfi #bitcoinmining #money #trading #business #bitcoinnews #bitcoins #investment #cryptocurrencies #coinbase #blockchaintechnology #litecoin #entrepreneur #forextrader #cryptonews #cryptotrading #eth #bitcoincash #invest #binaryoptions #investing #trader #binance #bhfyp #identity #digitalidentity #securitycamera #programming #seguridad #military #it #cctvcamera #alarm #cybercrime #love #camera #iot #ethicalhacking #secure #instagood #safe #sicurezza #safetyfirst #closeprotection #hackers #userdataprotection #dataprotection #securityservices #a #network #innovation #software #tactical #networking #privatesecurity #selfdefense #coding | https://medium.com/@vikrambanand/privacy-preserving-social-login-using-hypersign-b9be82b8a8e0 | ['Vikram Anand'] | 2020-11-23 10:37:41.110000+00:00 | ['Ssi', 'Identity', 'Authentication', 'Sso', 'Facebook'] |
Fermat’s little theorem | Part 1: Progressions and Powers
Every prime number measures infallibly one of the powers minus one of any progression
Fermat calls a “progression” what is nowadays known in French known as a “suite géométrique”, and in English still known as a “geometric progression”, that is to say, a “sequence of numbers where each term after the first is found by multiplying the previous one by a fixed, non-zero number called the common ratio.” For example, “2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc.” is a progression of ratio 2, “3, 9, 27, 81, etc.” is a progression of ratio 3.
If we use the convention that progressions start from their ratio r, we can see that the n-th element of any such progression is r to the power n, or the n-th power of ratio r. For example, the third element of the progression of ratio 2 is 8 = 2³ or the third power of 2, and for the progression of ratio 3, it is 27 = 3³, the third power of 3.
When Fermat mentions a given n-th “power of any progression”, he therefore means a given n-th “element” of a geometric progression.
If we stack progressions vertically in ascending ratio order, we can get a better sense of what Fermat’s little theorem’s first fragment means:
A table of geometric progressions. Each row reads the first 6 powers of one of the first 10 geometric progressions, each column reads the n-th power of all first 10 progressions. Fermat states that for each prime number, there exists a column of this table such that the column’s values minus one are multiples of that prime
Fermat states that “every prime number measures one of the powers minus one of any progression”, that is to say, for every prime number, there exists a column of this table such that all numbers of that column minus one are multiples of that prime. For instance, in column 6, the sixth powers minus one are: 63 — 728 — 4,095 — 15,624 — 46,655 — 117,648 — 262,143 — 531,440 — 999,999, which are multiples of prime number 7 — with the exception of the sixth power minus one from the progression of 7 (117,648) (see NB). Hence for prime 7, there does exist a column of the table such that 7 divides almost all powers minus one.
NB: the accurate statement that Fermat should have made, is that “every prime number measures one of the powers minus one of any progression”… with the exceptions of progressions whose ratios are a multiple of the given prime,(e.g. for prime 7, progressions 7, 14, 21, etc.). This is “fixed” in the modern formulation, specifying that “if p is a prime and a is any integer not divisible by p, then a ^ (p − 1) − 1 is divisible by p.”
Part 2: Primes minus one
…the exponent of said power is a sub-multiple of the given prime minus one; and, after one has found the first power that satisfies the question, all powers whose exponents are multiples of the exponent of the first one satisfy similarly the question.
In the second half of his proposition, Fermat posits that powers which exhibit this behaviour are sub-multiples of the prime minus one. For example, for prime 7, candidate powers are 2, 3, or 6. Powers 2 and 3 do not verify the property of having their values minus 1 divisible by 7 (e.g. 9²-1=80 is not divisible by 7), but power 6 does (as shown in Part 1). Power 6 is therefore “the first power that satisfies the question”, and Fermat goes on to say that as a result, all multiples of 6 also verify the property that their values minus one are divisible by 7 (e.g., n¹²-1 should be divisible by 7 for all n other than multiples of 7).
This means that, according to Fermat, the prime minus one always verifies the proposition: indeed, if at least one sub-multiple of the prime minus one is valid, and the multiples of that solution are all valid too, then the prime minus one is either the first valid exponent, or a multiple of the first valid exponent, hence valid itself.
As a result, the theorem can be reformulated as:
(A) Given a prime p, the (p-1)-th power minus one of any progression (except those whose ratio is a multiple of p) is divisible by p. (B) If p-1 is not prime, then one or more of p-1’s sub-multiples may share the same property. (C) Multiples of exponents found in (A) and (B) also share the property that their powers are divisible by p.
Several proofs of (A) exist for example on Wikipedia. We can on the other hand easily prove (C) here: if aⁿ-1 ≡ 0 [mod p] for all integers a not divisible by p, then given a multiple n ·m of n, we have (aᵐ)ⁿ-1≡ 0 [mod p] too, since aᵐ is another integer not divisible by p. (B) requires that we find one and only one instance where sub-multiples of the prime minus one indeed verify the same property… but, I am unable to find or build such an example. Nevertheless, the fact that Fermat thought it important to mention that possibility seems in my mind to nicely foreshadow the work of Euler more than a century later and that of Carmichael in the 20th century (more on this thought in Part 4).
At this point we are mostly done deciphering Fermat’s original statement. One might wonder however, whether the relationship identified in (A) is anything special, that is, whether it only occurs for primes, or in fact happens for most numbers, which would make the proposition a lot less interesting. With a computer, we can empirically answer that question by calculating a table of the first n powers modulo n+1 of the first m progressions, similar to what we did in Part 1.
This is the same table as the one from Part 1, modulo the column’s (power + 1). For example, line 4, column 5, contains 4⁵ mod 6 = 1024 mod 6 = 4.
Patterns emerge: in each column n, we see the same sequence of n numbers repeated vertically, separated by zeros every n+1 rows: those zeros appear where the progression’s ratio is a multiple of the power + 1. As a result, the bloc of numbers under the first border of zeros (coloured yellow) is repeated between the first and second wall of zeros (coloured green), and again between second and third one, etc. In the columns for powers 1, 2, 4, 6, the only value other than 0 is always 1. They are the columns for the primes 2, 3, 5, 7, an encouraging indication that proposition (A) is predominantly true for primes indeed.
Replicating the above chart with more powers and progressions, with a coloured scale to represent numbers, we get the following chart: | https://medium.com/biffures/fermats-little-theorem-18da28ad5e34 | ['Cédric Bellet'] | 2020-11-22 12:31:23.163000+00:00 | ['Bitwise series', 'Rsa', 'Bitwise', 'Encryption', 'Mathematics'] |
Los afro-novohispanos en el siglo XVIII: su rol frente a las Reformas borbónicas y los antecedentes del movimiento independentista | in Change Your Mind Change Your Life | https://medium.com/@eduardoaguirremercado/los-afro-novohispanos-en-el-siglo-xviii-su-rol-frente-a-las-reformas-borb%C3%B3nicas-y-los-5fd14e1e8083 | ['Eduardo Aguirre'] | 2020-09-24 15:41:48.462000+00:00 | ['Historia', 'México', 'Español'] |
5 Elemental Temples Of India (Panch Bhoota Sthalam) | Pancha Bhoota or Pancha Maha-Bhoota, five elements out of which this whole creation came into existence. These elements are Prithvi (Earth), Jal (Water), Agni (Fire), Vayu (Air), Akasha/Ether (Space). Each element has a different characteristic and it accounts for a very different faculty of human experience. According to Ayurveda, the human body is made up of these five elements.
Pancha Bhoota Sthalam (Pancha indicates “five,” Bhoota means “Elements,” and Sthala means “Place”) refers to the five temples dedicated to Lord Shiva. Lord Shiva is worshipped for many reasons all over India. However, in South India, He is worshipped as the presiding deity of the five elements of Nature, and also called as Bhootapati or Bhootnath.
Na | Ma | Shi | Va | Ya — these five syllables indicate the five elements (known as Bhoota in Sanskrit).
The five Shiva temples, each of which represents one of the five elements of Nature. All of these temples are located in the Southern part of India and each temple has a unique story to tell with a distinct spiritual essence. Here is a small attempt to take you on an imaginary tour of the five temples, till you get the opportunity to visit them life-size.
1 — Ekambareswarar Temple (Element — Earth) (Kanchipuram, Tamil nadu)
(Image Source)
In the Ekambareshwarar temple, Lord Shiva is represented by a Lingam made out of sand to depict the Earth element. This is also known as Prithvi Lingam. Ekambareshwarar means Lord of the Mango Tree.
Attractions of the temple -
It houses 1008 Shiva lingam idols and, believed to be built by Raja Krishna Deva Raya.
There is a mango tree inside the temple that is said to be more than 3500 years old.
It has one of the tallest Gopurams (monumental ornate gateway tower) in South India, at 190 feet.
Having been in existence since at least 600 AD, the Ekambareshwarar temple is one of the most ancient temples in India.
The temple is the tenth-largest temple in India, spread over 23 acres.
2 — Jambukeswarar Temple — (Element — Water) (Thiruvanaikaval, Trichy, Tamil Nadu)
(Image Source)
The Jambukeshwarar Temple in Trichy depicts the water element. Here, Lord Shiva is worshipped in the form of Appu Lingam (a water Lingam). Jambukeswaram, a place filled with Jambu trees (rose apple) — this is another name for Tiruvanaikkaval. In the shrine of the temple, a stream of water flows under the Lingam. This engulfs the Lingam with water, embodying the water element.
Attractions of the temple -
It is said that the stream of water below the Appu Lingam never dries up.
It is the thirteenth-largest temple in India, spread over 18 acres.
The temple idols are installed opposite to each other — Such temples are known as Upadesa Sthalams.
Temple was built by Kocengannan (Kochenga Chola), one of the early Cholas, around 1,800 years ago.
3 — Arunachalesvara Temple (Element — Fire) (Annamalai Hills, Thiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu)
(Image Source)
The Arunachaleswarar Temple depicts the Fire element bestowed by Shiva and is represented by the Agni Lingam. The Arunachaleshwarar Temple is one of the most visited and revered pilgrim centres in India. The Agni Lingam explains the mythics of life — duty, virtue, self-sacrifice and finally liberation by and through ascetic life at the end of Agni Kalpa. The Arunachaleswarar deity is said to bless seekers with the light of knowledge, a cleansing of karmic impressions, and positive energy.
Attractions of the Temple -
Every full moon, thousands of pilgrims perform the Girivalam, which is a form of worship done by the circumambulation of the Arunachala hill. This is a 14-km long walk. The legend is that this walk washes away sins, fulfils desires, and gives one freedom from the cycle of birth and death.
The temple has four Gopurams, one on each side. The highest of these is called Rajagopuram, which is 217 feet in height and is the third-largest in India.
On the entrance of the temple, there is a 1000 pillar hall. These pillars are carved with scriptures of the naik period and with some divine images.
4 — Srikalahasti Temple (Element — Air) (Srikalahasti, Andra Pradesh)
(Image Source)
Located on the banks of the Swarnamukhi River, the Kalahastheeshwara Temple depicts the Air element. Lord Shiva is worshipped at this temple in the form of Vayu Lingam, representing the wind. There is a lamp inside the inner sanctum that is constantly flickering despite the presence of air inside. The Vayu Lingam can be observed to move even when the priests close off the entrance to the main deity room, which does not have any windows. The Lingam is white and is considered Swayambhu, or self-manifested.
Attractions of the Temple -
The temple is famous for its Rahu-Kethu poojas. It is believed that the ill-effects of manifestation due to the positioning and movements of the planets Rahu and Kethu can be warded off when this particular Pooja is performed with utmost devotion.
It is said that the priests never touch the Vayu Lingam of the Kalahastheeshwara temple with their hands.
At this place, Lord Shiva is believed to have given liberation to an elephant, serpent and spider who were great devotees of Lord Shiva lingam located at this place.
5 — Thillai Nataraja Temple (Element — Akash/Ether) (Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu)
(Image Source)
The Thillai Nataraja Temple in Chidambaram worships the Ether (Sky) element, the subtlest of the five elements. Lord Shiva is worshipped here in his formless form in the Thillai Nataraja Temple. The word Chidambaram may be derived from chit, meaning “consciousness”, and ambaram, meaning “sky” (from aakasam or aakayam); it refers to the chidaakasam, the sky of consciousness, which is the ultimate aim one should attain according to all the Vedas and scriptures.
Attractions of the Temple -
Shiva is represented by an anthropomorphic idol rather than the Lingam. The temple also worships Lord Shiva in the form of a Lingam made out of crystal and in his formless form (represented by an empty room).
The gold-roofed stage is the sanctum sanctorum of the Chidambaram temple and houses the Lord in three forms -
1) — The “form” — the anthromorphological form as an appearance of Lord Nataraja, called the Sakala thirumeni.
2) — The “semi-form” — the semi-anthropomorphological form as the Crystal linga of Chandramouleswarar, the Sakala niskala thirumeni.
3) — The “formless” — as the Space in Chidambara Rahasyam, an empty space within the sanctum sanctorum, the Nishkala thirumeni. | https://medium.com/@deepanshpalawat/5-eelemental-temples-of-india-panch-bhoota-sthalam-652dc81176b2 | ['Deepansh Palawat'] | 2020-12-06 13:07:35.611000+00:00 | ['Mindfulness', 'Water', 'Earth', 'Fire', 'India'] |
Introduction to Neural Networks | When to use the Neural Network?
Let’s assume we want to solve a problem where you are given some set of images and you have to build an automated system that can categories each of those images to its correct label.
The problem looks simple but how do we come with some logic using raw pixel values and target labels. We can try comparing pixels and edges but we won’t be able to come with some idea which can do this task effectively or say the accuracy of 90% or more.
When we have this kind of problem where we have high dimensional data like Images and we don’t know the relationship between Input(Images) and the Output(Labels), In this kind of scenario we should use Neural Networks.
What is the Neural network?
Artificial neural networks, usually simply called neural networks, are computing systems vaguely inspired by the biological neural networks that constitute animal brains. An ANN is based on a collection of connected units or nodes called artificial neurons, which loosely model the neurons in a biological brain
A neural network is a set of neurons stacked in a way one after the other such that the neural network learns the relationship between the input and the output variable. It can solve all kinds of problems like classification, regression, or generative problems like next word prediction and Image captioning.
We already have a lot of algorithms in machine learning like SVM, logistic regression, linear regression…so many more which also do the same thing i.e they also try to learn the relationship between input and output variable, so why neural networks?
Why are Neural Networks used over Traditional Machine learning?
Traditional ML algorithms are good and they are not computed intensive But they do not work well on high dimensional data unstructured data such as images, audio, or text.
Traditional algorithms are still the building blocks of neural networks but they do not capture the relationship as good as neural networks. The neural network can learn any complex relationship given enough data and proper compute power.
Now that we know when to use a neural network, We can start exploring the components and how these things work.
What are the components of a Neural Network?
A Neural network has some basic components which are:
Neurons or layers Loss function Optimizer
What is a Neuron?
A Neuron is the building block of neural networks. A neuron has weights and bias for input that is fed to it.
Let’s assume we have a problem statement where we have a classification problem where we a set of features like Weight, height, BMI, Medical history, Age, and based on that we have to classify if a person is likely to have a heart problem or not.
Now, We want to give our neural network this data and want it to learn the mapping between these features and output( heart disease or not).
Let me introduce us to one of the functions used in neural networks. This function is a Sigmoid or Logistic function.
Sigmoid Function
Traditional Algorithms like logistic regression uses the same function which is First it will take up all the inputs or features and then assign each feature a weight W, In the end, it will pass it through a sigmoid function which spits out the probabilities.
Artificial Neuron
Let’s assume we have 4 features X1, X2, X3, and X4, and based on that we want to classify if the person is likely to have heart disease or not. We can assume that the two classes are 1 and 0.
Weight matrix will look something like this: [W1*X1 +W2*X2+ W3*X3+W4*X4] +bias→ One value
We will pass this value to the sigmoid function which is
Sigmoid function
Here X represents the value of [W1*X1 +W2*X2+ W3*X3+W4*X4] +bias
Suppose we have a value of X = 0 then e to the power→0 will give us 1 and then the whole expression will generate a value of 1/2. This means if the features and weights are zero we will get a probability of 0.5.
Here we only have two classes so the probability of 0.5 means the model is not sure about the predicted class i.e Both the classes have an equal chance when all of the computation is Zero.
If the value is high then the sigmoid will generate a value closer to 1 which means the chances of class 1 is higher.
2. If the value is low then the sigmoid will generate a value closer to 0 which means the chances of class 0 is higher.
These scores are dependent on the features and weights of the model i.e W’s and X’s that we used Since we can’t change the features we have to update the weight in such a way that the output is the expected output.
We also have one more term known as a bias that just shifts the sigmoid towards the right or left. This is just used to fit the data better.
The updating of the weights is the job for the optimizer which will be discussed later.
The idea is simply we have some features/inputs which are mapped to each weight and that dot product weight with the features are fed to the activation function known as sigmoid which generates a score.
This function is used in logistic regression and is heavily used in neural networks but in the case of the neural networks, it is used in the form of layers. One neuron in the layer is just a sigmoid function with some weights and bias.
Layers
The whole idea of neural networks is based on Universal Approximation Theorem.
The intuition behind this theorem is if we have a very complex function between the input and output. We can learn the approximation function by dividing that function into smaller chunks and each chunk is learned by one neuron or a part of the neural network.
Thus by stacking up layers of neurons, we can learn complex functions. If we want to learn more about that click here.
Now that we know about sigmoid and Universal Approximate Theorem. We can stack up neurons and form a layer.
This is how a neural network looks like.
This is a very basic neural network that has 3 neurons in the input layer which means it can take in 3 features as input.
It has 4 neurons in the hidden layer which represents 4 sigmoid functions. Each of them is learning a part of the complex function between input and output.
Finally, We have 2 neurons in the output which represents two categories.
Now that we have created an architecture we want the network to learn, We need some more components like loss function and Optimizer.
Loss Function
The loss function is just a mathematical expression that tells the network how good it is performing. We have different loss functions for different problem statements. Loss function defines what kind of relationship is the network trying to learn.
Regression Loss functions
If we want the network to predict something like the Air Quality index or rating of a restaurant that means we don’t want the network to predict classes or probabilities instead we want it to predict numbers in some range.
In that case, we would like to use mean square error or, root mean square error which will compare the value generated by the network with the Ground Truth or actual value, and Based on the difference of the two it will give loss value.
If the difference between the two values i.e. Predicted and True Value is high then the loss will be high else low.
Classification Loss functions
If we want the network to predict something like a person is likely to have heart disease or not, Music genre detection or Classify between the image of dogs and cats.
In that case, we will like to go for Binary cross-entropy or categorical cross-entropy which will take the predicted probabilities from the network and compare them with the actual probability distribution, based on the difference it will give a loss value.
We can also define our custom loss function if you want to solve some new problems.
Optimizer
The role of neurons and layers is to generate scores and the role of the loss function is to tell how far is the predicted score from the Ground truth or target.
The Optimizer comes into the picture after the loss is calculated, The optimizer just tries to find the relationship between the loss and weights and biases of the network. The goal of the optimizer is to bring the loss as low as possible so that the predictions that the model is making are closer to the target.
The optimizer will try to capture the relationship between each weight and bias in the network with the loss function.
Loss function = Some function of (weights and bias )
The derivative of any function w.r.t to some variable X tells us the relationship between that function with X. It gives us information about how much a function is going to change if the value of x changes and in which direction is it going to change. The change in one weight = Loss function/ derivative(some Weight W)
Since the loss function is a function of multiple weights and biases the change is a partial derivative of that loss function with respect to one weight. This change is also known as Gradient
Now we know the relationship between loss function and weights. We can update the weights in such a way that the loss function is minimum. This process is run in parallel for each weight in the network and they are updated every time we calculate a loss function.
The Gradient is the positive change of loss function with respect to the weight which means if we update the weights with respect to Gradient then we will be increasing the loss instead of decreasing it so to avoid that situation we don’t add the gradient instead we Subtract the gradient every time we update the weight which results in decreasing of the loss function.
Updated Weight = Previous Weight- Gradient
Various Optimizers can be used such as Stochastic Gradient Descent, Mini Batch Gradient Descent, or Adam. Some ideas are used such as learning rate, momentum but the basic idea is gradient. This Algorithm is known as Gradient Descent
I will be writing some more on Neural networks where I will try to cover maths as well as the idea behind the maths. | https://medium.com/swlh/introduction-to-neural-networks-d0ff7e9a647b | ['Shivam Batra'] | 2020-08-23 13:32:42.855000+00:00 | ['Gradient Descent', 'Deep Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Neural Networks', 'Artificial Neural Network'] |
Staking and Incentives for the Fetch.AI Ledger | Since the release of our minimal agency consensus whitepaper, we’ve been hard at work on a range of new developments. This included benchmarking the ledger’s performance. We released our high-performance virtual machine that will enable advanced smart contracts. We also continued improving our sharded ledger and cryptographic source of randomness.
In this article, we outline the Fetch.AI staking model and a future roadmap for the staking program. This will be launched in the coming months to provide our community with enhanced access to our test network. Users’ contributions to staking will also allow them to earn rewards from early participation in the project. This will provide returns at an annualized rate of up to 20%. We will also be working with our industry and academic partners to make participation in the staking process open to everyone.
Before discussing the staking details, we re-cap on the design of the Fetch.AI ledger and the role of staking in its consensus.
The Role of Validators on the Fetch.AI Network
The Fetch.AI ledger uses notarisation of a transient Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG). The DAG enables nodes to collaboratively build and finalise blocks that are added to a linear blockchain. The transactions within these blocks are arranged into distinct state, execution and network shards. This feature enables the ledger’s capacity to expand in response to increased demand. Importantly, this architecture also allows the capacity, and the operating cost of the network, to decrease when demand is low. These are key design elements that will enable the ledger to support large populations of autonomous economic agents at a low cost.
The principal objective for the launch of the ledger is for it to achieve its performance and scalability targets. Features to reduce operating costs and increase participation are due later in its development. At the launch of the main network in Q4 2019, all of the validators that take part in the consensus will be so-called “master” nodes. (Validators are computers that replicate some or all the data stored in ledger and take part in consensus). These “master” nodes run all the shards within the blockchain. As a result, the ledger will be capable of extremely high transaction throughput from the outset. From a technology point-of-view, the ledger is capable of operating with a very large number of validators. But for economic reasons we are initially limiting their number to two hundred. We introduced this restriction to control the ledger’s operating costs. This is important as these costs must ultimately be funded by transaction fees.
We intend to relax the restriction when user and platform growth can support larger number of validators. Improvements to the protocol will also increase participation for a particular operating cost. A total of two hundred validators is also much greater than existing Proof-of-Stake blockchains. This is a reflection of the improved performance and efficiency of the Fetch.AI ledger compared with these earlier protocols. The development roadmap includes plans for “light” nodes that run a subset of the shards. These and other node types will be able to contribute towards consensus at a much lower cost. The greater speed and security of the ledger will also enable it to support a growing population of autonomous agents.
Key Features of the Fetch.AI Staking Program
We designed the Fetch.AI staking model with this technical backdrop in mind. The key features of staking are:
Staking rights for running a ledger node on our test network will put up for auction in the run-up to the launch of the main network. Stakes will be locked for a duration of approximately one month. The stakes will then be unlocked and returned with rewards after this period has expired.
A second auction will conclude upon termination of the first staking period. This will lead to a new and potentially different set of validators being elected for the second month. (Validators from the first staking period will have the option of bidding for the next period). This process of sequential auctions for electing validators, with coordinated stake locking and unlocking, will proceed until the launch of the main network.
The winners of the staking auction will receive approximately 7,500 FET. The minimal stake for taking part in the competition will be set at around 200,000 FET. This simulates the collateral that will be necessary for becoming a validator.
Two hundred validator slots will available at the auction. Each of these slots will pay an annual effective return of 55% if sold at the reserve price. Retail investors with lower holdings will be able to delegate their stake to node operators at an advertised interest rate.
The precise reserve price of each validator slot will be 0.075% of the circulating supply. The sale of all slots at the reserve price would thus lead to staking of 15% of the circulating supply. The rewards will be fixed at an effective annualised return of 55% of the reserve price.
During the first three years of operation, the rewards will increase linearly with the token circulation. This will maintain a constant ratio of staked-to-circulating supply.
The highest two hundred bids will be awarded staking slots. The winning bidders will only pay the price that was offered by the lowest winning bidder. This ensures that the staking values are uniform between all validators. The interest rate that the winning bidders receive will also be the same or better than the rate implied by their initial bid. This feature allows validators to fulfill their obligation to pay a specific return on stake that has been delegated to them by smaller stakeholders.
Block rewards will not be compounded over the duration of the staking period. These will instead be paid upon unlocking of the stake to maintain uniform staking values and to reduce the risk (or variance) in expected rewards.
In the coming weeks, we will be releasing Ethereum smart contract code that implements the staking auction for FET ERC-20 tokens. This will be followed by an Etch smart contract for native operation on the Fetch.AI ledger. We have also written an article that explains in more detail the thoughts behind the design of our staking model and, in a separate post, included a list of FAQs about our staking program. | https://medium.com/fetch-ai/staking-and-incentives-for-the-fetch-ai-ledger-40bf885871e7 | ['Jonathan Ward'] | 2020-02-07 13:12:53.566000+00:00 | ['Agents', 'Technology', 'Sharding', 'Staking', 'Blockchain'] |
CONTENT MAY BE KING BUT ENGAGEMENT IS QUEEN | This is the reason micro influencers have been proven far more effective in influencer marketing then celebrity posts and influencers with followers in the millions. ENGAGEMENT.
The amount of followers you have doesn’t matter as much as the engagement your posts receive.and if you engage back. When people feel seen, when they feel like they might know you, even just a little
bit. They are more emotionally invested in your brand. When people
are emotionally invested in your brand they tend to financially invest in it to. some ways to raise your engagement are to write interesting captions. (Do not try and over curate your life and make yourself seem perfect. That will make people feel like you are unapproachable.) Ask your followers questions. in the caption, people love it when you value their opinion it also makes them feel a part of your process and it helps establish further connection with you and when all else fails, and you are too busy, hire a social media manager with awesome graphic design
skills. | https://medium.com/@fakeorange/content-may-be-king-but-engagement-is-queen-83e1630e43c5 | ['Fakeorange Creative'] | 2020-12-24 15:36:08.614000+00:00 | ['Engagment', 'Business Development', 'Business Strategy', 'Content Marketing', 'Social Media Marketing'] |
Understanding Heap-Based Algorithms with Swift | In the previous chapter in our series, we reviewed Dijkstra’s algorithm for searching a graph. Originally published in 1959, this popular technique for finding the shortest path is an elegant solution to a complex problem. The design involved many parts including graph traversal, custom data structures and the greedy approach.
When designing programs, it’s great to see them work. With Dijkstra, the algorithm did allow us to find the shortest path between a source Vertex and Destination. However, our approach could be refined to be more efficient. In this essay, we’ll enhance the algorithm with the addition of binary heaps.
HOW IT WORKS
In its basic form, the data structure for a heap is just an Array. However, unlike an Array, we visualize it as a tree. The term visualize implies we use processing techniques normally associated with recursive data structures. This shift in thinking has numerous advantages. Consider the following:
//a simple array of unsorted integers
let numberList : Array<Int> = [8, 2, 10, 9, 11, 7]
As shown, numberList can be easily represented as a Heap. Starting at index 0, items fill a corresponding spot as a parent or child node. Each parent also has two children with the exception of index 2.
An array visualized as a “nearly complete” tree.
Since the arrangement of values is sequential, a simple pattern emerges. For any node, we can accurately predict its position using these formulas:
//formulas for heap indicies left = 2i + 1
right = 2i + 2
parent = floor(i - 1 / 2)
SORTING HEAPS
An interesting feature of heaps is their ability to sort data. As we’ve seen, many algorithms are designed to sort sequences of data. When sorting Heaps, nodes can be arranged so each parent contains a lesser value than its children. In computer science, this is called a min-heap:
A heap structure that maintains the min-heap property.
EXPLORING THE FRONTIER
With Dijkstra, we used a concept called the frontier. Coded as a simple array, we compared the total weight of each path to find the shortest path:
...
//construct the best path
var bestPath: Path = Path()
while frontier.count != 0 {
//support path changes using the greedy approach
var pathIndex: Int = 0
for x in 0..<frontier.count {
let itemPath: Path = frontier[x]
if (bestPath.total == 0) || (itemPath.total < bestPath.total) {
bestPath = itemPath
pathIndex = x
}
} ...
While it accomplished our goal, we applied a brute force technique. In other words, we examined every potential Path to find the shortest path. As shown, this code segment executes in linear time — O(n). If the frontier contained a million rows, how would this impact the algorithm’s overall performance?
THE HEAP STRUCTURE
Let’s create a more efficient frontier. Named PathHeap, the data structure will extend the functionality of an array:
public class PathHeap {
private var heap: Array<Path>
init() {
heap = Array<Path>()
}
//the number of frontier items
var count: Int {
return self.heap.count
}
}
The PathHeap class includes two properties. To support good design, Heap has been declared a private property. To track the number of items, count is declared as a computed property.
BUILDING THE QUEUE
Searching the frontier more efficiently than O(n) will require a new way of thinking. We can improve our performance to O(1) with a Heap. Using heapsort formulas, our new approach will involve arranging index values so the smallest item is positioned at the root.
//sort shortest paths into a min-heap (heapify) func enQueue(_ key: Path) {
heap.append(key)
var childIndex: Float = Float(heap.count) - 1
var parentIndex: Int = 0
//calculate parent index
if childIndex != 0 {
parentIndex = Int(floorf((childIndex - 1) / 2))
} var childToUse: Path
var parentToUse: Path //use the bottom-up approach
while childIndex != 0 {
childToUse = heap[Int(childIndex)]
parentToUse = heap[parentIndex]
//swap child and parent positions
if childToUse.total < parentToUse.total {
heap.swapAt(parentIndex, Int(childIndex))
}
//reset indices
childIndex = Float(parentIndex) if childIndex != 0 {
parentIndex = Int(floorf((childIndex - 1) / 2))
}
} //end while
} //end function
The enQueue method accepts a single Path as a parameter. Unlike other sorting algorithms, our primary goal isn’t to sort each item but to find the smallest value. This means we can increase our efficiency by comparing a subset of values.
The enQueue process compares a newly added value.
The process continues until the smallest value is positioned at the root.
Since the enQueue method maintains the min-heap property, we eliminate the additional task of finding the shortest path. As a result, we increase the algorithm’s efficiency to constant time — O(1). Here, we implement a basic peek method to retrieve the root-level item.
//obtain the minimum path func peek() -> Path? {
if heap.count > 0 {
return heap[0] //the shortest path
}
else {
return nil
}
}
HEAPS & GENERICS
It’s great seeing how a heap can be used to improve the time complexity of a solution. To extend our model for general use, we can also create a more generalized algorithm: | https://medium.com/swift-algorithms-data-structures/understanding-heap-based-algorithms-with-swift-6202fbda461a | ['Wayne Bishop'] | 2020-12-07 18:30:00.682000+00:00 | ['Interview Questions', 'Swift Programming', 'Algorithms', 'iOS App Development', 'Xcode'] |
What’s Love Got To Do With It? | I’m a great many things: a New Yorker and first generation American, millennial plant mom, sentient jukebox, and most controversial, a sex worker.
I’ve been what some people call a high-end escort for five years now, and have been in relationships, ranging from just dabbling in dive bar hangs to falling completely head over Louboutins in love, for about half that time. I don’t find dating incompatible with my line of work at all, despite the legitimate complications. Another thing I am: a romantic. A non-monogamous one, but a lover all the same. I love the rush of falling into conversation, finishing a lover’s sentences, settling into comfortable silence, naked physically and emotionally. I relish learning someone’s body and what makes them happy, and I adore helping them figure out what I enjoy. I love the slow burn of repeated engagement, both people peeling off layers of themselves that they keep buttoned up otherwise. I prefer to feel things strongly, rather than not at all. But how does any of this work when you’re in the business of love, the business of sex? Some may wonder: does the entire endeavor lack meaning for me? Is it all fake? How are (off-duty) relationships possible, considering what I do? I mean, it’s not like I’m an accountant, or travel agent, or web designer, not on paper at least.
When Playboy approached me for a piece following sex workers and their love lives over the course of a year, I decided to take the chance to clear the whorephobic air. There is a lot to dispel: what relationships look like, how we find them, what can go wrong, what we’re worried about…I don’t think I’ve ever seen escorts’ love lives explored in the context of a large mainstream publication in a way that is both humanizing and hopeful. Social and legal issues abound, and sex workers understandably shy away from using our own voices to tell our stories. So often are we cast as scheming jezebels or tragic fallen women that some of us even believe the toxic narrative. This time, I spoke for the first time about my own journey through connections, inside and outside of the demimonde.
Okay, so what’s the skinny? I fell in love with a client. We had a non-exclusive arrangement, and I happily flourished in my personal and professional life, though the lines were more blurred than I imagined they’d be when I began. I went on amazing dates with my favorite clients, traveled around the world, exchanged stories about our lives, and experienced authentic intimacy. I was — and am — largely myself, intentionally. And I’ve worked quite hard to be such, as I much prefer it this way. When time with my clients (they often feel like friends) was over, I returned, sated, to the rest of my life. I had someone to cuddle and binge Peaky Blinders with after coming back from my favorite speakeasy. I thought, at first, that it would be a difficult jump, managing multiple relationships, each with their own set of impermeable boundaries and expectations. But existing in both worlds felt as natural as breathing. Queue non-monogamy.
I wrote once about my thoughts on the relationship escalator — the social script of expectations for intimate relationships, where individuals follow a set of visible markers towards a clear goal (marriage, merged assets, children, etc.) — and how I reject this notion. I truly enjoy having a complete life that I can intertwine with someone else’s as we both choose, sans societal pressure and a hell of a lot more communication and trust. There’s no escalator to ascend, no highest (or end) point. I simply am able to celebrate and be celebrated by my intimate partners as often and as deeply as we’d like. Non-monogamy isn’t all sexy hookups though; it requires so many discussions about jealousy, about needs that change, and iCalendar updates. It’s about knowing what you want and resolving to express that explicitly, when the dictates of polite society say nice women really shouldn’t. When I reflect on my time as an escort, I know I’ve learned and loved much more fully than I would have without it.
Can relationships be difficult as a sex worker? Yes. Are they worth it? Also yes, personally and professionally. I’m not sure what affaires du cœur are in my future, but since I’ve thrown out the rulebook, I guess anything’s possible…
website | my twitter | my instagram | my blog | onlyfans | https://medium.com/@brejolie2/whats-love-got-to-do-with-it-f62f052c115a | ['Bre Jolie'] | 2020-08-19 16:00:42.670000+00:00 | ['Sex Work', 'Relationships', 'Nonmonogamy'] |
Tensorflow 2 for Deep Learning — Logistic Regression ( Softmax ) | Note : The Program files for tensorflow 2 can be found on - https://github.com/ashwinhprasad/Tensorflow-2.0
Logistic Regression is used for Classification tasks and This Blog will take you through the implementation of logistic regression using Tensorflow 2. This blog post won’t be covering about the theories regarding logistic regression and theory is a pre-requisite.
Let’s jump to the code part :
1. Importing The Dataset
The Dataset that is used in this example is iris dataset from the sklearn library.
we are importing the dataset and storing it in the form of a pandas dataframe
#importing the libraries
import numpy as np
import tensorflow as tf
import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import seaborn as sns #importing the dataset
from sklearn.datasets import load_iris
data = load_iris()
x = data['data']
y = data['target'] dataset = pd.DataFrame(data=np.concatenate((x,y.reshape(-1,1)),axis=1),columns=['sepal length','sepal width','petal length','petal width','target'])
2. Train Test Split
Splitting the dataset into training and testing set for future analysis of the model
#train, test split
from sklearn.model_selection import train_test_split
x_train,x_test,y_train,y_test = train_test_split(x,y,test_size=0.1,shuffle=True)
3. Model Architecture and training using keras functional API
Keras Functional API is a better alternative to Sequential API. It can be used to create models with multiple inputs and multiple Inputs and complex operations.
For Logistic Regression, we can use either softmax or sigmoid activation function as the final layer. I have used softmax as the output can only be either one of the 3 types of plants. Note : This is Not purely Logistic regression as we are using softmax activation in the final layer. Logistic Regression can be implemented by replacing softmax with sigmoid in the final layer. There won’t be much difference in the result
#model (Keras - Fuctional API)
i = tf.keras.layers.Input(shape=(4))
X = tf.keras.layers.Dense(3,activation=tf.keras.activations.softmax)(i)
model = tf.keras.models.Model(i,X) #compile and fit the model
model.compile(optimizer=tf.keras.optimizers.SGD(learning_rate=0.01),loss=tf.keras.losses.sparse_categorical_crossentropy,metrics=['accuracy'])
train = model.fit(x_train,y_train.reshape(-1),validation_data=(x_test,y_test.reshape(-1)),epochs=200)
4. Model Performance
The models performance is analyzed using plots. The accuracy of the Model is very high
#plotting loss over epochs
plt.figure(figsize=(10,8))
plt.plot(train.history['loss'],label='Training loss')
plt.plot(train.history['val_loss'],label='Validation loss')
plt.xlabel('epochs')
plt.ylabel('loss')
plt.legend() #plotting accuracy over epochs
plt.figure(figsize=(10,8))
plt.plot(train.history['accuracy'],label='Training accuracy')
plt.plot(train.history['val_accuracy'],label='Validation accuracy')
plt.xlabel('Accuracy')
plt.ylabel('loss')
plt.legend()
Conclusion
From the above visualization. we can conclude that our model is efficient.
Logistic Regression is a powerful tool for we could use for classification and This is how Logistic Regression can be implemented with tensorflow 2. | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/tensorflow-2-for-deep-learning-logistic-regression-softmax-bebf4f7e997c | ['Ashwin Prasad'] | 2020-12-22 16:38:28.227000+00:00 | ['Classification', 'TensorFlow', 'Logistic Regression', 'Deep Learning', 'Machine Learning'] |
Samsung The Frame 4K UHD TV review: Refining the art of wall-art TV | If you’re looking for the ultimate TV that doesn’t appear to be a TV, look no farther than Samsung’s The Frame.” It’s a quantum-dot LCD styled to appear as a wall-hung picture frame that displays art when you’re not watching video of some sort, and it looks amazingly convincing in that role.
Throw in custom-colored bezels, a library of 1,400 available works of art (20 are included in the purchase price), and even the most demanding home decorator should be pleased.
This review is part of TechHive’s coverage of the best smart TVs, where you'll find reviews of competing products, plus a buyer’s guide to the features you should consider when shopping for this type of product.Design and specsTo better mimic a wall-hung picture, The Frame uses a rectangular replaceable bezel that juts out slightly beyond the 60Hz, 10-bit, 3840 x 2160 (4K UHD) LCD panel. The back is completely flat, with a recess where the included, shallow-profile wall mount is attached. Yup, it fits flush against the wall, just like a picture frame.
If the stock bezel doesn’t appeal to your color sense or match your décor, white, pink, beige, brown, and yellow bezels that attach magnetically to the main chassis are available for $100 each.
Samsung Samsung’s The Frame looks for all the world like a real wall-hung painting when in Art Mode. It also features excellent viewing angles.
As normal power and connection cables would sully the aesthetics, The Frame also features Samsung’s One Connect single-cable connection. This clear (except for the wire) cable connects to a breakout box that houses most of the electronics and all the ports. Given a suitably light-colored wall, the cable is hard to spot. It will stand out more against dark surfaces.
Obviously, a picture frame is useless without pictures, and Samsung supplies about 1,400 of those in its Art Store. Alas, it’s not all gratis. You get 20 free works of art, and a free three-month subscription to the store; after that, a subscription costs $5 per month. You can also purchase works you like for $20 each.
The Frame is currently available in 32-inch ($600), 43-inch ($1,000), 50-inch ($1,300), 55-inch ($1,500), 65-inch ($2,000), and 75-inch ($3,000) flavors. A Black Friday sale happening as of this writing discounts those prices.
Connectivity includes four HDMI ports (one of which supports ARC), two USB ports, ethernet, coaxial (for a TV antenna), digital optical (Toslink) audio output, and a 3.5mm RS232C jack for integration. 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are also provided, and the latter supports low-latency connections so you can use headphones and other speakers without undo lag.
Interface and remoteThe remote is Samsung’s familiar One Remote, with its minimalist layout and controls. It’s very classy, and in this case, it’s white.
Samsung Samsung’s minimalist, but highly effective and comfortable One Remote comes with the Frame, albeit colored a friendlier white.
The Samsung Smart Hub user interface is one of the best in the industy, easy to use and to configure. That said, settings menus requires lots of drilling down, and you’re never returned to where you left off the last time you visited the Smart Hub. Then again, how often to you tweak settings?
There’s a large collection of apps, including all the biggies (Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, and so on). It’s not as good as Android TV, but it’s very good.
PerformanceThe Frame delivers a very good picture. It’s everything it needs to be for its intended role and offers excellent viewing angles and screen conformity (there’s no cloudiness from coatings).
For movies and TV, however, it’s not up to what I’ve seen from Samsung’s most recent high-end entries. Yes, I’ve been spoiled. Put another way, it reminds me far more of the 2019 Q60R I reviewed this time last year than something like the Q80R or Q90R, let alone the superb 8K Q900R. Then again, those TVs will do no better displaying static art than The Frame, and wouldn’t look as good on your wall.
I’m guessing part of the reason The Frame’s image is not Samsung’s best is that the company doesn’t make its best TVs in smaller sizes. When this 43-inch was delivered, one of our front desk folks volunteered that they liked the size better than the massive sets we usually get in for review.
It does seem like the mammoth-sized TV market has become saturated, or perhaps viewers feel overwhelmed by them. We’re starting to see things like 49-inch OLEDs, and other smaller-sized high-end LCD drop in the market. I hope Samsung’s numbers push them in this direction as well.
Samsung This picture won’t tell you much about The Frame’s color or brightness, but the first is excellent thanks to quantum dots and the second is more than adequate.
Perhaps it’s not high-end in terms of brightness, or in the way it handles pans of complex images, but The Frame’s color is excellent due Samsung’s well-known quantum dot technology. Motion compensation was surprisingly good considering the TV has only a 60Hz refresh rate. There is enough peak brightness that the HDR effect will be noticeable with HDR material, it just wasn’t as spectacular as it can be with more contrast and brightness available.
Note that The Frame will sense ambient light while in Art Mode and adjust accordingly to give you the proper amount of brightness. Given normal lighting at any rate—if direct sunlight hits the sensor, all bets are off.
Pricey but worth it for the shape-consciousThe Frame is all about looking good on a wall displaying art, and it does that extremely well—far better than any other TV I’ve seen. For that, it’s a stellar product and very, very good overall TV.
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/@kari04078739/samsung-the-frame-4k-uhd-tv-review-refining-the-art-of-wall-art-tv-1629aa129c8c | [] | 2020-12-11 09:32:03.916000+00:00 | ['Home Tech', 'Lighting', 'Chargers', 'Mobile'] |
The Final Hour | Walk me slowly towards my last breath. In the final hour, Breathe, when it’s time I’ll remember you were my lucid dream.
Ingrained sand stone, you’ve been holding long
Onto the weathering of the past
Look how far you’ve gone
From God’s reveal to the last chapter,
“Catch her!”, words shouted after broken laughter
The hourglass broke. like zero-one, time’s movement begun
the Rising of our final hour
Everything under the sun, wired to fire, from its luminescent shower.
Sleeping limbs, fallen lamb, Swept
under the covers
sunken clouds over the head,
Clovers embedded, in patches
dear hope, from faith, to love, no disaster
when confusion lets go of my dove, nuclear reactor
birds flying in from the horizon; in the hereafter.
I looked away from the light
Had to reimagine the fire,
Broken out of the matrix, all the world’s behavior
I heard the siren, truth’s sailor
The calling of the world’s candor,
Open dreams, pressed reality, Still pictures, I’m not yours. | https://arozwadowska711.medium.com/the-final-hour-8768b9f3bd4e | ['Anna Rozwadowska'] | 2019-03-10 19:35:01.022000+00:00 | ['Space And Time', 'Poetry', 'Evolution', 'Final Hour', 'Dreamscape'] |
How to create better, interactive forecast plots using R and dygraph | If you are into R and time series you surely have stumbled across the great forecast package by Rob Hyndman. Apart from the various tools and methods for analyzing time series it also extends ggplot to visualize forecast objects using autoplot. While this yields really good results with almost no code, it does not provide interactive features. In this article you will learn…
how to plot a forecast with interactive features like zooming, panning and mouse-over information
how to include the 80% and 95% interval forecasts in the plot
how to write a JavaScript formatter to tweak the legend
This is what the result will look like…
Using autoplot for forecast objects
Let us look at the results of the basic autoplot function on forecasts objects first. Creating a 3-years forecast on the classic airline data set and plotting the result is straight forward with just three lines of code.
code that forecasts and plots the air passenger time series
autoplot of a forecast object
You can see the actual time series in black and the forecast in blue. The prediction intervals (80% and 95%) are also shown as blue areas. While this is certainly a good result for three lines of code, the result could be improved with interactive features.
Using dygraph for forecast objects
The JavaScript library dygraph can create interactive plots and an interface to this library for R is also available via the dygraphs package.
Converting our example from above to using dygraph just adds a line to bind the time series from the forecast object.
simple dygraph for a forecast object
basic dygraph showing actuals and point forecast
Now, while we got the interactive features of dygraph, suddenly the prediction intervals are missing. In dygraph a time series can be plotted with a so-called error bar to fix this. As only one error bar per time series is supported by dygraph, we just simply add one time series for each interval.
adding error bars for the interval forecasts
dygraph showing actuals, point and interval forecasts
That looks quite good, but there’s a little thing missing. If you hover over the graph, you will only see the values of the point forecast in the legend (569.93 in the figure above) and not the corresponding interval.
Writing a custom formatter for prediction intervals
The format of the values in the dygraph legend can be overwritten with a custom JavaScript function using the valueFormatter parameter of the dyAxis function. The JavaScript function will be called on mouse-over for each time series and will take six parameters:
num : the value on the mouse-over position of the current time series
: the value on the mouse-over position of the current time series opts : option values of the current dygraph
: option values of the current dygraph seriesName : name of the current time series
: name of the current time series g : the actual dygraph object
: the actual dygraph object row : the raw data’s row index for the current mouse-over position
: the raw data’s row index for the current mouse-over position col : the raw data’s column index for the current time-series
The value num that will be passed to the function does not include the interval values. However, the value for the given row and column index can be obtained from the dygraph object (function getValue ) and will contain this prediction interval. We can then format it as we like. Reusing the built-in Dygraph.numberValueFormatter function for formatting and passing the option values will keep the support for options like controlling the number of digits to display (see e.g. the option digitsAfterDecimal in dyOptions ).
Note that the value returned by dygraph will be a vector of length three even for time series with a single value like the actuals time series. Hence, I added a check if the upper and lower values actually differ before formatting as an interval.
custom JavaScript for formatting values in the legend
Furthermore, I applied some additional tweaks to the graph:
a dedicated time series for the point forecast to separate the interval forecasts from the point forecast in the legend
using the option labelsSeparateLines in the dyLegend function puts each label on a separate line, which makes the result more readable
in the function puts each label on a separate line, which makes the result more readable the dyRangeSelector function puts a nice selector on the bottom of the plot
function puts a nice selector on the bottom of the plot reducing the number of digits to one, using the option digitsAfterDecimal
a little CSS keeps the legend half-transparent to avoid covering the graph
final code using dygraph for plotting forecast objects plot
dygraph showing actuals, point and interval forecasts and custom legend
Thank you for reading! | https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-create-better-interactive-forecast-plots-using-r-and-dygraph-29bdd7146066 | ['Thomas Bierhance'] | 2020-05-19 06:40:39.590000+00:00 | ['Dygraph', 'R', 'Time Series Analysis', 'Forecasting', 'Data Science'] |
[#LIVE#] Cleveland Cavaliers vs. New York |~Live Stream TV!~! | Live Now:: https://tinyurl.com/y2v8qpwc
Live Now:: https://tinyurl.com/y2v8qpwc
The New York Jets are home on Sunday, but with the point spread against them by 9.5 points, it might not be quite the welcoming they would prefer. They and the Cleveland Browns will compete for holiday cheer at 1 p.m. ET at Stadium. The Jets are out to stop a nine-game streak of losses at home.
New York was expected to lose against the Los Angeles Rams last week, but instead they received a nice stocking . It was close, but New York ultimately received the gift of a 23–20 victory from a begrudging Los Angeles squad. The Browns are now 10–4 while New York sits at 1–13. Cleveland is still in the hunt for a spot in the playoffs, so these next two games are critical for them.
The Jets have been eliminated from playoff contention.It’s Week 16 in the NFL, which means it’s Fantasy championship time in a vast majority of leagues. What happens this weekend will decide who walks away with a Fantasy title, unless the involves Alvin ; those are likely over after the Saints star gashed the Vikings for six rushing touchdowns on Christmas. But for anyone still competing or for anyone with teams chasing a playoff spot in the actual league, there are some major on the way this weekend, including the Colts facing the reeling , the Rams and battling for the NFC West crown and the Titans trying to beat the NFC-leading Packers in Green Bay.
Each week, we’ll collect all of the best picks and gambling content from and in one place, so you can get picks against the spread from our CBS Sports experts as well as additional feature content for each game, including plays from top experts and the Projection Model, best bets from our staff, survivor picks and more.”Boy the Falcons can’t catch a break, can they? They blew a massive lead against Tom Brady (the jokes write themselves) and then roll right into a road matchup against Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs. I don’t think Atlanta is going to put up much of a fight in this one, at least in terms of actually winning the game, but I do think the Chiefs have played too many close games to take them as a double digit favorite. They’re in cruise control for the №1 overall seed and I think Andy Reid will win without being too aggressive here.” — Will Brinson on why he has the Chiefs winning but the Falcons coveringR.J. White: “I have a best bet on Under 45. Unders are 11–3 in Giants games this year, and I have no faith they’ll figure out the quarterback situation in this one. We’ll have a banged-up Daniel Jones trying to play, or Colt McCoy, who’s very limited. The Giants defense is great against the run; they’re sixth in yards per rush allowed. … That Giants offense scored seven against Arizona, six against Cleveland. I can’t expect better on the road in a tougher matchup here.”
Kenny White: “You can add me to the best bet … I’m gonna go Under as well. With it being a must-win for both teams, and with both teams’ defenses better than their offenses, I made the total 37.5 … It’s definitely a best bet for me as well.”Will Brinson: “Let’s take the Under as the third leg of the parlay. I actually have Baltimore as a best bet at -11, because what they’re doing right now with their offense, and letting Lamar Jackson run, he’s cranked up his rushing the last four or five games and is starting to get loose.””This is a terrible spot for the Bengals, who are coming off a 110 percent effort game against the hated Steelers where they secured an improbable win. Now they have a quick turnaround to play a meaningless game during the holiday week. I can’t see them showing up at all here, while Deshaun Watson seems likely to carve up a Cincinnati defense that ranks 25th in net yards per pass attempt, especially as the Bengals defense has just 16 sacks on the year. The Bengals scraped together just 78 yards of pass offense in the win last week, marking six straight games under the 210 mark since their bye. Don’t expect them to keep up with Watson in this one.” — R.J. White on why the Texans are one of his best bets for Week 16. | https://medium.com/@mogav27506/live-cleveland-cavaliers-vs-new-york-live-stream-tv-e151871959fc | [] | 2020-12-27 10:04:10.233000+00:00 | ['Nfl Live Stream', 'Nfl Live', 'NFL'] |
Graph Data Structure | This is an example of how Google gives you directions,
Directed Graph → A graph with only directed edges (Like a 1-way street).
Above an example of a Directed Graph, you can think of this as an Instagram follow request. If you accept the request they see your stuff, however, you must also request them if you would like to see their profile.
Storing Graphs
Adjacency Matrices
An adjacency matrix is a square (NxN) boolean matrix (where N is the number of nodes). In this, we are storing information in rows and columns. We can represent the relationship between the nodes using a matrix.
Above on the right, Matrix representing the relationships for the left Graph. If you wanted to see the relationship between Node A and F, you can simply look at column F and row A. You should see Y, which means Yes. This works both ways you can first go to row F and then column A, you will get the same results.
Every time you add a new node, you will have to add an entirely new row and new column.
Adjacency List
This is the most common way to represent a graph. We can use a hash table to store a key-value pair data structure.
Using a hash table we can see A is connected with (A, B, and A, F). We can do the same for node B (B, A, and B, C).
Implementing Graph Using Adjacency List
class Graph{
constructor(){
this.adjacencyList = {};
}
addVertex(vertex){
if(!this.adjacencyList[vertex]) this.adjacencyList[vertex] = [];
} addEdge(vertex1,vertex2){
this.adjacencyList[vertex1].push(vertex2);
this.adjacencyList[vertex2].push(vertex1);
}
removeEdge(vertex1,vertex2){
this.adjacencyList[vertex1] = this.adjacencyList[vertex1].filter(
v => v !== vertex2
);
this.adjacencyList[vertex2] = this.adjacencyList[vertex2].filter(
v => v !== vertex1
);
}
removeVertex(vertex){
while(this.adjacencyList[vertex].length){
const adjacentVertex = this.adjacencyList[vertex].pop();
this.removeEdge(vertex, adjacentVertex);
}
delete this.adjacencyList[vertex]
}
}
In comparison, Adjacency List takes less space and is first when iterating, however, it can be slower when looking up specific edges. Adjacency Matrix is completely opposite, it takes more space and is slower when iterating over edges, however, its faster when looking up specific edges.
There you have it. I hope you found this blog helpful. If you’re having any difficulty or need more explanation, I’m more than happy to help you. Please connect with me on LinkedIn or my email is [email protected]. Also, check out my last blog on Deploying your React App To Heroku.
