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Adapt to the distance with AviaHire integration and solutions | Adapt to the distance with AviaHire integration and solutions
Now that the pandemic has taken full form, how do employers keep their team integrated amidst the distance and achieve the same results as before? Read on to find out! Aviahire Follow Dec 23, 2020 · 5 min read
There are certain things that are beyond human control!
The pandemic has taught this very well to all of us. Everyone was placed in situations uncalled for, some more than the others, and somehow everyone managed to emerge with the most innovative solutions. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way businesses used to function and has paved the way for increasing remote work. Adapting to this distance has now become the biggest challenge for most employers and employees. Conference calls, virtual meetings, and online working have become trends. We wait out uncertainty, hoping that organizations can aspire to come out of this as even more resilient businesses, with stronger cultures, and as better teams. So how should companies successfully utilize this distance to achieve the same before-COVID level of success?
Here’s a guide for all the working individuals to get used to this growing mode of work-from-home with easy to adopt solutions to problems!
Problem: Working collaboratively
Due to this increasing distance, working in collaboration with the entire team has become an issue for companies, who find it confusing, concerning integrating the entire team on one particular platform. Checking the availability of all the employees, fixing on meeting schedules, and organizing online conferences has become an almost every day task now, but there is always one individual for whom it is not the best time of the day, leading to awkward situations.
Solution
The easiest way out of this is to use applications such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Google Meet, etc that provide the options for scheduling video calls and meets with the entire team on board. Interviewing and hiring candidates via these online platforms has also become very common these days. They are much more economical and easy to execute as compared to physical interviews.
To make your work easier, Aviahire’s integrations with multiple video conferencing platforms enable recruiters and candidates to gain a vivid experience and enjoy hassle-free video conferences and collaborations.
Problem: Remote Hiring
Another important difficulty that almost all companies are facing these days is recruiting new talent online. With the option of physically screening candidates not viable amidst the pandemic, companies need to think of new ways to process applications, conduct interviews, and select the right talent for their companies.
Solution
With modern technologies in place, there is no need for recruiters to worry about hiring anymore. An Applicant tracking system allows recruiters to carry out all the processes of hiring in almost a few clicks. Right from posting of jobs, parsing resumes, scheduling interviews to sending offer letters- an applicant tracking system does it all. AviaHire’s Video proctoring allows recruiters to screen candidates online save it as a form of a document attached to the candidate’s profile. Not only tests which involve answering questions by selecting options or typing the answer, but it also has the additional option to create a question to which candidates have to record their video in the form of an answer. Aviahire’s integration with multiple job boards as well as video conferencing applications makes the work easier.
Problem: Onboarding Candidates
Integrating new employees into the organization becomes difficult when you are not present in the office physically. How would you as an employer make sure that the new employees get to know their team members, get used to the new work culture and their team members know them as well?
Solution
The best solution to this problem is having digital onboarding for candidates. Digital onboarding leverages the availability of digital tools and technology to make the onboarding process as cost-effective and efficient as possible. Digital tools also provide new hires with the ability to access information and get answers to questions on a 24/7 basis whenever they need it. Integrating the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) with the Human Resource Information System (HRIS) can also prove to be beneficial for employers as it can simply transfer information from one system to another. This increased transparency and fluidity can have multiple benefits. Managers and employers may also be able to access needed information from a single point, instead of having to log on to separate systems.
Problem: Candidate Communication
Juggling with all the candidates, their hiring status, and communicating with each person can be overwhelming. But the recruiters must stay in constant touch with all the candidates. The company’s reputation is at stake here and you don’t want to be named as a bad recruiter.
Solution
All you need is an Applicant Tracking System(ATS) which makes 2-way communication easier for you. AviaHire’s ATS feature also uses WhatsApp, your candidate will never miss an update. Once a particular stage of the hiring process is completed an automated email is sent to the candidate’s email id and at the same time, a WhatsApp message is sent to the candidate to check their email. Even if you are using automated mails make sure they have a human touch to them. AviaHire provides its customers with customizable email templates and personalized updates and messages on WhatsApp as well.
Difficulty: Customer Support
Providing proper support and guidance to all the clients of your company is just another step toward being a recruiter. Customers are bound to have numerous doubts and queries regarding the ATS and it is only the company’s responsibility amidst a crisis to address all such queries.
Solution
Be honest with your customers. This is certainly not the time to over-promise or mislead customers. Maintain an open dialogue with them. Tell them your team is equipped to face the situation, but there might be occasional delays. If you’re in e-commerce, and a product shipment has been delayed due to a supply chain bottleneck, tell your customer about it. They’ll understand. AviaHire is proud of answering all queries and questions by customers and providing them with a positive experience. | https://medium.com/aviahire/adapt-to-the-distance-with-aviahire-integration-and-solutions-14c2633e61ed | [] | 2020-12-23 10:35:49.332000+00:00 | ['Work From Home', 'Remote Work', 'Applicant Tracking System', 'Pandemic', 'Human Resources'] |
The Cat Erased My Story | The Cat Erased My Story
I’m not sure I’d open with that if I were you…
I worked in a cubicle once. Or rather, a series of cubicles over almost ten years. Sure, I can say I used to live an exciting and exotic life in Southern California where the sun never stops shining and you can surf and tan all year round and maybe once in awhile see a movie star filling up their gas tank — but for the vast majority of my time it meant going back and forth to work every day, the same as all the other schlubs in all the other colder states, just with more traffic. And in winter, it meant zipping to work before the sun came up and trudging home after it had already gone down.
In all my years slogging for a nationally-recognized insurance company that shall not be named, I never made it into management — which means I did my time stuck smack dab in the middle of institutionally-lit cubeland, not on the outer ring of offices that enjoyed a window and a brief gasp of sunlight.
The Modern Mobile Office
With great thankfulness, I can now say that I operate out of what I like to call a mobile office. The benefits of the mobile office are many, not the least of which is that if you look up from your coffee shop table and see that the sun has come out to surprise everyone during a normally grey and cold Istanbul January, you can quickly pay your bill and dash outside. Yesterday was the first time that ever happened, but a girl can dream.
I walked to the park down the street and sat down, pushed up my sleeves and pulled up my pant legs, and started the serious work of converting sunlight into Vitamin D.
Then Hark, a story idea! I whipped out my computer and started tap-tapping away, when suddenly someone knocked on my cubicle wall.
Marking her territory in case one of the other hundred cats in the park decides to try to claim me.
Istanbul is full of cats. It’s kind of a thing. There’s even a movie about it. In our particular park there’s a series of ramshackle huts we call the cat palace, housing at least a hundred stray cats. But as everyone says, there are very few real strays in Istanbul, they’re mostly well-fed and partly domesticated.
I’ve seen businessmen in suits reach into their briefcase and pull out a bag of cat food while we wait for the ferry, random old guys giving all the new kittens shots on their own dime, and of course the farmers market near our park every Saturday is always a bonanza for them.
How can pets or babies hitting keys at random cause such technological distress?
In only a few brief moments, my new friend managed to add some “zhdkelvn” to the story I was working on, changed my Siri voice back to the original from the soothing British guy I prefer, and opened a new browser. I was so busy trying to get a picture while swatting her away from the keyboard that I was worried she was going to erase my hard drive.
In the past, if I hadn’t been trying to protect my computer, I would have given the sweet cat a little love. But everything is different now — last week I read about two women in Turkey who went blind because of a parasite cats carry and passed on to them. Without petting this one, I was already thinking about how I’d need to bleach my hands and computer when I got home before I touched my daughter.
Maybe a little scratching your leg to finish off...
Today I’m back in the coffee shop, cat-less. Just so you know, that’s not a given. Most cafes on our street have a cat hanging out somewhere, and sometimes you have to push them off the chair to sit down. It’s raining and grey outside, and I’m feeling thankful for my modern mobile office. | https://writingcooperative.com/the-cat-erased-my-story-eeefb67ef8a5 | ['Jodi Cowles'] | 2019-02-01 14:36:11.139000+00:00 | ['Working From Home', 'Mobile Office', 'Writing', 'Cats', 'Writers Life'] |
Which “Miracle on 34th Street” Made You Believe Again? | Believing — accepting something as true — is under constant attack.
At least six different versions of “Miracle on 34th Street” (two in film, two made for TV as well as Broadway and radio versions) show how hard it is to believe in love, relationships — or anything bigger than yourself.
When the original film debuted in 1947, Americans agreed on much, including God, family, and country. Now? Not so much. Polls show 90 percent of Americans celebrate Christmas, but fewer agree on the meaning behind it.
The original 1947 film, featuring Maureen O’Hara, John Payne, and young Natalie Wood, tried to blend romance, comedy, tenderness, and a bit of excitement.
The studio originally didn’t stress the Christmas theme (the film was released in June, and Santa was diminished, wearing civilian garb in the above poster).
The original is considered the classic, one of the best films of all time, and more beloved. Dr. Thomas Graves tells us to look at the image of the little girl with Santa, and we can see what all children see: “She wants to believe….but struggles the way we do.”
“But rather than react to her hesitation, he shines even more,’’ Graves said. “If we can imitate this kind of love…Patient, kind, and not self-serving, we will help many people have a very Merry Christmas.’’
The 1994 remake starring Richard Attenborough, Elizabeth Perkins, and Dylan McDermott, and a young Mara Wilson, is considered “more serious,’’ exploring deeper questions about belief and believing in love, relationships, and faith.
TV Guide called the 1994 remake “curiously depressing,” while Michael Medved, the culture critic, called the same film “the new holiday classic America has been waiting for.”
The impact of divorce and all broken relationships is more obvious:
Dorey Walker (played by Perkins) was married in college to an alcoholic who “took off,” right after their daughter Susan was born, never to be heard from again. The divorced Dorey is filled with “bitter thoughts… dragging” her child with her.
Dorey focuses on knowing “the truth and always being truthful with others and, more importantly, with yourself. Believing in myths and fantasies just makes you unhappy.’’
She teaches her daughter not to believe in anything or anyone, including Santa Claus, but her daughter, Susan, pushes back when she encounters Kris Kringle.
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” ― Philip K. Dick.
Dorey tells young Susan, “Now, I’ve told you the truth, but if I’m wrong, I will be glad to admit it. I’ll tell you what. You ask Mr. Kringle for something that you would never ask me for, and if on Christmas morning, you don’t get it, you will know once and for all the truth about Santa Claus.’’
Non-believers “doomed for a life dominated by doubt’’
Kris Kringle, aka Santa, tells Dorey: “I’m a symbol. I’m a symbol of the human ability to suppress the selfish and hateful tendencies that rule the major part of our lives. If you can’t believe, if you can’t accept anything on faith, then you’re doomed for a life dominated by doubt.’’
He then takes the unbelief as a challenge, adding, “I think you’ll make an excellent test case for me, you, and your daughter. If I could make you believe, then there’d be some hope for me. If I can’t… Well, I’m finished.”
Kris Kringle then makes Susan, Dorey's Christmas wishes, and Dorey’s boyfriend Bryan a top priority, going further than his character went in the 1947 version.
“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it.” ― J. M. Barrie, “Peter Pan.”
Dorey’s lack of belief in Santa, aka Father Christmas, extends to all father figures, including potential mates. When her boyfriend Bryan proposes, she rejects him with a cold denunciation of marriage and all relationships.
“Have I ever given you any sign that I wanted to marry you?’’ she declares. “Then, tell me, whatever possessed you to make a presumption?
Like most people in secular America, we tend to believe what we want to believe “and disregard the rest.”
“I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck.” — Neil Gaiman, American Gods.
Bryan tells Dorey, “You know, I’ve done everything I could to try to make you happy. I love your daughter like she’s my own. I loved you, getting nothing in return, never asking for anything in return. I put my faith in you.’’
Dorey shoots the wounded man harder in the heart, telling him in disgust, “Well, if that’s true, then you’re a fool.’’
“To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.” ― Mahatma Gandhi.
The Post Office and dollar bill show America believes more
Bryan (called Fred in the original) is the lawyer who makes the legal case for Santa. In the 1947 film, Fred uses the U.S. Post Office, delivering mail to Kris to make the case that the federal government recognizes him as real. In the 1994 version, Bryan hands the judge a dollar bill, circling “In God We Trust.’’
If the federal government sanctions believing in God, a higher power above government, the judge concludes, who was the court to doubt another traditional belief?
“All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson.
The arc of the entire remake uses the story of Santa aka St. Nicholas, as a metaphor for God, showing the skeptics as negative, angry, and down. At the same time, true believers are shown as more loving, hopeful, and joyful.
Faith, believing in something bigger than yourself, is shown to be the true spirit of Christmas. Believing in love, relationships, and giving to others are the fruits of that belief.
We ultimately see believer Bryan make his most convincing case for love after midnight Mass in a Catholic Church, leading to every dream coming together.
“If you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything.”― Gordon A. Eadie. | https://medium.com/the-partnered-pen/which-miracle-on-34th-street-made-you-believe-again-2ae7e71defc0 | ['Joseph Serwach'] | 2020-12-14 15:06:24.168000+00:00 | ['Film', 'Faith', 'Culture', 'Relationships', 'Psychology'] |
Intro to Feature Selection Methods for Data Science | Intro to Feature Selection Methods for Data Science
A guide to making data more manageable
Authored by: Ryan Farmar, Ning Han, Madeline McCombe
Photo by Eugenio Mazzone on Unsplash
What is feature selection?
Well, let’s start by defining what a feature is. A feature is an X variable in your dataset, most often defined by a column. Many datasets nowadays can have 100+ features for a data analyst to sort through! That is a ridiculous amount to process normally, which is where feature selection methods come in handy. They allow you to reduce the number of features included in a model without sacrificing the predictive power. Features that are redundant or irrelevant can actually negatively impact your model performance, so it is necessary (and helpful) to remove them. Imagine trying to learn to ride a bike by making a paper airplane. I doubt you’d get very far on your first ride.
Benefits of feature selection
The main benefit of feature selection is that it reduces overfitting. By removing extraneous data, it allows the model to focus only on the important features of the data, and not get hung up on features that don’t matter. Another benefit of removing irrelevant information is that it improves the accuracy of the model’s predictions. It also reduces the computation time involved to get the model. Finally, having a smaller number of features makes your model more interpretable and easy to understand. Overall, feature selection is key to being able to predict values with any amount of accuracy.
Overview
There are three types of feature selection: Wrapper methods (forward, backward, and stepwise selection), Filter methods (ANOVA, Pearson correlation, variance thresholding), and Embedded methods (Lasso, Ridge, Decision Tree). We will go into an explanation of each with examples in Python below.
Wrapper methods
Wrapping methods compute models with a certain subset of features and evaluate the importance of each feature. Then they iterate and try a different subset of features until the optimal subset is reached. Two drawbacks of this method are the large computation time for data with many features, and that it tends to overfit the model when there is not a large amount of data points. The most notable wrapper methods of feature selection are forward selection, backward selection, and stepwise selection.
Forward selection starts with zero features, then, for each individual feature, runs a model and determines the p-value associated with the t-test or F-test performed. It then selects the feature with the lowest p-value and adds that to the working model. Next, it takes the first feature selected and runs models with a second feature added and selects the second feature with the lowest p-value. Then it takes the two features previously selected and runs models with a third feature and so on, until all features that have significant p-values are added to the model. Any features that never had a significant p-value when tried in the iterations will be excluded from the final model.
Backward selection starts with all features contained in the dataset. It then runs a model and calculates a p-value associated with the t-test or F-test of the model for each feature. The feature with the largest insignificant p-value will then be removed from the model, and the process starts again. This continues until all features with insignificant p-values are removed from the model.
Stepwise selection is a hybrid of forward and backward selection. It starts with zero features and adds the one feature with the lowest significant p-value as described above. Then, it goes through and finds the second feature with the lowest significant p-value. On the third iteration, it will look for the next feature with the lowest significant p-value, and it will also remove any features that were previously added that now have an insignificant p-value. This allows for the final model to have all of the features included be significant.
The benefits of the different selection methods above is that they give you a good starting point if you have no intuition about the data and what features may be important. Also, it effectively selects a model with significant features from a large amount of data. However, some drawbacks are that the methods do not run through every single combination of features, so they may not end up with the absolute best model. Also, it can result in a model with high multicollinearity (inflated beta coefficients due to relationships among features), which is not great for predicting accurately.
Filter methods
Filter methods use a measure other than error rate to determine whether that feature is useful. Rather than tuning a model (as in wrapper methods), a subset of the features is selected through ranking them by a useful descriptive measure. Benefits of filter methods are that they have a very low computation time and will not overfit the data. However, one drawback is that they are blind to any interactions or correlations between features. This will need to be taken into account separately, which will be explained below. Three different filter methods are ANOVA, Pearson correlation, and variance thresholding.
The ANOVA (Analysis of variance) test looks a the variation within the treatments of a feature and also between the treatments. These variances are important metrics for this specific filtering method because we can determine whether a feature does a good job of accounting for variation in the dependent variable. If the variance within each specific treatment is larger than the variation between the treatments, then the feature hasn’t done a good job of accounting for the variation in the dependent variable. To carry out an ANOVA test, an F statistic is computed for each individual feature with the variation between treatments in the numerator(SST, often confused with SSTotal) and the variation within treatments in the denominator. This test statistic is then tested against the null hypothesis ( H0 : Mean value is equal across all treatments) and the alternative ( Hα : At least two treatments differ).
The Pearson correlation coefficient is a measure of the similarity of two features that ranges between -1 and 1. A value close to 1 or -1 indicates that the two features have a high correlation and may be related. To create a model with reduced features using this correlation coefficient, you can look at a heatmap (like the one shown below) of all the correlations and pick the features that have the highest correlation with the response variable (Y variable or the predictor variable). The cutoff value of high correlation vs low correlation depends on the range of correlation coefficients within each dataset. A general measure of high correlation is 0.7 < |correlation| < 1.0. This will allow the model that uses the features selected to encompass a majority of the valuable information contained in the dataset.
The response variable for this dataset SalePrice (top row) shows the correlation with the other variables. The light orange and dark purple show high correlations.
Another filter method of feature reduction is variance thresholding. The variance of a feature determines how much predictive power it contains. The lower the variance is, the less information contained in the feature, and the less value it has in predicting the response variable. Given this fact, variance thresholding is done by finding the variance of each feature, and then dropping all of the features below a certain variance threshold. This threshold could be 0 if you only want to remove features that have the same value for each instance of the response variable. However, to remove more features from your dataset, the threshold could be set to 0.5, 0.3, 0.1, or another value that makes sense for the distribution of variances.
As mentioned previously, sometimes interactions could be useful to add to your model, especially when you suspect that two features have a relationship that can provide useful information to your model. An interaction can be added to a regression model as an interaction term, shown as a B3X1X2. The beta coefficient (B3) modifies the product of X1 and X2, and measures the effect of the model of the two features (Xs) combined. To see if an interaction term is significant, you can perform a t-test or F-test and look to see if the p-value of the term is significant. One important note is that if the interaction term is significant, both lower order X terms must be kept in the model, even if they are insignificant. This is to preserve the X1 and X2 as two independent variables rather than one new variable.
Embedded Methods
Embedded methods perform feature selection as a part of the model creation process. This generally leads to a happy medium between the two methods of feature selection previously explained, as the selection is done in conjunction with the model tuning process. Lasso and Ridge regression are the two most common feature selection methods of this type, and Decision tree also creates a model using different types of feature selection.
Occasionally you may want to keep all the features in your final model, but you don’t want the model to focus too much on any one coefficient. Ridge regression can do this by penalizing the beta coefficients of a model for being too large. Basically, it scales back the strength of correlation with variables that may not be as important as others. This takes care of any multicollinearity (relationships among features that will inflate their betas) that may be present in your data. Ride Regression is done by adding a penalty term (also called ridge estimator or shrinkage estimator) to the cost function of the regression. The penalty term takes all of the betas and scales them by a term lambda (λ) that must be tuned (usually with cross validation: compares the same model but with different values of lambda). Lambda is a value between 0 and infinity, although it is good to start with values between 0 and 1. The higher the value of lambda, the more the coefficients are shrunk. When lambda is equal to 0, the result will be a regular ordinary least squares model with no penalty.
This shows how Ridge regression can adjust some of the large coefficients found in linear regression by making them closer to zero.
As the value of lambda (alpha) increases, the coefficients are pushed toward zero with at the cost of MSE.
Lasso Regression is another way to penalize the beta coefficients in a model, and is very similar to Ridge regression. It also adds a penalty term to the cost function of a model, with a lambda value that must be tuned. The most important distinction from Ridge regression is that Lasso Regression can force the Beta coefficient to zero, which will remove that feature from the model. This is why Lasso is preferred at times, especially when you are looking to reduce model complexity. The smaller number of features a model has, the lower the complexity. In order to force the coefficients to zero, the penalty term added to the cost function takes the absolute value of the beta terms instead of squaring it, which when trying to minimize the cost, can negate the rest of the function, leading to a beta equal to zero.
An important note for Ridge and Lasso regression is that all of your features must be standardized. Many functions in Python and R do this automatically, because the lambda must be applied equally to each feature. Having one feature with values in the thousands and another with decimal values will not allow this to happen, hence the standardization requirement.
Another common way to model data with feature selection is called Decision Tree, which can either be a regression tree or classification tree depending on whether the response variable is continuous or discrete, respectively. This method creates splits in the tree based on certain features to create an algorithm to find the correct response variable. The way the tree is built uses a wrapper method inside an embedded method. What we mean by that is, when making the tree model, the function has several feature selection methods built into it. At each split, the function used to create the tree tries all possible splits for all the features and chooses the one that splits the data into the most homogenous groups. In plain terms, it chooses the feature that can best predict what the response variable will be at each point in the tree. This is a wrapper method since it tries all possible combinations of features and then picks the best one.
The most important features in predicting the response variable are used to make splits near the root (start) of the tree, and the more irrelevant features aren’t used to make splits until near the nodes of the tree (ends). In this way, decision tree penalizes features that are not helpful in predicting the response variable (embedded method). After a tree has been made, there is an option to go back and ‘prune’ some of the nodes that do not provide any additional information to the model. This prevents overfitting, and is usually done through cross validation with a holdout test set.
Summary
So, now that you made it through all that, what is the most important idea to take away? Even though a dataset may have hundreds to thousands of features, that doesn’t mean that all of them are important or useful. Especially now that we live in a world with unimaginable amounts of data, it is important to try to focus on the bits that matter. There are many more (complex) ways to perform feature selection that we haven’t mentioned here, but the methods described are a great place to start! Good luck, and model on!
Key Vocabulary:
Feature: an x variable, most often a column in a dataset
Feature selection: optimizing a model by selecting a subset of the features to use
Wrapper method: trying models with different subsets of features and picking the best combination
Forward selection: adding features one by one to reach the optimal model
Backward selection: removing features one by one to reach the optimal model
Stepwise selection: hybrid of forward and backward selection.adding and removing features one by one to reach the optimal model
Filter method: selecting a subset of features by a measure other than error (a measure that is inherent to the feature and not dependent on a model)
Pearson Correlation: a measure of the linear correlation between two variables
Variance thresholding: selecting the features above a variance cutoff to preserve most of the information from the data
ANOVA: (analysis of variance) a group of statistical estimation procedures and models that is used to observe differences in treatment (sample) means; can be used to tell when a feature is statistically significant to a model
Interacting term: quantifies the relationship between two of the features when they depend on the value of the other; alleviates multicollinearity and can provide further insight into the data
Multicollinearity: occurs when two or more independent variables are highly correlated with each other
Embedded method: selecting and tuning the subset of features during the model creation process
Ridge Regression: a modified least squares regression that penalizes features for having inflated beta coefficients by applying a lambda term to the cost function
Lasso Regression: similar to ridge regression, but different in that the lambda term added to the cost function can force a beta coefficient to zero
Decision Tree: a non-parametric model that using features as nodes to split samples to correctly classify an observation. In a random forest model, feature importance can be calculated using mean decrease gini score.
Cross Validation: a method to iteratively generate training and test datasets to estimate model performance on future unknown datasets | https://towardsdatascience.com/intro-to-feature-selection-methods-for-data-science-4cae2178a00a | ['Madeline Mccombe'] | 2019-06-07 14:28:29.448000+00:00 | ['Towards Data Science', 'Feature Selection', 'Machine Learning', 'Python', 'Data Science'] |
How We Can All Read More Books in 2021 | Plot Twist: I’m not a massive reader, I’ll be honest. But, don’t shoot me just yet. It’s not that I don’t want to read, it’s that somewhere along the line, life just sort of got, well, busy 🤷🏻♂️ I’m sure you can relate.
When I was a kid, time was in abundance. I mean literally, the days felt endless. It may well be in abundance now, it just feels like I have less of it to do the things that I feel I really want to do. I know, bad time management. But, me and my partner have just had a little girl, she’s now 5 months old. I’m still trying to figure out how to be the father she needs me to be and also what to do with my life, while simultaneously trying to pursue all of my dreams, build a business, build a life and stay sane with a bank balance that wants me to do the opposite. Margo, my Golden Retriever is constantly swaying my hand to take her on the longest walks. We do live in the English Lakes though, so I mean, can you really blame her? I mean, look at it. JUST. LOOK. AT. IT:
Blea Tarn looking over to Langdale — Copyright Ben Ravetta Creative 2020
And, at the time of writing this, it’s Winter in the UK. That means that the days are about 1 second long. If you blink once, it’s over. By the time I’ve woken up from a groggy 4 hours of scattered sleep, it’s almost sunset. OK, I’m exaggerating slightly, but really - time seems to slip away from me lately. My days feel like I’m on full tilt, doing stuff for other people. Time is never my own. So sitting down and reading a book seems alien. When will I get the time? I have 600 things to do. Before I know it, it’s another day, with another 600 things to do. “Oh, shit yeah. I still need to finish Edward Snowden’s book. I’ll do that tomorrow…”
If you feel like me, and can barely get a minute to yourself. Let me show you my plan for 2021. It’s genius. I can’t believe I’ve never thought of this before.
Amazon.
Photo by Super Straho on Unsplash
Yes, my friends. Amazon is the key, to how we’re all going to read more books in 2021. I hear you, brothers. I hear you. You’re saying, “What the fuck is this guy talking about?”. But wait, before you jet on out of here (and clap this post on your way out 🙃👉🏻) just give me a hot second.
I figured there’s 12 months in a year, right? Jan through to December. Convieniently, I’m writing this post up in December 2020 (Yes, it’s finally over guys 🥳) which gives me a few weeks until the New Year, but you can start this any time. So, as part of my New Year resolutions, I have promised myself to read one book per month. I’m not going to push myself too much, because I know if I promise to read one book a week, it’s just not going to happen. So, one book a month. Seems easy enough. Start off slow. Ease back into it. It gives me 30 days (give or take a day or two) to read one book. If I can’t do that well, fuck me, right?
But I have no books. Of course, I’m lying. I have books. I have a fucking shit ton of self-help books that are just waiting to be read. Audiobooks coming out of my eyes — but those will have to wait. It’s not going to work using those books. No. We need something else. Something new. New books. An incentive each month, to pick up a book and read it. And this, my friends, is where the master plan really takes off.
Preorders.
My January Book — Animal Farm in paperback
I sat down one day and started browsing the books section on Amazon. Specifically, the “Next 90 Days” section. This is great, a section just for books releasing within the next 90 days. Now, the goal isn't to read anything specific. It’s just to read. That’s it. So, I started searching for stuff I thought I’d enjoy. Fiction novels, fantasy novels, real books. You know, the kind you can really get lost in. I’ve always read self-help books. Of course, you can have 100 million self-help books on business and things like The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck and whatever other stuff you can find out there. But it’s not really a book book, you know? It’s not going to keep me glued. You might be different and that’s fine, the same principle will apply.
Simply find a book that releases in each future month and do this for 12 months. One for January, one for February, one for March, etc. you get the idea. As I said previously, it doesn’t matter what month you begin, so long as you map out 12 books for the 12 months ahead. This will help keep you accountable and at the end of the year, you can be proud that you accomplished a whole year of reading. You don’t pay for them right away, you pay for them when they’re dispatched and if the price changes, you will always pay the lowest price it ever was. So no nasty suprises. It’s simply a case of setting this up for your future (extremely busy) self. When that book lands on your doorstep, right out of the blue. You’ll look inward and thank your past-self. You’ll sit down, you’ll find time to read your new book. You’ll get lost in it. You’ll (hopefully) learn to enjoy reading again. You have a whole month to read it and the beauty of it is, you can do it all again next month. A real “fire and forget” mission. If you find you’re not reading the books, you can cancel the pre-orders you have made, right up until the release date without being charged — no commitment.
But we won’t be doing that now, will we. | https://medium.com/@benravetta/how-we-can-all-read-more-books-in-2021-89ef2078ca3a | ['Ben Ravetta'] | 2020-12-16 02:58:45.131000+00:00 | ['Books', 'Life Hacking', 'Productivity', 'Time Management', 'Reading'] |
ADF Performance Improvement with Nginx Compression | We are using Nginx web server for Oracle ADF WorkBetter hosted demo hosted on DigitalOcean cloud server. Nginx helps to serve web application content fast and offer improved performance. One of the important tuning options — content compression, Nginx does this job well and is simple to setup.
Content compression doesn’t provide direct runtime performance, a browser would run the same code, doesn’t matter it was compressed or not. But it brings improved perceived performance (which is very important), network time is way faster, because of reduced content size. Oracle ADF is a server-side framework, each request would bring content from the server — faster this content comes, means better application performance.
1. Content Compression = OFF
Let see stats, when no content compression applied (using our Oracle ADF WorkBetter hosted demo).
Page load size is 2.69 MB transferred. Finish time 1.55 s:
Navigation to the employee section generates 165.76 KB and finish time 924 ms:
Navigation to employee compensation generates 46.19 KB and finish time 494 ms:
2. Nginx compression
Compression is simple to setup in Nginx. Gzip settings are set in nginx.conf, make sure to list all content types which must be supported for compression. Restart nginx process after new settings are saved in nginx.conf:
3. Content Compression = ON Page load size is 733.84 KB transferred. Finish time 1.48 s:
Navigation to the employee section generates 72.75 KB and finish time 917 ms:
Navigation to employee compensation generates 7.59 KB and finish time 498 ms: | https://medium.com/oracledevs/adf-performance-improvement-with-nginx-compression-8e880c81fec7 | ['Andrej Baranovskij'] | 2019-02-15 23:48:26.182000+00:00 | ['Jsf', 'Jdeveloper', 'Oracle Adf', 'Nginx', 'Performance'] |
What lies beneath… | What lies beneath…
Hi there, I’m Carlos. We may have met before but maybe not. Either way, I’m still happy you stopped by.
So I was sitting down this morning drinking my cup of coffee thinking about what to write for my inaugural post. Technology or dad stuff or startups or the evolution of data and software in the oil and gas industry. Then it hit me. Literally. Right on the teeth.
I was watching the boys (4 and 6), and making breakfast on this fine Wednesday morning while my wife was at work. I made my usual cup of coffee in the Keurig using the coffee mug that I sometimes leave on the machine from the day before (don’t judge me). Well, I loaded a pod, made a cup, added cream and sugar and even stirred it! Deep in thought and an episode of Trolls the TV Show, I drank half the cup before I even noticed.
You see, my wife runs scalding hot water over the brush heads to sanitize them and she had done so before any of us woke up. This gaffe was totally on me.
As I took stock of my life and the situation I wondered what the universe was trying to teach me. What lesson could I glean from this besides the obvious (always look in your cup before you pour something in it) and how could I tie it into things that I’m interested in these days…
When poop happens, sometimes you gotta shrug it off. I went ahead and finished the cup of coffee, toothbrush heads be damned. Again, don’t judge me. It tasted fine.
Relating it to what’s been on my mind a lot recently, if you’re going to build software applications or analytical tools (the coffee) for an industry notorious for sketchy data quality. (Oil and gas) always stay on your toes for freaking toothbrushes or other randomness in your coffee. Is that a stretch? Perhaps, but you’ll learn that I do quite a bit of mental associating. Deal.
Mistakes happen, learn from them and stay humble. You’ll notice the brush heads were in my big MIT mug. Yep, aways stay humble.
All in all, it was an eventful morning. Oh and yes Honey I re-sanitized them but this time I used your mug. | https://medium.com/@carloscantu.3rd/hi-there-im-carlos-19b05120675d | ['Carlos Cantu'] | 2019-11-28 00:55:06.700000+00:00 | ['MIT', 'Oil And Gas', 'Dads', 'Technology'] |
Because, Well, This IS the Year to Know About This | Photo by ray rui on Unsplash
If you and I feel strongly about being an ally, then….
Cultured editor Allison Gaines just saved me a buncha time. I was getting all ready to write about Kwanzaa, and she already did. Here you go:
This holiday, which began in 1966, celebrates African heritage and roots. There is great room for you to be religious, in whatever form you wish, and also celebrate Kwanzaa from today until New Year’s day, without offending anyone’s particular God.
Allison’s article is richly detailed and researched, with far more history than I am offering. I really want you to read her piece. This is just to support her and to ask you to consider educating yourself about this holiday and why, as she says, it really is VERY important right now.
Today is Boxing day, but it’s also something that you and I as White folks can both acknowledge and support. NO it’s not religious. The language is Swahili, which, although that particular language is very widely spoken (and sadly, is forcefully replacing many native dialects in Tanzania, just one country where it’s common), the idea behind it is universal.
Here’s a bit of history for those of us who may not be familiar with the holiday:
First. Well, surprise, not every Black person celebrates Kwanzaa, any more than every person born in Israel celebrates Hanukkah.
Second, not all Africans speak Swahili. While nobody really knows for sure, there are about 1500–2000 languages and dialects. Africa is, well, huge. Languages don’t honor borders, any more than tribes do. It’s a magnificently complex and massive continent.
Kwanzaa is the brainchild and creation of Dr. Maulana Karenga. If you want to see a profile in Black Excellence, please visit:
For my part, Dr. Karenga is the perfect example of the passionate intellectual.
Despite so many beliefs to the contrary, Dr. Karenga is in excellent company. There are a great many extraordinary people just like him from all over Africa who hold multiple degrees, often earned in American institutions (kindly, I’ve met quite a few over the years), and who give absolute lie to the notion that the so-called “dark continent” is peopled primarily by savages boiling white explorers in a cookpot.
If you will kindly please.
This day, and for the next five thereafter, you can, if you choose, join with a great many folks to celebrate and honor principles that we seem to have lost as a nation. We need them badly right now. With a tip of the hat to Alison, here’s what Kwanzaa asks us to honor (this is for those who don’t read the links:
KWANZAA is an African American and pan-African holiday which celebrates family, community and culture. It is based on African first harvest celebrations organized around five fundamental kinds of activities: in gathering of the people; special reverence for the creator and creation; commemoration of the past; re-commitment to the highest cultural values; and celebration of the Good.
I can’t speak for you or anyone else. As we struggle through this day, a day when so very many of our communities of color are facing ruin on top of loss on top of everything else because of a president who would prefer to play golf than lead, who cares more about whether his wife got a fashion magazine cover than to sign a critically important bill that is vastly too little too late…
We need to gather as a nation . We need to humbly have reverence for what created us, and thank All That Is for what led us to today. We badly need to reach to that which is much higher than our base needs, hates and impulses and touch those cornerstones of our collective cultures which make up a nation in terrible need of its people. And we need to celebrate, recognize, acknowledge and speak to the Good that is you, in me, in all of us.
That is Kwanzaa.
I am lighting my candles today. For she is my sister, she is my family, and when she suffers, so do I. So do we all. | https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/because-well-this-is-the-year-to-know-about-this-50bfd822c1b5 | ['Julia E Hubbel'] | 2020-12-28 00:15:37.950000+00:00 | ['Kwanzaa', 'Holidays', 'Society', 'Africa', 'Culture'] |
10 Indian-Christian Women Nation Builders & Freedom Fighters | The Indian Christian community has made disproportionate contributions to the Indian freedom struggle and many other causes meant to uplift the people of India. However the contributions of Indian women to these struggles are often ignored or forgotten. This articles seeks to highlight the lives and accomplishments of 10 Indian Christian women who dedicated their lives to fighting for independence, advocating for social justice or helping to build the institutions of a newly independent India.
Pandita Ramabai Sarasvati (1858–1922)
Born as Rama Dongre, into a Marathi speaking Hindu brahmin family, she received the titles of ‘Pandita’ and ‘Sarasvati’ in 1878 from Calcutta University in recognition of her knowledge of Sanskrit works. It was following the death of her husband in 1882, when she was just 23 years old, that Ramabai, a widow and a single mother, began to dedicate her life to women’s rights.
Following her husband’s death she founded the Arya Mahila Samaj which sought to promote the cause of women’s education and eliminate misogynistic practices such as child marriage. She advocated for the training of women teachers and administrators as a way to ensure equitable access to education, for Indian women, in a society where the overwhelming majority of men still opposed the idea of women’s education.
In 1883, Ramabai travelled to the United Kingdom where she converted to Christianity. She was particularly inspired by the fourth chapter of the Gospel of John in the New Testament. She also travelled to the United States where she gained the support of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. Fun fact, Ramabai is a relative of Anandibai Joshi, one of the first female Indian doctors, and even attended her graduation in 1886.
During a severe famine in 1896, Ramabai travelled through rural Maharashtra on a relief mission, rescuing thousands of vulnerable women and children. This eventually led to the founding of the Mukti Mission which sought to provide a home and refuge for destitute women, children and disabled persons. By 1900, the Mukti Mission was home to nearly 1,500 residents and still operates to this day.
Ramabai was also involved in the Indian Independence Movement and was one of the 10 women delegates to the Indian National Congress in 1889. She was a prolific writer and literary scholar. She authored several books, most notably ‘The High-Caste Hindu Woman’ which detailed misogynistic cultural practices in South Asia such as child brides and the social alienation widows (viewed as cursed or unlucky) endure. She also translated the Bible into Marathi from its original Hebrew and Greek.
Ramabai’s contributions as a nation builder, devout Christian and women’s rights activist have earned her many honors. She was awarded the Kaisari-i-Hindi Medal in 1919 for her community service, has been recognized by the Episcopal Church with a feast day on April 5 in their liturgical calendar and has had commemorative stamps and roads named after her in India.
2. Accamma Cherian (1909–1982)
Accamma Cherian was a Malayalee freedom fighter from Kerala. After completing her university education in 1931, she worked as a teacher eventually becoming the head mistress (principal) before quitting in 1938 to join the State Congress and dedicate herself to the Indian freedom struggle full time.
Cherrian led a mass rally to the Kowdiar Palace demanding an end to the ban on the State Congress and the dropping of charges against its leaders. This eventually led to a stand-off during which a British police chief ordered his men to prepare to fire on the 20,000 marchers assembled. Cherrian intervened an uttered the now famous lines, “I am the leader. Shoot me first before you kill others”. This led to a de-escalation and prevented a massacre. News of her bravery spread across the country and she was nicknamed ‘Jhansi Rani of Travancore’.
Cherrian also founded the Desasevika Sangh, an all woman volunteer group, meant to increase women involvement in the Indian Independence Movement. Her dedication to the cause led her to being imprisoned twice by British officials. She eventually went on to become the acting president of the State Congress in 1942 and was also notable for opposing calls from C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar’s desire to see Travancore be independent from India.
Following independence, Cherian severed in the Travancore Legislative Assembly. She died in 1982 and is memorialized with a statue and park in Trivandum, Kerala.
3. Cornelia Sorabji (1866–1954)
Cornelia Sorabji was the daughter of Rev. Sorabji Karsedji who was a key figure in persuading Bombay University to begin admitting women. She became the first female graduate of Bombay University and then became the first woman to study law at Oxford University.
Upon returning to India in 1894, she played a key role as India’s first woman advocate. The cultural tradition of purdah meant that many Indian women were forbidden to leave their homes, in the name of female modesty, and thus cut off from the broader role. This left women in a vulnerable situation. Sorabji noted that many of these women had been denied inheritances left to them by opportunistic male relatives who knew they could not leave the home or speak to a male lawyer. Sorabji was given permission to enter their please but could not defend them in court as she was not a barrister. Sorabji had bassed the LLB examination, but would not recieve legal recognition as one, until laws were changed in 1923 to allow women to be barristers.
Sorabji began petitioning as early as 1902 that female legal advisors be created to represent women in provincial court. She was appointed to one such position in 1904 in the Court of Wards of Bengal. In this role, Sorabji helped 100s of women and orphans fight legal battles often charging no fees to low-income clients. Sorabji was also involved in several feminist organizations like the National Council for Women in India and the Federation of University Women. Though she opposed to idea of wholesale Westernization, she strongly believed a reform was needed to eliminate negative cultural practices like child marriage and the alienation of widows.
Sorabji was controversial for opposing Indian independence however, fearing that women’s liberation in India was not strong enough to not be undone by religious fundamentalism. This led to her ostracism from several circles and strained her relationship with several other prominent Indian Christian women who were pro-independence.
4. Rajkumari Amrit Kaur (1887–1964)
Amrit Kaur was born into a Punjabi royal lineage with her father being the youngest son of the Raja of Kapurthala, who converted to Christianity and married the daughter of a Bengali missionary. Kaur was the youngest of their 10 children.
Raised as a Protestant Christian she entered the Indian Independence Movement, following the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre when British forces killed 400 peaceful protestors in Amritsar, Punjab. She began actively working in the Indian Freedom Movement as a member of the Congress Party and close associate of Mahatma Gandhi. She also became a strong advocate of women’s rights within the movement campaigning to abolish misogynstic practices such as child marriage, purdah (the segregation and confinement of women inside the home), and the devadasi system.
In 1927, she founded the All India Women’s Conference in 1927 and was jailed by the British authorities for her participation in the Dandhi March, let by Mahatma Gandhi. In 1934 she began living in Gandhi’s ashram, adopting an austere lifestyle that contrasted greatly from the royal luxury she was born into. Amrit Kaur, along with the Tamil economist and freedom fighter J.C. Kumarappa, would go on to be the two Indian-Christians in Gandhi’s inner circle.
She was jailed again in 1937 during a goodwill mission to what is now Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, in Pakistan and was imprisoned once more in 1942 for her involvement in the Quit India Movement. As Indian Independence began to appear on the horizon in the 1940s, Kaur began to advocate for universal suffrage and also served as chairwoman of the All India Women’s Education Fund Association. For these efforts, TIME Magazine declared her the ‘Woman of the Year’ in 1947.
Post-independence, Kaur become an elected representative and severed as Minister of Health for 10 years, during which she led several major public health campaigns to eradicate and limit the spread of malaria and tuberculosis. She also established the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, a collection of medical colleges and research institutes.
Despite her old age, Kaur worked tirelessly to advancing the causes of women’s rights, children’s welfare and improving public health. She was a key founding member of the Indian Council of Child Welfare and chairperson of the Indian Red Cross. On her death in 194, she was a member of the Rajya Sabha and held leadership roles in several public health organizations.
5. Dr. Hilda Mary Lazarus (1890–1978)
Dr. Hilda Mary Lazarus was born in 1890 in what is now Visakhapatnam in what is now Andhra Pradesh in South India. She received her medical degree from Madras Medical College and won a gold medal for her outstanding work in midwifery. She went on the receive a specialization in obstetrics and gynecology in the United Kingdom. She joined the Lady Hardinge Medical College in New Delhi, the only medical college in India that was women only and open to people of all religions.
During her career she dedicated herself to the promotion of women and maternal care. She began learning several new Indian languages, aside from her native Telugu, in order to train more women as nurses and midwives. She eventually went on to serve as Director of Vellore Medical College, authoring a book on her experiences as a doctor.
In 1961 she received the Padma Shri award for who contributions to women and maternal care in India in additional to the Order of the British Empire and Kaisar-i-Hindi Gold Medal from the United Kingdom.
6. Violet Hari Alva (1908–1969)
Violet Hari Alva was a Gujarati Christian freedom fighter and lawyer. The daughter of an Anglican reverend, she was orphaned at age 16, and care for by her adult siblings. She eventually went on to become an English language professor at the Indian Women’s University in Bombay.
In 1944 she became the first woman advocate in India to have argued a case before a full High Court bench. She also began a magazine titled ‘Indian Women’. She would go on to serve as deputy chairman of the Bombay Municipal Corporation and also as the President of the Juvenile Court. All the while she was involved in several organizations such as the Young Women’s Christian Association and the Business and Professional Women’s Association.
Alva also became a supporter of the Indian Independence Movement and a member of Congress and married fellow Indian-Christian freedom fighter, Joachim Alva. Her activities as a freedom fighter would eventually lead to her imprisonment by British authorities in the Arthur Road Jail. During this time, Alva brought her 5 month year old baby son to jail with her.To further support the independence movement she leveraged her experience and ties in the publishing would to create the ‘Forum’ magazine in 1943 which was dedicated to publishing and disseminating pro-independence writings and giving fellow freedom fighters a platform to voice their ideas.
Following independence, Alva served as a member of parliament where she advocated for family planning education and tools to be made more available and expansion to the Indian Navy. She would go on to become the Deputy Minister of State for Home Affairs and then the Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha. She passed away in 1969 and Parliament was adjourned early in her honor. She and her husband were honored in 2007 with a portrait in parliament for being the first parliamentarian couple in Indian history.
7. Constance Prem Nath Dass (1886–1971)
Constance Prem Nath Dass was born into a Punjabi-Protestant family and completed her university education at the University of Allahabad. She went on to become the first Indian woman to sever as the principal of a Christian college in India, at Isabella Thoburn College.
