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How to Measure Execution Time in Python

Python Interface Import Add the following import declaration at the top of your Python file: import timeit timeit We are going to replicate the same code snippet that we tested earlier using the timeit function. It accepts the following input parameters: stmt — String containing the code snippets for your test case. — String containing the code snippets for your test case. setup — Initial code that will be executed once. — Initial code that will be executed once. timer — The timer instance. It is defaulted to time.perf_counter() , which returns a float. — The timer instance. It is defaulted to , which returns a float. number — Number of executions to be carried out. The default value is 1,000,000. — Number of executions to be carried out. The default value is 1,000,000. globals — Specifies a namespace in which to execute the code. Most of the time, you will use just the stmt , setup , and number parameters. Append the following code in the Python file: result = timeit.timeit("'-'.join([str(i) for i in range(100)])", number=20000) Then, print out the result: print(result) You should see the following result when you run it. The time might differ based on the specifications of your machine: 0.4323697 repeat Should there arise a need to repeat the same test multiple times, you can use the repeat function. It accepts the same parameters as timeit with an additional repeat parameter. The default value is five: result = timeit.repeat("'-'.join([str(i) for i in range(100)])", number=20000) print(result) You should see a list of floats with different decimals placed on your console when you run the Python file. Function If you are testing codes that are enclosed in a function, you can wrap the function in a multi-block string and pass it as an stmt input parameter. However, a better solution is to import it as a setup parameter. Let’s define the same code snippet inside a function: def test(): return '-'.join([str(i) for i in range(100)]) The next step is to import it from the main definition: if __name__ == '__main__': result = timeit.timeit("test()", setup="from __main__ import test", number=20000) print(result) You should get more or less the same execution time when you run it. One big issue with this solution is that you will have a hard time writing the import statement if multiple functions exist. Globals Another option is to set the globals namespace, which will cause the code to be executed within your current global namespace. This solution is a lot more convenient and does not affect any of your underlying code:

https://medium.com/better-programming/how-to-measure-execution-time-in-python-21004748535e

['Ng Wai Foong']

2020-05-06 14:19:02.480000+00:00

['Python3', 'Programming', 'Python', 'DevOps', 'Data Science']

Student’s marks prediction using python

In these era of machine learning and artificial intelligence we can now predict the marks of a student which is to be achieved in the next semester. These will help teachers with the student’s performance. Teacher can ask their students to improve on a particular subject so that students can improve their performance. Main objective is to help teachers analyze students performance easily. Let’s move on where we get our hands dirty with the python. Dataset used here is the UCI dataset of a portugese schools of secondary education student. Link of the dataset: https://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/datasets/student+ performance# I have used 4 regression techniques which are as follows: Linear Regression Linear regression is used for finding linear relationship between target and one or more predictors. There are two types of linear regression- Simple and Multiple. Advantages: Linear Regression is simple to implement and easier to interpret the output coefficients. Disadvantages:On the other hand in linear regression technique outliers can have huge effects on the regression and boundaries are linear in this technique. Random Forest Regressor A random forest is a meta estimator that fits a number of classifying decision trees on various sub-samples of the dataset and uses averaging to improve the predictive accuracy and control over-fitting. Advantages: Random Forest can be used to solve both classification as well as regression problems. Disadvantages: Random Forest require much more time to train as compared to decision trees as it generates a lot of trees (instead of one tree in case of decision tree) and makes decision on the majority of votes. Gradient Boosting Regression Gradient Boosting is similar to AdaBoost in that they both use an ensemble of decision trees to predict a target label. Calculate the average of the target label. Calculate the residuals residual = actual value — predicted value. Construct a decision tree Predict the target label using all of the trees within the ensemble Advantage: Lots of flexibility — can optimize on different loss functions and provides several hyperparameter tuning options that make the function fit very flexible. Disadvantages: The high flexibility results in many parameters that interact and influence heavily the behavior of the approach (number of iterations, tree depth, regularization parameters, etc.). This requires a large grid search during tuning. Bayesian Ridge In the Bayesian viewpoint, we formulate linear regression using probability distributions rather than point estimates. The response, y, is not estimated as a single value but is assumed to be drawn from a probability distribution. The aim of Bayesian Linear Regression is not to find the single “best” value of the model parameters, but rather to determine the posterior distribution for the model parameters. Advantages: It’s good when you have a linear regression problem and want to use a Bayesian approach. Disadvantages: It’s not great when you don’t have a regression problem, or if a linear model does not work well, or if you do not want a Bayesian approach. These techniques are used to achieve more accurate result. Software: Google colab or jupyter notebook Exploratory data analysis Import the necessary libraries. import numpy as np import pandas as pd import matplotlib.pyplot as plt Load dataset To see what our data set looks like use head function as shown below:

https://medium.com/@nisarg-satani103028/students-marks-prediction-using-python-d95031a20eed

['Nisarg Satani']

2020-12-23 11:44:08.321000+00:00

['Python', 'Regression', 'Linear Regression', 'AI', 'Artificial Intelligence']

My Affair Came Out on My Birthday

The way the wheels came off my life, in the end, was dizzying. It was like a car crash at the bottom of a hill. It was summer, with long days and balmy evenings, but it did not feel like summer. I had been cheating on my husband for six months by this point and the weight of my mistake, of my duplicity, was holding me in place like I was underwater. I was running on empty and caring very little about anything. On the Fourth of July, it was my birthday. I had arranged a party at home in my garden in the evening before the day itself. My favourite sort of party; messy and disorganised with bowls full of crisps everywhere. Cheesy music from tinny speakers and sweet cocktails in plastic glasses. As many friends as I could round up, which was a lot, because of the cocktails. My lover asked me if he would be invited to the party. Well, no. What happened is that he told me that he was invited. “It’s your birthday,” he told me. “I love you. I should be there.” I did not argue with him. I didn’t want to argue. I wanted him there, even though I could see it was a foolish move to have him anywhere near me in public. But I reasoned that people knew that we were “friends.” I told myself it would be weirder, in fact, not to invite him. He said that we could be discreet. He said it would be fine. He said that the next day, under cover of visiting a friend of mine, we would have a night away together. That night away would be my birthday present. (I’d be paying for my own present, though. That was the deal. He’d already told the necessary lies to his wife and got everything ready, but he could not pay for the hotel, because his wife would notice the spending). On the night of my birthday party, he arrived late and he did not bring his wife. By the time he arrived, I was too drunk and overexcited, visibly far happier than I should have been to see him. I was neglectful of my other guests, even my absolute favourite people, in favour of him. I was drinking too much and trying all the time not to catch my husband’s pleading, baffled, but slowly understanding eye. For the first time, that night I could see myself as the other people in my life could see me. It was deeply unappealing and embarrassing. I hated myself. But I told myself that it was fine, as long as I kept drinking and the party went on. Which, of course, I did, and it did. Other people, I told myself as I drank more and more, were boring. They didn’t have full and interesting and dirty and exciting lives, like mine. They were so suburban. They couldn’t possibly understand me. They didn’t feel what I felt. What a relief that my lover was on my side and could see through it all. How wonderful that he could see through life’s smokescreen with me to the truth of my needs. How grateful I should be, for the fact of him. The night was late and loud and messy and when finally I got into my bed, close to dawn, my husband was in tears. He is not a man who ever cries. “I don’t know what’s happening,” he told me. “You don’t want me anymore. I know you don’t want me anymore. You’re not my wife, not deep down. You’re not yourself and I can’t get through to you. Something’s wrong. I don’t know quite what it is, but I know that something is wrong.” I was surly and silent. I told him in a hissed monotone that he was ruining my birthday. I said that we couldn’t talk about this now. I reminded him that I was too drunk. I said that if I had any problem, it was that he was being selfish and trapping me. I told him that if anything was wrong, it was the way he tried constantly to clip my wings, to hover around me, to make me the kind of wife he had always known I never wanted to be. I wanted to live, I told him. I didn’t want to trudge into the future yoked uncomfortably to someone who needed to know my every move and who wanted to spend every minute with me. Nothing I said was true. I was being so horribly unfair to him and I knew it, even as I said the words. I was lying, dredging up ridiculous arguments from absolutely nowhere, but I am good with words. I can choose them well when I am cornered. As I spoke I saw every single word hit its mark. I may as well have punched him. Punching him would have been kinder. I knew, even as I was speaking, that nothing I said was true or even made sense. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was that I was saying the words at all and that with every word I spat at him, I was ripping a jagged, vicious hole in the beautiful shell we had built over years together around our love, our shared life, our family. I was destroying him, and I was destroying us. I could feel my husband retreat, relent, and finally give up on me. We both slept, tearful and broken. In the morning, I got up late and said perfunctory goodbyes to my family, telling them perfunctory lies about where I was going. I could hardly be bothered to lie at all. I could hardly be bothered with anything. I just could not be bothered anymore. And then I drove to meet my lover. My eyes were swollen from crying and I could smell alcohol sweating from my pores. My lover and I travelled many miles, to a hotel that we would never actually spend the night in, because before the sky even began to darken — very soon after we checked in — a receptionist knocked carefully on the door and told me, eyes aimed firmly at the floor, that my husband was on the phone. He would wait, she said, until I was ready to come to the phone. He did not want to leave a message.

https://medium.com/fearless-she-wrote/my-affair-came-out-on-my-birthday-1e11954809b0

['Em Unravelling']

2020-10-15 14:16:18.295000+00:00

['Women', 'Marriage', 'Regret', 'Relationships', 'Self']

● Aesop: unclear biography, unwritten fables, timeless morals

This post shares a link from fellow freelance writer Tolovaj — a magical writer who hails from Ljubljana, Slovenia. Tolovaj doesn’t just publish written material. The man who pleased none. (Image from Baby’s Own Aesop by Walter Crane) ♦ ♦ “Tolovaj publishes masterpieces!” You can quote me on that. 💓 When you visit the articles, you become instantly mesmerized. The information is fascinating reading, but the layout and presentation of the images that complement the content is absolutely exquisite! The particular link below is to a mini-bio of the famous fabulist, whom we all know as Aesop, but whom we also don’t know very much about. (???) He didn’t even write down his fables! To put it in Tolovaj’s words: “Aesop was most popular fabulist in the world. He still is. But we don’t know much about him. Fortunately his fables are much more clear than his biography.” After reading the article I was moved to remark: Even though we don’t know much about his life, if Aesop’s fables are an indication of his character, he would definitely have been included in my circle of friends. :) *** Aesop’s Fables for Children: Includes a Read-and-Listen CD (Dover Read and Listen)

https://medium.com/express-yourself/aesop-unclear-biography-unwritten-fables-timeless-morals-5b8781033901

['Treathyl Fox']

2020-04-20 22:25:05.196000+00:00

['Life Lessons', 'Philosophy', 'Biography', 'Fables', 'Who Was Aesop']

Behind the Scenes of a Customer Service Hotline

Next time you do this, think about the person on the other end | Photo source Every time you pick up your phone and call a company’s customer service, chances are high that your call will be connected to a call center, where a (hopefully) friendly Customer Service Representative will receive your call. Or a robot, who can’t answer your questions and will redirect you to a CSR. When you have a problem with something, it’s understandable that you’re frustrated, even angry. That’s okay — you’re entitled to your feelings. Just take a few deep breaths before calling in, and remind yourself that the person on the other end is not guilty of causing the issue, and yelling at them doesn’t get you anywhere. It just ruins another human being’s day, and possible wrecks their mental health. Here’s what is going on behind the scenes. Relocation Here in Europe, these call centers are often located in cheaper countries, such as Spain, Eastern Europe, and the Baltics. In need of native speakers of certain languages that the hiring company wants to offer their customer service in, they offer “good” relocation packages. This is a good way of luring young people to move abroad to work on a minimal salary. In my case, the call center in question was located in the Baltics. The company paid for my flights and paid for my accommodation in a hotel near the office for the first 30 days. Upon arrival, I was picked up from the airport by a Team Leader and taken to my hotel. She handed me an envelope that included info about the company, its rules, and my job. There was also a little bit of info about the city and a bus ticket with either 5€ or 10€ credit. The hotel itself was far from a 5-star hotel, which I first imagined it to be as a young lad without any practical life experience. Instead, it was a fairly old, somewhat small building, located in a suburb quite far from the city center. The area might’ve not been the very best in the city, but yet far from the worst as I was to find out on my expeditions. My room was tiny. The walls and floors seemed paper-thin, as I could clearly hear people walking, talking, and doing things I’d prefer not to mention here, in the adjacent rooms. A breakfast buffet was included, but the bacon was often black and oversalted, the porridge was cold, the orange juice was too bland, etc. But I was happy to have a roof over my head. Training No previous experience was required from us and they promised extensive training before starting on the line. We had two weeks of 6–8 hours per day of theory in a classroom, followed by a week on the line with a senior CSR sitting next to you, listening to your calls and interfering if things would get out of hand. After that, you were “on your own”. Of course, you could always ask your colleagues, but on busy days, where everyone was occupied and unavailable to assist you, it wasn’t that easy. On my first weeks, even months, on the line, I faced so many issues that I wasn’t trained to solve, and required constant advice from senior employees. New issues kept appearing all the time, and even after a year in the house, I still had to bother others occasionally. On busy days, when the line was burning (lots of waiting calls), and everyone would be on the phone, and I would face an issue I didn’t know how to solve — those situations were unbearable. Either I would let the customer wait on the line until someone was free to assist me or give very ambiguous answers to get them to end the call ASAP. You’ll understand why the latter option was so tempting later in this article. I wish the training would’ve been even more in-depth and would’ve focused more on the real-world challenges, rather than useless “nice-to-knows”. Along with the job contract, we had to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA), to prevent us from sharing any sensitive details about our job, and to this day I am still under that contract, so I can’t go too much in detail here. Salary and employment Different lines were paid differently. The local language and Russian speaking lines were paid the least, and — from what I heard — the barrier to replace employees was far lower than on other lines, as in the Baltics there isn’t exactly a shortage of bilinguals, whereas there is a shortage of jobs. I don’t remember any specific numbers for their salaries — all I know is that it was barely average or even below the local average pay for a typical 9-to-5 office job. We, the Scandinavians, were on “top of the hill”, getting paid significantly more than our Baltic colleagues. But compared to the salaries back at home (over 50–100% more), it wasn’t such a good deal. Sure, it was well above the local average, and thus allowed me to get a good apartment and go out often, but if I was to visit Finland for holidays, I would’ve been broke in no-time. First, there was the base salary, which was around 30% above the local average for us Scandinavians, and on top of that, there were the bonuses, which are discussed in detail next. Performance To receive the full salary (base + bonuses), you had to fill the requirements for efficiency and accuracy. Even if you were fine with losing your bonuses, the company wasn’t. Reaching the goals was a big deal, and we were constantly reminded of it. The bonuses were paid based on two factors — “Quality” and “AHT”. “Quality” refers to the score of the weekly reviews of up to four of your calls, selected randomly by the Quality Analyst. The target score was 100 (out of 100) to get your bonus, which was more than 100€ — that was more than 15% of my salary. Every serious or even semi-serious mistake that you made during the call dropped your score, and just a single error in handling the call could’ve cost you that 100€. “AHT” or Average Handling Time measures the monthly average of the time you took to finish the calls in seconds. The Client that we worked for was dropping the AHT target almost bi-monthly and thus required us to be even faster with our already demanding job. Different lines had different targets based on the call volumes. For the Finnish line, it was around 210 seconds at some point, but it gradually dropped to about 180 seconds. For another line, it was often closer to 140s — that’s less than three minutes! Remember the last time you got your complex issue solved and received good service in under three minutes? Me neither. The AHT didn’t only count the call duration, but the overall time it took to wrap up everything. At some point we switched to a new CRM system and had to fill in even more details after the call, slowing down the process of wrapping it up. When the call ended, the system automatically switched your status to “After-call” and the clock kept ticking. More than a few times I forgot it on for over an hour, ruining my AHT for that month, and losing my bonus just because I forgot to change my status. It was tempting to switch myself to “Email” status when wrapping up, where the timer would stop, and I wouldn’t receive calls, but it was forbidden. I still did it in order to reach the unrealistic goals. Migrating to the new (slower) CRM system and lowering our AHT goals significantly happened almost simultaneously. Stupid decisions, that only made the employees’ work slower, and their life harder, were made all the time, and yet we were expected to work faster while keeping the level of service sky-high. Apparently, the call center charges their Clients per second, and the Client wanted to cut the costs. I was constantly struggling to keep my AHT below the target, as I failed to finish the interactions quickly enough. I considered myself mostly unlucky because I always got the hour-long calls where a granny would call in for help with resetting her password on the service’s website, or a frustrated customer would yell at me as long as they possibly can without breathing, and resume after a quick breath until their negative energy was depleted. We had monthly 1-on-1 meetings with our Team Leaders to discuss our performance. But despite all the tête-à-têtes, where we would try to find out how I can be faster, those long calls just kept coming, and there was nothing I could do to finish them any faster without breaking the rules. No matter how much I wished to be able to help those poor grannies reset their passwords, and chat with them for the whole day, or hang up on those pricks who would intentionally make my life difficult and ruin my day just because something didn’t work exactly the way they expected it to, I couldn’t. I had to prioritize my service’s speed over quality (because you can’t focus on both, and hanging up was unfortunately forbidden) to not get fired. Luckily we, the Scandinavians, were too hard to replace for the company to fire easily. That might have to do with how I was able to stay there for a year, not reaching the goals on most months. Speaking of being hard to replace, the company was constantly looking for more Scandinavians to join them. We were offered up to 1000€ (10+ months’ salary for us) if we would get one of our friends to relocate, and work there for a year. We once had a campaign, where anyone who would provide the HR with a Swedish CV would get a free pizza. I hit up a Swedish internet “acquaintance” of mine, that I barely knew, asked for his CV, and forwarded it. They wouldn’t have given me my pizza if I didn’t ask for it multiple times over the next few weeks. Once I got it, it was gigantic and they took pictures of me with it to post on the company’s internal blog — “Hey look at this guy, he got a free pizza for trying to recruit his friend! Lucky guy! Look at how generous we are if you please us!” Such propaganda, but at least the pizza was tasty. Work environment At this particular call center, we were located in a modern, relatively spacious, open office. Although there weren’t any assigned seats (except for the HR, Team Leaders, and QAs) CSRs of the same lines liked to sit together. Each work station had a good office chair, but quite old technical equipment (keyboard, mouse, headset). There was a small divider between the work stations to give a sense of privacy. The cheap over-ear headsets were very uncomfortable to wear after a while, and in the noisy environment, it was hard to hear anything from them, as it was often hard also for the customer to hear us. Phones and note-taking equipment were banned from the office for the employees and had to be left in the lockers in the hallway. Books were barely allowed, as for some lines it was often quiet, and since our internet access was limited to only a few whitelisted websites in addition to the web-based tools, we would’ve been bored to death without some kind of activity. Especially Sundays were so quiet, that most of us working then (~6–8 people in total) just sat together, playing cards, and answering the calls as they came in. When a call came in, we would hear a long beep in our headsets and have a second or two to take a breath before the call came in automatically. Angry customers, threats, and breakdowns If only it was just nice people calling in to quickly check where is our nearest office to them and thank you for the good service. If only. Almost daily, at least one of us would receive a call from someone, who’s biggest problem was not the technical issues they were facing, but rather anger management issues. They would call in and often start by just yelling at us. No matter how we tried to calm them down, listen to them, and help them resolve their issue, they wouldn’t listen. I believe the longest call I had was nearly 1,5 hours. One and a half hours of listening to rage. Only if the customer would ask to speak to a supervisor, were we allowed to transfer the call, but it had to come from them — we couldn’t suggest it to them. In rare cases, where the customer asked to speak to someone else than you or you were unable to handle the call, you could transfer them to a colleague. These kinds of calls were always challenging, especially for the more sensitive ones. Several times, I witnessed a colleague break into tears and call it a day after listening to the rage, blaming, threats, and personal insults for too long. They would indirectly or even directly blame us for causing their issue. They would sometimes give us personal insults or even threats. The most common threat was of course “I will never use your services again”, which had the lightest impact on us. Like I would care — it’s not my company. Then there were the legal threats, which were a bit harder to handle, because you never knew, if the customer actually is a lawyer, as they claimed to be. They would threaten to sue the company or worse, sue us personally for whatever reason. Last, but not least, there were the death threats. Though it was calming to know that they don’t know your identity (you only told your first name) and that there are a few seas and countries between us, it was impossible not to take these threats seriously. Once a customer sent us an email, promising to deliver our heads to the local post office. These customers often failed to understand, that the problem was caused by several elements of the company together and CSR ≠ company. They are called “representatives” for a reason — they represent the company, but that’s all that they have to do with it. The issues you are facing with a service are not the fault of the CSR. They are the ones dealing with the mess that the company has made. If this taught me something, it’s the ability to operate under stress and handle difficult people. After a while, I learned that just staying calm and letting them vent without trying to interrupt them, usually did the trick. It was amazing how many times someone who I imagined to be a hungry wolf at the beginning of the call, would turn in to a nice little puppy saying “thank you” and “I’m sorry” at the end of it. How to get your issue solved quickly This varies from company to company and issue to issue, but here are a couple of rules of thumb, that will help you and the CSR.

https://medium.com/no-company-policy/behind-the-scenes-of-a-customer-service-hotline-c7a639704221

['Claudio Lintunen']

2020-12-31 18:43:40.910000+00:00

['Human Interaction', 'Customer Service', 'Work', 'Experience']

How Getting Rejected By A Hot Doctor Improved My Self Image

I’ve had a lot of medical issues in the last couple years, but abdominal pain is the thread that ties them all together. Abdominal pain is a sure-fire sign to me that something is seriously wrong, because every time I have felt it in the last couple years, it means I’m dying. That’s not me being dramatic. I was literally dying. So, it’s understandable, that when I felt a similar abdominal pain last week, my PCP thought an infection could be brewing. I was encouraged to go to the ER for a CT scan, so I didn’t have to wait for insurance approval. The last time I waited too long for radiology, my body tried to kill me by means of attacking my internal organs (LOL). Lenox Hill Hospital is like my second home. For a time, it was literally my second home. Now, I am so comfortable there that I look forward to going back. It’s genuinely a pleasure. That’s what being chronically ill does to a person: you may not be able to count on much, but you can always count on someone at a hospital caring when you’re down. It may be sad to say, but the doctors, nurses, PAs, and staff at The Hill have cared for me in a way that no one else ever has. I know most of the surgical staff by name, and the radiology staff recognizes me when I come in, now. I get whatever testing I ask for, not only because I have great insurance (thanks, Obama), but because the staff at The Hill know that infrequent testing almost killed me twice. Let’s just say, when your nurse calls you “boss”, it’s well earned. I arrived at the Lenox Hill ER, surprised to see it so slow. Pandemic precautions had some frontline workers in the main ER, and some in a back waiting area, assisting non-COVID patients. I was taken into an exam room, where my nurse, a beautiful and friendly blonde, who could be a fit model, helped me settle in. She told me that the doctor would be in to see me soon. When he showed up, I was not prepared. This man was tall and muscular, with dark hair and kind eyes, in all-black scrubs, accompanied by a swag I have never seen at this hospital before. The Hill is a great hospital, but it’s not a particularly swaggy place. And this was a particularly swaggy doctor. After some initial exams and tests, it was determined that nothing was wrong enough for me to be admitted (which is one of my biggest fears). A few hours after I had arrived, the doctor sat down next to me in the waiting area, his body angled toward me, and his arm relaxed across the back of the seat. He had a clear charisma and comfort in this space, and in his body. He spoke casually to me, leaning close to make jokes, or give me advice about next steps. I had watched him for hours walking back and forth across the ER, with a tenor in his step that made it clear he loved his job. But, it was when he was making jokes to me, sidled comfortably into the waiting room seating, that I knew he loved his job. Nothing is hotter than a man that loves his job. Unless, you know, he’s too in love with his job, and then he’s the worst. I went home, defeated. The pain was subsiding from the Toradol the nurse had given me, but a new pang had arrived. For the first time in my medical journey, I was genuinely attracted to my doctor, in a way I could actually explain. If I had met this person under any other circumstance, I would have been attracted to him. It just so happened, that this man was a doctor. The irony wasn’t lost on me. Maybe my transference had manifested into a type. Or, maybe, my type was always swaggy, muscular men in scrubs. Why no one has identified these hotties before is a mystery to me. As any good Millennial will, I went home and looked him up, curious why I had never seen him at Lenox Hill before. When you Google my name a lot of information comes up. When you Google his name, it’s absurd. The amount of press that has been done on this man is astounding. He’s mildly famous, not only because he fought the pandemic and lived to tell the tale, but he’s a dancer, musician, world-traveler, blogger, and photographer. Honestly, how dare he? Everything about him was attractive and interesting and cool. Almagated together, he was truly swaggy. I commented on one of his posts that I appreciated his care at the ER. The speed with which he got back to me was astounding. He knew exactly who I was and wished me well. I was flattered, and my interest was officially piqued. A day later, I replied to one of his Instagram stories, and he messaged me back just as quickly. This time, with some flirtatious banter. I couldn’t believe a hot doctor took the time to send me a cute and quippy message. Finally, after much research on the ethical dilemma I was about to throw at him, and consulting with a number of famous TikTok doctors what risks were involved, I sent him the following DM: “Hey, if we had met under any other circumstance, I would have asked you out. So please let me know if you’d ever be interested in going on a date MONTHS from now.” He responded just minutes later: “Hahaha thank you! Sadly I’m taken! Ships in the night…” We continued the conversation for a few more messages. He was indeed as swaggy as I had perceived. He was as kind as his eyes gave away in the ER. He was as funny as his waiting room jokes had led me to believe.

https://medium.com/@clairemanship/how-getting-rejected-by-a-hot-doctor-improved-my-self-image-1ac89fe41373

['Claire Manship']

2020-12-20 19:00:55.779000+00:00

['New York City', 'Emergency Medicine', 'Medicine', 'Doctors', 'Dating']

Open enrollment is over, now what?

By Monique Cabral Open Enrollment for 2021 Affordable Care Act plans ends on December 15, 2020. In most cases, you would need to wait until the next Open Enrollment period starts on November 1, 2021, to change your health insurance plan or enroll in a new one. However, even after Open Enrollment has ended, there are some ways to still get health insurance coverage now. These are: Through a special enrollment period due to a qualifying life event like getting married, having a child, or losing existing coverage Under a short term medical plan Getting health insurance through a private provider If you missed the ACA Open Enrollment deadline and do not qualify for Medicaid, or a special enrollment period, you might consider a short term health plan. Some important things to consider regarding short term plans: Short term plans do not meet the Affordable Care Act’s requirements for minimum essential coverage. They do not commonly cover pre-existing conditions, and premiums can be based on your medical history. These plans are not guaranteed issue, so your application can be turned down. Regulations limit short term plans to 364 days in duration. They’re not available in every state. Now, when getting health insurance through a private provider, choosing a plan that fits your budget and supports your needs is essential. Places such as New Health Plans can help you find the right coverage and low premiums for free, with the help of a licensed health insurance agent. So good luck and happy hunting!

https://medium.com/@newhealthplans2021/open-enrollment-is-over-now-what-ef2f6f244a78

['New Health Plans']

2020-12-21 15:00:22.984000+00:00

['Healthcare', 'Insurance', 'Health']

Apache Spark - Spark SQL ve Spark Streaming Bölüm 1

SEPAL_LENGTH, SEPAL_WIDTH alanlarının avg fonksiyonu ile ortalamalarını alalım.. Dataset<Row> results = dataFrame.groupBy("VARIETY").agg(org.apache.spark.sql.functions.avg("SEPAL_LENGTH"),org.apache.spark.sql.functions.avg("SEPAL_WIDTH")); results.show(); Spark SQL’de SQL fonksiyonları haricinde, temel SQL yapısı gibi sorgular da yazmamıza izin veriliyor. Bunun için StructType ile bir şema oluşturuyoruz. Daha sonrasında ise elimizdeki veri ile şemayı birleştirip DataFrame oluşturuyoruz. StructType schema = new StructType(new StructField[]{ new StructField("SepalLength", DataTypes.createDecimalType(), true, Metadata.empty()), new StructField("SepalWidth", DataTypes.createDecimalType(), false, Metadata.empty()), new StructField("PetalLength", DataTypes.createDecimalType(), true, Metadata.empty()), new StructField("PetalWidth", DataTypes.createDecimalType(),false, Metadata.empty()), new StructField("Variety", DataTypes.StringType,false, Metadata.empty())}); Dataset<Row> df = spark.createDataFrame(dataFrame.toJavaRDD(), schema); df.createOrReplaceTempView("IRIS"); // Use query in iris schema dataFrame.sparkSession().sql("SELECT PetalLength from IRIS WHERE PetalLength>3 ORDER BY PetalLength ASC").show(); Console Görünümü Sorgu yapıları için bir kaç örnek göstermek istedim. Apache Spark SQL ile bunun gibi bir çok sorgu yazabilirsiniz..

https://medium.com/@soner.sariusak/apache-spark-spark-sql-ve-spark-streaming-b%C3%B6l%C3%BCm-1-8eab394297e9

['Soner Ömer Sarıuşak']

2019-12-02 07:06:03.554000+00:00

['Oracle Database', 'Spark Streaming', 'Spark Sql', 'Java', 'Apache Spark']

LeBron James Should Get a Medal From the President, Not Insulting Tweets

LeBron James (Keith Allison) By Manny Otiko Sometimes African Americans simply can’t win in the game of life in America. Go to school, get a good job and you can still get pulled over and asked why you’re driving an expensive car. Or in the case of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates arrested trying to break into your own house. President Donald Trump’s childish attack on NBA star LeBron James and Don Lemon is a perfect example of this situation. Last Friday, Trump attacked both men and accused them of being unintelligent. He has also accused Rep. Maxine Waters as being “low IQ.” “Lebron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon,” said Trump in a tweet. “He made Lebron look smart, which isn’t easy to do.” Trump’s attack was criticized by both Republicans and Democrats and seemed to be designed as a PR stunt to take the Russian investigation off the front pages. It worked for a few days, but as the Paul Manafort trial continues to reveal juicy details, the Russian investigation is still front and center. Trump’s attack was wrong for multiple reasons. Firstly, it adds to his long list of race-baiting comments and actions. He’s already called neo-Nazis “good people,” appointed several white supremacists to the White House, and is currently implementing an immigration policy which can only be described as legalized ethnic cleansing. (And doesn’t the leader of the Free World have better things to do than to get into beefs with media and sports figures?) But what’s really disturbing about the attack on James is it’s undeserved. James should be praised by the president, not mocked. When you look at James’ story it embodies that bootstrapping mythos that Republicans love. James was born to a teenage single mother in Akron, Ohio. His mother was so poor that the family was forced to move frequently because of their financial instability. But because of his basketball talent and business acumen, James was able to get out of his poor neighborhood and become a multimillionaire. After achieving national success with the Miami Heat, he returned to his hometown to deliver them a championship. He has also invested heavily in Cleveland and his new school in Akron, which is designed to help parents and children use education to get out of poverty. Akron schools have praised his accomplishments. “Anyone that’s done what LeBron James has done for the past decade to 15 years for our children to prepare them to flourish in life has to be an intelligent person,” said Mark Williams, Akron Public Schools spokesman in an interview with Reuters. “He’s a bright guy, end of story.” First Lady Melania Trump also said she disagreed with her husband’s opinion. She said James actions were worthy of praise. James is the kind of rags-to-riches American success story that most people dream about. However, James is also black and intelligent, two things that Trump seems to hate the most. And as a privileged, wealthy black athlete, James is a convenient tool for Trump, who built his campaign on white resentment. I guess Trump wants James to follow FOX News commentator Laura Ingraham’s advice and “shut up and dribble.” By the way, James has announced he plans to release a documentary on politically- active athletes which will be titled “Shut Up and Dribble.”

https://eaafolabi.medium.com/lebron-james-should-get-a-medal-from-the-president-not-insulting-tweets-75dae51abf08

['Manny Otiko']

2018-08-08 20:27:48.634000+00:00

['LeBron James', 'Ohio', 'School', 'Donald Trump', 'James']

Southern European Stars 2020: and the winner is…

The winner of the event is Southern Europe as a whole. This morning, I believe we raised our voices to assert that the Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian ecosystems are vibrant, full of talented entrepreneurs and with relevant investors willing to provide capital and brains to help founders create many more success stories than the ones mentioned in my previous post. The Event in numbers 29 VCs 200 applications → 15 finalists → 3 winners €500k in rewards from IBM Cloud, Google for Startups, AWS Activate, and Microsoft for Startups 3 sessions (B2B, B2C, Healthcare) 200 attendees across sessions 1m laughs organising all the set up The Jury They’ve not only been present today but throughout the whole process.It’s been fascinating to see how all of us coordinated to get sponsons onboard, evaluate all the applicants and send the message that Southern Europe rocks. You can check investors participating here. Kudos to all! B2C Jury Healthcare Jury B2B Jury The Real Winners Competition has been intense and the bar has been as high as Mont Blanc. Choosing the finalist involved tough decisions but choosing a unique winner… These three startups outcompeted all: B2C Kotokan (Spain): a game that teaches problem-solving skills through mathematics to children aged 7 to 12. B2B KeyLess (Italy): Keyless is a deeptech, cybersecurity company building the world’s first privacy-preserving biometric authentication and personal identity management platform. Healthcare Virtuleap (Portugal): VR brain training games designed to help increase attention levels, and address cognitive illnesses, disorders, and learning challenges.

https://medium.com/samaipata-ventures/southern-european-stars-2020-and-the-winner-is-82d8863b821e

['David Alonso Martínez']

2020-09-16 00:00:00

['VC', 'Portugal', 'Spain', 'Italy', 'Pitch']

Once when I was Yogi

Once when I was Yogi This morning, the wide grin of a little boy in a smart batman costume caught my eye. The joy on the child's face is unlike that of any boy photos I have in my collection. Beneath the photo appeared a proud grandpa's FB boast "Have you ever seen a happier Batman?" The man making the boast, roughly 25 years my senior, is the father of 4 boys and 3 girls, the oldest "boy" a childhood friend. I don't know how many grands, grandpa Joe has. My friend, Joe Jr , has sired a couple on the upper end of the age spectrum, and in the post's comment section, Joe Sr mentions that little Paolo is the second youngest. I will never walk in the shoes of a family patriarch, but I speculate the good ones exercise care with words. Grandpa Joe, is a retired computer engineer who raised 7 children in an affluent neighborhood. On his way to success, he mastered computer languages and algorithmic logic. Thinking as hard as he did may have served as a natural buffer against speech. What countless worth an extra nanosecond in a household more than twice the size of that to which i had belonged! I must say that the blond headed boy grandpa Joe was beaming about was quite handsome. Despite being maskless for the photoshoot, there was plenty of costume tinsel to appreciate; the black bat-sleeves with pointed ridges, in particular. Wisely, though,Grandpa Joe alluded to the boy's joy and not to his looks and kept the message brief. In it, perhaps, there was a coded message to his clan for these troubled times. "Life is good, and this here is the evidence!" While lingering on this FB post, the faint outlines of an old memory came back into focus. Once again, I saw the multicolored leaves on the maples and oaks of the neighborhood around the school, and I walking in step with fellow first graders on a leaf strewn sidewalk. Once again I recalled the "butterflies" while shuffling along in formation, incognito, surrounded by an eclectic group of kids whose voices I could not distinguish being that they too had disappeared beneath their cloaks and such. I recalled the dark brown coverall that enveloped me as I kept pace with my classmates, the pressure of the mask against my face, and the chafing of its bands against my scalp. But as my thoughts turned to the mask's painted outer shell, they turned unexpectedly to a different day; to the dress rehearsal that had taken place when the permission slip had been signed, and an adoring smile flashed my way. The person who once knew the real me reminded me in my thoughts today, that I was Yogi in that parade.

https://medium.com/@sonofeve3/once-when-i-was-yogi-fb840734c6df

['Steven Galanis']

2020-11-04 02:27:36.493000+00:00

['Autumn', 'Halloween', 'Family', 'Boyhood', 'Love']

Product Sprint 2: Ideation and Prototyping

On Figma, we each worked on separate features that we felt were imperative for a minimal viable product (MVP), while still continuing to collaborate and communicate throughout the process. To maintain a standardized and cohesive look throughout the app, we consulted each other for opinions on colors, fonts, sizing, and placement of different components. Through demonstrating how one would make and respond to an event and our use of Google integration to make our app experience simple, we differentiated ourselves from our competitors while showing how easy and smooth it would be to use our app. The aspects of the app that we focused on for Demo Day were our login page, the dashboard (where a user can see all of their groups), how a specific group looks, and most importantly, the events. Initially, coming up with a basic design in Figma was challenging — Angela and Ava only had experience designing mobile apps, so adjusting to the sizing shift and larger window area was difficult. For Allison and Mindy who had less design experience, there was a similar learning curve to making components and adding transitions between frames. We experimented with other features on Figma, like vector drawings, to design our logo. Since we had previously experience using Figma to prototype a mobile app during HackOurCampus, we had to make sure that we didn’t go overboard with transitions that couldn’t translate to web apps. Initially, coming up with a basic design in Figma was challenging — Angela and Ava only had experience designing mobile apps, so adjusting to the sizing shift and larger window area was difficult. For Allison and Mindy who had less design experience, there was a similar learning curve to making components and adding transitions between frames. Color Palette We experimented with other features on Figma, like vector drawings, to design our logo. Since we had previously experience using Figma to prototype a mobile app during HackOurCampus, we had to make sure that we didn’t go overboard with transitions that couldn’t translate to web apps. On Demo Day, we presented our work throughout the semester to fellow Cornell students, faculty members, and other guest mentors, and talking with the audience helped us gain insight on potential issues in user flow and design. For instance, one mentor mentioned that the layout of various functionalities sometimes felt unintuitive. Others suggested additional features, such as allowing users to prioritize groups, implementing events without groups, and allowing more customizability. Given such feedback, we intend to continue iterating over our design and developing our product through December and January.

https://medium.com/@ac2677/product-spring-2-ideation-and-prototyping-b42abdd567d9

['Angela Chen']

2020-12-15 05:00:06.027000+00:00

['Product Development', 'UI Design', 'Product Design', 'Product Management', 'Computer Science']

If You Want To Find Love, You Have To Heal Yourself First

How Was Your Childhood? Real love is not something you need to earn, nor is it something you have to fight for. It‘s something you deserve just because you exist. The problem is, many of us didn’t receive love in the very first stages of our life — and those stages teach us what we know about love and relationships. Not receiving the love we needed makes us develop coping mechanisms to avoid pain and loneliness. It leads us to push people away, to sabotage ourselves and to do everything we can to never be vulnerable again. “As part of developing our wounded self, we unconsciously decided that who we really are — our magnificent soul essence — was not good enough. We reasoned that if we were good enough, we would be loved. As little children, we could not understand that not being unconditionally loved had nothing to do with us. That it was because our parents, coming from their own ego-wounded self, simply didn’t know how.” Margaret Paul, in Do You Believe You Deserve Love? This means that, if you truly want to understand and break down your beliefs about love, you need to go within and look at your childhood. Were your parents present? As a child, did you feel loved by them — unconditionally loved? Did you live in a stable, caring, supportive environment? Or did you feel like you had to prove yourself in order to receive love? (Like getting good grades, being the golden child) Did your parents accept you for who you are, or were they constantly trying to change you? Take the time to get in touch with how you feel about yourself and about your parents. Be honest about your hidden feelings, memories, wounds and thoughts. Don’t be afraid — I know it hurts, but this is how you heal. To make it easier for you, I’ll give you my story. I was adopted when I was a baby. My parents were always honest about it and they never hid anything from me, so I never thought of my adoption as something that influenced me. However, the impact was there, and it was huge. Unconsciously, I have always carried this deep fear of abandonment and rejection — because I was abandoned in the very moment I was born. I absorbed the message that I was not good enough — if I was, why would my biological parents reject me? Besides, my father’s authoritarian parenting style only reinforced this idea. I had to follow his rules and meet his high standards, without ever having the space to express myself. He was never satisfied with anything I did. Living with the constant burden of pleasing him made me build one more belief: that my feelings and opinions don’t matter. If they did matter, why wasn’t I allowed to express them? Why did I have to follow every rule without saying a word?

https://medium.com/be-unique/if-you-want-to-find-love-you-have-to-heal-yourself-first-2482ec67457d

['Patrícia S. Williams']

2020-10-19 13:40:55.391000+00:00

['Relationships', 'Love', 'Advice', 'Parenting', 'Psychology']

The X factor of Polish software development companies

Software fuel economies transform companies, deliver business value. There are many firms creating products but only a few of them understand the craft. They go beyond code, delivering business consulting services. They take advantage of the dynamic Polish economy, employing the best talents in the world. The X factor of Polish software development companies lies in the people and business processes. That’s real value for your business. Many software business partners merely write the code. They don’t do much beyond that. The position of Poland and its developers comes from higher standards. Software developers, product owners, and business managers want to understand where the business value comes from. The software requirements specification document (SRS) is not enough. Teams in Poland want to understand the client’s business. This is the foundation. When the knowledge is there, they can move on to specifications, documents, preparations, and finally development. Big emphasis on understanding the company and its business goals lets the team care about functionalities. That’s another differentiating factor. In Poland developers not only create and implement functionalities of the software, they actively advise on them. This multitasking approach pays off for the customer, especially the long-term. Half-baked software doesn’t do any good for anyone. That’s why Polish software developers add functionalities, clean the legacy code, guide a client through the development roadmap. Developers understand that the client can’t be left on his own at any stage of development. Constant contact with the team, ability to reach them and consult, options to throw a part of the project half-way to meet new requirements — all of that is possible. The idea behind Polish software development There is no such thing as the “Polish school of coding” but software development companies (internally we call them “software houses”) understand the value of a unique approach to delivering products. They employ a wide range of professionals. Mostly seniors, and that also applies to testers. Automatic testing is highly valued, hence the quality of software and short periods of bug fixing at every stage of the project. Polish professionals are also very versatile — many of them can do frontend and backend. Technology mature and age very fast, so professionals have to keep up, every step of the way. That’s why many junior and mid-level developers graduate in the course of a project. By learning and expanding their abilities, developers prove their dedication to code quality, state of software, and above all — wellbeing of the client’s business. The idea behind it all is self-sufficiency. Developers are working in teams but are trusted to know everything about the project and be reliable. A teammate gets sick? Anyone can pick up the work and continue. The code is clean, the knowledge is there, the flow is uninterrupted. That’s the power of Agile, which is a common thing in Poland. Agile counts on two things: communication and performance. That’s where local developers shine. Up to three core technologies with up to five additional ones are nothing special for an average professional. Professional courtesy requires the constant development of new skills and enhancing old ones. That’s why Polish developers are skilled and competitive on an international level. The TopCoder ranking features Poland at the 4th place in the world in terms of skills. I have been observing the software development industry for over 10 years. Polish software houses look beyond technology and pay very close attention to existing and emerging software industry trends. While other countries have been generally slower in the adoption of trends such as Design Thinking or user experience, we quickly gained expertise in these areas. Many companies have also specialized in specific industries and technologies. We have a great pool of IT talents and our rates remain competitive (in comparison to Western countries). Industry’s maturity is shown by SoDA — we exchange experiences and bring people together. Kamil Rzeźnicki, CEO of Herodot We adopt quickly Poland is the perfect technology hub With the annual growth reaching 20%, the number of talents employed in software outsourcing tripled between 2009 and 2014. That’s because the country chose the fast-growing track before the famous crisis of 2008. It was also the fastest-growing economy in post-crisis Europe. The stability of the banking sector, a large number of small and medium-sized high-tech companies, and a large pool of talents attracted global investors. Companies with the need for custom software development quickly follow, further stabilizing the economy. You can read about it in the report by McKinsey & Company. With the upcoming recession and possible crisis of 2020 and 2021, nothing changes for Poland. Ceoworld Magazine ranked Poland the third-best country in the world to invest in this year. In a post-pandemic world, few factors will become crucial: · Ability to handle a virus if the second wave comes · Stability of the country’s IT infrastructure · Developers that can work stationary and remotely, no matter external circumstances That plus 11 factors featured in Ceoworld’s report, will make the difference. Corruption, investor protection, quality of life, taxes, red tape, workforce, and others got an equal weighting, placing Poland just one point behind Great Britain. That corresponds with the May 2020 report made by the European Union. According to these forecasts, the Polish economy will get into a 4% recession but will quickly recover in just a few months, ending 2021 on a high note. the EU predicts that Poland will be the least-affected European economy. Coronavirus hit us like everyone else but we are resilient. So much, in fact, that in the last decade many emerged reports placed us at the forefront of the global digital revolution. Poland and its software development companies put the country on a list of the most digital nations. The Tholons globalization index of 2018 gives us 11th place in the world. All of this wouldn’t matter if it wasn’t for natural advantages: · Proximity to financial and economic centers of the world (Great Britain, Switzerland, Brussels, Berlin, Paris) · Highly skilled workforce with a deep understanding of business processes · Very high proficiency in English (11th place in the world) · Small-time difference and culture gap between Poland and other Western countries · US and EU standards of IP protection and data security · A deep pool of IT graduates (estimated 80,000 a year, from at least 5 major academic centers such as Warsaw, Wroclaw, Cracow, Katowice, and Rzeszow) Poland attracts the biggest in the industry. Recently Microsoft; the company will invest 1 billion dollars. By investing in a data center region and cloud services, the giant will significantly boost digital transformation. Poland is Europe’s Grand Central for tech Software development? Only in Poland! Over the years, Poland has become a global tech hub with experience, tools, talent pool, and know-how for attracting investors and clients. Software development companies were a part of this revolution, hiring massive amounts of talents across the last three decades. Now it’s time for the next phase — the birth of the Polish Digital Valley. The goal is to transform key elements of an already digital society — healthcare, education, manufacturing, retail, energy, finance, and insurance. Local companies, benefiting from the proximity of Microsoft and the power of its cloud, will spearhead the innovation. Innovation can’t magically appear — it’s driven by people. That’s the true X factor in Poland. About the author: Jarosław Ściślak is an independent branding, marketing, company culture, business scaling, and content specialist. Working with technology companies, he helps to drive revenue and build an image. More on https://www.scislak.com.

https://medium.com/sodapl/the-x-factor-of-polish-software-development-companies-2bbedffe7ce0

['Jarosław Ściślak']

2020-06-16 07:01:01.931000+00:00

['Software Development', 'Design Thinking', 'Mobile', 'Software']

Dev tools are dead…Long live the dev tools

Developers’ tools have emerged alongside Computer Science. Their ultimate goal has always been to make developers’ life easier. But, what makes devs’ life easier today has nothing to do with what it was back in the 60’s. In this post we go through the evolution of dev tools and we argue that we are facing the rise of dev tool 4.0. Let’s walk through the history of dev tools from the physical punched cards to AI-powered tools. Dev tool 1.0 : papers and boxes Let’s do some digging into the first-generation of computers, and meet with punched-cards. Back then, they were the basic unit of data. If you dreamed about running a program, you’d rather be patient and highly careful. This is why. First, as a developer, you would write your instructions in an old programming language (like Cobol or Fortran). It was written on a piece of paper, the coding sheet. Then you’d pass over your coding sheet to a keypunch operator that would “encode” it into a source deck. The source deck was a bunch of punched cards and each card was one line of instruction 😥 Then (yes I know that’s a lot)…the source deck was compiled by the computer operator into a program deck. And finally, that program deck could be fed to a computer to run! Source deck Have you ever seen a program running perfectly on the first try?… Well you can be sure you had to repeat the whole process again and again and again before it worked. These steps were individually really long and cumbersome. So, the main concern of programmers was to save time. The first generation of dev tools helped to solve these challenges. To fix bugs, programmers had to go through the source deck. Initially, it was just a bunch of cards with some square holes. Reading back the original program was taking ages. So, keypunch printers were invented. On top of each punched card the translation in natural language was written. It was the first program reading interface. What about the code complexity? With one instruction per card, it was easy to get entangled in complex programs. To monitor the complexity programmers stored the source deck in boxes (first source code hosting system 😎). The size of the boxes was actually built-in to fit the maximum batch size for a computer to run. This was an easy way for programmers to see when they had to refactor their code. At the early stages of Computers, programmers were dealing daily with cards, boxes, rubber bands, and request forms. That might not seem highly sexy but dev tools had to be physical back then. 🏓 If you want to play with old school punched card, you should give a try to The Virtual Keypunch

https://medium.com/codist-ai/dev-tools-are-dead-long-live-the-dev-tools-66a4a7f0d91a

['Maeliza S.']

