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Team Update | We are delighted to announce and welcome Vincent Dsouza our technical adviser to the team.
Vincent is a Cloud Computing and Blockchain Specialist.
He is an accomplished IT professional with 16+ years of experience in the roles of lead solution architect, technical consultant, pre-sales/business development, service delivery, hands-on deployment in IT Infrastructure Management Services, Cloud Solutions and Blockchain Services.
Vincents’ expertise includes IT Infrastructure Management tools, Cloud Solutions (migration services) and Data Center migration services.
Vincent is certified in IBM Blockchain, AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, IoT, Bigdata, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.
For more details on our Private sale please visit www.YourDataSafe.io | https://medium.com/your-data-safe/team-update-b72c8c020417 | ['Your Data Safe'] | 2018-09-04 19:45:41.820000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Crypto', 'Data', 'Cloud Computing', 'Microsoft'] |
Daily Vaccination Rates of Chicago Residents | Daily number of vaccines being administered to Chicago residents
Over a year has passed since the COVID-19 outbreak surfaced in the U.S. and Americans have gone from feeling anxious and uncertain to relatively optimistic. With the development of vaccines for the virus in the past several months, millions of people have been able to get vaccinated. This includes thousands of Chicago residents.
According to an analysis, which used data provided by City of Chicago Data Portal of the daily number of vaccines that were given to Chicago residents, the number of vaccines has fluctuated to a great extent. Total number of daily vaccines in Chicago since December 2020 are shown here:
View the interactive chart
Starting in mid-December of 2020, only 7 doses were administered. However, in just three days, the number of daily doses jumped to nearly 6,000. Two days later, it went down to 900 doses. This fluctuation continued on throughout the rest of the month and for all the future months to come.
Vaccination rates in Chicago seemed to be at an all-time high in the early spring of this year, reaching 40,000 doses on April 4th; Chicago’s highest overall daily number of administered shots. With summer only a few months away, people were eager to get vaccinated so that they could enjoy the activities, social gatherings, and outings that they were not able to experience during the previous summer.
Interestingly, however, vaccination rates in Chicago from May up until now are lower compared to early spring. This could be a result of people not being able to get vaccinated or having trouble finding the time to have it done. Whatever the case may be, it is likely that by the end of June, thousands more Chicagoans will be vaccinated. As the analysis has shown, vaccination rates in Chicago tend to fluctuate frequently, so the numbers are bound to increase again soon. | https://medium.com/@kvaugh7/daily-vaccination-rates-of-chicago-residents-17cfa866afa7 | ['Kayla Vaughn'] | 2021-06-08 05:23:29.649000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Vaccines', 'Chicago'] |
Membuat Color Picker berdasarkan Gambar dalam aplikasi iOS | 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/dipantry/membuat-color-picker-berdasarkan-gambar-dalam-aplikasi-ios-2642bea4d81a | ['Auriga Aristo'] | 2020-12-22 03:02:25.490000+00:00 | ['Colors', 'Swift', 'Image', 'Color Picker', 'iOS'] |
App Directory Spotlight #4 — Todo, Statsbot & Leo | Welcome back to our app directory spotlight. We have a particularly awesome set of apps for you this time around. So you can stay abreast, we rotate featured apps every two weeks. It’s a GIF and video filled spotlight this week, so check out these apps and add them to your Slack!
/todo is an incredibly useful todo list for you and your Slack team that lives entirely within Slack. I bet when you first used Slack you wondered how you could manage tasks; /todo is your answer! It’s so easy to use, add it to your Slack right now and just start playing around. You can create your own todo list, assign todos to others or create a todo list for a channel — especially useful if you’re doing a project with a team. Even cooler, /todo is built by Guillermo Gette, an individual developer based in Australia! Check it out and install it here: http://www.zlapps.com/todo.
Statsbot allows you to pipe your team’s analytics data straight into Slack! It is your in-house data guru, the bot user for all of your analytics questions. Statsbot connects to Google Analytics, New Relic and Mixpanel. We have our own internal analytics bot that we use heavily here at Slack and suggest connecting Slack to your business analytics if you haven’t yet. The Statsbot team is aiming to eventually build an AI powered decision support system in Slack for SMBs — so follow them if you’re interested in this kind of thing! You can try Statsbot here: http://statsbot.co/
Leo, the Officevibe Bot, helps you figure out your workplace mojo. Leo asks employees anonymous questions about their experience at work and then shares to managers in a private channel. It also prompts employees to encourage one another and to go have fun! There’s a lot we could say about Leo but we’d rather share the Officevibe team’s video on how they decided to build Leo. Video below, to learn about Leo go here https://www.officevibe.com/slack. | https://medium.com/slack-developer-blog/app-directory-spotlight-4-todo-statsbot-leo-3b9098c0227c | ['Slack Api'] | 2016-04-08 06:03:31.544000+00:00 | ['App Directory', 'Slack', 'Productivity'] |
Is the silicon power base shifting? The value of ecosystem, tax and talent. | As I grab coffee this morning, I wonder… the value of ecosystem for next generation of high growth tech startups that look to transform services that we consume. Especially in light of the possible hub shift from silicon bay to silicon hills.
Coffee this morning is Ethiopian medium roast beans. Location is rooftop somewhere in Botswana.
Silicon Valley has been a hub of entrepreneurship for decades with the birth of HP in Palo Alto, Intel and IBM alike, followed by the scaling of the FAANG. The environment created by the pool of talent, entrepreneurs, investors and advisors are now leaving the area and Silicon Valley is no longer the top consideration as the go to place to set up a high tech transformation businesses. The cost of living and tax has taken the balance out triggering many tech leaders to consider alternatives across US. The new ways of working during the pandemic was the last nail.
Talent being the key attraction of the Bay area was driven by universities, Stanford being one of the huge talent generator who then join the high tech companies, in the last decade the rise of web tech companies created their own system to generate talent proving that it is possible to set this up elsewhere.
We started to pay attention when Elon announced his move to Texas, the likes or HP and Oracle have decided to move along with many others to join the bustling Texas tech scene. Speaking to a friend recently, the state has seen a steady growth of angel networks and incubators in the last few years.
The value of ecosystem is critical for growing high tech companies. The pandemic has shown the co-location is not mandatory and certain beliefs have been broken and proven wrong. According to a recent poll – 61% of the respondents said that they would follow tech leaders to emerging tech hubs if they were to relocate – 58% of the respondents worked at FAANG.
The ecosystem will require the money (VCs, Bankers) and other entrepreneurial services infrastructure to be available, such as lawyers, accountants and incubators.
To my knowledge, other popular hubs can include cities in Canada, India, Vietnam, China, Estonia and other European nations that offer the infrastructure, visas and talent for the upcoming high growth startups that are digitally transforming services that we use. I know that UK is continuing to put in serious efforts to grow the entrepreneurial infrastructure services and is well regarded ecosystem for launching and scaling Fintechs.
Where else could be the new tech hubs in the world? | https://medium.com/@karanjainonline/is-the-silicon-power-base-shifting-the-value-of-ecosystem-tax-and-talent-1c27620eb0c6 | ['Karan Jain'] | 2020-12-23 08:47:00.609000+00:00 | ['Ecosystem', 'Digital Transformation', 'Fintech'] |
Attic Lab Contribution to the EOS Blockchain | During these years of company operations, we have put many efforts in the development and support of many blockchain technologies. Experience of our tech-savvy blockchain specialists has laid a strong foundation for change across many projects, and we are proud to be a part of it. Having comprehensive experience obtained while working in the banking and cryptocurrency industries has allowed us to create a staking service Everstake, which contributes time and knowledge to build what communities need.
In this recap, you will find detailed information on how we strive to improve the existing blockchain space across such projects as EOS, BOS, and Talos. Moreover, you will discover many working solutions created by Attic Lab and Everstake that help communities interacting with these technologies. Enjoy!
EOS Contribution And Block Producing
Attic Lab is on the mission to contribute and develop new tools for all network participants and also to maintain the block producing at a decent level. Our contribution includes the open-source software, education initiatives, translations, plugins, computational resources aid, as well as for analytics tools. And here’s the shortlist of what we have accomplished so far for the EOS community:
MyEOSwallet — a truly secure and reliable wallet that allows storing, sending, receiving and delegating EOS. It is also available both for iOS and Android.
Offline Voter — a tool that helps to vote for block producers being offline.
Munin — set of plugins which help to monitor the RAM, CPU and Bandwidth usage of EOS nodes and accounts
EOS CPU Aid — you never know when you will need additional resources to perform actions on the EOS blockchain. Now you can have free CPU resources on demand.
Educational Materials — we prepared a plenty of guides that should help users to get familiar with EOS ecosystem, as well as useful tools.
Analytics Telegram Bot — now you can get important updates on the go regarding your node and account activities such as status, number of produced blocks and other information.
Full History Solution for EOS Ecosystem — we wanted the network to scale in the future, thus we created a reliable database on the basis of SycllaDB / Cassandra.
CPU Performance — The fastest EOS BP
Free EOS, BOS, and Telos Accounts giveaway
On top of that, we have deployed reliable API nodes for dApp development, upgraded our servers infrastructure so that we could provide higher uptime and performance. We also are actively involved in community education, EOSIO events promotion, and dApp developers consultations.
Our team keeps responsibility towards the EOS ecosystem by participating in EOS governance and development meetings so that we could propose solutions that benefit the whole ecosystem. During this year, we have also made a FREE EOS Account giveaway and attracted more than 8,000 new people to the ecosystem.
Telos Blockchain Contribution
We also actively participate in the life of other blockchain projects such as Telos because we believe that by improving them, we can get closer to the truly secure financial environment. And here’s the list of what we accomplished for Telos:
Telos Listing on Codex.one — Telos was successfully listed on the cryptocurrency exchange on January 15, 2019.
MyTelosWallet — Now Telos wallet allows managing digital assets, and at the moment only WEB version is available for use.
Telos Node — We have deployed a full Telos Node with a load balancer.
BOS Blockchain Contribution
New projects especially require additional help and contribution when it comes to such sophisticated technologies as Blockchain. During the last months, we have worked closely on the BOS project and were able to roll out some interesting things:
MyBOSWallet — we released the BOS wallet which allows sending, receiving, storing, and managing digital assets.
BOS Meetup Initiative — considering the fact that BOS ecosystem is not widespread in Europe, we decided to make a meetup in Kyiv, Ukraine.
BOS Antifraud Shield — our team has rolled out a proposal which can totally eliminate all fraud related to BOS blockchain.
In conclusion, we’d like to thank everyone who was actively involved in the process of development, education, and event organization. Attic Lab intends to keep a steady course towards new solutions that will be developed and contributed to a variety of different blockchain projects. We’ll continue supporting different crypto-communities all across the globe, providing educational materials to drive mass adoption. We want to thank everyone for supporting the Attic Lab!
If you’d like to stay up to date with the latest news about Attic Lab and other projects, you can subscribe to one of the following channels that you are interested in:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/atticlab_it
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/atticlab/
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/user/atticlab_it
Steemit: https://steemit.com/eos/@attic-lab
Medium: https://medium.com/eosatticlab
Golos: https://golos.io/@atticlab
Telegram Chat: https://t.me/atticlabeosb
Telos Telegram chat: https://t.me/atticlabtelos
Bos Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BOSCORE/ | https://medium.com/eosatticlab/attic-lab-contribution-to-the-eos-blockchain-193212fe6e16 | ['Attic Lab'] | 2019-10-21 07:53:14.152000+00:00 | ['Atticlab', 'Eos', 'Blockchain', 'Eosio'] |
Trans athletes: guarding against disinformation | Frau Farbissina (played by Mindy Sterling) in the movie “Austin Powers”, shouting “Lies! All lies!”
CW: transphobia, blood
The Tokyo 2020 Olympics are now belatedly under way in 2021, and this is the first ever Olympics in which any openly transgender athletes have qualified to compete, despite this being permitted since 2004. This topic attracts a lot of heated argument, to put it mildly.
The problem is that a lot of the information that you’ll see on social media and in much of the press is outright disinformation. Propaganda. Fake news. Lies.
Much of this propaganda is designed to appeal to your emotions, not your reason — to provoke outrage, not thought.
This isn’t an article about the trans athletes currently competing. Nor is it a detailed analysis of the science. Nor am I even stating a position on what the policies for trans athletes should be.
This about recognising the ways in which people are trying to deceive you.
Won’t somebody please think of the children?!
One of the key tactics is to use carefully-selected images to appeal to your emotion rather than your rational thought.
Mack Beggs, a trans boy, as a high-school level wrestler, holding a girl in a wrestling hold.
Those who have followed this debate for a while will probably recognise this photo. It’s used relentlessly to present the inclusion of trans women as an obvious threat to girls and women in sport. Who could fail to be appalled by the manifest unfairness of this masculine brute calmly destroying a poor girl in the wrestling ring?
Just one problem: this wrestler isn’t a trans woman (i.e. assigned male at birth). He’s a trans man, assigned female at birth.
Mack Beggs wanted to compete with the boys in high-school wrestling, but the State of Texas wouldn’t allow him to. If you agree with Texas that trans athletes should compete as their birth sex, then this photo is what you are voting for.
Beggs later won a scholarship to wrestle in the men’s division at college, as he always wanted.
So this photo isn’t just selected to appeal to your emotions — the way it is used out of context is also an outright lie.
Don’t think, just look
Veronica Ivy winning gold in the master 35–39 women’s sprint at the 2018 UCI Masters Track Cycling World Championships in Los Angeles. Carolien Van Herrikhuyzen took silver and Jennifer Wagner took bronze.
Similarly, this photo of Veronica Ivy has often been used by those opposed to trans athletes — generally without any explanation beyond “JUST LOOK!!!”.
Look at what?
People posting such photos often won’t articulate what precisely we are supposed to be seeing and concluding, because the whole point of the tactic is to trigger an emotional response, not to encourage you to think.
Presumably we are expected to conclude that the race was unfair because Ivy is taller and larger than the silver and bronze medallists? So what’s the assumption behind that conclusion?
Are we assuming that size is an advantage in this event? What even is this event? Is size likely to be an advantage?
The event is track sprint cycling, and conveniently we can compare with a previous event where Kristina Vogel (5'3" / 1.60m) took gold against a cis (non-trans) woman (Elis Ligtlee) who is bigger than Ivy.
Kristina Vogel winning gold in the track sprint event at the UCI Track Cycling World Cup in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, near Paris, February 21, 2015. Elis Ligtlee took silver and Zhong Tianshi took bronze.
None of this has anything to do with scientific or ethical debate on inclusion, because we can’t determine anything relevant from one photo.
Ivy has a thread here with some further details, including a photo that is dishonestly cropped to compare her to another woman who isn’t even a competitor.
Naturally the people posting this photo omit other key facts about Ivy’s performance. For example, the fact that (with all due respect) her world record of 11.649 seconds was: | https://medium.com/@davidallsopp/trans-athletes-guarding-against-disinformation-61aa3185427d | ['David Allsopp'] | 2021-09-13 07:27:48.259000+00:00 | ['LGBT', 'Sports', 'Misinformation', 'Transgender', 'LGBTQ'] |
More About FABCoin Mining | Fabcoin Mining is simple and accessible.
Why Equihash?
In our previous post, we have announced that we have started using Equihash as proof-of-work for block mining in Fabcoin.
Equihash is a Proof-of-Work algorithm devised by Alex Biryukov and Dmitry Khovratovich. It is based on a computer science and cryptography concept called the Generalized Birthday Problem.
Why Are We Using It?
Equihash has very efficient verification. This could in the future be important for light clients on constrained devices, or for implementing a Fabcoin client inside Ethereum (like BTC Relay, but for Fabcoin ).
Equihash is a memory-oriented Proof-of-Work, which means how much mining you can do is mostly determined by how much RAM you have. We think it is unlikely that anyone will be able to build cost-effective custom hardware (ASICs) for mining in the foreseeable future.
We also think it is unlikely that there will be any major optimizations of Equihash which would give the miners who know the optimization an advantage. This is because the Generalized Birthday Problem has been widely studied by computer scientists and cryptographers, and Equihash is close to the Generalized Birthday Problem. That is: it looks like a successful optimization of Equihash would be likely also an optimization of the Generalized Birthday Problem.
Nevertheless, we are not certain that Equihash is safe against these issues, and if we find some flaw in Equihash or if we find another Proof-of-Work algorithm which offers higher assurance, we may change the Proof-of-Work.
How Can I Mine?
The same way as before! Just add gen=1 to your config file, or run ./src/fabcoindd -gen. Use parameter -G to make GPU mining start , else it will using CPU mining. Use parameter -genproclimit to mention how many CPU core or GPU you want used to mining. using -allgpu to make all GPU to work.
Fabcoin-win10.zip is the our fabcoin binary package which can run on windows 10 environment, please download and run and test it.
Once you have downloaded, in case you need fabcoin to test transaction, we will be willing to send you some testnet fabcoin to start, please join telegram group: https//t.me/fabtoken
How to get your address to start : fabcoin-qt / receive / request payment will provide you new address.
What Are The Mining Requirements?
We set Equihash The memory requirements to around 1 GB of RAM , so you will need that much free memory per mining thread. For GPU mining, we developed GPU mining program based on OpenCL and Ubuntu environment, AMD Rx480 and Nvidia 1080 are certified.
Fabcoin Core Integration/Staging tree
What is Fabcoin?
Fabcoin is an experimental digital currency that enables instant payments to anyone, anywhere in the world. Fabcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority: managing transactions and issuing money are carried out collectively by the network. Fabcoin Core is the name of open source software which enables the use of this currency.
For more information, as well as an immediately useable, binary version of the Fabcoin Core software, see https://fabcoin.pro
Read the whitepaper for more details as well https://fa.biz/download/fab-en.pdf.
License
Fabcoin Core is released under the terms of the MIT license. See COPYING for more information or see https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT.
Development Process
The master branch is regularly built and tested, but is not guaranteed to be completely stable. Tags are created regularly to indicate new official, stable release versions of Fabcoin Core.
The contribution workflow is described in CONTRIBUTING.md.
Testing
Testing and code review is the bottleneck for development; we get more pull requests than we can review and test on short notice. Please be patient and help out by testing other people’s pull requests, and remember this is a security-critical project where any mistake might cost people lots of money.
Automated Testing
Developers are strongly encouraged to write unit tests for new code, and to submit new unit tests for old code. Unit tests can be compiled and run (assuming they weren’t disabled in configure) with: make check . Further details on running and extending unit tests can be found in /src/test/README.md.
There are also regression and integration tests, written in Python, that are run automatically on the build server. These tests can be run (if the test dependencies are installed) with: test/functional/test_runner.py
The Travis CI system makes sure that every pull request is built for Windows, Linux, and OS X, and that unit/sanity tests are run automatically.
Manual Quality Assurance (QA) Testing
Changes should be tested by anyone other than the developers who wrote the code. This is especially important for large or high-risk changes. It is useful to add a test plan to the pull request description if testing the changes are not straightforward.
Translations
Translations are periodically pulled from Transifex and merged into the git repository. See the translation process for details on how this works.
Important: We do not accept translation changes as GitHub pull requests because the next pull from Transifex would automatically overwrite them again.
Translators should also subscribe to the mailing list and contact the team directly.
Reference:
https://fabcoin.pro
Zcash blog: https://blog.z.cash/why-equihash/
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equihash | https://medium.com/fast-access-blockchain/more-about-fabcoin-mining-ab27b52eee65 | ['Fab Info'] | 2018-07-05 16:05:16.035000+00:00 | ['Articles', 'Blockchain', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoin Mining', 'Mining'] |
Verasity Integrations: Total Reach | Building the future of online video is a big job which needs a solid foundation. That is why over the last few weeks out team have been busy building integrations into the world’s largest online video platforms (OVPs).
Verasity is now integrated with JW Player, Brightcove, and Video.js. Combined, these three OVPs power 280,000 online video publishers who deliver 53 billion views per month.
Now that Verasity’s patent pending Rewarded Player Technology is integrated with these three leading OVPs, the 280,000 video publishers who use their services can now quickly and easily start using VRA and Verasity technology.
Publishers who use Verasity’s SDKs for their Video Reward module will be able to use VRA to reach, reward and retain their viewers. Publishers get loyalty and new revenue while viewers get rewarded for their attention.
“We are very excited to announce these new integrations that allow publishers to quickly add our Video Reward module to their existing online video platforms. By integrating Verasity’s technology into video publishers existing systems, we have significantly reduced the initial setup requirements to on-board even the largest video publishers.” — Chris Gale, Verasity Co-Founder.
The first video publisher partners are already being on-boarded to start using VRA tokens to reward their audience and will be announced in the near future.
Verasity will be listing VRA on HitBTC on March 11th, 2019. | https://medium.com/verasity/verasity-integrations-total-reach-bbb0ae2b5908 | [] | 2019-03-11 12:19:42.526000+00:00 | ['Video Tech', 'Video', 'Integration', 'Blockchain', 'Advertising'] |
How It Felt to Hit Zero Covid Cases and Come Out of Lockdown | How It Felt to Hit Zero Covid Cases and Come Out of Lockdown
Here’s New Zealand’s timeline with Covid:
28 February 2020: Our first case of Covid
25 March: Very aggressive, country-wide, month-long lockdown
27 April: Restrictions relaxed slightly
13 May: Restrictions relaxed further
1 June: Everything other than border restrictions back to normal
The broad brush strokes of New Zealand’s reaction have been pretty well reported. And as you can imagine, we were thrilled to have handled things well. But as hard as lockdown was, some kiwis found themselves dreading going back to “normal life.” Here are two threads from the time that highlighted what a lot of Kiwis were thinking through:
Anyone else feel like the Lockdown has highlighted a broken life?
Why life after Covid-19 has to be different
Many people seemed to go from “we did it!” to “oh crap, now I have to commute again. And oh yeah, I hate my job. And I should probably break up with my partner. And my life isn’t healthy or sustainable. And for some reason I think I might have actually preferred lockdown.”
It probably seems insane that coming out of lockdown somehow made us more anxious and less happy, but it wasn’t an uncommon feeling. It’s like that saying that a hungry person only has one problem, but a full person has many. Once Kiwis could get over the trauma of Covid, we were free to be anxious about a whole lot of other stuff. And there was a lot to be anxious about, like heading back to the office and dealing with all the side effects that traditional office life brings.
At my job, the leadership put up a poll asking if people wanted to work from home all the time, some of the time, or not very often. I assume leadership — full of extroverts, client meetings, fancy lunches, and in-person strategy sessions — assumed the poll would give permission to require everyone in the office five days a week, just like before. That’s not what happened at all.
By my recollection, the vast majority of people not directly connected to the leadership team requested between 50% and 100% remote work. A consensus seemed to emerge around the watercooler: not having a commute is amazing, the office is noisy and distracting, and in-person meetings should be the exception, not the default. Plus in the single month we were in lockdown, a lot of people’s home lives had changed. Different people were in charge of the kids. Partners needed the car. People’s financial situations were different. Flexibility was much more than important than returning to the status quo.
In my neck of the woods, there seemed to be a tension between companies eagerly wanting to go back to exactly the way things used to be, and the employees saying “not so fast.” It was a stressful time, one with a lot of self-reflection and negotiation. Not just between managers and employees but also between partners and friends. There was a realignment.
Every country will experience this transition differently. But you might experience some of what we did. One day you’ll reach a point where your company (or friend, or collaborator, or anyone else in your life) will be able to reasonably ask you to jump right back to how things were in 2019. The same commute, the same amount of in-person meetings, the same expectations as from before Covid. It’s worth asking what you’ll do when that day comes. A lot of things have changed, but things can also change back. And we learned that not everything was better before the Covid lockdown. | https://medium.com/new-zealand-immigrant/how-it-felt-to-hit-zero-covid-cases-and-come-out-of-lockdown-db1079863910 | ['Jon Bell'] | 2021-02-28 00:04:10.442000+00:00 | ['Lockdown', 'Newzealand', 'Covid'] |
Money Relative | I would like to start off and give a quick overview of a book which changed my entire fundamental thinking on money. I mean it. It literally transformed my perception towards the MONEY!!! I guess it would do the same to you.
According to the book mentioned above, The author Robert Kiyosaki has 2 dads.
His Real Dad and his friend’s Dad.
His Real Dad has a Ph.D. and a very stable career. But other dad did not even finish high school. His dad would say things like I can’t afford the other would say how can I afford it? However, they bother supported education but one focused on studying a career (Which most of all would do) and the other focused on studying Money. Eventually, His dad died struggling financially and the other dad as one of the richest men in Hawaii. One worked for money and the other made money to work for him. Kiyosaki decided to learn from his Rich Dad instead of his own Dad.
OK! Enough of intro titles…
Have you ever heard someone saying, Ahhh! My Job sucks this doesn’t pay well, I wish I had more Money. I need to take the second Job or side hustle to pay off that Student loan. All the above phrases are relatable to all of us.
So, it doesn’t matter how much money we make as long as we don’t understand the Money. Let’s say for example as of this moment your boss called you in and raised your pay to 10,000$. What is the first thing you would do ????
Would you buy that Lambo you are looking after?
Would you take a trip to Europe/ Hawaii? (I would prefer LV)
Or Would you like rather invest it?
Yes, Most of us would spend more money when we get more money
Know the Difference between Asset and Liabilities :
In simple words, Assets is something which puts money in your pocket.
And Liabilities are take away money from your pocket.
Simple, Right?
Most of the people would think their Car or Primary House would be a great investment and Asset of their lifetime. But in reality, it is a liability even if you are living in it.
To get rich, you need to build the assets and reduce the liabilities
Examples of Assets: Secondary houses, Condos for rentPaper StocksCommodities
Retirement Investments, Etc
More Money won’t solve the crisis, Financial IQ will :
More money would bring more spending to your account, But understanding the Money and cash flow would solve the real problem. Cash flow is the one thing you should look at when you streamline the finances.
What is Cash Flow?
Cash Flow is nothing but how much is coming in your account and how much money is going out in expenditures. it doesn’t make you rich if your income is 10K and you spend $9999 out of it. Basically, your cash flow is $1.
But if a person with an income of 1000$ and his expenses not more than 500$, then this person is richer and wealthier than you. Simple but effective
Keep Your Hard Earned Money :
What is the biggest expenditure on your account? I would’ve guessed it’s mortgage or a student loan.
No. It’s the TAX.
Even with the new Tax cuts that is the biggest expenditure on the single checking account.
Corporations, when we think of corporations it’s big buildings and suited folks working behind the glass doors. In reality, it’s just a bunch of papers. Corporations/Rich would be taxed on the amount remained after the expenses (That includes car payments, flight tickets, even corporation dinners).
Warren Buffet once said, he only pays 2.5% tax (Totally legal) which is lower than his secretary tax bracket (35%). So rich keep most of their money whereas poor/middle-class pay in taxes
Conclusion:
Take ways from Robert Kiyosaki,
Learn from the people who know this subject well like Robert and read or watch the videos on youtube or Social media.
Build or Buy the assets and limit the Liabilities
Learn how to keep most of your money
Do you want to learn How Debt Can Generate Income? Stay tuned for my next blog post… | https://medium.com/@althafuddinshaik/money-relative-fd98d74d0821 | ['Althafuddin Shaik'] | 2019-02-11 20:55:09.097000+00:00 | ['Investment', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Financial Freedom', 'Finance', 'Financial Literacy'] |
Indigenous People were Exhibited in Human Zoos to Entertain White People | Indigenous People were Exhibited in Human Zoos to Entertain White People
Dissecting the shameful history behind human zoos
An exhibition of the Igorot villagers — image from Wikipedia
I recently wrote an article titled Her African Buttocks were Exploited for Europe’s Entertainment. The article focused on the story of Sarah Baartman, a Khokhoi woman who was exhibited all over Europe in the 1800's due to her unusually large buttocks. As sad and cruel as Sarah Baartman’s story was, the bigger tragedy is that it didn't just happen to her. The act of exhibiting humans (mainly indigenous, non Caucasian people), although cruel was once extremely popular.
Human zoos, which are also referred to as ethnological expositions, were a great source of entertainment for Caucasian European and American societies from the late eighteenth century. The exhibitions were designed to showcase indigenous cultures and other races as being lesser than the white Europeans and Americans. Nowadays the act of displaying human beings in zoos, regardless of how peculiar looking they may be, would not be acceptable at all.
Human zoos provided great entertainment for Caucasian societies. They could even be likened to today’s cinemas as the zoos enabled people to see people from different parts of the world, people they themselves had never come across and perhaps had merely heard tales of their existence from travelers.
How did human zoos start?
Image of Carl Hagenbeck — courtesy of Wikipedia
During the 1800’s the animal trade market was booming. At the forefront of this business was Carl Hagenbeck who was a German businessman dealing in exotic animals (basically the Joe Exotic of the 1800's). Although the business was booming there were numerous overhead costs that made the business less profitable than it could have been. This put a lot of financial strain on Carl. As a result he began brainstorming ways to make more money and keep overhead costs low.
In an attempt to boost his business Carl decided to bring along the indigenous people from the foreign lands from which he sourced his animals. On his next trip, while picking up some for reindeers, Carl also brought back some Laplanders. The Laplanders became part of an exhibit set up by Carl on his property. The exhibit included the reindeer and the Laplanders who set up their traditional homes and went about their lives within the confines of the exhibition area.
This was the start of human exhibitions. The exhibitions proved so popular that Carl began planning more human exhibitions. He traveled far and wide to bring indigenous people alongside animals and various components of their traditional lives such as hunting and cooking equipment to Europe. The indigenous people were able to recreate their lives on Carl’s property which was used for exhibition purposes. The exhibitions continued to grow in popularity and complexity. The indigenous people became showmen, not only showcasing their lives but performing various acts such as juggling and dancing.
The Igorot village: one of the world’s most popular human exhibition
Poster advertising the Igorot village exhibitions — courtesy of Wikipedia
Soon human exhibitions had spread across the globe. The exhibition of indigenous people happened in many powerful countries around the world. Exhibitions were found in France, Belgium, the United Kingdom and the United States of America (the colonial super powers). One of the most popular and largest human exhibitions the world has ever seen was that of the Igorot villagers from the Philippines. They were displayed at the St. Louis World Fair in the 1900’s. The exhibit had a dedicated 47-acre site at the World Fair which was home to over 1000 Filipinos.
The Igorot village was a lucrative exhibition, making more money than any other showcase at the World Fair. The exhibition was extremely popular because it featured Filipinos who had a different culture and appearance to most of the white American audience. The indigenous people on display would be dressed in their traditional attire which was very minimal when compared to the clothing worn by the audience viewing them.
This particular human exhibition was extremely popular because the people displayed in the exhibition ate dogs as part of their tradition. The audience found this extremely fascinating. During the show the Igorot people were forced to eat dogs on a daily basis so as to entertain the audience. This is despite the fact that traditionally this tribe only ate dogs during special ceremonies. They were made to butcher dogs in front of the audience which was all part of a show as this spectacle was not part of the original Igorot tradition.
The village exhibition was so popular that many tried to recreate it even after the St. Lois World Fair ended. Many of the people in the exhibition went on to become showmen and women in various other fairs and carnivals. Those people belonging to the Igorot village was eventually banned by the American government in 1914 after protests by the Filipinos.
Human zoos today
Human zoos are not just a feature of the past. In today's world some zoos and nature parks continue to include humans in exhibitions. However, they are no longer a common feature in today’s zoos due to the criticism such an exhibition would attract. In 2005 Augsburg zoo in Germany was heavily criticized for showcasing an African village display that included African cultural performances. Although this may seem harmless on the face of it, given the history of human zoos, an exhibition that includes Africans would pay homage to the history of having humans displayed in zoos. It normalizes the horrific act of exhibiting humans in zoos which should never be okay. | https://medium.com/history-of-yesterday/indigenous-people-were-exhibited-in-human-zoos-to-entertain-white-people-92b1aa70a22e | ['Justannet'] | 2020-08-16 11:01:01.084000+00:00 | ['BlackLivesMatter', 'History', 'Equality', 'Culture', 'Racism'] |
Nginx as Reverse Proxy with GRPC. Quickly setup Nginx as reverse proxy… | While trying to setup Nginx as a reverse proxy with GRPC, I had to spend a few hours to go through the GRPC, NGINX tutorial to figure out the process and make it work.
With this article of mine, I would like to help anyone to set it up quickly.
Nginx acting as a reverse proxy (Source:Nginx)
In this setup where Nginx acts as a reverse proxy, client makes a call to Nginx at port localhost:1449 which then routes the request to the server running at port localhost:1338.
Generate the certificates to establish secure connection (ssl)
openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout server.key -x509 -days 365 -out server.crt
Add -subj '/CN=localhost' to suppress questions about the contents of the certificate (replace localhost with your desired domain).
For our setup we will be using localhost as the CN value.
NGINX Configuration:
upstream dev {
server localhost:1338;
} server { listen 1449 ssl http2; ssl_certificate /tmp/server.crt; #Enter you certificate location
ssl_certificate_key /tmp/server.key;
location /helloworld.Greeter {
grpc_pass grpcs://dev;
}
}
The initial setup of the GRPC server can be done by following the below links. It already has ready to use code with all the stubs generated.
#GRPC hello world tutorial for python https://grpc.io/docs/quickstart/python/ #Clone the sample repository git clone -b v1.23.0 https://github.com/grpc/grpc cd examples/python/helloworld ## if you want to make any changes to proto file and regenerate the stub , go to helloworld directory and run the below command python -m grpc_tools.protoc -I../../protos — python_out=. — grpc_python_out=. ../../protos/helloworld.proto
The highlighted code change is required to your server and client-side to make use of the ask certificate to verify the server and establish a secure connection between the client and server via Nginx.
Ensure to have the correct path for your certificates in Nginx config, server and client-side.
greeter_client.py
from __future__ import print_function
import logging import grpc import helloworld_pb2
import helloworld_pb2_grpc def run():
# NOTE(gRPC Python Team): .close() is possible on a channel and should be
# used in circumstances in which the with statement does not fit the needs
# of the code. host = ‘localhost’
port = 1449 with open(‘server.crt’, ‘rb’) as f: # path to you cert location
trusted_certs = f.read() credentials = grpc.ssl_channel_credentials(root_certificates=trusted_certs)
#channel = grpc.secure_channel(‘{}:{}’.format(host, port), credentials) with grpc.secure_channel(‘{}:{}’.format(host, port), credentials) as channel:
stub = helloworld_pb2_grpc.GreeterStub(channel)
response = stub.SayHello(helloworld_pb2.HelloRequest(name=’you’))
print(“Greeter client received: “ + response.message) if __name__ == ‘__main__’:
logging.basicConfig()
run()
greeter_server.py
from concurrent import futures
import time
import logging import grpc import helloworld_pb2
import helloworld_pb2_grpc _ONE_DAY_IN_SECONDS = 60 * 60 * 24 class Greeter(helloworld_pb2_grpc.GreeterServicer): def SayHello(self, request, context):
return helloworld_pb2.HelloReply(message=’Hello, %s!’ % request.name) def serve():
port = ‘1338’ with open(‘server.key’, ‘rb’) as f: #path to you key location
private_key = f.read()
with open(‘server.crt’, ‘rb’) as f: #path to your cert location
certificate_chain = f.read() server_credentials = grpc.ssl_server_credentials(
((private_key, certificate_chain,),))
server = grpc.server(futures.ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=10))
helloworld_pb2_grpc.add_GreeterServicer_to_server(Greeter(), server)
server.add_secure_port(‘[::]:’+port, server_credentials)
#server.add_insecure_port(‘[::]:50051’)
server.start()
try:
while True:
time.sleep(_ONE_DAY_IN_SECONDS)
except KeyboardInterrupt:
server.stop(0) if __name__ == ‘__main__’:
logging.basicConfig()
serve()
I hope this could help you get a basic understanding of setting up Nginx with GRPC.
Suggestions and inputs are always welcome.
Read more interesting software development and architecture articles. | https://medium.com/nirman-tech-blog/nginx-as-reverse-proxy-with-grpc-820d35642bff | ['Sohit Kumar'] | 2020-06-27 17:14:28.366000+00:00 | ['Reverse Proxy', 'Nginx', 'Grpc', 'Tutorial', 'Hello World'] |
BEYOND THE FREEBOWLER SUPERTHROWER: PART -I | At freebowler, we often get asked about our plans, ideas, next steps, the future line of products and in general what’s coming up. It’s great that people recognize, identity, and commend our work, and we genuinely appreciate people’s generosity, support, and eagerness to know what’s in the pipeline. Thanks to our social media marketing efforts. We’ve stayed consistent throughout, although not the best, we’ve managed to keep the audience interested and in our pursuit of building a global cricket brand. Now that we have developed the cricket’s first non-electric and portable cricket ball thrower and commercializing it around the world, it’s set a standard/benchmark for developing a similar innovative simple but effective and affordable training aids.
Sometimes we feel the pressure of delivering but then we also soon realize and understand the fact that we need to take it in our stride to make things happen beyond freebowler. We are still too early in the process there’s a long way to go before this “non-electric and portable cricket ball thrower” becomes a thing in cricket. It’s nice that we’ve built a proof of concept for a viable business model, but then there’s a lot that needs to be done to be meaningfully successful. What do we mean by that?
1. It should genuinely help solve the needs of the cricketers around the world 2. Make and sell enough to be financially stable. Its scalability. Yes, how far this product alone has the legs to run freebowler as a sustainable business? Could we sell enough to be functionally operational in the next twoyears?
We genuinely believe that freebowler Superthrower has the potential to reach thousands of cricketers and truly impact lives around the world. We also realize that’s just not enough for the product, company, and the cricketers. It still doesn’t solve the problem completely while it’s the beginning of solving a portion of the problem.
It would be hard to sustain like a bowling machine manufacturing company. We might end up selling 50,000 of them and reach our goal, but it’s not over yet because the hardware businesses run in perpetuity. We want to be an authentic cricket innovation brand. But we need to first sell enough of these bowling machines to put ourselves in a position and from there grow big as a business and a brand with a future line of products. So to people’s (investors, advisors, customers, and other stakeholders) question on what’s next? Yes, off course we have thought through this. We have ideas, plans, and a road map that we want to follow. Here’s a list of a future line of products /projects we envision to take the freebowler business and brand to the next level over the next five years.
1. FREEBOWLER SUPERTHROWER ACCESSORIES
Let’s start with something simple, realistic, necessary, and straightforward. Yes, a set of accessories for the existing product to along with it which could potentially be a regular buy and recurring revenue model. Just like the razor — razor blade business model -We change the blade while we kept the razor intact. Similarly, we have components that go with the existing bowling machine frame that could serve as an add-on and provide value for people and generate revenue both at the same time.
1. Springs: The power source and energy for the ball thrower has a rating for 30000 cycles, which is about 5000 overs, depending upon how much people use, it’s consumable and needs a replacement for a time to time. Since the spring cable system is a linear extension system, it extends over some time. So the entire spring cable assembly needs to be changed over time.
2.Kit Bag: Some people often ask for a sturdy and durable kit for the ball thrower itself. Especially in more prominent countries like Australia, UK, South Africa, people see it carrying to different places by fitting the ball thrower along with their other training gears — pads, gloves, helmet, bat inside it. So it’s 2 for 1, it doubles up as a cricket kit and a bowling machine carrying bag and both at the same time.
3.Protective Casing: For the most part, once the ball thrower is set up, it’s not folded down until and unless required. Some clubs have storage space to secure the bowling machine, and some don’t. People keep it both indoors and outdoors, fully erected, and folded down depending upon their abilities to store it. So to protect the machine from moisture, rains, dust and eventual rusting, it’s advisable to enclose the machine frame using a body cover.
4.Safety Net: This is an important one because it’s something we have been meaning to provide for the safety of our users. We’ve received much feedback on this, and it’s about time we make it available and a mandatory add-on to be used along with the product. This safety net again has a dual purpose, it doubles up as a protective net for the machine and a ball catching net behind the batsman to find balls when they don’t have a keeper and to avoid balls flying behind the stumps and picking them up far behind the stumps later.
5.Ball Bag: Although this is a tiny one and comes along with the machine, it’s got a lot of potentials to be used outside of the bowling machine for everyday practice and storing a set of cricket balls. We’ve seen some horrid ones out there where people store cricket balls in onion sacks, cement bags, water buckets, shoe covers, and more. Instead, people could use a handy ball bag. The ones available in the market are quite expensive, so we could potentially explore this space and provide cricketers with inexpensive and comfortable ones.
6. Ball Throwing Cup: Yes, this is another important, and exciting add-ons of all. The razor-razor blade comes into the picture here again. Just like the springs, the ball throwing cup also has a lifetime. However, the exciting thing lies in the variants of this. We could engineer specially designed cups for swing, spin and for different bowling simulations.
We believe in bringing value to cricketers first and then monetizing the value. It’s wise, a good business practice ethically to sell people what they want to be sold on. Brand = ‘Customer First’.
2.SUPERTHROWER MINI
Yes, how often have we been asked about this at various demonstration sessions at clubs, academies, schools, and apartments? People go like
“Why don’t you make a scaled-down version of the same for 8–10-year-olds? The one you have is good for adults 14 and above, this is quite tall for an 8-year-old. It’s hard for us to get to these practice facilities in this traffic every day, we’d rather have something small that can throw practice cricket balls at slow speeds from a lesser distance like half-pitch. Again we can’t feed our sons /daughters for hundreds of balls, we’d fancy having a training aid which is simple, non-electric, lightweight and throws cricket balls at lower speeds in one step operation”.
So we go like — ‘thanks for just taking freebowler to the next level, and of course, we’ll make it soon’. Just knowing the fact that cricket is only going to get bigger and better, understanding the youth cricket market we already see huge potential with this product idea. Every cricketer growing up could grow up with a ‘Superthrower Mini’ in their backyard, garage, front yard or backyard. Kids love batting, and they need somebody or something to throw balls at them all the time. Even in an academy, a 10–12-year-old needs to practice thousands of balls at 80–90kmph day in and day out to get into the professional junior cricket team. So there’s a need for a ball throwing equipment or a throw down equipment for every junior cricketer. Period. End of the story. We are building one already, and it’s going to be out there in the market soon at a price point every individual junior cricketer can own one.
Louisville Slugger Blue Flame Pitching Machine For Youth Baseball
3.FREEBOWLER TRAINING APP
We’ve previously expressed our desire to take the batting training experience to the next level through technology integration with the existing product. As previously mentioned, we feel we are still not entirely providing the solution to the problem with batting training; we want to incentivize the cricketers and also track their progress over a while and reciprocate the results to them in a way that reflects in their game through runs. Every cricketer on this earth wants to see the video of their batting technique, style, form, and more. So it could be as simple as an application on their cellphone that could record their batting video as a highlights package. Meaning capturing only the batting bits and nothing else outside of batting time. The captured highlights package video could be shared with their fellow cricketers, coaches, parents, and others for review and get feedback to improve their game.
Apart from the application, we want to incentivize them by rewarding them for their progress. Just like a fitness app which provides you a customized workout plan depending on time, place, fitness level and your other body characteristics, we’ll provide training plans and packages for people using the freebowler Superthrower Non-electric and Portable Cricket Ball Thrower through a mobile app. We could give them customized training session plan for their day/week /month /year depending on factors and parameters like time, place, experience level, batting style and a particular set of techniques they want to work on with match simulations. There’s so much more that we can do with cricket training not just with the bowling machine but overall.
Except for institutional training setups, the cricket training space is unorganized and most times cricketers go through the motions and do not realize the importance and significance of the practice session. It could be because of a lot of things like the coach’s inefficiency, inexperience, and more. There is much scope for better organizing a 2-hour practice session through an application which could otherwise be ineffective. For example, depending on the place of practice(indoor/outdoor), size of the field(small/medium/big), number of people(4/10/20), time available(30/60/120 min), age group, experience level, goal, and other parameters. Then the training app could provide customized cricket practice workout plan based on these inputs right from multiple warm-up exercises/games, stretching, batting, bowling, fielding drills, cool down, fitness, meditation and could also take it to the next level to nutrition.
So there are many scopes to make cricket training organized and productive at the individual level using technology and a mobile application. Many entities are already working on this program, and we’re not the first, there are better-equipped companies with resources-expertise, money, and access to players and coaches to develop a comprehensive cricket training app. However, we’d like to contribute to this ecosystem in our capacity and make the overall offering better. An app-based recurring subscription model to connect coaches with players with technology integration to track the progress, customized training modules, and recommended training aids (other brands products could be featured on our platform and monetize them) is the business model.
PART-II TO FOLLOW WITH MORE IDEAS… | https://medium.com/@pratheekpalanethra/beyond-the-freebowler-superthrower-part-i-9d20da8d4c40 | ['Pratheek Palanethra'] | 2019-09-01 14:20:29.059000+00:00 | ['Cricket', 'Hardware', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Startup', 'Batting'] |
Utilizing Microsoft Word to Search for Words | The hunt utility incorporated into Microsoft Word gives an exceptionally simple approach to look for a wide range of things in a report, not simply message. There’s a fundamental scan apparatus that is simple for anybody to utilize but on the other hand there’s a propelled one that gives you a chance to do things like swap content and look for conditions.
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Opening the hunt confine Microsoft Word is simple on the off chance that you choose to utilize the console alternate way, yet it’s by all account not the only strategy accessible. Pursue the means beneath to figure out how to look through a report in Word.
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The most effective method to Search in MS Word
1 From the Home tab, in the Editing segment, snap or tap Find to dispatch the Navigation sheet. Another technique is to hit the Ctrl+F console easy route.
2 In more seasoned renditions of MS Word, utilize the File > File Search choice.
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3 In the Search record content field, enter the content you need to scan for.
Press Enter to have Word discover the content for you. On the off chance that there’s more than one case of the content, you can squeeze it again to push through them.
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Hunt Options
Microsoft Word incorporates heaps of cutting edge alternatives while hunting down content. After you’ve made the inquiry, and with the Navigation sheet still open, click the little bolt alongside the content field to open up another menu.
Alternatives
The Options menu lets you empower a few alternatives, including match case, discover entire words just, use special cases, discover all word frames, feature all, steady discover, coordinate prefix, coordinate addition, disregard accentuation characters, and the sky is the limit from there.
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Empower any of them to influence them to apply to the flow seek. On the off chance that you need the new choices to work for later pursuits, you can put a check beside the ones you need, and after that apply the new set as the default.
Propelled Find
You can discover the majority of the standard choices from above, in the Advanced Find menu as well, just as the alternative to supplant the content with something new. You can have Word supplant only one occurrence or every one of them immediately.
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This menu likewise gives the choice to supplant the designing just as things like the language and passage or tab settings.
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A portion of alternate choices in the Navigation sheet incorporate hunting down conditions, tables, illustrations, references/endnotes, and remarks.
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Press Enter to have Word discover the content for you. On the off chance that there’s more than one case of the content, you can squeeze it again to push through them. | https://medium.com/@sharmarashii460/utilizing-microsoft-word-to-search-for-words-6d68b3f52f96 | [] | 2020-05-09 05:25:59.766000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Microsoft Word', 'Excel'] |
An in-depth look at the AppBar widget | In this article, we’re going to review the AppBar widget’s parameters one by one using a little app I whipped up for this exercise. It’s available to you for download on Github called, appbar_example. You can then ‘look under the hood’ at the code and see how to use AppBar widget’s many parameters.
I Like Screenshots. Click For Gists.
As always, I prefer using screenshots in my articles over gists to show concepts rather than just show code. I find them easier to work with frankly. However, you can click or tap on these screenshots to see the code in a gist or in Github. Further, it’s better to read this article about mobile development on your computer than on your phone. Besides, we program mostly on our computers — not on our phones. Not yet anyway.
No Moving Pictures, No Social Media
There will be gif files in this article demonstrating aspects of the topic at hand. However, it’s said viewing such gif files is not possible when reading this article on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, etc. They may come out as static pictures or simply blank placeholder boxes. Please, be aware of this and maybe read this article on medium.com
Let’s begin.
We’ll work our way down the AppBar’s named parameters and illustrate how each affects the appearance of the app bar and the general ‘look and feel’ of the app overall. This widget is, in fact, a StatefulWidget. That means it has a corresponding State object (_AppBarState) that retains some values for the duration of the app. Below is a screenshot of the AppBar widget.
Implements A Preferred Size
Further note, the widget implements another class called, PreferredSizeWidget. Unlike Java with its explicit Interface types, Dart has implicit Interfaces. In Dart, as you see in the screenshot above, you can assign any class as ‘an interface’ to any other class by simply specifying it with the keyword, implements. That means, however, you’ve now some further work to do. All the functions from that class will need to be re-implemented in your own class (unless yours is an abstract class). Further, any instance fields from that class will need to be re-assigned values — otherwise, they’re null.
In the case of the AppBar class implementing the class, PreferredSizeWidget, it is the instance field, preferredSize, that now has to be assigned a value. You see, it’s seen as the height in which the AppBar widget would prefer to be if it were unconstrained. In most cases, that height is the sum of [toolbarHeight] and the [bottom] widget’s preferred height forming a band (a bar) along the top of the screen.
Play With Your AppBar
Again, the sample app on Github, will allow you to try out to some degree each and every parameter offered by the AppBar widget. Note, its parent widget, in this case, is the Scaffold widget and is also using a Drawer widget in this app. It this drawer that you’ll use to adjust the AppBar’s parameter values: | https://andrious.medium.com/decode-appbar-4e810020f744 | ['Greg Perry'] | 2020-12-22 17:22:12.997000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Flutter', 'Android App Development', 'Mobile App Development', 'iOS App Development'] |
The Three Regressions | The Three Regressions
Photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash
When I first started my journey with Data Science and Machine Learning, I was overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information that was available on the internet. Overtime I realized that the majority of information was just the same thing being presented in different ways; most of the things that I actually wanted to learn or dive deep into were pretty scarce, if at all present. Thus, to help anyone who has the same questions as I had before, I will try to present discussions on topics which are often encountered but have relatively less detailed information available.
Here, we shall discuss the detailed mathematical background of Linear, Multiple, Ridge and Lasso regressions. Before we start, we shall recall some important definitions and properties which will be important for the said derivations.
Some Definitions and Properties
Random Variable (RV)
Let us consider a random experiment E and let S be its corresponding sample space. A random variable can be defined as a function that assigns a real number X(s) to every element s of S i.e. it assigns a value to every outcome of the experiment E.
Discrete Random
If a RV X can take either a finite or countably infinite number of values, then X is said to be a discrete RV.
Probability Mass Function (pmf)
If X is a discrete RV that takes the values x1, x2, x3, …, such that P(X=xi)=pi, where
then pi is called the probability mass function.
Continuous RV
If a RV X can take all the values in an interval, then X is said to be a continuous RV.
Probability Density Function (pdf)
If X is a continuous RV and
then f(x) is called the probability density function.
Mathematical Expectation or Arithmetic Mean
If X is discrete RV with pmf P(X=xi)=pi, i=1, 2, 3,…; the mathematical expectation or the arithmetic mean of X is
If X is a continuous RV with pdf f(x), then
Moments
Let X be a RV. The r-th order non-central moment about any value ‘a’ is given by
Such moments are called central moments.
Variance
The second order central moment is called the variance.
Property of Variance:
Proof: We know that,
Standard Deviation
The positive square root of variance is called the standard deviation.
Normal Distribution
A continuous RV X is said to follow a normal distribution with parameters mu and sigma if its pdf is given by
It can be symbolically denoted as
L1 and L2 norm
Let us consider an n-dimensional Euclidean space. Any vector x belonging to this space is in the form x=(x1, x2,…, xn). Here, the length of x is measured as
This is called the Euclidean norm or the L2 norm.
The L1 norm is given by
The distance derived using this norm is called the Manhattan distance.
Singular Matrix
An n*n square matrix X is said to be non-singular if det(X) is not 0 and singular if det(X)=0.
Transpose of a matrix
Let X be an m*n matrix. Then, the n*m matrix obtained by interchanging the rows and columns of X is called the transpose of X, denoted by X^T.
Transpose Properties
Linear Dependence and Independence
A set of vectors is said to be linearly dependent if at least one of the vectors can be represented as a linear combination of the others i.e. if one of them lies in the span of the others. If not, then it is said to be linearly independent.
Rank of a Matrix
The rank of a matrix is the maximum number of linearly independent column vectors in the matrix.
Collinearity and Super-collinearity
If some of the independent predictor variables in the data are highly linearly related, then we can say that the data has collinearity. When we have two or more independent variables which are perfectly linearly dependent, then the data possesses super-collinearity.
Method of Lagrange Multiplier
The method of Lagrange multipliers is used to find the local maxima and minima of a function subject to equality constraints. The method consists of reformulation of the given problem resulting in the creation of a function called the Lagrangian function which is then solved to find the stationary points.
Correlation Coefficient
Let X and Y be two RVs corresponding to a random experiment. Let the experiment be repeated n number of times so that we end up with pairs of values (x1, y1), (x2, y2),…, (xn, yn), which are plotted on a graph paper.
Equation of the Simple Regression Line
In the graph that we had obtained while deriving the correlation coefficient, let us suppose that Y is dependent on X. Let the equation of the regression line be
Error in Estimate of Y
Multiple Regression
Let us consider n number of samples with each sample having p characteristics, where n<p. Here, the n*p dimensional data matrix X is
Let Y be the response variable, where Y=(Y1, …, Yn)^T.
Using the linear regression form,
Maximum Likelihood (ML) Estimators
Although the likelihood can be calculated by taking this product, we prefer to use the log-likelihood instead. Either way is acceptable since the concavity of the logarithmic function ensures that the maximization of the likelihood coincides with the maximization of the log-likelihood.
Now, in order to get the value of beta that maximizes the log-likelihood, we shall first take the partial derivative of Eq. 15 with respect to beta,
Properties of the ML Estimators
Here,
Predictions
Need for Regularization
Let X be an n*p high dimensional data matrix. So, n<p.
Then, rank(X)≤=n.
Also, any subspace spanned by the columns of X has dimension≤n.
We know that n<p
Ridge Regression
It is a type of regularized regression which is used when the data suffers from multi-collinearity. It can be formulated as,
Properties of Ridge Estimators
Lasso Regression
We have seen that the parameter of the linear regression model in ridge regression are obtained by minimizing the term,
Here, the term
referred to as the ridge penalty, is a function whose choice is arbitrary. In other words, we can use a penalty of our choice in this term to be minimized. In lasso regression, the penalty is taken to be
which is called the lasso penalty. Thus, the difference between the ridge and lasso penalty is their respective use of the L2 and L1 norm i.e. in ridge, the penalty term is taken as lambda times the sum of the squared differences while in lasso, the penalty is taken as lambda times the absolute values of the regression parameters.
Unlike ridge regression, the lasso regression problem has no closed form solution except when X is orthogonal.
Let us suppose that X is orthogonal. Then,
Now, the lasso regression can be formulated as, | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/the-three-regressions-e4c159afc157 | ['Gaurav Thapa'] | 2020-11-24 16:26:25.681000+00:00 | ['Regression', 'Towards Data Science', 'Mathematics', 'Data Science', 'Machine Learning'] |
Simplifying Sentiment Analysis using VADER in Python (on Social Media Text) | What is Sentiment Analysis?
Sentiment Analysis, or Opinion Mining, is a sub-field of Natural Language Processing (NLP) that tries to identify and extract opinions within a given text. The aim of sentiment analysis is to gauge the attitude, sentiments, evaluations, attitudes and emotions of a speaker/writer based on the computational treatment of subjectivity in a text .
Why is sentiment analysis so important?
Businesses today are heavily dependent on data. Majority of this data however, is unstructured text coming from sources like emails, chats, social media, surveys, articles, and documents. The micro-blogging content coming from Twitter and Facebook poses serious challenges, not only because of the amount of data involved, but also because of the kind of language used in them to express sentiments, i.e., short forms, memes and emoticons.
Sifting through huge volumes of this text data is difficult as well as time-consuming. Also, it requires a great deal of expertise and resources to analyze all of that. Not an easy task, in short.
Sentiment Analysis is also useful for practitioners and researchers, especially in fields like sociology, marketing, advertising, psychology, economics, and political science, which rely a lot on human-computer interaction data.
Sentiment Analysis enables companies to make sense out of data by being able to automate this entire process! Thus they are able to elicit vital insights from a vast unstructured dataset without having to manually indulge with it.
Why is Sentiment Analysis a Hard to perform Task?
Though it may seem easy on paper, Sentiment Analysis is actually a tricky subject. There are various reasons for that:
Understanding emotions through text are not always easy. Sometimes even humans can get misled, so expecting a 100% accuracy from a computer is like asking for the Moon!
A text may contain multiple sentiments all at once. For instance,
“The intent behind the movie was great, but it could have been better”.
The above sentence consists of two polarities, i.e., Positive as well as Negative. So how do we conclude whether the review was Positive or Negative?
Computers aren’t too comfortable in comprehending Figurative Speech. Figurative language uses words in a way that deviates from their conventionally accepted definitions in order to convey a more complicated meaning or heightened effect. Use of similes, metaphors, hyperboles etc qualify for a figurative speech. Let us understand it better with an example.
“The best I can say about the movie is that it was interesting.”
Here, the word ’interesting’ does not necessarily convey positive sentiment and can be confusing for algorithms.
Heavy use of emoticons and slangs with sentiment values in social media texts like that of Twitter and Facebook also makes text analysis difficult. For example a “ :)” denotes a smiley and generally refers to positive sentiment while “:(” denotes a negative sentiment on the other hand. Also, acronyms like “LOL“, ”OMG” and commonly used slangs like “Nah”, “meh”, ”giggly” etc are also strong indicators of some sort of sentiment in a sentence.
These are few of the problems encountered not only with sentiment analysis but with NLP as a whole. In fact, these are some of the Open-ended problems of the Natural Language Processing field.
VADER Sentiment Analysis
VADER (Valence Aware Dictionary and sEntiment Reasoner) is a lexicon and rule-based sentiment analysis tool that is specifically attuned to sentiments expressed in social media. VADER uses a combination of A sentiment lexicon is a list of lexical features (e.g., words) which are generally labelled according to their semantic orientation as either positive or negative.
VADER has been found to be quite successful when dealing with social media texts, NY Times editorials, movie reviews, and product reviews. This is because VADER not only tells about the Positivity and Negativity score but also tells us about how positive or negative a sentiment is.
It is fully open-sourced under the MIT License. The developers of VADER have used Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to get most of their ratings, You can find complete details on their Github Page.
Advantages of using VADER
VADER has a lot of advantages over traditional methods of Sentiment Analysis, including:
It works exceedingly well on social media type text, yet readily generalizes to multiple domains
It doesn’t require any training data but is constructed from a generalizable, valence-based, human-curated gold standard sentiment lexicon
but is constructed from a generalizable, valence-based, human-curated gold standard sentiment lexicon It is fast enough to be used online with streaming data, and
It does not severely suffer from a speed-performance tradeoff.
The source of this article is a very easy to read paper published by the creaters of VADER library.You can read the paper here.
Enough of talking. Let us now see practically how does VADER analysis work for which we will have install the library first.
Installation
The simplest way is to use the command line to do an installation from [PyPI] using pip. Check their Github repository for the detailed explanation.
> pip install vaderSentiment
Once VADER is installed let us call the SentimentIntensityAnalyser object,
from vaderSentiment.vaderSentiment import SentimentIntensityAnalyzer analyser = SentimentIntensityAnalyzer()
Working & Scoring
Let us test our first sentiment using VADER now. We will use the polarity_scores() method to obtain the polarity indices for the given sentence.
def sentiment_analyzer_scores(sentence):
score = analyser.polarity_scores(sentence)
print("{:-<40} {}".format(sentence, str(score)))
Let us check how VADER performs on a given review:
sentiment_analyzer_scores("The phone is super cool.") The phone is super cool----------------- {'neg': 0.0, 'neu': 0.326, 'pos': 0.674, 'compound': 0.7351}
Putting in a Tabular form:
The Positive, Negative and Neutral scores represent the proportion of text that falls in these categories. This means our sentence was rated as 67% Positive, 33% Neutral and 0% Negative. Hence all these should add up to 1.
