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I Am Choosing to Live in the Present | As I recently wrote, I am in debt. It is indeed fixable, so I am not too concerned. If all goes well, by the end of 2022, I should be ‘debt-free’. As for student loans, I only have one year to pay off as I dropped out, and my studies in South Africa are being paid for by my dad.
When I was working in the UK, I would make, on average £200 a week. Most of that would go on rent, utilities and the £60 I had left would go on leisure. I would try to put some money into my savings; however, the money would eventually come straight back out.
At the moment, I make a modest living freelancing. Though this is because I currently pay no rent, if I had to, I would be in serious financial ruin. I am on payment plans with my creditors and the rest of my money goes into my savings. Though I’m not saving for the future, I’m saving for a holiday.
The end is nigh, whether this is from antibiotic resistance, climate change or a race war. As I have detailed above, the majority of people are struggling. So I have to ask, what exactly am I meant to be saving for? A better life? Security? In this economy?
Going back to university has essentially bought me three years before I have to be an adult. The first two times I did university, I was self-reliant, but this time I will be funded by them.
My id may have taken over. And I know I am being incredibly short-sighted. I may also be succumbing to nihilism by hinting that my future is doomed, however, at least for the next three years, I want to have fun. I want to enjoy my life now while I can. I want to spend all my extra money on travel. I’m tired of worrying about my future. Or at least, I would like to postpone the existential dread I feel for after graduation.
To be candid, there has always been a layer of comfort from knowing that no matter how much I fuck up, I can stay rent-free with my dad. Yes, I would have to sacrifice my autonomy, but my dad and his wife live very comfortably.
This is why I am relatively relaxed about the way my life is shaping up. Yes, I may have dropped out of university twice, but I have protections in place that mean I can be relaxed as I work my way out of this mess I created. Other people do not. I know this. However, even with my safety net, I am not safe from the economy or life.
I had planned to go back to the UK after my studies; however, with the current election results, I am re-thinking that plan. Settling down doesn’t seem appealing. Not to mention, 0.2% of journalists in the UK are Black, so perhaps it isn’t the greatest idea. But that is a problem for 2022 Zuva. | https://medium.com/an-injustice/i-am-choosing-to-live-in-the-present-f6151712f41e | [] | 2019-12-19 15:35:37.826000+00:00 | ['Money', 'Travel', 'Life', 'Zuva', 'Culture'] |
TestRail integration with Robot Framework | Integrating TestRail with Robot Framework is a pretty simple and straightforward task. In terms of dependencies, in addition to a TestRail account and Robot Framework, all you need is
Requests Library
Once the TestRail account is created, the first action should be enabling the API. This can be done in Site Settings which is under Administration tab. Another thing is creating an API key which comes under My Settings tab; though this step is optional but it’s highly recommended.
Before moving ahead with the script, create some test cases and add a test run, if it hasn’t been done yet.
In this article, three API methods are discussed primarily because they are the ones most prominently used. Let’s move ahead with the first method, Get Case, which should fetch you all the details of the given test case.
On the scripting side, two files need to be created, one is a python file where the API methods will be there and another is a .robot file where the test case will be created.
For Get Case, the following method needs to be created.
import requests CONTENT_TYPE_HEADER = {'Content-Type': 'application/json'} class TestRailRequest(object): def __init__(self, url, username, apikey):
self.url = url
self.username = username
self.apikey = apikey def get_case(self, testrailid):
self.testrailid = testrailid
headers = CONTENT_TYPE_HEADER params = (
('/api/v2/get_case/{}'.format(self.testrailid), ''),
) response = requests.get(self.url,
headers=headers,
params=params,
auth=(self.username, self.apikey)) return response.text
In the above code, the get_case method fetches the details of the test case with the given testrailid. The testrailid is the id of the test case defined in TestRail. Now, this get_case method can be used as a keyword in your .robot framework.
Library TestRailRequest.py *** Settings ***Library TestRailRequest.py https:// url user_email apikey *** Test Cases ***
Test Case 1:
${data} Get Case 1
Log to Console ${data}
Since TestRailRequest class takes three arguments, these three arguments need to be passed while importing the TestRailRequest.py in the .robot file.
In the same manner, one can also add methods for post request. Let’s take a look at a method that allows modifying the test results in TestRail.
def add_result(self, testrailid, status_id):
self.testrailid = testrailid
self.status_id = status_id headers = CONTENT_TYPE_HEADER params = (
('/api/v2/add_result/{}'.format(self.testrailid), ''),
) data = '{ "status_id": %d }' % self.status_id response = requests.post(self.url,
headers=headers,
params=params,
data=data,
auth=(self.username, self.apikey))
print(response.text) return response
While calling this method from .robot file, user has to provide the both the test_id and status_id to make the modification. Status id range from 1 to 5 and each correspond to a specific status.
status_id 1: Pass
status_id 2: Blocked
status_id 3: Untested
status_id 4: Retest
status_id 5: Fail
In a similar manner, other things can be done on the TestRail through the API, such as adding comments, assigning tests to user, adding attachments, and so on. | https://medium.com/@rahul.mishra2690/testrail-integration-with-robot-framework-b5dde14b0225 | ['Rahul Mishra'] | 2019-08-25 13:54:19.451000+00:00 | ['Testrail', 'API', 'Robot Framework', 'Python', 'Integration'] |
100 lições para 2021 | Get this newsletter By signing up, you will create a Medium account if you don’t already have one. Review our Privacy Policy for more information about our privacy practices.
Check your inbox
Medium sent you an email at to complete your subscription. | https://brasil.uxdesign.cc/100-li%C3%A7%C3%B5es-para-2021-3916c1d5db69 | ['Fabricio Teixeira'] | 2020-11-29 19:47:24.005000+00:00 | ['Visual Design', 'UI', 'Product Design', 'UX', 'Design'] |
ARCHITECTURE COUNTS FOR GOOD LIGHTING DESIGN | As a lighting designer, I try to integrate the illumination elements into the architecture as much as possible. Too many times we are brought onto a project after the architectural plans have been completed. The earlier we can get in on a project the more we can collaborate with the architect, contractor and interior designer to create something that is more cohesive and seamless. When that happens, the final result lets the people, architecture and objects within a space become the primary focus and not the sources of illumination. If we come in the end of the project it means we’re just tacking something on. It could be so much better.
When creating a design, it’s very important for lighting designers to see how the space is going to be used. That means we need a furniture plan, whether it’s residential or commercial. A lighting layout for an empty space is at best generic. It is hard to enhance what we can’t see. It doesn’t have to be the final selection of furniture, but we do need to see where the pieces will be placed in where potential art will be located. Here is a good example: If I were shown an empty dining room, the natural instinct would be to center a chandelier or a pendant in the room. If a buffet or a console it is placed on one wall, then the dining room table gets pushed off center. This means that the decorative fixture will not be centered over the table, which means an added expense for moving the junction box.
Also, we need to see door swings. We want to make sure that switches, dimmers or control panels do not end up behind the door as you are entering a room. If the doors swing gets changed during construction then the lighting designer, as a part of the team, needs to be given that information so that they can update the layout. This happens more often than you think. For example, say an interior designer decides to put a big armoire on a wall and needs the door to be flipped so that it doesn’t hit the piece of furniture as people enter. If that information doesn’t get to the lighting designer, then the controls end up on the wrong side of the doors swing,
Additionally, we need to see elevations and reflective ceiling plans so that beams, skylights, HVAC systems, sprinkler heads, ceiling heights, window heights and door heights are taken into account. All of these are essential in creating a lighting plan that integrates seamlessly with the other architectural elements.
Bottom line is that well integrated lighting adds to the visual experience of the space, allowing the architectural elements, the art…and especially the people to be the center of attention.
There’s a hot spot in San Francisco called China Live, which is both a restaurant and retail space. The food is fantastic, but I also noticed that my friends looked really good. It took me a few minutes to understand what was going on. Looking upwards, I saw that a series of linear troughs had been suspended from the concrete ceiling. Along the underside of these fixtures was a series of adjustable accent lights, using LED MR16’s. Then, tucked into the trough on top, was linear LED Architecture lighting LTD, fitted with a spread lens which providing both ambient light for the space; along with a way to accent the Chinese calligraphy on the ceiling. For me, the lighting was is delicious as the food. | https://medium.com/@rs6910319/architecture-counts-for-good-lighting-design-47e46712e8f0 | ['Rahul Singh'] | 2020-02-25 08:08:28.534000+00:00 | ['Médium', 'Trump', 'India', 'Home'] |
15 Top Manifestation Quotes To Manifest Anything You Want | “Learn to connect with the silence within. Everything you want to manifest is waiting there to sprout.” — Sri Guru Amit Ray
Meditation and Manifestation
Meditation is one of the key element of manifestation. The famous spiritual teacher and author Sri Guru Amit Ray, popularized the effects of deep meditation and helped countless people change their lives for the better.