2020-05-04 13:21:58.706000+00:00

['Developer Tools', 'Programming', 'Software Development']

Niche Marketing Kit

Photo by Merakist on Unsplash Hi! Welcome to my honest “the Niche Marketing Kit” experience story. As always, I want you to have all of the most important information that you need to decide whether this is a good product for you. You get a great deal with this product at a low price, so please read my short and honest story. First What Exactly Is Niche Marketing Kit? The Niche Marketing Kit is a new product from John Thornhill and Dave Nicholson, which launches on December 26, 2020 at 9am EST. This is a bumper holiday product that contains over $10,000 worth of value for a low price. John Thornhill and Dave Nicholson are very successful online marketers and generated more than $1 million in sales over the last 12 months. They identified 5 major areas that contributed to this success which were: Generating traffic Video marketing Affiliate marketing Building a list Social media marketing So they decided to provide all of their proven strategies and tools for me in these areas so that I will have a huge advantage in my online business in 2021. Each of the products within the Niche Marketing Kit has a high value and it would cost more than $10,000 to purchase them separately. I get them all for a small onetime price during the launch. This is a no-brainer as the information in these individual products is very powerful and it helps me you to take your business to the next level. The Niche Marketing Kit is not just some thrown together bunch of mediocre products. All of the products within the kit have played a major part in the success of the creators in 2020. They generated more than $1 million dollars in sales despite the Covid-19 pandemic. Both John and Dave frequently top affiliate leader boards for product launches so they know what they are talking about. They turned this knowledge into the Niche Marketing Kit so that others can copy their success. I have never seen so much value included in a package for such a low price before. I have used some of these materials and they are top quality. John and Dave really “walk their talk” and the Niche Marketing kit helps me to use their methods for online marketing success. If you want to know more about my story with Niche Marketing kit.. you can go here.

https://medium.com/@imbadass1995/niche-marketing-kit-f94a536b7754

[]

2020-12-23 15:48:07.480000+00:00

['Marketing', 'Online Marketing', 'Social Media Marketing', 'Affiliate Marketing', 'Video Marketing']

What’s a molar pregnancy? · Dr Dad

Also known as the hydatidiform mole, it is a pregnancy complication that causes abnormal growth of trophoblast cells. These cells normally grow in the placenta during pregnancy. This guide has all the basic information you need to know about molar pregnancy right from its symptoms to cure if any. Facts about molar pregnancy Molar pregnancies are of two types, complete molar pregnancy, and partial molar pregnancy. In the complete molar pregnancy, the tissues in the placenta are swollen and are filled with fluid-filled cysts. Other than that, the tissues are abnormal and there is no formation of any fetal tissues. On the other hand, in partial molar pregnancy, the normal placental tissues might have some abnormal placental tissue growth side-by-side. Even though there might be any fetal tissue growth, the fetal won’t survive and there will be a miscarriage in the earlier stages of the pregnancy. Molar pregnancy has several complications; a rare cancer is one of the severe complications. How to recognize molar pregnancy? Even though it might feel similar to normal pregnancy, several symptoms might help you recognize any abnormality in your pregnancy, in this case, molar pregnancy. If the color of vaginal bleeding ranges from dark brown to bright red in the first trimester then chances are it might be a molar pregnancy. Women who experience severe nausea and vomiting might have an abnormal pregnancy such as a molar pregnancy. Grape Like cysts growth in the vaginal passage, pelvic pain, and even uterine growth could be signs of molar pregnancies. The presence of Anemia and ovarian cysts could also be due to molar pregnancy. Conclusion Molar pregnancy is a severe complication that could prove fatal for pregnant women. It is advised that you visit the doctor if you go through any of the above symptoms.

https://medium.com/@parenthood7/whats-a-molar-pregnancy-dr-dad-565696e5fcab

[]

2021-07-27 09:14:16.369000+00:00

['Moms', 'Baby', 'Kids', 'Children']

Hi Viktor,

Hi Viktor, Nice article. In short, the conclusion I draw from this article is that weed smoking can lead to early age dementia. This article can serve as a red alert to people who are not regulars at weed smoking. Maybe prevent cannabis smoking in future.

https://medium.com/@vasu56deva/hi-viktor-275aeb130059

['K P Vasudeva Rao']

2020-12-21 11:19:03.744000+00:00

['Cannabis', 'Brain Injury', 'Smoking']

Charges filed in 2002 murder, 2018 rape investigations

On Dec. 21, the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office filed a first-degree murder case and a first-degree rape case against 45-year-old man already in prison for another felony crime. The murder victim was found in February 2002 behind a Federal Way grocery store. The rape occurred in May 2018 near Burien City Hall. The defendant was charged by the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office in a separate attempted robbery case and sentenced in May 2019. As part of that felony sentence, his DNA was entered into a criminal database (CODIS). That database led to matches in the 2002 murder case and the 2018 rape case. Additional DNA testing was completed in summer 2020. The murder and the rape investigations were referred to our office on Dec. 18. The 2002 murder was investigated by Federal Way Police and the 2018 rape was investigated by the King County Sheriff’s Office. As noted in the public court documents, in both instances in this current case the defendant targeted vulnerable, middle-aged, small-in-stature women who were strangers and who lived and/or worked on the streets. His arraignment on the murder charge and the rape charge is scheduled January 7. The defendant remains in the Monroe Corrections Center on the earlier conviction (case 18–1–04795–8). This post is current as of December 22. It is not expected to be updated, but updates in the case can be found using case number 20–1–06793–4.

https://medium.com/@kcprosecutor/charges-filed-in-2002-murder-2018-rape-investigations-c6f10bc71437

['King County Prosecuting Attorney S Office']

2020-12-23 00:28:54.245000+00:00

['Rape', 'Criminal Justice', 'King County Prosecutor', 'Cold Case Murder', 'King County']

High performance memory management for smart contracts

High performance memory management for smart contracts How smart contracts work on Solana’s Proof of History based blockchain Key Takeaways High performance bytecode designed for fast verification and compilation to native code Memory management that’s designed for fast analysis of data dependencies Execution of smart contracts that is parallelizable in as many cores as the system can provide Our approach to smart contract execution is based on how operating systems load and execute dynamic code in the kernel. In Figure 1. an untrusted client, or Userspace in Operating Systems terms, creates a program in the front-end language of her choice, (like C/C++/Rust/Lua), and compiles it with LLVM to the Solana Bytecode object. This object file is a standard ELF. The computationally expensive work of converting frontend languages into programs is done locally by the client. Frontend to LLVM takes a user supplied program in a higher level language such as C/C++/Rust/Lua, or is called as a library from JavaScript or any other language LLVM toolchain does the actual work of converting the program to a ELF. The output is an ELF with a specific bytecode as its target that is designed for quick verification and conversion to the local machine instruction set that Solana is running on. On the kernel side, the ELF is verified, loaded and executed. Verifier checks that the bytecode is valid and safe to execute and converts it to the local machine instruction set. Loader prepares the memory necessary to load the code and mark the segment as executable. The runtime actually calls the program with arguments and manages the changes to the virtual machine. Solana Bytecode Most of the focus on performance of smart contracts has been focused on moving to WASM. The bytecode doesn’t matter! While our bytecode is based on Berkley Packet Filter, we can use anything that is easy to JIT to x86 (or SPIRV!). The reason why we are basing our bytecode on BPF is because what the kernel does with untrusted code overlaps almost exactly with the requirements we have: Deterministic amount of time to execute the code Bytecode that is portable between machine instruction sets Verified memory accesses Deterministic and short amount of time to load the object and verify the bytecode and JIT to local machine instruction set We want the simplest, fastest and easiest way to verify instruction set. Memory Management is what really matters This is the most performance critical part of the engine. If all the contracts that are scheduled have no data dependencies, they can all be executed concurrently. If we succeed, that means that the performance of the engine will scale with the number of cores available to execute the contracts. The throughput will double every 2 years with Moores law. Memory management starts with the ELF itself. Initially we are constraining contracts to be a single read-only code and data segment. That means it’s composed of read-only executable code and read-only data — no mutable globals or mutable static variables. We can relax this requirement in the future, but for now it provides a simple solution for Requirement 4 from above. Since smart contracts themselves hold no state, how do you actually manage state for the contract? Our runtime will provide an interface for creating state. This interface is invoked through a transaction just like any other contract method. Allocate Memory If the page_address public key has no current memory region associated with it, the region is allocated and the allocated memory is set to 0. If the page_address public key is unassigned, assign it to the contract public key. The only code that can modify the memory that is assigned to this is code that is provided by the contract . Thus, all state transitions in that memory have been done by the contract. If any of the conditions fail, the call fails. This interface is called with a simple transaction. Execution The call structure is our basic transaction. This structure describes the context of the transaction: The two most important parts of this structure for the contract are the keys and the user_data . The runtime translates the keys to the memory locations associated with them with the memory that was created with allocate_memory . The user_data is the random bits of memory that the user has supplied for the call . This is how users can add dynamic external state into the runtime. Smart contracts can also examine the required_sigs vector to check which of the PublicKeys in call have a valid signature. By the time the Call gets to the contracts method, the signatures have already been verified. Rules A contract implements the following interface: With the following definition for a Page: As long as the caller can pay the fee to execute the contract, it will be called. But the runtime will only store the modified Page if the following rules are met: For pages assigned to the contract, the total sum of all the tokens in these pages cannot increase. For pages unassigned to the contract, the individual balance of each page cannot decrease. For pages unassigned to the contract, the memory cannot change. The total sum of all the tokens in all the pages cannot change. So a contract can move balances freely around any of the pages that have been assigned to it. It can modify the memory in those pages freely. For pages assigned to other contracts, the contract can add tokens to individual pages, and can read their memory vectors. Signals Signals are asynchronous but guaranteed calls. They are created just like pages are allocated and assigned to a contract. The memory that is owned by the signal’s page stores a Call structure that the runtime can examine. create_signal(page_address: PublicKey, contract: PublicKey) A signal is a way for a contract to schedule itself, or call other contracts in the future. Once a signal becomes set, the runtime guarantees its eventual execution. A client can call a contract with any number of signals, which can modify the memory of the signal and construct whatever asynchronous method the contract needs to call, including allocate_memory or create_signal Notes A contract cannot allocate memory synchronously. The client first makes a transaction for allocate_memory , and then it calls the contract method with the page that has some memory allocated to it. A contract can schedule a signal to allocate memory and call itself back in the future. , and then it calls the contract method with the page that has some memory allocated to it. A contract can schedule a signal to allocate memory and call itself back in the future. The runtime can execute all the non overlapping contract calls in parallel. Our preliminary results show that over 500,000 calls per second is possible — with room for optimization. Future work We are just about to merge the nuts and bolts of the memory management portion of the smart contracts engine. What will follow immediately is SDK, signals, JIT, loader, toolchain. But there is so much more! These basic primitives can be used to implement all the regular Operating Systems features. allocate_memory can be used to create stack frames for threads, and writable segments for processes elfs with persistent state. can be used to create stack frames for threads, and writable segments for processes elfs with persistent state. Signals can be used as a trampoline from the running process to an OS service that does dynamic memory allocation, creates additional threads, and creates other signals. This framework can eventually support all the operating system primitives that you enjoy in a modern OS as simple synchronous calls without compromising performance. If implementing a JIT or a dynamic linker in rust sounds like fun please reach out to me at anatoly@solana.com. — — Want to learn more about Solana? Check us out on Github and find ways to connect on our community page.

https://medium.com/solana-labs/high-performance-memory-management-for-smart-contracts-aa9b3bc950fb

['Anatoly Yakovenko']

2018-12-13 22:51:03.685000+00:00

['Smart Contracts', 'Blockchain', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Technology', 'Bitcoin']

World Without Google

(Engineer’s point-of-view….) Let’s just consider what the world would be like without google. Maybe an alternate universe or rather a different phase of the same reality. The would has come a long way from the age where people used to manually assemble parts for machinery, and age where the internet just came into existance. After a few year’s after the google was hosted, then world just started growing rapidly. I think that in the process of being an engineer i have learnt more information from google than i could ever from school/college. This fact simply exist due to the easy accessibility of the search engine, I have a doubt about some piece of code or a concept I would rather consider googling it than to contact my professors. There are other search engines but the preferencial search that is present in google is simply amazing, it it could also change the point-of-view of a individual. But enough of all the google this and google that, let’s go to a parallel universe year 2020, where google was never invented. Now being in this universe you gotta navigate home to check out your doppleganger, but no you can’t there is no google maps, ask everyone who is around for directions, there are those fat phones with no smart ness, cause not enough research was possible due to the difficulty of research, now there is this guy why is studying engineering and you being an engineer just curious to see what they study went near him, he was carrying a 100 ton backpack with books that didn’t exist in our would, and why would they we have webpages, talking about webpages, you ask that student about internet, he gave you the college domain, and said ‘I just know this website’.

https://medium.com/@joshinishant/world-without-google-234eae8d1fcb

['Nishant Joshi']

2020-12-22 10:47:26.681000+00:00

['Fun', 'History', 'Technology']

The Nordic secrets to happiness

This post may contain affiliate links. For more information please read my disclaimer. The Nordics are consistently some of the happiest countries in the world and hygge and lagom, two concepts integral to Danish and Swedish culture respectively, have become increasingly popular around the globe as notions as simple approaches for a happier and healthier life. Here, I’ll distil some of the key ideas from these practices so you too can live like some of the happiest people in the world. Hygge (from Denmark) Imagine yourself on a cold winter’s night, wrapped up in your favourite blanket, thick woolly socks on and hands clasped around a warm drink, ensconced in an armchair by the fire. Think of that warm fuzzy feeling. That feeling is the essence of hygge. Pronounced ‘hoo-ga’, hygge is the Danish concept and lifestyle trend that’s all about feeling cosy contentment and slowing down by enjoying the simple things in life. It is so important to Danish culture that it’s described as ‘what freedom is to Americans. . . hygge is to Danes’ in The Little Book of Hygge . It must have something to it as Denmark consistently places as one of the happiest countries on earth according to the world happiness report. Here are some ideas to make your life more hygge: Wrap yourself in blankets or get some thick socks and oversized hoodie (or a combined solution with the oversized hoodie blanket ). Light some candles around your home. Spend some time reading your favourite books. Play board games/card games with family and friends. Eat things you love — that means comfort foods, sweets and hot drinks. While restaurants have quite a hygge atmosphere there’s a special joy in baking or cooking together. Bring out grandma’s favourite recipes! It’s easy to get caught up in the business of life and working towards our goals. But it’s important to take time out to create ‘that feeling’ brought about from hygge activities. So don’t hesitate to invest in some warm attire, relax, indulge, spend time with the people you love and appreciate the things you have. The important thing to take away is that hygge isn’t necessarily about buying things or doing activities. It’s about appreciating the present moment and the good times. It’s bringing about that cosy feeling. Lagom (from Sweden) From another part of the happy Nordics, we have the concept of lagom. If hygge is about indulging, lagom is about balance. Moderation is often called a moral virtue and its importance has been cited across the millennia from the words of Aristotle to the principles of Buddhism. It is central to the Swedish concept of lagom which loosely translates to “not too little, not too much — just right” and in Sweden represents the art of living a balanced, slower, fuss-free life. While this is a simplified version of what lagom probably means to Swedes, it’s a beacon we can use to guide our thoughts and actions. Lagom encompasses thinking more about what’s best for the group than for the individual. This means living more sustainably, finding balance in work and life, not being overly ostentatious, and generally just being nice. It’s true that these two countries, and the overperforming Nordics in general, are wealthy, safe, and have a host of other qualities supporting high levels of happiness. This is partially due to this very attitude of consideration for the many over the few. Regardless, the concepts employed by hygge and lagom can be adopted by others around the world. Design your surroundings for comfort. Find the activities that bring you joy. Indulge a little with hygge but find balance with lagom. Slow things down and enjoy whatever you’re doing in each moment. While all of this may seem obvious (cosying up to a fireplace on a cold night obviously feels amazing) consciously taking time to create these moments and to appreciate the feeling they create is important.

https://medium.com/@thesimplelivingguide/the-nordic-secrets-to-happiness-225f0b9e3fa5

['Yash Daga']

2020-12-06 19:30:54.260000+00:00

['Friends', 'Nordics', 'Happiness', 'Holidays', 'Family']

一夕之間變成中國台灣—以當事人角度回顧台灣醫學生聯合會國名事件. 前言

前言 考慮了一段時間是不是該讓這段歷史重新浮上檯面，但就在上個月看到從高中一路到大學都很友好的柏錦選上世界醫學生聯盟（International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations，簡稱 IFMSA）的會長，加上近日因為台灣針對 COVID-19 的優質防疫措施，台灣參與國際組織的重要性開始被國際社會想起與支持，我更加確定台灣的國名在這個國際組織的重要性，以及多少發揮警世的效果，即使台灣人當上了 IFMSA 的會長，也不能放棄在更正國名議題上的耕耘。 簡單介紹一下筆者，我是洪程睿，中山醫學大學醫學系五年級，現任社團法人台灣醫學生聯合會（註1）會長，並且曾任： 社團法人台灣醫學生聯合會 第 30 屆、第 31 屆國際事務副會長(Vice-President for International Affairs) （註2） （註2） 世界醫學生聯盟（註3） 2017–2018 年度亞太區域發展助理(Development Assistant for Asia-Pacific) 、 2018–2019年度公共關係暨通訊副會長（Vice-President for Public Relations and Communication （註4） 註1：社團法人台灣醫學生聯合會(Federation of Medical Students in Taiwan; FMS-Taiwan)係由全國各醫學系、中醫系、後醫系、後中醫系學生所組成的學生自治團體（共13校18系），對於國內外事務皆深入參與，並積極推動相關議題，為現今台灣最具規模與影響力之學生組織之一，並具體展現醫學生對社會參與之熱情與動力。網站： 係由全國各醫學系、中醫系、後醫系、後中醫系學生所組成的學生自治團體（共13校18系），對於國內外事務皆深入參與，並積極推動相關議題，為現今台灣最具規模與影響力之學生組織之一，並具體展現醫學生對社會參與之熱情與動力。網站： https://www.fmstw.org/ （節錄自醫聯會Facebook粉絲專頁） 註2：國際事務副會長(Vice-President for International Affairs)為台灣醫學生聯合會執行委員會(Executive Board)一員，負責與會長一同統籌與世界醫學生聯盟(IFMSA)的一切相關事務。 註3：世界醫學生聯盟(International Federation of Medical Students' Associations; IFMSA)，自1951年創立，現今由全球超過130國醫學生聯合會組成，並具聯合國經濟社會理事會全面諮詢地位 (General Consultation Status) 及世界衛生組織非國家行為者 (Non-State Actor) 資格；台灣醫學生聯合會(FMS-Taiwan)與中國醫學生聯合會(IFMSA-China)皆為該組織之完全會員(full member)，享有相同權利，包括投票權。網站： ，自1951年創立，現今由全球超過130國醫學生聯合會組成，並具聯合國經濟社會理事會全面諮詢地位 (General Consultation Status) 及世界衛生組織非國家行為者 (Non-State Actor) 資格；台灣醫學生聯合會(FMS-Taiwan)與中國醫學生聯合會(IFMSA-China)皆為該組織之完全會員(full member)，享有相同權利，包括投票權。網站： http://www.ifmsa.org/ 註4：公共關係暨通訊副會長(Vice-President for Public Relations and Communication; VPPRC)，為世界醫學生聯盟之執行委員會一員，亦為世界醫學生聯盟執委會中5位副會長中其中一位，主責統籌該國際組織之所有公共關係與通訊事務。 正文前的聲明 接下來的故事可能對醫學系以外科系，或沒參與過 IFMSA 與台灣醫學生聯合會事務的人來說，聽起來會大多是對 IFMSA 的批評，但 IFMSA 在做的事情是我認為非常少數國際學生組織能達成的，其在全球健康照護議題上的耕耘與倡議實力，也可算是數一數二的。 可能就是我 2017 年遭逢犯太歲、水逆、運氣太衰，才會遇到一堆鳥事。 一些脈絡 首先，對於世界醫學生聯盟(IFMSA)不熟的人，請先想像這個國際組織是世界上最大最古老的國際組織，擁有豐富的學習資源與龐大的資金，對於喜歡國際交流的醫學生是最易入門，也最能學到東西的組織。 再者，世界醫學生聯盟(IFMSA)的領導架構十分階層化，若將幹部分成三個階層： 金字塔頂端就是 執行委員會 （ Executive Board (EB) ，由一名會長、五名副會長組成），在世界大會(General Assembly)外的時間，執行委員會的六個人就是決定整個組織運作的決策機構(decision making body) （ ，由一名會長、五名副會長組成），在世界大會(General Assembly)外的時間，執行委員會的六個人就是決定整個組織運作的決策機構(decision making body) 金字塔中間就是 行政幹部 （ Team of Officials (TO) ，包括五名區域主席(Regional Directors)、六名常設委員會主席(Standing Committee Directors)、六名對外聯絡官(Liaison Officers)），每個行政幹部都有對應的直屬 EB，TO 對外的任何聲明、決定、行為，皆須經過 EB 會議審核 （ ，包括五名區域主席(Regional Directors)、六名常設委員會主席(Standing Committee Directors)、六名對外聯絡官(Liaison Officers)），每個行政幹部都有對應的直屬 EB，TO 對外的任何聲明、決定、行為，皆須經過 EB 會議審核 金字塔底端就是各個幹部的助理(Assistants)，其實助理根本沒納入 IFMSA 章程中幹部的範疇，但由於助理時常承攬大量的業務，也算是為 IFMSA 貢獻的人 每次世界大會上，就是金字塔的這三層人在主持議程，而對於一位幹部而言，時常冥冥之中的升遷路徑就是 助理 → 行政幹部 → 執行委員會，除此之外行政幹部、執行委員會能夠代表 IFMSA 參加許多聯合國與世界衛生組織的會議，並在會議上代表 IFMSA 發言，綜合總總極度階層化、高度曝光，以及 IFMSA 本身於各大社群媒體上的活躍程度，使該組織的幹部們被塑造成一群「菁英(elites)」的形象，也培養出一「大」群對於生涯規劃有想法，多少喜歡享受權利與虛榮的信徒（including me）。 時間軸 以下將以時間軸的方式說明國名事件的脈絡，並穿插圖片佐證： （1）2017 年 9 月 14 日：選上 IFMSA 副會長 當時我正擔任亞太區域發展助理(Development Assistants)，且人在日本東京參加 2017 年世界醫學生聯盟的亞太區域會議(2017 Asia-Pacific Regional Meeting)。如前面所說，助理是身在金字塔底端的一群人，為上面的幹部做事也不會獲得感激，至少在我任內，我們團隊沒有任何人獲得我們印尼籍「老闆」的任何感謝。（對，就跟現在許多公司的老闆一樣。） 9 月 14 日當天，2016–2017年度 IFMSA 執行委員會通知我選上了 IFMSA Vice-President for Public Relations and Communication。當下我欣喜若狂，一個在金字塔底端的人，一躍而上到金字塔頂端，我馬上打給我的印度好友 Anshruta，兩個人在東京街頭大吼大叫（但其實就是迎接惡夢的開始）。 下方為 2017 年 10 月 1 日正式上任時所發放的 Appointment letter，由此可見，當時台灣醫學生聯合會(FMS-Taiwan)的所屬國籍名稱，仍為 Taiwan，並非 Taiwan, China，或其他莫名其妙的名稱。 宣布 2017–2018 年度 VPPRC 結果之信件 （2）2017 年 10 月 1 日 至 2017 年 12 月 6 日：暴風雨前的寧靜 在這段期間開始發現自己必須很努力才能兼顧課業與 IFMSA 的工作，在這三個月，我幾乎每天都是凌晨 4 點才睡，隔天早上就又氣色很差的去上課，更不用說考前被好幾十本筆記與一堆工作的死線追著跑，還曾經有一次為了要從學校要趕高鐵到桃園機場，因為深怕搭不上高鐵差點在高鐵站恐慌症發作（就是莫名吸不到氣，眼前模糊還爆哭的那種）。但這段期間，每當將 IFMSA 的一項工作完成，都有獲得相對應的成就感，且工作與課業都還在我的掌控之中，因此整體而言，這段期間的工作滿意度是高的。 （3）2017 年 12 月 6 日：WHO 要求台灣改名 IFMSA 的對世界衛生組織(WHO)聯絡官(Liaison Officer for World Health Organization)，摩洛哥籍 Amine Lotfi，轉寄了一封來自 WHO Secretariat for Non-State Actors 的信至執行委員會成員的信箱，要求下一步的指示。WHO 信件原文如下： 台灣時間 2017 年 12 月 6 日，WHO 寄給 IFMSA 的信件。 IFMSA 對 WHO 聯絡官的信件原文如下： 台灣時間 2017 年 12 月 6 日，IFMSA 對 WHO 聯絡官轉寄信件予 IFMSA 執行委員會，詢求下一步的指示 由以上的兩封信件可知，世衛（WHO）引用 1975 年的 WHO 執委會決議文（EB55.R53），要求任何指涉「台灣（Taiwan）」的詞語皆不得出現於聯合國與其相關組織，包括世衛本身，並明白指出 WHO 建議可將台灣醫學生聯合會所屬的國家名稱，由 Taiwan 改為 Taiwan, China 或 Taiwan, Province of China。 當時我也是台灣醫學生聯合會的國際事務副會長，因此在收到這封信的當下，我便馬上通知了台灣醫學生聯合會的執行委員會，也開始討論該如何回應 IFMSA 與處理此事。 （4）2017 年 12 月 9-18 日：IFMSA 執委會決議將 Taiwan 改成 Taiwan, China 由於 IFMSA 的執行委員會成員來自世界各地，因此在世界大會（General Assembly）以外的時間，都是透過線上會議的方式決定絕大部分事務。在 2017 年 12 月 9 日的線上會議中，當天最後一個議程就是關於 WHO 來信的後續處理方法，然而在這個議程中，其他 IFMSA 執行委員會成員（註五）認為基於利益衝突的理由，當初身為執行委員會一員但來自台灣的我不應該參與這個議程的討論，便決議將我排除在這個議程的所有討論與決定之外。 註5：其他 IFMSA 執行委員會成員包括： President：Carlos Andrés Acosta Casas（巴西籍） Vice-President for External Affairs：Batool Al Wahdani（約旦籍） Vice-President for Members：Satria Nur Sya’ban（印尼籍） Vice-President for Finance：Amela Hamidović（塞爾維亞籍） VP for Activities, acting Secretary-General：Hana Lučev（克羅埃西亞籍） Vice-President for Capacity Building：Frida Vizcaíno（墨西哥籍） 台灣時間 2017 年 12 月 9 日，IFMSA 執行委員會的線上會議之會議記錄 由於深深知道中國與台灣相關名稱在政治與媒體界中是多麽敏感，以及台灣人的嗜血程度，還有最重要的，身為一個愛台青年，我在 2017 年 12 月 13 日辭去 IFMSA 副會長（Vice-President for Public Relations and Communications）一職。辭去職務後，慰問的訊息以及我早有預期的質疑聲音一一浮出，有時間再來講當時的感想。 爾後，在台灣時間 2017 年 12 月 18 日，IFMSA 正式將 Taiwan 改為 Taiwan, China，並寄出下方此信（標題為 Updating IFMSA’s NMO List）予 IFMSA 的所有會員國組織。

https://medium.com/@jam1ehung/%E4%B8%80%E7%B3%BB%E4%B9%8B%E9%96%93%E8%AE%8A%E6%88%90%E4%B8%AD%E5%9C%8B%E5%8F%B0%E7%81%A3-%E4%BB%A5%E7%95%B6%E4%BA%8B%E4%BA%BA%E8%A7%92%E5%BA%A6%E5%9B%9E%E9%A1%A7%E5%8F%B0%E7%81%A3%E9%86%AB%E5%AD%B8%E7%94%9F%E8%81%AF%E5%90%88%E6%9C%83%E5%9C%8B%E5%90%8D%E4%BA%8B%E4%BB%B6-dc62b6e77389

['Cheng-Jui Jamie Hung']

2020-04-22 13:01:27.051000+00:00

['Politics', 'Taiwan']

Beaxy Deposit Bonus Program

“Beaxy will give you a 100% bonus on deposits up to $500 to allow you to trade with a bigger stack.” Beaxy is launching a one-of-a-kind bonus program that will double the amount of your deposit up to $500. For example, when you enroll in the program and deposit $1,000 worth of fiat or crypto, you will receive an additional 500 USDC to trade with. Full terms and conditions apply. How to get bonus funds: To enroll in the deposit bonus program, click here and log in if you’re an existing customer or sign up if you need to register an account. After logging in or creating an account, you will arrive at the trading platform where you can opt-in to the program and complete a deposit. That’s it! Once your deposit hits your account, a credit for your bonus funds based on the USDC value of your deposit will be applied within 24 hours. How the program works: Bonus funds can be used to trade throughout the duration of the program. If you opt-in to the program, you will continue to receive bonus funds on each deposit until 500 USDC has been credited to your account. Bonus funds will not be applied to deposits made more than one month after your initial bonus funds have been credited. In order to withdraw bonus funds from the exchange, you must meet a trading fee threshold based on the value of your bonus within six months of receiving the bonus. Once this threshold is met, you can contact support to enable withdrawals on your bonus funds. Failure to meet the trading fee requirement before the six-month deadline will result in a forfeiture of the bonus funds received as well as profits generated while enrolled in the program. Trading fees may very based on maker and taker orders, please see the below estimated requirements based on volume. Figures are estimated based on average trading fees. Actual requirements will vary. If you want to withdraw your deposited (non-bonus) funds before reaching your required volume threshold, you will need to open a support ticket. The amount that will be available for withdrawal is the value of your original deposit minus trading fees and any realized or unrealized losses on trading activity during the program. Opting out of the program before meeting the required fee threshold will result in a forfeiture of your bonus funds and profits generated while enrolled. You may be asked to close all open positions before withdrawing your deposits funds. In the event that you want to withdraw deposited funds and your realized or unrealized losses exceed the amount of your bonus, you will be required to deposit the USDC equivalent of the losses to enable withdrawals on your account. For example, you deposit $500 worth of bitcoin and receive a 500 USDC bonus and open a position worth 1,000 USDC. A month later, the USDC value of your position drops to $450. In this case, you would be required to deposit $50 worth of assets in order to enable withdrawals on your account. How to get the most out of your NEW $500. 1.) Beaxy’s bot options, Hummingbot, Autonio and HolderLab, are there to make autopilot trading EASY. 2.) Follow along with our pre-populated signals supplied by Beaxy’s PROVEN provider to take the guesswork out of trading. 3.) Participate in our recurring trading competitions to maximize your new MONEY. Throughout the program, Beaxy will continue to offer connections to automated trading platforms that will help you reach your volume requirement with much less in the market. We will provide you with all the materials you need to connect to a trading bot and learn how to deploy different strategies. Stay tuned for more updates on trading bot integrations. Click here to trade with more!

https://medium.com/beaxy-exchange/beaxy-deposit-bonus-program-d5f6566fce3d

['Steve Sofocleous']

2020-08-06 23:42:37.841000+00:00

['Hummingbot', 'Bonus', 'Bitcoin', 'Cryptocurrency']

Do you still believe in TETHER?!

Everything you need to know about Tether What is Tether? Tether (USDT) is a cryptocurrency with a value meant to mirror the value of the U.S. dollar. The idea was to create a stable cryptocurrency that can be used like digital dollars. Coins that serve this purpose of being a stable dollar substitute are called “stable coins.” According to their site, Tether converts cash into digital currency, to anchor or “tether” the value of the coin to the price of national currencies like the US dollar, the Euro, and the Yen. Like other cryptos it uses blockchain. Unlike other cryptos, it is [according to the official Tether site] “100% backed by USD” (USD is held in reserve) i.e. every Tether is supposed to be backed by dollars kept in reserve in a 1:1 ratio (this being a big selling point and a potential problem in the otherwise rather untethered and decentralized crypto space). With USDT you can, in theory, move into a coin that holds a stable value like USD… even when you are on an exchange that doesn’t deal in fiat! That is a big deal on its own, but it gets even better. Many exchanges also offer USDT as a trading pair, thus allowing you to buy coins with a coin that mirrors USD. That is very useful (especially when Bitcoin’s price is volatile). However, everything good about Tether aside, Tether also presents some problems… WHAT IS SUSPICIOUS ABOUT TETHER? TETHER IS COMPLETELY CENTRALIZED The company that controls and issues Tether is meant to hold US dollar reserves to back up all of the Tethers that have been issued — a little like the Federal Reserve backstops dollars with gold. In theory, Tether holders can sell one USDT back to Tether Limited for $1. The model is 100% centralized because the company is in full control of the money supply and reserves. Because its US dollar reserve must be stored in regulated bank accounts, it is subject to government regulations. 2. CEO Of Tether is the CEO of BITFINEX! Tether tokens are issued by Tether Limited, a company based in the British Virgin Islands according to the New York Times. Tether’s website says it is incorporated in Hong Kong, with offices in the US. The company has many of the same management team as Bitfinex, the Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency exchange that is one of the biggest in the world. Jan Ludovicus van der Velde is CEO of both Bitfinex and Tether, and Philip Potter is chief strategy officer for both businesses, for example. The most interesting thing is that the Bitfinex exchange, which, incidentally, controls the work of the company Tether Ltd, after the termination of cooperation with banks has incorporated and introduced the use of USDT, and managed to impose the dominance of USDT as the only stable coin for all other crypto exchanges. 3. NON-AUDITED Prompted by a subpoena from US regulators in December 2017, Tether reacquired the services of Friedmann LLP to conduct an audit on it’s US dollar reserves. However, a month later, news broke that the Tether had parted ways with their auditors, meaning no audit results were ever disclosed. That caused alarm and woke up the critics. Even Charlie Lee, Litecoin founder twitted: American accountant and auditor Abhishek Shah said that Bitfinex, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, could well have the necessary reserves to back up Tether. Nevertheless, Shah believes pressure from the community is the only thing that will lead to a transparent audit: “The Crypto community should come together and demand a complete independent audit of Tether.” 4. MANIPULATION OF BTC PRICE Controversy has swelled around Tether, whose chief executive officer Jan Ludovicus van der Velde is also the CEO of Bitfinex, after volatility and rumors of Bitcoin price manipulation surfaced late last year. One persistent online critic, going by the screen name Bitfinex’ed, has written several very detailed essays on Medium arguing that Bitfinex appears to be creating Tether coins out of thin air and then using them to buy Bitcoin and push the price up. More controversial claims have been found over social media in the past days, and one in particular stating that “130 Million USDT were just printed. https://www.omniexplorer.info/address/1NTMakcgVwQpMdGxRQnFKyb3G1FAJysSfz” was pretty alarming. 5. WHAT THAT MEANS FOR THE MARKET? If there is a problem with Tether, it could have wider knock-on effects for the cryptocurrency market as a whole due to its central role in many exchanges. “The issue is that the volumes against Tether have been growing lately,” Greenspan said. “They’ve been above 10% of total volumes on bitcoin for a few weeks already. “If there aren’t sufficient reserves in US dollars, then the price of Tether should not then be pegged to the US dollar and it’ll just be decided by the market.” The fear is that a collapse in the price of Tether could also bring about a collapse in the price of bitcoin and other crypto assets that people have been trading with USDT. Difference between Tether and other stablecoins This table clearly shows differences between Tether and other stablecoins that unlike Tether uses crypto collateral (this includes MakerDao, Havven, and Coin Payment Processor — CP Processor (cPRO) & Stable Tokens+Supplements — crypto collateral adjustment) So, do you believe in Tether? If you are still unsure what to think, read these informative articles: and follow CP_Processor for more interesting articles :) CP_Processor is also on Telegram! Subscribe to our channel @CP_Processor”>https://web.telegram.org/#/im?p=@CP_Processor

https://medium.com/cp-processor/do-you-still-believe-in-tether-db981d48ac96

['Cp Processor Team']

2018-09-14 14:36:59.433000+00:00

['Ethereum', 'Payments', 'Tether', 'Bitcoin', 'Cryptocurrency']

Are there 3, 5, 7, 9 or 36 Different Plot Types? [The Definitive Answer]

Thoroughly confused about how many different plot types there are? Yup, me too. So I did lots (and lots) of research so that you don’t have to. Why are there only a few different plot types? Walk into the British Library, and you’ll find around 25 million books. That’s more books than in any other library in the world, and some of them date as far back as 300 BC. Science tells us that the human brain is driven by story, but with only a handful of different plot types in literature, does that suggest that the human race is not very imaginative? Well, maybe. Ever give up on a book because it was just too complicated? Perhaps you lost track of all the different names or felt confused about who the protagonist was. Human beings like simple stories, and we like stories that feel familiar to us. “We tend to prefer stories that fit into the molds which are familiar, and reject narratives that do not align with our experience.” - Andrew J. Regan et al., The Emotional Arcs of Stories are Dominated by Six Basic Shapes. So, 3, 5, 7, 9, or 36? Which is it? In 1959, Foster-Harris used three basic buckets to define story — happy ending, unhappy ending, and tragedy (read that as a miserable ending). If you have a quick look at Amazon, you’ll find Christoper Booker’s The Seven Basic Plots (in which he discusses nine basic plot types, but dismisses two), Ronald Tobias’s 20 Master Plots and Georges Polti’s 36 Dramatic Situations. So are there 3, 7, 9, 20, or 36 basic story archetypes? Trick question — they’re all wrong. The correct number of basic plot types is 6, and we know that thanks to a simple sentiment analysis tool. What is the emotional arc of a story? Kurt Vonnegut submitted his master’s thesis to the University of Chicago in which he described the shape of plots. It was dismissed because, according to Vonnegut, “it was so simple and looked like too much fun.” You can find Vonnegut’s lecture on the shape of stories on Youtube. He plots out the emotional arc of a story based on the “Beginning-End” and “Ill Fortune (sickness and poverty) — Great Fortune (wealth and boisterous good health)” axes. The basic theory is that the character has ups and downs that can be plotted to a graph — this is the character’s emotional arc. The emotional arc doesn’t tell us about the plot or the meaning of the story, but it tells us part of the whole story. Vonnegut mapped out the shape of stories by hand, illustrated below by the designer Maya Eilam. Each graph as a distinct shape and many stories can be mapped to those shapes. Vonnegut predicted that the shape of stories could be fed into a computer (why not, computers could already play chess!) and in 2016, some 35 years later, that prediction came true. “There is no reason why the simple shapes of stories can’t be fed into computers; they are beautiful shapes.” - Kurt Vonnegut Hang on, so technically we’re categorizing different emotional arcs, not stories? Exactly. And it’s this issue that has drawn some criticism from the digital humanities community. Basically, this categorization is a dramatic simplification of a narrative or plot. But what’s wrong with simplicity? When we simplify plot types as the rise and fall of emotional arcs, we can provide new insights and trends into works of literature. How do we know how many types of arc there are? After feeding 1,737 fictional English-language stories from Project Gutenberg’s fiction collection through a computer program, students have confirmed that there are just six basic story plots. The experiment that took place with students from the University of Vermont and the University of Adelaide analyzed language for its emotional content and categorized it based on what happens to the protagonist. They used a tool called a Hedonometer, which was invented to measure happiness or pleasure and spits out meaningful graphs. (You can find a version of the tool here, where you can look at the average happiness for Twitter. Be careful; this is a rabbit hole). While the plot of books may be complicated, through simple sentiment analysis, emotional arcs are generally easy to pin-point. For example, here is the emotional arc of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling, as plotted by the study. Although there are several complex subplots, by following Harry, we can see the highs and lows of the story. What are the six different plot types? The six core plot types that form the building blocks of narrative are: Rags to riches (an arc following a rise in happiness) Tragedy or riches to rags (an arc following a fall in happiness) Man in a hole (fall-rise) Icarus (rise-fall) Cinderella (rise-fall-rise) Oedipus (fall-rise-fall) What are the most successful types of story? Using the data from the experiment, the students concluded that the most successful types of story are: Icarus (rise-fall) Oedipus (fall-rise-fall) Two sequential ‘man in a hole’ arcs (fall-rise, fall-rise) Okay, so now we know how many types of stories there are, lets put these plot types under the microscope. 6 Different Plot Types: A Definitive List Rags to riches (an arc following a rise in happiness) Aladdin, Puss in Boots, The Winter’s Tale. Our plucky but downtrodden hero meets his or her true potential. Tragedy or riches to rags (an arc following a fall in happiness) Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet. Our brave but downtrodden hero fails to meet his or her potential. Man in a hole (fall-rise) The Magic of Oz. Arsenic and Old Lace. As Vonnegut puts it, “somebody gets in trouble and gets out of it again. Icarus (rise-fall) The Greek myth of Icarus, The Metamorphosis. Life for our bold hero starts off all sunshine and rainbows, but it’s not long until everything goes sideways. Cinderella (rise-fall-rise) Cinderella, , the origin story of Christianity. Life seems to be going well for our hero, only for tragedy to strike. In this story, we root for the tides to turn, and for happiness to be restored. Oedipus (fall-rise-fall) The negation of the Cinderella story, such as Oedipus Rex Things start badly for the protagonist, seem to turn around for a while, but ultimately end in tragedy. Can a story have one than more plot type? Remember, in the six basic plot types, we’re following the arc of the protagonist, but stories that have strong supporting characters will use multiple story arcs. Take the classic Trading Places, for example. While Louis Winthorpe III’s path follows a Cinderella story shape, Billy Ray Valentine follows the Rags to Riches story shape. They meet at the point where everything has gone wrong for Louis and join forces to rise to the story’s end. Recategorizing the 7 Basic Plots Until now, Christopher Booker was the go-to authority on plot types. So, Christopher Booker fans, you must be feeling a bit miffed by now if you’ve memorized his seven archetypes. Let’s recategorize them and see if they fit into this new model. The Seven Basic Plots. The latter cites seven possible narrative structures: overcoming the monster (as in Beowulf ), rags to riches (as in Cinderella), the quest (as in King Solomon’s Mines), voyage and return (as in The Time Machine), comedy (as in A Midsummer Night’s Dream), tragedy (as in Anna Karenina) and rebirth (as in Beauty and the Beast). Overcoming the monster — Beowulf, King Kong, Alien, they all have something in common. A hero or heroine is forced on a quest where they need to save their community/the girl/the human race. Most likely, this would be a ‘man in a hole’ plot. Rags to riches — We’ve got this covered, it’s our first basic plot type. The quest — Here, our daring hero, often accompanied by a friend, sets out on an adventure, often to undergo a journey along the way, ultimately to win the prize or the love interest before returning home again. This could also be a ‘man in a hole’ plot, but it might also be a ‘rags to riches’ plot. Voyage and return — These stories are about heroes who find themselves in strange and unusual lands. Much depends on how the voyage goes. It could be simple, following a ‘rags to riches’ arc as the hero sets off happily, finds treasure and returns with it. Or, it could get more complicated. Say they follow the Oedipus plot, falling victim to a terrible storm, but finding a new land and claiming it as their own, only to be kidnapped by cannibals. Comedy — In terms of a Shakespearean comedy, like Much Ado About Nothing, there is some confusion and mischief that separates the lovers that must be resolved before they reunite again. This might follow the Cinderella plot. Tragedy — We’ve got this covered too, it’s our second basic plot type. Rebirth — Here, our hero has lost him or herself and needs to find a path back to redemption. A Christmas Carol is a great example here, with Scrooge finding joy and magic in Christmas. Perhaps Scrooge is just a ‘man in a hole’, who, with a little help from the Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present, and Future, finds his way out of it again. Applying the archetypes Now you know the six basic emotional arcs, you can apply them to the stories you read or watch, writing your own stories, or looking at your customer’s journey through product marketing. The world is your proverbial oyster. If you’re looking to write a bestseller, then you may consider using one of the three most successful plots, Icarus, Oedipus, or two sequential ‘man in a hole’ arcs. Use the arc as a starting point and see where it leads. So what next? Well, it seems that studies are producing data rapidly and will soon be able to categorize not only books, but also tv shows, and the news. This means we may be able to fully understand the landscape of storytelling within the next decade — which could impact the art form, leading to more surprising and delightful stories.

https://medium.com/nicely-said/are-there-3-5-7-9-or-36-different-plot-types-the-definitive-answer-nicely-said-90db2a60d4df

['Emma Bullen']

2019-09-11 22:28:20.907000+00:00

['Writers On Writing', 'Plotting The Novel', 'Novel', 'Writing', 'Plot']

Could Have Germany Built Nuclear Weaponry if Einstein Worked for Them?

Alternate History Could Have Germany Built Nuclear Weaponry if Einstein Worked for Them? And would have this lead to an axis victory of WWII? Albert Einstein and Adolf Hitler (Source: Wikimedia Commons) Albert Einstein has proven to be the brains of the 20th century, not only for the scientific and theoretical frameworks he came up with but also due to some of the decisions he made in the early period of the 20th century. One vital decision that was made by him was leaving Germany, as he knew that Hitler would force him to create weapons of mass destruction for him. Hitler knew that Einstein had the knowledge as well as the capabilities to build weapons that would put the Nazis at a technological advantage in case war was to break out. In order to give you a bit more context before we dwell on the alternate side of history, Albert Einstein actually migrated to America in 1933, six years before World War II broke out. However, he was clever enough to tell that Germany would start another World War, due to the German society simply becoming too indoctrinated by the Nazi regime on specific ideology and even worst on made-up German history as well as tradition. Although, the more direct reason for Einstein leaving Germany was because Hitler put him on the blacklist (assassination list), as Einstein did not want to cooperate nor work with the evil. If you want to read some more background on this please read this article I have written: A different kind of knowledge Now that we got a bit of background about the problem at hand, we can discuss not only Einstein’s ideology on war but also Hitler’s resourcefulness within his leadership. Yes, there is no other way to put it, Hitler was the reincarnation of evil, however, he was a pretty good leader for managing to not only build the biggest fascist political party but also to indoctrinate a whole country which we can argue was fairly well educated, making it more resistant to indoctrination. However, the art of persuasion does not look at intelligence, or does it? Adolf Hitler giving a speech at the terrace of Royal Castle of the Lustgarten of Berlin, during his election campaign, circa 1920 (Source: Time Magazine) Taking into consideration that Einstein was one of the brightest geniuses to ever live, he did not get tricked by the Nazi regime, however, this may not be necessarily because of his high intelligence, but more because of having a different perspective on life. The mentality of knowing that there is more to life, rather than spending a whole life to persuade a whole country that you are the best, why not spend a whole life actually becoming the best at something. Was Einstein able to build an atomic bomb? Now we need to get something straight, as I have mentioned in the article linked above, Einstein never created the atomic bomb, he only came up with nuclear fission which is the technology used to create atomic bombs. That is the main argument that we can have when it comes to the potential of the US Army creating the atomic bomb in 1945. Einstein writing the GR equations for the gravitational field in absence of matter (c. 1930) (Source: Wikimedia Commons) However, I would assume that given time, Einstein would have been able to create an atomic bomb. Nevertheless, we must remember that many of the great engineers at the time were still in Germany as many of them actually migrated thanks to Einstein so if he would have stayed and cooperated with the Nazis for whatever reason, they would have certainly done so too. From a generic point of view, there is no doubt that Germany was overall the leader of the world, at least during the Second World War. This meant that they probably had the potential to create even better Atomic bombs than the “Little Boy” and the “Fat Man” used by the US Army on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945. Therefore we can assume that Einstein’s nuclear fission technology was the critical part which was missing from the hand of German scientists. Maybe this technology could have been implemented into the V2 rocket system to create a ballistic atomic missile. Locker-Lampson and Albert Einstein 1933 (Source: Wikimedia Commons) From a different perspective, we also need to take into consideration that Einstein was actually a pacifist that would most likely rather die than produce anything for the Nazis, especially weapons of mass destruction. His creation of nuclear fission came about as an alternate source of power as well as for other scientific purposes, but never with the intent to weaponize this technology. At the same time we can bring into the equation the argument that without Einstein, we would have never probably seen the existence of nuclear weapons, nor nuclear technology. Just as mentioned in my previous work, I believe that Hitler would have broken down Einstein to the point where he would not have a choice but to cooperate with the Nazis, which as we have discussed would have lead to the creation of the atomic bomb before anyone else. This only brings another question into this interesting equation. Would have Germany won WWII using atomic bombs? This is probably the bigger question in this piece of alternate history and the more interesting one for sure. Now we need to firstly look at nuclear weaponry from two different perspectives. First, we have the normal perspective of a mass destruction weapon that has the potential to take tens of thousands of lives in a blink of an eye, being able to tear down whole armies in seconds. The second perspective is the psychological effect this weapon brings, not only seeing the power of said weapon but imagining the sheer fear it would put into armies, knowing that no matter how many soldiers the Red Army would have, they could be stoped in seconds. The other factor that we need to consider in this scenario is the time when this type of weaponry would have been built by Germany. If Hitler was to capture Einstein, it would have most likely happened in 1933–1934, therefore we could argue that by 1938 the Germans could have been in the possession of at least a prototype of the atomic bomb. Knowing Hitler, even how certain he was of victory during the first half of the Second World War, he would always come up with contingency plans, whilst inefficient this might have been one that could have turned the tide for the German Army. Fat Man Atomic bomb, 1945 (Source: Wikimedia Commons) If we consider that the atomic bomb would have been used at the beginning of the war, then the war would have quite different, as rather than using fascism to put fear into the enemy, they would just showcase the power of nuclear weapons to do so. Of course, there would most definitely be a limitation of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons that could have been built due to the lack of resources, however, by 1942 they should have had plenty of resources, including enough plutonium/uranium. Let’s assume that Hitler would be cleaver and wait until 1944 to actually use this overpowered technology as that is the year Germany was pushed back. The main target that I would imagine would either be Stalingrad or London, not only strategical targets but also a chance to showcase a different kind of power. However, thinking about it now, the western world was not extremely amazed by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki incident, so from a psychological point of view, I don’t think that the world would have been super frightened. However, this is where we have a big difference, nuclear weapons in the hands of the allies versus nuclear weapons in the hands of the axis, especially Nazi Germany. That could be the factor that would have made people really fear this sort of weaponry. Focusing back on the question at hand, if Hitler had enough atomic bombs, yes he would have been able to win the war, however, only two or three of these weapons — with my historical expertise of World War II — may have given the Germans more time, but I do not think that three nuclear bombs would have brought them victory. Let’s assume that they did take out most of Europe, including Great Britain and the Soviet unions, they would still have to face their biggest enemy, America. Here we are talking about a different kind of power, a nation that had the manpower as well as the necessary resources to put an end to World War II.

https://medium.com/history-of-yesterday/could-have-germany-built-nuclear-weaponry-if-einstein-worked-for-them-31796f92de27

['Andrei Tapalaga']

2020-11-05 10:59:01.452000+00:00

['Alternate History', 'History', 'Science', 'World War II', 'Politics']