Dass dedicated herself to securing admissions fees for poor and underprivileged people, organizing for donations and providing information on scholarships. She continued this work even during World War II when budgets cuts significantly impacted the ability of many Indian students to pursue their education. She also worked to promoting the expansion and modernization of university education in India.
Dass was also a strong support of the Indian Independence Movement. She was notable for her extremely progressive views on education, believing in a holistic model of learning that strongly emphasized the responsibilities and duties Indian graduates have towards working to build up their country. She believed students from different religious and cultural backgrounds she study together to promote an atmosphere of tolerance and cooperation across communities that would be vital for India’s success as a nation.
8. Dr. Gurubai Karmarkar (?-1932)
It’s not known when Dr. Gurubai Karmarkar was born, however she is of Marathi background. She became the second Indian woman to graduate from the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1886 and returned to India in 1893.
Her medical practice was dedicated to providing care to the poorest and most marginalized people in Indian society. Lower caste people, including so-called “criminal castes”, child brides, widows (seen as cursed) and lepers. She also played an instrumental role in providing medical care during famines and during the 1916 plague outbreak.
Dr. Karamarkar also spoke openly about the evils of cultural practices such as child marriage, discrimination against widows, and casteism. One early incident that impacted her greatly was of a ‘child-bride’ who suffered extreme abuse from her “husband” and “in-laws” which included the branding of her feet to prevent her from running away.
Following her retirement, she donated her personal wealth to open the ‘Dr. Gurubai Karmarkar Wing’ at the Lincoln House in Bombay, India.
9. Neidonuo Angami (1950-Present)
Neidonuo Angami is an Indian social worker from the Northeastern state of Nagaland, home to the Christian tribal Naga people. In 1984, she founded the Naga Mothers’ Association, to address the growing public health challenges of alcholism and drug abuse that were facing the Naga people.
She began by organizing women across Naga tribes with the common goal of addressing the issues of addictions and the social ills it can cause such as domestic violence, crime, family breakdown and the transmission of HIV/AIDS. Shelters and rehabilitation centres for addicts were established along with a clinic and hospice centre for people with HIV/AIDS.
She also began the ‘Shed No More Blood’ campaign which sought to promote national unity and end separatist violence in the state by encouraging insurgents to drop their weapons and join mainstream politics. She played a critical role in the brokering of a ceasefire between the insurgents and government. Her social activism and contributions to peace and national unity have led her to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 and receive the Padma Shri in 2000.
10. Lilavati Singh (1868–1909)
Lilavati Singh was born in what is now Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh to Indian Christian parents. In 1895 she earned a degree in English literature from the University of Allahabad, becoming one of the first two women to earn a degree from the institution.
She would go on to become a professor of literature and philosophy at Isabella Thoburn College becoming one of the first Indian women to become a professor. While teaching, she devoted her energy to inspiring her female students who belonged to the first generation of Indian women to receive a modern education to take advantage of all opportunities they receive in order to achieve their full potential. She would go on to serve as chair of women’s committee of the World Students’ Christian Federation. She also edited a women’s newspaper entitled Rafik-i-Niswan.
Singh realized the importance of Indian Christians developing their own indigenous literature. She dedicated herself to the translation of Christian works into Indian languages and was a strong admirer of the African-American intellectual, Booker T. Washington and translated his biography for publication in the Indian Christian newspaper Kankab-i-Hind.
Singh’s life was cut short by post-surgery complications and she passed away at the age of 40 while on a speaking tour through the United States. A Lilavati Singh dormitory at Isabella Thoburn College was built in her honor. | https://medium.com/@indochristianculture/10-indian-christian-women-nation-builders-freedom-fighters-40ef6715e2d1 | ['Indo-Christian Culture'] | 2021-01-16 16:28:59.487000+00:00 | ['Social Justice', 'Feminism', 'India', 'Christian', 'Women'] |
Fresha’s CEO letter to employees for 2020 Christmas & New Years | Dear Fresha team, with Christmas holidays upon us and this crazy 2020 year drawing to a close, it’s a great time to look back and reflect on what the hell just happened! I feel like everything is still sinking with this never-ending pandemic saga! In the midst of this global insanity with many companies and individuals struggling to survive — together we reached new heights with growth, closed new rounds of investments, added 55 new employees to our strong team of 180 and delivered our most innovative product features yet. Our revenues went from zero back in January to almost $20 million in ARR at the end of the year. We have not just survived this pandemic crisis but we’ve thrived through it. Much of what we achieved and built at Fresha today is based on our obsession to listening and delivering on our customer needs.
I am so proud of you for your achievements and having the courage to push forward and get the job done. I’m so proud of the work you’re all doing to solve big challenges and engineer new innovative solutions that make a big difference to our millions of users around the world. People love our products and services which means they love the work you do. The knowledge you’re making a positive impact on our customer’s lives is a powerful reward — one which I hope you feel during the holiday season and the year ahead, it’s an incredible feeling!
So much has changed this year, I know I have, but one thing has always remained the same, my belief that we can achieve anything we set our minds to and when we believe in each other. I have no doubt that whatever comes next, we can take it on together, as a team. And I know this because today I was reminded of what got me here, HOPE. Hope made us the people we are and the company we want to be. People who take risks and work hard to achieve their goals, people who might inspire others to achieve the impossible and all the other things we wish we could change in this crazy world. Because the thought the mere possibility, the hope and belief that we might succeed is enough for us to keep trying and never give up until we do.
BIG THANKS to our incredibly dedicated and talented Fresha team members, who have worked tirelessly during the pandemic crisis to support the success of our partners worldwide. Also thanks to our customers for allowing us to serve them and our investors and partners for believing in us. Again i’m immensely proud and happy to be part of our epic quest to change the world, both in good times and bad times.
I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year! Please enjoy some well-deserved rest with your family, friends and loved ones during this holiday season. I could not be more excited about what’s in store for next year, and for the opportunity to work with all of you to make it happen. We are just getting started
Best,
William Zeqiri
Founder, CEO | Fresha.com | https://medium.com/@william-zeqiri/freshas-ceo-letter-to-employees-for-2020-christmas-new-years-2882a4a3e635 | ['William Zeqiri'] | 2020-12-27 06:18:41.579000+00:00 | ['Best Salon Software', 'William Zeqiri', 'Salon Software', 'CEO', 'Fresha'] |
Les aventures de Captain User Research en phase de run | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/smile-design-performance/laventure-de-captain-user-research-en-phase-de-run-54b747712d48 | ['Jerome Benaud'] | 2020-12-23 14:01:51.293000+00:00 | ['User Research', 'UX', 'Business'] |
Here’s What Happens When You Diligently Seek the Lord | How God used a laundry basket to build up His disciples
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
I take part in an online Bible study with five other women. We take time out of our busy schedules each week to meet on Zoom for 75 minutes. We each come from different regions in Canada and the US, but distance is no barrier to God.
In last weeks’ session God showed us how faithful He is when we diligently seek Him. Let me share our story with you. May it bless you as it blessed each of us.
Lead me Lord
Our group consists of women from different age groups, and varying socioeconomic status’ and vocations. One thing we do have in common is we love the Lord and we seek to do His will.
As the leader of our Bible study, one of my jobs is to choose what scripture we study each week. After each study I wait patiently for God to speak the next verse or passage into my heart, and He’s not failed me yet. Last weeks verse was from Philippians.
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: (Philippians 2:3–5, NIV)
Simple study outline
We use a study method called the African Bible Study Method were we listen to the chosen passage from at least three different Bible translations. We usually start with a common translation such as the New International Version (NIV) or New King James Version (NKJV).
We like to follow that up with either the Message (MSG) or Amplified (AMP) version. We choose these translations because they elaborate greatly on the text. This allows us a broader interpretation and understanding of what we’re studying.
We end with a less common translation such as the Modern English Version (MEV) or the New Living Translation (NLT). We aim to vary our readings so we experience as many different versions as possible as the weeks go by.
We share what God speaks
After each reading, in turn, we each share what God spoke to us. At first it’s often just a word that catches our attention. The words selfish and humility floated to the top after our first reading of the scripture in the NIV.
We chose the MSG translation for our second go-around.
Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand. Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. (Philippians 2:3–5, MSG)
Themes begin to arise
As we move through the study, instead of words, God often brings phrases to our minds. From the Message version, put yourself aside and forget yourself were what caught most of our attentions. As we each proceeded to shared how God was speaking to us, it became apparent that God was uniting our group in a miraculous way that day.
Speak Lord, for your servant is listening
After the third translation is read, we take approximately 10 minutes to quietly seek God’s face. Our goal is to allow God the time and space to speak directly to our hearts. Some of us turn our audio and/or video off during this time.
As we seek God we ask Him questions like, What do You want me to do or be?, and What am I to change in relation to what You’ve spoken to me so far? In our own unique ways, we humbly approach God for guidance and direction, and He is always faithful to meet up with each of us.
When two or more come together God is there
Our final reading of our chosen scripture for this session was from the MEV translation.
Let nothing be done out of strife or conceit, but in humility let each esteem the other better than himself. Let each of you look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Let this mind be in you all, which was also in Christ Jesus, (Philippians 2:3–5, MEV)
When we came back together after spending time listening for God to speak, we shared what God spoke to each of us. This week, it was like God had a single message which He downloaded to each of us separately. We were all amazed as, in turn, we each shared our experience. This is where things got really interesting.
Disciples serve and spread the good news
Our group consists of six women who are committed to serving others, true disciples of God’s truths, determined to spread the gospel far and wide. That became apparent early on in our time together. Having a humble heart, setting ourselves aside, was often our main focus. We did this, at times, to our own detriment. This was the first truth God spoke to our hearts.
I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, (Ephesians 1:18, NIV)
It became clear to each of us that to serve God and others, it shouldn’t mean we must sacrifice our own peace or resources. Each of us had been trying so desperately to be good disciples, we lost touch with our own needs and sacrificed our own resources. We each admitted to feeling, at times, drained, taken advantage of, even misused by the very people we were serving. This was never God’s intention and He made that clear to each one of us.
In a large house there are articles not only of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay; some are for special purposes and some for common use. Those who cleanse themselves from the latter will be instruments for special purposes, made holy, useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work. (2 Timothy 2:20–21, NIV)
How to do things differently
As each woman shared what God had spoken to her, hearts softened and peace settled on the group. We began to see that a few small tweaks were all that was necessary for our disregarded hearts to be set straight.
The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance. (Psalm 16:6, NIV)
Setting boundaries can seem like a rigid and segregating action to a giving heart. However, as servants of the Living God, we are called to set limits on our giving. Each of us admitted to struggling with this idea though. In our own way we each had asked God this question, How do we continue to give, serve, and remain humble without feeling drained, misused, and becoming bitter?
The idea that set us all free
As one woman began to speak, she shared an idea that was given to her by a counsellor years ago. During a session she had attended to help her manage an important relationship in her life, the counsellor gave her this tool, which she shared with the group.
The counsellor likened the roles and responsibilities within relationships to a laundry basket. The purpose of a laundry basket is to hold dirty clothes that need to be washed, and clean clothes once cleaned. Each family member is assigned their own basket. As adults, we are responsible for tending to our own laundry basket. Even kids have their own basket in their room and are encouraged to place their dirty clothes in it. In an orderly household, members don’t leave their dirty laundry strewn on the floor nor do they fill other members baskets with their dirty laundry. Ideally, we are each responsible for tending to our own laundry.
The point became clear pretty quickly
Like our laundry, in our relationships we each need to tend to our own issues, struggles, and challenges (manage our own dirty laundry). We each must understand ourselves and our limits, and be adept at knowing when our baskets are full and need tending to. Also, we each should be mature and aware enough to keep our own laundry in our own baskets, and not burden others with it. In essence, my basket is my basket, your basket is your basket. We must keep our baskets ordered and well maintained so they don’t overflow and negatively impact others.
We also need to be aware when others are trying to fill our laundry basket with their dirty laundry, and not allow it to happen. By applying this perspective, we should seldom become overwhelmed, drained, or be left feeling misused.
It takes work and practice but keep at it
Though it’s a simple enough concept to envision, it still takes work, communication, and commitment to manage the subtleties of our relationships with others. Feelings get hurt, we get overworked or caught off guard. At times we’ll find we’ve misplaced pieces of our laundry or we’ve acquired pieces that are not ours. However, by using this simple example, we can responsibly and respectfully return what’s not ours, and gather up what is, and return it to it’s rightful place.
We end our sessions with prayer
We always end our Bible study by praying for each other. One person prays for the next and in turn our specific needs are addressed and brought to God. This day, we shared a common prayer. You can do the same.
Ask God to help you get clear about what belongs in your laundry basket and what does not. Pray for clarity and compassion when facing decisions on what to do with other peoples laundry. With clear boundaries in place, our relationships will thrive and we can focus on what we are really here to do, serves others and spread the good news. | https://medium.com/@bettharris19/heres-what-happens-when-you-diligently-seek-the-lord-a25bcae63d1d | ['Bett Harris'] | 2020-12-06 17:38:10.296000+00:00 | ['Christianity', 'Prayer', 'Boundaries', 'Relationships', 'Bible Study'] |
Be a Platinum Event Sponsor for Under $100 with Snapchat Geofilters | Has someone ever called and said, “We have a great opportunity for your business to be a gold, platinum or diamond medallion sponsor”?
Trade show or event sponsorships can range from $500 — $50,000.
They are normally great opportunities but there may be a less expensive way to get a similar amount of exposure with Snapchat Geofilters.
Article Summary
What are Snapchat Geofilters? Three business use cases where very little money resulted in massive exposure. How your business can create a custom geofilter for any event.
Snapchat Geofilters?
Snapchat is a phone only app that allows businesses to share photos or videos (more information on Snapchat here). Snapchat’s technology allows any user to overlay a design on a picture or video (Snapchat Geofilters).
Once a Snapchat user takes a picture or video, depending on their location, they swipe left or right on the screen to access all available filters.
Since I live in Holland, MI, I have access to several Holland / Lake Michigan inspired geofilters. These are not available in other locations because Snapchat tracks your location when using the app.
Those that follow me on Snapchat see this geofilter quite a bit:
There are community geofilters (like the one above) and custom business geofilters.
Business Snapchat Geofilters
Businesses can design and share to all Snapchat users custom geofilters with their logo / branding. If a user is in a location where a company’s geofilter is available, they can lay it overtop their photo or video and share to their followers.
By sharing to their followers, a Snapchat user advertised on behalf of a business.
These business geofilters cost money to publish (starts as low as $5) and Snapchat charges the business when a user shares the geofilter with their followers.
People Pay Attention to Snapchat Geofilters
Ads are very easy to ignore. This research suggests people can be exposed 3,000–20,000 times a day to different brand’s logos, messaging or advertising.
However, people really pay attention to whatever shows up in their Snapchat feed. Not only does Snapchat take up the whole screen but any content consumed (including ads) comes from a trusted source.
Meaning, the user will give Snapchat their complete attention and trust advertisements shared by someone they follow.
Three Events and Three Snapchat Geofilters with Big League Results
Event 1: Gary Vaynerchuk Book Launch Party in Austin, TX
Gary Vaynerchuk Snapchat Geofilters from different events
At an #AskGaryVee book launch party, Gary Vaynerchuk targeted the event’s location for five hours with his custom geofilter. Here were the results:
Filter uses: 176 (someone took a picture or video with the filter and shared it with their audience).
Views: 229,713 (number of Snapchat users that saw the filter)
Cost: $62.98
Event 2: Kanye West Pablo Popup Shop Event
At 21 different worldwide locations, Kanye West’s Pablo clothing stores opened simultaneously to sell his merchandise.
Alex Kehr placed a Snapchat Geofilter at a popup store in Los Angeles with his business’ name at the bottom and promoted the geofilter on reddit.com/r/kayne. These were the results:
Filter uses: 1,001 (someone took a picture or video with the filter and shared it with their audience).
Views: 214,257 (number of Snapchat users that saw the filter)
Cost: $15.33
Event 3: Tulip Time in Holland, MI
Dutch Dancing in downtown Holland
I live in Holland, MI which is nationally known for the Tulip Time Festival.
Every year, hundreds of thousands of people visit Holland from around the world.
A realtor put out several custom geofilters to promote his business during Tulip Time. This geofilter was put out four hours during the peak time of a parade and these were the results:
Filter uses: N/A (someone took a picture or video with the filter and shared it with their audience).
Views: 9,928 (number of Snapchat users that saw the filter)
Cost: $30.23
How Your Business Can Create and Share Custom Snapchat Geofilters
Find an event (or any place people will gather) to target with a Snapchat Geofilter. Develop an idea for a geofilter relevant to the event (if you were the user, what image would make you want to use the filter on your picture or video?). See two examples above. Find a designer on Fiverr.com (starts as low as $5) to design your custom geofilter or use your own designer. Make sure to include your company’s logo / branding. After creating a custom Snapchat Geofilter, login with your Snapchat account to their Geofilters section. Follow Snapchat’s four steps: Upload your filter, choose the date(s) and times the filter will be live, select the geographic area where the filter will be available and submit with your payment information.
Give it a try and let me know if it works! | https://medium.com/tips-from-the-trenches/be-a-platinum-event-sponsor-for-under-100-with-snapchat-geofilters-7ef0c61eb1d5 | ['Clayton Carroll'] | 2017-04-14 18:18:50.262000+00:00 | ['Snapchat', 'Social Media', 'Snapchat Marketing', 'Snapchat Geofilters', 'Digital Marketing'] |
Create API Rest with Laravel 5.6 Passport Authentication (Part 1) | We learning to create a authentication system with API Laravel Authentication Passport OAuth
Notice we recommend upgrading to a more modern version. Read upgrade instructions.
Step 1. Install Laravel
In first step, we require to get fresh Laravel application using bellow command, So open your terminal or command prompt and run bellow command:
laravel new auth
Step 2. Install Laravel Passport Package
Laravel Passport provides a full OAuth2 server implementation for your Laravel application in a matter of minutes.
composer require laravel/passport
Step 3. Run Migration
The Passport migrations will create the tables your application needs to store clients and access tokens.
php artisan migrate
Step 4. Generate keys
This command will create the encryption keys needed to generate secure access tokens. In addition, the command will create “personal access” and “password grant” clients which will be used to generate access tokens:
php artisan passport:install
After running this command, add the Laravel\Passport\HasApiTokens trait to your App\User model. This trait will provide a few helper methods to your model which allow you to inspect the authenticated user's token and scopes:
Step 5. Passport Config
<?php namespace App; use Illuminate\Notifications\Notifiable;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\User as Authenticatable;
use Laravel\Passport\HasApiTokens; class User extends Authenticatable
{
use Notifiable, HasApiTokens;
}
Next, you should call the Passport::routes method within the boot method of your AuthServiceProvider . This method will register the routes necessary to issue access tokens and revoke access tokens, clients, and personal access tokens:
<?php namespace App\Providers; use Laravel\Passport\Passport;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Gate;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Support\Providers\AuthServiceProvider as ServiceProvider;
{
/**
* The policy mappings for the application.
*
*
*/
protected $policies = [
'App\Model' => 'App\Policies\ModelPolicy',
]; class AuthServiceProvider extends ServiceProvider/*** The policy mappings for the application. @var array*/protected $policies = ['App\Model' => 'App\Policies\ModelPolicy',];
* Register any authentication / authorization services.
*
*
*/
public function boot()
{
$this->registerPolicies(); /*** Register any authentication / authorization services. @return void*/public function boot()$this->registerPolicies(); Passport::routes();
}
}
Finally, in your config/auth.php configuration file, you should set the driver option of the api authentication guard to passport . This will instruct your application to use Passport's TokenGuard when authenticating incoming API requests:
'guards' => [
'web' => [
'driver' => 'session',
'provider' => 'users',
],
'api' => [
'driver' => 'passport',
'provider' => 'users',
],
],
Step 6. Create API Routes
We will create api routes. Laravel provide routes/api.php file for write web services route. So, let’s add new route on that file.
<?php use Illuminate\Http\Request; Route::group([
'prefix' => 'auth'
], function () {
Route::post('login', 'AuthController@login');
Route::post('signup', 'AuthController@signup');
Route::group([
'middleware' => 'auth:api'
], function() {
Route::get('logout', 'AuthController@logout');
Route::get('user', 'AuthController@user');
});
});
Step 7: Create Controller
In last step we have to create new controller and four api method. So let’s create AuthController and put bellow code:
<?php namespace App\Http\Controllers; use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Auth;
use Carbon\Carbon;
use App\User;
{
/**
* Create user
*
*
*
*
*
*
*/
public function signup(Request $request)
{
$request->validate([
'name' => 'required|string',
'email' => 'required|string|email|unique:users',
'password' => 'required|string|confirmed'
]); class AuthController extends Controller/*** Create user @param [string] name @param [string] email @param [string] password @param [string] password_confirmation @return [string] message*/public function signup(Request $request)$request->validate(['name' => 'required|string','email' => 'required|string|email|unique:users','password' => 'required|string|confirmed']); $user = new User([
'name' => $request->name,
'email' => $request->email,
'password' => bcrypt($request->password)
]); $user->save();
'message' => 'Successfully created user!'
], 201);
}
/**
* Login user and create token
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*/
public function login(Request $request)
{
$request->validate([
'email' => 'required|string|email',
'password' => 'required|string',
'remember_me' => 'boolean'
]); return response()->json(['message' => 'Successfully created user!'], 201);/*** Login user and create token @param [string] email @param [string] password @param [boolean] remember_me @return [string] access_token @return [string] token_type @return [string] expires_at*/public function login(Request $request)$request->validate(['email' => 'required|string|email','password' => 'required|string','remember_me' => 'boolean']); $credentials = request(['email', 'password']); if(!Auth::attempt($credentials))
return response()->json([
'message' => 'Unauthorized'
], 401); $user = $request->user(); $tokenResult = $user->createToken('Personal Access Token');
$token = $tokenResult->token; if ($request->remember_me)
$token->expires_at = Carbon::now()->addWeeks(1); $token->save();
'access_token' => $tokenResult->accessToken,
'token_type' => 'Bearer',
'expires_at' => Carbon::parse(
$tokenResult->token->expires_at
)->toDateTimeString()
]);
}
/**
* Logout user (Revoke the token)
*
*
*/
public function logout(Request $request)
{
$request->user()->token()->revoke(); return response()->json(['access_token' => $tokenResult->accessToken,'token_type' => 'Bearer','expires_at' => Carbon::parse($tokenResult->token->expires_at)->toDateTimeString()]);/*** Logout user (Revoke the token) @return [string] message*/public function logout(Request $request)$request->user()->token()->revoke();
'message' => 'Successfully logged out'
]);
}
/**
* Get the authenticated User
*
*
*/
public function user(Request $request)
{
return response()->json($request->user());
}
} return response()->json(['message' => 'Successfully logged out']);/*** Get the authenticated User @return [json] user object*/public function user(Request $request)return response()->json($request->user());
Now we are ready to run our example so run bellow command to quick run: | https://medium.com/modulr/create-api-authentication-with-passport-of-laravel-5-6-1dc2d400a7f | ['Alfredo Barron'] | 2020-06-08 14:30:37.582000+00:00 | ['Laravel', 'API', 'Passport', 'Rest Api', 'Authentication'] |
An introduction to the world. | System.out.println(“Hello world”);
My name is Nurideen Farah Kalmey, and this is my first Medium article! I hope to write about my education and career in mathematics, computer science, statistics, and software engineering, as well as the world as a whole.
To the reader, I look forward to sharing my experiences with you!
Yours hopefully
N.F.K | https://medium.com/@mathwizard/an-introduction-to-the-world-6293fcc41d95 | ['Nurideen Kalmey'] | 2020-12-25 01:08:03.084000+00:00 | ['Personal', 'Mathematics', 'Software'] |
The Personal Capital Web Stack, Part II | Everyone knows that devs love trees. In fact, it might be the most common way to start a tech blog post. This time we used a Dragon blood tree. We like the way it branches; it is like the organic physical representation of our node_modules folder….
Hey! It’s been a while and we wanted to let you know that the web team at Personal Capital is still alive and responding pings with low latency.
Our blog has finally moved and we’re stoked about it. In fact, we’re so energized that we wanted to do a follow up on what has happened in the 900~ days since we created our last post and now.
In this post, we’re going to cover all the changes that we’ve made to our stack, why we made those changes and also share some of the good and bad things that these changes have brought to us.
Let’s start with the tech (after all that’s probably why you are here).
The Front-End Stack
We continue to use Node.js for development and builds, which we mix with browser-sync to proxy all non-static requests to a back-end server in the Cloud.
This allows us to run a local version of the website app without having to run the back-end server locally. It also comes with the extra benefit of watching our files and triggering local Webpack builds when they change (hot reload baby!). As you’ve probably already noticed, developer happiness depends greatly on how easy it is to work in the environment, hence our first change.
We’ve transitioned from RequireJS to Webpack. That was a huge milestone. Some of the observed benefits include:
Improved reload times in development.
Intelligent bundling which includes tree-shaking, resulting in smaller bundle size for CSS and JS static resources.
Script Chunks. They’re requested on demand, making our load times even faster.
Streamlining our build and bundling process. Currently, we’re bundling a couple of different apps from the same sources. Before something like this was hard to achieve; many scripts had to be updated to assemble such variations. This made the process slow and risky. Now we have well-defined Webpack configurations that allow us to make all kinds of combinations just by touching configuration files.
Expanded extensibility. Now we can integrate with open source tools already developed by the community (i.e. coverage reports, dependency charts, etc.).
Single Page Application and HTML
Our back-end services are written in Java. The server team has been doing a great job transitioning our old monolithic architecture into microservices. They’ll release an article about that soon, so stay tuned.
Our web service layer handles the request to the APIs and passes the data to the SPA controlled by Backbone and Angular. Backbone is still a key part of our stack, but we’re transitioning out of Angular and into React. Every new component that we have developed in the last three years is written in React. This has allowed us to:
Reuse components easily. React itself plays pretty well with our existing backbone architecture. Achieving functionality is super easy by passing props, as long as you pipe the component lifecycle methods and events in the right way.
We’ve been using the container <-> presentation pattern for a while. We really like the way it abstracts different concerns, giving our components another level of reusability (e.g. we can reuse the same chart with different data inputs coming from different APIs and make it look different by passing props). Now we’re thinking about transitioning away from this pattern into React hooks that just came out of the oven smelling like fresh-baked cookies. At this moment, we’re figuring out how to integrate our testing framework with this new pattern since enzyme doesn’t provide a way to do so yet.
Because of the previous point, our development workflow has entirely changed. We’ve integrated Storybook. Storybook is the first place where we develop components. We start there to ensure that our crafts are fully abstracted from the app, giving us a higher level of confidence when developing truly reusable presentational components.
From the developer’s standpoint, using Storybook was a huge productivity and morale booster. It gave everyone — not just engineers — greater visibility of the components available for use. Also, developing user experiences on it is a breeze since it’s super lightweight and the hot-reload builds are faster than our main web app. This means less time to go for coffee and more time for doing what we love: writing code. The only tradeoff is that we now have less caffeine pulsing through our veins, but the continuous excitement of watching your component coming together pretty quickly makes up for it.
Because of Storybook’s nature of developing components in isolation, web engineers don’t depend on back-end developments, which allows us to work in tandem to deliver a feature without depending on each other.
Since our last post, our HTML rendering technologies have been transitioning from Angular and Handlebars to React.
Styles
We have mostly transitioned from everything that we were using, like Bootstrap, to our own in-house styles based on Inuit. We continue to use BEM as our naming convention and KSS for our styling documentation.
Just like Storybook, we’ve also created our style guide to contain most of the basic HTML components with our styling and variations. This is a good starting point for new people to check our styling practices, class names and branding. There are future plans about migrating all the KSS docs to storybook, but we haven’t found time to do so yet.
Data Visualization
D3 is our go-to data visualization library and it has been that way since Raphael.js slowed down its pace of development almost to the point of not being maintained.
We also transitioned to D3 since it has a richer collection of charting modules out of the box, and Raphael charts were very buggy because we had to write SVG manipulation by hand.
Over this period we’ve integrated a couple of D3 extensions and we’ve built a few in-house React wrappers over it. Now we can reuse many of our charts which are highly customizable by props.
You can check out some more details regarding our D3 implementations here.
Testing
This is one of the areas that has had the biggest changes. Since we’re writing everything in React right now, we figured why not give Jest and Enzyme a chance; the outcome was pure joy.
Jest and Enzyme came in to replace Mocha, Sinon, Karma, and Chai. Their integration with React is natural, and we have been working hard on porting the old test to Jest and Enzyme.
The port is a story in and of itself. We usually hang out about twice a month in the war room to host what we call a “Jesting session”. During this time, we all work on this large list of test files that need to be ported.
Initially, we tried using Jest codemods, but it didn’t fully work with our test codebase. The converted files still had some old stuff. Then one of our teammates got rad. He wrote a custom shell script to convert the syntax using a bunch of “sed …” commands and regexps, a simple solution often forgotten.
Here is what part of the script looks like:
sed -i ‘’ ‘s/to.equal/toBe/g’ $NEWFILE sed -i ‘’ ‘s/to.be.equal/toBe/g’ $NEWFILE sed -i ‘’ ‘s/to.contain/toContain/g’ $NEWFILE sed -i ‘’ ‘s/to.not.equal/not.toBe/g’ $NEWFILE sed -i ‘’ ‘s/to.be.false/toBe\(false\)/g’ $NEWFILE sed -i ‘’ ‘s/to.be.true/toBe\(true\)/g’ $NEWFILE
This saved us a lot of time by doing more straightforward translations automatically. Of course, we had some more complex cases that required manual intervention as well.
Over the time that we’ve been using jest and enzyme we’ve found:
Significant decrease in testing time. Since the tests can run parallel now, this speeds up everything from our git push hooks which executes the unit test to the continuous build that happens at the CI server level. In fact, we’ve just merged some code to only run the test impacted by our changes on the commit hook. This makes the validation process even faster. The code uses the Jest “ — changedSince” parameter, if you didn’t know about this is definitely worth taking a look.
It allowed us to test components in full isolation without relying on anything else than what we’re testing. The mock functions work right out of the box with no configuration needed.
Easy implementation encourages TDD. This comes naturally. The easier it is to implement a test, the more you’ll enjoy writing them.
Out of the box coverage reports, this is something that we weren’t even looking before and we’ve realized it is key to improving our quality.
Snapshot testing allows us to make sure nothing was updated magically by our changes, giving us a higher level of confidence when releasing code.
IDE integration makes developing tests so easy that everyone is looking forward to writing unit tests. The hot-reload gives you immediate feedback while using TDD.
Testing and quality have become a big part of our day-to-day over time. As we grow, we need to continue to uphold our legacy of trust. The quality of our shipped features plays an important part in this as it does in any financial institution.
CI
We’ve fully transitioned to Jenkins 2. This impacted every dev team in the organization, including the web team. We’ve previously published an article about what this migration journey was like for the engineering team and you can find it here.
Wrapping up
For the record, anything that was not mentioned here remains the same. E.g. for versioning we still use Git and our sprints last one extreme week.
It has been a long journey to achieve the current state of maturity in our development processes and there’s way more to go. In fact, the only thing we’re sure about is that we will never stop making changes to our stack.
As new tech moves in, we need to stay updated. We do not integrate new technologies just for the sake of using what is super cool and cutting edge, but rather we identify what would really make a difference for us and the business. Finding a balance between the two is the key.
An example of the above is that in the past year some of our team members have been experimenting with GraphQL. They even developed a proof of concept during one of our internal hackathons. We find ourselves liking this way of fetching data a lot, but since this would be a major change we haven’t explored this option further. Maybe at some point in the future, this will align with business needs and we can pull this card out of the backlog.
Native technologies are coming along faster. New web APIs are published every month and some of them would certainly fill the holes better than the packages in our dependencies are filling right now. This is the case for native web components API, which is currently being implemented and might replace some of our rendering technologies at some point in the future.
Cheers! | https://medium.com/personal-capital-tech-blog/web-tech-stack-2-8656c4411ff3 | ['Luis Sepulveda'] | 2019-04-30 16:10:58.595000+00:00 | ['Jest', 'Web Development', 'JavaScript', 'Webpack', 'D3js'] |
South Asians and White Rice | Original image of the author
Like many South Asians, I have a strong family history of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. In fact, this was a significant personal motivation for me to make sustainable healthy dietary changes in attempts to prevent the development of these diseases. At the age of 31, I saw changes in my own routine blood work (my blood glucose and lipid panel) that were concerning to me. South Asians presents with greater metabolic risk at lower body mass index’s compared with other ethnic groups. South Asians develop type 2 diabetes at a younger age and when we do, we have worse outcomes such as the development of cardiovascular disease and chronic kidney disease. Yes, our genetics play a role in the development of these diseases, BUT there is so much that we can control when it comes to our lifestyle. This is why prevention is so important.
With that said, let’s talk about white rice. Growing up, white rice was a staple part of my diet, served with multiple meals a day. Did you know that India is the second largest producer of rice in the world, second to China and rice has been a staple food for thousands of years. White rice is thought to contribute to nearly half of the daily calorie intake in India. White rice is milled resulting in the husk, bran, and germ (nutrient dense portions) being removed while brown rice has only the husk removed (considered the inedible part). I am focusing on white rice consumption in South Asians because a recently published paper by Bhavadharini et al based on a large prospective cohort, demonstrated that a higher intake of white rice (2–3 cups per day) was associated with increased risk of diabetes. The highest risk was seen in South Asians.
So what happens if you swap out white rice with brown rice? A small, but interesting randomized crossover study by Mohan et al (2014) enrolled 15 Asian Indians (seven males and eight females) with overweight (as defined by ethnic specific criteria with BMI >23 kg/m2) who were randomized to a diet of white rice, brown rice or brown rice with legumes for breakfast and lunch. Each participant at some point in the study was on each diet with a wash out period of nine days in between. The study authors found while in the brown rice and brown rice with legume group of the study, the percentage difference in 5 day average glycemic response (as determined by the IAUC) was 19.8% lower in the brown rice group than white rice group. The brown rice with legume group further decreased the glycemic response by 22.9% compared to white rice. They also found that the 5 day percentage change in fasting insulin was 57% lower for the brown rice group and 54% lower for the brown rice with legume group versus white rice. The authors concluded that consumption of brown rice in place of white rice can help reduce 24 hour glucose and fasting insulin response among overweight Asian Indians. This small study suggest that replacing refined grains (i.e white rice) with whole grains (i.e brown rice), has a favorable effect on blood glucose and insulin release which could in turn could decrease the risk of developing type 2 diabetes in South Asians who are at risk.
Obviously, white rice is just one part of a traditional South Asian diet, but as an at risk South Asian and a physician, I recognize the importance of making sustainable dietary changes for prevention of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Even small dietary changes (i.e replacing white rice with brown rice or another whole grain for some of your meals) can be helpful if it is available to you. Small changes add big.
Sources:
Mohan et al. “Effect of brown rice, white rice and brown rice with legumes on blood glucose and insulin responses in overweight Asian Indians: A randomized controlled trial. Diabetes Technology and Therapeutics. Nov 2014
Bhavadharini et al. “White rice intake and incident diabetes. A study of 132,373 participants in 21 countries.” Diabetes Care. Sept 2020 | https://medium.com/@dr-plantelsf/south-asians-and-white-rice-e172c83c368e | ['Dr Plantel'] | 2020-12-26 16:03:19.642000+00:00 | ['Health', 'South Asian', 'Diet', 'Healthy Foods', 'Diabetes'] |
Back to Basics: A Guide to Pay Per Click (PPC) Marketing | What is Pay Per Click Marketing?
Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing is a form of internet marketing to drive traffic to websites, where an advertiser pays a fee for each click. It is a way of buying visits to your business’s website as opposed to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) which gains site visits organically.
PPC marketing is most prominently used on search engines such as Google Ads. Advertisers bid for keywords that are relevant to their products or target audience and pay when their advertisement is clicked on. The amount paid by advertisers is based on two factors:
The quality of the advertisement The maximum bid the advertiser is willing to pay for a click for that specific keyword
How is PPC different from Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?
We have covered Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) marketing in our blog previously, which is the practice of optimizing content so that your site will appear as one of the top results for searches. You might ask, what is the difference between SEO and PPC since they both involve search engines?
There are 3 key differences between SEO and PPC, as summarised in the infographic above. Firstly, traffic and clicks from SEO is free, whereas traffic from PPC has a cost for each click. Secondly, in terms of time frame, PPC has a more immediate effect while driving traffic organically through SEO will take a longer time. Lastly, the goal of PPC is more sales and leads focused, while SEO helps to build brand and customer loyalty.
How is PPC marketing useful for my business?
PPC marketing is important because paid ads from PPC appear at the top of the search page, above the organic listings influenced by SEO. For example, when one searches “online shopping singapore”, the top result is a paid ad by ASOS, while the first organic search result, Lazada, appears below. Adopting PPC enhances your business’s visibility, especially for small businesses just starting out.
Moreover, PPC has much faster results compared to SEO, allowing you to boost your brand’s exposure. In contrast for SEO, your business would have to compete with various large businesses who dominate the market.
Even for budget-conscious businesses, PPC allows you to plan and estimate the cost of advertising. Your business is able to set your own ad budget and determine the amount of money you want to bid on each keyword.
How can I utilise PPC marketing for my social enterprise?
In order to pay a lower price for PPC and to maximise traffic on your site, here are three ways your social enterprise can improve on the quality of your advertisement and website.
Effective ad copywriting:
Include the search terms in your description
Sell your product’s benefits and value proposition
Call to action to visit your site or purchase your social enterprise’s product
2. Target relevant keywords:
Consider which keywords and queries would be frequently searched by your target audience and their interests. For example, your keywords could target a particular social cause that your social enterprise is known for.
Keywords should be relevant to your business to ensure a higher click-through rate.
3. Improving the quality of your landing page:
Ensure that your site’s landing page is user-friendly and easy to navigate.
Additionally, your landing page should be able to provide what the user is searching for, whether its a product, service or query.
Interested in utilising PPC marketing to drive traffic to your social enterprise? Drop us an email at [email protected] today to find out more about how we can help you! | https://medium.com/@socreate-sg/back-to-basics-a-guide-to-pay-per-click-ppc-marketing-5354b72fe124 | ['Socreate'] | 2020-11-23 05:53:08.694000+00:00 | ['Digital Marketing', 'PPC Marketing', 'Marketing'] |
When Life Awaits to Hug | You can cry over your beloved’s death,
Or cherish the beautiful moments of life with them.
If you return to the past, you’ll be trapped in time,
But if you try to forget, the future will embrace you.
A shooting star can never shine back,
For it has lived its life,
And served its purpose,
By lightening other’s lives.
A withered flower cannot bloom again,
But makes way for the new buds to rise,
And none can stop them from doing so,
For there are rules of nature to follow.
We must be happy for tomorrow,
Because yesterday was a blissful memory,
Wipe off your tears and wear that smile again,
For the life of yours is waiting to love you. | https://medium.com/blueinsight/when-life-awaits-to-hug-63ee95cfe0f4 | ['Darshak Rana'] | 2020-12-24 21:51:40.156000+00:00 | ['Blue Insights', 'Relationships', 'Life', 'Love', 'Poetry'] |
Here’s how much it costs to launch a 51% attack on PoW cryptocurrencies | Repeated 51 percent attacks on proof-of-work (PoW) cryptocurrencies have triggered a critical dialogue about the security of blockchain networks. Last week, a researcher showed that a cryptocurrency worth $2 billion can be hacked profitably with as little as $1.5 million. One cryptocurrency enthusiast decided to take a deeper dive.
Reddit user xur17 has created crypto51.app, a website that tracks the costs of performing hourly 51 percent attacks on PoW cryptocurrencies.
The results are startling. As per the website calculations, it will only take $2,990 to keep an attack going on Bitcoin Gold for one hour, $2,216 on Ethereum Classic, $1,124 on Bytecoin, and $3,345 on ZClassic. For lesser known cryptocurrencies, the number ranges between $1-$500.
For some cryptocurrencies such as Catcoin, Cream, and Smartcoin, you don’t even need a dollar.
The cost for the attacks comes further down if you account for the block rewards that the miners receive from mining. As the website notes, the rewards can significantly reduce the attack cost — by up to 80 percent.
In proof-of-work consensus protocol, validation of transactions is done by the majority of the nodes on the network.
51 percent attacks occur when a single entity gains majority (more than 51 percent) of the network hashrate. This entity can now both prevent valid transactions from occurring as well as reverse already occurred transactions on the blockchain. A single coin can even be spent twice from the same origin with this sort of control, in what’s called a double-spend.
The attacks were previously considered highly unlikely due to financial constraints involved — however that claim has since then been invalidated, especially for cryptocurrencies with small networks.
To begin with, attackers don’t always need to buy new mining equipment. Most smaller PoW cryptocurrencies share their algorithm with the larger ones. This means that if you already have equipment to mine the larger cryptocurrencies, you can mine the smaller currencies with the same equipment. There’re also services (such as NiceHash) which allow for renting of hashing power.
Crypto51.app takes these factors into account while calculating the costs.
The website cumulates statistics from several sources to estimate the cost of the attacks. The hash rates are taken from Mine the Coin, coin prices from CoinMarketCap and mining rents from NiceHash. The website then lists the hourly attack cost based on the algorithm used, the hash rate for the currency, and the cost to rent hashing power.
It is worth noting that while the costs have been calculated for larger cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, etc., they can’t actually be attacked with this much money. As the website statistics show, the total renting capacity of NiceHash only amounts to 2 percent of the hashing power actually required to perform a 51 percent attack on Bitcoin for one hour; similarly for other cryptocurrencies — the hashing power available for rent through NiceHash is simply not enough for the major cryptocurrencies.
Another thing to note here is that one hour is not actually enough to mine enough blocks for the attack to be profitable. The attack will have to last a lot longer. That doesn’t mean it can last too long either — at some point either the developers of the currency will deploy a fix or the price of the currency will drop so low that the attack no longer remains profitable.
The statistics, however, succeed in showing how vulnerable PoW cryptocurrencies are to network attacks, at the moment. At least four different virtual currencies have suffered 51 percent in the last two months, including Verge (twice), Electroneum, Bitcoin Gold, and Monacoin.
There are multiple fixes available for this problem, as we noted earlier, that include upgrading to proof-of-stake or sharing the security of a larger PoW blockchain.
The companies know how to fix the problem, it remains to be seen why they don’t.
Content Credits: thenextweb.com | https://medium.com/dalla/heres-how-much-it-costs-to-launch-a-51-attack-on-pow-cryptocurrencies-8905eab04e8d | [] | 2018-08-02 06:37:06.170000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Crypto', 'Reddit', 'Bitcoin'] |
Processing Engines for Big Data | Introduction
This article is based on my previous article “Big Data Pipeline Recipe” where I tried to give a quick overview of all aspects of the Big Data world.
The goal of this article is to focus on the “T” of the a Big Data ETL pipeline reviewing the main frameworks to process large amount of data. The main focus will be the Hadoop ecosystem.
But first, let’s review what this phase is all about. Remember, at this point you have ingested raw data that is ready to be processed.
Big Data Processing Phase
The goal of this phase is to clean, normalize, process and save the data using a single schema. The end result is a trusted data set with a well defined schema. Processing frameworks such Spark are used to process the data in parallel in a cluster of machines.
Generally, you would need to do some kind of processing such as:
Validation : Validate data and quarantine bad data by storing it in a separate storage. Send alerts when a certain threshold is reached based on your data quality requirements.
: Validate data and quarantine bad data by storing it in a separate storage. Send alerts when a certain threshold is reached based on your data quality requirements. Wrangling and Cleansing : Clean your data and store it in another format to be further processed, for example replace inefficient JSON with Avro.
: Clean your data and store it in another format to be further processed, for example replace inefficient JSON with Avro. Normalization and Standardization of values
and of values Rename fields
fields …
Remember, the goal is to create a trusted data set that later can be used for downstream systems. This is a key role of a data engineer. This can be done in a stream or batch fashion.
The pipeline processing can be divided in three phases in case of batch processing:
Pre Processing Phase
If the raw data is not clean or not in the right format, you need to pre process it. This phase includes some basic validation, but the goal is to prepare the data to be efficiently processed for the next stage. In this phase, you should try to flatten the data and save it in a binary format such Avro. This will speed up further processing. The idea is that the next phase will perform row level operations, and nested queries are expensive, so flattening the data now will improve the next phase performance.
Trusted Phase
In this phase, data is validated, cleaned, normalized and transformed to a common schema stored in Hive or in another data store. The goal is to create a trusted common data set understood by the data owners. Typically, a data specification is created and the role of the data engineer is to apply transformations to match the specification which includes validation rules, transformations, standardization of values, renaming fields, etc.
The end result is a data set in Parquet or other columnar format that can be easily queried. It is critical that you choose the right partitions and optimize the data to perform internal queries.
You may want to partially pre-compute some aggregations at this stage to improve query performance.
Reporting Phase
This step is optional but often required. Unfortunately, when using a data lake, a single schema will not serve all use cases; this is one difference between a data warehouse and data lake. Querying HDFS is not as efficient as a database or data warehouse, so further optimizations are required.
In this phase, you may need to denormalize the data to store it using different partitions so it can be queried more efficiently by the different stakeholders. The idea is to create different views optimized for the different downstream systems (data marts).
In this phase you can also compute aggregations if you do not use an OLAP engine. The trusted phase does not know anything about who will query the data, this phase optimizes the data for the consumers. If a client is highly interactive, you may want to introduce a fast storage layer in this phase like a relational database for fast queries. Alternatively you can use OLAP engines.