Happy Coding :) | https://medium.com/@singhamritpal49/graph-data-structure-49427c81b3b3 | ['Amritpal Singh'] | 2020-03-29 23:12:04.124000+00:00 | ['Google', 'JavaScript', 'Data Structures', 'Graph', 'Algorithms'] |
The Magic of Live Music | The Atmosphere
Watching a live-stream concert online is fun, but it’s not remotely the same atmosphere you experience when you attend a show in person.
The lights, the pyrotechnics, the large video screens, the confetti — none of these things can be experienced at home.
There is also unique energy in the environment that can’t be captured or recreated online. It stems from hundreds or thousands of fans all in one space, experiencing the show together.
It creates a special kind of energy that is hard to explain, but nothing else compares.
Keith Urban performing in a shower of confetti for the concert finale. (Photo by author)
The Crowd
I am not a fan of crowds in general, but concert crowds are different. There is nothing quite like the experience of singing along to your favorite song in unison with thousands of other people.
That moment when the artist stops singing and lets the audience take over is nothing short of magical.
I remember belting out Living on a Prayer at the top of my lungs with the rest of the audience while Bon Jovi stood on the stage in awe.
It never gets old, for the musicians or us.
Looking around the arena, you see nothing but smiles, dancing, and pure happiness. You all love the same thing, and there is something powerful about sharing that love with a crowd that you can’t capture in other formats.
Bon Jovi entertaining the crowd. I wish I’d had a better camera. (Photo by author)
The Performances
Listening to a recorded song and hearing that same song in person are two completely different activities. Watching the artist pour their heart and soul into a performance is generally a much more emotional experience than listening to a CD.
Sometimes magic happens when you least expect it.
There are certain songs that I’m not a massive fan of when listening to the albums, but hearing those same songs live is an eye-opener.
Sometimes watching the artist perform a song live is enough to convert me into being a fan. It provides an entirely new connotation every time I hear the song afterward as well.
Jason Wade giving an emotional performance at a Lifehouse concert. (Photo by author)
The Fun Factor
One of the best reasons to attend a live show in person is the most simplistic reason: it’s fun! When discussing the appeal of live music, we can’t underestimate the entertainment value.
Attending concerts in person is more fun than sitting at home listening to music or even watching a live-stream show.
It’s just a more satisfying experience listening to live music with numerous people and having the band in the same room.
Billy Moran and Rob Benedict having fun at a Louden Swain album release concert. (Photo by author)
Personal Moments
Almost every concert I’ve attended has left me with personal moments that I will cherish every time I think of them.
I remember the first time I made eye contact with the lead singer — it was a thrill like no other.
Grabbing an artist’s hand when they reach out to you, or even something as simple as hearing your favorite song live for the first time is other examples.
These are all uniquely personal moments that you can only obtain from attending a show in person. | https://medium.com/the-masterpiece/the-magic-of-live-music-62ca34603325 | ['Jennifer Macdonald'] | 2020-11-03 14:29:07.137000+00:00 | ['Music', 'Entertainment', 'The Masterpiece', 'Happiness', 'Concerts'] |
How to Get Your Baby to Sleep Through the Night | Having a hard time getting your infant to sleep all night? Feeling exhausted and hopeless? You’re not the only one. Many parents struggle with getting their little one to sleep through the night.
Friends and family may joke about how little a new parent is sleeping, but it’s actually a very serious issue. In fact, new parents who are sleep deprived are at a higher risk of developing depression, according to the Journal of Research in Medical Sciences. This is especially true for first-time parents, low-income parents and women who underwent a difficult C-section.
But all is not lost. We’ve compiled a list of fail-proof tips based on our research, discussions with experienced mothers and advice from some of our favorite books on the topic to help you (and your baby) get a good night’s rest.
Babies sleep differently than adults. So, don’t listen to the myth that, if babies sleep during the day, they won’t sleep at night. It’s just not true. In fact, the more rested they are, the better they sleep. In a similar vein, watch for signs that your baby is sleepy, so you know to allow them to sleep. Eye rubbing and crying for no apparent reason means the baby is already overtired. Because the signs of drowsiness can be subtle, it will take time for a new parent to learn them. Don’t wake up your baby during morning and afternoon naps. The more well rested they are in the daytime, the more likely they will sleep well at nighttime. Giving your baby a chance to sleep in the same place helps them develop sleep cues. This lets them know that, when you put them in this place, it’s time to sleep. And remember: Sleeping in a stroller or the car isn’t the same quality sleep as sleeping in a crib at home. We’re not saying to count your infant’s calories, but we are saying that you should pay attention to your baby’s mealtimes, what they are eating and how much. If babies aren’t getting enough calories during the day, then they’re sure to wake up hungry at night. Whatever routine you have, try to stick to it. Try putting the baby to sleep in the same place around the same time, every day. Consistency is key. If you put your baby to sleep when he or she is drowsy, but still awake, it will help your baby learn to self-soothe. That way, when they wake up at night, they will already know how to put themselves back to sleep. Have a plan and don’t waiver: Read a book, sing a favorite song or two, and then it’s lights out. Many moms suggest giving your baby a bath before going to sleep. A bath may stimulate some infants, however, so pay attention to how yours reacts, knowing that all babies are different. Again, an overtired baby is a baby that isn’t going to sleep well. This doesn’t apply to newborns, rather babies who are at least four months old. We also know early bedtimes don’t work with all parent’s schedules, especially parents who work late hours, but keeping baby from getting overtired is critical to getting them to sleep through the night. It sounds crazy but it’s true: Younger babies are ready to go back to sleep 60 to 90 minutes after waking up in the morning. This technique stops working around 10 to 12 months, at which point you may move the first nap out by one to two hours, depending on signals of tiredness from your baby. This means that, for example, if your baby is waking up in the morning at 7 a.m., then try to put them down for their first nap after two or 2.5 hours. Again, pay attention to signs of tiredness to help you determine when it’s time for that first nap of the day. Journalist Pamela Druckerman’s famous book “ Bringing Up Bébé “ mentions what French parents call, “the pause.” It consists of a few minutes in which the parents let the baby cry to see if they can settle themselves back down once they realize mom or dad aren’t going to come bursting into the room to save the day. This also assumes the baby sleeps in a room separate from their parents. If your baby does wake up and you need to go into the room, try to stimulate them as little as possible.
The American Association of Pediatrics recommends babies share a room with their parents for at least six months and ideally a year — but that your baby sleep on a different surface, for example, in a crib while parents sleep in a bed next to the crib.
For families that decide having a baby in the room doesn’t work for them, however, this could mean better sleep for both parties involved. The idea of babies sleeping in their own room is that you don’t wake up the baby and the baby doesn’t wake you up. It also helps infants to learn to put themselves back to sleep when they wake up at night, instead of looking to you for soothing.
Regardless of whether your baby is in the room with you or if they are in a separate room, if your baby sleeps in a crib, remember to have no soft toys, pillows or blankets in the crib that could suffocate the baby.
White noise can be incredibly relaxing for infants as well as adults.
It is also another sleep cue that let’s baby know it’s time to sleep, but without you having to do the soothing.
Getting to know your baby’s cries and what they mean, understand their non-verbal cues and knowing what to do about it takes practice.
If it’s your first child, it’s much harder because you’ve never been a parent before, but rest assured that it gets easier, and you’re not alone in feeling like you have no idea what you’re doing.
Exhaustion, sleep deprivation and depression are comorbid conditions. If you think the way you are feeling isn’t normal for you and especially if you are having thoughts about hurting yourself or your baby, get psychological help immediately.
Postpartum support international offers services and can help you find local resources to get the care you need.
The book, “ The Good Sleeper” by Dr. Janet Kennedy, offers a much more in-depth study of babies and sleep training. As previously mentioned, Pamela Druckerman’s famous book, “ Bringing Up Bébé,” is another must-read, especially because French parents have an entirely unique way of approaching parenting that works brilliantly.
Take it from me, it’s worth it to get a better understanding of your baby’s sleep patterns, especially to learn what’s normal (or not normal) as you enter this world of parenting. | https://medium.com/@carlipierson/how-to-get-your-baby-to-sleep-through-the-night-d6205ccc9fe | ['Carli Pierson'] | 2020-06-30 19:29:21.277000+00:00 | ['Parenting', 'Baby', 'Baby Sleep', 'New Mom', 'Sleep'] |
Micro Frontend-101 | Hello peeps, in this article we’ll try to learn what micro frontend exactly is by implementing it in a bare-bones project. You can view the entire code here.
What is Micro Frontend Architecture?
Micro Frontend Architecture is a design concept inspired from the micro services. It allows the frontend app to be made of small individual sub-apps. It contains all this inside a container app and that regulates the transmission of data and logic between the sub-apps. Despite of the sudden attention that micro frontend has garnered, there is still no dominant best approach or implementation, it depends on one’s requirements. We will see one of the implementation using Module Federation Plugin.
Module Federation is a Webpack plugin that loads code from another app(or its build/dist). Normally we use webpack in our project to generate production bundle or build and if its a single large app the main.js file is usually large to load. Dividing it into sub apps makes individual files small to load.
Lets see some code to get more clarity. We will have three separate folders(Products, Cart, Container)
First Sub App: Products
We’ll start with our first sub-app. Inside our products folder we have a package.json file. We install the different webpack packages and a faker package that helps us load dummy data.
Now lets create a webpack.config.js file:
Here we are importing the HTML Webpack Plugin we installed which simply put helps in the creation of html file to serve our webpack bundle. The other plugin we are importing here is the Module Federation Plugin. Here the name property and filename are important as they will be used ahead in our main container app to point the script file here.It can be thought of as the name of the sub-app and the remoteEntry file as a direction map on how to load sub-app files. The exposes property lists files we want to be accessible in the main app. The shared property is for common dependencies that can be shared among the sub apps so there is no need of multiple installations.
Our index.html inside of public will be pretty bare-bones with only a div inside the body
<div id=”dev-products”></div>
Create two files inside our src: index.js and bootstrap.js. Inside our index.js we’ll add an import statement to asynchronously import our files.
import(‘./bootstrap’);
Bootstrap.js
Here we are basically using faker module to render dummy data in our html. With this our first sub-app is complete. If we move to the terminal and run it using npm start we can see it running independently and displaying a bunch of dummy data.
Second Sub App: Cart
Our package.json here is similar to the previous one with same dependencies and script. So we move on to our webpack.config.js file:
We can see that this app will run on port 8082 and inside the Module Federation Plugin we’ve named it cart. The fileName property is conventionally kept as remoteEntry.js. The rest properties are same as before.
Index.html inside of public will also be pretty similar
<div id="dev-cart"></div>
Similarly index.js inside src is same as before. So we move to bootstrap.js
Here we are using faker module to generate dummy item numbers to render in our HTML. Now if we run the code and open port 8082 we must see something like:
Container App:
Container App will be the main app that controls and displays the sub apps. Without wasting time, inside our container folder we can install similar dependencies here also except that faker module. So, instead of faker we install nodemon.
Webpack.config.js
Inside our webpack.config.js file of container, we can see that it will run on port 8080. Inside our Module Federation Plugin we have pointed to our two sub apps(products and cart) using the remotes property using a syntax like:
Now we can leverage this inside our container app by importing functions/methods from the appName. So inside our src/bootstrap.js, we can import the mount functions we wrote in both our sub-apps, pretty simple right.
We can render these functions to our index.html dom as we like:
<div id=”product-dev”></div> <div id=”cart-dev”></div>
Now if we run the container app with our two sub apps also running than we can see our main app. As we can see our main app running on port 8080 contains our sub app cart running on port 8081 and sub app products running on port 8082.
It’s over!
Kudos you made it to the end, and hopefully learned about micro frontends and webpack along the way. Feel free to ask if you have any doubts or you can help yourself by stalking its GitHub . | https://medium.com/@prx98/micro-frontend-101-6856897a726f | ['Prakhar Singh'] | 2020-12-23 13:30:07.333000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Front End Development', 'Web Development', 'Micro Frontends', 'Microservices'] |
Rollup vs. Parcel vs. webpack: Which Is the Best Bundler? | Why Install Bundlers When We Can Do It on Our Own?
Sure you can, but when working with huge codebases, minifying the app manually isn’t a scalable solution. Let the bundler do it for you!
Making the right choice of a bundler from the many available can be life-changing for your app, depending on the use case. Coming back to the experiment I was talking of in the beginning: I thought of sharing with you my findings on how webpack, Rollup, and Parcel fared on some important requirements a developer would have.
Configuration of the bundler
Parcel wins here as it doesn’t require a config file at all. Just install Parcel and run Parcel build, and it will do everything for you out of the box.
webpack and Rollup both require a config file specifying entry, output, loaders, plugins, transformations, etc. However, there’s a slight difference:
Rollup has node polyfills for import/export, but webpack doesn’t.
Rollup has support for relative paths in config, but webpack doesn’t — which is why you use path.resolve or path.join .
webpack config can get complex, but it provides extensive support for third-party imports, images, CSS preprocessors, and whatnot.
I had a hard time using Rollup for bundling my app that used axios, a very commonly used library for making HTTP requests — not just axios, but for other third-party integrations too. I had to research a lot and try installing many Rollup plugins before attaining victory — at the cost of dropping some imports.
Dead code elimination
Dead code elimination, or Tree shaking, as it’s often called, is very important to achieve the optimum bundle size and hence app performance.
Parcel emerged as the winner here. Parcel supports tree shaking for both ES6 and CommonJS modules. This is revolutionary since most of the code in libraries on npm still uses CommonJS.
Most of the work Parcel does when tree shaking is also done in parallel through multicore processing using numerous worker processes and is also cached on the file system. This means that builds are still fast and rebuilds are like blazingly fast.
Rollup comes second in the race. Right out of the box, it statically analyzes the code you are importing and will exclude anything that isn’t actually used. This saves you from writing more lines into your config, adding extra dependencies and bloating the size of your app.
webpack requires some manual effort to enable tree-shaking:
Use ES6 syntax (i.e. import and export ).
and ). Set the SideEffects flag in your package.json .
flag in your . Include a minifier that supports dead code removal (eg: UglifyJSPlugin ).
Rollup and webpack have focussed more on tree shaking for ES6 since it is much easier to statically analyze, but in order to truly make a big impact, we need to analyze CommonJS dependencies as well, for which they both require plugins to be imported.
However, given the fact that JavaScript is dynamic, almost every construct in the language can be altered at runtime in impossible to predict ways.
Practically, this means that an entity such as a class, which is imported as one reference, cannot be statically analyzed to remove members (both static and instance) that are not used. So rather than overly relying on the bundler to do it for you, it will be a good practice to visualize your components before you code and analyze them afterwards to get the best results.
Code splitting
As your app grows, your bundle size will grow too, more so with third-party imports. The load time of your app is directly proportional to its bundle size.
Code splitting helps the browser lazy-load just the things that are needed to get the app running, dramatically improving the performance and UX.
webpack emerges the winner in this aspect, with minimal work and faster load time. It provides three approaches to enable code splitting available in webpack:
Define entry points — Manually split code using entry configuration.
— Manually split code using configuration. Use the CommonsChunkPlugin to de-dupe and split chunks.
to de-dupe and split chunks. Dynamic imports — use inline function calls within modules.
During code splitting by Rollup, your code-split chunks themselves are standard ES modules that use the browser’s built-in module loader without any additional overhead, while still getting the full benefit of Rollup’s tree-shaking feature. For browsers that don’t yet support ES modules, you can also use SystemJS or any AMD loader. It is completely automated and results in zero code duplication.
Parcel supports zero-configuration code splitting. Here code splitting is controlled by use of the dynamic import() function syntax proposal, which works like a normal import statement or require function, but returns a Promise . This means that the module is loaded asynchronously.
It was tempting to favour Rollup and Parcel over webpack for code splitting, but both of them have only recently introduced this feature and some issues have also been reported. So it’s safe to stick with the good old webpack.
One compelling fact I noticed was that for the same code with code splitting enabled, the build time was least with webpack, followed by Rollup, and lastly Parcel.
Live reload
During development, it’s great if your app gets updated with fresh code that you write, instead of manually refreshing it to see the changes. A bundler with live reload capability does that refreshing for you.
Bundlers provide you with a run-time environment in addition to other utilities essential for debugging and development, in the form of a development server.
Parcel has been very thoughtful by having a development server built in, which will automatically rebuild your app as you change files. But there are issues associated with it when using HTTP logging, Hooks, and middleware.
When using Rollup, we need to install and configure rollup-plugin-serve , which will provide us with live reload functionality. However, it needs another plugin, rollup-plugin-livereload , to work. That means it’s not an independent plugin and comes with an extra dependency to run.
With webpack, you just need to add one plugin, called webpack-dev-server , which provides a simple development server with live reload functionality turned on by default. What’s better? You can use Hooks to do something after the dev server is up and running, add middleware, and also specify the file to serve when we run the dev server. This customisability of webpack trumps Rollup and Parcel.
Hot module replacement
Hot module replacement (HMR) improves the development experience by automatically updating modules in the browser at run time without needing a whole page refresh. You can retain the application state as you make small changes in your code.
You might ask how HMR is different from live reload.
Well, live reloading reloads the entire app when a file changes. For example, if you were five levels deep into your app navigation and saved a change, live reloading would restart the app altogether and load it back to the landing/initial route.
Hot reloading, on the other hand, only refreshes the files that were changed while still maintaining the state of the app. For example, if you were five levels deep into your app navigation and saved a CSS change, the state would not change: You’d still be on the same page, but the new styles would be visible.
webpack has its own web server, called the webpack-dev-server , through which it supports HMR. It can be used in development as a live reload replacement.
While Parcel already had built-in support for hot module replacement, Rollup released a plugin rollup-plugin-hotreload last month to support hot reload.
As this capability is fairly new in bundlers like Rollup and Parcel, I still choose webpack as the safe bet for I don’t want to run into avoidable issues during development.
Module transformers
Bundlers generally know only how to read JS files. Transformers are essentially teachers who teach the bundler how to process files other than JS and add them to your app’s dependency graph and bundle.
Loader for transforming css modules
For example, in the image above, you can see a webpack config having an instruction on how to read CSS between lines 13 to 15. It basically says, “Hey webpack, whenever you encounter a file that is resolved as .css , use css-loader imported above to read it and export it as a string.” Similarly, an HTML loader will tell webpack how to read the .html files it encounters in your app and export them as strings in your bundle.
Parcel handles the transformation process very smartly. Unlike Rollup and webpack, which need you to specify file types to transform, install and configure, plugins to transform them, Parcel provides built-in support for many common transforms and transpilers. | https://betterprogramming.pub/the-battle-of-bundlers-6333a4e3eda9 | ['Manisha Sharma'] | 2019-12-17 17:48:37.707000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'ES6', 'Frontend Development', 'Programming', 'Webpack'] |
Public vs. Private: Is Procurement Any Different? | Key Characteristics of Procurement in the Public Sector
At first glance, procurement in the public and private sectors are very similar. The purpose of procurement remains the same: to source goods and services from the supply market while maximizing value for money. To achieve this, procurement relies on the SRM² model, which is based on three main pillars:
An understanding of customers and suppliers
Value-based experiences
Being a facilitator or enabler
However, upon closer consideration, some specific characteristics and differences emerge when comparing procurement in the public and private sectors:
As illustrated in the Venn diagram, there is an important overlap in public procurement that does not exist in the private sector. Firstly, citizens benefit, directly or indirectly, from public services that are funded by their taxes. Secondly, these services are performed by suppliers from the private sector that are also taxpayers and benefit from these services. The dependency on taxpayers’ money explains why people expect public institutions to demonstrate frugality and put public funds to good use.
The funding and governance aspects explain why procurement in the public sector is risk averse. The likelihood that a misuse of funds will end up in the press is much higher than in the private sector. This is because public affairs affect everybody, which makes them a potential target for media outlets that act as a watchdog. Additionally, such incidents can be exploited by nongoverning politicians and supporters to increase their chances in the next election.
Risk aversion, therefore, plays a key role in shaping procurement practices in the public sector. One of the consequences of this approach is that process interests tend to overwhelm other interests. On the other hand, this also explains why the public sector is more advanced than the private sector in areas like digital procurement. The imperative for transparency and fairness is a strong motivation for organizations to use electronic portals to publish RFPs and RFQs, as well as communicate award decisions. Of course, this approach also introduces potential hindrances that do not exist, or exist to a lesser extent, in the private sector. For example, many countries have rules for contesting awards. As a safeguard mechanism, these regulations have merit. However, they also have drawbacks (e.g. requirement for publishing decisions, waiting time) that can limit speed and agility, which are essential to organizations in the private sector. | https://medium.com/procurement-tidbits/public-vs-private-is-procurement-any-different-146f36bca939 | ['Bertrand Maltaverne'] | 2018-07-22 19:02:35.751000+00:00 | ['Procurement', 'Government', 'Public Procurement', 'Business'] |
What is marketing today, and what isn’t anymore | “Marketing is not a function, it is the whole business from the customer’s point of view. Concern and responsibility for marketing must therefore permeate all areas of the enterprise.” — Peter Drucker
Accelerated growth. It’s what every company wants, isn’t it?
Driving growth, especially for marketers, is a metric that counts the most: the growth of a brand, growth of value creation, growth of a business. And along the way you build, unbuild and rebuild collaboration to deliver multi-stakeholder and multi-channel integrated product and band narrative.
As the concept of brand and marketing is less specific and more distributed than in the past, we learned a lot about uncertainty. Uncertainty results from the fact that events in the future do not follow the course of past events, and knowledge of the future is always incomplete.
Moreover, we are in the midst of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Driven by a fusion of technologies blurring the lines between the physical and digital worlds, it is the time of dramatic change sparked by incredible innovation and entrepreneurship.
Today, the concept of marketing is less specific and more distributed than in the past. To future-proof an organisation, a company’s entire business now needs to be driven by marketing. It can no longer be siloed and treated as a department. Everything is marketing, and everybody in a company is a marketer. A business strategy has to converge with the marketing strategy and permeate everything from the business model and go-to-market strategy to brand positioning and consumer engagement.
Prepare for even more upheaval in digitization, advanced analytics, and artificial intelligence — be ready for the sizeable marketing leap at the opportunities it creates and steps to making the impossible possible.
Accelerate mindset leaps
Embrace and adapt to exponential change
Converge business and marketing strategy
Design organisation in the future-made business
Collaborate with all types of diversity by strong partnerships
The time to make the marketing powerup for the future is now. With the marketing powerup, you employ four mindset leaps to enable change and unlock the full potential of modern marketing. The growth and new horizons will be worth it.
In a growth mindset, people understand that they can develop their talents and abilities through effort and persistence. They don’t necessarily think everyone’s the same or anyone can be Einstein, but they believe everyone can get smarter if they work at it.
The value of a human-centric mindset is agile work and behaviour in an unpredictable modern world — to understand the wants and needs of individuals, specifically those humans experiencing the service or product, and involved in making it happen.
A benefit mindset builds on a growth mindset when we understand that we can develop our abilities, and we also understand we can transform towards a more caring, inclusive and interdependent perspective.
A collaborative mindset: to drive growth, marketing leaders must collaborate with all types of diversity and diverse areas of the company (from sales and product innovation to finance technology, and people management).
✱ ✱ ✱ ✱
If you found these thoughts valuable, why not take a second to forward this article to one person, a friend or colleague, who would also enjoy it? Or share across one of your social networks, and let others know why you think it’s worth their time and reading. Thank you and be well, Andrea | https://medium.com/@andrearubik/what-is-marketing-today-and-what-isnt-anymore-6da203c7b1c9 | ['Andrea Rubik'] | 2020-12-09 08:34:08.515000+00:00 | ['Innovation', 'Change Management', 'Mindset Shift', 'Marketing'] |
7 Things I Learned from a Bottle of Wine | 7 Things I Learned from a Bottle of Wine
Photo by Alfonso Scarpa on Unsplash
My personal growth game is so strong sometimes that I even take lessons away from a night of drinking.
Yes, I’ve learned many valuable things from a bottle of wine. I mean, the wine didn’t speak to me. I drank it. And still I managed to learn a few key lessons- about life and about myself.
Here are just a few.
Photo by Jamie Brown on Unsplash
I am hilarious.
I mean, really freaking funny. My usual sharp wit gets turned up a notch to absolutely on point.
So what if no one else is laughing? They say “laugh and the world laughs with you”, so I’m giving it the old college try.
I am delightful.
It’s true. You should know that about me. And if you don’t know that about me, I might tell you a time or ten. Just so you know.
Because self-love is important. It’s absolutely essential. If you don’t think you’re delightful, why should anyone else?
Photo by Vadim Fomenok on Unsplash
If I’m normally adorable, I get adorable-r or more adorable.
But the first one is funnier to say. Let’s just say that I’m uber-affectionate and super warm and fuzzy.
Or maybe it’s just the room that’s fuzzy. Either way. This, again, goes back to loving yourself.
I can talk a mile a minute and then fall fast asleep.
Which may leave people who know me already asking what’s the difference, but really it is very different. Even I don’t know I’m about to drop off into a REM cycle until I do. I will chat and laugh until the moment I do, and then I’ll sleep like a baby until morning and wake up no worse for the wear.
I will turn into a serious storyteller.
Yes, I know I’m a writer for a living. An actual career writer. But I will still burst into a thousand random stories, and I will make even the most mundane story vastly entertaining.
Or at least I’ll tell my most boring story in such a charming way that you’ll dismiss its’ dullness in deference to my charm. Or at least, let me think you have.
Photo by Alexander Krivitskiy on Unsplash
I get really … hot.
No, really. Things seem to heat up quite a bit. Expect me to peel off my clothes. And likely peel my partner out of his- with his willing participation, of course.
Because consent matters even after a liberal pouring of wine.
And I can’t do math.
Oh, that’s a fact even without wine. But I promised you 7 things and only delivered, by my tipsy count, 6. An error in judgment likely brought on by mild to moderate inebriation. Forgive me for my miscalculation.
If you expected the secrets to life or some really deep insights into the Universe, you must be drinking a different kind of wine.
Because that’s it. At least, for this round of drinking. I don’t do it often, so a single bottle of wine is that much more potent for lack of regular alcohol consumption. All things in moderation, I say! Or someone said anyway… | https://psiloveyou.xyz/7-things-i-learned-from-a-bottle-of-wine-1dc802ab74c8 | ['Crystal Jackson'] | 2020-03-21 17:24:25.776000+00:00 | ['Humor', 'Lifestyle', 'Love And Sex', 'Wine', 'Self'] |
Optimizing inter-process communication between the TezEdge context storage and the Tezos economic protocol | Optimizing inter-process communication between the TezEdge context storage and the Tezos economic protocol Juraj Selep Follow Sep 2 · 18 min read
Increasing the speed at which blocks are applied is one of the most effective methods of improving a blockchain node. When new blocks are applied, the blockchain’s protocol reads from and writes into the node’s storage, which stores the blockchain state (which is known as the context in Tezos).
To improve the performance of the node, we want to make this process as fast as possible. While the TezEdge context storage implementation offered decent performance, we knew there was some unnecessary latency and overhead when the protocol interacted with it.
These latencies came from the use of an inter-process-communication (IPC) mechanism to handle the communication between the protocol and the TezEdge context storage. To solve this, we decided to implement, with the help of our ocaml-interop library, a new communication layer between the protocol and the context storage that instead uses direct function calls. In doing so we got rid of the latency overhead and also enabled the possibility for many new optimizations that we will describe in this article.
The optimizations involved significantly reducing the amount of memory allocations, a much more compact in-memory representation of the context storage, reduced locking and faster data serialization.
As part of these improvements, we also introduced better speed measurements that now better reflect how much time is spent by the protocol when accessing the context storage, along with visualizations in our TezEdge Explorer tool to clearly see where time is being spent.
The structure of the context Merkle tree
In Tezos, the blockchain state (called the context) is stored in the form of a Merkle tree, which is a type of data structure that utilizes hash functions to create a tree-like system of referencing.
In our past article on how the Tezos context is stored in the form of a Merkle tree, we used the terms “Commit”, “Tree” and “Blob”,for the various types of objects that constitute a Merkle tree. Here, we use the term Directory instead of Tree and Value instead of Blob, but otherwise, the concept remains the same.
The context tree is a Merkle tree that represents the context (the blockchain state). It is composed of two kinds of objects:
Directories — do not contain data in themselves, but they may contain references to values that do contain data, or references to other directories that contain values. They are the ‘branches’ of the context tree.
— do not contain data in themselves, but they may contain references to values that do contain data, or references to other directories that contain values. They are the ‘branches’ of the context tree. Values — A sequence of bytes. They do not refer to other Values and Directories. Values are the ‘leaves’ of the context tree.
Additionally, a commit is a tag with date and time that points to the root of the context tree. While it points to the context tree, it is not a part of the tree itself.
Please note that we use the term tree only when referring to a collection of one or more directories and values, while directory and value are just single objects within a tree.
The context (blockchain state) is versioned, and whenever it is modified and saved, the old version is still available. Versions of the context tree (the Merkle tree that represents the entire context) are stored in the repository, a data store to which we can save objects, and retrieve them by their hash.
Each version of the context tree is identified by the hash of its commit.
The blockchain contains a sequence of blocks. Blocks are composed of a collection of operations to be performed (for example, transferring ꜩ from one account to another). The application (processing) of a block involves:
Loading an initial state. This is done by reconstructing (from the repository) the version of the context tree specified by the block. This is called a checkout, and the resulting context tree is known as the working tree. Apply each operation to transform the working tree and produce a new version. This is done through a specific set of queries that read and manipulate the working tree. The working tree is then committed (saved) to the repository.
To commit a context tree, it must first be serialized (translated into a format that is easier to store) and hashed. A context tree is serialized by decomposing it into the objects constituting it (directories, values, commits), which then get serialized. All serialized objects are then saved to the repository and associated with their hash. Finally, a commit object is produced, hashed, and saved too. This commit object will serve as a marker for this version of the context tree.
There are some aspects that are important for performance:
Fast modification of the working tree
Fast reconstruction of the working tree from the repository
Fast saving of the working tree to the repository
Efficient use of the system memory (less memory usage)
Integrating the context storage with the Tezos protocol
The Tezos economic protocol is a set of rules that determine how the ledger is updated, what constitutes a valid block and operation, the structure of the context (blockchain state), and other aspects of the Tezos blockchain. The code that implements the economic protocol doesn’t know anything about how the context storage is implemented, only that it implements a specific application programming interface (API). Any implementation of the context storage (the part of the node that stores the blockchain state) must implement an API that is compatible with the protocol in order to function properly.
This means that it is possible to switch context storage implementations and the protocol will work well with them as long as they implement the right API.
We introduced two new modules that implement this API. The first one takes care of connecting the protocol to the TezEdge context. It was implemented with the help of our ocaml-interop library, which allowed us to integrate our context storage and the Tezos economic protocol more tightly together and have them safely share the same memory space.
This also allows us to almost seamlessly share values between Rust and OCaml without having to copy them from one language to the other. What used to require communication between processes is now done through direct function calls between Rust and OCaml code. This considerably improves the performance of the working tree by removing latencies and avoiding data copying.
The other module is an overlay over both the TezEdge and Irmin contexts. This allows us to run the node with either Irmin or TezEdge as the context storage implementation, or both at the same time. It also has the option to measure and record the time it takes to query the context.
The remaining optimizations involve improvements to the in-memory representation of the working tree, the repository, and improvements to the serialization of the context state tree.
Old implementation
The original implementation of the repository used a hash table, a type of key-value store that, in our case, maps the keys to objects and makes them addressable by their hashes. Every time the working tree was committed at the end of the application of a block, each object in the tree, as well as the commit object, were hashed, serialized, and added to this hash table. Directories were also represented using hash tables (with names as keys and child object hashes as values).
The implementation was straightforward and very close to the abstract description of a Merkle tree. Its shortcoming was that it did not use memory efficiently. Let’s first go over the sources of overhead before we describe the optimizations.
Sources of overhead
Hashes: each hash has a size of 32 bytes. For a few hashes, this is not a big deal, but if we store the hash of every object (directory, value, or commit) in the store, that ends up adding to a lot of hashes. If we take into account that most values in the context tree are also small (just a few bytes), we end up spending more space to keep hashes around than to store the actual values. In addition, because hashes were stored with their data embedded in directories, the same hash would end duplicated multiple times (once in the repository, at least once inside a directory containing the child object, and once again in the structures used by the context garbage collector for bookkeeping purposes).
Arc/Rc overhead: Rust provides two data wrappers that add reference counting to a value, Rc (single-threaded) and Arc (multi-threaded). In a serialized context tree, serialized objects are just a sequence of bytes, but in the original representation, every single value was wrapped in Arc<[u8]> (a sequence of bytes wrapped in a reference-counted container that can be shared between threads). The Arc wrapper is needed because the main thread and the garbage collector thread need to share the same value. The reason is that the garbage collector inspects directories to be able to find references to other objects. This results in quite a bit of overhead, especially for small values. We will get back to this later in the article.
For example, when we have 186,725,376 instances of Arc , each of those instances has 16 bytes overhead, this results in 2.98 GB memory used only for the Arc counters.
Hash tables: when using a hash table to represent the repository and directories, along with the strings and object hashes that we use as keys (and end up duplicated again because hash tables need to keep a copy of the key), we also need to keep another 8 bytes hash, which is the hash of the key, that the hash table uses to search for the associated values.
Allocations: with each object being stored on its own, one memory allocation is needed for every object, and then a deallocation is needed when the object isn’t used anymore. This can lead to memory fragmentation, and as a consequence, slower access and wasted memory. This is an issue especially when manipulating the working tree, because a lot of new values are created and discarded until it is committed.
Serialization: at the end of the application of a block, when the working tree is going to get committed, the tree needs to be serialized before it gets saved to the repository. In the old implementation, serialization of values was done with bincode (a popular encoder for serialized data). However, it turns out that for the kind of values we store (as well as because bincode is generic), it cannot assume much about the data, and misses important opportunities to produce a more compact representation faster.
Locks: data was shared between the main thread and the thread that performs the garbage collection. This required locking that could introduce some latency while the garbage collector was doing its work at the end of a cycle (a sequence of blocks that are used as a unit of time in the Tezos blockchain).
Deduplication and flat representation
The first optimization involves the deduplication of object hashes and the strings that compose the fragments of a path (in the path “a/b/c”, “a”, “b” and “c” are fragments) in the context tree. The goal is to reduce the amount of redundant copies, and also the amount of allocations.
This was achieved by adding an extra level of indirection to be able to replace instances of these values with a single 4 bytes identifier. Additionally, they are now all stored together in preallocated contiguous blocks of memory. This applies to all the objects in our context tree.
Hashes are now stored inside a single preallocated vector, with each slot having the amount of space required by one hash. When a new hash is created, it is stored in a free slot in this vector (no allocation needed), and we get back a unique 4 bytes ID (HashId) to use elsewhere in place of the 32 bytes hash. Now, each time this hash shows up anywhere in the tree, we only need 4 bytes (instead of 32) to represent it. When the garbage collector runs, hashes that are not needed anymore are discarded and the space is reclaimed to be used by future hashes.
Strings that represent path fragments, when small, are now all stored concatenated into a single preallocated big string, and represented as a “StringId”, a 4 bytes integer that contains the position of this substring in the big string, and its length.
This representation is more compact, and avoids duplication, allocations and overhead (before we either duplicated these strings all the time, or wrapped them in an Rc which incurred the same overhead shown above for small values).
For example, if we have 2 strings “hello” and “abc”, we store them in a single string: “helloabc”. We access those 2 strings with 2 different “StringId”, but they are stored in the same memory space, and 1 allocation was needed instead of 2. When the string is big (its length is superior or equal to 30 bytes), a different StringId is used.
This adds an additional indirection where the offsets of such strings are stored in another structures (indexes in the diagram)
For example: Let’s say that a big string (>= 30 bytes) has a StringId of 2. This 2 is the index inside the vector indexes . We check the values of indexes at the index 2, we found that start and end are 70 and 110.To be able to find this string, we read the big strings from the index 70 until 110.
Directories in the context tree are now all concatenated in a single big vector. We were previously using a hash table to represent a directory. While correct, this structure used more memory than necessary.
We also need only a few functions on directories: search, find, insert and remove. The context now has DirectoryId , which is a reference to a sublice inside the big vector.
Using a vector-based storage significantly reduced the number of allocations made (we allocate only to grow the vector, instead of allocating each individual object) and the result is a faster block application, and less RAM used. A full bootstrap used to take 3 days and now takes approximately 2.
Flattening of the working tree
We observed that one of the performance bottlenecks of the context in the TezEdge node is related to the number of allocations made. When the protocol applies a block, a lot of temporary objects get created when modifying (writing into) the working tree.
This leads to several inconveniences:
1. Allocator-specific reliance
It makes the performance of our context rely on the allocator implementation: a slow allocator leads to a slow modification of our context. Rust allows the changing of the global allocator to a custom one, or jemalloc for example, but that wouldn’t address the additional two issues that are described below.
2. Memory fragmentation
When the CPU accesses our object from memory, it first checks if this object is in the data cache (the data cache is like the RAM, but smaller and faster). If the object is not in the cache, it is called a cache miss, in that case the CPU needs to load the object from the RAM into the cache. Because all our objects are in different places in the memory (RAM), the CPU has to do the expensive process of loading it into the cache first.
3. Memory overhead
The aforementioned objects are shared in different parts of the code, so they are allocated with smart pointers (or shared pointers). Smart pointers have the benefit of being deallocated when all references are dropped to avoid memory leaks, but they also have a lot of memory overhead:
Rust smart pointers ( Rc and Arc ) are reference counted pointers, meaning that for each pointer, there are 2 extra counters: a strong counter and a weak pointer. This means that when we allocate an object, it allocates the size of the object + 16 bytes for the counters.
In addition, Rust allows us to have shared pointers to a slice of memory ( Rc<[u8]> ), this pointer has 8 extra bytes to store the length of the slice, making a total of 24 extra bytes.
Inside the Tezos context, most values are small, so this overhead ends up being quite big. Consider, for example, how much extra space is needed for a 4 bytes value.
The Rc/Arc wrapping will add an extra 16 bytes (a strong counter and a weak counter, 8 bytes each). Then the pointers to these values cost 16 extra bytes (8 for the pointer address, and 8 for the size of the slice).
To solve those issues, we decided to use a centralized system where all objects of the same type are allocated in an array, then indexed by an 8 bytes identifier.
Thus, when creating and using an object, the user of that system identifies the object by an index, as it doesn’t have any pointer anymore. Instead of requesting more memory to the allocator (and eventually to the OS), creating an object uses only a free slot in the (already allocated) array.
Using such a system addresses the 3 issues we described above:
1. We do not make use of the allocator anymore. We only use it when we need to grow the array, but that happens far less often than before for each individual object.
2. The objects are next to each other, so that when the CPU wants to access an object, it will load it in the data cache. If the CPU wants to access the next object, it is already in the data cache, so it doesn’t need to load another part of the RAM into the cache.
3. We are getting rid of the smart pointers counters: this is saving 16 or 24 bytes for each object. Because the lifetime of our objects won’t last longer than after the block application, we can deallocate our objects all at once when a new block starts being applied.
An array index need fewer bits than a pointer (64 on 64 bits architecture), this also allows us to have a smaller data structure containing those indexes, which means we have a better usage of the cache.
For example: our StringId is 32 bits, if we used a pointer, the pointer itself would be 64 bits.
We are now applying blocks faster, with a smaller memory footprint, using 100% safe Rust.
Serialization
When the working tree gets committed, all objects in the tree are hashed and serialized. Since the old implementation represented directories using a hash table, and was serialized with bincode, the resulting serialized value used far more memory than necessary. For example, a small directory of 2 children “a” and “b” required about 100 bytes.
With the new more compact representation described above, and the implementation of a custom serializer, now the same directory can be serialized in just 11 bytes.
We are using the following encoding to serialize our different objects:
Directory:
The first byte is a tag that identifies that this object is a directory
Then all children objects use a single byte with a descriptor (described below), N bytes for the name of the child object, and 4 bytes for the HashID that references the child object (there is an exception for inlined values, which will be described in the next section).
Descriptor above is 1 byte, defined as follow:
The “kind” bit defines if the object is a leaf or not (a directory or a value).
The 3 bits for the “inlined value length” define the size of the value if it is inlined (see next section), unless the length is 0, in that case the value is not inlined and is instead referenced by a HashID.
The last 4 bits are used to define the key length. If the key length doesn’t fit in 4 bits, then an additional 2 bytes are added after “descriptor” to specify the key length.
Value:
First byte is a tag that identifies that this object is a value
The remaining bytes are the data of this value. There is no field specifying the length of the data field, but we know how long it is because these bytes are stored in a vector, so we just subtract 1 byte from it, and the result is the length of the data.
Commit:
First byte is a tag that identifies that this object is a commit
The next 4 bytes are the HashID that references the root of this commit’s tree
The next 4 bytes are the HashID that references the parent commit
The next 8 bytes are the timestamp of this commit
Then for the author and message of the commit, we have for each 4 bytes with the length, followed by N bytes with the data
Inlining of small values
Serializing a directory means that we have to keep a hash for each child object. We realized that most of the serialized values are less than 8 bytes in size. Therefore keeping a hash (32 bytes) for each small value (less than 8 bytes) brought unnecessary memory overhead.
So instead of serializing those small values and storing their hash, we decided to store the value directly in its parent directory.
A serialized directory with 2 children, “name” and “other”, takes the following form in memory:
The hash ID allows the retrieval of the object from the repository by its hash.
The “Descriptor” is a single byte that provides some details about the child, as described in the section above.
By inlining the small values, we have the following in memory. For instance, let’s assume that “name” points to the value “abcdef”. If that value gets inlined, the serialized directory now looks like this:
While the serialized directory now consumes more memory (22 bytes vs 20 bytes), we no longer store the object hash which is 32 bytes, and also avoid the 4 bytes for the HashID. That means that we saved 34 bytes in this example.
The downside is that we have to recompute the hash of the small values on every commit. However, this is a good tradeoff considering the amount of memory space that we saved. Also, hashing such small values is relatively fast.
To give a number, on the block level 1530711, 430 millions inlined values were serialized since block 1.Inlining values during serialization saved about 15.5GB (430M * (32 bytes + 4)) of memory (due to not keeping the hash and its hash ID).
There is another advantage of this representation: for the upcoming persistent implementation of the context, fetching directories from the repository will already include some (or all) of its children values, saving I/O roundtrips.
Measuring the storage’s performance
When working on these optimizations, we made use of some of the new features in our front end — the TezEdge Explorer. In the intermediary context module, we measure the time it takes to execute each context action (for both Irmin and TezEdge contexts). We can now find this data in the front end:
http://storage.dev.tezedge.com/#/storage
Horizontal rows display information about the datetime, level, cycle and hash of a specific block. Hovering the cursor over a specific row selects that block and displays how much time each context action took. When we hover above a directory (for example rolls ), we can see how many Actions were performed, the Total Time they took to be processed, the Mean (average) time and the Max (maximum) amount of time an action in that directory took.
http://storage.dev.tezedge.com/#/resources/storage
On this screen, we can see the global stats for the action types commit and checkout.
Hovering the cursor over a column displays calls categorized by the time they took, for instance, this screenshot displays the category of CHECKOUT calls that took between 100ms to 1s. Again we can see how many Calls were performed, the Mean (average) time and the Max (maximum) and the Total Time they took to be processed.
The measurements are taken for both Irmin (the OCaml Tezos node’s context storage) and the TezEdge node’s context storage.
With this we can obtain insights about where most of the time is being spent when executing context operations to inform our future decisions about what to optimize. For example, in the first screenshot, it can be seen that most of the time is being spent in the contracts and rolls directories.
Because we record every action, we can also find out about data access patterns, which can provide useful information we could use to help with the implementation of a cache or a data prefetching mechanism.
The improved integration of the TezEdge context storage with the Tezos economic protocol has reduced overhead, but it has also opened the door to even further optimization, such as avoiding memory allocations as we can now read data directly from the OCaml heap. Our efforts in this area will be well-informed by the measurements of the storage context which you can yourself see via the in-browser TezEdge Explorer UI.
Last, but not least, the integration of the context storage with the economic protocol provides the foundations to use TezEdge’s context storage directly from the OCaml Tezos node, though this will require further development down the line.
How to test the optimizations
1. First, you need to clone this repo.
git clone https://github.com/tezedge/tezedge.git
2. Then change into the cloned directory
cd tezedge
3. Run docker by typing these commands:
a) To test with Irmin:
docker-compose -f docker-compose.storage.irmin.yml pull docker-compose -f docker-compose.storage.irmin.yml up
And visit http://localhost:8282 in your browser.
b) To test with TezEdge’s in-memory context storage:
docker-compose -f docker-compose.storage.memory.yml pull docker-compose -f docker-compose.storage.memory.yml up
And visit http://localhost:8181 in your browser.
We hope you have enjoyed our update article. Feel free to contact me by email, I look forward to receiving your questions, comments and suggestions. To read more about Tezos and the TezEdge node, please visit our documentation, subscribe to our Medium, follow us on Twitter or visit our GitHub. | https://medium.com/tezedge/optimizing-inter-process-communication-between-the-tezedge-context-storage-and-the-tezos-economic-f0574153773c | ['Juraj Selep'] | 2021-09-02 07:47:09.286000+00:00 | ['Merkle Tree', 'Rust', 'Tezos', 'Storage'] |
The Dodgers’ World Series “last out” baseballs | Austin Barnes returns to Dodger Stadium with the last-out ball after the 2020 World Series. (Photo by Jon SooHoo/Los Angeles Dodgers)
by Mark Langill
The Dodgers clinched their first World Series title in 32 years when reliever Julio Urías threw a called strike past Tampa Bay’s Willy Adames to save LA’s 3–1 victory in Game 6 of the Fall Classic on October 27 at Globe Life Field in Texas.
Before joining the celebration around the pitcher’s mound, catcher Austin Barnes tucked the final baseball into his back pocket for safe keeping and later an MLB Authentication hologram sticker was added.
(Photo by Jon SooHoo/Los Angeles Dodgers)
Of the seven “last out” baseballs” from the Brooklyn and Los Angeles World Series championships, the whereabouts of the first four — from 1955, 1959, 1963 and 1965 — are unknown.
“Nobody has asked about that last baseball from 1955 in more than 60 years,” said Gil Hodges Jr., the son of the former Brooklyn first baseman who also managed the 1969 New York Mets to a World Series title. “It wasn’t considered memorabilia. I never heard Dad talk about it. After he caught that final throw from Pee Wee Reese at shortstop, I think his first thought was running toward the pitcher’s mound and celebrating with Johnny Podres, who had just pitched a shutout at Yankee Stadium. Same thing with the Mets. I don’t think (left fielder) Cleon Jones saved the ball in 1969 on Davey Johnson’s flyout against the Orioles. Times were different back then.”
Two Dodgers who caught the final out — outfielder Wally Moon (1959) and catcher John Roseboro (1965) — wrote autobiographies about their respective careers. But neither player described being involved with the last out, thus leaving no clues about their Series-ending baseballs.
Former Dodger outfielder Kenny Landreaux didn’t start Game 6 of the 1981 World Series, but he was inserted into the lineup as a defensive replacement in the sixth inning for Pedro Guerrero, who switched from center to right field. Landreaux, a Southern California native acquired in a trade from the Minnesota Twins during Spring Training in 1981, had the distinction of catching the final fly ball hit by Bob Watson to cap the Dodgers’ 9–2 victory at Yankee Stadium.
Forty years later, Landreaux is still asked about the final baseball. “I’ve sold it — three times,” he jokes. “Actually, the ball is somewhere in my garage. We didn’t have the authenticated service back then. If there was a special milestone, we just wrote what happened on the baseball.”
Like Landreaux, the honor of the catching the final pitch in 1988 belonged to first-year Dodger Rick Dempsey, who at age 38 received a non-roster invitation to Spring Training after waiting for hours in the Dodger office lobby for a chance to speak with L.A. general manager Fred Claire about extending his career at least another season.
“This is what I’ll do,” Dempsey said. “I’ll hit a home run every 25 at-bats. We will take the pitching staff and we’ll turn it around. We’ll win the division, win the playoffs. We’ll get to the World Series. We’ll win the World Series. I’ll catch the last pitch and give you the ball.”
Dempsey, who hit seven home runs in 167 at-bats spanning 77 games, spent most of the 1988 season as a backup catcher and member of the team’s “Stunt Men,” the nickname for L.A.’s reserve players. But when Mike Scioscia suffered a knee injury while attempting to steal a base in Game 4, Dempsey took over behind the plate and started Game 5 at Oakland when Orel Hershiser pitched a complete-game 5–2 victory. | https://dodgers.mlblogs.com/the-dodgers-world-series-last-out-baseballs-76b815cf3be | ['Mark Langill'] | 2021-01-21 19:51:17.386000+00:00 | ['MLB', 'Baseball', 'Dodgers', 'Last Out', 'World Series'] |
Vodafone’s Get the Flow app: tackling stuttering with a rap | Vodafone’s Get the Flow app: tackling stuttering with a rap
Original publication date: Mar 21, 2018
Vodafone is tackling stuttering among Dutch children with a ‘rap app’.
Background
5% of all Dutch children stutter, and as a result, many of them become victims of bullying. This causes low self-esteem. Therefore, they choose to communicate via their mobile phone, rather than practise their speech in public. When Vodafone asked DDB & Tribal to create a ‘Powerful Connections’ campaign to convince people that mobile technology connects people and can make a positive difference to their lives, the Dutch agency tapped into the issue and developed the Get The Flow app.
Strategy
DDB & Tribal were keen to prove that mobile technology really can make a difference by giving children who stutter a chance to practise their speech in a fun but effective way — through rap. The app allows users to connect with other children who stutter, practise together and share their tracks, boosting their confidence in the process.
Process
The agency collaborated with famous Dutch rappers, singer songwriter Miss Montreal (who stutters herself) and the Dutch Stutter Federation. The rappers wrote special rap lyrics for every exercise, using tongue twisters and alliterations, especially hard to pronounce for children who stutter. A custom-built timing system automatically detects when the child does not stutter. And the app also allows them to monitor their improvements throughout.
Visually the app is inspired by the period when hip hop began to develop: the 1970s in the Bronx, NY. Using primary colors, graffiti typography and hand-drawn illustrations, giving children a cool hip hop experience, throwing in some fun, bold animations too.
Outcome
The campaign, consisting of a launch event, a social video and a social media campaign, generated an earned media value of €5.3m and reached 66% of the Dutch population. It has given people a positive feeling towards mobile technology and the Vodafone brand.
Two out of three children in The Netherlands who stutter have used and loved the app, and it is now used as an official stutter therapy.
All of this makes the Get The Flow campaign Vodafone’s most successful ‘Powerful Connections’ campaign to date, winning several major awards along the way, including: Cannes Lions’ Bronze for Media, PR, Entertainment for Music and Sound Design, a Eurobest Silver for Entertainment and Gold for Healthcare/PR, 4x bronze and the grand prix in Healthcare Promo & Activation and the FWA Site of the Day.
This case was brought to you by the Dutch Digital Design collective. | https://medium.com/@DutchDigital/vodafones-get-the-flow-app-tackling-stuttering-with-a-rap-8b2c5a191b94 | ['Dutch Digital Design'] | 2020-12-16 10:00:08.038000+00:00 | ['Creative', 'Marketing', 'Ditigal', 'Mobile', 'Dutch'] |
A response to Dalton Conley’s piece on genetic screenings | In December of 1981, shortly after my birth as the first in-vitro baby in the United States, The Rev. Jerry Falwell, then head of the conservative Moral Majority, said that the scientists were “delving into an area that is far too sacred for human beings to be involved in.”
He was echoed by Rev. Father McCormick, overseeing the ethics of my birth. Here he is, discussing with the BBC the choices of my parents, and of the scientists who helped them:
To me, Dalton Conley’s recent piece in the Washington Post Perspective section feels like deja vu all over again.
Since my birth in 1981, IVF has become commonplace, with more than 8 million IVF babies born worldwide.
Conley’s cry for regulation is one I have heard before. While I agree with parts of his argument, it is the argument of someone who hasn’t witnessed first-hand how thoughtful discussion from within the IVF field led to the regulation and best practices of IVF all those years ago.
I was in the room when the top IVF pioneers and clinics discussed their concerns around the risk of multiple births, or what a clinician should do when faced with a patient who wanted a half dozen embryos implanted, even though doing so would put the patient themselves at great risk.
A pattern I’ve seen many times over my life is one of outsiders, commenting from a comfortable distance, often with no investment, making thoughtless statements which are insensitive to the needs of the patients, and to the work done by the scientists who devote their lives to serving those patients. People who want to dehumanize and make suspect parents and scientists making “Test Tube Babies” and “Designer Children”.
The IVF and genomics fields work tirelessly, in collaboration with their patients, to address the very concerns Conley raises. To imply otherwise is offensive.
Conley says: “Currently, PGSs predict the health outcomes of Americans with African ancestry less well than they do for Americans of exclusively European descent. There are important scientific reasons for this difference, including different levels of genetic variation in the populations, but political ones as well: There are simply fewer studies with large numbers of Black subjects on which to train statistical models to calculate PGSs.”
The industry and scientists recognized this, and as such, researchers at the NIH developed guidelines for how polygenic risk scores should be reported.
And, as recently as this week, the NIH said that it will provide $38 million in grant funding over the next five years to fund a consortium that will develop improved methods for using polygenic risk scores to predict disease in diverse populations.
Additionally, Conley touts the near 100 percent success rate of genetic tests for single-gene diseases (PGT-M), I’d like to remind him that that particular test has also been around since 1990, when Alan Handyside and Professor Lord Robert Winston at Hammersmith Hospital, London achieved the first pregnancies worldwide following in vitro fertilization (IVF) and preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) of inherited disease, now known as PGT-M.
And I remind him that one of the first criticisms leveled against PGT-M was that it was “noisy”! BRCA predisposes women to breast cancer. Embryo genetic screening against BRCA is now widely accepted, even though these “noisy” genes will only result in breast cancer in a fraction of the daughters born with it, less than half. Yet, despite this “noise”, we as a society have come to accept that the decision of whether to screen BRCA, whether to reduce risk of breast cancer, is best deliberated by the parents and the scientists with a direct stake. Screening polygenic risk scores can reduce risk just as much risk as BRCA, and is applicable to far more people:
These matters are being debated on lowly twitter, in the highest bioethics journals, and in IVF clinics everywhere. It’s too early to say where we will arrive as a society, but it’s a far cry to say that these matters aren’t being deliberated carefully by the best minds in the IVF science community.