The Compound score is a metric that calculates the sum of all the lexicon ratings which have been normalized between -1(most extreme negative) and +1 (most extreme positive). In the case above, lexicon ratings for and supercool are 2.9 and respectively 1.3 . The compound score turns out to be 0.75 , denoting a very high positive sentiment.
compound score metric
read here for more details on VADER scoring methodology.
VADER analyses sentiments primarily based on certain key points:
Punctuation: The use of an exclamation mark(!), increases the magnitude of the intensity without modifying the semantic orientation. For example, “The food here is good!” is more intense than “The food here is good.” and an increase in the number of (!), increases the magnitude accordingly.
See how the overall compound score is increasing with the increase in exclamation marks.
Capitalization: Using upper case letters to emphasize a sentiment-relevant word in the presence of other non-capitalized words, increases the magnitude of the sentiment intensity. For example, “The food here is GREAT!” conveys more intensity than “The food here is great!”
Degree modifiers: Also called intensifiers, they impact the sentiment intensity by either increasing or decreasing the intensity. For example, “The service here is extremely good” is more intense than “The service here is good”, whereas “The service here is marginally good” reduces the intensity.
Conjunctions: Use of conjunctions like “but” signals a shift in sentiment polarity, with the sentiment of the text following the conjunction being dominant. “The food here is great, but the service is horrible” has mixed sentiment, with the latter half dictating the overall rating.
Preceding Tri-gram: By examining the tri-gram preceding a sentiment-laden lexical feature, we catch nearly 90% of cases where negation flips the polarity of the text. A negated sentence would be “The food here isn’t really all that great”.
Handling Emojis, Slangs, and Emoticons.
VADER performs very well with emojis, slangs, and acronyms in sentences. Let us see each with an example.
Emojis
print(sentiment_analyzer_scores('I am 😄 today'))
print(sentiment_analyzer_scores('😊'))
print(sentiment_analyzer_scores('😥'))
print(sentiment_analyzer_scores('☹️')) #Output I am 😄 today---------------------------- {'neg': 0.0, 'neu': 0.476, 'pos': 0.524, 'compound': 0.6705} 😊--------------------------------------- {'neg': 0.0, 'neu': 0.333, 'pos': 0.667, 'compound': 0.7184} 😥--------------------------------------- {'neg': 0.275, 'neu': 0.268, 'pos': 0.456, 'compound': 0.3291} ☹️-------------------------------------- {'neg': 0.706, 'neu': 0.294, 'pos': 0.0, 'compound': -0.34} 💘--------------------------------------- {'neg': 0.0, 'neu': 1.0, 'pos': 0.0, 'compound': 0.0}
Slangs
print(sentiment_analyzer_scores("Today SUX!"))
print(sentiment_analyzer_scores("Today only kinda sux! But I'll get by, lol")) #output Today SUX!------------------------------ {'neg': 0.779, 'neu': 0.221, 'pos': 0.0, 'compound': -0.5461} Today only kinda sux! But I'll get by, lol {'neg': 0.127, 'neu': 0.556, 'pos': 0.317, 'compound': 0.5249}
Emoticons
print(sentiment_analyzer_scores("Make sure you :) or :D today!")) Make sure you :) or :D today!----------- {'neg': 0.0, 'neu': 0.294, 'pos': 0.706, 'compound': 0.8633}
We saw how VADER can easily detect sentiment from emojis and slangs which form an important component of the social media environment.
Conclusion
The results of VADER analysis are not only remarkable but also very encouraging. The outcomes highlight the tremendous benefits that can be attained by the use of VADER in cases of micro-blogging sites wherein the text data is a complex mix of a variety of text. | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/simplifying-social-media-sentiment-analysis-using-vader-in-python-f9e6ec6fc52f | ['Parul Pandey'] | 2019-11-08 14:49:39.076000+00:00 | ['Sentiment Analysis', 'NLP', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Data Science', 'Machine Learning'] |
A simple Blockchain strategy framework | Recently I completed the Blockchain strategy certificate at Said Business school, University of Oxford. One of the first things among the fire-hose of information received was a strategy framework in evaluating the suitability of Blockchain for a particular project. It is not meant to be a highly technical document. However its extremely useful set of questions and an evaluation criteria for many reasons. For example it is a simple evaluation process to identify the use case, and how it could potentially operate in order to create a business strategy. It can also help you navigate through many of the scammy ICOs claiming to be the next hot blockchain project.
Answer these questions to determine whether blockchain could help solve your use case:
Is there a predictable, repeatable process that lends itself well to automation?
2. Is there an ongoing or long-running transaction or process, rather than a process that occurs only once?
3 Are there multiple stakeholders in this process or value chain?
4 Is the role of reconciling disparate data usually played by one party or a limited number of parties?
5 Remembering that value is not only monetary, is there an element of value transfer?
6 Is there value in an immutable record? Or is an immutable record a requirement?
If you answered Yes to any of the key criteria, consider the following questions to start planning how you would use blockchain:
PROTOCOL LAYER
Is it possible to use public blockchains? Or is there a defined need for a private implementation?
What are the design expectations regarding speed, programmability, or payment functionality?
Do you have developer resources available? Or is the protocol you’re using supported by a robust, sustainable open-source developer community with access to resources?
NETWORK LAYER
Who needs to run a node? Who has read access? Who has write access?
What are the technology integration requirements?
What are the data storage requirements regarding archiving and regulation?
APPLICATION LAYER
Who is going to use the application? What are the implications for user experience and design?
What is the existing organisational structure? And what behavioural patterns do users have today? How does this product or service fit into their existing workflow?
Are there any behavioural or organisational changes necessary to implement this use case?
Follow me on Twitter! | https://medium.com/blockchain-strategy-and-use-cases/a-simple-blockchain-strategy-framework-b25aa0ec0fc6 | ['Gayan Samarakoon'] | 2020-01-30 12:32:25.441000+00:00 | ['Digital Transformation', 'Strategy', 'Oxford University', 'Blockchain'] |
Thank You For the Best Hannukah Gift | So yesterday, I was alerted to the fact that some users on Quora had decided to post hate-speech about me personally, calling me a “little Zionist bitch” and wanting me to be scared.
Modern-Day Maccabees
Scared? Gentlemen, (and I use the term loosely) you don’t have me scared at all. Duck walks are scary. Being put in a rear-naked choke is scary. Drinking Diet Snapple is scary. Internet trolls aren’t scary.
What you mistook as fear is called pity and disappointment at the complete stupidity and evil of the ideas of ethnic cleansing. I’m scared that my country’s army will have to engage in pointless violence, because we have better things to do with our lives, like be Start-Up Nation. We’d really much prefer to make commerce, not war.
But please, don’t make me laugh. You wouldn’t even have the courage to face me in a boxing ring. You’d wet yourselves if you actually met a real Israeli soldier. So instead of making something of your lives, you decide to harass a complete stranger.
I’m not scared of your grandiose dreams of becoming the New Nazis and destroying six million more Jews. I just find it sad you don’t realize your plans of genocide are officially canceled by the existence of a top level army. Move on with your pathetic existence, get an education and try to actually accomplish something positive in your miserable lives.
Still, you made my day. Your hatred honors me. If I’m hated by you, I must be doing something right.
Last night, I lit candles with my Krav Maga class and I thought of the Maccabbees, who fought battles against the greatest military power and won. They were outnumbered, but their courage and intelligence won the day.
Compared to the Seleucids, you guys are a joke. I doubt you could even land a punch on me, let alone take on the state of Israel.
So feel good thinking you scared me. I doubt you’ll accomplish much more in your life, but enjoy your delusions. Thank you for giving me a good laugh. I needed it and it was the perfect Hannukah gift.
Signed
Elke, Juris Doctor, Master of Science in Urban Affairs, Top Writer on Quora, Krav Maga Practioner, former Israel Government Fellow, and decent human being. | https://medium.com/@elke-rweiss/thank-you-for-the-best-hannukah-gift-6193c5f20b95 | ['Elke Weiss'] | 2020-12-16 16:35:47.252000+00:00 | ['Trolls', 'Quora', 'Israel'] |
We Are All Missionary Disciples | For those who may be unfamiliar, missionary discipleship is a term made popular by Pope Francis, especially in his encyclical, Evangelium Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel).
In paragraph 120 of his encyclical, Pope Francis writes:
“In virtue of their baptism, all the members of the People of God have become missionary disciples (cf. Mt 28:19). All the baptized, whatever their position in the Church, or their level of instruction in the faith, are agents of evangelization.”
What this means is that each and every one of us — EVERY baptized man and woman, regardless of whether you have any position in the Church, and regardless of your level of instruction in the faith, is an agent of evangelization.
You, me, and every person around us, is called to spread the Good News that Jesus is Lord and Savior of the world. That every person is loved beyond measure by God and has been made in His image and likeness. That all of us are uniquely made and have aparticular vocation in this world for which God created us especially for, but that our highest calling is to become holy men and women — saints — who are immersedin the life of the Blessed Trinity. That every person who professes Jesus as Lord has been redeemed by His sacrifice on the cross, in which death and sin has been conquered for all time, and ensuring that anyone who says yes to the Heavenly Father’s invitation will then spend eternity with Him in heaven rejoicing atthe Heavenly Banquet Table.
This is the Good News we are called to share.
And where are we called to evangelize? Pope Francis tells us in paragraph #23:
“In fidelity to the example of the Master, it is vitally important for the Church today to go forth and preach the Gospel to all: to all places, on all occasions, without hesitation, reluctance or fear. The joy of the Gospel is for all people: no one can be excluded.”
It is this need to preach and share the Gospel everywhere thatbrings home the reality that everyone is called to be a missionary disciple. Sharing the Good News is not merely for “professionals” — like priests and religious — to be about while the rest of the us lay faithful sit by passively.
The new evangelization calls for personal involvement on the part of each of the baptized.
Every one of us is challenged, here and now, to be actively engaged in evangelization. Anyone who has truly experienced God’s saving love does not need much time or lengthy training to go out and proclaim that love.
In fact, it is our very experience of God’s love, rather than how much catechetical training we might have, that makes us powerful and profound witnesses to others of God’s saving love and mercy.
THIS is a message that our world desperately needs to hear.
Pope Francis exhorts everyone of the faithful to claim our rightful place in the efforts to evangelize.He writes:
“Every Christian is a missionary to the extent that he or she has encountered the love of God in Christ Jesus: we no longer say that we are “disciples” and “missionaries,” but rather that we are always “missionary disciples.” If we are not convinced, let us look at those first disciples, who, immediately after encountering the gaze of Jesus, went forth to proclaim Him joyfully: “We have found the Messiah!” (John 1:41). The Samaritan woman became a missionary immediately after speaking with Jesus and many Samaritans come to believe in Him “because of the woman’s testimony” (John 4:39). So too, Saint Paul, after his encounter with Jesus Christ, “immediately proclaimed Jesus” (Acts 9:20).
So as we prepare to begin Lent this Wednesday, I challenge each of you to consider how you might grow closer to Jesus and experience His love more deeply during this sacred time, so that you are strengthened to go out and bring others to Jesus so they can experience His love, too.
By our baptism, we are ALL missionary disciples. So what are you waiting for?
For more posts like this, as well as information and updates on Christina’s ministry, writing, and current online course offerings, got to: www.christinasemmens.com | https://medium.com/@christinasemmens/we-are-all-missionary-disciples-d81168a13c57 | ['Christina Semmens'] | 2019-03-21 18:06:00.831000+00:00 | ['Discipleship', 'Christianity', 'Christian Living', 'Evangelization'] |
How Holt’s Winter Beats out ARIMA when there is limited Data | Hi guys, as most of you know ARIMA and Holt’s winter are two popular Time series prediction models which are used to predict stationary/non-stationary data.
A project I was working on Involved comparing and predicting the water consumption for 84 areas in my city.I used 6 time series models, but I am limiting my discussion for only the two popular seasonal data prediction models.
These are the graphs I got for a particular area
Water Consumption prediction using Holt’s Winter Method
Water Consumption prediction using ARIMA
As you can clearly see, the amount of data I had was very limited,25 months to be precise.Despite a lack of data,The Holt’s winter could somehow catch the shape of the consumption prediction, where as ARIMA turned out to be a straight line with a negative correlation, something which we wouldn’t want .
Another thing which was notable was the fact that the RMSE value of Holt’s winter was less than the ARIMA predictions in 73 of the 84 DMAs I measured.
To conclude,I would like to tell all time series Analysts to always use Holt’s Winter over ARIMA when there is a lack of data. | https://medium.com/@narendranathdn/how-holts-winter-beats-out-arima-when-there-is-limited-data-792356e94829 | ['Narendranath Nadig'] | 2019-03-19 13:52:47.798000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Time Series Forecasting', 'Time Series Analysis'] |
Overcommunication — why is it so important for Product Designers? | This is more or less of what Product Designers should be doing (find me, I will think about giving you rewards)
For almost a year, working in Kargo has changed me a lot as a person and as a Product Designer. Kargo’s manpower are a mix of local and international talents put together in one vision, to build a world-class product to revolutionize the logistics Industry. I personally have learned from these amazing talents, like learning how to collaborate, learning their norms, what to say and what not to say. I even learned how much the foreigners (we call them Bule [Boo-Lay]) love rendang deeply.
This is Rendang, in case you live outside South East Asia (or you’re an Indonesian living under a rock) [Source: MOKA]
Now entering my 12th month in Kargo (with 9 months of #WorkFromHome isolation), I’ve had time to reflect on what was the most important things I’ve learned. Improving my design skills is a must, but developing my communication and stakeholder management skills are the most crucial.
When you have really smooth design process without any hitch of drawbacks from your stakeholders, then you might as well open the Pandora’s Box — some folksy Grecian Philosopher
Imagine you’re maintaining relationship with someone (this is the closest publicly relatable thing I thought about). Now I’m not one to talk about love stories, but I believe that the healthiest relationships are the ones who are able to communicate in improving one another. Things can go south very quickly if you’re not doing so. I don’t want to turn this blog into a love-advice blog, but it’s the same thing that you must do as a Product Designer. Keeping a close communication and collaboration with stakeholders involved within your project is crucial in delivering the best products, be it PMs, engineers, business teams, etc.
For freshies, I understand that you might encounter hiccups during those alignments, have heated discussions with your stakeholders. I also understand that this would require extra effort in your works. You already had lots of designs within your backlogs, now you also have to worry about how stakeholders would say about your designs? Believe me, my good friends, at least it is be far better to have these hiccups rather than finding them AFTER your product is delivered (Unless you want to see the world burn).
I made this meme for y’all. A simple simulation of overcommunication done wrong (video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI43U9UpkQo)
My experience when I did the exact opposite
Luckily for you, you don’t have to find out yourself about what happen if you don’t overcommunicate. I have some bags of experience of my own during my probation days working in Kargo. I worked alongside my then PM, working in Kargo’s Internal Tool Panthera (or at least I should have been). Back then, we were in the midst of a big bang project chunked into small sprints, where our goals were to enable our marketplace transporters to be able to fulfil shipments from our commercial environment (Commercial is where our bigger, more guaranteed Shippers are).
I was that typical fresh-graduate “Product Designer” diving in head first into one of the most fast-paced squads in Kargo. Working in silo, delivering designs by requests from people without knowing much technical and business contexts, you name it. Back then, I designed Panthera based on my gut feelings, ensuring my designs have the flow “they expect to work”. When I deliver the designs to the engineers and my PM, she said to me:
PM: “Pi, have you align this design with our users?”
Me: “Wait we need to align first? I thought it’s an internal tool, and a form, everyone gets it easily”
PM: “….”
Me: “….”
That’s when things started to go topsy-turfy for me. Midway into our engineering sprint, I’ve only just started aligning with the business team about the design. Their reaction were a mix of confusion, dissatisfaction, and resentment towards the design. Though I was only designing for an internal tools, everything still has to be tested, they are still part of Kargo’s users. After it happened, we just went along with the design, since there are still workarounds that can be done by the business team using my design, and it’s also way too risky to have changes now. I had my lessons learned at that time, and I promise to never do it again. Unfortunately, I bit my tongue twice, hard.
This is my state of mind when it happened
The second time it happened, I was designing one flow that could involve lots of cross-team collaborations in order to make it run smoothly. We already had our sprint planned, and pretty much done halfway. Then suddenly one of the business team member noticed something odd, there was one minor design change that we haven’t actually discussed. After noticing, lots of parties were massively infuriated and some even fed up with my performance.
The higher ups were immediately involved to handle this problem, controlling the situation so it didn’t go beyond it should’ve been. Turns out, this “minor component” could potentially be impacting our business workflow as a whole, in a horrible way. We had to rearrange our sprint, talked with many stakeholders in a flash, and made total overhaul of the design. All could’ve been avoided if I had aligned with stakeholders earlier.
What did I do next?
I opened up to my manager (by the time of writing), Rangga Husnaprawira on our 1-on-1 (re: therapy) session, he taught me how to say things the right way, getting more structured in articulating my thoughts, speaking practices, and confidence development. I started to shadow other meetings, see how my more senior colleagues work their way into an agreements with stakeholders. Summarise what and how they say it, and see if I can replicate or improve from them.
From Kargo Product’s standpoint, we have increased our alignments and overcommunications with the business teams every time an update happened within the product or the design.
For me personally, it required me a few more months before getting more used to it. I’m still learning this part of the job, even by the time of writing. But overtime, I noticed some improvements, and also providing more harmonies into my meetings. It helped me prevent lots of business and technical issues, with also figuring out edge cases of my design early.
The importance of overcommunication
When working on a complex project — especially if you don’t have enough people or you hired remotely — the last thing your team needs is to have to guess what you mean by saying “x”. Eugen Eşanu
One small component could be the difference between good and bad product. Our responsiblity as a PD is not only creating beautiful UIs, but about how good are we at communicating our thoughts and design applicable to our company. Think like a traveler, ask the right questions about practically everything, ask as simple as “What are we trying to solve?” rather than directly assure “Sure, I’ll finish the design by EOD”. Show how much we care and how we want to help achieve company goals.
I also made this meme for y’all
W hen you think that you have “trivial informations”, try to ask your stakeholders and hear what they think. It could avoid you into a lot of unnecessary mess
This does not only apply to when we’re figuring out requirements, explaining our designs and articulating the process also plays an important part in making sure that everything corresponds towards our previous discussions. There also are factors that we need to understand before delivering. By aligning to stakeholders, we can figure out these factors together and discuss about the end-goals of a project.
Going back into the present, and look into the future
The best designers are the ones who are able to properly communicate with others, and align on the goals. Learning how to communicate properly can be tricky. It takes time to get use to, building your own confidence, discipline, and soft skills. From me personally, improving your soft skills are just as important as building your design portfolio.
Would love to hear some thoughts and feedbacks from any Product Designer out there that are still with us in this article, Kargo folks are open for any feedbacks and iterate further! | https://medium.com/kargo-technology-team/overcommunication-why-is-it-so-important-for-product-designers-e98a24eecc40 | ['Luthfi Sulaiman'] | 2020-12-11 08:34:50.948000+00:00 | ['Product Design', 'Communication', 'Soft Skills', 'Startup Life', 'Strategy Execution'] |
Your ultimate Freelance guide | Not just India but the world has seen a rise in the gig economy in the last decade. More and more millennials are choosing the flexibility of working at their own time, pace, and also space. The past year has only confirmed this. As COVID 19 has changed our working patterns, more professionals and global companies are getting drawn to the idea of independence from the 9–5 cubicle life.
Although it’s not as rosy as it sounds, there are certainly a lot of challenges involved. Imagine being your own Boss, Accountant, HR, Marketer, Client Servicing Manager. Also being a freelancer would, well most of the time mean chai breaks alone 😥
On the upside, freelancing offers the opportunity to pick your own clients. It gives flexibility over workload. It also offers the exposure to work on a variety of projects at your own convenience of your own time and SPACE — beach, mountains, garden, home office, or even your garage (where the great ideas were born) — take your pick.
Freelancing can sound a little daunting having to play multiple roles. I have compiled a few points to keep in mind to make your journey less overwhelming. | https://medium.com/fizday/your-ultimate-freelance-guide-49a24fbe2010 | ['Bansri Shah'] | 2020-12-14 05:47:04.187000+00:00 | ['Graphic Design', 'UX Design', 'Freelancing', 'UI Design', 'Product Design'] |
NBA Christmas Day Games | December 25th has always featured the marquee matchups and MVP battles. This year is no different. The NBA season opener; Lakers versus the Clippers was not as hyped as the previous year as the Clippers failed to show up in Game 7 of the West Semis just a few months ago. Despite winning the season opener and the Christmas Day game against their biggest rivals last year, they failed to even reach the west finals where LeBron, AD and the Lakers were waiting. However, with the Celtics and the Nuggets hosting the Bucks and the Kings respectively, they set the tone for the season in two nail biting thrillers, the latter going to overtime.
This Christmas, the stage is all set as the best players in the world are set to face each other in a highly anticipated non-fan format. The day kicks off with last year’s finalists, the Miami Heat taking on the Pelicans in their home opener. Zion aims to make a memorable Christmas Day debut with Jimmy Butler and the Heat trying to spoil the party. Later, the Bucks look to bounce back after their disappointing loss to the Celtics despite their big three of Giannis, Jrue Holiday and Middleton scoring 87 combined points. They take on the Thompson-less Warriors as Curry plans to show out. Kyrie’s return to Boston is going to be interesting as he has Kevin Durant with him this time around. Tatum and Brown continue to develop as budding talents. Furthermore, the 5 game slate features the most anticipated match-up as LeBron and the Lakers take on Luka Magic and the Mavericks. Luka gets to show out in front of his childhood idol as the favourite to win the MVP takes on the best player in the world. (Spoiler alert: Triple Double watch). The night caps off with the Nuggets going against the Clippers as the latter desire to bounce back and get revenge against the team that humiliated them in last season’s playoffs coming back from a 1–3 deficit.
Matchup of the night: Denver Nuggets v/s Los Angeles Clippers.
Best player matchup: LeBron v/s Luka. | https://medium.com/@salilkanade/nba-christmas-day-games-aebd8c25b726 | ['Salil Kanade'] | 2020-12-25 18:16:25.274000+00:00 | ['Giannis Antetokounmpo', 'NBA', 'LeBron James', 'Lakers', 'Christmas Day'] |
The Open Letter | Forgiveness
The smear: “I forgave you. I still do…There’s a lot of things I’ve wanted to say publicly. Things that would shame you and display me as a victim, kind of what I understand you’re doing now, and it might even make me feel vindicated for a few minutes. But therein lies the problem. I totally forgive you.”
The truth: Wow, this is a big one to unravel, and I will share most of it in another story.
I will be the first to admit that I’m not a perfect person, but I am really curious what he “forgave” me for. Was it for causing him to have legal consequences for kicking one of our children in the ribs and back, and strangling him while screaming obscenities at him? Was it for calling the police on him when he tackled me to the ground and sat on my chest, almost suffocating me?
Was it because less than a year after our divorce two of his girlfriends contacted me for closure after he duped them out of hundreds of dollars and put them through an emotional wringer — and I chose to give them advice about recovering from emotional abuse?
I struggle with forgiving my ex. After we divorced, I had to re-learn the meaning of the word forgiveness. I learned that forgiveness is not about releasing someone from justice, but releasing myself from bitterness. Forgiveness is letting go of the pain so it doesn’t rot and destroy you from the inside out.
The things he did and still does to me are easier and easier to let go of, but the things he did and still does to our children are becoming increasingly harder to let go of. Right now, it is an almost daily process of letting go of the pain and hurt, using meditation, breathing exercises, and other relaxation methods so I don’t become physically ill from the stress of his continued and methodical abuse, and from the anxiety and sometimes panic attacks my physical body automatically triggers when my mind is reminded of past traumatic incidents.
Support
The smear: “I am your supporter…I still hurt when you hurt…I pray for you to be blessed…you matter to me…[our children] matter to me.”
The truth: Just a couple weeks before my ex posted these statements publicly, he and I were in mediation. When the mediator asked my ex-husband why he hadn’t paid child support in three months, he looked over at me with a smirk on his face and said, “Spite.”
I could write a whole book on the reason we were in mediation. Let’s just say the inflated ego of a covert predatory abuser tends to think things like court orders and state laws don’t apply to them because they know what is best.
If you are a survivor of domestic violence and you are in the midst of a custody dispute, you are your child’s best advocate. Even if you have a lawyer, research the custody laws in your state. Know the abuse statutes. Review custody case law until the words spill out of your ears. Document, document, document.
Apologies
The smear: “I will always be sorry and ashamed for the way we treated each other and long ago I apologized to you directly on multiple occasions and took full responsibility for my unloving actions.”
The truth: Towards the end of our marriage, I constantly heard apologies, quickly followed by another incident of abuse. Again, actions speak louder than words, and apologies are meaningless unless actions support a true change of heart. Our children and I still experience emotional and verbal abuse from my ex-husband. He also still refuses to acknowledge the truth that he was convicted of child abuse against one of our children — he continues to say that is a lie and it never happened.
Our two oldest children refuse to go to his house. The second oldest simply stated, “I feel uncomfortable in that angry atmosphere.” Our oldest, the child who bore the brunt of the worst of the emotional abuse, has disowned his father, blocking him on social media and phone calls and texts.
“Society would do well to remember that in an abusive relationship, there is no such thing as a “bad break-up” or successful co-parenting. In an abusive relationship such as this one, the break up is either usually staged by the abuser to maximize his or her cruelty in the shortest amount of time, is part of an abusive tactic in itself known as the “discard” phase, and the abuser rarely leaves the victim alone even if he or she does break up with the victim. In the cases where victims leave their abusers first, it is common for abusers to retaliate in ways that retraumatize their victims — from stalking and harassing them to threatening to release their personal information and/or staging a smear campaign.” — Shahida Arabi, ‘Why Survivors of Malignant Narcissists Don’t Get the Justice They Deserve’
Friends
The smear: “Even though you said you would never be my friend, I am your friend.”
The truth: Merriam-Webster says a friend is “a person who has a strong liking for and trust in another person…one that is not hostile.” The Urban Dictionary says, “A friend is someone you love and who loves you, someone you respect and who respects you, someone whom you trust and who trusts you. A friend is honest and makes you want to be honest, too. A friend is loyal.”
Again, actions speak louder than words. There was and still is a reason we are not friends. I take better care of myself now, and I choose to surround myself with people who truly do care about me, not only in words, but in actions.
The Fans
Fans in response to The Smear: “This is beautiful! [Your ex-wife] is very fortunate to have you in her life as a the father of [your children]!”
“Like MLK said, fight hate with love.”
“This is fantastic, [abusive ex-husband]. Thanks for sharing.”
The truth: Hoo, boy. Where do I start? This is probably the most demoralizing part of the smear campaign — the believers of the facade — however, I learned a long time ago that I can’t try to persuade his fans to see the truth. They believe the persona he shows the world, and honestly, I am the “crazy ex” because of his smear campaign. My consolation is that time tells them the truth of who he is so much better than I ever could.
Once again — actions speak louder than words.
My ex changes his circle of supporters frequently. He shares superficially. He gives generously when it benefits him. He charms and deflects. He is all about image. He is smoke and mirrors, a true magician. He even wears a wizard costume for Halloween.
When someone gets a peak behind the curtain, they see a frantic and frustrated man losing control of the slipping threads of the masterful web he weaves. He barks at them to get away, and if they don’t, he focuses his violent attentions on them until they are a shell of who they were before.
He moves often, because it’s hard work to keep the web of lies intact and afloat after a while. It gets heavy and starts breaking down, sometimes catching him unaware. So he finds a new base, a new group of fans, and starts all over, often reinventing himself.
If he has a shallow enough relationship with one of his supporters, he keeps them as a fan, spinning his stories of why this happened that way, why he is moving and changing jobs.
One of his supporters, our last remaining mutual friend from before we divorced, is actually a survivor of domestic violence herself, and she put up a post on Facebook that if any of her friends were to tell her to unfriend their abuser, she would. I told her to please unfriend my abuser, and told her a bit about my experiences. She wouldn’t, and wished me all the best. I told her she was hypocritical and I unfriended her.
This is actually all pretty common for a covert predatory abuser. It is formulaic, really. I know where he is at with his love life because of how “nice” he is towards me and our children. He is easygoing and agreeable when he is wooing his new prospect. He showers the children with gifts as they establish their relationship. He’s such a “good dad.” He showers the new woman with gifts and food and trips. He’s so “attentive.”
Then he starts the slow rot. Once the new woman is hooked by his overwhelming attention, he starts shaping her into exactly who he wants her to be. There will be suggestions and confusing comments that could be insults, but he’s so “kind” she must have misunderstood.
He will start asking for things from her more and more, financially, personally, sexually. He will start trying to control her by getting his fingers into every good thing she has. And she is a good woman, understanding and forgiving, and desiring more of the attention he has given her so far.
At this stage, he will start becoming more and more controlling of me and our children, too. There will be ultimatums and threats, and like our second oldest said — his house will have an angry atmosphere.
After a period of walking on eggshells, there will eventually be an explosion of some sort. The truth will come to light.
Over the course of the three years since we were divorced, six of his ex-girlfriends have sought me out for closure. One of them lost her job and her relationship with her immediate family because of his smear campaign against her. One of them has a restraining order against him for stalking and harassment. He used all of them for money, coercing them out of thousands of dollars collectively. All of them have scars from his emotional abuse and manipulation. How do you trust again after that?
The only thing I would say to a supporter of a covert predatory abuser is something I would say to a victim, a survivor, to anyone: actions speak louder than words.
When something doesn’t add up, don’t disregard it. When someone makes you uncomfortable, even if you don’t know why, don’t disregard it. Observe, listen, be aware. Look into the Power and Control Wheel — a tool for understanding the dynamics of power and control in an abusive relationship. Know the red flags of domestic violence. Learn what healthy and unhealthy behavior is in a relationship. Listen to your gut.
Abusers give off warning signals. There is always, always, something that indicates they are abusive. If you find out that you are a “supporter” of a covert predatory abuser, or any type of abuser, don’t turn away from their victims.
I read a quote recently from the Facebook page Living With Emotional Abuse: “I’m at the age where if a guy says that his EX is crazy, I kind of want to talk to her to see exactly what he did to make her that way.”
Beware the person with a plethora of “crazy” exes. | https://medium.com/memoirs-of-a-survivor/the-open-letter-438b490cdde5 | ['A'] | 2019-08-01 00:55:01.879000+00:00 | ['Abuser', 'Open Letter', 'Domestic Violence', 'Abuse', 'Survivor'] |
How does symlink work on macOS | I am working on a WordPress project. I accidentally removed a folder when deleting plugin. Let’s say our plugin’s name is simple-code-block . We built the project at ~/workplaces/wordpress/plugins/simple-code-block . The Wordpress is installed at /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/wordpress/ . I to be able to load the plugin directly from the development folder I created a symlink. When I delete the plugin the content in the folder is removed.
So I did a test on how symlink works:
// 1. create two testing folders
$ mkdir -p symlinks/wordpress/wp-content/plugins
$ mkdir -p symlinks/workspsaces/simple-code-block
$ touch symblinks/workspaces/simple-code-bloci/a-file.php // 2. create a symblink in the wordpress plugins folder
$ cd symlink/w/w/p/ && ln -s ../../../workspaces/simple-code-block // 3. rename wordpress, and check if symblink works
$ mv symlinks/wordpress symblinks/wordpress_2
$ ls symblinks/wordpress_2/simple-code-block
> a-file.php // 4. remove wordpress_2 and check if the scb folder is removed
$ rm -rf symblinks/wordpress_2
$ ls symblinks/workspaces/simple-code-block
> a-file.php
Explanation
A symbolic link, also termed a soft link, is a special kind of FILE that points to another file. | https://medium.com/cloud-tech/how-does-symlink-work-on-macos-8cd2cf817d2e | [] | 2020-12-20 08:46:44.601000+00:00 | ['Symlink', 'Mac'] |
The Harsh Reality For Magic Mushroom Possession: A True Story of Jail Time & Becoming A Fugitive in Australia | Healing the prison-induced trauma from psychedelic incarceration… with psychedelics.
After prison, I just needed to heal myself; reconnecting with family and friends to get my life back on track as much as possible before anything else.
I had to relearn to not be on guard 24/7, and to stop pretending to look and be someone not to fuck with, as you had to be tough in there, or get picked on VERY harshly.
This was extremely hard for such a passive, open minded, non-confrontational and happy person like myself.
I had to relearn to sleep well after getting so used to broken sleep from the freezing cold, the noise of people fighting and yelling at night, as well as the ‘screws’ making noise if it got too quiet; just to mess with you for a giggle on their boring high paid night shift.
I had to heal from the terrible processed food they pump you with, after rarely eating any such food for a decade before.
I had to reconnect with my daughter who turned 1 while I was inside, and basically forgot who I was! She’s 3 as of last Sunday, and our connection is stronger than ever!
An endless trauma list for a victimless offence.
I’m lucky I didn’t just tune out completely while pumping myself with depressants, instead of pushing myself to get well after my release.
The urge was overwhelming to escape with such substances, and I did; for a long time. A breakfast, lunch and dinner of flunitrazepam (rohypnol), heroin, and other downers was my escape for many months to hide from this terrifying experience.
How ironic that it was the use of various psychedelic compounds that helped me heal. I never would have been able to get through, and over, that trauma without them.
I decided to ingest 28.3 dry grams, and film it; to prove that this was not necessarily a commercial quantity and that it didn’t fall under the charges of “intent to distribute”. (There was no intentions or evidence of sale or intent to, I let them look through my phone I was so clean at the time and was infuriated that they added such charges).
So I took the dose I was charged with, ABOVE the actual amount; to show it can be safely taken in the right setting, that it’s not a commercial dose, and that I only use them to heal myself.
I teach others to identify and use these things online, and in workshops, but have never sold or given these things out. I don’t need to. All I need to do to spread mushrooms, is spread my knowledge.
Not sell them or hand them out.
I never EVER wanted to be in the spotlight for anything to do with drugs, even though I’m all for reform. I believe most of us are in this position, whether we use them, or just know these laws don’t work.
My hand has been forced by my systematic abuse by the system to take one for the team; to be open about my experience and hope that one day it has something to do with eventually changing these unethical and deadly laws.
I’ve been part of the HR movement and spreading proper drug education for over a decade before my arrest. The realization of our drug law fallacy was smashed in my face by seeing people like members of parliament and police use drugs, the many harms of legal drugs, plus the carnage caused by prohibition by age 15. I’m currently 31.
I’m sick of seeing people die as the result of drug law.
I hate knowing there’s an untaxed billion dollar black market out there that could be stopped over night with reform. I know crime for drugs has nothing to do with the drug, and only that it’s illegality makes it a lucrative trade.
I’m sick of stories of substituted substances as fairly safe drugs like MDMA, that hurt or kill people all as result of prohibition.
I’m hurting for the hurt children, families and friends, hurt directly and indirectly by these inhumane laws.
I’m done with mass manipulation of populations to continue this cruellest of treatments under the bullshit, completely disproven guise of safety, and I’m happy to defend and debate for us all. With or without anyone’s support.
I would go to jail for life to see my fellow beings set free of this madness. This isn’t about me. This is about every single person affected by these laws eg. EVERYONE… | https://medium.com/@ck.medicinepath/the-harsh-reality-for-magic-mushroom-possession-a-true-story-of-jail-time-becoming-a-fugitive-fb465ffd3108 | ['Caiyuda Kiora'] | 2019-03-02 02:04:36.754000+00:00 | ['Magic Mushrooms', 'Jail', 'Drugs', 'Psychedelics'] |
Eight Awesome Story Songs | The Night That the Lights Went Out in Georgia
Vicki Lawrence
I had this one on an old K-Tel record from the 70s. This song basically scared the crap out of me as a kid. I’d keep lifting my headphones off, making sure some backwoods southern lawyer wasn’t outside my bedroom door. They hung an innocent man, so the judge had bloodstains on his hands, and that was enough to send me running back to the Osmond Brothers faster than you could say Crazy Horses.
Some poor schmuck getting framed and hanged in some podunk town in Georgia was a bit much for this delicate little flower.
Shannon
Henry Gross
If you like Old Shep, you’ll love Shannon. Is there anything more heart-wrenching than a beloved dog’s death? Cue violins and grab a box of tissues. This one’s a doozy, kids, even though it's an utterly shite song.
I could never figure out what happened to Shannon, though.
She “drifted out to sea?” What happened? Swept out by a riptide? Shark attack? Trying to escape her maudlin owner and his dopey songs? That's my guess. Hopefully, she found that island with a shady tree, far, far, away from that painful falsetto chorus.
David Geddes
Here’s a little ditty about a pregnant teen named Julie and her maniacal gun-wielding father. You definitely get the vibe that this kid was wearing a purity ring and attended those creepy Daddy/Daughter dances with her old man. In fact, Julie telling Daddy that she and Joey were “gonna get married — just you wait and see” probably threw him into a jealous rage.
Hey Dad — got news for ya, pal. It takes two to Tango, so if you’re going to kill Joey, you should at least ground that hussy daughter of yours. Oh wait, you killed her dead. Never mind.
Bo Donaldson
A cheery and rather cheesy song about patriotism and the futility of war that is so infectiously bouncy it almost makes dying for the oligarchs sound appealing.
Almost.
My friends and I used to drink vodka and Kool-Aid, then “play” along to Billy, Dont Be a Hero on pots and pans in my parents' kitchen. That military drumbeat was irresistible. Good, wholesome, shitfaced entertainment.
Can't tell a lie, though. The last line “I heard she threw the letter away,” still gets me right in the fee-fees. But don’t tell anybody. I would hate to lose my street cred.
Pole? I dont need no damn pole Photo by Mervat
Cher
This was the first single I ever bought with my own money. It kinda made me wish that I’d been born in the wagon of a traveling show.
Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves was another tale of an oopsie pregnancy, but in this scenario, the impregnator bounces, and Unwed Teenage Mother’s dear Papa was seemingly supportive. I’m a tad confused by Cher’s assertion that “Papa would’ve shot him if he knew what he’d done,” though.
Hold up. Papa didn’t know what he’d done? Did a star rise in the East? Our friend Joey was at least willing to accept his responsibility. Julie’s dad, Mr. Anger Issues, should take note.
Long story short, our heroine would dance for the money they’d throw, just like her mother, and most likely her own daughter as well. Hooray for generational poverty!
Paper Lace
Daddy was a cop on the east side of Chicago …
I had no idea this was about a shoot-out between the Chicago cops and Al Capone’s gangsters. Yawn. This is the new millennium. Shit can go full-on OK Corral anytime or anywhere. The way Paper Lace spins it, you’d think it was a big deal. Clearly, this song was not composed during the era of almost daily school shootings.
I miss those days.
Jim Croce
You may recall that bad, bad, Leroy Brown was the baddest man in the whole DAMN town.
Ooooh. Profanity. That was exciting.
As kids, my best friend and I repeatedly sang this just for the opportunity to say the word “damn.” Naturally, DAMN was about a thousand decibels louder than the rest of the song. Singing that shit loud and proud. Because that’s how we rolled. We were gansta.
I know that today this jam would be considered a paean to toxic masculinity, but whatever. It rocks, so don’t mess around with Jim(Croce.)
Terry Jacks
I had a friend who loved this jam. Why, I have no idea. So, as a joke, I filled a 90-minute cassette with this song. Nothing but this maudlin, annoying song. Over and over. It was painful but worth it.
I know he enjoyed it because his brother told me if he ever found out who made him that tape, he’d flatten them. I just nodded and smiled, while laughing like a hyena on the inside.
I didn't want anyone to know I owned that record. Can you blame me? | https://rocknheavy.net/eight-awesome-story-songs-53f8b5a65fe0 | ['Kathy Copeland Padden'] | 2021-08-08 15:48:59.558000+00:00 | ['Songs', 'Music', '1970s', 'Culture', 'Humor'] |
How to Create an Interactive Bottom Sheet in Swift 5 | Let’s Start
First, we need to create a generic BottomSheetContainerViewController that will contain a content view controller and a bottom sheet view controller as children:
As we can see, both Content and BottomSheet types have to be UIViewController s, which means we will be able to specify any custom UIViewController either as Content or BottomSheet . You will see this later when we start using the BottomSheetContainerViewController in an example.
Now that we have Content and BottomSheet view controllers as children, let’s add some required properties. In this step, we will create two:
A BottomSheetConfiguration struct that will signify the total height and the initial offset of the bottom sheet
struct that will signify the total height and the initial offset of the bottom sheet A BottomSheetState enum, which manages the state of the bottom sheet. It has the .initial and .full cases:
Note that we updated the initializer to include the BottomSheetConfiguration as a parameter.
Now, let’s move to properties that handle interaction and animation. Add the panGesture and topConstraint properties as follows:
The bottom sheet view controller will move around the screen, so we need to get a hold of the top constraint of its view. For this reason, we have the topConstraint property, which we will repeatedly change and animate accordingly.
Note that we conformed the BottomSheetContainerViewController to UIGestureRecognizerDelegate . This allows us to add the method gestureRecognizer(_:shouldRecognizeSimultaneouslyWith:) , in which we return true .
This is useful in case you have a UITableView or any other scroll view placed inside the bottom sheet. If we hadn’t added this method, our UIPanGestureRecognizer would stop working when performing a gesture on a UIScrollView subclass.
Now let’s actually add the children view controllers to the container:
Here is a breakdown of all steps:
Add both the contentViewController and bottomSheetViewController to the container using the addChild() method. Add the root views of contentViewController and bottomSheetViewController to the root view of the container. Add the panGesture to the root view of the bottomSheetViewController . Apply translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraint = false . This is required because we are creating our UI programmatically using constraints. Set constraints for the contentViewController ’s view. Call the didMove(to:) method to inform the contentViewController that it was added to the parent. The parent is the BottomSheetContainerViewController . Set the top constraint of the bottom sheet to be aligned to the bottomAnchor of the container’s view. We also add an offset of the BottomSheetConfiguration to make the bottom sheet a little bit visible in the bottom of the screen. Set all the bottom sheet’s constraints and activate them. Call the didMove(to:) method on the bottomSheetViewController to inform it that it was added to the BottomSheetContainerViewController .
Finally we are done with setting up the container and its children. Now let’s handle interactivity using the panGesture .
Let’s connect the panGesture with its action:
Now, we are going to add two methods:
showBottomSheet(animated:) — moves the bottom sheet to its full height and sets the BottomSheetState to .full . If animated is set to true , it performs the movement with animation.
— moves the bottom sheet to its full height and sets the to . If is set to , it performs the movement with animation. hideBottomSheet(animated:) — similarly, this method moves the bottom sheet to its initial point and sets the BottomSheetState to .initial . If animated, it performs a nice spring animation.
The above code shows how you can animate constraints. These are the steps:
Change the constant of the constraint.
of the constraint. Run self.view.layoutIfNeeded() inside an animation block. Note that you must call the layoutIfNeeded() on the superview of the view you want to animate. In our case, this superview is the BottomSheetContainerViewController ’s root view.
Great! Now we can programmatically move and hide the bottom sheet. It’s time to work directly with the UIPanGestureRecognizer ’s action.
Here is the behavior we want to achieve:
Move the bottom sheet with our finger up and down.
When we stop moving it, take into account the current BottomSheetState , translation , and velocity in the y direction. If the state is .full , check if we have the bottom sheet translation of at least half of its height. If this is true , we run the hideBottomSheet(animated:) method. Otherwise, we return it to the full height. Also, we need to check if the magnitude of the velocity is greater than 1,000. If this gives us true , hide the bottom sheet. In other cases, revert it to the full height. Similarly, if the state is .initial , check the translation and velocity magnitudes and react accordingly.
Everything is going to make more sense soon, I promise. Let’s start with obtaining translation magnitude and velocity in the y direction:
Now let’s create a switch for the current state of the gesture:
As we can see, we handle the .began , .changed , .ended , and .failed states of the UIGestureRecognizer . Inside each of them (we group the .began and .changed ones) we provide an if else statement based on the current BottomSheetState .
Let’s handle each case now. First we start with the grouped .began and .failed case:
Here is a breakdown of the above steps. If the BottomSheetState is .full :
Assert that the user scrolls downward. The bottom sheet is already at its full height; no upward scrolling is allowed. Change the topConstraint ’s constant to match the current position of the user’s finger. For example, if the total height of the bottom sheet is 500 points and the user has scrolled 100 points, we subtract 100 from 500 and obtain 400 points. So we set the constant to -400, because this is an offset from the bottom of the container’s view. Update the root view to show the constraint’s change.
In case the BottomSheetState is .initial :
4. Calculate the new constant by using the BottomSheetConfiguration ’s initialOffset and the translation magnitude. For example, if the initial offset was 80 points and the user has scrolled 200 points, we obtain 280 points. This means we would need to place the bottom sheet 280 points from the bottom of the container’s view.
5. Assert that the user scrolls upward. Because the bottom sheet is at its initial point, no downward scrolling is allowed.
6. Assert that the magnitude of the newConstant is less than the full height of the bottom sheet. This is to prevent the bottom sheet from moving further than its maximum height point.
7. Set the resulting constant.
8. Update the root view to show the constraint’s change.
With the .began and .changed states done, now we need to handle the .ended case:
If the BottomSheetState was .full when a user stopped moving the bottom sheet:
Check if the user has moved the bottom sheet at least half of its maximum height, or the y velocity is higher than 1,000. If this is true, hide the bottom sheet. Otherwise, return it to its max height point.
On the other hand, if the BottomSheetState was .initial :
4. Check if the user has moved the bottom sheet at least half of its maximum height, or the y velocity is less than -1,000.
5. If this is true, show the bottom sheet.
6. Otherwise, hide the bottom sheet.
We need to handle the last case, .failed , if the UIPanGestureRecognizer fails during the process:
This time the logic is very simple. If the latest BottomSheetState is .full , return the sheet to its maximum height point. Otherwise, hide the bottom sheet.
Great! We have finally implemented a reusable class. We are now able to use it effectively whenever we want. Let’s quickly use it on a simple example. | https://medium.com/better-programming/how-to-create-an-interactive-bottom-sheet-in-swift-5-adadaad79e72 | ['Zafar Ivaev'] | 2020-08-28 13:51:02.881000+00:00 | ['Mobile', 'Xcode', 'Swift', 'iOS', 'Programming'] |
Refetch Strategies for Apollo’s GraphQL client | Refetch Strategies for Apollo’s GraphQL client
There are several techniques for refetching data. In this article, we explore them by example.
The setup
In Giving React + GraphQL a Lift with Apollo-Boost, I demonstrated how to get React application up and running quickly, and then how to incorporate the ApolloClient React components from apollo-boost. At the time of that writing, I used the Apollo Launchpad service to create a GraphQL server instance, but that has now met its demise. This time I’ll install and run the GraphQL server from the Apollo GraphQL Tutorial. Here are the steps to get that server running:
cd fullstack-tutorial/final/server
npm install
npm run-script start:ci git clone https://github.com/apollographql/fullstack-tutorial/ cd fullstack-tutorial/final/servernpm installnpm run-script start:ci
With success, you’ll see:
$ npm run-script start:ci
... 🚀 app running at http://localhost:4000/
The server will have to be running locally for the various branches of the application source I’m about to present to function.
The App
I’m ignoring the client that comes with the Apollo tutorial and substituting my own. For this article, I’ll iterate through several branches of my GitHub repository, with links to each at the end of this post.
Before getting started, take a look first at the GraphQL schema at http://localhost:4000 in your browser:
From the Playground, I can query launches :
So far, so good. Now it’s time to build an app. In the previously mentioned article, a React application was generated by create-react-app. Here, I’ll do the same:
npx create-react-app apollo-refetch
cd my-app
npm start
Once everything is loaded and the server is running, you’ll see a spinning graphic of an atom. Nice, but not useful. Before I can replace that graphic, I need to install GraphQL along with Apollo’s react tools:
npm i apollo-boost graphql react-apollo -S
Now we’re ready to go.
First step: the Query component
I’ll first create a component called Launches. This will replace the innards of the App component found in src/App.js of the apollo-boost generated app.
This yields (with the help of some stolen CSS):
This initial page will be a read-only view. I added a button that will navigate to an editor page so that changes can be made to the launch list.
Next step: the Editor component
The Editor component looks a lot like the Launches list, but with a control for booking on or more launches.
The Editor code has a query much like the one for the Launches page, and two mutations, one for login and the other to update mission bookings.
The server application from the full-stack tutorial requires a login before authorizing bookings. For my purposes, I will just generate a random login email from faker, perform the login, get the auth key, and then make sure my Apollo client instance is aware of it for subsequent requests:
Full source code links at bottom of this post.
It has some problems. If you go to the editor page, book a flight or two, then click submit, it may seem okay. However, the page should show only non-booked flights, so the flights you book should disappear from the list once the mutation has executed. Also, if you go back to the start page, the flights will still show as unbooked. The problem is that mutations don’t refetch data without you telling them so, and without a refetch, the React components won’t re-render.
There are several techniques for refetching data, which is what the rest of this article is about.
query/refetch
The simplest scenario for refetch is when there is component that both queries and mutates. The component first queries to populate, say, a list of items; then there is a control within the component that triggers a mutation operation, such as adding/deleting/modifying one or more of those items. Once the mutation is performed, the component is updated by refetching the data.
The Editor is just such a component:
The Query subcomponent (exported from apollo-client) wraps itself around the Submit component shown previously, which contains a Mutate component.
In this case, if I want to update the List so that it no longer shows the flights I just booked, I can use a refetch function that the Query component provides:
<Query query={LAUNCHES}>
{({ data, loading, error, refetch }) => {
...
<Submit refetch={refetch}/>
Now, when Submit performs the mutation, it can refetch afterwards:
const submitChanges = (evt, mBook, refetch) => {
const bookingElems = document.getElementsByName('booking')
const bookedAry = []; if (bookingElems.length) {
bookingElems.forEach(booked => {
if (booked.checked)
bookedAry.push(booked.id)
});
mBook({variables: {ids: bookedAry}})
refetch();
}
} const Submit = (props) => {
const {refetch} = props;
... return <Mutation mutation={BOOK}}>
{mBook => (
<input type="submit" value="Submit Changes"
onClick={evt => submitChanges(evt, mBook, refetch)} />
)}
</Mutation>
All well and good, but the Query must contain the Mutation for this to work. True, you could store the refetch method returned from Query in some React state structure or a React hook, but there’s another way.
refetchQueries
The Mutation itself can direct the refetching of queries, which in turn will update components displaying query results.
Mutation refetch by query name
There are two named queries in the application: ls and bookie . The ls query is used on the Launches page and the bookie query on the Editor page.
// Launches.js
const qLaunches = gql`query ls {
launches {
launches {
id
site
mission {
name
}
rocket {
name
type
}
isBooked
}
}
}`; // Editor.js
const LAUNCHES = gql`
query bookie {
launches {
launches {
id
site
mission {
name
}
rocket {
name
type
}
isBooked
}
}
}`;
Notice the similarities? Because they are essentially the same query under different guises, Apollo’s caching will make some of what I will demonstrate redundant, but the concepts are sound.
Instead of passing refetch around like a hot potato, I can instead have the Mutation component call the queries I want to update after the mutations are done.
const Submit = (props) => {
...
return <Mutation mutation={BOOK} refetchQueries = {['ls', 'bookie']}>
{mBook => (
<input type="submit" value="Submit Changes"
onClick={evt => submitChanges(evt, mBook)} />
)}
</Mutation>
And this will update both the Editor and Launches pages. (Actually, updating one updates the other, on account of that caching thing I mentioned.)
Mutation refetch by full query with query variables
The above technique is fine so long as I don’t have variables I have to pass to the query, but if I do, there is another syntax:
... refetchQueries = {[{
query: ['GetCollectionByUserId'],
variables: { userId : userId, first : :"Joe", last : "Friday"
}]}
If you’re not familiar with GraphQL query variables, there is an example here.
The one problem with the refetchQueries technique is that it can be hard to determine what mutations affect which queries. If I were to write a new Mutation component for a large project, would I know which Queries are affected?
Polling
Another technique for keeping Query component fresh is through polling. A Query component can take a pollInterval property, in milliseconds.
export default function Launches(props) {
const {setEditing} = props; return (
<Query query={qLaunches} pollInterval={1500}>
{({ data, loading, error }) => {
if (loading) return <p>Loading...</p>;
if (error) return <p>ERROR</p>;
return (
<Fragment>
<input type='button' value='make changes' onClick={() => setEditing(true)}/>
<table style={{ border: 'solid 1px' }}>
<tbody>
<tr>
<th>Site</th><th>Mission</th><th>Rocket</th><th>Booked</th>
</tr>
{launchRows(data)}
</tbody>
</table>
</Fragment>
);
}}
</Query>
);
};
The Query component is then refreshed every so often. This can be real handy if monitoring real-time events, but a lot of polling operations can affect network performance.
Subscriptions
Finally, subscriptions are available in GraphQL, and I’ve written about them before. If polling doesn’t appeal to you, and wiring up Queries and Mutations together seems potentially hard to maintain, then having a subscription service that refreshes Queries (by calls the refresh() method as shown previously) when a subscribed-to event occurs may have its advantages.
A bit of wiring would need to be set up to accomplish this: basically a mapping of subscribe events to Query refresh() methods. There might be a reduction in network traffic compared to polling, though the trade-off is the increased socket connections to the server or servers.
Source code | https://medium.com/hackernoon/refetch-strategies-for-apollos-graphql-client-248a449734cd | ['Jeff Lowery'] | 2019-06-05 14:29:27.645000+00:00 | ['GraphQL', 'Apollo Client'] |
5 Ways To Keep Romance Alive — On A Budget | 5 Ways To Keep Romance Alive — On A Budget
Just about everyone agrees that a nice dinner and a good bottle of wine at a quiet, intimate restaurant will set the mood for romance, but have you seen the price tag? Not everyone can afford to spend big money on romance every time, but a bit of creativity can get the same results without breaking the bank.
While most people know about ‘his and hers’ items like bathrobes and towels, there are a number of other items that can be enjoyed together as ‘couples’ items. Try getting matching T-shirts with cute sayings on them. Have matching his and hers overnight bags, coffee mugs, bicycles, cell phones, cars, holiday ornaments, tennis rackets, rocking chairs and even matching carved pumpkins on Halloween.
Surprise your partner by making the ordinary a little more special. If he or she is enjoying a good book, remove the bookmark and replace it with a note that says, “I bet you’ll never guess where I’ve hidden your bookmark.” If they always turn the TV on when they come home from work, tape a note on the television that says, “Wouldn’t you rather turn me on?” instead.
5 Ways To Keep Romance Alive — On A Budget
Making important memories is one way to be romantic on a budget. Challenge your partner to remember the most romantic kiss that you’ve seen in a movie. This will lead to some discussion about romantic kisses and should enhance the mood. As a surprise, buy that movie one day and try to recreate that special romantic kiss! Keep it in a special place and re-watch it whenever the mood strikes. If you can’t agree on the single most romantic kiss, go ahead and create a top-five list. This tip works for anything. The top five most romantic songs. The top five most romantic movies. The top five most romantic books. You see the pattern. Make sure to go ahead and buy the books, songs, movies, or whatever so you can use them in the future.
If you want to plan the ultimate romantic evening but funds are low or you simply don’t want to have to leave the house, shut down the electricity, and imitate a power outage (it’s up to you whether or not you tell him or her!). You won’t have any distractions or heat, so it is up to both of you to keep the other warm and entertain each other.
It’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t enjoy an Oreo cookie. Take an Oreo (or generic version of one), scratch the top of the cookie until smooth, and then scratch a heart and your initials into the smooth surface. You can also make your own cookies and create personal messages. Another version is to make your own cupcakes and frost them with special messages in red icing. You can also give your spouse a true treat and track down a box of his or her favorite Girl Scout cookie.
These 5 simple ideas are sure to warm up any relationship. Don’t be afraid to try simple tips and changes to “routines” to spice things up without having it cost a fortune!
5 Ways To Keep Romance Alive — On A Budget | https://medium.com/@akshaymh/5-ways-to-keep-romance-alive-on-a-budget-979ffc55d15f | ['Akshay Mh'] | 2020-12-20 07:52:56.991000+00:00 | ['Love', 'Budget', 'Romance', 'Tips', 'Marriage'] |
Elasticsearch Composite Aggregation Java API example | While I was trying to build a Composite Aggregation request from a java client, I realized there is a no-good example found in any resources. So here is a simple composite aggregation request (with a sub-aggregation).
P.S.: Composite Aggregation is not present inside Aggregations (org.elasticsearch.search.aggregations.*). Its present Inside Composite (org.elasticsearch.search.aggregations.bucket.composite.*)
List<CompositeValuesSourceBuilder<?>> sources = new ArrayList<>();
sources.add(new TermsValuesSourceBuilder("field1").field("field1"));
sources.add(new TermsValuesSourceBuilder("field2").field("field2"));
sources.add(new TermsValuesSourceBuilder("field3").field("field3")); CompositeAggregationBuilder compositeAggregationBuilder =
new CompositeAggregationBuilder("byProductAttributes", sources).size(10000);
You can add sub-aggregations as
compositeAggregationBuilder
.subAggregation(AggregationBuilders.min("sub-field1").field("sub-field1"))
.subAggregation(AggregationBuilders.max("sub-field2").field("sub-field2"))
Then add it to the searchSourceBuilder | https://medium.com/@thenerdnomad/elasticsearch-composite-aggregation-java-api-example-16979b6675b8 | [] | 2021-02-02 09:35:50.459000+00:00 | ['Java', 'Elasticsearch', 'Composite Aggregations'] |
11 Methods to Generate Solar Leads | The solar industry is fueled by leads. Everyone wants more leads but most solar reps have no idea what to do to get more. Here are 11 methods that you should consider if you are looking to generate solar leads.
#1 Past Client Referrals
This is the bread and butter of all established solar professionals. Make sure that you maintain a relationship with all past customers so that you are able to stay on top of their mind when they are talking to people in their network. For more tips on getting referrals, watch this video that provides you with 9 tips to make sure that you are doing it right.
9 Tips for Better Referrals
#2 Cold Call, Buy data
Another classic sales tactic, cold calling is exactly what it sounds like. Go to a site like 411.com, search addresses and start calling!
This is an old school method that is affordable and provides you with unlimited opportunity if you are good on the phone. It is an absolute relentless grind but it is Free (other than phone line) and you are able to do it from anywhere.
This is probably my least recommended option on this list but if nothing else is possible then pick up the phone and start dialing!
#3 Content
Content is King.
Content is King. You need to make sure that you are always producing content that reminds people about what you do, who you help and why people should work with you. Don’t over think it. Pictures of Beautiful Installs. Reviews from Happy Customers. Before/After Electric Bills. Educational videos/articles. Start posting consistently on all of your profiles and you will start to have people coming to you.
#4 Simple & Modern Website
Do you have to have a website? No you don’t if we are being honest and your website will never be the #1 lead genrator for your business. However, It still works! Having a professional & modern website is a simple and easy step you can use to establish credibility and generate leads passively throughout the year. Keep it Simple and make sure that it is designed to generate leads. and has the following:
Strong Call to Actions.
Lots of Social Proof (testimonials, reviews etc)
Emphasis on Local Market
Friendly & Inviting About Page
Contact Us Info
#5 Facebook Ads
Facebook is one of the most powerful platforms to advertise because you can pick the exact itnerests & characteristics of the people that you are looking to target. Facebook ads are relatively easy to get started with and can provide you with leads at fair prices One of my biggest recommendations for anyone venturing into Facebook ads is to begin creatign a swipe file. Screenshot every solar ad theat you ever find and you wil begin to notice trends and strategies that are owrking for other people. If you are a SolarBoom member then you can access our swipe file of 500+ solar ads from the main menu.