In one of his most inspiring manifestation quotes, he tells us to relax and remove the blockages of the 114 chakras and to maintain the equanimity of the mind.
“Alpha stage creative meditation is the Gateway to your divinity and the subconscious mind. It is the key to manifestation.” — Sri Guru Amit Ray
“Positive attention is the key. When your attention is right, you will thrive and flourish. The universe, moment to moment builds the pathways for the attentions to manifest.”— Sri Guru Amit Ray
“Stop waiting for somebody to elevate your game. You are already equipped with everything you need to manifest your own greatness.” — Germanyy Kent
Manifestation Needs Actions
“You can have many great ideas in your head, but what makes the difference is the action. Without action upon an idea, there will be no manifestation, no results, and no reward” — Don Miguel Ruiz
“No matter what it is, if you really want it, and if you get out of the way of it, it will happen. It must be. It is Law. It can be no other way. It’s the way this Universe is established. If you want it and you relax, it will happen.” — Esther Hick
“To bring anything into your life, imagine that it’s already there.” — Richard Bach
Manifestation and by Looking Inside
“The universe is not outside of you. Look inside yourself; everything that you want, you already are.” — Rumi
“Your whole life is a manifestation of the thoughts that go on in your head” — Lisa Nichols
“The main event has never been the manifestation; the main event has always been the way you feel moment by moment, because that’s what life is.” — Abraham Hicks
Manifestation and the Subconscious Mind
Often our subconscious part of the brain limits our abilities and keeps us away from abundance by distracting our attention. And that where we need to naturally reprogram the subconscious mind to lead us to the natural state of abundance.
“Get rid of the disbeliefs and the mental blockages. Create the positive vibrations and allow the universe to co-create the reality and manifest your intensions.” — Sri Guru Amit Ray
“Mind is like a magnet. Equanimity and a positive frame of mind is the garden for manifesting the seeds of intentions.” — Sri Guru Amit Ray
Manifestation and your Intention
Your intention is the key. Intend that your dreams manifest at your will. Manifestation doesn’t require an effort but being focused on what you desire. Intention gives a clear direction to your desire. By being focused, you say to the energy where it should go.
“Keep your thoughts positive, because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive, because your words become your behaviors. Keep your behaviors positive, because your behaviors become your habits. Keep your habits positive, because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive, because your values become your destiny.” — Mahatma Gandhi
“All that we are is a result of what we have thought.” — Buddha
“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.” — Albert Einstein
Manifestation by Removing the Mental Blockages
“Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Manifestation occurs when the biological rhythms are tuned with the universal rhythms. They are controlled by the 114 chakras and 72000 nadis — the energy channels. “ — Sri Guru Amit Ray
Summing Up
These fifteen manifestation quotes from the people of great wisdom and world leaders can help and guide you on your path of positivity and daily manifestation. If you open your mind and understand the spirit of the quotes. You will reach your goals. | https://medium.com/@lmunds/15-top-manifestation-quotes-to-manifest-anything-you-want-b861601445a7 | ['Lucas Munds'] | 2020-12-23 15:28:18.097000+00:00 | ['Manifestation', 'Quotes', 'Amit Ray', 'Success', 'Law Of Attraction'] |
Not Bothering With It | Cooking became my personal psychotherapy since March 2020. I can’t even imagine how many hours I spent in our tiny kitchen in Berlin. Learned a lot too. However, the main principle of my cooking is not really bothering with it. So it really helps against corona panic.
When I was pregnant and my memory shrunk to a span of a few minutes, I could be worried about something, and then immediately forget what it was, and have this feeling of worry without any obvious cause for a while, and then just let it go.
Same idea applies to my cooking. No recipes, no need to remember the precise proportions, just a small bunch of ingredients and inspiration as a starting point. The rest comes with it.
In our hideaway the list of ingredients has a glass ceiling defined by local demand.
So I’ll tell you about my favourite Christmas dessert, that’s baked apples. Just made a tray of them. The smell of hot apple sirup and cinnamon fills the living room, it is comforting, and relaxing, and soothing, and delicious.
Whenever I read about baking apples, it seems that people tend to really overdo it. There is always something about honey, sugar, nuts, yoghurt, quark, oil, butter, dough.
I don’t even bother to take the stem out, haha.
Join me, it’s a very good one. You need sweet simple apples and cinnamon.
Step number one. Take apples. No exotic tastes. Take them however many your baking tray can hold. Wash, don’t dry.
Step number two. Treat your child, cut accurate squares from the top of the apple. Keep the stem. Cut the squares in halves and give the little one a snack.
…or don’t. I mean you can eat them yourself. Or chop and put back into the apple once you have sprinkled it with cinnamon.
Step number three. Yeah, I actually said it already, sprinkle the apples with cinnamon. You can be generous.
Step number four. Bake them. Use baking paper (unless you enjoy washing the trays). I heat my stove to 200 degrees Celsius, but it’s just my favourite baking temperature. You can choose yours.
Step number five. Take them out once they are cooked. That is — the skin has burst, the tray is filled with boiling juice, the apple still preserves its shape, the kitchen is full of wonderful smells.
Let them cool, pour the sirup from the tray all over them and enjoy them warm or cold. The sweet taste is intensified by baking, the texture is soft and a bit chewy, the cinnamon adds Christmasy notes. Yes, you don’t need any sugar there. Really. | https://medium.com/@v-alina/not-bothering-with-it-57f6cd7b280d | ['Alina V'] | 2020-12-25 13:38:06.650000+00:00 | ['Travel', 'Lifestyle', 'Food', 'Memoir'] |
Can You Learn Coding and become a Web Developer in the 40s and 50s? | Can You Learn Coding and become a Web Developer in the 40s and 50s?
Career advice with resources to learn essential skills for web development
Hello guys, many people think that Programming and Web Development is for young people, for dudes, geeks, nerds, or whatever you call them but for younger people, and once you cross 40, it’s almost impossible to learn Programming and Web development.
This s NOT true and there are many examples where people have learned programming in even older age and got the job they wanted.
Yesterday, I was speaking to one of my old friends who is not from the programming background but working as a teacher in a college of Engineering and Technology in the countryside of India.
To give you some background, he just turned 40 and is the father of two wonderful kids. He has been teaching Maths to B.Tech students in a private engineer college for the last 15 years.
At the moment, he is happy being a Teacher, as technical Colleges and School pay well in India, but he always wanted to explore the world, and he now realizes that a Sofware development or Programming job can provide him that opportunity. So, he contacted me to find out whether it’s too late for a Programming career.
He is keen to learn Web development, particularly using the latest technologies like Angular, React, Vue.js, and Node.js. I actually showed this image to him and he was excited with the opportunity on the web development
Still, he is worried that it might be just too late for him to become a Web developer or work in a software development company.
He was in a dilemma, so he called me up for a discussion. I was thrilled to learn his desire and assured him that it’s never too late, all you need is the passion for learning and dedication to achieve your goals.
Many software companies don’t mind what you have done in the past, as long as you can show them that you have relevant skills for the job they are looking for.
Can you learn Programming as Part-time?
Once he saw encouragement for me, his next question was, can he do programming as part-time to see if it fits him? Like, whether he can actually do Coding or not? I know he was afraid of coding, which is quite obvious because of his non-programming background and trying to minimize his risk, which is definitely not bad.
After all, he has a family to support.
Regarding the question, Yes, once you learn to Program, you can do a lot of online jobs picking from sites like Freelancer.com, Upwork, or Fiverr, which not only gives you the much-needed experience but also boost your confidence as a Programmer and Software developer.
He was excited about the opportunity to work online and part-time because this way, he can not only gain some experience but also can earn some extra money to spend on his learning and skill upgrade.
What should you Learn to become a Web Developer without spending years on Programming?
But, questions never end, and he asked me what should he learn to become a Web Developer?
Now that is something I cannot explain in one word, but rather, I told him to follow this Web Developer RoadMap and suggested him to start learning to code using JavaScript.