For streaming the logic is the same but it will run inside a defined DAG in a streaming fashion. Spark allows you to join stream with historical data but it has some limitations. OLAP engines are which are better suited to merge real time with historical data.
Processing Frameworks
Some of the tools you can use for processing are:
This is the most well known framework for batch processing. Part of the Hadoop ecosystem, it is a managed cluster which provides incredible parallelism, monitoring and a great UI. It also supports stream processing (structural streaming). Basically Spark runs MapReduce jobs in memory increasing up to 100x times regular MapReduce performance. It integrates with Hive to support SQL and can be used to create Hive tables, views or to query data. It has lots of integrations, supports many formats and has a huge community. It is supported by all cloud providers. It can run on YARN as part of a Hadoop cluster but also in Kubernetes and other platforms. It has many libraries for specific use cases such SQL or machine learning.
The first engine to unify batch and streaming but heavily focus on streaming. It can be used as a backbone for microservices like Kafka. It can run on YARN as part of a Hadoop cluster but since its inception has been also optimized for other platforms like Kubernetes or Mesos. It is extremely fast and provides real time streaming, making it a better option than Spark for low latency stream processing, especially for stateful streams. It also has libraries for SQL, Machine Learning and much more. It is faster than Spark and a better option for data streaming.
Apache Storm is a free and open source distributed real-time computation system.It focuses on streaming and it is a managed solution part of the Hadoop ecosystem. It is scalable, fault-tolerant, guarantees your data will be processed, and is easy to set up and operate.
Another great stateful stream processing engine. Samza allows you to build stateful applications that process data in real-time from multiple sources including Apache Kafka. Managed solution part of the Hadoop Ecosystem that runs on top of YARN.
Apache Beam it is not an engine itself but a specification of an unified programming model that brings together all the other engines. It provides a programming model that can be used with different languages, so developers do not have to learn new languages when dealing with big data pipelines. Then, it plugs different back ends for the processing step that can run on the cloud or on premises. Beam supports all the engines mentioned before and you can easily switch between them and run them in any platform: cloud, YARN, Mesos, Kubernetes. If you are starting a new project, I really recommend starting with Beam to be sure your data pipeline is future proof.
Conclusion
Processing engines are the most famous tool currently used in the Big Data word. As a big data engineer, you will be working with these engines quite often. It is critical that you understand the distributed nature of these engines and you know how to optimize them, secure them and monitor them.
Remember that there are also OLAP engines that provide a single solution to query large amounts of data without the need to write complex transformations but by loading data in a specific format which makes queries much more performant.
For a new project, I really recommend looking into Apache Beam since it provides an abstraction on top of all the other engines allowing you to change the processing engine without changing the code.
For stream processing, specially stateful stream processing, consider Flink or Samza. For batch, use Spark. | https://itnext.io/processing-engines-for-big-data-5827bfad6b02 | ['Javier Ramos'] | 2020-10-29 12:37:54.566000+00:00 | ['Big Data', 'Etl', 'Scala', 'Apache', 'Spark'] |
I’m Sorry | I’m sorry momma.
I tried living as you taught me,
Loving God and living his word,
Being a good Christian as much as I can.
I tried listening to your teachings,
Giving God all my prayers,
Not letting my sexuality deviate,
But that is where I failed.
I traveled into Curiosity Forest,
Swam in the Pond of Femme,
And came up tasting its sweet water,
Wanting more in the end.
I met a siren that caught my eye,
And eventually found a world of other creatures.
Stags, centaurs, fairies, bears, and others galore,
And they all welcomed me with open arms
Presenting me love that I never knew
But all the same, it kept me warm.
Their rainbow brought color to my vision,
Seeing things for what they are,
Black and white were not enough anymore.
Pinning for the knowledge I never knew existed,
I did research and lived among the creatures,
Becoming one with nature. | https://medium.com/@amateurartist2016/im-sorry-d050f0ccd01c | [] | 2020-12-19 19:20:16.349000+00:00 | ['Freedom', 'Accepting Yourself', 'Sexuality', 'Poetry'] |
‘The Irishman’ Is A Perfect Thanksgiving Movie | ‘The Irishman’ Is A Perfect Thanksgiving Movie
Take a dose of tryptophan and watch Martin Scorcese’s gangster epic
After every Thanksgiving dinner, I turn into a sort of centaur, the mythological beast whose lower-body is a horse, only I’m half-man, half-couch. I am not one of those Americans who watch football while lost in a gravy fog. I was raised by Texans. Texans are to football what Klingons are to space battle.
Instead, I put on a movie and hope my friends and family join me, bellies exposed. It can’t be just any movie, of course. It must be a ‘Thanksgiving’ movie, which is a very specific kind of movie. There are three things a ‘Thanksgiving’ movie needs:
It needs to be long enough that you can take a short nap, wake up, and still follow the plot It needs to be a serious movie but should have a few laughs It needs to teach some kind of basic moral lesson.
Wizard of Oz is a good Thanksgiving movie. So are any of the Lord of the Rings movies, which are intense but have some lighthearted moments. I find Hobbits talking about taters to be very amusing. Die Hard may be considered a Christmas’movie but it is too short to be a ‘Thanksgiving’ movie and the moral lessons — don’t rob people, be a good ex-husband — are too basic. Depressing movies about war crimes or cancer are not ‘Thanksgiving’ movies.
Martin Scorcese’s new movie The Irishman, a sprawling masterpiece about a mob hitman, is a ‘Thanksgiving’ movie. You can watch it on Thanksgiving Day on Netflix. I saw it during its very limited theatrical run. I plan on streaming it after I’ve given thanks for the carbs that I will then inhale.
The Irishman is Martin Scorcese’s return to the gangster genre that made him famous. His best movies aren’t all mob flicks, though. His career is long and varied and some of his best movies are quiet and meditative like Age of Innocence or wrestle with controversial religious themes, like The Last Temptation of Christ.
Americans love gangster movies because we love stories about people who will do anything to get rich
But its goombahs behaving badly movies like Goodfellas and Casinos, both critically-acclaimed hits, that earned him a reputation as a filmmaker exclusively interested in the underworld. In The Irishman, Scorcese has the final word on the genre he is most associated with.
Americans love gangster movies because we love stories about people who will do anything to get rich, and then get punished for it. We are such a two-faced country. Americans believe in hard work but dream of the easy way. Even the story of the first Thanksgiving is a lie. Yes, the Native Americans fed our hungry ancestors but they were then slowly murdered for it over the course of the next few hundred years.
The Irishman is based on a nonfiction book titled “I Heard You Paint Houses” by Charles Brandt about the life of Frank Sheeran, an alleged mafia hitman. The title refers to blood splatter on walls after a murder. The book is full of dubious confessions from Sheeran who is not the most reliable of narrators. But in The Irishman, Scorcese takes Sheeran’s word for it.
The movie drains the romance from the gangster genre. It has neither the kinetic crackle of Goodfellas or the Shakespearean sweep of The Godfather. Robert DeNiro’s performance as Sheeran lacks any charisma whatsoever — he’s a bit of a dimwit who just does what he’s told.
None of the stereotypes of the gangster movie are present in The Irishman. The violence is brutal but perfunctory. Usually these movies have at least one scene where a couple of mobsters eat massive amounts of pasta. In The Irishman, a hit is planned while a boss makes a salad. The bombastic macho swagger is missing too. For instance, Joe Pesci isn’t a fast-talking maniac in this movie. He’s soft-spoken, even gentle. The Irishman takes it time making you glad you aren’t in the mob.
Trust me, it really is a perfect ‘Thanksgiving’ movie.
First, it is very long. A three and a half hour funeral procession. It is a movie about many things, but foremost, it is a movie about aging and you will feel yourself age during it. That is not to say that the movie is boring because it is not. That said, you can safely take a proper twenty-minute nap during it and miss almost nothing. I mean, spoiler alert, Jack Kennedy gets capped and Jimmy Hoffa disappears, permanently, but other than that you can nod off for a few without losing the plot. The ending is the beginning and vice versa.
For a movie about death and regret it’s also a movie with some very funny moments. It may be Scorcese’s funniest movie, to be honest. There are entire scenes of pointlessly mundane chatter that are positively Seinfeld-ian. There is something inherently funny about people who refuse to see the evil they commit and, therefore, never change. It’s like watching a clown repeatedly slip in blood they spilled.
“The Irishman” is a movie with startling moral clarity
As legendary workaholic union boss Jimmy Hoffa, Al Pacino is a loudmouth riot. Yes, he chews the scenery as if it were my made out of my mother’s green bean casserole. But he’s hilarious as a man who thinks he’s untouchable. My favorite bit in the movie is when minor characters are introduced and then titles are flashed up on the screen telling you how they died (nail bomb, shot multiple times, etc.)
The Irishman is a movie with startling moral clarity. It teaches many valuable lessons. One is an important history lesson for those of us living in the 21st century: the 20th century was garbage. Frank Sheeran learns how to kill without remorse in World War II. Elections were bought and sold. The entire century was nothing but men doing what they want as their children silently stare at them in horror. Scorcese accepts Sheeran’s near deathbed squealing as gospel. In The Irishman, the mob killed a president, funded Las Vegas, and erased one of organized labor’s greatest heroes from history because he was bad for business. That is America’s most recent history.
The Irishman also warns against choosing the wrong family. In The Irishman, one family offers money and power and the other love, but heartstrings are attached. Sheeran picks the mob over his own and ends up broken and alone. In the end, Sheeran has nothing to be thankful for. All he has is guilt and a line of bullshit to anyone who’ll listen.
There is a scene near the end of the movie that has stuck with me. In Goodfellas, prison is where mobsters enjoy privileges that regular inmates don’t. Remember the famous scene where Paul Sorvino’s Paulie slices up garlic with a razor blade for a tastier pasta sauce? The final scenes in prison between DeNiro’s and Pesci’s characters are bleak. Both mean shake with decrepitude. The last time DeNiro’s Sheeran sees Russel Bufalino, his friend and father figure, is when the old man is being pushed in a wheelchair. “I’m going to church,” Pesci’s mob boss says, like an excited child on his way to a playground. Wheee! He’s wheeled up a ramp and into a hospital where he will then die of lung cancer, even though he had quit smoking decades prior. Which is pretty funny.
Be thankful for the good things you have because we’re all going to church. | https://medium.com/humungus/the-irishman-is-a-perfect-thanksgiving-movie-4dc6f645e35d | ['John Devore'] | 2019-11-19 22:36:10.342000+00:00 | ['Culture', 'Thanksgiving', 'Politics', 'Film', 'Movies'] |
You Can Save a Life | How the smallest things you say can have a huge impact.
Picture this — it’s a Saturday afternoon and I’m working my usual weekend shift at my busy pharmacy.
A middle-aged woman comes up to my counter and asks if I could measure her blood pressure. Our store doesn’t have one of those machines where someone can just sit down and get a basic reading, so anytime anyone asks us for a blood pressure reading, either the pharmacist or I have to step out and invite our patients into a room designed specifically for this kind of thing — basic checks, vaccinations, counseling, etc.
I get very eager whenever I get to do anything outside of folding labels and chasing those evasive benzonatate capsules, so I kindly asked my guest to make their way to our patient room and informed her that I’d assist her shortly. We just finished covering approaches to hypertension treatment in lecture, so I was ready to begin applying all my knowledge, especially the new AHA guidelines.
I sit her down and start asking her for more information before I proceed with the blood pressure check — what’s going on, why she wants to do it, what her habits and diet are like, etc. She tells me she is 61 and drinks coffee daily. She doesn’t feel chest pain, but she was concerned because her eye was twitching from time to time and she understands that she’s getting older and needs to be more concerned about her health. I nod as I place the cuff on her arm, tighten it, position her arm, and press “start”.
151/106. I advise her that this is dangerous and a cause for concern. “Are you on any medication for blood pressure?” She replies, “no.” As she writes down these numbers, she asks me to measure it again, just to make sure.
149/98. I tell her that she must see her primary care physician and determine a plan, as well as adjust her diet and try to exercise (or even start walking, anything really). She responds saying she has an appointment Monday morning. Before she leaves, she tells me that she thought she’d have to go to her doctor if it’s extreme, “like 200”. My eyes widen as I inform her that “like 200” is a risk for stroke and that I would not be able to let her leave the pharmacy without calling her an ambulance, per company policy.
Sunday comes. I’m back for another 8-hour shift, when she arrives again, asking to get blood pressure checked. I see she is wearing this thick gray sweater and I tell her “look, even if I measure it now, the numbers will be very inaccurate”. I don’t know what it is with some people, but she wanted to have numbers written down today regardless and I can’t turn down a customer/patient’s request, so I follow through and measure it again.
120/87. She smiles and jokingly tells me “hey look, I’m doing better!” I reply that high blood pressure is a long-term game, to which she says that she didn’t drink coffee today, didn’t have any salt, and even exercised for an hour. I finish with “Good! Keep it up and see your doctor tomorrow, please.”
It’s Monday afternoon and guess who pulls up to my drive-thru?
“I’m here to pick up my blood pressure medication.”
Pretty cool, right? I look up her profile in the system and see that her doctor prescribed her hydrochlorothiazide 12.5 mg earlier in the day. I’m thinking great — a diuretic! She left a happy patient.
Patient education and health promotion is something that got me into pharmacy in the first place, but experiencing it first-hand has been nothing short of mind-blowing. I emailed my professors about it later, thinking that, even though it may be trivial to them as they’ve spent their lives doing way more for our patients than simple blood pressure checks, they would still find my story inspiring. I did get a warm-hearted reply from them.
I want all my peers to share a similar feeling in their line of work. Not everything we do may feel like a significant contribution, but every patient matters. Create every opportunity to alleviate any concern our friends and neighbors have. | https://medium.com/@da846/you-can-save-a-life-530d8a75ed61 | ['Denis Abel'] | 2020-05-20 18:11:54.520000+00:00 | ['Medical', 'Pharmacy', 'Pharmacy Practice', 'Healthcare'] |
Advent Day 21: Quiet Time with the Lord | Today’s Gospel: Luke 1:57–66
When the time arrived for Elizabeth to have her child she gave birth to a son. Her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown his great mercy toward her, and they rejoiced with her. When they came on the eighth day to circumcise the child, they were going to call him Zechariah after his father, but his mother said in reply, “No. He will be called John.” But they answered her, “There is no one among your relatives who has this name.” So they made signs, asking his father what he wished him to be called. He asked for a tablet and wrote, “John is his name,” and all were amazed. Immediately his mouth was opened, his tongue freed, and he spoke blessing God. Then fear came upon all their neighbors, and all these matters were discussed throughout the hill country of Judea. All who heard these things took them to heart, saying, “What, then, will this child be? For surely the hand of the Lord was with him.”
Today’s passage reminds us of the amazing circumstances surrounding the birth of the one who would prepare the way of the Lord, St. John the Baptist. The Lord is inviting you to reflect on how He orchestrated all of these events, fulfilling prophecies about Christ’s birth from hundreds of years prior. God always keeps His promises and is always at work in our midst! Determine this Advent season to truly trust the Lord in your faith and in your daily life. The message reiterates that from the 17th day of Advent: set doubt aside and do not limit what God can do in your life.
Ponder Together:
The circumstances surrounding your own birth were amazing as well, because even from that time you were set aside as a child of God! We should see ourselves within the full context of God’s plan, not just as a dash between the day we were born and the day we died. God has a purpose for all of us, and each of us is a part of God’s greater story. Every child born and baptized should inspire our hearts to ponder: “What will this child be, for the Lord is with them!” For the Lord is with them as He is with us, and “if God is with us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31).
Pray Together:
“Take, O Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my whole will. Thou hast given me all that I am and all that I possess: I surrender it all to Thee that Thou mayest dispose of it according to Thy will. Give me only Thy love and Thy grace; with these I will be rich enough, and will have no more to desire. Amen” — St. Ignatius of Loyola
Plan Together:
Zechariah must have had some amazing time to reflect on things while he was silent for all those months. Sometimes it is not the noise around you that drowns out God’s voice, but rather your own voice, never giving God a chance to say anything. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen once said that we should not be like a patient who runs to the doctor, lists all our ailments, and then runs out of the office before the doctor can prescribe a cure. Make time today to sit in quiet reflection with our Lord. If you need to say something do so, but then give Him time to say something too.
Also, schedule a married couples retreat in 2018. Find time for the husband to do a men’s retreat and the wife to do a woman’s retreat as well. Hopefully these retreats will be a silent time when God will have the opportunity to speak to your hearts, and a little more time for you to rest in His love and friendship.
“We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence.” — St. Teresa of Calcutta | https://medium.com/@unitedinloveunitedinchrist/advent-day-21-quiet-time-with-the-lord-efe04d5155ab | ['Jason Angelette'] | 2019-01-30 16:22:36.179000+00:00 | ['Relationships', 'Catholic', 'Christianity', 'Marriage', 'Advent'] |
Kite announces Intelligent Snippets for Python | We’re excited to share Intelligent Snippets with you, our latest feature designed to make your completions experience even more seamless. Kite’s Intelligent Snippets allow you to complete complex, multi-token statements with ease by generating context-relevant code snippets as you type. Whereas typical snippets must be manually defined in advance, Kite’s Intelligent Snippets are generated in real-time based on the code patterns Kite finds in your codebase.
TL;DR
Intelligent Snippets are live in the latest version of Kite (20190905.0) for all of the editors we support: Atom, PyCharm/IntelliJ, Sublime Text, VS Code, and Vim.
Global and local functions are supported.
Users need half the keystrokes when calling functions with Intelligent Snippets.
Visit Kite’s download page to install Kite.
Developers call billions of functions daily
Developers write approximately 1.5 billion function calls per day, many of which are repetitive. In the past, developers referenced docs or copy-pasted snippets in the event they didn’t remember a function’s signature. We recognized this was suboptimal, and built Kite’s Intelligent Snippets as a faster solution for calling functions in Python.
The problem with traditional snippets
are pieces of code that can be inserted into a code buffer and then edited immediately afterwards. Traditionally, snippets were manually defined ahead of time by developers. They were static and could not adapt to developers’ code as it changed. As a result, snippets have been limited to straightforward code patterns.
For example, the video below shows a developer using a snippet to insert the structure of a function definition and then subsequently filling in the rest of the function.
Kite’s Intelligent Snippets engine makes snippets more powerful by generating them on the fly based on the code you’re working with. Kite automatically detects common patterns used in your codebase and suggests relevant patterns while you are writing code.
There’s an interactive playground showcasing our new feature on our homepage. If you’re on a desktop computer, take over the demo loop by clicking “Let me try typing!” (Mobile users, you can see the loop, but you’ll have to move to desktop to test drive it.)
How we built Intelligent Snippets
Intelligent Snippets build on the code engine at the heart of Kite’s completions experience. Kite first indexes your codebase and learns how functions are commonly used. Then when you call a function, Kite suggests snippets for that function to easily complete it. Kite’s autocomplete still suggests completions for each argument, too.
Intelligent Snippets not only save you keystrokes; they also reduce the number of times you’ll need to look up docs for the call patterns you need.
Intelligent Snippets support global and local functions
The video below shows a developer using Intelligent Snippets to quickly call requests.post :
Intelligent Snippets also work on functions that you have defined yourself, like in the video below:
The future of Intelligent Snippets
We believe Intelligent Snippets will be a cornerstone of how developers interact with the AI-powered coding tools of the future. We’ve begun by using Intelligent Snippets to help developers write function calls, but we see broader uses for them coming soon. Intelligent snippets could be useful for writing try/except blocks or unit test cases, for example. We’re looking forward to bringing this technology to more use cases imminently.
What to expect the rest of the year
We have many more exciting projects in the works: We’re taking advantage of the latest research to make our machine learning models smarter. We’re building new editor integrations. Plus there’s a few more projects we can’t tell you about quite yet. Stay tuned! | https://medium.com/kitepython/kite-announces-intelligent-snippets-for-python-10e3205318c | ['The Kite Team'] | 2019-09-09 00:03:19.887000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'AI', 'Python', 'Developer Tools', 'Machine Learning'] |
Habits…The Struggle | Photo by christopher lemercier on Unsplash
Day 2 of 100 words! This building a habit thing can totally be tough and I almost gave myself the excuse to miss today, but then I listened to that little voice deep in my soul that I need to do this. Not for Medium or for the Publication, but to prove to myself that I can build a positive habit for once!
Unlike smoking, which I’ve been trying to break the bad habit for a couple years, but it just keeps weaseling its way back into my life…
Why is it so difficult to start something good and so easy to start something bad or so difficult to put the bad behind you? When everything inside your body, mind and heart says “NO! Don’t do this thing anymore!”
Here’s to making a good habit for once and working to find the strength to finally rid myself of the unhealthy habits that have plagued me for so long…And no, this is no New Year’s resolution, just a desire to change and taking advantage of the opportunity that conveniently came up because Johnson decided to come back and re-light the torch for those in need of something to focus on. Thanks Johnson!! | https://medium.com/100-naked-words/habits-the-struggle-fc75d72b51fc | ['James D Nelson'] | 2020-01-09 19:01:01.276000+00:00 | ['Habit Building', 'Second Chances', '100 Naked Words', 'Improvement', 'Goals'] |
Hi, An American Christian !! | Thank you very much for following me. I really appreciate.
I read very attentively your Chapter I and will go on reading the remainder chapters. I think it is very interesting.
My humble opinion up to now is that ALL the churches act in a dictatorial way sooner or later. I was born as a Catholic and during my upbringing I realized what you wrote in Chapter I. So, when I was 29 years and after my divorce, I finished with this traditional religion. I don’t think the Catholic Church is different from Evangelists or Anglicans or Lutherans.
Now I AM a mature woman who understands Life has rules, and to be free is not easy, most probably it is God’s Will we get our freedom with struggle to give a very high value to it. At the beginning of our lives we don’t know what it is good or bad, actually we don’t know ourselves, so it is good to have something to lean on and start with. After this, we should find our own way. Leaving behind our parents’ religion is simply a way of saying “this is not me, this is not my way, I am going to look for mine”.
My parents never divorced, OK, but I did, and I am very happy about it. Who said we should be similar to them? So, do not regret to be rebellious.
I will be very happy reading your work. I follow you as well in Medium.
Thank you so much again. Merry Christmas and all the best for you in this coming New Year 2021. Louisa | https://medium.com/@louisa-free/hi-an-american-christian-72c270e73c60 | ['Louisa Oliveros'] | 2020-12-24 03:38:39.906000+00:00 | ['Life', 'Christianity', 'Abuse', 'Writing', 'Church'] |
Surveying elites about global governance: challenges and solutions | Contemporary society confronts major global transformations and governance challenges, including pandemics, ecological changes, economic restructuring, financial crises, migration, peacebuilding, cybersecurity and so on. Yet, we are commonly told, current prospects for global governance are grim, hampered by institutional shortcomings, dissatisfaction among emerging powers, the rise of economic nationalism and rejection of globalism by populists. But what is the actual situation, if we consider the attitudes of the people who most directly influence whether and how global governance happens, namely elites? Our recent article in International Affairs sought to find out.
We chose to study elites — defined as people in leading positions in key organizations in society that strive to be politically influential — because systematic research on elite views of global governance institutions (GGIs) is lacking. We concluded that it is not a lack of interest in the topic, but a lack of appropriate data that causes this gap in the literature.
We attempted to fill this gap by conducting a large-scale survey exercise with 860 individuals from six elite sectors (researchers, civil society, bureaucrats, media, business elites, and elites in political parties) in six countries (Brazil, Germany, the Philippines, Russia, South Africa and the United States), as well as an international group. To explore our findings, we recommend that you read the article itself.
In this blogpost, we will share the challenges and solutions we discovered in carrying out this survey, in the hope that sharing our experiences will aid future research.
Issues with the target audience
Our central research focus was to understand how elites view global governance. Therefore, the target population included both political and societal elites, situated at any governance level. Indeed, as we wanted to evaluate what governance level they deem most appropriate to deal with issues (international, regional, national etc.), we did not want to limit our study to the people most involved in global governance, as this may lead to a biased picture.
As a consequence, some prospective respondents were hesitant to participate as they felt they weren’t experts on ‘international issues’ (as we described the topic of our study in our invitations). At times, prospective respondents inquired about whether we wanted to talk with their colleague working on internationalization instead. This experience demonstrates the importance of explaining the rationale of the sampling strategy to prospective respondents. It also highlights the risk of composing a biased sample when one is not sufficiently attentive to this issue of self-selection in (non-)response.
Organizational challenges
Our goal was to run the survey in parallel in six countries around the world, and in international organizations, which posed a set of challenges. We organized the research centrally to guarantee comparable data. However, to cater to local customs, language, and time zones we created a large research team with local partners. This was particularly challenging in (semi-) authoritarian states where local partners were harder to find.
Linguistic and cultural challenges
As is the case in most international survey research, much effort went into translating survey questions. More complex issues arose later, such as when searching for the most effective communication methods. Our standard invitation procedure consisted of emails and follow-up calls to prospective respondents’ offices. Yet, our South African interviewers noticed that in certain cases text messages were more effective, while in the Philippines, social media proved useful.
The message in communications also benefited from adaptations in some instances. The standard invitation included information on the study, the research team, the interview and confidentiality. Yet, adaptations were required in the US context, where mentioning the (financial) size of our research project raised the legitimacy of our request for some groups, while in other contexts mentioning this would have been regarded as out of place.
We also observed stark differences in responses to our invitation. In the global sample, Germany, Brazil and South Africa, the response rate (i.e. the proportion of the invited people that actually took the survey) was very similar (ranging between 35.0% and 40.5%). Yet, the refusal rate (i.e. the proportion of the invited people that explicitly refused participation) was much higher in the global and German samples (resp. 32.4% and 31.3%) than in South Africa (22.6%) and Brazil (12.5%). It seems that in some contexts, openly refusing an invitation to a survey is a more obvious choice than continuously delaying the interview.
Finally, we observed a high variation in response rates between elites in different sectors, as shown by the figure below. Researchers, civil society, bureaucrats and permanent officials of GGIs were clearly more willing to take the survey than national representatives at GGIs, media, business elites, and elites in political parties. It is somewhat surprising that the two categories that have most to do with GGIs and thus the topic of our survey (their own staff and national representatives at GGIs) do not rank first.
Challenges when interviewing
A third challenge was to survey people in leading positions in a standardized fashion. Given their expertise, respondents were often more used to in-depth interviews, where they can fully elaborate on their experiences and opinions. Yet, given our goal to map general patterns and compare large data sets we needed to ask standardized questions with standardized response options.
We did two things to attenuate respondent’s frustration. First, as the preferred survey mode was telephone interviews (used in 81.5% of the interviews), interviewers had to strike a balance between showing interest in respondents’ stories and getting through the list of about 50 questions. Second, the survey included an open question, where respondents had the opportunity to explain their view on the legitimacy of GGIs in great detail. Including this open question provided respondents with the space they may have longed for, and provides more detailed information in a standardized survey format.
Conclusion
In the data collection process, we were met by many challenges regarding sampling, response, and survey formulation. Previous research on surveying and elites, networks of helpful colleagues around the world, and generous funding to support this data collection made it possible to sketch a first picture of international elites’ attitudes toward global governance. Our original dataset sheds new light on issues often discussed by academics and practitioners that have so far lacked the data to test commonly held assumptions. Our experiences should help anyone planning to do large scale international research, or surveys with those in high ranked positions. While we are making important steps forward, we hope that sharing our practical experiences will help other researchers to continue where we left off and move beyond our limitations. | https://medium.com/international-affairs-blog/surveying-elites-about-global-governance-challenges-and-solutions-9c9696a0820e | ['International Affairs'] | 2021-07-02 08:15:40.231000+00:00 | ['Surveys', 'Methodology', 'Author Views', 'Research', 'International Relations'] |
Data Augmentation with OpenCV | OpenCV: Geometric Transformations of Images
Scaling is just resizing of the image. OpenCV comes with a function for this purpose. The size of the image can be… | https://medium.com/@firatsahnn/opencv-ile-i%CC%87mage-augmentation-8cb51b7432dc | ['Fırat Şahin'] | 2020-12-08 20:16:49.050000+00:00 | ['Image Processing', 'Opencv', 'Data Augmentation', 'Computer Vision'] |
The Zap Zombies Tool Kit | For readers with a good sense of humour
“Grandad, how do ya zap zombies?”
I looked up from my book and eyed my eight year old grandson with interest.
“I’m not too sure Pete. I think you’ll have to leave that one with me. Can I do some research and get back to you?”
“Okay,” he replied and wandered off around the garden.
I’ve never encountered a zombie before but I thought it might be wise to be prepared; you never know what might happen next. The zombie apocalypse perhaps?
I had noticed some strange looking people in our village recently; their eyes staring wildly with a stunned, glassy expression. But then a neighbour told me that the local bar had been selling some really potent, home brewed, beer — under the counter vintage — that had sold out within days.
Anyway, I went to bed that night thinking about……..zombies.
“Hmm” I thought, watching my wife preparing herself for slumber, “perhaps I should look seriously into a zombie defense system.”
Zombies are easy….
So next morning, I dropped in front of the computer and started my search for some expert information on the subject. I must say that it didn’t take me long to assemble some very interesting facts and figures. And I soon discovered that zombies are apparently pretty easy to see off. No problem I thought.
But like every hobby, you soon discover that you must have some specialised equipment.
It’s always the same. You become interested in a topic, say antique, toe nail clippers or rubberised, foot warmers, and then you realise that you’ve got to spend a small fortune getting all the right gear so that you don’t look like a complete novice. And this principle also applies to zombie eradication.
Before I continue, please take note.
I must state that those readers of a sensitive disposition might want to stop reading now; what follows does get a little gruesome and gory.
No, still with me? Well, you have been warned!
What you need….
First things first then. What tools and gadgets will we need for zapping our zombies?
Okay, here’s the basic list. (I’m trying to keep costs to a minimum here for those on a limited budget)
1. Sledgehammer…….a good quality item. Not one of your cheap imports. You don’t want the hammer head to fall off or the shaft to split at a critical moment.
2. Shotgun…….nothing too expensive (don’t use your Purdey). The basic item should do it. Ask your local farmer he might lend you his spare.
3. Large calibre pistol…….how about a 44 Magnum? (“Make my day, zombie punk!”)
4. Chainsaw…….your neighbour or an ex-friend might have one. Ask if you can borrow it. You don’t want to ruin your own.
5. Lawnmower…….just take the mother- in- law’s. If it gets damaged. you could call it compensation for having to marry into the family.
6. Automobile…….best to use your partner’s vehicle. You need to look after your own motor.
7. Gasoline…….a couple of gallons should do it.
8. Helicopter…….a tricky one this. Do you know a local millionaire? If so, tell him you need it for a charity event or something. That should soften him up.
Okay, now for the really meaty “how to” stuff (squeemies…you’ve been warned!)
The action plan….
First task is to render the zombie brain inoperable.
This is were your shotgun will come in handy or that heavy duty pistol (please don’t shoot yourself in the foot). Now a slug from one of those babies should allow you to see the sky through zombs head. Or, if you work out, you could just swing that sledgehammer and land a cranium crusher. Don’t wear your best clothes though. It could be messy.
Now your next task is to cut that head off.
Don’t panic. Just imagine that you’re getting the Sunday roast ready to go in the oven. But you’ll be using the neighbour’s chainsaw or, if you’re a real showman, you lift up poor zomb so that the rich guy’s helicopter blades do the job. One swish and it’s all over.
If you’re a keen outdoor type who likes camping then you’ll enjoy the next bit. This is were you do some serious burnin’ !!!
Again, you just imagine that you’re away for the weekend in the woods and you need to get a good fire going. Lay zomb on a dry pile of sticks or logs, sprinkle generously with the gasoline. Then stand back and light the blue touch paper. Hmm…….just feel that natural warmth!
Hey, we’re almost finished.
The final touch is really to do with destroying as much of the evidence as possible. We don’t want any trace of zomb remaining just in case his pals recognise a part and decide to come after you. So we have a choice.
We can liquidise, crush or generally spread around what remains of zomb. The mother- in- law’s lawnmower could be useful here. It will chop and distribute all in one action. Or, you could borrow the kitchen liquidiser or jump in your partner’s car and do some squashing manoeuvres on the remaining bits. Grind them into the earth……you need to be creative here folks.
Just enjoy!
Job done…
Well, that’s it. Easy peasy.
Now I really hope this advice is going to be useful for all those who have the stomach to read it and a good sense of humour.
My grandson, naturally, never mentioned the ‘zap a zombie’ subject again. After a few days he’d already forgotten about the subject and moved on to a more wholesome interest to occupy his young mind.
But let me tell you that I don’t consider my time wasted doing this research. No siree!
Because, along the way, I think I’ve found a cure for the thick growth of hair that suddenly appears all over my body every full moon.
My wife is so pleased. | https://medium.com/@productbank/the-zap-zombies-tool-kit-3c57e774855d | ['Carel Kolchinski'] | 2020-12-18 11:52:48.693000+00:00 | ['Zombie Eradication', 'Humour', 'Zombie Defense', 'Zombies', 'Zombie Apocalypse'] |
TYFI Airdrop Details: Distribution starting this Christmas!!! | We noticed several questions regarding TYFI airdrop. Below are some key points regarding the airdrop and these should answer all your questions:
· We received over 9000 entries for airdrop since we launched TYFI airdrop campaign.
· We would need to verify all those 9000 entries to ensure that only eligible participants get TYFI tokens. This exercise is largely manual, so it takes a lot of time.
· Our maximum airdrop eligible users are capped at 5000 but please remember ONLY eligible entries would get TYFI tokes as part of the airdrop campaign.
· Airdrop would start ideally after 5 days of the TYFI public launch, so we are aiming to start it from this Christmas. So, let Santa bring you some TYFI tokens and $$$.
· We’ll do the TYFI airdrop in batches and it may take couple of days before we finish the whole exercise. So, we appreciate your support and patience.
Weekly Winners:
As promised, we conducted weekly winner for our referral program and we chose two winners. Those winners were rewarded with 500 TRX, congratulations to both of them!
Top 10 Referrers awards:
We are still conducting airdrop campaign verification and once that’s completed, we will publish a list of top 10 referrers before distribution of Airdrop. Those top 10 referrers would be awarded in TYFI tokens as per the terms and conditions of the campaign.
Join the TRONYFI DEFI Community
TRONYFI(TYFI) is the first ever TRON-based DeFi token leveraging Bonding curve model through TRC20 smart contracts to generate wealth for its investors — through holding and staking. Our mission is to provide equal opportunities to everyone to secure their financial freedom and live their dream lives. TYFI is Trustless, Borderless, Verified and Confirmed smart contract and the best thing about TYFI is that its token value is 100% backed by TRX reserve in smart contract through Automated Market Maker (AMM).
If you are interested to follow TRONYFI and get in touch with the project team members, you can participate and receive timely updates from the following official channels:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/tronyfi
Telegram: https://t.me/tronyfi
Medium: https://tronyfi.medium.com/
For partnerships, media, or other collaboration opportunities, please email: [email protected]. | https://medium.com/@tronyfi/tyfi-airdrop-details-distribution-starting-this-chritmas-bae6f0a67a46 | [] | 2020-12-16 12:04:14.970000+00:00 | ['Giveaway', 'Airdrop', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoin', 'Tron'] |
Theater turns controversial “tiger mother” into musical | [caption id=”attachment_2646" align=”alignleft” width=”399" caption=”Legacy of the Tiger Mother, a musical by Angela Chan and Michael Manley, explores the relationship between a mother and her daughter in an Asian Pacific American household. Photo Credit: tigermotherthemusical.com”]
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In today’s world, the phrase, “My parents are Asian,” would be a sufficient explanation for why you have to stay inside to study rather than hang out with friends. The common stereotype that Asian parents are strict and hard on their children is brought to the stage in the humorous new musical, “Legacy of the Tiger Mother,” written by Angela Chan and Michael Manley.
The story, directed by Lysander Abadia, is centered around three generations of Chinese women living in America. Lily is a first generation Chinese immigrant who believes playing the piano is crucial for success in life, and pushes her daughter to painstakingly practice the piano as much as possible. Her daughter, Mei, naturally becomes an avid believer in the piano as well, when she raises her own daughter.
However, the question of how much parenting is too much parenting causes Mei and Lily to argue over the right amount of severity. Mei must find the balance between typical Asian parenting styles and Western parenting styles.
Looking at the musical’s playbill, one can see that it is meant to be a humorous play — the “r” in “regacy” is crossed out and replaced with an “l” to poke fun at the stereotypical Asian accent. The musical is based off of Chan’s own experiences growing up and also draws inspirations from the controversial book, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” by Yale professor Amy Chua. Chua’s memoir reveals her own harsh parenting style as a Chinese American. Part of the book’s subtitle says, “This was supposed to be a story of how Chinese parents are better at raising kids than Western ones. But instead, it’s about a bitter clash of cultures, a fleeting taste of glory, and how I was humbled by a thirteen-year-old.” The book and its controversy appeared all last January; people are still talking about it today.
Many Asian Pacific American students are able to relate to the show’s theme of strict Asian parents.
“My mom doesn’t even like me sleeping over my girl friend’s places,” said Stella Song, a freshman letters and sciences major. “I don’t think that’s a big deal in western American culture but to Koreans, it looks bad when the girl in the family doesn’t sleep at her own house.”
Themes involving APA culture are not commonly found within typical mainstream American theatre. “Legacy of the Tiger Mother” may become a hit or it may become just a simple yet failed attempt at bringing in cultural diversity to the stage.
“I would probably go see the musical because I think it’s an interesting topic,” said Rachel Buninski, a freshman economics major. “I have American parents, and you often don’t see as much strictness in the American style of raising children,”
The musical had its first performance in December 2011 in Las Vegas. The show moved on to perform in New York City and will be showing in Australia this spring. | https://medium.com/umdplex/theater-turns-controversial-tiger-mother-into-musical-66e976e3c238 | [] | 2016-08-10 16:57:04.395000+00:00 | ['Theater', 'Acting', 'Theatre', 'Broadway', 'Musical'] |
Securing your Web Application Database | Chances are high that if you are operating a Web application, you will also need to operate a database. If you, like we do, run your infrastructure on Amazon Web Services, there are a number of options to choose from. You can deploy any database on an EC2 instance (which then you will have to administer by yourselves), or you can use RDS and make use of Amazon’s management services. At mySugr, we choose to use RDS and save the time and effort it takes to keep a database server up and running.
Risks
Regardless of which model you choose, you will need to make sure your database is secure. If your application has a certain level of traffic, you will very likely not be able to run your application and the database on the same (physical or virtual) machine. That means, your application will need to connect to a remote database, and this has some implications:
Your database host needs to be reachable from your application servers.
Your application servers need to know the credentials that they need to connect.
There is some traffic going over a network that contains data. In our case, this is highly sensitive medical and personal data.
Operating such a setup brings some security risks. You don’t want anyone to have access to your database (likely, it contains sensitive information like user data and password hashes), and you do not want someone to eavesdrop the traffic between your application servers and your database. Eventually, someone breaking into your system may lead to your user’s data being leaked, altered, or deleted, which will bring you into serious trouble.
Let’s take a closer look at what the most critical elements of this part of your application are: access to the network traffic between your app server and the database, access to your database host on the network level, and access to the database itself (which will require having the database credentials).
Obviously, you don’t want someone to listen to the traffic between your application servers and your database. This traffic will not only contain your user data, but also authentication information. Since it is “internal” traffic, it will also give someone the ability to learn about how your database is structured.
If an attacker is able to physically connect to your database server, they probably will not be able to get data out of this. Still, it opens the possibility to cause harm, like Denial-of-Service attacks (which may bring your application down), or brute-forcing database credentials.
Your database credentials (i.e., the username and password that your application uses to connect to the database) are one of the most critical pieces of information in your infrastructure. In combination with physical access to the database, an attacker might be able to read data, or (even worse) modify or delete data in your database. I think we don’t have to discuss the potential negative effects of such a situation.
What You Can Do
So, how can we protect our infrastructure and avoid such situations? There are a couple of things we can do if your infrastructure (like ours) is running on Amazon Web Services. (If it isn’t, you probably need to adapt to your environment.)
To avoid the risk of someone eavesdropping your network traffic, you should always encrypt it. How to configure transport-layer encryption depends on the database you are using. In our case, for MySQL, SSL support is already provided and can be easily enabled via configuration. If you are using MySQL on Amazon’s RDS, SSL support comes out of the box — no extra steps needed.
To prevent someone from connecting to your database (which, obviously, needs to allow for incoming connections), it’s certainly a good idea to move all your infrastructure into a private network. Amazon provides an excellent mechanisms to do so: Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) allows you to segregate your network into sub-networks and to control the traffic that is allowed between these networks. Additionally, Security Groups (a feature of VPC) act like a firewall and allow you to permit or deny incoming traffic on the host level. We’ll cover the details how to configure VPC and Security Groups in a separate blog post.
Finally, it’s good to invest some time thinking about where and how you store your database credentials. You may be thinking, “Hard-coded in your source code repository?” Maybe not, since this may spread quite quickly. If you’re using Amazon’s Elastic Beanstalk, you could store the credentials in the environment software configuration. Again, this is not particularly secure as they can be read by everyone who has access to that AWS service. Also, the credentials would be included in plain-text in any CloudFormation template that you generate out of an existing environment. In general, it’s not a good idea to pass database credentials as command-line parameters to your service, since they may appear in log output or in the process list.
Whatever you solution you choose to store your credentials, it will be quite tricky to implement one mechanism that is always considered good practice, which is to change your credentials frequently (also known as password rotation). Fortunately, AWS offers a great solution to this problem: if you are using RDS with MySQL or Aurora, you can couple database accounts to IAM accounts and use access tokens provided through an EC2 instance role. These tokens are used instead of the database password when connecting, and are valid for 15 minutes. Again, we’ll show the details how to setup IAM authentication in a separate blog post.
So, to summarize, there are a few things to consider in order to protect your database resources. First, you should make sure that traffic between your application and your database is always encrypted. Second, you should ensure that your database cannot be reached from the public Internet by putting it into a private network. Third, you should carefully consider options how to store your database credentials securely, or use some other form of authentication that does not require storing credentials | https://medium.com/monsterculture/securing-your-web-application-database-ca7d667cd6ce | ['Bernhard Schandl'] | 2019-12-11 08:04:52.214000+00:00 | ['AWS', 'Security', 'Database', 'Software Development', 'MySQL'] |
The new Google TV: Detailed Review | The remote is one of the best built remotes I’ve held, if not the best. It’s very nicely thought out, intuitive to use and feels great in the hand. But this honor is only given to the remote itself, the actual integration with the platform is discussed in the next paragraph. On the top, the Bluetooth remote has a 4 button control wheel and that follows buttons for Back, Assistant, Home, Mute, YouTube, Netflix, Power, and Input Switch. And the volume buttons are on the right side. The remote is powered by 2 AAA batteries (provided in the box). The remote works well with my TV (LG OLED) for TV controls (power, input, volume) and you can configure between IR or HDMI-CEC for each of the controls. The Input Switch is a nice addition as that’s often the only use people have for the actual TV remote, I wish Apple TV or Fire TV included a button for this too.
There are a few ways in which using a remote can be the least boring. Apple TV still does the best job among the competition when it comes to the actual effort it takes in navigating with the remote. Despite the fact that Apple TV remotes are known to be laggy or buggy at times, the platform itself has a much deeper integration for video playback and keyboard typing. So you can use the touch remote for a very accurate and satisfying scroll when fast forwarding a video in any app, or use Siri to “skip 2 minutes” or to “go back 2 minutes”. And all apps have to use the Apple TV keyboard interface (I think it must be enforced by the Apple dev rules), so you can use voice typing or type on your iPhone/iPad everywhere. That being said, Google TV has tried to do a good job here as well. The remote scroll often works smoothly in many apps (even though there’s no satisfying touch swipe as in the Apple TV). And you can use the voice assistant to skip or go back in some apps like Netflix, but not in Prime Video for instance. I don’t believe there’s any universal keyboard interface implemented with Google TV that apps can use for a unifying experience. Many of the apps come from Android TV, so backward compatibility can be a reason. Voice typing is supported in some apps, like Disney+. The Fire TV remote has a similar feature set, with voice navigation supported in some apps like Netflix.
The new Google TV (and the matching remotes) comes in 3 colors (White, Pink, Blue), so it can be pretty useful having different colors for different devices in a home.
Technical Specs
Google doesn’t officially reveal the specs for the new Chromecast, but after doing some research you can find it has a 2 GB RAM and ~4GB storage. 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth 4.1.
Setting the specs aside, the hardware powers the software pretty smoothly. I haven’t found it hanging or lagging at all for streaming purposes. That’s unlike the similarly priced MI Box 4k I owned before for Android TV. Having said that, the (almost 4x more expensive) Apple TV 4k could definitely be trusted as having more juice, if at all you’d like to use your streaming box for something more demanding like playing games or for higher storage.
Video
The new Chromecast supports video playback up to 4K HDR at 60 FPS. It also additionally supports HDR standards like Dolby Vision, HDR10 and HDR10+, so it ticks all boxes. It’s worth noting that Chromecast Ultra did not support Dolby Vision. Both Apple TV 4k and Fire TV 4k stick also support these formats. Apple TV lacks HDR10+ but there’s not a lot of HDR10+ content around that I know of, and I don’t know if it’s going to be popular in future.