#6 YouTube Ads
YouTube Ads are the most challenging to do on your own but it is still possible for a solar rep to manage and utilize in order to generate solar leads for themselves. These leads are probably my favorite because they are usually much more excited to talk to you then leads from other paid sources. YouTube ads work especially well if the sales rep is the same person that was in the ad that the person watched! They will be surprised that you are the one calling and it makes the conversation much more enjoyable. If you want to try YouTube ads, don’t overthink it! Record a video using this trusted framework: 1) Hook: Why should they listen to you? Why should they care? Grab their attention in the first 3 seconds. 2) Tell the story. How does your program work and who are the people that are most likely to be in a position to take advantage. 3) Call To Action. Tell them what to do next and what they should expect. i.e. ‘Click the button down below and you can take a short quiz to see if you qualify today.’ Link the ad to your basic funnel or direct to your survey (DFY ones are provided with a SolarBOOM Membership) and then just wait for the traffic to role in.
#7 Google Ads
Why Google Ads?
Vast reach: Google processes 2 Trillion searches per year. That is A LOT of people searching for specific things and you are guaranteed that you will be able to find the people that are looking for solar if you set up your campaign properly.
You control the campaigns! You are in control the budget, the targeting & your total spend. Just like other online ad platforms, you have control over who your ads are shown to.
Getting quicker results: You publish a campaign on google ads ad it is possible that you can get calls as early as later today. It is super fast to get up and running because the ad itself isn’t as complex to create as Facebook ads or YouTube ads.
Increased conversions: High Intent means that you are getting people who are ready to talk to someone. The conversion numbers will always be better with these types of customers.
Google ads are awesome because they are able to get high intent leads who are researching their solar purchase now! It is a great method to generate leads but usually not the most cost effective because the bidding it much more competitive for these high intent customers. Plus, if they are going to Google to search for solar they you are going ot be more likely to encounter ‘price shoppers’ who are calling every company under the sun to get the best deal.
#8 Tabling Event
There are hundreds of events in your market that are looking for companies to place a table at their even and provide information for their audience. Find the events in which are likely to attract homeowners and see how much it costs to have a table at their event. It is usually insanely cost effective and if you get one deal out of the event then you will easily cover your costs. Once you are committed to an event, start to brainstorm ways that you can make your table stand out from the rest. Giveaways, Prize Wheels, & other interactive tools are great at attracting people to your table and then you are able to start a conversation. Make sure that you have a clipboard to capture their name, email & phone number and then start collecting names of interested people. Always remember, they are interested in the BENEFITS of solar. Focus on that and don’t make the conversation at the table to salesly.
#9 Networking & Partnerships
Network with other professionals who have relationships with your ideal customers. Provide them with value and then once the relationship is established, let them know exactly the type of people that you are looking for. Some of my favorite industries to create relationships with:
Roofing
Accountant
Realtors
Mortgage
If you are good friends with them then you may be able to get a good stream of referrals but if it a brand new relationship then I recommend that you compensate them with a referral commission to get them actively on your side.
#10 Knock Some Doors
I am a solar marketing guy. I love online leads as much as anyone but there is no better return on investment then if you are good at the door to door game. Practice and master this skill and you will always be able to generate leads. Other than your time it is completely FREE. Just pick a street and start knocking. Once you are good at knocking doors then hire others and train them to hit the doors on your behalf.
#11 Friends & Family
Maintain Your Personal Network and Work With it:
Do you friends and family know what it is that you do? Do they know what are the benefits of working with you? If not then you ae leaving money on the table. You want to make sure that everyone in your personal network considers you to be their ‘solar guy/gal’. Create an army of people who have their ear’s to the ground for you and you will get a steady flow of referrals. Remember: Friend’s & Family want to help you! Just make sure they know how they can.
In Conclusion
Many people like to rush to online leads because it is an easy and predictable way to grow your business. If you are interested in generating leads for the first time then II strongly recommend that you consider the cheaper options that are on this list first. No matter what these will provide you with a solid foundation. Then when you look to online leads I also recommend that you look into a few different lead generation companies. Working with a professional marketer will save you a lot of time and a lot of money.
If you are interested in learning about SolarBOOM’s industry leading performance based pricing model then please click here and let’s book a call to discuss your business. | https://medium.com/@PunchlineKyle/11-methods-to-generate-solar-leads-321dfd2a457c | ['Kyle Thumm'] | 2020-12-24 01:57:35.097000+00:00 | ['Strategy', 'Tips', 'Solar'] |
Guardrails for Funding Rates | A couple of months of activity and trades on the Leverj perpetuals markets has given us a good sense of how funding rates are playing out on the platform. Curious minds may want to look at our weekly funding rate publications.
On a few occasions the intermittent absence of quotes or widening of spread led to sharp funding rate increases. Consider reading the detailed notes on how funding rate is calculated for the perpetual markets. Also, dig into how funding payout impacts liquidation and deleveraging.
If the futures price and the underlying index is naturally diverging then high funding rates are expected and in line with derivatives market behavior. However, we wanted to put a few checks and balances in place to make sure any small quote adjustment windows or widening of spread for a split second didn’t adversely and disproportionately impact the rates. Some of the rate spikes were because of such intermittent samples and so we want to address it proactively.
You may recall from the funding rate math discussion that we take 60 samples every hour. These samples go into the calculation of the hourly rates. We have made a minor but important modification to how we consider this sample. If any of these samples are taken at a time during a sudden blip, when the spread between bid and ask is beyond a specified amount, then it is dampened by bounding it to a maximum value.
Let’s walk through an example to illustrate what we are doing. Consider the case where we have both bids and asks on the book on a given minute, when we collect one of the 60 samples. The average of the best bid and the best ask is considered the futures price for that particular sample. The difference between the futures price and the underlying index for this particular sample contributes towards the calculation of the funding rates. Details are explained in a previous post titled: Funding Rates and Payments.
With our new guardrails, we look for relative divergence and make sure it never exceed the specified tolerance limits. That is:
|index_price - futures_price| / index_price < tolerance limit (or bound)
If the relative divergence is above the tolerance limit or bound, we simply take that tolerance limit into ascertaining the specific sample. Remember, that a specific sample has 1/60th impact into the funding rate for that hour.
This simple modification allows us to facilitate fair markets, while containing disproportionate impact from unintended momentary issues.
The current tolerance limit is set at 3% and could be adjusted in future.
Funding rate has been a topic of discussion among our early adopters. We appreciate the feedback and support from our community and do hope that this minor but important change makes for a better trading experience. Thank you for being part of this exciting journey! | https://blog.leverj.io/guardrails-for-funding-rates-8f2b2da31396 | [] | 2021-01-28 14:02:54.227000+00:00 | ['English', 'Announcements', 'Perpetual Contracts', 'weekly funding rate publications', 'Funding'] |
Interactive AI for Sustainable Architecture | I was recently selected for a research internship at one of the most promising and exciting AEC startups — Digital Blue Foam. I was given a chance to use their Augmented Intelligence enhanced software. Here’s an article that describes its features and advantages.
So this software is a web-based interactive generative design tool that gathers urban and climate data from various available web sources. Once you log into the Digital Blue Foam website you get options to load the previous session (not for you if it’s your first time), search bar for searching and locating the site you are looking for designing, and feeling lucky option, which takes you through the tool and guides you about its features (you must select this option if you want to learn about the tool in brief).
Locate and Select Site
Once you search for the location the tool will fetch various datasets and take you to the location where you can draw and edit a polygon. Now you can see your located site in the 3D surrounding map.
You can draw a polygon to select your site
Draw Lines using the Pencil and Eraser
You can draw a random line or a polyline between your plot to divide it into subplots. The pencil has three options: (1) Axis — to assign the axis of the plot; (2)- Park, which creates and assigns the drawn place to park; and (3) a tape measure tool for measuring the line you are drawing.
Upon double-clicking, the click and drag draw a line option the line for subplots is finalized, which can be seen in orange color. Being an interactive software the number of subplots can even be changed in the statistics section, about which I’ll inform you in this article.
Draw tool also has an erase feature in case you want to redraw the lines. Clicking the play button now will generate designs according to the subplots drawn.
Straight as well as curved lines can be drawn to divide the plot
Generate Designs
The play button generates designs. You can pause on the design you like. The step forward and step backward are buttons that will toggle the designs one at a time.
The play button generates many options for the user to choose from.
Program Distribution
This section has input sliders that can be changed to change the ratio of educational, residential, commercial, office, and leisure spaces according to your needs.
If you like the generated design and not the distribution of program spaces you can click on the specific part of the structure which gets highlighted and then you can edit features like the program, floor height, and the number of floors in DBF Assistant. The side arrow keys give you the freedom to move the selected block. Selecting the plots also offers various options like convert the plot to park, parking, or a podium. You can even merge 2 or more plots.
Sustainable Tools
This tool has 3 features:
a) Sun path
This feature helps in the visualization of sun paths and shadows for your site. It also has input date and time for users to select. While designing a building, checking the sun path and shadows is essential as studies have shown that sufficient daylight in space increases one’s productivity and freshness quotient.
b) Wind path
This feature allows you to visualize the direction of the wind with huge arrows.
Wind path is another important factor in sustainable and climate-responsive design. The location of the opening can be chosen according to the wind direction. Also, it helps to analyze the airflow of the plot.
c) Solar radiation
This is the third sustainability tool. The Solar Radiation option does make the designing process a bit slow, but of course, this option helps you to visualize and analyze the distribution of solar radiation throughout your design. It can be beneficial while designing the shading requirements for the structure.
Sun path and Wind Direction can be selected
Statistics Section
This section offers a wide range of targets to choose from. Max Height., Facade Area, Floor Area, Site Area, and other targets can be set by the user. One of my favorite targets among these options is Site Efficiency, which tells you the site efficiency percentage. You can see this target change by changing the subplots and programs. This makes it an interactive and informative tool that has sustainability options to choose from.
Multiple input targets that can be set for the design, which includes Efficiency, GFA, and many more
Viewing Tool
This tool has 3 subtypes:-
a) View — This consists of 4 features:
Orbital view
Toggle view
Option to show cars
Show trees in the plot
b) Plan view — This part also has 4 features:
Plan view
Longitudinal section
Cross-section
Toggle isometric view
All these views are important from an architectural viewpoint.
c) Visualize Data — this subtype has 5 features:
Terrain — to visualize the satellite imagery of the map
Neighborhood programs — Proximity analysis of various nearby facilities
Heatmap
Structural Details
Save and Download
a) You will have slots to save 5 of your designs. These saved designs can be compared using the compare design tool, this compares factors like FAR (Floor Area Ratio), GFA (Gross Floor Area), and Efficiency.
An insightful comparison of up to 5 designs
b) The download button offers 4 options consisting of screenshot, 3D, 2D, and download an excel (.xlsx file) report. The report shows details like floor height, and area for every floor in each program. This file also has input sections like Title, Building Type, Site Area, which can be useful for presentations and documentation.
What I liked most about this tool is the designs are generated on clicking the play button and you can see the targets change their values. When you feel the right target has been achieved then you can pause and save the design. This tool is one of the best-use cases of “AI in AEC”, which helps the user in the optimization of the design efficiently with several input options.
The user interface is easy to use. Having a DBF Assistant makes it simple for the user to get information about the various tools offered. The software also has options like Quick Tips and Tutorials to guide you through the tool.
Progress is impossible without a change and it has become an important factor to change our designing process, We should make it more efficient and sustainable. The way your city looks today will be very different in the coming years, So it is important to optimize your design and analyze its effects on the environment for future generations.
“The future of urban design and project development has arrived” — Digital Blue Foam
Visit digitalbluefoam.com to learn about Digital Blue Foam’s early access program! | https://medium.com/digital-blue-foam/interactive-ai-for-sustainable-architecture-c5baf4c0ad3d | ['Rutvik Deshpande'] | 2020-08-27 02:22:24.496000+00:00 | ['AI', 'Sustainable Development', 'Architecture', 'Generative Design', 'Analysis'] |
Digital Analytics Scholarship @ CXL Institute — 5th Week Review | I have always thought of google sheets and excel as tools for data processing. but I never thought that someday, I will need to use them for digital marketing purposes. Now thanks to Fred Pike and CXL Institute, I know that a marketer should also know how to use it like a pro. I am going to tell you in advance that I’ve learned a lot in this course.
5- Excel and Sheets for marketers by Fred Pike
This is a combination of Excel and Google Sheets courses for marketers. It is actually awesome to learn how other marketers use these two great products in their daily lives and I’m excited to start it.
Fred started by using filter and sort in both tools. As Fred described it, it is a little bit more difficult to do these jobs in google sheets. But in the end, both tools are able to do them.
I would rather use google sheets over excel because I think google sheets is more dated and suits my needs better. But you have your own choice.
The next part was focused on the sum functions and by functions, I mean SUM, SUMIF, and SUMIFS. They are so easy to use and so capable of doing the work that you want to be done.
Fred talked about the absolute and relative referencing which was very well timed and became relevant during the lesson.
The great thing about the sum functions is that they are identical between excel and google sheets. You simply learn how to use them and after that, both tools are yours to use.
Guess what was the next lesson about? It was about count functions and as you might know, they are identical between excel and google sheets. Pretty much like sum functions, we have COUNT, COUNTA, COUNTIF, and COUNTIFS for different conditions.
And after that, Fred went to his beloved excel only to work on simple styles that addressed table headers. After that, he made a table out of the data in the excel file. To tell you the truth, I didn’t know the difference between tables and raw data. I always thought that every excel data in excel is always formatted as tables!
Then we dived into pivot tables both in excel and google sheets. Fred constantly talks about the weaknesses of google sheets which I don’t like to hear about. But he likes to talk about it.
I tried to create a pivot table that was introduced in the lesson in google sheets. It was damn easy and I did almost nothing to create it. The idea about rows and columns was very easy and I populated the cells with the data that I wanted.
But after that, I tried to do the same job in excel on my mac and I failed to do so. I don’t know whether it was just bad luck or Excel had a worse user interface. Fred showed in the video that you can use “analyze data” to expand or contract the rows based on your will. He also used some table variations that he evaluated as great, but I didn’t like them that much.
Believe me or not, Fred talked about calculated fields in google sheets and excel in the next lesson. The whole idea was to make fields with accurate data to use them in the pivot table.
Luckily, this time both excel and google sheet had the feature to add calculated fields and I think google’s approach was much cleaner to this specific topic.
Data for itself doesn’t convey any meanings, so we have to segment it to be able to have a more specific look at it. Excel gives us do this in its pivot tables and as it seems, google sheets can’t do that for now.
Microsoft excel has three segmentation tools for pivot tables. One of them is filters that let you have a drop-down and segment data based on whatever you want. After that, we have a great thing in excel called Slicer. By using a slicer, you can have a simple visualized representation of your filters or controls. It is very much like a dashboard tool that is right in front of your eyes and you can mess with it visually.
Finally, we have a timeline feature in the segmentation tools which only accepts time as input. By using a timeline, you can limit your data by a specific time. This too is like the things I’ve seen in the google data studio and reminds me of the features that are available in that google tool.
Oh, I didn’t know that we have slicers in google sheets as well. They work much better than their equivalents in excel. You can use them along with filters to segment your data.
And you know what? You can save your changes in the saved view to call it later. This feature reminded me of the saved reports in google analytics. They work in quite the same way.
So finally Fred got the chance to brag about his beloved excel. He said that pivot tables in excel have some features that google sheets currently does not. You can make named tables in excel and when you update your columns, the data in your pivot table responds to those changes.
There are also pivot charts in excel and google sheets doesn’t have it. And oh, I almost forgot to say that you can assign a specific tab in excel to filters that you apply to your pivot tables.
Do you have a dataset that you don’t know if is clean or not? Then you would need to use the deduplicate feature of excel and sheets. It is rather easy and can remove duplicate entries.
And after that, you can use text to column features. Using this feature, you can make long strings of text into smaller ones. I was very excited once I learned what they can do for me. | https://medium.com/@mamysamy/digital-analytics-scholarship-cxl-institute-5th-week-review-ecd87595126b | ['Mohammad Sammak'] | 2020-12-21 06:30:20.728000+00:00 | ['Microsoft', 'Google', 'Excel', 'Google Sheets'] |
Exploiting Activity in medium android app | Hello friends I am Raju Kumar A.k.a Mrcyberwarrior. Let’s come to the story, I found vulnerabilities in the web as well as android applications of medium but the web vulnerabilities are not fixed yet so here I will discuss one of the bug found on the Andriod application ie. Exploiting activity. if you already know about jadx-gui and have a basic idea of android application can skip the first section and directly read the detection and exploitation of the vulnerability.
jadx: It is a command-line and GUI tool for producing Java source code from Android Dex and apk files.
AndroidManifest.xml: Every app must have an AndriodManifest.xml file.it contains information about your package, including components of the application such as activities, services, broadcast receivers, content providers etc.
Activity: An Android activity is one screen of the Android app’s user interface. It is defined in the androidmanifest.xml file.
for more information look into the developer guide https://developer.android.com/guide/
Detection and exploitation of the vulnerability
I decompile the application using jadx-gui then looked into the AndriodManifest.xml file. I found there SaveToMediumActivity is an activity that is exported. It means it can be launched by arbitrary apps installed on the same device.
(Click on image to zoom)
Let’s jump into the code of SaveToMediumActivity to start analyzing the static code and its functionality what it does.
(Click on image to zoom)
By using this application I detected there is a save button on each article published on medium and once the user clicks on the save button article gets added to the user saved list. As an attacker, I just think to save my own article which is not published on medium into the victim saved list.
As you can see in the above code It is saving the article in the saved list. Here the vulnerability exists. Attacker provided URL is loaded through getIntent().getStringExtra(“android.intent.extra.TEXT”)
Let’s exploit this using adb
adb shell am start -n com.medium.reader/com.medium.android.donkey.save.SaveToMediumActivity -e android.intent.extra.TEXT “https://attacker.com"
PoC of exploitation code in Java:
I created an application using the above code let’s exploit it.
Thanks for reading.
Bug Reported: Sep 29, 2020
Bug fixed and bounty rewarded: Oct 2, 2020
For queries, you can DM on Twitter. Feedbacks are always welcome.
Happy Hacking :) | https://infosecwriteups.com/exploiting-activity-in-medium-android-app-e2e6f3553eef | ['Raju Kumar', 'Mrcyberwarrior .'] | 2021-05-21 15:09:20.795000+00:00 | ['Bugcrowd', 'Hacking', 'Médium', 'Bug Bounty', 'Hackerone'] |
Kwikswap Protocol Developer Blog — Episode 1 | Every week we will now feature updates from our dev team to showcase our weekly activity and progress. Be sure to follow us through our new roadmap and discover each milestone as we work towards them and deploy!
1/ The dev team are currently finalising integration with Acala Mandela Testnet, wallet integration is completed, finalising smart contract changes for a smoother user experience.
2/ The dev team are finishing off work to our all new BEP-20 token sender and claimer that will be used for our Kwikstarter projects and some future native token airdrops. Users will receive the tokens immediately and can also claim their vested tokens.
3/ An airdrop is being worked out for Kwikswap holders to pay out accumulated staked Kwikswap outside of the Kwikstarter staking pool.
4/ We are 45% complete in development for the second iteration to Kwikstarter IDO Launchpad! Any guesses for which blockchain it is using? Our users are definitely going to love the blockchain & it’s promising feature set.
5/ A new UI will be implemented within the next few days for our Ethereum Kwikswap mainnet DEX, it will be more futuristic and advanced UI for better UX.
6/ We are continuing our work with Reef and awaiting mainnet launch as we are with Astar (formerly Plasm)
7/ We have assigned two of our devs to commence working on Polkasocial. (We hired for these positions so it doesn’t take away from our core Kwikswap dev team). We’re trying to be more and more decentralised with every new build we take on.
8/ We are currently working on a top secret liquidity program and will release details of this program and what it entails very soon.
9/ We have some other exciting features and platforms that we will be adding to the already growing Kwikswap stable of dapps. One of those new features will create farming and some really exciting additional functionality to our Kwikstarter IDO Launchpad, more on this in next weeks update.
Until next week, have a great week! Best regards, James Lee & Kwikswap Protocol Team
Please join in the discussion that featured full team support in our official Telegram group: kwikswapdex
And for the latest updates on the Kwikswap Protocol happenings please follow us on our official Twitter: kwikswapdex | https://medium.com/@kwikswap/kwikswap-protocol-developer-blog-e439763fd93a | [] | 2021-07-09 13:04:38.946000+00:00 | ['Polkadot', 'Decentralized Exchange', 'Kwikswap', 'Blockchain', 'Developer'] |
July 15, 2021 — Thursday. i woke up in the middle of the night… | i woke up in the middle of the night. darkness anxiety. legs aching. had thought impulse read watch. i didn’t. i lay there. didn’t resist non-sleepiness. go to the feeling and accept it. sit with it.
what pulls pushes anchors you. what centers you. inspires you. what motivates you. what frightens you. what liberates you. what or who. more push than pull. or only thinking that.
what do i want need. have to give away. performance and being. send something to somebody out of the blue. do they get it. receive it or acknowledge it. received but not acknowledged.
there is going to be a time of it and maybe war. be calm and peaceful and alert. fluid quick and watch yourself. your blocks. where you dig your heels into.
the beauty of an error.
everything is everyone is everything again. all moving. there is pulling pushing standing idle. flow of your go going. not body/mind really. discrete. hands feet arms legs torso hips. breathing. attention. dreaming. what goes on its own.
zen is the body without organs. | https://medium.com/@mjbwriting/july-15-2021-thursday-9c02007805f | [] | 2021-07-15 16:19:22.621000+00:00 | ['Zen', 'Sleep', 'Body', 'Desire', 'Awakening'] |
Medford Police: Voorhees man charged with burglary at Bortons Road home | The following information was provided by the Medford Township Police Department.
On March 21 at 7:08 p.m., Medford Township police officers responded to a residence on Bortons Road for the report of a burglary. The investigation revealed that sometime between Dec. 28, 2015 and March 21, 2016, the residence was entered by smashing a second floor window. Once inside, the actor targeted the master bedroom and stole jewelry, valued at $9,000.
On April 1, a 51-year-old man from Voorhees was charged with burglary, theft and criminal mischief. His bail was set at $75,000 full. At that time, he was incarcerated in Pennsylvania pending extradition to New Jersey. On May 20 Geoffrey Petit was arrested at the Camden County Jail and remains incarcerated at that facility. | https://medium.com/the-medford-sun/medford-police-voorhees-man-charged-with-burglary-at-bortons-road-home-5ab0f630654b | [] | 2016-12-19 15:56:13.883000+00:00 | ['Arrest', 'Burglary', 'Crime', 'Headlines'] |
Forbes 30 under 30: Oana Manolache — Founder & CEO of Introvoke | The Entrepreneurial Genes.
She established a live streaming platform that she is expanding globally and she wants to then get more involved in social impact initiatives.
She left Romania after high school to get her Business & Marketing Bachelor Degree at Coventry University in England that she graduated with First Class with Honors, and now she lives in Boston. Oana Manolache (29 years old) believes she inherited the entrepreneurial genes from her parents.
“I think I was born with entrepreneurial genes, my parents also being entrepreneurs in Romania. I saw how much work is necessary to build something from scratch, but also the satisfaction that comes with the successful impact that your business can bring on the society and internally to the employee culture.(…) I always wanted to build a company that brings a positive change to people’s lives, to our customers, but also to our internal teams. We received a message from a user in Africa who thanked us for enabling him to access real time information from events and he therefore managed to accelerate his success in building a company in the US. Moments like these remind us why we built Introvoke”, says Oana Manolache.
The young entrepreneur is the founder and CEO of Introvoke, a global live streaming platform, which became very attractive especially in the current environment. As a matter of fact, the live streaming industry is estimated to value $125 billion by 2025 according to statistics.
“I started Introvoke due to a personal frustration that I validated with other entrepreneurs. I was invited to various events in New York and San Francisco and, although the information would have been so beneficial for my business, I could not afford to spend the time to travel. I started contacting these organizations and I learned that they were already looking for live streaming solutions, but no platform was solving their problem. Facebook, Instagram Live are mainly social media platform, not built specifically for live events, and other platforms were way too expensive and difficult to use, requiring live streaming technical experience. Therefore we soft launched Introvoke in May 2019. At the launch we had over 150 entrepreneurs, investors and experts, including a pitch competition that was live streamed on Introvoke”, says Oana Manolache.
Introvoke has 2 main audiences: any organization that is organizing events or sessions, as well as viewers who are looking for live professional content. Over 35 organizations are currently hosting hundreds of live events on introvoke with over 10,000 users attending these events.
“The traction came organically, but we are estimating a high exponential growth the moment our marketing campaign launches this spring. We built everything with deep feedback from our current customers. We launched the subscription model in March, but we decided to offer our plans for free until 1st May in order to help organizations go live quickly with their events and engage with their customers during this challenging time. We however have our hosts committed for the Elite subscriptions on the longer term.”, says Oana Manolache.
The entrepreneur is planning for Introvoke to become the world’s main digital venue for any live or virtual event. She is also mentioning an exit strategy in the next 5–7 years depending on the company’s expansion, taking into consideration examples such as the acquisition of Twitch by Amazon “We have a few companies in mind that could be the ideal buyers of the Introvoke platform in the future”.
“After the exit I will start another company with a social impact, maybe even non-profit. At a global level, 13% of people are undernourished, out of which 3 million children are dying of hunger. It’s a major difficult problem that has no solution so far.”, adds Oana Manolache.
**Article translated from the original Forbes Romania article. | https://medium.com/introvoke-inc/forbes-30-under-30-oana-manolache-founder-ceo-of-introvoke-4487ae39b819 | ['Oana Manolache'] | 2020-05-05 01:00:22.663000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Live Streaming', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Forbes 30 Under 30', 'Women In Tech'] |
The Analytics Hierarchy of Needs | 1. Collect
Wait, how are we not tracking usage of our flagship feature?!
This isn’t fun to hear. You can’t manufacture data that you wish existed in hindsight!
Before doing anything else, an analyst’s first priority should be to ensure basic event logging & data modeling for key entities. This can be informed by your own product intuition and key questions stakeholders have of your data.
Determining what to log and how to log it can be intimidating. Consider mapping out an Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) for your key entities, and giving engineering the basic event logging guidance of LATAM (Log All Taps And [Relevant] Metadata).
2. Clean
Hey Ryan, can you quickly pull this for me? Sure, let me just SELECT * FROM some_pristine_table_that_does_not_exist;
Your engineering team will likely emit data in disparate, narrow tables. Before dashboarding & diving into analysis, you should ETL your data into wider, standardized tables. This will make your analyses and dashboards far more scalable & easier to build.
Consider a per-user-per-day summary table as a place to start. Your stakeholders can inform the columns: ask them what common questions they wish they knew but are unable to answer.
3. Define & Track
Why is revenue lower than I expected this month?
Now that your data is organized, it’s time to break down your funnel.
Usually people care most about active users and $$. In order to understand what’s driving these, you need to map your product funnel to a flow chart. Consider this basic SaaS product as an example:
> Revenue = (active users) * (average subscription cost per user)
>> Active users = (new conversions) + (retained users)
>>> New conversions = (free trials) * (average conversion %)
And so on. Once you’ve mapped out this flow chart and built dashboards tracking each metric, you’re ready to analyze your funnel.
4. Analyze
Interesting churn analysis, Ryan, but our retention is best in class. Conversion is top of mind for me right now.
Once my team had each of our funnel metrics defined and tracked, we assigned a Red/Amber/Green status to each. We did this by comparing each metric to internal benchmarks, external benchmarks, and our gut; this helped us determine our biggest areas of opportunity.
For example: why do a deep dive into retention if it’s beating benchmarks?
Once you have your top area(s) of opportunity, you can do some basic heuristic analysis on each. There’s often a noteworthy trend when visualizing a metric by cohort, acquisition channel, and basic user demographics.
5. Optimize & Predict
So, you’re finally going to do that clustering analysis I heard about?
You’re collecting data and you’ve cleaned it. You’ve defined your metrics and you’re tracking them. You’ve analyzed your metrics and outlined key areas for improvement.
Congratulations: you can now do the ‘sexy’ stuff. 😎
A/B testing can give you confidence that one user experience is more optimal than another. If you’ve been following the analytics hierarchy of needs, this is well-timed: as the more users you have, the higher statistical confidence your experiments will yield.
Supervised machine learning can help you understand what is predictive of user behavior — for example, what actions or demographics lead to conversion or sustained usage.
Unsupervised machine learning can help you understand patterns among your users you weren’t aware of (hello, clustering!).
However, a word of caution: just because you’ve reached the top of the hierarchy does not mean that machine learning is the best solution to all your questions. Simple heuristics can often yield a better outcome, as they’re quicker to implement and usually more digestible.
In summary
Don’t be the analyst explaining the SHAP values of your XGBoost model while your new flagship feature isn’t being tracked. | https://towardsdatascience.com/the-analytics-hierarchy-of-needs-6d57d0e205e2 | ['Ryan Foley'] | 2020-12-15 04:18:07.413000+00:00 | ['Data Analytics', 'Data Analyst', 'Product Analytics', 'Data Science', 'Data'] |
Recurrent Neural Networks and LSTMs with Keras | Wherever you are as you read this blog, I want you to take a moment and think back to how you went about your day, every small decision you consciously and unconsciously made, to get to where you are right now.
Perhaps, just like every student ever, you got caught up in assignments till late last night and could barely make it to the last bus leaving for your college that’d just about get you to class in time were it not for your mother who screamed, “IT’S ALREADY 8:00 A.M YOUR CLASS STARTS IN 20 MINUTES! “, jolting you back to reality.
Or maybe you’re a working professional and your boss declared, “It’s a slow day at work today fellas” so you’re just looking to brush up on your Deep Learning skills on the side.
Or maybe you’re a hobbyist, just here for the fun of it.
Big Data Jobs
Whatever the case may be, and however you got to read this blog today, I want you to think if you would still be here reading and understanding any of this if:
i. You could see everything but without the ability to interpret what you see.
ii. You could hear everything around you but without the ability to understand any language at all.
That seems quite harsh. But clearly, the answer is no.
You wouldn’t get out of bed if your brain hadn’t interpreted whatever your mother yelled about it being 8:00 a.m and your class starting in 20, because you obviously wouldn’t know what any of that means or why that is a problem. For you, it would just be incongruous noise.
You wouldn’t have made the decision to browse Deep Learning concepts if it weren’t for you understanding what, “a slow day at work” means.
In, the same manner you wouldn’t be able to read or process any word of this blog because your brain wouldn’t know what a ‘word’ is in the first place.
All your brain would see is white, with some black interspersed.
You see, interpreting what you see, and what you hear, is something that we take for granted but cannot possibly survive without.
It’s the same with a machine.
Trending AI Articles:
In our previous two blogs, Deep Neural Networks with Keras and Convolutional Neural Networks with Keras, we explored the idea of interpreting what a machine sees. With this blog, we move on to the next idea on the list, that is, interpreting what a machine hears.
In the Deep Learning world, we have a fancy term for this. We call it, Natural Language Processing.
To learn more about Deep Learning, you can try out the “Practical Deep Learning with Keras and Python” online tutorial. The course comes with 3.5 hours of video that covers 8 vital sections. These include theory, installation, case studies, CNN, Graph-based models and so much more! This course is especially a helpful tool mainly if you are a beginner.
Also, you can opt for a similar online tutorial “The Deep Learning Masterclass: Classify Images with Keras”. Like the above, this course requires no prior experience either. The tutorial brings you videos of 6 hours where it covers 7 impressive topics that are important in understanding the concept deeper.
Natural Language Processing includes text processing (like the words in this blog), audio and speech processing.
Before we discuss how we can enable a machine to interpret speech or process text, we need to understand some concepts. I recommend you go through our previous blogs in this series for a seamless read.
Right.
Consider a sentence from this blog itself.
“ In the Deep Learning world, we have a fancy term for this. We call it, Natural Language Processing.
Natural Language Processing includes text processing (like the words in this blog), audio, and speech processing.”
Now consider this modified sentence and note how it will still make absolutely perfect sense to you,
“In the Deep Learning world, we have a fancy term for this. We call it, Natural Language Processing.
It includes text processing (like the words in this blog), audio and speech processing.”
The difference, of course, is just that I replaced Natural Language Processing with an ‘It’.
What do we learn from this? We learn that we interpret subsequent words based on our understanding of previous words.
We could immediately understand that ‘It’ refers to Natural Language Processing.
We don’t read one word, throw everything away, and then read another word and start thinking from scratch again.
Our thoughts have persistence.
For example, if you are developing an application that requires you to automatically calculate player runs in a game of cricket from the live telecast, you would first need your application to judge how many runs were scored (whether it was a 4 or 6 or a single) and then you would need to have the context from previous frames that would tell you WHICH PLAYER scored those runs so that you can add that many runs to the total for THAT PLAYER. It is difficult to imagine a conventional Deep Neural Network or even a Convolutional Neural Network could do this.
This brings us to the concept of Recurrent Neural Networks.
In the above diagram, a unit of Recurrent Neural Network, A, which consists of a single layer activation as shown below looks at some input Xt and outputs a value Ht.
A loop allows information to be passed from one step of the network to the next. When we unroll’ this loop architecture, we can see that basically, each unit passes a message to a successor, like a sequence.
Past inputs, thus influence decisions made on the present outputs. This is the key that was missing.
When the network begins to see things as ‘sequences’, we can immediately see that this solves our network’s initial problem of retaining or understanding ‘context’.
A question then, which should crop up in your mind is, from how far back in the sequence can a Recurrent Neural Network hold a context?
To reframe this, the question in focus is from how far back can past inputs, Xt, still influence the outcome of the present input activations Ht?
Well, unfortunately, not so far back. But let’s understand everything with example because we believe examples are the best way to learn.
Consider, we are trying to predict the last word in “when birds flap their wings they …”, we don’t need any further context, it’s pretty obvious that the next word is going to be fly. In such cases, where the gap between the relevant information and the place that it’s needed is small, Recurrent Neural Networks can learn to use past information.
But if you consider a sentence as complex as the one we took as our example at the very beginning,
“In the Deep Learning world, we have a fancy term for this. We call it, Natural Language Processing. It includes text processing (like the words in this blog), audio and speech processing.” For this, we have to go even further back.
Now if we were to predict the word after ‘ and ‘ in the sentence above, we would first need to know what ‘It’ refers to.
Unfortunately, as that gap grows, Recurrent Neural Networks become unable to learn to connect the information.
It’s entirely possible for the gap between the relevant information and the point where it is needed to become very large as in our example.
This is why we need LSTMs. Because LSTM units are perfectly capable of ‘remembering’ long term dependencies in a given sequence. In fact, LSTM stands for Long Short Term Memory.
Of course, to achieve this complex behaviour of being able to ‘remember’ context in ‘memory’, an LSTM unit also looks quite overwhelming in comparison to our Recurrent Neural Network.
The mathematical details are beyond the scope of this tutorial. A more detailed explanation of LSTMs will be covered in the coming blogs.
For now, let us move on to the final and the most interesting part of this blog, the implementation.
Implementation of LSTM with Keras
For this tutorial blog, we will be solving a gender classification problem by feeding our implemented LSTM network with sequences of features extracted from male and female voices and training the network to predict whether a previously unheard voice by the network is male or female.
Step 1: Acquire the Data
The data for this tutorial can be downloaded from here.
Step 2: About the Data
After downloading the data, which should be about 1.4 GB, you will notice 4 folders inside labelled:
Male: Contains 3971 male audio files from different speakers (Male Training Set) Female: Contains 3971 female audio files from different speakers (Female Training Set) Male Test: Contains 113 male test audio from different speakers (Male Test Set) Female Test: Contains 113 female test audio from different speakers (Female Test Set)
The average duration of all audio files is about 5.3 seconds.
Step 3: Extracting Features from Audio (Optional)
Audio files are also one long sequence of numbers. But this sequence tends to be extremely long, almost 40,000 sequence numbers long, and because of our limited RAMs, we need to find more efficient ways to represent this sequence (audio).
This is done by extracting the pitch of the audio along with something called the Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCCs) of the audio which is just a mathematical transformation to give the audio a more compact representation.
Because we are dealing with audio here, we will need some extra libraries from our usual imports:
import numpy as np import librosa import os import pandas as pd import scipy.io.wavfile as wav
In case this throws you an import error, run the following line in your command prompt:
pip install librosa pip install scipy
Next, specify the paths of the Male and Female folders ON YOUR MACHINE in the variables accordingly:
path_male = "C:\\Users\\Bhargav Desai\\Documents\\GitHub\\gender-classifier-using-voice\\Data Preprocessing\\Male\\"; path_female = "C:\\Users\\Bhargav Desai\\Documents\\GitHub\\gender-classifier-using-voice\\Data Preprocessing\\Female\\"; mfcc_col=['mfcc'+ str(i) for i in list(range(110))]; def main(path,gender): df = pd.DataFrame() print('Extracting features for '+gender) directory=os.listdir(path) for wav_file in directory: write_features=[] y, sr = librosa.load(path+wav_file) fs,x = wav.read(path+wav_file) print(wav_file) mfcc_features=get_mfcc(y,sr) write_features=[pitch]+mfcc_features.tolist()[0]+[gender] df = df.append([write_features]) df.columns = col df.to_csv(gender+'_features.csv') def get_mfcc(y,sr): y = librosa.resample(y, sr, 8000); y = y[0:40000]; y = np.concatenate((y, [0]* (40000 - y.shape[0])), axis=0); mfcc=librosa.feature.mfcc(y=y, sr=sr, n_mfcc=10,hop_length=4000); mfcc_feature=np.reshape(mfcc, (1,110)) return mfcc_feature main(path_male,'Male') main(path_female,'Female')
Although this part seems complicated, do not worry. It is okay if you do not understand this part of the code.
All you need to remember is that this part of the code gives you a compact representation of the audio sequence for both the genders.
It is completely okay to skip this part for now.
Consequently, we have successfully reduced our audio sequence length from 40,000 to 113!
The outcome of this should be two .csv files named male_features.csv and female_features.csv in the same directory containing a compact representation of our audio sequences where each sequence is of length 113!
In case you encounter compatibility errors, please comment on your errors down below or directly download the feature extracted .csv files by clicking here.
Step 4: Labelling & Preparing the Data for LSTM Model
The outcome of the previous step was that we got compact representations of male and female audio sequences which might give you the impression that the data is ready.
However, we are missing one critical element: Labels.
Before we can train, we need to label our data so that our network can learn the difference between males and females from our data.
We do this by first loading our data from the two .csv files we have obtained:
os.chdir('/Users/bhargavdesai/Downloads') maledf = pd.read_csv('male_features.csv') femaledf = pd.read_csv('female_features.csv')
NOTE: Make sure that you pass the directory/folder where you have downloaded the .csv files from the above link in the argument to os.chdir()
The output should look something like this:
We can see that the label is ‘male’ or ‘female’ which is not in the form that we want.
We need to change this to a numeric form which is either ‘1’ or ‘0’
Here’s how we do it:
maledf.replace(to_replace='male', value=1) femaledf.replace(to_replace='female', value=0)
You will have something like this printed out:
We can see that ‘male’ has been replaced by ‘1’ and ‘female’ has been replaced by ‘0’
We will now split it into our standard X_Train and Y_Train variable format so that we are consistent with the other blogs in this Keras series:
Male = maledf.replace(to_replace='male', value=1) Female = femaledf.replace(to_replace='female', value=0) X = pd.concat([Male, Female]) XTrain = X.sample(frac=1) YTrain = XTrain['label'] XTrain = XTrain.drop(columns="label") X_Train = XTrain.values Y_Train = YTrain.values
The pd.concat() function joins two DataFrames, X.sample(frac=1) randomly shuffles the rows of the joined DataFrame and the XTrain.values function converts the DataFrame to a Numpy array X_Train.
Note: Here X_Train is our training set and Y_Train are the labels that we separated using the XTrain[‘label’] function.
Step 5: Building an LSTM Keras Model
We have come to the conclusion of this blog where we will show you how to create an LSTM model to train on the dataset we have created.
We are now familiar with the Keras imports and Keras syntax. But we’ll quickly go over those:
The imports:
from keras.models import Model from keras.models import Sequential, load_model from keras.layers.core import Dense, Activation, LSTM from keras.utils import np_utils
Then we create a Keras Model object by:
model = Sequential()
Then we can assemble our Keras LSTM model by:
model.add(LSTM(32, return_sequences=True, input_shape=(112, 1))) model.add(LSTM(6, return_sequences=True)) model.add(LSTM(8, return_sequences=False)) model.add(Dense(1, activation = 'sigmoid')) model.compile(optimizer = 'adam', loss = 'binary_crossentropy', metrics=['accuracy']) model.summary() model.fit(X_Train, Y_Train, epochs = 20, batch_size = 32)
As soon as you run this code, you will get an error.
The error will read:
ValueError: Error when checking model input: expected lstm_1_input to have 3 dimensions, but got array with shape (7942, 112)
This happens because of the LSTM implementation in Keras expects sequences from you as input. A sequence has an additional dimension of ‘time’ in addition to the number of samples and features that are called ‘timesteps’ in Keras.
To rectify the error, just add this line of code before you start building the model:
Here, our number of ‘timesteps’ which is basically how long our sequence is in time is equal to 112 with the number of samples 7942. The result of running the code after the modification will show you a screen like this:
This indicates that our LSTM network is indeed learning how to differentiate between a male voice and a female voice! It can be seen that the accuracy is increasing consistently (~81% in just 20 epochs!) and the loss is also going down.
X_Train = np.reshape(X_Train,(7942, 112, 1))
On a concluding note from our side, we’d like to ask our inquisitive readers to see how much the accuracy goes up by when you train it for more epochs. At Eduonix, we push our students to go that extra mile so we’d also like to encourage all our readers here to see if they can use the code used in this tutorial to record their own audio and see if they can get our model to predict your gender correctly!
More From The Keras Series: | https://becominghuman.ai/recurrent-neural-networks-and-lstms-with-keras-44a08c6c5054 | ['Krishnakumar Karancherry'] | 2021-03-10 15:02:03.512000+00:00 | ['Keras', 'Machine Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Neural Networks'] |
Just Because. | Just because I haven’t ever seen a body drop,
Just because I haven’t worked back to back jobs,
Just because I didn’t grow up with a single mom,
Doesn’t mean I don’t work nonstop.
Now I’m not saying I lived the same as people who overcame things I’ve never even seen.
People who dodge gunshots as part of their routine,
People who love the night cuz they’re safe in their dreams,
People who live life with no guarantees.
All I’m trying to say is that looks may deceive,
Cuz my life has always been really far from a dream,
It hurts to keep my head up because I lack the self- esteem.
I want to admit defeat but I have to succeed,
I’m supposed to show the world everything I can achieve.
But that’s not how life works because it’s filled with deceit.
You think you’re on top but you’re really just naive,
Soon life will pull you down and have you begging on your knees.
Words provide relief for all my wounds that can’t be seen,
They always seem to make my mind feel whole and more complete,
They help to ease my mind,
when my thoughts are obscene,
when I have no relief,
They help me feel free.
They’ve helped me come to terms with my situation.
One of my downfalls is my lack of patience
I expect perfection before I learn the basics.
Ever since I was young I’ve craved admiration.
It was the fuel to my fire It was my motivation.
In my mind, it was disguised as my salvation.
Now I’m drowning in all the expectations,
I have to think before I act I move with hesitation.
Just because I haven’t been scared to go outside
Just because I haven’t had to see my parents high
Just because I haven’t wondered how to move a month’s supply
Doesn’t mean it's easy all the time.
Just because I haven’t ever seen a body drop
Just because I haven’t worked back to back jobs
Just because I didn’t grow up with a single mom
Doesn’t mean I don’t work nonstop. | https://medium.com/@pranaypalvadi/just-because-cc4fe0eb378e | ['Pranay Palvadi'] | 2020-10-19 18:33:25.530000+00:00 | ['Poem', 'Songs', 'Lyrics', 'Poetry', 'Introspection'] |
Spooktober 2020- Article Writing Contest | Spooktober 2020- Article Writing Contest
Give us your best spooky book story
Photo by Andrés Gómez on Unsplash
*As of 21st October 2020, the window for accepting entries for this contest is closed.*
Hey there Booksters!
October is here and we approach the spookiest day of the year. Also, Books Are Our Superpower has crossed 800 followers!
To commemorate this milestone, we’re celebrating Spooktober 2020 with our first writing contest. You need to just follow the following steps to enter:
Read one (or more than one!) spooky book(s). Write an article on the same. The article can be a book analysis, a theme critique, an analysis of a message you derive from it, or any other interesting account related to a spooky/creepy book you’ve read. Please avoid writing plain book reviews. Submit the draft to us. Please follow the BOAS formatting guidelines for the article. First drafts, articles not following our guidelines, poorly written articles are likely to be disqualified. Only fresh drafts are acceptable. Use the subtitle ‘Spooktober 2020 Entry’ for your article so that we can identify your submissions. New writers can send a link to their profile and the draft link to [email protected] with the subject ‘Spooktober 2020 Entry’. We will review only one story per writer. In the case of multiple submissions, we will consider only the first one.
The submission window is 1st — 20th October 2020.
Our judging panel consists of three judges. There will be two winners and each will receive a bundle of three books.
Participants must be above 18 or have parental permission to share address since we might send physical copies of the books.
We will announce the winners on 30th October 2020.
Excited? Get spooked first! Pick a scary book and submit your entries!
Till the next time,
Anangsha Alammyan, Sai Krishna Kothapalli, Ruchi Das | https://medium.com/books-are-our-superpower/spooktober-2020-article-writing-contest-9b856ca8c36b | ['Ruchi Das'] | 2020-10-23 09:13:16.738000+00:00 | ['Reading', 'Books', 'Newsletter'] |
“Colors are Forces, the Signatures of the Forces”: How Colors Become Entities | Spectrum image by Dawn Hudson
An earlier version of this essay was initially published in the I:MAGE Exhibition Catalogue. Robert Ansell and Livia Filotico, eds. Somerset: Fulgur Ltd. 2014
Regardless of how one approaches metaphysical and scientific concepts of color through the centuries, one thing is certain: color is a mighty slippery subject. Over time, scores of scientists, artists and thinkers have labored to understand the nature of various colors and importantly, how to use and predict their effects, because color produces powerful and profound impacts on the body, emotion and spirit. And although none of us, most likely, see color in exactly the same way as anyone else, and different cultures attribute different symbolism to colors, color shapes perceptions, and alters experiences and we can even anticipate the physical and emotional impact that different colors may produce.
In many cultures, colors have not only been perceived as symbolic of abstract principles such as love or anger, they have also been interpreted by artists and magicians as distinctive entities which can be summoned and called forth and which will subsequently be able to act upon the physical plane. Sometimes colors are believed to be independent beings, but more commonly they are interpreted as powers which can be not only employed, but invoked in a sacred manner to produce specific effects in both the artist and the viewer. With the evolution of color theory and color technologies in the 18th and 19th century and the mingling of the languages of science and spirituality, we see an interesting development in the use of color in both sacred and ostensibly secular contexts, where the effects of color are not just the result of artistic experiment, but perhaps also serve as a way of contacting beings on other planes of existence.
Here I will briefly examine the philosophical frameworks that have encouraged both artists and magicians to interpret colors as entities to be invoked. I will also briefly consider the impact of this idea on the viewer and in how this may impact how we think about and interpret esoteric art. Importantly, we will also discover that there is an intersection between how the science of color develops in the modern era with more established spiritual conceptions of color as entity, inspiring artists to engage in sophisticated engineering of color in order to produce profoundly spiritual effects. There have been so many approaches to color and color theory around the world and throughout time, that it was important to be selective here, so I have concentrated on the history that I believed best showed how the principles of color as entity informed historically European esoteric and modern occult traditions, and who ultimately had the most impact on artists who work with those concepts. This essay is really just dipping a toe in the ocean.
Seal of Paimon. Seems like a pretty cool dude.
But first, although we know that colors are themselves effective on the symbolic level, how do we distinguish between symbol and entity? Clearly, color operates as both. In Goetic magic, for instance, one learns symbols which stand for the names of entities to be invoked. But does the mere presence of the symbolic form of the name impact someone who cannot understand or does not know the entity? I suppose that entirely depends on how you believe these things operate. Perhaps if you call the name, even without intent or ceremony, the entity may appear or act, but what of the mere presence of the name or the glyph of the name? What happens if you look at a symbol for which you have no reference or context?
On the other hand, the use of color can function as a direct invocation if believed to be a power in and of itself. There is no mediation, and it will undoubtedly produce a response in the viewer. A color used in art will be necessarily be multivalent: it will carry symbolic resonances, drawing from the culturally determined and directed meanings ascribed to it (which also implies that different cultural backgrounds will shape various responses), but it will also carry the potential for physical and emotional reaction which may well be established by neurology. Regardless of artistic intent, a color acts of its own accord. It makes perfect sense that color should, therefore, sit at the nexus between discourses of science and spirituality, symbol and entity. And as the science for understanding color and also for producing ever more refined and nuanced shades and hues has developed over the centuries, the scope for manipulating the effects of color also emerged, the effects of which were zealously adopted by artists and magicians alike. Through time we can see a refinement of a very old idea; that color serves as a gateway to higher truths and non-corporeal entities, and the impulse to shape and instigate that experience for both artist and viewer interacts with the science of color theory and color production.
Platonic and Neo-Platonic Frameworks
Luminous color wheel, image by Roland Ally
As with many things esoteric in the West, the primary schematic for understanding color as an entity to be invoked is derived from Plato and his philosophical successors. In this consideration we are less concerned with Plato’s issues of color classification, but more with his understanding of the spiritual and material implications of color. Although this is not an area of concentration for Plato, his ideas and the derivations which follow provide the groundwork for centuries of mystical applications. A significant question in the ancient world was whether color is inherent in an object or is it a reflection? Katrina Ierodiakonou explains in her reading of Plato’s explanation of color in the Timaeus that for Plato colors are emanating effluences made of some sort of flame, which indicates that they have an independent existence and are not created by either the eye itself or any sort of reflection.[i] The essences of the flames were actually geometric forms. Plato was more interested in the theoretical implications of luminosity than he was color mixing and the derivation of particular colors, and given that there were absolutely no standardized colors during that period, this may be understandable. In fact, Plato believed that people could not understand the ways in which particular colors were derived with any certainty and so focused on the characteristics of black, white, red and what he called “brilliant” or bright.
But it is centuries later with the articulation of Neoplatonism that we start to see the ways in which color starts to inherit its own vocabulary of transcendence and spiritual essence. As ideas of deity and The One become conflated with rhetoric of “light” and “illumination,” color and its relationship to light becomes more important in symbolizing various aspects of the divine that were accessible. In The Enneads, Plotinus (CE 204–270) pioneered the idea of the “formless form”, after Plato, suggesting that the aesthetic and spiritual experience of that which was a representation was not an apprehension of that which was real, as the real and the good are beyond and superior to that which has form. For instance, the shape of the lover is inferior to the experience she/he/they represent, which is love. The further we can get from the form toward the essentialized immaterial, the more readily we can aspire to union with The One. Color is thus placed in the realm of essence, but not form, and this continues to be a key feature in the understanding of color as a gateway to the spiritual to the present day, especially as Kandinsky explores the rhetoric of the move toward abstraction as being a liberation from form and materiality.
From the Neoplatonists, the concept of emanations, the idea that the divine reaches manifestation through successive stages into the material, makes its way into western esotericism primarily via the Jewish Kabballah of the early Middle Ages and then in the Christian Cabala of the Renaissance, which becomes most significantly crystallized in the magical correspondences of Agrippa. The idea that emanations of the divine reflect diversity from a basis of divine unity, as all things emanate from the source, provides the perfect metaphor for the differentiation of light into the diversity of color. Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) iterates this idea with respect to color with brilliance being the furthest removed from matter, being a better, purer vehicle for spirit, and darkness or black as embodying matter and thus furthest from spirit. All other colors descend from brightness to darkness in a spiritual hierarchy.
Much early magically relevant color theory rests on the premise of sympathetic magic, and that, similar to Plato’s view, colors contain and reflect properties, and that you can add colors to things to achieve outcomes linked to planetary powers. Agrippa (1486–1535) writes in Three Books on Occult Philosophy (c. 1533) that light comes from the mind of God and then emanates downward through the Holy Spirit through angels. When it reaches humans it then becomes the knowledge of the divine. All things perceive (and reflect) the color of divine light according to their capacities, indicating that color holds a particular, inherent quality which can be apprehended by the magician. Colors thus also contain the influence of the stars to which they have sympathetic qualities. Agrippa links specific colors to planets and also to the various signs of the Zodiac and to the elements, presenting a basic version of the Hermetic table of correspondences well known to 19th century magicians ad modern occultists. The schema is explicitly Platonic in that everything is an emanation of the divine and that everything has its own Form which corresponds to the divine pattern, but Agrippa believes that the Forms are communicated through Rulers, Governors and Intelligences. Therefore, if you want to harness the power of a particular attribute, the magician will be required go up the chain of command. So, while Agrippa may not consider color to be an entity in itself, one will have to invoke and petition the correct being in the chain to properly access the properties that a color signifies. While later color theorists may not be as explicit about the ways in the properties of color are communicated, the general Neoplatonic framework in which much of spiritual color theory develops into the Modern period relies on many of Agrippa’s assumptions.
Prism, image from Wikimedia commons
During the Renaissance and into the early modern period, there then emerges a distinction between optics, and the more culturally driven perceptions and effects of color, providing a glimpse of the interplay between discourses of science and spirituality that are so central to understanding the development of esoteric thought and practice up until the middle of the twentieth century. This is somewhat exemplified by the competing frameworks of Newton and Goethe, both of whom were driven by differing spiritual beliefs concerning the nature and experience of color. Issac Newton (1642–1726) who coined the term spectrum, determined in the late 17th century that prisms did not color light, but that light itself could be broken down into various colors. Newton established a sevenfold schematic of color based again on planetary divisions from the ancient world, and held to the notion that colors, planet and musical notes corresponded. Newton still maintained that light contained colored particles, and therefore held some essential substance, that they were not simply reflections of light. Goethe’s 1810 work (1749–1832) sits primarily in distinction to Newton, who was more interested in the mechanisms of color perception rather than the experience of color, which was Goethe’s focus. Goethe believed that colors result from the interplay between light and dark, and that colors have an inherent darkness or lightness that can be subject to influence from the opposing quality. While scientifically Goethe’s work has been rejected, the poetic qualities appealed to artists such as Phillipp Otto Runge who further developed Goethe’s visual model and eventually impacted the Theosophical understanding of color.
Runge Color Spheres, 1810
In 1810 the German Romantic painter Philipp Otto Runge (1777–1810) published Farbenkugel, which further articulated the interplay between the science of color, artistic method, and spiritual applications of color. Runge believed there were five equal color elements, white, black, red, blue and yellow, and that these elements were pure and irreducible. He believed that the chromatic elements red, blue and yellow represented the Trinity and he placed these geometrically at the points of an equilateral triangle. Runge developed a spherical color system to represent all of the possible combinations of color mixing, with light at one end, dark at the other, and transected by blue, red and yellow at equal intervals. Runge’s concentration was on understanding and communicating the rules of pigment, not of light, and he created, or perhaps properly described the principles by which various color combinations produce harmony or disharmony in the viewer. He was primarily interested in the power of color to produce physical effects. Like Plato and some of the Neoplatonists, Runge was actually concerned with the quality of brilliance and luminosity in colors which he believed was most effectively demonstrated in transparent colors, those without the addition of black or white. In an 1806 letter to Goethe, he explains that the addition of either white or black to pure elemental pigments (red, blue and yellow) to create the condition of opacity also created a condition of materiality, which renders them either weak (mixed with white) or evil (mixed with black). But the application of light to transparent color, Runge believed created remarkably uplifting sensations.[ii] We see Runge’s applications in the Theosophical characterizations of pure color as luminous beacons of divine signature.
Van Gogh’s Still Life: Vase with Irises Against a Yellow Background 1890
By the late nineteenth century with the further development of artificial pigments, we see a progression into a variety of practical applications of color which also form the basis of color theory in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The complementary color theories of Ogden Rood in his 1879 Modern Chromatics, with Applications to Art and Industry were influential among artists of the late nineteenth century, with notably Van Gogh and Seurat using complementary colors to create a vibratory effect in the viewer. The Golden Dawn used the same technology in a ritual format to create intense initiatory experiences.
There is no doubt that the Golden Dawn magical curriculum developed the use of color in magical contexts in sophisticated and complex ways that had not been previously possible. In fact, the magical use of color is a cornerstone of the Golden Dawn curriculum, and is a distinguishing feature from other magical schools of thought. The Golden Dawn is largely responsible for regularizing the colors we associate with the Kabbalistic Tree of Life today. When the Golden Dawn was founded in 1888 it coincided with the expanded development and production of pure hues and a wider range of bold, artificial pigments that didn’t require blending. Moina Mathers, wife of one of the Golden Dawn founders Samuel L. “Mac Gregor” Mathers, and Florence Farr, both trained artists, contributed to the experiments with color that the Golden Dawn formulated in their ritual practice. What developed as a result is an exciting set of ritual practices and meditations merging traditional esoteric color correspondences and ideas of colors as invokable entities with newly emerging commercial and artistic applications of the physical and emotional impacts of color. In this way we see the Golden Dawn engaging directly with modernity and scientific discourses of the day, as magical engineers produced spiritual experiences with color that they believed were not only mythic in scope and narrative, but which were also repeatable.
Rose Cross Lamen, image from Wikimedia commons
A thorough and nuanced understanding of colors and their magical and especially Kabbalistic correspondences remains an essential part of the Golden Dawn curriculum. One of the key symbols of adepthood is the Rose Cross, which contains a color wheel in the center, with each color representing one of the twenty-two paths of the Tree of Life. The precision of color mixing and color contrast was highly important to Golden Dawn magicians. If the color was not precise, the correct result may not be obtained. However, the expanding range of brighter synthetic colors being released in the nineteenth century provided magicians with a richer way of playing with and also experiencing an expanded range of sacred color.
Ithell Colquhoun, sketch for Golden Dawn vault plate, c. late 1960s early 1970s
One of the most interesting and innovative uses of color in the Golden Dawn system is in the use of the Vault, which is one of the system’s primary initiatory devices, essentially being used to incubate an adept. The Golden Dawn vault is a seven-sided chamber ostensibly designed after the tomb of mythical spiritual adept Christian Rosenkreuntz, the story of whom underpins several strands of Golden Dawn ritual and mythology. Each of the walls, designating each of the seven planets, is covered with squares containing symbols painted in an opposing color to the background. This phenomenon is known as simultaneous contrast and it was used to directly invoke the spirit of the planets and the zodiacal signs. The intended visual impact is that all of the squares would be seen to vibrate therefore causing an intense immersive experience for the candidate. Additionally, simultaneous contrast of colors can also cause a temporary retinal burn, so the symbols might potentially remain visible to the candidate after the ritual, which of course reinforces the experience of color and also symbol possessing otherworldly essences. This is again one reason that the precision of color mixing in the Golden Dawn was such an important issue. Not only were these entities to be invoked, but the impact on the candidate needed to be ensured. Given that we exist in a world today saturated with color, image and pure hue, it is hard for us to imagine the physical and emotional intensity of the experience of the Golden Dawn vault for the candidate.
Ithell Colquhoun The Lord of the Waves and the Waters, The King of the Hosts of the Seas (1977) from Colquhoun’s Taro deck.
Despite the fact that the Golden Dawn had a well-articulated system of color, it would seem that the impact it had on the wider art world was limited. The work of Ithell Colquhoun (1906–1988) is certainly an exception. Colquhoun was a Surrealist and an accomplished lifelong esotericist who believed strongly in the idea of color as entity and who based most of her work on the Golden Dawn color scales. Colquhoun believed that colors had an independent existence as entities, and thus many of her works can be interpreted as invocatory to some degree or another. Colquhoun had a lifelong interest in the application of color and its effect on the body and spirit. In addition to her longstanding esoteric pursuits, Colquhoun had training in the commercial applications of color, which her archives show she applied in fanciful ways. In 1936 Colquhoun worked with French cubist Amédée Ozenfant who was hugely influential in English color theory, particular in the application of color to architecture. Colquhoun studied at his London atelier, and her archives show a number of wildly colored and fantastic architectural designs, indicating that her own interests in the application of color to environment to achieve specific outcomes were quite far ranging. In what is perhaps the most sophisticated of these explorations, late in her life, in 1977, Colquhoun developed a fully abstract tarot deck (which she spelled “Taro”), designed for meditation, not divination, that she rooted in the Golden Dawn Kabbalistic color system. Her deck was designed to deliver the information encoded in the card directly through color, bypassing the conscious, rational, narrative mind.