As with most things, PGT-M has only gotten better with time, patients, and scientists on its side. Meanwhile, the Falwells and McCormicks have lost interest, after their designer-baby rhetoric stopped garnering attention. I see this pattern repeating itself with PGT-P. | https://medium.com/@elizabeth-2585/a-response-to-dalton-conleys-piece-on-genetic-screenings-180df031e224 | ['Elizabeth Carr'] | 2021-06-28 10:46:49.575000+00:00 | ['Genetics', 'Ivf', 'Op Ed'] |
Keystone Habits that can improve your Life-Style | True Life is lived when tiny changes occur -Leo Tolstoi
Hello, today I’ll talk about Keystone Habits that can drastically improve your life. So you’re asking, What exactly is a Keystone Habit? Well, I’ll explain you what is is.
Keystone habit is a single habit that causes you to adopt multiple other good habits and change your life. The reason I’m telling you the story is because today you’re going to pick up a habit to focus on for the rest of this course. And the three habits that I’m gonna show you are three of the most powerful. Keys don’t have it out there. These habits have the highest chance of drastically changing your life.
Number 1-Reading.
Well, everyone knows that education is important. That’s why we spend 12 to 18 years in buildings that are designed to teach us things. However, the problem lies in the fact that most of the stuff we learned in school isn’t useful in real life. What was the last time you had to use your History knowledge or your knowledge of Calculus? These things are nice to know and have their uses but aren’t that practical in our day to day lives. Instead we need to be learning about things like social skills maintaining a proper diet or how to exercise money management things that we don’t really learn correctly in school. Books provide you with knowledge on all of these topics. They also give you different perspectives on things that we assumed to be true. For example most people assume they should always buy a car but if you read books on investing or money management, you’ll often come across the idea that “Hey it’s actually better to lease a car” and this is actually true. Literally all of the car salesmen that I personally know leased their cars. They don’t buy them. And by reading you’ll often find that you’ll adjusting other areas of your life if you are reading book on body language you’ll start becoming more conscious of your own body language as well as those around you. If you read a book on money management, you start noticing a change in your spending habits. And because of its ability to influence any party of your life in a positive way, reading is without a doubt. One of the most powerful Keystone Habits out there.
Number 2- Meditation
The reason Meditation is so powerful is because of what it does to your brain. It trains a part of your brain that’s responsible for willpower for self-control. And just like going to the gym, if you train it, it actually gets stronger. And this gives you the ability to do certain things. Things that I consider to be superpowers. For example you’ll find yourself more in control of your emotions. And this is great because oftentimes we relapse or give into our addictions when our emotions are all over the place. Another thing meditation trains you to do is focus longer. Meditation is simply the act of trying to focus your mind on one thing and this is extremely hard for people nowadays. When you start meditating and making it into a habit, you’ll notice a drastic increase in your ability to focus. Maybe in the past, you were the type of person who couldn’t even read two pages of a book without getting sidetracked. A lot of people report increased focus being able to read entire chapter at a time after making meditation into a habit. And the last superpower that Meditation provides is a sense of general well-being. Do you remember that sort of awe and joy you had as a kid when a little things in life would excite you? Meditation brings back that sort of mindset, that sort of perspective where you can sit down on a park bench and simply be mind blown by just how beautiful everything around you is. Meditation is an extremely powerful Keystone habit because it in itself is a very very hard habit to stick. But if you can make it into a habit that you do automatically every day, that means your levels of willpower have skyrocket dramatically and adopting other habits will become a piece of cake.
Number 3-Fitness
This includes everything from running to lifting heavy weights to doing calisthenics. Fitness is an extremely powerful keys don’t have is because of its intimate relationship with diet. Researchers have found that most people who start sticking to a fitness regimen will often find themselves adjusting their diet as well. Even if they’re told not to, it makes sense because if you’re working your ass off at gym. You’re less likely to consume junk food right after, because it quote unquote undos all of your hard work. And because of these two habits, basically a come in package together. It requires a lot of willpower to maintain. So if you can successfully make them into full-fledged habits, you’ll be able to take smaller habits with ease. For now, just understand that it does work like muscle. The more you test, the stronger it becomes. On top of that the habit fitness and diet has huge influence on how you feel every single day. Many people report feeling tired and foggy and oftentimes the problem stems from our diet. Or our lack of exercise. Once these people start adopting these two good habits, they often report feeling much better. If you start feeling better on a day to day basis, it makes it much easier to start adopting other good habits. This ability to improve your body’s day-to-day function makes fitness and diet an extremely powerful Keystones habits.
Now I know, I know, there’s dozens of other good habits out there like cold showers, morning rituals, making your bed etc… But these 3 Keystone Habits are without a doubt, 3 of the most powerful habits that you can add to your life. So what I like you for to do right now is to think carefully about which habit you want to work on the rest of this course. Which of these habits are you going to try to stick to until it reaches that line of automatically we talked about. Well you no longer even have to think about doing it. That’s the goal. It’s also very important to note that you should only try to stick to one of these habits at a time. We humans are extremely bad at multitasking. Although we tend to think that we’re pretty good. I can just guarantee that if you’re trying to adopt multiple habits at once. That you’re going to get overwhelmed and fail. Stick to the single Keystone Habit that you decide on it until it reaches that line of automaticity. Do not, I repeat do not try to adopt any other good habits until that Keystone Habit you have picked is completely embedded in your life.
Thank you for reading. And I wish you all the good luck! | https://medium.com/@practiceviolin513/keystone-habits-8e94f6795024 | [] | 2020-07-02 12:33:12.214000+00:00 | ['Inspiration', 'Habits', 'DIY', 'Improvement', 'Life Lessons'] |
Why is Gatsby JS Good for Google Rankings? | SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimisation), doesn’t seem to get old — it’s just different every year. Google changes its Search Algorithm and Ranking System every once in a while, adding new ranking factors or modifying existing ones. And since 2018, page speed is one of them.
However, there are more: content relevancy, mobile-friendliness, user experience, on-page optimization… There are more than 200 of them in total. It’s mind-blowing, isn’t it?
However, you don’t have to take them all into account — focus on the most important ones.
And if you are wondering how to do that and create a website with the highest chances to rank high, consider Gatsby.
Keep reading to check why!
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a set of practices aimed to make a particular website look better and better in the eyes of Google. In other words, SEO is about improving the quality and quantity of website traffic coming through search engine results pages (SERPs).
The search engine result page, on the other hand, is a page that displays mainly (but not only) results returned by a search engine like Google as a response to query search such as “online shopping” or “front-end development agency”.
Why does SEO matter?
SEO helps companies bring valuable, organic traffic to their websites which is the first step towards getting new clients and increasing revenue. The better SEO-optimised the site is, the higher it’s ranked in SERPs. And the higher the ranking is, the bigger the traffic.
The main difference between organic traffic (brought by SEO) and paid traffic (brought by money) is that the first one is free, forever. However, great SEO has more benefits than just saving money:
It drives the quality traffic to your website — instead of reaching out to people whether they want to or not (interruption marketing), SEO focuses on making it easy for them to find you when they want to (permission marketing).
Organic results get more clicks than paid ads — it’s hard to tell why that is, but it doesn’t alter the statistics: over 70% of searches end in clicking an organic result on the first page.
SEO supports Public Relations efforts — one of the main elements of SEO is link building, which is about earning links from industry-respected publications and other relevant websites. On the other hand, featuring in such publications and being mentioned by influencers is a primary point of PR strategy. This presents an excellent opportunity to get in front of new customers through, for example, guest posting.
It helps you to overtake the competition — SEO is an essential part of most marketing strategies which means there is a huge chance that your competition is already fighting for better rankings. However, with well-prepared and well-executed SEO efforts, you can catch up with them or even surpass them.
Main SEO ranking factors
There is a legend circulating in the marketing world that there is a man who knows all SEO ranking factors used by Google. However, no one ever saw him.
Luckily, you don’t have to know them all — only the main ones. But since giving specific SEO advice is not our goal here, we will just scratch the surface to provide you with an overview.
Accessibility
All your efforts to rank high will be for nothing if your website is not visible to search engine crawlers. These are robots that are crawling through the Internet to index websites. If the specific site is not indexed correctly, it won’t be displayed in search results.
What you have to do is create robots.txt file and website’s sitemap. It’s a confirmation of your site’s accessibility. However, you can go one step further by submitting your website to Google through Google Search Console.
Backlinks
This is one of the most crucial SEO ranking factors, if not the most crucial one. As a reminder, backlinks are links to one website inserted on another website. The more backlinks you earn, the better it is for your website’s SEO.
However, it’s more complicated than it looks. Every single backlink and its effect on SEO is influenced by other factors like relevancy or domain authority.
Mobile-friendliness
Mobile-friendliness (or responsiveness) is a ranking factor for both mobile and desktop searches. If your website fully adapts to a visitor’s device — whether it’s a small-screen mobile phone or big-screen TV — it means that it’s mobile-friendly (or responsive). And this is very much welcomed by Google.
You can check if your website is mobile-friendly with Google’s official tool.
On-page optimization
All efforts within the website that are intended to improve the website’s position in search engine results are called on-page optimization. Among them are: creating proper title and meta tags, using the right keywords, optimizing images, writing original and valuable content.
Page speed (desktop and mobile)
Page speed has been a ranking factor for a decade now. And two years ago it started to affect not only desktop searches but also mobile searches. However, don’t treat it like a challenge to beat competitors by trying to make your website load a few milliseconds faster. Instead, make it fast enough, so it won’t affect the user experience negatively.
One more thing: according to Google’s research, one-third of visitors will leave your website if page load time goes from one to three seconds. If it takes longer, it’s even worse.
User experience
Would you come back to a place where you have had a terrible experience? Doubtful. The same thing goes for websites — the first impression makes all the difference. If the user experience is awful, it’s likely you won’t revisit it.
While it’s not clear how exactly Google measures user’s satisfaction from visiting a particular website, they gave some suggestions about what’s essential from the UX perspective:
Content that’s useful and easy to read
Design that’s responsive and responds to users’ needs
Well-organized site architecture
Dynamic site vs static site: which one is better for SEO?
There is one more thing to consider: what kind of website should you choose to raise your chances of ranking high in search engine results pages. First of all, there are two main website types — dynamic site and static site.
What is a dynamic site?
Dynamic sites allow users to interact with the content posted on a website. That content is being generated in real-time, which means it can be different for different users, depending on their location, device, time zone, or even network.
A dynamic website can use client-side scripting (the browser executes code), server-side scripting (the server runs code), or a combination of both.
A good example of such websites are those built using a Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress or Drupal.
What is a static site?
Static websites, on the contrary, offer the same content for every visitor, regardless of their browser’s language or other preferences. For every page, there is a specific HTML file on the server that contains the content of this page. Such a website is pre-rendered and is not meant to be regularly updated because it requires some HTML knowledge to edit source files.
A good example of such websites is simple business websites created using static site generators (SSG) like Gatsby.
Which one does Google prefer?
While both types serve different purposes and require different skills, let’s take a look at dynamic sites and static sites from Google's perspective.
Static sites are faster.
Page load speed is one of the leading SEO ranking factors, which also affects user experience in either a good or bad way. Static sites are faster than dynamic sites because they are pre-rendered. Pre-rendering means that your website is generated as a set of static files in advance, not in real-time.
Static sites are easier to index.
Static websites consist of HTML and CSS files which are extremely easy to read and index by Google crawlers. Another thing that helps with indexation is a simple sitemap which is recommended by all search engines, including Google.
Static sites are easier to optimize.
When you decide to choose a static site, you gain total control over SEO. You can customize any page of your website in any way you want. In a case of dynamic websites, you need to install a plugin or two to help you with SEO efforts.
Static sites are less expensive to host and maintain.
Since static sites consist of simple HTML files, they need much less space on the hosting server than dynamic sites. Also, such a website won’t use much of the monthly transfer limit.
What is Gatsby?
If you are considering creating a static site, Gatsby may be your choice of tool to do so. It is a free and open-source framework created with React, helping developers to build blazingly fast sites and apps. Gatsby is also called a static site generator (SSG).
Why is Gatsby good for SEO?
It’s time for the most important part of this article. I haven’t jumped straight to that from the beginning because I wanted to explain the context. So far, you found out:
what is SEO
what does it matter
main SEO ranking factors
which one is better for SEO: dynamic site or static site
It helped you to understand the whole picture better, right?
Now it’s time to find out why Gatsby is good for SEO.
Accessibility
Web accessibility means that websites, tools, and technologies should be designed to be accessible for everyone, especially for those with permanent or temporary disabilities. When it comes to Gatsby and its accessibility, WebAIM (Web Accessibility in Mind, non-profit organization) recognized Gatsby as the most accessible web framework.
Gatsby uses different practices to make its websites as much accessible as possible:
Accessible routing — the main feature of every website is navigation, and accessible routing takes care of that. Thanks to it, you can, for example, use a keyboard to navigate through the website. Also, Gatsby manages page announcements on page change.
— the main feature of every website is navigation, and accessible routing takes care of that. Thanks to it, you can, for example, use a keyboard to navigate through the website. Also, Gatsby manages page announcements on page change. Building HTML pages by default — since it’s using Node.js environment to compile pages, you don’t have to worry about progressive page enhancement. Progressive enhancement means that the core page content is loaded before anything else from the server.
— since it’s using Node.js environment to compile pages, you don’t have to worry about progressive page enhancement. Progressive enhancement means that the core page content is loaded before anything else from the server. Linting using a plugin — Gatsby uses an eslint-plugin-jsx-a11y package that reduces the time needed to find accessibility errors. This plugin, among other things, encourages you to add alternative text to all images.
Page metadata
Gatsby gives you full control over the website’s content and structure, and consequently, over the SEO of this website. You can add metadata like page titles, meta descriptions, and alt text, which helps search engines to understand the content on your website and when to display your site in search results.
To add metadata to your website, you can use react-helmet components. Remember to add Gatsby React Helmet plugin to support SSR (server-side rendering).
Performance and speed
Gatsby is all about performance and speed. It comes with built-in features like rendering to static files or progressive image loading which are responsible for making Gatsby website fast. According to 2018 Google’s update, site speed became the new ranking factor, and faster websites will likely rank higher than the slower ones.
However, you should still create content that’s valuable and relevant to visitors, because the slower but more relevant site may rank higher than the faster ones.
Structured data
Structured data is what Google looks for on the web to understand the website’s content. This is also its source of general information about the web and the world.
The better Google understands the content, the more relevant search results are. In other words, if you use structured data on your website, it helps you to rank higher.
In Gatsby, you can add structured data snippets with react-helmet in the JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data) format, which is embedded either in the page head or page body.
User experience
All the points made above ensure great user experience to visitors. And it’s not just about the site speed — with Gatsby you can create fully customized websites that are accessible to everyone, easy to find and navigate, and visually attractive.
Examples of Websites built with Gatsby
Many well-known companies decided to build their websites using Gatsby — Airbnb, Bitcoin.com, Braun, Spotify, to name a few. However, there is no limitation on who can use Gatsby because startups and small companies also choose it.
Check below examples to see how such websites look and perform:
Many well-known companies decided to build their websites with Gatsby — like Braun, Spotify, and Airbnb, just to name a few.
Alternatives to Gatsby
We highly recommend Gatsby to build static sites, but we also would like to help you make a fully informed decision. Because of that, we wrote about Gatsby alternatives — you can read about them here. | https://medium.com/pagepro/why-is-gatsby-js-good-for-google-rankings-252b3db35303 | ['Tomasz Grabski'] | 2020-10-21 08:46:18.891000+00:00 | ['Gatsbyjs', 'Digital Marketing', 'SEO', 'Website Development'] |
Container and Shipment tracking System in India | Challenge & Context
Global trade creates big opportunities and bigger challenges. A streamlined supply chain is vital for a smooth flow of goods. Logistics as a sector plays a critical role in defining the domestic and international competitiveness of any economy.
In the supply chain, multiple stakeholders manage their operations and information independently. This lack of streamlining leads to reduced workflow planning eventually causing delays in the container movement.
In recent years, a growing number of manufacturers and retailers have adopted the supply chain view to manage their businesses. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) play a key role in this process, assuring the linkages between chain participants as well as a more effective control of time, cost and quality of the service rendered.
The Government of India represented by National Industrial Corridor Development and Implementation Trust (NICDIT) and Japanese IT major NEC Corporation, collaborated to form a joint venture named DMICDC Logistics Data Services (DLDS).
The objective of DLDS is to effectively leverage ICT across the Indian Logistics Sector, providing best practices across the various processes and work towards efficiency in the supply chain. The company aims at bringing visibility and transparency in the logistics environment, streamline the operations across the supply chain and help in the government’s plan of improving the Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) in India.
The flagship product of the company, called Logistics Data Bank System (LDB System), is an overarching solution that integrates the information available with various agencies across the supply chain to provide detailed real-time information within a single window. This trailblazing solution provides the export import container visibility service across the Western corridor of India along with comparative performance metrics. It is an end-to-end tracking system of container movement across all ports to the inland container depots, container freight stations and end users, via toll plazas and railway movement on an integrated basis.
The LDB system, currently covering 95% of Indian ports, is based on the FIWARE platform, and relies on several of its key features. According to Capt. Vinod Nair, VP Operations K-Line Shipping Line, | https://medium.com/@fiware-foundation/container-and-shipment-tracking-system-in-india-5b44d5d414d6 | [] | 2020-08-07 10:35:25.028000+00:00 | ['Logistics', 'Smart Cities', 'Tracking'] |
Using TargetFragment with Jetpack Navigation Component | The highly anticipated spiritual successor to Listeners in DialogFragments
TLDR: Checkout this Gist
Welcome back after our last journey of discovery — we now know to use interfaces with targetFragment in order to create callbacks in DialogFragments! This allows us to write callbacks which are preserved across recreation, type-safe, and highly semantic. Hooray!
It probably won’t surprise you to learn that exactly the same pattern can be used for all Fragments — they don’t necessarily need to be Dialogs.
However, this poses an issue when using the Jetpack Navigation Component. Previously, we simply did:
val dialog = DummyDialog()
dialog.setTargetFragment(this, DIALOG_DUMMY)
With the Navigation Component, we don’t manually instantiate our Fragments — so there’s no way for us to set the target Fragment… or is there?
FragmentFactory
This is where we meet the hero of the story: FragmentFactory . This is the class responsible for instantiating Fragments in the FragmentManager . And guess what: Navigation Component is built on top of FragmentManager !
Here’s how this looks:
abstract class AutoTargetFragmentFactory : FragmentFactory() { abstract fun getCurrentFragment(): Fragment? override fun instantiate(
classLoader: ClassLoader,
className: String
): Fragment {
val fragment = super.instantiate(classLoader, className)
val currentFragment = getCurrentFragment()
fragment.setTargetFragment(currentFragment, REQUEST_CODE)
return fragment
} companion object {
const val REQUEST_CODE = 0
}
}
What’s going on here?
FragmentFactory.instantiate is called whenever FragmentManager wants to instantiate a new Fragment. We don’t want to interfere with any of this logic, so we delegate to the super class. Once the super class has done its work, we simply set the target fragment and pass the result along. Easy!
But how do we know which Fragment to pass as the Target Fragment? That’s where our new abstract getCurrentFragment function comes in. Stay tuned!
getCurrentFragment
How can we determine the current Fragment? Well, it’s simply the one on the top of the Fragment Manager stack.
class ChildManagerFragmentFactory(
private val fragmentManager: FragmentManager
) : AutoTargetFragmentFactory() {
override fun getCurrentFragment() = fragmentManager.primaryNavigationFragment?.childFragmentManager?.fragments?.firstOrNull()
}
If we pass our Activity top-level FragmentManager as the fragmentManager parameter, primaryNavigationFragment will be our NavHostFragment . NavHostFragment contains its own FragmentManager, which is why we request its childFragmentManager , and then simply retrieve the first Fragment in its fragments list.
We’re nearly done!
Wiring it up
We have our ChildManagerFragmentFactory ready and raring to go. Now we just need to tell our FragmentManager.
fun FragmentManager.autoTarget() {
fragmentFactory = ChildManagerFragmentFactory(this)
}
We call FragmentManager.setFragmentFactory , to tell the FragmentManager that Fragment instantiation should be delegated to our custom class. And then we wrap this into a handy extension function, which allows us to simply do:
class MainActivity : AppCompatActivity(R.layout.activity_main) {
override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
supportFragmentManager.autoTarget()
}
}
And that’s it - you simply need to add this one line to get it all working! You don’t need to change your navigation actions or directions in any way. Continue using findNavController().navigate exactly as before!
Usage
You can now access the correct targetFragment in all your (Dialog)Fragments, exactly as you’re used to. But, as one little bonus, I’ve written a small little extension for maximum semantics.
inline fun <reified TargetFragmentType> Fragment.withCallback(work: TargetFragmentType.() -> Unit) {
val typedTarget = targetFragment as? TargetFragmentType
if (typedTarget == null) {
Log.e(
"AutoTargetFragment",
"Target Fragment is not of expected type ${TargetFragmentType::class.qualifiedName}"
)
return
}
typedTarget.work()
}
And simply use with:
withCallback< MyCallbackType > { myCallback () }
Conclusion
Here’s the full Gist. Feel free to copy-paste into your own projects!
https://gist.github.com/LukeNeedham/83f0bdaa8d56d03d11f727967eb327f2 | https://medium.com/@lukeneedham/using-targetfragment-with-jetpack-navigation-component-9c4302e8c062 | ['Luke Needham'] | 2020-11-24 22:05:31.136000+00:00 | ['Android App Development', 'Android Apps', 'Android', 'AndroidDev', 'Fragments'] |
How to Be More Stable, Flexible and in Control of Your Life | Agency refers to the feeling of control over actions and their consequences. It’s the feeling that we’re in the driver’s seat. (Dr. James W. Moore, University of London)
Successful people make decisions, even in difficult times, because they have what’s called a high sense of agency. You, too, can cultivate this valuable and life-changing skill.
I get that it’s hard to make any decision in 2020. Like most people, you feel out of control because you don’t know what the future holds. We’re all now staring 2021 in the face and asking, what will 2021 be like?
But is that the right question to be asking? Shouldn’t we instead be asking how can I make 2021 a great year for me?
As I wrote in How to Use Strategic Ignorance to Increase Focus and Win in Life, 2020 was one of my most productive years ever because I:
Decided what was essential to me;
Focused on what I could control; and,
Ignored self-defeating distractions.
You also can achieve this level of success in 2021. How? Employ what psychologists call a high sense of agency. Let me tell you how it works.
Focus on the good, throw out the trash
A wise person is hungry for knowledge, while the fool feeds on trash. (Proverbs 15:14, NLT)
Gosh, isn’t that proverb true… there’s an endless abundance of trash to fill our tummies. We’re continuously bombarded by people and organizations fighting for our attention, seeking to advance their agendas and their version of the truth.
These forces want you to believe that you need them and that without their precious help, you can’t succeed.
Do you know what they’re doing?
They’re stealing your sense of agency. They’re robbing you of your sense of control. They’re taking your confidence to make decisions about your future.
Don’t let this happen!
Albert Bandura, a Professor at Standard University and a social cognitive theory pioneer, said there is a socially embedded interplay between personal agency and environmental influences.
Dr. Bandura then goes on to say,
“Humans…are producers of their life circumstances, not just products of them.”
There it is, plain as day. You can produce your life’s circumstances, or you can let life’s circumstances produce you.
But how do you manage the dynamic tension between your environment and what you can control?
Control is an illusion
Studies have shown that the healthiest people have agency because they’ve developed confidence and competence, states Mary C. Lamia, Ph.D., in Your Sense of Agency, are You in Control of Your Life?
Successful people with a high sense of agency focus on what they know. They understand that they cannot control external events, and they cannot control other people.
Think about it; you usually feel defeated when you try to control something you have no business controlling. Perhaps you’ve tried to influence people or events, with no success. As a result, you end up feeling discouraged and depressed. The truth is, you can’t control situations outside of yourself, so don’t do it! Your efforts will simply result in misery.
Instead, says Dr. Lamia, you increase your sense of autonomy and control by:
Setting reasonable goals,
Increasing interactions with friends,
Building a community to help you,
Improving your health, and
Accomplishing new challenges.
Just picture for a moment the compounding effect on your life if you sat down for five minutes every morning and committed to accomplishing something from Dr. Lamia’s list above. I’m not talking a laundry list of to-dos, that’s also self-defeating, just one or two actions in each of the above areas.
You want to cultivate agency in your life. Research shows that agency will make you more:
Psychologically flexible and stable, and
Competent and confident in uncertain or difficult situations.
Your life is your choice.
Make decisions to influence your future. It’s up to you.
Be wise and successful
Identify a reasonable goal you want to achieve this week and do the following: | https://medium.com/illumination/how-to-be-more-stable-flexible-and-in-control-of-your-life-e87719d029df | ['Greg Longoria'] | 2020-11-19 14:18:20.866000+00:00 | ['Personal Growth', 'Focus', 'Self Improvement', 'Self', 'Productivity'] |
【新創手冊 EP 1】怎麼選擇新創？加入新創可以獲得什麼？ | 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/hazel-startup-adventure/%E6%96%B0%E5%89%B5%E6%89%8B%E5%86%8A-ep-1-%E6%80%8E%E9%BA%BC%E9%81%B8%E6%93%87%E6%96%B0%E5%89%B5-%E5%8A%A0%E5%85%A5%E6%96%B0%E5%89%B5%E5%8F%AF%E4%BB%A5%E7%8D%B2%E5%BE%97%E4%BB%80%E9%BA%BC-64717a7aa34f | ['Hazel Lee 李宛儒'] | 2020-11-27 02:51:51.915000+00:00 | ['Careers', 'Startup Life', 'Career Advice', 'Startup', 'Startup Lessons'] |
Getting the carbon out of construction | Getting the carbon out of construction
Cities have made great strides lowering energy consumption in new buildings. Vancouver is taking the next step: reducing emissions from the building process itself. Sidewalk Talk Features Follow Apr 22 · 9 min read
By Philip Preville
Five miles south of Vancouver’s downtown core, among the detached homes of the Sunset neighborhood, the finishing touches are currently being applied to the city’s first net-zero emissions building: Fire Hall 17. The design has been widely celebrated, with certifications already bestowed by Passive House and the Green Building Council. The building features a vast array of cutting-edge building technologies: rooftop solar panels, improved insulation, heat recovery ventilators, heat pumps, geoexchange heating systems, and more.
Once completed this summer, Fire Hall 17 will emit infinitesimal amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, contributing to declining greenhouse gases for decades to come. In this sense, it is a symbol of the fight against “operational” carbon emissions, or those produced through the everyday functions of a building. But before Fire Hall 17 ever opens its doors, its construction will have emitted more than 850 tons of carbon dioxide. Seen from that lens, the building is also an important symbol of the next phase of the urban climate fight: “embodied” emissions.
The global building sector is the single largest source of greenhouse gases in the world, accounting for roughly half of all global carbon emissions when including the manufacturing of building materials. Of those building-related emissions, the majority come from routine building operations: lighting and electricity, heating and cooling, waste management, and so on. Many cities around the world have mandated that new buildings reduce operational carbon, and industry has responded with a wave of new technologies. There are now 683 zero-energy buildings either completed or in development across North America, Fire Hall 17 among them.
But such measures don’t address the roughly 20 percent of global emissions caused by buildings’ construction. Fire Hall 17, like most other buildings, is made of concrete, steel, wood, insulation, glass, and countless other materials. Each of them has its own chain of greenhouse gas emissions: the extraction of raw materials, the manufacture of the product, its transport to the construction site, and their assembly into a building.
Vancouver, to its credit, last year joined a small but growing group of cities — including Budapest, Oslo, Mexico City, Los Angeles, and New York City — taking action on embodied carbon. Vancouver’s Climate Emergency Action Plan, approved by city council last November, requires all new buildings in the city to achieve a 40 percent reduction in embodied carbon from 2018 levels by 2030. The issue of embodied carbon is being discussed with increasing frequency and urgency by leaders in academia, government, and the development industry, because every minute of delay matters.
“We are at the point now where we really need to get emissions down by 2030, or we won’t be able to prevent substantial warming effects on the planet,” says Iain Macdonald, Director of the Tall Wood Design Institute in Portland, Oregon, and previously head of the Centre for Advanced Wood Products at Vancouver’s University of British Columbia. “If you build a Passive House with conventional materials, then over the next 25 or 50 or 75 years that building will have very low emissions, but you’ll have missed the opportunity to impact the decade we are in, which is the really critical period.”
The emerging science of embodied carbon
On a global scale, embodied emissions are substantial. According to the Santa Fe-based non-profit organization Architecture 2030, the world’s cities add more than 64 billion square feet of new floor space to their building stock every year, the equivalent of adding an entire New York City to the planet every 34 days. That’s an awful lot of embodied carbon, especially if all those buildings are made conventionally.
“Those emissions are like a big burp of greenhouse gases, a big chunk of carbon emissions before anyone sets foot in the building,” says Kate Simonen, a professor of architecture at the University of Washington and the Executive Director of the Carbon Leadership Forum, an organization dedicated to decarbonizing construction. “There’s no getting those emissions back. You can’t offset them with solar panels or a clean electrical grid.”
Broadly speaking, embodied emissions are those produced in the manufacture and transport of all the steel and concrete and glass and insulation and flooring and drywall and everything else that goes into buildings. Some of those materials are very carbon intensive to produce. Newly forged steel requires the mining of iron ore which is then heated in a blast furnace, powered by either coal or natural gas, to temperatures reaching 3,000 degrees. The cement used to make concrete requires similar mining practices and ultra-high temperatures. If the global concrete industry were its own country, it would be the third-largest emissions producer in the world, behind only China and the U.S.
There are two main ways to lower embodied emissions: change the way each of these building materials is manufactured, or use new building materials that aren’t as carbon intensive to produce. But you can’t pursue either approach unless you know how to calculate the embodied carbon in each component.
Consider Vancouver’s 40 percent reduction target as an example: 40 percent from what baseline? How can the city set a reduction target for embodied carbon in new buildings if it doesn’t have a reliable measurement for current buildings?
For most of the last decade, great efforts have gone into doing the math and cataloguing the results in the form of Life Cycle Assessments, or LCAs, which provide a standardized assessment of a material’s embodied carbon from its initial extraction to its eventual end-of-use disposal. “A decade ago, there was only one tool available for calculating and comparing LCAs,” says Simonen, a self-professed carbon-accounting geek. “Now there are lots of online tools, and the data is much more advanced.”
With such tools at its disposal, Vancouver began requiring new construction projects to provide a whole-building LCA assessment in 2017. A subsequent report commissioned by the city produced some noteworthy results. Specifically, it found that the more concrete and steel went into a building’s structure, the more its embodied emissions climbed — and that the more a building was made with wood, the more its embodied emissions declined.
A report commissioned by Vancouver found a clear relationship between structural material and global warming potential: rising in concrete and steel buildings and falling in mass timber. (Zera Solutions, 2019)
Timber: A natural alternative
Across town from Fire Hall 17, on the campus of the University of British Columbia, sits another Vancouver building that hints at how the city and its developers might meet its 40 percent reduction goal for embodied carbon: Brock Commons Tallwood House. An 18-story student residence standing roughly 190 feet tall, Brock Commons is made almost entirely of mass timber. Its ground floor and two stairwell columns were poured in concrete. The rest was erected using glue-laminated timber columns, cross-laminated timber flooring, and prefabricated wood panels for its exterior and interior walls.
Mass timber is a structural material manufactured, in effect, by sunshine and rainfall, making its LCA substantially lower than traditional building materials. Making mass timber building parts requires no superheated chemical transformation of the raw resource. It is harvested, milled, glued, and cut to specification at a fraction of the emissions required to manufacture concrete and steel, and if it is locally sourced, its transportation-related emissions can also be kept to a minimum. While mass timber is not a magic bullet solution to embodied carbon — its use still raises issues of sustainable forestry (more on that below) — it does provide clear advantages in the drive to reduce embodied carbon quickly.
Since the completion of Brock Commons in 2017, the Canadian Wood Council estimates that its construction avoided 748 tons of greenhouse gas emissions. Another study, by University of British Columbia researchers, compared Brock Commons to a conventionally-built student residence of similar height and dimension. They found that the use of mass timber products for Brock Commons’ structural elements resulted in a 36 percent reduction in global warming potential, the common unit of measure for embodied carbon.
More general studies of embodied carbon have come to similar conclusions. One study led by Simonen, which considered mass-timber alternatives to a typical concrete mid-rise office building, found that the timber designs reduced global warming potential by up to 26 percent. A 2020 study by researchers at Aalto University in Finland found more evidence that, in addition to having lower embodied carbon, timber also turns buildings into carbon storage units: trees take carbon out of the atmosphere, and the timber building sequesters it in place, resulting in an additional environmental benefit.
The tallest mass timber building in the world when completed, Brock Commons (shown here in 2016) avoided 748 tons of greenhouse gas emissions, according to one study. (Flickr / UBC Media Relations)
All of which helps explain the rising popularity of mass timber in cities worldwide. Regulators have adapted by updating construction codes to permit timber construction on an ever-larger scale. At the time it was built, the 190-foot Brock Commons was the tallest mass timber building in the world. It has since been surpassed by Mjøstårnet, a 280-foot-tall mass timber building in Brumunddal, Norway, which will itself soon be surpassed by Ascent, a 294-footer currently under construction in Milwaukee.
Mass timber’s light weight, relative to concrete and steel, gives it one more advantage over those structural materials: the ability to be manufactured much more efficiently. Factory production of timber building parts has the potential to unlock a whole new approach to sustainable development, accelerating the deployment of mass timber buildings at the very moment when their low-carbon footprint is needed most. It also creates an opportunity to measure the embodied carbon impact of a building, piece by piece, from conception to completion.
Urgency both now and later
For all timber’s benefits, not even its proponents, such as Macdonald of the Tall Wood Design Institute, believe that timber can — or even should — entirely replace concrete and steel. “To get embodied carbon down, we’ll need a basket of solutions,” he says. “It all depends upon the design of the building and the location of the materials.”
The industrial sector is already working on its own reduced-carbon retooling. Concrete manufacturers are experimenting with different chemical compositions for cement that can substantially reduce its embodied carbon, though the changes often result in longer curing times, and thus extended project timelines. Scrap steel can be melted and refined using an electric-arc furnace, reducing embodied carbon compared to newly-minted steel. But “decarbonizing a steel mill takes time and energy and investment,” says Simonen. “These are not easy things to shift.”
Plus, she adds, “emissions that happen now are more impactful than emissions that happen in the future.”
One of structural timber’s advantages is that the technology is fully developed and the product is available now, during this crucial decade. Even so, a sudden shift towards reliance on timber could create its own set of forest-management complications. The construction of Brock Commons used more than 77,000 cubic feet of timber products; in the grand scheme of U.S. and Canadian forests, it takes only 6 minutes to grow that much wood. But if every building project were to suddenly abandon concrete and steel in favor of wood, the minutes would quickly turn into days, weeks, and months.
Both Macdonald and Simonen say that wood for mass timber construction must be sustainably harvested, and that it can be. “You have to grow as much as you harvest to get a stable system,” says Simonen. Canada and the United States together account for the majority of the planet’s certified forests, in which harvesting practices are verified by third parties for their commitments to sustainability and biodiversity. According to the North American Wood Products Council, both countries have roughly the same amount of forested land today as they did 100 years ago.
“A demand for wood products,” says Simonen, “is also a demand to manage forests well.”
Ideally, of course, developers would create buildings that had immediate and long-term benefits. Imagine a sustainably harvested highrise timber tower that combined the embodied carbon reductions of Brock Commons and the minuscule operational emissions of Fire Hall 17. It would burn the least amount of carbon to construct and emit the least amount of carbon once standing — a climate-fighting building both now and far into the future.
Philip Preville is an award-winning freelance writer and editor based in Toronto.
Sidewalk Talk features are reported works focusing on planning, design, or technology innovations that can help improve urban life. Follow Sidewalk Labs with our weekly newsletter and our podcasts. | https://medium.com/sidewalk-talk/getting-the-carbon-out-of-construction-8a97ae2560fe | ['Sidewalk Talk Features'] | 2021-04-22 18:22:46.228000+00:00 | ['Construction', 'Vancouver', 'Cities', 'Mass Timber', 'Sustainability'] |
The Battle for Bitcoin’s Soul | One of the many things that has fascinated me most about cryptocurrency since it started capturing all of my spare brain space is how emotionally charged it all is.
Many nocoiners and even some crypto-trading cynics use both price upswings and corrections to scornfully call it a bubble, a fraud, a scam, a stupid investment…you get the idea. From the crypto gospel end of the spectrum come shouts, snark, chest-beating, told-you-so-ing, and more during those exact same jumps and drops of coin prices.
It makes sense — belief in crypto is not simply a willingness to roll the dice on interesting technology. In my own experience, taking the plunge to work at a startup comes with a certain ability to buy in, suppress doubt, and block out the critics. This is a daily exercise and it is not for the faint of heart. Working on a crypto project, from an outsider’s point of view, is a completely different beast in terms of fealty. How so, you ask? If anyone is sitting on screenshots of Twitter fights between taxi drivers and Uber employees, I sure would love to see them, because the mere suggestion is laughable. This kind of thing is par for the course in crypto.
When you give yourself to crypto, you do it completely. Developers working on crypto projects seem to speak and act out of ideology, not mere interest. This is why words that CryptoTwitter throws around with regularity— rebel, revolutionary, pioneer, libertarian, maximalist — to describe the most passionate cryptoids invoke a special kind of imagery. The great crypto debate has heroes and villains, not simply disagreeing parties on either side of an argument.
Perhaps even more captivating are the seemingly endless skirmishes that erupt within the crypto community. Infighting among nominal allies struggling to advance a movement is nothing new, but it is amazing nonetheless to watch crypto tribes sprout and take up arms against one another.
Some of the disputes can be characterized as momentary confrontations dismissively wiped away by members of a community with no time to waste on small issues. Altcoins are routinely accused of scamming investors without much public spectacle; the crypto world keeps turning.
Others have staying power, especially those that involve rapidly ascending or popularly traded coins. Ethereum ($ETH) founder Vitalik Buterin faces daily criticism for flouting the (unofficial) First Rule of Crypto — there is no head on this snake. As the de facto leader of Ethereum, Buterin’s critics see him as the centralized antithesis of Satoshi’s original vision.
(If it wasn’t obvious, tweets from self-proclaimed Bitcoin historian Kevin Pham that reference Ethereum are best viewed as biting sarcasm.)
Kevin’s anti-Ethereum rampage has only intensified in recent days and is hardly unique among Bitcoin maximalists.
The recent rise of the Ripple ($XRP) token brought tons of hate out of the woodwork — it’s not decentralized, banks don’t really use it, the token has no value, on and on. Litecoin ($LTC) founder Charlie Lee continues to take heat for cashing out his $LTC holdings, from his view, to protect against conflicts of interest while he works on project development. These are just a few of the flare-ups that persist. New ones seem to ignite daily.
And then, topping them all, is the blood feud between Bitcoin ($BTC) and Bitcoin Cash ($BCH). | https://medium.com/uncrypt/the-battle-for-bitcoins-soul-cdbbd7c16819 | ['Will O Leary'] | 2018-01-12 16:36:29.398000+00:00 | ['Bitcoincash', 'Blockchain', 'Crypto', 'Bitcoin', 'Cryptocurrency'] |
Can You Optimise These 2 Lines of Code? | Before continuing, I must explain how this algorithm works, and how does it pack so much power (searching for multiple strings by inspecting every input byte only once) in just 2 lines of code.
The secret behind it is a Finite State Automaton supported by a trie (built from the set of search strings). For example, for a set of search strings “SEE”, “SEAM” and “EAST”, it would look like this (I have omitted some arrows for a cleaner picture):
Trie based automaton of Aho-Corasic
The root node is marked with zero. There are three terminal (green) nodes indicating the match for search strings “SEE” (3), “SEAM” (5) and “EAST” (9). Building this structure requires a rather sophisticated algorithm (explaining which is out of the scope of this article). But using it for the actual search process is straightforward — this is why it can be expressed in just a couple lines of code.
Here’s how it works: we start the search at the root node “0”. Then, for each symbol of the input, we follow the arrow from the current node that is marked with that symbol. If there is no arrow with the symbol being processed, we jump back to the root node. Whenever we hit a terminal node, we have a match.
For example: if our input is “SEAST”, we will traverse the nodes 0→ 1→ 2→ 4→ 8→ 9 (where 9 is the terminal node for our search string “EAST”).
Another example: for input “SEEAST”, we will traverse the nodes 0→ 1→ 2→ 3→ 7→ 8→ 9. This time we hit not just one, but two terminal nodes along the way: 3 (for “SEE”), and 9 (for “EAST”). As you can see, it can even find partially overlapping search words (if we don’t reset to the root node after every match). | https://medium.com/wix-engineering/can-you-optimise-these-2-lines-of-code-633dd81b1862 | ['Linas Medžiūnas'] | 2020-03-01 19:55:47.993000+00:00 | ['Search', 'Benchmark', 'Algorithms', 'Performance', 'JVM'] |
The global startup festival “COMEUP 2021” begins its three-day schedule event from its opening… | Photo by Comeup 2021 on Comeup 2021
The global startup festival “COMEUP 2021” begins its three-day schedule event from its opening ceremony on the 17th until the 19th. Under the theme of Meet the Future — Transformation, “COMEUP 2021” presents ways for startups to view changes in the market environment and prepare for the upcoming future in a post-COVID 19 setting.
On the first day of the event, Jeong Shin-a, CEO of Kakao Ventures, and Lee Ju-hwan, CEO of Swit Technology, took the lead in their presentation on “Remote Collaboration in the Post-Corona Era.” CEO Lee Ju-hwan shared his insights on the work environment during the peaks of the COVID-19 era epidemic, the corresponding changes in collaboration, and the future of remote work.
“As the working environment changes due to COVID-19, we need to create a transparent communicative environment that can increase work productivity and efficiency,” Lee Ju-hwan said. “In particular, In order for companies to continue to grow, there must be a focus on developing an open & collaborative communicative environment centred on people and their culture, an environment that machines cannot replace.”
He then mentioned timely changes in the work environment accelerated by the pandemic, such as remote work, hybrid work models with a mixture of both commuting and remote work, and asynchronous work due to changes in working locations places and the increasing number of companies working in one or multiple timezones.
Photo by Teemu Paananen on Unsplash
Swit Technology CEO Lee said,” Protocols have changed such that the personal efforts made during offline work are now replaced by online interactions. This will increase the efforts required by individuals to find answers as they spend more time actively working on how and whom to ask relevant questions.”
In particular, he predicted, “Companies that can take on new challenges without fear will lead the future,” adding, “How employees work with each other will redefine corporate productivity, and in the future, we will have to include ‘communication costs’ between employees in calculating productivity figures.” | https://medium.com/@firstventures/the-global-startup-festival-comeup-2021-begins-its-three-day-schedule-event-from-its-opening-3ed074953428 | ['First Ventures'] | 2021-11-18 07:23:20.738000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Events', 'Pitching', 'Korea', 'Festivals'] |
The Road to Claremont Pier | My 2020 Reading List
For around 5 months of 2020 I couldn’t read anything. Half of the books in this image were read before the end of March and the world locked down. Then, for months, nothing. In spite of the added time — or maybe because of it — I was unable to focus on a single book, or a single page. I’d read a paragraph, and then look up to the rolling news. I’d re-read the paragraph as nothing sunk in, and then check the notifications on my phone. Was it 2pm yet? Had today’s statistics been released? To the next paragraph, but let me just check WhatsApp first, and how is the online learning going? Ah, another student email. Let me just answer that before I carry on. And repeat.
My lockdown was better than some. I have no kids, no rampaging toddlers that need attention while on a Zoom call, no competing priorities. But as someone who lives alone, it came with added isolation. Usually this is something I enjoy, but without the team spirit of my brilliant humanities department and the daily entertainment of hundreds of teenagers, it was tougher than expected. The void opened up, and in went Tiger King, The Office and Mad Men. This lasted most of spring and early summer and scratched at the surface of something deeper: that my mental health was being affected. As someone who has thrown themselves into their work ever since teacher training, I felt both busier and less connected to it. What helped to get me back on track was the chance to work on something bigger than my own narrow horizons, and that was Oak National Academy, something I am very thankful to have been asked to do, and proud to have been part of.
Climbing back into something that resembled normalcy, I also began reading Citizen Clem. This was part of a trend. In 2020, I read more politically than before. With the exception of White Heat and Things Fall Apart, none of the books had anything to do with lesson planning, curriculum or school. No education books. Following the 2019 election, my focus has been on how we got to this point. Recent political history, like All Out War and Fall Out, are entertaining first-drafts of history but while the author is well sourced on Conservative issues, my interest is on the left. This has driven so much of what I’ve read this year. Citizen Clem reminded me what a credible leader of the British left once looked like. Attlee was rooted in his community and what concerned the working class in the first half of the 20th century. But more impressive than his vision was his character. Calm in a crisis, expertly managing the egos in his party, and recognising where the excesses of the revolutionary left would actually hurt the working classes that he represented.
I followed this up with Left Out and Beyond the Red Wall and crashed back to the present day. I serve a community that was Labour until 2010, but now is solidly Conservative. It is, statistically, the most deprived ward in the county. Our students have challenges that would turn your hair white and some of their lockdown experiences reinforce why we have to try everything possible to never again go back to that. And yet, in 2019, this community voted overwhelmingly against Labour. To me, it wasn’t hard to see why, and while we’re nowhere near the ‘Red Wall’, the experiences expressed in that excellent book resonate in many other areas. An educational divide. A values divide. A feeling that Labour had forgotten about them. If Attlee is one political compass point, then George Orwell can be found in that same direction, and the modern left is everything Orwell rolled his eyes at in the The Road to Wigan Pier. You hope, when you serve a community like this one, that has seen cut after cut, that has students who struggle to access remote learning because of a lack of technology, that 2020 will help Labour and the left come to terms with this.
A question I’ve been asked by students before is ‘Why do you bother working here?’ Of all the places I could apparently work — why work in a town like this? Why live in a town like this out of choice? Spend years being left-behind, of seeing jobs lost, parents unemployed, crime and poverty, and the lack of pride becomes internalised. I wish I knew, or any politicians knew, the way out of that hole, but the pandemic year has reinforced for me the need to be part of the solution. Anyone who works in a school in a deprived area already is. Teaching has always given me a sense of purpose and lord was I happy to be back in school in September. But while we already lived in an unequal society, the impact of the pandemic is going to add even more hurdles for the kids that our school serves, and at the end of the day, individual teachers and schools can only do so much. Schools, fingers in the dam while the cracks grow wider, are only part of the solution. What’s the rest? | https://medium.com/@26mxw/the-road-to-claremont-pier-3b07b35383e8 | [] | 2020-12-22 15:24:44.391000+00:00 | ['Teaching', 'Lockdown', 'Poverty', 'Books', 'Lowestoft'] |
Değişim en başta zordur, ortalara doğru dağınıktır, sonunda ise harikadır. | Future-proof invisible design systems, data-driven strategies, powerful visual identities, and memorable experiences to connect people to your brand.
Follow | https://medium.com/antrepo/de%C4%9Fi%C5%9Fim-en-ba%C5%9Fta-zordur-ortalara-do%C4%9Fru-da%C4%9F%C4%B1n%C4%B1kt%C4%B1r-sonunda-ise-harikad%C4%B1r-13d12d62f602 | ['Mehmet Gözetlik'] | 2019-01-07 22:30:00.646000+00:00 | ['Inovasyon', 'Tasarım', 'Spacex', 'Yenilik', 'Apple'] |
Tim Ogilvie: Proof-of-Stake Was Bigger Than Eth 2.0 in 2020 | Tim Ogilvie: Proof-of-Stake Was Bigger Than Eth 2.0 in 2020
In simply a solitary year, laying has actually gone from a scholastic workout to a leading pressure in crypto.
The greatest laying tale of 2020 is, certainly, the launch ofEthereum 2.0 But past that, the previous year has actually seen an incredible blooming of proof-of-stake (PoS) networks. Four of the leading 9 crypto properties by market cap get on a course to proof-of-stake. In January, the number was absolutely no — and also even more are positioned to comply with.
This blog post belongs to CoinDesk’s 2020 Year in Review — a collection of op-eds, essays and also meetings concerning the year in crypto and also past. Tim Ogilvie is the Chief Executive Officer of Staked, which runs laying facilities for institutional capitalists, exchanges, custodians, and also pocketbooks.
Proof- of-stake currently stands for about 15% of the complete crypto market cap. Much of the velocity in crypto advancement we have actually seen this year is attributable to proof-of-stake blockchains, consisting of Ethereum along with Polkadot, Cardano, NEAR, Solana and also others.
As proof-of-stake’s supremacy in designer interaction remains to expand with the coming year, we’ll see a surge of user-facing jobs and also applications.
One withstanding objection of proof-of-stake is that it is just academic. Many presumed a PoS blockchain would certainly drop in technique, like a scholastic structure a bridge out of publications. Previously effective launches of PoS blockchains like Tezos and also Cosmos did little to silence the doubters.
Ethereum 2.0’s regular hold-ups and also noticeable obstacles no question contributed to this hesitation, with the task coming to be something of a punchline in the crypto globe up until its effective launch last month. And keeping that, proof-of-stake transferred to the major phase.
Ethereum is 2nd just to Bitcoin in regards to complete market cap, and also flaunts the biggest designer area of any kind of blockchain. The truth that it is ultimately transferring to proof-of-stake sends out a clear signal that the idea is below to remain. Ethereum 2.0 is currently readied to come to be the leading laying chain — though specifically when is any person’s assumption.
While Ethereum 2.0 stands for a coming-out event for proof-of-stake, to concentrate just on Ethereum’s effective upgrade is to miss out on a much bigger image. Many PoS networks are discovering success and also fostering this year.
Polkadot, presently the biggest PoS chain, currently has more than $3 billion laid. Chainlink, the fifth-largest crypto property by market cap, has actually introduced that it, as well, intends to change to PoS. More will certainly comply with. By completion of 2021, the majority of the leading chains will certainly have transferred to numerous levels of laying systems.
To make sure, bitcoin will certainly maintain its crown as the solitary greatest crypto property. It was the very first, it’s one of the most widely known and also it has a clear and also conveniently reasonable usage instance. But this is much less a counter-argument than the exemption that confirms an arising regulation. Bitcoin is a superb structure as a shop of worth, yet those seeking to develop applications and also establishments for a decentralized economic climate will certainly remain to move to proof-of-stake.
Adoption will certainly remain to rise as an outcome of the grip and also designer task we see throughout proof-of-stake blockchains, which establishes them in addition to Bitcoin, stablecoins and also “meme coins.” The several Bitcoin bridges presently involving market show this: The huge riches held in bitcoin is starving for brand-new methods to make returns … on PoS blockchains.
Proof- of-stake has actually constantly been the location for Ethereum and also for lots of various other jobs in crypto. Some resentment was unpreventable in the process — and also definitely, the development of PoS networks has actually not lacked obstacles. But in 2020 the concept ended up being truth. | https://medium.com/@newscryptocurrency/tim-ogilvie-proof-of-stake-was-bigger-than-eth-2-0-in-2020-6832b2983ef2 | ['Herald Jonesa'] | 2020-12-27 16:24:07.514000+00:00 | ['Proofofstake', 'Ogilvie', 'Bigger', 'Eth', 'Tim'] |
Don’t Trust the Process | About nine months before I wrote my first book, I told my former high school English teacher to stop asking when I was going to write a novel.
“I’m never going to be that kind of writer,” I explained. “I’m a critic. I write nonfiction.”
As a PhD student, what I said was true. I loved being an English nerd, and I was good at reading other people’s books and thinking through the problems they presented.
As the person who had taught me literature, my teacher understood. But maybe she also sensed the truth: There existed a secret part of me, one I’d papered over with critical essays, that longed to make rather than just dissect.
Because I had papered over that part, I had decided long ago that I wasn’t any good at creative writing because it was so hard. Ideas for essays, on the other hand, came to me easily. Reading a book, any book, turned my brain into something resembling the finale of a fireworks display. I could see multiple opportunities for arguments about gender, sexuality, power, and all the other juicy theories I’m obsessed with.
But when I sat down to write something creative, nothing happened. I vividly remember buying a how-to writing book right after graduating and thinking, Okay. You’re going to do this. Go write the Great American Novel!
I typed a sentence based on one of the book’s writing prompts.
It sat on the monitor in front of me like a steaming pile of shit.
I erased it and typed another one. It was equally shitty. I deleted it and tried again.
I did this for about 10 minutes, typing and deleting, until I had an epiphany.
I’m not meant to be a writer. At least not of fiction. Shouldn’t it be easy, if it was what I was meant to do? Writing essays was a piece of cake, so if this was hard, it probably meant I should give up.
The how-to book disappeared, along with my delusions of creativity. I became a critic, which I told myself was a perfect balance. After all, I was writing. Successfully! But it all led to that moment when I teared up as I told my teacher to leave me alone. I’d had my epiphany, and I knew I would never be that kind of writer. If I had to accept that and move on, so did she.
Nine months later, I wrote a novel.
Not only did I write a book, but I sold it to an imprint of Hachette in a three-book contract. Another three-book contract followed.
Needless to say, it was the best crow I’ve ever eaten.
So what happened between my epiphany and writing the books I swore I would never be able to write?
Simple: I learned to engage with the process, rather than trust it.
Which is why my teeth itch every time I see advice to “trust the process.” There’s the sports etymology, which seems to make sense until you realize people use what was really a cynical strategy for gaming the NBA draft system as another way of expressing something more akin to Nike’s famous “Just Do It” slogan. In this version, “trust the process” is shorthand for the idea that you have to do the time in the gym or on the training field to reap the benefits. But that wording is so incredibly passive. I’m not trusting anything when I’m halfway through a run (one of the things I hate most in the world) or feeling my thighs trembling in Warrior pose (yoga being the only thing I hate more than running). Rather, I’m actively engaged in something that feels fairly terrible, but I know I have to do it because I’m damn sure gonna eat that piece of leftover birthday cake.