The Dreamlike State of Mind in Magritte and Oppenheim

Inspired by Dadaism in the alluring 1920s of Paris, Surrealism is essentially a revolution, a movement which transgressed art into something more. This essay will explore the Surrealist art movement by referencing mostly André Breton’s Surrealist Manifestos, and linking them to two important works, “Déjeuner en fourrure” by Meret Oppenheim, as well as “Time Transfixed” by René Magritte. Both important works inherit Surrealist characteristics in different ways, based on their content, medium, and the responses that are evoked from the viewers. Apart from Breton’s manifestos, the essay will touch on Sigmund Freud’s analysis of dreams, as well as Jean-Paul Sartre’s writings on human imagination. With this, the intimate relationship between the human mind, surreality, and Fine Art is inquired into the research. In 1924, through his “Manifesto of Surrealism”, Breton gave a definition to the word Surrealism which is, the “Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.” Along with this, an encyclopaedic description of the word. For him, the word Surrealism should be understood as a philosophy, “based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought. It tends to ruin once and for all other psychic mechanisms and to substitute itself for them in solving all the principal problems of life.”[1] Breton’s text had become influential not just to his acquaintances, but for so many artists at the time. The Surrealist movement had become an explosive cultural gesture in expanding the boundaries of art. One of the key figures in relation to dreams and Surrealism is understandably René Magritte, who was personally a friend of André Breton himself, and was part of the Surrealist group in Paris. Being a poet himself, “everything is enigmatic” in Magritte’s paintings.[2] Magritte constantly compels the viewers to experience different sides of life. It is easy to see a pattern of motifs and themes in his paintings, with different details and a slight change in situations, he conveys unfamiliarity within the everyday life. In one of his letters, he explains that he wishes not to depict the “unreal” or the “imaginary”, but rather painting reality in a way which reality itself loses its sense of tedious characteristic,[3] which can be seen especially in “Time Transfixed”. Magritte’s masterpiece, “Time Transfixed” (see Figure 1), painted in 1938, is an exemplar of displaying the disruption of time and space in relation to reality. Its original title, French, is “La Durée Poignardée”, which literally translate to “Ongoing Time Stabbed by the Dagger,” until it was re-titled as “Time Transfixed”. One might consider that its literal translation is understood to be more violent and intense, which was what Magritte had preferred anyway. But both titles are self-explanatory. The basic human understanding of time is that it is “The indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole”, as defined by Oxford.[4] In this case, time is personified because it now has the possibility of action and reaction. Regarding the painting, in 1997, Magritte explained that he decided to paint the locomotive, while incorporating two familiar, although distinct, images together to “evoke mystery”.[5] He does this by putting an immensely scaled-down image of the train alongside an image of the ordinary fireplace of a dining room hall. Except, this clash of ordinary images is actually unusual and extraordinary. Figure 1: René Magritte, “Time Transfixed” 1938, oil on canvas, 147 × 98.7 cm, The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois. Starting off with what might seem to be usual is the setting of a fireplace in a living room, or a dining room of a pleasingly built house. There are two candlesticks and a clock placed strategically above the fireplace, underneath a mirror. At first glance, this setting is beautiful in the sense that it is interiorly symmetrical and it reflects a safe domestic space. However, the mystery begins to unfold when the details are taken into account. Both the clock and one of the candlesticks are reflected in the mirror behind them, leaving one remaining candlestick along with the rest of the room invisible in the mirror. The mirror’s colour itself appear to be darker than the bright room. To note, Magritte uses mirrors as a motif in his paintings because he believes that mirrors do not reflect true reality, and often provides mystery,[6] which helps explain the peculiarity in the setting of the painting. Moving on to the next piece of the puzzle is the image of the train. Immediately, Magritte integrates the locomotion of the train with the stillness of the fireplace. On these terms, the locomotive is conveniently shrunk with the aim that it fits inside the fireplace. Moreover, it is placed in a situation as if it is emerging out of a railway tunnel, with the absence of the railway and the tunnel itself. The train also produces smoke which goes up to the fireplace all the way to the chimney, which proposes the idea that it produces fire. The locomotive is certainly not the biggest aspect of the painting, although it shows the biggest impact. Apart from this, it is also important to realize that seeing the locomotive while in action indicates the consciousness of the presence of time for both Magritte and the viewers. With this, the use of visual manipulation in “Time Transfixed” is significantly crucial in the way that it disrupts time and space through its dream-like reality. Magritte plays with the idea of space and time in a subtle way, which is easy to get unnoticed. Firstly, the presence of the clock demonstrates this disruption. The clock reads that it is almost a quarter to one o’clock, but the brightness of the room does not correspond with the time fixated on the clock. This highlights the uncertainty and the precariousness of time. Time, which is by consensus, considered to be an indication of the certainty and predictability of life, suddenly does the opposite. In addition, in the painting, time is associated with motion, as only a portion of the train is visible while the rest is invisible. This establishes motion; and where there is motion, there is time. However, the stillness of the painting indicates that time as proposed by its title, transfixed by its own mystery. With this, through the painting, Magritte questions the very existence of time. If time exists, then how can it be transfixed, let alone be stopped by even Magritte, the creator, himself? This is a paradox, as Magritte eternalises time by painting something that might have never happened.[7] Equally important, Magritte also asks the question of whether space itself exists. To understand, first one must realize that time cannot happen without space, and vice versa. Therefore, with the paradox of the absence of time, this generates the idea that space is also absent. On the contrary, if space does exist, then it is disturbed by the presence of the unreal. The setting represents a conventional domestic space, in which everything is placed exactly where they were supposed to be. Apart from this, Magritte have strategically used shapes in showing the importance of space. Everything in relation to space; the domestic space and the setting, is identified with sharp edges and fine lines. Whereas time, in this case the clock and the locomotive, is represented with circular lines. This, again, emphasises on the distinction between reality and the dream. Precisely by using juxtaposition, altering the mundane, as well as emphasizing on what can be seen and what is hidden, Magritte epitomizes the very nature of Surrealism. Through this artwork, Magritte initiates the idea of everyday life to be surrealistic. The painting demonstrates what Breton considers to be the functions of Surrealism, which is to examine the “notions of reality and unreality, reason and irrationality, reflection and impulse, knowledge and ‘fatal’ ignorance, usefulness and uselessness.”[8] Therefore, there is a fine line between what makes sense and the nonsensical. Surrealists have the aim to touch on the unconscious and they do this by making artworks that unlock the madness inhibited deep down in the human mind. Human consciousness is ignored, and the unconscious along with the subconscious is embraced. In regards to this, Breton argues that, humans should also not confine themselves to reality, but rather use their imagination as a means to investigate further beyond reality.[9] In this case, the Surrealist movement encourages imagination to be liberated, as well as rationality, norms, and common sense to be rejected. Doing this, the visual artists incorporate their unusual ideas, for instance; primitivism, myths, and violence, mostly with the use of imagery. Moving on to Oppenheim and her sensational artwork, “Déjeuner en fourrure” (see Figure 2) was painted in 1936, inspired from her conversation with Pablo Picasso and Dora Maar at a Parisian café. Both Picasso and Maar was admiring Oppenheim’s fur-covered bracelet, when Picasso had joked that almost anything could be covered in fur, in which Oppenheim replied, “Even this cup and saucer”. Little did she know, this joke would then end up to be a masterpiece in the world of Surrealism that is still discussed today, more than eighty years later. Following this conversation, Oppenheim purchased a cup, saucer, and spoon from the French department store Monoprix, a department store in Paris, and had covered the items in Chinese gazelle fur.[10] Figure 2: Meret Oppenheim, “Déjeuner en fourrure”, 1936, fur-covered cup, saucer, and teaspoon, Museum of Modern Art, New York. Enticingly, Oppenheim’s sculpture has evoked tactile behavior, as Oppenheim’s works often explore the sense of touch, along with the relationship between the senses and the intellect. Similar to Magritte’s painting, the sculpture represents many juxtapositions in the three objects. There is the contradictory between animal and human, nature and culture, and ancient and modern. The cup, saucer, and spoon represents human, culture, and modern, whereas the fur represents animal, nature, and ancient. These contradictions evoke disturbing and unpleasant feelings, both physically and mentally as the idea of putting one’s lips against the fur-lined cup is just as disturbing as the thought of drinking tea from it.[11] Additionally, Oppenheim also stresses on the physicality of “Déjeuner en fourrure”, in which viewers can immediately imagine what it would feel like to drink from a fur-covered cup without having to do much. Without realization, the artwork requires us to extend our sensory experiences to fully appreciate and understand what it is all about. With this, one is allowed to interpret the work themselves through their visceral memories and thoughts, which emphasizes the concept of Surrealism itself. “Déjeuner en fourrure” exemplifies really well Breton’s argument, especially in his essay “The Crisis of the Object”, that displaying or presenting the mundane in unexpected ways and the mystification of utilitarian objects would immediately challenge reason, and enforces society to connect to their subconscious and conscience, whether they are ready or not.[12] Besides incorporating symbols of sex, cannibalism, and mortality, Oppenheim have also evoked the lesser sense of touch, which is often ignored. Oppenheim has found a new language to communicate with the viewers’ deepest thoughts and repressed feelings through her symbolism and juxtaposition. Perhaps, Oppenheim is suggesting that the senses, although more difficult to comprehend, is to be trusted.[13] This can be linked to Jean-Paul Sartre’s ideas that imaginations require a visual representation, whether it be a mental picture or a physical image.[14] This helps challenge viewers immediately. However, as the artwork was made during the age of Freud, the gastro-sexual interpretation of the painting is inevitable. Also producing unpleasant feelings, the spoon could be interpreted as phallic, the cup vaginal, and the fur as pubic hair.[15] Through this, Oppenheim have successfully expresses the fetishistic ideas of cannibalism, animalism, and eroticism that humans have suppressed due to its violence and inhumanity. In reference to the “Surrealist Manifesto,” Breton tries to give attention to the inferiority of dreams and the unconscious, also described to be “the madness that one locks up”,[16] which he argues should be superior in comparison to logic and rationality. A way that Surrealism as written by Breton could be understood is by looking at it through a an analogy, in which the human mind is a cage, and madness is an animal. The cage is made of logic and rationality, and common sense are the guards for the cage. As humans grow, this cage gets thicker and stronger, and the animal slowly gets weaker, making it harder for it to escape the cage. In this case, Oppenheim sparks the irrational within the human mind by allowing the viewers to have a shocking awareness of what is never conversed about, as well as simultaneously awareness of what one deeply desires and really thinks of. In regards to the concept of Surrealism relating to “Déjeuner en fourrure”, Breton writes that the state of surreality is ultimately a merge of reality and dream.[17] Through this, he refers to Sigmund Freud’s “The Interpretation of Dreams”. Freud’s theory has been the fundamental basis for understanding the Surrealist movement. In his book, Freud ultimately legitimatizes the significance of dreams and the unconscious, associating it with human desires and emotions. Freud believes that the worlds of sexuality, desire, and violence are repressed and are only accessible through dreams. Through Freud’s text, he suggests that all dreams have meanings, and interpreting these dreams are crucial in resolving the unconscious feelings and emotions. Both Magritte and Oppenheim’s works are visceral representations of the complexity of behavior and mind. However, unlike Oppenheim’s “Déjeuner en fourrure”, Magritte’s “Time Transfixed” does not necessarily emphasize on the materiality of the artwork to produce a mystifying and cryptic attitude. But rather, it signifies the importance of content. In “Déjeuner en fourrure”, through its three-dimensional characteristic, one is able to physically see the sculpture right before the eyes, as well as touch it. In this case, Oppenheim manipulates the object and the material to disrupt the reality of it. Whereas, in “Time Transfixed”, Magritte is not manipulating the medium or the material, instead, he manipulates the content of the medium. It is only through the visual sphere that one can experience and understand the concept of the artwork. Whereas, “Time Transfixed” encapsulates the fine line between what is real and what is not by using realistic painting techniques to paint unrealistic and illogical content. In Surrealism, space and time of reality is un-concrete and purely perceptual. In “Time Transfixed”, this can be seen through its content as Magritte plays with the intangible and definite concept of time in place. Whereas, Oppenheim uses the medium and material’s features to disrupt reality’s space and time. As a result, “Time Transfixed” produces the feeling that reality is in fact, ephemeral and transient, and “Déjeuner en fourrure” presents a very solid and striking cognizance that reality is a fabrication made of a number of norms and criteria. Furthermore, in homage to Roland Barthes’s “Camera Lucida”, Jean-Paul Sartre writes that a depiction in an artwork is a result from the combination of the resemblance of an image and the response that it ignites within each viewer.[18] What Sartre means by this is that an artwork’s depiction crucially requires the viewer’s response, along with their pre-existing knowledge and experience.[19] This explains to how Surrealist works can be interpreted differently for each individual and how depictions differ from one artist to another. Considering this, both “Time Transfixed” and “Déjeuner en fourrure” are quite open for interpretation, which gives the viewers freedom to incorporate their own thoughts and experiences. However, “Time Transfixed” and “Déjeuner en fourrure” are more than just illustrations and visual representations of the Surrealist movement. They are evoking “what it can be”, instead of what it is, through imagination and by escaping from the reign of logic, as written by Breton.[20] Therefore, they encourage that the mind can embrace much more beyond reality; like dreams, illusion, and fantasy. In relation to this, Sartre also argues that freedom of thought is “intimately bound” to imagination.[21] Without imagination, the human mind would be hopelessly tied to reality, and would be incapable of realizing potential and possibilities. With this, the Surrealist art movement is not something that has been left in the past, but rather approaches the presence and the future endlessly. The artworks of the Surrealists mainly reflected the idea of going beyond reality, which explains the portrayal of realism, with the addition of the unconscious. “Time Transfixed” by Rene Magritte and “Déjeuner en fourrure” by Meret Oppenheim are two very different artworks, distinguished by their medium, material, and content. However, some similarities could also be found within the two masterpieces. In both works, we can see that space and time are two mere illusionistic features of reality. In surreality, space and time exists only figuratively, because Surrealism stands for what is beyond the real. In this case, Surrealism should be understood as not to be a movement, but also a way of living, and the attitude towards life itself. NOTES: [1] André Breton, “The First Manifesto of Surrealism” in Art in Theory: 1900–2000, ed. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 452. [2] Nathalia Brodskaïa, Surrealism — Genesis of a Revolution (Temporis Collection). Parkstone International, 2012, 171 [3] Ibid., 181 [4] “Time: Definition of Time by Lexico.” Lexico Dictionaries | English, Lexico Dictionaries, www.lexico.com/en/definition/time. [5] Cory Wulf, “Time Transfixed 1938 by René Magritte,” Department of Museum Education, The Art Institute of Chicago, https://www.artic.edu/assets/3e982e0a-2098-ae73-d23a-9c754f501f0a [6] Ibid. [7] “Time Transfixed.” Time Transfixed by Rene Magritte, Rene-Magritte.com, www.rene-magritte.com/time-transfixed/. [8] André Breton, ‘The Second Manifesto of Surrealism’, in Art in Theory: 1900–1990, eds. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1992), 446–447 [9] Ibid., 448 [10] Brigitte Nicole Grice, “The Fetish, the Fur and the Exquisite Corpse: Meret Oppenheim and Her Surrealist Proclivity,” X-Tra: Contemporary Art Quarterly 22, no. 2 (Winter 2019): 82 [11] Elisabeth Mansén, “Fingertip Knowledge: Meret Oppenheim on the Sense of Touch,” The Senses and Society 9, no. 1 (2014): 5–6. [12] Cathrin Klingsöhr-Leroy, Uta Grosenick, ed., Surrealism (Taschen, 2004), 80. [13] Elisabeth Mansén, “Fingertip Knowledge: Meret Oppenheim on the Sense of Touch,” The Senses and Society 9, no. 1 (2014): 13 [14] Jonathan Webber, “Philosophical Introduction” in Jean-Paul Sartre, The Imaginary, xiv [15] Nina Martyris, “‘Luncheon In Fur’: The Surrealist Teacup That Stirred The Art World,” NPR, 9 Feb. 2016, www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/02/09/466061492/luncheon-in-fur-the-surrealist-tea-cup-that-stirred-the-art-world. [16] Ibid. [17] Breton, “The First Manifesto of Surrealism,” 450. [18] Webber, “Philosophical Introduction,” xvi. [19] Ibid., xvii. [20] Breton, “The First Manifesto of Surrealism,” 447–448. [21] Webber, “Philosophical Introduction,” xxvi.

https://medium.com/@priscindra/space-and-time-in-magritte-and-oppenheim-a-dreamlike-state-of-mind-fb27bf66b2f6

['Priscilla Indrayadi']

2020-12-30 04:43:57.429000+00:00

['Art', 'Psychology', 'Analysis', 'Philosophy', 'Fine Art']

3 Writing Lessons I Learned From the Author of Netflix’s Hit Show “YOU”

Make a story relatable When I started reading the first few pages of the book, what jumped to me was how quickly I was taken deep into the story. I attribute that to the way the story is narrated. The story is told through the thoughts of Joe Goldberg. Written in the first “I” and second “you” person, we quickly dive deep into Joe’s emotional world. We understand him, we relate to his feelings. And although is obsessive behavior quickly unfold, we somehow get him. Joe is a likable stalker. Why? because although most people would be ashamed to admit it, we’ve all stalked someone in some way. Alternatively, we also relate to Beck, the stalkee. The annoying yet loveable personality that portrays her makes us want to save her. Why? because we can all easily picture ourselves being the victim of a stalker. Takeaway: The author’s ability to make us relate both the hunter and the pray, is done through a simple, direct approach and the clever use of emotional words.

https://medium.com/@lauraalr/3-writing-lessons-i-learned-from-the-author-of-netflixs-hit-show-you-829760a6e380

['Laura Alr']

2020-12-24 07:53:50.709000+00:00

['Creativity', 'Inspiration', 'Tips', 'Writing Tips', 'Writing']

A Simple Guide to Investing in Marijuana

We agree this is a stupid question on the face of it. But it is worth exploring because we believe that this very question forms the basis of the potential of this market. These are the five methods: Smoke it Inhale through a vaporizer Eat it — capsule brownie Lotion to apply to skin Place a few drops of a liquid under your tongue The potential is in the non smoking method. Particularly for non smokers where a capsule or a brownie is going to be preferable to a glass bong. Pricing It is estimated that legal marijuana is 10% more expensive than its illegal counterpart. The average retail price in the US based on medium quality is $299, it is highest in the East, $319 and lowest in the West, $274. Here are a few sample prices per ounce by strain: Illinois $480 Double Dream Wyoming $140 Durban Poison Mexico $50 The lime Venezuela $140 Columbian Gold Australia $400 Bubblegum The Most Expensive The most expensive countries to buy marijuana in the world is the United Emirates with an average price of 102 euro per gram, next is Brunei at 68 euros per gram, Japan at 63 euros, Estonia 23 euros, Singapore 20 euros and Ecuador 19 euros. The Cheapest India is the world’s cheapest. At 0.08 euro per gram, the cannabis plant is native to India. South Africa is next at 0.092 euro, Nigeria 0.185 euro, Brazil 0.278 euro, Columbia 0.370 euro, Dominican Republic 0.463 euro, China 0.740 euro. Out of interest Afghanistan is about 4 euro per gram. 1 Euro = 1.20 USD Markets Outside the US Although the US market represents 25% of the global cannabis market it is projected that legal cannabis sales are projected to represent 72% of total global sales by 2025. Outside the US there are only two countries where recreational marijuana is legal, Canada and Uruguay. A few other countries of note include: Israel — One of the top medical cannabis importers in the world. It also has one of the most progressive medical cannabis industries in the world. Luxembourg — Although a small country it is expected to be the first in the EU that makes recreational marijuana legal. Germany — has the biggest market for medical use cannabis in the world and the largest importer. Italy — Is the second largest for medical use marijuana. Argentina, Columbia, Chile and Peru permit medical use marijuana. Australia and NZ — allow medical use marijuana. England — allow medical use marijuana, although there are many restrictions which have severely restricted this market. Mexico — Is close to legalizing recreational marijuana although it could be a few years before various hurdles/formalities are overcome and consumers can start buying legally. Cannabis in all forms is illegal throughout Asia although Thailand began allowing medical use of cannabis and more recently allowed it to be infused into food stuffs. Where is the Money being Spent? The vast majority of money is being spent on flower cannabis. That market represents over 50% of the total market, in some states it is over 70%. Concentrates and edibles are eating into this market as they experience higher growth. There is also an increased use of vaping products which despite a setback have carved out around 10–15% of the market and growing. The reality is for this market to grow and become mainstream there must be alternatives to the bong and the ‘joint’ and this is where vaping and edibles can potentially expand this market beyond all recognition. Licensing When a state legalizes cannabis that doesn’t mean that anyone can open up a store and start selling marijuana. This is only the first step. However it does depend on the state as some have made the process more complex than others. Take California for example. California has one of the most complex systems in place. With 58 counties and 482 incorporated cities, each municipality has the power to create their own unique set of requirements. Although already a big market it still has massive potential as only 20% of California’s cities have implemented cannabis regulation. A wannabe cannabis grower or retailer will have to obtain a license and that is not a cheap process. In California there are a range of annual fees payable ranging from ‘Speciality Cottage Outdoor’ at $135 per year to ‘Medium Indoor’ costing $77,905 a year. The Colorado system is more streamlined with only 6 tiers compared to Californians 16. Fees are also significantly cheaper with a maximum annual fee of $5,300. Many states and municipalities restrict the number of cannabis businesses. As well as licensing requirements some of the other barriers to entry include high application fees, strict regulations, stringent financial reporting and management requirements. Patience is essential when applying for a cannabis license. It can take over two years and costs can reach $300,000 plus. A Few Myth Busters There are many myths floating around about the effects of marijuana use. Here are the main ones. You can’t overdose on weed… You can, but it won’t be fatal. Weed is not addictive… It is. The addictive potential of marijuana is linked to THC. It is a natural plant so it can’t be that bad… While it can’t directly kill you, it isn’t risk free. Regular marijuana use has been shown to be associated with long term problems, including poor academic performance, memory loss and lung cancer. To a developing brain, like those of teenagers, marijuana can be especially toxic. Marijuana use causes cancer… It’s true that marijuana smoke, like tobacco smoke, contains carcinogens. But even hardcore pot smokers typically consume much less pot than tobacco smokers do cigarettes, probably not enough to cause cancer. Marijuana is a ‘gateway’ drug… People who use marijuana are statistically more likely to go on to use other drugs, but that doesn’t mean marijuana use causes use of other drugs. A report by the Institute of Medicine found ‘no conclusive evidence that the drug effects of marijuana are causally linked to the subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs’. Growing cannabis is easy money… It is true that the profit margins are extraordinarily high in the cannabis business. There is also a mismatch of demand and supply in most states with insufficient legal dispensaries to fulfill demand. But to counter this there are many issues that make this a hard business to operate in including high set up costs, regulation, security, specialist skills required to ensure a consistent quality crop and of course competition, not just from other legal operators but from the black market. The Future The recent US election saw five further states legalize marijuana in some shape or form. The potential however is all wrapped up in whether marijuana is legalized on a federal level. There is a possibility that the control of the Senate could swing to the Democrats as early as January and whilst legalization would not happen immediately it would definitely increase its chances in the short to medium term and probably by the end of Biden’s first term. The legalization of marijuana on a federal level is a game changer on so many levels. It would legitimize many of the US operators allowing them to make the most of their economies of scale and export across state lines and as significantly export to countries that allow medical marijuana. It will allow companies to access capital and drive expansion. Also, as we saw in Canada, it is likely that mainstream tobacco and liquor companies will make strategic investments and acquisitions in the US which they are prevented from doing now. Legalizing the industry will provide many opportunities bearing in mind however that there are many a slip between cup and lip! There is one other major development apart from the legalization of marijuana on a federal level and that is something called The SAFE Banking Act — The Secure and Fair Enforcement Banking Act. This bill allows cannabis businesses to work freely with banks. This is currently a major obstacle for marijuana businesses as regards payment processing, access to working capital and other banking services. The House passed the bill back in May 2020 and it heads to the Senate which has never passed cannabis banking legislation. It is unlikely however this bill will pass without the Democrats taking control, but there is a chance. Investment Opportunities ‘As of 2018, US recreational and medical cannabis have penetrated just 8% and 21% of their estimated markets, respectively. Based on our state by state analysis we forecast nearly 25% average annual growth for the US recreational market and nearly 15% for the medical market through 2030.’ Morningstar This is the opportunity, without federal legalization. With federal legalization the opportunity becomes so much bigger. What we are going to explore in this next section is how as an investor we can benefit from this phenomenal growth. Cannabis related companies fall into a number of categories including agriculture, retail, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, healthcare, household products, cosmetics and even real estate trusts. How Listed Cannabis Investments Work Cannabis stocks v traditional stocks Publicly traded stocks on major exchanges usually have at least 70% of their shares held by institutional investors. Because US based cannabis companies are reliant on private sources of capital to fund their business retail investors typically make up 91% of all cannabis stocks. This makes for a very volatile stock price. Generally Canadian cannabis companies can list in the US and the Toronto Stock Exchange (TRX). US based cannabis companies however have limited options. Exchanges in the US are out of bounds for them. Their options are restricted to the US over the counter market (i.e. matched bargain) or a listing on the smaller Canadian Stock Exchange. Investors wanting exposure to the US market should be targeting US based companies as their Canadian counterparts are unable to operate in the US. Although Canadian cannabis stocks do have potential with their ability to export to other markets in our opinion the action is in the US. So how do investors gain exposure to the US market? They can invest in a range of listed US stocks on the Canadian Stock Exchange or the US OTC but we must remember these stocks are volatile and in the main illiquid meaning to purchase a meaningful amount of stock the spreads are potentially substantially wider than quoted. Below are four US based companies that are worth a closer look: Curaleaf (CURA) $7.10bn Dispensary operator Green Thumb Industries (GTII) $4.70bn Dispensary operator Trulieve Cannabis (TRUL) $3.88bn Focused on medical in Florida Cresco Labs (CRLBF) $3.78bn Dispensary operator The only problem is many of these stocks have increased in value by over 300% from their low point in 2020 thus already factoring in the good news in the market. However an investor can look to buy on weakness and accumulate stock in these larger operators. Alternatively search out smaller operators which are only just emerging. Although a higher risk strategy you could add one or two of these smaller companies to a larger portfolio of US based cannabis stocks to diversify company risk. Rather than conducting your own extensive research you can buy an ETF (exchange traded fund). There are a few of these to choose from all offering different strategies and varying sizes. The two top ETFs in this space are: ETFMG Alternative Harvest with a market cap of $1.25bn. This ETF has a holding of 50 stocks with just 7 stocks representing 65% of their holdings. Much of the exposure however is in Canadian based companies with the exception of GW Pharma a UK based medical marijuana drug development company. Horizons Marijuana Life Sciences with a market cap of $740m. This ETF is mainly focused on the medical marijuana market. There are a number of other cannabis focused ETFs but these are much smaller i.e. sub $50m. And whilst many of these do focus on the US market their small size means trading in them can be expensive. One of the better ones is AdvisorShares Pure Cannabis ETF (YOLO). Its assets under management is around $62m and is primarily focused on US and Canadian based companies offering consumer products. Investing in cannabis stocks is probably the safest way to gain exposure to this market — although safe and cannabis does not go together. Some may say we are in a bubble right now with the recent massive increase in share prices. If you are a risk taking value seeking investor what other options are available to you? Crowdfunding — There are a number of specialist crowdfunding platforms that specialize in cannabis based businesses. This is a high risk high reward way of investing. One of your main considerations is to ensure that the valuation is not ridiculous — that is the sin of many of these platforms. In crowd funded or private investments it is imperative you conduct your own due diligence on the management team and the opportunity. Don’t take the entrepreneurs word for it. However there will undoubtedly be a few gems amongst the crap where you are able to invest at the ground level of a startup. But be very careful. Cryptocurrency — Believe it or not there is an opportunity to buy cryptocurrencies that have exposure to the cannabis market. A few cryptocurrencies are looking to assist the cannabis market in overcoming its reliance on cash. A good cryptocurrency solution in this space is long overdue and could be very lucrative. An Alternative Investment Strategy — The cannabis market can be broken down into plant touching and ancillary. A wise investor may look to explore opportunities in the ancillary market which isn’t quite so hot as the cannabis touching market. It is a forgone conclusion that if and when federal law changes the competition will heat up to the point where there will be an oversupply. By selling picks and shovels, as in the days of the California gold rush, this could be a good investment strategy in preparation for the arrival of the real green rush. Risks from Scammers We hope you all realize that wherever there are big opportunities it is fertile ground for the scammer. That will take many forms including overvalued or fictitious companies listed on crowdfunding sites. Investment schemes offering above average returns, limited time opportunities to invest in the next big thing. A popular ruse is ’buy now before we are granted our license when the stock price is going to skyrocket’ the problem is there is no license. Avoid the get rich quick schemes. Conclusion 2019 was the year of the bear in the marijuana market. Prices plummeted when it became obvious that stocks had been overbought on unrealized promises. Companies continued to make big losses and failed to realize the potential. The potential since the US election is even greater compared to 2018 before the market correction. Prices of listed cannabis stocks however have raced ahead in anticipation. In our opinion they are due for a major correction however that assessment could all change if marijuana becomes legal at a federal level. The market will quickly overlook the problems at the micro level as it races ahead. The big question is do you buy now or wait? It is never a good time to buy. It is always a good time to buy. We think that investors should consider buying exposure to the market now but keep some powder dry to see how things play out in the next six months. And remember only invest what you can afford to lose because with this hugely volatile market prices could easily halve if the market becomes nervous over slow progress or an unexpected sidewinder. Visit us at www.fraudstamp.com or follow us on Twitter or instagram: @fraudstamp No Financial Advice This article does not constitute financial advice in any way. The article should be treated as supplementary information to add to your existing knowledge

https://medium.com/illumination/a-simple-guide-to-investing-in-marijuana-6b7b77c7d356

['Fraud Stamp']

2020-12-18 07:28:59.576000+00:00

['Marijuana Legalization', 'Marijuana', 'Cannabis', 'Investing', 'Cannabis Industry']

When You’re Caught Between Worlds

When You’re Caught Between Worlds The electron always has to be in one place for us, instead of superimposed as an average From Lars_Nissen on Pixabay What if you could transport planets with the snap of the finger and find yourself in a whole new environment? I’ve come to realize that in life, there are simply different worlds you occupy. For me, I have a lot of different obligations, hobbies, and relationships but navigating them often feels like I’m entering portals from one world to another, all day, every day. There’s the world of my faith. There’s the world of my work. There’s the world of my writing. There’s the world of my relationship. There’s the world of my running. I struggle to realize it’s the same person in myself behind all of these things, but it is. To compound feeling like being caught between worlds of all my daily obligations, there’s the world of my identity: as an Asian-American, I’m caught between the traditional, conservative values of my parents and the westernized, more open values of my peers. People in different political parties occupy different worlds. Having it all occupy the same space of my brain is confusing, and sometimes, I feel like a shapeshifter. I move between teaching to going on a run and feel like a completely new person, and I wonder whether I’m overthinking. I don’t know, but I don’t think so. I feel like I’m constantly shapeshifting between worlds. And I don’t know which world matters most. But I know that watching a TV show is entering another world. Reading a book is entering another world. Texting my friend is going into another world. Going to sleep is another world. I’ve thought about world-shifting frequently recently. When I was in the darkest point of my life, I wish I told myself, “there’s a whole world out there.” It was true — because there was a whole world out there and a change in scenery and a new environment helped make a massive difference for my mental health. Switching into the writing world, all that matters is that I put more words on the page. But switching into the teaching world, what matters is that I plan well, teach well, and keep up with grading. There’s always a lot to do in the world of teaching and not enough time to do it. After about 5 p.m. on any given day, the teaching world evaporates. In comes the rest of my life. Those are boundaries between work and play, but is it really possible to separate worlds like that when you’re caught so deeply in between them all? I don’t know, and I don’t really think so. Just because I’m not doing anything teaching-related doesn’t mean I don’t think about teaching. And just because we try to separate our personal and work worlds doesn’t mean we really can. When I hung out with my friends from work, I remember we had a strict rule not to wear anything that could identify ourselves. We’re teachers, and we simply shouldn’t show our more personal and real selves to distort our professional image as teachers in public. We are all occupying multiple worlds, and the fact that we interweave and go into every one of them like portals fascinates me. Physicist Sean Carroll believes in the Many Worlds hypothesis, the idea in quantum mechanics that the universe splits itself into new branches, and those branches create multiple versions of themselves. Carroll believes that reality is described by a single quantum mechanical wave function, so chairs, tables, floors, and everything that seems separate is actually interwoven. The Many Worlds hypothesis is a concept I barely understand, so bear with me — in quantum mechanics, an electron is the superposition, or average, of all locations. We always see the electron in one location, but it doesn’t actually have one set location. Hugh Everett, the inventor of the Many Worlds hypothesis, said that every different part of superposition, everywhere we see the electron in a different position, actually exists: “It’s just that they’re in separate, non-interacting worlds,” Carroll says. Carroll started spending time thinking about what reality is, and the only reality is the world you’re in right now. All of our worlds exist, and in Carroll’s book, Something Deeply Hidden, Carroll concludes that there can be multiple copies of all of us, but that we should behave in the world we’re in as if no other world existed. Takeaways Bridging off Carroll’s quantum mechanics research and conclusions, we need to rationalize that it’s okay to be caught between worlds and have various worlds present. Life is full of paradoxes and contradictions, and we occupy spaces that directly contradict others — people who are strict environmentalist fly jets. Some Wall Street bankers are socialists. Religious people wrestle with whether they believe in a higher power. As for our ability to occupy different worlds, here arrives our struggle to deal with nuance. Yes, we are all the same people occupying a variety of different worlds, but the reason that causes us such significant discomfort is that we tend to see the world in such absolutes. The electron always has to be in one place for us — it can’t be superimposed somewhere on a spectrum like it is in reality. And so my worlds of running, teaching, faith, race, culture, and expectations aren’t so separate after all. In fact, in a solar system of worlds where each of these things occupies space, I would be somewhere between them. I’m not sure where because I, too, am just an electron, superimposed as an average for where I am and have been at different times. And you are superimposed as the middle ground between all your identities — being in between, caught between worlds, is simply a part of the human condition.

https://medium.com/publishous/when-youre-caught-between-worlds-dbb7dc6cd70e

['Ryan Fan']

2020-10-16 22:13:23.625000+00:00

['Mental Health', 'Science', 'Spirituality', 'World', 'Psychology']

Socialism in America, New York Magazine-style

The drive for narrative can represent both the very best and worst of what journalism has to offer. At its essence, narrative is a device hatched from literary fiction, where language is allowed to violate order and soar, and naturally bleeds into nonfiction, especially when practiced by those who aspire to write well. Journalists are always on the hunt for narratives. They want to tell stories, good stories. Editors and publications nurture this human instinct. In our fractured digital age, we are as hungry as ever to arrange the glittering dandruff of life into something compelling. Inevitably, a story like Simon van Zuylen-Wood’s treatment of the socialist rise in New York Magazine would arrive. Splashed across the magazine’s cover this week, the story is riveting and gossipy and highbrow when it needs to be, inhaling the scene of democratic socialism in New York. Many of the people namechecked are people I know personally or in passing. I’ve been to that happy hour, slurped drinks in that publishing house’s loft space, traded messages with the brilliant Facebook essayist. Like Gossip Girl, Gawker, and the New York Observer of yore, this magazine is after a certain kind of New York: insular, clannish, preppy, and, above all else, sexy. That’s the thesis here. Socialism has sex appeal. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the most famous freshman member of Congress ever and she will identify as a democratic socialist. Julia Salazar is a New York state senator and a democratic socialist. Neither of them are 30. And all the people flocking to the movement seem to be born around the same time. Members of the Democratic Socialists of America, the booming organization that is now the face of socialism and responsible for an underrated amount of grassroots organizing, are peeved about this piece. And, well, I understand. They weren’t looking for the Gossip Girl line. They are a serious organization. They knock on a lot of doors. It’s not as thrilling or wondrous as a Valentine’s Day loft party with lefty Twitter influencers. Canvassers don’t make good characters. Day-to-day life in DSA, if you’re committed enough, is not about attending happy hours or even the impenetrable, easily-mocked endorsement processes. If you’re involved in electoral work, it’s grueling and world-affirming. You’re going to knock on the doors of strangers, have conversations about candidates and policies, and log data. You’re doing it in the heat or the pouring rain. You are attempting to moblize people. It’s a story worth telling. It’s not the story told here. That’s the danger of narrative. A journalist hangs around with the same kind of people and gets an idea. In this piece, he may run into friends from Brown who are now socialists. Where are socialists most easily found? On Twitter, because they don’t wear bright red t-shirts and caps identifying themselves in real life. Or at a party or two. Is this approach wrong? Not necessarily. It’s incomplete. As a social tale alone, it sings. I really enjoyed reading it. I will reread it. As a story of socialism’s rise in America, in New York City, the nuts-and-bolts of it, it doesn’t deliver, though perhaps that was never its intention. Right now, DSA is engaged in a battle to elect the next district attorney of Queens. Tiffany Cabán, a 31-year-old public defender, is a candidate in the Larry Krasner mode and someone who, if she can somehow defeat six rivals, has the ability to profoundly reshape the criminal justice system in one of the largest counties in America. Cabán doesn’t rate a mention in the magazine piece. If Ocasio-Cortez’s power to transform politics lies less in her office than her influence— she is a first-termer in a body of 435, up against a Republican-controlled Senate — Cabán’s power could exist in the inverse: her office endows her immediately with the ability to change the lives of many thousands of people, if not more. I’ll address my own quote in the piece, which I stand by, and another from the founder of Jacobin, a socialist magazine. I told the reporter who wrote the piece that DSA can be an intimidating entity for newcomers and that it has yet to become a genuine working class organization. In my estimation, these two challenges bleed into each other. First, there is nothing wrong with college-educated, affluent people supporting some form of socialism — I would describe myself as a socialist, or at least someone who believes the profit motive must be excised from as many facets of society as possible — driving a movement. Successful leftist movements have always involved the educated. It’s important for those who have privilege to recognize their privilege and act accordingly. A different New York Magazine story could have explored why recent leftist and socialist movements in the United States have been fueled by this affluent, white collar class and not the people who would probably benefit from socialism the most; why labor unions, in New York and elsewhere, have wholly abandoned their radical roots, propping up centrist Democrats or outright Republicans in exchange for half a loaf or less. Nineteenth and early 20th century socialism looked very different. It was poorer and it was certainly less white, with remarkable figures like Paul Robeson and Hubert Harrison at the vanguard. If any figure today harkens to those beginnings, it’s Bernie Sanders, who has been vilified by the neoliberal center for harping too much on class, though he knows exactly the score. In New York City, DSA still thrives in areas where young people with college educations cluster, and has little presence elsewhere. As time goes on, it will be important for the organization to establish chapters in neglected communities like Coney Island, Brownsville, East New York, Southeast Queens, and wherever else only establishment Democratic politics have had any kind of beachhead. This won’t be easy. I do believe DSA is up to the challenge. They are blessed with energy and organizational talent. It will be a matter of doing what they do best — knocking on doors and having conversations. It will also mean understanding how the working class talks. This is the point I was alluding to in New York Magazine. Language policing has been necessary to ensure that bigotry is no longer socially acceptable, as it was in the last half century, but it must not be used to alienate allies. Newcomers to DSA, especially those who haven’t attended certain schools or read the right books, will not know about the “progressive stack,” how to make introductions by first identifying the pronouns they prefer, or that it’s a faux pas to say “manpower” instead of “people-power.” This doesn’t mean we should abandon such practices. What it means is, you have to meet people where they are. Have patience. Political incorrectness should be corrected. But not all those who act and speak in such a way are endowed with original sin. In the article, Bhaskar Sunkara, the Jacobin founder, attempts to make a point about the importance of class by stating, “I’d rather be a black middle-class person than a white poor person.” His point, argued more artfully in his forthcoming book, is that identity politics, without the bedrock of class, can become a cudgel for neoliberals to dismiss the importance of combating rapacious capitalism and greed. I disagree with how Sunkara made his point in the piece itself: it’s a silly thing to say, weighing the discrimination a black person faces against the lack of opportunity afforded to a poor white person. It’s a distracting contention. Everyone, when it’s over, retreats to their own camps, certain of their superiority. What Sunkara could have said, however, is that race and class both matter. One does not triumph over the other in the privilege Olympics; they are intertwined, and the American story can’t be told without either. The oppression and exploitation of slaves and later share-croppers had its roots in pernicious racism and economics — white supremacy was a matter of good business. Plantation owners, in the calculus of 19th century capitalism, believed they were entitled to make as much money as they could at the expense of human life. Those who defended the status quo, including many in the North, argued it would be too disruptive to the American economy to just free such people. Their descendants have always been there to lecture to us that all kinds of economic liberation is not sensibile or feasible, that degradation must be the status quo. It recalls the old Fredric Jameson line: “It’s easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism.” America must learn class solidarity and perhaps DSA, in due time, will be the organization to spread that gospel. Liberals should stop mocking the largely white, homogenous townspeople of the Midwest who don’t understand the concept of white privilege because everyone looks the same and works a minimum wage retail job, if they can get one at all. And they must recognize these people have more in common, economically and even culturally, with black and brown NYCHA tenants battling deteriorating housing conditions than they imagine. This is the most difficult aspect of the debate around race and class, because it’s not zero sum and never will be. Social media makes it seem so, because the construct of social media, particularly Twitter, often dissuades nuance, even when an influencer is threading. And it’s that sort of online combat that makes a magazine piece just a bit more entertaining. Some DSA members may fret that this narrative is frozen in amber: they are too well-off, too white, too much a social club. The corporate media did them in again. But they still have the power to tell the story they want to tell. There will be more journalists and editors on the hunt for a narrative. There will be more opportunities to tell the truth as DSA sees it. They will just have to seize them.

https://medium.com/@RossBarkan/about-that-big-new-york-magazine-story-about-socialism-in-america-d6ba4c5b87f0

['Ross Barkan']

2019-03-06 21:02:47.406000+00:00

['Dsa', 'Politics', 'Democratic Socialism', 'Socialism']

Do these 7 Simple Things in a Pomodoro break that improves productivity — [work/study at home version]

Regardless of how big your household is, vacuuming your workspace can take less than 15 minutes. And if you are a heavy eraser user, or, a pet owner, dust can build up in your living space fairly quickly. The reason I don’t recommend vacuuming a larger radius of space is the following: you need a small fraction of your break time to disconnect the task you are doing at hand, in this case, vacuuming, to the next task, say work on your next Pomodoro session. For your mind to regain calmness and be ready for the more mind griding task that comes up. You can also run your Romba if all the wires or other items on the ground have been reorganized. 3. Throw out the garbage. It is hard to concentrate on almost anything if you have a smelly kitchen garbage bag that is yelling to be taking out. During quarantine, the time we spent at our home office is significantly longer than usual, so does the time we spent eating at home. It’s best to do it in the day time when the sun is still out, so you can be delighted with the freshness of the sun-bathed trees and the friendly greetings from the dog walkers. A note to this tip: it’s best to have your garbage bag ready at the door at the beginning of your break session, so you can get back to your computer before the timer. 4. Take out clean dishes/put in dirty dishes Completing either of these two tasks can fill your break easily, especially for those who have more delicate dishwares. The whole take-out and take -in process can take up to two break sessions, but if you find it hard to stop completing either task, it’s better to do it during a 30 minutes break where you can combine another task, say vacuuming/sweeping the kitchen floor. The dirty dishes are ready to be washed! 5. Run the cleaning appliances. If you are successfully putting all the dirty dishes in the washing machine, you can start running it, the time it takes for a dishwasher to complete a cycle varies from brands and settings, but the rule of thumb is to make sure the clean dishes are ready before mealtime! Since it takes less than 1 minutes to get your dishwasher going, the rest of the break time can be used to either collect dirty clothes into the laundry basket, put the dirty clothes into the washing machine and run it, take the washed ones and transferred them into the dryer, take the clean ones out and spread it on your bed for folding next time. 6. Spend time with your pet. Poppy(my little princess) enjoys a five-star head massage. A 10 or 15 minutes break is probably too tight for a dog walking session, but some indoor playtimes between you and your pet can definitely be inserted in between your work session. As for myself, I often spend the break time petting my cats, where I will go back to my laptop when they find me too annoying to be around. 7. Put on an eye mask. If you are studying or working at home during the lockdown, chances are you might experience a slightly disrupted circadian rhythm, and that eye bag is started to look saggy. Wash your hand, take out your eye mask, simply dispose it when your 15 minutes timer is calling you back. It frees your hand from touching your face say…if you are putting on a face mask, so you are still able to do other chores at the same time. And the bonus for glasses-wearers — you can still see things clearly! That’s it, 7 simple things that can refresh your overworked brain and optimize your work/study systems. If you haven't decided on any particular household chores to do yet, simply write out the random popping micro-stressing items on a post-it note during a work session, and view/process them during the breaks. In general, the tasks you do during break should serve for the projects that require longer concentration-time in a work session.

https://medium.com/@thetalktivecarolina/do-these-7-simple-things-in-a-pomodoro-break-that-improves-productivity-work-study-at-home-38991da8c34b

['Carolina Li']

2020-12-23 13:51:08.266000+00:00

['Stress Management', 'Work From Home', 'Workathome', 'Time Management', 'Productivity']

How To Enjoy Your Free Time If You Get Anxious Easily

Take a minute and think about the last time you were feeling anxious for no reason. Where were you, what were you doing at that very moment? I’m willing to bet you weren’t doing much at all. You were either at work, in between tasks, or at home, paralyzed with fear. I know this because I’ve been in your shoes, more times than I’d care to admit. I’ve subjected myself to worry and rumination until my body learned it so well, it could switch into that uncomfortable state with no warning whatsoever. I slip into a state I can only describe as angst. That feeling of unease, like when something is wrong, but you can’t quite put your finger on it. Feeling like something horrible is about to happen when you’re merely brushing your teeth is a distressing state to be in. But, it doesn’t have to get to the point of frozen despair to acknowledge you have a problem. Why do we get anxious in our free time? To answer that question, we need to look at times when we’re not anxious. When we get so lost in whatever we’re doing that there’s no room for any other thoughts. In his book, “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience,” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes a state in which people are so involved in a task that nothing else seems to matter. When concentration is at an all-time high, we can’t pay attention to any other issues. “Flow is being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz.” ― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience I’ve experienced this myself many times. Whenever I performed a very detailed procedure at work, I completely immersed myself in it. On many occasions, I went to work anxious, tearful even, only to calm down while doing the thing that scared me in the first place. Pretty ironic. Obviously, it’s not the object of the worry that makes me feel so fearful. It’s the pattern of toxic thinking that blows that object way out of proportion. And when does this happen? In our free time. Whenever we don’t give our mind purpose, and we allow it to spiral into negative, stress-inducing thinking, our wiring for anxiety gets stronger. It becomes a habit. “But I need my free time. Work stresses me out, I need to work less.” The truth is, no amount of free time will make you feel better if you leave your mind to its own devices. I have tested many combinations — I tried working less, fewer hours, fewer days in the week. It only brought minimal relief until I filled that free time with things that I enjoyed and required some effort: writing, gardening, cooking, hiking, etc. How to replace “mindless” with “mindful” Unstructured rest doesn’t work well for anxious people. We rest our bodies when we get tired, but it’s a different process when it comes to relaxing our minds: we either do it through meditation or a state of flow. “Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times — although such experiences can also be enjoyable if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.” ― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience We must implement this state of “flow” in our free time as well. Our mind needs something to do that is interesting and challenging on some level. Examples of this are doing something creative like writing, painting, drawing; something technically challenging like playing an instrument, knitting, cooking; or something physically exerting: gardening, hiking, playing sports. Put simply, old-fashioned activities that we’ve unfortunately replaced with technology. We’ve made everything easy and convenient. We consume instead of engaging. We don’t make time for hobbies anymore, and it’s making us miserable. Managing free moments while at work Whenever I feel anxious at work, I crave distraction. The problem is I spend too much time on my phone, then feel guilty about it, which in turn fuels my anxiety. To put an end to this cycle, I’ve tested filling up this idle time in a more meaningful way: I carry a book with me that I’ve been meaning to read I catch up on small tasks that I’ve been procrastinating since I know that procrastination is a huge trigger for anxiety I organize my space I engage in conversations with my colleagues Whatever I do, I try not to give myself too much time alone with my thoughts when I know I’m in a negative state of mind. Focus is the best antidote for rumination. However, if your anxiety during those free moments is causing you too much distress, you should deal with it head-on. Avoiding it will only make it worse. Take 30 minutes to yourself and try to find comfort in these things: Breathe from your diaphragm Acknowledge your emotions Do a brain dump and write your worries in detail Investigate your fears with “why” questions Question your angst and reframe it This process won’t entirely take your anxiety away, but it will help tremendously. Designing your free time at home Watching Netflix after a hard day at work is not only easy, it’s also fun. And we need it too. We need to give our minds a break every once in a while. But there’s a difference between enjoying a show and watching endless hours of TV because you want to numb out pain or avoid something you’ve been procrastinating. In those moments, you know you should be doing something else. And it’s eating away at you. The answer to that annoying guilty feeling is doing something that matters to you. After all, it’s your free time. Whatever you choose to spend it on doesn’t have to be productive or meaningful to anyone else but you. So figure out what would make you happy, or make a difference in your life, and start working on it. Don’t expect it to be easy. You’ve been conditioning yourself to reach out for effortless entertainment for so long, you’re going to have some push-back.

https://medium.com/age-of-empathy/how-to-enjoy-your-free-time-if-you-get-anxious-easily-a901b7d1a7ea

['Adriana Sim']

2020-10-30 23:17:02.551000+00:00

['Self Improvement', 'Life', 'Adriana Sim', 'Anxiety', 'Mental Health']

Decoding Transformation: Pragmatic Series

‘Pragmatism’ series#5: “Design thinking Concept — Striving to be a Modern-day Kalpavriksha” From the ancient information archives of the sub-continent culture, there are proofs of practices followed by kingdoms rewarding their citizens for any act of good deed. The rewards were granting the wishes of the citizens. Another similar mention of a belief from the ancient information archives is a wish-fulfilling tree called Kalpavriksha. The ‘belief of wish-fulfilling tree’ is unconditional in giving vis-à-vis the ‘practices of wishing and granting’ is conditional during the kingdom rule. Almost in all the religions, there is a mention of the wish-fulfilling tree through their sculptures, carvings, and literature. The tree structure or representation may differ, but the same belief is ingrained. Key Inferences of Kalpavriksha: It epitomizes Infinite possibility. Provides hope and confidence to the human community to aspire more. It epitomizes Knowledge Personification. Showcases how sporting a positive mindset can unearth human potential to fulfill any desire. It is as if the tree is performing a two-step process: a) Listens to the wisher with empathy b) Unconditionally fulfilling the wishes What ‘Empathic listening’ is to knowledge, ‘Fulfilling the wishes’ is to Infinite possibilities. The Design thinking Concept Alignment: A widely popular concept over the last two decades and being adopted at a faster pace. Thanks to technological advancement, embracing design thinking by any enterprise will enable them to be nimble and sustainable and have a continuous competitive advantage for the overall progress. A simple definition of Design Thinking is identifying the unarticulated needs of a customer to create products or services that will fulfill their needs. Understanding your customers need with empathy is important. Most of the time, wishes or desires of the customers are not explicit. Multiple technological methods are employed that bled psychological information with experiential ways to identify specific or close to the need and fulfill it through their products or services. At the core, this approach is like the two-step process of the wish-fulfilling tree, Kalpavriksha. The difference is a financial transaction that takes place; hence it is conditional. Originally in the business world, the concept of ‘design’ was attributed to the production or manufacturing of a physical product (Object) — the Object produced is designed first. Later, product designing for the production process became key input in constructing the present-day ‘design thinking’ concept. At an individual level, I wish for ‘cultivating a happier mindset always’ from the ever grateful and granting ‘kalpavriksha’. What knowledge is to ‘being grateful and sharing’, What fulfilling the wishes is to ‘happiness’. What is your wish from the modern-day ‘Kalpavriksha’ as we approach 2021? Have you read? Credits: Linked quote and images available freely on the Public Internet. Respective trademarks owned by corresponding firms

https://medium.com/@rrp9164/decoding-transformation-pragmatic-series-3c2b3cd12500

['Ramprasad Ramasamy']

2020-12-21 03:33:01.225000+00:00

['Pragmatism', 'Design Thinking', 'Tree Of Life', 'Empathy']

“High Five” Birthday Party

We are BeeTeam and we create WOW websites with user friendly design and effective functionality. We always choice new technologies and focus on the high quality. Recently we celebrated BeeWeb’s 5th anniversary. During these years, just like a bee, we worked diligently and tried to do our best to accomplish any challenge we faced. We always followed our mission: “You Dream, We Implement”. We chose the concept of HighFive to emphasize one of our core values, our positive team spirit. We build deep and warm connections within the team and never forget to celebrate our victories together. We believe that the secret of a successful project is an effective team work. During the HighFive party our founders told us about the past path of the company and all difficulties they had faced in the process of establishing it. The progress was obvious: now we have several times more team members, our projects have bigger scope, the number of our clients has increased and we work in a creative and motivating environment. We also discussed our ambitious goals and the way we will reach them following our mission. We also had guests. Our former team members whose work had contributed to the process of establishment of our company also were present to one of the most important days of our BeeLife. We really appreciate our team members’ diligent work and eager to celebrate even small victories together. There is no birthday without gift, isn’t there? Our BeeTeam presented a new big blackboard to BeeWeb. It will become a great incentive for generating creative ideas and having more team discussions. The BeeParty was really fantastic and memorable. It gave us extra motivation to work harder and harder to fulfill all our dreams and raised the team spirit. Follow us and you will soon hear about our new accomplishment. As we continue to highlight our team, we invite you to join our community in Linkedin, Facebook and Instagram.

https://medium.com/@beewebsystems/high-five-birthday-party-b788b93159ca

[]

2020-03-03 13:31:50.949000+00:00

['High Fives', 'Party', 'Birthday']

A simple framework for making better decisions

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler” Albert Einstein In a world of ever-increasing connections between people, places and things, one small action can have an infinite number of outcomes. These connections create nearly limitless volumes of information. To make informed decisions in this complex environment requires simplicity. However, creating simplicity must be the result of hard work, not a short-cut. Too often, in our rush to decide or to justify a decision we skip the process of building an understanding. This is a trap that often compromises the decision making of managers. Alternatively, technical experts often get lost in all the possible outcomes. Overwhelmed by the complexity they become paralysed by indecision and unable to communicate effectively to the people they want to influence. In my roles as a strategist and manager of an infrastructure planning team, I have relied on the following framework to navigate complexity and make informed decisions: A framework for making good decisions Step 1: Simple When we see or hear something for the first time, we combine our observation with our past experiences, knowledge and biases to draw an initial conclusion. Step 1: The thought process for making simple conclusions This primarily unconscious process is based on our limited knowledge and inherent biases. These conclusions often align with the views of the people and media with which we surround ourselves. As long as we don’t make a decision based on this conclusion, this isn’t a problem. No-one has the time or energy to explore the details of every piece of new information. Making an informed decision on new information requires us to dig a little deeper. Step 2: Complex Making an informed decision means going beyond our own experiences and knowledge. It requires creating scenarios, seeking out additional information and refining our conclusions. Step 2: The thought process for navigating complexity Building a deep understanding requires several additional steps and feedback loops. Unlike Step 1, we seek out new information and run mental simulations to project what will happen under different scenarios. Working through these additional steps takes conscious effort (as opposed to Step 1) and will challenge our initial conclusions. The best sign of progress as we navigate complexity is that we have lost all faith in our initial findings. After becoming truly confused, we have two choices- put in the work or decide that ‘ignorance is bliss’ and return to the safety of Step 1. Most people choose the latter. What happens when we choose ‘ignorance is bliss.’ If we choose to try and cross the chasm between complexity and understanding, we will need to: Dive into the details Explore dead ends Seek out the opinions of others However, it is also possible to become lost in the details, forever pursuing dead ends. Or worse, remaining at a dead end and pretending like we aren’t because our egos can’t handle being wrong. A lot of people in technical disciplines lose themselves in the complexity. They are capable of having great technical discussions but are unable to explain what they know to people with less knowledge. When pressed to make a recommendation, their suggestion is nearly always more analysis. The best sign of progression is to be able to ask intelligent questions of an expert in the field. As our knowledge expands, we begin to comprehend the long list of variables that we need to consider. These factors have second and third-order consequences and feedback loops with impacts that are difficult to quantity. After identifying all of the variables, it’s time to separate the noise from the signal. This requires us to understand: Critical factors: The few variables with the biggest impact on the desired outcome. Leverage points: The few variables that are the easiest to influence and have a significant impact on the desired outcome. Critical factors and leverage points form the foundations of our understanding which then determines our decision. Critical factors are used to frame the problem and the leverage points become the source of potential solutions. After identifying the critical factors and leverage points we can create a simple explanation that follows the following formula: The problem is … The desired outcomes … The factors that drive this outcome are… The best opportunities to influence this outcome are… This simple description can be used to form the basis of an explanation that can be understood by someone without an appreciation of the complexities. Step 3: Simple The final step is communicating our understanding to decision-makers or those whose support we need to implement our decision. To do this, we need to build a narrative: Step 3: Building the narrative Influencing the opinions of decision-makers or explaining the importance to people who will execute is all about simplicity. A good story weaves in the problem, the critical factors, leverage points and solution through an analogy. Whether it’s drawing comparisons between a greenhouse to explain climate change or a frog in boiling water to explain the consequences of small changes, analogies are a powerful communication tool. Combining our understanding with a compelling story makes us not only informed but influential. It is essential to keep the narrative tied to the facts that it was initially built on. Often in trying to communicate, we can oversimplify or seek to overstate the evidence in support of our decision. This is one of the traps that managers often fall into. Where managers go wrong Managers are often great at sharing and promoting the narratives of decisions. However, they rely on technical experts to advise them on the critical factors, leverage points and potential solutions. Often without the time to understand the details, they usually skip the process of understanding the complexity their technical advisers are trying to navigate. This creates a knowledge gap. How managers often navigate the framework The knowledge gap created by a lack of understanding of complexity has a range of consequences for managers: They allow the narrative to move further and further away from the facts on which it was initially built. They fail to identify the right experts to listen to. They’re unable to recognise and develop the experts they manage. They’re unable to challenge the assumptions and analysis of experts. They can create centralised knowledge in the hands of a few experts who become critical points of failure if they leave the organisation. There some key questions that managers can ask themselves to identify if their knowledge gap is becoming a problem: Do I understand what my people do and how they do it? Do I understand the critical factors and leverage points for my area of responsibility? Am I developing and empowering my technical experts? Is critical knowledge shared across the team? If the answer to any of these questions is no, it’s time to shift focus to understand the complexity your team is trying to navigate. Summary

https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/a-simple-framework-for-making-good-decisions-116c96606fb2