As Alex Owen has noted, although the Golden Dawn was an initiatory and secret society, it was not a backward looking one.[iii] It engaged with contemporary currents in art, politics and science, to create a modern magical system rooted in the idea of ancient wisdom. The ways in which its movers and shakers used both color and shape in a ritual context to communicate to initiates keys to the fundamental building blocks of the universe, indicate the strikingly modern nature of this project. Nevertheless, it is likely that the complexity of the Golden Dawn system and its comparative specialization, along with the fact that much of the system was not made public until the late 1930s that its overall impact on the development of contemporary art movements was limited. However, the impact of Theosophy on the development of abstract art in the 20th century was significant, and we can still see the continuing interplay between the science of color and the spirit of color. The Theosophical system was different than the Golden Dawn system, although both of them are still rooted in a Platonic framework where non-form provides access to a more unmediated divine experience. The Theosophical conception of color would appear to be more symbolic and less ‘primal entity’ driven than the Golden Dawn system, yet the working premise for the viewer is the same: experience of color produces a primal effect and colors have independent fixed realities. Yet there is a contrast between the emphasis on invocation and ritual magic in the Golden Dawn that is absent in Theosophy, so while colors do seem to have the impact of independent beings, representing them seems to be sufficient invocation of their spiritual reality.
Thought Form: “The Intention to Know”
The works of Annie Besant and Charles Leadbetter which described the literally colorful existence of independent “thought forms”, were undoubtedly the most significant of the Theosophical contributions to the modern art world. According to Besant and Leadbetter, not only do humans have colorful auras, which was not an entirely novel idea at the time having been influenced by both Eastern and Western theories of subtle bodies, people also project “thought forms” which have predictable and constant shape and color, and which are visible to trained clairvoyants. Thought forms can be shaped by the vibrations of thoughts, which Besant and Leadbetter believed indicated a person’s intent, proclivity and state. The shapes and colors of thought forms are said to be key to a person’s nature and level of spiritual development. Besant and Leadbetter presented these theories in two works written at the turn of the twentieth century, their collaboration Thought Forms (1901) and Leadbetter’s Man Visible and Invisible (1903). In Man Visible and Invisible, Leadbetter presents a stunningly illustrated guide to the meanings and correspondences of colors and thought forms and what they signify on other planes. Although these thought forms were not characterized as hierarchical entities that one might formally invoke in the way that spirits or intelligences might be in a more Hermetically driven system, they were absolutely entities that had an existence independent from their creator, and which also shaped the environment into which they entered, making them well suited for the experiments of the emerging abstract art movement.
Besant and Leadbetter’s work also intersected with the language of science that was just developing at the end of the nineteenth century. For Besant and Leadbetter, testing and repeatability was not the cornerstone of the phenomena, it just very simply…was. These forms were theorized, observed and transcribed, and the promise of emerging science was that they could eventually be explained. Theosophical thought forms were also part of the wider discourses on vibrations, energy, and waves permeating both science and spirituality at the turn of the 20th century.
Wasily Kandinsky drew on Besant and Leadbetter’s theories as well as the Theosophical writings of Rudolph Steiner in his 1912 Concerning the Spiritual in Art, which is recognized as a key text in the history of abstraction, although many of the ideas were likely predated by the early twentieth century esoteric and Theosophically informed abstractions of Hilma af Klint. The premise of an underlying spiritual or esoteric dimension to abstract art contradicts popular conceptions of abstract art as inaccessible and emblematic of a disenchanted modernity, although this view is rapidly being revised by interest in artists such as af Klint. Theosophically derived approaches do not require the possession of a more rigorous vocabulary of correspondences on the part of both the artist and the viewer as does a Hermetic approach. While a Theosophical methodology also might benefit from some decoding, ultimately the experience of color itself allows for immersion and immediacy.
Kandinsky was aiming at an art of transcendence, a rejection of form and the degradation into materiality which is a perfect iteration of Neoplatonist views. Kandinsky believed that color harmony was predisposed by the spiritual condition of the viewer, which would ultimately triumph over any unpleasant symbolic associations that might also form a response. Kandinsky also believed that since colors produce a correspondence to soul vibrations that the artist can, with precision, produce a change in the soul of the viewer and also of the artist. For Kandinsky, the spiritual applications of color were timeless and universal, and the move toward abstraction was actually a return to fundamental principles perhaps best expressed by “primitive” cultures who, he believed, were more fully attuned to a spiritual dimension. Kandinsky attributed specific properties and polarities to colors and to mixtures of colors, and was also concerned with the effects of the harmony of color when placed together. For example, blue was heavenly, violet expresses frailty. Yet he also notes that colors also have essences and effects which do not lend themselves to description. Form restricts the power of color to affect vibration and to drive spiritual evolution. Here we see another shift toward the creation of an immersive environment with color as its centerpiece, with the primary goal of propelling spiritual development.
Freemasonic Tracing Board, image Wikimedia commons
Donald Kuspit writes of the spiritual impulse in abstract art that “The most significant abstract art today reflects an inner conflict between the socially encouraged will to conventional communication and the personal will to spiritual experience.”[iv] This holds true of esoteric art, whether representational or abstract. Marco Pasi has argued that the nature of esoteric art relies on the power of esoteric symbols to disrupt and undermine, that it is powerful because it signifies heresy, and it is that essentially heretical quality which gives esoteric art its power, regardless of the beliefs or practices of the artist or audience.[v] Much of what historically falls into the category of “esoteric art” is figuratively focused and representational, inviting the viewer into strange worlds and dream like dimensions, populated with liminal and otherworldly beings suggesting fantastic encounters. It may also incorporate symbols which suggest hidden associations and the suggestion of initiatory knowledge. The art of Leonora Carrington and Austin Osman Spare exemplifies these approaches, and so does the art of alchemical allegory and the aesthetically didactic material culture which emerges through Freemasonry, such as tracing boards . Yet if our gaze privileges a representative visual narrative, what other stories and experiences of esoteric thought are we missing?
Within the analysis of esoteric art, there has been much less discussion about the relationship between artist and audience and the role of performance and immersion, and it may be that the use of color as entity can be analyzed within in this framework. If artists are using color as gateways to other realities, or as a form of invocation of mediating powers, or producing thought forms intended to spiritually influence the viewer, this enriches the narratives encoded within esoterically driven art. When we experience the potential power of say, a color block, or the juxtaposition of several colors to impact the physical or psychic response of the viewer, and consider the way in which that response will have been intentionally engineered by the artist within an esoteric or occult context, the disruption still exists, but the source of the disruption is somewhat different. There may not necessarily be anything that is particularly exotic looking, fetishistic, or coded in the esoteric piece itself, yet the position of the artist makes it inherently esoteric and draws the viewer into a different, perhaps more accessible, dynamic with the piece. This opens up potentially new readings and cultural dimensions for abstract and contemporary artists who are not exploring the world of esoteric images and themes, but who are perhaps verging on performance, as their art is indeed an invocation and we become part of the ritual.
[i] Ierodiakonou, ‘Plato’s Theory of Colours in The Timaus’ pp. 221,227.
[ii] Letter from Phillipp Otto Runge to Johann Goethe, 3 July 1806 in Kuehni, Phillipp Otto Runge’s Color Sphere.
[iii] Owen, The Place of Enchantment, pp. 51–52
[iv] Kusbit, ‘Concerning the Spiritual in Contemporary Art, p. 314
[v] Pasi, ‘Coming Forth By Night’ pp. 106,107.
Bibliography
Donald Kuspit. ‘Concerning the Spiritual in Contemporary Art’ in E. Weisburger (Ed.) The Spiritual in Abstract Painting: 1890–1985. New York: Abbeville Press/Los Angeles County Museum of Art. 1987.
Katrina Ierodiakonou. ‘Plato’s Theory of Colours in The Timaeus’. In Rhizai: A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science 2:219–233 (2005)
Rolf G. Kuehni Philipp Otto Runge’s Color Sphere: A Translation with Related Materials and an Essay. Inter-Society Color Council, 2008.
Rolf G. Kuehni and Andreas Schwartz. Color Ordered: a Survey of Color Systems from Antiquity to the Present. Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2008.
Alex Owen. The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.
Marco Pasi ‘Coming Forth by Night’ A. Vaillant (Ed.), Options with Nostrils (pp. 103–111). Rotterdam: Piet Zwart Institute, 2010. | https://medium.com/@amyhale93/colors-are-forces-the-signatures-of-the-forces-how-colors-become-entities-e6d91483817e | ['Amy Hale'] | 2020-11-13 16:37:04.006000+00:00 | ['Occult', 'Abstract Art', 'Magic', 'Colors', 'Occult Art'] |
Model-view-controller for chatbot | It seems that we have figured out how to build applications with a graphical user interface (GUI). We can churn out GUI apps for different platforms, in different languages overnight. It does not cost that much, even the smaller business can afford to build something respectable. But the same can not be said for conversational user interface applications, or chatbots. The number of usable chatbots is embarrassingly small, particularly given the enormous public interest in chatbots for so long. It clearly costs a lot more to build the conversational user interface (CUI) application than to build its GUI counterpart, so only the businesses with deep pockets can really afford to build some usable one.
But why is it expensive to build a chatbot? It has been argued that missing a high-level design language can be a major reason, since we lost the opportunity to capture the potential issues during the design phase, ended up spending time and effort to build the wrong thing. But that is not the only best practice we forget.
Virtually all GUI applications are directly or indirectly based on a software design pattern called model-view-controller (MVC). Model-view-controller is commonly used for developing user interface application that divides the related program logic into three interconnected elements. It separates internal representations of information and service (model) from the ways the result is presented to (view) and input accepted from (controller) the users. The natural boundary induced by MVC often serves as the basis of the division of labor. The work is now divided into the back-end, the front-end, and UI/UX, with each task performed by people with special skills. This alone already implies greater productivity, but it also produces plenty of other more significant cost-saving opportunities, as we can see later.
A chatbot is also a UI application, so in theory, one can apply MVC to it as well. But in practice, we rarely hear this effective UI idea talked about when we build a chatbot. So it is thus interesting to see what cost-saving opportunities we really missed by not following the tried and true best practice, and how we can apply a similar idea in building CUI applications.
Model, service, or back-end first
Since we moved to the web, the model is often referred to as back-end (and I will use them interchangeably), with view and controller classified as front-end. And today GUI apps are strictly built with separation of the front-end and back-end. The back-end is the central component of any UI application, it directly manages the data and logic of the application. It provides service: functionality or information that can help users. The front-end mainly manages the user interaction, including collecting user requests and rendering the response from the back-end service. And front-end and back-end communicate through well-defined APIs, which allow both sides to develop independently.
Since the back-end mainly models the business data structure and logic, and these usually stay the same regardless of which platform the user accesses your service from. This observation opens up another huge cost-saving: now the same back-end can be used to serve different front-ends, one only need to create the UI part of the applications for different scenarios. This is why your favorite applications are often accessible everywhere: web, android, and ios, you name it. It does not cost that much more once the back-end is in place.
There is thus no surprise that GUI applications are designed and implemented in a back-end APIs first approach. We first figure out what service we want to provide to users and specify the API schema needed to provide these services, then we figure out what front end works best for these APIs. Without the service model in terms of schema, working on the front-ends is simply a waste of time.
Chatbots are initially designed to answer simple information-seeking questions, back-end often does not come up in design discussion then. But even when we extended chatbot’s responsibility to directly provide service, we still rarely practice the back-end service first strategy. This is wasteful because without the service provided by backend APIs, understanding users well alone does not help users much.
Instead of thinking of chatbots as magical conversational AI, we should be more practical, and treat chatbots as just applications with conversational UI. This line of thinking naturally suggests that we take a schema-driven approach for chatbot design and implementation: specify what service we want to expose first in form of its schema, then figure out how a user can access them via conversational interactions. Users do not come to the barbershop for cookies, simply bring the conversation back to the services that we do offer does not hurt the user experience much.
Extracting UI from View
In GUI applications, the view is responsible for rendering the information collecting page and final service result page so that users can engage in the interaction until they get what they want. Through trial and error, people figured out it is advantageous to separate the look and feel (generally known as user experience) from interaction logic. This separation allows the developer to develop interaction logic for different countries (speaking different languages) and demographic market (prefer different theme) in one shot; UI/UX people can design the look and feel, localization team customizes the message for each market segment. By reusing the interaction logic, the cost of bringing the GUI application out to different countries is greatly reduced.
Clearly, it is also desirable for us to build a chatbot that can be deployed to different countries with minimal additional cost. Luckily, simply by separating the script (what we say to users) from interaction logic, both during the conversation and delivering the final result, we can too build a chatbot that shares the same logic but serving the different market in a cost-effective manner. This can be done by abstracting the language-dependent part out from the rest of the front-end, so we can easily fill these parts with script in a new language for a new market.
Separating perception from Controller
The controller is responsible for extracting structured events from user interaction with the application. To make GUI applications serve users in different languages, we define some language-independent events. The same interaction logic can be used to react to these events, if we know the user wants to do something, how he/she express that intention does not matter anymore. The conversion from user interaction to events defined this way is typically handled by some UI library, developers do not need worry where the user clicked, and what does such clicking actually mean.
To share the same interaction logic for a chatbot is a bit trickier. The main challenge is at the preception module that converts user utterance in different language into the same event when they mean the same thing. By separating the understanding part out from the rest of the interaction logic, we can use different language understanding module to convert user utterances in different language into this structured intermediate format. Then we can share the same interaction logic and application logic. We note this preception module requires expertise in natural language understanding, and also machine learning, but there are ways that we can reduce the reliance on this, that we can cover in another log.
For business, building chatbot is an expense that they expect returns. So cost-benefit analysis is always at the core of deciding whether they want to build something. While the benefit of the conversational user interface is undeniable, without greatly bringing down the cost of building chatbots, it will be difficult for many business owners, particularly of these small and medium-sized companies, to justify the expense. If we follow these same engineering principles in building chatbots, we can greatly reduce the time and effort needed to produce a good usable conversational experience, by first enjoying the high productivity due to the division of labor, and then more importantly reusing both backend services and interaction logic. | https://medium.com/@sean-wu/model-view-controller-for-chatbot-89b46c1931da | ['Sean Wu'] | 2020-12-22 22:15:00.916000+00:00 | ['Chatbot', 'Conversational UI'] |
Launching the Civic Innovation Corps | Launching the Civic Innovation Corps
Today, Coding it Forward announced the Civic Innovation Corps — our newest program connecting mission-driven technologists to civic tech opportunities in city and state governments across the United States. Corps members will spend 10 weeks over the summer with a host office at the state or local level to use their data and technology skills to make government more effective and efficient for all.
We believe that young people play a critical role in how our country serves its constituents at all levels of government and have seen incredible excitement from young technologists looking to serve with their skills. The Civic Innovation Corps will allow us to further harness this enthusiasm and energy by providing young people with more opportunities to channel their excitement into lasting change.
This new program will complement our Civic Digital Fellowship, which will continue to be the home for all of our federal partners. There has never been a more necessary time to mobilize the next generation of technologists to create civic impact in cities and states across the country.
How We Got Here
Four years ago, our team founded Coding it Forward with the mission to inspire and empower young people with technology skills to work in social impact and public service. At the time, however, these opportunities were too few and far between.
Between 2017 and 2020, Coding it Forward tackled this problem head-on, building a program that would break down the barriers of entry that we identified were holding back young, mission-driven technologists, including awareness and availability of opportunities, a community of like-minded peers, and opportunities for mentorship.
In many ways, Coding it Forward has catalyzed a growing movement of civic-minded students and young people who want to use their technology and design skills to improve their communities and country. When we launched the Civic Digital Fellowship with 14 Fellows at the U.S. Census Bureau in 2017, we were one of the only mission-driven technology opportunities available for students and recent graduates.
Today, universities can join New America’s Public Interest Technology University Network, students can join or start a campus chapter of national organizations like Design for America or Hack4Impact, and organizations like Nava PBC and Code for America are hiring for entry-level and apprenticeship positions.
In the last four years, our Fellowship cohorts have only grown, and we now have a vibrant alumni community of over 200 young technologists. But the size of our applicant pool each year has grown just as quickly, if not quicker. Just two weeks ago, we closed our 2021 Fellowship recruitment with over 1,700 applicants from across the country — 70% more than our previous record.
While our federal government plays a key role in the lives of all Americans, it’s clear that many of our most important systems are built at the state and local levels. From transportation systems to trash disposal, and from public education to public safety, our local and state governments are often responsible for the systems and services that we interact with on a daily basis.
This is especially true during the COVID-19 pandemic, when citizens across the country have been frustrated by the botched delivery of state unemployment websites, contact tracing apps, and vaccine rollouts. And in no small part, this is due to budget shortfalls that have resulted in under-resourced and short-staffed government offices at the very moment when we need them the most.
The Civic Innovation Corps provides a new avenue for us to meet the growing demand from mission-driven technologists for opportunities in social impact and public service at a time in which there has never been a greater need for such opportunities at the state and local levels.
Program Model
We’re looking forward to working with 9 states and cities across the country to support their teams with mission-aligned software engineers, data scientists, designers, and product managers.
Corps members will be hosted by one of our host partners:
Cities: Austin, TX; Boston, MA; Los Angeles, CA; San Jose, CA; New York, NY; Miami, FL
Austin, TX; Boston, MA; Los Angeles, CA; San Jose, CA; New York, NY; Miami, FL States: California; New Jersey; Utah
Corps members will receive a competitive stipend, partake in programming and professional development curated specifically for local and state contexts, and enjoy a community of mission-driven peers.
Coding it Forward and our host offices have made the joint decision to have all Civic Innovation Corps members work remotely in Summer 2021 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The health, safety, and wellbeing of our community is our first priority, and due to continued significant community spread, uncertainty posed by vaccine distribution challenges, and new strains of the virus, our team believes that a fully remote program is the safest and most equitable option.
Eligibility
The Civic Innovation Corps will open the door to more applicants than we’ve been able to in the past. Non-U.S. citizens and other international students eligible to work in the United States will be eligible to apply to and participate in this new Coding it Forward internship program. Non-traditional students and career changers who have recently completed an alternative training program (e.g. coding bootcamp) are also eligible and encouraged to apply. All applicants must be currently enrolled or have graduated no earlier than December 2020.
Coding it Forward is committed to assembling a diverse cohort of Civic Innovation Corps members. Women, minorities, people with disabilities, and Veterans are strongly encouraged to apply.
How to Apply
Applications will open on Friday, February 12th, and close two weeks later on Sunday, February 28th at 11:59 p.m. PT. Visit our website for more details and frequently asked questions, and subscribe to our newsletter to be the first to know when applications open. | https://blog.codingitforward.com/launching-the-civic-innovation-corps-5a3fa3c51cb | ['Ariana Ophelia Soto'] | 2021-03-04 03:07:59.743000+00:00 | ['Coding It Forward', 'Internships', 'Civic Innovation Corps', 'Civictech', 'Local Government'] |
Meet the Advisor: Joel “Coach K” Kovshoff | Known as Coach K, Joel is an avid trading and financial coach known for his go-to-market strategies for early-stage projects, creative tokenomics, and a deep partnership network. He is found regularly on YouTube providing trading and review content as well as Ran Neuner from CNBC’s YouTube show Crypto Banter hosting several of the top Blockchain CEOs and Thought Leaders. Coach is the Co-founder of Mad-Tech LLC, team at AnrkeyX a DeFi Gaming project, and is an active advisor to the following projects, Ethernity, Splyt, FinXflo, Paid Network, and PlotX.
Kurt
First of all, why does everyone call you “Coach K”?
Joel
Because when I was a teacher before I was in crypto, my last name was hard for some of my international students to say, and I was also coaching sports at the time, so it was easier for the kids to call me “Coach K”. In sports, people don’t call you by your name, they call you by your last name. And then, when I was trying to brand myself in the crypto world, I figured since I was teaching people, then I would just go with “Coach”.
Kurt
I figured it would be something like that. I was a wrestler in high school, and we always called each other by our last names. So is that how you got involved with Splyt? Tell us a little about that.
Joel
I’m really good friends with Kyle and an advisor to PAID. He asked me if I had heard of Splyt and I said no, so he said I’ll make an introduction. So I made the call as an investor, but soon it became apparent that instead of an investor, I could really do much more for the company, so after the call, Cyrus said there is a lot of value you could bring, you’re creative, you’re good with people, you understand NFTs, you understand the DeFi side which people don’t get normally. Just very good synergy with him and myself.
Kurt
Kind of sounds like you’re a jack of all trades, somewhat. But what do you bring to the table that no one else can? Why is Splyt better off now because of your influence?
Joel
My experience is years in this industry understanding not only how the industry works, but how the people in the industry think and react, understanding their motivations, how to communicate with people. A lot of projects in this space aren’t great communicators. Also keeping people around me up to date and thinking outside of the box. I’ve done tokenomics for thirteen projects very successfully, and I’ve challenged how the industry does tokenomics, ways of building them, doing them differently, and it’s something I’ve become an expert in, you could say. I know a lot of people, I’m very friendly, I have a lot of connections to different projects and people. If someone says, “Hey, I need x, y, z,” I can find the right people or projects to plug into what they’re doing.
Kurt
Definitely a jack of all trades. Yeah, I’ve experienced that myself, the lack of communication in the crypto world, and I’m trying to help bridge that gap myself. So let me just ask, you have a lot of experience, but how does your past experience and interests line up with Splyt’s goals and ethos?
Joel
That’s a hard question. Hmm… Basically I’ve been pioneering a lot of projects in NFTs, I was one of the first to launch the NFT farming game. I’ve been very involved in NFTs and finding ways to use them. I was already on the creative side of NFTs with Ethernity, and then Splyt came in and added a new element in the e-commerce space, so I was giving him [Cyrus] new ideas for ways we could use them, and he said I feel like you’re a good person for the team, you understand what we’re doing, you could potentially find new use cases for what we’re doing. Not trying to get rich quick, but really trying to build a business. I own a law firm, a legally licensed marijuana farm, and a trading company, and I’m really focused on providing high-quality service for my people. I want everyone around me to do well and Cyrus wants everyone to do well. Cyrus and I have a similar mindset in that way, and in business and how things work.
Kurt
At the end, there is a similar story to everyone here, in fact. Most of us want what’s best for the people around us, that’s part of why we’re here and how we came together. Next question, what’s your favorite aspect of the project, and where do you see it in five years?
Joel
My favorite aspect of the project is solving actual problems. In e-commerce, when you sell things on different websites there’s the double sell problem, in shipping, there’s waste when you ship to two different people, there’s these inefficiencies in the supply chain that Splyt solves, saves people money and time. Just solving that problem alone is almost enough, but what Splyt makes available to retailers is to collateralize all the assets that they have and take out a loan against what they haven’t sold yet, allowing them to scale and pay for new stock or advertisements that they normally couldn’t buy because they wouldn’t have the credit. That concept alone is new and unique and I think people will definitely use it. When we’re talking five-year plan, I’m thinking large retailers will also do this, and as Splyt grows, they will just have more people to provide liquidity.
Kurt
Yeah, DeFi will be extremely, extremely powerful for a lot of people. Could really change things. Hard to lose, really. So when Splyt becomes a worldwide phenomena, how do you want people to remember you?
Joel
As someone who contributed to something that was awesome, who picked projects like Splyt who have actual use cases and value behind them and aren’t just fluff. Splyt has a token and economics and ecosystem that actually makes sense in the real world. I want to be seen as a person that picks unicorn-type projects and that works directly with them to bring them to the large scale. That’s why I picked Ethernity, Splyt, Finxflow, and PAID. They have strong leadership, strong use cases, and have a future that people actually value, that the community and everyone values, and aren’t just here for the cycle, but are here for a long time and to be used by many other businesses in the future.
Just as I expected, Coach K was super nice and genuine. He had his “Coach K” man-cave green screen behind him, had nothing but good things to say as you saw, and when his wife brought him a coffee and bagel, he acted like it was the nicest thing anyone ever did for him. Thanks Coach! Good talk.
Visit Splyt Website: https://Spl.yt
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Join the Telegram Community | https://medium.com/splytcore/meet-the-advisor-joel-coach-k-rovshoff-b8f4776fc65c | ['Kurt Ivy'] | 2021-09-11 17:27:26.676000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Decentralization', 'Interview Questions', 'Crypto'] |
One of the Most Important Parts of Sex Happens When It’s Over | For years, I was missing an extremely important part of sex. And I didn’t really know I was missing it, because I had never even heard of it.
I knew foreplay was a thing, but I had no clue that aftercare mattered, too.
I definitely wasn’t getting any. With a few rare exceptions, sex ended very unceremoniously. I’d bang some guy at a party, then we’d get dressed and leave.
There was always some kind of foreplay. No one played with my tits or touched my pussy, but we’d at least spend some time flirting, making out, and dry humping. There was a buildup to the sex. But there was nothing after it. Just an abrupt stop.
Then I met Mr. Austin and things were completely different.
The first time we had sex, it felt so new. He went down on me, which is something I wasn’t used to. He made me come — I wasn’t used to that, either.
When we were done, he didn’t get dressed and go back to whatever he was doing before. We caught our breaths while touching each other. We cuddled naked for so long, we didn’t bother getting dressed before fucking again. And we would just talk.
It felt perfect. But you can get used to perfect. All that cuddling and closeness became a normal part of having sex and I didn’t give it a lot of thought.
Then I did something that showed me all that aftercare wasn’t just nice — it was essential. I opened up my marriage.
When I threw myself back on the dating scene, I discovered that emotionally unavailable guys don’t just grow out of it in their twenties. I’ve met thirty-somethings who still don’t know how to be vulnerable with others.
I also learned that I can still fall for that shit. Maybe it’s because I spent my twenties in a committed relationship instead of getting burned by dudes, but I was right back to being drawn to the wrong guys for the wrong reasons.
One of them was Will.
I never met Will in person, but the sex was still memorable. At first, it took place over text. But then, he convinced me to get on the phone with him.
I put up a little resistance because I’m a phone-hating Millennial. I even get my husband to call the pharmacy for me so I can avoid being on a call. But this wasn’t getting a prescription refill — this was hearing a guy making himself come for me. So, I gave in.
And I was so damn happy I did, because it was one of the hottest experiences I’ve had. Knowing he could hear me moan and climax made me feel exposed in a way that really turned me on. Hearing him finish himself off to it was even better.
After that, we hung up. Masturbating over the phone was one thing, but I wasn’t ready to talk. Instead, we spent a long time talking over text.
I felt flustered. I felt excited. I felt a whole lot of warm feelings that just stayed with me long after we were done.
That wasn’t the last time we had phone sex. But it was the last time it ended well.
When the sex was over, he’d be quick to leave. Or he’d start ignoring me after, like he was too busy with other stuff.
The sex was still really good, but it never left me with those warm feelings I had the first time. It just left me feeling weird. It left me with anxiety. It made me feel stupid and used. It made our whole situation feel awkward.
And it made me feel lonely, like I missed him even though we had just been on the phone.
The only thing that made me feel kind of okay is the aftercare I got from my husband. Hanging out with him and talking about what had just happened was the only thing that kept me from spiraling into some even darker moods.
I learned a lot of things from my brief fling with Will. And one of them is just how important aftercare is. It was such a given in my married life that I took it for granted. Now I knew it was essential.
Why Sexual Aftercare Is So Important
Sexual aftercare is usually associated with BDSM but it’s really something everyone should be practicing, even if the sex they have isn’t very kinky.
And it’s not just for long-term partners, either. It’s worth making sure you get and give aftercare when you’re having casual sex or with your friends with benefits. Maybe even more, since you can’t rely on the intimacy and security you get from a solid relationship.
One of the reasons it matters so much is because that intimacy is what makes you feel special and appreciated. When someone just fucks you and moves on, it can feel like they were just in it because they wanted sex, not because they wanted you. Which, I don’t think I have to tell you, is not an amazing feeling.
Sex is also a very vulnerable act. You’re giving your body over to someone. You’re opening up to them physically. You’re showing them what you desire and what it’s like when you get lost in pleasure. If you get off, you’ll even lose control of your body for a few seconds (or longer if you’re lucky).
It’s easy to come out of that feeling a little bit ashamed and embarrassed. Even more so if you did the kind of nasty stuff you don’t even think about unless you’re horned up hard. Getting good aftercare will make you feel safe and reassured in those moments.
Sexual arousal, pleasure, and orgasms also come with a huge hormonal rush. That’s part of the fun, but hitting those hormonal peaks also means you have to come down from them.
How hard you come down depends on what happens next. If you just go your separate ways, roll over and go to sleep, or (in my case) hang up the phone, the rush can end in a hormonal crash. That crash can turn you into an uncomfortable, anxious mess of confused thoughts.
With good aftercare, though, you can process those intense feelings, get through them, and bury them under some positive ones. You can ride out your endorphin high and come down gently.
In general, aftercare makes the sex a more positive experience. Sex can bring you closer and make you feel more connected. But when there’s not enough aftercare, you can end up feeling more distant than before.
And even if the sex is good, everything that happens after can still spoil it (trust me, you can regret hot sex). If you do the aftercare right, though, you get to hold on to the good stuff.
How to Practice Good Sexual Aftercare
Aftercare looks different for everyone because we all have unique needs and we all approach sex with a different kind of mindset. But fundamentally, it’s just what it says in the name. It’s about finding ways to make your partner feel cared for.
These are some of the things you can do to keep the intimacy going after the sex is over.
Catch Your Breath Together
Instead of grabbing your phone after sex, lie next to each other while you’re both catching your breath.
It’s a great way to be present with each other. Even if you don’t say anything, coming down together will give the sex a natural conclusion instead of having it come to an abrupt stop.
Touch Each Other
Cuddle, kiss, stroke your partner’s arm or back, or play with their hair. You can enjoy the silence and listen to each other breathe, put on some music, or talk while you do it, but touching is going to help you feel more connected.
Again, it’s about not ending things too abruptly. You just had your bodies pressed close together, so it can feel emotionally disorienting when that physical closeness comes to an immediate stop.
And staying physically close is a good way to keep you from feeling emotionally distant.
Lie in Bed and Talk
Sometimes, it doesn’t matter what you talk about. Just having a conversation you can both feel engaged in can help you feel closer.
But it’s even better when you talk about the sex you just had.
You can go over what you liked and say things like “I loved that you did circles with your tongue. From now on, more circles please!”
Or you can compliment your partner on their skill: “The way you kept pushing the dildo in me while stroking my clit… Masterful.”
You can even giggle over the stuff you tried that didn’t quite work. I can’t count the number of times that sex with Mr. Austin has ended with one of us saying like “I had no idea that position would hurt my thighs so much” or “Maybe that sex act just belongs in porn, not real life.”
Make Room for All the Feelings
If you tried something new or if something just felt off, check in with your partner to see if they’re okay with what just went down. Sometimes, it’s not always clear, especially if it was something that was mostly good but made them a little uncomfortable. Giving them the space to talk about it can give them the reassurance they need.
Depending on the kind of sex I have, I can have all sorts of strong emotional reactions.
Normally, I just feel really good and I can bask in that glow. But sometimes, it feels so good I burst out in uncontrollable laughter. Those laughing orgasms are the weirdest ones I have, so they make me feel a little self-conscious. But when Mr. Austin giggles along with me and tells me to laugh all I want, I can let go and just enjoy it.
Other times, I go on such a hormonal roller coaster that I cry after an orgasm. Those make me feel guilty because I worry that I’m sending the signal that something went wrong. I don’t want my husband to feel bad just for making me come. But when he holds me and tells me it’s okay, I can get through it without having to feel worse than I already do.
And then there are the times where I just feel a whole lot of things and I don’t know how to sort them out. Maybe I got spanked a little too hard. Maybe the dirty talk was just a shade too degrading. Maybe the dynamic just didn’t feel right. Half the time, I don’t even know what the problem is — I just don’t feel quite right.
If your partner is going through any of that, do what you can to make them feel safe and help them process through those feelings.
Clean Up
Sex gets messy — there’s sweat, there’s saliva, there’s massage oil, there’s lube, there’s come, and who knows what else. Walking to the bathroom to clean yourself off after can be a bit of a lonely experience. Doing that job for your partner is a good way to make them feel taken care of.
Whenever we’re done, my husband will always clean the massage oil, lube, and come off me. He usually finishes on my ass, so I get to lie on my stomach and enjoy feeling the warm towel against my skin.
And it makes it so I can get all sticky and messy but not end up feeling dirty because of it.
Take Care of Your Partner’s Physical Needs
Sex can wear you out. When you’ve got all those horny hormones flowing through your body, you can just power through all the physical demands. But when those start to die down, you can be hit with all sorts of discomfort. Part of your aftercare should be easing that discomfort for your partner.
Gently massage their sore legs. Grab them an ice pack if the spanking left their butt feeling a little too beat up. Get them a snack if they’re starving after a long, exhausting session. Personally, I tend to get really thirsty after sex, so Mr. Austin will graciously pop down to the kitchen to get me a glass of cold water.
Getting an ice pack doesn’t sound as romantic as cuddling, but it’s a good way to show your partner you’re taking shared responsibility for the sex and everything that comes with it.
Always Leave Room For Aftercare
Aftercare generally isn’t a problem in my relationship, but there are times when it’s fallen to the wayside.
We have a lot of young kids at home, so we can only have sex once they’re all in bed. Sometimes, that gives us a very small window to work with.
We never rush through the foreplay, but sometimes we get cheap with the aftercare. We’ll do a quick bit of cuddling, talk for a few minutes, and then crash and go to sleep.
We figured that was enough, but it wasn’t.
Instead of waking up chipper and lovey dovey the next morning, we’d wake up feeling disconnected.
And no matter how great the sex was the night before, I just couldn’t feel excited about having it again. I felt spent and done.
That’s what made me realize that aftercare isn’t just about how you feel in the moment. Good aftercare puts me in a good mood, even the day after. It helps me get in the mood again, too.
It’s why I lost interest in having phone sex with Will. Because there was no aftercare, I knew what I was signing up for. I’d have fun for a minute and then I’d feel like crap the rest of the night (and wouldn’t feel much better in the morning). It wasn’t something I could stay excited about.
Ever since I came to that realization, I’ve become more intentional about aftercare. I always make room for it, even if I’m staying up late fucking. Because I love that warm glow and I’d much rather have less sleep than less sex. | https://medium.com/love-emma/one-of-the-most-important-parts-of-sex-happens-when-its-over-c65683e42e30 | ['Emma Austin'] | 2020-03-30 17:04:42.243000+00:00 | ['Relationships', 'Love', 'Sex', 'Women', 'Life'] |
The Global Compact for Migration , a worthless worthwhile agreement. | © NOTIMEX 2018
About the Compact
The Global Compact for safe, orderly and Regular migration is an agreement with no binding force negotiated between governments and endorsed in a formal manner by the United Nations General Assembly at the end of 2018.
The endorsement to the compact by the international community was outstanding, with some bitter exceptions in some cases expected given their domestic political focus on immigration e.g. United States, Poland or Czech Republic.
As it was established in the beginning of the document, its creation was aimed at improving the cooperation on immigration under the auspices that “international migration unite us, rather than divide us”. Using the words of the agreement, this compact strives for the common understanding, shared responsibilities and unity of purpose regarding migration, making it work for all.
This compact is undoubtedly an ambitious project which could become a gamechanger both in the short and the long-run. With a thorough point by point plan it could be a remarkable guide to follow when confronting migration not just internationally, but domestically. The compact is based on the principle of shared responsibility between all States and it takes into account not only the perspective of countries of origin and transit but also countries of destination.
However, there are some fatal obstacles which could mean, at last, the total futility of the compact. | https://medium.com/@aitanagonzalez/the-global-compact-for-migration-a-worthless-worthwhile-agreement-5892bda2bd0e | ['Aitana González Sainz'] | 2020-12-08 20:13:33.744000+00:00 | ['Critical Analysis', 'Migration', 'United Nations', 'Law'] |
3 More Stocks That Could Be Worth $1 Trillion In a Decade | The Motley Fool | 3 More Stocks That Could Be Worth $1 Trillion In a Decade | The Motley Fool Staff Follow Aug 21 · 5 min read
At this point, companies sporting a $1 trillion market valuation aren’t so special. State-backed oil titan Saudi Aramco was valued at $2 trillion shortly after its IPO late in 2019. As of this writing, Apple just reached $2 trillion, and Amazon, Microsoft, and Google parent Alphabet are all over the $1 trillion market cap mark. A number of other companies like Facebook are “only” a couple hundred billion from reaching the 13-digit valuation line, too.
The law of compound growth dictates plenty of other businesses will arrive at the arbitrary trillion-dollar valuation. Last month I outlined three stocks I think could do so in the next decade. Three more that are benefiting from secular growth trends that could be knocking on the $1 trillion valuation door in 10 years are Mastercard (NYSE:MA), Walt Disney (NYSE:DIS), and Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE). Let’s take a closer look at what makes these three companies so valuable.
Image source: Getty Images
1. Mastercard: One of the world’s largest toll booths
With a market cap of over $330 billion, Mastercard would need to increase another 200% to make it into the trillion-dollar club. But with digital payments and fintech continuing to increase in importance around the globe, it isn’t such a farfetched notion.
Mastercard — together with its rival Visa, which has a market cap of over $420 billion — has a virtual duopoly on the global payment processing network industry. Mastercard processes about a third of digital payment volume excluding China, which is mostly walled off to outside entities but which Mastercard got approval to enter in early 2020 from the People’s Bank of China. Using a credit or debit card or some other means of electronic payment is commonplace in developed countries, but digital payments overall are still in growth mode and are expected to grow at a high single-digit percentage over the next decade.
Thus, even though it has hauled in over $16 billion in revenue in the last 12 months (including a 19% decrease in revenue in the second quarter of 2020 during the height of the economic lockdown), there’s a lot to like about Mastercard. The company earns service fees from its card issuer partners based on transaction volume, as well as a toll booth-like “switched fee” every time an individual transaction is processed. As developing economies slowly but steadily move away from cash and e-commerce grows in importance, Mastercard’s payment volumes and number of transactions are sure to increase.
The best part about this business, though, is its lean operating model. Even in tough times, Mastercard’s operating margin was a massive 53% during the first half of 2020. Paired with the $11.5 billion in cash and short-term investments on balance at the end of June 2020, this digital payments giant has a cash spigot to tap into to continue developing its network or acquire smaller fintech peers. This stock is worth making a core portfolio holding for the long term.
2. Disney: The world’s most-loved entertainment
Consumers vote with dollars, and using that metric, Disney rings up as the most-loved entertainment brand. Besides all the classic Disney characters and stories, the company is deeply invested in sports with ESPN, has extensive TV properties through ABC and Fox, and owns the Marvel superhero universe and Star Wars franchise — all in a vertically integrated empire that spans theme parks, film and broadcast entertainment, and merchandise.
Of course, the current pandemic’s effect on Disney is well documented. Its theme parks are running on a limited basis (with the exception of the one in Hong Kong, which remains closed). Many sports events it has broadcast rights to have been sidelined. Movie theaters are closed. It isn’t a pretty picture, and Disney’s sales took a 42% dive during the three months ended June 2020. However, even in extreme circumstances, the House of Mouse has remained profitable, generating operating income of $1.1 billion on revenue of $11.8 billion during the spring.
That’s not to say it’s in great shape, but eventually the entertainment segments that rely on in-person interaction will be able to recover. In the meantime, Mickey and company aren’t resting on their laurels. The direct-to-consumer segment that encompasses streaming properties Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+, and Disney+ Hotstar (in India and soon also Indonesia) has over 100 million subscribers already. A new international general entertainment service under the Star name making use of ABC and Fox TV and studio content is coming in 2021. And with the future of the theater industry in question, Mulan will be the biggest-budget film to date going direct to streaming, available to Disney+ subscribers for $29.99.
Put simply, Disney remains a powerful entertainment empire that is helping lead the charge into a new digital age. It’s far from perfect at the moment, but the current state of affairs won’t last forever. And with a market cap of over $230 billion, it isn’t hard to imagine the world’s preeminent entertainment consortium being a lot bigger in a decade.
3. Adobe: Powering the world’s “digital transformation”
A lot has changed since the dawn of the internet in the 1990s. More than just a means for obtaining information, the internet has created an interconnected digital world that is now the very foundation for business operations and the means for obtaining and delivering goods and services. This “digital transformation” was already underway before COVID-19, but those businesses and individuals dragging their feet on making needed tech updates had a fire lit under them in recent months.
That’s where Adobe (and a growing rival in salesforce.com) comes in. Adobe began as a creative software developer but has used its leadership in that realm as leverage into a full-blown software suite for enterprise. From day-to-day workflow management (like electronic document signing) to marketing management (ad purchasing and data monitoring) to creative tools (graphical design and digital content creation), Adobe has businesses covered. The options that lay before it in coming years seem endless.
Underscoring just how important this technologist has become, revenue increased 14% to $3.13 billion during its fiscal 2020 second quarter (the three months ending in May) and management forecast another 11% increase during the third quarter. The world may be in the grips of recession, but spending on Adobe’s wares continues almost unabated. And with the need for software and cloud services only expected to increase in the next 10 years, Adobe sits at the forefront of a massive industry worth hundreds of billions worldwide every year and still increasing.
Currently valued at over $220 billion, this software firm has the farthest to go to reach $1 trillion on this list. But still in expansion mode and toting enviable operating margins of about 30%, there’s a lot to like about Adobe. It’s not unreasonable to think it will be close to the 13-digit market-cap range in a decade’s time. | https://medium.com/the-motley-fool/3-more-stocks-that-could-be-worth-1-trillion-in-a-decade-the-motley-fool-621e53b64ff9 | [] | 2020-08-21 20:51:27.445000+00:00 | ['Investing', 'Microsoft', 'Stocks', 'Adobe', 'Disney'] |
Everything You Need to Know About AirPods Max | The headphones also have a digital crown and button straight from an Apple Watch. The crown allows you to change volume, control ANC, use Siri, etc.
Features
These headphones of course have their whole list of features and gimmicks for marketing. Let’s quickly go through them:
The headphones have an array of 6 different microphones for adaptive EQ (including inside your ear). This is a marketing thing we saw on the HomePod. Was it groundbreaking? No, not really.
They will auto-pause when you take them off and put them around your neck (which is nice).
20 hours of battery life is good. Really happy to hear that.
It was rumored that the headphones would be bi-directional (meaning you could put them on either way and they’d adapt) but it turns out they are not. It does, however, say the left and right inside the ear cups. Similar to what Bose has done.
Spacial audio is something new we saw with AirPods Pro and is coming on the Max’s as well. It’s a really cool feature for watching movies and is actually a really cool feature that you won’t find in competitors' headphones.
They also have that AirPods magic which means that they pair with your phone and work amazing. It also of course has Active Noise Cancellation and Siri.
Accessories
It wouldn’t be a modern-day Apple product if they didn’t price gouge you on accessories, Best Buy style.
Apple has two main add ons (kinda) for the Max. The first is a bi-directional lightning to eighth-inch jack for $35. It will let you use the headphones with a wired connection.
The other add on isn’t as much a necessary purchase right now as it is a future one. Apple has confirmed that replacement cups will cost $69 each. I’ve never been so proud and disappointed with Apple at the same time.
Thankfully, the case which can put the headphones in a special lower power mode to save battery comes with the headphones.
But is it Worth the Price?
While the AirPods Max look really cool, it brings up the question of whether it is worth the price tag.
For $550 you can get really nice sounding headphones. And while those headphones don’t have the AirPods “magic”, they do have features the Max doesn’t have. For example, you can’t use an external amp to power the headphones.
But the real competitors to these are Sony’s and Bose headphones. The Sony WH-100X M4’s (yep, worse name on the planet) only cost in the $300 range. They have really good noise canceling and are highly acclaimed. Sure they won’t have that AirPods touch or the spatial audio, but is that worth the cost? We’ll have to see how good they sound once reviewers get their hands on them.
So Should You Buy Them?
No matter what, don’t buy them right now. Even if you’re interested in picking them up, you should wait till reviewers can try them. The headphones are already sold out so you won’t be getting them before Christmas.
There are also rumors that Apple will release a “sports-edition” version which will only cost $350. It might be worth waiting out a month or two to see how these really turn out. | https://medium.com/macoclock/everything-you-need-to-know-about-airpods-max-7f529ec6d3a | ['Henry Gruett'] | 2020-12-15 17:40:18.383000+00:00 | ['Technews', 'Technology', 'Technology News', 'Tech', 'Apple'] |
Writing about my dad’s death, for the first time | Writing about my dad’s death, for the first time
10 years ago today, my dad passed away. I particularly wanted to write about this today because I had promised him I would write his story. But I never have.
Back when I was 18 years old, sitting by his hospital bed, asking him to recount tales of his childhood, scribbling down everything he said into my notebook, I was simultaneously fantasising about my book on his life lining the shelves of Waterstones, and becoming a published author at 28 years old.
Well, I’m now 28 and this is the first time I’ve ever written about his death. I’ve made various attempts before to write about his life, like mulling over book titles and what to name him in a story (it felt too raw to use his real name). But everything was either half-baked, or something emotional knocked me down and halted my motivation to continue.
I then decided I didn’t have enough information — I needed to first gather more content and material. My first real stab at this was when I went to Malaysia, my parents’ home country, for a holiday in 2014.
I just had a bad breakup, so this trip became an opportunity for me to ‘find myself’. As cheesy as that sounds, it worked. It was the first time I really saw Malaysia as a country and not just somewhere my extended family lived. I explored my dad’s roots and reconnected with my heritage.
I interviewed my aunties and anyone who had memories of my father when he was growing up. We went to Penang, his hometown, and I took lots of photographs of the streets he would have walked down, the house he grew up in, where he went to school, the hospital he was born in. I collected a plethora of material!
But I still hadn’t written anything.
I also put off writing about it, simply because I didn’t feel like my writing skills could do his story justice. I was young, full of ambition and ideas… but not a lot of skill. I thought, if I worked first and gained some more life experience I could improve my writing skills and I wouldn’t embarrass myself or his memory.
I now work in communications for the government, have produced award-winning content, and have even ghost-written blog posts for ministers. I definitely have much better writing skills than when I was 18.
But as factual as all of this is, I also used this as a reason to delay writing about my dad and procrastinate. “I’m not good enough yet. I’m not ready.” Excuses.
I’ve now reached the 10 year anniversary of his passing, and I still haven’t written a thing. So now is the time — no more excuses.
It’s taken me 10 years to be able to pluck up the courage, and also have that emotional distance. Time is a healer, but you never know when the medicine will take effect.
With this significant milestone, I believe this is the first step I’m taking towards fulfilling my promise and writing dad’s story. Even if it’s terrible, and I never publish a book, at least I’ll have created something out of the grief I felt losing him at such a young age, immortalising him through the power of the written language, and paying homage to his life — the sacrifices he made to give me and my sister a better life — and never forgetting the life he had.
A photo of my dad with a kangaroo, and a beaded monkey he bought me over 14 years ago which I’ve treasured ever since.
“He’s gone”
10 January, 10.42am. Dad was pronounced dead.
I believe that’s the time written on his death certificate, but to be honest it doesn’t quite matter. He had in fact died much earlier, but time of death is recorded based on when the doctor arrives and pronounces it. I had learnt something new that day.
My mother found him first. Possibly around 10.30am — I can’t be certain. She gently shook me and my sister awake, saying softly, “I think he’s gone.”
In that moment, I cannot recall being in control of myself. I did not make any choices or had any thoughts. My body simply pulled me out of the bed, and towards his.
He was still.
I touched his face. It was still slightly warm. I began to well up. I was torn between wanting to kiss him goodbye, and also feeling revulsion over the idea of kissing a dead body.
But I reasoned, this is my dad. I have to kiss him goodbye.
His skin felt so thin, but familiar. I knew that skin, its texture. So feeling it only slightly warm, the sign of a body that’s not in its natural state of being alive, was so strange.
It was almost like my contact with him verified it. It had finally happened. He had died, and his body would now only get colder and colder.
The Royal Marsden hospital
Back in October 2008, we were told dad only have 3 months left to live. Funnily enough, this was actually good news.
Dad had, very unfortunately for us, initially misheard the doctor and told us he only had 3 weeks left.
This had devastated me. I remember hearing “3 weeks”, bursting into tears and having to leave the room. I went into some communal area at Sutton’s Royal Marsden Hospital on the wing dad was on. All I remember were some chairs, a water cooler, and the fact that some family members had followed me in.
As soon as I entered, I bent over and let out this terrible, raucous, animal scream. It erupted out from deep from within me. People were trying to get me to be quiet but it was impossible. I couldn’t be stifled, I couldn’t be silenced — I just felt pure pain, terrible raw emotion pouring out of my mouth. Echoing around this small hospital room.
My scream had shocked even me — but I would still continue to cry, doubled over into a ball. It sounds clichéd but I literally sank to my knees.
I believe this happened because my body simply gave up trying to hold itself up. It lost all energy, focusing its efforts to try and haphazardly handle this sudden intense level of grief. I’ve never felt that way before, and I’ve never experienced it since.
Simply put, my mind and body broke down at the news of only having my dad for 3 weeks longer.
So you can imagine how happy we were to then hear he actually had 3 months left.
When it comes to counting down the days of how long you have on this earth with loved ones, every single minute, every second, is a blessing.
Coming home
You see, dad hadn’t told us how sick he was. I had rushed back home from Leeds, where I was in my first year of university, with only the news that dad had to come back home from his holiday in Malaysia months early; the cancer had spread.
Dad never wanted me to go to Leeds, because it was too far and he wouldn’t have the strength to drive up and visit me. He instead wanted me to go to my second-choice university, Royal Holloway, University of London. He had loved its beautiful Founders Building — and how close it was from our home in Wallington, south London. But I couldn’t go to it just for him — Leeds was by far a more competitive and better university for me. But this feeling of guilt, of not going to the university he wanted me to, still stays with me to this day.
Another memory of mine that never fails to make me cry, is my last ever sight of dad standing up. I was being driven by my sister and her boyfriend (now husband) to take me to university. As we were pulling out of our driveway, all I could see, through my tears and the black lines of the back window of my sister’s car, was my papa, standing in our doorway, waving goodbye to me as I waved back.
Dad was losing his youngest daughter to the natural course of simply growing up and moving out of home. His eldest daughter was already living out of home with her boyfriend and in the process of buying their first house. His wife, my mother, was divorcing him for another man. He didn’t have much left for him at home, so he decided to take a 3-month holiday to Malaysia and spend it with his siblings who he’s not lived with since he left in 1982 to make a life for himself and his family in the UK.
So I thought dad was relatively healthy. But he never told us he had found out, I think as far back as August, that his cancer had spread to his spine. He was in intense pain, and he kept it entirely to himself.
But it was when he was in Malaysia, sitting in his sister’s house, that he realised the pain was unbearable, the cancer was spreading too fast, and as a result, he had to face facts and cut his holiday short to come back home to the UK — to die.
Despite the trauma and stress of the secrecy behind his health, how lonely and painful that 13 hour flight from KL to London must have been — I’m glad he got to see his beloved family in Malaysia, his sisters, his brother-in-law, his precious nieces and nephews, and of course his mother.
Since dad has passed, my Ah mah — (Chinese for grandmother on the father’s side) — is still alive at age 92, and has outlived 2 of her sons.
In a way, I am glad dad at least got to see his family back in his home country one more time. Home and family have always been incredibly important to dad. In fact, he had actually requested to die at our home in Wallington, much to our distress.
Selfish sounding, I know, but I didn’t know how I’d be able to live in a house where my father had died. But in the end, towards the end of his life, taking care of dad was simply beyond us. We didn’t have the medical expertise or the equipment to be able to give him an easy send-off.
Dad was starting to suffer, we began to panic, and we made the call. We phoned for an ambulance to take him to a hospice.
The hospice
Even though the actual date he passed away was 10 January, the 9 January is just as hard a time for me. That’s the day we had to rush him to the hospice so he could get proper medical care.
That’s also the day where I’ll never be able to forget the nightmarish sound of dad’s last breaths.
We were sleeping in the hospice for the night. It was nearly pitch-black, and my sister, her boyfriend and I sat in the communal area just outside of his bedroom, being unable to do anything with ourselves, but listen to his hoarse and laboured breathing echoing throughout the building.
That noise would haunt me and my nightmares for years.
It was a result from a combination of mucus building up in his system which he couldn’t expel, and the body automatically, desperately, gasping for air, trying to pull in as much oxygen as possible into a decaying body. It produced a hollow, rattling noise that pervaded the hospice. Even from a distance, I could hear his limp lips fluttering whilst his mouth struggled to suck in and push out air.
Dad was unconscious — he was being pumped with a continuous supply of morphine to relieve the pain. He was already beyond what we would consider ‘alive’.
So arguably, dad had got his wish of dying at home. He had effectively already passed away the moment the paramedics lifted him out of our house and into the ambulance to take him to the hospice. It was in the house I grew up in, our home, where I shared my last words with him, where I said my true goodbyes.
This is my worst and best memory of him. The one that never fails to make me cry. My dad’s last words to me.
His last words
For 2 months or so, we were taking care of dad at home. We pushed all the furniture aside and had set up a hospital bed in our living room. We’d take it in turns to feed, clean, and simply spend time with him.
But then at night time, I would go into my bedroom and pray everyday “please let us have Christmas. Please let us have one more Christmas with him.” Even though we were told “3 months” it was still completely touch and go. It was only an estimate. So when it came to Christmas and New Years Eve of 2008, I was constantly hung up on the idea that these festive times, where family usually come together, would be marred by his death.
Thankfully, dad lasted through the holiday season so I can still enjoy Christmas.
During his last few days, I fed dad his preferred food of Carr’s cheese biscuits dipped in Milo (a brand of chocolate drink popular in Malaysia), and poking it into his mouth. Dad had lost his ability to chew, so the Milo would make the biscuit soggy and easily digestible. I’d also help plaster his right eye down for him and administer his eye drops because he’d lost his ability to blink in one eye.
Dad was first diagnosed with cancer sometime in 1997 or 1998 — I was only 7 or 8, so I don’t remember the exact years. To remove his tumours, dad had to have a large portion of neck tissue removed and in the process lost the nerves on the right side of his face, so he constantly looked like a stroke victim.
Dad had nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Cancer behind the nose. Rather rare in this country, but incredibly common in China. So, dad’s cancer was likely a result of genes. He never smoked, never took drugs (but did drink the occasional red wine). Ultimately, he lived a healthy, sporty, lifestyle — was a Liverpool supporter (because he loved the Beatles) — and enjoyed taking care of himself.
To be honest, when I took care of him I wish I had done a better job. I still feel guilty that I would sometimes take a break from my duties, sacrificing moments with my dad, and run into my bedroom to spend time with my then-boyfriend. Puppy love. Overall, probably not worth it, but, I was a teenager so I guess I have to give myself some slack.
But he appreciated all the time we spent together. Of course he did. He was my daddy, and he did everything he could for me.
He would drive me to school, save money so I could have a better future, cook me my food, discipline me, teach me wrong from right. He told me, “fail to plan, plan to fail”. Nowadays at work, colleagues call me a meticulous planner.
He loved me and my sister, and would do anything to create and protect our happiness. He moved countries for us. So I will never stop crying, whenever I remember his last words to me: | https://medium.com/@EmilyChobbit/writing-about-my-dads-death-for-the-first-time-e108ed0411bb | ["Emily Ch'Ng"] | 2019-01-10 20:13:49.816000+00:00 | ['Death', 'Bereavement', 'Dads And Daughters', 'Grief And Loss', 'Family'] |
Technology that walks in the shoes of the patient | By Elizabeth Elfenbein and Prodeep Bose
For over a decade, we’ve been advising our clients and colleagues to “take a walk in the shoes of your customer” — to understand and empathize with the plight of patients and caregivers, so you can “get into their skin” and know how best to communicate with them.
Well, it’s really no different today, except now the shoes are walking in a technology-centered world, where devices and apps are doing more things to help these people manage and maintain their health.
Using technology to solve human problems
In the decade of walking in the shoes, technology has evolved at a speed that is outpacing that of humans — yet interestingly, in the process of evolution, it recognizes the need to address a human problem: health. In many ways, technology understands how to better connect and drive engagement and action in patients and caregivers, perhaps even more than humans do. And technology for health is in its nascent stage, just beginning to define the future and where it will lead to real time and future time, better outcomes.
Biometrics and biofeedback: the patients’ new shoes
“Walking in the shoes” takes on new meaning when it comes to technology-enabled health tracking. The foundation of health management has been episodic. When something happens, we go to the doctor and iterate the process of “describe, discuss, prescribe.” Continuous management and feedback on vitals, biometrics, pill compliance, and other real-world behavior will enable a shift towards continuous medicine — and in very real terms, allow for “walking in the patients’ shoes” beyond episodic empathy and sensitivity. We will see and understand the health transformation of people in real time by observing their lives, their health metrics, and their outcomes.
The key areas of innovation could be bucketed into four categories:
Monitoring
Biofeedback
Intelligent intervention (driven by predictive logic)
Robotics
The investment in these areas and the proliferation of companies developing innovative solutions is dramatic. Remote monitoring of pill compliance through programmed pill dispensers, use of biofeedback in managing ADHD and depression, exome-sequenced interventional logic for personalized and preventive medicine, and next-generation robotics to enhance or replace limbs are “always-on” platforms that change the function of a provider from somewhere between an interviewer and a detective to an analyst. As a financial advisor manages his fund’s health by constantly monitoring data, the provider-patient-caregiver relationship stands to be transformed to a proactive monitoring-driven intervention approach over an exacerbation-driven intervention approach.
Sensitivity and empathy are at the heart of the idea of “walking in the patients’ shoes,” and will always be at the core of care. Technology simply amplifies what is actionable and when. | https://medium.com/healthwellnext/technology-that-walks-in-the-shoes-of-the-patient-cae59345cdee | ['Elizabeth Elfenbein'] | 2016-11-28 21:54:19.143000+00:00 | ['Health Technology', 'Patients', 'Healthcare', 'Healthtech', 'Human Behavior'] |
Altcoin Analysis: BTC, ETH, XRP, EOS, LTC Cryptocurrency Review | Altcoin Analysis: BTC, ETH, XRP, EOS, LTC Cryptocurrency Review
The main indicator of the cryptocurrency market has once again updated its maximum since the beginning of the current year. To date, the capitalization rate is at $285 billion, showing an increase of 8% since Friday.
Image credit: CoinMarketCap
Basically, the increase in the indicator is due to BTC. In the rest of the coins, the upward movement occurs rather as a movement by inertia behind the leader, however, as we know, the revaluation can occur here at any time.
Bitcoin
The price for BTC has broken through the level of $9000 and, by inertia, without meeting any resistance, reached the level of $9300. Now, when prices have reached annual highs, from a practical point of view, it is more correct to have patience and hold the position as long as possible. Stop loss can be placed at $8,800, which gives a chance to participate in the next wave of growth, and in the case of a reversal will allow you to save most of the profits.
Ethereum
ETH quote is pulled up behind the leader, however, in this case, the dynamics are not of a pronounced nature and the movement occurs in a sawtooth uptrend. So, the purchase from the support line, of course, brought its positive results, but there is no certainty in the continuation of the upward movement in the near future. Resistance at $276. Stop loss placed below the trend line.
Ripple
In XRP, the technical picture has changed. First of all, it is worth noting the fact that the quote is leaving the down support line. The probability of moving to the $0.475 mark has now increased markedly, but from a technical point of view, it will be difficult to choose the entry point in this phase of the market. Small positions can be opened within the current short-term trend with a stop below the previous local minimum in this trend. At the same time, there are more technical tools on the market for active trade in large volumes. Level $0.47–0.48 is key to changing the situation over a longer time interval.
EOS
EOS broke through the upper resistance of the trading range, but so far there has not been a strong impulse. In the current situation, it may be worth staying in a position with a stop loss below the red line in case quote return to the range. If the scenario is implemented, in which a maximum of $7.16 will be updated, this will serve as a signal to increase the share of the coin in the portfolio.