I also suggested him to join online courses like Colt Steel’s The Web Developer Bootcamp to start with. This is a super-course that not only teach you all the thing you need to know for web development but also give you some hands-on experience by showing project-based development.
He is now in the second month of his learning and now have a basic understanding of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
It’s still some time for him to get some confidence in coding and Web Development, mainly because he doesn’t have much time to spend, but he is on the right path, and I am sure he will reach his goal sooner than later.
If you are also on the same crossroad of whether it’s too late to learn Web Development or Programming, then don’t get discouraged. You can do it whenever you want, not just in your late 30s, 40s, but even on the fifties.
All you need is the right guidance, determination, and resource to succeed. As Mark Twain has rightly said:
Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter. (Mark Twain)
Resources
If you want to become a Web Developer, here are some of my recommended resources:
And if you like this article, I am always there to answer any of the questions you have with your career or programming in general.
P. S. — If you want to start your Programming career with some of the best free resources, then you can also check out this list of 21 Free Websites to Learn Programming to start with. It contains free websites to learn Programming languages like Python and JavaScript, as well as some essential tools like Git and IDEs.
P. P. S— If you are keen to become a web developer in 2021 and looking for a single course that covers most of these frameworks and libraries then I highly recommend you check out The Complete 2021 Web Developer Bootcamp course by Angela Yu on Udemy. It’s the most up-to-date and engaging online course to become a web developer. | https://medium.com/javarevisited/can-you-learn-programming-and-become-a-web-developer-in-the-40s-and-50s-f9e117f32721 | [] | 2020-12-11 09:33:42.709000+00:00 | ['Careers', 'Programming', 'Web Development', 'Career Change', 'Career Advice'] |
Data Challenges Superiority of Manualized Psychotherapy | New data fails to support the promotion of manualized psychotherapy as superior to non-manualized forms of psychotherapy.
By Zenobia Morrill
Photo Credit: Flickr
A recent systematic review comparing manualized psychotherapy to non-manualized psychotherapy has challenged the ongoing promotion of psychotherapy manuals as a necessary part of evidence-based treatments (EBTs). Researchers, Dr. Femke Truijens and colleagues in Europe, found that manualized psychotherapy is no more superior to psychotherapy delivered without a manual.
“Manualized treatment is not empirically supported as more effective than non-manualized treatment. While manual‐based treatment may be attractive as a research tool, it should not be promoted as being superior to non-manualized psychotherapy for clinical practice.”
Psychotherapy treatment manuals are intended to direct therapists in the application of their approach. Manualized treatments specify a theoretical basis, the number and sequencing of treatment sessions, the content and objectives of each session, and the procedures required to achieve the objective of each session. The use of manuals have been embraced, and at times required, by overseeing institutions such as the American Psychological Association (APA) and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).
“This requirement captures the assumption that it is more effective to apply manualized treatment than to provide treatment in a less or nonmanualized form. As this assumption seems vital to justify the dissemination of manual‐based EBTs to clinical practice, in this paper, we review the empirical evidence for this assumption,” Truijens and colleagues explain.
They note that in clinical practice, there has been pushback to manualized approaches and the utility of manuals has been critiqued. Scholars and psychotherapists have expressed concerns that manuals inhibit flexible application of approaches, and impedes on one’s ability to tailor therapy to individual needs or adapt interventions to multiple, or “comorbid” presentations of distress.
In addition, manuals tend to be constructed around diagnostic presentations such that specific approaches are delineated for specific “disorders.” Practitioners critique the feasibility of mastering each approach. One response to these concerns has been to encourage the flexible adaptation of treatment manuals. For example, through the use of “transdiagnostic” manuals.
Nevertheless, the research has been focused on how to apply manuals rather than on whether or not manualized approaches are more effective. To address this gap in the literature, the authors consider the following questions:
“Does the use of manuals actually increase therapy effectiveness? And should manuals, therefore, be embraced in clinical practice and training?”
Truijens and team sought to add to this discussion by reviewing the empirical evidence. They write, “Given the current requirement of manuals as the core of evidence-based psychotherapy, it seems crucial to substantiate this discussion with empirical evidence.”
In this systematic review, the research team evaluated whether or not manual-based psychotherapy was more effective than psychotherapy delivered without a manual. They also examined the efficacy of manualized and non-manualized psychotherapies as compared to no treatment, delayed-treatment, minimal treatment, or alternative treatment control groups. Lastly, they examined lower levels of therapist adherence to the manual. The hypothesis was that if manualized therapy is indeed more effective, then the extent to which the therapist adhered to the manual would be linked to effectiveness.
To explore these three hypotheses, Truijens and colleagues conducted a systematic review of the existing literature. For the first hypothesis, they examined six relevant empirical studies. Eight meta-analytic studies applied to the second hypothesis and one meta-analysis of 15 studies was used to explore the last hypothesis regarding manual adherence.
Their results did not support the superiority of manualized psychotherapy compared with non-manualized psychotherapy. The researchers review of the six articles comparing manualized and non-manualized therapy directly found that three studies yielded no significant difference between the two, two observed superiority of non-manualized therapy, and one supported manualized delivery. The one study that did support manualized psychotherapy was interpreted by the authors to have been started “from a single specific intervention that appeared to be exceptionally effective, regardless of the administration via a manual.”
When manualized and non-manualized psychotherapy was compared with no treatment, delayed treatment, minimal treatment, or alternatives, the superiority of manualized psychotherapy was also not conclusively supported. Out of the eight meta-analyses reviewed, three demonstrated an advantage of using manualized therapy, one indicated the superiority of non-manualized delivery, and four showed no significant difference. The authors interpreted these findings:
“Here, we have to remark that it is fairly complex to meaningfully compare effect sizes of treatments that are so different in nature, given their varied understanding and operationalization of treatment, control groups, diagnosis, and outcome. First and foremost, this underlines how the universal hypothesis of manual efficacy is in trouble with respect to empirical support, both as a direct and as a moderating factor.”
Finally, when therapist adherence to the manual was explored, results were similarly inconclusive. One meta-analysis found that the degree of therapist adherence to the manual did not affect outcomes. The remaining 15 studies provided unclear results. Truijens and team comment on these findings:
“As such, the suggestion that adherence and fidelity to treatment principles may impact a positive treatment outcome remains a worthwhile avenue for further research. However, as an indicator for ethe fficacy of the manual as a general principle for clinical practice, this conflicting body of evidence is insufficient.”
The findings of this study do not support the superiority of manual-use in psychotherapy. The authors write that the failure to corroborate this claim “points to a severe problem in the justification of EBT dissemination.” In their conclusion, Truijens and team encourages consideration beyond the question of “manual or no manual?” toward the components and steps of the therapy process required to attend to different people and different presentations.
“Based on this review, we are not inclined to call for more research to settle the dispute about manualization in general; rather, we urge both researchers and clinicians to go beyond the dichotomy, as the next step in understanding what works for whom in psychotherapy.”
****
Truijens, F., Zühlke‐van Hulzen, L., & Vanheule, S. (2018). To manualize, or not to manualize: Is that still the question? A systematic review of empirical evidence for manual superiority in psychological treatment. Journal of clinical psychology. DOI: 10.1002/jclp.22712 (Link) | https://medium.com/mad-in-america/data-challenges-superiority-of-manualized-psychotherapy-885805ba85c6 | ['Mad In America'] | 2018-12-20 21:47:03.670000+00:00 | ['Depression', 'Suicide', 'Medicine', 'Mental Health', 'Mental Illness'] |
AYS Daily Digest 13/03/20: People removed from Greek islands without a chance to seek asylum | Growing Concerns about the Spread of Coronavirus // Illegal Returns in Greece // The Criminalization of Giving Assistance to People on the Move in Bosnia // Disastrous Conditions for Deported Afghans // & More
Growing concerns over COVID-19 in overcrowded refugee camps. Photo: MSF
FEATURE:
Refugees on Lesvos asked to sign documents in Greek, leading to their “voluntary returns”
Greek authorities on Lesvos seem to be returning people on the move to Turkey by having them sign their own voluntary return documents. It seems Greek authorities are giving Afghans, and others being kept in navy boats in the port of Lesvos, documents like the one in the photo below which outlines their “consent” to legal expulsion.
Trusted sources tell AYS that people on the move are being asked to sign these documents, despite the fact that they do not understand what it says and no one explains what impact it will have on them.