['Sean Hanrahan']

2020-08-22 20:32:13.405000+00:00

['Leadership', 'Decision Making', 'Personal Development', 'Communication', 'Management']

Florida Politicians in Apalachicola and Riviera Beach Stopped People From Speaking at Recent Meetings

Florida Politicians in Apalachicola and Riviera Beach Stopped People From Speaking at Recent Meetings Kevin Begos Jun 17, 2019·6 min read What’s the Law on That? The sleepy Panhandle city of Apalachicola and south Florida’s Riviera Beach have little in common, but this month politicians in both used police to stop citizens from speaking at public meetings. In Apalachicola a petite gallery owner in her 60s asked about conflicts of interest and was escorted from the podium on June 4, even though she had used just two minutes of the official five minute public comment period. The next day in Riviera Beach persistent gadfly, ex-Marine, and developer Fane Lozman was actually arrested, even though he’s won two U.S. Supreme Court cases against that city — one over a previous freedom of speech arrest. So did politicians in the two cities violate First Amendment rights to free speech? Frank LoMonte, a lawyer and director of the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information at the University of Florida, shared these thoughts: “The First Amendment applies vigorously to the public-comment period at government meetings, and a government agency cannot legally silence a commenter just because of speech critical of government agencies or officials,” LoMonte said. “An agency can enforce what are called “viewpoint-neutral” policies, such as holding people to time limits, but if the speaker is silenced for expressing critical or controversial opinions, there is a strong argument that the government has overreached and violated the speaker’s rights.” There’s a Florida law about the right to speak, too. Florida Statue 286.0114, passed in 2013, requires “that a member of the public be given a reasonable opportunity to be heard by a board or commission.” It also says a “circuit court has jurisdiction to issue an injunction under certain circumstances,… (and) to assess reasonable attorney fees in actions filed against a board or commission.” Former state Sen. Joe Negron, a Republican from Stuart, sponsored the bill. Yet despite numerous court rulings in support of free speech, LoMonte and a co-author said in a recent scholarly paper that many citizens around the nation “have found themselves gaveled down or even hauled away in handcuffs because of either what they say or how they say it.” There’s no sign that anyone in Apalachicola (pop. 2296) plans a lawsuit over what happened to local gallery owner Leslie Wallace Coon, but many residents were shocked that police were involved at all. In a widely shared social media post Despina George, a native of the city, called it “one of the lowest points in the history of our city meetings.” Apalachicola appears to have broken its own rules, since meeting agendas say near the top: “Once recognized please rise to the podium, state your name for the record, and adhere to the five minute time limit.” Coon had spoken for only about a minute when Mayor Van Johnson started interrupting her. A video of the meeting by resident Amy Hersey captured these exchanges: At about the 1:22 mark of Coon’s appearance, as audience members clapped and called out support for her, Mayor Johnson said “I’m going to expedite this meeting.” Coon replied “I believe I have 5 minutes” — the advertised limit — but Johnson replied “No you don’t.” At the 1:45 mark Coon asked whether the city manager had conflicts of interest. Johnson interrupted and said Coon was “not going to hijack this meeting.” The police chief approached the podium seconds later, and Coon left without being arrested. Coon told me in a phone call that she was not a threat to attack anyone, so involving the police was ridiculous. She feels critics get treated differently at meetings, though she’s not upset with the police chief, who was following orders. I contacted Mayor Johnson, pointed out that Coon wasn’t allowed the advertised five minute comment period, and mentioned FS 286.0114. Johnson didn’t offer an apology or respond to my key questions, though he did allow Coon to repeat her conflict of interest question later in the meeting without interruption, about 15 minutes after police were first called. City Commissioner Anita Grove responded to questions by saying “we certainly want people to be heard and to follow our policy.” I’ve known both Johnson and Grove for 20 years, and have had good relations with them and other city commissioners. The mayor should understand free speech: his late mother, Azalee, was a respected local civil rights advocate who led peaceful protests when necessary. So I’m puzzled that no one on the city commission has formally said “gee, we shouldn’t have had the police stop Leslie Coon, we won’t do that again, sorry.” Apologies can go a long way in a small town. The Riviera Beach (pop. 34,674) free speech disputes show how such problems can linger. In 2018 Lozman won an 8–1 ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court — over his 2006 arrest at a city meeting. The case drew national media attention, and Chief Justice John Roberts said Lozman’s arrest was “pretty chilling.” Note the case dragged on for 12 years, with huge legal fees for each party. I spoke to Lozman by phone, and he said “This is not unique to Riviera Beach. Municipalities around the country target public speakers who are critical of their policies.” Yet court rulings seem crystal clear. For example, in Lozman’s arrest case U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that “it must be underscored that this Court has recognized the ‘right to petition as one of the most precious of the liberties safeguarded by the Bill of Rights.’” America’s Founding Fathers repeatedly stressed the importance of free speech. James Madison’s early draft of the First Amendment to the Constitution read “The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, or to write, or to publish their sentiments.” U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote this in Whitney v. California (1927): “Those who won our independence believed… that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that without free speech and assembly discussion would be futile…that public discussion is a political duty.” Brandeis added a legal point that is still relevant today: the so-called “clear and present danger” test. “To justify suppression of free speech there must be reasonable ground to fear that serious evil will result” from the speech. Just making politicians uncomfortable doesn’t meet that standard. U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan wrote in New York Times v. Sullivan (1964) that “debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.” These days Apalachicola markets itself as a friendly and historic Old Florida town, and Coon is taking the high road. She “cannot stop laughing” at the absurdity of police being used to stop her from speaking. But Coon said other people might not be so forgiving. “If it happened to anybody but me, they’d be up in arms.” Perhaps a city election in September will soothe local tensions. Mayor Johnson and two Apalachicola city commissioners previously announced plans to retire at the end the current term. (Despina George and Amy Hersey are among those who plan to run; Leslie Coon doesn’t). Whoever wins in Apalachicola, Lozman said campaign promises about respecting free speech don’t always last. “Once they get in (office), if you don’t make public comments they like, they will do whatever they want to shut you up,” he said. We can excuse him for being a bit cynical. The early June dispute in Riviera Beach was over whether Lozman could speak for three or nine minutes. The Palm Beach Post reported that the mere sight of Lozman should inspire fear and caution, like an approaching hurricane. “So by now, you’d think that the words “In the event of Lozman: Do not arrest” are etched into the dais in front of each council member.” Lozman insisted on nine minutes, since he was also representing two corporations and the council had previously allowed him more than three minutes on the same issue (a development battle). The politicians then took a half-hour recess to discuss their options. “Isn’t it much easier to just let him say what he wants to say?” one council member wondered. Apparently not. The Riviera Beach council had police arrest Lozman again. — Kevin Begos has been an Associated Press Correspondent and an MIT Knight Science Journalism Fellow. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, Scientific American, Smithsonian, The New York Times, and many newspapers and magazines. www.kevinbegos.com

https://medium.com/@kevinb109/politicians-stopped-people-from-speaking-at-two-recent-florida-public-meetings-eafbf2da9522

['Kevin Begos']

2019-06-20 22:31:43.805000+00:00

['First Amendment', 'Apalachicola', 'Politics', 'Free Speech', 'Florida']

GIGA-POST! SEO Text Analysis: 11 Copywriting Tools

SEO Text Analysis Why bother with all these SEO services? Such a question may naturally arise. At the end of the day, the customer usually needs cool text, not some parameters. How can you technically measure the quality of material, does it catch on, does it sell? Not until they start reading it until they start buying from this page until they share it on social networks. However, there are a number of parameters that are necessary for the successful promotion of text in search engines. If at least some parameters can be checked automatically, it’s worth doing. Technologies are becoming more complex, the pace of life is accelerating, and we need to save precious time. Remember: not a single SEO specialist or webmaster (at least among my friends) has the goal of deliberately tormenting a copywriter with all these services. I hope that after reading this article, you will better understand why they ask you to check the text in one way or another. In addition, familiarity with certain services opens up new opportunities for you: Reduces the time spent on checking (allows you to either devote more time to the material or to reduce the time for creating and working out the text). Makes a transparent understanding of the requirements of SEO specialists and webmasters. Improves texts, even if you are not required to. This increases the value of your copy and gives you a competitive edge. The uniqueness of the text Why is it important: the base parameter. If the text is simply copied or badly rewritten, then at best it just won’t hurt. What to check: there are many tools, but I prefer semrush.com (also due to the online check). Why do many people ask to check on semrush.com? Because it does not use the standard algorithm for checking the uniqueness of the text using the shingles method (it is used by most services), which makes it possible to quite successfully determine a low-quality rewrite. Yes, semrush.com is often manic in terms of checking uniqueness, but you just need to consider each case separately. Time to check: 1–5 minutes, depending on the service. Time for revision: depends on how conscientiously the text was written. I don’t even check my texts, as they are by default authors. Important! It should be understood that in some topics it is impossible to achieve an indicator of 100% uniqueness due to the use of fixed expressions, phrases, quotes. In such cases, you can focus on the uniqueness of 80–90%. In the rest, I prefer the result 90–100%. Tip: if you have a table, quote, or technical characteristics in the text that are obviously non-unique, just check the uniqueness without them by deleting these parts of the material. What to look for: uniqueness is not important for product cards in an online store. There is no need to rewrite product descriptions manically. For some news sites, a rewrite or partial rewrite is also sufficient. There is also such a “dirty” method of increasing the uniqueness: replacing some English ones with other language characters. In practice, I have not come across such a hack, only if it is a typo. But the text.ru service finds and highlights them. It is worth checking and correcting so that the search engines understand the words correctly. Nausea I will tell you honestly: I have never vomited from the text. Even the worst. Even the most spammy and stupid. Therefore, this parameter for me is always zero and I personally do not use it in my work. Academic nausea is the ratio of the number of repetitions of the most frequently used word in a document to the number of words in the entire text. If it is large (more than 5–7%), then this is over spam. Of course, different services may have different ways of counting nausea, but the spam check, which will be discussed below, in my opinion, allows us to assess the presence of problems with the percentage of occurrences of phrases. Spammy text What is important: texts with a large percentage of occurrences of keywords can be pessimized by search positions (positions are underestimated for spam); with a large number of such texts, the site may be subject to sanctions. Important! In some cases, spam in the text can prevent the page from being indexed. Faced this several times. How to check: http://istio.com/ Time to check: 1 minute. Time for revision: 0–20 minutes. What to look for What percentage of spammy text is acceptable for SEO? In practice, a certain percentage or number of occurrences may be required from you, however, I can recommend a fairly safe border within 2–3%. Better no more than 2% — the density of the most frequent keyword in your SEO copy. How to check if the number of occurrences is optimal? Very simple. Open the service, insert the text, click “Analysis”. And that’s all. Reference. % in the text (density) is calculated as the result of dividing the number of occurrences of a given word by the number of all words in the material. In some cases, a high density may not hurt, but try to read a text where the density of a word is 5% and you will immediately feel that it is difficult to read. Below we will consider a service that will help you find the exact required number of occurrences if required. Advice! Pay attention to the most common words. They are located in the analysis report of the number of occurrences from top to bottom in descending order of density. Many people think that keywords should be the most frequent words in this report. In some cases, this is quite natural, but it can cause spam. You should not specifically strive for this. However, be sure to pay attention to whether the words in the TOP-10 in terms of density are thematic. I have had cases when the word-parasite (or just a favorite word) from the copywriter got into the TOP but had nothing to do with the text. And all this affects the relevance of the text, so words that are not directly related to the article should not be among the most frequent. A simple example: if we write a text about frame houses, then I do not expect to see the word “window” in the TOP10 phrases. The analysis of the most frequent words of competitors’ texts, which we will carry out below, will help to check this. Number of unique phrases Another important point: remember in the last article you discussed the point that in the TOP-10 there are mainly large texts? Large texts contain more unique words, which allows you to collect more traffic to the article due to the so-called “long tail” of requests (I will definitely write a separate article about it). This is where the roots of LSI copywriting grow. So, in Istio you can see this indicator in the “Dictionary” line. The indicator can be compared with the successful articles of competitors. You should not deliberately try to overestimate this indicator by using rare words, archaisms, and neologisms. By itself, it means nothing. But you can try to find thematic words that can be used in the text so that it ranks better or collect more traffic. In addition, these words and phrases can lead you to thoughts about what else should be mentioned in the text. Where can I get them? We’ll figure it out at the end of the article. Read on. Text volume What is important: in itself — nothing, because it may be “water,” but some studies show that large texts rank better. In addition, Technical Specification usually requires a certain volume or “fork” (which, in my opinion, is the preferred option). And many pay for “kilo-signs”. Therefore, it is necessary to measure. What to check: determined by any service, for example, Istio.com already discussed above. Or in the same Microsoft Word. Stop words (text water content) So we came to the parameter “water content” of the text or the presence of stop words. By stop words, in this case, we mean words and phrases that do not carry a semantic load, and the text does not lose anything when they are deleted. For example, “it’s not hard to guess that”, “without any doubt,” etc. Yes, in some cases these phrases may be present. For example, when an article is written in a living language. But in commercial texts they are superfluous, and when writing informational articles, I prefer to get rid of them. Water content is the percentage of meaningless words or expressions. What matters: the more meaningful the text, the better. And nobody wants to overpay for “pouring from empty to empty”. The presence of the words required by the Technical Specification I have been looking for an affordable tool of this kind for a very long time and finally found it! What is important: there are no necessary words — the search engine will not rank for key phrases. In addition, you can collect thematic phrases and also use them (more on this below). How to check: http://cabinet.seo-case.com/fraznum.php (free, but you need to register with the service “Semyon Yadren”). Time to check: 1–2 minutes. Time for revision: depends on whether you initially used all the phrases. We go into the service, insert phrases in the left field, and our text in the right field (or the address of the page where the text has already been placed, but the page addresses are now for some reason incorrectly processed there, insert the text). We press “Analyze” (do not pay attention to the error on the button =). Let’s say I have a text about frame houses and, according to the Technical Specification, there should be such words and phrases (we will consider how to find thematic words on our own using the same example below). If you know analogs of this service, write in the comments, because I have been looking for it for a very long time. It happens that I give the copywriter in the Technical Specification for the text and 30–50 thematic words and phrases (for informational texts), it is certainly not easy for both the copywriter and me to check their presence. Spelling and punctuation Why is it important: illiterate texts are unpleasant to read. In addition, literacy can affect rankings, but I have not seen detailed studies on this topic. I use Grammarly As a result, we get recommendations on: spelling; punctuation; grammar; style; typography; orthoepy; semantics. They are arranged on the right side of the menu. You can choose which ones to pay attention to. Time to check: 2–3 minutes (the service spends 1–2 minutes on text analysis). Time for revision: 0–30 minutes. Depends on literacy! What to look for: I pay attention to spelling, punctuation, grammar. Stylistics and typography — if you have time.

https://medium.com/marketing-laboratory/giga-post-seo-text-analysis-11-copywriting-tools-accbac4b3624

['Alex Koma']

2020-09-24 11:33:44.045000+00:00

['Writing', 'SEO', 'Copywriting', 'Blogging', 'Writing Tips']

SF’s Transit Project Delays and Waste Are Laid Bare on ‘Better’ Market Street

Next month, a once-ambitious plan to radically remake Market Street, now kneecapped by fears of a COVID budget crunch, will come under the scrutiny of the SF Board of Supervisors. But the hearing, slated for late June, won’t just be about finding more dollars, or salvaging what one transit official called a “once in a generation” redesign through the heart of the city. What takes place could shed light on a much deeper problem: the cost overruns and disheartening delays that often tie up parts of the city during transit projects like the Central Subway line to Chinatown, so far three and a half years late and $240 million over budget; and the Twin Peaks tunnel fiasco, in which a 2.2-mile track replacement was botched. Even if federal rescue dollars can patch the city’s transit budget, its long-term woes won’t be fixed without overhauls, as a recent scathing audit of the SF Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) made clear. A microscope is now on the Market Street project, 10 years in the making and slated to break ground this year. Though the Department of Public Works nominally leads the coalition of agencies on the project, SFMTA has been out front presenting the controversial changes and budget woes, and taking fire from the Board of Supervisors and bike and pedestrian advocates. Doubts about Better Market Street are now inseparable from a much larger question: Can our transit agency get its act together? From cheers to jeers When the Better Market Street plans were approved in October 2019, a crowd of pedestrian and bike advocates roared with applause outside City Hall at the promise of wider sidewalks, a new sidewalk-level bike lane, a ban on cars, utilities moved underground, and a faster ride for 200 buses per hour during peak times. The plan is the latest in the city’s seemingly eternal quest to restore a sense of common purpose to Market Street; in a town of neighborhoods, Market is meant to be a public space for all San Franciscans. Instead of a thoroughfare to avoid unless necessary, it would be a street for safe, efficient travel and a destination where residents could live and linger. Mayor London Breed recently unveiled a new safety plan for the area too, emphasizing Market Street’s essential role in the social and economic livelihood of the city. Dig what you’re reading? Sign up for our free The Frisc newsletter, sent every week (or two) with new stories, plus updates from around the city. But in October 2020, many elements of the original Better Market plan were stripped from the project, like the custom bike lane. It seemed COVID would crush the city budget, and the proposed changes were to save $63 million on phase one of the project, from 5th to 8th Street, set to break ground this year. Now, it proposes what are essentially infrastructure upgrades. The SF Bike Coalition and other critics cried foul. During the pandemic, the agency had already spent money on large highway construction projects, and the truncated Market Street plan seemed “rushed and shortsighted” — even with a still-hefty $111 million budget left for 5th to 8th Street alone. Even more frustrating, just before the plan was scaled back last fall, SFMTA was already reporting it would cost an extra $15 million — and it wasn’t even close to breaking ground. In the revised Market Street plan, bikes must share a single lane with taxis and delivery vehicles. In the original plan, the bike lane was to be separated and elevated to sidewalk height. (SFMTA) The city’s budget crunch is suddenly less dire, at least in the short term, thanks to federal stimulus dollars. The latest citywide projection: a $157 million surplus for the current fiscal year, which ends on June 30. (SFMTA is using $127 million in stimulus funds to balance its budget, according to the latest analysis.) But it won’t matter how much money SFMTA has to spend, because poor communication, bad priorities, and a dysfunctional bureaucracy have repeatedly fed cost overruns and delays, according to an audit released in February by the Office of the Controller — in effect, City Hall’s fiscal watchdog. The audit is the latest of the agency’s headaches in recent years: sexual harassment scandals that led to resignations and firings, budget woes, driver shortages, and, just after Mayor Breed appointed Jeffrey Tumlin in December 2019 as the new executive director, the existential threat brought on by COVID. Last month, in a grilling at the April 13th SF County Transportation Authority board meeting, transit officials did not dispute any of the audit’s findings and promised they were well on their way to fixing the problems. But just like the competing street grids that collide at Market Street, the once-ambitious plan to overhaul Market and the controller’s report are meeting at odd angles. Though everyone from SF transit officials to elected officeholders to city residents want improvements, there’s little indication of progress, which leaves Better Market Street as both an example of the agency’s dysfunctional project delivery process, and a test as to whether they can fix it. Waste of time and money In the long history of big civil projects, these numbers don’t immediately jump off the page: 1.7 years of delay and $9 million in cost overruns. According to the controller’s audit, that’s how much time and money the SFMTA wasted per project, across four projects from 2016 to 2020, because of flaws in SFMTA’s “collaboration, communication, and decision-making framework.” That might sound dull and bureaucratic, but those problems have consequences in wasted taxpayer money and lost commuter time. The four major projects were the closure and renovation of the Twin Peaks Tunnel; extensive upgrades at the light rail maintenance yard near Balboa Park, construction of a new T Third line platform at UCSF Mission Bay, and new traffic signals and curb extensions to accelerate a section of the 5 Fulton bus route. Most egregious was the Twin Peaks Tunnel, which carries the K, L, M, and T lines from Castro Street Station to West Portal Station. After replacing the track, the agency had to rip it up and do it again because they reused the tunnel’s century-old track ballast without cleaning it first. Here’s a summary of several of the audit’s findings. Some are startling, like improper vetting of safety records, while others are more technical. Accountability and communication: According to the audit, different divisions within the agency weren’t communicating, sharing key documents, or including staff with necessary expertise in project decisions. The audit laid blame on both employees and management, citing both “consistent absenteeism” and “a lack of empowerment” as key factors. One example: SFMTA knew about hazardous materials in the Twin Peaks Tunnel but didn’t “effectively and fully communicate” the need for testing and removal, which led to the do-over, part of the $35 million cost overrun and delay of more than a year. Contractor vetting: For three of the projects in the audit, SFMTA “did not include or consider safety history” when awarding contracts. A key contract in the Twin Peaks Tunnel work went to a company with a record of safety violations. Halfway through the project, in August 2018, a construction worker died after being hit by a steel beam. Bad budgeting: SFMTA’s engineering and cost estimates were missing key elements and didn’t budget for worst-case scenarios and other risks, according to the audit. The agency has software to help with these estimates but didn’t use it, and employees doing the work had insufficient knowledge and training, according to the audit. Repeating mistakes: SFMTA doesn’t track data that other major transit agencies use to avoid repeat mistakes, according to the audit. For example, SFMTA can’t say how many capital projects start on time, finish on time, or stay on budget. SFMTA also doesn’t analyze “change orders” — contractual changes to the scope, budget, or duration of a project — to look for patterns of inefficiency. (The audit came out right around the time when the SFMTA board approved $147 million in change orders for the Central Subway project, now set for completion two years after its initial deadline.) Support the local journalism you love by making a tax-deductible contribution. Thank you! As a point of comparison, Los Angeles County’s transportation agency Metro tracks capital projects via monthly reports that compare a project’s actual timeline and budget to the original plans, and highlights upcoming milestones for the next six months. Learning best practices from other agencies in the United States and beyond would seem to be a no-brainer. France, for example, often builds projects larger than SF’s Central Subway at a fraction of the cost, says NYU Marron Institute fellow and transportation researcher Alon Levy. But expertise from other cities and states is “disrespected in the United States,” says Levy, who adds SFMTA’s insularity prevents it from learning quickly from its mistakes. Nobody does it better? In the April Transit Authority board meeting, there was no discussion of learning from other cities. In an interview after the meeting, Sup. Rafael Mandelman told The Frisc he has spoken with the county transportation authority’s executive director, Tilly Chang, about doing outside evaluations. (SF’s 11 supervisors also serve as the county’s transit board; Mandelman is the transit board chair.) ‘They’ve suggested [the first phase of Better Market Street] could be a two- to four-year project. What about the rest?’ — Sup. Rafael Mandelman There was plenty of pointed talk, however, about learning from other agencies within San Francisco. Sup. Aaron Peskin, a frequent critic of SFMTA and the transit board’s vice chair, went as far as to suggest that it should hand over some of its duties to the SF Public Utilities Commission. The controller’s audit made many recommendations to improve SFMTA; stripping responsibility was not one of them. There’s a recent precedent of angry supervisors busting up a beleaguered agency. Last year, a board majority put Proposition B on the ballot to split the Department of Public Works in two. It passed handily. Asked about SFMTA reform after the meeting, Mandelman was critical of the agency’s track record and said, “Is there some way that we can use knowledge and competence and skills from one department in another? Those are the kinds of questions I would like to figure out.”

https://thefrisc.com/sfs-transit-project-delays-and-waste-are-laid-bare-on-better-market-street-af128102761f

['Veronica Irwin']

2021-09-15 16:01:47.124000+00:00

['San Francisco', 'Traffic', 'Transportation', 'Planning', 'Outdoors']

Ensuring Your Amazon Strategy is Bulletproof: Freedom Ticket Week 6

Welcome to Week 6 of Freedom Ticket. For those of you who have been determinedly marching through the whole course, congratulations on your progress! We hope you’ve learned plenty of helpful information. For those who are just joining us, or haven’t yet joined, what are you waiting for? Freedom Ticket is INCLUDED in all Diamond, Platinum, and Elite memberships! Don’t believe us? Check out the benefits here! Anyway, Week 6 really dives deep into how to perfect your selling strategy. How? We’ve discussed Brand Registry before, but we’ll take a closer look at that this week, along with more information about intellectual property, with the help of IP legal experts. We’ll also discuss how to identify common problems with sales that you’ll likely encounter somewhere in your Amazon journey. Want the details? Read on. All about Brand Registry and intellectual property (and how the two go hand in hand) Earlier modules of Freedom Ticket have discussed some aspects of intellectual property, but Week 6 will dig deeper into the intricacies of registering and defending trademarks and patents, how to navigate IP law, and most importantly, what this means for you as a seller when implementing Amazon’s Brand Registry. Amazon Brand Registry has come up a few times throughout the course, and Week 6 will go into detail about the benefits of enrolling in the registry — though at this point in the game we can’t really call them benefits, as Brand Registry is an essential component for private label sellers. Amazon Brand Registry has come up a few times throughout the course, and Week 6 will go into detail about the benefits of enrolling in the registry — though at this point in the game we can’t really call them benefits, as Brand Registry is an essential component for private label sellers. Really, we can’t emphasize this enough. GET ENROLLED IN BRAND REGISTRY. Kevin King brings intellectual property lawyer Rich Goldstein onboard to share his years of expertise. Mr. Goldstein’s firm specializes in IP law and has a wealth of experience working with Amazon sellers and getting their patent and trademark ducks in a row. Also, as an FYI, Amazon is also now offering to help you streamline the Brand Registry process through their vetted vendors. Anthony Lee discusses the details here! Troubleshooting declining sales and other shenanigans Sales stopped? Don’t sweat it; it happens. Week 6 will prepare you for the worst by providing several real-world “sales stopped” scenarios that can happen to any Amazon seller. As any experienced seller knows, the Amazon playing field isn’t all puppies and rainbows, but we don’t want new sellers to get discouraged by the first bump in the road they encounter. Week 6 will discuss solutions to common and not-so-common problems. We’ll get into both quick fixes and involved diagnoses that might require more extensive fine tuning on your part. From malicious listing hijackers to simple mistakes like product miscategorization or pricing errors, we’ll cover a spectrum of possibilities and how to troubleshoot them. Which, by the way, Helium 10’s Alerts tool is a great way to monitor your listings and catch sales-stopping issues before they can hurt you! Build your strategy into a veritable fortress with competitor research, ranking tips, and more Everyone out there regurgitates the same cookie-cutter surface-level strategies. Freedom Ticket provides tried and tested strategies that Kevin King has used towards his entrepreneurial success. Thinking outside the box puts you ahead of the competition, and Week 6 talks about a handful of approaches you can use to build upon your Amazon fundamentals. Learn about involved strategies like how to use your competitors’ product reviews to research your customers’ needs and frame your listing copy and photos to connect with your intended audience. We’ll also review and explore some key factors for ranking well on Amazon and break down the anatomy of a product listing to ensure your product pages are bulletproof. And worth mentioning is we’ll review what you CAN’T do on Amazon. There’s a lot of shady or just downright bad advice out there, so it’s worth taking a moment to learn what you need to explicitly avoid to stay on Amazon’s good side. It’s not worth risking a lifelong ban just for a temporary boost in sales. Look forward to Week 6! Remember, this all-in-one Amazon course is INCLUDED with your Helium 10 Platinum, Diamond, or Elite membership! And even though Class 1 members will gain access to Week 6 soon, new members can start from the beginning of the course and learn at their own pace. Existing AND new Platinum, Diamond, and Elite members will have access to all released Freedom Ticket content for the entirety of their active membership. This content is so fresh that we’re rolling it out week by week so Freedom Ticket students can have a chance to fully consume and understand the material. If you’re currently caught up, sit tight for the next week’s modules! Want to learn more about Freedom Ticket and Helium 10? Interested in access to the best in Amazon software tools and education? Get it here, now!

https://medium.com/@amazon-seller-tools/ensuring-your-amazon-strategy-is-bulletproof-freedom-ticket-week-6-343fa9bf1166

[]

2019-11-14 19:39:51.777000+00:00

['Startup', 'Amazon', 'Amazon Fba', 'Business Strategy', 'Amazon Fba Course']

The First Signs of Alcoholic Liver Damage Are Not in the Liver

The First Signs of Alcoholic Liver Damage Are Not in the Liver Myfather died of alcoholic liver cirrhosis four years ago. It came as a surprise to all of us, even though it was clear he had a severe drinking problem for decades. It was especially surprising to me, as a former nurse and a recovering alcoholic. You would think I’d know more about liver problems and alcohol use than the average person. But the truth is, in the months before his death, I had no idea my father’s liver was struggling at all. Most people know about cirrhosis, but few people know how a liver goes from early damage to end-stage liver cirrhosis. https://kegg.tech/wp-content/mxo/video-s-v-i00.html https://kegg.tech/wp-content/mxo/video-s-v-i01.html https://kegg.tech/wp-content/mxo/video-s-v-i02.html https://kegg.tech/wp-content/mxo/video-s-v-i03.html https://kegg.tech/wp-content/mxo/video-s-v-i04.html https://kegg.tech/wp-content/mxo/video-t-v-k00.html https://kegg.tech/wp-content/mxo/video-t-v-k01.html https://kegg.tech/wp-content/mxo/video-t-v-k02.html https://kegg.tech/wp-content/mxo/video-t-v-k03.html https://kegg.tech/wp-content/mxo/video-t-v-k04.html https://kegg.tech/wp-content/mxo/video-t-v-k05.html https://kegg.tech/wp-content/mxo/X-video-h-v-d-xx.html https://kegg.tech/wp-content/mxo/X-video-h-v-d-xx1.html https://kegg.tech/wp-content/mxo/X-video-h-v-d-xx2.html https://kegg.tech/wp-content/mxo/X-video-h-v-d-xx3.html https://kegg.tech/wp-content/mxo/X-video-h-v-d-xx4.html https://altagamma.it/mmm/peo/video-s-v-i00.html https://altagamma.it/mmm/peo/video-s-v-i01.html https://altagamma.it/mmm/peo/video-s-v-i02.html https://altagamma.it/mmm/peo/video-s-v-i03.html https://altagamma.it/mmm/peo/video-s-v-i04.html https://altagamma.it/mmm/peo/video-t-v-k00.html https://altagamma.it/mmm/peo/video-t-v-k01.html https://altagamma.it/mmm/peo/video-t-v-k02.html https://altagamma.it/mmm/peo/video-t-v-k03.html https://altagamma.it/mmm/peo/video-t-v-k04.html https://altagamma.it/mmm/peo/video-t-v-k05.html https://altagamma.it/mmm/peo/X-video-h-v-d-xx.html https://altagamma.it/mmm/peo/X-video-h-v-d-xx1.html https://altagamma.it/mmm/peo/X-video-h-v-d-xx2.html https://altagamma.it/mmm/peo/X-video-h-v-d-xx3.html https://altagamma.it/mmm/peo/X-video-h-v-d-xx4.html https://kegg.tech/wp-content/mxo/video-s-v-it1.html https://kegg.tech/wp-content/mxo/video-s-v-it2.html https://kegg.tech/wp-content/mxo/video-s-v-it3.html https://kegg.tech/wp-content/mxo/video-s-v-it4.html https://kegg.tech/wp-content/mxo/video-s-v-it5.html https://kegg.tech/wp-content/mxo/video-s-v-it6.html https://kegg.tech/wp-content/mxo/video-s-v-it7.html https://altagamma.it/mmm/peo/video-s-v-it1.html https://altagamma.it/mmm/peo/video-s-v-it2.html https://altagamma.it/mmm/peo/video-s-v-it3.html https://altagamma.it/mmm/peo/video-s-v-it4.html https://altagamma.it/mmm/peo/video-s-v-it5.html https://altagamma.it/mmm/peo/video-s-v-it6.html https://altagamma.it/mmm/peo/video-s-v-it7.html The combination of my father’s death and my personal background lit a fire in me to know more. He was admitted to the hospital on June 24, 2016, and he died on July 18. Only 24 days passed between the first sign there was a problem and his subsequent death. Now, hearing that he was in end-stage cirrhosis didn’t surprise me, given his heavy drinking. What did surprise me was that he’d visited several doctors and specialists in the months before his death, and no one knew his liver was struggling either. So what happened? Does end-stage liver cirrhosis really sneak up that fast? Were there other signs that would have alerted someone to his failing liver? As for why the doctors and specialists didn’t know what was happening, that mystery resolved reasonably quickly. The plain truth is that alcoholics rarely divulge the amount and frequency of their drinking to their doctors. This was the case for my dad. He had many health issues that he was trying to solve, but he protected his drinking habit fiercely. So he refused to spill the beans, even when it mattered. The problem is that liver damage has numerous multifaceted symptoms that are confusing and associated with many other illnesses. Unless a doctor knows that the patient is an alcoholic, they may not know how to interpret what’s happening until it’s too late. As he was dying, my father told me that he didn’t think to tell the doctors how much he was drinking. He said it was as if he blanked out and “forgot” to mention it. As crazy as that sounds, this strange “forgetting” is a common part of the alcoholic mindset. It may also be due to the metabolic and physical changes of cirrhosis itself. There are many signs of liver problems, but oddly, none seem to point to the liver at first. And in fact, many of the first signs of liver damage occur in other parts of the body. Knowing these signs may help educate alcoholics and their families if they want to understand their risk of developing liver cirrhosis. Liver damage has numerous multifaceted symptoms that are confusing and associated with many other illnesses. Unless a doctor knows that the patient is an alcoholic, they may not know how to interpret what’s happening until it’s too late. Digestive signs The liver plays a huge part in our digestive process. It filters out all toxins from food as well as helping to break down fats and glucose. When a liver starts to slow down due to significant damage, it will reduce its digestive work. Instead, it will divert its energy toward vital functions like metabolizing medications and filtering toxins. This means that symptoms like bloating, nausea, vomiting, gas, and diarrhea will start to increase. Over time, eating becomes more challenging. In the later stages of liver cirrhosis, toxins that can’t be filtered out begin to build in the bloodstream, which causes more nausea. Cognitive signs Although confusion and brain fog happen in end-stage liver cirrhosis, they can also be early signs. The liver is responsible for filtering dangerous substances in the blood. It also helps regulate hormones, blood glucose, and vitamin absorption. In the early stages of liver damage, these processes can be interrupted. Inevitably, this affects our brain and nervous system. This means that early liver problems can make you feel tired, confused, slow, and foggy. You may have some memory issues as well. Neuromuscular signs The liver stores vitamins required for the functioning of many organs and systems in the body — one of them is vitamin B1 or thiamine. A deficiency in this particular vitamin has been documented in many alcoholics with or without liver damage. Unfortunately, alcohol inhibits the absorption of thiamine in the intestine. Over time, as the liver becomes damaged, it can no longer store thiamine in enough quantities. Thiamine deficiency is responsible for many neurological issues in people with alcoholism. Symptoms of thiamine deficiency range from mild to severe and include things like: confusion, mental fog, lack of balance, pain and numbness in hands and feet, muscle weakness, rapid heart rate, digestive problems, flushing, and involuntary eye movements. Thiamine deficiency happens in almost every alcoholic who consumes frequent and large amounts of alcohol. And if thiamine deficiency due to alcoholism is discovered, you can be sure the liver is suffering damage at the same time. Many of the first signs of liver damage occur in other parts of the body. Vascular signs All alcohol consumption can lead to blood vessel dilation, causing flushing in the face and hands. Over time, this can cause damage leading to permanent redness in the face. Although many alcoholics have rosacea or spider-like veins on their faces, this is often benign. However, spider angiomas are different from rosacea or spiderlike veins. They’re circular and have a central point called a spider nevus that is darker than the rest of the lesion. Spider angiomas are a sign of liver disease and can be present in the early stages. They often progress to more extensive and more numerous lesions. Spider angiomas are caused by increased estrogen levels in the blood. When the liver becomes damaged, it can’t properly metabolize estrogens, which causes them to build up in the body. Many women who are pregnant or taking birth control pills may have a few spider angiomas. However, in alcoholic liver disease, these lesions are often more frequent and accompanied by red palms and varicose veins in the esophagus. These are a few of the main signs of alcoholic liver damage that happen outside of the liver. It’s important to know this because most of us have no idea how the liver functions and how it communicates distress. The liver itself doesn’t show signs like pain or swelling in the early stages of liver damage. This contrasts with other organs like the heart or stomach, where any damage will emit pain or symptoms directly from these organs. What happens with liver damage is that its many diverse functions become interrupted, causing symptoms in other parts of the body. This may explain why most people never think they have a problem with their liver. Unfortunately, patients with alcoholism are rarely educated about these issues. This is because they often don’t reveal their drinking, to begin with. And even if they do, the symptoms are widespread and complex, which makes patient education challenging. My goal in writing articles like this is to help educate regular people about alcoholic liver disease to understand their health and make better decisions. It’s hard to say if my father would have changed his drinking habits if he knew more about his vague and complicated symptoms. But I think having proper education would have certainly helped him understand his risks and health problems better.

https://medium.com/@barbarajkillerd393/the-first-signs-of-alcoholic-liver-damage-are-not-in-the-liver-b55d278968e7

[]

2020-12-19 12:51:51.570000+00:00

['Addiction', 'Health', 'Body', 'Alcohol', 'Mental Health']

Quality Assurance for Beginners

While communicating with colleagues or clients or within testing team, we commonly use vocabulary like “unit testing, “functional testing”, regression testing”,” system testing”, “test policies”, etc. If we communicate the same to a person who is not a test professional we need to explain in detail each and every term. So in this case communication becomes so difficult and painful. To speak the language of testing, you need to learn its vocabulary. And this article has been created to define the use of basic vocabulary among Quality Assurance activity. Application Authentication: is determining whether someone or something is, in fact, who or what it is declared to be. Authentication is a process in which the credentials provided by a person are compared to those on authentication server. If the credentials match, the process is completed and the user is granted authorization for access. Authorization: Is the process of giving someone permission to do or have something. In multi-user computer systems, a system administrator defines for the system which users are allowed access to the system and what privileges of use (such as access to which file directories, hours of access, amount of allocated storage space, and so forth). Component: A minimal software item for which a separate specification is available. Defect (Error): Nonconformance to requirements or program specification or common sence. Also human action that results in software containing a fault. Release Candidate: A pre-release version, which contains the desired functionality of the final version, and needs to pass regression tests (which ideally should be removed before the final version is released). Use Case: The specification of application usage that is conducted from the end-user perspective. Code Bug: A fault in a code which causes the program to perform in an unintended or unanticipated manner. Also an issue type in bug tracking systems Code Complete: The system is essentially done. The code phase was more or less over, and full system testing could proceed in earnest. The developers should consider themselves “done”, with only unknown bugs to repair, etc. Code Coverage: An analysis method that determines which parts of the software have been executed (covered) by the test case suite and which parts have not been executed and therefore may require additional tests. Code Inspection: Is the most formal type of review, which is a kind of static testing to avoid the defect multiplication at a later stage. The main purpose of code inspection is to find defects and it can also spot any process improvement if any. Code Review: A systematic examination of application source code. It is intended to find mistakes overlooked in the initial development phase, improving the overall quality of software. Code Review example in FishEye tool Dynamic Analysis: Is testing and evaluation of a program by executing data in real-time. The objective is to find errors in a program while it is running, rather than by repeatedly examining the code offline. Development Acceptance Test Driven Development: A development methodology based on communication between business customers, developers, and testers. Behaviour Driven Development: A synthesis and refinement of practices stemming from Test Driven Development and Acceptance Test Driven Development. More information here. Test Driven Development: Testing methodology associated with Agile Programming in which tests written prior code and they fail when written and then start passing when code ready Validation: The process of evaluating software during or at the end of the development process to determine whether it satisfies specified business requirements. To ensure that the product actually meets the user’s needs, and that the specifications were correct in the first place. Validation gives answer on question: Are we building the right product? Verification: The process of evaluating work-products (not the actual final product) of a development phase to determine whether they meet the specified requirements for that phase. To ensure that the product is being built according to the requirements and design specifications. The techniques for verification are testing, inspection and reviewing. Verification gives answer on question: Are we building the product right? Testing Test Case: A set of inputs, execution preconditions, and expected outcomes created for a particular objective, such as to exercise a particular program path or to verify compliance with a specific requirement. A Test Case will consist of information such as requirements, test steps, verification steps, prerequisites, outputs, test environment, etc. Test case example Test Environment: The hardware and software environment in which tests will be executed, and any other software with which the software under test interacts when under test including stubs and test drivers. Test Plan: A document describing the scope, approach, resources, and schedule of intended testing activities. It identifies test items, the features to be tested, the testing tasks, who will do each task, and any risks requiring contingency planning. Test Script: Commonly used to refer to the instructions for a particular test that will be carried out by an automated test tool. Simply, it’s an automated test case. Test Suite: A collection of tests used to validate the behavior of a product. Test Tools: Computer programs and test frameworks which used in the testing of a system, a component of the system, or its documentation. E.g. GUI testing tools. Traceability Matrix: A document showing the relationship between Test Requirements and Test Cases. Types of Testing Acceptance Testing: Testing conducted to enable a user/customer to determine whether to accept a software product. Normally performed to validate the software meets a set of agreed basic acceptance criteria. Accessibility Testing: Verifying a product is accessible to the people having disabilities (e.g. blind). Agile Testing: Testing practice for projects using agile methodologies, treating development as the customer of testing and emphasizing a test-first design paradigm. See also Test Driven Development. Alpha Testing: Testing of an early working prototype of a software product. Automated Testing: Test case execution using Test Tools. Can be applied in GUI, performance, API, etc. testing. Benchmark Testing: Tests that use representative sets of programs and data designed to evaluate the performance of computer hardware and software in a given configuration. Beta Testing: Testing of a rerelease of a software product conducted by a specially selected group of customers. Black-Box Testing: A test technique that focuses on testing the functionality of the program component or application against its specifications without knowlegde of how the system constructed. Boundary Testing: Test which focus on the boundary or limit conditions of the software being tested. Breadth Testing: A test suite that exercises the full functionality of a product but does not test features in detail. Concurrency Testing: Multi-user testing geared towards determining the effects of accessing the same application code, module or database records. Identifies and measures the level of locking (deadlocking) and use of single-threaded code. Conformance Testing: The process of testing that an implementation conforms to the specification on which it is based. Usually applied to testing conformance to a formal standard. Data Driven Testing: Testing in which the action of a test case is parameterized by externally defined data values, maintained as a file or spreadsheet. A common technique for Automated Testing. Dependency Testing: Examines an application’s requirements for pre-existing software, initial states and configuration in order to maintain proper functionality. Endurance Testing: Checks for memory leaks or other problems that may occur with prolonged execution. Usually it’s a Load Testing. End-to-End Testing: Testing a complete application environment in a situation that mimics real-world use. Functional Testing: Testing the features and operational behavior of a product to ensure they correspond to its specifications. This type of testing ignores the internal mechanism of a system or component and focuses solely on the outputs generated in response to selected inputs and execution conditions. Usually Functional testing and Black Box Testing terms used interchangeably. Glass Box Testing: A synonym for White Box Testing. Gray Box Testing: A combination of Black Box and White Box testing methodologies: testing a piece of software against its specification but using some knowledge of its internal details. Integration Testing: Testing of combined parts of an application to determine if they function together correctly. Usually performed after unit and functional testing. This type of testing is especially relevant for distributed systems. Load Testing: See Performance Testing. More details here. Life Cycle Testing: The process of verifying the consistency, completeness, and correctness of software at each stage of the development life cycle. Monkey Testing: Testing a system or an Application on the fly, i.e just few tests here and there to ensure the system or an application does not crash. Negative Testing: Testing aimed at showing software gracefully process invalid input data. Also known as “test to fail”. E.g. You try to register a new user which name is already exist in the system Nonfunctional Testing: Set of Performance, Load, Usability, Supportability, Security, Safety Testing. Performance Testing: Testing conducted to evaluate the compliance of a system or component with specified performance requirements. Often this is performed using an automated test tool and on about almost maximum load. Positive Testing: Testing aimed at showing software works properly. Also known as “test to pass”. Recovery Testing: Confirms that the program recovers from expected or unexpected events without loss of data or functionality. Events can include shortage of disk space, unexpected loss of communication, or power out conditions. Sometimes this type of testing is called “stress testing.” Regression Testing: Verification, that new changes/features did not affect existing features. Scalability Testing: Performance testing focused on ensuring the application under test gracefully handles increases in work load. Security Testing: Testing which confirms that the program can restrict access to authorized personnel and that the authorized personnel can access the functions available to their security level. Smoke Testing: A quick testing for the major functions of software. Stress Testing: Testing conducted to evaluate a system or component at or beyond the limits of its specified requirements to determine the load under which it fails and how. Often this is performance testing using a very high level of simulated load with goal to overload handling. System Testing: Testing that attempts to discover defects that are properties of the entire system rather than of its individual components. Usability Testing: Testing the ease with which users can use a product. Unit Testing: Testing of individual software components’s functions. JUnit test script example Volume Testing: Testing which confirms that any values that may become large over time (such as accumulated counts, logs, and data files), can be accommodated by the program and will not cause the program to stop working or degrade its operation in any manner. White Box Testing: Testing based on an analysis of internal workings and structure of software code. Also known as Glass Box Testing. Totally different from Black Box Testing. Quality Audit: An inspection/assessment activity that verifies compliance with plans, policies and procedures and ensures that resources are conserved. Metric: A standard of measurement. A metric should be a real objective measurement of something such as number of concurrent users for a peak hours. Quality Assurance: Planned and systematic actions necessary to provide a confidence that a product is fulfilling customers’ expectations. Quality Control: The operational techniques and the activities used to fulfill and verify requirements of quality. Testing is a quality control activity. Quality Management: That aspect of the overall management function that determines and implements the quality policy. Quality Policy: The overall intentions and direction of an organization as regards quality as formally expressed by top management.

https://medium.com/@annwainscott77/quality-assurance-for-beginners-a571ebcbffde

['Ann Wainscott']

2019-03-21 17:42:36.489000+00:00

['Software Development', 'Quality Assurance']

Healing Relationships

As I am getting to know myself, I tried using my past relationship as mentioned in the previous post, as a case study to understand why I felt the way I felt then, also started to observe the people around me and also all my current relationships to understand what really goes on within in this interpersonal energy exchange. The breakdowns or the challenges we face in relationships start happening when there are desires and expectations from the other. These expectations come from a really deep-rooted habit of ours where we tend to blame others incase we ‘feel bad’ or tend to believe that the other one is the cause of our ‘happiness’, and it is due to this habit which has penetrated into our subconscious through lifetimes of conditioning, we tend to look for certain feelings ‘outside’, especially in our relationships. We get into relationships with a subconscious feeling of lack which we feel the other one is supposed to and will fill. The funny thing is the other one also comes with the same belief. It's like two people coming together with a bowl begging from each other, each believing the other one will perhaps complete them, but Alas!, that never happens. We can only give what we have. All human beings lookout for the same common feelings, which are love, peace, and joy, albeit in different ways, but not feeling those feelings within us, we look for those in our relationships outside. Self Love The reason, I created so much suffering in my relationship was due to a lack of self-love. I was looking for love and happiness outside of me. I gave the other person my ‘remote control’, I gave her the power to make me feel ‘happy’ and make me feel ‘sad’, not realizing I am responsible for my own feelings. Self-love is something that is imperative to have relationships of the highest quality. To the degree one loves the self, inversely, one will look for security, validation, appreciation, or look for the other one to make him/her feel ‘loved’ or feel good about himself/herself. The more self-love, the less are the ‘wants’ and fewer expectations from the other person resulting in more acceptance. When ‘wants’ are less automatically, one starts giving. Giving the energy of cooperation, the energy of acceptance, understanding, care, and compassion. It is only then we can naturally let go and forgive ourselves or someone, and release what we have been holding onto. As you start loving yourself, you start taking responsibility for how you feel. You reclaim your remote!. The river of love already flows within you, just dissolve the dam of I want and start to give. - The Author Not allowing the river of love to flow because of our ‘dam of wants’, affects our relationships, and doesn’t allow us to live our life at the highest potential. It will not allow us to celebrate life as it should be. The greatest sages who have walked upon this earth had dissolved this dam completely and love flowed through them to the entire cosmos. The likes of Buddha, Mahavira, Jesus, Brahma, and many more. These were the souls who lived their highest possibility and lived out the true potential of man. Most of us live our lives and leave the body with the same potential as those sages but unmanifested. This doesn’t happen in a jiffy, but it is a process, as we get to know the real self, we start feeling that love that is within us. This requires unconditional acceptance of ourselves as we are: accepting this body I have been gifted with; accepting my past; accepting my weaknesses, my fears; along with my virtues, my strengths, my talents. Not being in a state of resistance to whatever has happened and whatever is happening. It is being grateful for life itself. Few Things I put my attention on: Awareness Practicing being aware, and bringing our attention back to this moment can give us a glimpse of our true nature. And with practice, this glimpse will be sustained for longer periods. This glimpse is nothing but a taste of self. When we are being the self, even for moments, there will be a deep sense of peace and joy emerging from within. In that glimpse, we will realize the self as beyond this form and experience ourselves as love itself. As we practice more awareness, we start understanding the games of the ego within us and thus able to see when others are also being trapped in those games, as in, we start to understand why others behave the way they behave, allowing us to be more understanding and ensuing more compassion for them. Acceptance Somewhere I wasn’t able to accept myself as I am. Due to this, there was a lack of self-love. We need to accept our past, present, and our self as we are. Accepting self, apart from accepting our bodies, virtues and strengths also include accepting our shortcomings, weaknesses, and any mistakes that I may have done in the past. It is also completely accepting your past without complaining and in this acceptance, forgiveness will be inherent. This acceptance of past and self will allow us to heal our scars and enable us to let go of what we have been holding onto in our minds, which was impacting our emotional as well as physical well-being. When we learn to accept self it will very easy to accept other beings. Awareness and acceptance heal the scars of the past. Gratitude Being grateful for what we’ve got, is something we tend to miss out on. We take what we have received for granted. Take some simple example, we have this beautiful working body who has been cooperating with us since our birth, but it is only when some part pains or doesn't work as it should we realize the importance of it. We should bring to our awareness what all we have been gifted with, things we got without us working for it, this body, friends, family, and countless other things. Keeping this in our awareness will keep us in a higher state of mind where we will dwell in contentment and again creating space to share the same with all we meet. Self Talk The quality of our self-talk greatly impacts how we feel about ourselves. Am I too self-critical? Do I put my self down? Do I think less of me? Do I feel I am no good? What is the energy of the words I use for myself whether loudly or in my mind? What are the adjectives I use for me? What kind of thoughts I have for myself and others? All this has an impact on how we feel and consequently our vibrational field. People who come in contact will only receive what I have to offer. If I resonate with love and joy, people will feel the same when around me. As we develop this love for self, automatically we will have a lot to offer in our relationships and we won't be in the wanting state but a giving state of mind. We will have to work on ourselves, instead of trying to change the other person as we would want them to be. Let's work on the self, absolutely fall in love with the self(not in a narcissistic way) and we will be able to accept people the way they are and also accept things the way they are. Love is oxygen for the soul. Let’s breathe it freely and deeply.

https://medium.com/spiritual-tree/healing-relationships-1c968b49efed

['Varun Jain']

2020-12-31 13:07:37.693000+00:00

['Wellness', 'Life', 'Spirituality', 'Relationships', 'Wellbeing']

How to Deploy Keras Models to Production (Beginners Welcome!)