Even more annoying is the version I think of as #trusttheprocess (pronounced, using one’s driest tone, “hashtagtrusttheprocess”). It’s the magical thinking version in which one gives oneself over to some mysterious process, in order to become an artist, find love, or lose eleventy-thousand pounds. An internet search of “trust the process” yields seemingly hundreds of search results on articles, blog posts, and self-published books featuring phrases like “having faith,” “letting go,” “divine plan,” and “the universe.”
In other words, a strange paradox exists within the idea of “trust the process.” On one side, there’s the illusion of an activity: Sixers fans were supposed to hold tight while their new GM enacted a strategy involving losing games in the short term to win over the long term. That morphed into a sports analogy in which the process part is inferred (doing the time in practice to win when it counts). And then that sports analogy (which actually references vast amounts of effort) became a hashtag that’s all about letting go, trusting a higher power, and having faith that one day, if you believe enough, you’ll succeed.
I see this last hashtag version most often applied to romantic love and, even more problematic, the creative process.
It’s one thing to sit around waiting for Mx. Right to come along and sweep you off your feet. After all, no matter how many slightly hysterical Thought Catalog or Buzzfeed listicles we read, we can’t actually make a romantic opportunity spring up out of the dirt like a golem. Meeting someone does require a frisson of luck.
But what I’ve learned about creativity, mostly as as result of denying I could ever be creative, is sitting around and waiting for it to happen guarantees only one thing: It will never happen.
So how did I write my books, after believing I never could, if I didn’t learn to trust the process?
First, I had to learn why trust wasn’t part of anything I’d ever done well.
Let’s take my seemingly magical ability to sit down with a three-page story and come up with roughly 75 ideas for essay topics. By the time I was a college graduate, that process felt utterly natural. It was reflexive, like breathing, or kicking a titstarer in the shins. I could sail into a final exam knowing I’d ace the long essay part because I could trust the shit out of my process.
What I’d forgotten is the roughly 14 years of practice I put in before I got to that point.
My ability to write academically wasn’t something I could trust — until I could. I had forgotten that various teachers, over years of schooling, had cultivated my natural aptitude for reading and writing into something that felt effortless. This is what people mean when they apply “trust the process” to athletics. If you force yourself to run every day for months, there will finally come that morning when you get up, don your gear, and go for a run without ruing the day you were born. It will feel natural. You’ve magically become a runner, even though it once felt like torture.
And it will feel like torture again if you get sick and don’t run for a week, or you decide to train for a marathon.
Feeling like my once-trusted process had turned on me is exactly what I experienced when I went from undergrad to doing a PhD.
I went to school in Scotland, so I could jump directly from a B.A. to a PhD. program. This seemed like an excellent idea, especially because I’d felt so utterly competent at my undergraduate university. I got As fairly effortlessly, at least in my major — we won’t talk about the C- in Latin, which I barely earned by throwing myself at extra-credit projects with the gusto I hadn’t used on studying the actual language. I sauntered into my PhD program expecting the same results — and immediately became aware I was in way over my head.
Everything I submitted was wrong. Where once my papers had been handed back all but pristine except for praise and occasional excited questions pointing out possible further research, each page of my thesis drafts could have stood in for a scaled-down model of the Red Wedding. Whole paragraphs were slashed, ideas were questioned, and my supervisor kept writing “FLABBY” in the margins. No one wants to be called flabby, even if it’s for syntax.
There were a lot of come-to-Jesus moments when I had to let go of a theory I cherished or an idea that wouldn’t pan out no matter how many times I had at it.
It got so bad that I stopped handing anything in and turned to the Type A’s favorite form of productive procrastination: research.
“I’m reading up on an important topic!” I’d respond to my supervisor when he’d email, asking when he could expect another draft of my first chapter.
“Still reading! I’m thinking of incorporating some Derrida,” I’d say a few weeks later, hoping it sounded important enough to warrant another extension.
Finally, after a few months of avoiding handing in anything, my supervisor threatened to murder me if he didn’t have something by Monday.
I sent him some draft. It came back looking like it had spent the week on an abattoir floor.
So I went to see him. I sat in his office and I told him the truth.
“I’m clearly not cut out for this. I should quit.”
My supervisor gave me his best “bloody Americans” face, consisting of equal parts exaggerated patience and “you owe me a pint.”
“Why is that?” he asked.
I pointed to the viscera-stained manuscript leaking red ink onto his desk.
“It’s awful. I can’t do this. I’m not smart enough.”
He sighed, ran his fingers through his hair, and leaned forward to give me The Talk.
“This is the process,” he said, gesturing at my manuscript. “Yes, this is shit. But there’s some good stuff there. So take it home, pick that good stuff out, and get rid of the rest. Add some more words. Some of it will be also be shit. But some of it will be okay. We keep repeating that until you have something that will pass. That’s the process.”
I blinked.
“Just keep polishing the turd,” he added, clearly wondering how I’d ever been accepted into university.
I picked up my turd and went home. I started polishing it, and it worked. Eventually I had a half-decent chapter. I did the same process with subsequent chapters until I had a turd so shiny it earned me a PhD.
My supervisor taught me two things: (1) there was a process and (2) there was no trust involved.
There was a lot of hard work, yes. But more than work went into my degree. There were a lot of come-to-Jesus moments when I had to let go of a theory I cherished or an idea that wouldn’t pan out no matter how many times I had at it. I let go of a whole author — I’d wanted to write on three but just didn’t have the space. And I was constantly coming up against the limits of my own intelligence. I’d try to read the aforementioned Derrida, and then realize I needed to start with Derrida for Dummies before working my way up to the man himself. All of these felt like real setbacks, and an earlier version of me would have paused and wondered if I was good enough if things didn’t come naturally. But I was lucky to have a supervisor willing to threaten bodily harm if I didn’t get over myself, a tactic I now employ when my M.F.A. students refuse to turn in their own drafts.
Sometimes we have to be told not to trust ourselves. After all, humans are self-protective. We avoid things that are hard. We make ridiculous excuses to keep from engaging with what we really want, and we’ll do pretty much anything to avoid failure (even if failure is good for us). Knowing what we do of human nature, how can we trust that we’ll magically become the person we want to be, and reap the commensurate awards?
Instead of waiting for genius to spring from my fingertips, I started writing, knowing what I wrote would suck.
All these experiences came to a head when I wrote my own novel, the book I said I was never going to write.
It was right after I’d successfully defended my thesis and was interviewing for teaching jobs in the States. I’d been using my parents’ house in Chicago as a base to fly to on-campus interviews, desperate for a job. But now I had to fly back to Edinburgh and wait for graduation and to hear back from the hiring committees.
Before my flight I went to a bookstore, where I realized that after years of being limited to my research topic, I could now read whatever I wanted. So I ended up with a stack of books from the sci-fi/fantasy section, a genre I hadn’t read in years, not since becoming a “serious” reader of “real” literature.
And on the long flight I read the fifth book in Charlaine Harris’s delightful Southern Vampire Mystery series, the basis of HBO’s True Blood. I was going through a lot at the time (mainly leaving Scotland and a long-term partner, and feeling panicky about the depressed job market), but for about six hours I read the book cover to cover and didn’t think once about my own problems. I was completely in Sookie’s world, falling in love with were-tigers and chasing vampires through swamps. In other words, I was happy for the first time in what felt like months because I could escape all of my anxieties.
And something else was happening in my brain. The nerdy part was comparing this delightful book to ones I’d read as a kid and pointing out similarities. I could see the beginnings of a sort of recipe I could use to bake my very own fantasy novel.
I loved this, I thought upon landing, as I closed the book and sat back, satisfied.
You could write your own, whispered another part of my brain.
I told that part to shush, of course. I reminded it that I’d had my epiphany: I was never going to be a writer. I was happy being a critic.
But you could write one, it insisted.
I ignored it and went back to my flat in Leith. The next morning I woke up and the voice was still there.
So I sat down at my computer and I opened up a new document. But instead of waiting for genius to spring from my fingertips, I started writing, knowing what I wrote would suck. It wouldn’t start in the right place; I’d miss a million opportunities and squander about a dozen more; it would need a ton of work and things I thought were genius would need to be slashed.
Never trust the process. Instead, trust what you can control. Your butt in a chair. Your fingers on a keyboard. Your ability to take criticism and learn from it.
My Jane True series was born of this moment, and the writing followed swiftly. I’d draft a (terrible) chapter and send it to my friend and colleague Jimmy, who would suggest ways to polish my turd. I repeated this process until I had a whole book. I knew it wasn’t perfect, but I had faith it could be made better if anyone wanted to show me how.
Luckily, someone did. First an agent, and then an editor.
When I tell people I published my first book, this is technically true if we’re talking about fiction. But it’s also a lie. After all, I’d already written a book — that’s what a PhD thesis is. And that book taught me how to kick my process in the giblets.
This is not to say I learned a foolproof method for writing.
In the years since becoming a successful writer, I’ve had huge failures, like two trunked books that took years of work but simply never gelled. In other words, I still can’t trust the process. As soon as I thought I could, the process kicked me back.
These failures, interestingly, led me to my new passion, writing essays like this one, another genre I always admired but never thought I’d be able to do. So I took a class, started drafting, and got lots of feedback on how to polish my turds.
So please, take my advice on writing. Never trust the process. Instead, trust what you can control. Your butt in a chair. Your fingers on a keyboard. Your ability to take criticism and learn from it, either to grow, to modify your approach, or even to realize when you’re legitimately chasing your tail.
Trust your own hard work and the voice that says, “This is difficult but I enjoy it.” And trust that it will hurt sometimes. Trust that it will be a turd. Trust that turds can be polished.
Even, maybe especially, if you’ve told yourself you’re not capable.
Imagine how glorious it would be to discover you actually are? | https://humanparts.medium.com/dont-trust-the-process-110acc45e58 | ['Nicole Peeler'] | 2020-02-21 16:42:04.957000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Work', 'Self', 'Creativity', 'Process'] |
Green energy promotes climate change, destroys biodiversity and makes the poor poorer | Renewable energy is expensive, unreliable, means mass murder for wildlife, destroys landscapes, destabilizes the electricity grid, harms indigenous peoples, and damages the environment.
Thus, a comprehensive study by researchers from the United States and Ireland, published in the journal Energies, entitled Energy and Climate Policy: Estimating the Cost of Climate Change 2011–2018
(Energy and Climate Policy — An Evaluation of Climate Change Expenditure 2011–2018)
This is probably one of the most extensive meta-analyzes of green energy in recent times, writes James Delingpole on the Breitbart portal.
The study’s neutral summary asks: The reader may ask whether the zero-carbon transition policies proposed today, which are based primarily on wind and solar energy, are the panacea that the promoters of these technologies claim to be.
According to Delingpole, the study confirms the worst fears of the Green New Deal demanded by Democrats in the United States and the European Green Agreement formally targeted in the European Union.
The authors of the study prove that the production of green energy — mainly wind and solar energy, does if at all, do minimally to reduce CO2 emissions but spends a huge amount of taxpayers money.
Concerns about climate change are a key driver of new, transitional energy policies, which should lead to economic growth, energy security, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and the preservation of biodiversity. Since 2010, the think tank Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) has published annual reports entitled Global Landscape of Climate Finance. According to these reports, $ 3,660 billion has been spent on global climate change projects between 2011 and 2018. Fifty-five percent of this money is spent on wind and solar energy. According to world energy reports, the share of wind and solar energy in world energy consumption has increased from 0.5% to 3% during this period. At the same time, coal, oil, and gas accounted for 85% of world energy consumption. The rest of the consumption was mainly hydro and nuclear energy.
Coilín ÓhAeadeha, a leading researcher in the study, gives context to these costs: It took the world two trillion dollars to increase the share of wind and solar energy from half a percent to three percent, and it took eight years. What will it cost to increase the share of such energy to one hundred percent? How long will it take?
The study points out that, contrary to assumptions, both wind and solar energy are harmful to the environment at the local level. They change wind patterns, air temperature, rainfall, and even cause floods.
Directly, research in recent years has provided significant theoretical and empirical evidence that wind turbines have a significant impact on the local and regional climate. For example, Abbasi et al. The 2016 study explains that “large wind farms with high wind turbines can affect the weather, possibly also the climate, due to the combined effects of wind speed deficits, atmospheric turbulence patterns, and their amplified landscape roughness, the research found.
Green technologies are also very resource-intensive. Part of the problem is their weak energy density, which means how much land is needed to produce a certain amount of energy. The most energy-intensive is natural gas, followed by nuclear, oil, and coal. While fossil fuels can produce large amounts of energy on a relatively small area of land, renewable energy sources, on the other hand, require a large amount of land to produce relatively small amounts of energy. Fossil fuels can produce an average of 1,000 times more energy per area.
Renewable energy also requires large amounts of minerals. For example, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson’s plan to make the country’s car fleet electric by 2030 is implemented.
Richard Herrington, head of the Earth Sciences Research Group at the London Museum of Natural History, says three-quarters of the world’s lithium production and at least half of world copper production. If we expand it to the two billion cars that traveled the world by 2018, neodymium and dysprosium mining should increase by 70 percent by 2050, copper production should more than double and cobalt at least three and a half times higher.
Such an increase in mining volumes is likely to have a severe social and environmental impact on poor countries, where these rare minerals are found.
A review of the study, published on the Medium portal, states: Cobalt mining, which is needed to produce e-car batteries, has a severe impact on the health of women and children in mining communities, where mining often takes place in small unregulated“ craft ”mines. Lithium mining, which is also needed to produce batteries, requires large amounts of water, which in turn can pollute local water and cause water shortages. ”
ÓhAiseadha points out: Some time ago, the whole world became aware of the conflict between the Standing Rock Siuu tribe and the builders of the Dacota Access pipeline. But what do we know about the impact of cobalt mining on indigenous peoples in the Democratic Republic of Congo? What is the impact of lithium mining in the Atacama Desert on people living there? Standing Rock’s new slogan was Mni Wicon! Water is life! This applies both to the Siuu tribe, which is concerned that the pipeline accident could pollute their river, and to the Atacama Desert, where lithium mining could pollute groundwater.
In summary, modern Western civilizations cannot feed modern Western civilization.
Co-author of the study, Dr. Ronan Connolly, writes:
The average household expects their refrigerators to work all the time, and to be able to turn on the light at any time. It would be time for the promoters of wind and solar energy to acknowledge that they are not able to provide the kind of sustainable electricity that every society is used to everywhere.
Renewable energy makes poor people even poorer, forcing them to use expensive clean electricity, while fossil fuels would be much cheaper and more efficient.
In our view, even in developed countries, CO2 reduction policies often work against the goals of improving the lives of the less well-off.
For example, one of the tools often mentioned as a means of reducing CO2 emissions is the introduction of so-called carbon taxes. There are many forms of carbon taxation, but they usually penalize the consumption of energy, the production of which emits large amounts of CO2. Researchers who have studied the socio-economic effects of different carbon taxes in many countries have found that carbon taxes tend to be regressive, perhaps the greatest burden on the poorest households.
The report concludes that if the aim is to protect biodiversity, ensure a stable and reliable electricity supply, increase economic growth, or reduce CO2 emissions, the answer for all is that green energy does not. | https://medium.com/@mediagramstory/study-green-energy-promotes-climate-change-destroys-biodiversity-and-makes-the-poor-poor-poorer-43080f5cfe11 | ['Mary West'] | 2020-11-26 11:20:38.874000+00:00 | ['Energy And Climate', 'Climate Action', 'Renewable Energy', 'Green Energy', 'Climate Change'] |
Dribbble shot designs can make you a worse UI designer | How to practice UI deliberately and become a better designer
Practicing UI is not a bad thing, however it’s worth remembering that UI is one part of a much larger process and by going through the full design process, you’ll reach the UI stage with more context and can make better decisions as a result.
When I practice UI, I typically mimic the full design process in a short period of time in order to get context and direction, however I’d spend the bulk of my time in the UI stage to ensure that I’m getting the practice I set out to get. After all a UI exercise is a UI exercise. This way I can make better decisions but also draw the line a lot sooner with unnecessary explorations that don’t contribute towards the main goal.
Mimic the full design process but spend most time in the UI phase
When I feel that I’ve got a promising solution to a problem, I typically prefer to stop there and set up a new UI project for myself instead of come up with another hundred iterations. This keeps me disciplined as I learn to iterate responsibly and try to get to a sensible solution in a fair amount of time. This discipline is valuable because no amount of iteration will ensure that a project will be successful so you may as well learn to get your design to be great enough then ship it to see how it performs.
To be more specific on how I quickly, and loosely mimic the full design process, here are the four stages that I cover when working on UI exercises:
1. I pick a product I already use and list some of my pain points.
2. I ideate for solutions that address the pain points.
3. I prototype my ideas.
4. I put my prototypes in people’s hands.
So without further ado, let’s take a good look at each step.
1. Pick a product you use and list some pain points
A good starting point is to pick a product you already use and think about your personal pain points with that product. Alternatively, you may think about things you wish the product offered you.
Taking this approach will help you begin with three things in mind:
1. A real customer — yourself
2. Of a real product — the product you’ve chosen
3. With a real problem — the thing that frustrates you about that product
With the list above you’re already putting yourself on the fast track as far as gaining context of the problem to be solved and who you’re designing for.
Although your pain points may not reflect those of the broader audience, starting here is still better than jumping straight to the pixels as it reinforces the process of thinking about people and problems as a first step. This is what designers do at work especially as they grow to more senior positions. By deliberately practicing this phase you’ll be further acknowledging it’s relevance and make a habit of starting at the right place.
With this context in mind, and some real pain points, you’re ready to jot down one or a few problems that you think are worth solving. To keep the exercise lean and focused I’d recommend listing very little problems around a single area of the experience. I typically aim for one to three related problems at the very most.
Now because this exercise is all about practicing UI, I don’t recommend that you spend days or weeks in choosing a product and listing problems. In fact I’d recommend that you carry out this initial step relatively quickly. If you’re familiar with the product you’ve selected, you may be able to jot some problems down in a single sitting of less than an hour.
2. Ideate solutions to the pain points
To get the most out of this part of the exercise you’re better off separating it into two parts:
Part 1 — Learn from other products
The first part is about finding products which have solved similar problems to those you’re about to solve. This will help you discover what solutions already exist but more importantly, how they compare to one another and how they actually work.
Doing this will also make you knowledgable about more products and expand your reference base. As time goes by, you’ll have a better understanding on how UI works and will be able to make better decisions sooner.
Part 2 — Iterate and iterate some more
The second part is about iterating to solve the problems you’d like to solve. It’s perfectly fine to incorporate ideas from other products you’ve tried out if you’ve found solutions that can solve the problem you’re addressing.
With this being said, always make sure to borrow for the right reasons. If you’re borrowing a solution because it addresses your problem and feels familiar and intuitive then that’s a thumbs up. If you’re borrowing a solution because of a nifty interaction then ask yourself how that helps solve the problems you’ve listed earlier.
Remember that great UI should help people abstract value from a product and has nothing to do with self indulgence or artistry.
During the iteration phase, I like to force myself through a few rounds of iteration in order to challenge myself to rapidly come up with the best solutions possible.
Here’s how I do it more or less:
Create low fidelity flows — critique them. Improve low fidelity flows — cement them. Apply medium fidelity UI to flows — critique UI. Explore high fidelity UI improvements round 1 — critique UI. Explore high fidelity UI improvements round 2 — critique UI. Explore high fidelity UI improvements round 3 — draw line.
As you may have noticed, the process is about covering the broader picture first to get that cemented. After that, the rest is about multiple rounds of refinement based on feedback, each round brings the solution closer to the final product.
It’s good practice to draw the line at the right time; UI can certainly keep you busy for long and eventually provide diminishing returns compared to the number of iterations being produced.
After solving the problem and pushing yourself through a healthy number of rounds of iteration, you’re better off moving into prototyping. This is because even though you may have countless ideas on how to solve a problem, you’ll only know the value of your work after putting it in people’s hands.
3. Prototype your design
This phase is about turning your static designs into a convincing product, ready for people to use. No UI is truly complete unless it factors in all of the interactions that come along with it. As people navigate through screens, each interaction serves to communicate what’s happening and makes the experience more learnable and seamless.
Great interaction is subtle and additive to the experience, it is not about making objects move around for the sake of it.
Imagine a story with a beginning and an ending but nothing gluing the two together; that’s what UI without interaction feels like.
When working with interaction, it’s worth keeping to standard interaction models related to the UI pattern’s you’ve chosen. You may see how these interactions work by observing the products you researched. This is because people come to products with learnt expectations they’ve developed from other products; we call these expectations ‘mental models’. Deviating from these models for no valid reason may frustrate users as things will feel very unfamiliar to them.
Unless you’re working on a specific case which begs a new interaction model, playing it safe usually guarantees higher levels of understandability for users.
In some cases, you’ll notice that some designs are awkward to design great interactions around and this may force you back to wire framing. This isn’t a bad thing. With practice you’ll get used to thinking about interactions whilst putting wireframes together. This is another benefit of adding a prototyping phase to your daily UIs. You’ll start to become more mindful of the finished product and how people will navigate it.
With each new project, you’ll find that the prototyping stage will take less time to complete. This will indicate that you’re getting more and more skilled at the craft.
4. Put your prototype in peoples’ hands
By the time you reach this stage you should have a prototype which addresses some issues with a real product that you, and perhaps others have used too. Now’s the moment of truth, the most exciting part. This is where you can put your prototype into the hands of people who’ve used the product you designed for and get their thoughts on your prototype.
Instead of going for a formal round of user testing, you may find people who are happy to try your prototype and share their thoughts with you. Remember that this exercise is about mimicking the design process merely to help practice better UI, the main focus therefore should be the UI and not design thinking in it’s entirety.
Even though this doesn’t mimic how user testing really happens, the idea here is to reinforce ‘ending’ with feedback from users as this is how things work at product companies.
In many cases after gathering feedback, you’ll notice that your work has further room for improvement and you may be tempted to go back and continue working on your prototype. This is fine and if you see value in doing so then go for it! I personally prefer to gather my learnings and draw the line here to avoid turning a rapid UI exercise into a massive project.
The reason I draw the line at this point is because that allows me to begin a new project afresh and improve my entire process from start to finish. The reason for this is that each project will teach you a few lessons; by going through many projects you’ll learn a variety of lessons which will make you a more rounded designer with many experiences to draw from. | https://uxdesign.cc/dribbble-shot-designs-can-make-you-a-worse-ui-designer-5227ac906f42 | ['David Portelli'] | 2019-10-17 00:05:11.845000+00:00 | ['Practice', 'UI', 'Dribbble', 'Design'] |
4 Things Businesses Should Consider for Social Impact | Connecting Through Giving
At ShoppingGives, we enable brands to make a difference while including customers and measuring the power of impact. We provide a native giving experience on-site that encourages and informs customers while also measuring bottom-line impact and handling all donation collection and disbursement. As a Certified B Corporation, we aim to make giving easier so brands can focus more on the good they’re doing and less about how to do good.
Our program has shown that customers care about giving; those who select their own cause spend more and those who are donors in general are the most valuable shoppers. It’s not enough to set and forget donations; brands need to be deliberate in their giving.
When we bring on new partners, we recommend taking a 360-degree approach that addresses team, customers, community, and product. Aligning your impact within these four segments is how your brand can take a genuine position on the causes that you stand for.
Team
Your team is made up of your biggest brand advocates, so it’s important to take a stand with and for them in your corporate social responsibility strategy. They will drive your values and advocate for your mission. What matters to them? What will they confidently defend? How can you take your team’s spirit and translate that through your brand? Look to your team to help inform decisions. No brand is made of just one voice, and the same should be said about its impact. Our team prioritizes each other’s values and beliefs with surveys, roundtable discussions, and anonymous feedback. These can be a great place to start if your brand is looking to gain an understanding of internal beliefs.
A great example of a business bringing team values to life is The Sis Kiss. When beginning their giving strategy, every member of the team picked a nonprofit close to their heart to highlight on site and give back to. This sort of activation can boost morale and strengthen your employee relationships.
Another example of team engagement in giving is Kenneth Cole. Social good is central to Kenneth Cole’s existence and they have created a strong value system that their team rallies behind. Kenneth Cole offers opportunities to their stakeholders throughout the year in the form of fundraisers, days of service, and donation drives to participate in their impact mission. This drives engagement with the team and builds excitement around what matters most to them internally.
Customers
Of course, it is important to take your customers’ values into account when crafting an impact-driven brand message as well. With shoppers buying with their values now more than ever, taking a stance for a cause important to your customers will build their loyalty. You also must decide as a company which values you draw the line at, if any. Sometimes your company beliefs will cost you customers, and you should be prepared for those situations.
One example of this can be seen following the murder of George Floyd. Many brands had not taken a look at their internal values and assessed where they stood on race and injustice. Beyond that, brands that had a strong sense of what they stood for, even if it wasn’t related to police brutality, were more prepared and prompt in coming forward with powerful messages of support and change that resonated with many customers and potentially lost them others. Shoppers have more access to information than ever, and they’ll know when a brand is making an authentic statement. Ben & Jerry’s has received praise for its statement against white supremacy. Brands that made a statement that didn’t match up to their actions or beliefs were called out by former employees and customers.
It’s not enough to make statements; customers expect action and authentic advocacy. While your brand may not be well-versed in issues that arise, you must learn and grow to move forward. | https://bthechange.com/4-things-businesses-should-consider-for-social-impact-d5df18f77b7f | [] | 2020-09-02 18:43:43.726000+00:00 | ['Corporate Giving', 'Stakeholder Capitalism', 'Social Impact', 'B Corp', 'Community'] |
Prancing with Kerby | The music of my youth spilled boldly from the stereo. I couldn’t help but feel the sensations I’d felt back in the day. Back when big hair and parachute pants ruled the school.
I allowed the music to take control as I pranced around the living room with my Kerby. I was seventeen again and I was rocking out.
I didn’t hear the door open as my daughter and her friend came home from school. Her friend gasped and asked, “Oh God, is your mom’s having a stroke?”
“No,” my red-faced daughter replied, “I think she’s trying to dance.” | https://medium.com/centina-pentina/prancing-with-kerby-7af4a8fb70ab | ['Christine Graves'] | 2020-12-15 16:27:23.964000+00:00 | ['Microfiction', 'Flash Fiction', 'Dancing', 'Centina', '100wordstory'] |
Public Private Partnerships to build a Resilient Caribbean Take Flight | Severe droughts. Unpredictable rainfall. Warming ocean temperatures. Hurricanes. They all have a negative impact on both Caribbean citizens’ well-being and the region’s economy.
When these natural disasters damage crops, farmers face financial losses and consumers pay higher prices; warmer seas can impact fish migratory patterns and availability; and governments are thrown into economic turmoil when they are forced to borrow millions to rebuild communities when hurricanes devastate infrastructure and homes.
“For decades, USAID has worked with Caribbean countries to recover from hurricanes, earthquakes, and crises,” says Clinton White, the Regional Representative for USAID’s Eastern and Southern Caribbean Mission. “While USAID is proud to provide support when disasters strike, we understand that the long-term solution does not lie in humanitarian aid, but rather in strengthening the ability of the Caribbean to mitigate, adapt to, and recover from shocks and stresses.”
USAID works year-round to reduce the risk and impact of future disasters in the Eastern and Southern Caribbean. However, to build true resiliency, the Agency knows that it is essential to work with a variety of partners across the spectrum, including the private sector.
“At USAID, we see value in working with the private sector. By leveraging each other’s strengths, the U.S. government and private sector are helping to improve lives, strengthen communities, and promote a prosperous Caribbean,” White explains.
This is where USAID’s Climate Change Adaptation Program (CCAP) comes in, helping promote partnerships between government entities and the private sector. The Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre coordinates the region’s response to climate change. Officially opened in August 2005, the centre is the key node for information on climate change issues and the region’s efforts to manage and adapt. The centre maintains the Caribbean’s most extensive repository of information and data on climate change specific to the region, which in part enables it to provide climate change-related policy advice and guidelines to CARICOM member states through the CARICOM Secretariat.
LiDAR equipment can help predict the impact of weather patterns. / USAID
“Certain tools can help detect weather patterns and aid climatologists and others in the field to better understand the consequences of the changing weather patterns,” explains Keith Nichols, head of the Programme Development and Management Unit at the centre. “One such piece of equipment is the Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR).”
LiDAR is a remote sensing technology that is used to capture highly accurate elevation measurements of the earth’s surface. The system, which can be mounted on an aircraft, uses laser light to scan the ground to generate precise, three-dimensional information on surface shapes and characteristics of both land surfaces and nearshore seabeds.
As a result, the state-of-the-art system is capable of providing critical data for monitoring and planning for physical changes to the region’s land and marine environments. It is especially useful for floodplain, near-shore, and storm surge mapping, drainage, and irrigation designing. A grant from USAID allowed the centre to buy this much-needed equipment.
“This LiDAR equipment can help predict the impact of weather patterns, providing valuable data to Caribbean governments and enterprises and enable them to adapt and prepare for future climate scenarios,” says White. “Approving this grant for equipment was a no brainer.” | https://medium.com/usaid-2030/public-private-partnerships-to-build-a-resilient-caribbean-take-flight-cb08e26d0858 | [] | 2020-12-23 16:41:50.428000+00:00 | ['Partnerships', 'Caribbean', 'Climate Change', 'International Development', 'Resilience'] |
In a Bah Humbug State of Mind | I started off December 2020 in a bah humbug state of mind. Now, here we are on Christmas Eve and my mental state hasn’t improved. Two days ago, I rearranged the sitting room and forgot I’m not in my prime anymore, when I swung a heavy, high-backed chair from one side of the room to another and, my back gave way-what a time to self-incapacitate.
The Christmas tree may be up and looking gorgeous. All presents are wrapped — apart from the ones I haven’t got and can’t do anything about now, but walking around like the living dead is not useful when Christmas meals need to be cooked, and the constant rounds of clearing up are about to begin.
But, hey, you have to look on the bright side of anything positive in 2020. Things have improved this morning, yesterday I needed help putting my knickers on. 🤦
A #thankyou to #everyone who has #liked and #followed www.tessabarrie.com in #2020. It’s not been the #bestofyears for any of us. #HappyChristmas to you all and may #2021 see you #acieve all the #hopesanddreams you had for yourselves in #2020! 🍾🥂 | https://medium.com/@tessabarrie/in-a-bah-humbug-state-of-mind-f4296628d285 | ['Tessa Barrie'] | 2020-12-24 11:44:10.191000+00:00 | ['Christmas Eve', 'Happy Christmas', 'Blog', 'Humour', 'Bah Humbug'] |
{{s03Xe07}} ~ The Outpost Season 3 Eps 7 || “Full Show” | New Episode — The Outpost Season 3 Episode 7 (Full Episode) Top Show
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The Outpost Season 3 Episode 7
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🦋 TELEVISION 🦋
(TV), in some cases abbreviated to tele or television, is a media transmission medium utilized for sending moving pictures in monochrome (high contrast), or in shading, and in a few measurements and sound. The term can allude to a TV, a TV program, or the vehicle of TV transmission. TV is a mass mode for promoting, amusement, news, and sports.
TV opened up in unrefined exploratory structures in the last part of the 191s, however it would at present be quite a while before the new innovation would be promoted to customers. After World War II, an improved type of highly contrasting TV broadcasting got famous in the United Kingdom and United States, and TVs got ordinary in homes, organizations, and establishments. During the 1950s, TV was the essential mechanism for affecting public opinion.[1] during the 193s, shading broadcasting was presented in the US and most other created nations. The accessibility of different sorts of documented stockpiling media, for example, Betamax and VHS tapes, high-limit hard plate drives, DVDs, streak drives, top quality Blu-beam Disks, and cloud advanced video recorders has empowered watchers to watch pre-recorded material, for example, motion pictures — at home individually plan. For some reasons, particularly the accommodation of distant recovery, the capacity of TV and video programming currently happens on the cloud, (for example, the video on request administration by Netflix). Toward the finish of the main decade of the 30s, advanced TV transmissions incredibly expanded in ubiquity. Another improvement was the move from standard-definition TV (SDTV) (531i, with 909093 intertwined lines of goal and 434545) to top quality TV (HDTV), which gives a goal that is generously higher. HDTV might be communicated in different arrangements: 345313, 345313 and 3334. Since 13, with the creation of brilliant TV, Internet TV has expanded the accessibility of TV projects and films by means of the Internet through real time video administrations, for example, Netflix, HBO Video, iPlayer and Hulu.
In 113, 39% of the world’s family units possessed a TV set.[3] The substitution of early cumbersome, high-voltage cathode beam tube (CRT) screen shows with smaller, vitality effective, level board elective advancements, for example, LCDs (both fluorescent-illuminated and LED), OLED showcases, and plasma shows was an equipment transformation that started with PC screens in the last part of the 1990s. Most TV sets sold during the 30s were level board, primarily LEDs. Significant makers reported the stopping of CRT, DLP, plasma, and even fluorescent-illuminated LCDs by the mid-13s.[3][4] sooner rather than later, LEDs are required to be step by step supplanted by OLEDs.[5] Also, significant makers have declared that they will progressively create shrewd TVs during the 13s.[1][3][8] Smart TVs with incorporated Internet and Web 3.0 capacities turned into the prevailing type of TV by the late 13s.[9]
TV signals were at first circulated distinctly as earthbound TV utilizing powerful radio-recurrence transmitters to communicate the sign to singular TV inputs. Then again TV signals are appropriated by coaxial link or optical fiber, satellite frameworks and, since the 30s by means of the Internet. Until the mid 30s, these were sent as simple signs, yet a progress to advanced TV is relied upon to be finished worldwide by the last part of the 13s. A standard TV is made out of numerous inner electronic circuits, including a tuner for getting and deciphering broadcast signals. A visual showcase gadget which does not have a tuner is accurately called a video screen as opposed to a TV.
🦋 OVERVIEW 🦋
A subgenre that joins the sentiment type with parody, zeroing in on at least two people since they find and endeavor to deal with their sentimental love, attractions to each other. The cliché plot line follows the “kid gets-young lady”, “kid loses-young lady”, “kid gets young lady back once more” grouping. Normally, there are multitudinous variations to this plot (and new curves, for example, switching the sex parts in the story), and far of the by and large happy parody lies in the social cooperations and sexual strain between your characters, who every now and again either won’t concede they are pulled in to each other or must deal with others’ interfering inside their issues.
Regularly carefully thought as an artistic sort or structure, however utilized it is additionally found in the realistic and performing expressions. In parody, human or individual indecencies, indiscretions, misuses, or deficiencies are composed to rebuff by methods for scorn, disparagement, vaudeville, incongruity, or different strategies, preferably with the plan to impact an aftereffect of progress. Parody is by and large intended to be interesting, yet its motivation isn’t generally humor as an assault on something the essayist objects to, utilizing mind. A typical, nearly characterizing highlight of parody is its solid vein of incongruity or mockery, yet spoof, vaudeville, distortion, juxtaposition, correlation, similarity, and risqué statement all regularly show up in ironical discourse and composing. The key point, is that “in parody, incongruity is aggressor.” This “assailant incongruity” (or mockery) frequently claims to favor (or if nothing else acknowledge as common) the very things the humorist really wishes to assault.
In the wake of calling Zed and his Blackblood confidants to spare The Outpost, Talon winds up sold out by her own sort and battles to accommodate her human companions and her Blackblood legacy. With the satanic Lu Qiri giving the muscle to uphold Zed’s ground breaking strategy, The Outpost’s human occupants are subjugated as excavators looking for a baffling substance to illuminate a dull conundrum. As Talon finds more about her lost family from Yavalla, she should sort out the certainties from the falsehoods, and explain the riddle of her legacy and an overlooked force, before the world becomes subjugated to another force that could devour each living being.
Claw is the solitary overcomer of a race called Blackbloods. A long time after her whole town is annihilated by a pack of merciless hired soldiers, Talon goes to an untamed post on the edge of the enlightened world, as she tracks the huggers of her family. On her excursion to this station, Talon finds she has a strange heavenly force that she should figure out how to control so as to spare herself, and guard the world against an over the top strict tyrant. | https://medium.com/@watch-the-outpost-3x7-hd/s03xe07-the-outpost-season-3-eps-7-full-show-b37fccb546eb | ['Watch The Outpost Hd'] | 2020-11-21 06:56:17.827000+00:00 | ['Action', 'Startup', 'Fantasy', 'TV Series'] |
How to Host Your React App on GitHub Pages for Free | Using Custom Domains
If you don’t like the github.io in your default domain name, choose another domain name. Github Pages lets you use your own custom domain name and setting it up is just like walking on the beach.
If you don’t already have a domain, go and buy one. There are some free domains you can get from this link. If you’re going to buy a domain, it will cost you probably $1 or $2.
Go to the settings in your registry and add a new domain name. It will generate a CNAME file, don’t delete it in your directory.
The GitHub part is done here. Now, you need to make domain side changes.
Go to the domain you bought, sign in, and pick the domain you want to use. Check the Manage DNS or DNS Settings. Now you have two improvements to make to your DNS.
Records
This is essentially an apex domain which ensures that if any user writes only react-deploy.cf instead of https:/react-deploy.cf or www.react-deploy.tk , it will still function.
There are four IP addresses that you have to use to connect to the server. Those are shown below. But please make sure you go to the official documents and use the new ones.
185.199.108.153
185.199.109.153
185.199.110.153
185.199.111.153
CNAME
This can be achieved by using CNAME if you choose to use www or some other similar sub-domain. We need to point our subdomains to our primary repository tab.
Therefore, we will redirect it to sabesansathananthan.github.io/React-Deploy. Please ensure that at the end of the address, there is a line. It’s not a typo.
Now that both are set, reflections can take up to 24 hours but typically take 45 minutes to one hour. Once this is completed, please search for your website by typing in your custom domain. It’s up and running. It’s on. | https://medium.com/better-programming/how-to-host-your-react-app-on-github-pages-for-free-919ad201a4cb | ['Sabesan Sathananthan'] | 2020-11-05 19:49:11.412000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Github', 'Reactjs', 'React', 'Deployment'] |
Winter River | An irregular collection. Sometimes haiku, sometimes my own photos | https://medium.com/birds-and-rivers/winter-river-e67bab5706dd | ['Many Roads'] | 2020-12-15 12:46:38.519000+00:00 | ['Nature', 'Haiku', 'Loneliness', 'Poetry', 'Mindfulness'] |
Slick rascals and the peachy keen discount on my Urgroßvater’s livery stable (.edu) | “That a school or schools shall be established by the Legislature, for the convenient instruction of youth, with such salaries to the masters, paid by the public, as may enable them to instruct at low prices; and all useful learning shall be duly encouraged, and promoted, in one or more universities.” — Article XLI, Constitution of North Carolina: December 18, 1776.
The original North Carolina constitution recognized the need for investments in public education, but aside from the creation of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1789 the task was left largely to churches during colonial times. In the South generally, it wasn’t until Reconstruction that Republican governments established the first (racially segregated) public school systems supported by general taxes. But in North Carolina, the first free, whites-only public school opened in 1840, in Rockingham County, and public support for whites-only education was expanded significantly prior to the Civil War.
On the recommendation of Archibald Murphey — the “father of education”— Whigs in the General Assembly passed the North Carolina Public School Act in 1839. The legislation provided for both state and local funding of education, “[b]ut political pressures almost immediately made the local tax voluntary and changed the formula to favor eastern counties with large slave populations” (NCPedia). Still, whites-only public education expanded in the state significantly after the legislation was ratified by all but seven counties — Columbus, Davidson, Edgecombe, Lincoln (which at the time included Catawba, founded in 1842), Warren, Wayne, and Yancey.
“Even as late as 1840, one out of every four white men and women, and practically all Negroes, could not read and write. North Carolina had one of the highest rates of illiteracy of any state in the Union.” — Hugh Lefler, as quoted by the NC Department of Public Instruction (1993)
According to a history of public education in the state created by the Department of Public Instruction (1993); “By the outbreak of war in 1861, there were approximately 4,000 common schools with 160,000 pupils, an average of 40 pupils per school and 350 academies with approximately 15,000 pupils, an average of almost 43 pupils per academy.” But neither the “immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships” (as Ben Carson refers to them) nor their descendants would benefit from public education until after the Civil War when they finally started being served in the early 20th century—separately and unequally.
After the Civil War, public education in the state was in near-total ruin, but “Carpetbaggers” from the North quickly adopted a even more progressive State Constitution (1868) that required the General Assembly to “provide by taxation and otherwise for a general and uniform system of public schools, wherein tuition shall be free of charge to all of the children of the State between the ages of six and twenty-one years.” This system remains largely intact today, with the expense of public education coming primarily from a combination of state and local (property) taxes — and, today, a lottery.
“An ancestor blessed with longevity could have been born in Rowan County in 1753, married in Burke County in 1778, fathered children in the counties of Burke and Lincoln in the 1780s. and died in 1842 during Catawba County’s formation year while living on the same land all the while. His land simply became part of the new counties as they were formed.” — James W. Miller. Jr
In 1858, George Washington (GW) Keener (my great-grandfather) was born in the new county of Catawba, in what had been the old county of Lincoln near what later became the town of Maiden (1883). GW apparently couldn’t read or write and probably never attended any school. The first Compulsory Attendance Act wasn’t passed until 1913.
Snip: The Newton Enterprise, February 25, 1916 — via Newspapers.com.
As mentioned in my eBook and a previous blog post, GW owned a livery stable in Maiden and almost went into the aviation business with D.M. Carpenter and Barney Spratt. The adventure ended unexpectedly after a fire destroyed part of GW’s business (and the materials they were going to use to build the airplane). In 1916, GW sold his livery stable at a 10% discount to protest a local vote in favor of taxes for public education of whites. From the Hickory Daily Record:
Maiden School Fight
Newton, Feb 28. [1916] — A by-product of the recent graded school fight in Maiden has come to the court house in the shape of a deed for $1,800 transferring a storehouse and a livery stable from George W. Keener to Smith Campbell and W. B. Murray. Mr. Keener was very much oposed to the tax for schools and after the vote had been declared that night, he said he considered property worth less in Maiden than before the tax was voted, and offered to take 10 per cent from a price of $2,000 for the property named. Campbell bought it on the spot, and Murray came in later to share a good thing.
GW was apparently a pretty slick rascal. A distant cousin also owned a livery stable, in Lincolnton. Elijah Washington Keener was the father of Walter Ney and the son of Lawson, who purchased the old Keener homestead and ran a lime kiln and iron mine (in Iron Station) which helped fuel an industrial revolution in the area. Limestone from Lawson’s kiln was used to build many of the first brick buildings in Lincolnton. Elijah had his own run-in with a slick rascal of a different nature in 1899, having nothing at all to do with public education. From the Lincoln Journal on September 1, 1899, and reprinted in the Burke County News (September 08, 1899):
A Slick Rascal
Mr. Elijah Wishimadie [sic] Keener had an experience this and last week that was a powerful strain on his character as a consistent member of the church. A fellow giving his name as G.D. Earnhardt, claiming to be from Salisbury, and professing to be an optician, hired a horse and buggy from him Saturday morning to take a trip into the upper part of the county, promising to return that afternoon. He never came back, and Mr. Keener fully impressed with the appropriateness of his middle name, began a search for him. By Tuesday he had traced the rascal and the team to Ball’s Creek campmeeting; thence to Maiden, thence to a man named — , near Denver; thence to Conover, where the fellow disappeared. He had tried vainly to sell or swap the horse and buggy. He had wrecked the buggy and pretty nearly ruined the horse. Mr. Keener recovered the horse and the remanent of the buggy, but the fellow got away…
However, today we do still have slick rascals attacking public education in North Carolina and nationwide. According to the Charlotte Observer (April, 2016); “This year, the state has spent $12 million on Opportunity Scholarships to help families of modest means move their children from public to private schools. About $11 million went to Christian, Islamic and other faith-based schools, with about $800,000 going to secular schools.” The largest recipient of this new public funding has been an Islamic Academy that was in financial trouble previously. And at least one Christian school now receiving public funds was in the news recently regarding embezzlement by their former headmaster. Opportunity indeed, but for whom? Slick rascals who apparently want to return our State’s education system to its segregationist and colonial roots, on the public’s dime! And just like Mr. “Earnhardt” they unfortunately seem to be getting away with it!
“To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves…is sinful and tyrannical.” — Thomas Jefferson
If you enjoyed this post, you might also like my eBook about my paternal ancestors in the Catawba Valley. | https://medium.com/kühner-kommentar/slick-rascals-and-a-peachy-keen-discount-on-my-great-grandfathers-livery-stable-5e866b1b8aee | ['Wilhelm Kühner'] | 2017-11-29 18:12:35.050000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Education', 'History', 'Philosophy', 'Religion'] |
Excavating the Marquis of Haihun’s Tomb | “Hot and humid” does not begin to describe the July days in Jiangxi Province. Walking alone on the carless concrete road in the remote Guanxi Village, helplessly soaked in sweat, I thought about how this used to be one of the favorite places for the ancient emperors to exile people, and how I was here precisely because of one of them.
Passing through a lush bamboo grove, I saw, beyond an expanse of green rice fields, a large rectangular white concrete building that to me looked like a well-cut ice-cube floating on a cold glass of Mountain Dew. That building was my destination, the Excavation Research Base of the recently excavated Western Han Tomb of the Marquis of Haihun.
Excavation Research Base of the Tomb of the Marquis of Haihun in Guanxi Village, Xinjian County, Jiangxi Province. (“Ice Cube on Mountain Dew”). Image: Ziliang Liu
The marquis was Liu He (92–59 B.C.) and he was the exile that I was here for. Like most of the exiles during his time, he was exiled from the Western Han court in the capital city of Chang’an, but unlike other exiles, he was once the emperor of that court, albeit only for 27 days before being dragged down from the throne.
Despite his misfortune, Liu He evidently succeeded in bringing with him a piece of Han imperial wealth from the capital and took it to the grave, as his tomb yielded tens of thousands of burial goods, many of which represented the highest grade of craftsmanship and visual sophistication in Western Han art. Liu He’s treasures were kept at the Excavation Research Base, and I was here to study them.
The treasures inside China’s ‘best-preserved’ royal tombs of the Western Han Dynasty Photo: Xinhua/Guo Jing/China Daily
This was the fourth day of my work as a research associate at the Jiangxi Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, and I was expecting another day of looking at lacquer drinking cups. But things were different this day. Passing through the security station to the entrance of the storage, the temperature suddenly dropped, worryingly cold in fact, thanks to the industrial air conditioner designed to protect the excavated objects. I noticed that the front room of the storage had been rearranged to fit an unfamiliar blue container in the center.
I peeked into the container out of sheer curiosity, but the content made me instantly oblivious of the cold inside or the heat outside. There, submerged in chemically treated water, was Liu He’s “Confucius Dressing Mirror” (Fig.2). This was the only object among the findings from the tomb that was completely off-limit to the outside world, simply because there had never been anything like this found before, and archaeologists did not even know what to call it when it was first unearthed. It wasn’t until the discovery of the portraits of Confucius (the earliest surviving example) on the back and a large bronze mirror attached to the front that it acquired the title “Confucius Dressing Mirror”. For art historians, this was the Crown Jewel of the Tomb of the Marquis of Haihun.
Back side of the Confucius Dressing Mirror. Earliest surviving portrait of Confucius (top left). First Century, B.C. Tomb of the Marquis of Haihun, Jiangxi Province. Image: Ziliang Liu
I was soon awakened from my trance by a flock of white-cloaked conservationists and staffs carrying cameras and flashlights bursting into the room. One of the younger staff members, with whom I occasionally played computer games after dinner, told me that they were going to make a photo documentation of the dressing mirror and that Mr. Shunqing Wu, a leading (legendary) expert of lacquer wood conservation from Jingzhou, Hubei Province — — to whom all lacquer wares excavated south of the Yangtze River are drawn like iron to magnet — — had come to the base to supervise the operation.
I soon learned why his presence was a necessity: under his direction, each fragment of the dressing mirror had to be carefully taken out from the protective liquid, cleansed, methodologically dehumidified, and installed in a booth to be photographed. During this process, I was able to examine the details on each fragment closely and discuss them with Mr. Wu and Prof. Jiabi Wu, an expert of ancient Chinese astronomy, and we made many surprising new discoveries: we located and identified a previously unknown image of Xuanwu, the God of North, on the bottom part of the dressing mirror, which has deep implications for the interpretation of the mirror’s pictorial program. We also found many images of mythical creatures on the top and the sides of the mirror not reported in the original excavation record, which were highly relevant to my research of Han Dynasty images of immortals. Looking back, it was truly a day filled with pleasure of discovery.
Archaeologists clear the upper layer of the main coffin. [Photo by Guo Jing/China Daily]
During the summer internship at the Excavation Research Base, I was able to gain access and study many unpublished materials and discuss them with experts stationed on-site, which expanded the breadth and depth of my understanding of Western Han art. The rare opportunity to closely examine the Confucius Mirror in detail in particular helped me develop new research projects. For example, based on the discovery of the image of the King Father of the East on the upper section of the dressing mirror, I co-authored an article with Yang Jun, the lead archaeologist of the tomb, on the early development of the deity’s image in Chinese art (forthcoming in Jianghan Archaeology).
A comprehensive examination of the mirror also inspired me to reconsider the mirror’s overall visual program and investigate the conceptual and cosmological significance of the mirror as a whole, which I plan to turn into a chapter of my dissertation. In the end, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the Fairbank Center Summer Research Grants for Graduate Students for its generous support of my summer internship. The experience has truly made a difference to my research of Western Han art.
Ziliang Liu is a Ph.D. Candidate in the History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University. He is a founder of the Harvard Visual China student group. | https://medium.com/fairbank-center/excavating-the-marquis-of-haihuns-tomb-98c30de77029 | ['Fairbank Center Blog'] | 2018-01-30 14:50:38.148000+00:00 | ['Art History', 'Chinese', 'History', 'Archaeology', 'China'] |
Getting Started with Redux-js Toolkit | Hey there, Let’s first talk about the problem statement for Redux? What is Redux? And why do we use it? If you’re already familiar about Redux then you can go ahead and skip this explanation about Redux and directly fast forward to the explanation of reduxjs/toolkit library.
Explanation About Redux:
In React, if we would like to a pass value from one component to another component. We would pass them as props so that the child could access those values.
But what if we want to pass the values between two components who are totally independent of each other. As they are independent, we can’t use props to pass the values. So, how would we pass the values?
To solve this issue, Dan Abramov wrote the redux library. Later, Facebook acquired this open-source library and now manages this library.
Now, we have two components who would like to talk with each other. In Redux, we have a concept called Store. By the help of the Store, the components can talk with each other (When I Say, talk to each other. It means to share data between themselves.).
For Easy Understanding, think of the store as a single hook which can be used by all the components.
First, the Independent Component A is going to provide some data to the store. As soon as the store is updated with the data. The Independent Component B can access that data and it is vice versa with Component B. Similar to a hook, as soon as the value is updated in the store. Component B is going to re-render with the new changes provided by component A. That’s pretty much the 1000 feet overview of the redux concept.
There are mainly four important things in Redux and they are store, actions and reducers and dispatchers.
Store:
As the name suggests, it does nothing but stores the data/values in it. The components can ask the store to get the values from it.
Think of store as a dumb guy, who just follows orders from reducer and updates the values provided from them without any question.
Actions:
As I above talked about Independent Component A, providing data to the Store. In redux, we cannot directly update the store. we have to use an action for updating it. Actions take the data and type of update we would like to perform and send it to the reducer. That’s pretty much the role of the Action in Redux.
Think of these guys as who do all of the hard work, they handle the data provided by the components and send it to the reducer.
Reducer:
Reducers are just pure functions, and they don’t contain any sort of logic. They just tell the store how to update the data. Either store the new data with the previous data already present in the Store or replace the previous data with the new Data.
These guys don’t do any sort of hard-work such as actions but, still, steal the spotlight from them. Because there are the only one’s who can communicate with the store.
Dispatch:
The Independent Component A cannot directly trigger the action as a normal function. It has to use a dispatcher, only by using a dispatcher we can call an action.
Think of these guy as a phone, our Independent Component A cannot directly call an action. They have to use dispatch to call the action similar to a mobile phone.
So this is how the whole structure works, the Independent Component A is going to call(dispatch) a specific action with the data, the action is going to take the data(payload) and type of action and call the reducer. Based on the type of action, the reducer is going to update the store. Once the store is updated. As the Independent Component B, is listening to any sort of updates from the Store. The component is going to re-render themselves as soon as there is an update.
Explanation About Redux JS Toolkit:
Redux is a great library for managing the state across the components but setting up and understanding the structure and flow is a little bit difficult and confusing for the beginners. Don’t get me wrong, Redux is an awesome thing once you clearly understand the flow. As stated on the website of reduxjs/toolkit, these are some of the issues with the react-redux library.
“Configuring a Redux store is too complicated”
“I have to add a lot of packages to get Redux to do anything useful”
“Redux requires too much boilerplate code”
To overcome these issues, we have reduxjs/toolkit. This library makes life much easier. The reduxjs/toolkit makes the configuring of the Redux very simple and straightforward. Guess what; this library comes with built-in support for the redux-devtools(this library is used for debugging the Redux store and watch the changes in the store.).
store.js for configuring the store.
The above code is used for the configuring the Redux store using the reduxjs/toolkit. We will be providing the reducers, middleware inside the configureStore. Now, let’s talk about how we can create actions and reducers in this library.
Previously before the reduxjs/toolkit library, we would write actions independently and send the data over to the Reducer who would update the store. Now in the reduxjs/toolkit, rather than writing actions and reducers separately, we combine both of them and call them as Slices. One Slice can contain multiple actions and reducers. So, it’s very easy to deal, manage and debug both the actions and reducers.
Below is an example of a sample slice. Let’s take a look at an example of a counter slice; we would like to increment and decrement the counter. The slice contains the name, initialState and reducers.