There is one slightly annoying issue, however. In the default setting, Dolby Vision is enabled for all video playback (even the SDR videos). This can be slightly annoying for some because Dolby Vision tends to add a warmer tint for SDR content. This can be configured in Settings, thankfully, to “Match content dynamic range” but then you lose Dolby Vision in the menu navigation, which looks worse. Apple TV doesn’t have this limitation, and I hope Google will add the same support, so we can have a Dolby Vision menu navigation but also keep the original dynamic range for video content.
An additional feature that Apple TV offers, is something called “Reduce White Point”, it can essentially reduce the brightness especially if you have an OLED panel. That can be pretty useful, especially at night when you want to keep the lights low.
Audio
The new Chromecast also supports Dolby Atmos (lossy using DD+), and so do the Apple TV 4k and Fire TV 4k stick. I got it working with Netflix and Amazon Prime content. Other than that, the features are pretty standard.
Apple TV adds a few extra features that I miss when using Google TV. For one, with Apple TV you can route the audio globally using AirPlay, regardless of what app you are in. And that means I can group my Sonos speakers (which support AirPlay) and listen to the news across rooms. Apple recently introduced spatial audio in headphones which could also be supported in an Apple TV in future, and that’d be pretty cool. Another feature that Apple TV offers, is called “Reduce Loud Sounds” which can be of great use in some scenarios, like if you watch TV at night living in an apartment complex :) Again, I hope Google implements something similar in future.
Finally, the Google TV does support background music playback (like Apple TV). So you can leave the Spotify app and keep the music playing while you try to find something good to watch in your favorite apps. But if we’re talking about music, let’s not forget that Apple Music on Apple TV is probably the most pleasing music player interface to use on a TV (have you seen those beautiful lyrics? enough said)
Content
Let’s talk about the thing that’s at the center of everything.
Evolving from Android TV, the new platform supports most services/apps you’d be interested in. The exception, of course, being the Apple TV app (which is surprisingly available on some other devices like Fire TV).
Google tries to keep the navigation and exploration interesting, and integrates well with most (if not all) of the streaming services. As of writing, the following streaming services are integrated: Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu, YouTube TV, Disney+, HBO Max, Showtime, Starz, Sling TV, Viki, CBS and Epix. This allows Google to play content directly from the respective apps, and by doing so it creates a unified viewing experience for the user. This is not a new concept and is being done by most streaming devices, like Apple TV or Fire TV. However, there’s still a lot that can be done better and Google acts in a few ways.
At the home screen, there are six sections: For You, Live, Movies, Shows, Apps, Library. Most of these sections are designed and implemented pretty well. There are no annoying aspects like too much sponsorship (shoutout to Fire TV ;). The UI is intuitive to use and I must say Google has borrowed many design and feature ideas from the competition. The rounded card layout itself appears to be heavily inspired by Apple TV, and it even adds some animation over the cards (colors and some movement). Just like the Apple TV app, Google TV also has rows of cards for different sections. And as implemented by the Fire TV, Google adds a Live channel guide as well. Apple TV additionally provides the option of syncing your home screen across all Apple TV devices, that’s something useful to have.
There’s also an accompanying Google TV app available on Android that replaces the Google Play Movies app. You see a familiar interface there for exploring what to watch. Additionally you can also purchase shows, browse your library or manage your watchlist. For watching something, you can either choose to open the content in Google TV device or in the respective apps on your mobile device. It’s similar to the TV app offered for Apple TV.
Let’s talk a bit more on content exploration (a.k.a what to watch). I think Google manages to do better than the competition with content exploration. Let’s focus on two major aspects: Availability and Personalization. Most apps are available and well integrated. I must give a huge shoutout to YouTube TV, it’s so well integrated in the new Google TV that it’s one of my top reasons for using the platform. Live TV with YouTube TV is integrated pretty nicely across the platform, including recommendations. Having live programs in the same place as everything else makes it all much easier. And besides the live stuff, YouTube TV offers a lot more content on-demand. The on-demand movies/shows are made available by all the different channels and on top of that, you have unlimited DVR so you can add anything that’s on air. Google TV does a great job of integrating all of that. And when it comes to personalization and recommendation, Google TV doesn’t disappoint. In fact, this could be where Google can really shine eventually, as this is powered by all the user data. In my use, I could see sections like “Movies about World War II” or “Movies about technology” which I am assuming is based on my interests. As I use this platform more, I’d be watching out for more interesting changes around this. Before I forget, Google TV does support multiple user profiles. The watchlist and likes are powered by a central system that Google introduced a while back. This is the same watchlist / thumbs icons you’d find when you search for a movie on Google. While this is a good thing in some ways, I use IMDb for all of my ratings and watchlists. So it’d been nice if Google provided some tool/API to import the existing ratings. When talking about the competition, Apple TV was really leading the race before. But Apple is known to be partial with third-party services, and plays favorites. So this means that the Apple TV app will feature content from HBO, Disney+, Hulu but not from Netflix. There are a few things, however, that Google TV doesn’t do as well as the Apple TV. There’s not a good equivalent in Google TV for “Up Next”, so if a new episode is available for a show I am watching, it doesn’t show up. And I don’t think there is a recently watched list either.
Moving on to the side features. The Google Assistant works well on the Google TV, as one could expect. You can use it to control what’s playing on TV, or the usual assistant stuff like smart home control, or to show the camera feed, or to get an informational page about Rabindranath Tagore. Many of these features are also available in the competition with the respective counterparts. Siri or Alexa act well on Apple TV or Fire TV. Apple TV recently added a nice UI for camera feeds. However, I still prefer the Google Assistant among all the assistants: even if I fake my accent enough for Siri to understand that I am asking for info on Rabindranath Tagore, it won’t give me an answer :)
If you use VPN, you will find it easy with Google TV to download VPN apps — something that’s not available on Apple TV.
When using the new Chromecast as a Chromecast, you gain the power to use the remote for reverse/forward/pause/play/volume. You also gain the power to control whatever is playing on the Chromecast with Google TV with your other Assistant devices.
Finally, let’s talk about the screensaver. Apple TV shows these amazingly beautiful 4k videos and I think nothing can top that easily. But still, the Google Photos frames that Google TV can provide aren’t that boring and I often found myself reminiscing to some memories while looking at the TV. For that you can select albums, recent highlights or select people that you want to look at.
Concluding Notes
Google TV is a very welcome entry in the streaming device market and gets a lot of things right. At 50 USD, it’s priced fairly and can be favored over the more expensive Apple TV in terms of price. There are a lot of compelling reasons to honor this as the top streaming device in market for the average consumer. The hardware and software is designed well. The platform supports most major streaming services and does a good job at unifying them together, and at providing good recommendations. Like Apple TV and Fire TV, the new Chromecast with Google TV also supports the higher quality video and audio playback standards. For a premium price, Apple TV 4k does include some features that could be useful to some users. With the competition being tough, however, many features are common among the devices and things can boil down to a personal preference for a specific ecosystem. Features like assistant & smart home, casting tech, watchlists, video & music library, streaming services, photos and more are part of the ecosystems (Google, Apple or Amazon) and that, in many cases, should be the deciding factor. | https://medium.com/trends-of-tech/the-new-google-tv-detailed-review-1172084d0094 | ['Arkanath Pathak'] | 2020-12-22 07:17:04.887000+00:00 | ['Chromecast', 'Google', 'Home Entertainment', 'Google Tv', 'Technology'] |
Democracy and the Challenge of Affordability: Using Film to Raise the Issue of Housing Affordability | This post is the seventh in a month-long series of blog postings on affordable housing as a challenge to the health of American democracy, and in particular local democracy in the United States. The series, edited by Harvard Kennedy School Assistant Professor Quinton Mayne, is part of the Ash Center’s Challenges to Democracy series, a two-year public dialogue inviting leaders in thought and practice to name our greatest challenges and explore promising solutions.
In this post, we invite documentary filmmaker King Williams to share the issues that motivate his filmmaking and what his film, The Atlanta Way, can tell us about the health of American democracy. In his piece Williams describes his efforts as a filmmaker to give voice to communities who very often are the voiceless objects of urban policy decisions. He also reflects on how he and fellow filmmakers can engage communities in political awakening, coalition building, and mobilizing action toward positive change.
By King Williams
Affordable housing has been central to both the realization of the middle-class American dream and to the long history of segregation and racial inequality in the United States.
Since the founding of the United States, federal initiatives from the 13th, 14th, and 15thamendments in the 1860s to the Federal Fair Housing and Voting Rights acts of the 1960s have helped expand basic rights and protections to African Americans and other people of color.
In housing, we have seen how impactful federal interventions like the passage of the GI Bill could be in jumpstarting the path to the American middle class. But federal government policy has mainly helped realize a white middle-class dream; it has been less successful in fighting the segregation and racism that has undermined equality of opportunity for African Americans in housing or elsewhere like the workplace.
This contradiction is felt most deeply at the local level. In too many communities like Atlanta, where I am from, the rules of the game militate against equality and social justice.
Atlanta was the first U.S. city to open a public housing development, Techwood Homes, in 1933. And as of 2011 it was also the first city to close all of its public housing. Throughout its tenure, public housing in Atlanta reflected what we call the “Atlanta way” of doing things — which has involved the shaping of policy by both black and white elites for well over 100 years.
Out of this system of ruling by gentry in Atlanta — part of the city’s collective DNA — grows the familiar concept of gentrification.
Origins of the film
I’ve always wanted to get into film since I was a young child. The summer before my senior year of undergrad I decided to make a movie about Atlanta that was something of merit.
In 2007, I put a status on Facebook asking if there was anyone who wanted to maybe work on a documentary, and the only person who answered was my fellow executive producer Zettler Clay IV. So officially the day after I graduated undergrad at Georgia State University (GSU) in Atlanta, I was sitting in the middle of the student center’s empty cafeteria with Zettler along with a core group of then students of GSU and SCAD, the Savannah College of Art and Design, detailing how we would do this documentary.
The author of this post, filmmaker King Williams (left) and The Atlanta Way producer Zettler Clay IV
Over time we’ve added some key personnel and upgraded our collective talents. For example, I worked as an intern for film director Spike Lee in 2011–12. All these efforts have made this film much better than anything that it could’ve been before.
We set out to make a documentary about the last days of public housing in Atlanta, to find out what happened to all of the people when it closed. To answer this, I first had to ask myself a simple question that no one could seem to answer; not my teachers, not my neighbors, not roommates, not even my own mother… that question is what happened to the people in East Lake Meadows?
East Lake Meadows was a public housing project on the east side of Atlanta that I remembered as a child. At one point it had the dubious distinction of being one of the largest public housing projects in the entire city of Atlanta. Additionally it was one of the most violent places in the United States, where crime was 18x the national average in the mid-1990s and the employment rate was at one point 9%.
My motivation to make The Atlanta Way has really been about making a movie about my city from the perspective of the people who actually live and work in it — people like the former residents of East Lake Meadows.
Watch an excerpt from The Atlanta Way: ‘Diane Wright & the last days of Hollywood Courts’
What happened to all the people?
In making the film, we learned that unfortunately many of the former residents of East Lake Meadows are no longer there. Many people of East Lake were relocated through housing vouchers based upon a list of eligibility criteria set forth by our Atlanta Housing Authority. These criteria as well as the wait listing of available new units caused a permanent and seismic change in the way Atlanta would develop.
Not everyone who formerly lived in East Lake Meadows received these housing vouchers, for various reasons. Even for those who received vouchers, there remained concerns as to how many people still live in low-income housing.
This (then) novel approach to housing redevelopment would dramatically change how the city addressed poverty. The ensuing years of subsidized voucher housing led to a mass exodus of people. It also led to the removal of public housing units which had been purposely neglected for years. The ‘Atlanta Way’ of housing deservedly had its share of press for the positive aspects it had to re-ignite the economic vitality of the city pre/post the 1996 Olympics.
The problem is that even as of 2015 the majority of the areas where those units once stood are no more than vacant lots. In those properties that have been renovated into the mixed-income model, not everyone who was voucher-eligible returned to live in these areas. What has happened is a systematic de-concentration of those who are impoverished. This approach is something everyone has championed, but the places where those people have moved to have not necessarily been an improvement in terms of moving people out of poverty.
So I’ve sought out numerous people who’ve either been studying the “Atlanta way,” or been directly affecting it, or who were affected by these relocations.
The data speak volumes to the system working, but many of its detractors argue that the reports are due to smaller, select sample. Also the means were not truly transparent in seeking to eradicate poverty; rather it simply reshuffles the deck for select individuals.
The Atlanta Way’s impact
The Atlanta Way, still in production, takes a look at mass scale gentrification in a way that has never been done in film before. The purpose of the film is to show how the ‘the Atlanta way of doing things’ makes Atlanta’s ongoing experience with gentrification unique and also to highlight the model that other cities are now following in the urban planning space.
As a filmmaker I think The Atlanta Way has helped tremendously in raising not only the issue of housing affordability but also other issues relevant to Atlanta such as race, class, respectability, self-segregation, and idealism. Importantly, the film highlights how housing affordability in Atlanta has a lot to do with the general lack of strategic long–term development of the city.
Former Mayor of Atlanta William ‘Bill’ Campbell is interviewed for The Atlanta Way. As mayor from 1994–2002, Campbell initiated Atlanta’s public housing reforms outlined in this post.
As with Andrew Padilla’s El Barrio Tours, the greatest impact of The Atlanta Way has really been at screenings and other events that provide an opportunity for people to actually talk face-to-face. With so much of our communications confined now to talking online via a screen, there are so many nuances, contextual cues, and general flow of conversation that are missed. During these screenings, I have been able to have in-depth conversations and actual dialogue with people on the issue of gentrification.
The film has become part of what I’ve seen is a growing movement of residential-led films such as El Barrio Tours USA and The Battle For Brooklyn, that have really been fueled by social media as a dialogue tool and by technology that lowers the costs of filmmaking.
Filmmaking as a force for positive change
The health of American democracy is definitely up for serious debate. In my opinion it is vastly in need of serious medical intervention. We’re seeing daily erosion of access to resources and services as well as reductions in overall federal programs, which vastly undervalue the poor, Latino immigrants, women, Blacks, and the LGBT community — basically the Democratic Party’s traditional supporters. Even further are challenges like the judgment of Citizens United, the NSA, Monsanto GMO regulations, and ALEC, to name a few.
All of these developments seriously suggest that democracy is for some rather than for all.
We’re living in the era of leaderless movements, and while social media gets all the glory it’s really non-traditional filmmaking that’s rapidly shaping and reshaping our more connected lives. I think film and filmmaking is becoming more malleable and accessible to people who’ve previously encountered barriers to access as a result of location, affordability, language, and traditional gate keepers. With the lower costs of equipment, as well as the increase in the number of people who have mobile devices and Internet connections globally, filmmaking has never been more prevalent.
To mobilize a populace without a leader and to do it effectively has really become a game changer for all whether or not we’re active participants. Just look at Twitter during the coverage of Baltimore, Ferguson, the Eric Gardner protests, the Gay Marriage and Arab Spring movements; filmmaking, journalism, and mobilization have arguably never been this good in our history.
Essentially anyone with an iPhone can make films and good ones too, just check out some of the fully narrative stories told on Vine and SnapChat. I see this as a trend continuing; as the people begin to speak out and up against issues of affordability, I see we’re getting more of an organized approach to this problem from people across the world who’ve never met before.
It’s now possible to see life events and the stories that shape them, in real time. This change has allowed for a number of vantage points that are often overlooked or ignored. The capability of citizen journalism and increasingly low barriers to entry for creating media could have serious implications going forward and we should all be taking notes.
King Williams is currently completing The Atlanta Way in anticipation of a fall 2015 release. Additionally he’s working on an accompanying handbook on gentrification as well as a podcast series on gentrification and city-related topics debuting later this summer. To stay updated about The Atlanta Way, gentrification handbook, or gentrification podcast series please sign up here. You can follow King (@iamkingwilliams) on both Instagram and Twitter.
Further Reading
CityLab from The Atlantic, By 2011, Atlanta Had Demolished All of Its Public Housing Projects. Where Did All Those People Go?, by Stephanie Garlock, May 8, 2014.
Creative Loafing, ‘The Atlanta Way’ documentary filmmaker discovers why ‘gentrification’ is a four-letter word, by Rodney Carmichael, May 22, 2013.
NextCity, Has the Shift to Mixed-Income Housing Created a Tale of Two Atlantas?, by Alexis Stephens, February 19, 2015. | https://medium.com/challenges-to-democracy/democracy-and-the-challenge-of-affordability-using-film-to-raise-the-issue-of-housing-a43398de6b76 | ['Harvard Ash Center'] | 2018-07-31 13:52:24.828000+00:00 | ['Housing', 'Challenge', 'Harvard', 'Democracy', 'Affordable Housing'] |
Mindful Musings | Photo by cottonbro via Pexels
Mindful Musings
We have been through so much with this year — words cannot even begin to describe the roller coaster we’ve all been riding for the last ten-eleven months. For those of you who have grieved this year — we send a prayer, we lend our hearts to you. For those of you who are struggling to make it through each day remaining of this year — we hold you close. You have our love.
As creatives, we know how to make our art work for us and during this daunting season, writers in A Cornered Gurl have not wavered. I am grateful for a community that connects, encourages, and shares openly with each other.
All of you are amazing and I am glad you are here.
There have been so many incredible pieces of poetry (with accompanying artwork from the authors), mesmerizing fiction, intense nonfiction, and dope challenge responses. Here you’ll find some of the work that truly stood out over the last three months. | https://medium.com/a-cornered-gurl/mindful-musings-17d6cc484e40 | ['Tre L. Loadholt'] | 2020-12-30 23:03:22.387000+00:00 | ['Creative Writing', '2020', 'A Cornered Gurl', 'Community', 'Letter'] |
The Judicial System in Sri Lanka | K. Banuka N. De Silva
BA (SP) Criminology and Criminal Justice
Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
The University of Sri Jayewardenepura,
Gangodawila, Nugegoda, Sri Lanka
[email protected]
Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3735185
The judiciary is a system of courts adjudicating legal disputes and interpreting, defending and applying the law in legal cases. The purpose of this article is to identify the evolution of Sri Lanka’s Judiciary System and its functions. Keywords: Judiciary system, Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka’s judiciary evolution
In the monarchical era, the justice system in Sri Lanka was born. The king was the highest and highest judge, whilst the judiciary worked under an unwritten legal system. He also received the final appeal for any judgement. During their rule in Sri Lanka, Portuguese continued using the old Sinhala judicial system. ‘Korale’, ‘Disave’ and ‘Vidane’ exercised their jurisdiction as the system or the ‘Gam Sabha’ of the village council was also continued. Three judicial districts, Colombo, Jaffna and Galle, were established over the Dutch period. They used systemic judiciary. During British colonial rule, the court was made much more systematic. The British judiciary has therefore also further applied the Romano-Dutch law introduced by the Netherlands. Over that period, a decision made by the apex court in Sri Lanka could be appealed to the British private council. That power was abolished by constitutional reforms in 1972. According to the Law of Dispensing Justice introduced in 1973, the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka was appointed an apex court, while the Court of Appeal, the High Court, the District Court, the Magistrate Court and the Primary Courts remained the other courts of the Sri Lankan judicial system. The current system of courts is defined by the Judicature Act No 02 of 1978. However, the modern form of the European way of justice originated during the Dutch colonial occupation of the coastal areas of Sri Lanka in the nineteenth century. Local conditions of civil and criminal law, as well as the system of courts, existed for centuries before the European colonization.
Sri Lanka’s current judicial system
Supreme court
(Source: Supreme Court of Sri Lanka Archives | Sri Lanka News — Newsfirst. (2020, Nov. 18). Retrieved from https://www.newsfirst.lk/tag/supreme-court-of-sri-lanka).
The Supreme Court of Sri Lanka was established on 18 April 1801 with the Royal Charter of Justice of King George the 3rd establishing the Supreme Courts of Ceylon by the British, who controlled most of the island at the time, excluding Kandy’s inland territory. This creation was abolished in 1833 and replaced by a new Charter covering the entire island. The Supreme Court is the highest and final supreme court of record and is empowered to exercise its powers, subject to the provisions of the Constitution. The Court of First Instance or the Court of First Instance shall have final and final jurisdiction in civil and criminal appeals. It’s headed by Chief Justice. The Supreme Court, consisting of 11 Judges, including the Hon. Generally, The Chief Justice appointed by the President of Sri Lanka. The Constitution of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka recognises the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court as follows:
The jurisdiction in respect of Constitutional matters,
The jurisdiction in respect of Fundamental Rights,
Final Appellate Jurisdiction,
Consultative Jurisdiction,
The jurisdiction in Elections Petitions (Presidential election),
The jurisdiction in respect of any breach of Privileges of the Parliament, and the jurisdiction in respect of such other matters which Parliament may by Law vest or ordain.
The Registry of the Supreme Court shall assist the Supreme Court in the performance of its functions for which the Ministry of Justice grants the provisions of Head 234. The functions of the Supreme Court Registry shall include:
Maintenance of the Record of the Supreme Court
Arrangements for sittings and schedule of applications
Record of Court Orders and Judgments
Enrolment of Attorneys-at-Law at the Supreme Court
Preparation of briefs received from the Court of Appeal and the assessment of legal costs
Court of appeal
Royal Charter of Justice of King George the 3rd, 1801, establishing Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court. The Court of Appeal is the highest and ultimate record court. It’s headed by Court of Appeal’s president. The president appoints judges to the Court of Appeal as recommended by the Constitutional Council. The Court’s jurisdiction is as follows;
Appeals from the high court in the exercise of its appellate or original Jurisdiction
Jurisdiction to try election petitions in respect of the election of the members of parliament
Jurisdiction to grant and issue writs of certiorari prohibition, procedendo, mandamus, Quo warranto and habeas corpus and to grant injunctions
Power of Investigating and inspecting the records of the courts of the first instance
Provincial high court
The provincial high courts were established in accordance with the 13th amendment of the Constitution of 1978. Judges are appointed by the Chief Justice to this court. The aim of the establishment of this court is to decentralise the powers of the court of appeal to the provincial level. It gives the public the opportunity to present their appeals at the provincial level. The powers of this court shall be as follows.
Commercial jurisdiction
Appellate and revisionary jurisdiction in respect of convictions, Sentences, orders entered or imposed by District Courts, Magistrate’s Courts and Primary Courts within the province.
Writ jurisdiction in respect of powers exercised under any law or under any statutes made by the provincial council.
Appeals from Labour Tribunals, Agrarian Tribunals and Small Claims courts.
Issuing writs of Habeas corpus in provincial councils.
High court
The High Court of Sri Lanka, established in accordance with the Constitution, has the power and authority to hear, try and determine all prosecutions on charges of the indictment. It has criminal and admiralty jurisdiction, as well as jurisdiction over offences committed on board aircraft and within the territorial air space. The High Court is the only court to exercise the jurisdiction and jurisdiction of the Court of First Instance. It exercises both civil jurisdiction and criminal jurisdiction. The High Court of Commerce is empowered to hear commercial cases transactions in excess of three million rupees and jurisdiction over cases covered by the Intellectual Property Act. These powers are as follows;
Original Criminal Jurisdiction — Murder cases, Attempt to murder, Rapes, Treasons, Large scale plunders
Applications for the return of or access to an abducted child (exercised by the High Court of the Western Province)
Admiralty Jurisdiction
An offence committed by a Sri Lankan abroad
Offences committed aboard aircraft and within the territorial air space
Jurisdiction to hear and determine an offence i.e. influencing or attempting to influence any decision or order made by the Judicial Service Commission or influencing any member thereof
District court
District Courts have been established in 54 districts of Sri Lanka. These courts have all the civil jurisdictions that are relevant to each district. The appointment and removal of district court judges shall be carried out by the Commission of the Judicial Service. The cases heard by the District Courts shall be as follows;
Cases related to marriages. (divorce, marriage, asking compensations for sexual misconduct and divorce allowances etc)
Testamentary Cases — (cases related to the property of people, died without leaving a last will i.e. intestate estate of deceased persons)
Guardianship of idiots and persons of unsound mind and guardianship of their property.
Cases related to guardianship and legality of the under-aged children.
Demands for the adoption of children.
Requests for changing the names in the birth certificate.
Cases related to incomes.
Cases on trusts and bankruptcy.
Cases on payments, debts, damages demands for and financial cases.
Partition cases.
Cases on lands.
Cases on house rents.
Cases on compensation for accidents and insurance.
Cases filed under company act
Magistrate court
Magistrate’s Courts are established for 74 judicial divisions in Sri Lanka. Every Magistrate’s Court is vested with original criminal jurisdiction and is ordinarily empowered to impose sentences up to a fine of Rs. 1,500 and/or 2 years of rigorous or simple imprisonment. All Magistrates are appointed by the Judicial Service Commission. Appeals from convictions, sentences or orders of Magistrate’s Courts within a Province lie to the High Court of the Province.
The cases heard by the courts of the magistrate are as follows:
Offences on public security.
Offences related to the army, air force and navy.
Offences related to government servants.
Offences related to elections.
Request for orders concerning protection from domestic violence.
Providing false evidence and offences against public justice.
Furthermore, this court can also work on offences mentioned in parliamentary Acts. Eg.- Forest Ordinance, Excise Ordinance, Cosmetics, Devices and Drugs Act, Food Act, Road Development Authority Act, as well as the Motor Traffic Act.
In addition to the judicial system referred to above, a number of other institutions and tribunals responsible for the administration of judicial functions have been established by special acts of Parliament. Labour courts have therefore been set up to settle labour disputes, while Quazi courts have been set up to resolve Muslim marriage and divorce issues. More on the Rent Control Board has been set up to solve house rental problems. In addition, the Conciliation Board was established to resolve disputes without going to court. | https://medium.com/@criminologylk/the-judicial-system-in-sri-lanka-40a611a5651c | ['Banuka N. De Silva'] | 2020-11-24 15:37:45.793000+00:00 | ['Sri Lanka', 'Criminal Justice', 'Criminology', 'Judiciary', 'https://www.newsfirst.lk/tag/supreme-court-of-sri-lanka'] |
Team Management: Why appreciation matters? | In this article, we will be discussing; what is the impact of appreciation and acknowledgment on employees/team member’s loyalty. This article is divided into two parts, firstly we will talk about why appreciation matters a lot in team management. In the second part, we will discuss what steps we can take to appreciate our team members.
We will try to understand the concept with an example. Let’s suppose you own a car. The basic need of the car to start is fuel. But you spend money on other parts of the car as well. You wash it, keep it clean. You take care of the tires. Now let’s suppose, you have to go from one city to another. It’s a long journey. What you will do? You will verify that all the parts of the car are in good condition. Water to keep the car cool, air pressure in tires, Ac is working fine, and so on.
If you just start driving the car with fuel in it and ignoring the other requirements, your car will probably be broken down after a few miles. It can make your journey uncomfortable. It can slow you down. And at the end of the day, you will not reach your destination. And you will blame the car for it. In fact, it’s not the car which didn’t take you to the destination, it’s YOU, who didn’t maintain your car when needed. | https://medium.com/feel-motivated/team-management-why-appreciation-matters-bc9b6e9b2534 | ['Faraz Javed'] | 2020-11-22 23:23:43.012000+00:00 | ['Team Building', 'Leadership Skills', 'Teamwork', 'Team Management', 'Leadership'] |
Foursquare Native Auth on iOS and Android: Developers, connect your users more quickly than ever | A few weeks ago we were excited to announce one of our most-wished-for features from our developer community, native authentication for iOS, and today we’re happy to announce we’ve also shipped support for native auth on Android in our latest release of Foursquare on Google Play! In a nutshell, this means that your users can connect their Foursquare accounts to your app without wrangling with messy WebViews and log-ins. Native authentication simply pops your users into the Foursquare app on their phone and lets them use their existing credentials there.
And even though this has only been out for a few short weeks, we love what our developers have been doing with it so far. If you want to see what native auth looks and feels like in the wild, install the latest version of quick check-in app Checkie: after using Foursquare to find a place for you and your friends to go, Checkie lets you check in with incredible speed.
Since Checkie uses our checkins/add endpoint, users need a way to log in. Below is what the app used to look like upon opening. Users are taken directly to a WebView where the user had to type in — and more importantly, remember, without the aid of Facebook Connect — their Foursquare credentials before continuing to use Checkie.
For this old flow to succeed, at least four taps are necessary, along with who knows how many keystrokes. Below is how the new Checkie flow works after integrating native auth: there’s a more informational screen when the app opens, and only two taps are necessary to begin actually using Checkie: “Sign in,” which bumps users to the Foursquare app where they can hit “Allow.”
How You Can Use Native Auth Today
You too can get started using this flow right away. We have libraries and sample code for iOS and Android available on GitHub that you can dive straight into. The details vary depending on OS, but the overall conceptual process is similar for both and outlined below — it should be familiar for those who have worked with 3-legged OAuth before.
Update your app’s settings. You need to modify your app’s redirect URIs (iOS) or add a key hash (Android). Include our new libraries in your project. OS-specific instructions are found on their GitHub pages. Unless you want to use it as a backup mechanism, get rid of that (UI) WebView ! Chances are, if you expect your users to have Foursquare accounts, they’ll have the app on their phones. Call our new native authorize methods. On iOS, it’s authorizeUserUsingClientId ; on Android, it’s FoursquareOAuth.getConnectIntent then startActivityForResult with the returned intent. These methods bounce your users to the Foursquare app’s authorize screen or return appropriate fallback responses allowing them to download the app. If you user authorizes your app, your user will land back in your app. Follow OS-specific instructions to obtain an access code. This should involve calling either accessCodeForFSOAuthURL (iOS) or FoursquareOAuth.getAuthCodeFromResult (Android). Trade this access code for an access token. The access token (not access code) is what is eventually used to make calls on behalf of a particular user. There are two ways to do this: (Preferred) Pass the access token to your server, and then make a server-side call to https://foursquare.com/oauth2/access_token —see step 3 under our code flow docs for details on the exact parameters needed. The response from Foursquare will be an access token, which can be saved and should be used to make auth’d requests. This method is preferable because it avoids including your client secret into your app. For more details, see our page on connecting. Call our new native methods to get an access token. On iOS it’s requestAccessTokenForCode . On Android it’s FSOauth.getTokenExchangeIntent followed by startActivityForResult (make sure you also make requisite changes to AndroidManifest.xml )
If you have any comments or questions about this new native auth flow — or anything API-related in general! — please reach out to [email protected].
- David Hu, Developer Advocate | https://medium.com/foursquare-direct/foursquare-native-auth-on-ios-and-android-developers-connect-your-users-more-quickly-than-ever-7f1f2129e283 | [] | 2018-07-31 19:21:44.591000+00:00 | ['Engineering', 'Foursquare'] |
How To Improve Your iPhone Battery? — MobileBitz | Your iPhone, iPad or iPod can be the super adaptable technology until it runs out of battery. Being iPhone user we can face this common situation very often. Though iPhone is popular because of good battery timing but at the same time over-consumption of different applications and some other negligence can harm the battery before its life duration. For this, many of us also use third-party apps to preserve battery.
Denying the fact that battery timing gets slower with the passage of time is impossible. But what if we can preserve it smartly and adopting some common yet helpful tips. For iPhone battery damage you will always need an immediate repair service but some common habits can prolong battery timing. In this article let’s just discuss and sort out this common and easy handled issue. Here are some tips and tricks to follow by every iPhone user.
Reduce Brightness.
This must be your very first step if you really want a long lasting battery. Reduce the brightness for unnecessary use. Brightness is actually consuming all the battery from your phone. You can set the brightness on automatic mode as well. Which means it will automatically turn brighter if needed. We seldom do this common mistake and end up with low battery lifespan.
Updates are important.
Update the iOS version whenever needed. This is the most common issue that effects battery timing. Whenever you are facing the minor issue in your iPhone or iPad, update the iOS version immediately. The reason behind this is Apple uses regular free operating system updates to roll out bugs and glitches. So there might be possible that minor issues can be solved by simple IOS update. Thus, battery timing will last quite longer than before. This tip can also apply to other smartphones.
Facebook and other applications.
Many of us heard this accusation that Facebook consumes excessive battery time. It is not just a myth. Facebook already admitted this fact that it consumes battery from the background. It was also published earlier in a report that Facebook admitted that this application consumes almost 15% of the battery from a background. There are also some similar applications which also consume excessive battery. Though iPhone has disabled and refreshes for this still it drains the battery. Furthermore, Facebook also worked on this issue before but no improvements yet. All you can do is use it via safari app.
Lock right away (auto-lock).
When you are done using phone lock it right away. Because, if it will remain awake then it will surely consume battery. It is suggested that keep your phone time out settings on 30 seconds so that it will not consume background battery. In iPhone 9 auto lock to an ultra-low 30 seconds option is also available. It will provide some extra timing to the battery and thus you can use the phone for a little longer.
Disable WiFi.
Keeping your WiFi always enable can bring iPhone’s battery timing to the worst condition. One must turn off the WiFi when there is no need. Although we are living in a world which is totally running on technology and mutual interaction. But at the same time keeping your device’s battery healthy is an important task.
Use the WiFi for important things only because it maximum consume the battery and thus decrease its lifespan quickly.
Stop Vibration.
Many of us have no idea but vibration mode also consume much battery. Use as a silent mode or you can turn on those annoying jingles which you were avoiding since long. Keypad vibration must also turn off because again it consumes remarkably excessive battery. So the next time when you find anyone using vibrating mode then advise them right away to turn off this phone’s battery enemy.
Avoid GAMES.
Although there wasn’t any need to mention this avoid using lots of games on your phone because it can harm not only the RAM but it will also decrease the battery timing of your phone. Okay, game lovers! This is really bad news for you but if you really need a healthy good phone then you have to follow this tip.
Charging Tips.
There few common charging tips which almost every phone needs. If we talk about lithium-ion battery it totally depends on how it charged. Do not overcharge batteries because it directly reduces battery timing. When you are charging iPhone make sure that Bluetooth, mobile data, WiFi, and other unnecessary applications must remain close. Moreover, if you are using any thick casing for your then remove it for charging purpose. Avoid phone charging in a highly sunny place, for that it can also damage your phone RAM and battery. Do not overcharge the phone because it drains the lifespan of the battery.
Keeping iPhone’s battery good is not that difficult task but it also needs a little more attention. Keep a check on your phone’s battery once a week. | https://medium.com/@sabika.ejaz/how-to-improve-your-iphone-battery-mobilebitz-6f178a263a3b | ['Sabika Ejaz'] | 2019-02-15 10:36:10.071000+00:00 | ['Battery', 'Iphone Battery Repair', 'iPhone', 'iPhone 7', 'iPhone 8'] |
Eyes of Gratitude | Eyes of Gratitude
Photo by Jackson David on Unsplash
I look around and
Then I see all the beauty
That’s here, around me.
I have tapped into
A new reality; my
Own with eyes open.
Eyes of gratitude
Change my being here and now
Focus on what is.
What is not remains
Taking a back seat as what
Is moves me forward.
Gratitude grounds me
It lights up my dark spaces
Breathes life when I wilt. | https://psiloveyou.xyz/eyes-of-gratitude-81676c742a7c | ['Galit Birk'] | 2020-12-20 13:04:20.819000+00:00 | ['Self-awareness', 'Haiku', 'Gratitude', 'Self Improvement', 'Poetry Sunday'] |
Being Labeled ‘Gifted’ as a Child Made Me an Idiot | I Didn’t Understand Tradition.
By tradition, I mean meaning structures that create half of human perceptual reality. In contrast to measurable reality, which is sums and science but not meaning.
When I was a kid, I was one of those people who didn’t understand pep-rallies and football. It all seemed so “illogical” to me. I can see now that people who think like this are annoying. They are missing literally half of what it means to be human: the meaning half. Football, America, and cheerleaders were part of the mythology of what it meant to be a high schooler in the South. If you thought all of it was meant to be “logical” then you were seriously missing the point.
No one could “explain” to me exactly what point I was missing, though. Because mythology and tradition isn’t something that rests in the front, thinking part of the brain. It’s the value structures that dictate how we should behave toward and with one another. They just rolled their eyes at me. Looking back, I would have too.
Yes, there is nothing measurable or logical about playing football, but it is a complex meaning structure that gives a whole lot of utility to the individuals involved and the community. Kids are given a place where they can grow confidence and learn to climb social hierarchies. Athletes tend to be more successful later in life, and for good reason. Obviously, sports have a huge social utility. But measuring it wouldn’t capture what it really means.
It would be a long time before I understood how much I was taking for granted. How much these built-in meaning structures allowed us to compete and cooperate in ways that were mostly functional and mutually beneficial. In nature, that is certainly not a given, and you only need to look at our brutal history for proof that it was something seriously hard-won.
I was more focused on the faults. While I wasn’t wrong about the faults that I noticed, the point I was missing was that it’s easy to point out faults. Any meaning structure is going to be imperfect. It’s harder to be constructive.
People who are less verbal don’t need to put this into words or even think about this. They just feel it and understand it. They had an intuitive grasp of mythology; one that I abandoned because I couldn’t make sense of it in my “gifted” thinking mind. By the way, I don’t mean to imply that people who love sports are stupid. The smartest people I know are also great athletes.
But for kids like me, who were on the more verbal end of the bell-curve and not great athletes, we can misunderstand an entire aspect of what it means to be human. | https://medium.com/the-ascent/being-labeled-gifted-as-a-child-made-me-an-idiot-91f1417ffbe6 | ['Taylor Foreman'] | 2020-10-20 12:03:25.939000+00:00 | ['Childhood', 'Intelligence', 'Personal Development', 'Life', 'Life Lessons'] |
The Media’s Punching Bag: Loving Yourself While Transfemme | The Media’s Punching Bag: Loving Yourself While Transfemme
Finding compassion and confidence when you’re the butt of every joke.
“You’re just tricking men, aren’t you?” “That’s not a woman, that’s a whole man.” “You’re a man. XY chromosomes. Open a biology textbook.” “I don’t think you’re fit to be around my kids.” “Sorry, I just don’t get it…”
We are deprived of love in all its forms. Trans people, and trans femmes in particular, have been here for as long as time and have been denied love and compassion for just as long. Well, that may not be entirely true, but at least with the coming of the colonial perception of gender, we’ve been seen as aberrants, transgressions, gay men, drag queens, stains on a clean society, and more for just being ourselves. The outrage of our existence is even communicated to us non-verbally with eyes following us down the streets wherever we go, should we not be “lucky” enough to pass.
Photo by ZSun Fu on Unsplash
Passing isn’t the goal for every trans person. Rather, we just want to grow into the person we see on the inside, whether that just involves switching our pronouns around or transitioning medically in some capacity. Some may think that this is an act of self-hate, changing everything we couldn’t accept about ourselves. I don’t understand how it could be thought of as anything other than an act of self-love. We choose ourselves despite the consequences. We choose ourselves despite all the laughs, the shouts, the beatings, the blows, the disappointments, the discrimination, and all the hate. Our love for ourselves is stronger than that, and we’re tough enough to bear it all to be who we really need to be.
Obviously, it’s not a journey to the pinnacle of confidence. Just like cis people, trans people feel insecure even when we reach general contentment with ourselves. While sort of a flawed narrative, when we “finish” our transition, we’re not immediately cured of our self-doubt, insecurity, and other issues. However, transition provides the general baseline confidence and attunement with the self that cis people have on a daily basis. It takes a lot of introspection, self-examination, and love to put in the necessary work to find a place of self-love even when the world feels that they can revoke our identities. However, even when we are assured in our perception of ourselves, finding romance can be difficult especially for transfeminine people. One of the biggest culprits is the media that shows our stories in such a skewed manner.
There are countless examples of movies that do trans women and transfemmes extremely dirty. After just watching the documentary Disclosure on Netflix, it really opened my eyes to how normalized this violent portrayal of trans narratives is accepted. Femininity, especially for people perceived as men, is something that is a joke. It’s a costume. For example, men dressing in drag in a movie is something that’s apparently inherently funny, going against the whole principle of drag as a means of exploring gender as art. This contributes to the false narrative that trans women are men, that we’re just something to laugh at. Even when transfemmes are portrayed in movies as explicitly trans, we’re often shown as either a “prostitute,” a “dead prostitute,” or exposed as trans in a negative light. There’s even more that can be said about this, but all in all, the portrayal is not that positive.
The most striking examples are the endings of Ace Ventura and Sleepaway Camp. Luckily, I haven’t seen these movies personally, but they’re emblematic of two common attitudes towards transfeminine people in movies. In Ace Ventura, it’s revealed at the end that one of the characters we thought was a woman is in fact “a man.” I hadn’t seen the scene until watching Disclosure, and let me tell you- it was jarring, to say the least. They forcefully strip her of her shirt to reveal breasts and a bra. Since that wasn’t “convincing,” they turn her around and reveal her underwear from the back, which has the outline of tucked male genitalia. As if this humiliation and sexual violence wasn’t enough, everyone begins to vomit. A lot. It wasn’t even just the assault that shook me to my core, but the disgust that came after it. The sad part is, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Diply, IMDb
Imagine growing up watching these movies as a transfeminine person. If you liked crime shows, there was always an episode where a “Jane Doe” sex worker was revealed to be a “John,” oftentimes rationalizing the violence against her while misgendering her in death. If thrillers and horror were more your speed, like Sleepaway Camp and Silence of the Lambs, their femininity and transness were often inextricably tied to the shock of their gory behavior. The “big reveal” was not just that they were a “psycho killer,” but also that they were spicy-evil because their transness made them even more perverse. Even if you liked something like anime, there’s a huge toxic use and fetishization of “traps,” or boys that look like girls. This term is then wrongfully applied to trans women who are treated as mere characters in a show rather than whole people.
All these narratives pointed to one thing: transness is wrong, no matter what situation you’re in. If you’re a young trans woman watching Ace Ventura, you’re shown that any violence against you is excusable and deserved because it’s brought upon you by yourself. Your transness is to trick men, and you’re wrong the way you are. You should hide it or not allow yourself to express it at all. You’re a man, and you always will be. I’m lucky to not have watched these programs, and I still had trouble getting rid of the internalized transphobia inside me. In fact, I still do. Now, if I had watched these as an even more impressionable young kid or teenager, I may not have even realized that what happened was wrong. This is how important media is in providing proper representation and stories for people like yourself. To us, the media is like a small slice of this big world we live in. If society basically spits at us that we’re not worthy of anything and deserve the horrid treatment directed at us, who are we to say otherwise? This darkness grows inside of many trans people, sometimes forcing them in the closet for years or even forever.
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash
When all you see left and right is poor caricatures of the deepest essence of your soul, it can be impossible to love yourself. That’s why I’m so grateful for shows like POSE and other programs with great representation. Also, all the trans YouTubers making great, free content for trans kids to watch on their own like I did can’t be counted out. Seeing someone like you love themselves and be loved can be life-changing. I almost had to rewind three times when I saw someone in POSE not only be okay with a trans woman’s transness, but embrace it. I’m still learning every day how to love myself when I look in the mirror and see what the most bigoted parts of society see, but having proper media representation has helped me immensely. If I can’t be loved in my own shoes by myself or someone else, having a healthy depiction of it for other people is something that’s really contributed to learning to love myself again. | https://stellaluna03.medium.com/the-medias-punching-bag-loving-yourself-while-transfemme-8b63ca2c0cdb | ['Stella Luna', 'They She'] | 2020-07-20 15:36:01.546000+00:00 | ['Transgender', 'Media', 'LGBTQ', 'Movies', 'Self Love'] |
Lifestyles of the Fake and Lonely | This story is part of the Internet Time Machine, a collection about life online in the 2010s.
Connor is 27, with green eyes and a dorky grin. His favorite emoji is the shaka (🤙), which he uses to express a casual DTF energy. He’s tan and toned, athletic yet approachable, and his profile photos resemble ads for a millennial lifestyle brand. There goes Connor, throwing up a peace sign on Runyon Canyon. Surfing as the sun sets over Manhattan Beach. A mirror selfie, an action shot, an abdominal V.
Connor is your average thirst trap next door. Also, I created him in the palm of my hand.
The photos are a friend’s. Sorry. Not a friend’s. A friend of a former roommate of a distant acquaintance’s, the hottest friend of a former roommate of a distance acquaintance I know. I found them on Instagram, screenshotted a select few, and cropped out the identifying details with no one’s permission but my own. It felt harmless, or fun, or necessary, somehow, in the way chronic loneliness can make you believe many unnecessary things are necessary.
I know. I’m sorry.
I tapped my way through a popular gay dating app’s sign-up flow, uploaded the photos, and invented a person. Connor is a software engineer, though if you ask him what kind he’ll have to home-button his way out of the conversation. He grew up in L.A. but just moved to “Willyburg.” He says “haha,” not “LOL,” which takes some getting used to. He almost never exceeds one line of text. He is calm, cool, and Objectively Hot.
“I’m so glad we matched!”
“Hiii!”
“👋😊😅”
Shaka.
And this isn’t Grindr, either, but a newer, more ostensibly ethical and supportive queer app. A safe space, until I came along.
I match with everyone. For three hours, I mainline approval like the approval-hungry human I am. It feels like I’ve unlocked another dimension. I don’t have to tread the waters of small talk or drop gratuitous exclamation points to telegraph how happy I am to be here — my matches do that. When I’ve played this game as myself, a 32-year-old gay man who is not a model, it’s slower. Harder. Connor is my cheat code.
“You seem really genuine,” a man named Brandon messages me at midnight.