Photo by Taylor Vick on Unsplash Lessons Learned in Deploying Neural Networks Let me begin by saying I have a really exciting job — but this blog is not going to be about the exciting parts. I want to speak to you about the problems you may face in deploying models implemented in Keras, the popular open source framework for deep learning. This is something many engineers (like myself) have struggled with, and you may spend hours trying to figure this out if you’re on your own. My objective though is to make sure you don’t need to do that, and that you’ll come away from this blog with 3 Learning Outcomes: Implement RESTful APIs in warp speed for your Deep Learning model using the Flask-RESTPlus framework Use the AWS SDK for Python, to Provide Cloud-Stored Data to the API Parse the JSON Responses from the API, so you can use it in your app! The good news is if I do my job right, you’ll see by the end that it’s actually very approachable. Lesson #1: Separate Concerns Between Machine Learning, and The HTTP Routes As you read this, I assume a few things about your deep learning project: You already have a trained model, and have saved it. NOTE: the examples in this blog will use a Hadoop (.h5) and JSON (.json) file, so please keep that in mind if you are using a different format. You are deploying the model to a web server. Unfortunately I cannot promise that these concepts will carry over to mobile or IoT devices (see TFLite), or the browser (see Tensorflow.js). If both those statements apply to you though, then I can sum up this lesson in 4 seconds: Let Someone Else Worry About the Model That can seem confusing at first, however this lesson is really just about the fundamentals — have a dedicated API endpoint for running inference, and I promise the deployment process becomes a lot simpler. Example: Building a RESTful API with Flask-RESTPlus As you may know, the simplest way you can load your saved models in Keras to use on a web server is by simply providing the relative file paths on your local machine[1]. For example, let’s take a look at Plant Vision, a RESTful API I built using Flask-RESTPlus. The code for the repository is linked here, and it already comes with a saved model (to use for image classification) so feel free to play around with it as you wish. For context, this API allows users to upload images of plant leaves, and the model (a convolutional neural network) identifies them as healthy or not. We start by importing the packages we need to program a web server in Flask, build a RESTful API with Flask-RESTPlus, and to process our image data using Keras with a Tensorflow backend: # Prevent ImportErrors w/ flask import werkzeug werkzeug.cached_property = werkzeug.utils.cached_property from werkzeug.datastructures import FileStorage # ML/Data processing import tensorflow.keras as keras # RESTful API packages from flask_restplus import Api, Resource from flask import Flask # Local utility Functions from util import leaf 2. We’ll need to initialize an app variable for Flask of course: app = Flask(__name__) 3. The next step is to build the API, and this is where the usefulness of Flask-RESTPlus shows. In this next snippet, we’ll instantiate an API object, and give it a namespace — you’ll see what I mean below: api = Api(app, version="1.0", title="PlantNet API", description="Identifying Leaf Disease via Deep Learning") ns = api.namespace("Diagnosis", description="Represents the health states of a leaf understood by the AI." ) You can run the Flask server in development now, using the following command (this is specific to the repo linked above): export FLASK_ENV=development; export FLASK_APP=application; flask run And see we already have something to show users! Auto-generated UI for a Flask-RESTPlus API Look back up at the previous code snippet — notice any similarities between the keyword arguments we provided, and the text that appears on the screenshot above? Normally in Flask we would need to make separate HTML templates to display a UI to users. But because you’re a smartypants, you now know that by using Flask-RESTPlus, we can auto-generate a UI just based on the keyword arguments we provided to the Api and api.namespace constructors! the version you provide Api becomes that little number 1 ; you provide becomes that little number ; the title you provided as well becomes the header of the template; you provided as well becomes the header of the template; and the argument provided for description subtitles the page But wait a second —what does it mean by “No operations defined in spec”? And how come it looks like nothing from the namespace appears on the template? This gets us into the next step: the purpose of the namespaces in Flask-RESTPlus is to group your API routes together. So until we actually have added a route for our model to classify images, there’s really isn’t a need for anything else on the UI (because we haven’t really built the API yet). 3. Let’s fix that now —let’s create a route that uses the model to infer the health of user-uploaded leaf images. Use the following code snippet to load the deep learning model as a global object, and implement this route: # Use Flask-RESTPlus argparser to process user-uploaded images arg_parser = api.parser() arg_parser.add_argument('image', location='files', type=FileStorage, required=True) # Model reconstruction - using retrained weights from Inception V3 with open("./plantnet/inceptionModelArchitecture.json") as f: model = keras.models.model_from_json(f.read()) model.load_weights("./plantnet/inception_model_weights.h5") # Add the route to run inference @ns.route("/prediction") class CNNPrediction(Resource): """Takes in the image, to pass to the CNN""" @api.doc(parser=arg_parser, description="Let the AI predict if a leaf is healthy.") def post(self): # A: get the image image = leaf.get_image(arg_parser) # B: preprocess the image final_image = leaf.preprocess_image(image) # C: make the prediction prediction = leaf.predict_leaf_health(model, final_image) # return the classification return prediction If you want to go into more detail on how the model actually preprocesses images and predicts on them, take a detour to the utility functions in the repository. Now when you reload the tab where you’re viewing the auto-generated UI, you should now see the API namespace show up: Once we have added routes, the namespace that groups them shows up as well. In fact you can even drop down the namespace to reveal a debugger, so you can test out the route we’ve created (using the sample image in the repo for example), and check to make sure it works like you’d expect: Again, let’s emphasize that this route’s only purpose is to provide a label for one image of a leaf — nothing more, nothing less. A sample input image may look like the following: And the output is a JSON string such as the following: { "label": "Grape_Black rot", "confidence": 0.4162355065345764 } Key Takeaways In this example, we’ve seen that can reduce the complexity of deploying deep learning models to the web, by encapsulating all the data processing into a API endpoint (and do it quickly with a framework like Flask-RESTPlus). The Next Steps For now, let’s move beyond the debugging UI— the real magic comes in using the API endpoint we’ve created in the backend of other web apps we may have. So let’s take a look at that now, and see how easy it becomes to use deep learning in your own projects! “Inside every large program is a small program struggling to get out.” ― Tony Hoare, 1980 ACM Turing Award Recipient Lesson #2: Don’t Let Cloud Storage Stop You Truthfully speaking, you’ve already done a huge chunk of the work my friend. There’s just a few things left that can trip us up in using our API — like, how are you supposed to send images programmatically in an HTTP request? Again, this example has a few assumptions: If your app stores the images in the cloud (specifically, in an AWS S3 bucket that has programmatic access)[3]. Your app’s backend is written in Python. If those assumptions do apply, then this next example is just for you! Example: Accessing S3 Objects Using boto3 Let’s say we have a web app for botanists who want to upload leaf images of the plants they study. We want our app to use the Plant Vision API described above, to let them know if the leaves are healthy. We can use boto3 , the AWS SDK for Python, to get images stored from our S3 bucket (more generally known as S3 “objects”) into our program. For starters, let’s make a .env in the repository of our other app, and add the AWS credentials we need to access the S3 bucket: AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=<your_access_key> AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=<your_secret_key> AWS_STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME=<name_of_your_bucket> 2. Next, let’s make sure we can use these environment variables in our application. There’s a few ways to do this in Python, for this example we’ll use the python-dotenv package, to be installed via pip: (env) python3 -m pip install python-dotenv Then, we can load in our environment variables to our Python module like so: # Python module from dotenv import load_dotenv # Loads in environment variables from a .env file load_dotenv() # Examples of Storing AWS information in Python variables # AWS S3 Variables AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID = os.getenv("AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID", "") AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY = os.getenv("AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY", "") AWS_STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME = os.getenv("AWS_STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME", "") 3. Now, we’re all set to actually access the S3 objects! We start by initializing the AWS client — this will let us interface with our S3 bucket: # init AWS client import boto3 s3 = boto3.resource('s3') bucket = s3.Bucket(settings.AWS_STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME) 4. In order to get the S3 object, we now need it’s key. This step is very tactical — for example, let’s say the bucket has an image stored in it using the following structure: *** My S3 Bucket File Directory *** garden-images/ | | |---plantA/ | | my-plant-img.jpg Then the key for my-plant-img.jpg would be garden-images/plantA/my-plant-img.jpg . However, your app’s database might only store the HTTPS address to the image stored in S3, so there’s a ton of extra information that would make boto3 throw an error! To fix this, we can convert your image’s URL address (which may be using HTTPS) to an object key on S3, by slicing the URL to take only the root directory of the bucket, to the start of the query string: # get the key to the image on S3, leaving out the rest ROOT_BUCKET_DIR = "garden-images" start_path = img_url.find(ROOT_BUCKET_DIR) end_path = img_url.find("?") key = img_url[start_path:end_path] Note that for this work, your img_url should start as a URL address! You will also need to study the file structure of your own S3 bucket, to find the ROOT_BUCKET_DIR you will need. 4. We can now grab the image data stored on S3 with the following: # get the image data object = bucket.Object(key) response = object.get()['Body'] 5. With that, you’re now all set to send this image in a HTTP request to the API, by using the requests module: # convert the image to low-level binary data img_data = response.read() img_bytes = bytearray(img_data) # data needed to make the request files = {'image': img_bytes} url = "https://plantvision.herokuapp.com/Diagnosis/prediction"\ # get the predictions from the Plant Vision API api_response = requests.post(url, files=files) NOTES: The files dictionary you make has to be structured for the specific API you’re using. The only reason I used ‘image’ as they key in this dictionary is because that is the argument we passed to arg_parser in the Flask-RESTPlus (see the example in the previous lesson). As a Python programmer, we don’t normally see the bytearray data structure — so what is it, you may ask? It’s essentially what we can use to transfer the image information over the TCP/IP network to our API, as it needs to be low-level bytes[2]. 6. Last but not least, we need to make sure we actually use the data! Right now our API returns a dictionary, which goes inside of our response.text . We probably don’t need all the data in the response variable. Let’s use the json package to parse the response from our API, storing the values that we care about in their own variables for further use: import json # parse the response label = json.loads(response.text)['label'] confidence = json.loads(response.text)['confidence'] Key Takeaways In this section, we saw how to make requests involving image data to a RESTful API in Python. We overcame the issues of accessing the images in AWS by using boto3 and a little string parsing, and made the HTTP request by using a bytearray in the dictionary we eventually pass to requests.post . I realize this part has a lot more steps to it, so here’s the link to the code on GitHub for the other app I’m using in the code snippets. “The cloud is for everyone. The cloud is a democracy.” –Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce Closing Thoughts For now, we’ve gotten a response from the deep learning model into our app. However, is this enough to actually provide value to users? At Carbon0 Games, my team and I believe we can advance how humans think, feel, and act in designing their lives to fight climate change. If deep learning can help us in that mission, that’s great — however it’s not the end of the story. If you’ve made it this far, I expect you too will try to deploy deep learning as a force for positive change. Build things your users can trust, help more of us get through these unprecedented times— because that’s a job truly worth getting excited about. References and Further Reading Please check out some of the following resource if you would like to know more on some of the topics mentioned here: [1] Kathy Wu, Francois Chollet, “Serialization and saving” (2020), Keras.io. [2] Jakub Przywóski, “bytearray”, (2015), Python Reference (The Right Way). [3] Corey Schafer, “Python Django Tutorial: Full-Featured Web App Part 13 — Using AWS S3 for File Uploads” (2019), YouTube. And lastly, if you want to build more robust production pipelines I’d recommend the Tensorflow Serving documentation. Alternatively, this blog post by an Amazon Data Scientist explains how to use AWS Sagemaker if you want to just run model inference in the cloud.

https://blog.devgenius.io/how-to-deploy-keras-models-to-production-beginners-welcome-1fbfab19d3f6

['Zain Raza']

2021-05-11 14:21:56.788000+00:00

['Keras', 'DevOps', 'Flask', 'AWS', 'Json']

UX Case Study: NSW National Parks

NSW National Parks App is unknown Our next task was to ask specific questions with users using the NP website, throughout this exploration the NSW NP app appeared, neither of us had been exposed to this before, and 90% of our 32 survey respondents had never heard of the app before. 90% of survey respondents had never heard of the NSW National Parks app. Avoiding the trap of “let’s make this an app” This presented us with a trap many UX projects seem to fall into — should we just make an app? Further survey insights tell us no, as 60% more users had used the website rather than the app. Hence our decision early on, to create additional features to improve the existing site rather than re-inventing the chariot. 69% of survey respondents had used the website before. Using photos to get the people outside But with these initial keys, how would we discover what features to implement? My quest partner and I decided to make two separate initial prototypes, with different design inspirations, one with a card-style photo presentation, and another with a more box-style photo presentation. This allowed for A&B testing which then led us to base some of our visual design and flow off the Airbnb filtration structure and image cards. We found that the images were best used when prioritised and given a lot of screen space. Bring Photos to the Focal Point of our Quest The construction of our Master File began by establishing two major features. As the website currently only contributes to the initial phases of a users’ journey into exploring a National Park, our quest team realised that we had to encapsulate the users’ experience through the site better. The first, and principal feature being “Find Inspiration” and the other being “Share Photos”. These features would provide solutions to our users’ problems in that they targeted the research phase of a users’ journey, and the return and share phase of their journey engaging with NSW NP. Reasoning behind our feature additions. Moments along the user journey we targeted. Which characters are we designing for? To tailor and to integrate our new features for someone, rather than no one, we developed two personas — these personas allowed us to have a strong focus on design for specific users, rather than for ourselves or no one in particular. Dan is in his 20s and reflects our most interviewed and surveyed demographics. Our secondary persona is Nat, busy mother and another common National Parks character. Our personas, their goals and what they have in common. If Users Flow, how do we? For our next venture into solutioning for our constructed personas, together we conducted usability tests with two key tasks (one to search for inspiration for a hike, and the other to upload an image onto the site). With a low task completion rate of without clear hints/direction, it was clear the structure of the solution didn’t separate the two tasks enough. With higher fidelity designs we conducted more usability tests individually, to get more holistic practice as well as validate our prototype rather than generate ways to fix the designs. A massive increase and very promising going into the final steps of our quest. There was a 50% increase of successful task completion rate after our changes. On the path to success! Nearing the end of the quest, we gathered back to compile all of our research and insights in order to validate our final prototype. We confirmed that our solution solved the problems of “confusing navigation” and “difficult to find inspiration for locations to visit”. Check out my video of a walk through of our Task 2. The next Quest awaits: Favourites and Info Our next steps for this project would be to add a ‘favourites’ function, as it was something mentioned near the end of our usability testing as a ‘nice to have’. This would help NSW NP have users come back to their page, and would help users to tick off their National Park bucket list! We would also find ways to integrate more of the NP information into some of the pages via simple iconography and pop ups, to ensure that our users are as knowledgeable, and inspired as possible when going out on their own quests!

https://medium.com/@emma-fouche/ux-case-study-nsw-national-parks-ca3688afb6ad

['Emma Fouche']

2020-12-02 23:32:24.504000+00:00

['Nature', 'Website', 'Apps', 'Wildlife', 'UX']

Save big on headphones, including a Bose model with active noise cancellation

Headphones can be a nice audio upgrade over earbuds, but they can run expensive—especially if you want active noise cancellation technology. But as Black Friday approaches, we can highlight two awesome pairs from Cleer and Bose that give you immersive audio without cleaning out your wallet. The Cleer Enduro 100 headphones are $60 on Amazon today, the cheapest we’ve ever seen them. These headphones boast an awesome feature set: In our review, we wrote, “Bluetooth 5.0 with aptX HD, Google Fast Pair, Siri invocation, and USB-C connectivity put these headphones comfortably into state-of-the-art category.” Up to 100 hours of playback on a charge, as well as up to 13 hours of playback on a 10-minute quick charge, means you’ll be able to use these headphones all day, or even all week, without running out of battery. They also come in two different colors, “Coronado sand” and navy. We gave the Cleer Enduro 100 headphones 4 stars out of 5 as well as an Editors’ Choice award for their awesome sound quality, packed feature set, and lengthy battery life. Want a serious upgrade with active noise cancellation? The Bose Headphones 700 are available from B&H Photo Video for $299, down from a list price of $379. These over-ear headphones feature 11 levels of noise cancellation, so whether you’re looking to block out all sound, or keep an ear out for environmental noises, you can set the noise cancellation accordingly. Built-in Alexa and Google Assistant allow for easy hands-free voice control with one touch, while earcup controls make it even easier to take calls, navigate through music, and more. In addition, up to 20 hours of wireless battery life keep the music going all day long. We gave the Bose 700 4 out of 5 stars, and they average 3.5 stars out of 5 across more than 750 user reviews on B&H Photo Video. [ Today’s deal: Discounts on Cleer Enduro 100 and Bose Headphones 700 ] Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details.

https://medium.com/@earl84024363/save-big-on-headphones-including-a-bose-model-with-active-noise-cancellation-26cdf40e66fe

[]

2020-12-17 13:29:04.777000+00:00

['Internet', 'Consumer Electronics', 'Chromecast', 'Security Cameras']

Zero Food Waste and the Rise of the Backyard Chicken

But they could . . . . . . . if those peels and food waste were first being fed to chickens! A Chicken for Every Situation It only takes 3 chickens, fed household waste, to produce a dozen eggs a week. One chicken can eat over 90 pounds of food in a year, and in that time produce upwards of 200 eggs. So for three chickens, that is 270 pounds of food eaten and 600 eggs produced! Chickens are omnivores, which means they are able to derive nutrition from a very broad range of plants, grains, seeds, and meat. Yes, chickens eat meat — sorry if that offends any vegetarians reading this, but they were born that way. Given sufficient nutrients and variety in their diets, these same birds produce fresh, highly nutritious eggs throughout most of the year. There are many types of chickens to choose from that are suited to different climates and conditions and production systems. Some do well in small spaces, and others are really meant for pastures and free-range situations. Some are friendly and even affectionate creatures, while others are flighty and high strung. From tiny Silkies to Jersey Giants there is a chicken breed that can fit into nearly any regime. Some are best suited to egg production. Some are meat birds. Still others are considered dual purpose, which means they produce both eggs and meat well, but neither one to the extent that a specialized breed would. Dual purpose breeds were once the lifeblood of small family farms for centuries until industrial chicken farming became the norm. Barred Rock hen (Pixabay) Thus a little care in choosing the “right” breed for the situation is warranted because some are better suited to a food waste diet than others. There is no point trying to raise the commercially bred Cornish Cross designed for industrial meat production on a household food waste diet. The results would likely be dismal. But feed that same diet to a heritage Barred Rock, and the results are amazing. The point is that with some attention to the details, there is a chicken and a production system suited to nearly every place on the planet where people live. This makes access to the food waste/egg solution possible in nearly every country of the world. So it would seem there is a match here in terms of food waste being generated and food-waste-eating chickens that can produce new table-ready food quickly and efficiently. There is even a match between this scale of the food waste and the food insecurity problem: They both come down to households. Households generate food waste and chickens, particularly those in backyards, can turn that into a new resource for the family or the neighborhood. Finally! We have arrived at a simple, every day action within the reach of millions of households that could make a real difference to food insecure families and the future of the planet. Your Effort is Minimal! Your effort is remarkably minimal, which is something to truly celebrate! Scrape off your plate into a bowl, empty the overdue stuff from your fridge, and go feed the chickens. If you have ever had a cat or dog, you fed them without ever getting a direct reward beyond a bark, a meow, a lick or a cuddle. But feed a chicken, and you are rewarded with new food that you can eat. You take your leftover spaghetti out to the hens one day, and the next day you collect fresh eggs. It’s little wonder that chicken keeping is catching on again! We have been programmed for instant rewards, and luckily chicken-keeping offers that satisfaction in ways most other pets could only dream of. They give US a food treat! Our brains are hardwired to seek out rewards. Chickens train their owners in no time at all. But how does this really solve food insecurity? If people don’t have enough to eat themselves already, then surely they don’t have enough to feed chickens. I can hear the argument forming in your head already. Well, yes and no. Can zero-waste eggs really make a difference? (Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash) Even food insecure families produce food waste from whatever is on their tables. We’ve already talked about that. But it is true, it might not be enough to support chickens too. This is where our personal actions come into play, and our choices can really start to add up. First of all, if you stop wasting food, there is simply more food to go around. When you start feeding your household waste to chickens, a remarkable thing starts to happen. You become mindful of your food habits and food waste. Not only are you utilizing more of the food you buy directly, but you start to question the cost of what you’re feeding those chickens. It leads to positive changes in your behavior that spin off to other waste and sustainability issues. You start to make better choices because you have experienced the benefit of reducing waste first hand, every time you eat an egg. Pavlov would be so proud! Secondly, as you benefit from feeding your birds food waste and eating fresh eggs, you realize that food waste is a valuable resource. If you actually had more waste, you could have more chickens and even sell eggs. Crazy right? My neighbors are more than willing to provide me with their food waste for the opportunity to buy fresh eggs. . . . that’s right, they give me chicken food AND still buy the eggs. Why? Because where I live, you have to take your own garbage to the dump. Everything not going into the garbage bag means lower fees on a dump run. They are saving money giving me their kitchen wastes and they love the fresh eggs so they buy them from me instead of the store. They like what I am trying to accomplish, and they vote with their dollars. Win-win-win. In other words, you can give your food wastes to someone else who has chickens, and still hit the bulls-eye. Thirdly, chickens are not all that consistent at producing eggs, meaning sometimes they will produce a lot of eggs all at once and other times there will be no eggs, like when the birds are molting. Any gardener will recognize this problem if they have ever planted zucchini — you can go from a few to too many in an eye blink and then what? When there are too many eggs, then there are dozens to be bartered or sold or given away. That means not every household has to have their own chickens in order to benefit from chickens in the neighborhood. When production is peaking, there are often eggs for everyone, even with only a small number of birds in the system. And lastly, it is not that much of a leap to go from having backyard chickens to having community or food bank chickens where food scraps could go purposefully to produce eggs for hungry families. There are any number of situations in communities where keeping chickens could provide nurturing and empowering experiences for people while at the same time creating local food. . . .think daycares, schools, halfway houses, addiction centers and even prison programs, seniors centers, church groups, food banks, and the list goes on. There are opportunities where there is food waste and people needing to experience connection and purpose. It is just really hard not to smile when you reach into a nest box and pull out a beautiful new egg, or when you hand someone a dozen eggs that you have produced with your own birds. There is more to this chicken story than just waste and food, but I will leave that for another day. Sharing is caring. (Photo by Monika Grabkowska on Unsplash) This is within reach If we can only start to match up these resources in our own households, and our communities, then we could actually make a difference on both the waste front and the food insecurity front at the same time: Killing two stones with one bird, if you will. This is not a silver bullet. You will actually have to do something. But your role is dead simple. Instead of throwing out your food, feed it to chickens or give to someone who will. (Photo by Bernard Tuck on Unsplash) There is nothing stopping you from having an immediate and measurable impact in the fight to save the planet, and reduce hunger. This is your cue to put the coffee down, and get cracking!

https://medium.com/land-and-ladle/zero-waste-and-the-rise-of-the-backyard-chicken-dcd200b221d3

['Sue Senger']

2019-01-14 01:55:07.842000+00:00

['Environment', 'Food', 'Farming', 'Lifestyle', 'Sustainability']

If Phones and the Internet Are Banned Tomorrow

On a cold winter morning, traveling alone from Singapore to Chandigarh, I had a peculiar encounter. I say peculiar since it happened in 2020, in the era of technology and digitalization. I was flabbergasted to find NO INTERNET connection on my phone!! My sleep-filled eyes were wide open. The only thought in my mind was “How to connect with family?”. I hurdled across the airport asking for help. Being new to Delhi, I was too skeptical to even step outside the airport without an internet connection. After running around for 1 hour, I somehow managed to connect to the airport Wi-Fi. TING, TING, TING!! Came in the notifications. Literally 30+ calls and messages from the family. Clearly, everyone was panicked. On my flight from Delhi to Chandigarh, there was only one question in my mind “How did people travel when there was no internet?” Have you ever thought about it? In today’s world, when everything revolves around phones and the internet, it becomes frightening if we lose the connection. Obviously, the pre-internet days had their own advantages like get-togethers, writing letters to your loved ones, etc. But what about today? Earlier this year, with the declaration of the global Coronavirus pandemic, almost the whole world went into lockdown. With the extending lockdown, we can say that the virus has changed the way we look at the Internet. Connecting with loved ones With the social distancing norms coming in, people are using social media platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, Zoom to connect with family and friends. We now see gatherings like weddings, birthday parties, get-togethers happening on Zoom calls. Altogether, humans are still finding out ways to connect. Working from Home With the extending lockdown, every person is facing equally tough choices. With the start of this pandemic, we saw many major businesses losing their consumer footfalls, revenues, and many smaller ones even crumbling down. Consequently, the internet proved itself as a savior and we celebrated the change in the way it helped the businesses emerge. Online courses Growing up, had we ever thought of our education system being online? With apps like Zoom, Microsoft teams, Google hangouts, etc. it was made possible. Also, with growing restrictions on public gatherings, people also tried to refresh themselves with online streaming options like Netflix, Amazon, YouTube. Lucky enough not to miss the latest releases during this pandemic! Managing essentials With the increase in the lockdown phases, we saw our E-commerce industry growing. From providing essentials at a quicker pace to its consumers, the E-commerce industry could be seen promoting both the consumers and the sellers. Sellers not only found a wider base of customers to sell out their products to but have also enhanced their products according to the customer requirements. Medical help The internet has opened up the world of medicines. The modern high-tech medical aids, when connected to the internet help collect important data, enables remote care, provide extra knowledge of symptoms, their treatments, and many more. To sum up, we can say that if the internet is used to the best, it can help people stay connected and learn many new things. Also, it is for us to decide how to use technology for our betterment. If we are enjoying what the internet is offering, we should also be aware of its potential risks.

https://medium.com/@k-jasneet349/if-phones-and-the-internet-are-banned-tomorrow-78b40ec775c5

['K Jasneet']

2020-12-23 15:25:18.186000+00:00

['Internet', '2020', 'Pandemic Diaries', 'Traveling']

400 Not out

400 Not out what a crazy headline….. Bear with me ..let us explore and understand together the headline more easier. Everybody knows treadmill ( more now ..thanks covid -indoor mandatory working). If you the treadmill then it is easy to follow the next …..A normal routine for normal ( read normal ) people who hit the treadmill routine to keep themselves alive and flexible start with a regular speed of let us 5 points and some inclination say 5 points ….. First 100 calories goes quickly ..then the next 100 starts looking and tells the mind that todays workout should start ending anytime ….say 200 ….then mind says no..no…crime….work for another atleast 50 more and make it a round figure of 250 calories …..say 30 of 40 % burnt of normal healthy food intake ….healthy word important …note that ( offcourse unhealthly can be anything……ha..ha ) Now let us change the speed and the inclination and mindset to a serious hard work go-get calories . Speed let it be the same 5 points ..incline double to 10 then the first 100 goes ok but then sweating …..for the next 150 ….for the same target as the first episode. Now I personally wanted to go the third level ….I did the second points of 5/10 and went to 275 with gusto and then …..I found mindself floating…rthymic …flowing and body became light and then the champion mindset of breaking …started coming to my body…….next 75 till 250 went very smoothly …now i wanted to extend the flow to 400 …… Now this is where the mind started playing breaking to the flow…because it said 400 will the end …and 370 to 400 was tiring…( mentally ..not physically) then Eureka….400 not out……….. Now the learnings which i learnt was that a. It is the mind only baby…only the mind ……… b. You can do it ..just persist and train your mind to achievement c. there are mindset bottlenecks ( 275 ….and more) but once this barrier is broken …it is nirvana and FLOW which gives pleasure ..joy of achievement d. ENJOY WHAT YOU DO……VERY IMPORTANT….things become easy and unsurmountable tasks become easy. f. Your selfworth and appreciation in your eyes goes up More …More…More…..It was a simple act but said everything every self help blog reads say every day . The most important here to state is the health or treadmill was never a priority for people like me for a long time in my life till last few years …..and that made the above blog an inspiration to write…. BREAK BARRIERS …IT IS EASY………IT IS THE MIND ..IT IS THE MIND ..IT IS THE MIND

https://medium.com/@agniram/400-not-out-1c19d5a47d96

['Raghuram Jayaram']

2020-12-24 08:31:21.375000+00:00

['Breaking Rules', 'Goals In Life', 'Mindfulness', 'Healthy Lifestyle', 'Winning']

How to Migrate Your iPhone and Apple Watch to Xfinity Mobile From Verizon After Getting Xfinity Internet

How to Migrate Your iPhone and Apple Watch to Xfinity Mobile From Verizon After Getting Xfinity Internet #hope Follow Dec 16, 2020 · 6 min read Now that I had already installed gigabit pro and generated the first bill, it was time to finally migrate from Verizon to Xfinity Mobile because: No matter how good it works, Verizon always sucked in my town and in my house. Horrible call quality, dropped calls, never received calls. I am using Verizon over WiFi because of this. So, then why not just use Xfinity which provides the internet anyway? We don’t go out much now, so our actual data usage is very, very miniscule, but our bill is still too much and does not let us share below 5gb for everyone. The key thing to remember here is that I waited for the Xfinity Gigabit Pro to be fully installed before starting the process. What I liked: $50 gift card currently for porting over if I bring my own phone. $250 they apply to your bill over 24 months $10 per month when you purchase a phone and port over using the monthly payment option instead of paying in full. It is quite amazing that with a 1gb plan for one line SIM it is only ~ $15 per month, and with the other line sharing data and ported over with the new phone, the total is only ~ $42 or so. This compares to ~ $85 on Verizon without the two apple watches on it (total $20 for both watch plans). We have decided to not get the watch plans unless we find a real need for it when we all start going out again. This finishes the initial part which was straightforward. Now comes the porting part which is not easy. I had to chat with Verizon to get that part going. Here is how it went: You dial #PORT from your phone to get the number transfer pin which is active for ~ 7 days and can be used for porting either phone. LIE: “One PIN is good enough for all lines” LIE: As long as you have Verizon service, you can use either phone to dial that number again to get another number transfer pin in case it gets disabled after ~ 7 days. I had to generate a separate PIN for each line I transferred over. This makes sense & is more secure. I could NOT use the PIN for one line when I tried to PORT over the other line. “The PIN can be generated from either phone if it expires” “It is ok if one number is ported first and I generate the PIN again after a few weeks to port over the next number from the next phone” The good thing is that when you do this process, it also asks you whether you want to “unlock” the numbers (to allow it to port over), you unlock the phone numbers and you should be good. I also removed the plans from the iOS watch app and then in the same chat session, I cancelled the watch plans as well — which takes effect at the end of the billing cycle. My iPhone XS Max did not like it after Verizon was removed and got confused. iPhone 7 did that process very smoothly though. Remember that if you leave Xfinity Internet, they will add a $20 to your monthly bill. I won’t because I have Xfinity Gigabit Pro How much am I saving? Even removing the two Apple watches from the plan, my Verizon bill is: ~ $85 per month for 5 gb on Verizon Note, we use less than 500 mb per month now But, there is no option “lower” than the current one. With Xfinity Mobile I will be paying ~ $15 per month for 1 gb internet (even that we don’t use now at home). With $250 paid over 24 months for a 128gb iPhone 12, the bill comes to: ~ $42 per month with 1 new phone for 1 gb on Xfinity Mobile It is about an extra ~$24 for the phone contract. for the phone contract. A few dollars and cents in taxes, etc make up the difference. Atleast like Verizon I am not paying more for data I am not using. We use around 8 gb per month (that is the max we have ever used no matter how much we have tried to use because we are not crazy enough to stream audio or video on cellular) when we go back to work, so that would be $60 per month (shared). So total with the phone at that time would be $60 + $24 = $84 ~ $84 per month with 1 new phone for 10 gb on Xfinity Mobile If one more person joins the plan later, with a new phone, we would still use under 10 gb (I know how much we use), so it would still be: ~ $108 per month, with 2 new phones for 10 gb on Xfinity Mobile Only one of us use cellular data a lot, if that person moves to unlimited at $45 per month for that line and the other person uses 3 gb per month at $30 per month, that would be $45 + $30 + $24 = $99 per month ~ $99 per month with 1 new phone for 3 gb per month on one line, unlimited on other line on Xfinity Mobile I am pretty sure Verizon is more expensive, because we have been Verizon customers for years now & I am used to paying like $140 per month even with only two people using up to 8 gb per month. What I hated about Verizon was not necessarily the high service fees. It was the fact that after spending all that $$$ per month, my service still sucked badly. Very slow mobile internet, spotty calls, you name it — it was horrible. Dec 23, 2020 The activation process online was super smooth and went without a hitch!. I did not have to call anybody. I was able to test the connection when we went out a few days ago. I had very low expectations from the service as I knew it was Verizon beneath it. I am super surprised to note that even though the underlying network is Verizon, my cell service has never worked better than it does now. I am getting much better service on Xfinity Mobile than I ever got with Verizon. I have never seen mobile internet work so well, and so fast as I have seen with Xfinity Mobile. Of course, I cannot say for sure until we get back to office. But, from the little I know about how bad the service is in our area — the fast mobile internet was surprising. Dec 28, 2020 I continue to be surprised by how well Xfinity Mobile is working even on cellular only when walking around my neighborhood. Previously when we were on Verizon, we have never ever seen the cellular service working this smoothly or well. Now, this feels like real LTE. And what we had with Verizon earlier felt like something between 2G-3G (mostly I would say ~2.5G — not as horrible as 2G, but nowhere near as nice as 3G). Remember though that the phones have always shown us as having “LTE” service even on Verizon. I had given up on “LTE” anywhere after 4–5 years on Verizon. You never know, maybe I am the only guy in the neighborhood with Xfinity Mobile and that is why it works better than Verizon as everyone else is on Verizon (not sure). To be continued…

https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-migrate-your-iphone-and-apple-watch-to-xfinity-mobile-from-verizon-after-getting-xfinity-27faa011d89f

[]

2020-12-28 17:09:41.848000+00:00

['Apple Watch', 'Mobile Phone', 'iPhone', 'Verizon', 'Xfinity Mobile']

Transfer Learning In NLP

Transfer learning At present we have achieved fantastic results for many tasks like speech recognition, machine comprehension, object detection, and machine translation due to massive efforts of collecting data. These huge models are extremely data-hungry and require an immense amount of labelled data. Most of the time there is a huge difference between these datasets available for training and its target application — for example training data available for speech recognition of USA but the target region is India. In the last few years, we have learnt the art of making great machine learning models for audio, image, and text data with large amounts of data. Unfortunately every time we train a model on a dataset and try to use it for a different dataset, the performance deteriorates. This happens as the model fails to generalize and understand the basic patterns in the data. Even a slight difference can catch it off-guard. This problem is important to tackle as the real-world data is ever-changing and it’s impractical to keep retraining model frequently from scratch for new scenarios. This is where transfer learning comes to the rescue. Fig:1.1 Traditional supervised learning Suppose we have a sentiment analysis task for the domain of Indian stock news. We have enough labelled data for this supervised task and train a model for it. Now when we apply the model to the task in the same domain, it will probably behave as expected. But, as soon as we apply it for the same task in another domain, such as cryptocurrencies, it will behave unexpectedly. If we have to use the same paradigm of supervised learning, we need to collect labelled data for cryptocurrency news and train a new model. Hopefully, it will now perform great for cryptocurrency news, although who can predict crpytos! 😂 But what if we don’t have enough labelled data or cannot afford to collect it? Doesn’t it make sense to leverage the older model and train it for small labelled data we have for the cryptos? But what if we want to add another prediction class to the model, such as neutral, while the earlier model was just trained to predict positive and negative? Transfer learning allows us to deal with these scenarios and use knowledge learned from a previous task/domain for a new one. Let’s give a formal definition to transfer learning. Given a source domain Ds, a corresponding source task Ts, as well as a target domain Dt and a target task Tt, the objective of transfer learning now is to enable us to learn the target conditional probability distribution P(Yt|Xt) in Dt with the information gained from Ds and where Ds ≠Dt or Ts ≠ Tt. In most cases, a limited number of labelled target examples, which is quite smaller than the number of labelled source examples are assumed to be available. The following figure illustrates the process of transfer learning: Fig: 1.2 Transfer learning Types of transfer learning Domain adaptation Cross-lingual learning Multi-task learning Sequential transfer learning Based on domain and task there can be many variations which can be tackled using transfer learning: Xs ≠ Xt : The feature space of source and target is different. For example, the domain-specific words of stocks are different from those of cryptos. Word initial coin offering ( ICO ) which is specific to cryptos will never occur in the context of stocks. Also, if the languages differ, there can be a complete mismatch of feature space. This scenario is referred to as cross-lingual learning or cross-lingual adaptation. : The feature space of source and target is different. For example, the domain-specific words of stocks are different from those of cryptos. Word ( ) which is specific to cryptos will never occur in the context of stocks. Also, if the languages differ, there can be a complete mismatch of feature space. This scenario is referred to as cross-lingual learning or cross-lingual adaptation. Ps(Xs) ≠ Pt(Xt) : The marginal probability distribution of words is different for source and target. The word ledger will be used more frequently for cryptos while it will be used rarely for stocks. This scenario is generally known as domain adaptation. : The marginal probability distribution of words is different for source and target. The word ledger will be used more frequently for cryptos while it will be used rarely for stocks. This scenario is generally known as domain adaptation. Ys ≠ Yt : Labels differ for source and target. Source had positive and negative labels while the target has neutral as well. : Labels differ for source and target. Source had positive and negative labels while the target has neutral as well. Ps(Ys) ≠ Pt(Yt) : The marginal probability distribution of labels is different for source and target. Positive labels occur more than negative in training but the market crashed and the real data has more negative labels than positive. : The marginal probability distribution of labels is different for source and target. Positive labels occur more than negative in training but the market crashed and the real data has more negative labels than positive. Ps(Ys|Xs) ≠ Pt(Yt|Xt): The condition probability distribution of labels is different. This can happen if the same words can mean different or the data imbalance is different for source and target, for example, cold storage means totally different in the world of cryptos. Now we define taxonomy as per Pan and Yang [2010]. They segregate transfer learning mainly into transductive and inductive. It is further divided into domain adaption, cross-lingual learning, multi-task learning and sequential transfer learning.

https://medium.com/modern-nlp/transfer-learning-in-nlp-f5035cc3f62f

['Pratik Bhavsar']

2020-09-13 06:17:18.852000+00:00

['Artificial Intelligence', 'Naturallanguageprocessing', 'Machine Learning', 'Programming', 'Data Science']

Intro to Machine Learning🖥️ & Azure Notebooks📑

Let’s us now start with coding 😍. Step 1: If you remember, our first step is to collect the data & visualize. So, let’s execute the below command to collect data, flightdata.csv. Now with the help of pandas library, we will try to read the data in the dataset & explore by storing as a dataframe, 2D data array. The raw data that is not preprocessed/cleaned is as useless as waste in a bin. Step 2: We will now try to clean the data & prepare it for training. #1. It’s good to know and remove missing values. Here, the 4th code line checks for null/missing values, while 5th code line tells the total number of missing/null values per column. Interestingly, you may observe that “Unnamed: 25 column” has all it’s data missing, that is because it previously had commas which were omitted. This resulted in missing values. So, we will delete/drop that particular column. Step 3: We now select only desired columns which we feel have some impact on prediction. We can see that only one column has missing values, so we reduced our burden 😀. What actually is there in the column, ARR_DEL15? Let us check. #2. Oh, NaN! It means “Not a Number”. But, how to resolve that🤔. Will replace with “1” if there is delay, else “0”. Still there are two more problems. Which are they? Airport IDs(letters), and Departure time(huge numbers). #3. So, we will bin or quantize the Departure time column by dividing entire column by 100. What to do with Airport IDs? #4. We will replace with “dummies/dummy” variables as “1” if the flight originated/departed from that particular airport, else “0”. Huh, done with data part🥳. What’s next? Step 4: Till now we have prepared the data, but not selected the features used for training(x) and the feature to be predicted(y). We will do this now. Also, to train any model and avoid overfitting(100% accuracy only over the training dataset), we will be splitting the dataset into two parts viz., training data & testing data. You may observe that we dropped the data column to be predicted from training data and included as label/to be predicted. Step 5: Now it’s time to select/build the model. We will be using sklearn library, which has inbuilt callable functions for classic ML algorithms such as Linear Regression, Logistics Regression, Random Forests, KNN, Decision Trees, etc... In our case here, we will be using Random Forests Classifier. Step 6: We then train the model by calling fit function. Need not worry, if arguments wonder you. Because they are by default, you should bother if you would like to change any of them. Step 7: Let’s score & evaluate our model over test data. You may observe that we used different metrics to evaluate model performance viz., accuracy, precision, recall, ROC AUC, confusion matrix. Refer here for more details about the metrics. We will also plot ROC curve for better understanding. For this we make use of matplotlib & seaborn libraries, and use roc_curve function from metrics in sklearn. Step 8: Tune Hyperparameters i.e., arguments of the function, RandomForestClassifier which we saw earlier for better model performance. Step 9: To deploy a working model, either we need to pack it as an API or define as a callable function. We will define the whole model as callable function, predict_delay which takes departure date & time, origin airport id and destination airport id as inputs and gives the probability of one-time arrival of the flight. Let’s test the function. Hurrah! It works cool🥳.

https://medium.com/@_vp/intro-to-machine-learning-%EF%B8%8F-azure-notebooks-23d3b2625ca9

['Vijayakumar Pattanashetti']

2020-06-18 08:45:22.948000+00:00

['Data Science', 'Supervised Learning', 'Machine Learning', 'Microsoft Azure', 'Sklearn']

Theatre Review: Feathers // Gutter Street Theatre Company

On Friday night, I was fortunate enough to once again witness a piece of new, live theatre. Yes, you heard that right! New! Live! Gutter Street Theatre Company’s latest offering, Feathers is being performed in The Calder Theatre Bookshop, and it truly set the mark for what the future of socially-distanced theatre should look like; cosy, yet perfectly safe, and undeniably thought-provoking. Gutter Street present a unique approach to their plays, rooting them all within the same road, yet spanning different time periods and introducing us to a range of residents. Their second play, Feathers, this time locates us in a bookshop the night before a national draft. Whilst this world is clearly alternative, and frankly dystopian, its similarities to our own serve as a stark reminder throughout of our own social failings, both past and present. This contemporaneous evocation is subtle, expertly eschewing an easy social commentary that surely would have fallen flat. Instead, what Feathers presents is a tight and focused display of a world in which family, patriotism, and morality are all put to the test. Walking through the Calder Bookshop itself before entering its theatre, you are truly enveloped into this world; watching from the start as Nathan Chatelier’s and Charlotte Keith’s siblings, Kaleb and Cecily, attempt to deal with the potentiality of their final night together. Their ‘Last Hurrah’, as the increasingly ominous background display aptly indicates, is spent packing and bickering and planning as they attempt to make a final flee from their state-sanctioned militia duties. However, they are soon thwarted by an Officer Haines, played by Matt Howdon, leaving the fate of them irrevocably uncertain. Whilst Cecily’s onstage presence is fleeting, her impact is surely felt throughout the rest of the production, with Keith giving a strong but subtle performance. She does not just epitomise the perfect stroppy sister, but rather the boldness and integrity of those refusing to simply go quietly. Having declined to officially sign away her final contractual obligations to the state, Cecily attempts to escape, instead seeking a utopian future elsewhere with the promise that she will soon be reunited with her brother. Keith is defiant yet understated in this role, perhaps representing the idealism of the utopian dream itself. Upon his sister’s departure, Kaleb’s own attempts at escape are yet again impeded by Officer Haines. What follows is a superbly inconsistent back-and-forth between the two characters that has us guessing about them as much as they are each other. We, too, are put to the test. Chatelier’s Kaleb proves to be an intense character. He first appears as intellectual, superior and captivatingly obnoxious. It becomes increasingly apparent that he uses literature as a shield, not a weapon, and this continual message of the power of the written and spoken word is not lost on the audience. Kaleb’s uncertain standoff with Haines, however, begins to reveal his vulnerabilities and nuances which Chatelier deftly delivers and from which the action of the play itself pivots. Throughout the latter part of the play, however, there are clear issues in pacing. Perhaps the piece could have actually benefitted from a longer run-time, presently running at just over an hour, with much of the significant revelations of the narrative falling flat. Despite this, the achievement on the part of the actors in displaying the variability of their characters in such a short period of time is commendable. Howdon’s Haines presented the perfect foil to Chatelier’s Kaleb. Boyish, yet fiercely loyal, Howdon presents a multi-layered character that constantly surprises, amuses, and fears us. Is he ultimately ignorant in his parroting politics, or in fact omniscient in his subjugation to the state? The chemistry between Haines and Kaleb continues to complicate this. With their borderline flirting, teasing each other both politically and personally, they leave us guessing as to both of their fates to the very end of the play. Gutter Street’s production of Feathers was certainly stimulating. As audience members, we became increasingly complicit in the events of the narrative- as well as in its situation as a piece of performance. With the slow return of live theatre, more productions, like Feathers, are going to be needed in order to keep us not just entertained, but alert. Words by Emily Radakovic.

https://medium.com/the-indiependent/theatre-review-feathers-gutter-street-theatre-company-e679d3cc1adc

['Emily Radakovic']

2020-10-05 18:55:12.891000+00:00

['Gutter Street Theatre', 'Arts', 'Culture', 'Theatre', 'Entertainment']

Global Perforating Gun Industry Analysis By Geography

Stratistics MRC’s Perforating Gun Market report explains company profiling, key segments, market trends, top players and regional, country-level segments. Perforating gun is a device used to drill holes in oil and gas wells for production purpose. The primary purpose of the perforating gun is to provide effective flow communication between the cased wellbore and the productive reservoir. Browse complete “Perforating Gun Market” report with TOC @ https://www.strategymrc.com/report/perforating-gun-market Based on the well type, the horizontal & deviated well segment is going to have lucrative growth during the forecast period due to the increasing well development activities and increasing reperforation of old wells. By geography, North America is going to have high growth during the forecast period owing to the rise in shale gas exploration activities and commencement of several offshore drilling activities in the region. Some of the key players profiled in the Perforating Gun Market include Baker Hughes, Core Laboratories, Dynaenergetics , Halliburton, Hunting PLC, National Oilwell Varco , Oiltech Service , Promperforator, Schlumberger, Shaanxi Fype Rigid Machinery , Tassaroli, Weatherford, Yellow Jacket Oil Tool , and Zao Ntf Perfotech. Request a Sample of “Perforating Gun Market” @ https://www.strategymrc.com/report/perforating-gun-market/request-sample Free Customization Offerings: All the customers of this report will be entitled to receive one of the following free customization options: Company Profiling Comprehensive profiling of additional market players (up to 3) SWOT Analysis of key players (up to 3) Regional Segmentation Market estimations, Forecasts and CAGR of any prominent country as per the client’s interest (Note: Depends on feasibility check) Competitive Benchmarking Benchmarking of key players based on product portfolio, geographical presence, and strategic alliances For more information about this report visit https://www.strategymrc.com/report/perforating-gun-market Report Store: https://www.strategymrc.com/report-store Covid-19 reports: https://www.strategymrc.com/covid-19-impact-reports About Us: Stratistics MRC offer a wide spectrum of research and consulting services with in-depth knowledge of different industries. Our research reports and publications are routed to help our clients to design their business models and enhance their business growth in the competitive market scenario. We have a strong team with hand-picked consultants including project managers, implementers, industry experts, researchers, research evaluators and analysts with years of experience in delivering the complex projects. Contact Us: Email: sales@strategymrc.com Organization: Stratistics Market Research Consulting Pvt Ltd Phone: +1–301–202–5929 Website: https://www.strategymrc.com

https://medium.com/@srinath.smrc1/global-perforating-gun-industry-analysis-by-geography-a185e6a57475

['Srinath Smrc']

2021-12-28 04:22:03.892000+00:00

['Report', 'Market Research Reports', 'Market', 'Business', 'Energy And Power']

Ekonomi itu dari, oleh, dan untuk segelintir saja, atau untuk semua?