“The document makes reference to several provisions of Greek and EU law, as well as the EU-Turkey Statement, but makes no reference to the Presidential Decree in which the access to asylum procedures was suspended for one month”, AYS was told.
Under section 6, it clearly states that by signing this document, the person has been informed, in a language s/he understands, of their rights and the reasons of their detention. Section 8 states that the person has not appealed the return decision within the 48 hour deadline.
There are serious concerns among people on the ground that detained refugees were NOT informed of anything regarding their detention, expulsion or of their ability to appeal the decision. It appears they are not even informed about what this specific document states. Sources say they are sure that the detained people concerned have not been given any actual means to appeal their return decision.
Even though it may seem obvious, it is worth repeating that suspending access to asylum and collectively returning people back to Turkey is in flagrant violation of several EU laws, the Geneva Convention and of the fundamental rights all EU Member States are obliged to protect. Moreover, Commissioner Johansson has said several times that the right to asylum shall be respected at all times and for all cases. Yet, these actions continue occurring in the face of EU principles, laws and norms.
Following the departure of the military boat carrying 500 rejected people from Lesvos, we were unofficially told they would probably be moved to closed facilities in the northern part of Greece, possibly in a new migrant detention centre being established in the region of Serres, in the nearest proximity to the Bulgarian border. | https://medium.com/are-you-syrious/ays-daily-digest-13-03-20-people-removed-from-greek-islands-without-a-chance-to-seek-asylum-93d1ea05091 | ['Are You Syrious'] | 2020-03-14 18:07:32.885000+00:00 | ['Migrant Crisis', 'Digest', 'Turkey', 'Greece', 'Refugees'] |
Merkle Trees and SPV | Find the full article on my personal blog here.
Merkle Trees
By now, it should be well understood that Bitcoin utilises the concept of a Merkle tree to its advantage; by way of background, we provide an explanation in this post. The following aids as a technical description and definition of similar concepts used more generally in Bitcoin and specifically within SPV; read the necessary background information here.
Such techniques form an important component in implementing SPV in an efficient and secure manner, allowing us to scale and effectively implement a verification solution that provides true peer-to-peer transactioning.
Simplified Payment Verification (SPV)
I’ll start by describing the base of any SPV system. In order to do so, we shall provide an overview of SPV verification techniques for ease of reference.
In what follows, we consider Alice (a customer) and Bob (a merchant) who wish to transact at the point of sale of some goods. We examine how the interaction takes place using simplified payment verification (SPV) using the traditional method, as outlined in the Nakamoto white paper (Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System, Craig Wright, [2008]). The same interaction is described later in respect of an illustrative embodiment of the present invention, in the section entitled Overview of the Invention. In both cases, we consider the role of three blockchain transactions (Txs). Two transactions have spendable outputs (UTXOs) owned by Alice:
Tx1– a transaction with a spendable output (vout-1)
Tx2– a transaction with a spendable output (vout-0)
The transactions Tx1, Tx2 will be referred to herein as input transactions, as a concise way of saying that they are transactions comprising outputs that are being spent by the inputs of some subsequent transaction, that is, a Tx3.
The third blockchain transaction is the payment transaction:
Tx3 — a transaction using vout-0 and vout-1 as its two inputs and one output paying to Bob. There are only two inputs and one output for simpler demonstration of the invention.
The three transactions, along with the Merkle paths which can be used to relate them to blocks (headers), are shown schematically in the following figure.
The basic concept of SPV has existed since I released the Bitcoin white paper, and the rudimentary concept, though not fully developed, was a part of the original Bitcoin protocol. In essence, SPV makes use of two properties of the Bitcoin blockchain:
Merkle proofs that can be used to easily verify that a given transaction is included in a Merkle tree and represented by a Merkle root; and Block headers that represent blocks of transactions by including the Merkle root of a Merkle tree of transactions.
By combining the two properties, a lightweight Bitcoin client need only maintain a copy of the block headers for the entire blockchain — rather than blocks in full — to verify that a transaction has been processed by the network. To verify that a given transaction has been processed and included in a block, an SPV client requires only:
a full list of up-to-date block headers; and
the Merkle path for the transaction in question.
It follows from property 1 that the SPV user can verify that the given transaction is part of a Merkle tree — represented by a Merkle root — simply by performing a Merkle-path authentication proof as explained in the section above. It then follows from property 2 that the transaction is also part of a block in the blockchain if the SPV client has a valid block header that includes the Merkle root. Performing the same type of payment verification in Bitcoin will be referred to herein as performing an SPV check.
The SPV mechanism as specified by Nakamoto informs the existing method of SPV-client implementation, including at the point of sale. Importantly, the state of the art in SPV implementation is based on the paradigm whereby a user verifies that a payment has been received by confirming (to a suitable depth on the blockchain, e.g., 6 blocks) that it has been included in a block. In effect, it is a post-broadcast check on a transaction to verify that it has been mined.
In contrast, the present invention requires that the necessary SPV check be performed on a transaction’s inputs prior to its broadcast. The shift in emphasis greatly reduces the burden and traffic on the network in dealing with invalid transactions.
A second important paradigm in the existing SPV system is that an SPV client must query full nodes on the network to obtain the Merkle path required for the SPV check. It can be seen in the Bitcoin implementation where it has been noted that “the SPV client knows the Merkle root and associated transaction information, and requests the respective Merkle branch from a full node”.
SPV checks that remove such burden on the network, by stipulating the lightweight Bitcoin client where users keep, maintain, or at least have access to their own copies of Merkle paths pertinent to the unspent transaction outputs owned by them, allow Bitcoin to scale.
Find the full article on my personal blog here. | https://medium.com/nchain/merkle-trees-and-spv-da18af9f6a26 | ['Craig Wright', 'Bitcoin Sv Is Bitcoin.'] | 2019-11-02 16:44:53.033000+00:00 | ['Scalability', 'Payments', 'Bitcoin', 'Blockchain', 'Merkle Tree'] |
How I Was Able To Accomplish More By Working Less | How I Was Able To Accomplish More By Working Less
Simply working more won’t get you any closer to your goals
Photo by K8 on Unsplash
I used to be an ardent disciple of the hustle culture; the philosophy that you work harder, faster, and longer than anyone else in order to accomplish your goals and dreams. I took great pride in the fact that on most days I was in my office cranking by 5:00 am and would work straight through the day. I enjoyed telling my colleagues about the lack of sleep I received all in the name of company growth and professional achievement.
I was all into this crazed culture until I hit a wall and realized that the ego and bravado of the hustle did not make me any better at what I did, it actually chipped away at me systematically until I had nothing left to give and I bottomed out . . . hard.
Since that rock bottom moment five years ago, I have made some wholesale changes in my relationship with work. I still work hard, but collectively reject the hustle and what I have found is that I accomplish more, I am closer to my life goals and have an all-around better quality of life than when I was working 12–14 hour days.
Below is a list of four things I did to ensure I accomplished more by working less.
I Established A Routine
As someone who has ADD, focus and routine is not something that traditionally has come easy for me. While I refuse to take any medication for this, despite my doctor’s urging, I have established a routine that works for me.
My routine is by no means rigid — like my one friend who told me he blocks time in his calendar each day for when he will take a shower, but it is a routine.
I begin each workday at the same time and start with responding to emails and checking in and responding to my social media feeds. I have times during the day where I check back but I no longer live by my inbox.
Additionally, I do whatever I can to avoid meetings on Mondays and Fridays as those days are scheduled to work on my client deliverables, writing, and thinking through new writing topics or new business concepts.
I also end my work at the same time each day. This is not to say that from time to time I do not put in an extra hour to meet a deadline, but having this consistency from week to week has helped me know what the next day holds and plan out what gets done and when which has led to increased productivity and better work quality.
I Aligned With My Body’s Natural Rhythms
A number of years ago I began working in what I called “sprints”. I would work for 90–120 minutes and then step away from my office and take a break of 15–20 minutes, before getting back to it. Little did I know at the time that I was actually working with my body’s natural Ultradian Rhythms.
According to Pilar Gerasimo, author of The Healthy Deviant, “Ultradian rhythms are natural, undulating cycles of energy — oscillating patterns of energy production and recovery — that occur in people (as well as in other living things) many times throughout the day.”
The science tells us that our brains are only capable of 90–120 minutes of sustained focus and energy and after that require a break to flush out all of the mental debris that has been accumulated. This is an opportunity to refresh and allows us to return to our work at full mental capacity.
By adopting this approach, I have seen big gains in my productivity and focus and am doing the best work of my career.