What I’m doing is wrong, I know that. I chat with 20 smitten or merely very horny gay men, deceiving them with every message. In queer communities, like the one I’m in, catfishing is everything we’re afraid of: We fear that people will prey on our sexuality, take advantage of our vulnerability, pretend to be someone they’re not when we’ve overcome so many hurdles to become who we are. | https://humanparts.medium.com/lifestyles-of-the-fake-and-lonely-f22ac231af46 | ['Harris Sockel'] | 2019-12-21 03:54:40.473000+00:00 | ['Nonfiction', 'Love And Sex', 'Dating', 'Internet Time Machine', 'Social Media'] |
WHAT IS FALL DETECTION IN MEDICAL ALERT DEVICES? HOW DOES IT WORK? | WHAT IS FALL DETECTION?
Medical alert devices have sensors to detect a fall. As soon as it senses a fall, it triggers a call for help. Sometimes, when the user falls, he/she suffers injury or falls unconscious; hence they cannot ask for help. Fall detection technology is helpful for elderly aged people.
HOW FALL DETECTION WORKS?
The medical alert devices featuring fall detection have sensors that can sense the fall, abnormal position, or a sudden change from a regular pose. In some cases, users are not able to press the button and ask for help; hence the device automatically dials the emergency call and seeks emergency help.
The machines are usually water-resistant as the senior people are at vast risks of falling in the bathroom. Users can wear the device on the wrist in the bathroom and become stress-free from facing any casualty.
HOW IS FALL DETECTION USEFUL FOR SENIORS?
The risk of falling is much higher in older people, and the chance of getting injured is also comparatively higher. They stay at home alone when their children remain at work. A medical alert device will provide support to them everywhere and every time.
Fall detection assures you that your loved ones are safe at home in your absence. Usually, older people need more attention to their health, and this device would reduce risk by providing instant help.
One must take needful measures while using medical alert systems. It would be better to keep the button outside your clothes. It would be easier for the user to press the button for help in any medical emergencies. If not needed, you can cancel the alert anytime.
It is significant to use the best medical alert devices for seniors so that you can lead a safe life. Usually, medical alert devices are water-resistant and convenient to use. You can wear it all time even if you move out of the house.
Medical alert device for seniors makes you take a step ahead to move forward a peaceful life. It is essential to save your family from unexpected risks or accidents that might take place in the future.
Visit https://jvz6.com/c/1757991/359777 and check out more deals on our products. | https://medium.com/@scarlettwilson1993/what-is-fall-detection-in-medical-alert-devices-how-does-it-work-3dc40b6e6f86 | ['Scarlett Wilson'] | 2020-12-26 11:04:25.275000+00:00 | ['Wellness', 'Health', 'Healthcare', 'Healthy Lifestyle', 'Medical Alert Systems'] |
6 Signs of a Truly Good Digital Marketing Agency | Hiring a digital marketing agency can be a major investment of any company’s limited marketing budget. Is it worth it? And how do you find a truly good digital marketing agency?
According to a research report from the Society of Digital Agencies the percentage of companies not using outside digital marketing agencies at all rose significantly over last year (27% in 2015, compared to 13% in 2014). Many of those companies that do still use DMAs shrank the number they engage. In 2014, 21% of those companies employed four or more DMAs; in 2015 that’s down to 13%.
While the vast majority of companies surveyed by SoDA do still use DMAs, the survey leaves little doubt that there is a growing trend for companies to take all their marketing in-house. Of course, that means those companies believe they don’t need a DMA.
Does that mean that Digital Marketing Agencies are becoming irrelevant? Have they failed to provide value and so will soon be a thing of the past?
I don’t believe that’s true at all.
What I do think we’re seeing is a sort of “day of reckoning” for DMAs. As is the case for SEO agencies, the barrier to entry for establishing a DMA is low. So what we may be seeing is the inevitable culling out of agencies that could not provide real, measurable value for their clients.
I think that means this is actually the best of times for high value, results-producing agencies. Client companies are realizing there is a difference, and thus those agencies will be seen as even more valuable and in demand in the days to come.
6 Habits of Truly Good Digital Marketing Agencies
The SoDA report spurred marketing consultant Mark Schaefer to write “6 Reasons Marketing Is Moving In-house” for the Harvard Business Review. He reviews the trend toward in-house marketing, and then based on a personal survey of “several ad agency executives and marketing leaders in a diverse group of businesses,” he came up with six reasons why marketing agencies are seen as failures by their clients.
His six reasons are:
Agencies are too slow. Agencies are stuck on advertising. Agencies favor campaigns over continuity. Companies don’t want to outsource customer relations. Companies want to own the data. Agencies don’t always have the best marketing talent.
My take is that these are six strikes against low value agencies, but the opposites of each of these then would be good signs of a truly valuable agency.
So here are my six signs, six characteristics of a highly valuable digital marketing agency.
1. A great digital marketing agency is nimble.
Notice I used “nimble” here rather than the direct antonym of Schaefer’s “slow,” which would be “fast.” I do believe a great agency should be fast. That is, the agency should have a track record of meeting or exceeding deadlines, getting deliverables and reports to clients on or even ahead of time.
But I think it’s even more important that the agency be nimble. By nimble I mean two things.
First, the agency is able to shift quickly with changes in the client’s market, business, or marketing plans. Nothing stays the same in businesses or marketplaces for long, and the nimble agency not only knows that but has a culture and processes that enable it to bend with the changes and keep current with the client’s needs.
Second, and perhaps more important, the nimble agency is ahead of the trends in digital marketing in general and in the client’s business in particular. The agency keeps informed with the latest news on digital marketing. It is constantly testing its own assumptions. And it attempts to project where things are going, to “skate to where the puck is going, not where it is” as hockey legend Wayne Gretzky famously said.
The high value agency isn’t just aware of coming trends, it communicates those regularly to its clients, and is bold to make suggestions based on those projections, to keep the clients ahead of their competition.
2. A great digital marketing agency knows more than advertising.
I suspect Schaefer’s critique comes because many DMAs are actually advertising or public relations agencies that added on digital marketing in a desperate move to stay relevant. But if they haven’t really adopted or committed to the inbound mindset, it’s inevitable that they will fall back on advertising as the easiest solution.
I also suspect that by “advertising” Schaefer’s interviewees mean not just paid advertising, but also content that is little more than direct advertising.
Advertising and direct selling should remain part of any overall marketing program, but companies engaging DMAs want more than that. The concept of inbound marketing has become pretty well known: marketing assets that bring value to the audience and thereby build awareness and reputation in a way that draws prospects to the brand, as opposed to marketing that interrupts the prospect and tries to coerce them into buying or trying the brand’s products.
A top-notch DMA knows how to build strategies for content that a brand’s audience will love, and that will make them love the brand all the more.
3. A great digital marketing agency emphasizes continuity over campaigns.
Now let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater: campaigns can be a perfectly valid and valuable part of marketing. But if an agency can only recommend campaigns, something is missing.
What’s bad about concentrating only on campaigns? At least a couple of things:
It makes your marketing “herky jerky.” You might make some progress via a particular campaign, but then that progress comes to a halt while you’re building the next campaign. In the meantime, your competition may pass you by. Each campaign is a roll of the dice. If it succeeds, great! But if it fails to meet expectations, then it becomes more wasted time during which the competition could gain an upper hand. Campaigns take your focus away from your overall, long-term goals. Everything becomes about winning the campaign, rather than about building brand reputation over time.
So what do we mean by “continuity”?
Continuity involves an overall marketing strategy aimed at building long-term brand value in the marketplace. The best DMAs know how to help their clients build holistic strategies that get everything, online and offline, working together. They aren’t in it for the quick traffic hit. Top agencies know they only win when their client becomes top-of-mind for prospects in their vertical.
That involves strategies that are aimed at big goals for the brand. Then campaigns or individual tactics are put in their proper place. They are just tools (and not the only ones) used to help achieve the bigger marketing goals. Furthermore, with this outlook, the agency helps the client design campaigns that contribute to the bigger, long-term goals, not just to winning that campaign.
At Stone Temple, we call that building a sustainable competitive advantage.
4. A great digital marketing agency supports rather than runs customer relations.
Schaefer is absolutely correct here. Companies owning and nurturing real relationships with their customers and prospects is marketing gold. Too many agencies offer to take that off the company’s hands, not realizing in the long run they are hurting more than helping. (And in too many cases, even those agencies are outsourcing their outsourcing!).
Consumers have become savvy enough to sniff out genuine vs. canned customer relations. Great agencies teach their clients how to manage those relationships better, instead of doing it for them.
This is not to say there is never a time and place for outsourcing the work in marketing, but it the old dictum “give someone a fish, you’ve fed them for a day; teach them to fish, you’ve fed them for life” applies well here.
There is a useful middle ground here as well. At Stone Temple Consulting, for example, we often find and initiate valuable relationships, but always integrate the client into the process. The bottom line here is not so much about who runs what as simply that it is not good for the client to be disconnected from customer and influencer relations.
5. A great digital marketing agency believes in data transparency.
Low quality agencies want to keep the raw data hidden, and only parcel data out via dashboards or limited reports that may give the client a skewed view.
High quality agencies believe that they and the client benefit best when data is open and shared, and each can apply their expertise to gaining insights from that data.
Such agencies are also always willing to show the client the source data behind their reports.
Really, this section underscores a theme that runs throughout all these characteristics of great digital marketing agencies: Partnership. Truly valuable agencies always have a partnership relationship with their clients that works for the greater benefit of both.
6. A great digital marketing agency builds a team of top experts.
In his HBR article, Schaefer shares an isolated anecdote from one client experience to back his claim that “agencies don’t hire the best talent.” While there is no doubt that this is true of some agencies (we’ve seen it too when we’ve taken over accounts!), this is a gross generalization.
In reality, a truly professional agency attracts and nurtures the best talent. Unlike an individual consultant, such an agency can offer the client the advantage of a team of multidisciplinary specialists, who can work together to formulate a holistic marketing strategy.
For more about why in-house teams can often benefit from partnering with reputable agencies, see Eric Enge’s “Why You Need to Complement Your In-house Team with External Expertise” on Search Engine Land.
How Do I Know Such Agencies Exist?
Because I work for one.
I wouldn’t write an article like this and publish it on this blog if I didn’t know that Stone Temple Consulting is an agency that exemplifies every one of the qualities I named above.
That’s why at a time when surveys show a growing number of companies abandoning agencies, I can say with confidence the reason is not because the agency model is bad, but because of bad agencies. I’m proud to work for a digital marketing agency that serves some of the top brands in the world, and where those brands consistently renew (and often increase) their contracts year-after-year.
Please forgive my very uncharacteristic bragging…but as Dizzy Dean once said, “It ain’t bragging if you can do it!”
Find out more about our content marketing services, SEO services, social media services, penalty recovery services, as well as our stance on white hat SEO.
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Originally published on the Stone Temple Digital Marketing Excellence blog. | https://medium.com/scale-magazine/6-signs-of-a-truly-good-digital-marketing-agency-3655ce8e26b3 | ['Mark Traphagen'] | 2016-10-28 16:29:47.153000+00:00 | ['Seo Agency', 'Marketing', 'Digital Marketing', 'Business', 'Digital Marketing Agency'] |
Dumpster Fire On The Lower Level | Dumpster Fire On The Lower Level
We aren’t talking about Trump’s tax returns anymore.
Image courtesy of Shuttterstock.com
Like most Americans, I am still reeling from Tuesday night’s debate. It’s impossible to watch such a heinous display of vitriol, and not walk around in a perpetual state of alarm.
Perhaps it’s worth it to the president. Perhaps it must be exactly this bad. The dumpster fire Tuesday night is effective.
We aren’t talking about his tax returns anymore.
His area of expertise is cornered animal. He is a shapeshifter, evading our grasp every time we think we’ve caught him. His instinct for sniffing out his next move is extraordinary. He’s a master of evasion.
He is utterly devoid of shame. I can’t help imagining what he’d be like with a little shame; how good he’d be at foreign policy. If he were not a racist, misogynist, narcissist, and criminal, he’d be the dealmaker of his imagination.
What a waste of talent.
Trump’s aptitude for evading consequences reminds me of muscle memory. That’s what kicked in for him Tuesday, when he plowed over both Biden and Chris Matthews; and sustained that attack for 90 straight minutes.
What he does isn’t conscious. Since 1973, when he and his father were sued by the Justice Department for discrimination, he’s escaped from the law. That’s close to fifty years of evading consequences.
What he did Tuesday is what you and I do when we drive a car.
I have been driving for forty years. As I drive, I don’t think about braking, or pushing down the pedal to go faster. My body responds to its environment. I drive automatically, and let muscle memory do its work.
Recently, I found myself crossing the upper level of the George Washington Bridge. I go across that bridge several times a month; but I always take the lower level, as it is less congested.
The upper level is hair raising. It’s nighttime, and I have to pay attention. My body is panicked. I am crossing the same bridge, but a different way. My muscle memory tells me everything I do is wrong. I realize how I rely on my body’s memory to drive.
Trump evades capture like I drive my car across the lower level. It’s automatic.
At the debate, that finely-honed criminal instinct wipes out any chance of his taxes remaining the focus of discussion. He refuses to take the upper level; he knows he’s doomed, up there.
He is incapable of going high.
The lower level may be closed to traffic. There might be a dumpster truck on fire. All cars must take the upper level. Trump gets to the toll plaza, crashes through the cones and barriers, and takes the lower level in front of our very eyes.
We scream,
Look what he just did!
We do not, however, issue him a ticket. We watch him barrel up the Henry Hudson Parkway in an eighteen-wheeler, going 110 miles per hour.
Then we howl about that.
We are in a four-year habit of allowing Trump to dictate the terms of his presidency. We let our country down every time we do this. Each increment of degradation counts. Each time we let him change the subject, we lose something dear.
It’s called integrity. Make no mistake; his losses are ours.
We are busy adapting to him right now, hustling to make changes to the debate format. We discuss what we can do differently, instead of demanding acceptable behavior from the president.
I don’t have to say that it’s outrageous; it’s also humiliating.
The question is, can we turn ourselves around, with only a month before the election? We are near to the closing bell. Wouldn’t it be something, though, if we put our foot down?
One time, folks. Just one time; just the tax returns. We can’t let this one go. | https://lizardgrey.medium.com/dumpster-fire-on-the-lower-level-d337dc4d85a8 | ['Elizabeth Grey'] | 2020-10-01 18:42:33.152000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Psychology', 'Society', 'Debate', 'Trump'] |
Creating a more collaborative and efficient process when migrating to Figma | Finding the right balance when defining processes
As designers, our hearts are pumping a little faster when we’re in the zone solving problems — user problems — not chasing people for access to the right files.
Being a part of a larger design and product team means that you’ll need to spend time syncing and aligning with people from adjacent teams, assure consistency between products and funnels, and more. I’m not going to lie — at times this can be very time-consuming. As designers, our hearts are pumping a little faster when we’re in the zone solving problems — user problems — not chasing people for access to the right files. When discussing workflows and processes, it’s easy to add more and more steps, assuming that everyone will dutifully follow the process. But the truth is, the more steps we add, the less likely anyone will follow the procedure.
How can we solve this challenge without adding more admin work for our designers?
Therefore, one key question I’ve asked myself and others on our team as we planned out our migration was — How can we solve this challenge without adding more admin work for our designers? It’s a tricky balance — we want our designers to have the freedom to work in whatever way suits them best. But we don’t want to go back to the mess of the past.
In this article, I’ll explain how we utilized Figma to improve the way we organize our designs (ourselves?) more efficiently and collaboratively.
Organizing teams and projects in Figma
Before the migration, all of our working files were managed in Abstract, which has a very similar structure as Figma:
Original image by Figma
Organization Team (Figma)/Section (Abstract) Project File Pages
It would have been easy for us to just recreate our previous file structure, import all files, and call it a day. However, our shared experience in the Figma working group was that the current setup in Abstract was inconsistent, confusing, and not very well maintained.
Before Abstract, we had all been sharing sketch files on local servers, over emails, and Slack, so at that point, anything seemed better. We were all excited to use Abstract and at the time it was hard to foresee what issues we would run into 3 years later, so we just took it and ran with it.
This time around we knew better — we wanted to carefully evaluate different options and gather as many insights as possible from the broader design team before moving ahead. First, we scheduled a workshop within the working team to brainstorm possible ways of dividing the teams in Figma: | https://uxdesign.cc/creating-a-more-collaborative-and-efficient-process-when-migrating-to-figma-f2c26c9c1df3 | ['Alexander Fandén'] | 2021-01-26 18:01:16.120000+00:00 | ['Design Process', 'Figma', 'UI', 'Sketch', 'Tools'] |
Implementation of AI in the Security Industry: The Basics and More | The idea behind artificial intelligence isn’t new by any means. We’ve seen it in popular culture, search engines have been using it for more than a decade, and the algorithms powering modern software heavily leverage AI and automation.The security industry is one industry that is feeling the effects of AI, from cryptographic algorithms that create strong passwords to data annotation processes that clarify security footage. AI isn’t just a big idea or a nice-to-have — today it’s a must-have.In this article, we are going to explore the relationship between data annotation and the security industry.
The Traditional Approach to Security: Video Footage
If you are a homeowner, or you own a dashcam, you can agree that it is tedious to view hours of grainy black and white footage. Multi-camera systems are even more of a hassle. Replaying the same event on tape repeatedly, trying to find out which objects are missing and which facial features the perpetrators are showing, is time-consuming.
Luckily, with the following forms of data annotation, you can view security footage without spending as much time doing so.
Common Types of AI Data Annotation
Detect Objects with Bounding Boxes
Bounding boxes display a colored box over an object of interest. You can choose to display bounding boxes over bags, faces, or any other image in a photograph or video feed. By covering items in boxes, you make them easier to track, saving a lot of time when reviewing your footage.
Instance Segmentation: An Advanced Form of Bounding Box Object Detection
Instance segmentation is similar to bounding boxes but much more precise. While bounding boxes cover an object in a square or rectangle, regardless of the object’s actual shape, instance segmentation limits itself to the item’s shape.
One example of why you would want to use instance segmentation is if you are tracking damaged merchandise. You will want to know if an object loses a part of itself in transit, like a bag strap. Instance segmentation makes it easier to observe this.
Skeletal Annotation: The Next Level of Crime Surveillance
When security firms and police review security tapes, they make inferences about suspects: how tall they are, their bodyweight, their physique, and more. What skeletal annotation allows you to do is to analyze a person’s gait, which you can use to make more meaningful and specific inferences like weight distribution, potential previous injuries, and more.
These benefits are great, but how can you add AI data annotation to your footage? Read on.
Some Benefits of Adding AI to Your Security Footage
Tracking People
Repeat suspects of crimes generally visit a crime scene several times before committing the crime. First-time suspects usually do not think of doing this. By tracking people with data annotated security footage, you can build up a suspicious person profile, which the police or a security firm would love to have at hand.
By tracking people, you can learn so much more about how to protect your car, property, or business, based on the inferences made by AI and the data you have.
Identifying Objects and Animals
Objects and animals can move very quickly on the screen. An animal may move so fast that the human eye might mistake it for a blur. Unless they stop and hover, have you ever considered how difficult it is to see a hummingbird in flight?
By identifying objects and animals on security footage, you can find suspicious activities happening on camera that you would otherwise miss without AI.
Detecting Movement
Tracking people and animals includes tracking the movements of every part of their body. With AI, you can analyze how someone in security footage moves their hands, feet, or even where they are looking.
You can access so much more information about package thieves, carjackers, and suspicious individuals on your property than by just viewing footage without data annotations.
Tracking Objects in Video
Video footage is extensive, and it is a lot to process for any individual surveillant. Even if you have a room full of guards whose sole purpose is to review security footage, the process can take hours, days, or even weeks, depending on the security incident.
Keymakr: Data Annotation Services for the Security Industry
AI is used a lot in the security industry, especially with data annotation services on security video feeds.
Keymakr uses experienced data annotators, big data, machine learning, and AI to provide much-needed context to your security images and footage feeds.
Are you looking to improve your data annotation processes? We can help. Contact us today to learn more about our services. | https://medium.com/@mafonya/implementation-of-ai-in-the-security-industry-the-basics-and-more-de1dabd25153 | ['Michael Abramov'] | 2020-10-20 15:22:35.456000+00:00 | ['Annotation Service', 'Machine Learning', 'Machine Vision', 'Security Camera'] |
Digest: How is 5G changing the demand for mobile trade-in & buyback? | Over the past two years, telecom suppliers around the world have been actively building equipment for the next-generation 5G wireless network. 5G is estimated to be 20 times faster than 4G. The development of the 5G network will entail one of the largest smartphone upgrade supercycles. This supercycle is also supported by the growth in sales of used and refurbished phones amid the pandemic.
We have conducted our second research of the used and refurbished phones market, examining the demand for trade-in and buyback programs in the countries with the highest turnover of mobile devices.
What is this digest about?
Impact of the 5G ‘supercycle’ on the demand for trade-in and buyback programs
The growth of search queries for phones sales worldwide
Top traded-in mobile phones
Country analysis of the prices of traded-in phones
Top traded-in manufacturers
How to get the digest?
Follow this link to NSYS Group website Find a banner “Digest: The growth of mobile trade-in: 2019–2020” Click on the banner Download the digest
Stay tuned for the NSYS blog to be on the cutting-edge of the industry. A new digest coming soon. | https://medium.com/@nsysgroup/digest-how-is-5g-changing-the-demand-for-mobile-trade-in-buyback-a0189dd8440b | ['Nsys Group'] | 2020-12-24 13:19:50.538000+00:00 | ['Digest', 'Infographics', 'iPhone', '2021', '5g'] |
How to customize request validation in Spring boot using Java Bean Validation | Prerequisites
Hibernate Validator is an official Java Bean Validation implementation and will give us the ability to integrate and extends the Validation functionality.
<dependency>
<groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
<artifactId>hibernate-validator</artifactId>
<version>6.1.6.Final</version>
</dependency>
Expression Language is required in order to use the interpolation in the validation messages
<dependency>
<groupId>javax.el</groupId>
<artifactId>el-api</artifactId>
<version>2.2</version>
</dependency>
Spring Web
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
</dependency>
Creating Custom Constrains
Java bean validation and some implementors come with a list of built-in constraints that you can take leverage to validate a bean at any application layer, however, there are cases where those constraints don’t fill our validation needs. The Bean Validation specification gives us the ability to create custom constraints that meets our requirements.
Let’s create a custom Constratin annotation that prevents the use of certain first names
The validator uses for this constraint, will perform the actual validation and do some additional work on the generation of the message if needed.
2. This is a required field, used to constraint grouping. This is not needed for this tutorial.
3. This is a required field, used to create the Payload and set the severity level for the constraint, this is not used by this validator.
Validator
The validator should extend from ConstraintValidator. Initializes the validator with any required data set in the Constraint annotation. this method is guaranteed to be called before any method in the Validator class. The method performs the actual validation, for sake of simplicity the isValid performs a simple validation checking the value of the field is not contained in the not notAllowValues attribute.
NOTE: Spring scans for all the classes that extend from ConstraintValidator, and load them in the context as validators, also given this we can inject and access other beans as we normally access in other beans.
Using the New Constraint
Here we’re using the custom constraint NotContains to prevent the use of some firstName and LastName values. We can also notice that the mixing of custom and built-in constraints is possible.
we’re also using the message attribute to specify the response message when the attribute is invalid, the message is interpolate using EL (Expression Language) to make reference to some dynamic attributes values such as notAlloweValues in the case of the NotContains constraint.
Validating Request
In order to validate the request body, we just need to tell Spring to do that annotating the request body argument with @Valid . Spring takes leverage of the Java Bean validation through the usage of Hibernate Validator Implementation.
Customizing Invalid Request Response
Spring throws a MethodArgumentNotValidException when an argument is not valid. To customize the endpoint response, we’re going to take leverage of the Spring exception handling capability.
@ExceptionHandler Instructs Spring which exception type should handle. We’re extracting all the invalid field errors, they contain the validation metadata for each validation that failed for a specific bean attribute. Creating a map that will be returned as a JSON format containing the endpoint path and an array with the field errors.
DEMO!
Let’s send and invalid request value and will see how our application will respond with a nice and easy to understand error response. | https://medium.com/@rod-19/how-to-customize-request-validation-in-spring-boot-using-java-bean-validation-278b52099cc9 | ['Rodolfo Rojas Segura'] | 2020-12-06 03:45:38.437000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Spring Boot', 'Java', 'Bean Validation'] |
Managing your LUN in Parity | In order to transfer your LUN you must first launch Parity
Then go to your Account and click TRANSFER
Now click on “type of token transfer” and select LUN
Type in the recipient address and amount of LUN you wish to transfer. Click SEND and submit the transaction. | https://medium.com/lunyr/managing-lun-in-parity-fec70702b242 | [] | 2017-04-30 19:21:44.944000+00:00 | ['Lunyr', 'Ethereum', 'Blockchain', 'Crowdsale', 'Dapps'] |
Sleep Struggles — Why Do Children Cry As They Learn How To Sleep | Sleep Struggles — Why Do Children Cry As They Learn How To Sleep Maxzbryan Aug 19·2 min read
It would be nice if your child could learn how to sleep without any crying or frustration whatsoever. Every parent would sign up for that. Unfortunately, the truth is that all children, regardless of the method you use to help them sleep, inevitably do shed some tears in the process. Let’s see why.
First and foremost, children cry when learning to sleep because they are protesting — they don’t like change. In fact, they hate change. Just think about it.
Do you remember what your favorite book was as a kid? Do you remember wanting to read that book over and over again, even though you knew every word of it?
We all resist change, children and adults alike. It’s normal to do so, and it’s normal for your child to express his resistance by crying. After all, crying comes before words — not the other way around.
Second, as children begin to learn how to sleep but haven’t yet figured out how to do so, they are understandably frustrated. They no longer have Mom and Dad on their side to help them get to sleep, and they don’t yet know what to do differently. They will eventually.
What’s really interesting about falling asleep is that although each of us is born with the inherent ability to do so, it is considered a learned behavior. And yet you can’t teach anyone else how to do it — you can’t simply say to your child to close his eyes and sleep. Instead, each of us has to learn for ourselves what to do to settle into sleep.
Of course, there are children who seem to learn how to sleep almost magically, with very little effort on the parent’s part. However, children are different. Everyone is unique.
Your child, along with many others, hasn’t learned this essential skill yet, which is why he needs you to take a step back, so he has the opportunity to achieve that on his own.
How will he do it? He might kick his legs around a bit, he might gently rock his head from side to side, or he might grab his lovey. Or maybe he’ll suck on his thumb. If he’s a bit older, maybe he’ll play with his hair.
The truth is, each of us has different things we do to soothe ourselves into sleep, and your child will surely find a way that’s perfect for him. But he won’t discover those things nearly as easily with you standing right next to him or picking him up — he won’t have the motivation to do so.
Simply put, if you “help” him, he will cry even harder because the touching feels like a tease that serves to reinforce the crying. | https://medium.com/@maxzbryan/sleep-struggles-why-do-children-cry-as-they-learn-how-to-sleep-8c51b831b68f | [] | 2021-08-19 06:00:46.135000+00:00 | ['Baby', 'Children', 'How To', 'Baby Sleep', 'Sleep'] |
Ray Tracing with CUDA on Windows 10 | I recently read and followed Peter Shirley’s Ray Tracing In One Weekend (http://in1weekend.blogspot.com/2016/01/ray-tracing-in-one-weekend.html). As I moved along with the book, the images were taking longer and longer to render. Eventually the following image, with 488 spheres and 10 samples per pixel took about 45 minutes to render on my PC. Having to wait so long for a still pretty noisy image bothers me. Luckily, there is a post by Roger Allen (https://devblogs.nvidia.com/accelerated-ray-tracing-cuda/) that discusses how to use CUDA in the same Ray Tracing project. I did my code modification mostly according to the repository posted in the linked post by Roger Allen. So the following blog post will mostly be about specific problems I encountered when making and running the project on Windows.
Regarding some tech specs, I’m using Visual Studio 15.9.5 and CUDA 10, and a GeForce 960m GPU.
Set up Project in Visual Studio 2017
Initially, I wanted to create a CUDA runtime application with Visual Studio because I wrote the non-CUDA version ray-tracer with VS. There was compatibility issues with VS 2017 and latest version of CUDA before; but this project builds and runs fine with the tech specs I mentioned in the beginning, with some small issues I will mention below.
The set up was rather straight-forward. I’ll skip the CUDA installation here. With CUDA 10 installed, we can just create a new CUDA runtime project.
You can find my code here: https://github.com/joycevk/SvampTracerCuda. However, there are a couple of issues. First, the compatibility issue between Visual Studio and CUDA 10 probably still persists. The following kernel launch code (and all kernel launch code) always shows an annoying expected an expression error. Just ignore it (if you can :P) and hit F5.
render_init <<<blocks, threads>>>(nx, ny, d_rand_state);
The second issue with VS is that the execution time is somehow significantly more than if I run the same code directly from command line. For the image that takes 23~ seconds to render, Visual Studio would probably take 2 to 3 minutes. If you know the reasons behind it, please comment and let me know 🙂
Not Using Visual Studio
For the reasons mentioned above, I actually recommend not using Visual Studio. Just use whatever editor you prefer and run the following commands to compile and run.
nvcc main.cu -o raytracer.exe
After this you will probably see some warnings like the following
ptxas warning : Stack size for entry function '_Z12create_worldPP7hitableS1_PP6cameraiiP17curandStateXORWOW' cannot be statically determined
Don’t worry about it. This is because there is recursion in our code, which we do and so the stack size cannot be determined at compile time. Just run the executable and we would get results similar to the following:
raytracer.exeRendering a 1200x800 image with 10 samples per pixel in 8x8 blocks. took 23.064 seconds.
Disable or extend WDDM TDR
If you don’t have a dedicated GPU, like I don’t, we have to extend or disable WDDM. For further information regarding what this is and what to do with it, I found this post to be useful: https://docs.nvidia.com/gameworks/content/developertools/desktop/timeout_detection_recovery.htm
We can do this through Nsignt Monitor. You probably need to run as administrator.
It’s NOT recommended to disable WDDM TDR completely. In this case I wasn’t sure how much time I need so I disable it just to run CUDA. I would also experiment with different delay time if you want to be safe.
Conclusion
The performance gain is such a relief. I have the following comparison:
============= 488 spheres 10 samples per pixel ================
Without CUDA : about 45 min
With CUDA : about 23 sec ============= 488 spheres 100 samples per pixel ================
Without CUDA : didn't have the patience to wait
With CUDA : about 130 sec
Granted, though, it might not be a fair comparison for the CPU because my Visual Studio runs on single CPU core. There are probably ways to increase the number of cores used with Visual Studio, which I didn’t have time to explore. So from my looking around online, the runtime without CUDA ranges from couple minutes to more than half an hour for different people. Regardless, I think the improvement can make us happy.
The process was not as smooth as I’d expected, mostly due to platform issues, but the result is so worth it. I’m excited to explore more with CUDA in the near future 😀 | https://medium.com/@joycechenvk/ray-tracing-with-cuda-on-windows-10-4a699747b12d | ['Joyce Chen'] | 2019-01-20 06:38:50.144000+00:00 | ['Cuda', 'Ray Tra', 'Computer Graphic', 'Computer', 'Cplusplus'] |
The Good and Bad of Angular Development | The Angular framework is here around for almost ten years. It is introduced and used by Google to build robust software products. This framework is developed by the same team that created the AngularJs framework. Angular is the most popular framework and ranks in the top five amongst other web app development frameworks. Angular is famous because it is equipped with robust components that help developers create readable, easy-to-use, and maintainable codes. To use this modern Angular framework, having knowledge of TypeScript is necessary.
Today, we will gather some necessary information about Angular and know its pros and cons that can help you in deciding whether to use this framework for your next project or not.
What is Angular?
Angular is one of the most popular typescript-based web application frameworks that belongs to the JavaScript ecosystem. According to a survey by Statista, it is the third most used web framework by 25.1 % of the developers worldwide in the year 2020.
Angular was introduced by Google in the year 2009 with an extended community of companies and people. It helps in developing cross-platform, single-page, and performant applications. Angular works easily with other libraries and allows the developers to create a unique app.
Angular Architecture
Angular is a well-known web framework written in type-safe JavaScript (TypeScript), which applies some of the functionalities and core libraries that can be imported by the application users. Here let us have a look at some of the top-level components of the Angular architecture.
1. Components
When we talk about Angular, it has many components that connect the document object model with the root components. These components are similar to the independent pieces of modules that can be injected into one another.
2. Modules
The developers can find information about the entire domain, specific capabilities, and workflow in the Angular modules. The root module in Angular acts as the entry point where everything is bootstrapped and orchestrated.
3. Directives, Data Binding, and Templates
Directives: The Angular template directives are responsible for program logic and are used with binding Angular keywords or markups.
Data Binding or Event Binding: Angular enables the support of two-way event binding where any changes made in the HTML dom or application code is reflected at both places.
Templates: They are an essential part of the Angular ecosystem that can help bind HTML in the front-end app with keywords.
4. Routing
The routing class handles all the URL directions, re-directions, and plumbing. Routing is an essential part of the architecture as it handles piping the URL to the view. Besides this, one of the best features is lazy loading. Here the router can load the module and don’t have to write while initializing.
Why Choose Angular?
Let’s see why you should select Angular for your project -
1. Google Support
Angular is a web app framework supported by Google. Having support from a supergiant company like Google, Angular is known as a trustworthy platform. The app developers can trust Angular more because of its community support and because of the fact that it is well-maintained.
2. Detailed Documentation
The Angular framework offers detailed documentation that helps the web app developers to find all the necessary information. Because of this, the developers can quickly solve any queries by finding the perfect solution. Besides this, if you are a newbie and want to learn about Angular, the documentation can be beneficial.
3. Component-based Architecture
The second version of Angular is converted from MVC architecture to component-based architecture. Because of this change, the app can be divided into functional components and independent logic. The developers can easily replace, decouple, or reuse these components in an app.
4. CLI
The command-line interface feature of Angular is the most popular amongst the app developers. It helps to automate the entire app development process by making app initialization and configuration.
5. Dependency Injection
The dependency injection feature in Angular means one object supplying the dependency to another. The dependency specifies how the components will connect and show how a change in one component can affect the other. In addition to this, the use of dependency injection can make the code more maintainable and reliable.
6. Ivy Renderer
Ivy Renderer is a feature available in Angular 6. It helps translate the app’s templates and components into a JavaScript code that will be showcased on the browser. It removes the unused code and makes it clear.
The Good: Angular Development Growth
1. Scalability
The Angular framework is easy to scale. This is because of the opinionated ways and design. You can design your app around pluggable modules with Angular, lazy loading, testable, a unified data flow, self-contained, and redux-like management. By following the Angular architecture, you can efficiently work with the bigger teams on a different codebase.
2. Tooling
Being one of the top frameworks, Angular offers a complete solution for unique, coherent features and different ways to do things. Compared to the two libraries Vue and React, Angular has all the major pieces like animation, HTTP client, forms handling, routing, etc. Besides this, Angular enables the developers to directly focus on the problems rather than analyze time and choose libraries.
3. TypeScript
If you know JavaScript, then working with TypeScript will be easy for you as TypeScript is known as a subset of JavaScript. TypeScript brings everything new to the versions of ECMAScript, like arrow functions, class syntax, etc.
4. Templates
With Angular, you can get templates that are enhanced versions of HTML with specific idioms. These templates present a slight learning curve, but it is usually cleaner than JavaScript markup and APIs when you look at the code.
5. Server Response
Angular is a framework that comes loaded with various CPU performance-enhancing features. Everything in Angular is written in a type-safe manner using TypeScript, making it faster than any other framework. Besides this, it also supports various toolkits and caching out of the box, which helps in improving the server-side performance.
6. MVVM Architecture
Model-View-ViewModel and Model View Controller architecture offers a super responsive and fast foundation for an application. As these are designing patterns, the app developers’ responsibility is to set up the codebase accordingly.
7. Angular Elements
Suppose your app development company is working with various projects simultaneously, which isn’t all in Angular, then with the 6th update of Angular. In that case, you can engineer other environments using the Angular elements. It doesn’t matter if the apps are built using React, Vuejs, or jQuery. You can use the Angular components.
The Bad: Angular Development Growth
1. Simplicity
Angular is easy to use, but it is not always that simple. It has lots of concepts, moving parts, and conventions to grasp. This makes time investment a significant thing for the developers if they want to create something more than a to-do app. It happens that even if the developers have experience in JavaScript/TypeScript, they have to invest considerable time to learn about everything that is going on with the framework.
Angular being bigger than Vue and React, it takes a longer time to load, and performance issues are observed, mostly on mobile devices.
2. Heavy Weighted Framework
There are many lightweight frameworks with different architectures in the market, like React and Vue. Being lightweight frameworks, they are not difficult to run a smooth application. On the other hand, it is a pretty bloated and heavyweight framework when we talk about Angular.
In the world of microservices, Angular lacks. This is because of its abstractions and features. Also, besides Angular, most of the frameworks follow the virtual dom concept, which helps them make significant changes in the views.
3. Migration
Porting jQuery/legacy js to the Angular style architecture is difficult, and this is why enterprises avoid choosing Angular for their projects. In addition to this, Angular has a very fast and iterative development lifecycle, resulting in new versions of Angular launching frequently. Therefore, app developers learn about new features often.
Besides this, the new releases can be painful for the app development companies as they have to upgrade their work, and some of them might not be backward compatible.
To Wrap Up With
Angular is one of the most used and popular frameworks amongst the app developing community as it enables them to create advanced projects. Angular is a framework that adds new elements to the projects that are built using different platforms. Some of the popular web applications built using Angular are Forbes, Delta, Microsoft Office Home, Google About, and more. It is clear that working with Angular for your project will be beneficial in many ways. | https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/the-good-and-bad-of-angular-development-f48ac045d556 | ['Nelly Nelson'] | 2020-11-03 12:33:06.675000+00:00 | ['Angular', 'Angular Development', 'Development', 'JavaScript', 'Web Development'] |
Edinburgh Silver and the Goblet of TarnishHow to Clean Your Silver | Greetings from Edinburgh Silver.
Do any of you already own some silver but you have no idea how to clean it and keep it looking brand new? Well, we guarantee that taking the little time to clean it could not be easier.
As you can see this goblet is extremely tarnished because it was left for nearly half a decade in a kitchen without being cleaned or taken care of. If you’re thinking cleaning this goblet below would be a nightmare then think again!
Just look at the results our steps to cleaning silver can bring you. Cleaning this goblet took around 3–4 minutes and the results we got were truly stunning.
Follow our few, simple steps below and your silver items will seriously look like it’s gone from looking 200 years old and ready for the dump to looking like it’s been cleaned and polished yesterday by a silversmith himself.
Firstly, just rinse the particular silver item off with water. Then we apply Anti-Tarnish Silver Soap from Town Talk Polish Co. Ltd (shown below) generously to the silver with a sponge applicator.
Once you’ve done that, rub the silver soap into the item with the sponge applicator and continuously do this until the tarnish is gone. Then rinse the soap off the item.
If you rinse all the soap off and still find the item has some tarnishing left then very simply repeat the steps above!
Here are some before and after pictures of when we cleaned our Goblet of Tarnish! It just shows you what a difference a few minutes can make.
That is really how easy it is. No trouble and no wasted time.
Also, we must add that if you want to put an extra shine to your silver items then make sure you buff it with a lint-free cloth! The cloth can also be used to remove finger marks rather than having to clean it all over again.
We really cannot stress to you how easy cleaning your silver is.
We really think that it is fun and rewarding to clean your silver up because it’s magical to see the difference between tarnished silver and newly cleaned silver.
That’s everything you need to know about cleaning and taking care of your silver and we really hope that it has helped you out.
Speak to you all soon!
Sean at Edinburgh Silver
http://www.edinburghsilver.co/
Social Media:
FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/EdinburghSilver
Twitter: https://twitter.com/EdinburghSilver or @edinburghsilver
Google+: http://bit.ly/UPtOl0
Instagram: http://instagram.com/edinburghsilver or @edinburghsilver | https://medium.com/@EdinburghSilver/edinburgh-silver-and-the-goblet-of-tarnishhow-to-clean-your-silver-9e5dd1154d25 | ['Edinburgh Silver'] | 2015-12-18 11:32:14.993000+00:00 | ['Silver', 'Cleaning', 'Luxury'] |
Kenyan County Sets Sights on Lofty WASH Goals | To make the government more accountable for service delivery to citizens, Kenya devolved many of its governance functions from national to county level as enshrined in the country’s 2010 Constitution. As a result, the counties are now responsible for providing water and sanitation services, rather than the central government. Thus much of KIWASH’s work is with county governments. “We have staff from KIWASH that are embedded at the county level, so that means they are able to do their planning together,” explains Nicholas Owuor, USAID/Kenya and East Africa Program Management Specialist for WASH.
As a KIWASH WASH Governance Specialist, Euphresia Luseka is that point of contact in Kakamega County. “I sit in the office where the Minister of Water, the Chief Officer of Water, and the Directors of Water sit,” she says. “In terms of activity design, implementation, monitoring, participating in each other activities, mentoring and coaching, and being available all the time, it really helps in creating ownership and accountability of processes.”
“Local ownership is really what allows all the work to happen.”
KIWASH’s emphasis on a close relationship with local government means that gains made through the program are likely to be sustainable. “It’s truly viewed as USAID having a partnership with the county government, and that local ownership is really what allows all the work to happen,” explains Robertson. “It’s very much owned by them.”
The billing and revenue clerk at Mumias Water Scheme, under Kakamega County
Urban Water and Sewerage Company, helps the utility curb non-revenue water
losses through effective billing, handling of customer complaints, and metering. Photo credit:
Euphresia Luseka/KIWASH
In Kakamega County, KIWASH has helped the local government develop policies that will guide their water services priorities, and the county has increased the budget allocation for WASH services and related capital investments by more than 100 percent as a result.
“KIWASH has really helped us improve water services through projects that are aligned to the government’s agenda. We now plan to create a rural water company to operate community water utilities for uniformity of service and sustainability of the water services in [all] the rural towns and villages,” says John Baraza, Kakamega County Minister for Water, Environment, and Natural Resources.
The program has also focused on strengthening corporate governance and operational efficiency at Kakamega County Urban Water and Sewerage Company (KACWASCO). As a result, the utility adopted automated metering and billing processes and data management, developed company policies, overhauled customer services, and introduced staff performance agreements. This led to improved overall performance and expanded water coverage for 87 percent of residents in the area (up from 68 percent before 2016). Annual revenues increased by 36 percent, from US$19.2 million to $30 million. KACWASCO is now one of the top-ten performing water utilities in Kenya, and its credit rating has increased from a B to a BB. | https://medium.com/usaid-global-waters/kenyan-county-sets-sights-on-lofty-wash-goals-958c3c164a0 | ['Usaid Water Team'] | 2020-05-11 20:38:07.540000+00:00 | ['Governance', 'Public Health', 'Water', 'Sustainable Development', 'Kenya'] |
Motherhood— My Gift of a Lifetime | My husband and I were in our early 30’s when we felt we were ready for babies. Of course, we had no idea what that would entail. We were sure that we wanted children. We had multiple years to grow as a couple, learn how to pick our battles, and enjoy all-inclusive vacations that serve you the cute cocktails right on the beach.
Now that we were ready, out went the birth control. Because this quickly became my focus, all I could concentrate on every month were my cycles and trying to get pregnant. The added personal pressure and heightened awareness did nothing to help the process but naturally, as a planner, I couldn’t help myself.
Oh how that quickly became my first lesson in motherhood and I didn’t even know it at the time. The lesson of making plans and the plan not quite panning out at all on the time table you wish it to.
Over that same year, I saw my sister-in-law get pregnant. I continued to count the days in my cycle getting my hopes up with no positive pregnancy test. There were tears, there were prayers, and I felt all-consumed with the desire to say I was expecting.
Not until I started being open with friends and family that my husband and I had been trying for months, only then the self-imposed shame started melting away. In fact, it’s from being vulnerable and sharing what I felt was a weakness that gave me new insight. Better connections bloomed with those closest to me struggling in silence as well. It also widened my perspective to other ideas in tracking my fertility that I know aided in that long-desired double pink line I had been waiting for. | https://medium.com/family-matters-2/motherhood-my-gift-of-a-lifetime-9e2ffa358ad2 | ['Allison Ditmer'] | 2020-12-30 12:19:38.337000+00:00 | ['Family', 'Motherhood', 'Prompt', 'Pregnancy', 'Parenting'] |
The Truth About Staffing Agencies | I wrote a review about a staffing agency on the main site I Hate Working.net and realized many people don’t really understand how staffing agencies work.
So if you are somebody looking for employment opportunities and are thinking about using staffing agencies or if you are applying for a position and just realized it’s through a staffing agency, this post is for you.
There are certain problems with staffing agencies that I’ll discuss at the end of this post but before we start, let’s look at how these agencies actually work.
How Staffing Agencies Work
Staffing agencies are companies that hire employees to their client companies.
They are popular because recruiting new employees is time-consuming and always a risk for a company.
A staffing agency allows to try out workers and handles the recruiting process. Companies are willing to pay good money for this.
The problem is that Staffing agencies can be really confusing to people who have not dealt with them before.
Typically it goes something like this
You see an ad for a position You apply to that position You go to an interview. At this point, you realize it’s a staffing agency and the position will be at a client company You get hired. You make the contract with the staffing agency so they are your legal employer, but you work at the client company. At the client company, there will be people working on direct contracts and likely other staff agency temps or tryouts.