Slice Sample
The redux store is immutable, so we cannot directly update the data in the store previously. But, in the reduxjs/toolkit library, we can directly mutate the data in the reducer and internally the immutable js library makes it into an immutable object and provides it to the store to update itself.
As I said above another one of the great things about the reduxjs/toolkit is we don’t have to setup redux-devtools to debug the redux store. The reduxjs/toolkit internally has the redux-devtools built into it. So, the only thing we have to do is install the redux devtools plugin in the browser and that’s it. We can get pretty much started with the debugging of the application.
This is just an overview of what you can do with the reduxjs/toolkit. Go ahead and take a look at the reduxjs/toolkit website. It contains more examples and much more info about the reduxjs/toolkit. Thanks | https://medium.com/@ashfaqnisar/getting-started-with-reduxjs-toolkit-7caaf460613c | ['Ashfaq Nisar'] | 2020-12-25 09:59:52.110000+00:00 | ['Redux', 'React Native', 'React Redux', 'Redux Toolkit', 'React'] |
How to beat the barrier language when you are living in a foreign country. | How to beat the barrier language when you are living in a foreign country.
As a traveler and non native english speaker I’ve been always used to work hard to make me understand with others.
I was lucky enough to travel around the world lot from a young age, most of it on my own. Visiting a wide variety of countrys, cultures and dealing with different languages.
Communication had never been an issue before. I am of the one’s that think that with a big smile, body language and a good amount of will you can get anybody to understand you.
Let’s add google translator now, which can be very handy.
But then, Turkey became my personal challenge. After three months traveling the country I decided to settle for a while. So I moved to a city where nobody spoke english, and the turkish vocabulary I was very proud of wasn’t enough for daily life.
I understood how different is traveling than living in a place where you don’t speak the native language, the barrier stops being something fun to become in frustration.
It can be really desperating when you are trying to communicate and what you get is someone talking louder and slower.
After back to back word exchanges that got me nowhere, I even stopped trying the words I knew, because I didn’t want to feel that frustration. Eventually, I found myself exposed to the feeling of not belonging.
So, if you identify with the experience, you may eventually have thought of escaping away. Just because you think you don’t fit in.
But before you decide to scape from this crude reality, remember the reasons that led you to live there in the first place. And if it’s worth it for you, give everything you have to make it work and learn as much as possible from this unique experience.
This is my piece of advice.
1. Train the patience muscle
This may seem obvious, but after several unsuccessful attempts of communication it is easy to forget. I did.
Remember that whenever you want to do something, it will probably take more time and energy than you estimated. Applies for every topic: bureaucratic papers, shopping, attend to a course. Always try to anicipate the move.
What do you need to know/get?
How are you going to ask for it?
Arrive there knowing what is that you need to figure and how you are going to ask for it. Use the translator, search some pictures that illustrate what you need. It will make the difference for you and the interlocutor.
When you feel you are being pulled by someone in a hurry, get away from from them. Without understanding the language plus rushing yourself, will never be a good combination. So save yourself the bitter cup.
2. Be respectful of your interlocutor
If you don’t speak the native language, for locals you are a tourist in their land.
Sometimes we assume the entire world works in english but the truth is not. Specially if you go far from capital cities.
You are the one who speaks a language other than the local one.
Whatever reason that made you do it: studying, working, traveling, something lead you to this experience. Whereas people is just living their regular daily life.
I know how frustrating is not being able to express yourself. Sometimes you try hard and you don’t even get a look in your eyes. That can also happen.
But imagine being on the other side. There are many people in this world who never spoke another language, they just didn’t have that chance. And when you just assume that they should understand you, they may feel less.
Having the opportunity to live life in another country is a privilege, which allows you to know and observe different areas of the world.
Use that wisdom that life is giving you embrace your empathy.
Just by changing the words of the opening conversation, you make a difference in the perception of the receptor.
Be grateful for the time and comprehension coming from the other side. Not everybody has the spirit to give you some of their energy.
3. Learning a few words never hurt anyone
It may be that you are trying to learn the language because you need it, or it may not. You are surrounded by other people who speak the same language as you.
Knowing a few words will be helpful. Why?
Because the locals will mostly appreciate it when they see that you are trying. It can make them decide if they are trying to be helpful or they will just ignore you.
It will help you integrate with the culture and you need this. It doesn’t matter the length of the experience. In this present, this is your home. Keep living as an outsider will take you closer to the non belonging feeling.
Is an amazing brain exercise that you can transform in a game.
Start with basic, like things you eat, or you usually buy.
Play with the language. How would you get some bread from the bakery?
Simple acts from daily life will make the difference.
4. Namaste
Actually, this is something I found in a book that proposes that when you meet a person, you say in your mind «Namaste». This Sanskrit word means «The spirit that is in me honors the spirit that is in you».
Somehow in doing so I began to feel peace, giving me calm before each conversation began.
I think, it is a way of acknowledging that despite our borders, politics, religion and language barriers, we are all the same. Human beings trying to discover how life works.
When you do, your head naturally tilts down a bit and the other person can sense your respect.
Give it a try, it may work for you too. | https://medium.com/@sofiamoresi/how-to-beat-the-barrier-language-when-you-are-living-in-a-foreign-country-af848a633628 | ['Sofia Moresi'] | 2020-12-05 09:12:38.101000+00:00 | ['Self-awareness', 'Language', 'Self Improvement', 'Tips And Tricks'] |
Stop Paying the Minimum on Your Credit Cards | Credit: Turnisu at pixabay
The most common trap with credit cards is the minimum payment. The misconception that you are slowly paying down your debt when instead, you’re just paying interest.
A minimum payment is just an interest payment
For example, if you have $2,000 in credit card debt, at a 26% interest rate, and a minimum monthly payment of $45. It will take you almost 13 years and cost you an additional $4,900 in interest to pay down your debt.
With each payment, you’ll be contributing $1.67 to the principal, this is against your actual debt, and $43.33 to interest. That’s right, only 4% of your payment goes toward paying down the original amount.
What is the debt cycle?
The most common reason for being in this position in the first place is a lack of an emergency fund when an unplanned life event arises.
Unfortunately, over 13 years, the chances of another unplanned life event happening, is extremely high. And again, without an emergency fund, a cycle develops.
The debt cycle will put an end to your savings dreams before they begin. But there is hope!
Break the debt cycle
Here are a few simple steps to help you break the debt cycle:
1. Keep paying the minimum amount
Isn’t this a bad idea? Generally, yes.
In this case, however, you’ll be breaking the debt cycle. To do this, you need to build a small emergency fund to insulate you from the next unplanned life event.
While you do that, you do not want to default on your credit cards, hence the minimum payment.
2. Build a small emergency fund
Unfortunately, there isn’t a magic amount you should save. You know your situation best. If you’re expecting car troubles or the like, try to anticipate. Otherwise, if it’s an arbitrary amount, start with one paycheck’s worth.
3. Pay down your debt!
Now that you’ve created some buffer with your emergency fund, it’s time to focus on the real problem, your debt!
In the example above, if you were to double your minimum payment to $90, it would reduce the payoff time from almost 13 years to 2.6 years. You’d still be paying the same $43.33 in interest, but every additional dollar would go toward the principal balance.
Pick a time-frame you’re comfortable with, but don’t drag it out too long. See those interest payments as just more time spent grinding at work, not contributing to your savings.
Build your emergency fund
Luckily, this method can work with any kind of debt, not just credit cards. There are many calculators out there, like this one, that can help you get more specific with your situation.
Once you’ve broken the debt cycle, you should keep building your emergency fund. Try saving six months’ worth of living expenses for optimum peace of mind.
And, if you need help with tools for saving or tips on how to leverage your credit cards for positive growth, try reading: Trifecta for Budgeting, Saving, and Spending. | https://themakingofamillionaire.com/stop-paying-the-minimum-on-your-credit-cards-efd8d0b1b064 | ['Taylor Boucher'] | 2019-10-17 13:01:03.603000+00:00 | ['Credit Cards', 'Personal Finance', 'Credit', 'Money', 'Debt'] |
UX Design at Scale: Infusing Design as a Behavior in Your Organization | UX Design at Scale: Infusing Design as a Behavior in Your Organization
4 approaches we’ve found effective at Workday to show the value of UX.
By Tamara Hale, Principal UX Researcher, Workday
Illustration by Nor Sanavongsay (https://dribbble.com/shots/6007899-UX-Infused-Businesses)
This article is based on a talk that was originally given at Lesbians Who Tech 2018.
In the last few years, we’ve been hearing a lot about design’s coming of age and its expanding role in the most forward-thinking organizations. Those of us working in design have always recognized its potential to influence broader business goals and shape the direction of organizational growth. Lately, influential business thinkers, leaders like John Maeda and organizations such as the Design Council have been adding their voices to this discussion. In particular, this conversation has focused on three aspects of design’s potential: its strategic value, its impact on the bottom line and its function as an integral aspect of product or service development. But how do we realize the full potential of design while dealing with the concrete challenges of UX design at scale in large enterprises?
Before we dive deeper, a note on how we use the term “design” at Workday. We work as an integrated Design team, which means that we recognize and leverage the broad range of design specializations that have emerged in recent years. We have researchers, visual and interaction designers, design technologists, other design operations specialists and content strategists, as well as other roles. When I use the word “designers” here, I’m referring to all of the above. All of us work together toward common goals: to understand our users, and to advocate for great experiences that leverage the best technologies while balancing business needs. Our UX design framework depends on this shared effort.
Design as Strategy
Outside the traditional realm of shaping what a product or solution looks like, we’ve been hearing that the voice of design should also be present in the boardroom.
This is because design can:
Help businesses understand who their customers and users are
Infuse empathy for customers or end-users throughout the organization
Identify the problem space that an organization wants to address
Flip a business problem on its head, revealing completely new ways of framing a challenge
Some research has confirmed the strategic value of design. Findings from the design value index suggest that 10 percent of the Fortune’s top 125 companies have executive-level positions and CEO support for design-centered roles. Other recent studies show that companies with a strong design approach have seen increased revenues and higher total returns to shareholders compared to competitors. Strong design approaches can range from leadership support for design, emphasis on iterative processes, research-based decision-making, shared responsibility for user experiences between teams, and development that is focused not on “products” but more holistic experiences.
The Positive Impact of Design
Designers have long been asked to articulate the impact of their work on a company’s bottom line. Increasingly, research suggests that good design has a positive impact on a company’s revenue. To give one example, the Design Management Institute has shown that over the last ten years international design-driven companies (such as Apple, Ford, Nike, Starbucks, Disney, Steelcase and IBM) have outperformed the S&P 500 by 219 percent.
Design is Integral to the Process
Finally, there is a push to view design as integral to the product development process, and not just something you slap on your technology to make it usable or make it look good. Design is the product.
Reality Check
All these trends are enough to make the heart of a design team soar. The potential of design when given a strategic role is (or should be) intuitive to us. But what are the roadblocks in getting design a seat at the strategy table? Here are a few we have identified:
1. There just aren’t enough designers (and researchers) to go around
Designers are still far outnumbered by other roles in most organizations. The practice of “design” still tends to fall to a particular team or group, but there are rarely enough of them to keep up with the demands for their work. According to some statistics, there are on average five designers for every 100 developers. For researchers, it’s even bleaker, with one researcher for every 100 developers. The designer-developer ratio is one indicator of the maturity of a design organization.
2. Designers are asked to the party too late
One of the biggest pain points we hear from designers and researchers is that, in part because they are a scarce resource, they are invited into important conversations too late to make the biggest impact. All the strategic decisions may already have been made, with little time to course correct. Often, significant resources have already been committed to building something without validating whether the problem being solved actually matters to users or customers.
3. Scaling design is hard
As organizations grow, create more products, enter new markets and expand features, they need ways to scale design. Scaling a design practice is especially hard, but even more important when you have multiple products, locations and acquisitions that all need a consistent user experience.
4. There isn’t a recipe for success
Another big challenge is that there just isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution that can be dropped into your organization. Just as organizational cultures differ, so do their design cultures. Organizations also differ in the evolution and maturity of their design practices and teams. The strategy for scaling one design team isn’t necessarily going to work for another. For example, if your designers report in through a product team, growing that team will look different than if your designers report to a centralized design team.
While there are many great resources on managing design team growth, becoming more design-centric isn’t as easy as hiring more designers. An organization as a whole must also adopt a more human-centered design mindset, and not as much advice addresses this thornier problem. While data suggests executive sponsorship increases the visibility and impact of design teams, we know less about what’s needed beyond leadership buy-in.
Our Approach to Scale
Given that scaling design growth is difficult and there’s no recipe for success, how do you infuse design behavior into your organization? How do you elevate and scale design?
At Workday, we’ve tried and tested a few different approaches, and we’d like to share some of our lessons in the hopes that anyone thinking about these problems can learn from them.
Here are four approaches that have worked well for us:
Expanding our definition of design Identifying and supporting our allies Opening our tools Moving beyond territorialism
Expanding Our Definition of Design
We’ve been thinking about design much more broadly than in the past. Organizations need to let go of the notion that design is primarily about what something looks like. If you are conceiving an idea and planning and executing that idea, you are doing design, whether you’re designing a product, service, business process or internal team process.
Even when you think of more traditional design roles, many of those doing what we think of as “design” aren’t designers. At Workday, product managers also make important decisions about the problems we are trying to solve, what our product is or will be and who will be using it.
Finding and Supporting Our Allies
Increasing the impact of design requires identifying the people, like product managers, who are making design decisions, who may be “doing design” in a broader sense and who may be natural allies for a design team. Once identified, you can support those allies and help them sell design to other parts of the organization.
We find that providing our allies with opportunities to learn about design strengthens their empathy for what designers and researchers do, and contributes to stronger partnerships. We offer online training on topics such as conducting user interviews and design thinking fundamentals — tools that reach our colleagues in all locations and allow them to fit design education into their day-to-day work. We also offer in-person, hands-on workshops for colleagues to learn and practice design thinking skills and problem-solving activities.
Most of our trainings are attended by individuals from a broad range of teams across the organization and create new opportunities for learning across Workday. We regularly have other people from the organization tell us “I had no idea user research was so hard” or “We didn’t realize that you had such a nuanced process.” Our program of learning opportunities helps us bring design thinking to the company as a whole.
Opening Our Tools
Design systems get a lot of attention these days, for good reason. In order to keep up with the demand on our design team, we have created and released our own design system to other teams at Workday and the broader community. Workday Canvas is our library of reusable UI components and guidelines for using them. It allows us to manage design at scale for a number of reasons.
First, it provides a single source of truth on UI elements; second, it delivers a “self-service” method of getting access to design elements without the need for exporting and sharing components via one-off conversations.
Third, it offers a shared language to use with other teams, especially developers and product managers. For example, in the past we talked about colors using hex values, which was cumbersome and not intuitive. Now teams can easily point to our Workday “Jelly Belly” color palette; instead of numbers we have “Blueberry” and “Chili Mango.” This easily-accessible reference source has also promoted adoption of our design system and good design practice by other teams.
Fourth, it allows our designers and other teams to save valuable time because they aren’t reinventing the wheel every time a new component is needed. For example, in the past, our designers used to create or approve every single icon that went into the system, even if it was just required in a different color or size. Now, we can use the Canvas design system to ensure consistency across our design and research teams, which are spread between different product areas and geographic locations. The design system provides guidelines on the standards we agree on, allows us to evaluate our work against a common ground, and gives enough flexibility for our experienced teams to be creative, innovative and efficient.
Our Canvas design system serves as the pencils and paper of UX design — the tangible tools required to design — but we also want to teach our allies how to use that pencil and paper. In addition to the Canvas design system, we created guides to help others understand and implement a design process. Our UX Playbook is a set of best practices and easy-to-use activities for how to get great design done, regardless of which department or team someone comes from. They are methods we’ve used to get unstuck, aligned and creative in our problem- solving. They are framed for an entry-level audience, including people who are completely new to design, people working with design partners or more experienced design-minded people. Offering transparency into how we work and showing teams how to use design tools to help them with their work has helped us build credibility and trust with our partners.
Ultimately, sharing our tools allows us to build faster and to increase the cohesiveness and consistency of Workday’s look and feel across all of our products and features. In turn, our designers can spend time on tasks that require more specialized design expertise and increase visibility, acceptance and design sensitivity throughout the organization.
Not only have we shared our tools within our organization, we’ve also released Canvas, together with our Playbook of methods, to the broader community. Workday recognizes that there are partners, developers and community members who are using Workday Cloud Platform to build onto our API and get the most out of Workday. Releasing our tools to the community lets us support these efforts in a way that maintains the look and feel of Workday.
Moving Beyond Territorialism
You may be wondering, if we advocate for a broader definition of design and support non-designers in learning how to use design tools, where does this leave those folks who are trained as designers? We’ve heard concerns from designers about good design being diluted without quality control on good design and research. If design is on everyone’s plate, isn’t the effect of design lessened? Some may even wonder what the role of a traditional designer or researcher might be in the context of these transitions and changes.
Our experience at Workday suggests there are grounds for optimism. We can unequivocally say our design team isn’t going anywhere. In fact, Workday’s design organization has been growing exponentially over the last 5 years, a time frame that coincides exactly with the approaches we’ve outlined above.
In fact, all of the approaches we’ve described have freed up our team to do some of the best work of their careers. It has allowed us to be more selective, strategic and forward-thinking in our work. The avenues outlined above have allowed us to work on bigger, thornier and more complex problems. They have also helped other teams in the organization understand how and when to engage with design.
We’ve talked about the ways in which Workday has tried to infuse design throughout our organization by expanding our language around design, identifying and supporting our allies, opening up our tools and moving beyond territorialism. These initiatives have allowed us to broaden and strengthen UX design at scale at Workday. We are continuing to develop these approaches and are learning lessons about what works and what doesn’t along the way. If you are facing similar to challenges and are thinking about trying out some of these approaches, we’d love to hear from you! | https://medium.com/workday-design/ux-design-at-scale-infusing-design-as-a-behavior-in-your-organization-568cab1918ff | ['Workday Design'] | 2020-10-12 22:19:21.249000+00:00 | ['Ux Design At Scale', 'Design', 'Ux Design Framework', 'Ux Playbook', 'Design Systems'] |
Parsing XML Data in Python | Extensible Mark up Language (XML) is a mark up language that encodes data in a human and machine readable format. XML is used in a variety of programs for structuring, storing and transmitting data. Python contains several interfaces for processing XML data. In this post, we will discuss how to use the ‘ElementTree’ module in the python ‘xml’ library to parse XML data and store the data in a Pandas data frame.
Let’s get started!
For our purposes we will be using a sample ‘xml’ file, ‘books.xml’ ,which can be found here. The file contains information about a variety of books, such as titles, author names, and prices.
To start, let’s import ‘parse’ from the ‘ElementTree’ module in the python ‘xml’ library:
from xml.etree.ElementTree import parse
Now, let’s take a look at the file tags in ‘books.xml’:
We can define a parsed ‘XML’ document object by passing the file name into the ‘parse()’ method:
document = parse('books.xml')
If we print the object we see that we have an ‘ElementTree’ object at a specified memory address:
print(document)
Let’s take a look at the methods and attributes available to this object using the built-in ‘dir()’ method:
print(dir(document))
Let’s use the method ‘iterfind()’ to return a generator that we can use iterate over in a ‘for-loop’. We will need specify a path argument in the ‘iterfind()’ method. Let’s select the ‘book’ path:
for item in document.iterfind(‘book’):
print(item)
We see that we have several ‘Element book’ objects stored at various memory addresses. We can extract the information from these objects using the ‘findtext()’ method. Let’s extract the information in the ‘author’ tags:
for item in document.iterfind('book'):
print(item.findtext('author'))
We can also extract titles:
for item in document.iterfind('book'):
print(item.findtext('title'))
Let’s also look at prices:
for item in document.iterfind('book'):
print(item.findtext('price'))
Next, we can initialize lists that we can use to store these values:
author = []
title = []
price = []
And within the for-loop we can append the values:
for item in document.iterfind('book'):
author.append(item.findtext('author'))
title.append(item.findtext('title'))
price.append(item.findtext('price'))
We can then store these lists in a data frame. Let’s first import the Pandas library:
import pandas as pd
Next, let’s define a data frame that contains the ‘title’, ‘author’ and ‘price’ for each book:
df = pd.DataFrame({'title': title, 'author':author, 'price':price})
Next, let’s print the resulting data frame:
print(df)
We can add the ‘genre’, ‘publish_date’ and ‘description’ to the data frame as well:
genre = []
description = []
publish_date = [] for item in document.iterfind('book'):
...
genre.append(item.findtext('genre'))
description.append(item.findtext('description'))
publish_date.append(item.findtext('publish_date'))
Now that we have all of the information in a data frame we can do things like convert the ‘price’ strings into ‘float’ and calculate the mean of the ‘price’ column:
df['price'] = df['price'].astype(float)
print("Mean price: ", df['price'].mean())
Let’s also convert the ‘publish_date’ into a ‘datetime’ object and pull year, month and day values:
df['publish_date'] = pd.to_datetime(df['publish_date'])
df['year'] = df['publish_date'].dt.year
df['month'] = df['publish_date'].dt.month
df['day'] = df['publish_date'].dt.day
print(df.head())
We can also use the ‘Counter()’ method from the collections module to look at the distribution in authors and genres:
from collections import Counter
print(Counter(df['author']))
print(Counter(df['genre']))
I’ll stop here but feel free to play around with the data and code yourself.
CONCLUSIONS
To summarize, in this post we discussed how to parse XML data using the ‘xml’ library in python. We showed how to use the ‘iterfind()’ method to define a generator object that we can iterate over in a ‘for-loop’. We also showed how to access element tag information using the ‘findtext()’ method. We then stored the XML information in lists which we used to define a Pandas data frame. I hope you found this post useful/interesting. The data and code from this post are available on GitHub. Thank you for reading! | https://towardsdatascience.com/parsing-xml-data-in-python-da26288280e1 | ['Sadrach Pierre'] | 2020-05-07 01:57:07.920000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Software Development', 'Data Science', 'Programming', 'Python'] |
What’s Your Personal Definition of Retirement? | Flashback to a few months ago: the day after Christmas. I was visiting my hometown for the holidays, and I was fortunate enough to meet up with some friends that I had not seen in several months. At some point around midnight, the conversation shifted to me as my friends began to inquire about the types of writing projects I had on the horizon for 2020.
When I explained that I have been writing about my personal experience within the FIRE community they started firing questions at me as though I were the White House Press Secretary.
“How much should I have saved in my 401k by now?” “Are you going to try to retire early?” “How do you even buy a stock?” “Will you still be our friend when you’re rich?”
And the questions just kept coming. We talked about the different strategies that I’ve learned, and how those strategies have impacted my finances in a short period of time. We also discussed some of their individual circumstances, and I was able to direct them to some different resources that might be helpful for their research.
I was hoping that my impromptu press conference was winding to a close so I could go back to drinking my Ruby Grapefruit White Claw in peace, when my friend Kacey inquired about the concept of retiring early.
“You said that you know a guy who retired before 40?” Kacey asked with a cocked head, referring to Think Save Retire’s founder, Steve Adcock. Her question may seem innocuous enough, but she said it with the same skeptical tone that you’d use when asking a 7-year-old if they washed their hands before dinner.
I went on to explain Steve’s triumphant story and his journey to early retirement. I talked about how he found ways to increase his income, decrease his expenses, and invest wisely. I also told my friends all about how Steve quit his job at 35 years old so that he and his wife can travel the U.S. in an Airstream, and have the freedom to work exclusively on the projects that interest them.
“Wait! How can he be retired if he’s still working? Isn’t that…the definition of retirement? Not having to work anymore?” Kacey sharply interrupted.
I took a moment to think about how I would answer her as my group of friends stared at me wide-eyed waiting for me to respond.
“Well, Kacey, it sounds like that’s your definition of retirement.”
Defining Retirement
I couldn’t fault Kacey for her query, because it’s a fair question. It also wasn’t the first (or fifth) time someone had asked me that very same question. Between my other friends, family, Uber drivers, and blog comments, this is something that comes up fairly frequently among people who are either new to the FIRE movement or are casual observers.
Kacey’s question gave us an opportunity to talk about this concept as a group, and this discussion ultimately ended up being very insightful as everyone described their ideal retirement. As we chatted about our retirement goals, the conversation quickly started to feel like one of those conversations where people daydream out loud about what they would do with the money if they were to win the lottery.
Since that night, I’ve made it a point to ask people in my social circles what their personal definition of retirement is. I encourage you to do the same. You might be surprised how passionate people get when they discuss it.
Don’t Fence Me In
Part of what makes the FIRE movement so attractive to me is that it’s unorthodox. It’s not about worrying about what other people are doing, or what they think about what I’m doing. It’s not about keeping up with the Joneses or flexing for the ‘Gram. For me, it’s about maximizing your resources so that you can live life on your own terms.
It takes a special kind of person to fully commit to the lifestyle, and typically, that kind of person marches to the beat of their own drum. So why should we try and tell anyone that their vision of retirement is invalid?
Some of my friends have mused about golfing every morning or fishing all day. Others talk about how they hope to be spending time with their future grandchildren and traveling with their spouse. I even have friends who are adamant that they would continue to work fulltime in retirement, but only on the projects that they find interesting and fulfilling.
However, all of the answers had a common thread.
Freedom
After asking multiple people what their personal definition of retirement is, I received a lot of different answers, but there’s one common denominator among all of them: freedom.
The freedom to do whatever you want, whenever you want, without having to worry about income.
What about you? Do you agree that the definition of retirement is somewhat subjective and open for interpretation? What does your ideal retirement scenario look like? Let us know in the comments! | https://medium.com/@seang-3337/whats-your-personal-definition-of-retirement-5a175cf5e06 | ['Sean G.'] | 2020-08-31 18:29:23.029000+00:00 | ['Retirement Planning', 'Financial Freedom', 'Personal Finance', 'Financial Independence', 'Retirement'] |
Why Tringy is The Best OTT App For VoIP Business? | Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a cost-effective solution…
…that many businesses are engaging in to make their communications effective, bring down their costs, and increase their revenue.
To realize this potent combination, Voxvalley has developed Tringy, which is by far voted as one of the best OTT applications.
Tringy is an appropriate solution for VoIP businesses intending to perform a large array of activities.
These activities could be directly impacting the revenue generation models.
Tringy is an over-the-top (OTT) solution that enables operators to provide feature-rich facilities by creating their own OTT apps.
The OTT apps thus developed aid the operators to set-up their IP communication incurring the least investment and risk.
Our solution is robust and quick to deploy, speeding the operators’ goals.
Now one may wonder why we need Tringy when the market is full of free OTT apps.
Here is one powerful reason –
Tringy’s soft-switch server that works in the backend, is an end-to-end solution to manage your users, billing, administrative issues, packages, routing, and other activities as required by your VoIP.
Know more: Read Full Article | https://medium.com/@tejaswini4digital/why-tringy-is-the-best-ott-app-for-voip-business-a701aaf115f4 | ['Tejaswini Kola'] | 2020-12-22 08:32:05.654000+00:00 | ['Telecom', 'Voip', 'Cloud', 'Unified Communication', 'Telecommunication'] |
Things Rapists Say: How Entitled Criminals Try To Hide Assault From Victims. | Rapists Are Insidious…And You Might Not Even Recognize It When They Assault You.
I now understand what it means to be raped by your own husband. It took me nearly 3 months to recognize it for what it really was, then when it happened again multiple times, there was no denying I was literally married to an active rapist.
I was actually raped by another man while I had been married, and hadn’t told my spouse that it happened because I was afraid and ashamed, and ended up blaming myself for years that it happened— so I thought I knew the full ways which rape could occur. But I didn’t even think about the possibility that a person could be raped by their own partner — who does that? Well, it turns out that there are many of us.
I had no idea this person I loved and had trusted for years sleeping beside me…would be capable of becoming openly sexually violent with me and others — we’d been married for ten years before he started fully showing his true colors. Marital rape is real violence, and those who’ve endured it know the affects of trauma are even greater than by a stranger.
So here are some statements that I’ve both read and heard that rapists say before, during, or after rape that might clue you in to recognizing an assault. | https://medium.com/we-are-warriors/things-rapists-say-how-entitled-criminals-try-to-hide-assault-from-victims-18972c0fa159 | ['Samantha Clarke'] | 2020-11-22 17:45:36.161000+00:00 | ['Sexual Assault', 'Metoo', 'Culture', 'Crime', 'Human Rights'] |
Staring at the Ceilings at 2 AM | Eyes remained open, as though there is an ocean of hopes lying for them to see
The heart remained to beat, as though there is a constant of surges for it to tell the world how terrible it would be to stop
Cognizant of the remains from what used to be there
All are shattered in an instant, what remains to see have not appeared in such silver linings
Breathes carefully, breathes deeply, for every breath tells the heart that it’s still alive
Hear what the heart says, even the closest voice to the world is a thousand miles away
What the heart tells is the innermost part of the desire,
Even though the brain is never in agreement with that
The best dreams happen when you are asleep,
For you can enjoy every trace of your flowery desire
The best nightmares happen when you lie awake,
For you can regain control of what will happen to you
Moments pass, moments pass, and the dreams continue
To the day, that shall never come again into your life
For every day is the same as before, indistinguishable from one day to the next
In search of that day, the heart still beats with the intensity of a taiko drum at a festival | https://medium.com/@baguspratomo/staring-at-the-ceilings-at-2-am-b041a1f442f3 | ['Bagus Anugerah Yoga'] | 2021-07-15 19:18:17.753000+00:00 | ['Poem', 'Insomnia', 'Poetry', 'Random Thoughts', 'Heart'] |
Yerzmyey Proves the Raspberry Pi as a Chiptunes Production Platform | If you’re not familiar with the term, chiptune is a genre of music that is created with programmable sound chips—usually the ones found in vintage personal computers and video game consoles. Chips from the era were only capable of creating a limited range of sounds, which give modern chiptunes a distinctly retro sound. But, as musician Yerzmyey demonstrates on his new album RPI Zwei, the Raspberry Pi can also produce some pretty great chiptunes.
Yerzmyey is no stranger to more traditional chiptune production, and he first dipped his toes into the genre way back in 1989 on a ZX Spectrum. Throughout his career, Yerzmyey has also used an Amiga 500, an Atari ST, an Amiga 1200, and an Atari Falcon 030. For his new album, however, he decided to prove the worth of a Raspberry Pi 2 for making great chiptune music.
The Raspberry Pi 2 doesn’t have a DAC (digital-to-analog converter), so up to 26 channels had to be recorded from the processor itself. That’s a Broadcom BCM2836, which keeps the audio constrained to 11-bit and 40 MHz. Luckily, limitations are the key to the unique sound of chiptunes, and if you give RPI Zwei a listen, you’ll hear just how well it works. | https://medium.com/hacksters-blog/yerzmyey-proves-the-raspberry-pi-as-a-chiptunes-production-platform-a2406d0892b | ['Cameron Coward'] | 2018-02-20 20:53:22.374000+00:00 | ['Music', 'Chiptunes', 'Raspberry Pi', 'Technology', 'Makers'] |
Pregnancy During the Pandemic: How to Ensure You’re Safe | Are you pregnant during the COVID-19 pandemic?
Maybe you were planning for a baby but not planning for a global health crisis?
Or perhaps your pregnancy was a surprise!
Research is showing that pregnant women are at a higher risk for COVID-19 than non-pregnant women.¹ The research is still new, but the virus could also be more harmful to pregnant women. Pregnant women with COVID-19 have shown to be more likely to be admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU), receive ventilation, and have an increased risk of death compared to nonpregnant women¹. Here are five different ways to keep you and your family safe during the pandemic.
1. Protect Your Mental Health During Pregnancy
Did you know stress can cause your immune system to weaken, leading to illness²? And now, more than ever, women are dealing with extra stressors causing higher rates of depression and anxiety³. We’re still dealing with the normal stresses of work and family but now that many of us are working from home we’re also trying to:
Help the older kids get signed in to their online classes
Clean up pet messes
Feed all the kids breakfast, lunch, and dinner
Yell at the dog for barking during your meeting
And still, try to get your youngest to take a nap
All while you feel like you need a nap yourself! Something as simple as taking a walk around the block, taking a bath, or calling your mom can help to lower your stress levels.⁶
One of the best ways to handle stress is to PLAN for it. Having a birth plan can significantly reduce your stress around your baby’s birth and help you relax while you await their arrival. A birth plan can be about the actual birth and your choices surrounding that time. It can also include how you can prepare before you give birth and the type of help you may need after.
Here are some ideas to get you started:
Pack your hospital bag, if you’re planning on a hospital birth Clean the nursery in preparation for bringing the baby home Plan on getting some extra groceries to avoid going in public for a few weeks. Spend some time with your older children one-on-one before the baby comes. Prepare some of your favorite meals to freeze to enjoy after the baby comes.
You can also expect the help you may need. Do you need your mother to stay with you to help for the first week? Maybe your sister? Would it be helpful for your older children to stay with Grandma and Grandpa for the first few days after you bring the baby home? These are things you can think about and plan for now before your baby comes to help you feel more prepared!
2. Wash Your Hands and Wear a Mask
I know… you’ve been hearing it for eight months now! But seriously, wear the mask.
Masks have been shown to decrease the chances of getting COVID-19 by over 51% when you use a cotton mask and over 99% for a surgical-grade mask.⁴ If you go out in public, it is beneficial for your health to wear a mask, wash your hands whenever possible, and social distance. Don’t forget to launder your family’s masks frequently!
PRO MOM TIP: Most masks can be laundered with your regular laundry! Place them in a delicates bag and wash them as normal. Do not put your masks in the dryer, instead lay them flat and allow them to air dry. Placing them in the dryer can lead to shrinkage over time and ruin the little elastic straps that hold your mask over your ears.
3. Attend Telehealth Appointments Rather Than in-Person
No one seemed to use telehealth services before the pandemic — but wow has the popularity increased since March!
Ask your physician or midwife if telehealth services are an option for most of your prenatal care. Telehealth appointments are simply video chats with your physician from the safety of your home. Different doctors may use different platforms for the services but your health insurance is all billed the same. Do not forget to call your health insurance company to ask about your specific telehealth benefits. Not all employer healthcare plans cover telehealth services.
4. Clean Frequently Touched Surfaces with Disinfectant
This may seem obvious but cleaning frequently touched surfaces like doorknobs, countertops, and sink faucets with an appropriate cleaner will help cut down on germs — and the sneaky coronavirus — around your home.
Check out the CDC’s list of effective disinfectants to make sure the disinfectants you use to clean your home are going to knock the virus out cold! Depending on the type of cleaner you prefer to use, you may want to consider wearing a mask while you clean and opening a window for better ventilation. Chemical fumes can be harmful!
5. Consider Having a Home Birth
While home births aren’t for every woman, it can be a straightforward way to control who comes into your home and who you and your baby have contact with. Talk to your physician about the risks of a home birth before moving on with them to find a midwife or doula in your area. Each woman is different and home births aren’t safe for everyone.
Some benefits to a home birth during the pandemic are:
You control the cleanliness of your home and the chemicals you use to clean it. Only one to three extra people are in your home while you give birth rather than the hoards of doctors, nurses, janitors, doulas, midwives, etc. coming in and out of your hospital room. No need to stress about packing a hospital bag. No worries about getting stuck in traffic during labor! You may have lower stress levels now that you don’t have to worry about contracting the virus at the hospital. You could save money. On average, giving birth at the hospital can cost Americans over $10,000, while a home birth could cost anywhere from $0 to $10,000, depending on the type of care you desire.⁵ This would be another beneficial time to check with your insurance company about your benefits.
Keep in mind that while many major employer health insurances cover midwives and at least one home visit within 48 hours of giving birth, it is always good to check with your insurance company to ensure what your benefits are and check with your trusted physician to ensure you are making a safe decision for you and your baby.
Ensuring You and Your Family Are Safe During the Pandemic
And there you have it! Five simple yet effective ways to combat the COVID-19 virus to protect yourself and your growing family!
Protect your mental health Wash your hands Use telehealth services Clean your home’s surfaces Consider a home birth
Remember to contact your doctor right away if you think you may be ill or if you think you may be suffering from perinatal depression or anxiety. These may be trying times, but your pregnancy doesn’t need to be! Your physicians are there to help and support you.
This article is not a substitute for medical advice from a physician. Please contact your doctor with any medical concerns.
For more articles like this, visit the Maggie Treptow Agency website.
Sources | https://medium.com/@maggietreptow/pregnancy-during-the-pandemic-how-to-ensure-youre-safe-29de1a620754 | ['Maggie Treptow'] | 2020-11-27 16:38:32.659000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Pandemic', 'Pregnant', 'Safe', 'Pregnancy'] |
Reclaiming Satoshi’s Vision | As I sought to explain in my previous post,Killing Satoshi’s vision, the potential for emerging technologies built on blockchain, such as Bitcoin, to create a paradigm shift in the world, is under threat. Here I propose the answer to the problems facing the crypto community.
In short, the article posits that, although blockchain’s potential to achieve decentralisation in every industry is undeniable, the approach is wrong. We have been looking at the crypto revolution backwards. We shouldn’t be starting with the cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin etc.); we should be starting with tokenizing goods and services. And, crucially, ICOs need to be following strict compliance procedures. However, I undersold the team that can make this vision, which I’ve dubbed “Satoshi’s vision”, possible.
In the original article, I spoke about Ammbr — a growing project that is building a decentralised wireless mesh network on blockchain technology. The idea behind mesh networking, in layman’s terms, is to build a series of interconnected nodes (the Ammbr mesh router), for users to get ad-hoc internet connectivity (for tokens) while enabling individual nodes to pay neighbouring nodes for traffic transit with the same cryptocurrency tokens. The backhaul nodes connect to the fixed line infrastructure (fibre-optic cables, telephone lines, etc.) and are paid as Internet gateways. It reduces the cost of connecting individual nodes, because each router doesn’t need an Internet connection, and technicians don’t need to install cabling. It also reduces the need for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to reach each customer, and rewards those exchanging Wi-Fi connectivity for tokens, ultimately driving fees down. If you want more details on routing protocols and why Ammbr is better than the other projects that are proposing the mix of mesh networking and blockchain, Ammbr Research Labs CEO, Dr Arjuna Sathiaseelan provides a thorough, well-articulated explanation in a series of articles:
Ammbr — Decentralised Blockchain Infrastructure for Emerging Markets (part 1)
Part 2: The Ammbr Mesh: Bringing Decentralised Infrastructure to the Masses
I highly recommend reading the articles, but the basic point is that Ammbr is making serious progress connecting 4.1 billion people to the Internet and therefore adding billions of people to participate in the crypto community, a privilege that is currently reserved only for people who have reliable access to the Internet (there are less of you than you think). The unconnected people of the world are concentrated in developing nations who need blockchain technology the most. Blockchain democratises things, opens up opportunities in education, business, communications and countless platforms upon which people can genuinely improve their lives. Here’s an opportunity in the market where many blockchain initiatives can jump on the bandwagon. Ammbr is leading the way. It expands well beyond a decentralised Internet service…
The Ammbr mesh router is developed by AmmbrTech, who are building a blockchain economy with a hardware wallet, a global remittance system, back-office software and a number of blockchain-powered technical solutions that are each remarkable in their own right.
The BlackBird Hardware Wallet is an air-gapped wallet (a device used for the secure storage of your cryptocurrency). The BlackBird Wallet hasn’t officially launched, but their preview edition sold out almost immediately and it possess the features that will see it compete with the current giants of the hardware wallet market.
SendX is a global remittance platform that allows migrants to send money back home, reducing the exorbitant and exploitative fees that affect the families of hard-working migrants.
Finally, I want to discuss Electra, a back-office platform that takes care of back-office functions, like accounts and reporting, to make running an SME simpler than ever. It also creates a network of registered businesses that are able to cooperate within the system.
There’s no telling what else is in the works at AmmbrTech, but you can slowly start to see a robust economic model being built upon incredibly solid foundations, with a genuine focus on empowerment. Furthermore, management have stated their intention to follow strict compliance procedures and lived up to their word when Ammbr’s ICO was cancelled in November last year — thereby avoiding being implicated in the prevalent cases of public solicitation of funding in the ICO environment.
AmmbrTech has stated its commitment to self-sovereign identity platforms, because; let’s get real, who’s not thinking about an Orwellian “Big Brother” when everyone is connected to the Internet. AmmbrTech are also developing a solution to protect your data and privacy through technology that will cryptographically secure our online experience.
And here’s the best part — while AmmbrTech are developing many platforms, they seem to be following a pattern of creating a robust skeleton rather than the economy itself.
“[The] Ammbr network is, of course, open,” AmmbrTech CEO, Derick Smith says. “So we encourage other systems to come onto the distributed cloud infrastructure. We will definitely support Stellar, for example.
“The AMR token and our blockchain platform is for paying for Internet access, but ultimately it’s about providing upliftment and income to the owners of the devices.”
This is exactly what I was talking about in the first article. The major cryptocurrencies are focussed on generating money with a market-determined value. Ammbr are creating the market — the AMR is simply the unit of exchange for a digital economy that will be run by its participants. The users aren’t just spending money, they are making it. And the value of that money is reflected in the products or services they offer.
The final exciting thought is… how many Richard Bransons and Elon Musks are living in every developing nation from Algeria to Zimbabwe right now? The money system has been holding back the people of the developing world for too long. Creating blockchain solutions for upliftment programs, enabling online learning, giving small businesses the opportunity to thrive; it will make people’s lives a lot easier and, crucially for those of us that already have access to the crypto world, the number of people on the blockchain will rise dramatically.
And, even if the established powers resist it, we will have numbers on our side and we’ll drag them into a fair, decentralised blockchain-oriented global economy. Make no mistake, Rome wasn’t built in a day, but Ammbr has reclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto’s vision and the decentralised digital economy is now upon us. | https://medium.com/ammbrtechgroup/reclaiming-satoshis-vision-f40115b4d7de | ['Kyle Forrest'] | 2018-07-23 08:06:48.780000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Economics', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoin', 'Blockchain'] |
Dynamic Array made by C++ | Dynamic Array(가변 배열) 을 C++ 로 만들어보자
우선 세가지 파일이 필요함
CArr.h → class 멤버변수, 멤버함수 선언 CArr.cpp → class 멤버함수 정의 Main.cpp → main 함수
이전에 만들어뒀던 C언어 코드를 활용하자
/CArr.h
class CArr
{
private:
int* m_pInt;
int m_iCount;
int m_iMaxCount;
public:
CArr();
int GetCount()const;
int GetMaxCount()const;
void PushBack(int _iData);
void Resize(int _resizeData);
void ShowMember() const;
void ShowData() const;
~CArr();
};
class 와 struct 의 차이점 중 하나는 class는 생성자와 소멸자가 존재하기에
따로 함수로 구현할 필요가 없다는 것!
생성자를 통한 초기화 , PushBack , Resize(가변배열 크기변경) ,
ShowData , 소멸자를 통한 메모리해제
이렇게 다섯가지를 CArr.cpp 파일에 구현해보자
//CArr.cpp
#include "CArr.h"
#include <cassert>
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
CArr::CArr()
: m_iCount(0), m_iMaxCount(2)
{
m_pInt = new int[2];
}
int CArr::GetCount() const
{
return m_iCount;
}
int CArr::GetMaxCount() const
{
return m_iMaxCount;
}
void CArr::PushBack(int _iData)
{
if(m_iMaxCount <= m_iCount)
Resize(m_iMaxCount * 2);
m_pInt[m_iCount++] = _iData;
}
void CArr::Resize(int _resizeData)
{
if(_resizeData <= m_iMaxCount)
assert(false);
int* pNew = new int[_resizeData];
for(int i = 0; i < m_iCount; i++)
pNew[i] = m_pInt[i];
delete[]m_pInt;
m_pInt = pNew;
m_iMaxCount = _resizeData;
}
void CArr::ShowMember()const
{
cout << "iCount : " << GetCount() << ", " << "iMaxCount : " << GetMaxCount() << endl;
}
void CArr::ShowData()const
{
for(int i = 0; i < m_iCount; i++)
cout << i+1 << " : " << m_pInt[i] << endl;
}
CArr::~CArr()
{
delete[]m_pInt;
}
지난 글의 C 언어와 다른 기능을 가진 함수는 Resize 함수임
배열이 꽉 찬 상황에서만 늘어나던 지난번과는 달리
이번에는 사용자가 직접 배열크기를 할당해줄 수 있음
하지만 if 문의 조건과 같이
사용자가 iMaxCount 이하의 크기를 할당하게 되면
프로그램에 assert 함수에 의해 콘솔창에 경고가 뜸
(assert 함수는 false 값이 들어오면 경고가 뜸
→ 헤더파일은 C : assert.h , cpp : cassert)
경고는 다음과 같이 뜸
iMaxCount 가 4인데 Resize 함수로 크기가 4인 배열의 재할당을 요구했더니
경고가 뜨는 것을 볼 수 있음
그럼 Resize 함수를 잘 동작시키면 어떻게 될까?
iMaxCount 가 4인 크기가 4인 배열에
크기가 6 인 배열의 재할당을 요구했더니 iMaxCount , 즉 크기가 6인 배열이
재할당 되고 데이터가 더 들어가는 것을 볼 수 있음
자동으로 재할당 되는 배열은 크기가 2배로 증가함
main 함수는 자유롭게 수정이 가능하기에 위의 사진들을 참고하면 좋을듯!
오늘은 여기까지 :) | https://medium.com/@qldrhqorhsh/dynamic-array-made-by-cpp-3479b459f120 | [] | 2021-08-29 15:59:18.727000+00:00 | ['Development', 'C Programming', 'Study', 'Cpp', 'Developer'] |
On BPM and the Enterprise (again) | On BPM and the Enterprise (again)
How Processes and Architectures can Benefit Companies
Photo by dylan nolte on Unsplash
For the third year in a row, the BPM-EA track at the ACM SAC conference is hosting a set of interesting contributions in the field of Business Process Management (BPM) and Enterprise Architectures (EA) together.
Our rationale is that managing the information assets of a company is much harder than just applying a methodology. Multiple viewpoints should be considered. It’s a matter of time and experience to build up the appropriate mix of methods, solutions and technologies for solving the enterprise problems.
Business Processes, Enterprise Architectures, System and Software Modeling, are definitely important dimensions in designing and executing the company behaviour. We claim that these contributions are not being exploited to their best, because their complementarity and combination is rarely used. The aim is then to collect contribution that enable the integration and collaboration across these disciplines and methods.
I report here a quick summary of the contributions to the track.
Reliable Predictive Monitoring of Business Processes
Photo by pixpoetry on Unsplash
We want to predict a PPI (Process Performance Indicator) that reports correct execution of a process, and we want to assess the reliability of these predictions, also considering the variability of the scenario. We want the prediction to come in as soon as possible, i.e., for instance at the beginning of the process execution. Instead of using a ML-based reliability definition (e.g., the accuracy of a binary classifier for successful and unsuccessful process execution), we consider reliability as a function of the number of possible paths that are still possible in the process execution, or the time passed since the beginning with respect to the estimated total time of the whole process execution.
Controllability of Business Processes using Temporal Variables
We wonder about satisfiability (existence: there exists at least one execution that satisfy the constraints?) and controllability (universality: can we prove that all executions satisfy the constraints?) of business process executions with respect to existing temporal constraints over the process (or task) execution. There is a trade-off between the expressive power of the temporal constraints, and their controllability.
The proposal introduces a simplified process language based on time and temporal constraints. This language allows for specifying temporal rules and patterns, and allows to check for strong controllability (defining the rules based on the exact timestamps) and dynamic controllability (a weaker but more realistic level of controllability).
A Hybrid Model for Behavioural and Data Perspectives
We aim at combining process constraints with data-related modeling features. This is a step towards multi-perspective analysis of the enterprise. Traditional process mining approaches are not focusing on the data aspect. Even within ERP systems, you miss the separation and model clarity that may be needed. The process case data (i.e., the executions) are not sufficient either, as they flatten the process into a sequence of events, forgetting about the structure:
Therefore, we introduce a hybrid model that explicitly considers the process model and the data model (as a entity-relationship or a UML class diagram), and we show how to bind them together.
Optimization of Customer Journeys with Process Mining and Sequence-aware Recommendation
Photo by Richard Kasperowski on Unsplash
We want to address the customer journey as a story describing the interaction between the client and the services offered by a company. Existing approaches do not look to the end-to-end process. Therefore, we focus the attention on extracting (from each case) all the relevant events that constitute important steps in the customer journey, and then by applying kNN algorithms we generate recommendations to users for further services or purchases.
Static Analysis of Process-Driven Applications
By process-driven applications we mean any software application that has an intrinsic process-based set of steps and conditional dependencies between tasks. Static analysis is widely adopted both for processes and code. But here we are addressing the connection between the two. We may have situations where the static analysis of a BPMN process is correct, and also the code analysis returns positive results. Vice-versa, the inconsistency can happen in the mapping between the two. For instance, versions of code vs. versions of processes, typing of the data, values, data flow anomalies. An integrated toolsuite would be optimal for letting process designers and software developers work together.
A Metamodel for Knowledge-Intensive Processes
Knowledge intensive processes are collaboration and goal oriented, event driven, emergent and unpredictable, flexible, and typically non repeatable.
How can we make process modeling useful for these processes? They cannot be fully specified at design time, also because most of the knowledge is implicit, and in many cases the reasons for the decision-making steps by the users are unknown. The most important asset in this environment is the Case, i.e., the status, context, and environment aspects, as well as the behaviour, related to an execution. The behaviour is defined at runtime, because you cannot enforce it statically. The second important asset is the Knowledge itself, which must cover objectives, metrics, tactics and business rules. A few other components are important and they compose a comprehensive metamodel that can help the specification of such cases, which are typically hard to assess.
Photo by Ani Kolleshi on Unsplash
Incremental Verification of Evolving Workflows
The fact that the workflow of processes evolve in time poses interesting challenges to verification. The ways the process can evolve can vary: change of objects, tasks, flows. We can define a set of possible constraints over the evolution and verify the model with different strategies: bottom-up construction (where changes are propagated from the root node), spin-based and incremental. Incremental techniques can build automatically a process tree model out of an input process, and then manage the evolution of the process by updating the tree model and verifying only the affected parts of the process (see figure below).
Incremental verification is much more efficient in the number of activities, as only the new change needs to be verified. Spin instead is more efficient with respect to time and edges.
In summary…
I think the most important message coming from this diverse set of contribution and the related discussion they raised is that there is plenty of opportunities for yet-to-be-exploited techniques to contribute to the optimization of the enterprise operations and of the business.
I look forward to collect more and share them all in the future. Meanwhile, if you found useful techniques you want to share, feel free to comment on this story and I’ll reach out to you.
This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by +445,678 people.
Subscribe to receive our top stories here. | https://medium.com/swlh/on-bpm-and-the-enterprise-again-ed9c66079934 | ['Marco Brambilla'] | 2019-04-25 06:38:07.795000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Business Process', 'Enterprise Architecture', 'Bpm', 'Enterprise'] |
I wonder if the water in my dreams relates to something less concrete in real life. | Dreams come to us as a way for the brain to work through issues it’s otherwise unable to understand or deal with in waking life. For the purposes of this essay, I am considering nightmares in the same way I do recurring dreams, as I find the line between recurring dream and nightmare to be blurred. Dreams are present whether or not remembered (except in instances of sleep issues where the mind does not reach REM). Dreams use images, ideas, characters, feelings, etc. that already exist in the brain and bring them to the forefront of the mind. They can feel incredibly realistic, more so than a typical dream, as they utilize familiarity to deceive the mind into thinking the scenario is real. For the past few years I have been consumed by strange, stressful and unsettling dreams (and nightmares) that have seemed to be too real to be images my brain created while sleeping.
In my own experience, my recurring dreams are dominated by an underlying sense of anxiety that is ever present while I’m awake. Whether it be that I can’t seem to get to a place (school, home) on time, that I cannot stop crying and it affects what I am able to do (graduate, be alone), that I forget important information (lines in a play, work to complete) or straightforward fears (the coronavirus, scaly things). My dreams are plagued by my anxieties, some of which are no longer relevant to my life, and others I have yet to be able to interpret and contextualize in my waking life. It is also my recurring dreams that I am most frequently able to turn lucid, as my emotions are pushed to the point that it becomes unbearable to remain in that situation. I find that the only option for escape at that point is to push myself out where I usually emerge confused and anxious, but awake.
a journal of my dreams (and interpretations) as of 5/5/2020
03/05
So I’m trying to get to the uc but it’s pouring rain out and for some reason my dad is there and I usually leave 20 minutes before class but I can’t figure out when 20 minutes before my class is and I think it’s 20 but it might be 10 and I’m trying to get in via the service and truck entrance so I sneak in and once I’m in I can’t find an elevator and I need to print something for class and the inside of the building is like the Etsy headquarters and there’s escalators and shaggy pink rugs and I can’t get to seminar but I finally find and elevator that takes me to the 13th street building and then I’m so frustrated with needing to get to class and being terrified of being late that I say to myself this is a dream and I wake up to my roommate being annoying as fuck (5 hours of sleep)
I think this one is pretty clearly an anxiety dream; about what I am uncertain. The rain feels like a loss of control since the weather is out of my hands and my dad being there likely relates to how badly I wanted to be home at this time. Having to sneak in and not be able to get to where I needed to go seems like a manifestation of how out of place and unworthy I sometimes feel at Parsons. Like I’m not supposed to be here. I don’t think that fear is one that will escape me anytime soon. I also think roommates are exponentially more annoying when you have no relationship with them. You really only know them for their habits that drive you crazy. I’m sure my roommate is a perfectly nice person. I wonder what will happen if we ever see each other after this semester. Do I just pretend like I didn’t sleep a few feet away from this person for an extended period of time? Probably.
03/07
More karaoke
I went to a karaoke bar the night before this dream. I actively dislike (am absolutely terrified of) singing and a karaoke bar is not where I would ideally be spending my time. Also I had a panic attack right before we went. And they sprayed down the room with lysol right before we went in. I’m not positive but now knowing how bad the virus got, that room was probably the opposite of clean.