Litecoin
LTC chart at the moment punched the trend line, then bounced back. As a result, the trend line is slightly adjusted and, presumably, in this situation, there will be some pause for speculators, so that you can look at what is happening and draw conclusions without emotion from the outside. What is happening in the coin now is not at all like the presence of a pronounced tendency. Buyers who moved prices up in the first half of June changed their trading behavior, so an outside view should help to take a more sober look at the current situation.
DISCLAIMER: All Content on this site is information of a general nature and does not address the circumstances of any particular individual or entity. Nothing in the Site constitutes professional and/or financial advice, nor does any information on the Site constitute a comprehensive or complete statement of the matters discussed or the law relating thereto.
Author: Marko Vidrih
Charts via Investing.com powered by TradingView | https://medium.com/the-capital/altcoin-analysis-btc-eth-xrp-eos-ltc-cryptocurrency-review-f0e2a0f8d445 | ['Marko Vidrih'] | 2019-06-17 10:10:44.554000+00:00 | ['Eos', 'Ripple', 'Ethereum', 'Bitcoin', 'Litecoin'] |
3 Crucial Things to Know About NavigationLink in SwiftUI | 3 Crucial Things to Know About NavigationLink in SwiftUI
Build robust iOS apps
Photo by Dan Chung on Unsplash.
Navigation is an essential component of any application, and with SwiftUI, Apple introduced NavigationLink and NavigationView to allow us to create routers with ease.
However, there were a few hiccups in the first iteration of SwiftUI. Specifically, destination views inside a navigation link were getting loaded immediately. But now in iOS 14, we have lazy views — namely LazyHStack and LazyVStack — to make our lives easier. | https://medium.com/better-programming/3-crucial-things-to-know-about-navigationlink-in-swiftui-cb15d791a55 | ['Anupam Chugh'] | 2020-12-09 15:55:54.356000+00:00 | ['Mobile', 'iOS', 'Swift', 'Swiftui', 'Programming'] |
Female Disruptors: Michelle Duval of Fingerprint for Success On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry | Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
My interest in the coaching industry was sparked by my early experiences in the hospitality industry working for 5-star hotels. My role at the time involved coordinating the visits for high-profile guests (like Andre Agassi, Richard Branson, and Pavarotti) to ensure that their needs are all taken care of during their stay.
Through this experience, I had the privilege of taking a peek into the lives of these individuals who are the top and elite in their respective fields. I got fascinated by the entourage of support each one of these professionals traveled with — ranging from dieticians, psychologists, chefs, sports coaches, and more.
And this got me thinking: How can I make this same level of support accessible to everyone so that we can all fulfill our potential in all aspects of our lives?
Since then, I’ve been working hard to solve this question through my startup, Fingerprint for Success (F4S) — an AI-powered web application that brings personal coaching to everyone.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
Our main motivation for F4S is to make personal coaching available to everyone through the use of AI-powered technology.
The biggest issue with the coaching industry at present is that it’s always been seen as a “luxury” that’s only for those at the top in their field — superstar athletes, celebrities, CEOs, or top-level management.
But I’ve always wondered why shouldn’t these same resources be made available to anyone and everyone? Don’t we all want to discover our strengths, blind spots, preferred communication style, ideal motivators, and more? Wouldn’t this information make us better team players, leaders, people?
I found my answer to these questions through technology. With a focus on advancing conversational AI, we’ve been rolling out the world’s first personal AI Coach on our platform. Our “Coach Marlee” app is able to recreate that same coaching interaction within a device — such as your smartphone — making it more affordable, accessible, and convenient for everybody.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Several years ago, I was invited back to my old high school to speak to the students about my career and how I found success in my field. Before I took the stage, I’d decided I would head to the bathroom first. As I entered the auditorium again, I realized that the students were snickering. And I was wondering what was going on. To my horror, one of the teachers pointed out to me that I had toilet paper tucked into my clothes for the whole cohort to see!
So what exactly did I learn from that? From then on, I realized that the most embarrassing moment in my life had already taken place. And if I could survive that, I should be able to survive pretty much anything else that life throws my way!
We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?
I actually go to various mentors for advice whenever I encounter different issues. It’s difficult to identify any single story to share about the impact they’ve made on my life. I feel that the impact can be seen in the culmination of how far F4S has come.
But the one thing I will add is that if you’re looking for mentorship, always try to approach someone who is a specialist in what they do. I find that people who don’t have the depth of experience in their field won’t be able to make as much of an impact as a mentor as someone who has had very specific experiences to share.
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?
I generally see disruption as a positive thing in most circumstances, and I feel that it should arise from the need to improve the current situation, rather than for the sake of going against the trend.
For example, the one area in which I find disruption to be ineffective is when I’m trying to develop a psychologically-safe space and culture for my team.
So when I talk about developing psychological safety in the workplace, I’m referring to creating an environment where people feel supported enough to make mistakes, be vulnerable, and be creative. And in order to develop this safety, it requires setting an empowering, consistent and welcoming work culture. So being disruptive, changing things up, and constantly taking big shifts in the way we work together may not be as helpful in developing this safety.
Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
The customer comes first: Coming from a hotel management background, I’ve always been obsessed with customer experience. And this ingrained mindset has helped me tremendously when developing the F4S application. Whenever I’m at a crossroads about something, I always put myself in the shoes of the user and think about what it is that they want at the end of the day. No one will love you like your dog: I learned this from my dog! For me, it’s also a great reminder that you can’t make everyone love you, nor can you make everyone happy. It’s incredibly important to be able to stay true to your vision and do the best you possibly can to achieve your goals. It’s not what you say, it’s how you make people feel: When I was working in hotel management, many of my team members would come up to me and tell me how much they appreciated my guidance or leadership. And I truly believe what they were most appreciative of wasn’t necessarily what I said to them specifically, but rather it was more of the feeling they had from our exchange — that told me they felt appreciated and supported in their growth.
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
Personal coaching can be beneficial to all individuals, and not just for a select few. My vision is to seeF4S used as a platform to break down these assumptions about who deserves coaching and who doesn’t.
Everyone deserves the chance to discover the best versions of themselves through personal coaching.
In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by ‘women disruptors’ that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts?
This may surprise you, but I actually haven’t felt that I’ve experienced any major challenges that are unique to female disruptors.
I don’t feel that being a woman in this field has significantly disadvantaged me. If I encounter rejection from someone, my mind doesn’t automatically think that it’s because that person is biased against women. I could have been rejected for a whole variety of reasons — my race, nationality, physical appearance, etc. These are prejudices that men face too.
So instead of trying to figure out what superficial reasons that person had for rejecting me, I try to focus on how I can improve myself. Could my communication have been clearer? Is my idea really the best it can be? How can I make myself more convincing? These are the things I’m more concerned about.
Do you have a book/podcast/talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us?
I’m quite a hands-on learner. So I find that it’s the interactions with people throughout my career that have had the deepest impact on shaping my thinking throughout my life. You can learn so much by just observing people and seeing how they live, work, and think.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
My #1 movement is to bring personal coaching to the world, and F4S has been my vehicle to accomplish this.
My other “movement” is health-related. When I was 23 years old, I was diagnosed with several autoimmune diseases and was only given a few months to live. It was only through sheer perseverance and experimenting with different therapies that I managed to “cure” myself. So I’ve made it my personal mission to create more awareness about these unseen conditions, provide support to others with the disease, and be involved with the advancement of treatment research.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
One of my earliest life lessons actually came to me as an experience, rather than a quote I read. When I was 17 years old, I scored badly on my high school trial exam. It came as a shock to me, and I got quite worried about how I was going to be able to bring my marks up for the actual exam.
I told myself I had to do something to fix this. And I decided to try listening to a hypnosis recording about creating the optimal study plan. Fascinatingly, after listening to that recording, I was able to create the most in-depth study plan that had everything mapped out for me — when I would study, how much rest I would get, when I ate, and even what I ate. And because of this, I was able to increase my marks by around 40%.
This was one of my earliest experiences with the coaching principle of how altering your mindset or motivations can have a profound impact on your life. If you can change your mind, you can change your life.
How can our readers follow you online?
Website: www.fingerprintforsuccess.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fingerprintapp/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/fingerprintapp
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fingerprint-for-success/
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us! | https://medium.com/authority-magazine/female-disruptors-michelle-duval-of-fingerprint-for-success-on-the-three-things-you-need-to-4437adcf9bf5 | ['Candice Georgiadis'] | 2020-12-28 17:56:54.525000+00:00 | ['Business'] |
#SexWorkersAdviseHarvardYale | This is concerning a recent study entitled ‘Modelling the Effect of Continued Closure of Red-Light Areas on COVID-19 Transmission in India’ (2020) authored by Dr. Sudhakar V. Nuti at Harvard Medical School, along with Jeffrey P. Townsend, Alison P. Galvani, Abhishek Pandey, Pratha Sah, and Chad Wells at the Yale School of Public Health. The study recommends that shutting down red-light areas in Mumbai, New Delhi, Nagpur, Kolkata, and Pune during and beyond the lockdown can reduce the number of new COVID-19 cases by 72% and deaths by 63%, and recommends keeping them closed indefinitely. The letter below is a response to this study from sex workers in India.
Prefer to hear the letter? Scroll to the bottom right now!
Dear respected Doctor ji[1] and mananiya[2] Researchers
Pehle, first of all, greetings, namastes and salaams to you all from our sex work communities in India.
Don’t worry, we are footnoting all these terms for you; see below. Salaam namaste from tawaifs[3], nautch girls[4], veshyas, jounokarmis[5] etc. Haai. We have been closed — locked down, as you would say — for the last three and a half months but we can’t even work from home. So sad, no?
But don’t worry, Researcher saabs. While our muscles are beginning to get sticky-sticky from disuse, we have not occupied our brain muscles with idle thoughts. No no, madamjis and sirjis, we have not let our minds become the Devil’s workshop. No shaitaan[6] vaitaan in our heads. Instead, we have spent this lost time thinking of how we can collectively help humanity.
Because this is the time for WE, not me, no?
This is the time to think of ALL, not one, no?
We have made a long-long list of ideas for this upliftment or empowerment or healing or jo bhi naam usko do[7]…because as this corona vorona has shown, we humans need some bada bada[8] change in how we are living, no? Now when we say upliftment you may think we are talking of distributing groceries, masks and reliefs, woh sab toh ho hi raha hai[9], and getting better types of masks from America. Nahin nahin. No no. We are talking of deep upliftment, mananiya Researcher jis. Digging below the surface. Opening the hood, you car-walas might say.
Researching the underbelly to improve the upper side.
But we cannot successfully uplift society all by ourselves. So we are humbly proposing a new type of partnership with you; an India-US bhai-bhai (bye bye China) type of partnership.
In this new kind of private-private partnership, we sex workers will exercise our mind muscles to their fullest like we are doing at Hot Yoga and come up with ideas for research. And you’ll will use your lajawab[10] research skills to do the research. Arre, what fantastic research skills you’ll have! Wah!
Deal?
We will call this private-private partnership
Underbelly Research.
Nice, no? We only came up with it. All by ourselves.
Accha, let’s get to work. No time wasting shasting. The world is waiting. Healing research is beginning. These are the ekdum[11] priority research ideas. Because international flights are not yet starting, we are first thinking of ideas where you are. In your own backside. This first phase of the project we will call Backside Underbelly. Or do you think Boston Underbelly is better? [We know Harvard is in Cambridge, but we like b-b more than b-c. Alliteration, no?] Don’t feel shy; speak freely. [See in any partnership, we always only take joint decisions, no?]
1. Because this corona is not missing anyone, it has been called The Great Equalizer. Very bada bada words. We say in Hindi simply: Yeh sab ko chhoonta hai. Touching all. So now, very important for your Boston back belly oops sorry backside, very important to research the spread of corona in all bungalows of above 5,000 feet carpet area to see how it is spreading in low-density households. (You understand the carpet area in America, na? We have to work out which country ka language we will use in our research — 50/50 ok? Some Hindi, kuch[12] English). This is more front lawn than backside, but theek hai[13]. What’s in a name? A gulab[14] by any other name is almost as sweet, no? Now, this has to be pukka[15] scientific research — please use the latest population number — (you call it Census data na?) to choose households. We don’t want to be rejected by that doctor magazine Lancet. And please don’t feel all shy using demographic data — if this means you are researching only White bungalows, let it be. Research must be proper, na? We don’t want to be rejected by Scientific American.
Samajhla?[16]
2. Second idea, again now we are moving fast from front lawn straight to backside, straight to the dustbin, in your part of the world you say garbage can, na? Many pioneering studies are done poking around in dustbins, but nothing yet for corona.
What an opportunity for our PPP. [PPP is ok, no? Far from KKK.]
In one study, we saw that in dustbins with no condoms, researchers said this is a sex-free household. Study was criticized by all these queer shweer groups, saying what about women loving women, yeh sab, but what an innovative methodology, no? Let us use this same method to survey the kachra[17], see what people in these houses are eating — we will do what our research aunty calls Obesity Audit of each house. Means who is the most mota of them all! Then we will give each house Mota mota stars or an Obesity Star — Platinum, Gold, Silver, Copper, Tin. Just like the mota measurement what doctor uncle calls the Basal Metabolic Index gives numbers, we will give stars. Just like that nursery rhyme, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star; how I wonder how obese you are. We will identify those houses that are more likely to have severe corona symptoms, and save those families from their eating habits. We will give them a new life, na?
We are not just underbelly, mananiya Researchers. We are going straight to the belly.
Understanding, na?
3. Last idea for this round. Now we must go to the city’s underbelly, to the sewer system. In Italy they found traces of corona from November…what will we find when we examine the gutters of Connecticut? When did corona come here? This is a new kind of study, where we will do cross-matching
of three kinds of data: sewer data, satellite data and Google searches. Then we will find the footprint of Corona as it swept around Connecticut. Where did it start? Which route did it take? It will be an invisible footprint, like the Invisible Yeti — we will sense its presence, but we won’t see it. From this study we will see how Corona prowled through the city like a panther. Aah, so exciting, no? Or as we Veshyas like to say, XXXciting, no? And you see how we are going from backside to belly to underbelly…that’s the way aha aha. We like it. Aha aha.
Mananiya Masked Researchers, this is all for now. We are signing off with so much pyaar[18], joy and hope. So much asha[19].
Look forward to hearing from you soon,
With hugs, kisses and much XXX,
This letter comes to you from 2063 sex workers from all across India.
‘Loved #SexWorkersAdviseHarvardYale? Listen to it here.
Endnotes
[1] A common Indian suffix signifying respect
[2] Respected
[3] A tawaif was a highly sophisticated courtesan who catered to the nobility of the Indian subcontinent, particularly during the Mughal era
[4] The nautch /ˈnɔːtʃ was a popular court dance performed by girls (known as “nautch girls”) in India.
[5] Terms for sex workers in some Indian languages
[6] Devils or demons
[7] Whatever we may call it
[8] Big big
[9] All that is happening, yes
[10] Incomparable
[11] Absolute
[12] Some
[13] It’s alright
[14] Rose
[15] Proper
[16] Understood?
[17] Garbage; dirt
[18] Love
[19] Hope | https://medium.com/@nationalnetworkofsexworkers/sexworkersadviseharvardyale-827861f37968 | ['National Network Of Sex Workers India'] | 2020-07-13 06:03:23.678000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Sex Work', 'India', 'Research', 'Harvard'] |
Linear Regression : Possible ways to find regression parameters for your best-fit line. | Here all the three methods are explained with the help of a dataset which has one independent variable and a target variable which is to be predicted. Regression with one independent variable is called univariate regression.
In this dataset we have:
i. Study hours variable as independent variable named as ‘hours’ in the dataset.
ii. Student Scores variable as dependent variable named as ‘Scores’ in the dataset.
In this regression problem we are going to predict students scores based on the study hours. This is a quite simple regression model to predict scores with a single variable. The first method is Ordinary least squares which is implemented below with the help of sklearn and without sklearn library.
Ever wondered what is the maths behind linear_model.LinearRegression of sklearn library, it uses the ordinary least square technique to compute regression parameters. It is the method which minimizes the residual sum of squares between the observed targets in the dataset, and the targets predicted by our linear model.
This is a step-by-step method(quick explanation) to achieve regression parameters:
Start by writing a equation stating sum of squared differences between all the predicted and observed values which is to be minimized. This equation upon expanding and performing some algebraic operations we form a equation whose gradient i.e. partial derivative w.r.t to regression parameters is taken and equated to 0. Upon equating to 0 and some substitutions leads to two formulae for slope and y-intercept as below:
Here is the link below to the detailed derivation of the above mentioned points. This is a whole lot of derivation required for computing regression parameters. It is absolute fun to know about the maths behind linear regression. You’ll enjoy watching if you are curious enough to get an in-depth intuition stating how things work behind hood. Who doesn’t love being curious, so BANG ON!
Now lets see implementation of our regression model.
WITHOUT SKLEARN
Here you can see using the simple slope and intercept formulae derived by the least squares derivation we can compute its values. The value for slope i.e. m is 9.775 and y-intercept c is 2.483. When we give new value as 9.25 as x variable i.e. study hours, using the parameters computed we get output as 92.90 as output i.e. student score.
2. WITH SKLEARN
In the above implementation we have slope value as 9.775 and intercept as 2.483, which is same as implementation done in previous gist.
Hence we could make a conclusion, sklearn uses the method of Ordinary least squares method internally!
3. GRADIENT DESCENT APPROACH
The main objective of gradient descent algorithm is to find optimal values of slope and intercept which will result in minimum residual error hence resulting in best-fit. In this approach, we define a squared error function known as cost function which is to be minimized .
This is a step-by-step method(quick explanation described in points below) to achieve regression parameters :
Initialize parameters i.e. m and c with a random value and calculate sum of squared errors(SSE). Calculate gradient i.e. change in SSE when the parameter values are changed by a very small value from the original randomly initialized value. Update the parameter values with the gradient. Use the new parameter values for prediction and calculate new SSE. Repeat step 2 and step 3 until the error doesn’t reduce significantly and we obtain a local minima.
Below is the image of notes taken from Andrew Ng videos,
Below is the implementation for our model using Gradient Descent.
This is the gradient descent implementation for our dataset with less data. Mainly gradient descent converges optimal for more complex data.
Gradient Descent can converge to a local minimum, even with the learning rate i.e. alpha fixed. As we approach a local minimum, gradient descent will automatically take smaller steps, so no need to decrease alpha over time.
If learning rate is too small, gradient descent can be slow. It will take more time to reach optimum. If learning rate is too large, gradient descent overshoot the minimum. It may fail to converge or even diverge.
Here is a quick link where you will get a detailed explanation about gradient descent https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDv4f4s2SB8
4. NORMAL EQUATION METHOD
This normal equation gives us the direct values for our regression parameters. Below is the implementation for the dataset.
In the end output, we can see matrix containing intercept and slope. | https://medium.com/@mrunalmetkar/linear-regression-all-possible-techniques-you-need-to-know-7ef7d7e45eee | ['Mrunal Metkar'] | 2020-10-15 07:48:49.019000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Implementation', 'Linear Regression', 'Gradient Descent', 'Machine Learning'] |
The Only Linkedin Recruitment Tips You Need to Know | Original photo from Pixabay
Whether you are at recruitment or whether you have done it for years, let’s refresh on the most important tips and tricks about recruitment on Linkedin.
For the past 10 years, Linkedin has been a got-to-spot for professionals to increase their network, a place where to generate Sales and to find an employee, or search for new job opportunities. The latter has been so popular that Linkedin itself is offering Talent Solutions and option to upgrade to premium user account.
1. Original style
This has been said everywhere by now, but we also want to emphasize the importance of not using copy-paste, generic messages and communication in general. Since 2018, regardless of whether you’re in marketing for a business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C) organization, it’s about creating human-to-human (H2H) connections. In other words, people buy from other people. And recruiters sell job positions and company culture to candidates, so it translates to recruitment very well.
So, the best approach would be to create meaningful conversations over cold communication. Quality over quantity. Show genuine interest, mention specific details, lesser-known facts that would catch candidate’s attention.
Where to get this information? Let’s move to next important tip.
Source: Pixabay
2. Research skills of a Secret Service Agent
To provide very personalized message, recruiters need to work with information and find those significant details. Make the information work for you. Compliment candidate on specific achievements, finished projects, show appreciation for set of skills the person has been endorsed for. You can also research the company that candidate currently works at and try to find information on their website, social media about the candidate, and later on use it communicate. You can also build trust through mutual acquanitances or friends.
3. Network, network, network
Build your network. Work on your profile, connect with professionals and be visible. The more people you are connected to, the bigger your network gets, and this means that you are that much closer to candidates. You then have connections that can introduce you to other people or spread the information of vacant positions. Maybe some people will reference suitable candidates on you vacancy post. But to get to that point, some work has to be done. Engagement is the answer. You need to post updates that would start a discussion, like other people’s updates and news, congratulate them on work anniversaries.
How to find the time develop recruitment on Linkedin? — use staffin!
staffin is a recruitment software, which automates all of the manual work! All of the above-mentioned recruiter’s tasks are programmed into the software.
staffin saves up to 50% of the time spent on recruitment!
Don’t be shy and apply for a FREE 30 day trial — click here! | https://medium.com/@staffin/the-only-linkedin-recruitment-tips-you-need-to-know-fcb89699ab0f | [] | 2019-03-21 13:53:42.677000+00:00 | ['Recruitment Software', 'Recruiting', 'LinkedIn'] |
#MeToo and the use of social media to build community around a social issue | “#MeToo Vs Kavanaugh” by Mobilus In Mobili is licensed with CC BY-SA 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/
The #MeToo movement, propagated by Black activist and survivor Tarana Burke, gained momentum online beginning in 2006 on MySpace, and has since grown into an international movement against sexual violence. The movement went viral in 2017 with actress Alyssa Milano’s encouraging survivors of sexual violence to share their stories on social media.
Milano Tweeted with the goal of giving people “a sense of the magnitude of the problem” of sexual violence, and empowered a global community of survivors to speak out against the harm that had been done to them. The Journal of Public Interest Communications describes how advocacy groups employ social media as a means of “foster[ing] dialogue and engagement with publics,” and the #MeToo movement is no stranger to this. By 2018, the hashtag had been used on Twitter upwards of 19 million times, with heartbreaking stories coming from all genders, ages, and walks of life. The hashtag accompanied personal anecdotes, as well as critiques about celebrities and politicians with sexual violence allegations against them. The momentum of the movement has not ceased since then, and makes regular resurgences with popular events, such as the most recent presidential election.
Social media movements are notorious for disrupting dominant, harmful ideologies. This can occur in the form of K-Pop stans dropping fancams and memes under #WhiteLivesMatter Tweets in order to direct attention away from harmful, violent narratives, or the #MeToo movement combating the ideals that defend and protect abusers in positions of power, such as Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who came to power in 2018 in spite of multiple allegations of sexual assault against him.
In “Information, community, and action: How nonprofit organizations use social media,” Saxton and Lovejoy determined the three main categories of nonprofit organizations’ social media usage: information, community, and action. This same lens can be applied to examine how the #MeToo movement uses social media to garner momentum and attention. Primarily, the spread of information is critical. Though #MeToo is largely anecdotal, the emotional presentation of subjective information is just as important to the movement as Tweets sharing numerical statistics on sexual violence. Community building is an inextricable aspect of the #MeToo movement, with survivors from all over the globe feeling connected by the hashtag regardless of language or cultural barriers. When Tarana Burke began the Me Too campaign over ten years ago, her goal was for survivors to feel heard, understood, validated, and — most importantly — not alone. The movement has fostered community between survivors who otherwise would have had no connection to one another. Vox found that, after the accusations against Harvey Weinstein surfaced, a domino effect occurred that empowered countless survivors across the globe. The Pew Research Center found that nearly 30% of Tweets using the hashtag were not in English, proving that this issue does not discriminate against locality, and that this movement truly provides community and union for survivors across the globe.
“I, too, was scared, but thanks to so many women that have spoken up, I also have the courage to do so. I may not have been raped like many of you, but no one deserves to be threatened or touched without consent. In unity, there is strength. #IBelieveYou #MeTooMerida #MeToo”
Of course, a movement is not truly a movement without action being taken. The Me Too hashtag is a rallying cry for action, with the whole movement’s purpose being to bring sexual violence out of the shadows and enact justice for survivors. The social media movement made way for real life action. Countless survivor marches have donned the hashtag across the globe. Beyond this, policies have been enacted as a result of the movement, such as one banning nondisclosure agreements around sexual harassment in the wake of allegations against Harvey Weinstein. The Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund has helped nearly 4,000 survivors seek justice for the violence against them. While fostering community is absolutely critical in a movement surrounding such a sensitive issue, action is, ultimately, the guiding force of the #MeToo movement. Community among survivors means nothing if the community is not being given the justice it deserves.
“de #metoo à #wetogether” by Jeanne Menjoulet is licensed with CC BY-ND 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/
The #MeToo movement has done an incredible job of harnessing the power of social media for the good of so many people. It is living, breathing proof that social media is truly a platform for enacting positive social change. | https://medium.com/@abpena/metoo-and-the-use-of-social-media-to-build-community-around-a-social-issue-a393a5ddec94 | ['April Barbosa Peña'] | 2020-11-08 19:16:38.775000+00:00 | ['Metoo', 'Sexual Violence', 'Social Media', 'Social Issues', 'Social Media Activism'] |
Why I traveled to 47 countries while building a startup | Two years ago, I wrote that I was traveling because it’s cheaper, more productive, and better for my social life.
Now after three years of traveling full-time while building Moo.do, I’m more confident than ever that a nomadic lifestyle is an effective way to live while building a company.
Looking back, my goals made no sense to me
I was following the goals of the previous generation: what my parents wanted for me and what I saw people do on TV. But the old definition of “success” doesn’t necessarily make sense in our modern world, so I’m recalibrating what success means to me and rethinking my basic assumptions about life.
I’m supposed to spend my 20s saving up to buy a house. I don’t want to own a house. Owning a house restricts my freedom and may not even be a good investment. I’m investing my time and money into my startup and an adventure-filled life rather than lock myself into one location and lifestyle.
I’m supposed to buy things for happiness. I’m much happier living out of a backpack than I ever was sitting in front of my massive 3D TV and ordering new toys from Amazon every week. Exploring the world is much more interesting than putting more things in my home.
I’m supposed to work when the sun is out. Working from 9–5 is ridiculous!. That’s the best part of the day! I prefer to enjoy being outdoors during the day and work at night.
Now I’m trying to ignore what I’m supposed to do, and instead I’m figuring out what I want to do.
A life of adventure can be cheaper than staying home
In my first year of traveling, I favored cheap destinations in Southeast Asia or stayed in hostels to keep the costs down. But I realized that I was making the mistake of procrastinating the adventures on my bucket list because I perceived them as too expensive.
I found out that the expensive adventure I had been putting off is more reasonable if I split apartments with friends or stay in a hotel slightly off the beach. I’m spending more money this way, but my increased happiness improves my productivity, making it easily worth the extra cost. And it’s still much cheaper than when I was living in the US.
I’m more productive because I’m getting exercise and having fun
Productivity is one of the major reasons I’m traveling full-time. I feel more creative and it’s easier to focus while traveling. But I only recently figured out why: a side effect of traveling is that it makes it easier to get into a flow state.
My #1 goal is to always work in flow
When I’m working in flow, or “the zone,” I’m totally focused. My mind is completely invested in my task, and I don’t get distracted. My output is substantially higher and I am much more creative than when I am struggling to concentrate.
Time is my most valuable asset, so I want to produce as much as possible while still leaving time to enjoy my life. And after years of experimenting with how to get into flow easily and often, it all comes down to one strategy.
Take many breaks to exercise outside
Working in an office or at home, my instinct when I need a break is to browse Reddit or watch TV. But doing something active outside is much more mentally regenerative than continuing to sit in front of a screen. After a 30 minute TV show, I don’t really feel refreshed at all, but a 30 minute walk usually brings me right back into flow.
Going for a walk is much more invigorating when I’m exploring a new city. Or I can go for a hike in the woods, swim at the beach, ski with some friends, or check out a museum. In an exciting new environment, my mind is occupied and inspired by all the new sights. But when my surroundings are familiar, my mind stays preoccupied with work and I can’t clear my head.
Working flexible hours lets me spread my work through the day and give me time for adventures even on work days.
A solution to a design problem came to me while hiking in the Black Forest in Germany.
I’m making lasting friendships with other traveling entrepreneurs
When I first started traveling in 2013, all of my relationships were short-lived and superficial. I had nothing in common with kids partying in hostels, and friendships with locals disintegrated as soon as I left. I wasn’t the only one with this problem — many nomads have written about their difficulty making lasting connections.
But after a tipping point in late 2014, the situation has significantly improved. Digital nomad communities have formed to foster communication between nomads, and new organized travel groups are making it easy to meet like-minded travelers. Many of them are entrepreneurs, freelancers, or remote workers, which makes discussing and advising each other with our businesses and projects beneficial for everyone.
Discussing business ideas at our weekly Mastermind group, while Tom was rudely on the phone.
In the past three years I’ve explored all sorts of different ways to meet nomads, and these have been the most effective for me:
Go solo to nomad hotspots
Nomads flock to cheap destinations with good wifi, mainly in Southeast Asia. A lot of nomads like to work in coworking spaces, which have a nice community built around them and often organize group events. My favorites have been Kohub in Koh Lanta, Hubud and Dojo in Bali, and The Hive in Bangkok.
Meet nomads online
The numerous nomad communities on Facebook are a great resource, as are the subreddit and forum, and I met a lot of my best friends in the Nomad List community. In my experience it’s easiest to meet nomads online while in Asia, but it’s still a viable option in other parts of the world.
Go on organized group trips
The best way I’ve found to make lasting friendships with interesting people is to go on trips with an organized travel group. They bring between 10–75 nomads together in one place and organize housing, coworking, and sometimes even food. It’s a great way for new travelers to get started, but it’s also a good option for seasoned travelers who want to meet new people and have unique experiences that you can’t get traveling solo.
I’ve been to Hacker Paradise eight times, Nomad House once, and visited Remote Year for a few days. These groups often have a focus on business development — I’ve gotten invaluable help in design, marketing, and branding for Moo.do from organized talks as well as simply asking the group for advice.
The best thing for me is the events I wouldn’t have otherwise had access to: a chat with the CTO of Estonia, a meetup at TypeForm’s office in Barcelona, and exploring Jeju Island with a group of English-speaking local students.
Enjoying Porto’s São João festival with Hacker Paradise
You can find the top cities for digital nomads on Nomad List, chat with nomads on Nomad List’s chat, find good coworking spaces on Work Hard Anywhere or Places To Work, and search for organized travel groups on Coworkations.
Soon you’ll have lots of nomad friends
After two years of meeting nomads, I now have a big group of friends who are exploring cool places and going on epic trips.
This ski trip with friends from Hacker Paradise was the best month of my life.
I love that each month I have a choice of a dozen different trips to join, whether they’re organized group trips, a bunch of close friends, or even going solo and following a friend’s recommendations.
See you out there
After three years of traveling full-time while building Moo.do, I have no plans to stop. I’m more productive than ever, I’m spending less money than I did at home, and I’ve made some incredible friends. And of course, I’m having a lot of fun!
The digital nomad revolution is just getting started, and I’m excited to be a part of it. I hope you and I will meet some time, somewhere out there. | https://medium.com/digital-nomad-stories/why-i-traveled-to-47-countries-while-building-a-startup-635558f1fb23 | ['Jay Meistrich'] | 2017-03-30 19:21:46.995000+00:00 | ['Coworking', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Digital Nomads', 'Travel', 'Startup'] |
Yesterday’s Tragedies | By CL Bledsoe
My daughter isn’t into the music
I like. I must not have neglected
her enough. She likes pretty things
that sound good and rehearsed.
I’m more comfortable with chaos,
which mirrors my own experience.
If they can afford guitars that stay
in tune, they can’t speak to anything
I understand. Production value means
turn everything up. She wouldn’t be
caught dead in a leather jacket. I’ve
given serious consideration to cheer
practice for her. All of this, to me,
means a chance at happiness, or
at least, a different kind of misery
than I knew. I’m an adventurous
father; I don’t keep her mired in
the same old tragedies. | https://clbledsoe.medium.com/yesterdays-tragedies-e882db26bc6c | ['Not Another Tv Dad'] | 2020-07-19 11:01:01.120000+00:00 | ['Poetry'] |
A girl born with 4 legs and 2 vaginae!!? | Often, when people tell someone about themselves, they put forward their date of birth, date of marriage or similar things related to their life. But have you ever read that a person is giving details of body parts in his introduction?
like; 'I have two hands, one eye and two ears'. This is utterly stupid but someone who needs to do it too.
She is different from the world and in her introduction she has to say that 'I have four legs, not two’.
This is Myrtle Corbin
Myrtle Corbin was born in Tennessee, United States. His birth surprised everyone. The very innocent and lovely Myrtle came to this world with only one difference compared to the rest of the people and that is her four legs. Yes, Myrtle has not two but four legs, two in the same general position, and the other two legs are attached to a separate limb just in the middle of her body.
According to doctors, the two separate legs associated with Myrtle are weak and Myrtle cannot even fully control them. These legs are shorter and more delicate than their other legs.
These feet belong to none other than myrtle
According to doctors, the middle two legs are not of her own, but of her diaphysis twin sister. Now you might not be able to understand this and it seems strange to you, but it is true.
Her twin sister, who is associated with Myrtle, is her twin sister who has not come into this world.
Doctors say that sometimes there are twins who are connected, but the body of one becomes full size but the other Some parts of the body are joined with the previous child. This means that Myrtle had a twin sister who was in her mother's womb before she was born. But only Myrtle was born who did not come along with birth but brought her twin sister's feet.
This world is amazing
It is strange and bizarre that you have brought someone else’s body parts with you after birth. According to doctors, Myrtle could control her unborn sister’s body, but it was very challenging for her to use it while walking. It was also said that those two legs connected with those two legs had only 3-3 fingers. This strange thing about Myrtle also made him famous all over the world. When she was only 13 years old, a biography was written on her life, named
'Biography of Myrtle Corbin’.
Myrtle married also
Myrtle also had a sister named Willey Ann. She was married in the year 1885 to a boy named Locke Bunnell. Locke had a brother, Doctor James Clinton Bicknell, who proposed to Marital shortly after his brother’s marriage.
Myrtle and James’s marriage proclaims true love.
There is one more important point here and that not only Myrtle but also her unborn sister can have sex. That is, not one but two vaginas were present in Myrtle’s body.
Myrtle is said to have given birth to eight children, three of whom died in childhood.
In the context of Myrtle's children, it has also been said that two of her three children were born from her vagina and the other two from the other vagina. Now whether this fact is true or not, but it is considered possible to be seen medically.
This world is also one miracle.
Just think how would you feel if you have 4 legs or 3 hands or 3 eyes or 4 ears?
I am amazed and you? | https://medium.com/illumination/a-girl-born-with-4-legs-and-2-vaginae-62c3b8cafefc | ['Nilesh Mithiya'] | 2020-12-19 19:26:38.310000+00:00 | ['Mystery', 'Girls', 'Biology', 'Vagina', 'Science'] |
The ultimate guide to getting over depression and bad moods | We all experience unhappiness and bereavement at some point in life time. Our faith and belief in Almighty God’s will are usually enough to console and strengthen our sense of loss, grief or sadness.
However as human beings we are prone to feelings of depression
under serious and difficult circumstances. It has been said that depression affects up to 60% of people at some stage in their lives, and has been found to be more common in women than in men.Depression can seriously affect a person’s daily life.
If you have grown tired of life, or wish to go someplace where you can be alone, or you are always nervous, stressed, worthless, restless, sleepless and gloomy, you are probably suffering from depression.
One could expect such a person to be suffering from this ‘illness’ who is incapable of fulfilling his needs or a time has come in his life that he feels totally helpless and defeated, either as a result of an unfortunate death, a missed opportunity, a financial loss, persistent feeling of depravity,
or some other unexpected (class exam results) disappointing experience, long-term illness, unnecessary negative thinking.
This can invariably contribute towards feelings of jealousy, fear,
cowardice, pessimism and insecurity. A heightened form of this ‘illness’ could force the sufferer into committing suicide or even setting himself ablaze. It is a pity though that today this ‘illness’ has become rampant at every level of society and its disastrous effects result in the form of all sorts of hideous crimes depending upon the circumstances and history of the sufferer.
Our objective is not to delve into the causes of depression, rather to focus on just the ‘illness’ itself from a different perspective
In layman’s terms, depression can be of two forms: one finds its roots in the chemical disorientation of the sufferer whereas the other can be attributed to social circumstances.
Happiness package
Now a days the major cause of depression is the cell phone. there are number of articles and surveys which clearly indicates that being addicted to cellphone leads to depression specially in women
Is it true that the calamities of this world will not touch the man of contentment? No, it is not true, because calamities will touch everyone, but the way he reacts to the calamities will be different.
He will not get in the emotions to handle the situation. People react to their problems in different ways, some being more vulnerable than others. As the saying goes, “Winners don’t do different things. They do things differently.”
Let us read the following story called as “Be a Lake” to understand it
better. Continue reading here
By Kazim Merchant
(www.tandurasti.com) | https://medium.com/@itszimka/the-ultimate-guide-to-getting-over-depression-and-bad-moods-9d5dc4477b3b | [] | 2020-05-05 10:26:50.702000+00:00 | ['Grief', 'Depression', 'Mental Health', 'Sad', 'Happiness'] |
Tips to know how increase your stamina | Life nowadays is really hectic. You need to be very energetic to complete all your daily jobs(professional) and still hangout with family and friends. However, people often complain of them getting tired and unable to perform their work to the best. Moreover, it took thousands of years for human beings to discover food with essential nutrients that we need. But, within a hundred years we transformed our way of having meals. Now we eat lots of junk foods, mostly packed. These meals don’t fulfill all our body needs as a result we feel terribly exhausted even after climbing a few stairs.
Though there are steroids and supplements available to boost your stamina, most people don’t prefer it. Don’t worry, here are some natural tips for you that will help you to increase your stamina and stay energetic throughout the day. But, remember you have to take it slow and stay patient. The results won’t turn out in a single day, however you can see the differences after a certain period of time depending upon your dedication towards it.
Tips to increase your stamina
Workout & exercises how increase your stamina
Do Isometric Exercises
People also call it a static strength training exercise. These exercises include being in a position other than moving and applying tension to certain muscles without moving surrounding joints. These are very fruitful in improving physical endurance. Isometric exercises include a Plank position, Side bridge, Wall-sit, yoga position like chair and tree poses.
Go for long walks and cycling
This is very helpful for beginners. Walking for like an hour or half boosts your physical endurance. Cycling of all kinds ie,. indoor cycling, mountain biking or road biking is very helpful.
Check out the full story at https://inquisitor.xyz/tips-to-know-how-increase-your-stamina/ | https://medium.com/@manishtk11/tips-to-know-how-increase-your-stamina-43698a70c245 | ['Manish Thakur'] | 2021-06-12 19:30:08.132000+00:00 | ['Exercise At Home', 'Healthcare', 'Exercise', 'Body Positive', 'Stamina'] |
Fintech Inside #14–12th Dec, 2020 | Hi Insiders, Osborne here
Welcome to the fourteenth edition of Fintech Inside. Fintech Inside is the front page of Fintech in emerging markets.
Have you wondered why this newsletter is called Fintech Inside? Well, this edition answers that question. Hint — it’s got to do with embedded fintech. Everything is Fintech.
Important: This is my last newsletter for 2020 before I go on leave for the festive season. The next edition will be on 9th January, 2020 with a new format for better readability. I genuinely appreciate all your support and feedback thus far and hope for the same in the new year.
How will you get your Fintech Fix?
Join the Indian Startup Club on Clubhouse (iOS only) where founders have off-record conversations. Pravin and Kuldeep do a great job here. I have 2 invites to giveaway — send me an email to get one. My favourite Fintech event of the year — RazorpayFTX is on 18–19th Dec, 2020. Do attend. Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn where I will continue to be active. Follow these usual suspects in Fintech: India — PJ, Deepak, Anirudha, Rahul, Sandeep, Amit, Asheeta, Mahavir, Transfin, Nina, Michael, Jason, Nik, Alex and Mary Ann.
Till then, wishing you and your family a joyous festive season and a happy new year! 🎉
Feedback: Your feedback helps me improve this newsletter. Appreciate your help in this less than a minute feedback. Click UPVOTE 👍🏽 or DOWNVOTE 👎🏽
🤔 One Big Thought
Why is this newsletter named Fintech Inside?
Aside from the fact that the latest “Fintech” updates are literally “Inside” this newsletter (I tried!), I personally feel the future of Fintech is… invisible. The future of finance is in making it invisible to the user, but, without it, everything crumbles. All businesses will end up being “fintech-enabled”, not just “tech-enabled”.
The financial system is the oil that keeps our economic machines running smoothly. Financial services touches every single industry and hence it is important to make sure it’s accessible, available and transparent.
Early days of Financial Services: All our financial transactions could not be decentralised or left up to goodwill from either party. This required centralised “Trusted” financial institutions. Further, to ensure that these institutions acted in consumer interest, regulations needed to be in place from central banks and regulators. Thus was born the large financial institutions we have today — the incumbent “Centers of Trust”. Our financial institutions needed to face the consumer — be there at all times, as a sign of long lasting trust.
Fintech Wave 1.0 — Digitisation (Early 2000’s to present): The old way of designing and distributing financial products soon became lethargic, opaque, inefficient and expensive. Technology offered financial services a new lease of life. Startups in Fintech were founded on the premise of making financial products and services easier to understand, transparent in pricing and cost effective (for the business and the consumer). Not to mention, frictionless and instant to execute. With consumer facing technology, Fintech’s put the power of controlling their financial lives, back in the hands of consumers.
Challenges with Wave 1.0: Existing Fintech models work great for distribution — not as great for building trust. Trust is tough to build digitally — when there is no existing, in person “relationship”. Technology truly lowered the cost of distributing and servicing. I’d argue that Fintech’s are merely digitising existing/traditional financial products and services. There’s a lack of true product innovation.
Fintech Wave 2.0 — Embedded/API’s (2020’s to future): In my view, trust centers are shifting, not necessarily away from banks but not increasing in them either. The value of trust is dramatically increasing in large consumer-facing startups e.g. companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Zomato, Flipkart, DeliveryHero, Spotify, Gojek, Grab, Lazada and many more. None of these startups are financial in any way — as in their core business is not to provide financial products and services. But users will still trust these startups with their financial data even more than banks. Consumer businesses, for example those mentioned above, have typically stayed away from Fintech businesses to avoid regulation and compliance. But if they have access to the right API’s, balance sheet and licenses, they are best suited to build new products for their customer base.
Banks no longer need to be consumer facing, they need be in the back end — providing the balance sheet and doing compliance reporting. Bank’s apps cannot and should not be measured by DAU and MAU. Further, consumers don’t wake up every morning and decide to take a loan or insurance product or buy that stock for the long term. They make those financial decisions at the point of “need”.
Use Cases: Financial services and products would be much better adopted when embedded with an existing non-financial product or service. For example, I think about buying a stock when I read a news article about it — why not buy that stock at that point. I think about taking a loan when I am looking for a phone on Amazon — why not take a loan at checkout. My tax filings are the dumbest thing — I have to manually enter all information even though a lot of information is already available.
Sure, a lot of this has already started happening and that actually helps my point. Solaris Bank, a German Banking-as-a-service startup, has its own universal banking license but its customers are other consumer facing brands that want to embed banking products. Stripe did exactly that with the launch of its BaaS product Stripe Treasury. There are a few Indian startups — YAP, Setu, Decentro and others, working to exclusively solve this problem in India.
Financial services can also be embedded in devices — not just on my phone. While searching for something to watch on my TV, currently I need to go through a separate workflow to subscribe to the OTT platform where my movie is streaming — why not complete it on the TV itself. Why not automatically buy a dental insurance plan based on my smart toothbrush usage? Subscribe myself to an accident insurance only for the duration of me using an e-Scooter — I don’t want a blanket cover, for times when I’m safe and sound at home/office.
Challenges or Unintended effects: Now, I’m not saying that all fintech in the future will be B2B or not consumer-facing. This embedded model, could also lead to a concentration — the Grand Rebundling. Few fintech API startups could corner a majority of the market and will leave no place for new startups or innovation. Further, startups with a large consumer base will be favoured by users.
Secondly, how do you transfer the cost of risk in these cases. Most brands with non-core financial services offerings would not want to bear these costs. In this case, the product/service does not become truly embedded/bundled. We will need better ways to ensure risk is accounted for and the user experience is unhindered.
At the same time, valuation is supposedly much higher when the startup owns the customer (B2C model vs. B2B model). Owning the customer means, having proprietary data on the customer. If Fintech’s in embedded finance don’t own the customer, will valuation appreciate appropriately?
Fintech Inside is the the future where all businesses will be “Fintech-enabled” and not just “Tech-enabled”
Conclusion: Financial services and products, not the financial institution, should be at the consumers point of need. The value of Trust is shifting away from banks to consumer tech platforms where true product innovation can happen. Technology allows a platform to design & scale its financial offering to the last customer that will adopt it.
This is an abridged version of my blog post from July, 2020 titled: “The Future of Financial Services? Invisible”
💼 Fintech’s Hiring
Basis, financial services for women, is hiring for design and engineering. Apply here.
If you’re a Fintech who’s hiring I’d like to help. Write to me and I’ll put your requirement here.
3️⃣ Fintech Top
1️⃣ CRED launched CRED Pay
CRED, the Indian startup whose business model is leaving everyone scratching their heads pointlessly, launched CRED Pay. CRED Pay will enable users to pay at merchants using combination of credit cards and CRED Coins. CRED partnered with VISA and Razorpay to enable this product.
Takeaway: Users that have been complaining of the (lack of) usability of CRED Coins finally have a reason to rejoice. CRED Pay, to me, is CRED basically opening up its “currency” externally versus use within its app with exclusive partners. This potentially increases the value of its currency making other credit card rewards programs pointless. Users could flock to CRED versus even new credit card platforms (e.g. OneCard, UniCredit). Obviously, as a user, you cannot use your CRED Coins to pay for the entire amount. Now, imagine if Razorpay enables CRED across its entire merchant customer base — that will be something.
When it comes to revenue potential, I have some reservations — also because I have limited information here. Normal payments MDR might be marginal. Potentially, CRED partners directly with brands offering higher conversion and higher basket size, in exchange CRED takes a higher than normal MDR cut (3–5% vs 2–3% for credit cards). This is why Razorpay cannot just enable CRED acceptance across its network, CRED will have to do the merchant acquisition itself.
2️⃣ Singapore Fintech Festival 2020 Highlights
Government of Singapore and its Monetary Authority held its annual Fintech Festival last week and it was a grand affair, as always. Some of the major highlights of the event are
1. MAS and Singapore’s Ministry of Health partnered to launch health data platform for faster insurance claims.
2. Singapore and Thailand partnered to launch cross border payments with mobile numbers only.
3. Association of Banks in Singapore launched financial account aggregator platform — SGFinDex
4. Singaporean blockchain ecosystem report was launched.
5. Singapore is now Davos for the World Economic Forum in 2021.
3️⃣ ICICI Bank launched its PhonePe/GooglePay competitor
ICICI Bank launched a service within its iMobile Pay app for non-bank customers to link UPI accounts within the ICICI Bank app. Through the app, these non-ICICI bank customers can even apply for ICICI credit cards, bank accounts, loan accounts and other services.
Takeaway: To me, this app comes across as ICICI Bank’s attempt at offering its own customers a PhonePe/Paytm experience. Literally — you can make payments to anyone on your contact list, pay bills, check your account balance (even without an ICICI Bank account). These features are possible with any other UPI payment app today and they do it really well. So why launch this? Is ICICI Bank “losing” the payment game? It already has, it’s too late to this party.
The real problem for Fintech’s will arise when they launch neo banking and account aggregation features — unless its named iMobile Pay, then Fintech’s have nothing to worry about. Banks are risk averse and would rather copy a product that’s doing well than be the first to launch an innovative product. I’m keen to see what Axis Bank and others are up to on this front.
🇮🇳 India
📰 Market Updates:
- FINTECH’s: NPCI released UPI payments volume and value of each UPI entity. Razorpay released its credit card design process. BharatPe becomes 3rd largest merchant UPI platform. Niyo rolled out ESOP buyback program. CreditVidya received US Patent approval for its unstructured data based alternative scoring system. Razorpay grew revenue 2.6x in FY20, turns cash flow positive.
Plum partnered with ICICI Bank to launch platform for group health insurance for small business customers. Walmart may join other global players for New Umbrella Entity for payments. PCI-DSS is working on upgrading its security standards for mobile and contactless payments.
- TRADITIONAL PLAYERS: NPCI to spin off Bharat BillPay as separate entity. Banks blame Fintech’s for EMI bounces. RTGS payments system to be available 24x7 from 14th Dec, 2020. HDFC Bank said it may take 3 months to fix IT issues.
📝 Regulatory Updates:
- RBI: Expected to introduce Digital Payment Security Control’ guidelines. Canceled license of regional banks — depositors to get back 99% of deposits under deposit insurance scheme. Set thresholds of capital adequacy and NPA for NBFC’s to give out dividends. Delhi High Court sought response from RBI and NPCI regarding Fintech regulations.
- SEBI (securities): Barred founders of Minance from securities market.
- IRDAI (insurance): Instructed all health insurers to standardise personal accident cover to INR 10 mn from April, 2021.
🚀 Product Launches:
- Fintechs: GooglePay launched gifting in partnership with Qwikcilver. Klub launched KlubSpeed — credit card for small businesses.
- Traditional Players: SMS based GST filing launched for small businesses with nil GST. YES Bank launched credit card for HNI’s. TCS launched a digital bank guarantee platform in Israel.
💰 Funding Announcements:
- FUND RAISE’s: Smallcase — stock investing platform, Investor: HDFC Bank (undisclosed)
- ACQUISITION: ScripBox (mutual fund investing) acquired Mitraz Financial (advisory platform)
🌏 South East Asia
📰 Market Updates:
- FINTECH’s: JD.com to become the first platform to accept China’s digital yuan. 2C2P launched brand change. Paytm’s PayPay in Japan is the 5th largest app. Razer Fintech shifted its digital banking focus to Malaysia and Philippines. Indonesia’s OJK to release new guidelines for P2P Fintech platforms.
Pine Labs extended its Pay Later feature to South East Asia. Stripe is on a hiring spree in South East Asia. Finaccel rejigs its senior management.
- TRADITIONAL PLAYERS: Singaporean government agencies launched a joint blockchain research program with USD 9 mn investment. Japanese central bank is the largest owner of Japanese stocks. Bangkok Bank co-developed a Thai-language chat bot.
DBS Hong Kong launched digital banking for small businesses. DBS Singapore launched digital asset exchange platform. South Korea threathens to jail short sellers.
💰 Funding Announcements:
- FUND RAISE’s: CHAI — South Korea, payments (USD 60 mn). Rely — Singapore, pay later (USD 75 mn, Debt). Bukalapak’s Fintech subsidiary sold 20% stake to Ashmore.
🇪🇺 Europe
📰 Market Updates:
- FINTECH’s: PaySafe Group to go public in Europe via SPAC launched by Bill Foley. Woli, Greek challenger bank for families, to launch in 2021. Lemonade launched in France. Glint, gold based payments platform, received a Principal Member status from Mastercard.
Revolut launched Pockets — smart spending feature. Rocker, Swedish challenger bank, to launch biometric debit cards. OneBanks launched new kiosk banking concept.
- TRADTIONAL PLAYERS: MasterCard released its payment report 2020. Dutch regulators are scrutinising Apple’s NFC payment platform. Passive funds make up for 20% of European investment market. Polish and Finnish Banks joined European Payments Initiative (EPI) as shareholders.
💰 Funding Announcements:
- FINTECH’s: Vantage Group — Europe, reinsurance (USD 1 bn). Luko — France, home insurance (EUR 50 mn). GoHenry — UK, teen payments (USD 40 mn). Finn Auto — car subscription (USD 24 mn).
GetSafe — Germany, insurance (USD 30 mn). Payaut — Amsterdam, payments (EUR 2.6 mn). Pigment — France, business forecasting SaaS (EUR 24 mn). Outfund — UK, revenue based finance (GBP 37 mn)
IDNow — Germany, digital identity (EUR 15 mn). Modularbank — Estonia, Banking SaaS (EUR 4 mn). OpenFin — Banking SaaS (undisclosed). Solactive — Index fund SaaS (EUR 50 mn). Upvest — Germany, securities investing API (EUR 12 mn)
- ACQUISITIONs: Societe Generale to merge with Credit du Nord.
👋🏾 That’s all Folks
If you’ve made it this far — thanks! As always, you can always reach me at [email protected]. I’d genuinely appreciate any and all feedback. If you liked what you read, please consider sharing or subscribing.
Found a broken link or incorrect information? Report it.
See you in the next edition. | https://medium.com/@os7borne/fintech-inside-14-12th-dec-2020-b666550e4f06 | ['Osborne Saldanha'] | 2020-12-12 03:31:14.317000+00:00 | ['Payments', 'Fintech', 'Venture Capital', 'India', 'Newsletter'] |
My journey to landing the first UX job | Fast forward to October 2020, I was preparing to take on my new role as a full-time UX / UI designer. Along with the bubbly, exciting feeling came certain “new job nerves” as I was meeting the whole UX / UI Design team. There were plenty of matters that ran through my mind, such as wanting to be of use from day one, getting on track with the team’s rhythm, and remembering every bit of information or every person I met — the usual!
Having been in this role for a short while, I would like to share a couple of thoughts and points to consider if you are are at the beginning of your design career.
In terms of personal development, it is a good idea to consider ways in which you will succeed at your job. However, this brings a certain risk of focusing a little bit too much inward. You also want to paint the bigger picture and look at ways in which you contribute and support the company’s / project’s goals.
Particularly if you are an entry-level designer, I suggest being open and honest with your manager when discussing your goals and what you would like to achieve. This enables your manager to support you to the best of their abilities and helps you build trust through transparency.
In my view, you should not be afraid of admitting your flaws, even as early as during the job interview. It shows you know yourself, and are able to critically evaluate your skillset and put it into perspective— where you are and where you would like to be in the future for example.
As a newcomer, you have the ability to ask plenty of questions, understand how the team got to where they are now, and what is their ultimate goal. Besides this, it can also be interesting to consider knowing how does success looks like to the team and what does it take to be successful when the product launches. | https://bootcamp.uxdesign.cc/my-journey-to-landing-the-first-ux-job-23b61c0b7f31 | ['Daniela Popa'] | 2020-12-24 05:27:51.982000+00:00 | ['UX Design', 'Entry Level Jobs', 'UI Design', 'Product Design'] |
Case Study: Lonely Planet Social App Design Concept | Case Study: Lonely Planet Social App Design Concept
Young travelers are struggling to connect and explore new places during the Pandemic. How can we design an app that allows them to keep exploring, and to feel connected to other travelers?
Lonely Planet is a well-known travel and tourism company based in the United States. Despite the strength of their brand with young travelers, Lonely Planet has experienced a significant decline in business during the Pandemic. They want a way to keep young travelers engaged and feeling a sense of connection right now, so that when it’s safe to travel again, they’ll be more likely to use their travel services. LP would like to design a digital tool for young users living in social isolation during this pandemic, utilizing a human-centered design process.
The problem belongs not only to these world travelers who are feeling isolated, but also to Lonely Planet. Because Travel is off-limits in most areas during the pandemic, and because many people have lost work and therefor cannot afford travel, Lonely Planet’s business has suffered a substantial financial hit.
The Team: Katlyn Conklin, Jenny Lee, Adrienne LaFlam
Tools Used: Slack, Google Surveys, Google Sheets, Figma, Miro
Timeline: 2 weeks
I was lucky to have an incredible team of talented, hardworking UX Designers. I took on the role of research in the first phase. Specifically, conducting Competitive and Comparative Analysis. I also synthesized the data collected from user interviews and surveys in order to create our affinity map. Out of the raw data, my team and I arrived at key insights and tangible takeaways that helped us to create our Persona and begin solving the key problem.
DISCOVERY PHASE
Survey Results
We began by brainstorming a list of questions we wanted to ask young travelers, in order to learn their travel habits and to ascertain what they are doing in lieu of travel for entertainment during the pandemic. Our survey had 18 questions, and our interview had 12 questions.
KEY INSIGHTS
100% of travelers had their travel plans disrupted by the pandemic
Over 90% had to cancel plans
Over 60% feel socially isolated right now
38% have participated in a virtual event of some sort
More than 50% said virtual events they’ve tried weren’t enjoyable
Interview Results
DEFINE
My team and I created a Persona based on the results of our extensive survey and our user testing. We came up with “Ray”, a young travel photographer. Ray is feeling isolated since the Pandemic, and wants to find more ways to feel connected. Ray also wants to keep exploring travel destinations, even though they can’t travel currently. We believe that Ray embodies most of the traits of the young travelers that Lonely Planet is trying to maintain connection with during the pandemic.
TIMELINE
This project was assigned in early December of 2020. We had 2 weeks to complete the entire project, including research, ideation, design, and deliverables. We were limited in scope (time, money) because this was an educational experience. Also, we had limited time to find user testers, and to find young travelers to take our survey. The survey was sent out on a Friday and we had all of our results by the following Monday.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
HOW MIGHT WE?
How might we help Ray meet new people but in a safe environment?
How might we create an online community that offers experiences and adventures for people to explore while travel is down?
USER FLOW
WIREFRAMES
My teammates and I began putting our ideas and possible user flows into basic sketches. We then discussed how to best accomplish the goals of both Lonely Planet, and their target customers.
With a better understanding of what users want, and considering the goals of Lonely Planet, we started sketching some user flows based on the idea that we wanted to create a social app for travelers. This app would allow users to do 2 basic things: To explore, and to connect.
After our first mid-fidelity prototype was built, we conducted usability testing on 5 users. We asked them to:
Log in as an existing user
Someone sent you a message, go ahead and read it
Try and book the experience your friend sent you
KEY INSIGHTS
Wanted more social features like comments, tags and location
There was no search bar
There was no way to see which messages had been read
The social feed layout was unfamiliar
People didn’t understand how to connect with and find other users
REITERATE
Considering the feedback from our usability testing, we implemented changes in order to solve the issues presented. We created a high-fidelity prototype in Figma, so that users could click through our app and test it out again with the changes. It was really exciting to see it come together!
PROTOTYPE
The thinking behind our prototype was that we’d offer an “experiences feed” so that users could log in and see trending stories about travel, posted by top users or friends on the app. We also added a messaging feature, so that friends are able to message one another, share experiences, and then book those experiences, as shown below:
OUTCOME
After this project, we had time to reflect on what went well, what didn’t, and what we’d change. I think most of the project went really well. For example, my team worked really well together. We communicated clearly and often, and we organized our tasks and schedule well. We also did really well with our user research. We were able to do both a survey and user interviews, which gave us more useful data than if we’d just done interviews. This led to clearer insights, which of course led to a better solution.
Some things that didn’t go well were that I didn’t voice my concerns about certain app aspects from the get-go. I was concerned that the “feed feature” might be confusing for someone trying to find new connections
NEXT STEPS | https://medium.com/@adriennelaflam/case-study-lonely-planet-social-app-design-concept-7111385df754 | ['Adrienne Laflam'] | 2020-12-24 03:01:46.849000+00:00 | ['Case Study', 'UX Design', 'Travel', 'Pandemic', 'Lonely Planet'] |
Basic Statistics for Data Science | The aim of this article is to provide basic statistical knowledge for people who just got started in data science. Statistics plays a central role in data science; knowing the descriptive statistics and probability theories provide a deeper insight into data. In this article, I will be giving a general overview of basic statistical concepts you must certainly know in order to excel in data science.
Types of Data
1) Categorical Data
a) Nominal Data
They don’t have any quantitative value and are only used to label variables.