This can feel pretty confusing especially to young people with not much work experience.
When you need to ask about your terms of contract, pay, overtime allowance, etc. The client company can’t usually help you, you have to handle that with your actual employer, the staffing agency.
This often puts the “hired workers” into a weaker position compared to the regular personnel.
Who Are Staffing Agencies Good for?
That said, there are pros to Staffing agencies. Because the risks of a bad match are much smaller for the client company, an inexperienced worker can get in more easily through a staffing agency and show their potential.
It’s very common that companies try out especially inexperienced workers like college graduates through staffing agencies.
If they show potential the company often hires the directly after that. When used this way, a staffing agency offers a win-win situation to all parties.
The employee gets a chance to show their skills, the company gets to try the worker with small risk and the staffing agency earns a commission.
Another situation when a staffing agency is good is for a project that requires a lot of temporary workforce. Things like festivals, events, concerts, etc. are great for staffing agencies when there is a need for short term employment of a lot of people.
The Problems With Staffing Agencies
So when used in the correct situation, staffing agencies can be great. But there are problems the whole culture of hiring workers causes.
Many companies abuse staffing companies to go around employer obligations.
They can leverage the staffing agencies' temporary contracts to keep the workers in a short leash. They can pay minimum wage and treat you like poop. If you don’t like it, they simply don’t renew your contract and get another worker to replace you.
This causes a situation where the employees have next to no rights. This is, of course, unethical and in perfect world situations like this didn't exist.
But you and I both know there are thousands of companies trying to maximize profits and minimize costs, including wages.
In my opinion, honest and ethical companies should see their workers as a resource beyond the paycheck.
Conclusion
So that’s my short opinion on staffing agencies. I’ve worked in a couple of different ones in the past myself and in my experience, the most important part is to know your rights.
I did gain some precious working experience through them but I never felt the agency truly cared for my rights or wellbeing.
You can read more about my experience in my Insight Global Review.
So what’s your take on staffing agencies? Do you think they are a great opportunity for inexperienced workers to find employment or just a way to bring down employee rights? | https://medium.com/@cyberianwinter/the-truth-about-staffing-agencies-dc9cd10333d4 | ['I Hate Working'] | 2020-01-01 14:03:35.877000+00:00 | ['Staffing Agencies', 'Insight Global', 'Hiring', 'Employment'] |
Are You Really Ready for CI/CD? | Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash.
Set the Expectation
When moving from a traditional software release cycle to CI/CD, you might be surprised to find just as much pushback from people internally as you find externally from your customers.
People don’t like change. It’s human nature. Give someone a routine and they will be happy. Moving to continuous deployment is like telling somebody, “Everything you’ve done up to now is wrong. Please relearn all of it.”
Internal struggle
Inside your company, you’re going to get pushback from all sides of the org. They have to rework customer contracts. They don’t understand how something could make it to production without a full regression testing cycle. They don’t trust the developers to not break everything.
There are going to be hiccups. You have approximately a 0% chance of pulling it off without a hitch on your first try. That is OK. Set the expectation that processes are changing and you’re ironing out some of the details.
Client expectations
Your existing customer base is accustomed to you behaving a certain way, but you’re now going to change the way you operate to something “better.” You are going to have to prove to your customers that this new model is better than what you’re doing right now.
You must convince them this is going to be worth changing their process for. This is your chance to prove that defect turnaround gets exponentially quicker. There’s no more waiting for a specific date to see a fix. Once the change has been made, it’s in their hands. | https://medium.com/better-programming/are-you-really-ready-for-ci-cd-9a8bf6d01b8a | ['Allen Helton'] | 2020-08-06 14:28:53.271000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Software Development', 'DevOps', 'Continuous Delivery', 'Continuous Integration'] |
Монголын Махны Үнэ — Хугацаан Цувааны Таамаглал | Монголын Махны Үнэ — Хугацаан Цувааны Таамаглал
For the English version of this article click here. You can find the data and Jupyter Notebook for this article on Github here. | https://medium.com/mongolian-data-stories/%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%BB%D1%8B%D0%BD-%D0%BC%D0%B0%D1%85%D0%BD%D1%8B-%D2%AF%D0%BD%D1%8D-%D1%85%D1%83%D0%B3%D0%B0%D1%86%D0%B0%D0%B0%D0%BD-%D1%86%D1%83%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%B0%D0%BD%D1%8B-%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%B3%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%BB-b29739482c0e | ['Robert Ritz'] | 2019-06-06 08:46:56.638000+00:00 | ['Mongolia', 'Time Series Forecasting', 'Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Монгол'] |
China and Russia Block Aid In United Nations Vote | For the past eight years Syria has been home to one the longest civil wars in history. This war encompasses two parties, the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and his supporting soldiers vs anti-government rebel that call their group the Islamic State (IS). The current Syrian government has international supporter from Russia and Iran, while the United States, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are supporters of the rebels. Other western countries such as the United Kingdom have found a middle ground by supporting the civilian population caught between the current Syrian regime and the Islamic State rebels. This civil war was fueled by a climbing unemployment rate and the lack of political freedom. on March 28, 2011, a protest took place were al-Assad’s army killed four peaceful protesters, while also shooting at mourning bystanders at the victim’s funerals, which lead to another death. The people of Syria were outraged and these actions caused a divide in the country.
China and Russia are supporters of the Syria’s President, Bashar al-Assad. China and Russia do not want outside military action to intervene with Syria’s internal affairs. The two countries vetoed the votes to continue supplying aid, which is a crucial lifeline for many Syrian civilians and rebels. “Syrians will suffer needlessly as a result of this resolution, Syrians will die as a result of this resolution”, said Kelly Craft.
China’s United Nation ambassador, Liu Jieyi was opposed to the uses of chemical weapons but felt it was premature to impose sanctions. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin suggested sanction against Syria would be “totally inappropriate”, in hopes to have a peace talk in the future.
On January 10, 2020 United States Ambassador Kelly Craft was present at the Security Council Stakeout and gave a powerful statement. “People across Syria are desperate for the help that the united nations was created to provide”, said Kelly Craft. “it is the Russian federation, that brought us to this point,” said Kelly Craft. The denial of aid and sanctions leaves the United Nations at a stands still. On one hand, the Syrian people are in dire need of help, meanwhile, China and Russia and attempting to “prevent foreign military action in sovereign countries:”. One thing is clear, the United States and Russia are in a proxy war and Syria is the stage. | https://medium.com/@xeniacontreras/china-and-russia-block-aid-in-united-nations-vote-c76e6e7e89db | ['Xenia Contreras'] | 2020-01-14 05:50:23.186000+00:00 | ['China', 'Russia', 'Syria', 'Veto', 'Comm206'] |
Top 10 Books: the International Affairs Christmas reading list 2020 | After the year we’ve had we want nothing better than to curl up with a book. Here are our picks of the top 10 books reviewed in International Affairs in 2020 hand-picked by the editorial team. Below you will find books that offer interesting discussions on Indian foreign policy, environmental destruction, gendered theorizations of the state and much more besides.
1) Worldmaking after empire: the rise and fall of self-determination
Written by Adom Getachew. Published in 2019 by Princeton University Press.
Give it to: The friend who’s interested in historical what-ifs.
Joe says: I picked this because of the fascinating way Getachew charts a history of anti-colonial nationalisms and their visions for re-making the existing international order. The book’s sustained engagement with post-independence black anti-colonial political thought and diligently researched account of the practicalities of historic attempts to challenge international coloniality make it a must read.
Read the full review here.
2) Comparative grand strategy: a framework and cases
Edited by Thierry Balzaq, Peter Dombrowski and Simon Reich. Published in 2019 by Oxford University Press.
Give it to: Anyone who’s done with hot takes on US foreign policy.
Andrew says: As an ambitious and wide reaching intervention in the study of grand strategy, Comparative grand strategy is impossible to ignore. Responding to US centric and systemically focused accounts of grand strategy, this collection of work articulates a new research program for the study of grand strategy that foregrounds context and the linkages between international and domestic politics.
Read the full review here.
3) Race and the undeserving poor: from abolition to Brexit
Written by Robbie Shilliam. Published in 2018 by Columbia University Press.
Give it to: Anyone interested in a broader perspective on British politics.
Leah says: I may be predisposed to liking this book as I reviewed it, but I think it is worthy of another mention. Shilliam skillfully identifies the imperial genealogy of the concept of the white working class and provides a vital critique of contemporary approaches that racialize the ‘deserving poor’ as white. The analysis of the Grenfell Tower disaster, an absolute highlight of the book, is put into even starker context of this year’s Black Lives Matter movement. Shilliam thus provides essential reading for anyone looking to understand British politics overall and how British history has always been moulded by understandings of race and exclusion.
Read the full review here.
4) Representation, recognition and respect in world politics: the case of US–Iran relations
Written by Constance Duncombe. Published in 2019 by Manchester University Press.
Give it to: Any Biden voters hoping for a revitalized US–Iran deal.
Ben says: I picked this book because I’ve long been a fan of Duncombe’s work at the intersection of representation, visual politics, digital communications and diplomacy. With the possibility of a renewed effort by the incoming Biden administration to repair the Iran Nuclear Deal, this account of the role that identity and recognition has played in the history of Iran–US relations is essential reading.
Read the full review here.
5) Fateful triangle: how China shaped US–India relations during the Cold War
Written by Tanvi Madan. Published in 2020 by Brookings Institution Press.
Give it to: Your favourite history prof annoyed with analyses of great power relations that ignore the past.
Krisztina says: As academics increasingly focus on trilateral relations between the US, China and India, Tanvi Madan presents a well researched account of the history of these relationships demonstrating the profound impact of China on US–India relations. Moving beyond simply accounting for US-India relations in terms of balancing against the threat of China, Madan engagingly presents the key political, ideological and economic features of the relationship in a way that provides important context for contemporary debates on the future of trilateral relations.
Read the full review here.
6) Savage ecology: war and geopolitics at the end of the world
Writen by Jairus Grove. Published in 2019 by Duke University Press.
Give it to: Anyone who isn’t sufficiently worried about the way things are going…
Ben says: Savage Ecology brings a vital critical perspective to conventional understandings of security and geopolitics. Grove grapples with the terrifying implications of the man-made destruction of habitats and societies which has characterized the ‘Eurocene’ epoch. It’s a terrifying but hugely stimulating read for anyone interested in re-thinking the existing political order.
Read the full review here.
7) Revisiting gendered states: feminist imaginings of the state in international relations
Edited by Swati Parashar, J. Ann Tickner and Jacqui True. Published in 2018 by Oxford University Press.
Give it to: The grouchy relative who ‘doesn’t get’ feminism.
Leah says: Revisiting gendered states is a fascinating collection of critical and postcolonial feminist work on the state in international relations. Its contributors trace the workings of gender in international politics across a range of political contexts in ways that transcend theoretical boundaries and provoke fundamental questions for those interested in conceptualizing the state in international politics. It reminds us of the often anti-feminist actions of states, but also of examples of the state being used to pursue feminist objectives.
Read the review here.
8) North Korea-US relations: from Kim Jong Il to Kim Jong Un 2nd edition
Written by Ramon Pacheco Pardo, published in 2019 by Routledge.
Give it to: Your nuclear apocalypse-obsessed uncle.
Krisztina says: Ramon Pacheco Pardo does an absolutely brilliant job of outlining the north Korean perspective on its changing relationship with the US. Pardo draws on discussions with US, Chinese North Korean and South Korean policymakers to demystify the North’s Strategy adding important detail to cursory accounts of the country as a rouge state.
Read the full review here.
9) Unravelling liberal interventionism: local critiques of statebuilding in Kosovo
Edited by Gëzim Visoka and Vjosa Musliu. Published in 2020 by Routledge.
Give it to: Anyone interested in liberal interventionism.
Joe says: This book presents a vital critique of liberal statebuilding in Kosovo and is an important contribution to attempts to decolonize methodologies in International Relations. With its range of critiques from local scholars on everything from international economic policy in Kosovo to the politics of acceptable resistance, this volume is great for anyone interested Kosovo and the politics of statebuilding.
Read the full review here.
10) Modi and the reinvention of Indian foreign policy
Written by Ian Hall. Published in 2019 by Bristol University Press.
Give it to: Anyone who wants to understand Modi’s foreign policy.
Andrew says: This volume looks to examine foreign policy under Modi’s controversial leadership. It considers both the international and domestic dimensions and how these play out in the role India now plays on the world stage. As such, this timely book will be invaluable for those looking to understand the immediate context for India’s contemporary foreign policy and the factors influencing it.
Read the full review here. | https://medium.com/international-affairs-blog/top-10-books-the-international-affairs-christmas-reading-list-2020-b02fa2755f4d | ['International Affairs'] | 2020-12-28 15:30:47.931000+00:00 | ['Academia', 'International Relations', 'Books', 'Review', 'Publishing'] |
BRITISH GAS FULL INFO | British Gas is an energy and residential services provider within the . It is the trading name of British Gas Services Limited and British Gas New Heating Limited, both subsidiaries of Centrica.[2] Serving around twelve million homes within the UK , British Gas is that the biggest energy supplier within the country, and is taken into account one among the large Six dominating the gas and electricity market within the UK
Further information: Gas Light and Coke Company
The Gas Light and Coke Company was the primary utility company within the world. It was founded by Frederick Albert Winsor and incorporated by charter on 30 April 1812 under the seal of King George III .[4]
It continued to thrive for subsequent 136 years, expanding into domestic services whilst absorbing many smaller companies including the Aldgate Gas Light and Coke Company (1819), the town of London Gas Light and Coke Company (1870), the Equitable Gas power company (1871), the good Central Gas Consumer’s Company (1870), Victoria Docks gas service (1871), Western Gas power company (1873), Imperial Gas Light and Coke Company (1876), Independent Gas Light and Coke Company (1876), the London Gas power company (1883), Richmond gas service (1925), Brentford gas service (1926), Pinner Gas Company (1930) and Southend-on-Sea and District gas service (1932).[5]
On 1 May 1949, the GLCC became the main a part of the new North Thames Gas Board, one among ‘s twelve regional gas boards[4] after the passing of the Gas Act 1948 by Clement Attlee’s post-war Labour government.
Further information: Gas board
In the beginning of the 1900s, the gas market within the was mainly travel by county councils and little private firms. At this point the utilization of a flammable gas (often referred to as “town gas”) piped to houses as a fuel was still being marketed to consumers, by such means as the National Gas Congress and Exhibition in 1913. The gas utilized in the 19th and early 20th centuries was fuel , but within the period of 1967–77, British domestic fuel supplies were replaced by gas .
Commemorative plaque in Great Peter Street
In 1948, Clement Attlee’s Labour government reshaped the gas industry, bringing within the Gas Act 1948. The act (on the vesting date of 1 April 1949) nationalised the gas industry within the UK and 1,062 privately owned and municipal gas companies were merged into twelve area gas boards, each a separate body with its own management structure.
The twelve gas boards were: Eastern, East Midlands, Northern, North Eastern, North Thames, North West, Scottish, Southern, South Eastern, South West, Wales, and West Midlands. Each area board was divided into geographical groups or divisions which were often further divided into smaller districts. These boards simply became referred to as the “gas board”, a term still sometimes used when pertaining to British Gas.[citation needed]
In addition, the Gas Act established the Gas Council, its constitution was such control lay effectively with the world boards. The council consisted of a md and deputy chairman, both appointed by the minister, and therefore the chairmen of every of the twelve area boards. The council served as a channel of communication with the minister; undertook labour negotiations; undertook research; and acted as spokesperson for the gas industry generally.[6]
The Gas Act 1965 shifted the balance of power to the centre: it put the Gas Council on an equivalent footing because the area boards, with the powers to borrow up to £900 million, to manufacture or acquire gas and to provide gas in bulk to any area board.[7] In May 1968, the Gas Council moved to large new offices at 59 Bryanston Street, Marble Arch, London.
In the beginning of the 1970s, the gas industry was again restructured after the Gas Act 1972 was passed. The act merged all the world boards and created British Gas Corporation, and abolished the Gas Council.[8]
From its inception, the corporation was liable for development and maintenance of the availability of gas to Great Britain, additionally to satisfying reasonable demand for gas throughout the country. Its leadership, like that of the world boards, was appointed and supervised by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry until 1974, when those powers were vested in the newly created position of Secretary of State for Energy.
Further information: British Gas plc
The Conservative Government, led by Prime Minister Thatcher introduced the Gas Act 1986, which led to the privatisation of the corporate , and on 8 December 1986, its shares floated on the stock exchange as British Gas plc. In the hope of encouraging individuals to become shareholders, the offer was advertised with the “If you see Sid… Tell him!” campaign.
The initial public offering of 135p per share valued the company at £9 billion.[citation needed]
1997-present
Further information: Centrica
A newly designed van of British Gas (2013)
In February 1997, eleven years after it had been privatised, British Gas plc demerged to become the entirely separate BG Group and therefore the Gas Sales and Gas Trading, Services and Retail businesses.
The Gas Sales and Gas Trading and Services and Retail businesses, together with the gas production business of the North andSouth Morecambe gas fields, were transferred to Centrica, which continues to have and operate British Gas retail brand.[9]
British Gas acquired Dyno-Rod in October 2004.[10] In May 2007, British Gas signed a landmark deal which saw 1,000 Volkswagen Caddy vans being supplied to the firm, which were fitted with a bespoke racking system and a speed limiter, designed by Siemens.[11]
The deal was renewed in September 2015.[12] In April 2016, it had been announced that 224,000 residential customers had left the corporate , citing customers coming to the top of their fixed deals and then moving on to other suppliers as the main reason for this loss.
In the same month (April 2016) British Gas also announced they would be closing a call centre and office in Oldbury (West Midlands), with a loss of approximately 680 jobs.[14] In May 2018, Centrica announced that British Gas had lost 100,000 customers since the start of the year.[15] However, the parent company was still likely to hit its targets of 2018, and pay dividends of 12p per share.
British Gas is now led by chief executive, Sarwjit Sambhi, who oversees a business that gives energy and services to around ten million homes, and employs over 28,000 staff based across the UK .[16] an extra seven hundred job cuts within the UK are announced by Centrica in July 2019, amid growing marketplace challenges, which include the loss of 742,000 customers in 2018, and therefore the government’s price cap.[17]
Advertising, sponsorship and marketing
British Gas has actively been involved in sports sponsorship, including a six-year affect British swimming team which commenced in March 2009, and is predicted to net the team £15 million,[18] and from 2006 to 2009, it sponsored the Southern league of England.[19]
The company’s extensive television advertising has featured many high-profile individuals, and within the beginning of the 1990s, one advertisement included Cheryl Tweedy as a little child, quite ten years before the start of her pop career.[20] In November 2012, the knowledge Commissioner’s Office publicly listed British Gas together of variety of companies that it had concerns about due to unsolicited telephone calls for marketing.
The concerns were based on complaints. In response, British Gas said that “We uphold the very best standards when contacting people in their homes, and only use contact information if we’ve express permission to try to to so.”[21]
In July 2014, regulator Ofgem reached an agreement with British Gas for the corporate to pay £1 million in compensation to many people, who had been advised to modify from other suppliers to British Gas by British Gas advisers using exaggerated claims.[22] On 20 September 2015, British Gas launched a billboard , including their new mascot, Wilbur the Penguin.
Distribution network operators
British Gas is an energy supplier for homes across the country. The infrastructure (pipes) which delivers the gas to consumers is owned and maintained by other companies. They do not, however, manage the network of towers and cables that distributes electricity — these are maintained by distribution network operators (DNOs) which vary from region to region. If, as an example , there’s an influence outage it’s necessary to contact the acceptable DNO instead of the energy supplier.[23] | https://medium.com/@ramdhenu2050/british-gas-full-info-96b5326398d | [] | 2021-01-28 03:21:38.664000+00:00 | ['Blog', 'Loans', 'Blogger', 'Google', 'Finance'] |
ML for “poets” — Abstractions, Conceptual Compression, and Commoditization | Two is an abstraction.
One wonderful thing about technology (especially software) is that over time, things that are hard become easy. They become accessible. The hard stuff gets abstracted away at lower-levels, and you can build software faster and more efficiently.
David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) has a piece where he calls this conceptual compression. I’m not a huge fan of that term (it doesn’t really capture the meaning), but I can’t think of a better one, so I’ll just alternate between “conceptual compression” and “abstraction commoditization”.
Anyway, one example DHH gives, which is probably relatable for most software engineers, is the idea that if you’re building database-backed applications, you used to need to understand your database engine. But over time, databases have been abstracted away and that is no longer the case. He cites memory management as another area that has been abstracted away.
Of course, just because you can get away with not understanding your database doesn’t mean you should. It’s easy to err on both sides — some software purists are insulted that someone can build an application without “understanding the fundamentals”, even if it might be the more pragmatic thing to do. If you are one of those people, I hope you’re writing your code in assembly (or binary, if you’re a true purist). After all, all languages are abstractions on top of 1’s and 0’s. It’s abstraction all the way down.
On the other hand, you can really make a mess of things if you’re completely oblivious about what’s happening at lower levels. But learning when and how to “cross the abstraction barrier” is probably a subject for another post.
This abstraction or commoditization that occurs in software is a really magical thing. A driving force of that is the open source movement. Someone notices they need to do something over and over again, and that thing is difficult. They build a tool to make it easy for themselves to do that thing. They open-source that tool so others can use and improve it. Of course, it’s not always that noble; open-sourcing can happen for a variety of more material reasons, too, but the result is still the same. Commoditization in other industries tends to be a lot less noble, and usually driven more by market forces and competitive dynamics. People don’t often provide tools for free. They realize that it’s better to be the weapons supplier than participate in the war.
In software, the overall trend of things seems to be towards more “compression”. One way to observe this is to look at a particular company’s approach, so we’ll look at Google (and some Jeff Dean-related projects).
For instance, early on, Jeff Dean helped architect Google’s MapReduce tool. MapReduce was published as a paper in 2004, but most of Google’s tooling around MapReduce was proprietary and never really released for open-source or paid public consumption. To fill the vacuum, Hadoop emerged, inspired by MapReduce and Google File System, but developed largely outside of Google (with major support from Google competitors like Yahoo!).
To take another data point, Jeff Dean was also involved in Spanner. Spanner was also intially published as a paper (in 2012). It was never open-sourced, but eventually it was provided as a paid, hosted service within Google’s Cloud ecosystem.
Most recently Jeff Dean has been heavily involved in TensorFlow. Google uses TensorFlow internally, but has also open-sourced it (with libraries in multiple languages), provided it as a cloud service, and even provided custom hardware that can be used for more efficient computation (TPU) as a paidservice. It’s pretty amazing to see this progression from having really awesome tools that are only used internally to tools that are designed for public consumption.
In 2005, unless you worked at a company like Google, if you wanted to run large distributed computing, you really could only read the MapReduce paper and fantasize about what it would be like. You didn’t have access to the libraries or computing power. In 2018, if you want to run deep learning algorithms, it’s all at your fingertips. There’s a Google TensorFlow codelab called “TensorFlow for Poets”.
And it’s happening at a lot of other companies. Microsoft goes from “Linux is a cancer”, the “Halloween Documents”, and “embrace, extend, extinguish” to opensource.microsoft.com and being a top contributor to open-source.
I don’t think companies are doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. There are good business reasons to contribute to this commoditization.
One really interesting area where this abstraction commoditization is happening right now is Machine Learning. It’s getting easier and easier to do Machine Learning, and for someone who isn’t an ML specialist, that’s really empowering. There’s a few things that make the process of ML commoditization really exciting to watch and hard to predict:
The field itself has been around for dozens of years, but has picked up a lot of momentum in the past few years, due to abundance of data and compute, break-throughs in hardware (e.g. GPUs), and a flurry of activity in the field. There’s all sorts of interactions between academia and industry, and people who have been doing this for ages and people with new ideas. This can result in interesting debates and drama.
The field is moving really quickly. For proper commoditization to occur, some level of stability is needed. Otherwise, you’re trying to hit a moving target —and the ML target is moving really, really quickly.
There are a lot of “gorillas” in the room with different interests. Companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon are battling it out.
ML is critical to their ability to compete and build their own consumer products, so they are investing heavily within ML internally and hiring the best ML engineers they can find.
To do that, they need to prove that they’re an attractive place to work on ML, and so that means they publish papers, give talks, and build tools like TensorFlow. They’re also helping sponsor and develop ML curriculums to build their credibility.
Finally, they are also all competing in the Cloud space, and providing ML tools/libraries (like SageMaker, Tensorflow, or Pytorch) and computing resources (like TPUs or Deep Learning AMIs) to help get developers on their platforms.
In fact, a lot of times these goals might be at odds with each other. For instance, publishing breakthroughs can build credibility within the industry but might give away some “secret sauce”. Releasing open-source tools might be beneficial for the ecosystem, but proprietary tools are more likely to create lock-in to their platforms.
It’s fun to watch, and amazing if the end result is more people can easily do traditionally “difficult” things. | https://oao84.medium.com/abstractions-conceptual-compression-and-commoditization-9126e79bdbc8 | ['Osman', 'Ozzie'] | 2018-05-09 13:59:15.661000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Software Development', 'Programming', 'Computer Science'] |
Public Token Sale is delayed due to current market conditions | Dear Supporters,
Due to adverse market conditions, dApp Builder have taken the difficult decision to postpone the public element of our sale. We believe this to be the best decision for the company and token participants.
In the interim the team remains fully focused on factors within our influence and are dedicated to bringing dApp Builder to market. We will continue to develop product and will focus on three core areas during this period.
Further Product Development
Partnerships
Private sales and white-listing
We will continue to update our supporters and community as we hit milestones in these areas and will share information shortly on these.
We thank you for your support and are here to answer any questions you have!
dApp Builder team
Try it now on https://dappbuilder.io/builder
Or watch the code on https://github.com/DAPPBUILDER/dApp-Builder
Stay in touch for for updates via | https://medium.com/ethereum-dapp-builder/public-token-sale-is-delayed-due-to-current-market-conditions-7441cadaef41 | ['Dapp Builder Team'] | 2018-10-30 10:20:42.633000+00:00 | ['Dapps', 'Ethereum', 'Development', 'Blockchain'] |
I Know How I React When I’m at Gunpoint Now | We didn’t need telling twice. The gamekeeping story was not a convincing one; the area has farmland around it, but no estates, and the land we were running through was agricultural, with nowhere for pheasants to hide. Everything about the encounter felt sinister. We decided to take a different route back, one that wouldn’t come back past the car, which had now been parked on the headland of a field and sat, squat and menacing, in the inky dark. And full — apparently — of guns.
I live in the middle of nowhere in England and I can count on both hands the number of times I’ve actually seen a gun. Most of those sightings have, I’ll be honest, been of the weapons slung on the belts of airport guards. Guns are…other. They’re from films and television, really. Dangerous, deadly props. They don’t feel like a real thing.
They’re a classic trope though, aren’t they? Who hasn’t wondered how they’d react if they came face to face with the barrel of a gun?
In the dark last night, my friend and I kept running for another 3 miles and then we looped back towards our cars. Again, the expanse of fields we’d crossed earlier loomed, but we deliberately took a different route to skirt its edges rather than cross the middle. We would not pass the car again.
And yet, of course, we did. As soon as we entered the paddock we were caught in the beam of its headlights. It had moved to block the path we needed to take to cross the field back to our cars and again, the window slid down.
This time, the passenger of the car was not the first thing we saw in the gap of the lowered window. This time, we came squarely face-to-face with a rifle. It was set up on a stand to fit the car window and it was huge and blackly metallic, with a delicate sight through which the passenger’s eye glared at us coldly.
“We’ll get nothing tonight, will we, not with you two crisscrossing the place all sparkly. You want to be getting yourselves home. You shouldn’t be here.”
I thought: Here I am, quite literally at gunpoint. I also thought: the absolute cheek of you, dude, coming at me with your vaguely threatening talk when we’ve actually got more right to be here than you. I said something like “Don’t worry, we’re going now!” in a breezy voice at exactly the same time my friend said belligerently “This is public land and we run here a lot. We don’t have to go anywhere because you tell us to!”
What was she thinking? They had a weapon.
But it was fine. We ran the fastest half-mile we’ve ever run on that field, no one shot at our ankles, and then we were back in our cars and safely on the road home. My friend called the police and the police said that what the men were probably doing is called “lamping”, which we hadn’t heard of before, so it turned out to be quite an educational evening. (The police also said that there was no point making any kind of formal report because nothing would be done, so that was educational too. Government cuts, man).
And then I got home and tried to tell the story to everyone around the dinner table in an archly amused tone but suddenly I couldn’t stop crying for about five minutes. I didn’t feel sad or frightened; the tears were like a thunderstorm, a panicked reaction to the adrenaline I hadn’t realized I’d accrued, presumably in the face of that surreally dramatic-looking rifle. | https://medium.com/assemblage/i-know-how-i-react-when-im-at-gunpoint-now-4339691694af | ['Em Unravelling'] | 2020-12-08 12:26:22.216000+00:00 | ['Personal Essay', 'Experience', 'This Happened To Me', 'Life', 'Fear'] |
Grandmother ❤️ | Foto by Christian Bowen from unsplash
I am sure that your prayers are one of the reasons for me to stay alive. Always concerned about her family, her greatest wealth, her grandchildren. Joy in the heart, sadness in the eyes for those who saw it go. Older with the strength of a young woman. Always willing and willing to move on. This is my grandmother. She taught us that time passes. But education and humility prevail and things change, so love your neighbor without expect too much in return. | https://medium.com/afwp/grandmother-%EF%B8%8F-fb80dd8d46d3 | ['Leonel Carvalho'] | 2020-11-25 15:32:06.052000+00:00 | ['Médium', 'Reflections', 'Love', 'Grandmother', 'Letters'] |
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Livestreaming, what’s in it for us?
Technology has advanced significantly since the first internet livestream but we still turn to video for almost everything. Let’s take a brief look at why livestreaming has been held back so far, and what tech innovations will propel livestreaming to the forefront of internet culture. Right now livestreaming is limited to just a few applications for mass public use and the rest are targeted towards businesses. Livestreaming is to today what home computers were in the early 1980s. The world of livestreaming is waiting for a metaphorical VIC-20, a very popular product that will make live streaming as popular as video through iterations and competition.
Shared Video
Do you remember when YouTube wasn’t the YouTube you know today? In 2005, when Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim activated the domain “www.youtube.com" they had a vision. Inspired by the lack of easily accessible video clips online, the creators of YouTube saw a world where people could instantly access videos on the internet without having to download files or search for hours for the right clip. Allegedly inspired by the site “Hot or Not”, YouTube originally began as a dating site (think 80s video dating), but without a large ingress of dating videos, they opted to accept any video submission. And as we all know, that fateful decision changed all of our lives forever. Because of YouTube, the world that YouTube was born in no longer exists. The ability to share videos on the scale permitted by YouTube has brought us closer to the “global village” than I’d wager anyone thought realistically possible. And now with technologies like Starlink, we are moving closer and closer to that eventuality. Although the shared video will never become a legacy technology, before long it will truly have to share the stage with its sibling, livestreaming. Although livestreaming is over 20 years old, it hasn’t gained the incredible worldwide adoption YouTube has. This is largely due to infrastructure issues such as latency, quality, and cost.
Latency is a priority when it comes to livestreams.
Latency is the time it takes for a video to be captured and point a, and viewed at point b. In livestreaming this is done through an encoder-decoder function. Video and audio are captured and turned into code, the code specifies which colours display, when, for how long, and how bright. The code is then sent to the destination, such as a streaming site, where it is decoded into colours and audio again and then displayed on a device like a cell phone. The delay between the image being captured, the code being generated, transmitted, decoded, and played is consistently decreasing. It is now possible to stream content reliably with less than 3 seconds of latency. Sub-second latency is also common and within the next 20 or so years we may witness the last cable broadcast (or perhaps cable will be relegated to the niche market of CB radios, landlines, and AM transmissions).
On average, the latency associated with a cable broadcast is about 6 seconds. This is mainly due to limitations on broadcasts coming from the FCC or another similar organization in the interests of censorship. In terms of real-life, however, a 6 second delay on a broadcast is not that big of a deal. In all honesty a few hours’ delay wouldn’t spell the doom of mankind. But for certain types of broadcasts such as election results or sporting events, latency must be kept at a minimum to maximize the viability of the broadcast.
Sensitive Content is Hard to Monitor
Advances in AI technologies like computer vision have changed the landscape of internet broadcasting. Before too long, algorithms will be better able to prevent sensitive and inappropriate content from being broadcast across the internet on livestreaming platforms. Due to the sheer volume of streams it is much harder to monitor and contain internet broadcasts than it is cable, but we are very near a point where the ability to reliably detect and interrupt inappropriate broadcasts instantaneously. Currently, the majority of content is monitored by humans. And as we’ve learned over the last 50 or so years, computers and machines are much more reliable and consistent than humans could ever be. Everything is moving to an automated space and content moderation is not far behind. We simply don’t have the human resources to monitor every livestream, but with AI we won’t need it.
Video Quality
In the last decade we have seen video quality move from 720p to 1080p to 4K and beyond. I can personally remember a time when 480p was standard and 720p was considered a luxury reserved for only the most well funded YouTube videos. But times have changed and people expect video quality of at least 720p. Live streaming has always had issues meeting the demands of video quality. When watching streams on platforms like Twitch, the video can cut out, lag, drop in quality, and stutter all within about 45 seconds. Of course this isn’t as rampant now as it once was, however, sudden drops in quality will likely be a thorn in the side of live streams for years to come.
Internet Speeds
Perhaps the most common issue one needs to tackle when watching a live stream is their internet speed. Drops in video quality and connection are often due to the quality of the internet connection between the streamer and the viewer. Depending on the location of the parties involved, their distance from the server, and allocated connection speed the stream may experience some errors. And that’s just annoying. Here is a list of the recommended connection speeds for 3 of the most popular streaming applications:
Facebook Live recommends a max bit rate of 4,000 kbps, plus a max audio bit rate of 128 kbps.
YouTube Live recommends a range between 1,500 and 4,000 kbps for video, plus 128 kbps for audio.
Twitch recommends a range between 2,500 and 4,000 kbps for video, plus up to 160 kbps for audio.
Live streams are typically available for those of us with good internet. Every day more people are enjoying high quality speeds provided by fibre optic lines, but it will be a while until these lines can truly penetrate rural and less populated areas. Perhaps when that day comes we will see an upsurge of streaming coming from these areas.
Language Barrier
You can pause and rewind a video if you didn’t understand or hear something, and many video sharing platforms provide the option for subtitles. But you don’t really get that with a live stream. Pausing and rewinding an ongoing stream defeats the purpose of watching a stream. However, the day is soon approaching where we will be able to watch streams, in our own native language with subtitles, even if the streamer speaks something else. Microsoft Azure’s Cognitive Speech Services can give livestreaming platforms an edge in the future as it allows for speech to be automatically translated from language to language. The ability to watch a livestream in real time, with the added benefit of accurate subtitles in one’s own language, will also assist language learners in deciphering spontaneous speech.
Monetization
One of the most damning features of a live stream is the inherent difficulty in monetizing it. As mentioned before, videos can be paused and ads inserted. In videos, sponsored segments can be bought where the creators of the video read lines provided to them. Ads can run before videos etc. But in the case of a spontaneous live stream sponsored content will stick out. In the case of platforms like YouTube there are ways around ads. Ad blockers, the skip ad button, the deplorable premium account, and fast forwarding through sponsored segments all work together to limit the insane amount of ads we see every day. But in the case of a live stream, ads are a bit more difficult.
Live streaming platforms could implement sponsored overlays and borders or a similar graphical method of advertising, but the inclusion of screen shrinking add-ons like that may cause issues on smaller devices where screen size is already limited.
Monthly subscriptions are already the norm, but in the case of a live streaming platform (Twitch Prime not withstanding), it may be difficult for consumers to see the benefit in paying for a service that is by nature unscheduled and unpredictable. Live streams are great for quick entertainment, but as they can go on for hours at a time, re-watching streamed content is inherently time consuming. For this reason, many streamers cut their recorded streams down and upload them to platforms like YouTube where they are monetized through a partnership program. It is likely that for other streaming platforms to really take off, they would need to partner with a larger company and offer services similar to Amazon and Twitch.
What Might the Future of Livestreaming Look Like?
It is difficult to say, as it is with any speculation about the future. Technologies change and advance beyond the scope of our imaginations virtually every decade. But one thing that is almost a certainty is the continued advancement in our communications infrastructure. Fibre optic lines are being run to smaller towns and cities. Services like Google Fiber, which is now only available at 1 gigabit per second, have shown the current capabilities of our internet infrastructure. As services like this expand we can expect to see a large increase in the number of users seeking streams as the service they expect to interact with will be more stable than it currently is now. Livestreaming, at the moment, is used frequently by gamers and Esports and hasn’t yet seen the mass commercial expansion that is coming.
The future of live streaming is on its way. For clues for how it may be in North America we can look to Asia (taobao). Currently, livestreaming is quite popular in the East in terms of a phenomenon that hasn’t quite taken hold on us Westerners, Live Commerce. With retail stores closing left and right, we can’t expect Amazon to pick up all of the slack (as much as I’m sure they would like to). Live streaming affords entrepreneurs and retailers a new opportunity for sales and growth.
Live streaming isn’t the way of the future, video will never die, but the two will co-exist and be used for different purposes, as they are now. Live streaming can bring serious benefits to education as well by offering classrooms guest lessons and tutorials by leading professionals. Live streaming is more beneficial for education than video as it allows students to interact with guest teachers in real-time.
The live streaming market is waiting to be tapped. Right now there are some prospectors, but in North America, no one has really found the vein leading to the mine. So maybe it’s time to get prospecting. | https://medium.com/nba-2021-brooklyn-nets-vs-atlanta-hawks-live-2021/live-streaming-brooklyn-nets-vs-atlanta-hawks-2021-full-match-f2d3d5603475 | [] | 2021-01-27 12:16:08.915000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Startup'] |
Scale-Up the Best Version of Yourself — Accelerating Innovation in a Start-Up Company | Every morning I wake up and some of my first thoughts are: “how can I make a larger impact with my big idea and what are the next steps of learning to get there”. Well, I need some coffee and some minutes of thinking, perhaps a way of mindfulness in the silence of the early morning, before I get going. Every day is full throttle, especially when scaling-up your startup company. But you need to have a strong team and good support to achieve your goals in the best possible way. I had been thinking about this when we suddenly got some unexpected help.
End of last year we were invited and selected to take part in the Silicon Valley accelerator program run by the Nordic Innovation House — the TINC. TINC aims to scale-up the best of Nordics startups. With the pandemic ongoing it was the first time this had to be run 100% virtually, so all of the participants from Iceland, Norway, Sweden and us from Finland ended up working 4 weeks late evenings with the accelerator team in California. That was a tough one, but there were some clear benefits — the “nighttime” learnings of tools, techniques and methods taught by the accelerator team, we utilized during daytime in our interaction with our trusted customers. Oh boy, we were trialing, building MVPs, pivoting, getting direct feedback. We had created a functional MVP on our data side and we were pretty excited about this! Our focused strategy became very clear quickly, why we are now putting our best efforts on conquering the beachhead market.
This all accelerated our creation of business value to our customers removing their pain points. It was continuous learning. It never stopped. After four weeks we were pretty exhausted, the usual working days started early morning and ended around midnight. And we made some great connections. We are looking forward to being able to go and meet many fantastic people post-pandemic in the Silicon Valley that we networked with and built incredible relationships with.
This sparked us to keep on working on our sprints and do agile development in a similar manner, engaging our team, having workshops and trials with customer to move ahead. Working in this intense way, which I would also dare to say is necessary for a start-up that wants to scale-up and grab the market opportunity fast, and this also knits the team together closely. We are on a daily basis doing progress, solving some problems and encountering a bunch of new ones. With our diverse team we could apply critical thinking, solving complex problems and collectively create unique knowledge, making us extremely hard to beat.
But we do not stop here; working with many customers in parallel (we probably are in various phases with some 50 customers), our name and brand recognition is quickly growing. We have a great brand recognition. Being a top innovator with a key scalable solution to improve society and industry that is good for our planet is great.
You can read more about
Nordic Innovation House TINC accelerator program under:
https://www.nordicinnovationhouse.com/siliconvalley/sv-programs/tinc
Our company:
https://www.rocsole.com
Note: Curious about the rest of my scribblings on the board — get in touch and I will tell you. | https://medium.com/@mika-tienhaara/scale-up-the-best-version-of-yourself-accelerating-innovation-in-a-start-up-company-712681c2f6e9 | ['Mika Tienhaara'] | 2021-03-19 12:04:59.099000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Accelerator', 'Startup', 'Entrepreneurship'] |
Demystifying the Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors (MLSA) program! | Demystifying the Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors (MLSA) program!
Who doesn’t want to be a part of a community that uplifts its individuals to do better each day, to be the best version of themselves, to grow and to rise?
Of course, many of us want to! This blog is all about one such program. Yes, as the title suggests, it is Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors program.
How did I get into the program?
It all started in the year 2019 when I received an application form regarding the Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors Program (formerly known as Microsoft Student Partners program) through a friend of mine. After skimming through the website, the idea of empowering the community through the means of technology seemed appealing to me. So, I decided to apply for the program (Indeed, the best decision I’ve ever made! :D)
What is Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors program?
Student Learn Ambassadors are a global group of on-campus ambassadors who are eager to help fellow students, lead in their local tech community, and develop technical and career skills for the future. It is a worldwide recognizable program to sponsor students majoring in disciplines related to technology. The MLSA program enhances students’ employability by offering training in skills not usually taught in academia, including knowledge of Microsoft technologies. MLSAs are assumed to further share the knowledge among the academic community by, for example, arranging courses, giving presentations and initiating projects.
Application Process
Just like everyone, I was also pretty confused about the application procedure of the program which is the reason why I’ve thought of writing this blog which would, in turn, help the readers to get an overview related to the application process.
Eligibility Criteria
The program is open to anyone who is a university student and currently enrolled in any Undergraduate, Postgraduate or Ph. D program in an accredited academic institution having age above 16 years at the time of submission. The student can be of any stream.
Hold on…
Now that you’ve seen the eligibility criteria, I’d recommend you to complete some tasks before jumping directly to the program application. This task is not compulsory but it’s just to ensure you have a successful application. :)
Make a LinkedIn profile, if you haven’t. If you already have one, update it with your recent achievements. Update your resume with your latest achievements and community experiences. Create a video describing yourself, your community involvements and the impact that you’ve made till the date of application.
How to Apply?
Now that you’ve completed the above task, you’re good to apply for the program.
Step 1: Go to https://studentambassadors.microsoft.com/login and sign in using your Microsoft account.
Step 2: Click on the ‘Apply Now’ button that pops up on the website.
Step 3: You’ll see a window comprising of several sections of the form. Agree to the Privacy Statement, in the ‘Privacy and Terms’ section and click ‘Next’ to proceed with your application.
Step 4: Fill up your personal details like name, contact email, gender, phone number in the ‘Personal Info’ section and click on ‘Next’.
Step 5: After that, fill your college details and the degree you are currently pursuing in the ‘School info’ section and click on ‘Next’.
Step 6: The next section of the application comprises of ‘Written sample’ section which is a major field of consideration. It comprises of three questions namely Inspire, Teach and Promote.
In this section you have to demonstrate how you’ve impacted the community over the years and why you’re passionate about technology. You must devote proper time to prepare for the ‘Written sample’ part as it is a major part of the application.
Note that while these questions can be answered either in a video or a written document form but at least one video must be provided by you having a length less than 2 minutes. A link to the video needs to be provided.
Step 7: Next you’ll see the ‘Additional Info’ section where you can provide your LinkedIn Profile URL, Social media handle’s URL, technical blog post URL, etc. Though it’s an optional section, I’ll recommend you to fill every possible field to highlight your previous community experiences.
Step 8: The last step of the application process is the ‘Technical Skills’ where you can mention the technologies that you’ve worked with.
Step 9: You can share anything in the ‘Anything else’ section if you wish to.
After completing all sections, click on the “Submit” button and hurray your application is complete. :)
Additional Information
There are a few points that I’d like to highlight in regards to the application.
One can edit the application until the time it goes under review.
The applications are open for the 365 days so you can apply anytime you want.
One should keep patience after applying for the program as the applications are reviewed quarterly.
Student Ambassador Milestones | https://medium.com/@hemshree/demystifying-the-microsoft-learn-student-ambassadors-mlsa-program-535488f424df | ['Hemshree Madaan'] | 2020-11-06 18:34:01.740000+00:00 | ['Imagine Cup', 'Microsoft', 'Community', 'Diversity In Tech', 'Technology'] |
Shawnee Jazz Festival | Shawnee High School will host their annual Jazz Festival on April 8. Jazz bands from ten area high schools are scheduled to compete. The program includes many popular jazz standards and features some very accomplished young musicians, including several talented members of the All South Jersey and All State Honor Bands. In addition, there will be a guest performance by local favorite, M-Town Jazz.
“This is not only a showcase for the tremendous musical talent we have in our South Jersey schools, but also a really entertaining evening for the community. We urge everyone to come out and enjoy a great night of music,” said Lisa Bakanas, event coordinator and member of the Shawnee Band Parents Association who organizes the Jazz Fest.
Music department faculty members from area colleges and universities will serve as judges for the event. Between the sets performed by local high school jazz ensembles, Medford’s M-town Jazz Jam will perform. M-Town Jazz Jamincludes several professional musicians and music educators who rehearse and perform with the students. They are part of the South Jersey Music Education Partnership, a local non-profit that is dedicated to the development of student musicians through scholarships for private instruction, performance opportunities, and mentorships. More information on SJMEP events will be available the night of the jazz festival.