Solidarity as a Business Model: A Multi-Stakeholder Cooperatives Manual Multi-stakeholder cooperatives (MSCs) are co-ops that formally allow for governance by representatives of two or more…

https://medium.com/334455-demokrasi-ekonomi/ekonomi-itu-dari-oleh-dan-untuk-segelintir-saja-atau-untuk-semua-dc393994646e

['M Sena Luphdika']

2020-01-22 14:44:05.836000+00:00

['Koperasi', 'Oligarki', 'Demokrasi Ekonomi', 'Ekonomi', 'Demokrasi']

I Think I Might Be Too Selfish to Be a Parent

On Saturday, I took my youngest daughter out for a couple of hours. She is fourteen years old. We drove to a city about an hour away that has a cathedral that’s currently festooned in elaborate Christmas lights. It also has assorted shops of the type that 14-year-old girls love (the ones that sell pink foam candy sweets and the bigger ones that sell expensive puffa jackets). As I drove we listened to the new Taylor Swift album and critiqued it vociferously (I think it’s musically proficient but lacks soul; my daughter thinks “the songs all sound the same”). We chatted on the handsfree system with my eldest daughter, who lives 100 miles away and was getting ready to go on a date. When we got to our destination we met up (at a careful social distance!) with two friends of ours. We all bought Christmas scented candles and salty snacks, and then we got hot drinks from the takeaway stand and went to look at the pretty lights. It was dark by now, the sky was a clear navy blue and the city was properly festive and magical. When we got home again a couple of hours later, the heating was on and my husband had laid out a Moroccan takeaway feast. We ate it all together as a family and after dinner, my daughter and my 17-year-old son chose a Christmas film for us to watch all together. Which we did. With a big box of Christmas chocolates, and wine for the adults. It was, I thought, a pretty perfect day for a fourteen-year-old girl who can’t have sleepovers with her friends at the moment (and can’t even have those friends over to hang out in her room). We’re all getting ready for a strange, different sort of Christmas, one without crowds of people to celebrate with, and it’s quite depressing — but I was pretty pleased with myself for having managed to whip up some festive spirit despite the strange times. Imagine my dismay, then, when not one full hour after the film had finished my daughter appeared again, silhouetted in the doorway of the sitting room. “I’m…just…so…bored,” she opined. “I can’t think of anything to do.” She looked at me expectantly. Livid, I was. Livid. Do I really have to give every last piece of myself to this task, this endless working role of parenthood? I was tired. I’d driven an hour each way to look at Christmas lights and I’d watched a film I don’t even particularly like (Fred Claus, since you asked) and I’d been jolly and upbeat and I’d even started to felt pleased with the idea that I might have had a good day, in parenting terms. Until five minutes previously, I’d almost been smug. It wasn’t enough, though. No way. Somehow, when my daughter got bored a few short hours later, it was my job to fix. Of course, it was. This is what I’ve discovered, in around 23 years of parenting: that you give and give and give, and try and try and try, and somehow it isn’t ever quite enough. Either your kid tells you outright that it isn’t, or you have a nagging sense that you’ve forgotten to do or say the one vital thing on one particular day that might contribute positively to your child’s future. It’s relentless. The relentlessness is precisely the thing I wasn’t prepared for, back when I thought it would be super-fun to have three kids. In my head, you had a few relentless years at the start where it was all feeding and nappy changes and making sure they didn’t walk into the road, and then you got some rewarding years when they thought you were the best thing in the world and everyone enjoyed doing jigsaws and collages with glitter glue. Then, I thought, they’d disappear off with their mates more and more and there would be a scary new sense of freedom but also of a job done, a parenting task achieved, another level of life’s computer game triumphantly completed. Instead, the “freedom” that greeted me when my children reached their teens and did start to go off with their friends felt quite terrifying, an empty void that yawned against the backdrop of a future I couldn’t quite imagine yet. I was lonely and wanted them home again. Yet, in between those terrifying glimpses of freedom, I felt as desperately needed as I ever did when they were babies, and twice as inadequate. It’s not freedom when you don’t feel free. So I indulged them when they were around. Basically, I’m very selfish, is the truth of it. I seem to want my children to need me to a schedule of my devising, not theirs. Plus, my indulgence of them in the past now means that it’s me they run to when they experience five seconds of boredom or the smallest of problems. I’ve always sorted things out for them before; why wouldn’t I do it again? I’ll tell you why. It’s because sometimes, I’ve earned a precious hour on the sofa with a glass of pinot noir and an episode of Love Life, and they’re definitely old enough to deal with that and entertain themselves for once. Or at least to politely be bored somewhere I can’t see them. Which, funnily enough, is exactly what I told my daughter on Saturday night.

https://medium.com/assemblage/i-think-i-might-be-too-selfish-to-be-a-parent-3fc26ad3dc95

['Em Unravelling']

2020-12-16 14:52:27.872000+00:00

['Teenagers', 'Personal Essay', 'Parenting', 'Humor', 'Motherhood']

How to Know What to Blog About

So, you want to be a blogger. Chances are pretty good that if you’ve ever said that out loud someone has told you that you should be writing every day. Or three times a week. Or weekly. Or at least regularly. Maybe that someone was even me. Chances are also pretty good that you’ve had this panicked thought run around your brain like a crazed hamster: holy crap! I’m going to run out of stuff to say before I even get any readers. Deep breath, writer. You’re going to be okay. Because the internet is a wild and wonderful place full of bajillions of human beings who are all asking questions on multitudes of topics. We are legion and we are curious. We have already asked the questions on every single topic there is under the sun. All you have to do is find those questions and answer them. I promise you, once you figure out how to do that, your own creativity will kick in and you’ll augment those questions, and you will never run out of things to say. It’s more likely that you’ll barely scratch the surface. For the purpose of this post, I’m going to chose a niche topic that isn’t anything that I write about. I just want you to see that you can be very specific — and still find a ton to write about. Because just outside my office window on this gorgeous August Sunday morning there are a bunch of people kayaking down the Allegheny river, let’s use: river kayaking as our topic. I’m going to introduce you to three free tools today that you can use to find topics for your blog posts. Ubersuggest Ubersuggest was designed by Neil Patel. And it’s free. This is the kind of generosity that makes me so happy. And I really think (hope) that this kind of generosity is the next new thing. I’ve never paid Patel anything, except that I bought one of his books once. But after using Ubersuggest nearly daily for the past several weeks, you can be sure that if I ever need to hire someone to help me with SEO, I’ll hire him. Anyway, that aside. Ubersuggest is amazing. And it’s totally free. Not throttled (you can use it for free all day long, as many times as you want.) Just free, free. I’ll introduce you to it and then show you how I use it. When you go to the homepage, you’ll see a simple search bar where you type in a keyword. In our case today, ‘river kayaking.’ Screenshot: author The results show me that a lot of people search for the term, but that it’s going to be pretty difficult for me to rank on Google for the term. Screenshot: author At this point, I don’t care about ranking. (I will in a minute, though. Stay tuned.) For now, scroll down. Because Patel gives you ‘keywords’ and ‘content ideas.’ Keywords are other keywords that contain ‘river kayaking.’ Content ideas are links that rank for the keyword ‘river kayaking.’ Both of those lists are a goldmine for me, if my goal is to write regularly about river kayaking. Screenshot: author Above is part of the keyword list. I can see that people routinely search for river kayaking in their area. Maybe I could start a series about river kayaking by state. Or in the different areas of my state. People are also interested, clearly, in learning how to river kayak. Screenshot: author Above is part of the content ideas list. I can see that for river kayaking, most of the content is news articles. But the one about the 70-day kayaking journey could easily kick off a series of posts about planning a long trip. And between the keyword list giving me ‘river kayaking dangers’ and content ideas list giving me a story about a river kayaking death, I can see there’s definitely a call for posts about safety. How I use Ubersuggest. I use Ubersuggest to come up with post ideas, as outlined above. But my favorite way to use it has been to start to integrate some simple SEO into my blog post titles. I do that by searching for a keyword that has some search value (I usually look for a keyword that has more than 200 searches a month), but that Ubersuggest tells me would be easy to rank for. It will literally tell me ‘easy.’ How nice is that? For this blog post, I decided the keyword I’d use was ‘what to blog about.’ And it’s a good one! Screenshot: author Ubersuggest tells me that about 1300 search Google for ‘what to blog about’ every month, but the SEO difficulty is easy. (I don’t care about the ‘paid difficulty’ or ‘cost per click’ because I’m not buying Google ads.) So when I title this post, I’ll use ‘what to blog about’ in the title. Hopefully, down the road, Google will start sending some folks over to read it. Thanks Google! And thank you, Neil. Your tool is boss. Answer the Public Answer the Public is another free tool, although this one is throttled if you use the free version. You can use it a few times a day for free. If you want unlimited, it’s $99 a month. I’m pretty sure it’s designed for marketing firms or something, because I can’t imagine a regular blogger paying that much for it. But we can take advantage of the free throttled version. When you log in, you get this kind of creepy dude. He’s automated and he’s scolding you (silently, at least) for making him wait while you think about your question. Since you only get a few questions a day and typos screw up the results — this guy gives me some anxiety, to be honest. I think pretty hard about my question before I log in. Thankfully that guy goes away after the search. Whew. And you just get questions that people have asked Google and maps them for you. You can get a visual map — which might work for you, but makes my poor, old, very linear brain hurt. Screenshot: author There’s the visual map for ‘prepositions’ for River Kayaking. My brain literally cannot, but maybe yours can. Or you can just get a regular list. Thank God. Screenshot: author You get questions that start with different question words (are, can, why, etc.) — unfortunately, people aren’t asking a lot of questions about river kayaking. But when I removed ‘river’ I got a ton of questions. Screenshot: author And each one could spark a blog post. Or more than one. (Can kayaking make you seasick? How can you combat motion sickness? What are natural remedies for seasickness for kayakers? Etc.) After questions, you get prepositions. River Kayaking + (for, to, can, is, etc.) Then comparisons. River Kayaking + (and, like, or, vs.) And finally an alphabetical list of words that people have Googled with your keyword. It’s exhaustive and amazing. How I use Answer The Public. When I’m feeling a little stuck on what to write about, I just pop in of my key topics. Or anything that’s interesting me at the moment. It’s a rabbit hole that I’m purposefully jumping down. Think of that creepy dude like the White Rabbit. He’s in late. Quora I’ve written about Quora before and I still think it’s a great resource. Quora is a question-and-answer social media outlet. People ask questions and other people answer them. You can search for questions on any topic at all and see what people are asking. Then answer the questions in a blog post. Because Quora has a mechanism for following the questions there, you can see how many people are interested, which gives you some insight into whether there’s an audience for the question you’re looking at. You just type your keyword into Quora’s search bar and see what comes up. ‘River Kayaking’ was slightly too specific for Quora, but ‘Kayaking’ gave me some good questions. Screenshot: author I can also see that there’s a Kayaking topic with more than 13,000 followers — so questions are likely to continue to come up. And if I read some of the answers, I can probably mine them for ideas for my own posts. For instance, the top answer could lead to my own post about winter kayaking. And maybe a post about not caring what anyone else thinks about me when I’m on the river. Screenshot: author One nice thing is that when you’re on the topic page, Quora gives you some related topics on the right side of the page. Screenshot: author Those are also known as ‘shoulder niches.’ Not exactly the same thing you’re writing about, but similar. You can use them on Quora to find more blog post ideas and also take them back to Ubersuggest and Answer the Public. One caveat. Quora has a gazillion users and it’s social media. There are a lot of questions and answers that kind of make my stomach turn. It seems like people definitely make stuff up for attention. If you have a hard time ignoring the stuff you don’t want to see, you might struggle with Quora. How I use Quora. When I’m feeling uninspired, I head over to Quora and click around the fiction writing topic until something sparks an idea.

https://shauntagrimes.medium.com/how-to-know-what-to-blog-about-957a537c1463

['Shaunta Grimes']

2019-08-12 00:31:57.930000+00:00

['Entrepreneurship', 'Blogging', 'Creativity', 'Writing', 'SEO']

As US, China fight trade war, Greece opens up to Huawei’s 5G ambitions

Source: Freepik While the US-China tech cold war rumbles on and the UK weighs up how much involvement Huawei should have in the country’s 5G networks, elsewhere in Europe the Chinese tech giant is already implementing its technologies. As of last month, a prime example of these developments is Greece, where pilot projects could help open up the southeast European 5G market to Huawei. Recently, the Chinese telecom company tested two pilot 5G pilot networks in the Greek capital, Athens, and in the seaside city of Kalamata. Huawei is running the pilot in Kalamata with Greek telecom provider Wind Hellas. By implementing the project, Kalamata becomes the first Greek city to experience the potential of 5G. The 5G network in Kalamata now covers the central square and several important points in the city. First commercial use is expected to begin roughly two years from now. According to Anastasios Bikos, a 5G cybersecurity architect with Huawei, Greece’s cooperation with the Chinese giant represents a “ tremendous historic opportunity for the country to take the lead in investing in new revolutionary 5G digital technologies”. Huawei has been investing in Greece for almost 15 years and commands a 50% share of the telecoms equipment market. Bikos tells ZDNet that public debate on implementing 5G and the efforts of the governments and regulatory bodies in Greece and Cyprus are smoothing the shift from 4G to 5G. Despite speculation that the US could ease some of the restrictions that President Donald Trump imposed on Huawei in May, the ongoing trade war between Washington and Beijing doesn’t appear to be nearing its end. That situation could spell trouble for Huawei’s business in Europe. But in the case of Greece, Bikos points out that “no political issue should delay the 5G deployment, since no one, nor Europe, will benefit from that”. However, amid rising global privacy concerns related to 5G technology and especially Huawei as a 5G supplier, Greece has yet to address one crucial issue regarding the processing of personal data — the full implementation of GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). Together with Slovenia and Portugal, the country is a part of the remaining trio of EU members that still haven’t made the necessary domestic reforms to enact GDPR. The regulation is crucial for providing European citizens with better protection on the use of personal data. Last month, the European Commission decided to refer the country to the European Court of Justice, for failing to incorporate GDPR into national law. The Commission also called on the Court to impose a fine on Greece of €5,287.50 for each day that has passed since May 6, 2018 — the deadline set by Brussels on national governments to incorporate the directive. Enacting the GDPR also means tighter data-protection rules when it comes to managing data on 5G networks. So the Greek authorities will soon have to consider the possibility that this could affect ongoing and future 5G projects with Huawei.

https://medium.com/@hasawatermark/as-us-china-fight-trade-war-greece-opens-up-to-huaweis-5g-ambitions-179572e11ea1

['Bojan Stojkovski']

2019-08-19 12:46:23.201000+00:00

['Trade War', 'Huawei', '5g', 'Greece', 'Privacy']

Monitoring Linux Logs with Kibana and Rsyslog

Sometimes you may want to monitor SSH intrusions on your VMs. Sometimes, you might want to see what errors were raised by your application server on a certain day, on a very specific hour. Or you may want to have some insights about who stopped your systemd service on one of your VMs. If you pictured yourself in one of those points, you are probably on the right tutorial. In this tutorial, we are to build a complete log monitoring pipeline using the ELK stack (ElasticSearch, Logstash and Kibana) and Rsyslog as a powerful syslog server. Before going any further, and jumping into technical considerations right away, let’s have a talk about why do we want to monitor Linux logs with Kibana. I — Why should you monitor Linux logs? Monitoring Linux logs is crucial and every DevOps engineer should know how to do it. Here’s why : You have real-time visual feedback about your logs : probably one of the key aspects of log monitoring, you can build meaningful visualizations (such as datatables, pies, graphs or aggregated bar charts) to give some meaning to your logs. about your logs : probably one of the key aspects of log monitoring, you can build meaningful visualizations (such as datatables, pies, graphs or aggregated bar charts) to give some meaning to your logs. You are able to aggregate information to build advanced and more complex dashboards : sometimes raw information is not enough, you may want to join it with other logs or to compare it with other logs to identify a trend. A visualization platform with expression handling lets you perform that. to build advanced and more complex dashboards : sometimes raw information is not enough, you may want to join it with other logs or to compare it with other logs to identify a trend. A visualization platform with expression handling lets you perform that. You can quickly filter for a certain term, or given a certain time period : if you are only interested in SSH logs, you can build a targeted dashboard for it. for a certain term, or given a certain time period : if you are only interested in SSH logs, you can build a targeted dashboard for it. Logs are navigable in a quick and elegant way : I know the pain of tailing and greping your logs files endlessly. I’d rather have a platform for it. II — What You Will Learn There are many things that you are going to learn if you follow this tutorial:

https://medium.com/schkn/monitoring-linux-logs-with-kibana-and-rsyslog-4dfbbd287807

['Antoine Solnichkin']

2019-07-24 21:40:43.222000+00:00

['Programming', 'Software Engineering', 'Monitoring', 'Linux', 'Software Development']

Why is transparency so crucial for the future of work?

In a world where there is a growing importance given on the stamp of being a “great place to work”, particularly in current hybrid or remote first organizations, there is an increasing emphasis being given to certain aspects of organizational culture, one of them being transparency. But what is organizational transparency? And why is it so important? Organizational transparency is a management style that focuses on open governance (Boiser, 2019). It means that there is no information being withheld from employees (whether it is negative or positive), and that there are processes implemented in order to make information more easily accessible and shared. Building a culture of transparency implies that the organization: trusts them and wants them to be involved in the growth of the company; gives them a higher sense of security and psychological safety: validates their role and importance; increases morale and creativity which results in higher levels of engagement. But its importance goes beyond this, according to Salam (2019) and Hearn (2020) organizational transparency: Establishes Trust: transparency leads to higher engagement and commitment from the employees to the vision of the organization, because they will be able to fully understand the mission and will feel that their ideas and inputs are welcomed by management. This happens by consistently showing employees that the organization trusts him/her with their vision and business model. Expands Relationships: “Solid relationships with strong foundations are built from being transparent” (Salam, 2019). Relationships build based upon transparency and openness are relationships that last. it is important to build an environment where people will feel like they can share ideas without judgment. Organizations should always keep an open line of communication so that meaningful conversations that build not only trust but strong relationships can occur, particularly the not so easy ones. Increases Productivity: If employees don’t feel the organization is being transparent towards them their level of commitment will drop resulting in not applying their full potential towards the job. When employees are fully committed to the organization they will commit themselves as a team to achieve its goals. Strengthens Innovation: in a culture of transparency, employees will feel more invested in helping the organization deal with any problems it may be facing. As “two heads are better than one”, if more people are trying to find a solution for the same problem, it is more likely they will find it faster and more efficiently. Transparency will stimulate employees’ creativity and innovation, particularly helpful in key and/or critical times of the organisational life cycle . Is good for recruitment & retention: transparency will transform an organization into a more desirable place to work, attracting more competent and suitable candidates when recruiting. More importantly, transparency is key for retaining talent. According to an article from Forbes (2018) a transparent organization can be identified by these five characteristics: Communication of the organization’s vision and mission statement: When a mission statement is clear and very straightforward communicates the organization’s vision, it will help employees have a clear understanding of financial and business goals, and not only promote it amongst themselves but also to prospective clients. They tell the whole truth: communication should be built on a basis of transparency; organizations should keep their employees on the loop of what’s going on inside and outside: communicate not only the good news but also the not so good; trusting employees with sensitive and confidential information. They don’t delay dispensing information: keeping employees on the loop regarding multiple subjects is important so that they don’t get surprised when hearing information by others that should have been communicated by the organization. “Transparent companies stay on top of information and make sure employees are informed as soon as possible through official company announcements” (Arruda, 2018). They make important documents available: simple tools can help share information like annual reports, financial data, contact sheets, and even calendars with all employees. On the long run, this type of open and direct communication will not only increase efficiency but will also promote trust. They establish trust through social media: giving employees the freedom to share information on platform such as Linked In will give them the sense that the organization fully trusts them to the point of what is going to reach the public eye. This will amplify the organization’s visibility and the transparency of the message being conveyed to the general public. To sum up, as managers we have to be ready to embrace transparency and incorporate it into our organizational culture, and start by putting in place mechanisms for communicating vital issues to team members and keep them posted. Any organization that promotes a culture of transparency has engaged, productive, trustful, confident and happy employees. And happy employees are healthy employees. References: Boiser, L. (2019). Transparency in Organizations: How Transparent Should You Be as a Leader. Kaban Zone. Available at: https://kanbanzone.com/2019/transparency-in-organizations-and-leadership/ Salem, C. (2019). Why Transparency Is Important To Business. Christopher Salem. Available at: https://christophersalem.com/why-transparency-is-important-to-business/ Hearn, S. (2020). Building trust and transparency in your organization. Innovation Enterprise. Available at: https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/hot-to-motivate-employees-building-trust-and-transparency-in-your-organisation Arruda, W. (2018). Five Ways To Identify A Company With A Culture Of Transparency. Forbes. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamarruda/2018/03/11/five-ways-to-identify-a-company-with-a-culture-of-transparency/ This post was originally published at www.boundmakers.wordpress.com

https://medium.com/bound-review/why-is-transparency-so-crucial-for-the-future-of-work-5259090df36d

['Liliana Dias']

2020-12-09 11:09:15.789000+00:00

['Organisational Culture', 'Future Of Work', 'Transparency', 'Remote First', 'Remote Work']

Never Be Complacent

Your loss is unbearable Antiochus IV Epiphanes — Altes Museum — Berlin — Germany 2017.jpg Reflection Mark 13:14–32 In 167 BC, the Syrian king, Antiochus IV Epiphanes desecrated the Temple of Jerusalem by setting up a statue in honor of the Greek god, Zeus. To the Jews, it was sacrilegious. The Jews abhorred it, yet they could do nothing against the occupying forces. This was already a sign of troubled times for the Jews. Because of their unfaithfulness to God, they became self-serving. Their greed brought about disunity. That resulted in the Greeks and Romans occupying their land. Further disasters were expected. So, Jesus warned the devout Jews who have kept the faith. Instead of staying and trying to save this decadent city, flee to the mountains with haste. He asked them to be watchful for the signs of the impending disaster. Indeed, when the Romans laid siege on the city in AD 70, many of the Jews suffered and died. Corporate Leadership Israel was located at the intersection of two great empires — the Roman Empire to the West and the Persian Empire to the East. It was strategically located for trade and it was also a fertile land situated next to the Mediterranean Sea. God chose the best land for His people. However, the people, having had many blessings over the years, took things for granted. Instead of thanking and God, they indulged themselves. Likewise, people working in a well-established company may be lulled into complacency. They may think that the company owes them a living rather than putting their heart into their jobs. Instead of striving for improvement, they fight for more welfare benefits that cause them to lose their competitive advantage. A good leader, however, has to warn his team against complacency. The job that they take for granted could be lost to other competitive workers. Jimmy Carter, 39th president of the United States said, “I hate to see complacency prevail in our lives when it’s so directly contrary to the teaching of Christ.”- XW Family Leadership The development of children from birth through their adolescent years is crucial. Their learning and experience during those years form their thinking and behavior for the rest of their lives. So, it is important that at a young age, children are taught Godly values. If they are neglected, they would be self-serving and take things for granted. This happened to the Jews who failed to practice God’s commandments. They had the thinking that, since they were the descendants of Abraham, they were the specially chosen. Since the Temple of Jerusalem, with all its splendor was still standing, they were protected. Not true. The city did fall to the Romans eventually. Likewise, parents should observe their children closely during their developmental years. Children’s behaviors are indications of what they are thinking and feeling. These are signs to watch out for and not be ignored. The best way for parents to maintain a close watch is to be open for conversation with their children and teens — be sensitive when children want to ask a question, share an experience, or confide in something important. At every stage of their developmental life, parents must teach them values to raise them up to be responsible adults. Erik Erikson, a German American developmental psychologist said, “There is in every child at every stage a new miracle of vigorous unfolding, which constitutes a new hope and a new responsibility for all.” — XW Next: Be Vigilant Always

https://medium.com/@xavierwoon/never-be-complacent-f1d1b1e559af

['Xavier Woon']

2020-12-22 03:31:41.583000+00:00

['Christian Living', 'Leadership', 'Parenting', 'Family', 'Catholic']

ETH and USDT now available on SerenityPay.io

Two new cryptocurrencies — ETH and USDT — have become available on the cryptocurrency exchange platform SerenityPay.io along with BTC. Other ERC-20 tokens can also be added at request. Serenity team has expanded the list of cryptocurrencies available to exchange for fiat money on the cryptocurrency exchange platform SerenityPay.io. The currently available cryptocurrencies include BTC, ETH, and USDT. Other ERC-20-based tokens can be added at short notice if requested by a customer. Cryptocurrency can be purchased with US dollars or euros using a bank card. In the upcoming months, Serenity will focus on upgrading the variety of available currencies and cryptocurrencies, as well as easing the transaction limits and expanding the geographical availability. Subscribe to us on Facebook and Twitter to learn about all the updates firsthand. About SerenityPay.io In April 2020, Serenity team launched a simple and user-friendly platform for quick cryptocurrency purchases, SerenityPay.io. The service is targeted at both businesses and individuals. Any website can integrate SerenityPay.io into their platform and expand their available payment options. If you accept cryptocurrency as payment for your services, but you often encounter clients with no funds in cryptocurrency, you can offer them the services of the cryptocurrency exchange platform SerenityPay.io. Clients can buy cryptocurrency using their bank cards and immediately transfer it to your account if they choose to do so. The funds will be converted into cryptocurrency in two clicks, so the purchase will not require any effort even from those unfamiliar with it.

https://medium.com/serenity-project/eth-and-usdt-now-available-on-serenitypay-io-6c04001aecf9

['Serenity Financial']

2020-07-23 13:48:49.364000+00:00

['Crypto Exchange', 'Ether', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Ethereum', 'Bitcoin']

Workshops 💻 with The Fifth Elephant and Anthill Inside

Did you know that we are organizing workshops too this year, along with The Fifth Elephant 2018? #NowYouKnow This year we bring you a deeper and more hands-on experience at the conference. With the workshops happening along with the conference sessions, you can attend them free of cost! All attendees who’ve already purchased tickets will receive RSVP links for the workshops. If you’ve not purchased tickets yet, you can now buy a single day ticket as well. Here are the 2 workshops planned for both the conference days: Machine Learning with Amazon SageMaker — 26 July — Building, training and deploying machine learning models efficiently and at scale Deep learning based hybrid recommendation systems in TensorFlow — 27 July — Gain an end-to-end view of deep learning-based recommendation and learning-to-rank systems using TensorFlow But hey, we have limited seats. So this is going to be a first come first serve on the RSVP, till we run out of space. Don’t wait any more! Get tickets: https://fifthelephant.in/2018/ We have planned more workshops around the data ecosystem to help you upskill and meet the rising demands of your organization and the industry. Dig deep, get your hands dirty and emerge more powerful at the other end! Bootcamp: Learning representations of text for NLP Date: 28–29 July 2018 Venue: Thought Factory, Bangalore URL: https://anthillinside.in/2018-july-nlp-bootcamp/ Math for Data Science Date: 28 July 2018 Venue: IKP Eden, Bangalore URL: https://fifthelephant.in/2018-math-for-data-science/ Update: We’re sold out for this workshop, but you can sign up for the next one here: https://fifthelephant.in/2018-math-for-data-science-ii/ Workshop: Make your own DL framework Date: 29 July 2018 Venue: Datalicious, Bangalore URL: https://anthillinside.in/2018-july-dl-framework/ Deep learning bootcamp II Date: 30–31 July 2018 Venue: IKP Eden, Bangalore URL: https://anthillinside.in/2018-july-dl-bootcamp2/ Workshop: DL and ML for computer vision Date: 5 August 2018 Venue: Great Learning, Bangalore URL: https://anthillinside.in/2018-computer-vision-workshop/ For more details about any of these, write to info@hasgeek.com or call 7676332020.

https://medium.com/the-fifth-elephant-blog/workshops-with-the-fifth-elephant-and-anthill-inside-cd62e0a92c06

['Abhishek Balaji']

2018-07-23 08:22:16.937000+00:00

['Machine Learning', 'Conference', 'Workshop', 'Deep Learning']

Explore Emerging Technologies in the Aerospace Industry

Innovations in the aerospace industry are continuously on the rise over the years. While a number of technologies have emerged in the industry, here are some of the top technologies that you must know. • Virtual Reality Interiors In recent times, there is hardly any industry that does not leverage the latest virtual reality technology. The aerospace industry is no different. The aircraft are now being designed with the use of virtual reality indicators. With virtual reality technology, the aircraft windows are designed to provide travelers with a view of the outside even when there is no window. This makes the aircraft lighter, thereby enabling faster flight. • Zero Fuel Aircraft Zero fuel aircraft are gaining much popularity in recent years. It has proved to be helpful in the commercial as well as the civil sector. Such aircraft make use of the photovoltaic panels to leverage solar energy in order to provide the essential thrust to the aircraft engine. Zero fuel aircraft have a wide range of use in aerial photography, wildlife protection, agriculture, 3D mapping, and more. • Autopilot Autopilot is another emerging technology in the aerospace industry. Autopilot is all set to replace the need for human operators in an aircraft. Autopilot is a system used to control the trajectory motion of an aircraft, spacecraft, or marine craft without the requirement of manual control. • Smart Automation Manufacturing the different parts of an aircraft is daunting as well as very expensive. However, with the emergence of the latest technologies, creating efficient and smarter aircraft has become easy. Smart automation enables the technicians to easily scan the different metal surfaces with the use of smart glass or tablets. It helps in enhancing automated transactions as well as improves efficiency. • Advanced Materials Advanced materials are now used for the making of aircraft. Materials such as carbon nanotubes and graphene help make the wings of the aircraft more efficient through the reduction of weight and fuel consumption. Apart from these technologies, 3D printing, AI-based design, and smart airports are some of the latest technologies in the aerospace industry. With seamless innovations in the industry, the sector is expected to experience optimum success.

https://medium.com/@infigentsolution/explore-emerging-technologies-in-the-aerospace-industry-37c79cb88a96

['Infigent Solution Pvt Ltd']

2021-08-17 08:42:15.297000+00:00

['Writers Block', 'Writer', 'Writers On Medium']

Blockchain and Corporate Social Responsability, better together.

As you may know if you have read my previous posts (a little bit of autospam 😉) -Tokens, Sia & Celebs- I am an unconditional fan of the Blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies but today I woke up in a philosophical mood so I started to think about the reason of Blockchain existence and what benefits it could bring to the society in general and not only to the companies that use it. That’s why today I will be mentioning some of the Business that are commited and have implemented Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in their business. Kiva started as a crowdfunding in 2005 and has been constantly innovating to meet the diverse lending needs of people around the world. From San Francisco they try to reinvent microfinance with more flexible terms, support community-wide projects or reduce costs for borrowers, always improving. What makes Kiva different? Anyone can start by lending the small amount of $25 to Kiva and be part of the change with this minimal contribution. 100% of each dollar you lend on Kiva goes to project loan financing and you are the one choosing the person or project that is going to borrow your money. As a lender you will be repaid in full. The platform works with Kiva’s Protocol, a digital identification system that uses Blockchain technology to address two major barriers to accessing financial services: lack of formal identification and lack of verifiable credit history. This service has been implemented in Sierra Leone and it covers a need of its population as 80% of the citizens are unbanked and cannot access the financial services they need. This project is expected to continue its growth in other regions. A few months ago I made my first loan so I would like to know if you will also join the cause! Kiva Protocol- Blockchain I nternxt, in this case this platform is a Decentralized Cloud Storage. This Spanish company uses Blockchain technology to give us the freedom and the ownership of our data as it ensures that we have our files, photos or any digital document really safe and no one else, except us, has access to them. We already know that big corporations like Google, One Drive, iCloud or Dropbox offer this kind of service but we also know that these big companies are not really secure and do not care about our privacy since they usually access our information and take advantage of it. Internxt Drive uses point-to-point encryption and Blockchain technology, so that the files you upload are completely safe from third parties (hackers and even the company itself). During the pandemic, Internxt offered its service for free to anyone who needed it, both companies and individuals, as many companies were not digitally prepared for remote work. In addition, Internxt is environmentally aware since behind every screen where you simply see your files there is an industry that requires high levels of energy, which has harmful effects due to the CO2 emissions generated to keep the network fully operational at all times. According to McKensey, “the ICT market as a whole produces around 2% of all carbon dioxide emissions in the world, a figure similar to that represented by the aviation industry. What’s worse, this percentage is expected to grow to 3–4% by 2020, when the ICT sector will more than double the carbon dioxide emissions of countries like the United Kingdom”. Using decentralized storage helps reduce the CO2 emissions that are produced. Moreover, Internxt has a campaign to raise awareness against deforestation. For every customer who subscribes to one of their plans, they plant a tree.🎉 This other project that I read about recently caught my attention, thanks to the union of RTI , an independent non-profit institute, and Collaborative Health Solutions. Its goal is to encourage more timely, reliable, and safe reporting of domestic violence crimes. The only catch I see is that they are only planning to implement it in California for now. They want to ensure the safety, privacy and integrity of medical reports submitted to authorities that include photographs and personal information. We also make sure that the photographs and data in the medical reports are not altered or manipulated. We could implement this in many countries, but in my personal case, given that I live in Spain, cases of gender-based violence against women have increased during the lockdown, as had been warned by various organizations such as the UN. In Spain, calls to the help-line telephone for victims, 016, have increased by 60% during the month of April if we compare them with those received in that month of the previous year. Tell me, are there any similar measures in your countries? As a conclusion I would say that perhaps it is too early to know how beneficial the growth and adoption of the Blockchain applications will be for the social impact but little by little we see more avant-garde companies that are betting on it and also many companies that are trying to solve these social problems and are looking for ways to fit the Blockchain into their business model. With them we benefit from the potential that the blockchain has to instill trust among multiple parties, reduce costs, increase efficiency and improve security as you have seen in the companies I mentioned above. I hope you enjoyed the reading and if you know of any other company that tries to carry out corporate social responsibility activities through the Blockchain system let me know in the comment section. I will read you!

https://medium.com/@edumontoya/blockchain-and-corporate-social-responsability-better-together-da0ccbe34381

['Edu Montoya']

2020-11-19 16:38:40.684000+00:00

['Csr', 'Blockchain Technology', 'Ngo', 'Blockchain Startup', 'Blockchain Development']

Analytics in a Nutshell: An Introductory Look at Setting Up Google Analytics for CRO

Image created by Objeqt.com How do you improve something? Anything. Any process, any action. You start by understanding your baseline. You can do 10 pushups today, but after a month of daily pushups, you’ll be able to do more. Setting up Google Analytics for CRO for e-commerce stores is a way to measure/track by setting a baseline and tracking indicators in order to improve. “You can’t improve what you can’t measure” is how some people put it. “What gets measured gets managed” is equally true. Analytics is just a way to measure by setting a baseline and tracking indicators of improvement (or lack of improvement). But when you look at the Google Analytics dashboard, all of a sudden this simple concept becomes incredibly complicated. And what you need to track for conversion optimization for your e-commerce website only complicates it further. You need accurate and timely data — and lots of it. What sort of data do you need? ResearchXL (used by ConversionXL) divides their areas of research into four main categories: Technical Heuristics Quantitative Qualitative Web analytics is the main tool used to measure quantitative data, like the number of visits to your website, number of conversions, and numbers of new or returning visitors.Quantitative data is all about the hard numbers, which is why you need to supplement that information with qualitative or heuristic research, which are more descriptive (they rely on customer surveys and feedback) but are also more open to bias and misinterpretation. Since quantitative data is collected by a computer program in real time, you can be relatively sure you’re not missing anything — provided the analytics tool is configured properly. That’s the kicker. You have to configure your analytics program, including Google analytics, to make sure collecting all of the information you need. Configuration is a large part of the CRO’s job. We call it an “analytics health check,” typically offering it as a service to determine if a client’s analytics tool is working properly and tracking everything accurately. At this point, we’re not focusing on one set of data over another, though we’ll be doing that later. Right now, we’re trying to collect as much data as possible from which to extract insights, and you can only do that when you customize the out-of-the-box settings on your analytics program. How Web Analytics Works Web analytics records every action of every visitor to your website in real-time, as each person interacts with the content. There are many analytics tools that do this, all with similar features, but Google Analytics is the one most-often used — by more than 70% of the market. Every analytics tool works by leaving a short piece of JavaScript code on every page of the site. This piece of code is called the “tracking code” or “snippet” which collects and sends user-action data back to the analytics program which presents the data to you in readable form. One of the overview screens in Google Analytics Google Analytics isn’t only popular because it’s free (at least in basic form), but also because it is continuously updated, entirely customizable and has a large community creating customizations that are also available for free. Since Google Analytics is sufficient for almost all uses, it became not just the tool of choice, but the industrial standard for analytics tools. It’s one of those things that’s easy to learn but difficult to master. The non-custom version is usable by everyone and pretty self-explanatory, but the real depth of data only becomes available once you customize it. You’re basically transforming the tool from ordinary kitchen knife to a Swiss-army knife. In the simplest terms, before you can rely on Google Analytics to give you the information you need to understand how your website is doing now, and how to improve it, you have to teach GA a few tricks: What you want it to track How to track it How to report it What to Track: Basic Metrics Metrics are the bread and butter of digital analytics. Common metrics in Google Analytics are: Sessions Unique visitors Time on site Number of pages viewed… And many more. There are also what we call “dimensions,” like location, page, language, gender, product category etc. Some metrics are really a combination of two metrics, like “sessions per page” or “visitors per page.” You can also create custom metrics. Once the actions are reported in metrics, we can draw some conclusions from them. A good place to start is simply counting the number of visitors who actually interacted with any given content. That’s a good indication of the popularity of the content. However, opening a page means nothing if the user clicks in and clicks out after a few seconds. That is called a bounce. You want your bounce rate low. If it’s high, it means visitors aren’t finding what they hoped to find. We can also compare certain types of actions or content for more insights, like finding out which types of content attracts visitors more than others, or which parts of the website may be experiencing usability issues. We can also compare the actions of different segments of visitors; for example, how visitors from different countries interact with the site. The third way to draw conclusions is to look for correlations. You’re looking for things like how one segment of visitors interacts with the site, or what sequence of interactions typically lead to conversion. You might select one category of visitors based on their largest average order value, then observe what interactions they had with the site to convert so well. Then you can use that information to optimize your site — essentially finding ways to tweak the user’s experience so they follow the same path as your successful customers. Gathering this data is how CROs begin creating hypotheses to test, which leads to optimizing for conversion. How to Track it: Segmentation & Events One of the best features of any web analytics tool, including Google Analytics, is the ability to segment. Segmentation allows you to select different categories of visitors based on any number of characteristics — where they came from, what they were looking for, how much they bought, etc. Sample of a segmented report in Google Analytics Event tracking With some customization, any analytics tool can track individual events on your website. This will unlock further wealth of data and allow you to exploit it to gain more insights in the way your visitors interact with the site. By using event tracking, any activity on the website, from clicking individual links to playing videos and downloading files can be tracked. An example of event goal in Google Analytics Analytics categories like Goals and Conversions function on a ‘page view’ mindset. Event tracking is different — it’s more focused on user-experience. In Google Analytics, events are basically interactions, like downloading a PDF or e-book, playing embedded videos, clicking external links or call-to-action (CTA) buttons. While event tracking requires customization and additional JavaScript code, it is relatively easy to implement and maintain using tag managers. Goals Your analytics tool can track your on-site goals too — if you configure it to do so. Goals are specific actions you want your users to do, such as viewing certain web pages, or watching a video, or spending a given amount of time on a page. Some of the most frequently used goals are “destination goals” that let you check whether the visitor actually got to a web page you define as a goal. An example would be a ‘thank you page’ signifying that the user completed a purchase on your website. How to Report it: E-Commerce in Google Analytics Google Analytics has a fully customizable e-commerce tracking feature that integrates with your e-commerce platform and allows you to view the performance of your website in Google Analytics, shown in terms of revenue. You can see the number of products being sold, average revenue per customer, the shopping behavior of your customers and other data that is highly relevant and actionable. This is also a customizable feature. Yes, this was just a quick overview of setting up Google Analytics for CRO! As you can see the digital analytics is the virtually indispensable tool for any eCommerce store. While it is theoretically possible to operate a web store without web analytics, it is not a recipe for long term success or growth. Regardless of what web analytics tool you choose, it will open a new world of opportunities and provide insights not only into the performance of your web store, but also into the minds of your visitors. Learn to master Google Analytics and you’ll improve your website and compel more of your existing visitors to become customers. Analytics is the key to increasing the revenue of your web store, and is possibly the most cost-effective way to do so.

https://towardsdatascience.com/analytics-in-a-nutshell-an-introductory-look-at-setting-up-google-analytics-for-cro-43858f83e0e7

['Edin Sabanovic']

2017-03-14 23:31:47.905000+00:00

['Marketing', 'Analytics', 'Conversion Optimization', 'Digital Marketing', 'Ecommerce']

Parenting tips for new parents

Bathing Give your baby a sponge bath until the umbilical cord falls off and the navel heals completely. (Within 2 weeks after birth) Umbilical cord healing process Your baby needs a bath 2–3 times a week. Avoid bathing your baby if they have just been fed or hungry. The room should be warm and get ready with Baby towel, Diaper, Clean clothes, Warm water, Clean and soft cloth to sponge, Mild and unscented baby soap before bathing your baby. Feeding and burping Newborn needs 8 to 12 times to feed in 24 hours. They need feeding every 2 to 3 hours but it is right to feed when the baby demands. After each feed whether it is breastfeeding or bottle-feed burping, your newborn is mandatory to prevent milk coming back. Burping your baby also helps to get rid of the gas. (“Gas”-during feeding baby swallow some air that gets trapped in the gastrointestinal tract) The most relaxed position to burp is over your shoulder. Hold your baby facing towards your chest and support chin on your shoulder. Use one hand to hold your baby and by the other hand repeatedly patting your baby’s back. You can also burp your baby on your lap. Sleeping time Sleep time A newborn baby needs 6 to 8 hours of sleep in a day and 8 hours of sleep at night. Newborns wake up only for feeding every 2 to 3 hours because their digestive system is very tiny🤏. After 3 months of age, many babies sleep through the full night. If your baby doesn’t, no need to worry as the baby grows they develop their sleeping pattern. Summary In the first part of blog series we discussed gentle care of newborn, kangaroo mother care, umbilical cord healing process, bathing, feeding, burping and sleeping time. If you feel that I have missed any point about newborn care than feel free to comment here. I will ensure them to cover in my next blog. Stay connected, My next topic is about Vaccination schedule.

https://medium.com/@sneha-mevada/parenting-tips-for-new-parents-b891551bee0f

['Sneha Mevada']

2020-08-19 06:52:52.269000+00:00

['Parenting', 'Baby Feeding', 'Newborn Care', 'Baby Sleep', 'Kangaroo Mother Care']

Improving scalability in C# using Async and Await

Learn how to improve performance using scalability with the async and await keywords. When are asynchronous code able to help us and when will it make our performance worse. We want good performance in our software, and we can get good performance in two ways. 1. Refactor the software to do its tasks faster. 2. We can improve the software scalability so we can handle more concurrent tasks. Asynchronous code targets scalability making us use the resources of our servers better. The inspiration for this article comes from the talk given by Maarten Balliauw. What is asynchronous code good for? Most programs consist of single-threaded synchronous code. That causes the program to pause when it waits for disk or network. Only when the disk or network has responded the program continues processing. It works great if we have a single task to complete. But, if we have a server that executes many tasks in parallel we need to consider scalability. It is where asynchronous code can help. Asynchronous programming can in some cases help with performance by parallelizing a task. But, that is not its main benefit in day to day development. Instead, the main benefit comes from making our code more scalable. The scalability feature of a system relates to how it handles a growing amount of work. And its potential to scale to accommodate that growth. We can scale in two ways, horizontal and vertical Horizontal scaling If our system supports this scaling type, we can add more servers if we need to scale our service. The difficulty with scaling this way is that it has a few key constraints. Each server lives without knowing about the others. Because of that, we can only scale if the service is stateless. When session data is part of the system, it makes scaling horizontally much harder. It increases the complexity of the solution, and we have a bottleneck with a shared cache or database. A service build from RESTful principles is easy to scale horizontally. We can use horizontal scaling no matter if we have synchronous or asynchronous code. There is no difference. Vertical scaling Another way of scaling is to improve how many requests our server can handle. Every single request will most likely not perform any better. But, we can increase the number of concurrent requests the server can handle. When we scale vertically, we are not limited by the properties of RESTful because we are on a single server. Often vertical and horizontal scaling is used together. It makes REST a list of sound principles to follow. How does async work? We go through a few examples, and explain how both synchronous and asynchronous code work. From it arrives at the server to it sends its reply back. Synchronous requests Inside our C# application, no matter if it is a .NET Core or .NET application, is a thread pool. When a request hits the service, a thread is drawn from the thread pool. This thread handles all processing needed until the response is sent. If we need to make a slow database query as part of the request, the thread pauses. Nothing happens before the database query is complete. Let us assume this scenario; we need to make a database query that takes a long time to complete. As long as we have available threads, we can allocate a new thread for every incoming request. But as soon as we hit the max amount of threads, we rejects incoming requests. Most of the threads are waiting for the database query to complete. And we end up with a server that is not doing much, except waiting but is rejecting requests. Not a good situation, and a bad underutilization of resources. Asynchronous requests With asynchronous code, we can improve the situation quite a bit. A request starts in the same way by fetching a thread from the thread pool. But now we have marked our database query method as async. It instructs the .NET runtime that we expect the method call to take a while to complete. Now the thread is freed and put back in the thread pool. When the database query completes, a thread is allocated from the thread pool. This thread allows us to continue the request. Now we only have threads allocated that have work to do. When we need to wait for IO, we allow the threads to continue with other tasks. We are not guaranteed to get the same thread back. But that is not a problem since the .NET runtime handles the details. Using asynchronous code does not give an increased performance on a development machine. The reason is that there is not enough load to see the overall benefit. But for a production environment, it can process more requests. Is asynchronous code worth it? Later we go through how easy it is to implement. But first, let us look at some numbers and see if it can make sense to use asynchronous code in the first place. I took this example from this article. Let us assume we have a 16 core server and a thread pool with 1 thread per core, 16 threads. If we create 1000 requests to the service, the 16 threads are able to handle all 1000 requests. Let us assume that some lousy programmer put a Sleep(200) as the first code on each request. We would assume that each request would be 200 ms slower, but actually, it is much worse! The first 16 threads block for 200 ms while processing the request. When they complete their requests the next 16 requests are handled and blocks for another 200 ms. Now the average response time goes up to 6 seconds for 1000 requests. But the resource allocation on the server is low, not indicating any problem. A small amount of blocking code can cause huge problems with throughput. Since a thread needs an actual CPU to run we can not increase the number of threads to thousands or millions. It causes too much congestion on the CPU to be useful. Generally, you want less than 1000 of them(threads), and preferably < 100 Diagnosing .NET Core ThreadPool Starvation Asynchronous code is not just worth it; it is essential for high performing services! Asynchronous coding Now to the exciting part, how do we implement asynchronous code in our service? C# comes with two keywords built in “async” and “await.” They go hand in hand to allow us to easily implement asynchronous code. When we mark a method with async, it gives two things. We can use await inside it and it transforms the method into a compiler generated state machine. Notice the async keyword does not make anything async. That is the purpose of the await keyword. Await tells the compiler that the async method cannot continue. Before the awaited process has finished. We can only await async methods. If an async method does not have any await inside it is run as a normal synchronized method. In this example, the call to the filesystem goes through the method “GetDataAsync”. The async and await keyword allows the thread to return to the thread pool. When the call returns, a new thread is allocated to continue processing. In the code example, the return type is a Task<string> instead of string. Async methods can return either Task or Task<T>. A Task represents the execution of the method and is a state machine. The state machine can be in a few different states. IsCanceled, IsCompleted, and IsFaulty which are accessed through the field Status. It is the state machine that allows the .NET runtime to make it easy for us to implement asynchronous code. For more details, I recommend looking at C# In a Nutshell, chapter 14. We can use the async return types Task and Task, without the async keyword but then it runs sync. It is bad practice because it reveals the implementation details from our method. Asynhronous in the bigger perspective The example above shows how to apply async to a single method, but that does not show us how to use it in a larger system. We must apply async through the layers. Most applications pass a request through different layers to build the response. We need to have async where the IO happens, so we should start bottom up. Let us set up an example. We have an ASP.NET controller with an action to get a user based on its user id. The controller passes the request down through a service layer. In turn, it requests the user from a repository that fetches it from a file on disk. It is the last part, fetching from disk, that causes IO that we want to have async. Let us see some code. The IO is in the GetData method. It is where we want to add async code. We create the GetDataAsync method. Add the async keyword and changes the return type to Task<string>. We also need to change it to read the file using a StreamReader so we can await it. In the repository code, we also need to make changes to consume the new async method. In the repository, we can get away with making the method async. Also, add the await keyword on the GetDataAsync method call. We continue up the chain to the service layer and add the async code. Finally, we add async to the controller. Now we have added async to the whole stack down to the actual IO. It allows the .NET runtime to release the thread to the thread pool while we wait for the disk to fetch data. We should not mix synchronous and asynchronous code without careful considerations. We should strive for async all the way. We could use “.Result” or “.Wait” on the task object to switch from synchronous to asynchronous code. It is a bad idea since it causes the thread to block until the asynchronous code returns. It is defeating the whole purpose of adding async in the first place. Which work should we use async for? Async is not the solution to all thread blocking code. Threads block if we call a method that performs some heavy computation or if it needs to wait for IO. It is only in the case of IO that we get any gain from using async. IO bound Any task that accesses the file system or any external service is good candidates for async. Computational bound Any algorithm that takes a long time and is CPU or memory intensive are bad candidates for async. Examples Adding an entity using entityframework: IO happens when we call save. Not when we initially add the entity. It is not a good candidate for using async. Entityframework supplies us with an async add method, but we gain nothing from using it. Entityframeworks SaveChangesAsync is a good candidate for async. It does IO to the database. Integrating async with legacy code What if we need to integrate our code with code that is not async aware and we can not change it? The old code is directly awaitable. But we can cheat and make it awaitable by creating a task. Some extra discussion from stack overflow. As discussed before, it is not optimal to create a task in synchronous code. It causes the main thread to block until the task returns. But the code is still correct, just not as scalable. It can be done as shown in this example: Closing remarks I hope this overview into asynchronous code gives you some ideas to go try it in your own code. Happy coding!

https://medium.com/@frederikbanke/improving-scalability-in-c-using-async-and-await-f97af1466922

['Frederik Banke']

2019-03-02 09:35:31.012000+00:00

['Scalability', 'Csharp', 'Programming', 'Performance', 'Asynchronous']

How to Price Your Virtual Assistant Services

Figuring out how you will charge your clients is one area most Virtual Assistants come to a standstill when they first start up their service-business. Most start out with hourly and/or retainers until they get a bit of experience behind their belt and know how long tasks take to do and then they can put together packages/projects if their prospecting clients want these payment options. In anticipation of putting together packages in the future start putting together your “Company Menu” as you start doing individual tasks for your clients. Every time forthwith that you do a task for a client make sure you keep track of the time it took you to complete that task. As you add these tasks to your Company Menu try to categorize them by skillsets to keep it organized just like a chef keeps their dishes on a menu organized under Appetizers, Main Dinner, Dessert and Drinks. Your menu might have Email Marketing, Social Media, Writing and WordPress categories on it. For example, if you created a Pinterest image in Canva for your client then keep track of the time it took to create this image and then record this in your “Company Menu”. After a while, you’ll have a whole list of timed tasks on your “Company Menu” that you can then start adding prices to using this equation: Menu Price = Time X Hourly Rate Download this handy template to help you create your Company Menu (instant download, no email required). 1. Hourly Rate Pay as you go — This is perhaps the most common and easiest pricing method at the beginning for service-based businesses. You’ll need to know your hourly rate no matter which way you choose to charge your clients so it’s important to figure this out first. Download here for FREE our handy Pricing Formula Worksheet to help you figure out your hourly rate. All you have to do is fill in the blanks (like your yearly salary goal, your operational costs and your billable hours) and our worksheet does the rest. VOILA! This excel worksheet will automatically calculate the hourly rate you need to charge to keep your business afloat! The only problem with hourly pricing is that you are limited by the number of available billable hours in a day. It also does not account for the speed you have developed over time and as a result of this, you must increase your hourly rate to account for expertise and experience. 2. Retainer Pricing Retainer pricing is based on your hourly pricing. Most people that have retainer pricing provide a discount as an enticement for people to “sign up” for more hours. For example, your hourly price may be $40 and you may set up retainers as follows: A — 5 hours — 5% discount $190.00 B — 10 hours — 10% discount $360.00 C — 25 hours — 15% discount $850.00 Hopefully, you get the idea here but in a nutshell, you are basing your retainer packages off your hourly rate and giving your clients a bigger discount the more hours they buy. Also, the client should pay upfront and the discount encourages them to do this. Now, if you determine you will provide retainer pricing there are a few other things to consider as well. How quickly must the retainers be used? Do the hours expire? Will you provide a refund? Must retainers be paid in advance? Do extra hours revert to old rate or does this guarantee the new rate? This will vary depending upon each Virtual Assistant’s business protocols as each business is unique. 3. Package Pricing Package pricing determination is based on services rather than time. Keep in mind that when you tell someone your price they are thinking like this … It takes me 10 hours per month which is $400 per month — I can’t afford that. They do not realize that these same tasks would take you only 5 hours to complete. This is when your “Company Menu” will come in handy that you have been creating since day 1 in your business. When providing package pricing you simply provide a list of products you will provide within that package and the price it will cost. You determine this price by estimating the time to complete these services each month and multiplying it by your hourly rate. An example of package pricing might look like this: Article writing — $XX per article OR Monthly social marketing package — $XXX per month includes 12 blog entries includes 3 daily tweets maintenance of a Facebook page Even though these packages are based on how long you think it will take to do these services and is still based on your hourly price, your client simply sees the bottom line and what they will get for those services. The client is not left guessing how many hours they may need — they simply know what services they want and how much it will cost. It is great for them for budgeting purposes. It also allows you to make more money as you develop speed without having to increase your package pricing. Keep in mind that as you learn your client’s business and their needs you will undoubtedly get faster. Hourly pricing does not allow you to benefit from this … package pricing does. TIP: On your website tell your potential client that you can customize a package to fit their needs and their budget. 4. Project (One Time) So often I am asked the question… I have a potential client that needs me to do XYZ, has anyone ever priced something like this? Some examples of things you might find a request for project-based pricing include one-time customer projects, mass mailings, calling projects, database entry, etc.. Project pricing works similarly to package pricing. In essence, the client is simply looking to be able to budget how much a particular project will cost. Next time you are asked to provide a project price, here are 3 quick and simple ways to determine the price: Industry Standards — Research what the industry standards are. For example, transcriptions are based on a 1:4 or 1:6 ratio. You can usually do 100 letters of a mass mailing per hour including addressing and stuffing. These standards are available if you do the research online or ask at our #VAforum. The “test” — Take a small sample of the project and then multiply your results Company Menu — This is where having that Company Menu comes in handy in determining the project price. The biggest problem with project pricing is that until you become familiar with how long something actually takes it can be hard to come up with a fair price. Many VAs tend to underestimate the amount of time something takes, especially when it is something they enjoy doing. If I was to ask you how long it would take to type 40 handwritten pages what would your answer be? For each person the answer is different. For this reason, you can see why project pricing can be very difficult. TIP: Don’t be afraid to overquote a project if you are asked to quote a project. I will often say that I will set a $300.00 budget for the project and track my time. I let the client know that I will track my time and charge them my hourly rate but not go over the set budget of $300. Project pricing is a great way again to allow yourself to be paid for your speed and expertise. As with package pricing, the client is simply looking at the total cost the project will be and whether they think that is a feasible amount to pay to outsource the project. Keep in mind, as I have stated, that hours to complete a project are subjective … often times those that are not in our industry haven’t a clue how long something will take. If, for example, you were to have someone build a house for you and they said they charge $100 per hour including costs … what on earth would this mean to you? Do you know how many hours it would take them? Probably not. Pricing is very simple once you breathe and work through the numbers. I hope this helps you figure out your pricing in your Virtual Assistant business. Get more FREE resources for Virtual Assistants here: http://vanetworking.com/free Editors note: This was originally published on VAnetworking.com

https://medium.com/@tawnyasutherland/how-to-price-your-virtual-assistant-services-e2e9cc9a8933

['Tawnya Sutherland']

2019-01-10 15:01:00.929000+00:00

['Virtual Assistance', 'Freelancing', 'Freelancers', 'Work From Home', 'Virtual Assistant']