I Improved My Sleep Habits
Many entrepreneurs will tell you that sleep is overrated, I used to be one of them. Research conducted by The National Sleep Foundation recommends 7–9 hours of sleep for those between the ages of 18–64 and yet the CDC reports that 1 in 3 adults are not getting the required amount of sleep needed.
I now make it a habit to get 8–9 hours of sleep per night and have found that my decision making has improved, my thought processing is faster and clearer and that I am able to complete tasks in less time with less energy.
Sleep is foundational to our mental health and when making this a priority it will make us better at our work.
I Realized More Is Not Better
Simply working more hours does not necessarily translate into reaching your goals sooner or accomplishing more. In fact according to research highlighted by Harvard Business Review, working long hours can have adverse effects on workers and their companies.
As Sarah Green Carmichael, the author of the article states, “In sum, the story of overwork is literally a story of diminishing returns: keep overworking, and you’ll progressively work more stupidly on tasks that are increasingly meaningless.
If you want to improve your work performance or accomplish your professional goals, the answer is not working more hours, it may just be in working less. | https://medium.com/the-innovation/how-i-was-able-to-accomplish-more-by-working-less-16d1efe63a0c | ['Carlos Hidalgo'] | 2020-08-28 17:35:00.518000+00:00 | ['Work', 'Business', 'Goals', 'Time Management', 'Work Life Balance'] |
Let the fear hang in there for a while, Let it be there to make you a little fragile. Let it consume and make you weak for a while, So that next time it comes, it makes you worthwhile. Let the… | Let it be !!
Let the fear hang in there for a while,
Let it be there to make you a little fragile.
Let it consume and make you weak for a while,
So that next time it comes, it makes you worthwhile.
Let the insecurities dangle in there for a while,
Let it be there to make you a little volatile.
Let it dominate and demolish you for a while,
So that next time it comes, it makes you definite.
Let the discomfort stay in there for a while.
Let it be there to make you a little versatile.
Let it trick you and make you crazy for a while,
So that next time it comes, it makes you smile. | https://medium.com/@divyanijain/let-it-be-64eeb16d312b | ['Divyani Jain'] | 2020-12-23 15:39:29.913000+00:00 | ['Writing Life', 'Writing', 'Volatility', 'Feeltherush', 'Writing Prompts'] |
What I learned from an Instagram burnout and a 3-month break | Three months ago I was affected by an issue faced knowingly or unknowingly by anyone who is on social media: A full-on Instagram burnout. I did a social experiment on myself and it might prove useful for those navigating mental health in an Insta-world because let’s be real, this is inevitable.
The beginning of the end
Its been 3 months since I’ve posted anything on Instagram. A few months ago I was gallivanting across India posting pictures of gorgeous beaches, iconic temples and giving people glimpses into my family’s life. However, things got chaotic and busy with family (as they do) and I found myself obsessing over capturing the good times.As I was going through my day, I honestly I felt as if there was a voice in my head that would keep asking, Would this look good on Instagram? It was exhausting to the point that I began to question why I was doing this to myself. Sharing my life with my friends was supposed to be fun. It was supposed to capture memories that I can look on fondly years later when I was old and decrepit. It was the fuel for conversations with friends who follow me when I meet with them IRL (What else are they going to start a sentence with other than…I saw your story the other day!) So why did this make me miserable?
Hitting pause
I hit pause on the sharing and decided that I would give some thought to the whole process of posting. My friends on instagram didn’t seem to have this issue, (in fact they only seemed to be either deliriously happy or deeply contemplative in their posts) so I thought I would observe them. Maybe their peace with documenting their perfectly curated lives will rub off on me and things will go back to normal. Spoiler alert: They didn’t.
In fact it made things worse. Watching my friends on Instagram from the sidelines felt like a bizarre episode of the Truman show where everyone was happy and things were perfect. It felt like everyone was falling over each other with a daily advertising pitch about how amazing their life is and how everyone should want their life. More that the fact that I knew none of their lives were as perfect as their stories show, I felt sad that somehow well meaning people were tricked into conforming to creating an ‘Envy Culture’: Somehow a majority of my friends posts seemed to reek of a distinct vibe of “You want what I have” and that seemed off-putting. Mind you, these are my friends who in real life are perfectly normal folk who have no problems sharing their myriad of issues and reasons why their lives are falling apart if I give them the time. So there was something about social media and Instagram in particular that was bringing out this side in them. It was time to find out if I was alone. Unsurprisingly, I was not.
I did some online research and there are truckloads of articles on why social media is making people miserable (https://time.com/4882372/social-media-facebook-instagram-unhappy/ and https://newrepublic.com/article/123367/it-possible-be-happy-instagram for e.g.). It was great to know that other people were in the same boat as me, but as an engineer, I only cared about one thing: What do I do about this?
Solutions
The obvious next step was to delete all social media accounts, pack up for the cave in the Himalayas and say goodbye to the world. But flights were expensive so I fell on a Plan B: Contemplation about what I actually enjoyed on Instagram and maximizing what gave me joy. Here are the top three strategies I found gave me joy on Instagram again.
1. Identify the happy place: Amongst all the things on my feed that made me sad, there were things that made me smile, hope and gave me energy. I zeroed in on what the common elements of these things were. For me, there were things that were genuinely funny and people trying to tell a story (warts and all) from an authentic space of sharing rather than advertising their ability to overcome some trauma or a story about how incredible their life is. Everything else drained me and this revelation gave me hope for a brighter Insta-future.
2.Purge that follow list: Gaining some control on who appears on my feed and my stories was deeply cathartic. For years I hadn’t touched my follow list for fear of offending someone or starting beef. The awareness that my mental sanity comes first and anything not making me happy deserved to go took time. But when it felt right, the process of dropping hundreds of people I followed felt freeing. I could now choose what I would see on my stories and feed (other than ads of Chinese denim jackets that Instagram thinks I would love) and it was a breath of fresh air. No longer was I subjected to a never ending litany of the perfect beach shots, the annoying cafe froth art, the over saturated raw vegan bowl shots, the obviously staged yoga on rocks, and the obligatory sunset silhouettes with coffee mug worthy captions, some of which I have guilty of in the past myself.
3. Create, don’t consume: I reached into deep wisdom from ancient times (courtesy Master yogi Sri Sri Ravi Shankar) to find that consumption will never satisfy and the antidote is to create. When I unplugged from Instagram I spent more time making music, creating workshops and making short docs. All this made much more of an impact in my life than spending every event of note curating the experience perfectly to make my friends jealous and want my life. As I make my re-entry into the world of social media, I will take note of this phenomenon and spend more time making the kind of content that makes me happy: funny things and stories of depth and authenticity.
The obvious question is, why don’t I quit social media altogether? If these steps hadn’t worked, I would have. However, to find a middle ground in this complex world was gratifying. I can now spend time consuming updates from select friends that I really enjoy and that feels like a good thing. I have my fellow denizens of the internet to thank for sharing their input in helping me navigate this mess so I decided to pen my thoughts on this to add to the collection of thoughts to share on where else? Instagram. Follow me @m.k.anand if you’d like but honestly, I probably won’t follow back and thats a good thing. | https://medium.com/@mkanand/what-i-learned-from-an-instagram-burnout-and-a-3-month-break-ccc658e94936 | ['M.K. Anand'] | 2019-06-13 12:54:33.143000+00:00 | ['Burnout', 'Social Media', 'Instagram', 'Authenticity', 'Mental Health'] |
What Exactly Is EXPO 2020 Happening In Dubai | For many, the pandemic has put a pause on travel plans, but at Expo 2020 Dubai, residents and international visitors alike will be able to ‘travel’ around the world, with a fun, customizable passport that keeps a record of their journey as they explore 200-plus participating pavilions.
The vibrant yellow passport encourages visitors to see as many pavilions as possible during the 182-day event and helps them to relive those special moments after they leave the mega-event. Mimicking a real passport, no two are alike, including enhanced security features — a unique number, an area to include a passport-sized photo, personal details, and hidden watermarked images on each page.
Linking the past with the present, the passport celebrates the UAE’s Golden Jubilee year with a special page stamped in gold foil, featuring a photograph of the nation’s Founding Father — His Highness Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan — taken in 1971 when the UAE celebrated the birth of the nation.
Expo Initiatives
Together with people from across the world, we are creating meaningful impact through a range of programmes and initiatives.