Examples: Gender, Zip Code, Blood Type, Eye Color
b) Ordinal Data
It involves an order between units however the distance between the points is not equal or measurable. It is usually used in survey questionnaires.
Examples: Likert Scales (Very happy — Happy — Neutral — Unhappy — Very Unhappy)
2) Continuous Data
c) Interval Data
There is an order between units and the distance between them is equal. It doesn’t have an absolute zero point, that is to say, zero doesn’t mean the absence of the quantity being measured.
Examples: Temperature, time, IQ test
d) Ratio Data
There is an order between units, the distance between them is equal, and it has an absolute zero point. Hence it cannot be negative.
Examples: Height, weight, duration
Measures of Central Tendency
Measures of Central Tendencies are single values that attempt to describe the whole set of data. Three main measures are the mode, the median, and the mean.
Mode: The most commonly occurring value. The advantage of using mode over the median and mean is that mode can be used both with categorical and numerical data.
Median: It is the ‘middle value’ of a distribution when the values have been arranged in ascending or descending order. In the case a distribution has an even number of values, the median is the mean of the two middle values. It is less affected by outliers. Hence, the median is usually preferred to use rather than mean when there are many outliers in a distribution.
Mean: It is the arithmetic average of a data set which can be found by adding all the values and dividing by the number of data points. Its limitation is that it is affected by outliers.
Measures of Dispersion
5 Number Summary & Box Plot
Box Plot
5 Number Summary is used in descriptive statistics to give an idea about the distribution of the observations and it is visualized with a box plot. 5 Number Summary consists of the minimum value, the lower quartile(Q1), the median(Q2), the upper quartile(Q3), and the maximum value. In other words, they are the 0th, 25th, 50th, 75th, 100th percentiles respectively. Each interval between the points contains 25% of the data. The box plot is useful as it shows the skewness of a data set. If the median is closer to the bottom of the box, it means the distribution is positively skewed(skewed right). And if it is closer to the top of the box, then the distribution is negatively skewed(skewed left).
Range: The difference between the maximum and minimum value.
Interquartile Range(IQR): It is the first quartile subtracted from the third quartile(Q3 — Q1). Therefore, it can be said that IQR is the amount of spread in the middle 50% of a dataset.
Outliers: An outlier is an observation that is abnormally distant from the rest of the observations. A value beyond an inner fence is called a mild outlier. And a value beyond an outer fence is called an extreme outlier.
lower inner fence: Q1–1.5*IQ
upper inner fence: Q3 + 1.5*IQ
lower outer fence: Q1–3*IQ
upper outer fence: Q3 + 3*IQ
Standard Deviation & Variance
Standard Deviation(σ) and variance( σ²) measures the spread of the data about the mean value.
Variance is calculated by taking the differences between each value and the mean, and then squaring the difference to make them positive, and dividing it by the number of the values.
Standard Deviation is the square root of the variance. It is always measured in the same units as the original data.
Correlation Coefficient & Covariance
Covariance shows us only the direction of the linear relationship between variables. However, the Correlation Coefficient shows both the direction and the strength of the relationship. For this reason, the correlation coefficient is preferred over covariance. | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/basic-statistics-for-data-science-edb52d2ddcd5 | ['Melis Kurum'] | 2020-04-24 17:08:57.518000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Descriptive Statistics', 'Statistics', 'Data Analysis'] |
Decision Trees — Introduction (ID3) | Decision Trees — Introduction (ID3)
Have you ever wondered how learning from past experiences might work?
You meet different types of persons throughout your life, after some experience, you get the idea that what kind of person you like, right? I mean after several experiences with many humans, when you meet a new human, most of the time you get the idea if you like them or not. How do you do that? With ‘Experience’! right? But you don’t keep all years of experience at the top of your brain always, rather than that it feels some simple and quick decision mechanism working inside your brain.
So, rather than going deeper into the biology of the brain, let’s try to build a similar mechanism at a simpler level.
Let’s say after your encounter with several people, you don’t want vampires to be your friend in future :P
So you made a list of several people you met, their characteristics and if they turned out to be a vampire or not. ( “?” in shadow attribute is because you met those people only in dark conditions so you couldn’t verify if they cast a shadow or not )
After observing this data, we may come up with a naive model as this tree,
Since with the help of that tree we can make a decision, we call it “Decision Tree”. This tree must satisfy all data in the given dataset, and we hope that it will also satisfy future inputs.
But how could we come up with such a tree? The tree given above is made just by some random observation on data…
Following observations…
All people with pale complexion are not vampires .
. All people who have a ruddy complexion and eats garlic are not vampires and if they don’t eat garlic then they are a vampire .
and if they don’t eat garlic then they . All people who have an average complexion, and they don’t cast a shadow or we don’t know if they cast a shadow or not, then they are a vampire, or else if they cast a shadow then they are not a vampire.
But is that the right way to build a decision tree? Is that tree is the simplest tree we can get from the given dataset?
Such random analysis on a large dataset will not be feasible. We need some systematic approach to attack this problem.
Let’s try to attack this with a greedy approach…
So first, we look at the dataset and decide which attribute should we pick for the root node of the tree…
This is a Boolean classification, so at the end of the decision tree we would have 2 possible results (either they are a vampire or not), so each example input will classify as true (a positive example) and false (a negative example).
Here ‘P’ refers to positive, which means a person is a vampire, and ’N’ refers to negative, which means the person is not a vampire.
We want attribute which divides more data into homogenous sets, which means in such sets where only P or only N exists because if we have that, we can definitely answer about a vampire or not, thus those will be leaf nodes of the tree.
Check for each attribute, and see which one has the highest number of elements in the homogenous set. Here we find that the ‘Shadow’ attribute has the highest count for elements in a homogenous set, so we choose this attribute.
So till now, we got this much of the tree…
For the shadow attribute “yes” and “no”, we can decide if a person is a vampire or not, but in case of “?” we don’t know, we need to decide which attribute divides data well when shadow = ‘?’
So, let’s analyze another attribute while the shadow is unknown…
Here we find that “Garlic?” attribute divides maximum elements, in fact, all elements in homogenous sets.
So, our tree now looks like this,
This tree looks simpler than the one we created by picking random attributes, so we observe that the greedy approach is helping us to get better results.
But, is that the right way to do so?
No, because if the dataset is large, we need not end up with attributes dividing into the homogenous set, we may find for all attributes elements in the homogeneous set are 0.
How should we proceed then?
So now let’s dive into the ID3 algorithm for generating decision trees, which uses the notion of information gain, which is defined in terms of entropy, the fundamental quantity in information theory.
Imagine these 2 divisions of some an attribute…
We observe that that one on left has the equal number of Ps and Ns, so that doesn’t give us any hint about the decision, but one on right has more Ps than Ns, so it may direct us somewhat towards P, so in these 2 we might consider right one.
So, now instead of scoring them 0 right away, let’s go with another way. Let’s say, one where Ps and Ns are equal numbers has the highest entropy (1), and one where there are only Ps or Ns has the lowest entropy (0). We can have something like this, P/(P+N) vs Entropy graph.
So, when P=N, thus P/(P+N) = 0.5 then Entropy = 1,
if P=k(some integer) & N=0 then Entropy = 0.
That feels like a pretty much appropriate graph to achieve what we want, so is there some mathematical way to to get this graph…
Luckily for us, this curve can be achieved by the following equation
Which can be written in P/(P+N) and Entropy form,
by replacing x= P/( P+N ) and y = Entropy,
Where P and N is the count of Ps and Ns of an attribute for which we are finding the attribute,
We want to find information gain from the attribute, which is defined as,
( IG — Information gain from some attribute A is the expected reduction in entropy )
IG(Attribute) = Entropy of attribute — Weighted average of Entropy of each child set
For example,
^ ( Example calculation of IG )
Since now you got the idea about Entropy and Information Gain, let’s build our decision tree again from scratch with this new approach!
We observe here that we get maximum Information Gain from shadow attribute, Choosing this as our root node,
We need to decide another attribute for Shadow = ‘?’
We get maximum Information Gain from Garlic,
So our tree will look like this,
This is exactly the same as the previous approach, because luckily at each step we were able to find some attributes dividing into a homogenous set, but the approach with Information Gain is more robust, which can be applied to make a decision tree from a large dataset.
Reference :
Identification Trees | MIT OCW | https://towardsdatascience.com/decision-trees-introduction-id3-8447fd5213e9 | ['Siddharth Maurya'] | 2019-11-04 16:53:44.449000+00:00 | ['Decision Tree', 'Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Artificial Intelligence'] |
7 Reasons Why We Believe in Black Insurance? | We have had a series of articles introducing our team members and various stakeholders of Black Insurance. One thing they all share and have in common is the strong belief in Black Insurance and its business model. Find below an overview of the key aspects why we are going to disrupt the insurance industry and take the use of blockchain in insurtech to completely new level.
Ahoy! That’s Mart, Black’s COO
Because all the building blocks necessary to build BLACK exist today; there is a clear and proven demand on the broker side and there is a lot of capital on the market, the investors looking for new investment opportunities. Our role is simply to connect all the building blocks by putting them into right place, connect capital with brokers. And by the way, we are very strong in the execution part!
When I heard about Black Insurance, I immediately thought: “Damn this is BIG”. Why? All other insurance startups address only a small sector of the entire insurance industry. For example, a startup might focus on distribution of home insurance — it’s limited both in that it only addresses the distribution part of the value chain, and only the home insurance product line. If it is only doing distribution, it can’t innovate around the product since this is done (or, rather, not done) by the insurers that underwrite the product that they’re selling.
Black is building a very attractive value proposition that is relevant to the entire $4 trillion insurance industry, across all parts of the value chain, applicable to all insurance product lines.
The value it could add to the insurance industry is about $400–600 billion annually, both by enabling new innovative products and making the existing business more efficient.
Also, Black has really strong founders. As a wise man once told, idea is just a multiplier of execution. Bundeep and Risto have proved to deliver operational high growth businesses one after another.
After doing some research I have come to have very high expectations. If Black decides to work with our agency our expectations would be having financial backing to create our own products and become our own carrier, help with IT and having access to the Black team when needed and basically working together to build a great product and change the insurance industry as we know it.
It makes sense. Just like bitcoin said it will remove banks from the equation, insurance too can operate without the trusted third party in the middle. Replace bureaucracy with tech and move forward faster.
Black Insurance has 2 key components that I am interested in (insurance and crypto to be more specific), I took some time to learn more. Other than that, in Black’s case it was also about the team behind the project, scalability of the business model, and the need to have modern and convenient insurance solutions for the clients.
First- the people behind BLACK! The founders, the advisors, the whole team. Secondly — there is a strong need for a change in insurance industry and it is already changing. It is a good time for BLACK to be part of it and make it happen. We have seen quite many successful insurtech startups, ICOs and blockchain applications for insurtech. It sure is BLACK time!
Any insurance broker, with a profitable stable portfolio, could conceptually use the Black business model as a potential route to participating in and creating risk bearing capital. This could provide a greater control in servicing their client base in a number of different ways.
For an MGA, such as our own, the principle of being more in control of your business is very attractive indeed. The potential to be able to participate in the risk bearing capital supporting what we do is equally as attractive. The Black business model provides for this possibility. In the past such owners transformed their agencies into insurance companies, however today the relatively high capital investment needed precludes this for many. With this model a lower capital threshold is necessary and provides for an equivalent way forward either on a stand-alone basis or as a PCC or even a syndicate at Lloyd’s.
The insurance industry is vast and different solutions for different situations will be required. To my knowledge Black is attempting to become the first or one of the first entirely blockchain/cryptocurrency insurance networks in tandem with matching risk bearing capital to specific insurance portfolios. It opens avenues for new forms of risk bearing capital with the potential to create some fascinating opportunities.
Scale is important, in that a small to medium sized insurance company, syndicate at Lloyd’s or cell of a PCC needs reinsurance with a financially sound reinsurer. The role of reinsurance in these circumstances is compatible with the Black business model.
There are practical and regulatory issues. With innovation and working with Regulators and established insurance entities we are confident that they will be surmounted and are following your progress with interest.
The huge potential of being something extraordinary and big. A game changer in the broader sense in many different aspects — innovation, technology, business, social. The business model is not limited, it has many stakeholders with guaranteed benefits for all of them — better insurance products for end-users, new investment opportunity for investors, and last but not least — the new business and innovation possibilities for insurance entrepreneurs ie brokers.
Be sure to check out our website as well as connect to our social media on Telegram, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, LinkedIn and Bitcointalk. | https://medium.com/blackinsurance/7-reasons-why-we-believe-in-black-insurance-2b0e5a4b46fe | ['Triinu Murumäe'] | 2018-08-30 10:25:07.179000+00:00 | ['Insurance', 'ICO', 'Blockchain', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Crowdfunding'] |
Salaried Employees vs Independent Sales Reps: Which is best for your global enterprise? | Salaried Employees vs Independent Sales Reps: Which is best for your global enterprise? Maria Adam Follow Jan 21 · 4 min read
There is no question that technology has fueled a global gig economy that enables freelancers and small business contractors to engage with enterprises of all sizes. While some businesses benefit from as-needed services from independent contractors and sales representatives, there are some down sides for both companies and contractors, and many businesses gravitate to traditional employer-employee relationships.
Employee vs Contractor
While both salaried employees and independent contractors perform similar tasks for businesses, there are several distinct differences that define their relationship to, and interactions with, the employer.
Please mind the ✅ — Benefits and ❌ — Risks connected with both* :
Employee or a salaried worker pays FICA taxes just like their employer in equal parts.
Contractor, also called a commission-based worker is responsible for paying self-employment (SECA) taxes.
Check the below infographics for a greater visibility:
Risks of Hiring Contractors Over Employees
For many businesses who are expanding overseas, it may seem sensible to start off with local independents in the interest of saving money on taxes, benefits and the cost of establishing a legal entity. However, working with foreign independent contractors has multiple inherent risks. | https://medium.com/acumen-international/salaried-employees-vs-independent-sales-reps-which-is-best-for-your-global-enterprise-598d828b58e2 | ['Maria Adam'] | 2021-01-21 13:54:57.618000+00:00 | ['Independent Contractor', 'Global Companies', 'Global Peo', 'Salaried Employees', 'Gig Economy'] |
There’s Nothing Wrong With Being “Self-Partnered” | There’s Nothing Wrong With Being “Self-Partnered”
There is something wrong with shaming people for being single.
Photo by bruce mars from Pexels
The Internet might have skewered Emma Watson for her “self-partnered” comment, but I say good for her. As the actor approaches her thirtieth birthday, she admits:
“I never believed the whole ‘I’m happy single’ spiel. I was like, ‘This is totally spiel.’ It took me a long time, but I’m very happy (being single). I call it being self-partnered.”
So she’s having a relationship with herself, and no one can deal. She’s being called out for everything from narcissism to talking nonsense.
Rachelle Hampton in her article on Slate, “Embrace Being Single, Emma Watson! Enough With This ‘Self-Partnered’ Nonsense,” warns:
“Self-partnering turns us even more into islands, suggesting that with the right mindset we can all be self-sufficient.”
Hampton goes on:
“The problem with declaring yourself self-partnered is that you’re ceding the argument, agreeing with the precept that some kind of monogamous partnership is a necessary component to a fulfilling life.”
I don’t agree. I think that Watson is simply talking about the importance of having a relationship with herself. Because when you’re in your biological prime, and especially when you’re female, people are very uncomfortable when you’re not partnered.
People very much need you to be in a relationship. I remember all too well how terrible it was to be a single female at Watson’s age. It was pure hell actually. My biological clock was ticking, and everyone was very concerned about that.
People were constantly asking me whether I was in a relationship or not, and shaming me when I said no.
My mom: “Anyone special in your life?”
Me: “No.”
My mom: “Maybe you’re just not cut out for a relationship.”
My other family members: “Don’t you have a special boy in your life?”
Me: “No.”
My other family members: looks of distress and murmured comments between each other about what could possibly be wrong with me because I didn’t have a “special boy” in my life.
My female friends: “So who are you fucking?”
Me: “No one.”
My female friends: “Why not? What’s wrong?”
There always had to be something wrong with me as the reason I was single or wasn’t going to bed with a new guy every other weekend.
My male friends: “How come you’re not dating anyone?”
Read: “How come you’re not fucking me?”
Dudes I met at bars and clubs: “You dating anyone?”
Me: “No.”
Dudes I met at bars and clubs: “You want to date me?”
Me: “No.”
Dudes I met at bars and club: “Fucking bitch.”
Or: “Why doesn’t a pretty girl like you have a million boyfriends?”
Tweet from Nov. 7, 2019, The Daily Show
I don’t know. Because the men I met sucked. Because I was immature for my age. Because I had a stormy relationship with my father growing up, which made it difficult for me to relate to men in a healthy way.
Because I was too sensitive for my own good. Because I was introverted, and I just didn’t like many people. Because I was also extroverted and so I liked everyone, but everyone didn’t like me.
Because I was weird. Because the men I met just didn’t click with me. Because I’d rather be alone than in a relationship with someone who wasn’t right for me.
Or because there was other stuff I wanted to do, experiences I wanted to have, far-off places I wanted to travel to, and I didn’t want to have to check in with a man to ask permission if I could do those things or not.
Why is it anybody’s business anyway who’s coupled up and who’s not? People only asked this question of me when I was younger because they were nosy.
Or because I was also figuring myself out at that moment, so I just couldn’t be in a relationship with anyone but myself.
The stress I used to experience because of my single status. The shit people used to say to me. The shame I used to feel for not having “special someone” in my life.
Sorry, world, but it took me a little longer than most to find him, and even when I did, it didn’t work out. I’m divorced now. So maybe I should have actually spent a little more time “self-partnered.”
Why is it anybody’s business anyway who’s coupled up and who’s not? People only asked this question of me when I was younger because they were nosy.
That or they wanted to know if I was available to fuck. Sometimes it was because they wanted to exert some sort of moral control over me. Or they just wanted to feel better about themselves, because they were in a relationship and I wasn’t.
Some people are messed up like that. It took me a long time to figure that out. It also took me a long time to figure out that I needed to have a relationship with myself before I could have one with someone else.
I wish I’d had the balls that Emma Watson has at her age to say I was self-partnered. Me? I just wanted people to approve of me. Sometimes I’d even lie, just to get people off my back.
Me: “Yup, I have a boyfriend.”
Them: “Oh, really? How long have you two been dating?”
Me: “A year.”
Them: “How come you never told me about him?”
Because he doesn’t actually exist!
I remember some of the worst shaming came from my male friends, because I always had a lot of them. These were often guys who were in long-term relationships with women whom I found to be incredibly boring. These men would bemoan the loss of passion in their own relationships, and yet they’d have the audacity to shame me for not being in one.
“We need to find you a man, Lara.”
Why? So you’ll no longer masturbate thinking about me? So my being single will no longer make you uncomfortable? So you won’t be jealous I actually have sex with different people while you’re stuck with the same person? So every time you see me I won’t remind you that you’re only staying with your girlfriend because you’re too scared to leave? Because being single terrifies you? It should. It’s incredibly difficult to stand up to society’s need for you to be coupled and not single.
The ironic thing is that as much as I felt ashamed about being single most of my twenties, when I did have relationships, I was always patently miserable. Because I just wasn’t ready to settle down. I still had to figure myself out.
And any guy I got together with was evidence of that. He was never right for me.
Because having a boyfriend wasn’t going to help me do the inner work I needed to do. I needed to have a relationship with myself first, period.
It wasn’t until I actually started “self-partnering” in my early thirties that I began to figure myself out. I began to fix the problems that had been holding me back from having relationships and from getting ahead in my life in general.
Because having a boyfriend wasn’t going to help me do the inner work I needed to do. I needed to have a relationship with myself first, period.
So let’s stop asking people about their relationship status, and shaming them not having a significant other.
And for crissakes, when a young person actually has the wherewithal to admit that they’re happily “self-partnered” then — jeez — leave them alone.
Let them be “self-partnered” if they want to be. I think it’s awesome that Emma Watson not only has the strength to admit there have been times when she hasn’t been happy single, but that she’s finally now doing what so many people never take the time to do: she’s having a relationship with herself. | https://medium.com/eros-is-everywhere/theres-nothing-wrong-with-being-self-partnered-1f9471e73d41 | ['Elle Silver'] | 2019-11-12 16:38:41.671000+00:00 | ['Self', 'Relationships', 'Feminism', 'Women', 'Dating'] |
The Green New Deal is species suicide — hemp, mycelium and nuclear are infinitely cleaner and greener than solar, wind and lithium | Because The Green New Deal would massively expand fuel-intensive extraction-based production, carbon emissions would continue to increase rapidly. We need a green industrial revolution that is actually green — predominantly hemp-based. Hemp can be turned into more than 50,000 applications, including batteries that outperform lithium, but it also grows quickly, reverses desertification and rapidly draws down CO2 from the atmosphere. Safe, emissions-free, high-energy nuclear is also essential.
The so-called ‘Green’ New Deal is species suicide. It is, in fact, dirty old imperialism. It would massively expand the fuel and heat intensive extractive production of metals in what may be called the ‘neo-colonies’ of Africa, Asia and Latin America. As Asad Rehman of the charity War on Want has written, the scale of new extraction needed “will come to dwarf the current relentless drive for resources that capitalism is built upon”.
The OECD’s Global Resources Outlook to 2060, modelled on an annual 2.8% global growth in GDP, estimates that extracted resources would increase from 79 to 167 billion tonnes, a 111% increase overall, with a 150% increase in metals and a 135% increase in minerals. Resource extraction is responsible for 50% of global emissions, with minerals and metal mining responsible for 20% of emissions even before the manufacturing stage.
In June 2019, Prof Richard Herrington and fellow members of SoS MinErals published an estimate that said meeting the 2050 UK electric car and van targets alone (not including the LGV and HGV fleets) would require almost two times the current total annual global cobalt production, nearly the entire global production of neodymium, three quarters of the world’s lithium production and at least half of the world’s copper production. This is surely suicidal. Clearly, the amount of energy required for all this could keep the fossil fuel industry in business for a while yet….
Not only is extraction-based production energy-intensive, it involves digging up the environment and therefore releasing CO2 presently trapped in nature into the atmosphere. As shown by the Michael Moore film Planet of the Humans, energy produced from logging and deforestation have been rebranded as ‘clean energy’.
As Sid Smith has argued, doubling the size of the economy in its current form, which happens roughly every 20 years under capitalism, would finish off the planet’s atmosphere, guaranteeing human extinction. However, he also argues that the economy is now so large that the expense of doubling the extraction-based energy supply (including solar, wind and lithium) that the system is dependent on is too high for this doubling to be possible. This tallies with my assessment that capitalism is now coming up against a historical limit to accumulation.
We therefore need much more efficient and cleaner ways of producing and consuming energy and the other things we need to produce.
Hemp: the miracle plant
We need to make things to meet human need. New innovtations create new needs. The things we need have to be maintained and, at some stage, replaced. This all requires an enormous amount of material and energy.
What few people seem to be talking about is the fact that most things can be made from fibrous plants — one hell of a renewable material, given that they tend to grow quickly and without having to build and dig enormous mining facilities.
Probably the most versatile and prolific fibrous plant is hemp, which provides food, medicine, fuel and fibre. Hemp can be converted into more than 50,000 applications, including:
‣ anything with an oil base, including paint, varnish, solvent and lubricating oil;
‣ the softest of fabrics that are four times stronger and harder-wearing than cotton, with its antimicrobial properties making it perfect not only for fabric but also as a base for soap and detergent;
‣ sulphur-free charcoal with a heating value equivalent to coal;
‣ batteries and conductors that outperform lithium and graphene;
‣ biofuel that is up to two-thirds cleaner than petrol and diesel;
‣ paper at a much greater quality and rate than trees;
‣ bioplastic that can be made up to ten times stronger than steel yet lighter than carbon fibre;
‣ highly-insular hempcrete than makes the entire process of constructing and using buildings carbon-negative.
That fibre glass, which has to be heated to 1,371°C, no longer has to be used as a reinforcing component in hemp bioplastic notably reduces emissions alone.
Along with other fibrous plants, such as Kenaf and bamboo, hemp can potentially largely replace the materials that we currently extract from the earth (including trees). (Banana peel can be made into high-performance sodium-ion batteries. Leaves can be turned into solar panels, and much more cleanly than present methods.)
Hemp grows very quickly with little water, making it drought-resistant; heals even the most damaged soil, reversing land degradation and desertification, thanks to its deep areating root system; and draws down CO2 from the atmosphere faster than any other plant. Since it grows tightly packed, nor does it need poisonous pesticides that damage the soil and biodiversity.
Biofuel obviously releases gasses previously trapped in the plant back into the atmosphere when burned. But the unburned products made from hemp sequester the CO2 indefinitely.
A worldwide hemp/plant-based industrial revolution is therefore absolutely essential if we are to reverse desertification and stabilise the climate, and with the added bonuses of furthering technological and industrial advancement and ending pollution, whether plastic or atmospheric.
This is not a call for a hemp monoculture. In 1984 it was estimated that just 6% (90 million acres) of contiguous US land cultivating hemp could supply all current demands for oil and gas while maintaining a neutral carbon system. (‘Coincidentally’ the US government pays farmers not to grow on 6% of the farming land (to keep food prices high and profitable), while another 500m acres of marginal farmland lies fallow.) Clearly the figure would have to be higher than 6% if hemp were also to replace steel, concrete, plastic and lithium, etc. While the economy is now much bigger than in 1984, a lot of what we produce is completely wasteful (bombs, for instance) and are only made to serve the needs of capitalism’s profit-based accumulation. So a hemp monoculture is not necessary.
Mycelium and ‘sky mining’
Other clean, ‘natural’ alternatives exist to mining and extraction.
Mycelium, a type of fungus, can be coaxed, using temperature, CO2, humidity and airflow, to rapidly build fibrous structures for things such as “packaging, clothing, food and construction — everything from leather to plant-based steak to scaffolding for growing organs”; all with minimal (mostly compostable) waste and energy consumption.
Carbon-negative ‘sky diamonds’ that are physically and chemically identical to those mined from the earth can be made by drawing down carbon from the atmosphere. Producing a one carat diamond requires the shifting of around 1,000 tonnes of rock and earth, consumes almost 4,000 litres of water, and generates more than 100kg of carbon emissions.
And gold that is ‘golder’ than mined gold can be grown in labs.
Nuclear energy
Having said all that, there is still a large role for nuclear power to play. Hemp’s energy density rate is about half that of coal’s, whereas nuclear’s is much higher. Pound for pound uranium provides 16,000 times more electricity than coal. Nuclear power must be re-embraced to provide the energy for the large-scale, centralised infrastructure that enables the masses to have access to cheap electricity, water and food.
Before the era of neoliberalism, after 1973, France decarbonised 78% of its electricity in just 13 years by building 54 publicly-owned nuclear power plants. The abandonment of nuclear power has had nothing to do with safety concerns but rather its expensive upfront costs and — because it is long-lasting; there is no inbuilt obscelence involved — unprofitability. Nuclear is much safer than seems to be generally thought. As Leigh Phillips writes:
“Exposure to cosmic rays while taking two transatlantic flights (0.16 millisieverts (mSv) of radiation) is roughly equivalent to the annual exposure of a UK nuclear power station worker (0.18 mSv), which is far less than the annual dose of the average US citizen from all sources (2.7 mSv), or exposure to radiation as a result of one CT chest scan (6.6 mSv) or the average annual dose from radon from the ground experienced by people who live in Cornwall (7.8 mSv). We also know that the new generation of dramatically safer reactors employing passive-safety systems physically cannot melt down, and that safe methods of waste disposal are proven. The amount of waste produced is also tiny compared to that of many other industrial processes, and far less hazardous. Radioactivity also decreases with time, but the danger presented by solar panel production, such as cadmium, mercury and lead pollutants, never goes away. Instead these pollutants bioaccumulate (there is ever greater concentration of the pollutant in an organism) and biomagnify (there is ever greater concentration of the polluting as you move up the food chain). Advanced nuclear power systems can completely recycle used nuclear fuel, actually producing a net positive balance of energy in this process. In a 2014 survey of all energy sources exploring which delivered the least direct harm to biodiversity, nuclear was among the best options, due to its small land and mining footprint. Nuclear has by far the best safety record of any energy source, clocking in at 0.04 deaths per terawatt hour, compared to wind’s 0.15 deaths, solar’s 0.44 deaths, hydroelectric’s 1.4 deaths, oil’s 36 deaths and coal’s 100 death.”
Emmet Penney and Adrián Calderón write in The Bellows:
“Throughout seven decades of service, nuclear power has consistently been proven to be safer than every other mass scale form of energy production. In one year, residents who live near a nuclear power plant are exposed to less radiation than anyone who has eaten a single banana. Though it may sound counterintuitive, because elements such as uranium and plutonium have such long half-lives, the radiation they emit is low enough to safely hold in your hand. Nuclear is also far and away the most reliable form of energy generation in the US, which makes it ideal for providing baseload power for the electrical grid [whereas wind and solar are intemittant due to night time and winter]. Nuclear reactors routinely spend years in continuous operation. The current fleet of nuclear power plants have no technical limits that prevent them from being in service for 80 years, if not a century
… most [nuclear waste] is composed of low-level waste (LLW) made up of protective clothing, cleaning materials, equipment, and tools exposed to neutron radiation. LLW accounts for 90% of nuclear waste by volume but only 1% of its total radioactivity and can be disposed of safely and permanently. After about half a decade of providing carbon-free energy in the reactor core, the uranium fuel itself must be replaced. This high-level waste (HLW) is the highly radioactive and long-living stuff that you see caricatured in popular imagination. Yet this type of waste comprises only 3% of total nuclear waste. To put this in perspective, all of the waste from the entire history of American nuclear power plants can fit within an area the size of a football field, 50 feet high — half the height of a single wind turbine.
“Meanwhile, weather-dependent renewables require 400–450 times the land to produce the same amount of electricity as nuclear. Leveling an area of land larger than almost a third of all US states for energy production might be an acceptable compromise to some, but it does not solve the weather-dependent nature of those sources. Further complicating matters is the fact renewable energy must be stored for later, which requires the use of lithium batteries. But the sheer scale of mining and land use required, and the fact that it involves the domination and exploitation of predominantly developing countries, makes the choice not only inefficient, but unethical. With the abundant uranium reserves already in the United States today, we have the capacity to cultivate an industry to domestically fuel our reactors right now.”
The economics of production
So why is the US and the world ramping up the expansion of solar, wind and lithium instead of hemp, mycelium and nuclear? The simple answer is because the former are much more profitable. Why? Because they are far more labour-intensive, since capital’s exploitation of commodity-producing labour is the sole source of profit. The cheaper the labour, the higher the profit, so US and European capitalists would rather exploit mining workers across their empires than relatively expensive nuclear workers at home.
Fossil fuel has been ideal for capitalism not only because of its high energy density and portability; but because it disappears into thin air once used, and therefore has to be dug up and treated anew by labour. Renewables by contrast, even extracted wind and solar, are only profitable during their production, after which they only have to be switched on and maintained, which involves little to no commodity-production.
It is only now that fossil fuel is becoming unprofitable, because all the best quality fossil fuel has been found and used, coupled with the fact that the industry has become very capital-intensive (due to capitalism’s ever-greater need to raise productivity) that wind and solar, whose prices are rapidly falling, are starting to get a serious look in with investors.
However, the fact that so much extraction and land are needed for wind, solar and lithium compared to nuclear shows that the move towards theses renewables is about extending the lifespan of capitalism, rather than saving the planet.
Capitalism, since it needs by its very nature to continually expand production on an extractive basis, can only continue to accelerate the climate crisis like a runaway train approaching a cliff edge. It really is an extinction cult.
Socialist transition
Because actual socialism (socially owned production and services) creates value based not on exploitation but on utility — something’s use-value, or usefulness — it is not, unlike capitalism, absolutely dependent on extraction or economic growth.
Whereas capital only employs people when it is profitable to do so, a socialist state employs people according to human need, enabling real full, formal employment, a shorter working week, and much higher and consistent productivity. Such a system would therefore be able to afford to transition away from extractive production, since all labour would become productive of exchange-value, not just commodity-production.
Under socialism we could transition away from fossil fuels and metal mining to hemp, mycelium and nuclear, the latter of which are not labour intensive to produce or maintain. Hemp is renewable to the point of being self-seeding and processing it is relatively non-labour-intensive as well, making it a relatively cheap and unprofitable resource. This combined with its versatility, making it a such a threat to extraction-based industries, is the reason it has been under-utilised and prohibited. Given that hemp means ‘useful’, it seems socialism and hemp are made for each other.
We could also build things to last, rather than with inbuilt obsolescence. The emergence of 3D-printing and lab-grown food also means we have the potential to make much production increasingly ‘local’, drastically cutting down emissions from international trade and intensive farming.
With computers and gadgetry getting smaller and smaller, production could also potentially move increasingly underground, freeing up yet more land for CO2 sequestion and enviromental revival. With so much fallow land in need of revival, there is plenty or room for increasing hemp production without needing a hemp monoculture. Africa could be key — an industrial hemp revolution could reverse the continent’s desertification and, with its great land mass, turn it into the ‘workshop of the world’, making it the powerhouse of world socialism.
Economic growth
Whereas capitalism needs continual growth based on finite resources, socialism is planned on a break-even basis, meaning the size of the economy does not have to grow. If it is based on clean, renewable resources, growth would certainly be much less of an issue, and may indeed be part of the solution, given that the more CO2 we sequester in hemp products and the more nuclear replaces fossil fuel, the better.
But we would be able to make sure economic growth (which is also necessary to end poverty) happens slower than nature’s ability to replenish itself, which isn’t currently the case.
Stopping people from ‘overconsuming’ can be encouraged and incentivised but ultimately it cannot be enforced (especially as the state withers away under world socialism). People will always strive for higher living standards and innovation. What can be done is to use resources more efficiently through communal forms of living (to be incentivised and carefully planned to embrace privacy and individuality).
The Soviet Union, China and Cuba
The Soviet Union and socialist China had rathermixed environmental records. For all the bad aspects environmentally, though, there were many, many good things about the Soviet Union.
But because the Soviet Union had to trade with capitalist countries, it never got to the stage where it could fully plan its economy or abolish money. It also had to continually update its military capacity in order to be able to defend itself from capitalist invasions and nuclear bombs, and could only do so with materials of production that dominated the world market at that time. Nor was technology as advanced as it is now, of course — we had to go through the chemistry revolution to get to where we are going now, for instance. It’s a similar story with China, whether or not it can still be considered socialist.
It is going to take world socialism to save the planet’s habitability, especially since the countries with the most land will need to supply other countries around the world with hemp and other fibrous plants.
Cuba, though, is already considered the most sustainably developing country in the world, largely due to its urban agriculture. It even has the world’s healthiest bees, which seem to be dying out everywhere else.
Complementary solutions
While hemp cannot do everything, it can do a lot (this summary only skims the surface, and much more research is of course needed, since prohibition has severely limited research and development). We may or may not be able to abolish metal mining entirely, and it will have to be a transition, but it can be reduced to the bare minimum. Mining for metals that can’t be replaced by fibrous plants could be powered by emissions-free nuclear instead of fossil fuel.
Clearly other things need to happen as well to save the planet. Where possible some devices should return to analog. Does everybody really need an electric doorbell, for example? We may need filtration systems to help de-pollute the air. Hydrogen power, which enables much faster charging than lithium and is more suitable for longer distances and transporting freight; and thorium-based nuclear fusion, which is even less radioactive; will be options to consider. The prospect of space-based solar power and the related wireless transmission, meaning solar can be ‘collected’ without the intermitency of night or winter, is also very promising.
Among the practices that socialist states of the future should almost definitely scale up are hydroponics, permaculture farming and ‘carbfixing’ (dissolving CO2 in water and injecting it into basaltic rocks; again not being done on a large scale because there’s no profit in it; there is no mass commodity being produced).
Socialism or extinction
That none of these arguments are currently being made on mainstream platforms is alarming to say the least given the dire state of the climate crisis. With the arctic sea ice disappearing, releasing the carbon sequestered inside, it is clear that 1 degree of heating was too much, let alone 1.5 or 2.
Most people are being denied the truth about what needs to be done. We urgently need to spread this knowledge and build an unstoppable, international movement for socialism. | https://medium.com/@grossmanite/the-green-new-deal-is-species-suicide-hemp-mycelium-and-nuclear-are-infinitely-cleaner-and-334922be273b | [] | 2021-04-20 18:15:43.621000+00:00 | ['Hemp', 'Extinction Rebellion', 'Socialism', 'Capitalism', 'Nuclear'] |
Understand Bayes Rule, Likelihood, Prior and Posterior | Understand Bayes Rule, Likelihood, Prior and Posterior
A case study based introduction to using Bayes rule and how it compares with a frequentist, pessimistic and optimistic approaches to drawing conclusions
Photo by Robert Ruggiero on Unspalsh
This post will help you understand Bayesian inference at an intuitive level with the help of a simple case study. I hope that once you read this article, you will be very clear on how the well-known “Bayes theorem” is used, what do the terms in the theorem mean (prior, posterior, likelihood) and how this compares with other approaches to decision making (pessimist /optimist/frequentist). We will use a simple case study to help explain the concepts. For those who are interested, I have provided simulation results for the given case study and a link to R code for further exploration. Let’s start with the case study:
Case Study
There is a very dangerous but rare disease called dangeritis with 0.1% prevalence (1 in 1000 people get it). One morning you wake with chest pain (one of the symptoms of dangeritis). With no history of heart disease, you take a test of dangeritis as a precautionary measure. You suspect that the pain you had is muscular but you take the test just to be sure. Unfortunately, the test turns out positive suggesting that you have dangeritis. You feel like doing one more test but the cost is prohibitively high and you are told that the test is 99% accurate. You get deeply concerned finding this and perhaps that means that there is a 99% chance (almost certain) that you have the disease. However, you only have one symptom of dangeritis and you do wonder if, just maybe, the test was wrong? Thoroughly confused, you decide to get opinions from four of your close friends. You consult them telling them your story and asking them for their input. Your friends are:
(i) Percy Pessimist
(ii) Opal Optimist
(iii) Fin Frequentist
(iv) Ben Bayesian
They all present their argument and their verdict. The overall verdict turns out to be a tie with Percy and Fin concluding that you have dangeritis while Opal and Ben concluding that you do not have the disease. Here are the arguments from each of them:
The Pessimist Argument
Percy Pessimist
Bad things happen in this world, and if you have the symptom associated with a disease, and the test (which is highly accurate) suggests that you have the disease, then this is a clear verdict. I am sorry but you have the disease.
Percy’s mind concludes the worst possible outcome if there is any chance of that happening. Percy, however, argues that the conclusion is not unreasonable because the test is highly accurate and you had at least one related symptom. Percy does not make detailed use of data and relies on intuitions mostly.
The Optimist Argument
Opal Optimist
You only had one symptom, and no other symptoms. And there is a chance that the test could be wrong, even if it is 1% but it does happen! Taken together, I do not believe that you have the disease.
Like Percy, Opal does not make detailed use of data and relies on intuitions mostly. Unlike Percy though, Opal tends to infer the most favourable outcome if there is any chance of that happening.
The Frequentist Argument
Fin Frequentist
Look, I am a data person and I have made use of probability theory and worked out that you most likely have the disease. The chances are very high, 99%! I am sorry but that is life…
Fin is a data person and he makes use of data to draw conclusions. Fin concludes that you have the disease, unfortunately. He uses probabilistic argument to support his conclusion. He says:
Look, there are two possible situations. Either you have the disease,
probability of having the disease
or you do not have the disease:
probability of not having the disease
In addition, you can get a positive test result:
probability of test being positive
or a negative test result:
probability of test being negative
Fin argues that we have already seen the data (that your test returned a positive result suggesting that you have the disease). It is now a question of figuring what is the “likelihood” of observing this data given that you have the disease, and what is the “likelihood” of observing this data given that you do not have the disease (and then choosing the likelihood which is bigger for drawing conclusion). Fin computes the likelihood supposing both scenarios and then chooses the likelihood that is bigger of the two to draw his conclusion. As the earlier statement suggests, we call this term “likelihood” and the approach taken by Fin is that of maximising the likelihood (maximum likelihood).
Likelihood refers to the probability of observing the data that has been observed assuming that the data came from a specific scenario.
(i): What is the likelihood of observing a positive test result given that you have the disease:
probability of test being positive given that you have the disease
(ii): What is the likelihood of observing a positive test result given that you do not have the disease:
probability of test being positive given that you do not have the disease
Fin computes the two likelihoods and then figures out which one has a bigger value to draw his conclusion. To work out the two likelihoods, Fin uses the test accuracy information provided. We have been told that the accuracy of the test is 99%. This means that the test make correct decisions 99% of the time. This information is sufficient to work out the likelihoods for both scenarios (that you have the disease, and that you do not have the disease). To express this in probability terms, let us think of four scenarios in two grids (this is called a confusion matrix, see my article on ROC for a more gentle introduction), and this is a straight forward case. The cases where no mistake is made has a probability of 99% (shaded in green in the figure below) and consequently, the cases where a mistake is made have a probability of 1% (shaded red in the figure below). We have observed positive case, and we just need to find out the likelihood of observing this in two steps: first working out the probability of observing this outcome assuming that you have the disease, and then working out the probability of observing this outcome assuming that you do not have the disease. When Fin works out the two likelihoods, he sees that there is only a 0.01 probability of you not having a disease and a 0.99 (99% chance!) probability that you have the disease. Fin consequently concludes that you, highly likely, have the disease.
Likelihoods of test results given disease status for all four situations for a test with 99% accuracy
The Bayesian argument
Ben Bayesian
Look, I am a data person and there are two crucial parts of information that I will take account of. One is the accuracy of the test, and one is the disease prevalence. I made use of both pieces of information in a systematic way using Bayes rule and concluded that the chance of you having the disease is only 9% and the chance that you do not have the disease is 91%. I, therefore, believe that you do not have the disease!
Like Fin, Ben also uses the data and works out the likelihood. However, he does not stop at that. He also makes use of previous knowledge on the subject (or “prior” information) that the disease is very rare and combines that with the likelihood information to draw his conclusion. What is the appropriate way to combine these two pieces of information? It turns out that this is the most well-known rule in probability called the “Bayes Rule”. Effectively, Ben is not seeking to calculate the likelihood or the prior probability. Ben is focussed on calculating the posterior probability.
Ben argues that the question you are asking is not: what is the probability of observing the test result that you did given that you had the disease (likelihood). It is in fact: what is the probability of you having the disease given that we observed that the test is positive (called posterior in Bayesian language).
Bayes formula helps us calculate posterior probability using likelihood and prior information together. The formula in plain English is:
Bayes formula in our specific case study is:
Prior is the probability of the disease before having seen any test result (our prior understanding/beliefs modelled in a single probability value). Evidence is also called the marginal likelihood and it acts like a normalizing constant and is independent of disease status (the evidence is the same whether calculating posterior for having the disease or not having the disease given a test result). We have already explained the likelihood in detail above. Posterior is the probability that takes both prior knowledge we have about the disease, and new data (the test result) into account.
When Ben uses the information given, the posterior probability that you have have the disease given that the test is positive is only 9%. And the posterior probability that you do not have the disease given that the test is positive is 91%. Consequently, Ben concludes that you are highly unlikely to have the disease.
So there you have it. You got two people who made no use of data, you got another person who only made use of data at that point without making use of previous knowledge on the subject and then you got another person who made use of the data, and the prior to draw a conclusion.
Bonus material (R code and Simulations)
How would the posterior probability change for different scenarios of test accuracy, and disease prevalence?
The figure below shows how the posterior probability of you having the disease given that you got a positive test result changes with disease prevalence (for a fixed test accuracy). Notice how the posterior probability is below 50% for a disease prevalence less than ~2% despite a very high test accuracy!
Posterior probability with disease prevalence for a fixed test accuracy (Image by author)
The figure below shows how the posterior probability of you having the disease given that you got a positive test result changes with test accuracy (for a fixed disease prevalence). Notice how you really need a test that is almost 100% accurate if you want to reduce the amount of errors that you would get in situations where the disease prevalence is low.
This should also be a lesson for you to know that next time anyone claims that a given test is 98% accurate does not mean that it is good enough and the whole context needs to be looked at before drawing any conclusions. There are going to be situations where, despite being 98% accurate, a given test would lead to too many errors!
Posterior probability with test accuracy for a fixed disease prevalence (Image by author)
You can visit my github page to get the R code where you can generate the above figures and play with the parameters. I have commented extensively but please do ask if you have any questions :)
Concluding remarks
In this article, I have used a simple case study to explain the Bayesian approach to calculating the probability of having a rare disease when a highly accurate test provides a positive result. The Bayesian framework offers a principled approach to making use of both the accuracy of test result and prior knowledge we have about the disease to draw conclusions. For cases where the prior information is uninformative, the Bayesian approach is as good as the Maximum likelihood (the frequentist) approach. | https://towardsdatascience.com/understand-bayes-rule-likelihood-prior-and-posterior-34eae0f378c5 | ['Ahmar Shah'] | 2020-12-25 22:46:18.443000+00:00 | ['Bayesian Statistics', 'Machine Learning', 'Maximum Likelihood', 'Decision Making', 'Data Science'] |
Achieving holiday eCommerce success with gift guides | In 2020, Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM) sales totaled $5.1 billion globally. That’s not to mention the rest of the holiday season, which seems to stretch earlier and earlier into November every year. For eCommerce businesses, the holiday season is an optimal time to achieve sales goals and attract new consumers in the hopes of turning first-time purchasers into loyal customers.
However, many companies fail to capitalize on the gifting season. Due to a lack of preparedness, poor planning, ineffective marketing, or a whole host of other issues, many online retailers experience disappointing sales during the holidays.
Creating a holiday gift guide is a low-stakes effort that can pay off big time for eCommerce businesses looking to boost their holiday sales. In this post, we’ll outline what makes holiday gift guides successful, as well as best practices for launching your own.
Benefits of a holiday gift guide
A gift guide is a valuable tool for both consumers and eCommerce businesses alike. Let’s examine some of the key benefits of publishing a holiday gift guide for online retailers.
Increase conversions
It’s no secret that the holidays can be stressful, especially when it comes to gift-giving. Customers want to make sure they purchase thoughtful gifts for their loved ones, but often don’t have a ton of time to research potential purchases extensively. This is where gift guides come in handy.
Gift guides are resources for consumers, helping them to streamline their selection process and reduce friction that can discourage them from making purchases. As curated lists, gift guides help customers that are likely short on time narrow down choices and make educated decisions about what to purchase. Reducing friction is at the heart of optimizing your eCommerce experience for conversions.
Improve your email marketing efforts
According to Publitas, marketing emails that feature gift guides generate 48% higher transaction rates compared to other promotional content. This is because gift guides offer direct value to your customers. Consumers are more likely to engage with marketing materials that offer content that benefits directly. They perceive gift guides to be tools that will help make their lives easier when it comes to purchasing holiday gifts.
By offering content that directly impacts your customers, you improve the performance of your email marketing efforts, while creating brand awareness and encouraging customers to make purchases.
Boost your eCommerce site’s SEO performance
Holiday gift guides provide the perfect template to boost your search engine optimization (SEO) performance during the competitive holiday season.
Search engines view holiday gift guides as extremely valuable to searchers. This means an engaging holiday gift guide is likely to get pushed up higher in search results, making it easier for customers to get directed to your site. Plus, gift guides can be optimized for specific keywords your company has chosen to target for the holiday season, helping you rank higher on the search results page than your competitors.
Holiday gift guides can help you take advantage of SEO to increase your company’s visibility during the busy holiday season.
Creating a holiday gift guide
Creating a holiday gift guide is a relatively low-effort way of educating your customers about products, acquiring new customers, and boosting conversions. Let’s look at what you need to get started.
Pick a theme
Just throwing a bunch of random products into a list and calling it a gift guide isn’t going to cut it. Your holiday gift guide should be organized around a specific theme to ensure customers get relevant product suggestions. Remember, customers aren’t making purchases for themselves, they’re browsing for gifts with a specific person — or price point — in mind.
Tailor the theme of your gift guide to customer segments that gel with your brand. Think, “A holiday gift guide for dads,” or, “What to get the outdoors fanatic in your life,” or, “Best holiday gifts under $20.”
Choose your products
This one’s a no-brainer. In order to assemble a successful gift guide, you’ll need to accurately match your products to the guide’s theme. It’s not as simple as just plugging in every possible item available on your eCommerce site that could fit.
To be truly valuable to your customers, a gift guide needs to be carefully curated. Be thoughtful about choosing quality products that will resonate with your customers.
Also, consider the economics of the holiday season for your brand. Do you generally launch new products in November and December? Consider adding them to your gift guide. Are there specific items that allow for larger markups? Add those to your gift guide to boost profits. Got a popular product that sells well year-round? Feature it in your gift guide to entice new customers.
Any product you feature on your holiday gift guide will need to be readily available throughout the entire holiday season. The last thing you want is to recommend customers purchase a product that will sell out a couple of weeks into the season. Make sure all products featured are easy to source and your fulfillment processes are built to withstand an uptick in purchases.
Create a marketing strategy
Your holiday gift guide will only be as successful as the marketing plan you initiate to promote it. Hone in on crucial SEO keywords by conducting keyword research and include them in your guide to ensure it ranks near the top on a web search results page. Incorporate keywords and phrases prominently into product descriptions, titles, categories, image file names, and more.
Promote your holiday gift guide in your newsletters and other email marketing efforts to customers. Advertise your gift guide on your social media channels, using relevant hashtags to target your desired customer segments. The key is to make your gift guide as visible as possible, so utilize the full extent of your marketing capabilities to promote it.
Achieving holiday sales success
The holiday season offers an incredible opportunity for eCommerce companies to boost sales and expand their customer base. So setting your store up for success might just be the most important thing you do all year. Launching a gift guide is one strategy for achieving success during the busy holiday season. But there are numerous other approaches that can help your brand come out on top.
At Codal, we’re a web development and design agency that specializes in eCommerce. Our mission is to help eCommerce companies drive revenue through beautifully designed websites and applications with seamless customer experiences. We’d love to learn more about your business and develop a strategy to help maximize your holiday performance.
Want to learn more about Codal’s eCommerce capabilities? Get in touch with Codal today! | https://medium.com/@codal-inc/achieving-holiday-ecommerce-success-with-gift-guides-749a05700443 | ['Codal Inc.'] | 2021-09-08 14:53:35.606000+00:00 | ['Black Friday', 'Ecommerce', 'Ecommerce Web Development', 'Gift Guide', 'Ecommerce Marketing'] |
Striking a blow against fake news | Photo by Elijah O'Donnell on Unsplash
The deal between prosecutors and the National Enquirer sends a message to the purveyors of falsehoods
At this time of year, we see a lot of posts suggesting a “word of the year.” Amy O'Rourke suggests the word “moments,” while Jessica Valenti proposes “trust,” Meghan Daum submits for consideration “f*ck,” nancy gibbs brings up “listen,” James Comey recommends “truth,” and Morgan Jerkins proposes “rage.” Any one of these is a good candidate, but I would advocate for another: “fake news.”
I don’t think any of the above words have been tweeted as regularly by the President of the United States as “fake news.” What’s somewhat shocking to realize given how circumstances have developed is that “fake news” was originally a term coined by the left, moderates and intelligence analysts to describe falsehoods spread on Facebook during the 2016 campaign. The source of many of these lies (let’s call a spade a spade) was bots based in Russia.
Upon hearing the term, however, Trump seized upon it. The term became a key part of his campaign to discredit the mainstream media that has traditionally worked for the public interest. Any time news sources report something Trump doesn’t like, he calls it “fake news.” Do the traditional media sources always get it right? Certainly not. But their agenda is the dissemination of information, and their credibility rests upon their effort to get it right at least most of the time. They may have an ideological bent, but those beliefs will not stop them from exposing a hot story that embarrasses one of their ilk.
Such is not the case with real purveyors of fake news, such as the bots set up in Russia with the intent to deceive voters, or Trump’s lawyer seeking to silence porn stars. We now have a new candidate for the ultimate purveyor of real fake news: the National Enquirer. This revelation might be the least surprising fact revealed by the various investigations into Trump’s affairs. After all, anyone who has ever stood in line in an American grocery store has probably been amazed by the gall of that publication with its outlandish headlines promoting ridiculous stories. But up until now we thought its only agenda was selling newspapers by promoting hysteria to the lowest common denominator. It turns out that its agenda was actually much more sinister.
In a recent statement, prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York — the same prosecutors who went after Trump attorney Michael Cohen — announced that the owners of the National Enquirer will cooperate with prosecutors in return for immunity from prosecution. The crime? Allegedly paying hush money to former Playmate Karen McDougal during the 2018 campaign to keep her quiet about her affair with candidate Trump. Such payments, when unreported, potentially represent violations of Federal campaign finance laws.
The dynamics of what happened are actually a little more complicated. Allegedly, the National Enquirer purchased rights to McDougal’s story, paying her and promising her the opportunity to write about health issues for the Enquirer. McDougal considers herself a fitness expert. When the Enquirer did not publish the Trump story, and backed out of its post-election commitments to her, McDougal cried foul.
This is where what they did becomes particularly insidious. At least in the past, the Enquirer, like most newspapers, was supposed to be committed to the dissemination of information. But here, it was involved in hiding information from the public, information that might have mattered in such a close election.
With this deal, then, prosecutors have fired a warning shot across the bow of the real fake news purveyors. Because of first amendment protections, newspapers believed they could say or do whatever they wanted without consequence. But that is not strictly true. At a certain point, society has an interest in restricting certain kinds of destructive speech. Think of the classic case of somebody yelling “fire” in a crowded theater. Such speech is not protected and can, in fact, be prosecuted. Now it appears that there may be potential criminal liability for newspapers that use their privileged position in American society to damage our political system.
Thus far, most of the commentary about this deal has focused on the risk it represents to Trump, as indeed it does since the testimony and records of the National Enquirer can now be used to bolster the testimony of the decidedly non-credible Michael Cohen. The possible impact of this deal upon fake news, however, could have even more important long-term consequences. Certainly, any law that potentially burdens our free speech rights will face tough inquiry by the Courts. But the principle that free speech rights are not absolute is well established, and the National Enquirer may have unwittingly added an exception to this right where journalists purposely obscure facts to impact an election.
If you liked this post, you might also like: | https://greinerou.medium.com/striking-a-blow-against-fake-news-7bbcea8209d9 | ['Michael Greiner'] | 2018-12-17 23:13:23.611000+00:00 | ['Government', 'Politics', 'Words That Matter 2017', 'Law', 'Fake News'] |
How to fail 2021? An anti-guide to New Year resolutions | This brief article is meant for those among us who like to set up new goals and New Year resolutions and remarkably fail them.
2020 showed that classical goal setting (for example, SMART) does not always work and therefore in this article, in a half-joke and half-serious form, we want to show you how to build anti-goals.
There are easy steps which we need to follow in order to fail any of our New Year resolutions:
Step 1. Before 2020 ends, set SMART goals for the next year
Step 2. Forget to review your goals in January 2021
Step 3. Forget to review them in all the following months until December 2021
Step 4. Don’t follow your intuition
Step 5. Don’t rely on your gut feelings
Step 6. Confuse yourself by following various predictions of your future
Step 7. Do not create / develop and follow your own vision
Step 8. Hope for the best
Good luck and a Happy New Year!
“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players…”
(W. Shakespeare, As You Like It)
We believe that each and every one of us is not only a leading actor but first and foremost a writer of our own destiny. Overwhelmed by life events, we may unintentionally forget that we are the sole playwrights of our own lives. We may even unwittingly drop or lose the thread of our unfolding life story. Then, we start questioning ourselves and let others do the writing for us. Doesn’t this happen to all of us occasionally? The best thing we can do is to resume the leadership as soon as we can: only we should write the play of our life!
With the renewed confidence and new skills, we design new perspectives. Coaching and training are some of the best instruments we use to achieve this goal. | https://medium.com/@anna-97073/how-to-fail-2021-an-anti-guide-to-new-year-resolutions-3e550e7ae150 | ['Anna Gross'] | 2020-12-23 13:54:15.641000+00:00 | ['Best Year Ever', 'New Year 2021', 'Annagross', 'New Year Resolution', 'Coaching'] |
Interesting AI/ML Articles You Should Read This Week (Sep 19) | “GPT-3 impressively explains the origin of everything”
Kirk Ouimet article is a dialogue between himself and GPT-3, which is referred to as ‘Wise Being’.
The content of the dialogue is around the origin of the Big Bang and other associated topics such as time, space and the Universe.
I was truly expecting to be bored or at the very least be a little bit impressed by the output of the ‘Wise Being’ in the dialogue.
After reading the entirety of the dialogue and article, I would have to admit that the responses from the ‘Wise Being’ felt almost human-like, and surpassed my initial expectations. The responses were well put together and had some form of logic, well as much logic as possible when answering questions that are outside the realms of human imagination.
The key takeaway for me from this article is that the GPT-3 language model is clearly very robust and can mimic creativeness. It also has the ability to draw upon the relevant source of text from its training data to provide some decent responses.
Although it should be noted that GPT-3’s responses are not actually unique and is not generated as a product of reasoning. Not for now, anyway.
An excellent read for: | https://towardsdatascience.com/interesting-ai-ml-articles-you-should-read-this-week-sep-19-92ee6b14c12c | ['Richmond Alake'] | 2020-09-18 22:36:10.289000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Towards Data Science', 'Data Science', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Machine Learning'] |
Terraform: don’t use kubernetes provider with your cluster resource! | So you use terraform to create a kubernetes cluster. This is not at all uncommon to create some resources in the cluster as well. Like some namespaces, RBAC, network policies and maybe even deploy an ingress controller. You decided that it all belongs to the infrastructure and terraform is your IaC tool.
Thankfully, terraform has kubernetes provider that can do exactly this.
Let’s take the following minimalistic example. It creates an Azure Kubernetes Service Cluster and a namespace in it:
If you apply this script, the 3 resources will be created in the correct order and you will see the green result from terraform. So far so good.
And at this point you will probably continue adding infrastructure to the project and never look back.
But as soon as you make a change in the cluster configuration that leads to cluster recreate, you will be surprised what happens when you run terraform refresh .
You will start getting strange errors.
It can be something like this:
Error: Get “ http://localhost/api/v1/namespaces/demo ": dial tcp 127.0.0.1:80: connect: connection refused
Or I also saw something like this:
Error: Kubernetes cluster unreachable: invalid configuration: no configuration has been provided, try setting KUBERNETES_MASTER environment variable
Seems like the kubernetes provider configuration is somehow reset? But why at refresh?
And no, it doesn’t help setting explicit dependency between the resources. The graph looks pretty good:
As usually, only after playing around, scratching your had, searching the internet, you will finally read carefully through the official kubernetes provider documentation:
WARNING When using interpolation to pass credentials to the Kubernetes provider from other resources, these resources SHOULD NOT be created in the same Terraform module where Kubernetes provider resources are also used. This will lead to intermittent and unpredictable errors which are hard to debug and diagnose. The root issue lies with the order in which Terraform itself evaluates the provider blocks vs. actual resources. Please refer to this section of Terraform docs for further explanation.
Bold text is marked by me.
Hence the title of this post. You need to split cluster creation and creating resources in it into two different scripts. And preferably use terraform remote state data source to get required cluster information for the kubernetes provider. | https://itnext.io/terraform-dont-use-kubernetes-provider-with-your-cluster-resource-d8ec5319d14a | ['Pavel Tuzov'] | 2021-02-03 20:01:41.360000+00:00 | ['Azure Kubernetes Service', 'Infrastructure As Code', 'Kubernetes', 'Terraform', 'Azure'] |
Claude Roget: Philosopher or Fraud? | Louis Bloch’s critical biography Claude Roget: Montmartre Mountebank denounces one of the most influential philosophers of our time as an “audacious plagiarist.” Bloch’s argument that Roget’s books leave an “embarrassing stain” on contemporary philosophy has generated both moral outrage against and spirited defense for Roget’s intellectual legacy — the Post-Linguistic school of philosophy. Devoted students have recently posted the legendary unabridged first editions of Roget’s works — which many believe are loaded with plagiarized passages — on the Internet, fueling debate over the extent of Roget’s originality.