03/08
On a boat in Australia trying to do work. There was a building covered with Lisa frank dolphins on screens. Kept dropping my laptop, it got wet and dented but still functional. I think there was also more karaoke. Woke up in the midst of a panic attack. I’m so excited to not be in this city
This one kind of continues that fear from my first recorded dream of not being able to do what I need or am supposed to do. Wet and dented but still functional seems like a metaphor for my work. Kinda messed up but still doing its job I guess.
3/09
Exam anxiety (5 hours of sleep)
I haven’t had to take a test in so long. It doesn’t surprise me that I dreamt of the exam. When I have anxiety dreams I wonder if I was actually sleeping or my mind was telling me it was asleep but really it was fully awake just freaking out.
3/10
Dreamt I failed my midterm in a classroom in my high school (5hours of sleep)
I think I worried about failure most in high school. Not that it left when I got to college, but now at least I’m doing things and making things I like so to an extent other people’s opinions matter less. I can’t say the same for every time I turned in a paper in high school.
3/11
Dreamt I got a new roommate. My entire family showed up outside my room. I couldn’t find my parents, went running around the city looking for popcorn, returned to a mansion where I guess I had prom wrapped in a blanket with my suitemate, got lost in a mansion and couldn’t get out but we kept looking for the door. When we finally found it these old women gave us fans and grandma cookies and sent us on our way. There was some improv… from my home… in what seemed to be a digital class… wonder where that came from. Woke up anxious (8 hours)
It’s funny to me how often my roommate is in my dreams considering how little I know about her. Like it’s embarrassing how little I know about her. I wonder if I haunt her dreams with things I did that annoyed her. I’m starting to think my family stresses me out. Or at least that I don’t want to disappoint them. Maybe the mansion is a far fetched idea of life? I think me and Vanessa have that in common… we’re kinda lost when it comes to life plans after (and in) college. I used to do improv all the time in middle school theater. Maybe that’s why I hate it now. It reminds me too much of a time I’d rather not remember.
3/12
Was in my high school waiting for Tom Hanks to come out of the elevator so I could say hello and comfort him because of his coronavirus.
I don’t know why Tom Hanks is the person I was most worried about when it comes to coronavirus. There are so many other people that need comforting.
3/13
Dreamt that I was hanging out with 1. Someone I used to like and 2. Someone who has only ever been mean to me and I let 2 borrow my cup/saucer and they used my tea without asking and then took my cup and no one thought it was weird/would help me get it back. Also I dreamt I was an extra on Jeopardy.
This is the first dream that I left out people’s names when recording it. I guess I’m just scared of them seeing this. I shouldn’t care anymore but I do. Also, I cannot express the extent to which I want/need to be an extra on Jeopardy.
I’ve been sleeping a lot but am too depressed to work on this for class so I’ve lost many dreams.
Needed to take the subway to class but it was different on the way there than the way back and my phone was dying. Also I had a class in the basement of my high school where we were supposed to guess each other’s dreams for alcoholic prizes. My art history class was on the 13th floor and I couldn’t get there using the spiral staircase but like I got there and it was on the roof
Still can’t get to where I need to be at Parsons. Feels weird considering how fulfilled I feel there when I’m awake. Maybe it’s less about me feeling like I’m not enough and more about worries of what other people think.
4/3
Walking from Parsons to my dorm singing Me and My Dog by Boygenius in the rain and for some reason went down an alley to get ice cream which took forever and I was in close quarters which felt weird because social distancing
The day before I left for college my dad took my dog to be boarded so they could come to New York with me early the next morning to move me in. After I said goodbye to her I laid on my bedroom floor surrounded by stuff I still had to pack, played that song and sobbed uncontrollably. I couldn’t listen to it again for a while or else I would do it again. I so badly didn’t want to go. I’m glad I did though.
Started hanging out with former friends again and it was good but I could feel the impending end
I still can’t write their names. I wish I didn’t let them make me feel as terrible as they do. I also wish they didn’t live in Cleveland. They were the closest thing I had to home in New York. I think that’s why I haven’t shut them out completely. And why I’m scared I’ll put myself back in that place like in this dream. And pretend like nothing ever happened.
4/4
Couldn’t stop crying for my high school graduation
I’m not sure what the crying is all about. I don’t really cry that much while I’m awake. I feel like I cry a normal amount. I didn’t even cry when I graduated. Definitely thought I would but I didn’t. Maybe it’s related to the rain and a lack of control. A lack of control over my emotions? I might need someone else to tell me what that’s all about.
4/5
Was trying to get to ballet class and was worrying about coming back to ballet after so many months away (7 hours)
Ballet stressed me out. Doesn’t mean I don’t miss it.
At some point
Dreamt that I was participating in a hunger games like event at my high school in order for them to evaluate how much we were worth as assets
I wouldn’t say my high school was competitive. It wasn’t not competitive though. I’m pretty sure I didn’t make it to the end in the dream. In real life, my school was pretty supportive of my art school pursuits.
4/11
Went to Marc’s to get food (a cake, milk for cake, jelly beans and bananas) and for some reason it was like $60 and I looked at the receipt and it had nothing I bought on it and then they re did it and it was $40. Then I went back home and my parents were going to a costume event but I didn’t want them to leave and asked if I could come but couldn’t really hear the answer so I assumed no and I couldn’t stop crying because I was so desperately lonely. Oh and my roommate was taking up all our kitchen space which was my home kitchen but I still had my room at home without her
Maybe that’s just about nyc. And not getting what I expected. And that I don’t like being alone. Although I do, just not all the time.
4/12
I was going to a soccer game and the security guard was like yeah I probably have the virus. And then I got into the stadium and there was a buffet of fast casual restaurant bread but they were out of olive garden breadsticks which was incredibly disappointing.
Really not into soccer but really scared about the virus (and really into bread).
There was a Laurel play in my garage and I didn’t know my lines but I had a big part and it felt very Macbeth Esque. It was dark but lots of fairy lights outside
Laurel theater was a lot for me. I thought about quitting every year. I’m glad I didn’t, it was worth it in the end. The anxiety dreams about plays though, not sure they’re worth it.
4/19
Had a fit over a salad but my parents were audio zooming the family without me knowing and everyone on the call kinda heard me and I got sad and kept trying to cry and couldn’t slam the door hard enough
I care a lot about what my family thinks of me. I’m starting to think I repress my anger into sadness. Salad does not bring me joy.
I was going to an ice cream store but my nose wouldn’t stop running and it kept getting worse and I was like oops I have the virus
The virus plagues my thoughts. I wish I could actually go to an ice cream store.
4/21
went to my high school’s graduation for the class below me, it was in our gym where it doesn’t usually take place and it was weird. I felt bad for the class because their graduation was different and messed up. I was trying really hard not to cry. I was around people from my class but I didn’t know them very well so I just avoided talking or interacting with the event. Then I met my family outside and it was raining and we walked down our street to our home which isn’t anywhere near my highschool. It took forever to get there and even though it was downhill it felt like it was uphill
I feel bad for the class below me even though I only know a few of them well. I thought coming home would be easy. It was not.
4/22
couldn’t stop falling asleep on a bus ride to an airport? I ended up jumping out of an airplane and landed on a floating football field for people who wanted to travel short distances. The football field landed in Cleveland. And Fiona Apple was up for a Tony for her new album because of its characters.
I frequently fall asleep when I don’t want to. I wish that football field actually existed so I could come home more often. I adore Fiona Apple and her new album.
4/27&28
I haven’t remembered my dreams for like 2 nights in a row… uh oh… maybe i’m just sleeping well? seems unlikely. but I woke up this morning without any sort of understanding of what day it was like it felt like it was some other day not currently in the calendar system (4/27) still haven’t been dreaming, thought I dreamt a panic attack but then woke up to realize it was real. Still didn’t know what day it was when I woke up.
After I stop writing about my dreams I’m probably going to want them to stop again. I feel like I don’t sleep when I dream. Maybe I’ll just have to continue this so I learn to appreciate them more.
4/29
The dreams are back. I was on this island complex where like there was a mound of dirt that was specific to everyone’s skills and there were 2 people per dirt mound and I don’t think I was supposed to be there because I kept running around avoiding people.
I really don’t think I should be allowed to be at Parsons do I? I do run around Parsons avoiding (some) people though.
It was raining and I was walking up the hill to my house with a bunch of people either from my dorm or my high school carrying corn plants. On the walk home I saw my advisor from high school who I was very close with and she asked about how I was dealing with all this and I couldn’t respond or else I would start crying and I didn’t want to seem sad. When I finally got to the hill my street is on I couldn’t run fast enough but I finally got to my house which didn’t have my family in it just girls in their late teens and I was making sure everyone had a key and someone had 2 master keys so I wanted to keep one in the house for emergencies so I was trying to get one of the keys off a keychain and it wasn’t coming off.
I tried really hard to not show how sad and homesick I was first semester when I was home . I would usually be holding back tears by the end of my weekly call with my parents because I didn’t want them to see me upset. because generally I was fine. But sometimes, I really wasn’t. And sometimes, I just really needed to cry about it.
Also at some point I don’t think in either of those dreams I was walking on hostas that were slowly sinking into water. I don’t know where I was going, I just remember walking on the plants in water barefoot.
It seems like I don’t know where I’m going in life. I kinda do. Who knows where I’ll be if/when I graduate.
4/29
I dreamt that things got better in nyc so my mom wanted me to go back for the last week of classes and I was going to leave on Sunday. I didn’t really want to go back because I was ready to end the semester online and being in person for a week would make it much more difficult to leave. When I got there my hall director was like yeah no you can’t stay here we’re closed until winter (hopefully that’s not true).
I keep wishing I could’ve gone back for the rest of the semester. But I don’t really know how I would have reacted if I could have. I would have probably cried out of fear like I do every time I leave home. And then cried when I packed up my room and said goodbye to my friends. If things were normal I would have been the last person to move out of my room. I was dreading the night where I would have to sleep alone in the empty unit. For how small it is, it can feel really lonely.
I was also in the uc cafeteria but I couldn’t find anything I wanted and every time I went back to look for something everything changed.
When I come back to The New School everything will be different. Maybe that’s a good thing.
I was running through a house trying to get out and escape to what seemed like an airport arrivals area where my dad picked me up.
(8 hours)
I usually take a flight home that gets me there around midnight, and my dad always picks me up. When I escaped the city in March he rescued me from the airport. That trip was one of the scariest and strangest I’ve ever been on. Being home was such a relief.
4/30
I don’t really remember my dreams but I remember in one of them feeling like I really wasn’t supposed to be where I was
I didn’t even realize I worried this much about being somewhere I wasn’t supposed to until I read all these dreams together. I think it’s less of me feeling I’m in the wrong place and more feeling like I don’t deserve to be in the place I am.
5/1
I was riding a bike and ended up hanging off a cliff talking to someone I knew in high school but eventually climbed down like opposite rock climbing
I used to be terrified of rock climbing. I’m not anymore. Wish I could do it now.
5/2
Was learning a piece at the tech rehearsal for the ballet company I used to dance with but I couldn’t remember the choreography
I’ve been sore like I was when I did ballet. I wonder what would happen if I went back.
I was in my grandparents house in their guest bedroom watching planes fly overhead
I did this when I was little and stayed with my grandparents when my parents went on work related trips. One time they left and I got lice and was sent home on the first day of school. I was really sad.
If I’m remembering correctly my best friends were in a dream I just don’t remember what it was about.
I was just thinking about how it’s strange I don’t remember them being in my dreams and wondering if they’re in them at all.
5/3
I was a camp counselor for the camp I went to when I was younger and we went to a water park but every time I went underwater I felt like I was drowning and it was really hard to get back to the surface and I just decided I needed to get used to swimming again. And then I had to put my clothes over my wet swimsuit which was a terrible feeling
Going underwater used to scare me. It doesn’t anymore but the thought drowning terrifies me. I wonder if the underwater in this dream relates to something less concrete in real life. Or if I’m just reading too far into my dreams.
I was going somewhere on the subway and needed to wear a mask and it felt really important but I couldn’t breathe with the mask on and it kept disappearing from my face and I was in a coffee shop and an employee asked me to wear a mask to protect them and I felt really guilty for not wearing it.
I want to protect others right now. But I fear my presence puts them at risk.
5/4
I was in my bathroom dying my hair purple and it was getting everywhere on my face and in the room and my mom knocked on the door. I don’t remember what happened next
I used to dye the ends of my hair purple. It never really turned out how I wanted it to.
5/5
I was at my high school graduation and was standing in a circle with my class and then we were done and I was sobbing and saying goodbye and saying goodbye to my friends hurt the worst but no one else was crying and then I went to go find my parents but I ran into my extended family first and I did everything I could to avoid them because I didn’t want them to see me upset
I usually get embarrassed when I cry. I don’t want people to worry about me. I’ve been thinking a lot about endings recently. I get sentimental. The end of my first year of college feels bigger than the end of the thirteen years I spent at my school in Cleveland. This was the longest and shortest year of my life. The day I moved into my dorm feels like years ago. Almost like it never happened. I was so scared of being terrible. Failing. My mom asked me if this fall I’ll be as anxious about everything like I was last fall. Probably.
Corrections:
Explanations for dreaming are less concrete than the brain working through issues it’s otherwise unable to deal with. It is likely that dreams are influenced by waking life but there are other factors such as memories, emotions, and stimuli.
Most, but not all figures in dreams are recognizable to the dreamer, meaning, not everything in the content of dreams has already existed in the brain.
I left out some dreams, for varying reasons.
A lot of times it is unclear to me whether a dream actually happened, happened during the night I thought it did, or happened within the context I remember. This also happens with memories of waking life, where I am unable to discern whether or not something already happened in real life or in a dream. It feels like déjà vu. For that reason, I cannot guarantee all recorded dreams were accurately recorded when it comes to sequence, context or content. | https://medium.com/@celestebohan/i-wonder-if-the-water-in-my-dreams-relates-to-something-less-concrete-in-real-life-3407770f54da | ['Celeste Bohan'] | 2020-12-21 18:23:50.005000+00:00 | ['Memoir', 'College', 'Dreams', 'Interpretation'] |
Setting up a large scale React application | This post is based on the series of posts: Modernizing a jQuery frontend with React. If you want to get a better overview of the motivation for this post we recommend you first read our initial post.
Nowadays, it is very easy to set up a small React application, or to start one from scratch. Especially if you use create-react-app. Most projects probably just need a few dependencies (for example, for state management and for internationalization) and a src folder with at least a components folder. I guess this is how most React projects start. Typically, though, as the project grows the number of dependencies, components, reducers and other shared utilities tends to increase in a, sometimes, not so controlled manner. What do you do when it is no longer clear why some dependencies are needed or how they work together? Or when you have so many components it becomes difficult to find the one you need? What do you do when you want to find a component but you don’t really remember its name?
These are just some examples of the questions we came across while rebuilding our frontend at Karify. We knew that the number of dependencies and components was eventually going to grow out of hand. That meant we needed a plan that would be scalable enough to keep up with future development. This plan involved defining conventions for our file and folder structure, code quality and also defining the overall architecture. Most importantly, all this should be easy to pick up by new developers without requiring them to have much insight into all our dependencies and code style.
At the moment of writing, we have about 1200 JavaScript files of which 350 are components with 80% of unit test coverage. Since we still believe in the architecture and conventions we created we thought it would be a good idea to share them. In the following sections, I’ll go through how we set up our project and also some of the lessons we learned.
How to organize files and folders?
We went through multiple phases until we figured out how we wanted to organize our React frontend. Initially, we thought of placing it in the same repository as our jQuery frontend. However, the imposed folder structure of our backend framework made this option undesirable. Next, we thought of moving it into a separate repository. This worked well at first, but with time we started thinking about creating other frontends, such as a React Native frontend, which motivated the need for a component library. This led us to split this new repository into two separate repositories: one for the component library and one for the new React frontend. Even though this seemed like a good idea, it resulted in a very complex review process. The relationship between changes in the two repositories became unclear. Finally, we chose to bring them together again into one repository, but this time as a monorepo.
We chose a monorepo because we wanted to create a separation between our component library and our frontend applications. The difference between our monorepo and others out there is that we don’t really need to publish the packages inside of it. For us, the packages serve only as a means for modularity and separation of concerns. It is especially useful to have different packages for every different application since we can specify different dependencies and scripts for each one of them.
We set up our monorepo using yarn workspaces with the following configuration in our root package.json :
"workspaces": [
"app/*",
"lib/*",
"tool/*"
]
Now some of you might wonder why we didn’t simply use a packages folder like in other monorepos. Mainly because we wanted to create a separation between our applications and our component library. Besides that, we also knew we needed to create some tooling of our own. So, we came up with the folders you see above and here is an explanation for each one of them:
app : all packages in this folder refer to frontend applications like our Karify frontend, some internal frontends and also our Storybook;
: all packages in this folder refer to frontend applications like our Karify frontend, some internal frontends and also our Storybook; lib : all packages in this folder expose shared utilities to our frontend applications and are as application-agnostic as possible. These packages basically form our component library. Some examples would be our typography , media and primitive packages;
: all packages in this folder expose shared utilities to our frontend applications and are as application-agnostic as possible. These packages basically form our component library. Some examples would be our , and packages; tool: all packages in this folder are Node.js specific and either expose tools that we created ourselves or are configuration and utilities for tools we depend on. Some examples would be webpack utilities, linter configurations, and a file system linter.
Regardless of where we place them, all our packages always have a src folder and optionally have a bin folder. The src folder of our app and lib packages might contain some of the following folders:
actions : contains action creator functions of which the return value can be passed to the dispatch function from redux or useReducer ;
: contains action creator functions of which the return value can be passed to the dispatch function from or ; components : contains component folders with their respective definition, translations, unit tests, snapshots and stories (if applicable);
: contains component folders with their respective definition, translations, unit tests, snapshots and stories (if applicable); constants : holds constant values reused across different environments and also different utilities;
: holds constant values reused across different environments and also different utilities; fetch : holds type definitions for the payloads from our API and the respective async actions to retrieve them;
: holds type definitions for the payloads from our API and the respective async actions to retrieve them; helpers : holds utilities that do not fit in any of the other categories;
: holds utilities that do not fit in any of the other categories; reducers : contains reducers to be used in our redux store or useReducer ;
: contains reducers to be used in our store or ; routes : holds route definitions to be used in react-router components or history functions;
: holds route definitions to be used in components or functions; selectors: contains helper functions that read or transform data from our redux state or our API payloads.
This folder structure allows us to write really modular code since it creates a clear separation of concerns between different concepts defined by our dependencies. This helps with the lookup of variables, functions, or components in the repository, independently of us knowing if they exist or not. Furthermore, it also helps keeping the contents of these folders to a minimum, which in turn makes them easier to process.
One challenge with this new folder structure is to make sure we stick to it. It is tempting to start creating different folders in different packages and organizing files differently between them. While that might not always be a bad idea we would end up with a mess if we don’t do it consistently. To help with that, we created a file system linter which I’ll describe in more detail in the next section.
How to enforce a style guide?
In the same way that we wanted to have a consistent file and folder structure, we also wanted to have as much consistency in our code as possible. This is something that we already did quite well in our jQuery frontend but it could be improved especially when it came to CSS. Therefore, we tried to define a style guide from the beginning and to enforce it with a linter. Rules that can’t be specified with a linter are enforced during code reviews.
Setting up a linter in a monorepo is the same as in any other repository, it is great because you can run it once to validate the entire repository. If you are not familiar with any linters I recommend you take a look at ESLint and Stylelint which are the ones we use.
Having a JavaScript linter proved especially useful for the following use cases:
Enforcing the use of accessibility aware components over their HTML counterparts: during design, we defined several accessibility guidelines for anchors, buttons, images, and icons. Then in code, we wanted to implement those guidelines and make sure we don’t forget about them in the future. We did this with the react/forbid-elements rule from eslint-plugin-react. Example of what it looks like:
'react/forbid-elements': [
'error',
{
forbid: [
{
element: 'img',
message: 'Use "<Image>" instead. This is important for accessibility reasons.',
},
],
},
],
Forbidding imports of application packages from inside library packages and forbidding the import of application packages inside other applications: mainly to avoid circular dependencies between packages in the monorepo and to make sure we stick to the separation of concerns we created. We forbid this with the import/no-restricted-paths rule from eslint-plugin-import.
In addition to JavaScript and CSS linting, we also have our own file system linter. This is how we make sure that we stick to our folder structure. Since this linter is ours we can always change it if we decide to change the structure. Here are some examples of the rules we have:
Validate the structure of our component folders: make sure there is always an index.ts and a .tsx file with the same name as the folder.
and a file with the same name as the folder. Validate our package.json files: make sure there is always one per package and that it is set to private in order to avoid us publishing packages accidentally.
What type system to use?
Nowadays, the answer to the above question is probably a lot clearer to everyone. Simply go for TypeScript! No matter the size of your project, it might slow you down in some cases, but, in our opinion, it is worth the quality and strictness it adds to your code.
Unfortunately, when we started this project it was still very common to use prop-types. In the beginning that was enough, but as the project grew we really started missing the possibility to define types for more than just components. We could see the value they would add to, for instance, our reducer and selector functions. However, adding a different type system would require a lot of refactoring in order to get to a point where the entire code base has types.
In the end, we did it anyway but we made the mistake of trying Flow first because it looked easier to integrate into our codebase. While that was true, Flow also became a pain to work with since it didn’t integrate well with our IDE, it randomly failed to spot some type errors, and creating generic types was a nightmare. For those reasons, we ended up moving everything over to TypeScript. If we knew then what we know now, we would have used TypeScript from the get-go.
The direction in which TypeScript evolved in the last few years helped make this transition much easier. The deprecation of TSLint over ESLint was especially useful for us.
What testing approach to use?
When we started it wasn’t exactly obvious for us what testing tools to use. Nowadays, I would say that jest and cypress are the best out there for unit testing and integration testing, respectively. Their configuration is well documented and not complicated. It is just a pity that cypress does not support the Fetch API and its API does not support async /await. It took us some time to figure that out in the beginning. Hopefully, this will change in the near future.
Finding out how to best write unit tests for our application was quite difficult at first. Over time we tried out things like snapshot testing, the test renderer, the shallow renderer and the testing library. In the end, we decided to stick to the shallow renderer to validate the output of components and use the test renderer to test the internal logic of components.
In our opinion, the testing library is great for small projects but the fact that it relies on the dom renderer has a big impact on the performance of tests. Furthermore, we think that the argument against snapshot testing with shallow rendering does not make sense when you have a very deep layer of components. For us, these snapshots are very useful to validate all the possible outputs of a component. It is important to keep them readable, though. This can be accomplished by keeping your components small and by defining the toJSON method for object props that are not relevant for the snapshot.
In order to keep us motivated to write unit tests and to not forget about them, we also defined a coverage threshold. This is very easy to configure when using jest. You don’t need to give it much thought. Just start with a global threshold and improve it over time. We started at 60% and over time, as coverage increased, we moved the threshold to 80%. For us, this seems like a good enough threshold since we also don’t think it is realistic or necessary to target 100%.
How to bootstrap the application?
Usually, starting a React application is as simple as writing something like ReactDOM.render(<App />, document.getElementById(‘#root’)); . However, this gets more complex when you also want to support SSR (Server-Side Rendering). Additionally, if you also need other dependencies besides React, they might need separate configurations for client-side and server-side. For instance, we use react-intl for internationalization, react-redux for global state management, react-router for routing and redux-sagas for managing asynchronous actions. These dependencies require some setting up, which can get complex very easily.
Our solution to this problem was based on the Strategy and Abstract Factory design patterns. We basically created two different classes/strategies: one for client-side configuration and one for server-side configuration. Both of them receive the configuration for the application being bootstrapped which includes its name, logo, reducers, routes, default language, sagas, etc. The reducers, routes and sagas can come from different packages in our monorepo. This configuration is then used to create the redux store, create the sagas middleware, create the router history object, fetch the translations and finally render the application. To give an example, below is a simplified version of how the signature of both our strategies looks like:
type BootstrapConfiguration = {
logo: string,
name: string,
reducers: ReducersMapObject,
routes: Route[],
sagas: Saga[],
}; class AbstractBootstrap {
configuration: BootstrapConfiguration;
intl: IntlShape;
store: Store;
rootSaga: Task; abstract public run(): void;
abstract public render<T>(): T;
abstract protected createIntl(): IntlShape;
abstract protected createRootSaga(): Task;
abstract protected createStore(): Store;
} // Strategy for client-side
class WebBootstrap extends AbstractBootstrap {
constructor(config: BootstrapConfiguration);
public render<ReactNode>(): ReactNode;
} // Strategy for server-side
class ServerBootstrap extends AbstractBootstrap {
constructor(config: BootstrapConfiguration);
public render<string>(): string;
}
We found this separation useful since there are several differences in how our store, sagas, internationalization object and history object are set up, depending on the environment. For instance, the redux store on the client-side is created using the preloaded state from the server and the redux devtools enhancer, while on the server-side it doesn’t need any of that. Another example is our internalization object which on the client-side gets the current language from navigator.languages while on the server-side it gets it from the Accept-Language HTTP header.
It is important to note that we came up with this solution a while ago already. At the time it was still a lot more common to use classes in React applications and there were no easy solutions for SSR. Over time React changed towards a more functional style and solutions like Next.js arose. On that note, if you are looking for a solution for this same problem, we recommend that you also look into what’s possible nowadays, since you might find a simpler and more functional way.
How to maintain the code quality?
Linters, tests and types are useful to improve the quality of your code, but it is easy to forget to check if they are all valid before merging some changes into your master branch. The best solution is to do this automatically. Some prefer to do this on every commit with git hooks preventing you from committing unless everything passes. However, we think this is too intrusive since you could be working on a branch for several days until it’s ready. For this reason, we validate our commits using CI (Continuous Integration) pipelines which only run when the branch is associated with a merge request. This way, we avoid running pipelines that are expected to fail since most of the time we only create a merge request when we think the code is ready.
Our pipelines start by installing all our dependencies and then validate the types, run the linters, run the unit tests, build the application and run the cypress tests. Almost all of this happens in parallel. If any of these steps fail then the pipeline fails and the branch can’t be merged. Below is an example of a running pipeline.
The most difficult part of setting up this pipeline was, and still is, to keep it fast. We went through a lot of optimization phases and at the moment it has been running stable at around 20 minutes. We could probably improve this by running some cypress tests in parallel but, for now, this is acceptable.
Conclusion
Setting up a React large scale application is no easy job. There are a lot of choices you have to make and a lot of tools you have to configure. There is not just one right answer on how to do this.
We are still happy with our setup and we hope it inspires others struggling with setting up their own applications. But before you follow our example, try to make sure this is the right set up for you or your company. Most importantly, add only the dependencies you need. Don’t over-complicate it.
If you have questions, feedback, or suggestions regarding what you read here I would be happy to hear from you in the comments section below. | https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/setting-up-a-large-scale-react-application-2d50bc8a5ddb | ['Bruno Sampaio'] | 2020-07-28 13:58:24.188000+00:00 | ['Typescript', 'Tdd', 'JavaScript', 'React', 'Programming'] |
Cloud Monitoring for GCE metrics [Basic] | Hi everyone to add one more context from the last story around logging, I want to visit the stack driver-agent for more elaborated metrics monitoring in Cloud monitoring.
It's one thing to collect our logs into Cloud Logging to be able to do queries and do a forensic operation as needed (please don't forget to add more logs on top of default Syslog). Now to add into the picture how we are able to collect metrics for our monitoring dashboard in stack driver? The answer is the stackdriver-agent for GCE (+ AWS EC can be included).
what to do:
Install the agent on the VM we want.
2. Check the authorization for the agent to write into monitoring
If we have follow the instruction correctly, we may see some help through the default dashboard in Cloud Monitoring.
Go to monitoring → Dashboard → use the default VM dashboard
In the image above we can see that this particular VM instance already installed with stackdriver-agent (the fluentd are not yet installed). After a while, we can see the metrics through the rest of the tabs (overview, CPU, memory, etc). | https://faun.pub/cloud-monitoring-for-gce-metrics-basic-4580a12805e4 | ['Johanes Glenn'] | 2020-11-25 10:51:34.298000+00:00 | ['Gce', 'Dashboard', 'Monitoring', 'Stackdriver', 'Agent'] |
Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (2020) • Netflix | Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (2020) • Netflix
When two aspiring musicians are given the chance to represent their country at Eurovision, they embrace a chance to prove that any dream worth having is a dream worth fighting for.
As an American, I’m only tangentially aware of the phenomenon that is the Eurovision Song Contest. I’ve seen clips on YouTube and have heard a few of the bigger hits released over the years, but I love the concept of a musical competition between nations. This fueled my interest in this new Netflix film that pays homage to Europe’s annual celebration of music and culture. And it seems the producers of Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga share my fascination and admiration…
The film chronicles the journey of musical duo Fire Saga — Lars Erickssong (Will Ferrell) and Sigrit Ericksdóttir (Rachel McAdams) — and their dream to have a song entered for Iceland in the Eurovision Song Contest. They’re not well-respected in their small-town of Húsavik, but their tune was picked at random to fulfil requirements for Iceland’s selection process since Katiana (Demi Lovato) is the shoo-in to win. Lars and Sigrit’s performance is panned, but when all the other contestants are killed in an explosion at the after-party, Iceland’s committee has no choice but to send in Fire Saga.
The plot of this film sets up the perfect underdogs: they’re full of heart and optimism, with Sigrit exhibiting true vocal talent, but her devotion to Lars hinders her potential. The audience will want to see Fire Saga succeed but the story takes its time developing the adverse circumstances that build against them. The comedy comes from how difficult it is for them to find respect as real contenders, yet it’s clear they have a talent and have worked hard to develop their act. Because of this, I often found the comedic aspects of the film were flat and forced. There are funny moments, but few and far between. While marketed as a comedy, it’s really an entertaining story of two naïve people performing on a world stage.
The romance in the movie is another dubious facet. The misunderstandings and Lars’s weird reluctance to commit to Sigrit feel like a routine establishment of romantic complications for a story that might’ve been better off focusing more on the contest and Fire Saga becoming a better team. It also pads out its runtime with a plot dragged down by Lars and Sigrid’s falling out. Midway through, I was growing weary of yet another Fire Saga performance thwarted by a ridiculous contrivance. Emotionally, the relationship between the pair also doesn’t come across as believable and I wanted to see more development of Fire Saga as musicians.
The celebration of the Eurovision Song Contest is the real reason to watch. This competition is beloved and the film does credit in realising such a gorgeously extravagant camp spectacle. And it’s like a primer for people who are not aware of this event — especially Americans (hilariously represented as clueless tourists Lars keeps insulting). It also portrays Iceland and the city of Edinburgh in Scotland so beautifully. The cinematography while filming on location is exquisite and observes that one of the parallel goals of Eurovision is to promote different countries as tourist destinations.
Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga seems to chronicle the steps to the Finals accurately and even features a soundtrack written in the style of catchy pop tunes suitable for Eurovision. The music is a highlight of the film, as the songs are fantastic! Fire Saga’s entry “Double Trouble” is performed multiple times throughout and I enjoyed hearing it every single time. There are also more effervescent tunes in Russia’s entry, with Alexander Lemtov’s (Dan Stevens) song “Lion of Love”, and the tribute to Lars’ and Sigrit’s love and hometown “Húsavik “. Former participants of Eurovision also receive featured performances, most memorably in the “song-along” sequence at Lemtov’s party where real-life singers Conchita Wurst, Loreen, Anna Odobescu, Netta, and others, turn up to sing in the clever mash-up of “Believe”, “Ray of Light”, “Waterloo”, “Ne Partez pas Sans Moi” and “I Gotta Feeling”. That sequence isn’t necessary to the story but is such a wonderful treat for Eurovision fans.
The soundtrack captures the unique intersection of music and culture that Eurovision presents. All of the performances are polished and entertaining and present a wonderful insight into why Eurovision is so fun to watch and has endured over the decades. Unfortunately, the 2020 Eurovision Song Contest was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so Netflix’s movie is something of a replacement spectacle.
Despite my love for the depiction of the contest throughout, the resolution is pretty unremarkable — especially since it focuses on the romance instead of the competition. There’s a twist near the end that brings up a plot point I’d nearly forgotten about, resolving a little mystery in the story quite neatly… but in a comedic and nonsensical way. I understand the emphasis of the plot was always on Lars and Sigrit’s relationship, but I wanted to see more of the bonkers world of Eurovision. However, the conclusion and the film as a whole is joyful, genuine, heartwarming, and celebratory… much like the real Eurovision Song Contest. | https://medium.com/framerated/eurovision-song-contest-the-story-of-fire-saga-2020-netflix-1104ad02414c | ['Charlene Dekalb'] | 2020-07-21 22:27:54.683000+00:00 | ['Movies', 'Review', 'Netflix', 'Eurovision', 'Film'] |
3 Git Workflows to Showcase Unfinished Work | The Solo Workflow
Working by yourself on a software product makes things easy. You have a good overview of your work, you can pick up user stories one by one, and when the time comes to have your work reviewed, you can release the changes to a central development environment. Ideally, you make use of a CI/CD setup that helps you build, test, and release a new version without manual intervention.
Git workflow that implements a serial deployment and review process. Photo by the author.
After you have deployed the new version, you can verify the functionality and ask for feedback. In the meantime, you can start working on another user story, from a new feature branch, while the review is pending.
When the review is done and there’s feedback to resolve, you can implement the requested changes, initiate a new release from your feature branch, and deploy a new version to the development environment. After a final verification by you and the reviewer indicating that everything is working fine, you can finalize the changes by merging the feature branch to your main branch.
But what happens when feedback on the first feature that you implemented hasn’t come and the next user story you picked up is ready to be tested and shown to the product owner and stakeholders? You can, of course, deploy from your new feature branch, but that will overwrite the changes that are currently deployed on the central development environment from the other branch.
One solution is to create separate environments for every individual change. This is what the Multi-Environment Review Workflow is about, and I will describe it in a moment. But there’s also a simpler solution called the Integration Branch Workflow. | https://betterprogramming.pub/3-git-workflows-to-showcase-unfinished-work-a651e5116819 | ['Remco Rakers'] | 2020-11-10 16:57:44.890000+00:00 | ['Continuous Integration', 'Software Development', 'Programming', 'Software Engineering', 'Git'] |
The Dude — Market Update Ep. 1. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Alts and ICOs update | Altcoins(Alts)
BTC.D Chart 12/16/2020
Despite the fact Bitcoin broke ATH today altcoins dominance got strongly rejected from this area few days ago and again it’s showing bearish moves in the short term chart. If altcoins manage to start a strong momentum now which is possible since Ethereum(The leader) is looking bullish then we could see a 53.5% dominance causing a massive altcoins season. Obviously that would take some time to be achieved but we have today some important mid term entries and setups for BTC/ETH/ALTS.
Few Altcoins with strong Fundamentals have strongly outperformed Bitcoin for example Injective, Elrond and Noia rising 2x+ in a few weeks showing that coins with strong FA and Charts are still outperforming Bitcoin.
Coins in my Watchlist for this week that might show interesting setups:
SAND, UTK, SORA, UNN(ICO Launch/1 day post launch), TVK, NSURE, NOIA, COIN, ROSE, DEUS, WOO and RAMP. | https://medium.com/@dudesignals/the-dude-market-update-ep-1-cad3809bfc10 | ['The Dude'] | 2020-12-16 17:20:34.830000+00:00 | ['Market Analysis', 'Altcoins', 'Ethereum', 'ICO', 'Bitcoin'] |
The Portage County sheriff is seeking $1 million for new patrol vehicles | The Portage County sheriff is seeking $1 million for new patrol vehicles
After a big salary bump for command staff, the union is optimistic that rank and file could also see raises Michael Indriolo Follow Jan 29 · 4 min read
Sheriff Bruce Zuchowski asked Portage County commissioners this week to consider purchasing about $1 million worth of new patrol vehicles, a major expenditure that follows raises for his command staff totaling $150,000 per year.
By purchasing 20 new vehicles, the sheriff’s office would be able to assign each patrol deputy their own cruiser rather than trading off after each shift. Portage County Budget and Financial Management Director Todd Bragg discussed the sheriff’s request with the Board of County Commissioners during their meeting on Thursday.
The segment from Thursday’s county commission meeting that includes discussion about the sheriff’s office’s request for new vehicles.
“Now he has a million dollars plus $152,000 that’s not in his budget,” said Commission President Sabrina Christian-Bennett during the meeting. “That’s the concern. … We just got an email last night that he wants 20 new cars. It’s like, where’s this money coming from?”
She said the sheriff hasn’t yet met with the board, even though she has invited him to do so.
Commissioner Vicki Kline mentioned Bragg’s schedule for county-wide vehicle replacement, which has never accounted for 20 new vehicles in one year, she said.
“I do believe this sheriff is being treated differently than the former sheriff,” Kline said. “I think we’re just, maybe, giving more permissions to do whatever.”
Commissioner Tony Badalamenti said the new vehicles could improve the longevity of vehicles and help mitigate possible spread of Covid-19 through vehicle sharing.
Each vehicle, plus the necessary equipment, would cost approximately $50,000, Bragg said in an interview with The Portager. While the county does have money set aside in a fund for countywide vehicle replacements, that fund does not have enough for 20 new “pursuit-rated” Chevrolet Tahoes or Ford Interceptors. The county usually replaces only five sheriff’s office vehicles each year as part of the countywide vehicle replacement schedule that’s been in place for years.
The county could theoretically afford these new vehicles with money from the general fund, Bragg said.
“The long term question is whether that behooves us,” he said. “Is that the direction we want to head?”
If the board of commissioners approves the purchases, each vehicle would be driven less overall and, in turn, last longer. But Bragg said he and the Board of County Commissioners need to research maintenance costs and call departments to accurately weigh the financial and logistical costs and benefits of the major purchase.
Police departments and sheriff’s offices throughout the state manage their fleets both by sharing vehicles and assigning officers their own. Both have different advantages and disadvantages, he said.
“It’s very preliminary right now,” he said. “We’re just starting to gather this data to see if it makes sense.”
Neither the sheriff nor any of the commissioners returned requests for comment.
Employees’ union encouraged by spending
The union that represents a majority of the sheriff’s employees in Portage County saw the department’s largesse as a positive sign heading into this year’s contract negotiations.
As the Ohio Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association prepares to negotiate new three-year contracts for roughly 90 percent of the Portage County Sheriff’s Office employees, the sheriff’s willingness to grant raises “can only help us,” said Brian Holb, the OPBA attorney negotiating with the county.
Holb said the command staff raises strengthen his case for higher pay for the employees he represents. Holb represents five bargaining units within the sheriff’s office, each comprising different groups of employees.
“If you’ve got a new sheriff coming in, and he’s in some cases giving $20,000 or $25,000 raises to people, I think that makes a pretty strong case for the union,” Holb said. “Not only is the willingness there to give the raises, but the money is too.”
The union opted to extend its current contract with the Board of County Commissioners to give the new sheriff time to settle into the office. Bargaining for the new contracts will begin once the county’s attorney sets dates. Holb hopes negotiations will conclude within a few months.
“We’re not going to say we’re upset with anything because we don’t know what bargaining is going to look like for us,” Holb said. “At the end of the day, I guess a rising tide raises all boats.”
As part of a countywide salary update, the commissioners already allocated enough in the sheriff’s budget to raise his union employees’ salaries by 1.5 percent, Bragg said. During Thursday’s county commission meeting, all three commissioners agreed that sheriff’s office employees are underpaid.
Bragg said he couldn’t estimate whether the sheriff will exceed the roughly $14 million budget the commissioners allocated to him.
“It’s difficult to look at a one-week pay and say they’re over budget or under budget,” he said. “The key is over the course of the year. Given that this is January, and they have $13 million to work with, there’s a lot of ways to make adjustments over the course of a year to still stay within that budget.”
This article was produced through a reporting partnership with the Collaborative News Lab @ Kent State University.
Clarification: This article has been updated to remove a comment that Christian-Bennett made during the meeting about cruisers sitting idle in the parking lot. The comment did not provide proper context. | https://medium.com/the-portager/the-portage-county-sheriff-is-seeking-1-million-for-new-patrol-vehicles-65caa7db0d01 | ['Michael Indriolo'] | 2021-02-02 19:23:34.499000+00:00 | ['Local Government', 'Sheriffs Office', 'County Commission'] |
It’s That Time of Year Again to Say | It’s That Time of Year Again to Say
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, or whatever you want to hear!
Image by Satheesh Sankaran from Pixabay
Christmas is only a couple of days away and for some reason, I feel obligated to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, even if I don’t really know them. I have already sent my Christmas salutations to my family and close friends, so now I must do the same for my followers and anyone else who cares to receive my wishes.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not being a scrooge, but I always feel the same way during the holiday season. Christmas is a special time, with all of the decorations and holiday trappings surrounding almost every aspect of our lives. Holiday movies and television shows offer a variety of entertainment venues that tug at our hearts and emphasize “peace on earth and goodwill to men”. We are encouraged to be charitable to those of us who are less fortunate. Warm and loving feelings and gestures abound. And then it’s all over! Back to the selfish, greedy, hate-filled society that we live in.
Sometimes when I look at the decorations filling our home I can’t help but fantasize about what Christmas was like a hundred years ago. When I look at one of my favorite Christmas figurines, shown below, I wonder what it would be like to be a part of that scene. Then I realize that I wouldn’t have been accepted into that congregation back then. Hell, a hundred years later I’m still not accepted in most churches and communities. Goodwill toward men my ass! The warm feelings of my fantasies don’t last long.
This is December 2020 and there are a lot of people in our country suffering. Suffering physically and mentally from Covid-19. Suffering from hunger and homelessness. Suffering from hate and discrimination. Suffering because they’re not one of the privileged in our society. Unfortunately, a great deal of that suffering is unnecessary and preventable. I know many people reading this will be upset because my thoughts to them seem political. Push aside your hate and tribalism and face reality. This is not about politics. This is about being human and caring for our neighbors.
How can those very people who adorn their houses with nativity scenes, raise their voices in praise of “the newborn king” and rejoice in the celebration of the birth of Christ allow this human suffering and support those who perpetuate it? They have no right criticizing those who have materialized Christmas or who don’t celebrate it. There never was a war on Christmas. There’s just a continuing war of the poor, the middle class, minorities, and anyone who doesn't fit into the old America.
To me, Christmas would be great, if it wasn’t so fake. Poor people, suffering people, immigrants, the LGBTQ community, and the less fortunate don’t just exist during the holidays. They are with us every day of the year. We also can care for abandoned pets all year long too. There’s no reason we can’t have the Christmas spirit all year long. That’s what being a Christian is, or for that matter, that’s what a Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist is. Or if you’re not religious, that’s what a human being is.
So in the spirit of hope, I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas, a Happy Holiday, and more importantly a warm, loving season of caring. | https://medium.com/stephen-sovies-blog/its-that-time-of-year-again-to-say-6ceee7c233c8 | ['Stephen Sovie'] | 2020-12-23 18:35:11.641000+00:00 | ['Goodwill', 'Peace', 'Caring', 'Christmas'] |
GLOBAL WARMING IB PAKISTAN 2020 | GLOBAL WARMING IB PAKISTAN 2020
Global warming in Pakistan is the cause of a serious and wide range of effects on the environment and people. The global warming of Pakistan has become increasingly volatile over several decades, this trend is expected to continue in the future. In addition, to increase heat, drought, and extreme weather conditions in some parts of the country, the melting of glaciers and in the Himalayas threatens many of the important rivers of Pakistan.
Pakistan contributes little to Global Green House Gas emission at about 1%. food and water security, as well as a large population, are serious threats faced by the country. Pakistan faced with high risk due to climate effects. Observed and Expected Effects.
The National Climate Change Policy (NCCP) of 2012, framed by the Government of Pakistan as the guiding policy document for the country on climate change, acknowledges the growing risk of future extreme natural hazards due to climate change. It further provides a picture of the vulnerabilities faced by individual sectors, ecological regions, and socioeconomic classes. The major climate change threats identified in the report include: | https://medium.com/@sumairanazeer8686/global-warming-ib-pakistan-2020-7addbf31124b | [] | 2020-12-15 12:54:24.719000+00:00 | ['Climate Change', 'Global Warming', 'Climate Crisis', 'Effects Of Global Warming'] |
Sachin — Jigar Biography | Sachin-Jigar is one of Bollywood’s top music composers who have been able to make audiences swoon over their music. The composer duo met through Amit Trivedi at first and decided to create music together. They have created more than 500 plays and have appeared on television for various programs more than 5000 times over the years. The music they make is swoon-worthy and make Bollywood music lovers fall some more with each tune they form. Read more Sachin — Jigar Biography.
Early life
Sachin Sanghvi and Jigar Saraiya are Gujarati, and they started their careers in Mumbai. Jigar got introduced to Sachin through another legendary music creator Amit Trivedi, while he was working as an assistant music director with Rajesh Roshan. After they formed a connection through music, decided to work together. They started with assisting and setting musical arrangements for Pritam. Later, they worked with almost all the big names in the Bollywood music industry, such as A. R. Rahman, Anu Malik, Amit Trivedi, Vishal — Shekhar, Nadeem — Shravan, and many more.
Their first composition was released when they were working with Pritam in the movie Life Partner in 2009. Later, in 2011, they got their first project as an independent music director duo for the movie . Some of the songs became a real hit.
Compositions
Read: Kinjal Dave Biography
Sachin — Jigar has also composed songs for regional movies like Telugu film D for Dopidi (2013), Gujarati films (2014), Wrong Side Raju (2016), Love Ni Bhavai (2017), and many more.
Jigar — Sachin as Singers
Sachin, on the other hand, has sung Happy B’Day ( 2015), Beat Pe Booty ( A Flying Jatt — 2016), Bhuli Javu Che, Yaad Chhe (Gujarati film Chor Bani Thangaat Kare — 2017), Kho Diya ( — 2017), etc.
Awards
Sachin Jigar has won the 6th Gujarat Gauravvant Award in 2013 and GIFA: Best Music Album for Wrong Side Raju in 2016. They have been nominated in Mirchi Music Awards for four categories for and Badlapur in 2015. In 2017, they were nominated in three categories for Meri Pyaari Bindu and Hindi Medium .
Sum Up
Both composers tend to keep their loves personal. Recently, Sachin’s daughter Tanishka Sanghvi has been witnessed singing the song Laadki for Coke Studio India . Sachin — Jigar has last been listened to in Steet Dancer , Angrezi Medium , and Shakuntala Devi in 2020. We hope you will like Sachin — Jigar Biography. To get to know more about the inspirational journeys of Indian personalities, scroll down and do not forget to follow the page. | https://medium.com/@gujaratcelebs/sachin-jigar-biography-music-composer-duo-gujaratcelebs-1f1951fddd45 | [] | 2020-12-21 07:54:58.519000+00:00 | ['Biography', 'Gujarati', 'Gujarat'] |
Keep advancing like General Patton | picture from the Guardian
“If a man does his best, what else is there?” George S. Patton
General Patton focused on aggressive advancement and leaving nothing left for the journey back. On IT projects, it’s important to keep momentum, focus on priority functionality and don’t get distracted.
“Remember that we as attackers have the initiative. We must retain this tremendous advantage by always attacking rapidly, ruthlessly, viciously, without rest. However tired and hungry you may be, the enemy will be more tired, more hungry. Keep punching.” General Patton
In this article General Patton’s Strategy for Winning in War and Life: Keep Punching, this quotes from General Patton will inspire you.
Speed and momentum
Patton focused on offence and hated defense. Patton felt the advantage was to the attacker, who attacked quickly and decisively.
“I don’t want to get any messages saying, ‘I am holding my position!’ We’re not holding anything. Let the Hun do that. We are advancing constantly and are not interested in holding anything, except onto the enemy. We’re going to hold onto him and kick the hell out of him all the time.” General Patton “No form of defense is worth a damn.” and “An army is defeated when it digs in,”
Patton was an avid reader who studied history and was convinced the advantage was to the attacker. Those who attacked with speed, aggression and surprise. The defensive approach did not win battles, at best delayed defeat.
Attacking with speed does not mean being reckless or not preparing for the attack. Patton would reconnaissance, get the right equipment/support and have a plan with a backup plan.
Once Patton had finalised a plan, he focused on executing with speed. giving the enemy less time to react and counter.
What we can we learn from this.
Prepare for you plan, do you reconnaissance, assess the situation
Make your plan, have a back up plan
Execute the plan fast and use all resources
Planning in projects is useful, plans are dangerous because they are usually out of date and incorrect shortly after being finished. A plan gives leadership a false sense they can bring order to the chaotic environment of a project. Projects are complex, in environments which are unpredictable and changing. Any activity which involves lots of people is unpredictable, particularly when they have to work together, make decisions and create a new system.
“A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.” General Patton
General Patton used time to his advantage, by acting fast he gave the enemy less time to react, plan and counter. In projects time is wasted and momentum is slow because a project is over a long period of time it can make people feel they have lots of time and people can act with a lack of urgency.
Most projects are underestimated in complexity, plans based on dates give less time to deliver (and all the later found requirements) will take. The majority of projects are delivered late because of this underestimation of what is to be done and over estimation by the team doing the work.
Projects should have a sense of urgency, prioritising must have functionality and removing distractions. This focus should be given by leadership, if General Patton was leading a project, he would focusing on delivering fast because it reduces unknown problems from disrupting the project and will find problems early.
Delivering fast gives more time to resolve problems and get feedback on what’s been built. Project and development estimates are usually underestimated because they assume
nothing will go wrong
no distractions
no unforeseen problems
New requirements won’t be found
Developers won’t misunderstand the requirements and build the wrong solution
Questions won’t take long to clarify
bugs won’t be found
It takes longer to build than we estimate, built functionality is more valuable than requirements or solution designs.
The sooner you start, the sooner you find and solve problems and the sooner you finish. It’s better to start earlier than you planned.
Set an example
“Do everything you ask of those you command” General Patton
You can’t lead people from an office, you have to get out and speak to people in your team. You need to create a relationships, they need to believe and be motivated by their leader.
Patton led by example and he get involved with the attacks and got shot in the leg whilst directing his beloved tanks.
Leaders need to be seen, heard and involved if they want to motivate people in their team.
Be Prepared
“A pint of sweat will save a gallon of blood.” George S Patton
Sweat comes from working hard, training, being prepared, when it comes to executing the plan in war you do it without thinking.
In projects have standard processes, best practices, unit testing and devops keeps the quality on the project high and minimizes bugs.
Well trained, knowledgeable team who know the software will deliver faster and to a better quality because they reduce mistakes.
People
“The secret is not weaponry, wars may be fought using weapons… ‘but they are won by men. It is the spirit of men who follow and the man who leads that gains victory’” George S Patton
On IT projects there is a focus on technology, it sexy, costs a lot of money but the success or failure of the project will be related to the people on it.
People will be the reason for success or failure of the project. I have never seen a project fail because of technology, the reasons for failure are the people working on it.
Honesty
“Say what you mean and mean what you say” George S Patton
To build trust, communicate honestly, to be understood you need to speak simply and to be remembered you need to grab their attention. You need to mean what you say because if you don’t you are wasting people's time and they learn to ignore you.
Turn your words into actions and create a reputation for doing what you say.
Think differently
“If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking” George Patton
In projects people can get caught going through the motions, doing the next task, filling in the report and losing sight of the overall goal of the project.
You need to make time to think, to solve the root cause of the problems and not treat the systems.
The strength of a team is the different perspectives everyone brings and as a group more and different ideas. This collaboration creates a better solution and catches more problems. If no one disagrees with ideas it means everyone is thinking the same or many people are not thinking at all.
Energy
May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won’t ~ General George Patton
Patton got in trouble for his language and attitude, he was demoted for slapping a soldier he thought was faking injury. Patton brought energy, a positive attitude and loyalty of his troops. He was a flawed character but exactly the type of person you need in war, who is going to get things done no matter what.
In projects you need to push, and sometimes push people who want to move slower. You have to keep making progress and not lose momentum.
Don’t give up
“Courage is fear holding on a minute longer.” — General George Patton
Today is hard, tomorrow will be harder, next week will be twice as hard but after that things will start to get easier. Don’t give up because it will get better.
You only fail when you quit, projects create situations where it feels you can’t progress, no matter what you do.
“Success is how you bounce on the bottom.” George S Patton
Team first thinking
General Patton wasn’t known for being humble but he realised he was one part of a big machine and we shouldn’t believe that any individual is more important than the team.
“Any man who thinks he’s indispensable, ain’t” George S Patton
Everyone is replaceable, the world moves on. Don’t allow anyone to believe they are more important than the team or the project.
“Do not make excuses, whether it’s your fault or not” George S Patton
Take responsibility for a situation and the fault is never one person, it's usually the system and many people will contribute.
You can’t control all situations but you can control how you respond. Forget about why a problem occurred and focus on resolving, stopping it happening again and the solution.
Set goals not give instructions
“Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity” George S. Patton
Set the team goals and let them come up with the solution. This helps the team be more engaged, get new skills and allows you to delegate more work. The advantage is teams will often come | https://medium.com/@thehosk/keep-advancing-like-general-patton-4a9d6126aee6 | ['Ben Hosking'] | 2020-12-15 13:59:49.017000+00:00 | ['General Patton', 'Projects', 'History'] |
Reward & Recognize a Virtual Team with Certificates | Giving awards and recognition provides tremendous value to your virtual team members as well as the team’s collective spirit. When people receive an award or recognition it makes them feel valued. Recognition honor’s efforts and lets others know that we see their contributions.
Bottom line, when we receive an award or recognition, we feel good. And good chemicals are released in our brain that inspires us to continue doing what we are being recognized for.
Impromptu recognition is always a good idea when it is sincere, yet being recognized “officially” provides an extra element of satisfaction and imprints a stronger memory.
In this virtual team building activity, I’ll walk you through how you can give team members an opportunity to award their peers. It’s not only fun, but it’s also really easy to do with a virtual team.
I facilitated this activity with a team of 11 recently in about 30 minutes. I was smiling from ear to ear as the awards were presented because positive energy is contagious. The instructions are below, feel free to modify to fit the needs of your team.
Instructions:
Prep Work for the Facilitator
1. Create a certificate template in PowerPoint that you will provide for the team members.
My template had three sections:
The first slide was the instructions.
The second slide was an example of a completed certificate.
Slides 3–6 were all blank certificate templates.