Participants
Explore the power of connections in shaping our world. From organisations to 192 participating nations, you’ll be engulfed in unique architecture, culture and inspiring innovations.
Sustainability
Every day, more and more of us take a sustainable path towards a future where we all live in balance with our only home: Planet Earth. As we join forces, small actions grow into positive global movements that will help communities protect and preserve the world around us.
Mobility
We live in a world of limitless connections. Explore horizons that drive human progress, as mobility continues to transform the way we live, connect with people, understand different cultures, and exchange knowledge and ideas.
Opportunity
There’s a ripple effect in everything we do. Even one person can be the key to unlocking eight billion opportunities that can help individuals and communities create a better tomorrow, today. It’s time to unleash the potential within and be an agent of change.
The 50-page booklet also contains designs and pictures of the three Thematic Pavilions (Mission Possible — The Opportunity Pavilion, Alif — The Mobility Pavilion and Terra — The Sustainability Pavilion), as well as Al Wasl Plaza — the crown jewel of the Expo site — plus other Dubai landmarks, such as the city’s iconic skyline.
Priced at AED 20, the Expo 2020 Dubai passport is available for purchase from all official Expo 2020 Dubai stores located across the Expo site, the Expo 2020 Dubai store located in Dubai Airports’ Terminal 3 and expo2020dubai.com/online store.
VISIT : https://www.expo2020dubai.com/
All credit goes to @Expo2020 Dubai ( expo2020dubai.com ) | https://medium.com/@scientificwebstore/what-exactly-is-expo-2020-happening-in-dubai-5f8af401f5d4 | ['Scientific We Design Company India'] | 2021-11-29 06:24:48.899000+00:00 | ['Expo', 'Dubai Expo 2020', 'Export', 'Trading'] |
Seeking new landscapes: The Eyes of the Beholder | “In the eye of the beholder” by Morjer
“The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” — Marcel Proust
“We may have the notion that what we see is the reality, but it’s a highly human reality. Other animals live in other realities, and we can now see through their eyes and reveal many secrets. Reality is in the eye of the beholder.” — Dan-Eric Nilsson, professor at the Department of Biology at Lund University
The human retina has three kinds of receptors used for colour vision. These receptors are called cone cells. Humans see red, green and blue (rgb). Birds, which are active during the day have four kinds of cone cells. This extra cell enables them to see ultraviolet light. It means birds not only see UV light, but they are much better than humans at detecting differences between two similar colours. This is an important evolutionary trait to distinguish differences in ripeness of berries or to accurately navigate foliage.
In the future, using tools like CRISPR, we will modify our eyesight to make it, ahem crisper. We will also be able to restore sight to the blind and give sight where there was previously none. However, that is not the point of this Thursday Thought. The point is that we create our realities depending on what we pay attention to. If we only pay attention to information that confirms what we already know, we will continue to divide and conquer — ourselves. In a VUCA world, changing faster than at any other point in history, we must seek out new information (as discussed with Nadya Zhexembayeva on Innovation show 252). This new information is akin to the extra cone cell of the bird, resulting in a new way to see the world. Seeing the world differently means we will not only see the challenges differently, but also the solutions. Seeing information differently is only part of the way forward, next we need to blend that vision across various perspectives.
Our previous Innovation Show guest Robert Sapolsky shared that visual spectrum is a continuum of wavelengths from violet to red, and it is arbitrary where boundaries lie for different colour names (for example, where we see a transition from “blue” to “green”). To illustrate this, different languages split up the visual spectrum at different points in coming up with the words for different colours.
If you show someone two roughly similar colours and the colour-name boundary in that person’s language happens to fall between the two colours, the person will overestimate the difference between the two. If the colours fall in the same category, the opposite happens. In other words, when you think categorically, you have trouble seeing how similar or different two things are. If you pay lots of attention to where boundaries are, you pay less attention to complete pictures.
Thus to solve challenging problems, we must collaborate more than ever before. We must reframe boundaries as intersections. We must focus on overlaps rather than differences. Intersections are where innovation lives (“Intersections” is the title of a new monthly series we launch in the New Year — first up Robert Sapolsky and Robin Dunbar).
Our guest on this week’s Innovation Show is former Pentagon advisor, John Rogers, author of The Renaissance Campaign. John tells us how to formulate “Mixed Tables”. Mixed tables are groups of diverse people: for example a retired army general, next to a Hollywood producer, seated with an industry executive, beside a sociologist and a creative designer. The goal is to assemble diverse perspectives around complex problems. ( John explains how to do this on the show.)
If we learned anything in 2020, perhaps it is that we are stronger together. Collaboration can bring us vaccines in record time. This mindset cannot be just a flash in the pan, if that is the case the pan will not be around for much longer. In a world of complex challenges, we need to venture beyond our swim lanes and explore the entire pool.
“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” Max Planck
Happy Christmas | https://medium.com/thethursdaythought/seeking-new-landscapes-the-eyes-of-the-beholder-440782f1207b | ['Aidan Mccullen'] | 2020-12-24 09:59:35.150000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Disruption', 'Leadership', 'Transformation', 'Innovation'] |
What is pay per click (PPC) sites and jobs for freelancers | What is pay per click (PPC) sites and jobs for freelancers
PPC stands for pay per click, is the component of digital marketing use by the companies for advertising. It is the model of digital marketing in which advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. It is the paid method for increasing visitors to your websites rather than attempting to earn those visits organically. There are a lot of software programs that provide the facility of pay-per-click advertising. This method is beneficial for new companies or businesses because they can divert large traffic to their website. Erin Olivia Dec 20, 2020·2 min read
Types of PPC:
There are eight types of pay per click advertising which are under:
Search ads (Google AdWords)
Display ads (Google AdWords)
Social ads (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc)
Remarking ads
Google Shopping (Google)
Local service ads
Gmail sponsored promotion (Gmail)
in-stream ads (YouTube)
How PPC work?
PPC platforms use an auction system to sell ad placements. Advertisers create ads, specify where and how they’d like them to show up, and define how much they’re willing to spend.
Because it’s a bidding system, how much you spend will directly relate to what ad placements you get. The platforms base what they charge on how competitive certain placements are. (Host Gator website).
There are a few concepts for the bidding and auction process to advertise on search engines which are below.
CPC (Cost Per Click)
Quality score
Ad Rank
Maximum Daily Budget
Manual and Automatic Bidding
Keyword Research
Also read:
What is digital marketing and the top 18 components of digital marketing
Major Elements of PPC:
To launch your pay per click advertising campaign you must consider these seven factors:
Begin with high Keyword Research. Well Crafted Ad Copy. Practice A/B Testing. Bid Management. LANDING PAGE RELEVANCY Hone Your Call-to-Action. MEASURE, TWEAK, IMPROVE
Pay per click sites:
Below are the famous pay per click sites for pay per click advertising
Pay Per Click Google AdWords Facebook Bing YouTube SEARCHFORCE CLICKSWEEPER AQCUISIO EFFICIENT FRONTER / ADOBE ADLENS
How much does Search Engines PPC Cost?
The average cost of Pay Per Click Google AdWords varies but mostly Google charges $1 to $2 heavily depends on keyword research.
If we compared the average bidding cost of Bing, then you will be to amuse that Bing charges almost up-to 70% low cost as compared to Google AdWords.
If you use CPC, Facebook advertising costs around $0.97 per click.
On average, businesses pay an average YouTube advertising cost of $0.10 to $0.30 per view or action, with an average $10 daily budget.
Pay per click sites for freelancers:
Freelancers can easily search jobs on these sites related to pay per click are under
Fiverr Upwork Guru Freelancer Peopleperhour
Freelancer Jobs | https://medium.com/@arslansharif33/what-is-pay-per-click-ppc-sites-and-jobs-for-freelancers-156eff61e306 | ['Erin Olivia'] | 2020-12-26 17:50:50.174000+00:00 | ['Jobs', 'Digital Marketing', 'Freelancers', 'Pay Per Click Marketing', 'PPC Marketing'] |
Start writing code faster with DevCon1 | When inspiration and ideas strike for a software project, or when I have less than an hour to write code, I want to quickly write down my ideas and start coding it as fast as I can so I don’t lose the thoughts and energy driving it. When joining a new project team I also want to quickly provide value by writing code for new features. Both of these scenarios have required me to spend days or weeks, setting up the development environment on my local computer which delays my productivity.
Spending too much time setting up Infrastructure?
I created DevCon1 to minimize the time it takes to setup and start developing code by automatically building and deploying a containerized developer workspace that has the benefits of updated dependencies and tools needed for the project.