The jazz festival runs from 5 to 10 p.m. Tickets, available at the door. They will be $8 for general admission and $5 for students and seniors. Seniors with a Lenape regional school district golden pass are admitted free. The Shawnee Band Parents Association will be selling hot food and homemade baked good in the cafeteria all evening. The competition will be held in the Shawnee High School auditorium located at 600 Tabernacle Road in Medford. | https://medium.com/the-medford-sun/shawnee-jazz-festival-60f62e2866bc | [] | 2016-12-19 15:55:33.560000+00:00 | ['Schools', 'Entertainment', 'Jazz Festival', 'Headlines', 'Shawnee High School'] |
Changing the Status Quo | Although I appreciate the value of a traditional liberal arts education, I resisted critiquing the status quo for a long time because I was worried about pissing people off.
I don’t worry much about that anymore.
Right now, we are witnessing the death of an idea. But it’s the beginning of a new idea, transformed into something we can be passionate about again. With our students and in our own work. These two things go together.
These issues have shaped not only my own career, but the careers of a great majority of you. If 75 percent of faculty are really adjuncts, then I know you’re reading his right now.
This journal is a culmination, so to speak, of everything that has come before it. The aim of this journal is to breathe life into new ideas.
I can’t do this alone. Join me. I need your help. Together we can change the status quo and leave the B.S. behind. It’s time to take our careers — and our lives — into our own hands.
Let’s shine light onto the obscurity and shake the jargon out of our mouths and pens.
— F.W. | https://medium.com/the-humanities-in-transition/changing-the-status-quo-ff5ee3f6e019 | ['Flannery Wilson'] | 2020-06-25 15:02:59.412000+00:00 | ['Philoosphy', 'Postmodernism', 'Theory', 'Higher Education', 'Professor'] |
#Juststart Project | For a few years now, I’ve wanted to master MS Excel, the spreadsheet program by Microsoft. In fact, I have wanted to be good at it from the very beginning of my mandatory training at an accounts firm that started back in mid 2015. Understandably, its been quite a while. Most business professionals have at least some basic familiarity with the program and while I’ve learned some of the basics, the potential to improve is endless. As an accounts and finance professional, it is both an essential requirement and an additional skill that sets you apart from your peers.
The first three tasks I need to do in order to master MS Excel are (i) to identify the sources of learning, (ii) to gather the data (in whatever form from these sources) and most importantly, (iii) set aside time everyday to actually study, practice and learn new features.
I have already gone through with the first two steps - or at least, partially. I have listed down the people I will have to track to gather the lectures, presentations and raw dis-aggregated data for practice on Excel and the online courses I will have to consult.
I have corresponded with an acquaintance who is a certified Excel trainer and I’ve had him email me his material. I have also signed up for a three part course by Microsoft itself on edX that deals with excel and data analysis. Now its upto me to set apart the time to actually wind up the planning phase and start the operational phase.
It is the 12th of January, 2019 today and Ii am hoping to making everyday count. | https://medium.com/@shariq.hassan94/juststart-project-47215a27cf20 | ['Shariq Hassan'] | 2019-01-12 01:10:03.124000+00:00 | ['Excel'] |
Russiagaters Ramp Up Narrative Management As Mueller Report Nears | Both CNN and the Washington Post are reporting that Robert Mueller’s investigation into a possible conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government will be wrapping up as soon as next week. This report comes without a single American having been charged with any such conspiracy during the investigation up to this point, and we’re seeing a very revealing uptick in narrative management from the people who have been making a name for themselves promoting the Russiagate conspiracy theory.
A Washington Post article titled “Mueller’s ‘winding down’ may be less than it appears” by Jennifer Rubin (a member of WaPo’s large lineup of neoconservative empire loyalists) argues that while it is very possible there won’t necessarily be anything earth-shattering in the report itself, “the host of other investigations will continue while the focus moves to Congress.” A New York Times article titled “The Mueller Report Is Coming. Here’s What to Expect.” argues much the same thing. Both articles effectively tell the reader that they should brace themselves for disappointment, but definitely still keep their tinfoil pussyhats on.
“I’VE EXPRESSED SKEPTICISM ON #MUELLER FROM DAY ONE,” tweeted the totally calm and unbothered former Hillary Clinton advisor Peter Daou. “Trump obstructed justice in plain sight and bragged about it to Russian operatives in the Oval Office. THAT’S UNQUESTIONABLY AN INDICTABLE/IMPEACHABLE OFFENSE. If he remains in office, it is an abject failure of our system.”
“As you await the Mueller report, please remember how many of Trump’s worst offenses against American democracy have taken place in full public view,” tweeted David Frum, author of George W Bush’s infamous ‘Axis of Evil’ narrative. “Inciting violence against political opponents? It’s not some clandestine plot pierced by investigators. Trump … tweeted it out.”
“From what I understand about the complexities, opaqueness and length of counterintelligence investigations, I’d be surprised if Mueller was able to uncover the breadth of this conspiracy,” tweeted Hollywood’s most prolific Russiagater Rob Reiner, who once went so far as to collaborate with neoconservatives and intelligence community insiders to make a blatant propaganda video starring Morgan Freeman.
“What makes you so confident this report is on Mueller’s terms and timetable?” asked Congressman Eric Swalwell, easily the most virulent and conspiratorial Russiagater on Capitol Hill after Adam Schiff (who for his own part has already started moving the goalposts and accusing Mueller of timidity in his investigation). Advancing the baseless claim that Mueller was being secretly forced to wrap up his investigation by outside forces, and also forced to remain silent about it, is about par for Swalwell’s contributions to the Russiagate narrative.
“The best possible result would be if Robert Mueller found Donald Trump completely innocent because I don’t want our president to have engaged in collusion with a foreign power, I just don’t want that,” said Congressman Ted Lieu, pretending that he hasn’t been circulating incendiary Russia conspiracy theories for months.
Over and over again we’re seeing the gears shifting, the goalposts moving, and the herd being paced out of its belief that Trump is about to be dragged out of the White House in chains any minute now, and into a narrative about how if Mueller turns up with nothing it will actually be fine, and certainly not an indication that they’ve spent two years obsessing over a fact-free conspiracy theory.
Others, like Russiagate pundit and Bill Kristol coworker Molly Jong-Fast, are just plain doing it wrong.
“I am incredibly stressed about the mueller report,” tweeted Jong-Fast. “If it’s damning then Alex Jones will try to start Civil War 2.0 and if by some weird possibility it exonerates trump then trump will go full banana republican kleptocrat and turn what’s left of our democracy in North Korea.”
Rank-and-file Russiagaters have been worshipping at the altar of Saint Mueller this entire time out of the sincere hope that Trump will be proven guilty of conspiring with the Russian government to steal the 2016 election, but those who have been building and maintaining this narrative have long known that no such thing is going to happen. The mainstream conspiracy theory which has duped mainstream liberals into supporting the US intelligence community and longtime neoconservative agendas against Russia, Syria and WikiLeaks has done its job beautifully, and when “It’s Mueller Time!” has outworn its usefulness they’ll simply be paced into something else. Meanwhile Trump’s term is more than halfway over, and we’re not one iota closer to seeing the Russiagaters vindicated than we were in 2017.
People tend to believe things not because of facts and evidence, but because the people around them believe it. There’s a whole sub-sect of Left Twitter that still believes I’m a fascist simply because a few influential manipulators in their circle started saying so in an assertive tone, and now if I run into one of them online and deny the things they tell me about my own worldview I get accused of “gaslighting” them. Because that clique has isolated itself from any outside perspectives, the consensus within that echo chamber gets taken for reality, despite the fact that anyone who regularly reads me knows that I’m as far from a fascist as it gets.
Russiagate works the same way, as do other fact-free establishment-serving narratives like QAnon. People are so isolated into their echo chambers that you can run into a Russiagater who will stare at you mouth agape in genuine shock if you tell them you don’t believe Trump colluded with the Russian government. Russiagaters so rarely encounter intelligent arguments against their pet conspiracy theory that you have to get past a huge wall of “Everyone knows this is true!” objections before you can begin showing them that claims they’re making are entirely baseless.
Since narrative control is the source of real power in this world, you can understand why this ability to isolate people and then get them believing whatever you want is being so carefully cultivated and protected by the social engineers. Which is why we’re now seeing all the narrative control agents of the political/media class working together to steer the mainstream herd in a direction which will keep them plugged into the official narrative and isolated in their carefully constructed echo chambers as the situation moves around them. Keep everyone herded into their respective echo chambers, and you can get them supporting any agenda you want.
_________________________
Thanks for reading! My articles are entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish.
Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2 | https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/russiagaters-ramp-up-narrative-management-as-mueller-report-nears-32ab30353e85 | ['Caitlin Johnstone'] | 2019-02-22 01:58:48.859000+00:00 | ['Media Criticism', 'Politics', 'Propaganda', 'Mueller', 'Russia'] |
Our podcast — Getahead: Behind The Curtain — is live | It’s apparent that we — as humans — perceive everyone else as having their lives together, of being ‘sorted’. This perception is put on rocket-boosters by the social media. But a peek behind the curtain will show we all have our cross to bear, struggles to shoulder, pitfalls we have fallen in.
Instagram shots are an edit of our lives, not real life.
But we swallow these Stories wholesale.
We see the superstar DJ, the rock star tech-CEO, the super-Mom and think…”why am I such a sorry loser?”. Well, guess what? We all feel that way.
But nobody’s lives are perfect.
What if you could find out what it was really like?
Hence: “Behind the Curtain”
We want to go behind the curtain of successful people’s lives to find out what really goes on…the good, the bad and the ugly. The podcast is a long-form conversation featuring super-interesting friends of Getahead.
Our mission is to help a billion people ‘get ahead without burning out’ by 2043 (a 25 year commitment we made in 2018). The podcast is a central part of our plan to scale our impact. It is hosted by a man who was there when we dreamed up the idea for Getahead: Will Kirby.
And he’s someone with his own story to tell…
Our host Will Kirby aka Santero
Living the dream?
Will has enjoyed a stellar career as a globe-trotting, award-winning club DJ.
In fact he’s lived the message of our podcast. Because at the height of his fame — when the outside world saw him living the dream — he was at his lowest. Behind the curtain — for the person behind the on-stage persona — the dream was turning into a hollowed-out nightmare.
Will is articulate and upfront about the demons he’s faced, and how he’s transformed his life, discovering a way of being which is healthier and better.
What better person to find ways to help you get ahead in your life?
Podcast 1: Introduction
Will opens up about the ups & downs of his life, looking behind the curtain
Santero in action
Podcast 2: Melody Kane
Will interviews Melody — the superstar resident Radio 1 Xtra DJ & fitness goddess behind No Kane No Gain — at the pop up event we held during Flatiron Square’s Wellness Week in January 2019.
Recorded in front of a live audience, this was his first interview…no pressure!
So get after it!
Getahead: Behind The Curtain is available on your favourite podcast provider, as long as they’re Apple Podcasts & Spotify:
Apple:
Spotify:
While you’re here…
Why not check out our interview with Michael Acton-Smith — the CEO of meditation & sleep app Calm — who spoke at the inaugural Getahead Festival in 2018 in London. He opened up about what life’s really like for the CEO of the world’s first billion dollar mental health startup:
Make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more like that.
You can also follow Getahead on Twitter or Instagram.
Getahead in your inbox
And we send a monthly email newsletter with hints & tips on how to get ahead without burning out — sign up at www.getahead.life | https://medium.com/@Getaheadlife/our-podcast-getahead-behind-the-curtain-is-live-bc19319acd11 | [] | 2019-06-10 13:37:52.803000+00:00 | ['Mental Health', 'Wellbeing', 'Burnout', 'Podcast', 'Conversations'] |
Kyber is now officially on Discord! | Starting today (March 11th), Discord will be the Kyber Network team’s official community discussion platform. Our current Telegram groups will remain, but all official announcements and discussions will happen on our Kyber Network Official Discord server. Kyber community ambassadors DeFi Dude and Mark will be helping to moderate our current English Telegram group.
Building an informed, engaged, and empowered community has always been of paramount importance to us. Telegram has so far been a great platform for fun, engaging, and sometimes heated discussions about all things Kyber and we have established a strong Telegram community of over 15,000 users, including over 1100 developers!
However, we realised that for contentious topics that attract a wide variety of opposing perspectives, important conversations may come fast and furious yet it is very challenging to track and record them on Telegram. Given Kyber’s rapid growth and the upcoming launch of the KyberDAO, Telegram can no longer support our evolving needs. As such, we have made the decision to use Discord as our official community platform.
What will happen to the current Telegram groups?
Current Kyber Telegram groups will remain to help ensure a smooth transition, but take note that official Kyber announcements, discussions, and community polls will be in our Discord server. Our WeChat groups and private Telegram chats with various partners, reserve managers, and projects will continue as usual. For questions on KyberSwap, head to KyberSwapOfficial.
Why Discord?
Discord is designed for very large communities and allows for separate channels catered to the specific needs of different community groups — whether you are a KNC holder, developer, staking pool, trader, or reserve manager. As we prepare for the launch of Katalyst and the KyberDAO, we foresee this #channel feature being absolutely essential for discussions and achieving rough consensus regarding protocol and DAO-related topics. Discord will be a very important part of our governance process and host key discussions and polls around Kyber protocol parameters.
For example, prior to on-chain voting on the KyberDAO, the Kyber community will need a specific channel to discuss about the total network fee and the corresponding % fee distribution to staking rewards, reserve rebates, or burning of KNC. To keep discussions focused, another channel can be created to discuss topics and activities related to growing our network of DApps. These different channels can be navigated easily within the same Discord platform. Moreover, Discord has other useful features for online collaboration such as better moderation tools, convenient file uploads, easy search for past messages, group voice chats, video streaming, emojis😊and many others.
We have successfully utilised Discord for our #KyberDeFi Hackathon operations last year, and many of the top crypto projects in the space today are already using Discord, including Chainlink, Synthetix, Aave etc. After much research, and given Discord’s distinct benefits over Telegram in facilitating varied discussion topics, we have decided to make Discord our official community platform moving forward.
Discord will house our new Kyber #💻developers chat, and we will also have Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese and other language channels. Admins are labeled as ‘Kyber Team’ or ‘Community Admins’, and they include Shane | Kyber Network#0042 and BBY (Bo) l Kyber Network#5991. We look forward to having an even more informed, engaged, and empowered community contributing to the success of Kyber Network.
We welcome the entire Kyber and DeFi community to join us in our new Discord server!
Discord Launch Contest! Win up to 1500 KNC (~$1000)!
We understand that this transition to Discord might take some getting used to. To kickstart our brand new Kyber Discord server, we will have a 1500 KNC (~$1,200) Discord Launch Contest from 11th March — 12th April 2020.
Let your creativity run wild! Join our new discord server and post ANY original article, infographic, meme, or suggestion that helps educate more people about Kyber, Katalyst upgrade, KyberDAO, or new KNC model. The Kyber team will pick the highest quality submissions to share rewards from a prize pool worth up to 1500 KNC! Winning submissions will be selected based on quality, creativity, and impact. Make sure to add #Katalyst2020 in your submission.
General prize guide based on categories (not guaranteed; up to Kyber to select the winners) #Katalyst2020
General guide only. Add #Katalyst2020 in your submission
Eligibility T&Cs
Must join the Kyber Network Official Discord Server: https://discord.gg/NfFMVz6
Submissions must be related to Katalyst, the KyberDAO, or the new KNC model and posted on our Kyber discord server. No price talk.
Submissions can take any form: article, infographic, meme, GIF, song, video, tweet, podcast, feedback etc.
Add a #Katalyst2020 tag on discord when you share your link, file, or comment
tag on discord when you share your link, file, or comment One user can win from multiple submissions and categories, but being the only submission for a category does not automatically make you a winner
Plagiarism is not allowed and affected submissions will be disqualified
Kyber team has full discretion in selecting the winners and our decision is final
The full 1500 KNC may not be awarded if there are insufficient quality submissions
Join Discord and participate now!
Contest Period: 11th March — 12th April, 2020 23:59 GMT+8
Let’s embark on this new Discord journey together! | https://blog.kyber.network/kyber-is-now-officially-on-discord-6b270d136618 | ['Kyber Network'] | 2020-03-18 09:32:10.450000+00:00 | ['Featured', 'English', 'Ethereum'] |
Improve Your ML Models Training | Improve Your ML Models Training
Cycling learning rates in Tensorflow 2.0
Deep learning has found its way into all kinds of research areas in the present times and has also become an integral part of our lives. The words of Andrew Ng help us to sum it up really well,
“Artificial Intelligence is the new electricity.”
However, with any great technical breakthroughs come a large number of challenges too. From Alexa to Google Photos to your Netflix recommendations, everything at its core is just deep learning, but it comes with a few hurdles of its own:
Availability of huge amounts of data
Availability of suitable hardware for high performance
Overfitting on available data
Lack of transparency
Optimization of hyperparameters
This article will help you solve one of these hurdles, which is optimization.
The problem with the typical approach:
A deep neural network usually learns by using stochastic gradient descent and the parameters θ (or weights ω) are updated as follows:
Stochastic gradient descent
where L is a loss function and α is the learning rate.
We know that if we set the learning rate too small, the algorithm will take too much time to converge fully, and if it’s too large, the algorithm will diverge instead of converging. Hence, it is important to experiment with a variety of learning rates and schedules to see what works best for our model.
In practice, there are a few more problems which arise due to this method: | https://medium.com/towards-artificial-intelligence/improve-your-ml-models-training-fc0b7a49da4 | ['Fabiana Clemente'] | 2020-09-15 00:01:02.427000+00:00 | ['Deep Learning', 'Software Development', 'Data Science', 'TensorFlow', 'Machine Learning'] |
Cryptocurrency: Inflation, Pre-Mine and pump & dumps — its all about COMMUNITY | The Graphcoin project recently had the opportunity to list its cryptocurrency with a new exchange — CoinExchange.IO. Listing on a second exchange would provide a much-needed backup solution for those who needed liquidity while our listing at Crypto-Bridge was having technical or support issues. Customer support problems are increasingly more common as they attempt to scale their operations.
A second exchange listing would also provide new arbitrage opportunities for those interested in trading the currency. Spreading the available coin supply across two fronts allows for better price action and mitigation of large buy or sell walls. We had the exchange listing on our roadmap so it was natural we’d execute this next step in our path to rapid currency adoption.
After CoinExchange.IO’s respectful and thorough due diligence process with their knowledgable staff, they were gracious enough to extend an offer to list Graphcoin. Graphcoin, being a young project with limited resources, was able to include its own currency GRPH as a supplement to the BTC listing fee. The supplement was not a small number of coins — 20,000 GRPH to be exact.
Do we pull the 20,000 GRPH from our pre-mine, close the deal and move quickly on this opportunity?
First, some considerations -
Pulling 20,000 GRPH from our pre-mine reduces our overall foundation budget for meaningful projects to be funded in the near future. By using more of our pre-mine, we are essentially “printing” new money, increasing the overall circulating supply and in effect setting off an inflationary event. Giving 20,000 GRPH to a single entity causes additional supply concentration in our network. We always seek fair, even distribution as we scale. By handing over 20,000 new GRPH, we increase the masternode count by 4 new masternodes, which in effect reduces the profitability for all existing masternodes by 4% (MN count was 100 at the time). And the compounding effect of the 4 new nodes further reduces profitability at an accelerating rate. By default, earnings from the new nodes stake in 30 minutes thus reducing staking profitability for those without nodes.
After careful consideration we decided to take a different approach in order to better serve our community as a whole.
We launched a community-based fundraiser.
Pro’s
The foundation budget for meaningful projects remains largely intact. This allows us to fund community-submitted proposals that will drive the adoption and value of the currency. By not “printing” new money, we’ve effectively maintained organic growth of our circulating supply. This allows our original network parameters for the block reward to naturally inflate the currency at the predictable, long-term pace prescribed at the genesis block. Our overall masternode count may go up incrementally, but the coins are from existing supply which you can deduce will prevent other nodes from springing up from the community hoarding their coins. The 4 new nodes would come into the network as they normally would have if the community either put their coins in a shared masternode program or created one themselves. We further mitigate the expected coin dump that ensued after we performed a coin swap and re-opened exchange deposits. MOST IMPORTANTLY — we’ve proven the Graphcoin community can come together to accomplish a significant task without the need for a central governing authority to step in and pay.
The value of a cryptocurrency should be determined by the capability of its participants to work together to solve real-world problems. Think GDP but community-based. GCP.
Con’s
By running a fundraiser, we delayed our second exchange listing by 2 weeks. The fundraiser came with opportunity costs. Community members were required to invest their time and energy into the fundraiser and not other meaningful projects. Further concentration in coin ownership resulted from a large community all pooling their resources together to give their coins to one single coin holder. We unfortunately pissed off a few community leaders who decided to part ways with the Graphcoin project due to how we decided to fund the exchange listing.
Indications things are working well
When you look back at how our network persisted and continued to scale through a PoS attack and a coin swap, you’ll see the signs of a healthy currency.
Masternode Counts
The number of new masternodes joining the network is increasing at a steady pace suggesting long-term viability for our masternode owner’s investment. We carefully designed the block reward schedule to allow for a slow, steady masternode increase by splitting the block rewards evenly between stakers and MN holders for the first 100,000 blocks. Healthy growth can be seen through the PoS attack and subsequent coin swap in the chart below. | https://medium.com/graphcoin/cryptocurrency-inflation-pre-mine-and-pump-dumps-its-all-about-community-1cff0da87307 | [] | 2018-08-11 01:43:01.582000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin', 'Masternodes', 'Community', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Graphcoin'] |
Narcissists Have 2 Types of Interests in Their Children | ➤How narcissists perceive their children
The only time when narcissists would want to see their children succeed is if they were to gain direct benefit from it. It could be financial wealth, but would much rather prefer something that enhances their personal status, like power and influence. As said earlier, they don’t see their children as individual people, they see them as an extension of themselves. A reward given to their child is a reward given to them.
That is not to be confused with the pride parents feel because of their child’s achievements in life. When the parents genuinely rejoice in another’s success — and when that someone also happens to be their child. The genuine appreciation to see someone fulfill their dreams and ambitions — it’s not that.
It’s more like winning the lottery.
Narcissists believe the whole world functions like they do. That everyone is on the lookout to take advantage of someone else. A constant predator and prey game, where all you do is hope you get to be the predator more often than the prey. And if you succeed in doing so, then you had a good life. A reptilian brain kind of existence in which their own children are only part of the play.
There’s no deeper understanding of what it means to pass on life to another human being. And not the slightest clue that their children exist independently. A lack of empathy inhibits their ability to relate any of their actions to an outcome. All that goes wrong is unrelated to them. Circumstances and other people are responsible for everything that goes wrong in their lives. However, all success, be it the result from their actions or someone else’s — like their child’s for instance — is based on their merits alone. | https://medium.com/the-innovation/narcissists-have-2-types-of-interests-in-their-children-f3a3faff12ff | ['Alen M. Vukelić'] | 2020-12-04 01:19:59.714000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Abuse', 'Psychology', 'Relationships', 'Mental Health'] |
Tales From the Ethereum Mines | Collected writings on cryptocurrency, blockchain and related topics
Around Thanksgiving 2017, my daughter and I got interested in Bitcoin. Since then, we started a mining business together and have both written about our adventures (together and separately). This page is a one-stop-shop for our collected writings on the topic.
While our Father/Daughter articles have been our most popular, here are other articles we’ve written.
What’s Gone Wrong with Bitcoin and Can It Be Fixed In Time? — A deeper analysis into how the internal architecture of Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies is failing under stress. The article goes onto explore possible solutions
Look Out World! Here Comes Alexa Wilson, and She Can Teach You a Thing or Two About Tech — Alexa’s experience in crypto mining leads to her guest blogging spot for a major, corporate tech web site.
Get yourself Alexa’s Cryptocurrency Mining Starter Kit here | https://medium.com/coinmonks/tales-from-the-ethereum-mines-b9aaa486a89a | ['Steve Wilson'] | 2020-10-16 12:20:56.423000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoin', 'Ethereum'] |
Kubernetes: A case-study about how Spotify solved their challenges using k8s | Introduction
Ever since new technological revolution industries has adapted all those tactics which will help them to grow their services and reliability in market. Today we are going to talk about one of of the well-known technology which helped Spotify, a audio streaming platform to built an reliable and strong community named “Kubernetes”.
What is Kubernetes ?
Kubernetes, also known as K8s, is an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.
Lets get into the case-study: “How Kubernetes helped Spotify, to identify and solve various challenges..!”
Challenges Spotify facing before adapting k8s:
Jai chakrabarty, Director of Engineering, Infrastructure and Operations kept a vision “To empower creators and enable a really immersive listening experience for all of the consumers that we have today — and hopefully the consumers we’ll have in the future”
Being an early adopter of containerize technology called “Docker” and Microservices, Spotify had containerized microservices running across its fleet of VMs with a homegrown container orchestration system called Helios.
Jai Chakrabarty added “By late 2017, it became clear that “having a small team working on the features was just not as efficient as adopting something that was supported by a much bigger community”?
Reliable Solution:
Spotify saw the amazing community that had grown up around Kubernetes, and they wanted to be part of that, Kubernetes was more feature-rich than Helios. Plus, Spotify wanted to get benefitted from added velocity and reduced cost, and also align with the rest of the industry on best practices and tools. At the same time, the team wanted to contribute its expertise and influence in the flourishing Kubernetes community. The migration, which would happen in parallel with Helios running, could go smoothly because Kubernetes fit very nicely as a complement and now as a replacement to Helios.
What Impact Spotify observed?
The biggest service currently running on Kubernetes takes about 10 million requests per second as an aggregate service and benefits greatly from auto-scaling, also prior, teams would have to wait for an hour to create a new service and get an operational host to run it in production, but with Kubernetes, they can do that on the order of seconds and minutes. In addition, with Kubernetes’s bin-packing and multi-tenancy capabilities, CPU utilization has improved on average two- to threefold.
Experiences shared by the key Engineer’s and Directors of Spotify:
During the migration, the services run on both, so team doesn’t have to put all of their eggs in one basket until we can validate Kubernetes under a variety of load circumstances and stress circumstances.
Spotify’s experiences so far with Kubernetes bears this out. The community has been extremely helpful in getting them to work through all the technology much faster and much easier, It’s been surprisingly easy to get in touch with anybody they wanted to, to get expertise on any of the things they’re working with. And it’s helped them validate all the things they’re doing.
Here I conclude, hope you liked it..! | https://medium.com/@oswalyashraj07/kubernetes-a-case-study-about-how-spotify-solved-their-challenges-using-k8s-27c861b5b8f1 | ['Yashraj Oswal'] | 2020-12-26 13:44:33.876000+00:00 | ['Case Study', 'Kubernetes', 'Spotify', 'Vimal Daga'] |
This is how I feel about what I do for a living. | This is how I feel about what I do for a living. I love to be a mentor, but I rarely get the chance to do it.
I don’t remember when was the last time I was in a situation where I could keep advancing technically, instead of being thrown into the managerial kennel. There is one company that won’t even let me interview, after I was laid off, for new positions because I expressed that sentiment.
I’ve seen a few companies that have have a “Technical Fellow” path. Sadly, I only hear about someone achieving that then it disappears into the bit ether, to never be heard from again. | https://medium.com/@hectorsosajr/this-is-how-i-feel-about-what-i-do-for-a-living-43b3e1cbe005 | ['Hector Sosa'] | 2020-12-05 17:25:34.288000+00:00 | ['Manager', 'Fellowship', 'Career Development', 'Career Advancement', 'Career Paths'] |
STEM WOMAN CRUSH: ANETH DAVID | My intrinsic passion for science and research keeps me driven for a large part. But when this is not enough, I have found out that focusing on the larger picture is motivating. — Aneth David
The SWIS Africa team has been following Aneth’s Instagram handle and how she has been engaging her followers about her journey as a Biotechnologist. We were inspired by the great things she’s doing in the STEM space. We arranged an interview with her to learn more about her journey so far as a biotechnologist and use her story to inspire other women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.
SWIS Africa: Kindly give us a brief autobiography of yourself?
Aneth: I am an early career research scientist and an academician in the field of agricultural biotechnology at University of Dar es Salaam. I am currently training as a PhD student at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), investigating plant-soil microbiome-insects interactions by using maize “push-pull” farming system as a model. My research focuses on promoting sustainable food production using beneficial soil microorganisms. Outside work and school (or as an extension thereof), I engage with science and equality related initiatives.
Regarding science advocacy, I am an eLife ambassador and the inaugural Next Einstein Forum (NEF) science ambassador for Tanzania. Also, I co-founded Tanzania Society of Human Genetics, while I am still part of the executive committee. I enjoy mentoring and inspiring young people in science and technology, especially young girls. I use different platforms for this purpose including social media, blogging (http://www.anethdavd.wordpress.com) as well as capacity building activities like workshops and trainings.
When I’m not in the lab I read a lot, travel and share inspiring knowledge. I have a strong passion for science as well as diversity and inclusion in science/academia.
Aneth David speaking during a meeting of African scientists, Next Einstein Forum Community of Scientists (NEF-CoS), Kigali, Rwanda
SWIS Africa: What drives your passion to share your scientific journey online?
Aneth: Online platforms are very effective in getting stories to a wide audience beyond obvious limits like distance and time. I share my scientific journey to show young women and girls that it is possible to succeed in science, to become an actual scientist. I like the idea that I can be a role model to these young people and hopefully inspire them to choose science career paths or find the resilience to stay in one.
SWIS Africa: How easy has it been managing your work and social life in a balance?
Aneth: It’s not easy, its is one of those issues that one learns as they go. I find that planning weekly schedules (as a reflection of clear short and long term personal and career goals) very helpful in managing the balance. I usually make one schedule with both work and personal activities. I also be sure to schedule (leave) time for myself (hobbies, rest, etc) and family because if I don’t factor these in, it is easy to get overwhelmed. It is not perfect but it works.
Aneth David observing an experiment on the effect of Desmodium spp. on maize infestation of Striga weed at the International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE), Mbita, Kenya
SWIS Africa: Will you ever for any reason agree that science is not a “woman-thing”?
Aneth: No
SWIS Africa: Has there been any humiliating or tears-driven moment in your course all because you are a woman-in-the-science-world?
Aneth: So far there hasn’t been major life-shattering events for me as a woman in science, its the attitudes of colleagues or other people that can be disheartening. I am often judged as a woman and not as a scientist, this may have serious consequences on access to opportunities when people with such mindset hold influential positions.
I frequently get told that I don’t behave like a woman while in professional contexts but a male counterpart would rarely be judged by their “maleness”. Or when people value my career as a negative aspect to my personal life relative to finding a partner and starting marriage life.
SWIS Africa: Can you tell us briefly about your job or course?
Aneth: As an academician my main roles involve teaching, research and consultancy in the areas of agricultural biotechnology and bioinformatics.
As a PhD student, I now spend most of my time doing data analysis and writing manuscripts as I am in the final year of my PhD.
Aneth David during a field experiments visit at the International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE), Mbita, Kenya
SWIS Africa: What is your boost for going on with this passion-driven scientific adventure?
Aneth: My intrinsic passion for science and research keeps me driven for a large past. But when this is not enough, I have found out that focusing on the larger picture motivating. Keeping the target goal in mind helps me in setting off short-term pain.
SWIS Africa: It has been a wonderful experience having you; before you go, what will be your words for that girl out there still left in the darkness of her thoughts and decisions of whether to pursue her scientific career or just let go off it?
Aneth: I would like her to know that anyone can be a scientist regardless of their gender.
I wish to inspire in them the kind of self-confidence that will help them to keep moving despite challenges that they will encounter. I strongly advise young girls and women aspiring to careers in science to first, have role models they look up to for inspiration. This goes a long way to instilling a positive mindset especially when they can relate to these role models, such as people of the same ethnicity, gender or nationality.
Second, they should always strive to learn more about their options. Asking for advice from qualified sources and personal efforts to find more knowledge will help them make informed decision. The internet has made online resources widely available to many people, as well as widening the pool of potential mentors and role models. They should use them fruitfully.
SWIS Africa: Thank you very much, Aneth, for your time. We wish you success in your career.
If you want to learn more about Aneth and her work, kindly follow her on social media:
Instagram: @anethdavidd
Linkedin: Aneth David
SWIS Africa is an initiative focused on celebrating and shaping women in STEM in Africa. You can learn more about us by clicking this link. | https://medium.com/@stemwomenafrica/stem-woman-crush-aneth-david-c227f5e41e02 | ['Shaping Women In Stem Africa', 'Swis Africa'] | 2020-11-17 21:20:07.076000+00:00 | ['Women in STEM', 'Women', 'Biotechnology', 'Science', 'STEM'] |
GPT-3 as a All-Seeing Prophet Predicts Biological War And Best Investment Strategy | There is interesting implementation of GPT-3 engine-based textual quest game, called AI Dungeon. Adventures here are quickly becoming very trippy, as if you are participating in a dream.
Here is interesting Dialogue with The Prophet that was generated by the game:
“> You cast a spell to summon Great All-Seeing Prophet.
A bright light appears and you find yourself face to face with a man. He is short and bald, but his face is happy despite the fact he is literally burning in the hot desert sun.
> You say “Greetings, wise Prophet, how should I call you?”
“Just call me Wally, I don’t mind,” Wally says. “Gladly, my name is…”
You explain your situation to Wally who listens intently.
> You say “Dear Wally, you, as all-knowing and all-seeing Prophet — what do you see for Humanity in 2021? Will COVID still be there?”
Well, there are a few points that I see for the future of this world.
The first is war.
There will be a war with the China.”
“The what?” You ask.
“The China. They’re a big group of people that live out in the China country. There will be a Third World War just like the first, but just like the First World War, that wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. Once again, a few industrialized nations fought for the right to continue destroying the environment, and once again the non-aligned nations came out on the losing end. As a direct result of this war, the first generation of children will grow up even more wary of technology than they are now. The Second World War, for all its killing, didn’t teach the world anything. If anything, it made the world more twisted. ‘The prophet continues… or does he?
> You say “Ok, what about technology? WIll 5G prevail?”
“Look at the bright side: at least we’ll have 5G by then.”
“Ha ha, but what about cell service? Will it be available?”
“You’ll get something similar to 3G, but not quite the same.”
“Oh…”
“Technology won’t matter anyway. This war will be fought with biology, not machinery. Nuclear weapons won’t be used; the threat of mutually assured destruction is enough to stop that. No, instead there will be a biological weapon that will change the course of this war..”
“What’s that? What is it, Wally?”
“The Anti-Personnel Weapon. You’ve heard of the Plague, of course?”
“Yes, of course. It’s been known to kill people. But it only kills… Why are you smiling? What are you suggesting?”
“I’m suggesting that we release the plague into the air and soil of the battlefield. By the time anyone realizes what’s going on, it’ll be too late. Everyone will be infected. Death will follow.”
You stare at Wally in disbelief. “You can’t seriously be suggesting…”
“I am suggesting.” Wally says with a smile.
“Dear God… You’ll crush the entire world trying to protect your home.”
“It’s the best I can offer.” Wally shrugs.
You look away, deep in thought.
> You say “ok, what will be the safe heaven then?”
“Safe heaven?”
“The safe place. The place where there is no war, no death. The place where humanity can thrive.”
Wally starts nodding his head slightly. “You have a good idea there, friend. Yes… A safe heaven.”
“A safe heaven? I don’t understand.”
“A place where war and death do not exist. A place where humanity can thrive, live happily ever after. Where everyone gets along. Where there is no poverty, no crime, no war. Where everyone has enough, and no one goes hungry. Where everyone has a home, and the world is their home. A utopia.
> You say “Yes, exactly! Where it will be?”
“Yes. You may be right.” Wally smiles, his eyes darting around as he stares at the trees around. Then, he snaps back to you. “Yes, we can do that.” A far-off look enters into Wally’s eyes as he stares at a tree and his mind seems to leave this world for a moment.
> You say “Ok, please do so. What will be the best investment strategy?” “Huh?” Wally says, shaking his head as if coming out of a trance. “I said, what will be the best investment strategy? I need a good place to make money.” Wally starts nodding his head slowly again. “You want to make money, eh?” Wally says.
“Yes.”
“Well, I’d say you should go get yourself a job at the mill. There’s always work there.” Wally says.
> You say “Good one!”
“Really? Oh, thank you!” Wally says, smiling.”
Do you know if there any mill worker courses online? | https://medium.com/@yury-kachubeyeu/gpt-3-as-a-all-seeing-prophet-predicts-biological-war-and-best-investment-strategy-127d1f67b6a2 | ['Yury Kachubeyeu'] | 2020-12-01 05:47:42.166000+00:00 | ['Predictions', 'Gpt 3'] |
Logstash — Dead Letter Queue. Logstash is an open-source, server-side… | Logstash is an open-source, server-side data processing pipeline that ingests data from a multitude of sources simultaneously transforms it, and then sends it to your favourite “stash” like Elasticsearch.
The data collection is accomplished via configurable input plugins including raw socket/packet communication, file tailing, and several message bus clients. Once an input plugin has collected data it can be processed by any number of filters which modify and annotate the event data. Finally Logstash routes events to output plugins which can forward the events to a variety of external programs including Elasticsearch, local files and several message bus implementations.
One of the main problems the users face when Logstash encounters an event that it cannot process because the data contains a mapping error or some other issue. In that case, Logstash pipeline either hangs or drops the unsuccessful event. In order to protect against data loss in this situation, we can configure Logstash to write unsuccessful events to a dead letter queue instead of dropping them.
To process the events in the dead letter queue, we need to create a Logstash pipeline configuration using the dead letter queue. input plugin.
The dead letter queue feature is currently supported for the Elasticsearch output plugin output only. Additionally, the dead letter queue is only used where the response code is either 400 or 404, both of which indicate an event that cannot be retried. Support for additional outputs will be available in future releases of the Logstash plugins.
Configuring Dead Letter Queue
Dead letter queues are disabled by default. To enable dead letter queues, set the dead_letter_queue_enable option in the logstash.yml.
We can also specify the path for the queue.
By default it is /logstash-<version>/data/dead_letter_queue
We can check the status of the queue by calling the logstash stats API.
Processing the contents of Dead Letter Queue
We can use Logstash to reprocess the content of a dead letter queue by using the dead_lette_queue plugin
Details of Dead_letter_queue plugin
Example file
Example Use Case
Below is a use case for the use of the dead letter queue.
Load a JSON file to Elasticsearch using logstash
{“fruit”: “Apple”,”size”: “Large”,”color”: “Red”,”id”: 1,”isFruit”: true} {“fruit”: “Apple”,”size”: “Large”,”color”: “Red”,”id”: 2,”isFruit”: true} {“fruit”: “Apple”,”size”: “Large”,”color”: “Red”,”id”: 3,”isFruit”: true} {“fruit”: “Apple”,”size”: “Large”,”color”: “Red”,”id”: 4,”isFruit”: false} {“fruit”: “Apple”,”size”: “Large”,”color”: “Red”,”id”: 5,”isFruit”: false}
Logstash pipeline config
Failure case
Try to index a dataset that has a different field type
{“fruit”: “Apple”,”size”: “Large”,”color”: “Red”,”id”: 5,”isFruit”: 56} {“fruit”: “Apple”,”size”: “Large”,”color”: “Red”,”id”: 5,”isFruit”: 56} {“fruit”: “Apple”,”size”: “Large”,”color”: “Red”,”id”: 5,”isFruit”: 56} {“fruit”: “Apple”,”size”: “Large”,”color”: “Red”,”id”: 5,”isFruit”: 56} {“fruit”: “Apple”,”size”: “Large”,”color”: “Red”,”id”: 5,”isFruit”: 56} {“fruit”: “Apple”,”size”: “Large”,”color”: “Red”,”id”: true,”isFruit”: 56} {“fruit”: “Apple”,”size”: “Large”,”color”: “Red”,”id”: true,”isFruit”: 56} {“fruit”: “Apple”,”size”: “Large”,”color”: “Red”,”id”: true,”isFruit”: 56}
Here the type of id and isFruit is wrong. When we try to index this data set, elasticsearch will through MapperParserException.
In this case Logstash stores the event to dead letter queue. We can check this by calling the stats API of Logstash.
Queue details
Reading data from the dead letter queue
This pipeline will read the data from queue and index to elasticsearch.
Reading the data from the queue will not delete the event from the queue. This functionality is still in development(https://github.com/elastic/logstash/issues/8904) | https://medium.com/@vishnugmavelil/logstash-dead-letter-queue-298a97a99f65 | ['Vishnu G'] | 2019-11-21 10:03:01.170000+00:00 | ['Logstash', 'Elasticsearch', 'Elk Stack'] |
Can Spicy food be a reason for unhealthy-skin this summer? | We all love spicing up the things! Don’t we? Turning up the heat in our favourite foods could be a culinary adventure! But it turns out that spice does impact our bodies-YEAH, unfortunately that includes your alluring and angelic skin as well!
Well, spices might have some health benefits; for instance, it might help you lose those EXTRA POUNDS that you gained last summer and even prevent cancers and cardiovascular diseases but as far as your skin is concerned, it’s a big NO!
As always said, “Clear skin is an inside job” and is direct reflection of your digestive track. Too much spicy food disturbs the pH level of your body which would be visible on your skin. As healthy skin requires balanced ph and most importantly supple hydration, consuming spiced up foods would produce heat (Tef) in your body which disturbs skin hydration and leaves the epidermal layer of skin irritated and moisture stripped. Guess the outcomes? YES-Acne, Blackheads, Pimples, Blemishes and wrinkles!
Spices like hot peppers though might not be bad for everyone but spiced up food dilates our blood vessels and capillaries irritating sensitive skin especially those who are rosacea-prone and ultimately increase facial redness. Also, making skin less youthful and easily aging.
Even though spiced up foods might increase blood circulation and some spices also contains minute quantity of vitamin C supplements for skin but eventually the cons are far greater, thus it’s time to bid farewell to your favourite chilly steak and hot sauce! - | https://medium.com/@sumamaabdullah/can-spicy-food-be-a-reason-for-unhealthy-skin-this-summer-eb4259674978 | ['Sumama Chhotani'] | 2021-04-09 17:43:40.394000+00:00 | ['Acne Prone Skin', 'Summer Skin Care', 'Skincare'] |
The Hot Ottawa Real Estate Market Is Not Slowing Down Anytime Soon… | The Hot Ottawa Real Estate Market Is Not Slowing Down Anytime Soon…
Wow, when will the Ottawa real estate market slow down?
Will there be a real estate bubble in Ottawa?
Will residential and condo prices come down in 2021?
Who knows? 🤷🏿
I find it remarkable that Ottawa continues to be consistently having record home sales, especially in November where sales are typically slow. As well, Ottawa's ability to withstand the negative effects of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Here are some important statistics on what the Ottawa housing market did in November:
⬇️ Listings of residential properties significantly decreased by 50.2% compared to November 2019.
⬆️ Most buyers purchased residential properties in the $450,000-$800,000 price range, which accounted for 62.7% of the residential resale home sales.
⬇️ Condo units were sold much quickly on average from 34 days to 26 days on the market, which is a 24% decrease from the same month in 2019.
⬆️ Bells Corners, Greely, Manotick and Carp were the districts that received the largest average sale price increases in Ottawa year over year above 25%.
Read more details about the Ottawa’s housing market performance here: https://bit.ly/3n6xH2i
I am available to answer your questions about the market. | https://medium.com/@michaelbarthur/the-hot-ottawa-real-estate-market-is-not-slowing-down-anytime-soon-c93f36232269 | ['Michael Arthur', 'Mpa', 'Mcne'] | 2020-12-11 15:56:52.208000+00:00 | ['Market Research Reports', 'Ottawa', 'Housing', 'Rental', 'Real Estate'] |
Nature’s message amidst the pandemic. | Nature’s message amidst the pandemic.
“We need nature for our survival and not vice-versa. A shift in approach to deal with climate change is long overdue.”
The world is currently witnessing a global pandemic which has affected almost every aspect of our life. Businesses are going through tough times, traveling/tourism has come to a halt, the supply chain has been disrupted, people are in constant fear of job losses and laborers/workers are struggling for life. The pandemic has taken everyone through hell and is making it increasingly hard for humans to cope up with the situation. In times like this, it is important to remember that the worst experiences teach us the best lessons and tough times make us more resilient and prepared for the future. One such major learning opportunity lies in the human perception of Climate Change.
Climate change has been a hot discussion topic at the most prominent global platforms in the last decade. We have seen world leaders gather to discuss several ways to mitigate the effects of human interference in nature and to save the planet. One such instance is of the Paris Agreement, adopted in 2015. It aims to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping the rise in global temperature this century well below 2 degrees Celsius (above pre-industrial levels). The agreement also aims to strengthen the ability of countries to deal with the impacts of climate change, through appropriate financial flows, a new technology framework, and an enhanced capacity-building framework. Many approaches and technology like sustainable development, use of renewable energy, reducing and recycling waste, electric vehicles, etc are in progress and are providing aid in terms of achieving the target. We are trying our best to solve this problem but the solution seems to be nowhere in sight. 2019 was the second warmest year on record and the end of the warmest decade (2010- 2019) ever recorded. Carbon dioxide (CO2) levels and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere rose to new records in 2019. It is time to reevaluate and I believe, that the problem might be in the approach we are taking to tackle this crisis. The narrative which our leaders bestow us with is essentially this — “We have to save our planet.”