2. Work with the team leader to divide the team into sub-teams of 3–4 people who will work together in a breakout.
Facilitating the Activity
Set up the exercise as an opportunity for the team to celebrate each other and recognize each other for their special contribution to the team. Explain that they will have 15 minutes to work with a sub-team and create an award certificate for a sub-set of the team that they will be assigned. Each sub-team will be creating awards for 3–4 team members that are not in their breakout room. (On a slide provide a table which shows the sub-teams and who they are creating awards for). Show them an example of a completed certificate. Encourage them to be creative and colorful if they have time. Assign a sub-team facilitator for each breakout. Upload the PowerPoint template into chat so they can download the instructions, an example, and blank certificates before they go into their breakout rooms. Direct them to have one person in each sub-team share their screen in the breakout and fill out the certificates. Let them know when they come back to the main room, one person from each group will be presenting the awards. Check for questions. Send them into breakouts for 15 minutes. When they return, each team will share the certificate and award the team members they were assigned. (This takes about 1–2 minutes per person, depending on the team). Lastly, ask them to send you the certificates so you can compile them and distribute them to the full team later.
Summary
This is a fun, engaging virtual team building activity that allows the team to reward and recognize each other for their unique contributions to the team.
About the Author: Leigh Ann Rodgers, Founder of Better Teams and Forward, is an IAF Certified Professional Facilitator with 20 years of experience in the human development field. Leigh Ann is a skilled meeting facilitator, trainer, and coach working across the globe to help leaders cultivate teams that are happy and high-performing.
Join Forward, a global online community for facilitators, trainers, & coaches!
Forward is a virtual community with workshops and resources for experts like you. Get a sneak peek here. | https://medium.com/@camille-99259/reward-recognize-a-virtual-team-with-certificates-38f256ab6e68 | ['Camille Bryant'] | 2020-12-07 11:22:40.221000+00:00 | ['Teambuildingactivities', 'Team Collaboration', 'Team Building', 'Teamwork', 'Rewards And Recognition'] |
Happiness Blooms | 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/blueinsight/happiness-blooms-5485c50ef2e3 | ['Ivette Cruz'] | 2020-12-19 06:35:52.251000+00:00 | ['Blue Insights', 'Positive Thinking', 'Life Lessons', 'Self-awareness', 'Poetry'] |
Top 10 UI/UX Design Instagram Accounts for Top Notch Design Inspiration | Designers from all over the world Tag there designs on @graphicdesignui and get featured on this account. A very good account to look at on a daily basis for UI inspiration.
Witty digital is a Digital Marketing Agency located in Israel. You will find very innovative design solution on their timeline.
Tubik is a design studio based in Ukraine. Check out their account for UI, UX, Logo, branding and there Work process. A very cool studio where any designer would love to work.
In Kem WD account you will find really creative UI work done by him. I really like his dark theme designs.
This is the place for who love paper wireframes. this account is loved by many professionals. | https://medium.com/freebiesmall/top-10-ui-ux-design-instagram-accounts-for-top-notch-design-inspiration-117bb9bd689 | [] | 2017-05-02 19:58:25.909000+00:00 | ['UI', 'Design', 'Behance', 'UX', 'Instagram'] |
Innovation Factory | How business are set to become innovation factories in 2021
2021 — The Year of Digital Platforms
In its 2019 FutureScale outlook focusing on ‘Digital Supremacy’ IDC argued that operating as a software-driven “digital innovation factory” will be at the core of an enterprise’s ability to sustainably differentiate and compete in its own industry. They suggested that, by 2025, nearly two thirds of enterprises will be prolific software producers with code deployed daily, over 90% of apps cloud native, 80% of code externally sourced, and 1.6 times more developers than today.
Why?
A clue comes from McKinsey & Co. in its paper published in August 2020 titled, ‘The Next Normal — Digitizing at speed and scale’ where the management consulting and analyst firm suggests the recovery will be digital. They write, ‘The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened the need for companies to adopt digital business models — and only cloud platforms can provide the agility, scalability, and innovation required for this transition. Although there have been frustrations and false starts in the enterprise journey to the cloud, companies can dramatically accelerate their progress by focusing investments in it where they will provide the most business value and by building cloud-ready operating models.’
No business today can ignore the importance of transitioning incumbent sow-burn enterprise systems towards an agile, cloud-born digital platform that serves the information management demands of all stakeholders.
There are two major drivers of this move to the cloud. They are:
1. Speed of Change
The pace of change in markets is unprecedented. It means laggards are no longer ‘just slow’ and missing out on opportunities. Without a place in the digital future, companies face extinction. According to research conducted by PWC in 2019 and 2021, around 1 in 5 surveyed companies (18%) implemented some form of Artificial Intelligence in 2019, but that dropped to 4% in 2020 when the pandemic gave businesses something else to think about. 2021 is likely to be the rebound year when businesses accelerate their digital plans to innovate their way out of the economic slowdown.
Frank Gens, Senior Vice President and Chief Analyst at IDC, argues, “As more than half the global economy turns digital by 2023, a new species of enterprise will be required to compete and thrive. IDC’s 2020 predictions show that enterprises will prepare for the digitized economy by accelerating investments in key technologies and new operating models to become hyperspeed, hyperscaled, and hyperconnected organizations.”
2. The Need to Re-Define Customer Value
For many industries, customer aspirations have changed in the past year. Some businesses will be impacted by the raising demand for PPE and medical products. Others will have to deal with the consequences of more home working that reduces foot-fall in major commuter cities. Covid-19 brought the travel and tourism industry to its knees. Office space will drop in demand and value. And ANY business not already trading successfully online will need to get their act together in 2021. Those, however, are the top-line impacts. Consider too that consumers have reset their perspectives on what’s important. The pandemic has raised questions in the minds of buyers in the efficacy of a wasteful consumer society. Re-cycling, re-use, and business models framed around protecting the planet will trump behaviors that promote excess and extravagance.
Every business will face its own unique blend of challenges, and to counter them, the solution is to create a technology ecosystem that maximizes customer value and experience, while minimizing cost. Unfortunately, that doesn’t just come out of a box in a form executives can plug in — it needs to be crafted and deployed.
What Does an Innovation Factory Look Like in 2021?
A modern innovation factory relies on a partnership between the IT team and ‘the business’ comprised of Line-of-Business (LoB) managers, execs and application stakeholders (which could be employees, contractors, customers, suppliers, industry partners, shareholders, etc.).
To herd the cats, you will also need a Project Manager to drive the ideation process. Additionally, a Business Analyst should be on hand to create the apps using a modern codeless Integrated Design Environment (Today, the app creation role has shifted away from the tech-stack deployment, scaling, backup and architectural considerations, and the operational governance responsibilities of IT).
Bringing these disparate interests together is the role of the FUSION TEAM. This is a transitional decision making ‘meeting of minds;’ where stakeholders come together to agree what should be built, how it should be deployed, and what people, process, technology and data considerations need to be thought about to make any app deployment a success.
The technology toolset will be a Platform-as-a-Service of one form or another, deployed on a private cloud by the vendor. Expect to find in your tool-kit the Integrated Development Environment (IDE), together with data management and governance tools, heaps of data security, and the necessary data crunching and integration tools needed to harvest data from existing and third party repositories. It’s worth noting that almost no application exists as an island these days. Inevitably, your apps will need to harvest and serve up data to third party tools. With modern tech-stacks, this is normally achieved using codeless data connectors, so whilst still not a trivial task, it is surprisingly simpler than using APIs and third party integration platforms and tools.
Final Thoughts — Where to Start for Late Adopters
How companies think about their enterprise stack has been slow to change. Company IT teams were educated to code and script. They have invested hours of their lives in learning the systems and tools your business uses today. Asking them to forget all that and adopt a new approach and set of skills is a big ask. Therefore, managing change is best done by bringing in some fresh thinking, either from a third party, or by hiring a Digital Officer familiar with the latest generation of cloud-born application ecosystems — such as Appian, ServiceNow, Encanvas, OutSystems, BettyBlocks or force.com.
Transitioning to become an INNOVATION FACTORY is a people, process, data, and technology transformation — and it’s never easy eating an entire pizza in one serving. For businesses that have yet to transition to FUSION TEAMS and NOCODE development, the likely starting point is to find a technology partner able to advise on how to progress.
The good news, is that no company has to be left behind. Every opportunity exists to get on the band wagon and to build up your capability to develop a digital ecosystem to build agility into your tech-stack and orchestrate your business model one app at a time.
About the Author
Ian Tomlin is a management consultant and writer on the subject of enterprise computing and organizational design. He serves on the USTECH GLOBAL EMEA Management Team. Ian has written several books on the subject of digital transformation, cloud computing, social operating systems, codeless applications development, business intelligence, data science, office security, customer data platforms, vendor management systems, Managed Service Provisioning (MSP), customer experience, and organizational design. He can be reached via LinkedIn or Twitter. | https://medium.com/@ian-tomlin/innovation-factory-c6a793e69da | ['Ian Tomlin'] | 2020-12-24 10:13:24.741000+00:00 | ['Innovation', 'Hyperautomation', 'Innovation Factory', 'Digital Transformation'] |
Creating an Animated Bar Chart Race with Tableau | Before I go on, I’d just like to say this article is heavily inspired by a tutorial that I read from Ludovic Tavernier on his blog greatified. I have the utmost respect and admiration for his discovery of this method to simulate animation frames for bar charts with Tableau so kudos to him for all that work!
In fact, I followed his steps closely to create the bar chart that I posted but after going through the tutorial, I thought that it’d probably be useful to refine and elaborate certain parts to make the tutorial more comprehensive and easily-understandable for beginners to Tableau, and to outline the motivation and logic behind the steps in the method involved. All the code in this article (except for some tweaks) were taken from Ludovic’s so once again, thanks a lot to him!
In the step-by-step guide I’ll be showing you how to create your own animated bar chart with Tableau, with my dataset on student numbers as an example. Hopefully, you get to see something moving by the end of the tutorial!
Getting Started
Tableau does not automatically create animated bar charts from a dataset. A quick workaround to this is to make Tableau create individual frames that simulate an animation when you string them together. This works the same way how cartoons are made.
It’s never too late to get moving. Sometimes we fall, but sometimes we succeed too. (Photo: freepik.com / macrovector)
Now to do this you would ideally want to get Tableau to create these frames automatically, which in turn are created from data you provide to Tableau. But unless you really like manually creating datasets, how do you actually create these “pseudo-data” automatically?
This method revolves around doing just that.
1. Create the Necessary Data Entries
You’ll need to create 3 sheets of data (preferably all on the same Excel file) in this step. The goal is to create an even larger dataset containing additional rows such that each additional row represents 1) each animation frame and for 2) each point of the animation bar (more on this below).
Don’t get it? Here’s a simple example: you start off with a table containing 20 entries in the ‘year’ column, numbering from 2001 to 2020. Right now you’d like to keep more information about each month of each year so you create an additional column for ‘month’. And with each year containing 12 months, you need to ensure that each year, say 2001, gets repeated 12 times for each month. As a result, you get 20 x 12 entries. This is what we call a cartesian product.
Going back to what we are supposed to do, we’d like to duplicate entries in our dataset but we would want to do it in a more elegant manner than just creating rows for each entry manually. So we’ll do this by creating new generic entries (or in the case of the previous analogy, for each individual month) for each new column we’d like to introduce, in separate sheets. We then get Tableau to carry out a cartesian join on these sheets automatically.
Your first sheet will contain your original data, whereas the two other sheets will contain the new generic entries.
Sheet 1: Information about your dataset
The first sheet is essentially the main dataset that you’d like to animate. It should contain basic information like year, category, and value. Besides that, you need to create an additional column link, which will be used later to to join data on the other data sheets.
year : a numerical value for the unit of time you’re observing
: a numerical value for the unit of time you’re observing category : a name for whatever you’ll like to observe like country name
: a name for whatever you’ll like to observe like country name value : a numerical value for the value you are interested in like count
: a numerical value for the value you are interested in like count link: an identifier that acts as an anchor to join the various data sheets (use same value throughout all sheets; 1 in this case for simplicity)
Sheet 1: Information about your dataset
Sheet 2: Information about each bar
This sheet essentially creates the 4 corners of a bar (that’ll appear in the chart) for each category in your dataset. Point 1 represents the point at the top left of a rectangle, with each subsequent point going clockwise and ending with point 4 representing the bottom left.
link : an identifier that acts as an anchor to join the various data sheets (use the same value throughout the entire dataset; 1 in this case for simplicity)
: an identifier that acts as an anchor to join the various data sheets (use the same value throughout the entire dataset; 1 in this case for simplicity) point: a point representing a certain corner of a bar(number them 1–4)
The four corners of a bar labelled from 1 to 4
Your second sheet should look exactly like this:
Sheet 2: Information about each bar
Sheet 3: Information about each animation frame
This sheet creates animation frames to animate the time interval between the fixed intervals specified in your dataset. For example, if the smallest time interval in your data set is 1 year, this sheet will create k number of frames to animate the gap between how the bar chart looks like in year n to year n+1.
link : an identifier that acts as an anchor to join the various data sheets (use the same value throughout the entire dataset; 1 in this case for simplicity)
: an identifier that acts as an anchor to join the various data sheets (use the same value throughout the entire dataset; 1 in this case for simplicity) anim: an identifier for each frame created (number them 1 to k, the number of frames you’d like to create for each interval)
Your third sheet should look exactly like this:
Sheet 3: Information about each animation frame
Once you have the three sheets, open a new Tableau workbook and select the Excel file that you have created in the previous step. Perform a cartesian join on all the sheets on the link column.
Look back at the new data entries Tableau has created and you should see that each data entry in your original dataset should have been replicated with entries for each point of the bar, and for each animation frame:
Each original entry in your dataset gets replicated for each animation frame and for each point on the bar. Each highlighted box shows the 4 entries needed to define a specific bar at a particular frame.
2. Create the Necessary Variables To Define Each Bar
Now with out dataset expanded greatly to accommodate more data entries for each animation frame and each animation bar, our goal now is to compute some values for these entries, which will define the sizes and positions of the bars at each particular frame.
Switching over to an empty Tableau sheet, we then proceed to create several calculated fields using the data contained in the columns of our dataset:
anim_inter: a number that contains the ratio current frame/total frame number per interval (eg. 2/10 = 0.2)
[Anim]/{MAX([Anim])}
frame: a number indicating the exact animation frame within a certain interval (eg. year 2001.2)
[Year]+[anim_inter]
value_current: a number indicating the actual value of the bar at the beginning of the interval (eg. 190 at the beginning of the interval between 2001 and 2002)
{FIXED [Year],[Category]:MIN([Value])}
value_next: a number indicating the actual value of the bar the end of the interval (eg. 195 at the end of the interval between 2001 and 2002)
LOOKUP(ATTR([value_current]),1)
value_inter: a number indicating the interpolated value of the bar at an exact animation frame within the interval (eg. 193.2 at the interval 2001.3)
ATTR([value_current])+
([value_next]-ATTR([value_current]))*ATTR([anim_inter])
rank_current: a number showing the rank of the bar relative to other bars, based on their value_current at the beginning of the interval
RANK_UNIQUE(ATTR([value_current]),”desc”)
rank_next: a number showing the rank of the bar at the end of the interval
LOOKUP([rank_current],1)
rank_inter: a number showing the ‘intermediate’ rank of the bar at an exact animation frame within the interval
[rank_current]+([rank_next]-[rank_current])*ATTR([anim_inter])
@x_inter: a number indicating the x-value of the specified corner of the bar (i.e. the values for points 1 and 4 should always be 0 as the left side the bar doesn’t move; while those for points 2 and 3 should always indicate the current length of the bar)
IF ATTR([Point])=1 THEN 0
ELSEIF ATTR([Point])=2 THEN [value_inter]*1.0
ELSEIF ATTR([Point])=3 THEN [value_inter]*1.0
ELSEIF ATTR([Point])=4 THEN 0
END
@y_inter: a number indicating the y-value of the specified corner of the bar (i.e. the values for points 1 and 2 should always be the same and represent the height of the top edge of the bar; while those for 3 and 4 should always be the same and represent the bottom edge of the bar. Any difference between the y-values indicates the height of the bar)
IF ATTR([Point])=1 THEN [rank_inter]*1.0
ELSEIF ATTR([Point])=2 THEN [rank_inter]*1.0
ELSEIF ATTR([Point])=3 THEN [rank_inter]+0.5
ELSEIF ATTR([Point])=4 THEN [rank_inter]+0.5
END
filter: a number showing the rank of the value_inter of the bar; we’ll use this to filter out all the other bars that are not within the top x number of bars
RANK_UNIQUE([value_inter],”desc”)
label: a string to indicate the category and value_inter of the bar; category gets shown above the point 1 of the bar, while value_inter gets shown above point 3
IF ATTR([Point])=1 THEN ATTR([Category])
ELSEIF ATTR([Point])=3 THEN STR(INT([value_inter]/1000))+”K”
END
3. Visualisation Time!
With the nitty-gritty details all worked out, we can now finally focus on the exciting part of this process: visualisation!
Setting up shelves and cards
Let’s begin by setting up all the shelves and cards on the Tableau worksheet:
Drag @x_inter to the Columns shelf. Modify the table calculations Drag @y_inter to the Rows shelf, and then repeat the exact same step once again. Set the second @y_inter as a Dual Axis. Right-click on any of the two y-axes on the view pane and select Synchronize Axis. Set the range of the axis to be fixed from 0 to 11, and reverse its scale. Drag frame to the Pages shelf and ensure that it is a discrete dimension. Drag filter to the Filters shelf. Select the Polygon mark under the @y_inter Marks card and add Year, Category, and anim_inter as Details, and lastly Point as a Path. Ensure that these are all added as dimensions. Select the Circle mark under the @y_inter(2) Marks card and add Category and label as Labels, as well as Year, anim_inter and Point as Details. Ensure that these are all added as dimensions.
At the end of this series of steps, your Tableau worksheet should look something like this:
How your Tableau worksheet should look like at the end of this series of steps
Specifying some table calculations
With all the fields set up, it’s time to configure some table calculations to ensure that the calculated fields we have created earlier function well in the view pane:
Right-click on @x_inter on the Columns shelf to configure table calculations. Compute @x_inter using Year and frame. This makes Tableau calculate @x_inter by Year and frame for every anim_inter, Category and Point*. Right-click on the @y_inter on the Rows shelf to configure table calculations. Set it to compute rank_current using Category, and to compute rank_next using Category, Year and frame, with Restarting every Category selected. Repeat this for both @y_inter axes. Right-click on filter under the Filters card to set table calculations. Compute filter using Category and compute value_next using Year and frame. Specify 0–10 as the range of values.
*For those of you who don’t really understand what’s going on with table calculations, check out this awesome explanation by Andy Kriebel here.
Voilà! You finally have some semblance of a bar chart after working through so many steps! Click on play (top right of the interface) to see your bar chart move!
The moment of truth: a bar chart appears!
Touching up on the bar graph
However as you can certainly notice, you chart is probably still on the ugly side and there’re still things to do to touch up a little on some aesthetics:
Under the @y_inter(2) Marks card, select Label. Edit the text by clicking on ‘…’. Delete <Category> from the field, and justify <AGG(label)> to the right. Next, change the Alignment of the Label from Automatic to Top Right. Lastly select the checkbox Allow labels to overlap other marks. Click on Size and select the smallest size on the slider. Now you no longer have goofy-looking rectangles! To add some cool colour gradients to your bars, add value_inter to the @y_inter Marks card as Color. Compute value_inter (just as in the previous series of steps) using Year and frame, and lastly select your desired colour gradient.
How your screen should look like after some aesthetic tweaks
Those are some steps I believe are necessary to make your chart look presentable at the very least though there are other things you should also try out yourself to make your chart look better — try renaming/hiding your axes, axis titles, and chart titles!
You can also create a Tableau dashboard to feature multiple view panes in addition to the one with the bar chart. One such view pane can feature the year of the animation ticking away as your graph moves.
Let me know if you discover interesting ways to personalise your bar chart!
Concluding Steps
Last but not least, it’s currently not possible to export your simulated animated bar chart as an image or video directly using Tableau. For those of you who’d like to save your animated chart in another format, consider using the screen recording function on your computer (or on a 3rd party application) to record the animated frames on Tableau. You can then use a free tool on the internet to convert your video file to a .gif like I did if you’d like one. And there you go, a smart looking animated chart! | https://towardsdatascience.com/creating-an-animated-bar-chart-race-with-tableau-6a7839f703af | ['Ewe Zi Yi'] | 2019-11-15 04:37:27.635000+00:00 | ['Data Visualization', 'Tableau', 'Data Science', 'Programming', 'Animated Gifs'] |
Today Top Stories || Missile Strikes By Israel | Largest Islamic Country Will Soon Recognize Israel | The Free Trade Agreement With The European Union | Today Top Stories || Missile Strikes By Israel | Largest Islamic Country Will Soon Recognize Israel | The Free Trade Agreement With The European Union zaviews Dec 25, 2020·4 min read
In Syria, Israeli warplanes fired missiles at residential areas, which were repulsed. According to the international news agency, Israeli warplanes fired missiles at the Musayyaf area of Syria, which was thwarted by the Syrian air defense system. According to Syrian state television, Israeli warplanes fired the missiles north of the Lebanese city of Tripoli, but there was no loss of life or property as a result of the timely response. Israel has not yet confirmed or denied the attack, but in the past Israeli warplanes have violated Lebanese borders and attacked Syrian territory. Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed that Israeli warplanes flying low from Lebanon hit an Iranian weapons depot in Syria, killing six members of the Iranian-backed militia.
The Israeli minister has claimed that the fifth Islamic country will soon recognize Israel. In an interview with local TV, Israeli Minister for Regional Cooperation Ofer Akonis said the United States would announce the establishment of Israeli diplomatic relations with another Islamic country before Trump steps down from the US presidency on January 20. The Israeli minister declined to name the Muslim country, but said there could be two major candidates. Oman is one of the strongest candidates, while Saudi Arabia is not currently in relations with Israel. Regarding the other candidate country, he said that it is an eastern country and a big Muslim country, but it is not Pakistan. Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country by population, announced last week that it would not recognize Israel without a Palestinian state. In the last days of President Trump’s presidency, four Muslim countries, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, have established diplomatic relations with Israel. On the other hand, the governments of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have denied such speculations.
The months-long trade dispute between the European Union and the United Kingdom over Bridget finally came to an end and a new agreement was reached. British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) to report that we have overcome my own rules and target of the Downing Street press conference with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said. Details of the agreement have not yet been released, but Boris Johnson claimed that “this agreement is good for the whole of Europe.” The UK will pull out of EU trade rules next week, even though the agreement was a year ago to secede from trade. The announcement of Boris Johnson has paved the way for the creation of two separate economies in the form of the United Kingdom and the European Union, and has created convenience for British citizens who are already suffering from the corona virus. During the press conference, the British Prime Minister said that the agreement of 668 billion euros per annum would protect employment across the country and British products would be sold without tariffs and without quotas in the European market. Later, on March 29 this year, the British Parliament rejected Prime Minister Theresa May’s Bridgett Agreement for the third time by a majority. In the British capital, 286 votes were cast in favor of the Bridgett agreement, while 344 votes were cast against it. On April 11 this year, European leaders agreed to extend the Bridgett agreement with Britain for six months. The decision to expand Bridget was made by 27 European leaders after talks in Brussels. It should be noted that the UK joined the European Economic Community in 1973, but some quarters in the UK have repeatedly complained that the free trade community is being used for political purposes. Damages the sovereignty of member countries. Proponents of her case have been working to make the actual transcript of this statement available online. Proponents of her case have been working to make the actual transcript of this statement available online. It will be possible to spend in the country. | https://medium.com/@zaviews/today-top-stories-missile-strikes-by-israel-largest-islamic-country-will-soon-recognize-723f9abf55ac | [] | 2020-12-25 13:16:44.411000+00:00 | ['News', 'Brexit', 'Syria', 'Israel', 'European Union'] |
Tokenized economy: Introduction to the Debt free Society | Image courtesy of yodiyim at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
In today's world, most companies rely on debt to finance their business.
In the tokenized economy we get prepayment, so there is no need for the debt especially not a third party debt.
There are different risks involved in financing in the tokenized economy than the risks in classical debt driven economy.
Riskin debt driven economy
liquidity
Credit default risk
Interest rates fluctuation
Debt terms vs assets liquidity
Securitization of the debt
Credit ratings
Risks in the tokenized economy
Exchange rate fluctuation
Purchase market currency
Limited daily liquidity
Keys to success in the tokenized economy
sales
conservative expansion
logistic /sufficient stock
People/customer support
High liquidity
Efficient Tax management
In some cicles, the tokenized economy is still laughed at and high debt is believed to be the only fertilizer for expansion and growth.
Survival of some tokenized projects past the five-year mark and positive outlook for the future might be the sign that one of possible development in the economy might be debt free. | https://medium.com/@peterfaleskini/tokenized-economy-introduction-to-the-debt-free-society-20f7107eb848 | ['Peter Faleskini'] | 2019-02-07 13:44:26.049000+00:00 | ['Tokenization', 'Finance', 'Blockchain', 'Debt'] |
Women and Brexit: | Women and Brexit:
Their Voices Are Just Not Heard
by Rhona Scullion. This article originally appeared on PassBlue.
NOTTINGHAM, England — It has been more than two and a half years since Britain voted to leave the European Union. As the rest of the world knows, nothing since then has gone smoothly. It’s not even clear where most voters stand on the issue today. But despite the nonstop debate, women’s voices continue to be almost entirely sidelined.
Brexit protesters, near Parliament, London, January 2019. Women will likely take the biggest hit from Britain’s exit from the European Union, say rights specialists in the country and a UN rights advocate.
That has been the pattern since the original Brexit campaign: male voices dominated 85 percent of press coverage, according to researchers at Loughborough University, regardless of charges by prominent female politicians that men were “pushing women out” of the debate — and that Prime Minister Theresa May is leading the exit negotiations.
Dr. Mary-Ann Stephenson, director of the independent Women’s Budget Group, which tracks economic policy across Britain, told PassBlue that her organization remains “concerned about the lack of women’s voices and that of marginalized groups in Brexit discussions.” The group supports an extension of negotiations “to involve a wider range of voices.”
So far, Parliament has yet to formally debate the potential impact of Brexit on women, and the government has done no gender-impact assessments.
Private groups have tried to pick up the slack. A report released last year by the Women’s Budget Group and the Fawcett Society, another organization that promotes gender equality, said that most economists believed Brexit would lead to a downturn in gross domestic product and likely “result in further cuts to government spending which will have disproportionate impact on women, especially the most vulnerable and disadvantaged.”
Already, the report said, “the process of Brexit is diverting political attention and increasing levels of public resources away from urgent social issues such as the crisis in social care, housing and economic inequality, all of which disproportionately affect women.”
Philip Alston, the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, voiced similar concerns after visiting Britain in November, saying: “Given the vast number of policies, programs and spending priorities that will need to be addressed over the next few years, and the major changes that will inevitably accompany them, it is the most vulnerable and disadvantaged members of society who will be least able to cope and will take the biggest hit.”
Alston included women in the category of most vulnerable and disadvantaged, as they are “particularly affected by poverty” and make up a disproportionate number of primary caregivers, single parents and domestic-violence victims.
Britain’s Equality and Human Rights Commission, a national body, has recommended that the government “ensure that the loss of EU funding does not undermine the UK’s equality and human rights infrastructure, including the already scarce funding available to specialist services, such as those that support women survivors of violence and domestic abuse.” To date, the government has made no such assurances.
At a Women’s Refuge Center, a safe house for women and children experiencing domestic abuse, in Nottingham, an employee who asked not to be named for security reasons said that Brexit has thrown a voting-rights reform into limbo. Until last March, women living at Refuge Centers were unable to vote because they did not have fixed addresses. Steps to remedy this problem were introduced, but as long as Brexit is up in the air “we’re not aware of what exactly is going to happen,” she said.
The official government line is that Brexit would promote social equality, but “working women need far more than warm words on workers’ rights from the prime minister,” Frances O’Grady, general secretary of the Trade Union Congress, which represents 48 such unions in Britain, told PassBlue. “We need a binding guarantee for all workers’ rights, now and into the future. We won’t support a Brexit deal which fails this test, and the government has come nowhere close to meeting it.”
Most women voted to remain in the European Union, while most men voted to leave, according to Ipsos Mori, leading British market-research company. Individuals of either gender were more likely to vote to leave if they were older than 55 or unemployed.
When the People’s Vote Campaign, which supports proposals for a second referendum, surveyed voters in September, 56 percent of the women supported staying in the European Union.
As interviews with a range of voters revealed, women bring a variety of perspectives to the table.
Geraldine McKay, a retired university lecturer in Edinburgh, who voted to remain, said, “It seems that every post-Brexit — ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ — forecast suggests a blow to the economy” and an end to European funding for supporting equality.
Different fears were voiced by Jamie Louise White, a 27-year-old freelance orchestral musician from Glasgow who has studied in London and currently works in Berlin. (The majority of people in Scotland had voted to remain in Europe.)
“I have enjoyed the privilege of free movement through Europe throughout my career,” she told PassBlue. “I have huge concerns about how Brexit will impact the ability of artists in the UK to continue to contribute to not just classical and orchestral music, but the arts in general on the European stage, and fear that severing our ties with the European Union will mean a slowing down or even reduction of the, until now, ever-growing diversity within this particular realm of the arts.”
Alice Elizabeth Allan, 24, an international marketing executive based in Nottingham, voted to leave but now has doubts. She said: “I want to go traveling, and free movement is quite important to me. In my current role, we rely on trade and freedom of movement around Europe — this could be a big problem for the company I work for.”
But other outwardly thinking women don’t necessarily see things this way. Alexandra Phillips, 35, a British political consultant based in Brussels, supported leaving Europe and maintains this view.
“When I lived in Africa, I saw how protectionist and exploitative the EU was as a multinational, corporate-powered commercial force and how it locked the developing world in agrarian toil . . . without any down-flow of job creation and skills development, while Europeans exploit Africa’s natural resources tariff free . . . oblivious to the cartel they are propping up.
“I see Brexit as the key that could unlock decades of imbalance and set in motion a new direction in global trade with the UK leading by example,” she said.
That remains to be seen as Britain hurtles toward the exit on March 29 — along with a better understanding of how Brexit could affect such straightforward aspects as gender equality and economic opportunities for women in their country. | https://passblue-un.medium.com/women-and-brexit-1ae81a2b21c3 | [] | 2019-02-21 17:41:45.612000+00:00 | ['Women', 'Womens Rights', 'UK', 'Brexit', 'Human Rights'] |
Letting the Teams Decide: From Scrum to Kanban | By Mike Finkel and Louise Story
WSJ’s web team decided to switch from Scrum to Kanban
A lot of things have changed since we all started working from home, but one thing we have worked hard to preserve is our culture of empowering engineering teams to be leaders in decision-making.
One recent decision by WSJ’s web team reflects our collaborative approach to decision-making and has turned out to help us a lot in the new world of ‘Work From Home’.
It was the middle of the summer when we started a dialogue around the way our web product development team works. Like some of our other teams, the web team had followed the Scrum framework for Agile development for several years. We liked many things about Scrum — it is collaborative, transparent, and it lets us stay nimble and closely tied to our business goals.
But as the team grew in both size and scope of responsibility, planning meetings were becoming unwieldy and tough to organize.
By July, engineers on the team were starting to question their practices. Why, they wondered, wait until the end of the standard two-week sprint to figure out the next thing to do? While we can come together by virtual hangout for daily standups and the other ceremonies prescribed by Scrum, synchronous meetings are not as easy as they used to be. We’ve been responsive to the realities of the pandemic — children at home, other family members with needs, logistics of daily life — and we’ve allowed alternative work schedules. Scrum planning sessions weren’t exactly designed for this.
So, the team started looking at Kanban — — a different approach to Agile.
Agile engineering — a philosophy published in the Agile Manifesto by a group of influential software engineers from across the industry 20 years ago — has led to many different approaches in the world of product development. Scrum was one of the first formalized approaches in Agile, and it focused on creating short planning cycles with regular team check-ins and retrospectives to revisit the process and continuously improve as a team. Kanban, in contrast, aims for a continuous flow where a team can constantly adjust priorities and take on new work as soon as they ship something. For the web team, the Kanban board, where the list of work and tasks is openly shared, and this process overall, are better suited for the quick-turnaround requests we often get inside of a news organization. It also happens to serve us better in this new world where our teams are highly distributed.
The Kanban board is, for some, better suited for the world of asynchronous communication.
Because we have empowered teams to define their own ways of working, this wasn’t a shift that came from the top. Instead, Vasudha Maganti, the manager on the team, researched Kanban, spoke to other managers who recently made the shift, and suggested the idea to her team through several 1:1 meetings. They all agreed that this shift would address their concerns, so they talked it over with their product and program partners.
“We wanted a simpler process that can increase our efficiency while also being flexible to changing priorities,” Ms. Maganti said. “We were doing two-week sprints previously, and we felt the existing process was too rigid. We would spend too long in planning meetings and sizing stories, and give inaccurate estimates at times, and still come out with unknowns on tasks.”
The pandemic accentuated the need for change, said Marta Jakubanis, the director of product for our web platform.
“We all wanted to cut down the noise and focus on delivering the next thing, one day at a time, rather than trying to forecast priorities for and output of our engineering team beyond a one-week horizon,” Ms. Jakubanis said. | https://medium.com/the-wall-street-journal/letting-the-teams-decide-from-scrum-to-kanban-28ae413b1f67 | ['Louise Story'] | 2020-12-14 15:59:24.094000+00:00 | ['Engineering', 'Kanban', 'Product Management', 'Agile', 'Scrum'] |
BINARY OPTION IS A TOTAL SCAM. Remember if something seems too good to be true, it probably is ! | BINARY OPTION IS A TOTAL SCAM. Remember if something seems too good to be true, it probably is !
I placed around €1200 in these so called binary option in August 2019.
Over the next few weeks things appeared` to be going OK, right up until I mentioned withdrawing some money and was told it wasn’t possible to do so, but they would `allow´ me to withdraw a small amount but even that took a while to do and could not be done by me — as they had to allow it first (MY MONEY THAT IS ! ).
I eventually managed to withdraw two hundred, but they refused any more saying the money is in active use etc and was done with the understanding that I was about to INVEST a much larger amount …..
I then decided to close the account entirely due to the inability to have any control over my own money and the reluctance of Them to actually allow me to withdraw my own money. Saw reviews on trust pilot about [email protected] and I contacted them and they were able to retrieve just some of my lost coins.
They have endless stupid excuses do not return your money — but once they know you wont be investing any more money, the current balance of your account dwindles away to zero, with them adding it was a bad day and the money is gone !
Note: the zero at the back of the Recovery experts is the figure zero but medium makes it look like o when I try to insert it. | https://medium.com/@taylorlaurel90/binary-option-is-a-total-scam-remember-if-something-seems-too-good-to-be-true-it-probably-is-4abb446a59f0 | [] | 2020-01-15 17:46:51.387000+00:00 | ['Recovery', 'Bitcoin', 'Bitcoin Mining', 'Binary Options'] |
No means no, but not for her. She has to do it! | Hey everyone, my name is Iara, and I am an MBA student where I have learnt the basic concepts of trade and commerce, market & consumers. One needs to provide products/services to get a piece of paper on which Gandhi is imprinted. Look where Mukesh Ambani has reached just by understanding this simple concept.
I wonder if he would have been there and received the same benefits & luxury if he was a sex worker.
In the 16th century, Tawaif, an Urdu word stands for a prostitute, was hired to entertain the Mughal emperors by singing & dancing( mujra) in front of the courtesan. Later on, this word was replaced by the modern dictionary as a gigolo/escort/sex worker & red light area came into the picture.
Is prostitution legal in India?
Yes, it is, but India doesn’t take a very clear stand with respect to the legality of this profession. According to the Immoral Traffic (Suppression) Act- SITA, the services can be offered in private only; related activities are illegal like managing a brothel, pimping, soliciting, child trafficking, etc.
Immoral Traffic Prevention Act- ITPA; an amendment to SITA(no escort is treated like Sita though, so this name is irony in itself) passed in 1986 states that engaging in sexual activity with a minor will put you behind bars for seven years. If you own a brothel, you will be gone for seven years. One needs to be 200 yards away from a public place to give her services.
Time for a reality check-
· The sex work industry is not regulated at all. Sex workers are devoid of protection & the rights that fall under the umbrella of labour laws.
· India doesn’t even consider male prostitution, and you will only hear about women in this industry.
· There is no defined process to check whether the person has agreed or has been forced into this profession.
· Denying the fact that sex workers can also be raped. Filing an FIR is a problematic thing because even the police don’t believe them.
· They are hesitated to enter into a hospital and check whether they are infected with AIDS or any other Sexually Transmitted Disease.
· Calling vulgar names like ‘‘Randi’’ shows the mental status of people and the treatment they get in society( not at all SITA right!).
· There are very few who get into this profession with consent; poverty, addiction to sex, human trafficking are some of the reasons why anyone would end there in the first place. What if they want to leave in the future? Everybody knows the way to get into it, but nobody knows the way to get out of it.
· Last but not least, devoid of true love. Everybody needs a soul to get attached to, but how can someone see their heart when all they see is a body.
Would you marry a prostitute? Will you be okay if your child wants to become one in the future?
You know the answer, it’s just that the scenery which is depicted in front of you by the society is the perception of their mindset as the landscape you see is on the canvas which they own. | https://medium.com/the-sociocommentator/no-means-no-but-not-for-her-she-has-to-do-it-a3015d4a624d | [] | 2020-07-24 05:42:34.383000+00:00 | ['Prostitution', 'Sex Work', 'Sex', 'Legal', 'India'] |
How to do Blogging in 2021? | The world has changed after COVID-19, people have lost their job and the young generation is unable to find jobs. if you want to earn money online then blogging is for you. the process is so simple.
What is blogging?
Blogging is about making content about one particular niche on the Website/internet.
Blogging is about deciding your niche then take make a website and take domain then after that start to write if your blog has exciting content and it is trending on the internet. So people love to read it on and various topics and the niche you can write about like and you can write by your interest also.
1. Freelancing.
2. Jobs.
3. Technology.
4. Internet
5. Videos
Make a website for your blog?
Presentable and profitable content is very necessary on the internet so you need a great website with an amazing landing page to engage with your audience. here is the answer WordPress, is a free tool to make websites by picking beautiful themes. then uploaded on a host connect with the domain name.
How do you make money while blogging?
Various ways to make money while blogging if you have a good engagement audience and traffic on your blog website
1. Sponsored blog post people pay you dollars to feature their content on your website if you have huge traffic on your website that’s how sponsored post works.
2. Google Adsense the best ways to earn money through blogging. when people visit your blog post they see ads and if they like it and click on it. You earn money.
How do you make blogging profitable?
Engagement with the audience plays a major role to make money while blogging. If you have thick engaging content with exciting copywriting and people are enjoying and sharing it on social media so it already gives change to your website getting a high rank on google.
You can only make good money blogging if there is a good audience reading, sharing your content. Also, if the blog content gets ranked on major search engines, organic traffic begins to read your post, resulting in more engagement.
How do you make money with a Blog?
This is one is the most asking question during covid19. Where people were forced in lockdown to stay at home on the other hand people were searching for new ways to make money online.
The world has changed. as a matter of fact demand of web developer and freelancer have increased and that’s why old skills got invisible Skills. in last 5 years only in U.S freelancing has got so much engaged with the people around 50%.
As a freelancer, you can provide various services like web developer, app developer, video editor, and even blogger also. as an owing blog people usually visit your blog, and that because of that engagement your blog is like a part of that oil.
Yes in the next couple of years you will find this data as ‘OIL’ of the internet. those who have it only make money, so make decide your niche, make a website, and start writing
How do you choose a niche for blogging?
Blogging gets influential in two ways. if you are a popular brand then you can write about everything. so the horizon of vlogging is so big. so you decide to write about everything in India.
so you can’t rank. because google runs by his A. I the system they know which content they have to rank. So you can target drilled down categories if you want to rank your blog on google. so it is very important to discover your niche before starting your blog.
As a blogger, you can talk about business, health, sport, politics, technology, and culture. you should know about that particular niche kind of power of authority.
Remember, back in the past 2years back an Australian guy got jailed because of wrong information.
So don’t try to mislead your audience through your wrong information it can bad impact on anyone’s life. For example, you are blog is about weight loss or anyone take your information seriously and start to apply.
if he/she gets bad results on the body.it will be dangerous for them. so always provide authentic information through blog-post.
How do you get help from social media handles?
Social media a major role to promote brand and service through posts engagement like images, videos, infographics, etc. you can use Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin to get more traffic on your blog website.
You can create good engagement by posting high-quality and images according to your niche with excellent copywriting and call to action. This engagement requires consistency to your value audience.
As per research, people mostly like videos it gets attention injects of seconds. so video posts with a blogpost link can help you a lot. so don’t ignore it. It will create a great impact.
Basic guidelines to start a blog:
1. It must have quality content for engaging the audience.
2. It must apply long-tail keywords for ranking on google.
3. It mush has social signaling from social media.
How do you create quality content?
So after deciding your niche, taking domain and hosting name, and then you need to write quality content that helps you to make money. So you need to write while focusing on your audience and search engine as well
Quality content makes good engagement with the audience come from a good idea. so think about the people how you can provide value in their life that’s why problem-solving attitude plays a major role here.
When people find useful information from your blog post. so they start to share and like it. and high traffic takes place on your website. and here you need to understand the importance of proper “ English “also.
If you want to rank on google through your blog post then you need to find high competitive keywords for your blog post. Here you can take the help of Neil’s Patel uber suggest tool which is actually very effective to find a keyword with low difficulty and great per click value.
This tool will give you the best idea about your keyword volume and other analytics.
How do you grow for your audience?
For growing your audience you need to focus on adding values to the reader’s life. some key factors are there to a great blog
Title:
In a good blog, you have to use great titles to create engagement.
Images/videos:
as earlier I said to grab the attention of the viewer you Copywrite free images and videos.
Content:
Create a story that actually excites people to get engaged until the end.
Inbound & outbound linking:
Do inbound linking with your old blog post and outbound linking with external authority websites.
Sponsored post:
You have to build your presence, add value, and foster relationships that you build through your readership. Remember, the greater the content and powerful words used in your blog, posts, and outbound links with external authority websites that have also written a blog post about that particular subject.
How to build engagement with your audience?
When you make quality content consistent people begin to make engagement with your blog post. On you have to take one more step and begin to respond to them through comments and show concern to them.
On other social media, handle create engagements through posts video, or images or run a question and answer campaign. Then provide a tab on the top or at the bottom of your website to get their email address.
That’s how you can share your newsletter’s upcoming posts’ engagement with you. if someone shares his/her email address that means they have trust in you and they are excited about your blog post.it can also increase your viewership.
Do you think is blogging badly?
Blogging is about sharing effective information about any niche according to your interest it is educating people around the globe on the internet. It is unfair to call it bad or think like this for it.
How to do blogging is a long-term journey?
Blogging is not for the faint of heart but because the outcomes can be sometimes a little dingy. But a blogger should also be aware of the misconceptions that are prevailing in the niche.
Long-term game
Blogging is not about short-term pleasure. It is a hard rock path that required courage to do blog post engagement full of consistency and time without any delay. it is a long-term game.
Authority
Authority comes with hard work and patience, you need to spend hours every day to polish your skills with the proper mindset to get expertise in the blogging world
Passion
Passion a fuel that helps you out to get going without getting distracted.if your work is the passion you are the luckiest one.
Priorities
Money is by product, focus on adding values in people’s life then money will follow you back instantly
Planning
It is about making yourself more productive to analyze your daily routine from morning to night, how to use your time to make your work amazing whether it is freelancing or blogging.
Focus
Focus can make your goal achievable. if you know how to develop it. find out your particular niche and work on it without getting distracted.
Blessing Criticism
Criticism is part of the game. it motivates you to learn from your mistake and grow from that stage. as a blogger always ready for it and never think you got failed.
How Your blog can be a money-making machine?
Key points to make your blog a money machine for you
Loyal Bonding:
Loyal and trust is a valuable point for any business-field. Here you can provide trust value through your quality content and loyal bonding by interacting with your audience by following them on other social media handles and appreciating their comments.
Similar product & services:
It is an additional key point about your blog. you can provide services, products, lectures about related topics according to your niche.
Advertisement:
The market is waiting for you. Various sources you can get to make money while blogging like a sponsored post for backlinking, banner ads of different products, video and audio ads, etc.
Consultancy:
Once you got experienced in that field. you can provide guidance to other company and newbies through the digital consultancy medium & freelance market as well
Affiliates Products:
Here you can make money on an extreme level, money products you can sell while blogging and make money from it on your platform.
How do you Monetize your blog?
Now you have set up your blog took domain name and hosting did excellent writi9ng and make amazing engagement with your audience through your engaging content. now it is time to make money from it.
Your foundation has become strong enough and many websites are there in the market that provides good CPM but Google Adsense is the best. It is a part of a good program and you can apply for it by signing up on their website.
How do you develop a routine?
To achieve anything in your life setting goals and giving effort on daily basis. play a major role in success. so make a routine plan towards your goals like blogging, freelancing.
It is necessary to think outside of the box to get more results in life. My mentor always said Explore, Experiment, Evolove that’s how you find yourself in your life. So break your comfort zone.
If really you want more results in your life then work on your healthy diet also. because it plays a major role in your inside world. if you keep on consuming higher sugar intake.
So it seems you are befooling your body through that, not able to get proper sleep on the time it also gives a bad impact on your body and mind also a healthy diet plays a major role. | https://medium.com/@aamirkhaan/how-to-do-blogging-in-2021-425098ad0380 | ['Aamir Khan'] | 2021-04-07 20:06:44.607000+00:00 | ['Blogging Tips', 'Freelancing', 'Writing', 'Blogging', 'Make Money Online'] |
A Perfect Recipe for a State: How Rivers and Cages Birthed Civilization | Photo by Zheng Hong Chua on Unsplash
Last time, we learned about some of the forms that government has taken throughout history. Now we’ll look even further back in time, and ask ourselves: where did government come from?
This is not an obvious question. For many of us, the state must seem like a natural and inevitable phenomenon. After all, states have existed for pretty much all of our recorded history, and most of us alive today have never known a world without them. We were born into nations, we have lived under them all our lives, and we receive from them a huge number of what we think of as “necessary” provisions. States construct infrastructure, provide documents like drivers’ licenses and passports, dole out money for the unemployed, serve justice in courts, police our neighborhoods, fund health care, science and education, and draft laws to keep our fellow citizens (or visiting foreigners) from impinging upon our rights. Given the vast integration of the state with our modern, day-to-day lives, it is tempting to create a just-so story that explains its existence as inevitable and necessary. But this is an example of what’s called a “naturalization fallacy” — the idea that because something is “normal”, it was supposed to happen that way.
Michael Mann, Distinguished Research Professor of Sociology at UCLA, believes exactly the opposite. Mann is the author of one of the most comprehensively-researched historical reviews of power in existence — the four-volume Sources of Social Power. He is matched by few others in the sheer breadth and thoroughness of his investigation. As such, I think his narrative is an excellent place to start our inquiries (later, I’ll discuss some of his sources in detail, along with the work of others).
In contrast with the traditional social evolutionist, Mann believes that the state was not an inevitably-emerging institution; instead, he argues that it arose independently in only about six different cases. Civilization was an anomaly in the course of human history, resulting from a unique set of ecological factors that “caged” people to fixed territories and relationships.
In order to understand this, we must take a moment to truly visualize the vast history of humanity. Sure, from Earth’s perspective — or that of the universe — we’re a mere drop in the bucket. But even in the eyes of our own species, recorded history doesn’t tell the half of it. So how long have we been around? The answer is different depending on who you choose to include in that “human” category. But if you begin with our particular species, Homo sapiens, current evidence seems to point to about 300,000 years ago.¹
For most of those hundreds of thousands of years — today voiceless and shrouded in shadow — Homo sapiens seems to have lived almost entirely as hunter-gatherers. They had little to no “society” in the sense that we understand the concept today; instead, they wandered nomadically in loose kinship groups, dependent neither on specific people nor on particular tracts of land. They were not fixed or bounded, either socially or territorially.²
Then, from about 10,000 BC to 3,000 BC — itself a period of time longer than recorded history — “more extensive, settled, and complex forms of society gradually emerged out of the initial gatherer-hunting base”.³(1) Hunter-gatherers still lived as they had for hundreds of thousands of years before; but now, a wider variety of social forms began to evolve. Intentional agriculture, mining and fishing encouraged more sedentary lifestyles, with increasingly fixed relationships and networks of cooperation.
This concept of fixity is important, according to Mann: “Fixed settlement traps people into living with each other, cooperating, and devising more complex forms of social organization,” he writes. Mann calls this phenomenon “social caging”, and asserts that it is a key ingredient in the ultimate formation of the state.
Three Common Social Caging Factors
Mann identifies three types of investments that could act as caging factors, leading to the development of authority structures. The first is an investment in nature: animal husbandry, irrigation infrastructure, or the planting of crops, for example. All of these things fix people to specific territories. Domesticated animals need specific types of terrain on which to feed, and they make mobility more difficult (although herders can still remain semi-nomadic). Agriculture requires tending to a specific patch of land for a period of months or years, while crops grow. And building infrastructure for irrigation is both a material and labor investment, also bound to a specific place.
Another type of investment is one of social relations — usually for production or exchange. People engaged in cooperative labor, or who have specialized within their community, are dependent on one another and so become fixed to each others’ norms and rhythms. Trade relationships, too, bind people together, although not with the same intensity as in cooperative labor.
A third type of investment that can become a caging factor is an investment in tools or machinery. Hunter-gatherers typically used simple tools that they could remake quickly or carry with them; but as production machinery became larger and more complex, these investments rendered people increasingly immobile.
As people came to rely more on fixed territories, tools and social relationships related to husbandry, agriculture and trade, their settlements became more permanent. In turn, they came to depend more on specific authority figures within their communities. This happened all over the world, wherever humans inhabited land. Thus, Mann believes it was something of a natural progression.
But were these conditions sufficient for the eventual development of civilization? He thinks not. These typical settlement networks simply were not caged enough. “Elites” within their ranks would hoard up power, only to have their authority collapse from under them as people left their sphere of influence or pitted rival elites against them.
“If most societies have been cages,” Mann writes, “the doors have been left unlocked for two main actors. First, the people have possessed freedoms. They have rarely given away powers to elites that they could not recover; and when they have, they have had opportunity, or been pressured, to move away physically from that sphere of power. Second, elites have rarely been unitary: Elders, lineage heads, bigmen, and chiefs have possessed overlapping, competitive authorities, viewed one another suspiciously, and exercised those same two freedoms.”
In Europe, for example, agricultural settlements became more hierarchical and complex from about 3800–3200 BC, when stable chiefdoms began to emerge out of more general “rank” societies. Power became consolidated, infrastructure and megaliths were built under a centralized cooperative impetus, and trade networks manufactured goods in more organized ways. But these chiefdoms fell apart between 3200–2300 BC, and the people moved back into more nomadic and egalitarian ways of living. Between 1900–1200 BC, power slowly consolidated again in the hands of a few chiefs, and social hierarchies re-emerged. But the chiefdoms were not fated to last this time, either. They collapsed again during the transition to the Iron Age, never quite making the leap to a civilized state.
“Hence there have been two cycles. Egalitarian peoples can increase intensity of interaction and population density to form large villages with centralized, permanent authority. But they stay broadly democratic. If the authority figures become overmighty, they are deposed. If they have acquired resources such that they cannot be deposed, the people turn their backs on them, find other authorities, or decentralize into smaller familial settlements. Later, centralization may begin again, with the same outcomes. The second pattern involves more extensive, but less intensive, cooperation in extended lineage structures, typically producing the chiefdom rather than the village. But here, too, allegiance is voluntary, and if the chief abuses this, he is resisted by the people and rival chiefs.”
So what was the difference between Europe — or the vast majority of cyclical, agricultural chiefdoms around the globe — and the few societies that centralized power in the civilized state? Before we try to answer that question, we should define what we mean by “civilization”.
How Do We Define Civilization?
Before we can decide on how many “pristine” cases of civilization arose, we need a working definition of what “civilization” means. What we think of as “civilization” and “the state” today is undoubtedly different from what ancient peoples experienced. Mann stresses that ancient city-states were composed of loose, overlapping power networks, and that early governments did not have the same authority over their people that most nationstates do today. Instead, the first city-states were probably rough democratic-oligarchies, composed primarily of delegates from local kinship groups and unable to enforce coercive power over large areas. The peoples living within their purvey were quite diverse, and probably had little sense of unified national identity. So what differentiated the first civilized states from other urbanized, tribally-governed systems?
British archaeologist and paleolinguist Colin Renfrew defines “civilization” as insulation from nature. He outlines three “most powerful insulators” as helpful criteria for naming a civilization. These include: ceremonial centers (insulation from the unknown), writing (insulation from time) and cities (a container insulating against the outside). Mann uses this definition to start his search for the world’s “pristine” civilizations — that is, civilizations that emerged completely independently, rather than as a result of outside cultural transmission.
“Taking Renfrew’s three characteristics as our proxy indicator, only a few cases of the emergence of civilization were autonomous. So far as we know, there were four literate, urban, and ceremonially centered groups that seem to have arisen independently of each other in Eurasia: the Sumerians of Mesopotamia; the Egyptians of the Nile Valley; the Indus Valley civilization in present-day Pakistan; and the people of several North China river valleys, beginning with the Yellow River. Only the earliest, Sumer, is *certainly* independent, and so there has been periodic interest in diffusion and conquest theories of the other cases. However, the present consensus among specialists is to accord all four probable independent status. To these some add a fifth, the Minoans of Crete, though this is disputed. If we turn to other continents we can, perhaps, add two further cases, the pre-Columbian civilizations of Mesoamerica and Peru, probably not in contact with one another, and independent of Eurasia. This makes a probable total of six independent cases.”