AI Speeds Drug Discovery to fight COVID-19

AI Speeds Drug Discovery to fight COVID-19 An inside look at AI’s role in the race for COVID-19 treatment and drug discovery, and TCS’ first-hand research and experimentation The virus named “SARS-CoV-2” is the source of a global pandemic COVID-19, which has severely affected the health and economy of several countries. Multiple studies are in progress, employing diverse approaches to design novel therapeutics against the potential target proteins in SARS-CoV-2. One of the well-studied protein targets for coronaviruses is the chymotrypsin-like (3CL) protease, responsible for post-translational modifications of viral polyproteins essential for its survival and replication in the host. There are various ongoing projects to find inhibitors against 3CL protease of SARS-CoV-2. Recent studies have proven the efficiency of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques in understanding the known chemical space and generating novel small molecules. These small molecules have to satisfy several physicochemical properties to be able to be used as potential drug molecules. With the advent of AI-based methods, it is possible to design novel small molecules with desired drug-like properties. At Tata Consultancy Services(TCS), we employed deep neural network-based generative and predictive models for de novo design of small molecules capable of inhibiting the 3CL protease. The generated small molecules were filtered and screened against the binding site of the 3CL protease structure of SARS-CoV-2. Based on the screening results and further analysis, we have identified 31 potential compounds as ideal candidates for further synthesis and testing against SARS-CoV-2. The AI-driven revolution in drug discovery Finding a new drug takes a decade or more with a very low success rate. Advances in data curation and management have fueled the emergence of an AI-driven revolution in drug discovery. AI-based methods are emerging as promising tools to explore the vast chemical space that is available to sample drug-like molecules. AI models are capable of learning the feature representations based on existing drugs that can be used to explore the chemical space in search of more drug-like molecules. This has provided a beacon of opportunity to the drug design community to overcome many challenges including the global antibiotic-resistance crisis. Most importantly, an AI-based approach can reduce the initial phase of the drug-discovery process from years to a few days. TCS capability in terms of algorithms In this study, we have utilized our in-house deep neural network-based generative and predictive models to design novel drug-like small molecules (new chemical entities or NCEs). Our in-house models and algorithms have been validated on a multitude of drug design tasks to tailor compounds to a specific protein target of interest. These validated, pre-trained state-of-the-art models were used to generate novel small molecules capable of inhibiting the 3CL protease of SARS-CoV-2, utilizing advanced training techniques such as transfer learning and regularized reinforcement learning. An overview of dataset collection and pre-processing ChEMBL is a public database which maintains the most comprehensive collection of drug-like small molecules. The generative model was initially trained on a dataset of ~1.6 million drug-like molecules from the ChEMBL database. The molecules were represented in Simplified Molecular Input Line Entry System (SMILES) format which will enable the model to learn the necessary features to design novel drug-like small molecules. Training the deep learning models The pre-processed SMILES dataset was used to train a recurrent neural network (RNN)-based generative model. The problem of learning the SMILES grammar and reproducing it to generate novel small molecules was cast as a classification problem. The entire SMILES string was considered as a time series, where every position or symbol was considered as a time point. The different symbols in the SMILES vocabulary were considered as the classes of the classification. At a given time point, the generative model was trained to predict the class of the next symbol given the class distributions of the previous symbols in the time series. Thus, the model learns the probability distribution over the various classes at each time point of the time series. The problem was cast this way, to resemble the class of natural language processing (NLP) problems for which sophisticated AI models and architectures have been developed over the years. Our trained generative model has state-of-the-art accuracy of 96.6%, calculated based on the chemical and synthetic feasibility of the drug-like molecules inferred from the model. This general model capable of exploring the chemical space acted as our prior model, which was further adapted to generate small molecules specific to a target of interest using transfer learning. In order to bias the model to focus on the 3CL protease of SARS-CoV-2, a dataset of protease inhibitor molecules was manually curated from the ChEMBL database. The dataset of 2,515 protease inhibitor molecules was used to re-train the generative model using transfer learning. In the process of transfer learning, the generative model is biased towards focusing on a smaller subset of the chemical space. Further, regularized reinforcement learning was used to modulate the generative model to produce molecules with optimized physicochemical properties (Fig. 1). Figure 1: Approach used for generating novel compounds for targeting 3CL protease of SARS-CoV-2. Filtering the potential drug-like molecules against SARS-CoV-2 The trained generative model was used for sampling 50,000 small molecules from the learned chemical space. After removal of duplicates and molecules which were identical to the ChEMBL database, the residual dataset consisted of 42,484 molecules. These molecules were subjected to stringent physicochemical property filters including drug-likeness, octanol-water partition coefficient (logP), hydrogen bond donor and acceptor counts, molecular weight, bioactivity and synthetic accessibility, which resulted in a set of 3,960 molecules. These molecules were further filtered based on their affinity towards SARS-CoV-2 3CL protease. After virtual screening, a total of 1,333 small molecules were obtained which could act as potential inhibitors. We also observed that, the generative model could generate small molecules that are similar to HIV-protease inhibitors, but with better binding to the SARS-CoV-2 3CL protease. The complete set of promising small molecules can be found here so that anyone can test these molecules against SARS-CoV-2 in this hour of need. Other AI-based applications for COVID-19 drug design research Several companies and startups have transformed their research goals in innovative ways, to utilize AI in accelerating the search for a cure against COVID-19. The European AI-centered startup Molecule.one has released its patented syntheses planning platform for free access to the scientific community, in an effort to help researchers rapidly synthesize and test potential candidate molecules against COVID-19. IBM has applied its AI generative frameworks to three COVID-19 targets and has generated 3000 novel molecules. These molecules have been released under the Creative Commons License (CCL) to the scientific community for synthesis, testing and optimization. The Hong Kong-based pharmaceutical research company, InSilico Medicine has released a list of 97 candidate small molecules designed to inhibit the 3CL protease of SARS-CoV-2. Several AI-based rapid virtual screening models have been developed and tested against COVID-19, with existing public and commercial virtual screening compound libraries as primary databases. In essence, several directions of research have incorporated AI-based models to come up with potential therapeutics for COVID-19, at an unprecedented pace.

https://towardsdatascience.com/ai-speeds-drug-discovery-to-fight-covid-19-b853a3f93e82

['Arijit Roy']

2020-04-29 18:08:51.910000+00:00

['AI', 'Covid 19', 'Data Science', 'Science', 'Deep Learning']

hard to love

growing up like a child isn’t easy as they say first of all imagine how painful it is being so small and then become so big learning growing being… who? just to pull you off so then can love you as they want you to be ⁃ don’t do like this. ⁃ sit yourself down. ⁃ crying is for losers. ⁃ please, darling, shut your damn mouth! i guess i’ve never learn i’m always going down ’cause while i was fighting a battle to be me all the crowd says: “hey kid, you’re just hard to love”.

https://medium.com/@larissaur/hard-to-love-91dd2a1efe53

['Lar Ssa']

2020-12-10 23:59:04.909000+00:00

['Poesia Brasileira', 'Poesia', 'Women Loving Women', 'LGBT', 'Poetry']

Chip shortage, TSMC and automakers’ JIT culture

My colleague Mike and I held our first Clubhouse room on Wednesday, where we talked about the global chip shortage. I remember during the 90’s and even early 2000’s, most of the tech people — hardware or software — did pay certain attention to the evolution of the semiconductor industry, because underlying all techs was the chips. Somewhere beyond 2004 when computing power started exceeding the performance requirement of most retail softwares — which ushered in the golden era of lean startups — new generations of software people started abstracted the underlying semiconductor chips, seeing it as a resource that you can gain access to as long as you’re willing to pay the price. The recent crisis of chip shortage that prompted German, Japanese and eventually US governments to plead with Taiwanese government to help negotiate with TSMC in allocating some capacity to their automobile makers shows that you can ignore the devil for a while, but you can’t run away from it forever. This article could go very lengthy, much like our 1-hour Clubhouse chat that left still quite some ground uncovered, but I will try to keep it short and only present the facts. JIT does not work in semiconductors Let me jump to the key problem: the huge difference in the supply chain culture of automakers and semiconductors. Automakers run on JIT (Just-in-time) systems and rely on (screwing) their suppliers to react to their demands in a swift and reactive way (forcing the later to shoulder the inventory cost and working capital). Automakers’ concept of supply chain is measured in weeks if not days. Semiconductors run on extremely high capex, long cycle of bring-ups and constant obsoletion of equipments that fall behind the curve dictacted by Moore’s Law. To ensure the massive capex of a new process technology be recovered in 4 years before it falls behind the curve and therefore becomes unprofitable, foundries need long-term forecasts from clients in order to build capacity. Semiconductors’ concept of supply chain is measured in years. Clients like Nvidia (co-founded by its Taiwan-born CEO Jensen Huang), Qualcomm, Broadcom, Mediatek as well as today’s Apple and Tesla give forecasts of their chip demands to TSMC starting at 2 years minimum. Forecasts alone are not enough. Mutual trust between clients and TSMC also rely on clients making good on their promises continuing to fulfill most if not all of the forecasted orders year over year, and TSMC making good on their promises to deliver those chips. These clients do not screw TSMC in bad times. TSMC does not screw these clients in good times. Now can you imagine GM, Ford, BMW, Volkswagen, Toyota and Nissan to behave the same with TSMC, when they’ve been relying on (screwing over) their own Tier-1, Tier-2, Tier-3… Tier-N suppliers over the decades? Can you imagine them placing an order of $1B to TSMC for 2022 and still keep up with that promise even if by then they realize they had been overly optimistic? Can you imagine the automakers, ever so used to just pick up the phone and call a supplier demanding them to bring in XXX in YYY quantity in 1 week, to be able to understand the cycle time of a delicate 5nm semiconductor fab and work closely throughout the months with TSMC, keeping in sync? Now you see why German, Japanese and US governments were forced to step in for their automakers. Automakers used to commend over their suppliers due to their prowess, but TSMC does not need auto business. Car electronics account for just a very small part of TSMC’s business. Their advanced nodes (10nm and below) have been full due to the explosion of AI applications(Nvidia) and continued growth in mobile devices (Apple, Qualcomm, Broadcom, Mediatek, etc). Not to mention AMD, led by its Taiwan-born CEO Lisa Su, all of a sudden came back to life and grabbed 40% of the CPU market share! A surprising comeback of AMD further strained the already tight capacity From the trend above, one can see that in 2016 AMD was hovering at 20% market share. As Intel’s advanced nodes surprisingly fell behind in schedule, AMD’s CPUs, which leverage TSMC’s advanced process technologies, started outperforming Intel CPUs on the market and grabbing market shares. From 20% to 40%, whatever AMD gained was the loss of Intel. The CPU chips underlying those lost Intel revenues were supposed to be manufactured in Intel’s fabs. Instead they are manufactured at TSMC now. AMD has since become a top 5 client of TSMC. This makes advanced nodes even more crowded. Given the situation, TSMC of course will prioritize over long-time chip clients such as Nvidia, Qualcomm, Broadcom and Mediatek, while catering to proven new champions such as Apple and Tesla. All these clients are Silicon Valley companies that understand, respect and honor their partnerships with TSMC. But why don’t automakers go to other foundries? Because there’s no other foundry that has advanced nodes in mass production. TSMC is the only one currently mass producing at 5nm. GlobalFoundry is still stuck at 14nm. Samsung has advanced nodes and does have a foundry service, but since it has its own chip products as well so there’s always an inherent conflict with clients. Intel also has advanced nodes but despite contemplating doing foundry services (as a night job), never got serious. TSMC is only foundry for applications that require advanced nodes, especially the AI chips and powerful CPUs that are now becoming larger and larger part of a car’s BOM cost. Another bottleneck upstream of TSMC But even if traditional automakers somehow miraculously calibrate their culture and work with TSMC as the chip companies do, there’s another bottleneck that’s even further upstream than TSMC. The EUV maker, ASML in Netherlands. EUV stands for « extreme ultraviolet lithography ». ASML is the sole manufactuer of EUV machines that produce light in the 13.3–13.7 nm wavelength range. These machines are the only ones that can do modern advanced process technologies such as 5nm. Each one of this machine costs a minimum of $120M and you have to place orders years ahead. In 2020 ASML was only able to manufacture and ship 31 EUV lithography machines. Half of those went to TSMC. The rest went to Intel and Samsung. None went to China. In 2012, Intel, Samsung and TSMC invested in ASML and became each one of them a meaningful shareholder. All three work with ASML to co-develope EUV lithography processes. This means that even if automakers are willing to pay for the fabs and the machines themselves to secure the capacity, ASML might not have the capacity to cope with additional orders. Again, here it takes months to build the machines. So forecast is on the order of years. Contrast to that, automakers’ JIT culture runs on weeks and days. And my former employer Qualcomm tried that before already. Years ago as Qualcomm swept through the 3G and 4G markets and became the dominant force, they were worried about TSMC not being able to provide enough capacity for them. With tons of cash in the hand, Qualcomm inquired TSMC about the possibility of Qualcomm paying for Capex to build a Qualcomm-exclusive fab and contracting TSMC to run it. TSMC politely declined. (Of course.) Qualcomm eventually gave up on the idea and continued to work with TSMC closely as their largest client. If TSMC could say no to Qualcomm, what will TSMC say to the automakers? The White House of Taiwan Any geopolitics perspective in this? Of course. Otherwise German, Japanese and US governments won’t get involved. Taiwan has always been in a delicate position geopolitically between China and all the western powers. Trump administration tore off the veneer of peace and politeness between US and China, partly by leveraging American’s dominance in semiconductor supply chain. Despite the (surprising) recent setback at Intel, US is still №1 in semiconductor manufacturing; Taiwan is №2. The eye-popping evolution of how China, US, Japan and Germany handled Covid crsis as contrasted with Taiwan also helped open up a lot of space for maneuvering among multi stakeholders. This is why German, Japanese and US governments raised their voices. This is a multi-stakeholder geopolitics game. But one has to remember that TSMC is not a state corporate. It’s a public company with a market cap of $590B as of today and its ADR trading on NYSE. At the moment ADR accounts for 20% of TSMC’s outstanding shares. Those shareholders in US do not hold TSMC’s ADRs because they’re a big fan of Taiwan. They hold them because they want to make money in dividends and capital gains. Taiwan is also a « full democracy » — at least in The Economist’s latest Democracy Index 2020 Report. This means unlike Alibaba vs CCP, Taiwanese government does not have a commend over TSMC on how it should operate as a for-profit private corporate. That said, TSMC started out in 1987 as a project encouraged and supported by the government. TSMC also didn’t achieve its currents status by itself. The whole semiconductor and tech ecosystem in Taiwan was its biggest ally and they are in turn supported by the active involvement of the government over the past 30+ years. TSMC obviously would work with the Taiwanese government in response to all these demands from Germany, Japan and US. Also, prior to this crisis in the beginning of 2021, TSMC already started building a fab in Arizona. This opens up the access to DoD businesses so it benefits both TSMC and US. We’ll see how Germany and Japan might take the same approach and work with TSMC to build fabs and acquire talents to run locally. Exactly how this will play out remains to be seen obviously. One thing for sure is the geopolitical situation has changed forever since the tulmultous 2020. It will never go back to the pre-2020 world. Anyone with deep experiences in related subjects should definitely refresh their understandings and stay open-minded. Okay, this isn’t exactly a short piece as I promised. But then again the chip shortage crisis also isn’t a simple problem that could be addressed by a tweet.

https://blog.hardwareclub.co/chip-shortage-tsmc-and-auto-industrys-jit-culture-dcbc1db16bb

['Jerry Yang']

2021-02-05 14:17:50.544000+00:00

['Auto', 'USA', 'Semiconductors', 'Taiwan', 'Shortage']

Honoring the Lineage: The Epic and Historic in Phillis by Alison Clarke

Honoring the Lineage: The Epic and Historic in Phillis by Alison Clarke Margaryta Golovchenko Follow Sep 9 · 3 min read Phillis by Alison Clarke. University of Calgary Press, 2020. Many are likely familiar with the opening lines of Homer’s Odyssey, which invoke the muses and ask for their artistic strength to bless the following account. A similar tone permeates Alison Clarke’s Phillis, a poetic biography — or “herstory,” as Clarke calls it — about the eighteenth-century African American poet, Phillis Wheatley. Along with deities — the goddess Diana, Mother Mnemosyne — Clarke honours the lineage of women who may have inspired Phillis and those who drew strength from her life for years to come: “I am a puppet, with invisible strings./ I thank you all, The Mystical Sisters And/ Daughters./ And My Mother…/ Ancestors, you have kept/ Me Sane.” Phillis is an atemporal collection, a “sacred circle:/ one with no beginning, and no end, as the past, present, and/ future converge.” The three sections each fulfill a distinct function. In part one, Clarke paints a complex historical tableau of Phillis’ life, partially reconstructed from known historical fact and supplemented with the breath of the poet’s thoughts and dreams, Phillis’ determination to become a poet while honouring her ancestors in continuing to fight for freedom and recognition. Part two builds on this by tracing Phillis’ legacy over the course of the next two and a half centuries. Here more than in the other two sections, the “you” in the poems is frequently a conflation of selves — Clarke and Phillis, the other historical figures that Clarke writes through. Rather than a negative, this ambiguity is one of the collection’s strengths. Through this technique, Clarke gives weight to her words by making the reader slow down and dwell on them, on the weight they continue to bear today, all while offering further words of resistance and power: “Us women, we get it done. Us black women/ we get it done. It’s in the details: the Doin.’” The third section serves as a way of wrapping the collection up, not in the form of a neat bow, but by reiterating the importance of cyclicality that is determination, leaving the reader with one final call to fight in “Dream”: Yes, I am grateful for what I have Been GIVEN But, that’s not Enough — I wanted to do more: Fill the depths With knowledge, The students willing vessels At the same time, Phillis is also a testament to the power of literature, particularly poetry, both within Phillis Wheatley’s present and now, centuries later, a reminder the reader receives from Phillis herself: “Where I can sculpt with The Word, that/ is home, and that is anywhere; I am not limited to Borders.” Both Clarke and, through her, Phillis engage with memory and identify poetry’s ability to bring to the surface that which is hidden, the histories and cultural traditions waiting to be brought to the surface. Most often, this is done through systematic erasure, like the “tribunal, all albescent men” that Phillis faced in “The Colony House” who “decide if I’m a poetess or/ a fraud-ness.” Clarke works against these forces with her poetry, using her craft primarily to commemorate but still taking the time to critique through a balanced blend of fact and fiction. For those who are interested in learning more about Phillis the historical figure, Clarke provides a concise and thoughtful essay in the form of the book’s afterward. Phillis is perhaps best categorized as a combination of epic and historical fiction. It is also entirely a celebration of the life and work of Phillis Wheatley as she is elevated to the rank of poetic muse and goddess in her own right, “the Maecenas The Ovid The/ Homer [who] May […] take Refuge In The Stars.” Traversing a register of voices, including Phillis’ own, Clarke reminds readers of the vibrancy of poetry as a medium capable of containing the multitudes of histories waiting to be written into being.

https://medium.com/anomalyblog/honoring-the-lineage-the-epic-and-historic-in-phillis-by-alison-clarke-9c2a8668b415

['Margaryta Golovchenko']

2021-09-09 16:07:59.976000+00:00

['Poetry', 'Literature', 'Book Review', 'African American', 'Review']

Code Smell 49 — Caches. Caches are sexy. They are a one-night…

Code Smell 49 — Caches Caches are sexy. They are a one-night stand. We need to avoid them in a long-term relationship. Photo by Aimee Vogelsang on Unsplash Problems Coupling Testability Cache invalidation. Maintainability Premature Optimization Erratic Behavior Lack of transparency Non-Deterministic behavior Solutions If you have a conclusive benchmark and are willing to pay for some coupling: Put an object in the middle. Unit test all your invalidation scenarios. Experience shows we face them in an incremental way. Look for a real world cache metaphor and model it. Sample Code Wrong Right Detection This is a design smell. It will be difficult to enforce by policy. Tags Premature Optimization Conclusion Caches should be functional and intelligent. In this way we can manage invalidation. General purpose caches are suitable only for low level objects like operating systems, files and streams. We shouldn’t cache domain objects. This page is hosted on a cached website. Relations More Info

https://medium.com/dev-genius/code-smell-49-caches-d2e64373b838

['Maximiliano Contieri']

2020-12-11 10:04:13.072000+00:00

['Programming', 'Cache', 'Caching', 'Code Smells', 'Clean Code']

How Long Should You Be Resting in Between Sets for the Best Gains?

Rest periods are a fundamental part of working out in the gym and making progress. It’s vital for you to take rest periods between sets, as they allow you to regain your energy and continue to push harder for longer. However, there’s so much debate around this that it’s often very confusing to lifters, and can quickly become overwhelming when they’re trying to determine the ideal rest periods for themselves. There are those that say resting 30 seconds or less between sets is the way to go, as it keeps the workout intensity high and the pumps feeling good. Then, there are those that say you should be resting several minutes between sets, to ensure that you’re not lifting in too much of a fatigued state. And of course, there are those in between. But which side of the spectrum is right? Is there are any science behind this to prove it? In this post, we’ll be going over what the ideal rest period is, looking into some of the science behind it and helping you make sense of all this and understand what it means for you. First of All: Why Do We Even Need Rest Periods? It should be pretty clear to begin with, but the primary reason that we need rest periods are simply to regain our energy, continue to push harder in our upcoming sets, and ensure that the reps we do are of the highest quality possible. In order to maximize our muscle growth, we need to be training hard. This means taking all of our working sets within 3 reps of failure. Doing this will maximize our results, without taxing the body too much and causing our future sets to suffer. By resting between these sets, we’re allowing our body to get a chance to recover from all the hard work we did in the previous set, and giving ourselves the best possible opportunity to push hard in our next sets as well. Doing simply one or two high quality sets at the start of the workout won’t get you where you want to be. You need to be ensuring that most of your sets are of high quality. You’ll also likely find that you feel more motivated before your working sets after a good rest period, as you’re in a lesser state of fatigue and will feel much better going into the set. However, it doesn’t just stop there. Rest periods can also be helpful for us to assess how the previous set went, and for us to look for ways to improve and enhance the quality of the rest of our session. For example, if you noticed that your lifting was feeling a little off one day, you could take a moment to reassess how you’re doing, and see if you need to make any adjustments to the weight you’re using, your form, maybe even an exercise change if something’s hurting. Our rest periods are a great chance for us to reevaluate how the workout is has gone so far, and for us to look to make any improvements or chances necessary to help improve the safety and effectiveness of our workout. And, of course, you can use rest periods to sip on your water, do some stretching if needed and do anything else that’s going to improve your workout efficiency. You see, rest periods are extremely important for you to take, and form a fundamental part of your workout. Many people will actually spend more time in the gym resting than they do actually lifting weights. So if you’re not currently taking your rest periods seriously, or even worse, you’re barely taking them at all, you really need to take a look at what you’re doing and try to fix this up. So How Long Should You Be Resting? The short answer is quite simple. Rest as long as you need to. Rest until you feel like you can achieve the same level of output and intensity that you did in the previous set. Or at least somewhat similar. Unless you’re specifically taking short rest periods to train for endurance or athletic purposes, you should be resting as long as you feel that you need to. We’ll look at the notion that taking shorter rest periods leads to more growth. To understand what we’re about to say, you need to understand that muscle growth has three mechanisms. They are as follows in order of importance: Mechanical tension Metabolic stress Muscle damage We have an article that fully breaks down these three mechanisms of growth, which you can read here to learn more about this. However, for now, all you have to know is that mechanical tension is the primary driver of muscle growth. That basically means the weight that you’re lifting and the amount of stress that you’re placing on your muscles. Taking short rest periods of less than a minute and a half between hard working sets is going to cause you to feel much more fatigued, and you’re going to be able to move much less weight than you otherwise would haven been able to, or do the same weight but be able to perform less reps. This means that by resting too little, you’re limiting your ability to apply mechanical tension onto your muscles. You’re doing this with a tradeoff for metabolic stress, which is responsible for that burning sensation in your muscles. That burning sensation might make your workout feel like it’s more effective and that you’re working harder, but in reality, you’re doing much less than you otherwise could be. You’re putting a cap on your total volume and mechanical tension by resting more, in order to achieve more metabolic stress, and more of a pump. According to this study conducted by Brad Schoenfeld, “This study provides evidence that longer rest periods promote greater increases in muscle strength and hypertrophy in young resistance-trained men.” The study involved resistance trained men being split into two groups. One rested 1 minute between sets, and the other rested 3 minutes between their working sets. Other variables such as set and rep ranges were kept the same. After 8 weeks, it was found that the group resting for longer saw better strength and muscle gains. This would be due to the ability to apply more mechanical tensions and achieve more total volume, leading to more growth over time. Several other studies showed this as well. So now we know that resting longer will lead to better strength and muscle gains over time, as opposed to taking deliberately short rest periods. But is there a cap to this? Does there come a point where resting too long will negatively affect your gains? Well, so far no study has been able to find evidence that resting for longer leads to any sort of downside. Resting for a ridiculously long period of time (upwards of 10 minutes) may cause you to cool down a little and have you lifting in a slightly colder state, but nobody really ever rests that long. The longest people will ever rest is usually around 5–6 minutes. Aside from that, resting longer will only cause your workouts to take longer. That’s all. There is no proof or evidence that resting for longer will lead to any other downsides. So what does this mean for you? Basically, it means that you should rest as long as you need to. Don’t cut down on your set quality or performance simply because you feel that you’re resting too long. As long as you’re staying in a sensible range, you can rest as long as you need to. So all those people that really take their time with rest periods, you could be doing a lot worse. But just how long will these rest periods usually be? We know that we can rest as long as needed, but what’s the general minimum for this? This study conducted by Gilmar W Senna found that you should generally be resting at least two minutes between sets for your isolation or less taxing exercises, and at least 3 minutes between hard sets if you’re doing the main compounds movements with a barbell. Of course, like we said earlier, you can rest for longer if needed. In fact, it’s recommended that you go above 3 minutes if you’re specifically lifting heavy for strength on the main compound movements. This is going to increase your ability to generate force and move even more weight. These rest guidelines are going to be optimal if you’re looking to build strength and muscle. And if you’re looking to build endurance for any athletic purpose, you should be lifting light weights for high reps, and keeping your rest periods short. Under a minute. This will keep the metabolic stress high and get you comfortable working hard for long periods of time. What this all means for you and key takeaways: Resting for longer is absolutely fine and won’t lead to any downsides. Rest at least 2 minutes when doing isolation and less taxing exercises for muscle gain. Rest at least 3 minutes between sets on main barbell compound exercises (rest longer for strength gain). Rest under a minute between sets if you’re training for endurance. Only deliberately rest for short periods if you have a good reason to do so. If you only remember one thing out of this post, rest as long as you feel that you need to. You should feel pretty good going into your set. Wrapping It Up To wrap it up, the notion that taking shorter rest periods simply to increase the workout intensity is not really the most optimal way to go about your training, and you can simply take a look at the science to see for yourself. The main thing that you have to remember is to rest for as long as you need to. Keep your rest periods sensible, but take them seriously, and really give your body a chance to recover from all the hard work you’ve done. If you found this post helpful, remember to share it with your friends so that we can reach more people and help more achieve their goals! It can never hurt to know a little more.

https://medium.com/@lu.tonyh/how-long-should-you-be-resting-in-between-sets-for-the-best-gains-6abebb2f917a

['Tony Lu']

2021-12-22 05:09:10.883000+00:00

['Exercise', 'Workout', 'Gym', 'Fitness', 'Fitness Tips']

Consider The Benefits of Nordic Skiing This Winter

Cross country skiing has the ability to compliment your running in several ways because of how it engages the body. First and foremost, cross country skiing is something that works the entire body. Distance runners, whether competitive or not, often forget their upper body. While a lot of extra mass may not be beneficial for distance running, a strong upper body IS important. Sprinters live by the notion that if the arms keep moving the legs will follow, and this is true for distance runners too. Having a strong arm swing throughout your entire run will improve your efficiency and help keep your momentum moving forward. In distance runners, arm swing from side to side, caused by underdeveloped muscles and/or poor technique, can cause substantial rotational torque on the body, which in turn may increase injury and fatigue risk. Because Nordic skiers have to move their arms forward and backward, the patterned muscle movements developed in sport may translate to better form in running. Skiing is a full-body exercise that also requires a lot of balance. The use of your core and accessory muscles to balance your body as you glide across the snow at high speeds will help develop body stability. Improved body stability means better form and less fatigue on the run. Because you are gliding across the snow and not pounding the pavement, these gains come without the damage to your tendons and ligaments that running causes. Summary: Running is a great activity that many people love to participate in from day-to-day. To bring your game to the next level, it’s important to think of yourself as not only a runner but as an overall athlete. Taking this mentality will make you seek out other activities that build your overall capacity for health and performance. Choosing to supplement your running with Nordic Skiing this winter is potentially one of the best complimentary sports a runner can engage in during the colder months of the year. Nordic skiing may be an even better option this year because, in addition to being cheap and effective, it also does not require big crowds for participation.

https://medium.com/runners-life/consider-the-benefits-of-nordic-skiing-this-winter-87370db28af2

["Thomas O'Grady"]

2020-12-02 03:18:45.915000+00:00

['Exercise', 'Running', 'Running Tips', 'Motivation', 'Health And Fitness']

A Peercoin Propaganda Piece

Motivation can mean more than just hanging in there. Image credit ShonEjai Let’s talk motivation. What makes you get out of bed in the morning? Why do you want to stay in bed in the morning? There is a constant balance between pleasure and duty, a mixing of chemicals and spirit that makes you do you. And sometimes, let’s be honest, a lot of the time that motivation is money. We all need it to function practically, to survive, and its versatility allows us to boil our motivation into something we can channel into a specialization. Say what you want about capitalism, it undoubtedly creates a system of motivation. Peercoin is money, so the logical conclusion is that my motivation for writing this piece is in order to get more Peercoin. Well, I don’t want or expect donations, I would much rather you donate to the Peercoin Foundation or developer funds. But surely it’s because I am invested in the system. That much is true, there is motivation there in that I have put a nontrivial amount of time, energy, and money into this network. However, I do not at present intend on ‘cashing out’ at any imaginable price point. There must be a deeper motivation, or an expectation of reward, for my writing to you today. I ought to construct an argument about how Peercoin is a revolution, that it will entirely replace government capital, and so on. And if I thought that, it would be perfect motivation for a hypothetical future where I have a large amount of social power. However, I don’t really believe that, at least not for the foreseeable future. I believe Peercoin is a settlement network that works best with third party services and functions, and government capital as well as credit cards and the entire financial system in place across the world is a plenty fine example of a ‘third party’ (to Peercoin) service/function. I don’t see Peercoin replacing anything that came before cryptocurrency, really. I see it as adding something new. Possibility is what motivates me. I wake up in the morning and say ‘what if?’ The creation of new that is Peercoin fills me with hope. It is sappy, without a doubt, but the way I have seen people come together around Peercoin over the years is powerful. There is a common acknowledgment of the mutual motivation, that if you’re just in it for the money you should go elsewhere. Peercoin is a bridge between the practical and the fantastical, in that it dared to implement something new (Proof of Stake) while still being rooted in its history so strongly that protocol development still follows Bitcoin’s in lock-step. Mixing the organic with the designed can result in emergent creations. Image credit Joshua Woroniecki That mysterious creation of the mixture between the old and the new is what I want to tell you about. Take Lightning Network for example, this is a function designed for Bitcoin that Peercoin ported over without too much trouble. But the potential implications are highly intriguing. Let’s presume that Peercoin implements a few expected upgrades to its minting protocol, such as multisig minting. At that point, we will need to choose how minting interacts with Bitcoin technologies like Lightning. Are Lighting nodes now able to mint by cooperating with each other? If a Lighting multisig mints a block then we are suddenly thrust into a world where Lighting operators are uniting to govern the chain and possibly make intrinsic money from it, a situation completely unlike what Bitcoin had imagined. Here, with these curious forms of rewards for participating in the system, we readily see how motivation is a key property of Peercoin. The alignment between people that use the functions of Peercoin that go beyond simple transactions and the people that govern the chain to select these kinds of functions is one of the main drawing points of Peercoin. The ability to motivate coinholders to actively participate in the network via the block reward provides a fundamental base point for interaction with the system. And this motivation trickles all the way to the top, where people feel compelled to volunteer their time and effort working on something that they don’t have a huge reason to expect large rewards from. We all see the self-sufficiency of the network and that it will likely survive for all time because it is designed specifically with that goal in mind. It is a self-reinforcing system in this way, regardless of how it is valued by the third parties. The ability to motivate is the motivation, in an endless bootstrapping of human involvement in the consensus process. I can’t tell you how to interact with Peercoin, I can only tell you that you will have company if you do.

https://medium.com/peercoin/a-peercoin-propaganda-piece-f26fd7522381

['Peercoin Pulse']

2021-03-04 15:55:22.650000+00:00

['Motivation', 'Lightning Network', 'Proof Of Stake', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Peercoin']

What is churn in SaaS

Every month some of your customers will leave you. It’s nothing personal and they are not taking half of your stuff. Sometimes your customers will choose to leave you. Maybe they are going to a competitor, or had a bad experience and don’t want to use your product any more. When customers choose to leave this is called voluntary churn. Sometimes your customers leave without deciding to. Maybe their credit card expired and they forgot to update it, or your server threw an error when charging them so the payment failed. When customers leave without deciding to this is called involuntary churn. We need to talk If you want to make more money then you should find out why your customers are leaving. You don’t need to call them and have a deep and meaningful, just ask them in a web form when they cancel their subscription. Once you find some common reasons you can fix things that will stop future customers leaving. You might need to fix bugs, improve customer onboarding, or provide better support. If your team is involved in this process make sure you follow a blameless process. No individual or team should be blamed for lost revenue, the issue is probably due to a system or process within your business. If you can reduce your customer churn rate by 1% then your business will grow by an extra 1% every month — it’s like giving yourself a 1% pay raise every month for the rest of your life. Here’s my number, so call me maybe There are a few popular ways to measure churn, and they tell you different things about your business. Customer churn just measures how many customers are leaving you each month. To improve this just make sure that fewer customers leave every month. But what’s my pay-raise? I need money to make youtube video memes. Before you order your books, you need to calculate your revenue churn: Revenue churn just measures “if I don’t get any new customers, how much less money will I make next month”. Revenue churn includes revenue lost from customers leaving or downgrading but includes revenue gained from existing customers upgrading. If you earn more money from customers upgrading than you lose from them leaving/downgrading then your revenue churn will be negative. This is called negative churn.

https://medium.com/@scottpaulin/what-is-churn-in-saas-c4f9945e54a6

['Scott Paulin']

2020-12-21 01:20:10.697000+00:00

['SaaS']

Diabetic Cyborg Life 12/27: Texas Treason & Sedition

The last actions of the Texas State legislation and Attorney General to overturn the election results are the latest reason I need to leave the state. Joe Biden won, like it or not. George W. Bush won in 2000 ,and Trump won in 2016, and I never liked those outcomes. I begrudgingly accepted them though, yet I never referred to either G.W. Bush or 45 as my or our president, but it was what the people wanted, it seemed. Biden won the popular vote by almost 8 million votes and the electoral college. Save your breath and efforts on arguing “Illegal votes,” I will ignore and block all who suggest that. Not worth my time or words to educate people that argue those POVs. Go learn some basic citizenship and American politics before you argue that here, please. Yes, I can teach American politics at the 1301 and 1302 levels, but I have no job to do that and this is not the place to do so. Getting a job elsewhere is harder than ever with my disabilities and finding a UX/UI design job for my brother is fruitless so far. I just see the likelihood that a marriage and kids, one day, will push me to have to work. Yet, that is not here and now, so I rest those ideas for now. I just recall the GTT sign that meant “Gone to Texas” that was popular in history. I just want to leave a post or sign saying GTFOT, or Got the F*** Out of Texas, now more than ever!

https://medium.com/adam-the-diabetic-cyborg-daily/diabetic-cyborg-life-12-27-texas-treason-sedition-aa958dbd7e90

['Adam', 'Diabetic Cyborg']

2020-12-27 10:14:36.300000+00:00

['Hope', 'Texas', 'Optimism', 'Election 2020', 'Trump']

Poke: A CLI tool for Ethereum Development

Today we are pleased to announce we are open sourcing a tool that we have found useful for simplifying Ethereum development. We hope you like it. Meet poke What is Poke? poke dynamically generates a command-line interface at runtime for your smart contracts. We know that doesn’t sound sexy, but hold on a minute… You only need one CLI tool for all your smart contract interaction You don’t have to think about bytecode You don’t have to think about ABIs Everything just works With poke , you can go right from writing Solidity to deploying and interacting with your smart contract within seconds. Why Poke? If you give a child a new object, what happens? Well, they start poking at it of course…and putting it in their mouth…and throwing it across the room…and all sorts of other crazy things. But all these behaviors have something in common: they provide feedback, and they provide it FAST. This example is ridiculous, of course, but it does illustrate an important point: the process of quickly understanding is composed of questions and answers, and preferably, lots of them. Maybe interacting with software isn’t so different. What does Poke do? Now for the nitty gritty… First, poke compiles your .sol file and any dependencies it has to create the corresponding bytecode and ABI, which it stores in a hidden cache for use next time. Next, poke processes the ABI and creates a cobra CLI tool, all on the fly. It’s sort of like factory, but instead of creating a new CLI tool for you, it just changes itself during runtime to adapt to whatever smart contract it’s currently working with. Here’s what it looks like when you call poke without any commands: the result of using poke on our RSR token. See: https://etherscan.io/address/0x8762db106b2c2a0bccb3a80d1ed41273552616e8#contracts If you write a new function for your smart contract, it will automatically appear here. No extra work required! Everything happens at runtime. Here’s a breakdown of the sections: In the top section, poke creates commands that allow us to read out the state of the contract. In the middle section, poke creates commands for each of the functions in our smart contract. For example, we locked all our own tokens by calling the lockMyTokensForever function. We do not recommend you do the same! (Note: Comments from the solidity file are pulled in as command descriptions automatically. Shame on us for commenting so sparsely here) At the bottom, we have a set of utility functions. These functions are always provided to the user, regardless of what smart contract you’re working with. deploy is extremely useful. Lastly, there are a few flags that we added just to complicate things, but you’ll be glad you have them. Most importantly, the -n flag allows you to specify the url of the node you’d like to interact with. This allows you to seamlessly switch between a local dev chain, testnet, and mainnet. You can also pass -F hardware in order to use a Trezor or Ledger Nano. One tip we have for people is that poke pairs extremely well with aliases. So, for example, say you’re working with a few different smart contracts. One option is to declare a few aliases for yourself such as: alias rsr='SOLC_VERSION=0.4.24 poke /path/to/ReserveRights.sol -c ReserveRightsToken' This enables you to do things like rsr pause or rsr transfer from anywhere in your file system. That’s about it! If you’d like to contribute or use the tool yourself, you can find it in our Github repository, https://github.com/reserve-protocol/poke

https://medium.com/reserve-currency/poke-a-cli-tool-for-ethereum-development-b4bb66f4e438

['Taylor Brent']

2019-11-25 18:56:22.489000+00:00

['Ethereum', 'Software Development', 'Cli', 'Updates', 'Stable Coin']

Scrapbooks Connect The Treasures of The Time

The pictures of the events of the previous year can also give you help with time management. When evaluating your circumstances, you can see where you spent your time. · That gives you the awareness to adjust the activities. · In the new year, you will be able to effectively spend time on the activities that will provide you with the highest return financially. And satisfaction with the work that you have done and the time you have spent doing it. In your resolutions for the new year, you can decide if an activity area should have more or less time invested in it. As part of your new year strategy, those decisions will help you make wise choices for the time and energy investment you will make in the new year. The scrapbook of the previous year gives you a perfect road map for the new year. That way, you can plan your new year’s events to achieve the critical goals for you more easily. Your scrapbook lays out your road map for your trip through the next year. · Taking a road trip requires planning to reach your destinations along the way and your final destination on time. · Your scrapbook road map from last year will show you destinations you wanted to stop at that you drove on past. · Those destinations are easily added to your road map for the next year if they are essential to you.

https://medium.com/illumination-curated/scrapbooks-connect-the-treasures-of-the-time-fd120c4102db

['Marjorie J Mcdonald']

2020-12-21 15:55:14.310000+00:00

['Lifestyle', 'Creativity Tips', 'Creativity', 'Inspiration', 'DIY']

PrimaDollar Is To Bring Supply Chain Trade Finance In India

PrimaDollar, a Supply Chain Trade Finance platform is now planning to conduct its business in India after launching it in the UK. Supply chain trade finance is a unique and efficient way that allows big corporates to handle the funding and payment system for their overseas suppliers. As per the release, “Replacing LCs and other bank trade finance instruments, it delivers immediate cost savings, reduces street prices for goods, and improves India’s international competitiveness. With the top 100 Indian importers bringing in over $30 billion in goods every year, PrimaDollar is targeting savings for this sector of at least $50 million”. This advanced supply chain trade finance platform by PrimaDollar is expected to assist Indian companies in refining a full-fledged competition in both local and international markets as it reduces the input costs of materials and components essential for developing and manufacturing goods for sale. With its UK head-Office, PrimaDollar is a fintech company that is facilitating international trade finance worldwide with clients over 40 countries now. Launched in India in September 2019 and now consists of 5 offices with an adequate staff in India compared to any other country, the company is reinforcing big Indian global traders with its supply chain trade finance across its digital advanced platform. Swati Babel, CEO PrimaDollar India explained, “ It has been a lot of work to adjust our successful supply chain trade finance platform to fit with Indian market requirements. But now this has been done, with the excellent support of the leading corporate law firm, Indian companies and their Indian relationship lenders can now take advantage of this leading trade finance technology”. After launching their business in the UK and European markets, PrimaDollar has modified the platform with the purpose to ensure its suitability with the Indian regulations, customs, standards, and rules of Indian Banks and the Indian foreign exchange control regime. The supply chain trade finance platform of PrimaDollar associates global traders ( importers & exporters), domestic banks, logistic suppliers, and funders together. The whole process of the global supply chain can be then handled, funded, and dominated by the importers through one process, doesn’t matter where the goods are being shipped or coming from. It will help to shift the entire import supply chain onto standard open account terms, while the banks of India or global partners facilitate finance to ensure on-time payment to the exporters at shipment while global imposters release payment later.

https://medium.com/@emeriobanque/primadollar-is-to-bring-supply-chain-trade-finance-in-india-168465b35825

['Emerio Banque']

2020-12-21 10:24:58.007000+00:00

['Supplychainfinance', 'Supply Chain', 'Finance', 'Primadollar', 'Trade Finance']

Digital Recruitment — Creating a Great Remote Candidate Experience

The recruitment and onboarding of new employees continues for many companies across the globe even during the pandemic, albeit in new ways. In this post, one of Benify’s HR experts, Sofia Johansson, talks about the advantages she has discovered with recruiting digitally. We also provide tips on addressing one challenge many companies experience with a digital employee experience: showcasing your corporate culture remotely. In a recent HR survey exploring how the work of HR leaders has been affected by the pandemic, 4 out of 10 HR professionals said they have continued recruitment according to the plans they had in place before the coronavirus outbreak. One-third of survey participants said they have recruited entirely remotely without having met candidates physically. Therefore, it’s not surprising that onboarding new employees appeared at the top of the list of HR processes HR leaders will be digitalizing in the near future. Benify has continued its own recruitment efforts at rapid speed during 2020, which meant that many new employees have undergone their onboarding remotely. We spoke with HR Business Partner, Sofia Johansson, who works primarily with recruiting tech specialists and tech leaders, to find out more. Sofia Johansson, HR Business Partner, Benify How has recruitment at Benify changed during the pandemic? For us (at Benify), recruitment during COVID-19 has been very much about a transition and making full use of our own tools. We already had the processes in place to recruit digitally — from the first contact and interviews to signing and onboarding. The challenge has been maintaining a great candidate experience. Do you think digital recruitment will be the new standard in the future? Whatever the future holds, I believe flexibility will increase. During the spring and summer, we conducted all our interviews digitally. We have further increased our flexibility by letting our candidates choose whether they want to do the interview digitally or in the office. I believe that we, along with many other employers, have realized that it is, indeed, possible to carry out recruitment without meeting the candidate in person and that it can even be an advantage when assessing candidates. Has COVID-19 changed your view on digital recruitment? Previously, I had the idea that you needed to meet ‘face to face’ at some point during the process to create a positive recruitment process, especially for the candidate so he or she can get a feel for the culture and the workplace. However, now, I have changed my opinion to some extent. For us, as an employer, I see no problem recruiting digitally — we can do it really well. In 2020, we have successfully recruited and onboarded approximately 95 employees, most of whom have had a completely digital recruitment process. Of course, candidates understand the current situation with COVID-19. However, under normal circumstances, I think for new hires, the desire to visit their future workplace will increase. And, of course, we want to give them that opportunity. In 2020, Benify has successfully recruited and onboarded approximately 95 employees. What advantages do you see with digital recruitment? Based on our experience with digital recruitment processes in 2020, I see three advantages in particular: More efficient processes HR leaders, recruitment managers, and candidates are more flexible with times for digital interviews. Additionally, there is no need to factor in planning for getting to the office Clearer structure In digital interviews, you can stick to your prepared questions and take notes without the candidate perceiving you as looking down at a piece of paper or looking at your computer, which may be the case in physical interviews. Fairer assessment of competence We work with competency-based recruitment, which means that we make our assessments based on the skills we are looking for and not on, say, a feeling for the candidate. An advantage I see in conducting interviews and assessments digitally is that the evaluation of the candidates can be even fairer than when done physically. Even though we work on the basis of competence, we’re all human and can unconsciously base our assessments on things that are irrelevant to the candidate’s competence, such as their handshake, scent, or way of walking. With interviews conducted digitally, the risk of these unconscious biases decreases. What is the biggest challenge with a digital recruitment process? We do our best to tell candidates about our company culture and we make a point to highlight it in our interviews, but I must admit that our culture is best experienced when the candidate is able to visit the office in-person. What can be done to highlight company culture during digital recruitment? Since the company culture does not ‘feel’ the same way when candidates cannot visit the office, it becomes even more important to highlight the concrete parts of the employment offer, such as attractive work conditions and employee benefits. Under these circumstances, it’s also important to think about your employer brand and how it can be represented digitally. For example, among other things, we have created a simple but effective film of our office and have shared it with candidates during the recruitment process to give them a sense of how it looks. It’s important for companies to think about their employer brand and how it can be represented digitally. Do you have any tips for other HR leaders looking to improve their digital recruitment processes? Think about how you can create a feeling that represents your workplace culture in a digital format and make sure it can be seen and felt in everything from interviews, social media, ads, and onboarding. What’s important about your company culture, and how can you make that a common thread throughout everything you do? Another tip is to clearly visualize your employment offer to candidates. Using digital tools, such as Benify’s Total Reward feature, you can easily display your offer in an attractive way, including everything from salary to employee benefits. Do you think in the future we will see more digital tools being used in the recruitment process? I definitely believe the need for different digital tools will increase. Today, together with interviews, we use digital tools for assessment. We can already see trends with AI, for example, in the candidate selection process. However, right now, I see that it’s still problematic that we build our own bias into technical solutions. We are not quite there yet when it comes to being able to provide an entirely fair competency-based recruitment process using these technical solutions, but it will be exciting to see what the future has to offer. I believe personal meetings will be important in the future as well, especially for the candidates in their choice of workplace.

https://medium.com/@benify/digital-recruitment-creating-a-great-remote-candidate-experience-8f8b9c7a9fac

[]

2020-11-19 08:44:03.743000+00:00

['Employee Experience', 'Recruiting', 'Recruitment', 'HR', 'Hrtech']

NapoleonX Newsletter — April 26, 2018

It’s been 3 weeks since our last newsletter and a lot of things have happened. ETH went up 65% despite a 10% drop since the top 2 days ago. BTC went up a more modest 30% over the same period. So CHEER UP everyone, HODL has once again paid off. Platform release The most important news is the release yesterday of the first version of our Platform, right on schedule at less than 2 months post ICO. In it, you can now have access to our trading signals for the 10 DAFs presented in our Blackpaper. We will collect your feedback in the next couple of weeks to assess what kind of changes will need to be made. So please send us your constructive feedback on our Telegram group. As you have noticed, there are several sections that will evolve over time. So what you see is only the beginning of the story. New crypto strategies Because we are continuously developing our value proposal, we have researched brand new strategies on ETH.USD and ETH.BTC pairs. We are in the process of integrating them in our Platform. As long as the first DAF has not been launched, they will be accessible for free with the same time lag rules as the other 10 ones. NPX listing We have said that once the markets would stabilize we would press ahead with the listing on the already identified Exchanges (HitBTC and Coinbene). These conditions have now been met and we are finalizing the listing contracts. We want to make sure that we are well protected against any delisting. Given the associated cost, this is the least that we should be doing to protect our interests. Asset Management license We have just met with our regulator to present our file to them yesterday and the meeting went pretty smoothly. Because the crypto subject is very new to the regulator, we will have to conduct it in several steps. The first step for them was to accept to have cryptos in certain investment vehicles. This is already something that they have accepted with another asset manager and thus we just need to understand and replicate the right operational set up. The second step for them will be to accept to launch investment vehicles that collects in crypto. This is not something that they have envisaged so far so we will work with our lawyers to get them comfortable. This will be a longer process though as their lawyers and their board will have to review the subject. So the strategy to get the asset management license will be to apply for products that have already been approved to avoid delaying the process and work in parallel with them to accept investment vehicles collecting in crypto. Once we get the license, we will have the possibility to manage funds that may not be necessarily in French jurisdiction and that could allow us to collect in crypto. We have already identified some options and are working with our lawyers and potential counterparties to be ready when we get the license. Timing wise, we might not be ready for June as anticipated but we should still be on target for a summer license. Indeed, now that we have exposed our case, we will formally fill in all the official form and then we will depend on their committees that happen once a month to get the approval. Given that summer is fast approaching and that they may not be fully staffed for summer months, we are cautious on timing. We went through this with our Financial Advisory license last summer already for Napoleon Capital and it was very frustrating. Liquidity management As part of our liquidity management, we have diversified our liquidity positions recently to benefit from the sharp ETH rebound. We have converted some of it in BTC and some of it in EUR so that we have sufficient liquidity for the foreseeable future on the corporate side. I wish you all the best and don’t forget to HODL. Stephane IFRAH, CEO

https://medium.com/napoleonx-ai/newsletter-26th-april-2018-8b1be37c6278

['Napoleon Group']

2018-09-30 22:22:41.180000+00:00

['Finance', 'News', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Investing', 'Bitcoin']

How to find the Best Digital Marketing Agency in Delhi?