Roget’s boyhood does little to suggest the later lady-killer and shameless self-promoter. Teachers described him as a “wall-flower,” and “silent as a stone.” His most marked characteristic as a boy was his constant fear of his mother’s purse, an overstuffed accessory that he would point at in shrill terror until she removed it from view. But after his father’s death in battle during the Algerian civil war, the embryo of Roget’s personality emerges. His grief gave way to a burst of extroversion, and an interest in debating and student government. In his high school debating club he developed a reputation for defending the most absurd theories, once arguing that the more cheeses a society (like France) produces, the more likely it is to experience civil unrest, in contrast with the politically stable but cheese-illiterate nations of Britain and the United States. But having discovered Marx in his senior year of high school, Roget saw France’s instability, cheese-induced or otherwise, as a state of affairs ripe for exploitation.
Roget rocketed to fame at the age of twenty-four during the violent May, 1968 campus convulsions in Paris. As a student protester, Roget quickly published the long manifesto Order Is Terror, which argued that since the social order in France was enforced by armed police it was inherently violent and oppressive. “If France truly believes in democratic principles,” he wrote “it must disband the army and police to let the will of the people rise to the surface unchecked.” Although reviews found Order Is Terror “abysmal” and “bereft of scholarship or thought,” in the climate of the campus convulsions it earned Roget an assistantship at the Sorbonne, where he has remained on the faculty to this day, despite not having taught a class there since 1987.
Even early in his career Professor Roget focused his energy more on producing works for publication than on teaching. Bloch, a former student of Roget, remembers him holding court with his admirers at a café:
Roget often said things he thought especially witty or insightful. Sometimes he would stop the conversation in mid-sentence, and hold up his hands to silence us while he wrote down what he had just said. He believed everything he said had relevance to some book he was writing. As his fame grew, some of us volunteered to serve as Roget’s scribes. We learned to watch his face for the discreet nod that meant he had just said something he believed worthy of preservation.
But there were still times when Roget was forced to take his own notes. Bloch relates one former lover’s claim that Roget took notes for his absurdist play Decapitation and Capitalism while they made love, scribbling even during her climax. Today it is not unusual for Roget’s dinner guests to see him switch on a pocket tape recorder to record his entire dinner-hour monologue after their small talk has ceased and he has seized the reins of the conversation.
Roget solidified his reputation in 1973 with the publication of Literature and Vacuum, which argued that all writing — from an infant’s pre-literate crayoning to King Lear — are of “precisely equal value,” and that only the dictates of race, class, and gender fool us into valuing literature over other forms of writing. But more than a critique of literature, Literature and Vacuum set out to show the appalling limits of language itself to represent reality. Consider:
Language always connotes itself self-referentially as a solipsistic meta-language, an infinite regress mediated by its own inherent linguistic modality about itself, which, ipso facto, is incommensurate with “reality” as hitherto described by post-Humean and pre-Heideggarian Western metaphysicians working within the epistemological straightjacket of murky and untestable neo-Kantian a priori propositions about our collective ψυχε [psyche]. Plato’s famous condemnation of poetry as dangerous to his Republic sprang from his insight that poetry has the effrontery to claim that it transcends language and says something “meaningful” about “the world” — rather than about other Words, as we now know. Science, by atomizing reality, makes no such claims of transcendence, but, through its mundane and joyless exactitude, manufactures the pervasive and comforting illusion that our absurdly arbitrary units of measuring “reality” — the meter, the Celsius degree, the hour, the color “blue” — are worthy nets with which to capture the slippery and incomprehensible flux that “reality” “really” “is.”
Indeed, for Roget, Man’s development of language represents regression in evolutionary terms:
Because a dog is more in tune with the magical, pre-linguistic world, the dog’s barking and growling — indeed, the sounds he emits during defecation — are far more “meaningful” and “poetic” than even the strongest passages in Proust or Dante.
A masterpiece of timing, Literature and Vacuum was just the book that a generation of philosophers weaned on Post-Structuralism was waiting for. Roget was quickly heralded as the Deconstructor-In-Chief of the Post-Linguistic Movement by Maurice Duchamps, Professor of Non-American Studies at the Sorbonne, who had become Roget’s intellectual valet. Duchamps’ seminal article “Uncommunicative Modalities In Roget’s Anti-Texts” launched scathing salvos at traditional philosophy, including his famous assertion that “those who still study the so-called Great Philosophers in earnest are like so many naïve children.” A flood of articles appeared heralding “The Post-Linguistic Movement,” many of which reverentially cited Roget’s work as sacred text. Despite his argument that “the linguistico-philosophical enterprise is hardly nobler than a good game of Scrabble®,” Roget started churning out wordy philosophical tomes at the dizzying pace of four per year for the rest of the 1970s.
Probably the most influential of these, Words: First Tools of Capitalistic Oppression (1979),was an eight-hundred page neo-Marxist interpretation of the Garden of Eden myth in Genesis, chapters 2–3. In it, Roget interprets the character God as playing the role of “the Original Capitalist Overlord” who falsely promised Man an earthly paradise, only to later condemn him to a lifetime of working the soil:
God deliberately places the serpent in Paradise to tempt Adam’s new “helpmate” (co-worker) into eating of the Tree of Knowledge (Words), casting Man into the linguistic prison from which he is yet to emerge. Later, when Man unifies to build the Tower of Babel, God senses a threat to his monopoly of ultimate linguistic power. So God confuses Man with a shower of strange tongues, dividing the workers for thousands of years. Capitalists from all ages have found inspiration from this example.
Despite a chorus of praise for Words: First Tools of Capitalistic Oppression, the burgeoning feminist voice in American academia roundly attacked Roget, now a fixture at NYU, for the perceived sexism in the work. They detected a latent homosexuality in the Frenchman, citing his praise of Adam’s idyllic life before the creation of Eve and the expulsion from Eden as an “infantile wish for a world without women.” Roget laughed off these charges as the “Words of sexless spinsters,” further envenoming a growing corps of enemies.
Painstaking in its linguistic analysis of Genesis (Roget devotes a long chapter to an analysis of the word “those”), Words: First Tools of Capitalistic Oppression represented the high-water mark of Rogetian scholarship. Having established his core tenet that “though everything is a text, all texts are meaningless,” Roget now turned his attention to analyzing the “meta-meanings” supposedly lurking within otherwise innocent-looking printed words all around us.
Thus, Roget expanded the scope of the Post-Linguistic school by applying its methods to “cultural artifacts” in our daily lives — letters, postcards, laundry lists, recipes, tax forms, and other of modern man’s “daily contacts with written language.” Roget saw a higher social validity to his studies than to traditional scholarship, which concerned itself only with elitist literary and philosophical classics. Thus, the books of Roget’s middle period of 1979–88, such works as Cryptography and Food Labeling; Stratagems of Corporate Enslavement; The ”List” as Archetype; Words: What Are They Good For?;and Calendar and Subtext, represent a neo-Marxian attempt to “bring philosophy to the common man” by analyzing everyday “Word encounters.”
Stratagems of Corporate Enslavement (1986), critiqued the corporation’s growing role in modern life. Roget posited a “Corporate Mother,” not unlike Orwell’s Big Brother, that will assume many functions of government and the churches. The first essay “The Sticky Note as Ephemeral Text” is typical of Roget’s approach. Consider:
Although regarded by office workers as a harmless, even useful, invention, the Post-It Note (also known as the “Sticky Note” and by other aliases) insidiously undermines the durability of written language. The written word, which in ancient times was etched in stone, or painstakingly written with a stylus or feather pen, stood for something permanent. Even more than the invention of the microcomputer with its blinking, ephemeral text, the Sticky Note screams the transience of its own message. It also communicates in a blatantly corporate manner. When looking at a Sticky Note, we never see the words alone; we see our words in the context of the modern corporate office, always as furthering some task for the Corporate Mother. Many workers now write a significant percentage of their lifetime written output upon this disposable medium — communicating only with themselves, isolated from their brother workers. Insidiously, workers come to rely on the Sticky Notes in place of their own, now-atrophied, short-term memories. The Sticky Notes become the very medium of their thoughts, and soon they degenerate into white-collar crime, dropping the desired Sticky Notes into their pockets or purses. Wise companies do not discourage this practice, knowing that even in the home, the Sticky Note serves as a silent reminder of the ever-present demands of the worker’s Corporate Life. Subconsciously guilty for stealing the Sticky Notes, many workers compulsively think about their jobs, or even perform little tasks at home for their Corporate Mother. The Corporate Mother’s colonization of workers’ homes always begins with the footholds established by pilfered office supplies. The wise corporation even offers to install computers or other expensive equipment in their workers’ homes, knowing the salubrious effect this will have on the minds of even the most slothful employees.
Consider also Roget’s theory of the Business Meeting:
Modern business meetings concern themselves primarily with aggression and the affirmation of corporate hierarchies. Indeed, we are not surprised to learn that the origins of the modern business meeting lie in the gatherings of marauding 8th century Anglo-Saxon tribes — forbears of the great capitalist nations of Germany, Britain, and the United States. In fact, the English word “meeting” is itself ultimately derived from the Old English “mead,” [sic] the wine drank in “mead halls” (“meeting halls”) after the tribe’s successful conquests, as in the epic Beowulf. Are our espresso-slurping corporate chieftains any different after their latest mega-merger?
Despite the penetration of some of Roget’s analyses, his works grew even denser and more inscrutable than Literature and Vacuum — and it is doubtful that many common men whiled away their hours reading them. Dr. Nigel Tarreyton of Oxford lamented that Roget, who had once claimed to have destroyed the validity of both the American Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution in twenty-five pages, now “devotes twice that space to a label on a piece of fruit.”
He also continued to alienate his feminist critics. His persistent use of the word “Man” for humanity, and his silence on women’s issues, had made Roget an enemy of the feminist movement. Roget’s response was his only play, the avant-garde La Décapitation et le Capitalisme (Decapitation and Capitalism), a pilot for his revolutionary school of theater, “The Theater of Loathing.”
First performed in Paris at La Cartoucherie on September 11, 1989, Roget’s “spectacle of loathing” depicts a young woman (“The Woman”) behind thick dollar-sign ($) shaped steel bars, futilely reaching her hand out of the cage for a crust of bread. The bread, an impossibly large baguette, never fits through the bars despite the best efforts of The Woman. Meanwhile, her oversized rubber shoes are shaped like breasts, and at her feet snap huge lip-shaped, mechanical jaws, ostensibly representing her suckling children. The only man in the play (“The Man”) wears a black mask, and carries a large tapered club, unmistakably suggestive of a phallus (and indistinguishable from the baguette), with which he repeatedly urinates on the desired bread and beats the woman whenever he enters her cage. Minor variations on this theme occur throughout the play’s five acts. During the final scene, the stage is darkened, and The Man decapitates The Woman with the symbol-laden club: The Woman lets out a long, blood-curdling scream, sustaining it even while a symbolic female mannequin’s head rolls into the audience and up the aisle, triggering uncontrollable laughter even in Paris audiences.
The five-hour play ran for only two weeks in Paris despite lavish financing, and has never been re-produced. Its critical reception was brutal, and even Roget’s academic lackeys stayed uncharacteristically mute. Yet Roget remained convinced he had written a masterpiece, and continued to cite Decapitation and Capitalism in his own writing as an important work, comparable to the best plays of Beckett, Brecht, or Pinter. Although Roget may have intended Decapitation and Capitalism as an olive branch to his feminist critics, many of them saw it as Roget’s greatest chauvinistic outrage to date — albeit a coded one.
Other clouds were gathering around Roget’s reputation. By 1992, many American academics were envious of Professor Roget’s reputation and feather-light teaching load at NYU, and embarked on an intensive critical analysis of his books. Doubts arose that he alone could have possibly written one million words per year for the past fifteen years running. Some of his colleagues suspected most Rogetian research had been conducted by his graduate assistants.
A self-appointed body of fifty professors from the United States and Britain, calling itself the Committee Against Corruption in Academia (CACA), began to check Roget’s footnotes, evaluate his research, and validate the originality of his most obfuscated passages. They also demanded that Roget produce the rough drafts of his works, a request he “wouldn’t dignify” by honoring.
After a two-year investigation, CACA met in New York in August 1994 to compile its findings. Rumors circulated that some of Roget’s former students had discovered meaningful chunks of their old term papers lurking deep within his mammoth works. Some of Roget’s former student “scribes,” who had once dutifully transcribed his every café utterance, now claimed that long passages of his mumbling had been inserted into the late chapters of his works verbatim. Pages of staggeringly Germanic complexity from Hegel, Leibniz, Spengler, and Schopenhauer had also been included without attribution. And Roget’s newest bête noir, Professor Katelyn Nokin of Michigan State, who had unilaterally spearheaded an independent probe into Roget’s personal life, unearthed some three-hundred female students with whom Roget reputedly had had sex (apparently without satisfying). Nokin was especially scandalized by Roget’s rumored practice of demanding a hot breakfast the morning after a rendezvous, and then badgering all of his mistresses (even unlettered prostitutes) to solve ancient philosophical paradoxes that still baffle specialists.
And yet CACA’s final report, which was sure to lead to Roget’s total disgrace even in France, was never to appear. A closed-door session of CACA’s central committee unanimously resolved to drop the matter after three days’ heated debate. Yet a few committee members later leaked the motivation behind CACA’s last-minute silence: Nearly all professional philosophers had been praising Roget in their own publications for years. A full expose would reveal that they themselves had scarcely read his works. In the “publish or perish” world of the contemporary university Roget seemed only an extremely effective practitioner of what so many other professors were trying themselves to accomplish.
Roget himself had not been idle during this mortal threat to his reputation. He had busied himself weeding out the most hideous verbal excrescence and shameless piracy from his works, and had published much slimmer second editions, sometimes at less than half their original length. And the first editions, which were largely unavailable off-campus, began mysteriously disappearing from the shelves of university libraries. Librarians purchased the slimmer, plagiarism-free second editions, effectively concealing the evidence of Roget’s scholarly crime from future students. Even more perversely, the first editions became collectors’ items, a process that accelerated their disappearance from campus libraries.
Roget became reclusive after his near destruction by CACA. He claimed, in a carefully orchestrated 1996 interview with Der Spiegel, that the only accusations that had ever “hurt” him were that his works were “insincere.” He claimed to have recently spent four weeks on holiday in the Australian Outback, getting in touch with his inner Man, and developing a “personal primal scream” to “affirm [his] own post-linguistic nature.” Asked about his plagiarism, Roget replied: “Authorship is a bourgeois illusion. No one owns The Words.” He claimed that the verbatim passages from his undergraduates’ term papers had been included in his works intentionally in order to bolster his theories of The Death of the Author, and the “inherently communal nature of language.”
Roget’s Legacy
The sheer size of Roget’s collected works makes assessing his legacy problematic. His groundbreaking research into vanity license plates and food labels brought an immediacy and relevancy usually lacking in contemporary philosophy. Works such as Literature and Vacuum and Words: First Tools of Capitalist Oppression displayed unprecedented linguistic acuity, even while they paradoxically argued that human language was by now a blunted instrument, less “true” than vibrations emanating from insects or dolphins. Yet the researches of CACA unearthed a hurried and less scholarly Roget, absent-mindedly or otherwise including thousands of words of writers as varied as Kant and his own undergraduates without proper attribution. The careful scholar must sift through mounds of Roget’s lifetime logorrhea in order to find the nuggets of original wisdom lurking within. Yet for these it is perhaps worth the whiff of plagiarism and perhaps chauvinism that engulfs them.
Despite the condemnation of Roget’s plagiarism, his works have been too influential to perish. Literature and Vacuum, Words: First Tools of Capitalistic Oppression, Calendar and Subtext and several other books will be read as long as philosophy is taught in universities. In fact, Roget’s first editions are now available on the Internet, and in a recent plagiarism case at the University of Ohio, school officials found that seven students had downloaded Roget’s work for inclusion in term papers as their own. So perhaps Roget was right after all: the words return full circle.
###
First published in The Satirist
Get The Satirist Newsletter! | https://dan-geddes.medium.com/claude-roget-philosopher-or-fraud-6f5f8b145909 | ['Dan Geddes'] | 2019-03-03 15:29:40.186000+00:00 | ['Postmodernism', 'Philosophy', 'Deconstruction', 'Academia', 'Satire'] |
Review on the Global Economic Situation and How It May Impact Tokenized Assets part 1 — Debt | In our previous post, we mentioned that major economies are facing a series of lingering or new-found difficulties:
“… a decade of #stagnation across the Eurozone despite record-setting bond purchases and negative interest rates, Japan in its third “#LostDecade”, and the United States rushing to raise interest rates to brace for the upcoming downturn towards the end of the soon-to-be longest economic expansion since the Great Depression…”
While it is always difficult to time the next #recession, any level-headed observer would see that after a decade of #expansion a #downturn is likely inching closer. In this context, it is interesting to look at some of the structural problems in the global economy and assess how, with consideration of these issues, would the next global economic downturn impact #tokenized assets.
First, an obvious problem that haunts many is #debt. Too many economies have seen debt level rise too fast for too long. #IMF has an overview with the latest data. It is easy to see that debt is plaguing most advanced economies and #China, all with significant levels of public as well as private debt. An interesting dynamic here has to do with interest rates: Simply put, due to the rapid growth of debt in recent years, when interest #rates are low, some debtors may find it difficult to service their debt if interest rates rise. Before central banks tighten monetary policies and raise interest rates, therefore, they have to take into account the effects on debt servicing.
At the same time, we see that interest rate below inflation has not stimulated much lending and growth. The #Eurozone serves as a prime example. The #ECB has resorted to actively buying corporate bonds in the hope of injecting #liquidity to the economy. An increase in interest rates may not be in sight. The US #FederalReserve, on the other hand, has been carefully increasing interest rates, as central bankers prepare for the next downturn.
Our view is that the Federal Reserve is generally correct in taking proactive rate hikes, though some leading economists suggest that this should have taken place earlier, when the US economy already recovered and was booming during #Obama’s second term. As others have suggested, however, this is a very delicate matter, and it is probably a matter of time when the Federal Reserve will misstep. When that happens, the #Fed will be in a relatively strong position, because of the rate increase, the reserve status of the dollar, and the strength of the US economy. The Eurozone will be ill-prepared, defaults under negative interest rate may happen, and the decade of stagnation can devolve into contraction.
A related observation concerns why persistent low interest rates have failed to stimulate lending and growth in a satisfactory manner, particularly within Eurozone. Our view is that this reveals the limitation of regional monetary policy in a global economy: Simply put, due to deeper structural problems, Eurozone economy is not competitive. We will cover these problems in the coming parts of this review.
What does the debt situation mean for tokenized assets? We see two opposing effects:
On the one hand, when the next economic downturn hits, we can expect growth-related problems. Revenues will likely decline, and productions will likely be scaled back. Tokenized traditional financial instruments (such as the much hyped #STOs) will experience some difficulty, as will the global stock market. #Inventory assets will likely see lower volume and perhaps valuation.
On the other hand, at @IdeaFeX we have much optimism in tokenized assets in general. #ExoticAssets are relatively independent from the global financial markets. On IdeaFeX, exotic assets encompass #collectibles, #BusinessAssets, #CommercialRealEstate, and #infrastructure. In an economic downturn, collectibles and infrastructure may become safe havens for funds escaping more volatile investments. Business assets may be temporarily undervalued, but since our marketplace is launches in late 2019, investors may deem the timing interesting for an entry. After all, the right business assets will appreciate once recovery kicks in.
Moreover, live trading of tokenized assets on IdeaFeX makes it possible to inject liquidity more directly into the economy. Inventory, products, business assets, and infrastructure (in a fashion that improves upon #PPP) classes of tokenized assets can drastically broaden the access to liquidity. For economies where investment and liquidity have been a lingering problem, tokenized assets may be a solution: Effectively, we carve out the efficient parts of the economy and inject liquidity directly to them. Tokenized infrastructure has additional appeal to debt-laden governments who want to have the stimulating effects of infrastructure investment but cannot safely raise more debts.
In sum, while tokenized real-world assets aren’t a panacea, we believe an economic downturn in a period of unsustainable debt levels will be the opportunity for tokenized assets to shine.
This post reflects the opinions of the IdeaFeX team on the economy and our product. It is not meant to be instructional. IdeaFeX does not offer investment advice, nor are we qualified to do so. | https://medium.com/@ifx/review-on-the-global-economic-situation-and-how-it-may-impact-tokenized-assets-part-1-debt-b5945cf1fdae | ['Posts For Ideafex', 'Defunct'] | 2019-02-11 18:04:40.820000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Central Bank', 'Tokenization', 'Macroeconomics', 'Debt'] |
Dismantling the Stigma of Student-Led Initiatives: A Story by Merakit Project | Dismantling the Stigma of Student-Led Initiatives: A Story by Merakit Project
We often say that youth are the future of our nation, yet they are often associated with nuances of incompetence. A partner of Aspiratif.id, Merakit Project shares their break-the-stereotype story. Aspiratif.id Team Follow Dec 18, 2020 · 5 min read
There are three types of reaction to an introduction of something new in this world: accepting the brand new idea, rejecting the brand new idea, or having a certain limitation whether they are accepting/rejecting. Where does this term apply? Who will reach in this situation? The answer is uncertain because one’s reaction could always influence others. This leads to the crucial figure and time matrix that is believed to have grand ideas to disrupt the society for the better, the youth and early-young-adults. Some of them are creating a small community, some are choosing to build a non-profit or non-governmental organization, even some are starting to build a company based on their self-anxiety and motivation to an issue.
As a student, I personally believe that we need to view the world as it should be, instead of as it is. Idealist? Maybe. But we never know if we never try to revamp the stigma, right? It turns out, in this current developing society, there are a plethora of students who build a student-led organization. Not only to address certain issues that need to be addressed, but also to learn about how to lead a team and most importantly creating a small step to build impacts. The student-led organization caters to several core deliverables, it could be an educational forum, or even a community-based development program.
When you live in a small city with a short length of exposure, you only know what is happening in your textbook, almost never beyond that. For me, personally, it is because there is little to no program to help me understand what it’s like to be living in another city with higher exposure. When someone moved out from that small city to the capital for their study, the shock both socially and academically is so high. Turns out, 87% of my peers feel the same and 90% are hoping to know what it’s like to have bigger exposure since the beginning. This is how my peers and I built Merakit.
Merakit is a community-based organization that is focusing on the educational and sharing platform for academic and non-academic (e.g. culture and trend) agendas for students in Madiun. At the first glance, you might see that this organization is the “noble” one due to its purpose in developing the youth during their student phase. Yet, again, in every initiative, there are three types of reactions. In the first month of Merakit, a ton of negative feedbacks are running through Twitter and Instagram, expecting Merakit as a sunset community that will be dead in the first month due to the assumption of, “People here will never, ever, and ever, be developed with any organization. It is just another early failure.” The stigma of a student-led organization, not only Merakit, but also a ton out there all over Indonesia is the same: an early failure.
Did we, as Merakit, stop? No, we did not, we are growing. In four months, Merakit has introduced Model UN to students in Madiun, resulting in one winner from Merakit in an international MUN as a first-timer. Merakit also became the platform to connect with COVID-19 survivor in an exclusive interview, even being the only organization to have collaborated with the Indonesian community in Germany to advocate environmental protection during Eid Adha. The growth is getting bigger and bigger, and the assumption of sunset has never been true because the dusk will always lead to dawn, the sunrise.
To every student-led organization out there. You always have the right to pursue your purpose and initiatives. You always have the right to give back to your surroundings. You are the one who drives the ship and the bigger the wind, the faster you will grow. Again, in every assumption of sunset, will always lead to sunrise. The dusk will always bring the dawn.
There are three types of reaction to an introduction of something new in this world: accepting the brand new idea, rejecting the brand new idea, or having a certain limitation whether they are accepting/rejecting. Where does this term apply? The answer is uncertain because one’s reaction could always influence others. This leads to the crucial figure and time matrix that is believed to have grand ideas to disrupt the society for the better, the youth and early-young-adults. Some of them are creating a small community, some are choosing to build an organization, even some are starting to build a company.
As a student, I personally believe that we need to view the world as it should be, instead of as it is. Idealist? Maybe. But we never know if we never try to revamp the stigma, right? Then, when you live in a small city with a short length of exposure, you only know what is happening in your textbook, almost never beyond that. Based on my organization’s and my survey, when someone moved out from that small city to the capital for their study, the shock both socially and academically is so high. Turns out, 87% of my peers feel the same and 90% are hoping to know what it’s like to have bigger exposure since the beginning. This is how my peers and I built Merakit, a community-based organization that is focusing on the educational and sharing platform for academic and non-academic (e.g. culture and trend) agendas for students in Madiun.
At the first glance, you might see that Merakit is the “noble” one due to its purpose in developing the youth during their student phase. In the first month of Merakit, a ton of negative feedbacks are running through Twitter and Instagram, expecting Merakit as a sunset community that will be dead in the first month due to the assumption of, “People here will never, ever, and ever, be developed with any organization. It is just another early failure.” The stigma of a student-led organization, not only Merakit, but also a ton out there all over Indonesia is the same: an early failure.
Did Merakit stop? No. In four months, Merakit has introduced Model UN to students in Madiun, resulting in one winner from Merakit in an international MUN as a first-timer, became the platform to connect with COVID-19 survivor in an exclusive interview, even being the only organization to have collaborated with the Indonesian community in Germany to advocate environmental protection during Eid Adha. The growth is getting bigger and the assumption of sunset has never been true because the dusk will always lead to dawn, the sunrise.
To every student-led organization out there. You always have the right to pursue your purpose and initiatives. You always have the right to give back to your surroundings. Again, in every assumption of sunset, will always lead to sunrise. The dusk will always bring the dawn again. | https://medium.com/aspiratif-id/dismantling-the-stigma-of-student-led-initiatives-a-story-by-merakit-project-9eb96ef8a177 | ['Aspiratif.Id Team'] | 2020-12-18 11:34:58.869000+00:00 | ['Education', 'Stigma', 'Ngo', 'Youth'] |
Thank you for hurting me | Today I am grateful for the hurt you caused me because it helps me to see who you are and why my friends were right to warn me about you.
I read that I am responsible for my feelings and nobody can do anything “to” me. I’m sure that’s right. But you decided to do something that would hurt me and I am sad. I trusted you but yes, that was my own fault. There were enough signs to tell me what kind of person you are. Enough red flags that should’ve made me think twice before falling for you. But I didn’t think twice. I loved everything about you and so I overlooked what could’ve warned me. I closed both eyes and embraced you as you were. By doing that I abandoned myself. I knew I was doing it but I couldn’t stop, didn’t want to stop. Because when it was good it was so so good.
But now I feel terrible. Because you didn’t choose to embrace me, it seems. Or at least not enough to be considerate of my feelings.
But actually, I want to thank you for hurting me. It shows me where I abandoned myself. It teaches me to stop doing that (hopefully). It helps me to grow. To be wiser next time. To embrace myself first. To love myself. Because I can’t ever ask someone else to love me if I can’t even do it. So thank you for the lesson. Thank you for being there during this time of my life to teach me self love.
I will always be grateful. | https://medium.com/@damarisfey/thank-you-for-hurting-me-96c77a918dc5 | ['Damaris Fey'] | 2021-03-22 12:22:53.710000+00:00 | ['Self-awareness', 'Love Yourself', 'Mindfulness', 'Self Improvement', 'Self Love'] |
Origins of the Callisto Network | A long time ago in a chain far, far away….
This article mostly describes my personal vision and the reasons why I am here doing what I have been doing for the past 5 years starting from the moment before Callisto Network came to existence.
4 years have passed since the founding of Callisto Network. A lot has happened over the years as in our team, our project and the entire crypto industry as a whole.
I usually write an annual report on the work done and the state of Callisto development. However, this time I would like to write in more detail about how it all began, how everything happened and why everything happened exactly as we can now see.
And it started during the ETC/ETH split right after TheDAO hack…
Picking the side in ETC/ETH split
I was engaged in many interviews and I was often asked why at that moment I picked the side of the ETC community. I’ve never gave a fulfilling answer so far. It’s time to explain in more details.
I was watching the progress of Ethereum project since its very beginning. And then there was TheDAO. And then it was hacked and about 3,600,000 ETH were drained from it — the most interesting thing however was the ideological background of “TheDAO event” because technically it was not a hack.
The nitpicky part here is that Ethereum Foundation declared an absurd “code is law” paradigm and promoted their smart-contracts as immutable decentralized applications. They stated that smart-contracts should work exactly as programmed when the code is deployed, although it is obvious to any sane person that any program should work as INTENDED and not as it was CODED because programs can be prone to bugs and it’s a normal practice.
For any person who has minimal experience in programming it should be obvious that program’s code cannot be immutable nor should it! Mistakes are the inevitable part of any software development. Programmers spend 80% of their time dealing with bugs, not writing the code. There is plenty of evidence that a 200-line program has been patched over the decades (like this one).
And then Ethereum developers felt victims of their own mistakes — TheDAO got exploited.
They decided to perform the softfork but it was rejected by the community. After that Ethereum Foundation performed the “DAO bailout hardfork” violating all the core principles of blockchains, decentralization and their own declaration of immutability paradigm. Even though, I would not blame them for doing this. If this were my project, I would also do everything to save my users from losses that were not the result of their faults.
However, I was a strong supporter of decentralization ideology that was later described in “Crypto Decentralists Manifesto” which is still available to anyone as an open document.
Neutrality is necessary. It’s important for anyone participating in blockchain-enabled cooperation to be on an equal footing with everyone else. It doesn’t matter if you wield huge economic power or only a tiny amount. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a saintly Mother Theresa or a vicious drug dealer. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a human or a refrigerator. It doesn’t matter what you believe in, what political theory you subscribe to, or whether you’re a moral or immoral person. A participant’s ethnicity, age, sex, profession, social standing, friends or affiliations, make or model, goals, purposes or intentions — none of this matters to the blockchain even a bit. — A Crypto-Decentralist Manifesto
The actions performed by Ethereum foundation violated the neutrality principle and the opposite side of the conflict was worth supporting in my opinion. There were a lot of those who disagreed with the Ethereum Foundation, and this was the first time in my life when a part of the community showed such an inexorable resistance to censorship in action — they splitted off and supported the “original” chain.
I was clearly supporting both sides of the conflict — ETH and ETC. However, there were people on both sides who supported their ideas with their efforts and investments. All these people, regardless of whether they chose the side of ETH or ETC at that moment, in my opinion, deserve all the best, since the conflict was ideological and the fact that they were involved was already a significant contribution to the history of TheDAO drama.
The difference between ETH supporters and ETC supporters was that ETH side had a well-funded already-existing development team and all their media resources. They already had exchange support and all those benefits remained with them. As the result, I decided that I will join the Ethereum CLassic community to support the minority and learn the underground of “establishing your own crypto project from scratch”.
I picked the pseudo-name “Dexaran” and joined ETC from day0 even before Poloniex Exchange listed ETC and finally gave it a birth.
The Lord of Ethereum CLassic
During the ETC / ETH split and in the early days of the ETC chain, I gained invaluable experience in creating my own project / chain, as well as the process of driving the fork-off successfully.
A number of random facts regarding my early contributions to ETC project:
At the very beginning I sponsored Russian community media resources. Russian community was a big part of ETC lead by BitNovosti (the creator of Crypto Decentralists Manifesto and owner of bitnovosti.com)
After the hack of classicetherwallet.com on July, 2017 I took on the main web wallet of Ethereum CLassic ecosystem and continued it’s development. Currently the wallet.callisto.network is a descendant of that-days classicetherwallet.com
TheDAO hacker paid me 1000 ETC (~$16,000 at that moment) for the security audit of ETC Multisig.
Fun art of good ol’ times. Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/EthereumClassic/comments/7z9r5u/etc_overlords/
After the excitement of the success of ETC birth calmed down we started to realize the reality of driving the project forwards. While the “moral winner” status of ETC was a strong background in TheDAO drama it was the only valuable part of ETC as a project. ETC community started to experience governance and technical problems from the first days.
Ethereum had strong ecosystem represented by rapidly developed wallets, blockchain explorers, bigger community, a team of talented developers with a clear vision. They also had Unicorns!
ETC had none of those (especially unicorns…) and started to lag behind from it’s very first days as it’s wallets needed constant maintenance, explorers were worse than those of ETH and a lot of efforts were required just to keep up with Ethereum.
Two development teams emerged in ETC at that moment:
Apparently it turned out that both teams were focusing on their own vision and none were interested in solving the actual problems of “ETC deprecation” as compared to rapidly evolving Ethereum.
I decided to step in and solve these actual problems myself. I’ve seen Ethereum CLassic as an “ideologically different” copy of Ethereum that experienced no need to differentiate on tech level. You can find my position described here at that time. I realized that a lot of efforts to “make it different” are going to waste because this turned into development for the sake of development. Afterall Ethereum was the most progressive project in the whole industry at that moment and trying to compete with it while having less resources was not so smart idea.
I did some research and found a number of Ethereum-Fork-Coins, including Musicoin, UBQ, Expanse, Pirl etc.
They all required similar resources — blockchian explorers, wallets, RPC nodes. They all solved this similar problems by developing their own versions of these.
At this time I formed the ideology of unifying all the Ethereum-based chains under one project so that we could join our efforts and avoid double work when solving similar problems independently.
I decided to form the Ethereum Commonwealth. I needed a team.
The time of Ethereum Commonwealth
I have described my ideas and launched the Ethereum Commonwealth ICO. It was not as successful as I wanted it to be but I gathered enough funds to hire developers to work on what I thought was necessary for the success of ETC. At that time I hired Yohan Graterol as a programmer who became a co-founder of Callisto Network afterwards.
Shortly after this event, we had a falling out with ETCDEV over some controversial posts on Reddit, and I was accused of discrediting them (although I did not).
At that moment our internal disagreements became obvious. We had 3 teams with different visions and the result was that we couldn’t implement what we wanted to. Charles Hoskinson was proposing a Treasury and governance system ideas developed by IOHK and it looked reasonable at that moment. For me it was obvious that any governance system would be better than no governance system at all.
However, we could not reach a consensus, and whatever changes were made to the protocol, they were made by the protocol developers (ETCDEV team) disregarding what other development teams were proposing.
The main argument was “the impact of these changes is unknown, the risks are too high. Better keep things as they are because somehow it works now”.
At this moment I came to the idea of creating a “live proof” for our ideas. It should have been a separate chain where we could implement the experimental features to show that they do work and it would not hurt the chain. The plan was to port those changes to ETC once they are live tested.
Those changes that I considered necessary were:
Simplified Treasury based on what Hoskinson and IOHK proposed
Security Auditing DAO (view on github) to prevent hacks of DAPPs (this required Treasury and it would have been impossible without it)
“Cold Staking” — a financial feature developed to compensate the effect of extra selling pressure that came as a result of free-of-charge security audits that were paid by the Treasury
Financial transparency — all the “ecosystem” expenses must be covered transparently and must be available to everyone at any time with no restrictions. As the result, we needed an open financial report at the beginning and later we moved to commenting Treasury transaction on-chain.
Decentralization of media resources — to avoid a situation where teams are working on the same project, but one has an employee who controls media resources. Then this employee can ignore the progress of all teams and only cover what his team has done, as if this is the only development in the project. This happened to ETC community.
I have designed the structure of this chain with all the above named features. It was decided to launch it via the airdrop for ETC holders and it was announced at ETC reddit. You can find this announcement here.
At this time, I offered Yohan to become a Callisto co-founder. The Treasury of Callisto Network was just a simple address and we both shared it’s private key (so technically we both had access to the funds at all times). We had an agreement that 33% of Treasury income could be spent by each party (my part of Callisto Team and Yohan’s part of Callisto Team) independently at their will. Another 34% should be allocated for common expenses such as exchange listings, compensations, extra marketing expenses etc.
Callisto Network came to existence
Callito Mainnet was successfully launched on April 15, 2018.
The mainnet launch was not as smooth as planned. Firstly, I was hospitalized during the most important moment of this event and Yohan drived the process on his own. After the launch there was a chain split caused by the 2miners pool that had more than 51% of the network hashrate. We agreed with the owners of 2miners pool to compensate their losses and resync the network. The compensation was paid with Treasury funds (Treasury is a very good idea, you know).
Here you can find more info on the chain split accident.
When the post-launch accidents were resolved we have expanded the team and hired a team of dedicated developers who would work on Callisto Network development only.
Callisto Network was designed, funded and launched as a sub-project of Ethereum Commonwealth with the initial goal of researching experimental improvements of Ethereum protocol that could be proposed to ETC afterwards.
At the stage of pre-launch development all the salaries and expenses were covered with Ethereum Commonwealth ICO funds. In addition, I’ve spent over $500,000 of my personal funds to cover exchange listing fees and paid promotion before the first official exchange listing. At that point of time CLO had no value as it was not traded.
Callisto Network & ETC
In the past years we did everything that we originally planned. You can follow the links above to find my proposals that have been submitted to ETC for the experimental improvements we originally announced as a goal of Callisto launch.
In 2020 ETC suffered a number of 51% attacks. As it was a big issue for Callisto Network earlier, we already had a ready-to-go solution to this problem.
The ECIP-1092: 51%-attack solution was submitted to ETC community that suggested to copy&paste our code as a protection measure that could effectively stop the attacks. This was a live tested solution that was implemented in Callisto and proved to be efficient ‘in real environment’.
Here you can find the video presentation of the ECIP-1092.
Here you can find a technical discussion where all questions were addressed.
The ETC team employee in control of @eth_classic twitter account openly refused to give my proposal the announcement. Here you can find the record of this media censorship on github.
All the Ethereum CLassic Improvement Proposals (ECIPs) that came from Callisto Team were rejected by ETC community (or ETC team leaders) including the proposal for 51%-attack solution.
My proposal to solve 51%-attacks by copying our already-existing code was submitted on 18 August, 2020. ETC community kept suffering 51%-attacks until February 3, 2021 when the MESS solution was presented.
As the result it was decided that Callisto Network must choose its own way instead of following the initial goal of developing improvements for ETC.
Callisto Network 2021 report
In 2021 Callisto Team experienced a significant reorganization. A new entity of Callisto Enterprise was formed and joined the Callisto ecosystem.
Yohan Graterol resigned from his CEO role and Callisto legal entity was transferred from him to Vladimir Vencalek, CEO of Callisto Enterprise.
Key members of the Callisto Network team were also hired as employees of Callisto Enterprise. I took over the role of COO at Callisto Enterprise.
We focused on directing Callisto’s development towards improving the blockchain ecosystem in a more sensible way than keeping ETC protocol up-to-date with Ethereum. As the result, we have introduced:
The SOY.Finance — a new generation DeFi, the only decentralized exchange that support ERC223 token standard.
ERC223 improvement for global adoption.
Crosschain bridge — already live on mainnet.
CallistoNFT — better NFT standard as a superset of ERC721 features.
A number of token offerings that driven attention of investors, such as CHOAM token.
The most important thing in the industry of tokens
2022 is going to be a year of token standards.
You can remember the time of ERC20-ERC223 standard disputes. It was a hot topic but it calmed down then. Despite the fact that ERC20 tokens are still vulnerable.
The same goes for ERC721 and CallistoNFT — we have a better standard to offer this world.
This is not an easy task to change the ecosystem that already formed. However this needs to be done in order to make significant improvements. Now we have the team, experience and desire to achieve this goal.
We will introduce and promote better token standards, better token exchanges, better explorers for better user experience. | https://medium.com/@dexaran820/origins-of-the-callisto-network-5785a40d2817 | [] | 2021-12-31 13:41:49.461000+00:00 | ['Security', 'Standards', 'Nft Collectibles', 'Ethereum', 'Nft'] |
React 2020 — P6: Class Component Props | We covered class components in the previous article. We created a couple of Jim Carrey movie components and we stopped there since we didn’t want to keep creating new movie components for each Jim Carrey movie.
It would be beneficial if we had one component that allowed us to render any movie that Jim Carrey appeared in by passing in the movie name as the argument. If you’ve been following along, passing arguments should not be a new concept for you in React. We already looked at how to pass arguments in functional components; we just need to figure out how to do it in class-based components.
Let’s create a new file under src/components and call it BestJimCarreyMovies.js.
The file will contain a class-based component named BestJimCarreyMovies that returns a string “Movie by Jim Carrey.” The component should be exported so that it can be imported elsewhere.
We’ll import it in our src/App.js file and render it in our App component.
Once you make sure that you’re running your development server (npm start), check the browser.
The first two movies are from the two components that we created in the previous article.
In functional components we passed the props object as an argument to the functional component. The props object contains all of the properties that were declared. In class components, since we extend React.Component, we gain access to the props object through inheritance. To access a property or method inside of the object, we use the this keyword. If you’re not familiar with this, you’ll need to familiarize yourself with Object Oriented Programming. The easiest way that I can explain it is if you’re talking about yourself you use the I or my pronouns. For example, if you were talking about your eyes you would say my eyes. If you were talking about someone else’s eyes, you would say his/her/their eyes. With this (my) you’re pointing to yourself. Since props was inherited, it’s within the object, so you’ll reference it with this.
The process of creating the property is the same as what we did with functional components. When you render your component in the App component, you’ll attach a custom property to it; in this case we’ll create a custom property named movie.
In src/App.js <BestJimCarreyMovies movie="Ace Ventura" />
The movie gets attached to the props object and is accessible by using this.props.movie.
In src/components/BestJimCarreyMovies.js return(
<div>{ this.props.movie } by Jim Carrey</div>
)
If we check our browser, we can see that Ace Ventura by Jim Carrey is displayed. We can now render this component as many times as we want and pass a new argument to it each time.
I know you see where this is going. Why not abstract this out even further? Why not just create a Movie component and pass the movie title and actor as props?
We can render movies from Jim Carrey or from any other actor now.
That’s really all there is to the props object in class based components. See you in the next article when we cover JSX. | https://medium.com/dev-genius/react-2020-p6-class-component-props-af254c103d14 | ['Dino Cajic'] | 2020-09-03 20:57:25.596000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Web Development', 'React', 'Reactjs', 'Programming'] |
Another Tesla Record | The capitalization of Tesla (TSLA), a leading company in the electric car sector, exceeded $500 billion for the first time.
This is a milestone that has long seemed within reach of the company, whose shares have gone — in the space of eight months — from a value of 107 dollars to that recorded yesterday of 555.4 dollars, for a positive percentage change of 419%.
Tesla continues to dominate
Tesla is undoubtedly a young seedling in a sector — such as the automotive one. Still, its nature as a “first mover” in the sector’s electricity branch has allowed it to record growth at a record rate.
From the close of the stock market on Friday to the session on Tuesday, the company’s shares jumped 13.6%, with the share capitalization that has now crossed the threshold of 500 billion euros (526.4, to be exact).
This is a value that allows Tesla to overcome the aggregate market capitalization of some of the world’s leading automotive companies such as Toyota, Volkswagen, General Motors, Ford, FCA, and the PSA Group.
With the debut on the S&P 500 index at the gates — a sort of coronation for the young Californian company — Tesla is preparing to greet a year that has profoundly revolutionized the company’s prospects and, more generally, those of the electricity sector. An ascent that has inevitably also filled the pockets of Elon Musk, now — as certified by Bloomberg — in second place in the ranking of the world’s billionaires. | https://medium.com/@theclaudiajoseph/another-tesla-record-ce1d244d810f | ['Claudia Joseph'] | 2020-11-26 18:40:24.706000+00:00 | ['Trading', 'Tesla', 'Stocks', 'Elon Musk', 'Stock Market'] |
No, cryptocurrency is not dead — here are 5 reasons why | There is a lot of debate permeating the internet about whether cryptocurrency is dead. The price of Bitcoin has fallen 65% from it’s 2017 highs and we’ve seen a total cryptocurrency market cap fall from $1 trillion to $260 billion.
Former diehard Hodlers have returned to full-time gaming and our grandparents have stopped asking us about this “Bitcoin” thing. But is cryptocurrency really dead?
Here are 5 reasons why it’s not:
1.Cryptocurrency prices rose exponentially and declined slowly. Usually bubbles form and burst in the opposite direction — steady increases over a long period of time and a sudden crash. This happened in infamous crashes such as the 1987 Black Monday, Dot Com crash and 2008 Global Financial Crisis. The most recent cryptocurrency trend has been a staggered decline, about three times longer than its rise. A slow decline is more indicative of healthy correction rather than an absolute crash.
2. The blockchain and smart contract technology remains intact. There was no Bitcoin security breach, no superseding technology, nor any threat that renders Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies useless. The supporting phenomenon that popularised cryptocurrencies in the first place is better than ever and represents an alternative to the legacy financial systems (and other systems) that we have in place today.
3. We now have over 24M blockchain wallet users worldwide. This is a 15% increase since the end of last year, which has occurred even during the declines of the last few months. This also represents an almost 100% year-on-year increase of wallet users worldwide.
4. More businesses than ever are accepting cryptocurrency as payment for goods and services. This doesn’t just include major companies such as PayPal and Expedia, it also includes an influx smaller businesses as well (see list of businesses accepting crypto payments here). Cryptocurrencies are also the preferred method of payment for internet based freelancers which are becoming an increasingly important economic engine of the digitised 21st century.
5. We’ve been here before. For those who have been involved in crypto for longer than a year have experienced at least one major fall in the price of Bitcoin. This is not our first rodeo and it is certainly not our most significant crash either.
A more convincing argument to why crypto is alive and well, is that we still don’t know who Satoshi Nakamoto is. Until we hear it from the horses mouth, there is no reason to assume that cryptocurrency is going away any time soon.
Whoever Satoshi is (I personally think it was Nick Szabo, see reasons why here), he created an amazing gift and has left it for humanity. More important than arguing over whether cryptocurrency is dead, is arguing over who is going to play Satoshi Nakamoto in the blockbuster Bitcoin movie! | https://medium.com/localcoinswap/no-cryptocurrency-is-not-dead-heres-5-reasons-why-ca5a302d47bd | ['Tom Underwood'] | 2018-04-03 03:47:06.417000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin'] |
Annie Duke on Poker, Probabilities, and How We Make Decisions (Ep. 99) | Annie Duke on Poker, Probabilities, and How We Make Decisions (Ep. 99)
For Annie Duke, the poker table is a perfect laboratory to study human decision-making — including her own. “It really exposes you to the way that you’re thinking,” she says, “how hard it is to avoid decision traps, even when you’re perfectly well aware that those decision traps exist. And how easy it is for like your mind to slip into those traps.” She’s spent a lot of time studying human cognition at the poker table and off it — her best-known academic article is about psycholinguistics and her forthcoming book is titled How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices.
Annie joined Tyler to explore how payoffs aren’t always monetary, the benefits and costs of probabilistic thinking, the “magical thinking” behind why people buy fire insurance but usually don’t get prenups, the psychology behind betting on shark migrations, how her most famous linguistics paper took on Steven Pinker, how public policy would change if only the top 500 poker players voted, why she wasn’t surprised to lose Celebrity Apprentice to Joan Rivers, whether Trump has a tell, the number one trait of top poker players, and more.
Listen to the full conversation
You can also watch a video of the conversation here.
Read the full conversation
TYLER COWEN: And how does one introduce Annie Duke? I would say, most of all, she is a force of nature, a best-selling author in multiple books, a very famous poker player, an expert in decision theory, and she has a new book coming out this September, called How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices. Annie, welcome.
ANNIE DUKE: Thank you for having me. I’m super excited to dig in and get into this conversation.
COWEN: Let me start with a simple question. How can we spot situations when thinking probabilistically is likely to make our decisions worse rather than better?
DUKE: How can we spot situations when thinking probabilistically is likely to make our decisions worse rather than better? That is such an interesting question. Honestly, I would say that those situations would only be . . . In some ways I’m not sure that this means that you’re not thinking probabilistically. It’s just what do you do with the information? But there are certain times when thinking through what the probabilities are in terms of what your reaction is — given the downside risks that you might be exposed to — wouldn’t make sense.
The classic example would be the sensitivity versus specificity argument. If I’m out on the savannah as an evolving human and I hear rustling in the grass, it’s probably not great for me to think, what’s the probability that that’s a lion? Because the downside is so great. The magnitude of the downside — dying — is so great that thinking categorically in that . . . just yes or no in that situation probably makes sense for survival. But I would love to hear your thoughts on that because I’m kind of hard pressed to think of a lot of examples in which thinking probabilistically isn’t helpful.
COWEN: There may be cases where thinking probabilistically conflicts with the kind of authenticity. Say one of our audience members is out on a date, should he or she set up a kind of mental probability ticker? Well, you start off the date thinking, “The chance I marry this person is 2.3 percent.” And then as the evening progresses, the number might go up. It might go down. It’s hard for some people not to think that way. Yet it seems, actually, your chance just might lower if you even open up that door at all, right?
DUKE: Actually, I love that example. I think it depends on what your goal is, right? If your goal is to find a great match, then I think that that’s actually helpful because the fact that you’re thinking that way means that you’re more likely to be talking to somebody who is compatible with somebody who thinks that way. So while it might reduce the number of people that you might match with, the number of people that might end up being long-term, the quality of the match, I think, would go up because you would be more likely to be compatible in terms of the way that you thought about the world.
I always think that this goes into the category of what are you doing with the information? One of the things that I really try to think about is what’s the difference between — and I think this goes into this category, and correct me if I’m misunderstanding — but I think about what’s the difference between a goal and what’s the difference between thinking about what your expected value is.
I think that we confuse the two things — that we’re allowed to set really high goals and believe that we will reach them, and at the exact same time, we can be thinking in expected value, which of course is just thinking probabilistically combined with what the payoffs are. Understand that the expected value may be well below what our goal is. And I think that these two things can actually live in the same space.
It’s kind of a false dichotomy to think that you can only do one thing or the other, that if you have this kind of running ticker of, let’s call it our expected value, on the date that you can’t also be having high aspirations and some optimism about the date working out. I’m just a really big believer that those two things — not only that they can live in the same space, but it’s actually useful for them to do so.
COWEN: Maybe it’s a bit like hurdle rates for private business investment. A business might set a hurdle rate of 50 percent, knowing deep down underneath, maybe, they’d be happy with 23 percent, but they know along the way in the process, gains will be overstated, costs understated. So maybe if you’re looking for friends or a maid or a marriage partner, should you be thinking probabilistically — but with bad probabilities — and just set all your hurdle rates too high because otherwise you’re going to fool yourself and leap at silly mistakes?
DUKE: Just off the top of my head, yeah, I think so.
[laughter]
On what we will and won’t bet on
COWEN: What are the decisions in our own lives that we should not be willing to bet on? You go to your friend. Your friend says, “Oh, I’ll bet you on that.” For which of your decisions should you say, “No, I’m not willing to make you a bet on that.” Like will your kid into Princeton? Should you be willing to bet on that with your best friend?
DUKE: It depends on the friend. This is something where I think that it’s actually really important in our lives to understand what the purpose of the interaction is. There are certain friends where I would absolutely make that bet. In fact, I can tell you a story from my own life, but this has to do with is this part of what’s going on in your group in terms of the way that you’re thinking? So that it doesn’t actually jeopardize other aspects of the friendship.
So when I went on my first date with my husband, my brother and brother-in-law immediately decided to make a market, and it was whether we were going to get married. Now to be fair, my husband and I — before we went on our first date, we’d been friends. Both my brother and my brother-in-law knew my eventual husband, but this is when we’re going on our first date. They make a market. I think that my brother-in-law ended up bidding 23.
My brother then called me up, cracking up, that my brother-in-law had bid 23 when we hadn’t been on a first date yet. And I then started laughing at my brother, said, “Well, that means you had to bid 22. Why are you laughing at him? You somehow bid 22. It’s our first date.” Now, that’s because we’re all people who sort of think this way. And so this sort of becomes the fun of the friendship, but there are other people . . .
I think about friends as serving different purposes. I have friends who I play tennis with, and I would never make a bet with them about whether their child was going to get into a certain university, particularly if I was going to take the other side, the side that they didn’t want of the bet. Because I think that people can interpret that as you think that that’s what’s going to happen. Because these things settled to one or zero.
So if I were to get on the other side of that, if I felt that the price was right, I think that they could interpret that as me saying, “I think it’s going to settle to zero.” And I don’t think that that’s good for some friendships. So I don’t think that you need to bring everybody in your life into this type of thinking. And you can understand that different people bring different types of value.
COWEN: Let’s say you’re betting on sports teams. Should you bet on your favorite team? Or should you bet on a team you hate to hedge your utility?
DUKE: [laughs] Well, personally, I would only bet if I felt like I was getting the best of it. But that being said, I suppose there could be isolated situations . . . I’m an Eagles fan. So obviously it took a really, really, really, really, really long time for the Eagles to win a Super Bowl.
When they did get to the Super Bowl, it might make sense — given the fact that I can have different values. I can want to make money. I can want to have an emotionally good feeling. That’s another way that I can experience a payoff — it might make sense for me to bet the other side, just so that I get some happiness, even if my team loses.
I think when it comes to the Eagles, I don’t know if that would be enough. I’m not sure what the number was they would have to win, where I would be happy that that team lost. I guess you’d have to figure out what that indifference point is. But yeah, I think that that’s an important thing to think about, right? Payoffs are not always monetary. They’re sometimes emotional, so sometimes you can hedge the emotional downside with a monetary upside, and I guess you could figure out what the indifference point is to that.
COWEN: Is there a limit to the process? I think a lot of people would be reluctant to bet on their own divorce. No one would say, “Well, I’ve hedged my position.” On the other hand, the exact same people are happy to buy life insurance, and they think of that as noble, right?
DUKE: Yeah.
COWEN: And they say, “Oh, well, I’ve hedged my position.” What’s exactly the difference that accounts for the things we’re reluctant to bet upon?
DUKE: That’s such a great question. I think a little bit of it is magical thinking, which I’ll get into in a second. I think a little bit of it is this kind of strange thing about hedges, that we’re obviously hoping that we never have to use them. So when we do, I think that often then, in some ways, we’re happy. And then when we don’t have to use them, I think we’re sad that we had those positions on in the first place.
What I think is that there are certain things about us and certain beliefs that we have that are very, very central to our identity. So when we think about something like fire insurance on our house — what home we live in, in terms of that kind of choice and whether it actually burns down — that feels very much like a matter of luck that’s happened to us.
I think it’s easier for us to hedge against it because we’re not feeling that we did anything to make the bad thing happen. So it gets out of the emotional space because we can offload it to luck.
But when we’re talking about something like our marriage, now it has to do with “What’s our commitment? What’s the commitment that that person has to us?” And that now goes into this area of things that we’re making decisions about, things that have to do with who we are personally. And I don’t think we like to hedge very much against our identity.
And on top of not wanting to hedge against our identity because we think of our identity as very categorical, and that really gets into that emotional space about who we are. but I think that on top of that, we have this kind of idea — and this goes into some of my quibbles with things like The Power of Positive Thinking, which ultimately realizes into The Secret — that we have this idea that if we do hedge against something, that somehow if the bad thing happens, we caused it. And this is particularly problematic in situations that do have very high emotional valence.
Obviously, the hedge that you would put on your marriage is to have a prenup. And we know that only about 5 percent of married couples end up with a prenup. And people are very emotional about that, and they’re very against it because they say, “Are you predicting I’m going to fail?” It’s a little bit like the betting problem, right? Am I going to bet with you about whether your child gets into Princeton? If you have a prenup, it feels like not only are you predicting that you’re going to fail, but then if the failure happens, perhaps you caused it in a magical thinking kind of way.
But this goes into this category of like, how can you be a good decision maker if you’re not really thinking about the negative outcomes that could occur? And then trying to get out in front of those in a variety of ways, one of which might be to hedge. And one of the issues that I have with the literature and The Power of Positive Thinking, which I think ultimately expresses itself through the book The Secret . . . Are you familiar with the book The Secret?
COWEN: Yes.
DUKE: Okay. I think it ultimately expresses itself through The Secret. It’s this idea that if you imagine success, it shall happen, and if you imagine failure, that also shall happen. The mechanism of that is unclear, and, of course, The Secret ends up positing this very strange, this really kooky mechanism, which is your thoughts have magnetic power that actually attract the things that you’re thinking about to you. So if you think about a traffic jam, you’ll end up in one, which is obviously really kooky.
But I think that that’s kind of how the human mind works. If I enter into a marriage and I do put the hedge on, which is a prenup . . . I think that the way that our minds work, it says, “Okay, now I’m going to cause that to happen.” That somehow that’s saying that I think it’s going to happen, and I’m going to cause it to happen, as opposed to just saying there’s all sorts of negative routes that your life can… and you’re more likely to have success if you can think about what those routes are and actually get out in front of them.
COWEN: I’m not a gambler myself, and I don’t understand gambling very well, but maybe you can explain it to me. I read an article in the paper today that many gamblers are now betting on shark migration patterns because a lot of the horse races are shut down and dog races are not running. Shark migration patterns — that seems to me also a zero-sum game. Why don’t you all just bet on equities, which at least, we hope, is a positive-sum game? Why do these zero-sum games exist when there’s this one huge, really quite liquid positive-sum game? And I can get as excited about a company as about a horse, right?
DUKE: Well, first of all, I haven’t played poker since 2012, so I’m definitely not betting on shark migration patterns over here.
One of the things that I used to say about poker was that you better not be willing to be a poker player unless you want people to endlessly discuss golf propositions. A lot of poker players play golf, and they’re always trying to figure out how many strokes a side, and are we playing a NASA, a scramble, or whatever. And there’s endless conversation because they basically want to turn everything into making a market.
COWEN: To become detached?
DUKE: I think they just like the action. And I think that, to your point about the zero-sumness of it all, I think they really want to say, “If you state a belief, I might be on the other side of that. And there’s going to be some price at which we can find a place where you’re willing to take one side and I’m willing to take the other, and let’s do that price discovery. And then let’s get on opposite sides of that bet. And let’s just test out those beliefs.”
I think it’s just a particular mindset, and they become somewhat detached from whether that’s zero-sum or not. Now, I think that you may know that there’s actually quite a bit of crossover between people who are trading equities and poker players. There’s lots and lots of poker players who have become options traders, for example, or people who are trading financial instruments. There’s people who go the other direction, who are in finance who then transitioned to poker.
I think it’s because the minds work really similarly. So, I’m sure that what happened was somebody read something about shark migration patterns, said it out loud to a bunch of people who play poker, and immediately they started making a market in the same way that my brother and my brother-in-law did. It’s fun.
COWEN: If gamblers cultivate detachment to be better at gambling and not so emotional about it, does that mean when they win, they’re not that happy? How does a gambler stay happy and stay rational at the same time? Isn’t there a tradeoff?
DUKE: Hmmm.
COWEN: If you enjoy risk for its own sake, you’ll go broke. But if you don’t enjoy risk for its own sake, what are you doing playing these zero-sum games?
DUKE: The thing about poker that I think is really interesting is that it actually is a very small group who actually figure out a way to be happy. And I think it has to do with what exactly is it that you’re trying to get out of the game? So I think that the people who find a way to be really happy are the ones who are really interested in trying to figure out how to solve the problem of making decisions under that kind of extreme uncertainty.
And how are you actually figuring out — given the environment that you’re in and the information that you have — how do I build a really good model of my opponent? How do I figure out, given my model of my opponent, what the appropriate line is to play. You become somewhat, in that case, indifferent to the win or the loss, and it’s really about the game itself and solving the problem of the game.
But I think that that’s actually a relatively small handful of people who are playing poker. One of the things that’s hard about poker is that it’s one of the only places where you’re actually — I’m looking at you and putting my hand out when we have a transaction that you’re on the wrong end of, and you have to actually put that money in my hand, face-to-face in person.
And not only that, but in order for poker to really be fun, in general, people have to be playing for an amount of money that matters to them. So by definition, when you lose, you’re having to lose in this very personal way where you’re actually handing the money to me directly. And it’s by definition an amount of money that really matters to you. And I think that that can actually make people pretty sad.
And if you’re sitting at a poker table, you’re like, “Oh yeah, loss aversion is definitely, yes.” You just see these examples of it all the time, where there’s this huge asymmetry between how sad people are when they lose versus how happy they are when they win. It’s one of those things that, unless you’re really focused on process, and I think this is a lesson for all of life, right? The way to happiness is to focus on process.