Over the last 2 decades, I have tried to find ways to set up a development environment that would allow me to quickly write code when I need to, instead of spending time setting up the environment. This has progressed from using Java project templates like maven or ant, to using virtual machines (VM) with snapshots of the environments containing the required dependencies. Each one required a significant amount of time to set up and update to the latest dependencies and tools, and this cost me time and energy that I wanted to focus on real value.
Containers on Cloud is the new trend.
I have noticed the trend in the industry is to use containers and cloud infrastructures to develop software projects. For example, Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces and Coder are two projects that allow developers to write and/or manage projects through a browser running an IDE on the cloud or in a container. Both of these applications require money to be spent either on their hosted SaaS or to pay for a cloud infrastructure to host them. DevCon1 has the goal of lowering the time it takes to get started writing code and control costs by running on AWS’s free tier.
If you have also been trying to find a solution to speed up the time it takes to set up a development environment then DevCon1 may be of interest and use. The name “DevCon1” comes from “Developer Containerized” workspaces and a wordplay on DefCon 1, because it is now more important than ever to be able to focus on writing microservice applications as fast as possible before someone else beats you to it. It is war in the software / IT world.
Don’t waste time, focus on consumer value.
As a software developer, I can’t waste my time any longer on setting up and managing infrastructure, operating systems, frameworks, and other dependencies that are needed to quickly develop when I get the time. We now have a convergence of technology that allows me to automate all of these things and DevCon1 is a starting point for this.
Using AWS or other cloud providers to provide the compute, storage, and networking, with free tiers, I can now use automated scripts to deploy my development environment onto any system anywhere in the world.
How is all of this done?
To do this I use source repositories like GitHub or Gitlab where I am able to save all of my code in the cloud. These source repos provide the CI/CD automation that builds and deploys to the cloud environments using automation. Using Docker Containers I can quickly build the latest development environment with specific dependencies and tools that stay up-to-date using the Dockerfile automation. This has the added benefits of developing in a production-like environment because the same environment is deployed to production.
The source repository at DevCon1 documents in code the specification for the Vuetify framework that I want to use to develop my Indigoninc.com website. Working backwards from the end targeted development environment I started building out the required dependencies for Vuetify into a Dockerfile: the base OS is ubuntu,18.04, adding tools like vi and curl, git, and then the development frameworks NodeJS, and Vuetify CLI. I need a way to connect to the docker container, so I choose to install an SSH server which allows me to connect with any IDE through SSH. I use VSCode with the “Remote Development” extension pack which allows me to open any folder in a container, on a remote machine, or in the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and take advantage of VS Code’s full feature set”. With the Dockerfile I need to automatically build it, test it, and save it to a registry. GitLab CI provides the free ability to do this very easily using their “.gitlab-ci.yml” configuration file, similar to Jenkins.
Tuono saved weeks of work
Now that I have a container image of my development environment I can run it on any Linux or Windows host that supports containers. But I don’t want to spend time setting up the Linux or Windows host as a VM running locally or in the cloud, I want to automate this also. Tuono is a company and tool that allowed me to do this very quickly. Fortuitously the team contacted me at the start of this project, when I told them about what I was trying to accomplish I was blown away by their amazing response to provide assistance to accomplish my goals. I spent less than a week (remember I only get less than an hour a day to work on this project) learning their tool, working through their tutorials, and at the end I had a running containerized development environment on AWS free tier.
The alternative to using Tuono, which is already capable of deploying on AWS, Azure, or GCP with no changes, would be for me to spend a few weeks learning and writing Terraform code to do all that work. Then if I want to run my container on another cloud platform like Azure or GCP I would then have to rewrite my terraform to manage those specific cloud providers. The other options I have are to use the specific cloud providers tools like AWS “CloudFormation”, but these are not portable, or use the UI, which is not automated. This would take me far away from my actual goal of rewriting my website.
Writing code in less that 5 minutes
With the hard work of developing the automation done, I can startup my DevCon1_Vuetify workspace in about 2 to 3 minutes, “git clone” the Git project I want, and start working. This is the fastest development environment I have ever been able to deploy to date. Because this is running in the Cloud I also don’t need to have an expensive desktop computer since all I am running is VSCode, I can use cheaper hardware, maybe even the Raspberry Pi 4b with 8GB RAM running Ubuntu Desktop (but that is another project :) )
Let me know what you think by trying out DevCon1. Feel free to fork the project, make it your own, and submit new ideas and code back to the project so that the community can learn and take advantage of your great ideas and work! | https://rsbaccus.medium.com/start-writing-code-faster-with-devcon1-fae677d8e07 | ['Rob Baccus'] | 2020-11-12 18:29:20.365000+00:00 | ['Nodejs', 'Docker', 'AWS', 'Azure', 'Cloud Computing'] |
Covering Segments by Points | Problem Introduction
You are given a set of segments on a line and your goal is to mark as few points on a line as possible so that each segment contains at least one marked point.
Problem Description
Task. Given a set of n segments {[a(0) ,b(0) ],[a(1) ,b(1) ],…,[a(n)−1 ,b(n)−1 ]} with integer coordinates on a line, find the minimum number m of points such that each segment contains at least one point. That is, find a set of integers X of the minimum size such that for any segment [a(i) ,b(i) ] there is a point x ∈ X such that a(i) ≤ x ≤ b(i) .
Input Format. The first line of the input contains the number n of segments. Each of the following n lines contains two integers a(i) and b(i) (separated by a space) defining the coordinates of endpoints of the i-th segment.
Constraints. 1 ≤ n ≤ 100; 0 ≤ a(i) ≤ b(i) ≤ 10^9 for all 0 ≤ i < n.
Output Format. Output the minimum number m of points on the first line and the integer coordinates of m points (separated by spaces) on the second line. You can output the points in any order. If there are many such sets of points, you can output any set. (It is not difficult to see that there always exist a set of points of the minimum size such that all the coordinates of the points are integers.)
Time Limits. C: 1 sec, C++: 1 sec, Java: 1.5 sec, Python: 5 sec. C#: 1.5 sec, Haskell: 2 sec, JavaScript: 3 sec, Ruby: 3 sec, Scala: 3 sec.
Memory Limit. 512 Mb
Sample 1
Input:
3
1 3
2 5
3 6
Output:
1
3
Explanation:
In this sample, we have three segments: [1,3],[2,5],[3,6] (of length 2,3,3 respectively). All of them contain the point with coordinate 3: 1 ≤ 3 ≤ 3, 2 ≤ 3 ≤ 5, 3 ≤ 3 ≤ 6.
Sample 2
Input:
4
4 7
1 3
2 5
5 6
Output:
2
3 6
Explanation:
The second and the third segments contain the point with coordinate 3 while the first and the fourth segments contain the point with coordinate 6. All the four segments cannot be covered by a single point, since the segments [1,3] and [5,6] are disjoint.
What To Do
To design a greedy algorithm for this problem, consider a segment with the minimum right endpoint. What is a safe way to cover it by a point? | https://medium.com/competitive/covering-segments-by-points-fc2c56c4b038 | [] | 2016-09-01 02:47:43.467000+00:00 | ['Algorithms', 'Programming', 'Competitive Programming', 'Code', 'Cpp'] |
The Summer I Thought I Had It All | The Summer I Thought I Had It All
Photo by Eva Darron on Unsplash
It was many years later that I suddenly realized that 2009 was what I deemed to be the best year of my life. I was 16, I was about to travel to two countries that summer, and most of all, I woke up excited every day, counting down the weeks, the days, and the hours. I thought that I had reached the pinnacle of my life, a life full of adventure and novelties. When I now look at that time of my life, I do get pangs of reminiscence, not of the events during that summer themselves, but of the Feeling of Being that knocked on my room door every day. As the years passed, I could not help but look at that time, without it breaking an extremely small piece of my heart. If that was the summit, then the next move would be the descent. As the years have passed, however, my impression of that time faded, I thought of the events rather than the Feeling of Being like before, and thinking of those events lacked any sentiment on my part. But often, it disturbs me. It disturbs me to know that it’s over. It’s really just remembering what had already passed. When I think of that year, I think of a parchment in a bottle being sent into the sea from an island, knowing that nobody would find it, but keeping up the hope that somebody would.