How to find the Best Digital Marketing Agency in Delhi? Digital marketing is the need of the hour. Almost all the companies in the world are rushing towards the digital space to get the maximum customers for their product and services. In order to get the best out of the online efforts, it is really essential for a brand/company to hire the best digital marketing agency. The internet is the global influence nowadays. Brands, companies, organizations and institutions are running an endless race to sail through the online tide. Each day millions of users access the internet including social media websites, which make the internet the best platform to reach to prospective customers. In order to get the best out of the digital world in the India, it is really essential to hire an experienced digital marketing agency in Delhi, so that your brand can effectively be portrayed among the flash of other brands, to attract prospective customers. One needs to find the best agency in the field, and one can keep in mind the following points to ensure that the brand is getting maximum benefits out of digital efforts: • Experience: Experience lends wisdom to lead. An experienced digital marketing agency is more efficient than a fresh team of digital marketers without prior experience of dealing with digital mediums. An experienced team understands the needs of a business from the digital medium and devises an effective strategy to bring more benefit to a business than the efforts of a fresh team. • Expertise: One should always make sure that a digital marketing agency has a strong team on-board which consists of digital marketing experts who are comfortable and knowledgeable enough to extract the maximum business benefit out of a digital campaign. Expertise in digital marketing helps them understand the pros and cons of a campaign beforehand and suggest more effective campaigns for the growth of a business. • Specialized and dedicated team: It is essential that a digital marketing agency works full time and is completely dedicated towards its clients. The digital world is a fast changing world where fortunes are made in a matter of seconds. Better results can be attained from a digital marketing campaign only when one remains actively involved in the digital marketing campaign, which necessitates the dedication of the digital marketing agency for the client. Before choosing a digital marketing agency for your business, ensure that it stands strong on the above points for the are the pillars for standing high on the pedestal of the best digital marketing agency in Delhi. YNG Media is a leading digital marketing agency and has a talented and experienced team of internet marketing professionals on-board to manage your digital campaign and bring the best out of the internet for your business. The YNG team comprises of best-in-industry SEO professionals, digital strategists, experienced designers and web developers, who remain actively engaged in digital campaigns to bring the best leads for your business. Through a strong business — centric digital marketing strategy, YNG helps a business to benefit from the internet efficiently.

https://medium.com/@yngmedia/how-to-find-the-best-digital-marketing-agency-in-delhi-f036de064678

[]

2015-12-07 12:29:24.718000+00:00

['Digital Marketing', 'Online Marketing', 'Digital Marketing Agency']

Design and Future

*This text is part of a class about the relationship between design and future in the Interaction workshop (1st year course) at the Design School of Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. At this course we encourage students to be curious about the capacities of design as a tool to understand and transform the world at the same time. From the future to “the futures” Before even beginning to talk about the concept of future, I think it’s important to briefly speak about time, which could be understood as a major concept in which the future is contained. Time –not in a scientific but in a social sense– doesn’t exist by itself if not as something we’ve created as a measure of our actions. Everything we do can be measured in time and it even tells us if we are being efficient or not. The existence of time is important as it allows us to orientate and situate ourselves in history as individuals and as society and therefore it gives context to our actions. The clock then becomes a symbol of said importance of time, a materialization of how our lives revolve around a measure that’s socially constructed and not necessarily fits us all: “With the presence of the clock, time will be dissociated from the rhythm of the planets and the seasons, from experience and memory” (trad. from Carrasco & Recio, 2014). That’s how without realizing, we live in a constant state of awareness about how our actions reflect in the future. We do or stop doing things hoping they will assure us a better future that –according to our clocks– seems to never arrive. The future, in a linear conception of time, it’s what’s ahead of us. The things that have not happened yet but it’s not an empty space but one that’s already outlined by the consequences of our present actions. That’s why we are able to destabilize the future –even if it seems already written– through our everyday practice in the present. Trying to predict the future makes no sense, science and technology have not been able to do it for centuries and it only reflects how badly we want to control everything. What we are actually able to do is to dream and imagine what could happen, the potential futures. Those potential futures can be classified in 4 large groups that take us out of the linear conception of time and replace it with a number of cones fanning out from the present to the future (Dunne & Raby, 2013). The 4 groups are: PROBABLE: This is where most designers operate. It’s the one that best describes what is likely to happen if we continue doing things the same way and without any major crisis ahead. PLAUSIBLE: This is the space of what could happen, it’s the place for planning and foresight. It’s where things don’t seem desirable but are quite convincing. A few years ago, we could have placed the covid-19 pandemic here. POSIBLE: This is where today’s world links with every suggested future, even the ones that sound like fantasy. There are not impossible future scenarios, just some that are out of our current understanding of science and some others where we can’t imagine the path to them yet. PREFERABLE: The future where probable and plausible intersects according to our aspirations. But it seems important to ask ourselves: preferable for whom? and under what circumstances? Nowadays, specially in the middle of multiple crises we are facing and with the constant advances in science and technology around us, we have lost our capacity of dreaming about new future scenarios and are instead beginning to just hope that things will work out someway. Contradictorily, we could use some of that dreaming to take our minds off to more desirable future scenarios. But, to which idea of time are we referring to when we talk about present or future? The capitalist idea of time has separated productive from reproductive time and has made us value the first one above the other. Carrasco and Recio also refer to productive time as “measured time” (Carrasco & Recio, 2014) because it’s the time others are measuring for us and we have no control over it. We tend to project our lives from a productive point of view: Where will I be working? What will I be producing? Instead of asking ourselves how our everyday lives will be, how those activities without payment we love so much will be. As this understanding of time is directly related to a neoliberal model of development, our society tends to marginalize those whose time can’t be measured for productive purposes such as children, elder or homeless people. Maybe a more egalitarian society should be based on equal management of our individual times. In the current pandemic scenario with constant lockdown periods around the world, it’s been particularly interesting to see people face the domestic activities previously invisible to many of them and see how much effort it takes to keep the house going. In many ways, what is uncomfortable of working or studying from home is the disappearance of the border between productive and reproductive spaces. But, which are the activities that give meaning to our lives? Which ones do we want to project into the future? How would a socioeconomic system that allows us to balance them better be? Why is it important to think about the futures from design? “Design is inherent about future (…) while ideas about possible futures are internal representations in the mind, designers externalize those ideas and give them a coherent representation that communicate ideas about the future with others thereby increasing awareness and understanding about possible futures across wider audiences” (Heidaripour & Forlano, 2018) Design, beyond it’s known capacity of problem solving –which is the most popular way of understanding the discipline–, has the potential to show us that other future narratives are possible because we can experience them through design interventions and prototypes. This is why events that destabilize –for better or worse– our everyday lives are a matter of concern: they show us other ways of doing things are possible, they enter the future into negotiation and propose a future where things now considered extraordinary could be the rule. “Although ideas about the future are not applicable for immediate action, they inform us and créate a culture of thought that gradually impacts our current practices and social orders. In other words, through the construction of everyday practices, the practice of formgiving to alternative futures could destabilize dominant power relations.” (Heidaripour & Forlano, 2018) When we bring the future to the present through our designs, we are choosing towards which future we want to move. It’s not about trying to predict the future but about giving access to the possibilities that it has so new and alternative futures could be discussed, debated and used to collectively redefine where we want to go as society. The choice of which future we want to materialize is –without a doubt– a political act and can’t be done from innocence and ignorance as it has been done so far. We are so blinded by how easy it is to objectively understand our users that we have ethically and politically distanced ourselves from our practice. We believe to be materializing the dreams of the majority but we haven’t even questioned who that majority actually is. We have left our voice out of our designs, they have our style but do they communicate our ideas? We prefer to be silent than uncomfortable. All social aspects can be modified (trad. from Carrasco & Recio, 2014), we only need to convince and mobilize enough people to make it happen and we can do it by letting them experience the alternative futures through our designs. In the current multidimensional crisis scenario it’s worth asking ourselves –through design–: How could a new relationship between government, market, citizenship and consumption be? How does a designer approach futures? What seems to conflict most designers about speculation about alternative futures is to design for non-existent scenarios, therefore design things that can’t be sold because they belong to a fictional scenario. We are so familiar with the market dreams that we’ve lost the capacity of dreaming our own futures and even less the collective ones. Outside the market we are free to experiment but at the same time nobody knows we are doing it. Let’s not forget that above all things we design relationships, we mediate the interaction between actors and their consequences and we amplify ideas. We must not ignore these capacities but use them in our favor to open the debate about what world we want to live in. As professionals, we feel pressured to make useful things, things that serve an immediate purpose, things that solve “design problems” we’ve found, but thinking there’s a “design solution” to every “design problem” is a conceited and innocent idea. It’s hard for us to think of design that only seeks to generate reflection and debate fulfills a function in society just because it doesn’t give an answer to a question but instead opens us to curiosity and moves us towards a process of analysis and critical thinking about the world around us. The critical capacity of design is equal or even more powerful than its capacity to communicate ideas. We have the ethical and moral responsibility to make ourselves aware of how norms, values and other social constructs are produced and reproduced in society through the things we design. Something many alternative design practices have in common –such as design explorations, design research, speculative design, among others– it’s that they move outside of what we consider possible and even real. When we design for how things could be we open new and much richer possibilities for ideas and dreams. The antagonist here would be a design that says yes to everything and accept inequality as an unalterable condition, it reinforces the status quo without trying to understand and modify the world. If we intend to know and transform the world, we have to observe and describe it first, we can’t project and tell stories about a desired future without understanding the relationships that exist in the present. Our responsibility with the future In addition to the already mentioned multidimensional crises we currently live in, there’s a strong critique from the citizens to the professionals. We are supposed to build a bridge between two groups that refuse to touch: the ones who decide how we live and the ones who live by the consequences of the first group decisions, but we are not fulfilling this task and instead we are just increasing the distance between them as we explain with our technical concepts to those “on top” how those “on the bottom” live and think (trad. from Fauré, 2014). As professionals we’ve had the privilege of participating in spaces of critical reflection and must try to actually shorten the distance between the ends of said bridge. At the same time, as members of the society we have the responsibility to not conform with how things are and dream about other ways of doing things. Finally, as designers, we are challenged to prototype those dreams so many people as possible can access them. When are we going to stop materializing the dreams of the industry and beginning to materialize the dreams of the society? It’s not about just adapting methodologies as design thinking from one sphere to another –from business fields to public policies for example– because as those methods have been thought and produced for business they are trapped seeking for quick answers that can be achieved in the short term. The market is not willing to question the current context because it’s comfortable in it and all his actions are towards sustaining it. If we just transfer these forms of design from private to public we are also transfering the customer-service way of relationship between the government and the citizens. The public sphere should not be a space for that kind of logic but a space of cooperation and shared responsibilities between the ones involved towards a common goal. To question the current values and paradigms doesn’t take away from us the capacity of design for the present but it challenges us to stay updated as to methodologies and topics to work with. It doesn’t have to be better, but it has to show alternatives instead of answers.

https://medium.com/@patriciaisidora/design-and-future-224b68aec3c6

['Patricia Sánchez']

2021-01-21 22:06:06.157000+00:00

['Responsibility', 'Alternative Futures', 'Design']

A step-by-step guide to using Ninject for dependency injection in C#

Recently, I’ve been trying out the Ninject Dependency Injection framework. It’s amazing! In this post I would like to give you some pointers on how to use it. I will also briefly explain the purpose of Dependency Injection. For those aching to play with some code rather than reading a lengthy blog (for webforms or as a console application), check the sourcecode repositories below. What is dependency injection? Dependency Injection (DI, wikipedia) is a design pattern that reduces hard-coded dependencies between your classes by injecting these dependencies at run-time, instead of during design-time. Technically, Dependency Injection is a mechanism that allows the implementation of another, more high-level, design pattern called Inversion of Control (IoC, wikipedia). The purpose of both patterns is to reduce hard-coded dependencies (or ‘coupling’) between your classes. What are dependencies? Suppose that you are building a web application that is going to send e-mails to visitors that have entered a form. In object-oriented code, it is important to separate responsibilities. So you’ll probably end up with a class that handles the form input (FormHandler) and a class that is responsible for sending the e-mails (MailSender). The MailHandler class looks like this: public class MailSender { public void Send(string toAddress, string subject) { Console.WriteLine("Sending mail to [{0}] with subject [{1}]", toAddress, subject); } } If you don’t use Inversion of Control, your FormHandler class will look like this: public class FormHandler { public void Handle(string toAddress) { MailSender mailSender = new MailSender(); mailSender.Send(toAddress, "This is non-Ninject example"); } } Although there’s nothing wrong with this code, it is creating a dependency between the FormHandler and MailSender classes. The dependency is created at line 5. Using the New keyword in your code to instantiate a class implies that you are creating a dependency. From a practical point of view, you are telling your FormHandler class to use a concrete implementation of the MailSender class. There’s no flexibility. ‘But why’, you ask, ‘is this a bad thing?’. Let’s take a look at some reasons … Why are dependencies a bad thing? You can’t use multiple implementations of the MailSender class : If you write the code like shown above, you will lose one of the benefits of object oriented code. You can’t easily swap out the implementation of MailSender with another implementation. Perhaps you want to avoid sending real mails and log them instead for a staging environment of your application. Or you want to send mails in plaintext instead of with HTML. In these cases, you can only change the implementation of MailSender by changing the MailSender class and the FormHandler classes. Bottom-line: you lose flexibility; : If you write the code like shown above, you will lose one of the benefits of object oriented code. You can’t easily swap out the implementation of MailSender with another implementation. Perhaps you want to avoid sending real mails and log them instead for a staging environment of your application. Or you want to send mails in plaintext instead of with HTML. In these cases, you can only change the implementation of MailSender by changing the MailSender class and the FormHandler classes. Bottom-line: you lose flexibility; It makes it easier to write sloppy code : If your classes are tightly coupled, it will be more tempting to mix up responsibilities. If you use Dependency Injection (as you’ll see), you have to invest more time in coming up with a good design for your classes and, specifically, their interface. Therefore, using Inversion of Control or Dependency Injection will improve the quality of code because it makes it harder to cut corners; : If your classes are tightly coupled, it will be more tempting to mix up responsibilities. If you use Dependency Injection (as you’ll see), you have to invest more time in coming up with a good design for your classes and, specifically, their interface. Therefore, using Inversion of Control or Dependency Injection will improve the quality of code because it makes it harder to cut corners; It makes unit testing (nearly) impossible: When you’re writing unit tests for a class, you want to test only the behavior of that particular class. If you would write unit tests for the FormHandler, you’ll end up testing the MailSender as well. After all, the MailSender is used ‘under the hood’ of the Handle method, and there’s no way to do anything about that. This makes writing unit tests nearly impossible. If you are writing unit tests, dependency injection is often required; The bottom-line is that your FormHandler shouldn’t know what concrete implementation of the MailSender is used. What concrete implementation is used, should be determined outside of your classes. That way, you can swap out the MailSender with another implementation if the need arises. If you are writing unit tests for the FormHandler, you can swap out the MailSender class with a mocked version, for example. So, how do I get rid of dependencies? One way to do this is by using a Dependency Injection framework, like Spring, Unityor Ninject. These frameworks allow you to configure, separate from your classes, which concrete implementations should be used. I prefer Ninject because it is lightweight, easy to use and requires little change in your code. Step 1: Download Ninject Go to the Ninject website and download the latest version for the .NET platform you’re targeting. Take .NET 4.5 if you are not sure. You can do this through NuGet in Visual Studio. I still prefer the manual approach and put the assembly (ninject.dll) in a folder in my solution called \Assemblies. Step 2: Preparing the code Before diving into Ninject, the first thing we have to do is rewrite our code to use Interfaces. This is required for Dependency Injection, but is good practice anyways. An interfaces is basically a contract between classes that force one class to behave exactly as described by the interface. The contract can be implemented by other implementations (different class, same behavior). We create a very straightforward interface for the MailSender class: public interface IMailSender { void Send(string toAddress, string subject); } We also rewrite the MailSender class to implement the IMailSender interface: public class MailSender : IMailSender { public void Send(string toAddress, string subject) { Console.WriteLine("Sending mail to [{0}] with subject [{1}]", toAddress, subject); } } We’ve basically told C# that the concrete implementation of our MailSender class follows the IMailSender interface (or contract). It is now possible to create other concrete implementations that follow the same interface but do different things ‘under the hood’, for example: public class MockMailSender : IMailSender { public void Send(string toAddress, string subject) { Console.WriteLine("Mocking mail to [{0}] with subject [{1}]", toAddress, subject); } } Right now, we can change which concrete implementation is used by our FormHandler by rewriting the code where the class is instantiated: public class FormHandler { public void Handle(string toAddress) { IMailSender mailSender = new MockMailSender(); mailSender.Send(toAddress, "This is still a non-Ninject example"); } } Of course, this already adds a lot of flexibility to our code, as we can swap out which concrete implementation of IMailService is used by changing line 5. Although C# will now force you to implement the IMailSender interface to the letter, your code will already improve a lot by using interfaces. The next step is to implement manual dependency injection to get rid of this codechange that is required to change which implementation is used. Step 3: Implementing manual dependency injection Before using Ninject to inject dependencies, it’s useful to do it manually to understand the basics. Basically, we’re going to pass the dependency in through the constructorof the FormHandler class. This way, the code that is using the FormHandler can determine which concrete implementation of IMailSender to use: public class FormHandler { private readonly IMailSender mailSender; public FormHandler(IMailSender mailSender) { this.mailSender = mailSender; } public void Handle(string toAddress) { mailSender.Send(toAddress, "This is non-Ninject example"); } The code that creates our FormHandler has to pass in a concrete implementation of IMailService. This means that control is now inverted; instead of the FormHandler deciding which implementation to use, the calling code does. This is the whole point of Inversion of Control, of which Dependency Injection is just one approach. The calling code (the code that uses the FormHandler and now controls the dependencies) looks like this: class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { IMailSender mailSender = new MockMailSender(); FormHandler formHandler = new FormHandler(mailSender); formHandler.Handle("test@test.com"); Console.ReadLine(); } } This is an example of manual dependency injection, because we’re not relying on any framework to do the heavy lifting for us. The above code is fine, and will work like a charm. But this approach will become progressively harder as the number of dependencies increases. After all, you’ll have to add one constructor parameter for every new dependency in the class you’re instantiating. This can be quite infuriating. Therefore, we need a framework to take care of this. This is where Ninject, or any other DI framework, comes in. Step 4: Implementing Ninject to inject dependencies for us Ninject is fairly extensive, but I’ll stick to the easiest (and most often used) dependency injection, called constructor injection. The nice thing about Ninject is that you don’t have to change MailSender, IMailSender or FormHandler at all. You do need to add a reference to the Ninject.dll assembly in your project and create a separate class in your project that Ninject uses to configure the dependencies at run-time: using Ninject.Modules; using Ninject; public class Bindings : NinjectModule { public override void Load() { Bind<IMailSender>().To<MockMailSender>(); } } The name of the class can be whatever you like; Ninject will find it as long as it inherits from NinjectModule. Your calling code (Program.cs) has to use Ninjectto determine which concrete implementation to use: using Ninject; class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { var kernel = new StandardKernel(); kernel.Load(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly()); var mailSender = kernel.Get<IMailSender>(); var formHandler = new FormHandler(mailSender); formHandler.Handle("test@test.com"); Console.ReadLine(); } } When running this code, your console will say ‘Mocking mail to ….’, which is also what we expected. The dependency injection is working! The code is creating a Ninject Kernel that resolves our entire chain of dependencies. We tell Ninject to load the bindings from the executing assembly. This is the most common scenario. In this case, your Bindings class should live in one of the assemblies included in your executing project. Practically speaking, this means that your Bindings class will usually live in your website, webservice, windows service, console application or unit test project, as they are at the top of the chain of executing code. For every chain / context (website, unit tests, console) you can create a different Bindings class with different configurations. For example, you can change the Bindings class to use the MailSender wherever IMailSender is used: public class Bindings : NinjectModule { public override void Load() { Bind<IMailSender>().To<MailSender>(); } } Running the same code will now result in your console saying ‘Sending mail to …’ (and not the Mock version), which is what we expected. Step 5: More levels of dependencies, and where the magic truly shows The above example works, but it doesn’t show the true power of Ninject. When your project grows, and the number of dependencies increases, Ninject will automatically figure out which concrete implementations to pass into constructors based on the Bindings. Suppose our MailSender is going to call a separate class for logging exceptions. Without dependency injection, our FormHandler would now depend on the MailSender, which in turn depends on the Logging class. So, your MailSender class could look like this: public class MailSender : IMailSender { private readonly ILogging logging; public MailSender(ILogging logging) { this.logging = logging; } public void Send(string toAddress, string subject) { logging.Debug("Sending mail"); Console.WriteLine(string.Format("Sending mail to [{0}] with subject [{1}]", toAddress, subject)); } } Your bindings will look like this: public class Bindings : NinjectModule { public override void Load() { Bind<IMailSender>().To<MockMailSender>(); Bind<ILogging>().To<MockLogging>(); } } Now, if you call FormHandler from the console application, two dependency injections will take place. The first one we’ve already seen; we ask Ninject to give us a concrete implementation of IMailService and pass it into the constructor of FormHandler. When Ninject instantiates MailSender, it understands that this class requires ILogging. It will check its Bindings and load the concrete implementation specified there automatically. The nice thing is that if you forgot to add a configuration for ILogging in the bindings, Ninject will throw a friendly exception explaining what you have to do. So, once you’ve set up the top level of the execution hierarchy (in this example) by creating the Kernel, Ninject will take care of the rest for you. This is a big difference from most other Dependency Injection frameworks. They often require code changes within all your classes with dependencies. Avoid Service Locator anti-patterns A mistake I initially made is that I used a container or IoC manager as a Service Locator (another design pattern). Basically, I created a class that lived as a singleton and was called from all classes with dependencies to resolve the dependency (IoCManager.Resolve()). Many Dependency Injection frameworks facilitate this approach, like Unity. This is a common strategy, but it causes a dependency on the IoC container _itself_and is not necessary. The code I’ve shown above works without any kind of custom Service Locator pattern. In fact, the MailSender and FormHandler classes have not changed since the manual injection approach. For more information, see this or this blog. Concluding thoughts Dependency Injection is a difficult concept to grasp if you’ve never used it before. Just give it a try, and you’ll see how flexible it makes your code. Especially when you’re writing unit tests you’ll quickly see the benefits. In that case, you can easily swap in mock implementations of dependencies. If anything, it makes your code a lot cleaner and sort of forces you to write better code. And don’t forget to check out Ninject’s website for far more advanced scenarios. Check out the code for a simple console app here (Visual Studio 2013): https://bitbucket.org/cverwijs/examples.ninject Or this code for a simple webapplication (Visual Studio 2013): https://bitbucket.org/cverwijs/examples.ninject.webapp The webapplication implements the same classes in a Webforms context. Although there is no visible functionality injected by Ninject, you can verify and follow the injection by placing a breakpoint in Default.aspx.cs. Injection is also possible for master pages and other pages, but check the Ninject.Web documentation for that. The bindings are configured in the /App_start/NinjectWebCommon.cs.

https://medium.com/the-liberators/a-step-by-step-guide-to-using-ninject-for-dependency-injection-in-c-68a125bd7fa4

['Christiaan Verwijs']

2020-10-15 07:42:33.343000+00:00

['Csharp', 'Dependency Inversion', 'Dependency Injection', 'Software Development', 'Design Patterns']

Product Manager vs Product Marketing Manager vs Growth PM — What’s the Difference?

Product Manager vs Product Marketing Manager I recently saw this great thread from Lenny Rachitsky on Twitter where he asked the question about the boundaries between a Product Manager and a Product Marketing Manager. The common theme was that a Product Manager worries about getting the product ‘out the door’, whereas a Product Marketing Manager worries more about getting the product ‘into the customer’s hands’. Or as Evelyn Hartz put it: “PMs own getting the cereal ON to the shelf (i.e. ingredients, nutrients, placement in relation to competitors, etc.) PMMs own getting you to take the box OFF the shelf (i.e. packaging, pricing, etc.)” It’s important however to note that all this is in the context of organisations where they have both roles. There are many organisations — e.g. early-stage startups — where they may only have Product Managers. In these cases, the Product Manager would be doing both roles of getting the ‘product on the shelf’ as well as ‘off the shelf’. So to break this down a bit more, it can look something like this: Product Manager: Product Vision/Strategy/Roadmap Product discovery & development Product lifecycle management Product Marketing Manager: GTM strategy and execution Sales enablement (B2B) and lead generation Communicating the product to the market Marketing campaigns Where a Product Manager is more concerned with the overall direction of the product through defining its strategy, vision and roadmap. A Product Marketing Manager on the other hand would be more focused on taking the product to market — communicating its value proposition in a way that it attracts and retains customers. “While all product teams aspire to create an elegant user experience and functionality that enables customers to intuitively “get it” after they try it, product marketers are focused on conveying the product’s value to the customer to engage, convert and retain them. Product marketers play a key role in driving awareness and trial as well as packaging the product to appeal to customers. They accomplish this by packaging a product’s features and functionality into messaging and positioning, pricing, and collateral.” — What Is Product Marketing? by Ada Chen Rekhi But an important nuance is the fact that there is no definitive place where one role starts and the other finishes. We know that building good products is key to selling them, and how we market, position and sell our products impact the way we build them. As such the two roles (at least how I’ve experienced them) are more of a partnership than mutually exclusive roles. I liked the ‘Driver-Navigator’ analogy Brett Bryon used stating that “PM + PMM must be in lock-step throughout prod lifecycle, but who is sitting shotgun vs driving changes with phase.” Not an exact science as I believe the best approach is to get in a room together and talk about who’s going to do what — I recommend doing one of these Roles and Responsibility workshops to align together on what this means as it will be different from person-to-person, company-to-company, product-to-product. But an example of where both a Product Manager and Product Marketing Manager would be equally concerned with: Market segmentation TAM, OAM, SAM Value Proposition Personas Pricing Positioning Go-to-market planning etc

https://productcoalition.com/difference-between-product-manager-vs-product-marketing-manager-vs-growth-pm-3aef15cb5b18

['Anthony Murphy']

2021-07-14 04:01:14.507000+00:00

['Growth Hacking', 'Product Management', 'Agile', 'Product Marketing', 'Growth Product Manager']

Five Places to Go If You’re Still Threatening to Leave the U.S.

Get out already! Photo: Dreamstime Fake news, fake virus, fake tan, fake election. Now that that’s all over with we need to do some follow up work. Have all the people who threatened to leave the country if Trump lost left yet? If not, please hurry. If you’re planning to abandon the United States as you promised, but aren’t sure where to go, I have already googled that for you. Naturally, if Trump had handled the “Chinese virus” better you might have had more choices, but c’est la vie. Keep in mind that your U.S. passport is basically worthless tinder and you are looked upon globally as a laughable, undesirable disease-ridden piece of crap, but nonetheless there are a few places who will welcome you, like fools, with open arms. Here are five countries to go to right now, with no restrictions. Don’t let their high Covid rates, raging crime, or any civil unrest deter you. You are no longer a proud American and you deserve to leave and enjoy your life abroad. Promises are promises and it’s time to get out. Belarus — No Restrictions “While in the midst of mass protests, the borders of Belarus are open to Americans.” Hahahah. Sounds perfect. Take your anger, guns and empty garbage bags for looting and go! From what I read their president is also in denial of Covid-19 so you will feel right at home and have a smooth and easy transition. They have had very few deaths and have lots of hospital beds so when you bring Covid to them they will have plenty of room to hospitalize everyone you infect. Be sure not to miss their sguschenka and glazed curd bars. Mexico — No Restrictions Travel Advisory: Level 3 — reconsider travel Just LOL. Mexico — one of the most corrupt crime-ridden countries on earth is eager to have you, no questions asked. I heard Tijuana is great this time of year and the drug cartels are super friendly. Just don’t drink the water and watch out for the kidnappings, hold-ups and beheadings. Also, sombreros and castanets go great with cocaine and murder. Photo: istockphoto Brazil — No Restrictions Level 4: Do Not Travel Of course a country with no Covid rules or regulations welcomes us with open arms! The blind leading the blind. Brazil also has one of the highest rates of homicide in the world. Don’t worry though, you’ll be fine. I’ve been there three times and I’m still alive. Just keep your mask on and stay out of the favelas, unless you happen to have packed war gear and rented a tank. Dominican Republic Level 4: Do Not Travel I don’t know much about the Dominican Republic. I was there once on a sober Club Med trip and I wanted to kill myself, but that’s not the republic’s fault. The Dominican Republic is known for its blue ocean waters, beautiful beaches and resorts, and the poverty that surrounds them. Medical care is limited, but they eat patriotic food. A dish called La Bandera, meaning “the flag,” is a traditional meal of stewed meat, red beans, and rice. I almost fell asleep writing that. North Macedonia No one knows anything about North Macedonia, or has any desire to go there, but that’s your free pass into Europe. Don’t fuck it up!

https://medium.com/the-haven/five-places-to-go-if-youre-still-threatening-to-leave-the-u-s-36d6ef8eee1a

['Pam Gaslow']

2020-11-16 21:30:50.155000+00:00

['Travel', 'Covid 19', 'Humor', 'Trump', 'Pandemic']

Dappradar.com has listed Keepr3v1.network now

Dear Keepr3v1.network community, We have submitted our project on https://dappradar.com/ethereum/defi/keepr3v1-network successfully. DappRadar is the #1 global leader in dapp distribution and analysis. DappRadar is the most referenced dapp index by top blockchain media such as Cointelegraph, Bloomberg, Coindesk, Bitcoin.com,… Thanks for your reading. Please stay turned with us to get more information. 📪 Our social media: Telegram Channel: https://t.me/keepr3v1networkofficial Telegram group: https://t.me/Keepr3V1 Twitter: https://twitter.com/kpr3official Medium:https://keepr3v1network.medium.com Gifhub:https://github.com/Kpr3V1/Keepr3V1-Token Website: http://www.keepr3v1.network Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l4pzjw45i8&t=15s Email: info.contact@keepr3v1.network

https://medium.com/@keepr3v1network/dappradar-com-has-listed-keepr3v1-network-now-6d41f9f55ff8

[]

2020-12-18 09:57:41.532000+00:00

['Defi', 'Projects', 'Dappradar', 'Presales']

Start your Data Science Journey in 4 Steps

Start your Data Science Journey in 4 Steps An opinionated path guide for beginning your Data Science career Until September of 2018 the term “Artificial Intelligence” had literally no meaning to me. I was posting letters for Royal Mail and curious as ever to learn a skill that didn’t require me to physically exert myself. The thought of programming did come to mind, but I didn’t think I was smart enough — by trade I am an athlete after all and did not have proper formal education after High School (unless you want to include my Level 3 Coaching badge and BTEC in sports). Just under 2 years on, I have received what I deem to be a major achievement in my journey: I am now a Top writer in Artificial Intelligence on Medium. After initially being filled with joy, my mind switched and before I knew it I was reflecting on where I have come from… Every major action that I have taken has come as a response to a difficult situation, but it does not have to be that way! I sucked up my fear of programming, and the fact I hadn’t done an inch of math in 5+ years no longer concerned me, however, that was only because I had lost my job as a Postman — I had no other option. I began my Medium journey in December 2019, but only started posting regularly because the Covid-19 outbreak left me furloughed — I needed to do something productive with my time or I’d just be bored at home until I am wanted back at work (if I am wanted back that is). Realising that my reactive approach to life is unnecessarily strenuous, I’ve made a decision to be proactive and hope to make a mark in the Data Science field. You don’t need to be like me! If you are reading this now then you have an opportunity to decide to be proactive today! On that note, I aim to provide you with the tools that have helped me to reach where I am now so that you can kickstart your career.

https://towardsdatascience.com/start-your-data-science-journey-in-4-steps-f5b5a6e7e80b

['Kurtis Pykes']

2020-07-17 13:36:01.087000+00:00

['Machine Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Data Science', 'Deep Learning', 'Towards Data Science']

My Child Is An Early Bird — Can I Do Something About It?

Early morning wakings are one of the toughest sleep problems to fix, if not the toughest. If you’re wondering why, it’s because after a decent night’s rest your child has got more energy to fight sleep in the morning. And the truth is, all of us come up into lighter sleep phases in the last hour of our sleep, preparing to take up for the day. Remember, however, your child is waking early only if he is not getting the right amount of night rest for his age and his body. In other words, if your child sleeps from 7 PM to 6 AM, it’s a perfectly reasonable schedule for him, even though it might feel early to you. We can’t ask our children to sleep more than 11 hours at night. Their bodies are usually rested after this much sleep, and they won’t be able to do more. Also keep in mind the following fact: if your child is waking even at 10/½ hours, if he is rested and energetic in the morning and makes it easily till his naptime, then he’s getting enough rest for his body. Problems arise if your child sleeps from, say, 7 PM to 5:30 AM. In this case, you’ll need to push the bedtime later by 15-minute increments, then watching to see if your child can sleep later in the morning, A word of caution, though: Making the bedtime later can often have the opposite effect of causing your child to wake up earlier. This is the reason why things need to be done in small steps. Here are some other ideas to try if your child is an early bird: • Make sure that your child’s room is very, very dark. • If there are any sounds that could be waking him — such as garbage trucks, barking dogs, sprinklers — put white noise in the room and make the volume loud enough to protect him from these sounds • Remove all stimulating toys from your child’s crib or bed, which can be distracting once the sun enters his room. • If you are checking in on your child within the last hour before his wake time, your interaction may prevent him from returning to sleep. Don’t check on him if it’s less than one hour till his wake time. • Make sure the bedtime is not too late for your child’s age. Adjust the bedtime earlier by 15-minute increments, and watch what happens in the morning. In doing so, you will allow your child to sleep later, as he is less overtired at bedtime. If he does wake earlier, return to your previous bedtime. If moving the bedtime earlier has no effect on the wake time, you may want to consider using the earlier bedtime anyway to help your child get the right amount of night sleep for his age. • Make sure your child is not hungry. If you have a child under 12 months and have newly begun to wean feedings, you may want to slow the process down to give him more time to adjust. Moreover, be careful to ensure that you are offering the breast or bottle more often during the day to help him transition his previous nighttime feeds to the daytime, so he won’t be hungry going down for sleep at night. This an affiliate article to help out any parents

https://medium.com/@georgespencer296/my-child-is-an-early-bird-can-i-do-something-about-it-2f5a70f311b1

['Spencer George']

2020-12-22 16:21:13.068000+00:00

['Sleep', 'Parenting', 'Baby', 'Health', 'Parenting Advice']

How retirement was meant to be

There we were, two couples sitting around a table at 10 o’clock on a beautiful but sultry Monday morning playing cards. Our only objective was to win the game. Nana Neva and I had taken an extended weekend break from our part-time grand-parenting duties to explore a less-familiar area of Virginia with another retired couple. We had worked all of our lives to reach this point. Playing cards followed by a round of dominoes seemed like the perfect way to begin a new week, especially on a hot and muggy morning. We played until lunch and then walked down the slanting limestone driveway to a cozy eatery in a marina for some fabulous homemade ice cream. Choosing which flavor became the toughest decision we made all day. The location had much to do with our buoyant attitude. We had rented a cottage situated on a point overlooking a human-made lake where the dam generated hydroelectricity. The lake was long and narrow, the product of a few creeks damned up to fill steep valleys in southern Virginia. Such a project brought more natural benefits than producing power. Wildlife thrived. Each morning and evening a resident bald eagle perched on a favorite snag, often on the same limb a quarter of a mile across the bay from us. We had a perfect view from our deck that faced the water, made murky by a series of recent heavy rains. Before breakfast, I spotted an osprey perched on a dead pine farther up the narrow bay. The “fish hawk” stood tall and stately in the morning mist. Pileated woodpeckers called and flew back and forth across the water, too, landing if only briefly in the sizable wild cherry tree in our front yard along the shoreline. An eastern kingbird, a much smaller species, chased the much larger woodpecker upon every approach. Fierceness is the kingbird’s nature. The ripe fruit of the lakeside tree drew songbirds, too. The kingbird didn’t seem to be as bothered by the Carolina chickadees, tufted titmice, red-bellied woodpeckers, and even young redheaded woodpeckers. I could have stayed there all day to watch that show. The previous day we ventured to Rocky Mount, the county seat where my maternal grandparents were born. We researched family records in the historical society. The lilt and soft, southern accent of our hostess could have been my grandmother’s. In the process, I was a boy again, standing in the hot Virginia sun inserting a nickel into a parking meter for my father. Dad had to finish the task because I wasn’t strong enough to turn the knob so the coin would activate the meter. The street meters have long disappeared, just like the department store where a relative had worked. We visited the Booker T. Washington National Monument where the famous educator was born and freed as a slave. The sweltering heat and humidity made it easy to envision the slaves toiling in the parched fields. Back at the cottage, boats rippled the reflected sunset as they headed in for the evening. Spiders devoured gnats trapped in the delicate webs on the deck just as a young eagle glided across the dusk’s burnished light. This is what retirement was meant to be. We are grateful to be at this phase of our lives. That said a palpable quietude subdued any thought of celebration. Too many others would not know the same joy and appreciation. Empathy should temper our golden years. Compassion must rule the way to ensure a purposeful retirement.

https://brucestambaugh.medium.com/how-retirement-was-meant-to-be-ac4216b716b5

['Bruce Stambaugh']

2018-12-12 16:54:13.041000+00:00

['Writing', 'Essay', 'Travel', 'Retirement']

IDEAL USES OF SMART CONTRACT DEVELOPMENT IN BHOPAL

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Below is that the list ready by sensible corporations of best sensible contract firms to cater your wants. SMART CONTRACT improvement Because the sensible contracts square measure joined to blockchain, the information becomes changeless and so the necessity for third party is eliminated, that thereby automates business method and hamper additional prices. Osiz technologies, a supposed sensible contract development company deliver top of the range sensible contract solutions for start-ups to enterprises. Our professionals square measure updated to the earth category technologies, together with new innovations in blockchain technology. whether or not it’s building sensible contracts for your existing blockchain or implement new sensible contract for your enterprise, we have a tendency to concentrate on developing self corporal punishment digital contracts, customizable for any style of industries. we provide the foremost correct sensible contract services, to form certain merely|that you just} simply profit with right automation method to cut back budget items and time. Optimizing sensible contracts for value people who square measure engaged on Blockchain, particularly on Ethereum, should have detected concerning sensible Contracts. Optimizing sensible contracts for value. people who square measure engaged on Blockchain, particularly on Ethereum, should have detected concerning sensible Contracts. whereas writing contract code we’ve to be terribly careful otherwise, a user will end up losing plenty of Gas. Overview: A developer has to be terribly careful whereas writing these contracts, otherwise, the user/creator of those contracts might end up losing several Gas. And someday, it’s about to exceed the block gas limit additionally and in such cases, those contracts will not even get deployed on the network. to look at ‘block gas limit’ construct, please look here. in brief it defines the utmost quantity of gas all transactions among the entire block combined square measure allowed to consume. The developer should understand these operations and therefore the means abundant they consume gas. Bottom line is to put in writing down optimized contract code. And to undertake to that, the developer ought to be at home with ‘opcodes’. Let’s look at variety of those directions and perceive their behaviour.

https://medium.com/@digital91705/ideal-uses-of-smart-contract-development-in-bhopal-71d71cf4390c

[]

2021-06-17 11:12:03.502000+00:00

['Smart Contracts', 'Smart Contract Tron', 'Smart Contract Platforms']

AYS Daily Digest 09/01/20: New Report on actors and situation in Syria

GENERAL Frotex published a press release stating that, “the number of irregular border crossings detected on the European Union’s external borders last year fell to the lowest level since 2013 due to a drop in the number of people reaching European shores via the Central and Western Mediterranean routes.” We know that these numbers are a result only of push-backs at sea; detention centers in horrendous conditions in Libya, run by war lords and financed by EU; the horrible situation in the camps in Greece; and violent push-backs along the Balkan boarders. Find the full press release here: SEARCH AND RESCUE AT SEA The Sea Watch 3 rescued 77 people in two operations in the last two days. Alarmphone was further informed yesterday evening about a boat in distress with 41 people, amongst them many children. The boat was located within the Maltese SAR zone. Alarm phone informed the Maltese authorities. The people on board were desperate, Alarmphone reports. Water was entering the boat. “The sea is so big, and our boat is too small, we are afraid to die.” they said. No updates yet on their situation. Aegean Boat Report reported of one boat that landed on Lesvos despite bad weather conditions, carrying 57 people. BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA Bihać A month after the closure of Vucjak, members of the Red Cross Mobile Teams have actively continued their work on serving migrants in Bihac, but also at all access locations leading to the city. Mobile Teams also work on a daily basis to serve the migrants in the locations where they reside, out of the official IOM-ran camps. The tasks of the Mobile Team are providing food packages, distributing clothing and footwear, and providing first aid, as well as registering migrants at locations in the surrounding area. Tuzla In Tuzla, a new refugee center Man Motel opened its door to 62, soon to be 100 people. It is operated by a local NGO Pomozi.ba, and it serves as a stop-and-go location for people on the move, where they can rest, eat and wash. “What made us very happy about the migrants housed at the Man Motel in Tuzla is their attitude regarding the accommodation itself. The migrants took their own initiative in cleaning the premises, preparing food, washing dishes, laundry, etc.” The center is supposed to support the most vulnerable people amongst the hundreds that are sleeping raw and in squats in and around Tuzla. It provides a place to rest, get treated, recover and have a warm shower for sick and vulnerable men. The center is in need of support, be it hands-on or financially. See there facebook page: Promozi.ba. Sarajevo We have previously reported about the ongoing efforts of the local groups, students and foreign NGOs in the city collecting and distributing clothes, food and other basic necessities to the people stranded outside, in the streets or some provisional accommodation. They need support, primarily in funds, but also men’s clothes, warm shoes, blankets, sleeping bags and such. If you have something and can’t decide what to do or can’t find direct contacts, tell us about it and we will connect you to those who really need it at the moment. For update on the situation in Velika Kladuša, please read our yesterday’s edition of the News Digest. CROATIA In Croatia, AYS Free Shop and integration centre continues activities in the centre and outside of it. Activities include supporting the families who are asylum seekers staying in the reception centre, but also those who are asylees, as well as people outside the system for different reasons. Support is always welcome, even in the smallest amounts such as always-needed hygiene products (shampoo, detergent, washing powder, soaps, shower gels, tooth paste, etc.). Let us know if you have any other ideas and wish to help. DENMARK Following the report of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture on the situation of Danish Detention Centers for Asylum Seekers (see digest 07.1.2020), activist Lene Kjær has send a letter to the Danish ministry of justice and the Danish ministry of Immigration. Lena Kjær has deep first-hand knowledge of many of the inmates and the conditions at Ellebæk. The two centers Ellebæk and Nykobing Falster have been visited in Spring 2019 a part of the investigations for the Country Report on Denmark. The report condems the treatment of asylum seekers as criminal, verbal abuse and one case of excessive use of force, restricted access to open air (30 min a day for female detainees) and other activities, like the denial of access to the detainees mobile phones of basic internet access and much more.

https://medium.com/are-you-syrious/ays-daily-digest-09-01-20-new-report-on-actors-and-situation-in-syria-58dd6b0b4fcf

['Are You Syrious']

2020-01-10 14:26:04.558000+00:00

['Migration', 'Denmark', 'Digest', 'Europe', 'Refugees']

Why Do I Write?. A Sunday summer afternoon. The sun was…

A Sunday summer afternoon. The sun was a little brighter than the other days. Life was the same. It was around 12.30 p.m. Everything was messed up. There was a huge and unkempt pile of clothes on the bed. The unwashed dishes were stinking in the sink. The chair started yelling at me asking to drop him back to his place. And on another side of the jumble, there stood a nice wardrobe and inside it was again a pile of clothes precariously standing and fighting for existence. I had to gather genuine courage to clean it all up! It was nearly 3.15 p.m. The bedsheet was perfectly stretched at every side. White, neat and tidy. The kitchen perfumed. And the wardrobe looked like a well-planned city. Something was still off. So I planned to take a nap. The blades of the fan were turning at its sickest pace and highest volume. I unfolded a rose-printed bedsheet to wrap myself up. As I slowly snuggled in and closed my eyes, I sensed a disturbing silence. Not the usual one. I just shut my eyes to it. But it was stubborn as a mule! It came back. I ignored again. It refused to go. The struggle went on for almost an hour, until, I decided to get up and write. I pulled my diary from the bookrack, turned to a fresh new page and began penning down every random thought that crossed my mind. There were lines in a sequence that were not in sequence. Thoughts were waiting in the queue but they rolled down in no particular order. There was a rush of ideas and emotions flowing through my blood and into the paper. The past, present, and future all laid down there in a non-chronological manner. Pause. I took a long deep breath. A profound sense of relaxation then filled me up from within. The silence felt so comfortable and the mind was cleared. Suddenly, the phone beeped. Nothing much, some app notifications. And as a usual thing, I just clicked on Instagram for no purpose. And to my shocking wonder, I saw a post that said : “The chaos doesn’t end, you kinda’ just become the calm.” It was at that very moment I realized that more than the wardrobe and the kitchen, it was my mind that needed cleaning up. Sometimes, we get so involved with our schedule, the people around us, commitments and obligations, our roles and responsibilities and all the chaos they bring that we almost forget that we have a mind of our own. A mind that needs space and time. A cluttered mind cannot exist, cannot create. And the only way to declutter is feeding it the right thing. The thing that you truly enjoy and value. So I write! What is it that you do every day without any external drive and that fills you up with delight?

https://medium.com/askthebigquestion/feed-your-mind-to-detox-right-e7a6f7b21a61

['Ankita Saha']

2020-01-11 08:53:21.150000+00:00

['Short Story', 'Writing Life', 'Detoxification', 'Mindfulness']

Get Boring Tasks Done Faster So You Can Do More Interesting Things With Your Life: Easy Tips for Procrastinators.

Get Boring Tasks Done Faster So You Can Do More Interesting Things With Your Life: Easy Tips for Procrastinators. Simply Audrey Jun 5·3 min read I am an adult and I do not like doing chores. I either don’t get boring tasks done, or I take an embarrassing amount of time to get them over with. Some people just grit their teeth and get it done. For others these tasks are “meditative; a part of life” they say. I have used some tips over the last few months to help me get things done. If you are a fellow ADHDer or chronic procrastinator you may appreciate these tips even more. *** Time that Sh*t Giphy Time is your friend, friend. I now use time to knock down that to-do list. Here is how it works: Make your usual to-do list. Jot down how many minutes you think it can take to get that task done if you exclusively focus on it. The trick is not to allocate more time than necessary. Do that for all the items on your list. Start your timer according to your estimate Do that task with the goal of getting it down within that amount of time or less. Congrats, you have just gamified your to-do lists….well, kind of. Getting things done is a head game. So why not make it a challenge. Your brain will look for quicker ways to get a task done. *** Use and Abuse Templates If time is your friend, then templates are your ally. If you have a project that you need to get done, but you find yourself staring into the abyss or using planning as procrastination, just use a template (where applicable). If you are concerned that your own creative flare will be missing, iterate after. By using something that already exists, you can complete tasks quicker. By using templates you can use, your creative power somewhere else within the project. *** Don’t Sleep on Delegation; That Is What Fiverr is For Giphy I have gone to several forums where entrepreneurs are asked what is one of their biggest regrets or mistakes that prevented them from accelerating quicker. One of the top mistakes is not delegating. You can choose to do it all, or choose to get it done. If you feel guilty about delegating something because you feel like you should be a superwoman or wonder man (wait, switch that), then tell yourself you are helping the economy or something. Fiverr is a great platform to find people you can delegate tasks to at affordable prices. For example, if you are a content creator it may be better for you to delegate social media graphics to someone so you can focus on creating more content. For work time-consuming tasks, there are people who can do that task much faster at a lower opportunity cost to you. For example, it can take you 2 hours to complete something, but that is 2 hours you could be improving your skills, being with family or doing revenue-generating activities. Try it out and see if it works for you. Do you have some interesting hacks to get tasks done faster?

https://medium.com/@simplyaudrey/get-boring-tasks-done-faster-so-you-can-do-more-interesting-things-with-your-life-easy-tips-for-8fc9e9a66fe1

['Simply Audrey']

2021-06-06 02:21:18.808000+00:00

['Getting Things Done', 'Productivity', 'Task Management', 'Adhd', 'Procrastination']

Who is Who in the Blockchain ecosystem of Finland?

Who are the key influencers in the Finnish Blockchain sphere? Picture via Pixabay by Anastasia Borisova How do you analyze who is who if you want to find key influencers of a certain country Blockchain sphere? Who is who? Who are the movers & shakers? Who are the “brains” and leading people? Disclaimer: Fyggex.com is Finland based limited company and has deep interest in the matter. For the sake of integrity we de-list all our collaborators from the below list. Sources of information Here, as a sample, let us have a look into Finland. Quick research check here to be done with Social media (Twitter & Linkedin), Literature & Academic papers and finally if there is any association or meetup where key people interact. Please note (not 100% sure) avoidance cryptocurrency angle as this text is entirely about Non-currency related Blockchain only Social Media (Real names only, not exchaustive list) Twitter: Anna Juusela, Petri Honkanen, Juha Viitala, Ville Sointu Linkedin: Juhana Hirvilehti, Markus Hautala, Martin Wichmann, Hans Kärtner, Antti Osara, Vesa Lähdemäki, Mika Honkasalo, Olli Muukka, Jarmo Suoranta, Teijo Peltoniemi, Sven Martinsson, Tuomo Haukkovaara, Sampo Tervomaa, Mikko Alasaarela, Matti Timonen, Ville Hilmola, Riku Wiitala, Esa Niiranen, Anniina Saarinen, Dmytro Naumenko, Svante Lehtonen, Mika Romanoff, Hannu Valkonen, Suvi Nummipuro, Juha Nokelainen, Lauri Peltonen, Ben Sheppard, Janne M. Korhonen …& still very many others 2. Literature: Books & research Antti Innanen, Mikko Eerola, Juha Viitala, Patrik Johansson: Lohkoketju Wille Kuutti: Kryptovaluutat ja lohkoketjut, mahdollisuus vai uhka? Henter Eloranta: Lohkoketjut kryptovaluutoissa Arto Holopainen: Lohkoketju, Digitalisaatio Sami Karhunen: Lohkoketju ja älykkäät sopimukset Vesa-Matti Lahti: Lohkoketju muuttaa maailmaa Markus Rahkola: Katsaus Lohkoketjuteknologioiden hyödyntämiseen Suomessa Erno Seppänen: Lohkoketjujen potentiaali ja tulevaisuus Henrik Suikkanen: Economic and Institutional Implications of Blockchain 3. Associations and other institutions Blockchain forum Finland: Jay Hamideh, Tomi Dahlberg, Mikko Valjakka, Juhani Strömberg, Markus Lehtonen, Teemu Rissanen, Anita Kalergis, Jussi Simolin, Henrik Keinonen, Lari Iso-Anttila & Pertti Reponen Lohkoketju Laboratorio (University of Jyväskylä) Conclusion: Who is who? Despite the impression of Linkedin giving over 40 pages of people in Finland with Blockchain skills, the real circles are relatively small. If you reach out to the people mentioned here, they will know most likely common names who lead the Finnish blockchain scene. One might criticize the above list that it is the Government and Big corporates who lead the game, they are the ultimate locomotives or show stoppers of any serious local development. In that sense one might need to ask are there any major Finnish large multinationals embrace Blockchain technology today? In the finance sector Tieto,OP group, Nordea bank & Privanet had a joint share distribution development project but it has not reached daylight yet as commonly used system, has it? TietoEvry is the largest Finnish company with a Blockchain practise From the Public Sector side, the capital of Finland, Helsinki invests in Helsinki Blockchain center and sets up the scene. The Parliament has ordered special report about practical implementations. But from another perspective, who needs national boundaries anymore on the age of internet? Blockchain customers, partners and provides can operate globally from anywhere, as the very idea is to be decentralized across the nodes. Therefore, more important than Finland might be to analyze the nodes. Which cities around the world are those network nodes that gather most Blockchain talent and companies to themselves as magnets of the development?

https://medium.com/@fyggex/who-is-who-in-the-blockchain-ecosystem-of-finland-40c13667fe35

['Kari Syrja']

2020-12-28 20:25:44.387000+00:00

['Blockchain', 'Blockchain Technology', 'Blockchain Application', 'Blockchain Startup', 'Blockchain Development']

Candid Holiday Photos from the Turn of the 20th Century

The Camden photographs invite viewers into the world. From a low vantage point, we see as people sit on grass, smile, and gallivant. Hills, harbors, beaches, houses, and more serve as backgrounds for the family members and friends in the historic tableaus. Flames force change The Camden we see in Theresa’s pictures is a changed place. Only a few years prior, on November 10 1892, a great fire had started in a wooden block on Main Street, then spread out before any help arrived on the scene. Even after firefighters arrived, the hydrants’ water pressure did not stop the conflagration. A strong wind drove the fire across ten business blocks. Finally, with the aid of the Rockland steamer and a snowstorm, the people put a stop to the fire’s sprint. Ruins included the halls of the Odd Fellows, Masonic, and fifty businesses. Few residential properties were damaged, though. In the aftermath, a town meeting passed a law prohibited the construction of wooden buildings in the business district of Camden. Main Street in Camden (July 1898). By Camden Public Library from Flickr (No known copyright restrictions). Thus, although the photos depict smiles, a traumatic event had scarred the village’s landscape. Out of this tragedy came a revitalization. The Camden Opera House, a 500-seater multipurpose theatre, was one of the first buildings to grace a rejuvenated business district. Various other brick buildings would also spring up in the center of the village. Seaward gazes Because of its coastal location, shipbuilding would be a logical industry for Camden, Maine. Captain William McGlathry established the area’s earliest recorded shipyard near the end of the 18th century. In the next century, several shipyards built various types of ships. The clipper ships of Captain Joseph Stetson, in particular, gained great fame because of their great speed. People attend the launching of the 5-masted schooner “Jennie French Potter” (1899). Edited by the author. By Camden Public Library from Flickr (No known copyright restrictions). As well as being sources of wealth, the shipyards were also attractions in of themselves. People would visit the spaces to see the massive hulks take shape right before their eyes. Of course, the completed vessels also facilitated trade with other places, therefore they could also be representations of prosperity itself. A slice of time

https://historyofyesterday.com/candid-holiday-photos-from-the-turn-of-the-20th-century-cfee8acb22c1

['C.S. Voll']

2021-12-17 18:02:19.942000+00:00

['Society', 'Photography', 'Photos', 'History', 'Art']