Then the winning becomes secondary to that. It becomes a way to keep score on how you’re doing on the process piece. And to really focus on that as opposed to focusing on the end result, which is, what does the chip exchange look like at the end of the day? If you can’t do that, I think that you’re just not going to be happy playing the game, frankly.
COWEN: What made you most happy about poker? Other than just winning, of course, but the process.
DUKE: [laughs] Yeah. There’s a few things that made me really happy when I was playing. One thing is, I had come out of this PhD program in cognitive science where I was really studying learning, and poker is just a different way to study that topic.
That’s really, really powerful as a laboratory for thinking about human decision-making, not just about the way that other people make decisions, but it really exposes you to the way that you’re thinking, and in a real way, how hard it is to avoid decision traps, even when you’re perfectly well aware that those decision traps exist. And how easy it is for your mind to slip into those traps.
As an example, I went into that environment, knowing full well about self-serving bias, that we tend to attribute good things to our own skill, and we tend to attribute bad things that happen to us to luck. And I knew that that thing existed. I had studied it. And yet when I was at the table, it’s so easy to convince yourself that you’ve lost because of bad luck and you’ve won because you made great decisions. And you’re just sort of rinsing and repeating.
So, one of the things that I really loved about the game was the way it exposed that to yourself in a way that you . . . In a lot of ways, it was hard to hide from because if you weren’t seeing that clearly, you were going to lose. So not only did it expose that, but then you had to start to figure out, “Okay, so how can I at least reduce the impact of that?” Which was an ongoing self-discovery process of trying to figure out how to reduce the impact of cognitive bias. That was really interesting.
The other thing that I really, really loved about the game was that it happens to be one of those games that reveals itself to you as you go along. What you think the game is and what you think you know about it on the first day that you play is really different than what the game has revealed to you by a year in. And even 10 years in, it’s totally revealing new things to you.
So it just doesn’t get stale. It’s this constant process of learning and discovery and trying to understand this really, really, really complex system. And how do I actually get myself into a position where I can actually win despite the uncertainty and despite my own frailties of mind?
COWEN: Do you think very good poker players make better decisions than average in the other parts of their lives? Is there a transfer of learning or are they just sort of unhappy train wrecks?
DUKE: [laughs] My intuition is that it depends. Again, I think that there’s this handful of players who are very process driven, and for those players, it does indeed transfer. It’s just so easy for me to recall examples of people where there was literally no transfer — the number of people where you were definitely not seeing it translate into their personal life.
Just as a really simple example, you could see someone who was a really, really, really good poker player and they’d be really crushing it at the table. Then the next minute, they’d be out in the casino — which is obviously negative expectancy — just dumping a bunch of money at the craps table or the baccarat table. And it would be very confusing. What was happening there? Why were you so good in this one domain, and then suddenly, you were making these really terrible decisions in this other domain?
So, I do think that one of the things that poker teaches you is that you shouldn’t assume that just because people are really skillful in one domain that that’s going to transfer. Because I think that that ability can be very, very domain-specific.
COWEN: When you play poker with your brother and sister, how much does the actual course of play reflect real life family dynamics? They’re also famous poker players, right?
DUKE: No, my sister is actually — she’s a writer.
COWEN: But you’re a writer, too.
DUKE: But she does play a little bit of poker. That’s interesting. How much do they . . . Actually, I think quite a bit, to tell you the truth. [laughs] There’s quite a bit of psychodrama. My sister is quite a bit younger than me and my brother, and I think that that definitely expresses itself at poker. Just in the way that she plays, I think that that dynamic of younger sister comes into play.
Then I’m actually younger sister to my brother, When I was growing up, we used to actually play a lot of cards with my father, and I kind of idolized the way that they played, my dad and my brother. But then I would also get very mad when I’d lose to them. And I would say that that definitely translates as well.
COWEN: Your father does. Do you have a favorite malapropism or pun? Or is that not for you?
DUKE: Oh my gosh, no. That is definitely my dad’s domain. I think that, in some ways, I might’ve been scarred by all the punning that was happening in the household. [laughs] So I’m going to leave that with my father. That being said, I will recommend to everybody that if you haven’t read Anguished English, it’s a really hilarious book.
On a linguistics debate with Steven Pinker
COWEN: Your best-known academic article on why children learn nouns more efficiently than they do verbs.
DUKE: That’s true.
COWEN: In a nutshell, why is that?
DUKE: Okay, oh my gosh.
COWEN: Before you left psycholinguistics, right?
DUKE: Yeah. Let me, first of all, give a shout out to Lila Gleitman who was my advisor. She’s 90. I actually just talked to her the other day, and she’s an amazing, amazing intellectual.
But all right, how wonky do you want me to get? That’s the question.
COWEN: As wonky as you wish to.
DUKE: Back when I was in graduate school, there were competing theories. Just as a fun fact, the person who was on the other side of the argument was Steven Pinker, who I’m sure that everybody is familiar with. Essentially Steven Pinker was — and it’s not as dichotomous anymore, but at the time, people felt like it was either one thing or the other — what Pinker was arguing was that the way that children learn language is they learn what a bunch of words mean.
Then from the words that they learn, they then can bootstrap the syntax, the grammar of the language. German has a different grammatical structure than English does, which has a different grammatical structure than, say, Chinese. So the question was, how do you figure out the grammar? And he was positive that you do it from learning the meanings of some words, and then you work backwards to the grammar. That was called semantic bootstrapping.
My advisor was on the other side of that argument, which was that, actually, you learn the syntax of the language, and then that allows you to bootstrap the meaning of the word. That would be syntactic bootstrapping. Some of the evidence for that would be when there are a lot of cases where kids wouldn’t have any input of a fluent grammatical language, and they invent their own grammar that’s totally grammatical within what’s possible within human grammars, even though they hadn’t any grammar inputted to them.
The two examples of that would be, there was a trend back in the ’70s to not allow kids who couldn’t hear to actually learn American Sign Language. They were being forced to lipread. Those children invented their own sign language, and it looked very much like a regular, natural language.
Another example would be, there are pidgin languages where two groups come together who speak different languages. The adults have to communicate with each other. They basically communicate like, “Tyler, you, bottle, take.” It’s not really grammatical. But the children of those speakers create what’s called a creole. And that is actually a fully grammatical language that fits in with the rules of natural language.
So the idea is that we’re born with the syntax, and then you use the syntax to figure out the words. So the study that you’re talking about — we basically said, all right, let’s figure it out. And what we found was that some pretty simple nouns, like dog, you can actually pick up from your environment without the syntax.
But nouns that are not about concrete things out in the world — like dog — you actually can’t really get. So a noun like thought would be hard. What is thought? How can you see that? You can’t point to it, but you can point to dog and people will figure out what dog means, but verbs actually are hard too unless you actually have the grammar to support it.
So it turns out, kind of, everybody was right, that the idea is that you learn a few basic nouns, like dog. That helps you then figure out something about the grammar that you happen to be born into. And then once you have that grammatical structure, it allows you to start bootstrapping very quickly all the other words. That was really wonky, but you asked.
COWEN: When you beat people at poker, to what extent are you winning because you read their language better because you’ve studied psycholinguistics?
DUKE: Pretty much not at all. Mostly what you’re doing when you’re playing poker is that you’re really just trying to build a model of your opponent. And most of what you’re building has to do with things like what’s the frequency with which they enter pots? When they do enter a pot, in general, over time, you start to figure out what’s the range of hands that they would be playing in different positions for them. What’s a playable hand? So that you can throw out some possibilities and start to narrow down those ranges —
COWEN: Do they all have perfect poker faces? Forgive the use of the expression. You can’t look at them and feel, “Well, I think this person’s bluffing.”
DUKE: No, they definitely don’t have perfect poker faces. Let me put it this way. Most of the time in poker, the market’s really wide. Just let me figure out how to explain this. Okay, tells — things like let me look at your eyes and see what you’re doing — people definitely show them, but it’s not necessarily the most reliable information, particularly because, in order to pick the tell up, you have to be staring at the human being and human beings in general don’t like to be stared at, so —
COWEN: Who cares what they like? They’re opponents. They don’t like to be beaten, either.
DUKE: Right. Except that the problem is that, really, what you’re picking up — when people are bluffing, they’re uncomfortable. So when you’re seeing these physical tells from them, what you’re seeing is signs of discomfort. But if you stare at somebody too long, they’ll be uncomfortable.
So, sometimes when you see some of these things, you’re not exactly sure — is it they’re just uncomfortable because I’m staring at them? Or are they uncomfortable because, say, they’re bluffing and they’re not comfortable that they’re bluffing? That’s all I’m saying, is there’s noise in poker tells, so —
COWEN: But if you’re right 51 percent of the time, that’s significant.
DUKE: Right. That’s exactly right. The reason when you would use tells is when the decision is very close. You would use tells as a way to tip you from one side or the other. What I mean by that is . . .
Let’s say that a situation comes up where the pod is laying you three to one. If the pod’s laying you three to one, you only have to win the hand 25 percent of the time, and that’s actually a relatively low bar. If I’m playing only against one other person, the chances that I’m going to win over 25 percent of the time are pretty good. I don’t actually have to think too hard in that situation about whether I should play that hand.
But sometimes you get into a situation where I have to win the pot 25 percent of the time, and that’s actually right around where my market is sitting. I’m like, “Eh, that’s pretty close.” Then, tells can come in handy because they’re extra information that can allow you to tip over onto one side or the other of your decision.
COWEN: Can you read men better or women better?
DUKE: In general, I would say that I can probably read men better. And my understanding is that that’s also true of men, that the data is that men can read men better than they can read women, and women can also read men better than they can read women. I’m not totally sure about the second part, but I’m pretty sure about the first part, that men have an easier time reading men than they do women. The other thing —
COWEN: What’s wrong with us? What’s wrong with we men? Are we too vain? Are we boastful? Are we too sloppy with our countenances?
DUKE: In my case, it could be that only 3 percent of people who play poker at the level that I was playing are women, so I just have a lot more experience reading men. [laughs] That could be what it was. That’s possible. It’s been so long since I’ve read that literature, but I think that men more reliably show that information, but I feel like it’s been so long since I read that literature, I don’t know that I have anything that would be valid to say about it.
COWEN: Let’s try some rapid-fire questions with quick answers. First one, New Hampshire or Vermont?
DUKE: Oh, New Hampshire. I grew up in New Hampshire. I have to be loyal.
COWEN: But Vermont is prettier. Why is New Hampshire better?
DUKE: Because I grew up there. I have to be loyal to my home state. Also, I’d just like to say, Lake Winnipesaukee is pretty awesomely beautiful.
COWEN: Contract bridge or blackjack?
DUKE: Oh, for me, contract bridge.
COWEN: Why?
DUKE: I think that blackjack is kind of boring. It’s very rote. If you’re not actually counting the cards, you’re really just playing basic strategy, which means that there aren’t really a lot of decisions that are to be made that wouldn’t be premade. It’s not a fluid game where you’re having to adjust to what’s happening around you. You could walk into the casino, and someone can hand you a little card, and you could follow that card, which isn’t very fair.
Then if you’re counting, the cards — just more complex, but it’s still very rote. With bridge, it’s like . . . Gosh, bridge is so amazing. It’s like, how are you thinking about the way that you’re playing your cards in order to figure out where the king is sitting, or the ace is sitting? Ohh, I love that game.
COWEN: Options or futures?
DUKE: Well, for me, options just because I think I understand them better. I’ll go with what I understand more.
COWEN: What’s the best song by Nirvana?
DUKE: I want to say just “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” It seems so cliché, but it’s just such a great song. But I just love . . . You know the MTV Unplugged that Nirvana did?
COWEN: Of course.
DUKE: Can I just pick that whole album? It’s acoustic. Kurt Cobain’s just singing. I’m just going to take that whole album and say that version of all of those songs is so incredible.
COWEN: I think “Aneurysm” would be my single song pick.
Is Joan Rivers funny?
DUKE: I think that her act was funny.
COWEN: In 2009, you were on Celebrity Apprentice with Joan Rivers, and Donald Trump picked Joan Rivers over you. What’s your model for how that happened? Because I would pick you.
DUKE: She’s more famous than I am, and it was called Celebrity Apprentice. It was funny because I had a bunch of people after that say to me, “Well, that was really unfair.” And they started ticking off all the supposed rules of the game, like, “You raised more money. You won more challenges.” As if that was the game that I was playing.
And prior, when I had gotten in a heads-up situation with her when we were the final two, there’s a lag between when the show ends and when the winner gets picked, and I was letting people know, “Oh, just so you know, I’m going to lose.” And they were like, “No, you’re not.” And they would tick off all these reasons that I was going to win.
And I said, “But that’s not the rules of the game. It’s Celebrity Apprentice. Donald Trump picks. He’s been friends with Joan Rivers forever, and she’s more famous than me. I literally have no shot. And no matter what you think the rules are, those really aren’t the rules because it’s reality TV, so he’s going to figure out a way to pick her.” I was pretty clear about that. Actually, I wasn’t particularly upset by it because I understood that that was the game that I was sitting in. I was upset by other things, but not by that.
COWEN: I don’t intend this as a political question, but what was Donald Trump like?
DUKE: Basically, probably, whatever your viewpoint of him is now would be very true to what he was like in person.
COWEN: Does he have tells?
DUKE: Oh, for sure. Yeah, absolutely.
COWEN: So you think one can just read him flat out in obvious ways?
DUKE: In some obvious ways, yes. Some tells are very, very easy to read and reliable. I was talking about some of the more subtle tells once you get to the expert level of poker, but as an example, there’s a very reliable tell when people are new to poker that I would use every single time. It would actually move my market by a lot if you did this.
As an example, there’s something when people are new to poker, which is “Strong means weak, and weak and strong.” When a player puffs themselves up and takes their chip to bat, and they grab their chips and it’s a big motion, and they very forcefully put those chips into the pot, if it’s a new player, they’re almost always bluffing in that situation. But if they take their chips, and they’re as gentle as a mouse, they’re like, “Ooh, look, I’m betting. Don’t pay any attention to me. I’m just going to quietly slide my chips into the pot,” usually means that they’re very strong.
DUKE: Now, that particular tell goes away pretty quickly. When I was saying it’s very hard for tells to really move your market a lot, I was talking about expert players. But if you’re talking about a beginning player, tells can actually make your market. They can really tell you something incredibly significant. So yeah. I feel like he’s got some pretty strong tells.
On how poker player would think about public policy
COWEN: If only poker players voted, how would policies change? How would the country be different? It’s not a question about party affiliation, but about how poker players think because your reason for why you vote is going to matter more than which party you vote for if you’re the only voters.
DUKE: I need to understand what you mean by a poker player because there’s all sorts of different types of people who play poker. Do you mean —
COWEN: The top 500 poker players. You all vote. How does the country change?
DUKE: I think that —
COWEN: What decisions do we make better? Because you’ve already said these people are not necessarily better at happiness. They don’t necessarily transfer the learning. Would it just be the exact same country? Would we somehow take more clever risks in foreign policy? Would we read the tells of Putin and other foreign leaders?
DUKE: My suspicion is that if only the top 500 poker players voted, people would be thinking a lot more about edge cases — where things could go wrong, for sure, because poker players just are obsessed with that. I think that there would be more long-termism as opposed to short-termism, again, because you have to be obsessed with that as a concept. I think that people would be thinking about “What are the unintended consequences? How does this look?”
Another thing that’s really important that poker players think about is, “If I put this policy in that looks like it’s awesome, how can someone come in and find the cracks in it so that it can turn into something bad?” I feel like the top 500 players would definitely be thinking in that way more.
Assuming that they wanted to use their powers for good as opposed to evil, which we’ll assume, I feel, in general, policies would be better, less easy to be advantaged, thinking more long-term, definitely more willing to take risks that were worthwhile. Yeah, I feel like things would be better.
COWEN: Let’s say the top 500 people in finance were the only voters. Putting aside policy toward finance, do you think it’s basically the same answer or somehow different?
DUKE: Well, again, with both groups, I’m assuming that they’re trying to do good and not do evil because, obviously, you can be thinking about any of this. Yes, I think that that is true as well.
COWEN: Why are there so many casino scenes in American Western movies and James Bond movies? Gambling scenes, baccarat, right?
DUKE: I feel like it’s a little similar to a lot of people playing the lottery. And also, what is the image of a gambler in America? First of all, I think that America likes to think of itself as really idolizing risk takers, so it shows James Bond is a risk taker, but he’s very smart. I think that a lot of it has an association of glamor with it, which is pretty hilarious if you’ve ever seen people at a poker table, but I think they think it’s glamorous.
Then also, I think that there’s just a certain amount of fantasy, like, “Maybe I could be in that position and I could win big.” Or “If I had enough money, I’d bet that amount of money.” There’s some wish fulfillment.
COWEN: Why has poker stayed culturally such an American game? If you go to Macau, poker is not nearly as big a thing as it would be in the United States. What’s the cultural barrier? Why is it not such a universal game?
DUKE: It’s so funny because I think about that. I think about poker as a pretty universal game because certainly when I was playing, you would be sitting at a table and there were people — Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian. It really drew people from all over the world into the game, but I suppose, maybe, that it drew them into whatever the American version of the game, although there’s the European Poker Tour, and there is poker in Macau.
It’s an interesting question. I’ve always thought of it is very international, but if it’s not, obviously, I’m thinking from the inside view. I was living in poker, which seemed very multicultural when I was playing.
COWEN: If I went to a random get-together with Taiwanese men in a midsize Taiwanese city, I would be shocked if they were playing poker. Maybe it’s Mahjong— I’m not even sure, some other game with tiles, some other form of betting. Whereas in the United States, I wouldn’t be shocked by seeing poker anywhere.
DUKE: Yeah. I guess that’s true. Gosh, I’ve really never thought about this. I think that every culture has some form of gambling, and for whatever reason, poker became part of the lore of the Old West. It was a way that we gambled, but I don’t know. Can I ask you a quick . . . Are there people who — for example, Mahjong — are there people who make their living playing Mahjong? I don’t even know.
COWEN: I believe so. I’m not an expert in the matter, but yes, I think wherever there’s gambling, even with chess, people make their living from gambling and chess, and that’s an absurd gambling game because who’s ever better is evident very quickly, right?
DUKE: Right, which is why speed chess allows you to feel like you got unlucky. That’s why the real money is made in speed chess.
The other thing of course is that, I guess, in chess, you can negotiate. You start with two pawns fewer than I get, so you can try to negotiate what the tipping point is. Same in golf. I’m just going to have to say I don’t know there. It originated in France too, so I don’t know. That’s a really good question. Let’s call it a stumper.
On the cognitive styles and personalities of top poker players
COWEN: How smart are those top 500 poker players just as humans?
DUKE: Oh, they’re brilliant, most of them. Not all of them, but almost all of them are brilliant. And that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re incredibly well-read. Not all of them are. Not all of them would have a traditional education, but they’re all ridiculously smart. Not all, but most.
COWEN: Do you think they could have done other wonderful things and there’s some kind of potential social loss? Or being a poker player is the highest advocation, and they have some kind of strange personality asymmetry where, say, they wouldn’t have made a great CEO. They couldn’t have been an inventor, couldn’t have done this or that. And like chess players, they ended up as poker players. Or are they multifaceted, and it’s some kind of shame that they were not out there being great in some other role?
DUKE: I think that there’s certainly some significant portion of them that that’s true of, that they could be doing great things out in the world.
But I also think that there are quirks about people who are attracted to poker because, given how brilliant they are and particularly how brilliant they are at game theory and expressing that and instantiating that in a real-time, high-stakes decision-making problem, I think that most of the people who are playing poker could be making more money doing something else, could be creating more productivity for the world as you said, moving out of this zero-sum situation into something that’s more win-win.
But I think that there is something in general about who’s attracted and willing to take a haircut to go play poker, in order to do that, that has to do with a sense of independence and not necessarily fitting in with what the norms of society are.
There’s a very famous story about a poker player, a really good poker player, who decided that they wanted to actually try trading instead. So they got a job with a firm to go trade. And the first day, they didn’t show up, and they called in at, I think, 11 in the morning or something and said, “I’m sorry, I can’t take this job. It’s just too early.” [laughs] They just didn’t want to get up that early. So, they went back to playing poker. And I do feel like that encapsulates something about a certain group of poker players.
COWEN: You probably know the case of the famous economist, Steve Levitt. He decided he would become a top poker player. Within a fairly short period of time, he did. Do you think most very smart people could do that? Or are they, in turn, lacking something that these top 500 poker players have?
DUKE: I don’t think that most just generally very smart people could do it. Obviously —
COWEN: What stops them? What are they lacking?
DUKE: Well, first of all, I just want to take this moment to tell everybody to go get Maria Konnikova’s new book, The Biggest Bluff. Super smart, PhD in psychology, decided she was going to learn poker to try to understand uncertainty better and the influence of luck in your life and managed to become a champion. Her book is a really wonderful. It’s a memoir, but it’s also a real meditation on luck and uncertainty and its influence in your life and game theory. And it’s really an amazing book. It actually just came out on Tuesday.
No, just because you’re smart doesn’t mean that you can become a great player. I think that you have to be smart in a very particular way, and it would be the way that somebody like Steven Levitt is smart or Maria Konnikova is smart. I think that there’s a certain way —
COWEN: What is that way? I don’t have it, though I’ve never tried. What is the way? What am I lacking? All those like me who would fail?
DUKE: I don’t know that you would fail by the way. I think that if you have the ability to think probabilistically, I would say that that’s number one is that you really, really have to understand that —
COWEN: Seems like the easy part to me. That I can do.
DUKE: But see, that’s the thing. That one thing — I actually co-founded the Alliance for Decision Education partly because of that one thing. This thing that we take for granted, that has to do with thinking probabilistically, is not something that’s really taught in K through 12. It’s not the way that people are trained to think. You can see it all the time.
In 2016, Trump — I think he closed on 538, at something between 30 and 35 percent to win. And when he won, people were like, “They were wrong. That was ridiculous.” And this is how, generally, people think. So, that core thing of are you good at thinking probabilistically is a bigger thing than you think.
And then on top of that, you have to be somebody who’s really interested in understanding when the things you believe are inaccurate. And you have to be so incredibly hungry to collide with corrective information. You have to be openminded to the corrective information.
You have to be updating your beliefs constantly, and I think that you just have to be willing to have less endowment to your own beliefs and hold those really loosely because you have to keep this end goal in mind. I’m not trying to win this hand. I mean, I am, but I understand that there’s all sorts of things that might intervene in my ability to do that. I’m trying to win in the long run.
And the worst thing that I could find out is that I believed something was true and held onto that belief too long, so it affected my bottom line. You just have to be thinking that way all the time. And then you have to be willing to try to solve for it. If you have those things and you’re smart, I think that in a pretty quick period of time, you could become very good at that game.
COWEN: Let’s say you take a player who plays regularly at a local casino, does pretty well. Maybe he’s in the top 5 or 10 percent of that group and has played for 10 years. You put that person down at a table with a top-20, top-30 poker player. What’s the difference? What do the very top players have that that individual would not? How would they beat him?
DUKE: It’s such a combination of things. The way that I would think about it is if I took some really successful trading options in 1982, and I put them into the environment that exists now, where the market is super, super tight, I wouldn’t actually expect them to be able to win. And the reason is that when the markets are really wide, your ability to be leaving basis points on the table — you just have so much more room for not getting it just right, because the difference between you and the people that you’re trading against is so wide.
So yeah, could you be, if you were really concentrating and you were really working on getting better at modeling your opponent, really understanding bet size, understanding that you always want to be trying to get on the primary line of play as opposed to the secondary line of play, that gets forced on you as the markets tighten.
But that person who’s sitting in that game where they might be in the top 10 percent of their local casino — they can be choosing the secondary line of play a lot and still be crushing the game. Once you get against the people who are real experts, who have really come up the ranks, those people are — at just such a higher percent of the time — they’re choosing the primary line.
And when you’re butting up against that on the secondary line . . . You’re good. You’re coming up with a pretty good option, but you’re just not coming up with the best option enough.
Or you might be on the tertiary line. That might be okay if the market’s wide enough. And how you’re sort of figuring out what’s the right choice in any given time — it’s like so many things go into that. So you’re just going to butt up against ooh, that market just got really tight on you.
COWEN: Is playing poker different when you’re nine months pregnant?
DUKE: [laughs] Yes. You have to go to the bathroom a lot more, so you miss a lot more hands. The other thing is that, honestly, when you’re physically uncomfortable, it does affect the quality of your thinking. I truly believe when I was playing when I was nine months pregnant, I was certainly not playing as well as when I was not nine months pregnant, just because you’re super physically uncomfortable. And you’re also tired.
COWEN: Does alcohol affect high-level play in poker?
DUKE: Oh yes, a lot. It’s interesting — at the lower levels, if you have somebody who maybe isn’t aggressive enough in their play — they’re a little bit too passive at the lower levels — if you give them a beer, it would probably be helpful because it would get their courage up. And in poker, courage can get really rewarded. But again, the problem is that once those markets tighten and your opponents start to get a lot better, alcohol would not be advised. I would like it if my opponents were drinking.
COWEN: In the last 10 to 15 years, what’s the main thing we’ve learned from computers about playing poker that we didn’t know before?
DUKE: Actually, this is a place where I’m not the best person to answer. The reason is that I retired in 2012, and a lot of the stuff that’s been done in terms of simulations has actually occurred in that period since I retired. Now people have access . . . Like Maria Konnikova — a lot of the learning that she did was through being able to run these Monte Carlo simulations and try to figure out . . . Through being able to run those simulations, it’s a lot easier to figure out what the game theory optimal choice would be.
And those things, we were sort of trying to figure out by feel, or sometimes by hand. There’s just a whole bunch of really interesting plays that players are making now that I think that we, back in the day, when we were all doing it just ourselves, I don’t know that we would’ve been able to come to them because they’re not intuitive.
In the same way, I think that backgammon has changed a lot, too. The intuition about — for somebody prior to being able to run all these simulations — about how often you should be leaving a naked checker, a shot, you would have been trying to cover those a lot more back in the ’90s. But what the computer simulations have shown you is that you should actually be leaving those shots a lot more often than what your intuition might tell you.
And I think that there’s a lot of similar things in poker. But honestly, I can’t really give you specifics because a lot of those changes occurred after the point that I retired, which is really good for me, by the way, because I don’t know how I would have done in that environment. I’m not sure that at this point I’d be willing to put in the work. I think if I tried to play poker today, I would just get destroyed. [laughs] This is my opinion.
COWEN: My last question, if you meet a young person, maybe 18 or 20, and they tell you they want to become a top poker player, and they’re already quite good. Maybe you could imagine it. What signs do you look for in them to judge whether they really have the talent, temperament, whatever it takes? What do you look for?
DUKE: The number one thing, really honestly, is open-mindedness. I just think, in order to really succeed at the top levels of the game, you have to be so open minded. You have to be so willing to ponder on a daily basis the idea that you might be wrong, the idea that the things that you think to be true or what you think about an opponent — that it just might be inaccurate.
And if you’re not willing to ponder that, which I think is difficult — I mean, the human brain isn’t really built to just be constantly thinking, Where am I wrong? Where am I wrong? Where am I wrong? The human brain is built to go like, I’m right, I’m right, I’m right.
DUKE: And I think it’s kind of a hard thing to actually live, to actually put into practice. So that’s probably the number one thing that I would be looking for. Obviously, it would be, if they’re already successful, I already know they probably know the basics. They’re good with the math. They certainly must have a feel for the game and skill in the game. But then I would be looking at how eager are they to learn and learn in this particular way, which is just always thinking, what did I do wrong?
There’s a story about Phil Ivey that I think is so telling about what it takes to be a great player, where he won a really, really huge tournament. And then he went to dinner and during the dinner, all he talked about — he was just obsessed — all he talked about were the places where he felt like he didn’t bet enough, or he bet too little, or a hand he shouldn’t have played, or a hand he didn’t play and he should have, or the mistakes that he felt that he had made playing that final table.
This is someone who had just won a huge tournament, who, by all accounts at that time, was the best player in the world. And I think it’s so telling that that’s what he was talking about right afterwards, was just picking apart what are all the places where he was leaving equity on the table, where he wasn’t grabbing what was sitting in front of him, and trying to clean up around the edges of that and figure out all the mistakes that he made. And I don’t know that everybody is built for that.
COWEN: Annie Duke, thank you very much.
DUKE: Thank you. | https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/annie-duke-tyler-cowen-poker-probability-274aea4f6b5d | ['Mercatus Center'] | 2020-07-01 12:16:01.007000+00:00 | ['Economics', 'Poker', 'Podcast', 'Mathematics', 'Probability'] |
FCRA Amendments: a blessing in disguise for Social Enterprises and Social Startups? | By Rinkesh Dharod
Social Enterprises and Social Startups are traditionally not the first option for International Philanthropy when they are looking to deploy their considerable resource to make Social Impact and help achieve UN Sustainable Development Goals [SDGs]. This is due to multiple reason like trust, old habits, existing legal and operational structures, establish channels and relationships etc. all of which favors International Philanthropy relation with local Non profits and philanthropy. However recent changes the law governing this relationship in India, has opened a possibility even necessity for International Philanthropy to restructure their existing relationship and explore new methods and relationship. This creates a window of opportunity for Social Enterprises and Social Startups to seek support of International Philanthropy to help achieve their vision.
This article will explore that recent changes in brief and how and why it creates opportunities for Social Enterprises and Social Startups. It also lay out the fact the same hurdles mentioned above and can also create hinder this process. This highlights the need to reimagine the social impact sector to meet this new challenge.
The Change is coming:
New FCRA amendments which were introduced and passed in the Parliament without advance notice, have caused an uproar in the Non-Profit sector. These new amendments have variously been called, ‘Surgical Strike on India’s Voluntary Sector’, ‘Fatal blow to civil society work’ among other things. And they have led to real life consequences like shutting down of Amnesty International India’s Operations leading to lose of jobs for 150 persons.[1] There is also a lot of uncertainty regarding proposed changes in International Philanthropy focused towards India.[2]
Yet they may also lead an unintended consequence of giving boost to Social Enterprises and Social Startups in India. Lets examine in details the implications.
What is FCRA?
Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) is a law which regulates and in certain cases prohibits receiving of “foreign contribution or foreign hospitality by certain individuals or associations or companies”.[3] It is designed to regulate Foreign contribution to Individuals and Non profits and is counterpart to acts like Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999 (FEMA) which regulate foreign investment in for-profit sector.[4]
Introduced first time at height of Emergency in 1976 and strengthened in 2010, the act viewed by many as draconian and xenophobic, seeks to address the Government’s concern that Non Profit sectors may act conduit for money to flow to India from source which are antithetical to countries interests.[5] Hence it prohibits certain person like Elected offcials from receiving any foreign contribution and regulates for what purpose and in what manner Non profits can receive foreign contribution and who can they utilize it.
What are the new changes?
In the new amendment passed in September 2020, Government made further changes in relation prohibited person and more importantly manner is which foreign contribution can be utilized. This includes among other things:
· Changing the definition of prohibited person from Government Servant to Public servants.
· Reducing the amount used on administrative expensed from 50% to 20% of foreign contributions,
· Prohibiting Sub granting
· Mandating all FCRA accounts be opened in one branch of SBI in Delhi.[6]
While the reasons and merits of these changes have been debated elsewhere, it is widely recognized that these will have major impact of Social Impact and Non profit sector in India. Also while full implication will known only once the Rules of acts are published, many existing model of Social Impact sectors seems to have been rendered in operational. It also makes functioning more onerous for both funders and recipients.
Are Social Enterprises and Social Startups the way out?
There is justified apprehension that in worst case scenario there will be reduction in and diversion of international philanthropy away form India. It would gravelly affect the most marginalization sections in Country and have negative consequence on the country meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Hence there is a need to reimagine how International philanthropy works in India and how at least a section of Impact sectors activities can be preserved under these conditions. Solution can be Social Enterprises and Social Startups.
Social Enterprises or social business are generally described as For profit entity which work to achieve social impact in a sustainable manner.[7] While in India they don’t exist as a separate legal entity, unlike in some other country, they are seen by many as a alternative model to achieve social impact in some areas. Social Startups can be seen described as Social Enterprises which aim to make impact in a scalable manner.
So why are Social Enterprises a way out? Well FCRA has certain exemption in terms of regulation and prohibition of foreign contribution. Most prominently any For profit work done on behalf of Foreign entity is not covered under FCRA.
Section 4 of FCRA clearly defines the persons on whom prohibition of the act don’t apply and states,
“Nothing contained in section 3 shall apply to the acceptance, by any person specified in that section, of any foreign contribution where such contribution is accepted by him, subject to the provisions of section 10,-
(a) by way of salary, wages or other remuneration due to him or to any group of persons working under him, from any foreign source or by way of payment in the ordinary course of business transacted in India by such foreign source; or
(b) by way of payment, in the course of international trade or commerce, or in the ordinary course of business transacted by him outside India; or…”[8]
As mentioned earlier the aim of FCRA was to regulated foreign contribution i.e. grants, donations etc received by Nonprofit Sectors. As Social Enterprises are by definition For Profit entity which seeks contract and payments for work done and not grants, they are not covered under restrictions and prohibition of FCRA. They will be covered by other laws like FEMA but these are in most cases less onerous and more importantly have clearer and well established interpretation. This reduce the regulatory and legal risk associated with them.
What would this new model look like?
Thus, in this new scenario Social Enterprises and Social Startups, International Philanthropy instead of issuing call for grants to achieve a certain objectives, will issue request for tender [RFT]. Social Enterprises and Social Startups can they apply for this and get a contract which sets outs objective and timeline. This of course would mean change in the approach, but other objective would be meet.
To illustrate:
An International Philanthropy organization wants to combat anemia in India. They would issue RFT with the that objective set out. Social Enterprises and Social Startups then can as individual or consortium apply for the RFT. Lets as XYZ is Social Enterprises which make fortified biscuits and ABC is a Social Startups which as invented a new technology to mass screen for anemia is very cheap way. Together they can apply contract setting out the parameters of the project and cost involved.
Such contract with Third Party Beneficiary i.e. person benefiting from contract is not one paying the fees are perfectly valid under the law. In fact, they create an additional safeguard as under this arrangement event the Third-Party Beneficiary has right to sue the service provider for deficiency in the service.
This of course is thus a simple illustration. There are many other models possible. Also, For-Profit model allows for far more experimentation and innovation as For-Profit entity face far less regulatory burden to justify the decision making and can also hire professionals more easily.
What are hurdles?
Of course, it is not all hunky dory. There are certain hurdles needed to overcome before Social Enterprises can become a viable option for India Focused International Philanthropy. Some of the important one are:
· Funding Models: Funder organization made need to make fundamental changes in their operational and even legal model to be able to give contracts to Social Enterprises. The present model including reporting and legal structure are designed to give grants to Nonprofits and not contract to For profits. There may be even a legal prohibition on such contract. All these needs to be worked out.
· Cost structure also needs to looked into taking into consideration taxation and compensation requirement that come with a For Profits entities.
· Trust: Most Social Enterprises are relative new player and entire ecosystems need to develop trust in relation to both individual motive and viability to the model to make impact in a sustainable and cost-effective manner.
There are other issues that may also arise with more experimentation with this model.
Benefits:
However Social Enterprise model also brings potential benefits. This include:
· Fair compensation to employees in Social Sectors
· Potential scalability of successful model.
· Potential Sustainability of the model.
· More Accountability
Conclusion:
It is said that necessity is the mother of invention. The adverse condition in social sector created by these FCRA changes means that all actors will have to pivot and take innovative steps to survive. Using the For-Profit Social Enterprise and Social Startup model is one-way Social Impact sectors can adapt to environment created by new FCRA law and thrive. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her budget highlighted the need for market-based approach for Social Sector.[9] Social Enterprise and Social Startup can use this new adversity to create a new opportunity for themselves and make sustainable social impact.
This article was first published at AIC-IIITH.
[1] Dadrawala, Noshir H. “The Government Has Conducted a Surgical Strike on India’s Voluntary Sector.” The Wire, 12 Oct. 2020, www.thewire.in/government/fcra-foreign-funding-voluntary-sector-ngos , Accessed on 20 Oct. 2020; Khan, Fatima, et al. “Modi Govt Tables FCRA Amendments, Opposition & NGOs Call It Fatal Blow to Civil Society Work.” ThePrint, 20 Sept. 2020, www.theprint.in/india/governance/modi-govt-tables-fcra-amendments-opposition-ngos-call-it-fatal-blow-to-civil-society-work/506851/ , Accessed on 20 Oct. 2020; Shantha, Sukanya. “Amnesty International India Shuts Down, Blames Government’s ‘Reprisal’.” The Wire, 29 Sept. 2020, www.thewire.in/rights/amnesty-international-india-shuts-down-inquiries-investigating-agencies-ed-cbi, Accessed on 20 Oct. 2020.
[2] “New Indian FCRA Amendments Impact Foreign Grants to Indian NGOs.” Council on Foundations, 13 Oct. 2020, www.cof.org/news/new-indian-fcra-amendments-impact-foreign-grants-indian-ngos, Accessed on 20 Oct. 2020.
[3] ResponsiveWebInc. “Bare Acts Live.” Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 2010, www.bareactslive.com/ACA/ACT1405.HTM, Accessed on 20 Oct. 2020.
[4]Ibid; ClearTax. “Foreign Exchange Management Act — FEMA.” Pinchy, ClearTax, 5 June 2020, www.cleartax.in/s/fema-foreign-exchange-management-act, Accessed on 20 Oct. 2020.
[5] Team, The Print, et al. “UPA Made Indira’s Draconian FCRA Tougher, Modi Govt’s Amendments Will Now Make It Worse.” ThePrint, 21 Sept. 2020, www.theprint.in/opinion/upa-made-indiras-draconian-fcra-tougher-modi-govts-amendments-will-now-make-it-worse/507101/, Accessed on 20 Oct. 2020.
[6] The Gazette of India. “THE FOREIGN CONTRIBUTION (REGULATION) AMENDMENT ACT, 2020.” FCRA Online Services , Ministry of Law and Justice , 28 Sept. 2020, www.fcraonline.nic.in/home/PDF_Doc/fc_amend_07102020_1.pdf, Accessed on 20 Oct. 2020.
[7] Barone, Adam. “The Aims of Social Enterprises.” Investopedia, Investopedia, 29 Aug. 2020, www.investopedia.com/terms/s/social-enterprise.asp, Accessed on 20 Oct. 2020.
[8] ResponsiveWebInc. “Bare Acts Live.” Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 2010, www.bareactslive.com/ACA/ACT1405.HTM, Accessed on 20 Oct. 2020.
[9] Roy, Divyanshu Dutta. “Nirmala Sitharaman’s Budget Proposes Creating A ‘Social Stock Exchange.’” NDTV.com, NDTV, 5 July 2019, www.ndtv.com/india-news/union-budget-2019-nirmala-sitharaman-proposes-creating-social-stock-exchange-2064968, Accessed on 20 Oct. 2020. | https://medium.com/aic-iiith-foundation/fcra-amendments-a-blessing-in-disguise-for-social-enterprises-and-social-startups-6c85b45ec606 | ['Aic-Iiith Foundation'] | 2021-03-19 07:33:20.798000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Social Enterprise', 'India', 'Sdgs', 'Fcra'] |
Sqribble Ebook Creator REVIEWED! | In this review, I’m going to be taking a closer look at Sqribble — a brand new cloud-based tool that allows you to create eBooks, reports, whitepapers or other digital books on the fly, quickly and easily.
We’ll cover what it does, who it’s for, how much it costs, what the upsells are, and the pros and cons of this new tool, so you can make a more informed decision about purchasing it… and if it’s right for you.
Sqribble is a cloud based eBook creator tool. It allows you to create professional looking eBooks, based on templates inside the tool, with a few clicks, saving you a huge amount of time and money.
Unlike other eBook creators, Sqribble immediately caught my attention because it has some really useful features I haven’t seen anywhere else.
Automatic content — yep, you can actually use Sqribble to fill your book with expert content, so you don’t have to write a word. This is content from around the web, based on the URL you provide. You can pull content from any URL, paste it directly, extract from a Word doc or from their own library of niche articles. Total game changer.
This is a HUGE time saver and a major plus for anyone who hates writing or doesn’t have time to do it.
Gorgeous eCovers — a lot of eBook tools might save time, but they turn out terrible eCovers for your books. Sqribble is different here. The covers are seriously impressive. They wouldn’t look out of place on Kindle or Amazon, and they instantly look like you’re a professional who commands trust and authority.
Create Flipbooks — this is one of my favorite things about Sqribble. You can turn your “flat” books into interactive flipbooks. This makes your digital book look and feel much more like a real book — with pages that turn (animated like a real book page turning) and make the book look like something you can reach out and grab.
Why does this matter?
It’s about standing out and grabbing attention. Plus, it’s a way to engage your readers better. If they enjoy the experience of reading your book (“flipping” the pages) they’re more likely to get value from your content and keep reading until the end where your pitch or call to action is! Another thing about flip books is that you can embed them on your website with a simple piece of code that Sqribble provides once you publish your book. Awesome!
What else can Sqribble do?
Sqribble is versatile tool, with tons more features I found useful. For example, here’s what else Sqribble can do:
— Automatic table of contents
— Automatic headers and footers
— Automatic pagination
— Drag and drop design
— Add or delete pages
— Add your own media
— 300+ Google Fonts
— 50 eBook templates (covering 15 different niches)
— 10 different eBook themes (1 click changes color scheme of book)
— Import content from a URL
— Manually add content
And that’s just the stuff I saw inside the dashboard!
There’s tons of features packed into this tool, making it one of the best eBook creators I’ve seen, but there is one slight negative point which I’ll cover down below.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. This means I may earn a commission should you chose to sign up for a program or make a purchase using my link. It’s okay – I love all of these companies anyways, and you will too!
Sqribble is most suited for freelancers, independent internet marketers, small marketing agencies and small business owners who want to create lead magnets, publish Kindle books, create and sell eBooks, or publish whitepapers.
If you’re also looking to create an additional income you’ll be pleased to know that also included is a commercial agency license to use Sqribble for client work, offering eBook creation services, with the ability to create unlimited eBooks which you can sell and keep all the profits!
They also give you a ready built agency website with pre-filled portfolio that you can upload to any domain for instant authority, so that you can show it off to any new potential clients to get work. (Professional websites like this would cost you at least $600 alone, so it’s really good value.)
Also included is an in-built “Client feedback tool” to collaborate with clients on eBook projects more easily (I love this feature).
What does it cost?
Normally $197, but the special launch price is a one-time $47.
Any upsells?
Yes, there are currently 4 upsells. You don’t really need all of them to use Sqribble, but they might come in useful depending on your situation and usage.
Upsell 1 — Sqribble professional.
Unlock 150 more professional eBook templates (the best ones are in the professional version), graphics and even more ready — made content for all kinds of niches. (Just so you know, single templates from stock websites would cost you up to $450… for just ONE template!) Great for those that want more variety, content and heavy users.
Upsell 2 — Sqribble Prime.
Get 15 premium “limited edition” new eBook templates added to your Sqribble dashboard every month. This will increase your library over time, and make you stand out from other users. It works out to less than two bucks for a template! (Much cheaper than stock sites.) Great for moderate users.
Upsell 3 — Sqribble Fantasia 3D.
This includes 2-in-1 features.
1.) Unlocks a 3D cover creation tool inside your dashboard, allowing you to turn “flat” covers into lifelike, 3d covers. Great for getting more attention and making your books look and feel more “real.” People do judge a book by its cover, so something to keep in mind.
2.) Create “Flipbooks” that turn your eBooks into interactive and animated pages that turn like in real life. They can be linked to from anywhere online, as well as embedded on web pages with a single piece of code. This is really cool.
Upsell 4 — Auto Job Finder software.
If you’re going to be using Sqribble to create eBooks as a service to get paid, then Auto Job Finder is something that you need. It will automatically find you related jobs across various freelance websites and notify you so that you can fulfil them. A huge time saver and money earner.
The bad
— 3D cover is locked behind an upsell
The good
— Easy to use
— Glitch free
— Unlimited use (one-time payment)
The awesome
— Tons of beautiful templates
— Professional page layouts
— Automatic content (saves time)
— Flipbook creator (available through 3rd upsell)
There have been plenty of eBook creator tools in the past, but I haven’t seen any that make the entire process as smooth and quick as Sqribble. It’s surprisingly glitch free (most low-priced tools like this are buggy as hell) and it’s packed with some really cool features.
The templates are very nice looking, the layouts are professional and the fact you can automatically add content makes this a must have for anyone who’s tired of spending hours slaving over book design, writing content and screwing around with formatting.
The icing on the cake is the commercial license which is included. Normally vendors charge extra for this, so it’s a huge value added bonus. The additional provided done-for-you agency website is just over delivery.
Sqribble has been developed by Adeel Chowdhry, who is a well-known internet entrepreneur and best seller, with over ten years of experience and has previously created worldwide hits such as Pixel Studio FX which sold tens of thousands of units all around the world. He’s known for creating high quality professional solutions and I expect no less from Sqribble.
If you’re planning to create eBooks, reports or Kindle books in the near future, you owe it to yourself — and your sanity — to pick this up as it’s a tool that you’ll definitely need in your business.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. This means I may earn a commission should you chose to sign up for a program or make a purchase using my link. It’s okay – I love all of these companies anyways, and you will too! | https://medium.com/@mvzwane/sqribble-ebook-creator-reviewed-60dbcfbd3f71 | ['Mandla Zwane'] | 2022-01-26 12:20:07.380000+00:00 | ['Authors', 'Storytelling', 'Sqribble Review', 'Sqribble', 'Outsourcing'] |
Meditation isn’t hard — we’re just doing it wrong | When you think of meditation, what comes to mind? Probably something along the lines of “I really should be trying not to think right about now.” Well what if I were to tell you that the whole point of meditation is actually to keep thinking — not to stop thinking?
Maybe you want to believe me but you don’t want to make the rookie error of taking time out your meditation to actually ponder about it. At present, you’re desperately trying to shut every slither of a thought from sauntering through the distracted chaos that is your mind, all the while trying to retain some sense of feeling in your slowly numbing ass, as your back muscles start to ache from sitting up in such an unnaturally straight posture.
Your body is screaming, and so is your mind. But still you stubbornly sit and listen out for some unobtainable solace of silence.
Stop.
It’s not coming.
And it’s not supposed to.
Meditation isn’t about cutting off the power supply to every wayward thought and emotion that flitters through your head. It is not the gathering of empty darkness that will invite inner peace and clarity to swoop in. The point of meditation is actually to observe your thinking patterns to help you decipher the mismatch of incomprehensible twists and turns of the mechanical madness that comprises the maze of topsy turvy mayhem that is the holistic constitution of your mental faculty. What? Exactly.
That got you thinking again.
Now we’re getting somewhere.
When I sent myself off to meditation camp, I thought I’d return with yogic super powers that enabled me to sit dead still for hours on end in full lotus, or at the very least, come away with the answer to every childhood hangup or emotional melodrama I’d ever self-inflicted on myself and the poor souls around me — but I didn’t. What I came away with was far more valuable.
I came away with a deeper understanding of how I think. In other words — I came away with a deeper understanding of who I am. Which is actually the same thing.
As James Allen says in As a Man Thinketh:
“The outer conditions of a person’s life will always be found to be harmoniously related to his inner state…Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.”
Meditation doesn’t teach you to stop thinking — meditation teaches you to become a silent observer to your own thought patterns, which give rise to your emotions and, subsequently the actions and reactions that stem from this. Your humaness is the very essence which will bring you peace and fulfillment. The more you deny your thoughts and emotions, such basic of human instincts, the more you cut yourself off from who you actually are.
So rather than telling yourself that meditation is “too hard” and you just can’t possibly have a single moment spare to even try it, here’s a few tips that may help you do it right.
Tips to Help You Meditate
Practice mindfulness whenever you remember to. When you are eating, when you are driving, when you are brushing your teeth or closing a door. Just allow yourself to be aware of what you are doing. That’s all you have to do — think about what you are doing.
Sit in silence in nature for at least 10 minutes a day. Take a small smidgen of time out your daily schedule to remove yourself from stress and hurriedness to contemplate trees. Take off your shoes, run your finger along the roughness of bark, make friends with the insects, take a breath and relax.
Meditation doesn’t mean you have to sit for hours on end. Try standing, walking at different speeds or bringing mindfulness into seemingly mundane tasks like washing the dishes or cutting vegetables. Bring your full focus into what you are doing and turn your work into a form of meditation.
Focus on your breath. This is how Buddha reached enlightenment. By observing his in and out breath he was eventually able to completely disassociate his consciousness from this human instinct and so became an outside observer of his own body. Easier said than done, but give it a try.
When you feel an emotion arising, rather than reacting instinctively, pause and immediately take note of what you are thinking. What are the habitual thinking patterns that have caused this emotion to arise and is it really necessary to be allowing yourself to feel this way?
Self-observation is the first step to positive change.
Try incorporate these simple meditative principles into your everyday living and see the way you think, the way you are, miraculously start to change. | https://medium.com/dreamer-do/meditation-isnt-hard-you-re-just-doing-it-wrong-6c8ba25b95d5 | ['Camilla Marsh'] | 2019-10-16 03:44:38.401000+00:00 | ['Self-awareness', 'Mindfulness', 'Inner Peace', 'Meditation', 'Life Lessons'] |
What’s New in OpenRMF Professional v2.4? A LOT!! | The latest version of OpenRMF Professional is v2.4 released in early July 2021. We have added several things to help you and your team manage your RMF and FedRAMP data easier, faster, and with less stress! The Custom Checklist Creator. Improved vulnerability bulk. Bulk lock on vulnerabilities. Add tags to checklists and devices. Export/import overlays. And improved navigation to the UI with linked breadcrumbs and keyboard shortcuts.
If you have not checked out OpenRMF Professional yet, now is the time!
OpenRMF Professional v2.4
Custom Checklist Creator
The Custom Checklist Creator allows you to make custom checklists on software, hardware, as well as processes and procedures that link to NIST 800.53 controls. If you ever wanted to make a checklist to match to the manual controls such as Program Management, Awareness and Training, Incident Response and the like this is for you!
Create a custom checklist template, set the version and release, specify the technology or asset type, and then add 1 or more vulnerabilities to create your custom checklist template. Call it a questionnaire. Call it a survey. Call it a checklist. Whatever you do, use it to help automate documentation and compliance and generate a full compliance level look across your whole system package. Including the manual pieces!
The checklists made from this template can be used in OpenRMF Professional, OpenRMF OSS, or even viewed in the DISA STIGViewer 2.14 or higher. And you can use our template engine to make Organizational templates or System Package templates off custom templates and tailor them for your needs as well.
Bulk Lock / Unlock Vulnerabilities
Another new feature is the bulk lock and unlock feature. You can specify your checklist type, enter a vulnerability number to search and then select the ones you want to lock or unlock. Click the button and done! The lock icon shows on the checklist listing and all reports when run from OpenRMF Professional.
This helps block false positive SCAP scan results from updating checklists. It stops editing manually through OpenRMF Professional. And stops uploading checklist CKL files from changing them as well.
Bulk Locking Vulnerabilities from changes in OpenRMF Professional 2.4
Bulk Edit Vulnerabilities
You also can edit vulnerability status, details, comments and severity override information now from the bulk edit page. Search for the vulnerability across all your system package checklists, select the ones to edit, and fill in the form. Click the Save button to update those checklists, the reports, and the POA&M where applicable.
Of course, you cannot do a bulk edit when the vulnerability is locked (see previous section information).
We had a “do this edit across all checklists” in previous versions. This lets you focus on a bulk edit and select the actual checklists to edit. Not an “all or nothing” scenario.
Better UI Navigation
Thanks to input from several current and future customers, we updated our navigation throughout the application. Linked breadcrumbs show where you are, how you got to where you are, and how to go back with a single click.
Add in keyboard shortcuts to the System Package Dashboard and you can quickly navigate to where you need to be, even without lifting your hand off the keyboard to move the mouse.
Kubernetes Installation
We also have a Kubernetes helm chart now available in beta. This can be used for a local Kubernetes installation (even Minikube) as well as AWS EKS in Amazon Web Services. We are currently testing AKS and GCP as well as others (OpenShift 4.x, Tanzu) and will come out with updates as they are tested and approved.
Tag Checklists and Hardware Devices
Add tags to your checklists and/or hardware devices in OpenRMF Professional to quickly find and filter your information. On larger system packages and teams, it is nice to say “list all the Windows Team checklists” or “give me all web server checklists” and quickly find them. This lets you do that.
You can enter the tags in the table listings to quickly filter data. Or enter tags into the System Package Dashboard filter for checklists and only list the ones you need.
Add tags to checklists and devices in OpenRMF Professional 2.4
OpenRMF Professional to the Rescue
OpenRMF Professional automates much of the RMF and FedRAMP process, helping decrease the time to an ATO or approval by 40–50%. OpenRMF’s collaborative environment eliminates much of the manual labor and isolated work involved in aligning the NIST controls and sub-controls, checklists, patch scans, POA&Ms, and compliance generation and then manages all information in a secure central database structure. This allows automatic generation and updating of the POA&M, Test Plan Summary, and various other security and RMF or FedRAMP reports.
Having a web-based central repository for all cybersecurity compliance data that has role-based security for each system package, eases the RMF and FedRAMP processes using a single source of truth and eliminates errors, manually intensive individual tracking, and rework. It also provides leadership with direct insight into the status of all system package security and risk information thus eliminating the mystery around implementing the RMF and FedRAMP processes.
Once an ATO or approval level is achieved, OpenRMF provides continuous monitoring and tracking of POA&M items, overall risk of systems and applications, and tracking updated scans and checklists throughout the life of the system package.
Check it out here. Ask for a 30-day no obligation evaluation to try it yourself! | https://medium.com/@dale-bingham-cingulara/whats-new-in-openrmf-professional-v2-4-a-lot-15086b1301e3 | ['Dale Bingham'] | 2021-07-06 15:03:28.105000+00:00 | ['Cybersecurity', 'Fedramp Compliance', 'Compliance', 'Nist 800 53', 'Stig'] |
How to Remove Array Duplicates in ES6 | Code Tidbit by SamanthaMing.com
Here are three ways to filter out duplicates from an array and return only the unique values. My favorite is using Set cause it’s the shortest and simplest 😁
1. Using S et
Let me start first by explaining what Set is:
Set is a new data object introduced in ES6. Because Set only lets you store unique values. When you pass in an array, it will remove any duplicate values.
Okay, let’s go back to our code and break down what’s happening. There are 2 things going on:
First, we are creating a new Set by passing an array. Because Set only allows unique values, all duplicates will be removed. Now the duplicates are gone, we’re going to convert it back to an array by using the spread operator ...
Convert Set to an Array using Array.from
Alternatively, you can also use Array.from to convert a Set into an array:
2: Using filter
In order to understand this option, let’s go through what these two methods are doing: indexOf and filter .
indexOf
The indexOf method returns the first index it finds of the provided element from our array.
filter
The filter() method creates a new array of elements that pass the conditional we provide. In other words, if the element passes and returns true , it will be included in the filtered array. And any element that fails or return false , it will be NOT be in the filtered array.
Let’s step in and walk through what happens as we loop through the array.
Below is the output from the console.log showed above. The duplicates are where the index doesn’t match the indexOf. So in those cases, the condition will be false and won’t be included in our filtered array.
Retrieve the duplicate values
We can also use the filter method to retrieve the duplicate values from the array. We can do this by simply adjusting our condition like so:
Again, if we step through the code above and see the output:
3: Using reduce
The reduce method is used to reduce the elements of the array and combine them into a final array based on some reducer function that you pass.
In this case, our reducer function is checking if our final array contains the item. If it doesn’t, push that item into our final array. Otherwise, skip that element and return just our final array as is (essentially skipping over that element).
Reduce is always a bit more tricky to understand, so let’s also step into each case and see the output:
And here’s the output from the console.log:
Community Input | https://medium.com/dailyjs/how-to-remove-array-duplicates-in-es6-5daa8789641c | ['Samantha Ming'] | 2019-01-20 21:33:47.064000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Web Development', 'Software Development', 'Front End Development', 'Programming'] |
[BLOG] TEMCO Development and Business Progress | Market business status report
As of Jan. 13, the average number of monthly visitors since the market opening is about 300,000. The total number of registered products is about 270,000, and the average number of maintained products is about 100,000. Currently, about 40% of sellers have entered the luxury market based on the target.
Since the end of October, monthly orders have increased significantly. November orders increased 478% compared to October, and December orders increased 1,256% compared to November.
We are preparing for beta service that applies blockchain technology to our platform. Also, we are in a process to upload customs clearance, product purchase and distribution history to blockchain, and to receive A/S through NFC card. We will continue to expand the beta service by the end of January.
TEMCO team is making continuous efforts to stabilize the blockchain application and the whole project. We will endeavor to become a sustainable project with weekly development status and monthly business status.
Thank you for your support. | https://medium.com/temcolabs/blog-temco-development-and-business-progress-cad89f440e5d | [] | 2020-01-13 08:29:09.310000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Guhada', 'Announcements'] |
On the beach, or in the economy section of an airplane, Corona attempts to connect to the working… | On the beach, or in the economy section of an airplane, Corona attempts to connect to the working class by showing that their beer can fill the void of getting away from their daily routine. Corona provides an escape for the average individual, picturing a young male on the beach with a beer in hand, as a flight attendant walks up to him. It then switches shots to the same man in a plane, still with the Corona in hand. Corona manages to effectively advertise the beer by showing that Corona can be the escape you need, regardless of where you are.
The commercial opens with a young man, sitting on the beach, drinking a Corona and listening to the waves. A flight attendant then walks towards him pushing a cart of in-flight snacks and drinks. As she starts speaking to him, the environment quickly changes to the inside of a plane, with the same man in business clothes, still with the Corona in hand. The woman next to him then asks for what the man is having, as she wants to experience a similar feeling. The advertisement uses the format effectively by changing the environment entirely, except for the man and his beer. Relaxing on the beach, with waves crashing, and a cold drink in hand is an escape that many men in the working class dream of. It switches from this fantastical environment to the common, dull environment of the economy class of a plane. Corona shows that even in the most routine and boring places, you can find your own escape in drinking Corona. The woman adds to the effectiveness of the ad in showing the reaction people have to seeing someone drink their beer. Her eagerness to try Corona attempts to show how everyone wants an escape from their daily lives and can satisfy that with their beer.
Corona’s advertisement appeals to a broader audience than most, and it’s a bit difficult to narrow down their exact target. They attempt to appeal to the working class as a whole, picturing a man and a woman, both in their 30s and both dressed in business clothes. The clothes they’re wearing and the fact that they’re flying in the economy class section of a plane represents the fact that they’re both in the working class and going throughout their daily routines. The “escape” that is pictured also avoids appealing to a very specific audience. Beach vacations are also not very gender specific. Instead of a bunch of guys sitting down and watching the Sunday night game, or a ladies spa night, Corona chose to be a bit more general and chose a scene that both genders could enjoy.
Corona’s advertisement leaves a lasting need for an escape in the viewer’s life. After seeing the ad, the audience begins to feel more of a need for an escape now that they’ve seen what could be. It creates a void of an escape that Corona claims it can fill.
. | https://medium.com/@cklotz0215/on-the-beach-or-in-the-economy-section-of-an-airplane-corona-attempts-to-connect-to-the-working-b6e5a8e9b3bd | ['Case Klotz'] | 2019-10-04 15:53:54.488000+00:00 | ['Beer', 'Escape', 'Vacation', 'Corona', 'Advertising'] |
Guest Posting on devconnected | Before submitting your article
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The subject of your article is related to at least one of the points above .
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Once you submitted your article to us :
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Antoine | https://medium.com/schkn/guest-posting-on-devconnected-1607602ef960 | ['Antoine Solnichkin'] | 2019-06-05 18:59:37.154000+00:00 | ['DevOps', 'Programming', 'Technical Writing', 'Blog', 'Writing'] |
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