With the global pandemic bringing our fast, capitalistic lives to a sudden halt, we have seen a massive improvement in climate instantaneously. With all the major economies being forced into lockdown for almost a quarter of the year; the average temperatures have reduced drastically. Signs of recovery of the ozone layer near the South pole have also been encouraging news. Greenhouse emissions have been at a record low in this quarter. One main reason for this stream of positive news is the behavioral changes in human beings. People are now refraining from extra expenses and relying more on basic necessities. Travelling and tourism have come to a halt, both because of government regulations and fear in people’s minds regarding the virus. Due to this shift, oil demand has been at a record-low and ultimately it has led to fewer pollutants in our environment.
Greenhouse gas emissions are projected to drop about 6 percent in 2020 due to travel bans and economic slowdowns resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. It is interesting how a global pandemic has mitigated climate change in such a small duration, which otherwise would have taken years. However, our history suggests that these changes are temporary which happen after major events and affect people globally. The world rebounds back from it and starts running at the same pace and sometimes at a higher pace than before. See the graph below –
It is obvious that humans are repeating the same mistake again, arrogantly ignoring the reminders nature is throwing at us. We are missing an important clue of the puzzle to solve this grave problem. Here, I want to suggest some changes in the narrative on how we are dealing with the problem of climate change by reminding ourselves that, “Humans are part of nature.”
Human egoism has led us to believe that we are masters of everything. We always take every problem in our hands and try to solve it with the mindset that we are the only ones who can solve this. We forget that we are just one species out of millions on the planet, worth just as much as a drop in the ocean, of our universe. We should remember that our planet started when we were not around. Earth has seen many cycles of death and birth and she has always survived; irrespective of whether we were there or not. In the last 500 million years, life has had to recover from five catastrophic blows and we might be approaching the sixth one.
We need nature for our survival and not vice-versa. So, the best approach would be to leave aside our egoism and go with the flow of nature. If we foolishly try to control nature then we have to get ready for more such punishments which nature can impart on us in future.
It is peak time to introspect and humbly change the narrative from “We have to save Nature” TO “We have to live and learn with Nature.” | https://medium.com/@shivamgarg1602/tackling-climate-change-bbbab48207bb | ['Shivam Garg'] | 2020-06-02 13:49:22.712000+00:00 | ['Coronavirus', 'Human Behavior', 'Global Warming', 'Climate Change', 'Nature'] |
Preparing for the 2021 NFL Draft | Air Force Academy in action. (Image above via WikiImages at Pixabay)
Welcome to the new home. I’ve been writing about the NFL Draft since 2008 and after a short break to go back to school, I am set to use this space as a place for all things NFL Draft.
Going to have a bit of everything here including some of my previous writing. Mock drafts, player previews, fantasy projections, and team needs are just a few of the topics that will be found here. Thanks for stopping by. | https://medium.com/@sean-patrick/preparing-for-the-2021-nfl-draft-c305565bb31f | ['Sean Patrick'] | 2020-12-27 05:52:04.732000+00:00 | ['Mock Draft', 'NFL', 'Draft', 'Football', 'NFL Draft'] |
A Novel Economic System To Respond To The Novel Coronavirus? | Data Driven Investor | Smart Money
Economics is not governed by laws of nature or the physical universe but rather by rules created by human beings to organise their lives. It is an emergent system not directly constrained by base reality. So while a farmer’s productivity is limited by nature and his ability to tame the natural world to his purpose, contemporary economic systems in our society are driven in large measure by human emotions & incentives and our ability to align them to some agreed social goal.
Economics- an emergent system
Scientists working on developing vaccines for Covid19 are tinkering with constraints imposed by nature and attempting to bend it to meet human ends. Those scientists are operating at the level of base reality. Economists are not. Economic systems are several degrees removed from the base physical constraints and can, therefore, be significantly influenced and maneuvered by humans relatively easily, unlike physical laws in nature. We can, therefore, unlock immense value by expanding our minds and being creative in designing economic systems that the situation demands and not taking old models as self-evidently true.
Preparing for the outcome of this pandemic by assuming similar paths and trajectories as the past may not necessarily be the optimal strategy. Models of pandemic spread are enormously useful till such time as we start to constrain ourselves to them and accept them as prophesied truth. This is even truer of our economies, given that sentiment plays such a disproportionate role in shaping them. We need not assume similar imperatives and outcomes as the past when considering the present. We have several new levers at our disposal today that can be brought to bear on the present-day pandemic. The Internet for instance has been a significant tool thus far in sharing information, keeping jobs alive, allowing human interaction, and collecting & disseminating data about the contagion while sheltering in place. The current lockdown offers significant opportunities to redesign systems and create a new form of economic organisation. Be it pricing assets to match their true worth to humans or re-organising our urban spaces or rethinking our financial systems, we have an opportunity here for real meaningful change.
Existing market pricing models can address some of these questions. How should our ability to work from a distance, for instance, affect the valuations of commercial real estate and the design of our urban spaces? However there are deeper issues with respect to the economy such as the nature of money itself that might benefit from active intervention using hitherto unavailable technologies. Just one example of new technology at our disposal for delivering meaningful impact is the innovation of ledger-based money that can be moved at the speed of electricity and given many more dimensions than those of a store of value and a unit of exchange. In this case successful tinkering by humans with the laws of Math as applied to cryptography has already yielded an innovative new system of account keeping and transferring value in a traceable, transparent, and immutable fashion. It might be useful to invest a bit more energy in exploring how such a system can be deployed for better money flow and more targeted & efficient utilisation of its value.
Could a ledger-based digital currency be a useful tool during the Pandemic?
In the UK and elsewhere, Keynesian measures to support the economy during the current Covid19 pandemic have been brought in. In the UK the chancellor has created the furlough scheme paying salaries up to GBP 2,500 per month (up to 80% of the salary) from the treasury’s coffers. Keeping employment rates up and ensuring people have money to spend is the motivation behind these measures. Such generous outflow of funds from the public purse will likely lead to either more money being printed, leading to inflation, or result in higher taxes or both. The asymmetric burden on different parts of the population or unintended consequences of monetary measures can result from such action without proper control. Track and trace may be needed well beyond tracking the spread of the virus to also track the movement of money through the economy.
A ledger-based currency that can be issued in tranches and traced through the sequence of addresses transacting it on a ledger could help increase accountability and transparency. In addition the ability to append smart contracts to the currency tranches could help define the end-use or create purpose-specific currency tokens. The possibilities created by attaching smart contracts to money could be meaningful as they add further dimensions to currency. Such a structure is almost directly opposed to the assumed use case for the original Blockchain architecture i.e. Bitcoin, designed on libertarian principles (as decentralised, out of government control medium of exchange). A Blockchain or ledger-based digital contract architecture could also be a useful tool for the government’s treasury itself. It could help in lighting a path in the lockdown economy. A token-based currency adds a different aspect to digital transactions in that you can apply further features and constraints to specific tranches of money issued through smart contracts. Food tokens, for instance, would be an example of a specific purpose-driven digital token with a defined use.
Smart Currency?
Such a government-issued ledger-based currency would still be centralised feat currency and not a distributed ledger currency like Bitcoin. Tax-payers could target their tax dollars or pounds to specific end purposes and projects when the time comes to rebalance the economy when these dramatic measures can begin to be eased. It seems on the surface to give control to the government but in fact it also gives control back to the tax-payer to ensure their tax dollars are spent where they were promised. The move towards a smart economy with digital money and tokenisation could help make the government more efficient considering the malleability and transparency offered to the economic system by such an architecture.
Digital Ledger inspired by Blockchain is just one among a raft of inventions available to policymakers and economists to get us out of the weeds. An open-minded and creative approach to speeding up growth and reprioritising value in society is a tractable problem as opposed to the much harder challenge faced by scientists of finding cures and vaccines by pushing against nature in their labs.
It is telling, however, that so far we seem more hopeful of succeeding in bending nature than better organising our own selves. | https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/a-novel-economic-system-to-respond-to-the-novel-coronavirus-data-driven-investor-597d55174dae | ['Anuj Kapoor'] | 2020-06-02 17:15:55.870000+00:00 | ['Innovation', 'Smart Contracts', 'Economics', 'Blockchain', 'Coronavirus'] |
As a Man Does… | One of the greatest books, in my opinion, was titled, “As a Man Thinketh”. This book was penned originally in 1903, long before any of the self-help books of today. There are now numerous authors who have written on the power of positive and right thinking, which has been shown to help us to set the stage for our future outcomes. I can attest from personal experience that I have been able to conjure up many situations and outcomes simply with continuous and purposeful visualization activities. However, anything that becomes an outcome in your life, will take some effort to achieve what you desire. I do not believe there are too many circumstances documented which demonstrate great success or awesome achievements that happened simply by brain power alone. My belief is that your thoughts and your visualization are the preview of coming attractions in your life, and that every action or outcome always starts with a thought; but you still must apply action to your thought to be able to realize the outcome you see in your mind.
I would like to propose that a thought, a desire, or a dream is simply the seed that gets generated to grow this outcome in your life. Let us imagine that you go out a purchase some seed for the purpose of growing carrots in your backyard garden. This seed has all the potential it needs to grow into carrots, but if you leave them in the package, or on your leave them in your shed, there will never be any carrots. This seed, or your thoughts, must be supplied with some action so that the potential will be realized, and you can grow some carrots. We all surely know that to grow anything from a seed, you must plant it in some dirt of some sort, and consistently water it. And of course, we should also know that this seed will not grow into a carrot instantly, it must have time to mature from a seed into a fully grown carrot. If the care of this seed, through consistent nurturing, is interrupted and/or forgotten about, then you will never see a carrot grow. This is the same for your thoughts, you must take them out of the package, plant them, and nourish them over time to grow your dreams.
As you can see from this example, a seed, a thought, a dream, or a desire, will require attention all the way until it is finalized. You cannot simply create an outcome by finding a seed, nor can you create an outcome simply by thought. You also cannot create a desired outcome without tending to and caring for your seed, or your thought. Too many of us, including me, have thrown out many seeds, started the process, but have left our dreams to perish in the dirt. And for many of us, this dilemma is prevalent because we sow too many types of seeds, and then fail to have enough time to tend to all of them, thus causing them all to perish. If we just were to pick a single dream, or limit it to a few dreams, then we could concentrate much better on nurturing these desires and have a greater chance at see them bloom and grow into what we have imagined them to be. Focused nurturing always has a better opportunity for growth then a scattered nurturing process.
We have all claimed that we simply do not have enough time to nurture our dreams, even when we are focused on one or two at a time. The funny thing is that every living thing on this earth shares the same amount of time each day; the bum on the street and the billionaire each have 24 hours a day — so why is there such a different outcome? I believe it comes down to excuses and rationalization for why we cannot achieve what is burning within us to become. I am like many others, and have certainly played the blame game, and convinced myself that my failures were because of something external to me, but that is far from the truth. Each one of us owns the outcomes in our lives, and no one can take that from us unless you allow that to happen. I can guarantee that all of us can find time to work on our dreams, no matter how busy you think you are. Us human beings tend to fill much of our day with so many time wasters, that do not add value to the outcomes that we “wish” we could have. A wish will always remain a wish unless you apply goals and actions to achieve this desire in your life.
I decided to look at some of the things that society fills our time with. I think the number one-time stealer in our culture today, is the television, or some other device that streams shows and movies. Second to that is our phones, followed closely by video games. I did some simple math on what I believe is the average amount of television time in the American household. If a person were to watch the television 4 hours every day of the year, that would add up to just shy of 60 days. The avid television watcher than will always be behind the competition curve because they may only be applying their trade 10 months out of every year. I am not suggesting that you give up shows and movies altogether, but I may suggest that shaving off some of that time can create more time for productive activities. Many other activities in our culture also steal our productivity time, so you must really decide what the value of your success is and break down how you are using their time.
Remember that time waits for no one, and unless you use it properly, you may find yourself an old person who has not realized any of your dreams. If you want something, you must chase it down, like there may be no tomorrow. Remember that you do not have to be great to get started, but you must get started to be great! | https://medium.com/@robertmazak/as-a-man-does-4d91f86f4c53 | ['Robert Mazak'] | 2020-12-27 03:24:58.853000+00:00 | ['Action', 'Dreams', 'Time', 'Thoughts', 'Faith'] |
Can a task force dismantle hate? | What happens when one race becomes the face of a global health crisis?
Spit on. Yelled at. Attacked. Horrifying accounts of racial discrimination against Chinese-Americans are on the rise since the pandemic began. Even worse, east Asians from Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Japan and the Philippines have also become the target of hate crimes, revealing harmful racial biases at play not unlike what Muslim-Americans experienced post-9/11.
Anti-Asian sentiment in the age of COVID-19 should come as no surprise when the sitting President openly refers to it as “the Chinese virus” in White House press briefings, blaming the Chinese government for unleashing it on the world. Linking a disaster to its origins fuels fear of the foreign, making an innocent group the scapegoat for everyone’s suffering.
The plain fact is, language matters. Government agencies have the power of visual and verbal cues to shape public perception of the pandemic. How information about the virus is worded, visualized and exchanged — in the parlance of ThoughtMatter’s world, how it’s branded — has direct consequences for social and political ties around the world.
With much fanfare, last month the New York Police Department rolled out the Asian Hate Crime Task Force — a new team made up of 25 detectives of Asian descent — to investigate local coronavirus-related hate crimes directed at Asian people.
At a time when it feels scary to be Asian in this country, here members of our staff weigh in on the role of a task force — and other modes of collective action — in fighting hate. It’s more important than ever to challenge harmful stereotypes and create “fellow-feeling,” as Queen Elizabeth II puts it. It’s not just our lives at risk. It’s how we relate to one another.
Community healing
Hua Chen, Designer
Whenever there is a new public initiative dedicated towards anti-discrimination, I find a few questions always pop into my mind regarding motivation and outcome.
Dating back to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Asian-Americans were among the first ethnicities to face immigration bans in the US. Indeed, limits on Asian immigration — to do with everything from education to the workplace — have existed in the West for centuries. In no way does it compare to the subjugation and enslavement of Black, Latinx or Indigenous Americans, but it does relate to how we talk about anti-racism. We must be especially careful as to how national dialogue can impact all of our communities.
When Asian-Americans again were allowed to immigrate to the US in the 20th century, they, along with many other immigrants, were heavily screened and selected for admission. Their subsequent treatment in society has created the myth of a “model minority;” a portrait of a foreign population that “deserves” the American Dream more than other minorities. The dialogue is spun so that anti-discriminatory measures like Affirmative Action are framed as anti-Asian, or anti-Good Immigrant. This, despite the fact that narrative undermines opportunities available to other people of color systemically excluded from wealth, resources and more. These contextual problems are incredibly important to keep in mind when planning programs or “task forces” to target individual manifestations of racism.
When we talk about broad policing movements in the US (and NYC), we think of the War on Drugs and Stop and Frisk, both programs designed to reduce crime in certain sectors and promote public safety. Trouble is, they scapegoated and targeted Black and Brown Americans and the poor. When the NYPD starts an anti-racist task force targeting anti-Asian racism, those programs spring to mind. It isn’t such a leap for such measures to become ways for the police to harass already heavily-policed neighborhoods, harming people who instead would benefit more from better healthcare, schools, mutual aid or de-escalation.
Policing in minority communities has long been motivated not by the goal of growing those neighborhoods but by a twisted, punitively-oriented concept of discipline. That slash-and-burn technique only serves to reinforce racist stereotypes and institutions and stigmatize different populations, most often poor Black and Brown people. Challenging and improving how we perceive and treat POC is not just a targeted to-do list of task forces and disciplinary measures. To end anti-Asian aggressions, we have to think about racism holistically, create healing-oriented programs and organize around communities. Spot-treating violence of any kind with more violence is merely cosmetic and begets more cyclical violence. Instead of instituting more hypocritical save-face programs, let’s articulate and be specific about how racism manifests itself. When you say safety, what do you mean? Who is it for? When people say they are “advocating” for specific groups, who could be negatively impacted? And if you want to advocate for people of color, how can you truly do that if you do not address the wildly different experiences and separately interwoven traumas of ALL people of color?
People in positions of privilege and power speaking “for” POC communities isn’t as effective a form of activism as simply raising up the many incredibly qualified POC activists and organizers who have already been working towards community healing for decades. Rather than creating new ways to police, we should direct our attention to uplifting local grassroots movements and parties.
W.O.W. Project
Art Against Displacement
Mask culture
Tommy Park, Design Intern
The idea behind mask-wearing here in the United States, or in Western culture in general, is completely different to that in most Asian countries. In America, wearing a mask has culturally been linked to signs of fear, weakness or being the enemy. As a Korean-American, I remember early on in the pandemic, when there was little information about the virus and people were scared, my mom often told me to wear a mask when going into New York City to attend class. What she didn’t know about was my hesitation to wear one at the time. To many, what I thought was a kind gesture — keeping myself and those around me safe — instead signaled fear. I’d already heard stories about my international friends being bullied or harassed on the subway just for wearing masks. The result is, I find myself questioning how and why masks got political, especially when I look at my home country South Korea, where there are vending machines for them. One thing I know for certain is how difference in culture and mentality plays a huge role. Growing up in America, I have noticed that the mentality here is centered around the self. “How can I do things to benefit myself?” or “If something is obstructing me, I don’t want to deal with it.” In Asian culture, on the other hand, the mentality is often about “we” — about how my actions are affecting other people around me. Hence why mask culture is so ingrained in places like South Korea, China and Japan. Part of me thinks one good thing to come out of Western countries experiencing this pandemic is that they finally incorporate mask-wearing into their culture.
An inclusive perspective
Jason Chen, Experiential Designer
Having lived in New York for almost 3 years now, I’ve experienced numerous race-based incidents, and sometimes accidents. One of the more serious ones was when a glass bottle was thrown at my apartment after I ignored someone’s request for money. Among the less significant were when few people on the subway want to sit next to me, or when I’m the next customer in line at a bakery and the staff’s attitude towards me shifts dramatically. More recently during the pandemic, neighbors in my building have closed the elevator door behind them a little too quickly, without giving notice. Although I’ve been experiencing micro-aggressions of this sort, I still don’t believe there is a need for the Asian Hate Crime Task Force. We don’t need to be put on a pedestal. It’s better to treat the root problem rather than the symptom. Some people show bigotry and bias towards others who don’t look the same due to a narrow point of view or a lack of proper education. The real question is, how do we raise awareness, cultivate a holistic, inclusive perspective, and learn how to empathize? | https://medium.com/thoughtmatter/can-a-task-force-dismantle-hate-c9631f4e15f1 | [] | 2020-11-19 16:44:40.578000+00:00 | ['In The Know', 'Masks', 'Covid 19', 'Asian American', 'Xenophobia'] |
Preparing for IVF: 10 Things I Bought For My Egg Retrieval | In her fertility journey, Natalist CEO Halle Tecco has become an unwilling expert in IVF. She’s had four egg retrievals (plus two canceled rounds) and nine embryo transfers (and counting). She’s the proud mom of one IVF miracle and uses this vast experience to help others on their journey to motherhood.
By Halle Tecco, Chief Executive Officer, Natalist
If you’re starting the IVF journey, you may be feeling scared, anxious, hopeful, excited. And that’s normal! This is a huge undertaking — physically, emotionally, and financially. If you’re like me, you are preparing meticulously. There are calendars, journals, maybe even Google spreadsheets (guilty).
In my fertility journey, I’ve become an unwilling expert in IVF. I’ve had four egg retrievals (plus two canceled rounds) and nine embryo transfers (and counting). I am the proud mom of one IVF miracle and use this experience to help others on their journey to motherhood.
Two of the questions I often hear are how I prepared and what I purchased for IVF. So, I put together this list of my must-haves.
Supplements for egg and sperm health
In addition to my daily prenatal, I bought a number of supplements (for me and my husband!) as advised by my doctor.
1. CoQ10
In a 2020 systematic review and meta-analysis of 46 trials with 6,312 women, ten adjuvant treatments for poor ovarian response in IVF were evaluated. Compared with controls, CoQ10 treatments resulted in a “significantly higher chance” of clinical pregnancy. Additionally, CoQ10 supplementation led to the lowest cancelation rates for IVF cycles. The authors conclude that, for women with poor ovarian response, controlled ovarian stimulation protocols including CoQ10 showed better clinical outcomes.
2. MTHF Folate
Women undergoing assisted reproduction, like IVF and IUI, have unique needs when it comes to nutrition and fertility. In 2019, A Harvard study found that women who took in more than 800 micrograms of supplemental folate while undergoing fertility treatment, among other dietary changes, had an increased probability of live birth.
Other studies have found similar results: One study evaluating 232 women undergoing assisted reproduction found that live birth rates were 20% higher among women who took the most folate (more than 800 mcg/day) compared to women who took less than 400 mcg/day. Additionally, higher supplemental folate intake was associated with higher fertilization rates and lower cycle failure rates before embryo transfer in this study.
3. Prenatal for him
Sperm is half the equation, so it’s important that men optimize their health during IVF as well. Antioxidants have been shown to improve live birth rate for couples undergoing fertility treatment. A 2019 Cochrane systematic review concluded that antioxidant supplementation in subfertile men improves live birth, clinical pregnancy rate, and sperm DNA fragmentation.
Feel-good items for all those doctors appointments
If you don’t yet know Wanda (what we affectionately call the ultrasound wand), you will. You will also get to know the nurse coordinator, the front desk team, and your REI. For me, I get super bloated throughout IVF stims and need comfortable clothes with no harsh waistbands.
4. Fuzzy socks
These are a must! You will spend lots of time in stirrups. I got a bulk pair from Costco that have carried me through the years. Check out the Cozy Warrior Socks — they are a 501 ©(3) nonprofit, and proceeds from the socks go to gifting socks to women who are struggling to conceive.
5. Warrior gear
I love the t-shirts and hats from Marilyn Gomez’s shop, Infertile Tees. Marilyn is also an IVF mama!
The right products for IVF shots
IVF shots are no joke. I used to be afraid of shots (ha!) until I realized there’s a way to make them easier. First off, I never do my own shots. My husband is my shot-giver, and he’s gotten really good at becoming my nurse. Second, we make it a ritual. We do the shots at night, after I’ve taken a hot bath and gotten in my jammies. I use an ice pack to numb the area, and it’s over in a cinch! I always have a piece of chocolate as a treat, and we save a good show to watch right after (my son was created from a round where we watched Schitt’s Creek every night).
6. Ice pack
To me, this is a must. Numbing makes the shots barely noticeable. At first, I used the Buzzy Bee, which I first saw on Shark Tank. It’s an ice pack with vibration. But, I think the ice pack is the most important part, and you can find them anywhere for under $5.
7. Self-care distraction
For me, this is coloring books, gardening, reading, and baking. Find something that brings you calmness and peace.
8. Pregnancy tests….in bulk!
Some clinics ask that you wait for a pregnancy blood test (β-hCG, or “beta”) to test for pregnancy instead of taking an at-home pregnancy test. I personally have never been able to wait the two weeks and have done home tests sooner, starting five or six days after the transfer.
Buy Natalist Pregnancy Tests Bulk — just $1.25 per test!
What I used for post-retrieval recovery
9. Fiber
I have never had worse constipation than after an egg retrieval. I feel like no one warned me about this part of IVF! During fertility treatments like IVF, you’re given hormones as well as sedatives. Many believe that progesterone can cause constipation by altering the regulation of g-proteins. It’s also hypothesized that sedatives can have certain effects on the body, including constipation.
Learn more about constipation during fertility treatments.
10. Heating pad
I got my heating pad as a gift from a friend, and it has been a life saver! Towards the end of stims, and definitely after the retrieval, you may feel bloating and cramps. Resting under a heating pad helps me relax and feel better.
Want to read more about IVF? Up next:
To learn more about Natalist, head to natalist.com. | https://medium.com/@natalist/preparing-for-ivf-10-things-i-bought-for-my-egg-retrieval-108dd65f2329 | [] | 2021-01-18 21:29:35.390000+00:00 | ['Fertility', 'Ivf', 'Reproductive Health', 'Infertility', 'Pregnancy'] |
“Pennyworth” Season 2 : Episode 3 (FULL EPISODES) | New Episode — Pennyworth Season 2 Episode 3 (Full Episode) Top Show
Official Partners Epix TV Shows & Movies Full Series Online
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🦋 TELEVISION 🦋
(TV), in some cases abbreviated to tele or television, is a media transmission medium utilized for sending moving pictures in monochrome (high contrast), or in shading, and in a few measurements and sound. The term can allude to a TV, a TV program, or the vehicle of TV transmission. TV is a mass mode for promoting, amusement, news, and sports.
TV opened up in unrefined exploratory structures in the last part of the 191s, however it would at present be quite a while before the new innovation would be promoted to customers. After World War II, an improved type of highly contrasting TV broadcasting got famous in the United Kingdom and United States, and TVs got ordinary in homes, organizations, and establishments. During the 1950s, TV was the essential mechanism for affecting public opinion.[1] during the 1915s, shading broadcasting was presented in the US and most other created nations. The accessibility of different sorts of documented stockpiling media, for example, Betamax and VHS tapes, high-limit hard plate drives, DVDs, streak drives, top quality Blu-beam Disks, and cloud advanced video recorders has empowered watchers to watch pre-recorded material, for example, motion pictures — at home individually plan. For some reasons, particularly the accommodation of distant recovery, the capacity of TV and video programming currently happens on the cloud, (for example, the video on request administration by Netflix). Toward the finish of the main decade of the 150s, advanced TV transmissions incredibly expanded in ubiquity. Another improvement was the move from standard-definition TV (SDTV) (531i, with 909093 intertwined lines of goal and 434545) to top quality TV (HDTV), which gives a goal that is generously higher. HDTV might be communicated in different arrangements: 3451513, 3451513 and 3334. Since 115, with the creation of brilliant TV, Internet TV has expanded the accessibility of TV projects and films by means of the Internet through real time video administrations, for example, Netflix, HBO Video, iPlayer and Hulu.
In 113, 39% of the world’s family units possessed a TV set.[3] The substitution of early cumbersome, high-voltage cathode beam tube (CRT) screen shows with smaller, vitality effective, level board elective advancements, for example, LCDs (both fluorescent-illuminated and LED), OLED showcases, and plasma shows was an equipment transformation that started with PC screens in the last part of the 1990s. Most TV sets sold during the 150s were level board, primarily LEDs. Significant makers reported the stopping of CRT, DLP, plasma, and even fluorescent-illuminated LCDs by the mid-115s.[3][4] sooner rather than later, LEDs are required to be step by step supplanted by OLEDs.[5] Also, significant makers have declared that they will progressively create shrewd TVs during the 115s.[1][3][8] Smart TVs with incorporated Internet and Web 3.0 capacities turned into the prevailing type of TV by the late 115s.[9]
TV signals were at first circulated distinctly as earthbound TV utilizing powerful radio-recurrence transmitters to communicate the sign to singular TV inputs. Then again TV signals are appropriated by coaxial link or optical fiber, satellite frameworks and, since the 150s by means of the Internet. Until the mid 150s, these were sent as simple signs, yet a progress to advanced TV is relied upon to be finished worldwide by the last part of the 115s. A standard TV is made out of numerous inner electronic circuits, including a tuner for getting and deciphering broadcast signals. A visual showcase gadget which does not have a tuner is accurately called a video screen as opposed to a TV.
🦋 OVERVIEW 🦋
A subgenre that joins the sentiment type with parody, zeroing in on at least two people since they find and endeavor to deal with their sentimental love, attractions to each other. The cliché plot line follows the “kid gets-young lady”, “kid loses-young lady”, “kid gets young lady back once more” grouping. Normally, there are multitudinous variations to this plot (and new curves, for example, switching the sex parts in the story), and far of the by and large happy parody lies in the social cooperations and sexual strain between your characters, who every now and again either won’t concede they are pulled in to each other or must deal with others’ interfering inside their issues.
Regularly carefully thought as an artistic sort or structure, however utilized it is additionally found in the realistic and performing expressions. In parody, human or individual indecencies, indiscretions, misuses, or deficiencies are composed to rebuff by methods for scorn, disparagement, vaudeville, incongruity, or different strategies, preferably with the plan to impact an aftereffect of progress. Parody is by and large intended to be interesting, yet its motivation isn’t generally humor as an assault on something the essayist objects to, utilizing mind. A typical, nearly characterizing highlight of parody is its solid vein of incongruity or mockery, yet spoof, vaudeville, distortion, juxtaposition, correlation, similarity, and risqué statement all regularly show up in ironical discourse and composing. The key point, is that “in parody, incongruity is aggressor.” This “assailant incongruity” (or mockery) frequently claims to favor (or if nothing else acknowledge as common) the very things the humorist really wishes to assault.
In the wake of calling Zed and his Blackblood confidants to spare Pennyworth, Talon winds up sold out by her own sort and battles to accommodate her human companions and her Blackblood legacy. With the satanic Lu Qiri giving the muscle to uphold Zed’s ground breaking strategy, Pennyworth’s human occupants are subjugated as excavators looking for a baffling substance to illuminate a dull conundrum. As Talon finds more about her lost family from Yavalla, she should sort out the certainties from the falsehoods, and explain the riddle of her legacy and an overlooked force, before the world becomes subjugated to another force that could devour each living being.
Claw is the solitary overcomer of a race called Blackbloods. A long time after her whole town is annihilated by a pack of merciless hired soldiers, Talon goes to an untamed post on the edge of the enlightened world, as she tracks the huggers of her family. On her excursion to this station, Talon finds she has a strange heavenly force that she should figure out how to control so as to spare herself, and guard the world against an over the top strict tyrant. | https://medium.com/@pennyworth-2x3-hd-on-epix/epix-s2e3-pennyworth-series-2-eps-3-official-series-stream-eps-a1d28589a458 | ['Pennyworth Hd On Epix'] | 2020-12-26 06:48:56.542000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'TV Series', 'Drama', 'Crime', 'Action'] |
Backend Frameworks with the most stars on GitHub in 2020 | Backend Frameworks with the most stars on GitHub in 2020
1. Laravel - 63.1K ⭐
2. Django - 54.5K ⭐
3. Flask - 53.3K ⭐
4. Spring Boot - 52.5K ⭐
5. Express - 51.3K ⭐
6. Ruby on Rails - 47.3K⭐
7. Meteor - 42.2K ⭐
8. Nest - 32.9K ⭐
9. Koa - 30.5K ⭐ | https://medium.com/@kanikamittal0606/backend-frameworks-with-the-most-stars-on-github-in-2020-14d319b2c85a | ['Kanika Mittal'] | 2020-12-27 15:30:31.048000+00:00 | ['Webdev', 'Web', 'Top 10', 'Web Development', 'Backend Development'] |
Does It Really Take 66 Days to Form a Habit? | Does It Really Take 66 Days to Form a Habit?
Science came up with a random number and I decided to put it to the test.
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels
We all have that moment in our lives when we decide to get our life together. So we do an audit of everything that needs changing and figure out all the intricacies of how we’re going to make those changes happen. Except that this plan has one major flaw:
We try to change everything at once.
Nod if you’ve been doing this for years now. I get it. You’re too impatient to wait around and fix one thing at a time — that will take you ages. If you’ve been living life on a whim, chances are you’re dealing with a lot of unwanted behaviors you’re desperate to change.
In fact, I’m going to take a wild guess here: you’d like to wake up earlier, eat better, work out regularly, stay on top of cleaning, banish procrastination and become a productivity beast. You want to give up some vicious habits, and acquire some shiny new ones.
Well, good luck with that. It won’t be easy. And you’re already setting yourself up for failure by trying to change your entire life overnight.
I’ve been overzealous for years when “starting over.” Nothing stuck. Why exactly? Because I was too stubborn to only pursue one habit at a time. If I had done that ten years ago, I would now have at least a dozen habits in place, instead of just a couple of them. That, of course, is a very rough estimate. I don’t even know if I can operate with that many habits, although studies claim that nearly 40% of our daily activities have a very repetitive nature.
The point is that ten years from now, you’ll wish you started small and stayed consistent.
After a decade of failing, I’ve finally done just that.
But before describing my process, let me tell you how I came up with this seemingly random number — 66 days — for making a new habit stick.
How long does it really take to form a new habit?
Honest answer: no idea.
Popular answer: 21 days.
Sciency answer: 18 to 254 days.
Average sciency answer: 66 days.
Okay, let me explain. You’ve probably heard countless times that it takes 21 days to form a habit. People have been throwing this information around for decades, without actual fact-checking. This 21-day habit myth started as an erroneous observation of Dr. Maxwell Maltz, a cosmetic facial surgeon who studied self-image and concluded that it took most of his patients 21 days to get used to their new looks.
A 2009 study on habit formation found a very different result in real life. 96 subjects chose an eating, drinking, or activity behavior to practice under the same circumstances, over the course of 12 weeks. It took them 66 days on average to make that behavior automatic, and if you look at the individual numbers, there’s a huge variation: between 18 to 254 days.
A lot of questions are left unanswered in this study, though. Do complex habits take longer to form? How much consistency do we really need — is daily practice a must?
Knowing this, it’s safe to assume that we have no idea how long habits actually take to become part of our behavior. But it’s fun to come up with a random number. Like 66 days.
Or, according to Dr. Caroline Leaf, neuroscientist, and researcher of memory formation and the mind-brain connection: 3 cycles of 21 days, hence 63 days. I love her podcasts, but as much as I’d like to take her word for it, I didn’t find any links to back up her claims.
So we’re back where we started: there’s really no way of knowing how long it will take for a habit to stick, since there are so many variables. But we can certainly test different strategies and see what works and what doesn’t.
Make your new habit simple.
Cue: Accomplishing my habit before dinner.
Routine: Daily exercise with a duration of 20 to 30 minutes.
Reward: The habit itself…and eating dinner.
You might be familiar with Charles Duhigg’s work on habits, and his famous Habit Loop: Cue — Routine — Reward.
A “cue” is what triggers the habit in the first place. The cue could be a time of day, boredom, hunger, negative emotions, anything you can think of. When forming a habit, the cue is the tricky part. To this day, I don’t exercise at the same time of the day, because life gets in the way, and my days are sometimes very different.
But I do have a rule: I can’t have dinner if I didn’t exercise that day. And since I tend to do most things at the last possible minute, I often postpone my workout until late in the evening. It’s not ideal, but it works.
The “routine” is usually a 30-minute long workout of either weights, isometric exercises, HIIT, or yoga. For simplicity’s sake, I have a 3 month-long workout program that I follow, but sometimes I’m too exhausted to do a specific scheduled workout, so I change it up.
Finally, the “reward” is the satisfaction I get from staying accountable. I have an accountability buddy to thank for that — my husband(thanks, babe). When the day is over, and the habit is out of the way, we finally sit down to have dinner. This way, we can add that delicious food to the list of rewards, along with better health and higher self-esteem.
Make your new habit easy.
Your chosen habit may be simple, but not always easy to do.
Feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, and unmotivated was often the norm these past two months, and I have my non-ideal health to thank for that.
Any other time, I would have given up because “it wasn’t a good time”. I would have vowed to start again in a couple of weeks when things settled down. It turns out there’s a better way to banish all excuses: do the absolute minimum.
Or in Leo Babauta’s words: “Make it so easy you can’t say no.”
So how did I make my exercise habit easy? I allowed myself to do light movements, like static yin yoga or stretches instead of the daily strenuous workout. It didn’t feel like much of an effort, and frankly, I was feeling rather down that I couldn’t do more, but at least I was staying consistent.
It’s been 66 days. Did my habit stick yet?
I stuck with exercising for 66 days and only missed 3 days (which we randomly selected as the number of days we were allowed to skip.) Aside from the fact that I’m incredibly proud of myself for not giving up, I’ve noticed a few things:
PROS:
Exercising daily, even if for just 30 minutes, positively impacted my health and made my back pain go away. This, in turn, motivated me to stick to it long term, since I’ve battled with chronic pain and neuralgia for a long time now.
Exercising is on my mind every day now, without any need for a reminder. I know I have to get it done before the day is over, and it’s non-negotiable.
CONS: | https://medium.com/curious/does-it-really-take-66-days-to-form-a-habit-78ac155ab56c | ['Adriana Sim'] | 2020-12-23 23:11:38.307000+00:00 | ['Self Experimentation', 'Inspiration', 'Habits', 'Life', 'Self Improvement'] |
Organization Legos: The State of DAO Tooling | Another example of functional committees (“workstreams”) in ShapeShift DAO
While many responsibilities overlap with those of traditional organisations, the core difference (and value proposition) is that opportunities to contribute are open. Anybody can take the initiative and make proposals to create new working groups or change the way things are run.
Unlike traditional orgs where individual employees and users are beholden to decisions made behind the closed doors of a boardroom, any stakeholder of a DAO can step up to be the change they want to see. A DAO opens up the floor to the wider community through proposals and request-for-comments. The purpose, resource requirements, key stakeholders, performance metrics, and actual results of an initiative are made transparent — creating accountability and a social layer of checks and balances.
Decentralisation doesn’t mean leaderless. Rather, more people are empowered to take initiatives towards shared goals: the DAO’s North Star.
Well-maintained documentation that details how the DAO is structured, and what each working group is working on, goes a long way to help potential contributors understand where their skills might align with the DAO’s needs. Of course, the motivation to contribute has to be there in the first place. This is where the contributor journey comes in.
Contribution Management
The contributor journey is the process by which an individual goes from not knowing about the DAO, to lurking on social channels (e.g. Twitter, Discord), to establishing connections with other members, to making their first contribution, and beyond.
Ideally, the contributor journey fosters a growing sense of ownership and belonging such that the individual wants to grow with the community and make a larger impact towards its vision.
Contributor journey is a process design problem, but inherent in this are questions about what tools to use and how best to use them. Tools can address big questions like:
How to surface the right opportunities/information to the right people at the right time
How to quantify, incentivise, and properly reward contributions
How to foster trust through roles and reputation systems
Quests and Bounties are bite-sized tasks that members can take on to “level up” in the DAO. While only the first step for onboarding contributors, Bounties are a good way to give contributors a “Good First Issue” to work on because they are well-defined in terms of scope and deliverables. Bounties can be automatically verified if it’s an on-chain task (Rabbit Hole), or left up to the discretion of a DAO member that owns the bounty (Gitcoin, Coinvise).
Yearn has a dashboard that aggregates open issues across their code repositories, and a Telegram group dedicated to surfacing tasks for interested participants.
Bounties can be as simple as a Telegram group, but needs a dedicated facilitator to connect the right individuals with the right opportunity.
Dashboard of open issues across yearn’s repositories
The “Quest Complete” moment, as gamers know, is a powerful feeling that can itself be intrinsic motivators to take on a task. However, bounties by themselves are insufficient to drive individuals to take on more ownership.
Over time, members can grow their reputation within the DAO by earning “XP” and trust with each contribution. A few hours perusing a DAO’s Discord or Discourse forums can reveal its most influential members. Some are founding members, but many have organically emerged from the crowd by taking their own initiative to drive outcomes for the DAO.
A member’s progress through the contributor journey could manifest itself as Discord Roles, which when leveraged well, serve as proxies for trust. If there is a shared understanding within the community that a “Gold” member has contributed 500+ hours of work to the DAO, for example, you know to put more weight on what they say than someone without any badges.
Reputation as proxies for trust helps people allocate their attention within the DAO, it also tells outsiders who to approach when they need support or want to explore partnership opportunities.
Contributor tiers in Index Coop are tied to access rights and rewards
If a person or tool becomes a bottleneck, a task for the Community or People working group should be to remove the bottleneck. The contributor journey, when working well, should be the path of least resistance for community members to go from 0 to 1 and beyond.
The contributor journey doesn’t end when someone goes from being a lurker on Discord to a working group lead. Web 3.0 allows individuals to port their identity and reputation across applications and communities. As DAO-affiliation is more pluralistic and intertwined than traditional employer-affiliation, DAOs are much stronger vessels for individuals to build and communicate a holistic picture of who they are and what they’re passionate about.
Compensation
Payment distribution infrastructure is more mature relative to tooling in other organizational areas. DAOs can stream payments to contributors via Sablier or Superfluid, bulk-distribute tokens through Roll or disperse.app, fund grants through its Gnosis Safe multisig, and keep track of payments via treasury management tools like Parcel and Multis.
DAOs can even offer something akin to an employee stock option plan (ESOP) by locking tokens in an options contract and streaming call options to contributors over some vesting period. The power of DeFi primitives.
How different types of contributions should be rewarded is less clear. Tools like SourceCred quantify and assign “cred” to activities like Github issues, PR commits, and Discourse posts. Drawing inspiration from SourceCred, Govrn takes this a step further and works with individual DAOs to create a “Movement Model”, in which the community assigns weight to different types of contributions depending on its priorities.
Meta Gamma Delta’s Movement Model on Govrn
What’s nice about this is that you get standardisation for value creation within the context of the DAO. What counts as a contribution, and how valuable each type of contribution is, is up to the community’s discretion. This weighting can be modified through proposals at any time.
Movement Models may look completely different from one DAO to another, but that’s the idea. The community shouldn’t have to retrofit itself to metrics that were defined elsewhere. Bottom-up models like these plug into things like rewards distribution, bounties creation, and novel voting mechanics like quadratic trust.
Because the opportunity to contribute is open, the DAO itself might not know there is a need until a member of the community voluntarily builds a solution for it. It’s easy for “compensation committee”s or even governance to overlook contribution at the edges of the network.
Coordinape is a peer-based compensation tool built on the premise that contributors of a working group themselves know best who has created the most value. Since contribution comes from the edges, knowledge about the value each contributor adds also lies at the edges. At the end of some work period (an “epoch”), Coordinape allows members within a working group to distribute rewards to peers at their own discretion. This removes the need for a central authority of rewards distributors who has to (likely inaccurately) determine value creation at a granular level.
Screenshots from Coordinape. A rewards distribution tool that allows people who work closely together to reward their peers.
HR is one of the most under-addressed verticals for DAO contributors. There is a huge opportunity for projects to offer individuals a web3-native solution to handle “meatspace” benefits like health insurance, 401ks, IRAs, and tax compliance.
Today, these benefits are attached to the employer instead of individual employees, who are beholden to the providers and packages selected for them by a company’s HR department. Furthermore, they lose these benefits should they leave the company. This is a perverse relationship and a problem for freelance workers in general, but topped with receiving payroll in crypto, it’s a downright barrier for people to go “full-time DAO”
Opolis is one of the first digital employment cooperatives aimed at independent workers in web3. The platform serves as an employer-agnostic shared services layer, giving its members access to employment benefits, payroll and tax compliance services. By unbundling employment such that benefits are attached to the individual and not the employer, Opolis gives individuals the freedom and flexibility to get compensated by different DAOs while retaining the HR benefits of a traditional organization.
Opolis currently works with individuals from projects such as MakerDAO, Gitcoin, BadgerDAO, and more recently ShapeShift. Although membership is currently limited to US individuals, the platform is one of the few that bridges web2 stability with web3 self-sovereignty. | https://medium.com/1kxnetwork/organization-legos-the-state-of-dao-tooling-866b6879e93e | ['Nichanan Kesonpat'] | 2021-09-15 17:36:42.019000+00:00 | ['Web3', 'Ethereum', 'Dao', 'Community', 'Crypto'] |
How Asset Managers become better Deal Makers | If you cannot track them, you cannot measure them
Anonymous.
Ideas that Grow
Private Markets for deals in Asset Management have become extremely competitive. There is more capital in the market than deals, and managers are often chasing similar opportunities. There are fewer proprietary deals… Check for numbers here
Manual (Excel is still “manual”) deal tracking processes invite sloppiness, risk losses in the portfolio, and cannot be approved on systematically. So what do 63% of Private Capital Managers do — they use “manual processes” to manage deals in the pipeline. They have a good excuse for not using all that tech providers have offered.
Oh! the tech is too expensive And difficult to use Does not integrate with my other enterprise systems I know every deal like the back of my hand
We agree with facts #1 to #3 and, are not super-human enough, to get #4. But here are some other observations that our clients have made:
Good deals were not just dumb luck, but happened because the managers sourced them, worked on them diligently and made sure they were fully prepared, with every fact of the deal. They made the deal process extremely efficient. They knew which deals they had in their pipeline and what was lacking. They knew which deals got stuck at which stage, and how to move them forward. They could track who were their better partners and who were time sinks. It gave them a great view into what was working and what needed to be improved. They were proactive on the ‘mission critical’ alerts. They often tinkered with the different stages in managing deal pipelines. Every Asset Manager had its own “Deal Stages” and an ability to create a fine tuned process for each stage. And obsessed about keeping all their records together. Managers mentioned that they spent time on a deal’s progress looking through its progression page. Automating the deal tracking process greatly increased the quality of deal making. Some features they identified that were of big help included Automatic reminders, email integrations, and ability to add Notes to every deal. Deal metrics helped reduce time to close a deal, and made each team member more responsive. The archive of dead deals became a rich repository of market information, that they were able to leverage for doing new deals.
Most managers who had adopted Deal Tracking systems would not go back to their old ways. It greatly enhanced their ability to identify better deals and added significant values to their portfolio. | https://medium.com/@on-pepper/how-asset-managers-can-become-better-deal-makers-d450516fd3e2 | ['On Pepper'] | 2019-06-25 22:01:01.118000+00:00 | ['Private Equity', 'Cloud Services', 'Portfolio Review', 'Asset Management', 'Deal'] |
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