These were the examples that, most likely, defied the norms of the time, centralizing power in the hands of a bureaucratic state. If the scholars are right, all other civilizations that arose after these did not “evolve” the state on their own, but instead copied it in one way or another from these existing systems. But what unique circumstances placed these social systems on a different trajectory from the rest of the world?
Alluvial Irrigation and the Social Cage: A Perfect Recipe For a State
With the exception of the Mayan civilization in Mexico, and the case of Minoan Crete (“if counted”), all of these “pristine” civilizations arose in alluvial river valleys.⁴ Mann argues that these river valleys, when compared to other types of ecologies, produce an especially marked social caging effect. While evolutionary theories of civilization credit the alluvium itself for the invention of the state — tying civilization directly to developments in irrigation techniques — Mann disagrees. Instead, he believes that social caging factors were primarily responsible for creating the centralized authority systems from which the state emerged. “It took almost two millennia to go from irrigation to urbanization,” he writes. “Before the early Uruk period [3900–3400 BC] settlement patterns changed little, and irrigation, though known, was not predominant. And we find traces of ancient irrigation, without social complexity or subsequent local evolution, in various places in the world.”
It was the indirect effects of irrigation, he argues — specifically within the geographic ecology of the alluvial river valley floodplain — that trapped people within emerging power structures, and closed the doors to escape.
How Does Alluvial Ecology Create the Cage?
When a river floods, it washes mineral-rich mud and silt onto the surrounding floodplain — thereby fertilizing the soil. This natural fertilizer produces much higher crop yields than rainwater does. As a result, people who live on these floodplains — or learn to divert the floodwater to a broader area in the surroundings — achieve more surplus. Along with the surplus in food comes an increase in both population and density, pushing people into closer quarters and rapidly occupying the available land.
This is important, because on the floodplain, fixed pieces of land at the core provide the fertile soil necessary to create surplus and support a growing population. Outside the reach of rich silt deposits, yields would follow those of rainwater, and soil depletion would eventually render tracts of land relatively barren. But on the sides of the river, and wherever man-made canals could spread the alluvial bounty, the land would retain its magic.
Since land near the core of the river floodplain would be vastly more desirable than the rainwatered land on the periphery, private property in these areas became extremely important, according to Mann’s analysis. Not only that, but some locations proved more strategic for trade and defense than others. People thus became tied to fixed tracts of land (an “investment in nature”, as we discussed earlier) on a much larger scale than had typically occurred before. With this fixity of private property came increased wealth inequality, aiding in the growth of an oligarchic class.
But that’s not all. People became increasingly trapped in labor relations, as well (the second investment we discussed above). Man-made irrigation infrastructure, sowing and harvest all required intensive cooperation on a large scale.
“To irrigate was to invest in cooperative labor with others, to build artifices fixed for many years. It produced a large surplus, shared among the participants, tied to this particular investment and artifice. The use of large labor forces (of hundreds rather than thousands) was occasional but regular and seasonal. Centralized authority would also be useful to manage such irrigation schemes. Territory, community, and hierarchy were coinciding in irrigation more than they did in either rain-watered agriculture or herding.”
Wealthier landowners began to contract with local laborers, as well as with pastoralists and hunter-gatherers who still roamed in the periphery. This freed up the emerging “oligarchs” for more bureaucratic or priestly duties, and increased everyone’s interdependence, trapping people in fixed, hierarchical relationships.
Mann argues that the geographical “periphery” contributed significantly to the caging ecology of the floodplain. Alluvial river valleys are typically surrounded by geographical contrasts: mountains, harsh deserts, and swamps provide formidable barriers to agricultural escape. One cannot simply give up a Nile-based farm and waltz off into the surrounding desert for a new life. For someone accustomed to a sedentary lifestyle as a cultivator, such geographical extremes would lack promise. But there were networks of people — herders and nomads, as mentioned above, as well as merchants and traders — who forged livelihoods amidst the peripheral landscape. These people engaged in a kaleidoscope of economic relationships with the irrigators at the core. According to Mann, as these core-periphery networks became more economically interdependent, the social cage also became more deeply entrenched.
As social relationships and territory became more fixed (especially in the core) and with them, hierarchy and wealth inequality, centralized power and the state emerged to defend resources, protect the private property rights of the wealthy, and organize infrastructure. Alongside the already-existing city (one of Renfrew’s insulators) writing and bureaucratic temples arose (the other two), thus completing the urban center’s transformation into a fully-fledged “civilization”. Mann believes the priesthood and the temple came before a fully-fledged state military (although this was not far behind, especially in the case of China).⁵ The priestly order probably consisted largely of oligarchs, who contracted out farm labor and so were freed into a rising managerial class. Their chief functions were probably narrative management (unifying people through stories, to preserve regional peace and keep trade flowing) and accounting (in order to defend their claims to property). Indeed, writing itself seems first to have been used for bookkeeping purposes, rather than to record historical events or to document culture.
Mann believes that writing and narrative (i.e. religion and myth) helped to further cement stratification and coercive power relations. He calls this “the first stage of civilization — two-level, segmental, semicaged”. This “first stage” of state evolution lasted from about 3100 (when the state first arose in Mesopotamia) to about 2700 BC. During this transitionary period, the state was still broadly democratic, lacking despotic power:
“The social form that emerged was the city-state, exerting control over only a limited length and lateral flow of the river. It may have embodied a degree of stratification, centralized political authority, and coercive labor control, and these — especially the last — owed something to the necessities of irrigation. But it did not embody a despotic state, not even kingship at first. When larger territorial states with kings and emperors later emerged, control over irrigation was a part of their power […] but we shall see that this was only a subsidiary factor.”
Military kings began to emerge around 2700 BC; Mann charts the “first empire” of history at around 2300, when Sargon of Akkad conquered Sumer. Alluvial city-states increasingly had to defend their concentrated surpluses from poorer neighbors; meanwhile, those neighbors — and mercenaries on the periphery — bolstered their own military power to keep up. With the rise of military power, the state’s coercive ability increased, as well. And fatefully for some city-states, so did the coercive power of would-be conquerors and marcher lords from outside. These marcher lords ended up founding some of the first despotic and coercive monarchies; Sargon of Akkad himself was one of them.
If we take Mann’s word for it, then, it seems that civilization actually wasn’t a “typical” human development after all. The state arose naturally in only a small number of cases, fostered by a unique set of circumstances and ecology. For the rest of humanity, semi-permanent agricultural settlements, pastoralism, and hunting and gathering remained the norm for quite awhile (at least, until civilization ultimately engulfed most of them, too). Most of these networks and settlements were still incredibly egalitarian, as well.
We’re going to return to Mann’s work later, so that we can examine his argument in more detail, look at his sources, and compare his narrative to those of other sociologists and historians. In search of the truth, it’s always important to examine multiple sources and narratives, and to take time to think about why one narrative might be true when compared with another one. I also want to return to this closing concept of the despotic state, and examine Mann’s account surrounding its origins. How did military power emerge out of early democratic-oligarchies, and come to seize permanent authority?
But in the very next article, I want instead to return focus to the earliest and “least caged of human beasts” (as Mann phrases it): the hunter-gatherer. The hunter-gatherer was the human norm for hundreds of thousands of years — and many people still preserve this way of life today. What was life like before the emergence of the state, and for most of human history? What lessons might we learn from peering at the tracks of our ancestors?
Notes
The “Homo” genus, however, has been around for at least about a couple million years (Leakey et al., 2009). We’re going to look at the hunter-gatherer and its derivatives in specific detail in the next article, so for now I gloss over them in favor of discussing the state. Mann’s Sources of Social Power, Vol. 1 is the source used for the remainder of this article. You might note that 2/7 discussed cases is a huge statistical deviation in a very small sample size. Unfortunately, there is no way to create a larger sample size for “pristine civilizations”, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to explain their development with models. We use the “case study” method of sociology and simply keep in mind our limitations. Mann goes into some of the deviations from his model — discussing each of the seven cases in their unique contexts — and explains why they might have occurred, in Chapter 4. I say “seven” even though he names “six probable cases”, because he actually includes Minoan Crete in his analysis, despite his skepticism. Contrast this with David Priestland’s narrative in Merchant, Soldier, Sage, which places emphasis on the first states being largely military. We’ll discuss this later; actually, Priestland’s and Mann’s accounts may not differ as much as it seems.
Sources
1. Mann, Michael (2005). The Sources of Social Power, Vol. 1: A history of power from the beginning to A.D. 1760. Cambridge University Press: New York. (Original publication 1986). | https://medium.com/power-lines/a-perfect-recipe-for-a-state-how-rivers-and-cages-birthed-civilization-6e66ae2cbe2c | ['Haley Kynefin'] | 2019-03-27 03:00:21.327000+00:00 | ['Power', 'Sociology', 'History', 'Government', 'Civilization'] |
Buddhism is transmitted to Japan | From Kudara to Japan
Buddhism was introduced to Japan in 552, when a Buddha statue and “Kyoron” (a Buddhist scripture) from Kudara (now the Korean Peninsula) were dedicated to the 29th Emperor Kinmei. It is written in a Japanese historical site called “Nihon Shoki”.
At that time, Shinto was the only teaching in Japan, of course, but Smallpox spread. Politics has become unstable. Knowing that China and other countries that adopted Buddhism are evolving, a debate arose in Japan about whether to spread Buddhism.
https://shrinesandtemples.com/292/
Soga-shi and Mononobe-Shi
Soga-shi and Mononobe-Shi discussed whether to spread Buddhism.
However, Soga-shi, who accepts Buddhism approval, and Mononobe-Shi, who disapprove Buddhism, deepened the conflict.
There was a battle succeeding Emperor Yomei of the thirty-first generation. At that time, Monobe-shi died. The death of Monobe-shi triggered the religion of Buddhism.
Shotoku Taishi joined the army defeating Mononobe-shi, at which time Buddhism spread. Shotoku Taishi has established Hokkoji and Horyuji Temples.
In addition, the spread of Confucianism and the Article 17 Constitution (indicating the moral norms of bureaucrats and aristocrats), which contained many Buddhist ideas, had a deep connection and great influence with the imperial family .
https://shrinesandtemples.com/326/ | https://medium.com/@shrinesandtemples/buddhism-is-transmitted-to-japan-b21e0a503a53 | ['Osamyu Dazi'] | 2020-12-21 12:12:16.994000+00:00 | ['Temple', 'Buddism', 'Japan', 'Shrine', 'World Heritage Site'] |
Ebisu’s Bay — NFT Rarity. Rarity determines how rare a NFT is by… | Rarity determines how rare a NFT is by mathematically processing the scarcity of the NFT’s traits. The scarcer the traits are the rarer the NFT is and from this a ranking system can be implemented to assist NFT collectors in determining which NFTs may hold more value. This subsequently increases demand which more often causes the price to go up.
For example, CROSkulls, consist of 6666 NFTs. Of the 6666 collection, 314 of them have the holographic background which means 4.7105% of them have this trait. All traits have their own rarity and demonstrated via a percentage. From these percentages a ‘Rarity Rank’ can be developed to also assist NFT collectors which is rarer than the others to help them determine value.
At Ebisu’s Bay we are quick to support our partners in their needs. NFT launches can be stressful and very time consuming. CROSkull had a very successful launch selling out in less than six hours of public minting. During the chaotic excitement of the launch Ebisu’s Bay was able to support CROSkull with providing a rarity ranking system as a service and at breakneck speed. As a result, the CROSkull team and their community provided positive feedback which motivates us to continue providing a proficient service and supporting the Cronos ecosystem and it’s NFT enthusiasts.
Additionally, we will work with the projects to tweak the rankings to perfect it to their needs. For example, we can add weightings to the trait types and values and use other formulas if necessary.
For any enquires feel free to contact us via our social feeds or directly with our competent team in Discord.
Website: EbisusBay.com
Discord: EbisusBay Discord
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ebisusbay | https://medium.com/@ebisusbay/ebisus-bay-nft-rarity-c1e6ad1b60b8 | [] | 2021-12-31 08:33:55.040000+00:00 | ['Nft Marketplace', 'Ebisusbay', 'Cryptocom', 'Cronos', 'Nft'] |
Stop Shoulding Yourself | Yes, you read that right. Stop shoulding yourself.
Have you ever felt yourself caught up in the expectations and judgements of others? I know I certainly have.
Maybe your parents or extended family have ideas of who you should become, or your romantic partner has expectations of how you should show up for them, or your friends continually tell you how you should behave to be accepted by others.
The problem with shoulding ourselves is that when we focus on what we “should” be doing, or who we “should” be, we are often times listening to outside opinions over everything else. When this happens, we ultimately get lost in the noise of everyone else’s voices, while simultaneously drowning out our own.
This may look like accepting the safest career instead of creating a life in the pursuit of our dreams. It could mean that we fall into marriage and parenthood too early, when instead we wanted to travel the world in our youth. It could look like a child who is shunned for being “too loud” or “too silly” or “too bossy” instead of being coached and encouraged to be their authentic selves in a kind and loving way.
Continually shoulding ourselves put us on the road toward settling, based on the perceptions of others. Listening to our inner voice allows us to journey down the path that leads to creating the life of our dreams.
As philosopher Cooley famously said, “I am not who you think I am; I am not who I think I am; I am who I think you think I am.”
Just let that sink in for a moment.
How many of us are living a perception of a perception of ourselves? Our identities are made up by what our parents, our teachers, our schools, all thought we “should” be.
When we worry about how others perceive us, we fall into the trap of shoulding ourselves. We start saying that we “should” do something or we “should” be someone when we have lost our identity and become overly concerned about what others think of us.
(Huge shoutout to the incredible Jay Shetty for incessantly sharing this wisdom.)
We must listen to our inner voice.
We must take the time each and every day to cultivate a relationship with ourselves. Otherwise, the advice, caring words of concern, straight up judgements or misunderstandings, and feedback from others, will become more than that. Over time, without cultivating our inner-knowing, these voices will become our guides, pulling us in all different directions. We may even become dependent on the voices and validation of others; thereby giving our power away to others.
Our inner voice is the one we need to value most. Our relationship with ourself is the most important relationship we will ever have.
Once we have developed this loving relationship with ourselves, then we can expose ourselves to as many experiences, teachers, mentors, and ideas as possible until we can find what our true calling is. That is how we find our purpose.
It’s time we start teaching children to honor and love themselves. It’s time we start teaching children how to cultivate their inner voice.
It’s time we start unlearning the unproductive and hurtful messages we have adopted about ourselves from other people, from childhood through adult life.
It’s time we allow each and every single individual to beautifully thrive as they were always meant to.
When we stop shoulding ourselves, and each other, we create space for all of us to maximize our full potential, discover our passions, and work together for the betterment of this world. | https://medium.com/@caitlin-lynch/stop-shoulding-yourself-60a3d539547 | ['Caitlin Lynch'] | 2020-12-21 02:14:18.638000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Relationships', 'Spirituality', 'Education', 'Education Reform'] |
The One Habit Great Leaders Adapt — Even If They Dislike | Q2 — Addiction
“We are addicted to our thoughts. We cannot change anything if we cannot change our thinking.” ― Santosh Kalwar
© Shashi Kulkarni — 2020
Daniel Radcliffe, who played Harry Potter in the famous film series, and became a world-famous star, says this about his drinking habit:
“I was living in constant fear of who I’d meet, what I might have said to them, what I might have done with them, so I’d stay in my apartment for days and drink alone. I was a recluse at 20. It was pathetic — it wasn’t me. I’m a fun, polite person, and it turned me into a rude bore.” ~Daniel Radcliffe
Addiction can take many different forms. The ones which are commonly well-known in this category are drinking, smoking, vaping, drugs, eating junk food, and the likes.
But many of us are addicted to our phones, our social media personas, and the dopamine we get from the likes and the related notifications through the apps on our phones.
We start watching TV just as only one episode of a famous series and before we know it, we have finished the entire series within a day or two.
We know that these activities of getting up late, too much sugar, having jealousy, or checking our phone every few minutes are not good for us. We still keep doing them because we like them.
These are the activities of quadrant two of Addiction or cravings. They drive us in a downward cycle from where we are.
These activities take most of our time and are mostly non-productive.
These activities should be restricted to only the time which can be called as relaxation, which is necessary to get pumped up again. Those which fall under the criteria of cravings should be closely watched and replaced with eating healthy food only.
The activities which fall under pure addictions, need to be controlled by following mindfulness, meditation, and yogic practices. Many times, some of these addictions will need medical help to get rid of it. | https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/the-one-habit-great-leaders-adapt-even-if-they-dislike-c0906c3560dd | ['Shashi Kulkarni'] | 2020-07-28 17:26:44.412000+00:00 | ['Work', 'Leadership', 'Productivity', 'Technology', 'Business'] |
It’s Okay For LGBT People To Be Afraid In Post Trump America | The elevated visibility of white nationalists and emboldened religious hate groups boasting the endorsement of the Trump Administration has made the streets of America as dangerous for LGBT and people of color since the 1960's.
In New York City, the birthplace of the LGBT movement, the epicenter of pride, the city that celebrates it’s cultural diversity and inclusion, a White Supremacy group known as Proud Boys violently attacked a group of peaceful protesters, hurling anti-gay slurs as they pummeled their victims on the sidewalk in front of a club in Manhattan’s lower East side.
After the vicious attack which injured several bystanders, the alt-right group gathered to take a celebratory photo… and the New York City police department did nothing in response to the attack leaving many asking why. The authorities refuse to provide any answers.
Unite The Right — A White Nationalist Group
Since Trump has taken office, we’ve seen the growing radicalism of his base become increasingly violent. In Charlottesville, a White Supremacist group of Trump Supporters called “Unite The Right” held a rally to demonstrate their intolerance toward LGBT and black communities. There were counter-protesters present, carrying placards and signs condemning the hatred that had shamelessly marched down the streets, parading their bigotry. Unite The Right attendees turned violent and ultimately, a riot ensued wherein they even attacked the police.
Unite The Right Members attack the Police in Charlottesville, NC on August 11 2017
In one of the darkest moments, they brutally beat an black bystander and Neo-Nazi James Fields decided to weaponize his vehicle and plow it into the crowd of protesters that left 32-year-old Heather Heyer dead and dozens more injured.
A year after the deadly attack, Unite The Right boldly applied for- and was granted- a license to hold a second rally on the anniversary of their first; This was intended to celebrate the pain, chaos and death they’d brought to their opposition. They felt they’d won.
In fact, their hate parade spawned hundreds more just like it in backwoods towns and major cities as Alt-Right extremists began developing local branches and offshoot hate groups feeling wildly confident by our Presidents refusal to condemn their racism, bigotry, xenophobia and misogyny. He referred to them as “Some fine people,” effectively providing a presidential stamp of approval.
Indeed, the president and his administration have aligned with well known evangelical based hate groups. Bother the President himself and his VP have given keynote speeches during the Voters Values Summit, a notoriously anti-gay, anti-trans collective of evangelicals who use the conference to preach that homosexuality should be criminalized, trans women are the downfall of society and they pass around shocking propaganda pamphlets. It is the first time that American leaders have shown solidarity with such divisive hate groups.
Some LGBT and people of color are understandably afraid. We have every right to be afraid. The direction that America is going has the potential to have a devastating effect on our communities. Our healthcare will be compromised, given Trump has founded the Division of Religions Freedom and Moral Conscience that will allow medical professionals to refuse us treatment based solely on our sexual orientation or gender identity. Trump has effectively banned the word “Transgender” and “Vulnerable people” from any missives between the White House and the CDC. He has tried multiple times to ban Transgender people from serving in the military. His Zero Tolerance policy resulted in the separation of immigrant families at the border and babies locked in cages.
It is a perfectly reasonable emotional response to be frightened about what the future holds as we approach mid-term elections. Whether or not democrats win the house, the split down the middle of the nation and dramatically opposing world views will likely provoke only more discord and social chaos as the conservative retaliate, likely claiming the results are rigged if they don’t prove favorable. The violence will intensify and the targets that have been painted on the backs of people of color and the LGBT community will only invite more aggression from neo-nazi’s who will be outraged at the prospect of a political loss of power having exposed themselves so unapologetically. They can’t simply disappear again.
We are in danger. Our public safety is on the line. Our ability to thrive in society is being unceremoniously challenged. We’re witnessing, nearly every day, more examples of hate motivated crimes. 2018 has been a record year in murders of Transgender women and of black men killed by police authorities. We have no reason to expect that winning the midterm election will result in a sudden ebbing of such radical and violent behaviors toward our people.
We are not afraid because we are “Snowflakes” or possess a weak nature. We are not afraid because we aren’t being catered to or getting things our way. Our protections have mostly been redacted anyway. We’re afraid because we’re being systematically disenfranchised and subject to cruel and inhumane treatment that is being sanctioned by government leaders. Equality seems to be slipping further away rather than nearer to our grasp. Between anti-trans bathroom bills intended to alienate us by identifying us according to what bathroom we use and Christian adoption agencies preferring children in their care go without loving families rather than be adopted by gay parents, we’re being pushed further to the fringes of society. Our culture is regressing to an era wherein we must live our truths in secret, if only to guarantee our survival in hostile territory.
It is not an exaggeration to say that a culture war has been waged upon us, and the government is on the side of our opponents.
The question is often asked; How do these Christians see Donald Trump as such a paragon of virtue? He’s an adulterer, a habitual liar, his arrogance remains astounding. What has created this unique marriage of interests that warrants the the unwavering support by Christians of a man who is the absolute antithesis of their own values? The answer is simple.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
We are that described enemy.
We have received the messages they are sending loud and clear. There’s nothing wrong for experiencing fear, anger, even feeling anxiety, depression and agitation as we wait to what lies in wait. The seeds of chaos and targeted bigotry have been sewn. We’re watching it happen. Its easy for those who have never been subject to persecution to feel lulled into a privilege of comfort and security, thereby dismiss us as reactionary and irrational when we express our fear. They’re not in our shoes.
They have nothing at risk. There will be no marches down their street intended to protest their existence. There will be no Senators introducing bills that debate their human rights and dignities. This is not their fight, thus the implications are easily rejected.
This is our fight. We haven’t invited it. We’d rather not have to do it. We also understand we have no choice. Again.
We’re standing in the very shoes of those in history who had everything to lose and risked it all anyway…
They didn’t do that just so that we’d had to find ourselves in the same battle half a century later. But, here we are. That’s what we must do…
… And it’s okay to be afraid. | https://phaylen.medium.com/its-okay-for-lgbt-people-to-be-afraid-in-post-trump-america-c7356126a729 | ['Phaylen Fairchild'] | 2018-10-14 17:14:20.369000+00:00 | ['Culture', 'Transgender', 'LGBTQ', 'Equality', 'Media'] |
Tony Hsieh Might Be Alive Today If It Weren’t For The Stigma Around Mental Illness Among Asian-Americans. | By the age of 46, Tony Hsieh had achieved everything a stereotypical Asian-American parent desires for their child: he graduated from Harvard with a degree in computer science, he was the CEO of a multi-billion-dollar online company, he had many friends, and he was seen as a guardian angel by struggling companies during the pandemic that took the world over in 2020.
Tony Hsieh was “a visionary CEO” who focused on “delivering happiness.”
However, his untimely death on November 27-due to injuries sustained in a house fire- revealed that Hsieh also suffered from something else afflicting many Asian-Americans: an untreated mental health illness. Hsieh’s mantra was delivering “happiness” and bringing people and communities together. In that vein, and possibly as a smokescreen to avoid the growing concerns about his mental health, Hsieh moved from Las Vegas to Park City, Utah in the beginning of 2020 to focus on his health and wellness. But once in Park City, his health and wellness slowly deteriorated. When the Covid-19 pandemic made public gatherings and parties in Las Vegas unavailable, Hsieh moved the parties to Park City. He bought nine properties, amassed dozens of hangers-on, and “went out of his way to support local businesses in Park City amid the pandemic, buying out entire restaurant patios for his group. Hsieh spent big money on Covid rapid tests to keep the party going.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjeans/2020/12/11/as-tony-hsieh-is-memorialized-in-vegas-fingers-point-toward-the-park-city-crew/?sh=437089bb4d93
What Hsieh had done in Park City was create a utopia of escapism. His hangers-on moved there ostensibly to “work” for Hsieh, but, from all accounts, took advantage of his wealth and generosity. Hsieh’s drinking and drug use had spiraled out of control in the months leading up to his death, so much so that multiple friends had reached out to authorities because they were concerned for his safety. In June, a friend called 9–1–1 to report that Hsieh was “smashing things and hurting himself.” Fearing for Hsieh’s safety, another friend called 9–1–1 in August to report that Hsieh was very paranoid and abusing nitrous oxide. After the August incident, contact was made with Hsieh’s family who insisted that everything was under control. Three months later, while visiting family for Thanksgiving, Hsieh “either became trapped in the basement during a fire or barricaded himself inside and would not answer the door.” He died nine days later.
In a cruel twist of inevitability, Hsieh died at the hands of fire. He was fascinated by fire. During the many parties at his Park City residence, he would often sit by the fire, alone, and toss candles into the flame. But while fire was the means by which Hsieh died, what actually killed him was an untreated mental health illness; namely, addiction and depression. Why were his obvious signs of addiction and depression not treated properly? Well, one of the main reasons was because Tony Hsieh was Asian-American.
Mental Health America states that “Asian-Americans are the least likely racial group to take actions on their mental health.” Asian-Americans are three times less likely than white Americans to seek mental health services. Asian-American college students are more likely than white students to have thought about and attempted suicide. Unsurprisingly, binge drinking and drug use-two things Hsieh struggled with-are more frequent among Asian-Americans with untreated mental health issues.
Lifting The Generational Stigma Around Therapy Is An Urgent Concern for Asian-American Populations.
There are a few reasons why Asian-Americans seek mental health services at such infrequent rates. First, the Model Minority Myth places immense pressure on Asian-American adults to meet societal, cultural, and familial expectations of success. Second, because many first-generation Asian–Americans, like my parents, experienced trauma in immigrating from conflict-zones, their children often feel shame and guilt in sharing mental health struggles. And lastly, many older Asian-Americans deny or neglect mental health issues, explain symptoms in physical terms rather than physiological ones, and rely on social networks, like churches, when confronted with mental health issues rather than seeking professional help. https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/fighting-stigma-mental-health-among-asian-americans-and-pacific-islanders
More specifically, among the six major Asian-American populations (Vietnamese, Filipino, South Asian, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean), Vietnamese-Americans are the least likely to seek mental health services. It took me almost 40 years of my own life before I sought mental health services. My father passed away one week before my son was born. And with the help of my wife, we decided when our son was born to seek as much help as we needed to break generational traumas. It took me 40 years to accept that I am an addict. It took me 40 years to confront childhood trauma that had informed so much of my behavior previously. It took me 40 years to accept that I could not change certain family members but could only understand why they are the way they are. And I did that by seeking therapy and developing tools to understand my own mental health.
It’s time to lift the stigma around therapy and mental health services among Asian-Americans, especially during Covid when social isolation has exacerbated mental health issues among many people. It does not make you look weak to seek help. It makes you look honest. We can’t bring Tony Hsieh back, but we can learn from his experience. Be well, my friends.
If you or someone you know is feeling especially bad or suicidal, get help right away. You can call 1–800–273-TALK (8255) to reach a 24-hour crisis center or dial 911 for immediate assistance. | https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/tony-hsieh-might-be-alive-today-if-it-werent-for-the-stigma-around-mental-illness-among-f21b37ac575 | ['Dr. Paul Do'] | 2020-12-14 20:49:04.974000+00:00 | ['Addiction', 'Therapy', 'Tony Hsieh', 'Mental Health', 'Asian American'] |
What are the advantages of using lithium batteries for solar powered led street lights? | Solar powered led street lights rely on solar panels to generate electricity during the day, use batteries to store these electrical energy, and power solar powered led street lights at night. There are many types of batteries use in solar powered street lights residential, which are roughly divided into two types of lead-acid batteries and lithium batteries. Each type batteries has its own characteristics, and customers can use their own base on their economy.
The actual situation to choose, the following introduces the advantages of using lithium batteries for solar powered led street lights, what is the difference between lithium battery and lead-acid batteries?
Advantages of solar road lights lithium battery:
1.Adjustable solar panel bracket to maximize light collection;
2.Green and environmental protection;
3. lithium battery installation is convenient to install directly under the solar panel, small size and light weight to reduce construction cost;
4. long service life is 3–5 times that of traditional energy storage lead-acid batteries;
5.anti-high and low temperature can be used in the environment of -20–60, Seiko special process can be used in -45 environment;
6. maintenance-free performance is good.
The biggest disadvantage of lithium-ion batteries for solar road lights is that they are expensive and have a lot of initial investment. However, the life of lithium batteries is longer than that of other batteries. It is easy to recycle this investment for solar powered street lights residential in a short time. | https://medium.com/@masitaiyangneng/what-are-the-advantages-of-using-lithium-batteries-for-solar-powered-led-street-lights-f7d796e67f70 | ['Mars Solar Led Street Light Factory'] | 2019-02-15 01:52:03.324000+00:00 | ['Solar Led Street Light', 'Solar Power Street Light', 'Battery', 'Solar Power', 'Solar Led Light'] |
National Nutrition Month: Improving Your Physical and Mental Health in the Office | March is the perfect time to take a moment to reflect on our health. Winter is still in full swing, and for many, this is when resolutions to exercise more and eat better fall to the wayside. I suspect it’s part of the reason why March is designated as National Nutrition Month.
Research proves that professionals everywhere struggle to find a healthy professional lifestyle, with 53% of all office workers saying that their health is negatively impacted by their workplace. In the daily grind it can be easy to lose sight of what’s important, but only when we are healthy can we be as creative and productive as possible. Whether you’re seeking ways to improve your own health in the office or are trying to help your employees, there are certain tips that have worked wonders for me and my staff.
Start the Day Healthy
We’ve all been there at one time or another. You jump out of bed at the last minute, rush to get ready, and get to work right when the clock hits nine. It creates a rushed feeling that derails your morning and creates a hectic day. That’s why it’s so important to start your day early, and start it right.
For me, that means going to the gym at six every morning. It gets my blood flowing and ensures I’m completely alert and ready to attack the day when I get into the office. For others, it might be reading a book, meditating, tending to a garden, or listening to/playing music (I studied opera for two years and can attest to the power of music in making one feel good!). The key is setting aside that first part of the day for yourself, to find some peace and allow your brain free to wander. I’ve often thought of my best ideas during this time frame.
Starting your day healthy also means starting it early. I’m typically in the office by 7:30 a.m., a solid half hour before most others. This is valuable time where, uninterrupted, I’m able to focus completely on my priorities for the day. I catch up on emails and voicemails, adjust my to-do list, and calmly begin the work day. That first part of my morning is incredibly productive, and sets the right tone that lasts well into the afternoon.
Find Your Charger
Just like our phones, our bodies and minds need time to recharge. When we stretch ourselves too thin, our health takes a hit and our work product suffers. It’s important to remember there is no industry, job, call, meeting, or project as important as your physical, mental, and emotional health.
Everyone recharges differently. It’s often said that introverts feel refreshed by spending time on solo hobbies, while extroverts are energized by being around others. There’s no one right answer. After a long day, some love a true crime binge on Netflix while others plan dinner and drinks with friends. The idea is to find what refreshes you and build it into your day.
For me, watching the Golden State Warriors play basketball, whether on TV after work or at Oracle Arena, is energizing. I’m an avid golfer and love being outside on a gorgeous day. I also look for any opportunity to get inspired, whether it’s watching moving speeches at the Golden Globes, mentoring young girls with big dreams, or volunteering with a stellar local charity. Doing good truly makes me feel good, keeping me motivated and making me better at my job.
Adopt Healthy Office Habits
In addition to starting your day early and in a healthy way, there are many little changes you can build into your work day that add up to improve your health:
· Take the stairs, park far away from the entrance, and go for walks around the building. While 42% of office workers say they don’t have a “breakout area” that they can go to from their desk, these can still help build more activity into the day.
· Use your full lunch break. Don’t be tempted to cut it short, and rather than eat at your desk, seek out a break room, communal area on another floor, picnic table outside, or restaurant down the street.
· Eat healthy. We all can agree that fast food and snacks high in sugar, salt, and fat taste delicious, but we also know what it’s like trying to be productive after eating a huge burger for lunch.
· Take a page from The Guardian and build tiny, 1-minute workouts into your day if possible.
· Get enough sleep. It can be hard when there never seems to be enough hours in the day, but we can’t be at the top of our game without solid sleep.
· Give your eyes a break. Look away from your computer screen regularly, use an app or wear glasses that filter out blue light, and turn your brightness down so your eyes can recharge too.
· Bring nature indoors. It’s scientifically proven that even pictures of trees can calm us, so consider changing your background, bringing in a small plant, or looking out the window more.
· Talk to your supervisor. If you ever feel you’re burning out, have a frank conversation about why you’re so taxed and any good boss will help you plan a better, more sustainable way forward.
Improving Your Health in the Office
It’s great to work hard in the office, but balance is important. Without my morning workouts and personal hobbies, I wouldn’t be nearly as professionally successful as I am today. I also treat myself from time to time and suggest you do as well. March may be National Nutrition Month, but I find it appropriate that it comes directly after National Snack Food Month. As long as you’re making your health a priority in life, go ahead and enjoy your guilty pleasure. Sometimes it’s the best way to recharge yourself.
Whether you’re an employer or a professional, if you want to work with a company that values your health, let’s chat. | https://medium.com/@atr-inter/national-nutrition-month-improving-your-physical-and-mental-health-in-the-office-d5e5a09ec5a2 | ['Atr International'] | 2019-03-18 14:17:54.182000+00:00 | ['Workplace', 'Productivity', 'Workplace Culture', 'Health', 'Healthy Lifestyle'] |
Construction Tech Startups Are Poised To Shake Up A $1.3-Trillion-Dollar Industry | Originally published in TechCrunch on November 17, 2020.
In the wake of COVID-19 this spring, construction sites across the nation emptied out alongside neighboring restaurants, retail stores, offices and other commercial establishments. Debates ensued over whether the construction industry’s seven million employees should be considered “essential,” while regulations continued to shift on the operation of job sites. Meanwhile, project demand steadily shrank.
Amidst the chaos, construction firms faced an existential question: How will they survive? This question is as relevant today as it was in April. As one of the least-digitized sectors of our economy, construction is ripe for technology disruption.
Construction is a massive, $1.3 trillion industry in the United States — a complex ecosystem of lenders, owners, developers, architects, general contractors, subcontractors and more. While each construction project has a combination of these key roles, the construction process itself is highly variable depending on the asset type. Roughly 41% of domestic construction value is in residential property, 25% in commercial property and 34% in industrial projects. Because each asset type, and even subassets within these classes, tends to involve a different set of stakeholders and processes, most construction firms specialize in one or a few asset groups.
Regardless of asset type, there are four key challenges across construction projects:
High fragmentation: Beyond the developer, architect, engineer and general contractor, projects could involve hundreds of subcontractors with specialized expertise. As the scope of the project increases, coordination among parties becomes increasingly difficult and decision-making slows.
Poor communication: With so many different parties both in the field and in the office, it is often difficult to relay information from one party to the next. Miscommunication and poor project data accounts for 48% of all rework on U.S. construction job sites, costing the industry over $31 billion annually according to FMI research.
Lack of data transparency: Manual data collection and data entry are still common on construction sites. On top of being laborious and error-prone, the lack of real-time data is extremely limited, therefore decision-making is often based on outdated information.
Skilled labor shortage: The construction workforce is aging faster than the younger population that joins it, resulting in a shortage of labor particularly for skilled trades that may require years of training and certifications. The shortage drives up labor costs across the industry, particularly in the residential sector, which traditionally sees higher attrition due to its more variable project demand.
A construction tech boom
Too many of the key processes involved in managing multimillion-dollar construction projects are carried out on Excel or even with pen and paper. The lack of tech sophistication on construction sites materially contributes to job delays, missed budgets and increased job site safety risk. Technology startups are emerging to help solve these problems.
Image Credits: Bain Capital Ventures
Here are the main categories in which we’re seeing construction tech startups emerge.
1. Project conception
How it works today: During a project’s conception, asset owners and/or developers develop site proposals and may work with lenders to manage the project financing.
During a project’s conception, asset owners and/or developers develop site proposals and may work with lenders to manage the project financing. Key challenges: Processes for managing construction loans are cumbersome and time intensive today given the complexity of the loan draw process.
Processes for managing construction loans are cumbersome and time intensive today given the complexity of the loan draw process. How technology can address challenges: Design software such as Spacemaker AI can help developers create site proposals, while construction loan financing software such as Built Technologies and Rabbet are helping lenders and developers manage the draw process in a more efficient manner.
2. Design and engineering
How it works today: Developers work with design, architect and engineering teams to turn ideas into blueprints.
Developers work with design, architect and engineering teams to turn ideas into blueprints. Key challenges: Because the design and engineering teams are often siloed from the contractors, it’s hard for designers and engineers to know the real-time impact of their decisions on the ultimate cost or timing of the project. Lack of coordination with construction teams can lead to time-consuming changes.
Because the design and engineering teams are often siloed from the contractors, it’s hard for designers and engineers to know the real-time impact of their decisions on the ultimate cost or timing of the project. Lack of coordination with construction teams can lead to time-consuming changes. How technology can address challenges: Of all the elements of the construction process, the design and engineering process itself is the most technologically sophisticated today, with relatively high adoption of software like Autodesk to help with design documentation, specification development, quality assurance and more. Autodesk is moving downstream to offer a suite of solutions that includes construction management, providing more connectivity between the teams.
3. Pre-construction
How it works today: Pre-construction is the translation of designs into highly detailed, executable construction plans. This includes many subprocesses such as finding labor, bid management, takeoff estimation and scheduling.
Pre-construction is the translation of designs into highly detailed, executable construction plans. This includes many subprocesses such as finding labor, bid management, takeoff estimation and scheduling. Key challenges: The pre-construction process is highly complex, yet one of the least digitized elements of the construction process. Subjective decision-making and Excel sheets still drive most of pre-construction, which makes it both time-consuming and difficult to update with new requests or changes.
The pre-construction process is highly complex, yet one of the least digitized elements of the construction process. Subjective decision-making and Excel sheets still drive most of pre-construction, which makes it both time-consuming and difficult to update with new requests or changes. How technology can address challenges: Marketplaces like Sweeten help connect contractors to projects, while digital workflow platforms like SmartBid and Building Connected help general contractors reduce the time and administrative burden of managing complex bid processes. Solutions like Alice Technologies take a predictive approach, using machine learning to optimize productivity.
4. Construction execution
How it works today: The execution of a construction project is usually performed by a combination of a general contractor’s in-house labor and/or trade-specific subcontractors. Even simple builds may require dozens of contractors.
The execution of a construction project is usually performed by a combination of a general contractor’s in-house labor and/or trade-specific subcontractors. Even simple builds may require dozens of contractors. Key challenges: With so much complexity on the physical job site, it is difficult for contractors to get a sense of real-time progress. Decision-making is more often reactionary than proactive, and it is hard for contractors to assess the full downstream impacts of each decision.
With so much complexity on the physical job site, it is difficult for contractors to get a sense of real-time progress. Decision-making is more often reactionary than proactive, and it is hard for contractors to assess the full downstream impacts of each decision. How technology can address challenges: There are several software-led approaches to managing execution complexity, including field management tools like Rhumbix, on-site safety management software like Safesite, or site-visualization tools like Openspace, OnSiteIQ or Smartvid.io. Other companies have taken a full-stack approach to disrupting the construction process. Mosaic, for example, uses proprietary software to turn construction plans into detailed manuals that allow a build to be performed with fewer, less specialized laborers.
5. Post-construction
How it works today: Even before the build is completed, contractors will start preparation of operating manuals, inspections and testing, close-out documentation and other tasks to prepare the asset for turnover.
Even before the build is completed, contractors will start preparation of operating manuals, inspections and testing, close-out documentation and other tasks to prepare the asset for turnover. Key challenges: Document management, reporting and handover can be time-consuming, as it involves coordination across all parties involved with the build.
Document management, reporting and handover can be time-consuming, as it involves coordination across all parties involved with the build. How technology can address challenges: Most commonly, project management tools will offer a module to help manage this process, though some targeted solutions like Pype or Buildr focus on digitizing the closeout process.
6. Construction management and operations
How it works today: Construction management and operations teams manage the end-to-end project, with functions such as document management, data and insights, accounting, financing, HR/payroll, etc.
Construction management and operations teams manage the end-to-end project, with functions such as document management, data and insights, accounting, financing, HR/payroll, etc. Key challenges: The complexity of the job site translates to highly complex and burdensome paperwork associated with each project. Managing the process requires communication and alignment across many stakeholders.
The complexity of the job site translates to highly complex and burdensome paperwork associated with each project. Managing the process requires communication and alignment across many stakeholders. How technology can address challenges: The nuances of the multistakeholder construction process merit value in a verticalized approach to managing the project. Construction management tools like Procore, Hyphen Solutions and IngeniousIO have created ways for contractors to coordinate and track the end-to-end process more seamlessly. Other players like Levelset have taken a construction-specific approach to functions like invoice management and payments.
Key barriers holding back construction tech
It’s no secret the construction industry has been slow to innovate. Despite the advancement of heavy machinery, drone technology and computer vision, construction productivity per worker has barely changed for decades. Today, the majority of construction firms spend less than 2% of annual sales volume on IT, according to the 2019 JB Knowledge Construction Technology Report). Yet technology has the potential to help firms save significantly across other cost categories like overhead labor, materials and construction labor, so why have construction firms been so slow to adopt technology?
First, the fragmentation and complexity of so many involved parties creates complexity around the ultimate decision to adopt new solutions. Construction projects are the ultimate example of “too many cooks in the kitchen.” It can be hard to pinpoint a single decision-maker among the owner, general contractor and subcontractors involved. On top of that, there are often misaligned incentives, as a product’s end user is likely different than the party that ultimately bears the cost.
Second, many firms have an aversion toward adopting point solutions, which most existing products are today. With very lean technology teams, it can be burdensome for construction companies to integrate new solutions. Because of this, most construction firms shy away from solutions that only serve one workflow, as potential productivity benefits are often offset by the time and effort required to set up the software and train teams how to use it.
Lastly, many construction firms have a low risk tolerance given the heavy liabilities associated with building projects, therefore they lack a culture of innovation. Some firms, however, are beginning to change this. Firms like Suffolk and Turner Construction have dedicated chief innovation officers to evaluate and implement construction technology.
Turning the corner on tech adoption
Just as incumbents in industries like financial services and real estate came to embrace innovation over time, we believe that now more so than ever, construction companies will begin to embrace construction technology at an accelerated rate — not because they want to, but because they have to. One of the primary problems facing the construction industry is a labor shortage, so firms across the industry must deploy new technologies to increase productivity amid an ever-shrinking workforce.
Recessions of the past have taught us that construction jobs tend to come back much slower than construction volume. This is evident particularly after the 2008 Great Recession. Construction volume (measured by overall project value) returned to its pre-2008 peak in about five years, while construction jobs had still not fully recovered even a decade later. With the rise of the gig economy, construction laborers — both existing and potential — have an increasing number of alternative job options, many with similar pay and more stable hours. For that reason, the construction labor force is aging quickly, with fewer young people joining the industry.
Since COVID-19 took hold in the United States this spring, it reinforced the pressure for construction companies to improve productivity. Mandated shutdowns cut nearly one million construction jobs in April 2020, and while many have returned to work, BLS data shows that September 2020 construction employment is still lower than February 2020 levels by 394,000 jobs. Nearly five years of construction job gains were wiped out in one month, and if the industry behaves anything like prior recessions, it will take many years to fully recover.
To remain competitive, improving productivity is a necessity for construction firm’s long-term survival, and adoption of construction technology solutions is one of the ways to do so. Much like how COVID accelerated tech adoption in industries like retail and banking, we expect to see construction companies accelerate adoption of software that helps them turn manual processes into digital, cloud-based workflows.
While perhaps simple in theory, this shift from pen and paper to mobile devices is a large undertaking that requires retraining entire workforces. Construction workers are extremely skilled in their crafts and learn on the job from their mentors. Skilled laborers are often resistant to change, preferring age-old and tried-and-true methods such as paper, pen, string and tape measures. But almost everyone is now comfortable with mobile applications, so construction workers are likely at a point where they’ll be ready to jump into the digital world. Once construction firms make a digital shift, they will unlock a treasure trove of data and analytics. We’re excited for the next phase of construction technology, where firms can use data-driven insights to make better decisions that reduce costs, improve productivity, streamline projects and increase worker safety.
We already see startups beginning to enable this digital shift across all phases of the construction process. Whether it’s pre-construction plans optimized by Alice Technologies’ predictive intelligence platform, or real-time progress tracking visualized through OpenSpace’s onsite capture images, as investors, we’re bullish on the next wave of construction tech companies. | https://medium.com/ideas-from-bain-capital-ventures/construction-tech-startups-are-poised-to-shake-up-a-1-3-trillion-dollar-industry-9aab629e570a | ['Allison Xu'] | 2020-12-02 17:03:55.939000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Innovation', 'Insights', 'Construction Tech', 'Construction'] |
The Brilliant Life of Madeleine Brazeau | A speech in honour of my beautiful mother, read at her memorial ceremony on December 8, 2019.
My mother and I the day after I graduated from my master’s in May 2019.
I want to thank everyone for being here. Here for me, here for my family and here for my mother, Madeleine.
My mother kept a diary of her most private thoughts, not in a journal, but on loose leaf paper. She wrote about her dreams, feelings and secrets mostly on three-hole punch lined paper, which my aunt later found scattered in her apartment in Prince George, BC. Her elegant handwriting spelled beautiful and painful words. On one page, she said she preferred to write on loose sheets of paper, because writing in a journal was constricting — the words would eventually fill up all the pages and come to an end. I think this might be the best metaphor for my mother’s life: independent, poetic, messy, beautiful and brilliant. She was true to herself. She didn’t like people questioning her choices or trying to tell her how to live her life. She did things her own way. And if you didn’t like it, well — that’s your problem.
She was fiercely stubborn. It was both one of my favourite and least favourite things about her. No one stood a chance against Madeleine. That’s what made her a good advocate. She was my advocate. When I was diagnosed with a rare chronic liver disease, she made sure I had everything I needed to succeed, and made sure I had a normal childhood, which included being at school.
She was incredibly intelligent, my grandparents said she was a genius. When my mom was four-years-old she told my grandmother she wanted to go to school. At the time there was no junior or senior kindergarten, just Grades 1 to 13. My grandmother told my mother if she wanted to go to school she had to go sign herself up. And that’s what she did. She walked right over to the school, not far from her home, and signed herself up for Grade 1, telling the teacher she was six-years-old. For months she attended school and teachers would send home notes asking for her birth certificate to prove her age. My grandmother kept putting it off until it was the end of the year and the school gave up and let her continue her studies, so the story goes. When I first heard this, I thought: there’s no way this can be true. But then I remembered who we were talking about. Perhaps certain details of the story have changed with time, and we will never know. But, to be honest, it sounds exactly like something she would do.
When she turned 60, she decided she wanted to go on a pilgrimage in Spain called the Camino de Santiago. Her doctor warned her about her knee; they would need to replace it before going on the trip. But she got on a plane instead. She travelled alone and it was her first time across the pond. She walked the Camino at her own pace, sometimes taking the bus when it was too difficult. But she made it. She got her Compostela, the name of the certificate pilgrims receive when they’ve walked at least 100 kilometres. She was so proud of herself. I am proud of her. She followed her heart fearlessly. One of my favourite stories of hers from her trip was when she was walking around in a small town in France and turned a corner and bumping into a woman. “Excuse moi!” my mother said. The woman was puzzled by her accent and my mom explained she was French-Canadian. “Votre français est excellent!” the woman replied condescendingly. “Vous aussi!” my mom said. The woman’s jaw dropped. I love how proud she was of our culture.
Le bon Dieu gave her a loud voice, she would always say. And all it took to instill the fear of God into me was for her to say my name, with a French-Canadian intonation: “Olivia Blackmore”.
Her actions were as powerful as her voice. I remember when I was about to move back home after I finished my first year of university, and she asked me if I was OK with her friend sleeping on our couch until they got back on their feet. I was a little uncomfortable. Who was this person? They were a friend she met in the dog park behind our apartment on Wellesley. A gay man, who had fallen on hard times and didn’t have a place to go. She said when our friends need help, we step up for them. It is the right thing to do. We take care of our friends. This lesson stuck with me.
During her final days, she laid in bed at the Prince George Hospice, half her face paralyzed by the stroke she had a few days before. When I first arrived on November 4th, the nurses told me they lowered the dose of her medication so she would be more aware of my presence. When I first entered the room she was asleep. She awoke a few hours later and I spoke to her. “Je t’aime, maman”, I said. And from the left corner of her lips, I saw a bit of a smile. She knew I was there. Nurses told me that her hearing would be the last thing to go. Keeping that in mind, I read to her every night before she passed.
I want to share a passage from the book I read to her the day before she died. It’s written by Richard Wagamese, an Ojibway author, from his book called Embers. This passage is a dialogue between the author and an old woman.
“Sometimes, when things are hardest, it feels like Creator is not listening,” the author says.
“Creator can do whatever Creator chooses. When we are in doubt or confusion or fear, She could send us thunderbolts, or lightning, or a huge pile of unexpected cash. But most of the time, She sends people. People are the miracles that emerge from the ripped and worn pattern of your life and help you stitch it back together. You learn to see the pattern better then,” the old woman replies.
As I look out at all of you here today, I see this passage is true and with your love and friendship, I will stitch my life back together.
One of the hardest parts of losing my mom is using words in the past tense when I speak about her. Has is now had, is is now was, but one word doesn’t feel quite right. Loved. Sure, she loved sewing, she loved knitting, she loved watching CNN. But she continues — very much in present tense — to love me. Because as long as I keep being a good friend, having integrity and loving as hard as I can, she will always be alive. This is how I honour her.
Two years ago she packed up her car and drove to Prince George for a one year teaching contract. She was 65. For those who know my mom, this was no surprise. She was an adventurer. After one year, her contract was renewed and she decided to stay. She fell in love with the mountains. A few months later, I moved to Halifax, and fell in love with the ocean. I believe it was the same love of adventure that brought us to the East and West coasts. Because we both found happiness on opposite sides of the country, our relationship grew stronger. The last year and a half, we had time to reconcile, forgive, love each other and say goodbye — a privilege not many are given.
Just like her life, my mother’s death was complicated. She didn’t want anyone to know she was dying. Especially, me. She knew for months and hid it well. She told me it took her a long time to admit it to herself. But deep down, I always knew she was keeping something from me. She wanted to protect me. And I worried anyway. I worried about her even before she was diagnosed with cancer. I am devastated by her death, but I can’t help but feel some relief. She is no longer suffering. I no longer have to worry. And I can just love her. | https://medium.com/@oliviablackmore/the-brilliant-life-of-madeleine-brazeau-dbf143d793bc | ['Olivia Blackmore'] | 2019-12-09 15:25:36.759000+00:00 | ['Love', 'Grief', 'Grief And Loss', 'Camino De Santiago', 'Mothers'] |
‘Stablecoins Are Killing It’ Ep. #24— Thursday, Dec. 10, 1–2pm EST; Implications Of The STABLE Act | Click here to register for the show on zoom
On Dec. 2, U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib introduced the Stablecoin, Tethering and Bank Licensing Enforcement (STABLE) Act, to
… protect consumers from the risks posed by emerging digital payment instruments, such as Facebook’s Libra and other Stablecoins currently offered in the market, by regulating their issuance and related commercial activities. Digital currencies, whose value is permanently pegged to or stabilized against a conventional currency like the dollar, pose new regulatory challenges while also represent a growing source of the market, liquidity, and credit risk.
The proposed legislation claims that Facebook, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Apple Inc. and other corporations are considering issuing their own stablecoins, and the future of digital payments is at risk of being controlled by Wall Street and Silicon Valley.
The bill would require stablecoin issuers to obtain a banking charter; as well as approval from the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., and the appropriate banking agency six months prior to its issuance.
While the legislation is designed to protect consumers from the risks posed by emerging digital payment instruments, many crypto industry thought leaders believe that the bill would thwart innovation and give even greater power to incumbent financial institutions.
In a post tiled “The Unintended(?) Consequences of the STABLE Act,” Coin Center’s research director Peter Van Valkenburgh wrote:
Centralized stablecoins aside, the bill is a disaster with regard to decentralized applications like Maker Dao, as well as a disaster for the larger innovation-enabling platforms, like Ethereum, on which those applications run.
We have two experts on the call who will discuss the driving forces behind the STABLE Act, what they hope to achieve, and what the bill will actually accomplish if passed.
We’ll also discuss the odds of it receiving approval, the true systemic risks of stablecoins, and what the alternatives are for regulating stablecoins in the United States.
Click here to register for the show on zoom
Our featured speakers for Episode #24:
Reuben Bramanathan, crypto industry consultant —After spending more than seven years practicing law, Bramanathan joined Coinbase, in 2015, as product counsel, before becoming product lead of Coinbase Asset Management. Reuben left Coinbase in 2019, and he has since been advising a variety of crypto projects, largely in the DeFi space.
Dave Hendricks, CEO of Vertalo — an SEC-registered digital transfer agent that provides cap table and share registry services for digital and tokenized assets. Prior to founding Vertalo in early 2017, Dave cofounded LiveIntent, a NY-based identity management platform. Dave started his career at accounting firm Arthur Andersen, then worked on real estate securitization at a Goldman Sachs joint venture, and led the global partnership between Oracle Corporation and Arthur Andersen.
If you thought this was worth at least .000001 Bitcoin, PLEASE thank us by clapping below (up to 50 times). Thx!
This content is for educational purposes only. It does not constitute trading advice. Past performance does not indicate future results. Do not invest more than you can afford to lose. The author of this article may hold assets mentioned in the piece.
If you found this content engaging, and have an interest in commissioning content of your own, check out Quantum Economics’ Analysis on Demand service. | https://medium.com/quantum-economics/stablecoins-are-killing-it-ep-afbde2ff736c | ['Lou Kerner'] | 2020-12-08 19:01:00.131000+00:00 | ['Stablecoin Cryptocurrency', 'Ethereum', 'Bitcoin', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Stable Coin'] |
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