Two things happened that summer — I went for an exchange program from school to a little village in Germany for about a month, and I then participated in a global conference held in Washington D.C and New York City. At that point in my life, I had barely travelled. I grew excited even at the thought of the airplane ascending. I was also fascinated by the ‘duty free’ section at the airport, and I could not help but look around the whole airport, trying to digest all of it. I was travelling to Germany with about 15 schoolmates (and of course, we caused a great commotion on the plane). Once we reached, we were assigned our exchange partners, the ones with whom we would be staying the rest of our time here. I was excited to meet mine, and she was great. Unfortunately, we never did really hang out with each other. Since we were sitting in on classes at the local school, I saw my classmates each day. We had a really great time — together we would explore various parts of Bavaria. I came back home satiated with my travels.
But that wasn’t the end. I was due to fly to the conference in the US 3 days after! I was overjoyed. When I was on the plane (this time by myself so not so much of a commotion), I kept looking at pictures from my exchange program. I talked about it to anyone who tried to talk to me on the plane. I imagine I was quite a nuisance, but in my defence, I was too excited- the satiation had gone, and I was hungry once again for adventure. This, my first time being to the US, was far better than I had ever imagined. I went to museums, restaurants, and who knows what else. In NYC, we- around 60 of us from different parts of the world- lived in a college’s dorms, to get a fuller experience of young students’ lives there. I think I was most excited to see the dining hall — food, food, food. This also meant endless pizza and hamburgers, not to mention a large variety of desserts (Yes, I love to eat). On the night before we had to leave, we went on an extremely fancy cruise on the Hudson. I couldn’t believe, for a whole minute, the beauty I was seeing all around me. Unfortunately, this too, had to end. I was in tears coming back home, both on the plane, and then at home.
At that time, I felt like the world had become my home. I wanted to travel to every country in the world — it was my sole dream. I even started applying to universities across the world, although finally I did stay in my home country (that’s a story for another day). Looking back at those years now, I feel like I was a lost child with extravagant hopes and dreams; not knowing the path, but moving forward at least. Over time, my dreams have taken on a different character, and I now imagine a life in which I would someday, without any hurry, go to different parts of the world. But those memories stayed with me. Thinking that that was the pinnacle of my life was indeed false (but that is now, not when I was younger). I had many years to do many things. But thinking that my life had metaphorically ended at that age still makes me feel sad, about being the child that I was. | https://medium.com/writers-blokke/the-summer-i-thought-i-had-it-all-8914fd4556d3 | ['Akhila Nagar'] | 2020-12-19 10:43:07.354000+00:00 | ['Adventure', 'Home', 'Friends', 'Memories', 'Travel'] |
Lebanon-Israel: a potential harmony | Recently the Emirates and Bahrain, today Lebanon, tomorrow the Palestinians. This is the motto of the individuals who uphold harmony in the Middle East with Israel. Indeed, eye to eye talks has been held lately among Beirut and Tel Aviv with the help of the United Nations and neighboring nations, to agree on oceanic fringes.
Lebanon and Israel appear to stop a ten-year argument about oceanic outskirts through political exchanges. That could be another bit of a more extensive type of local adjustment that additionally incorporates the Abrahamic Agreements, the restart of relations marked between Israel, the United Arab Emirates United, and Bahrain.
The structure doesn’t just concern the immediate concurrence with the Israelis, however an a lot more extensive as per the announcement by the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. He said that the arrangement among Beirut and Tel Aviv speaks to another “memorable arrangement” that will offer the capability of greater steadiness, security, and thriving for the residents of the two countries. Washington is intervening between the Lebanese and the Israelis, obviously.
Nothing more fundamental for Lebanon, destroyed by the blast at the port that revealed the ills of the nation. A belittling political, financial and social framework and consistent obstruction from outside, all connected to the confession booth design of the state. Beirut is under a political stalemate bound to proceed for one more month. The chief assign, Mustafa Adib, disavowed the post for “a mission government” got half a month back, on the grounds that he didn’t discover in the Lebanese political class the will to defeat the divisions — and position rents connected to control — and structure the leader.
On the off chance that for Lebanon the concurrence with Israel — with which it was actually at battle from 1948–49 — speaks to another approach to substantiate itself dependable according to the global network, for Tel Aviv, the issue is associated with two strategic vital issues.The first concerns Hezbollah, with which the Israelis have a question opened since the 2006 clash, and which is the principle danger to public security.
Hezbollah is connected to the Pasdaran, who equipped it, misusing the disarray of the Syrian battle by requesting that those weapons be utilized against Tel Aviv sometime. Iran is rather the most vital issue for Israel behind the concurrence with Lebanon. An arrangement with Beirut could pass on the elements of the nation further away from Tehran.
Extending the image implies anticipating the Israeli-Lebanese oceanic concession to a reasonable dossier. That of the eastern Mediterranean, waters that wash the Levant, shore on which the Greek-Turkish tempest breaks. Israel has in that locale some significant gas stores that can’t be misused without the concurrence with Beirut. Disclosures that drove Tel Aviv to adjust itself to the Greek-Egyptian framework in open resistance to Turkey. | https://medium.com/@blackwilliam879/lebanon-israel-a-potential-harmony-30c7da79a729 | ['William Black'] | 2020-10-17 12:03:45.318000+00:00 | ['Lebanon', 'Israel', 'Palestine', 'Peace'] |
The LIDN Weekly Roundup #70 | Photo by Samuel Charron on Unsplash
2020 might have felt a year of unremitting awfulness, but there have been some bright spots amongst the gloom. The recent Institute of Development Studies Annual Lecture from IDS alumni and now President of Costa Rica, Carlos Alvarado Quesada is one such moment. A wonderfully personal exploration from a ‘reluctant frontman’ of the interconnectedness of issues such as climate change and social inequality with the Covid-19 pandemic, the lecture ends on a note of hope for the future.
Recently released, and winning superlative reviews, Mira L. Siegelberg’s book ‘Statelessness: A Modern History’ looks unmissable. Siegelberg examines how the legal category of ‘statelessness’ (a person who does not have a nationality of any country) has fundamentally altered the relationship between states and their citizens since the early part of the twentieth century.
Global Health Film has been highlighting classic movies from their back catalogue all Summer. This coming Sunday their ‘Global Health Film Festival’ will instead host the brand new documentary by the acclaimed director of ‘How to Survive a Plague’, David France. ‘Welcome to Chechnya’ is reputed to be a harrowing look at the work of Chechnyan activists who face immense risks in attempting to rescue LGBTQ+ victims from government efforts to detain, torture, and execute them. The director is speaking in a panel discussion afterwards.
Jack Shenker authored a poignant and highly recommended article for The Guardian last month; the story of the reunion between a photographer and the family whose life of poverty he famously documented in the early 90s. Shenker’s account of their lives in the intervening years is compassionate journalism at its best.
Finally, in honour of the annual International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People (Sunday 29 November), watch Rafeef Ziadah’s stirring poem ‘We Teach Life, Sir’. A future of justice, equality, and self-determination for all is possible - if we fight for it. | https://medium.com/@londondevnetwork/the-lidn-weekly-roundup-70-1efcfc2c0192 | ['London International Development Network'] | 2020-12-01 16:45:42.990000+00:00 | ['Lgbtq Rights', 'Poverty', 'Palestine', 'Statelessness', 'Costa Rica'] |
When the Darkness Becomes Day | In our ever-changing world
Every spirit’s individual,
The earth’s all-seeing eyes
Only know us by one name;
A shift in perspective to open up the mind,
One name — human, one soul — I;
Enhancement of another’s day,
Just by being kind.
Connected to the past is the man I want to be,
The reason we’re here, open eyes that long to see.
Where I’m headed, don’t know yet,
Although it’s becoming clear,
That whatever land I call my home,
I’m already here.
A destination I’m proud of,
Sunny day of inner peace,
Walking tall, standing strong
Atop this mountain of trials,
Each thrilling step takes me higher,
Miles, and miles.
Between us all a bridge of light spanning heart to heart,
Takes bravery to dance through life,
An essential art.
The first move is all that it takes,
Embrace the dark unknown,
’Cause when the darkness becomes day,
You’ll see how much you’ve grown. | https://medium.com/scribe/when-the-darkness-becomes-day-377cd01c12fc | ['Vincent Van Patten'] | 2020-12-01 20:59:51.233000+00:00 | ['Self', 'Inspiration', 'Growth', 'Poetry', 'Poem'] |
The Struggle of Being a Woman | The concept of beauty standards has finally been blurred in our modern lives. There is no longer a standard that defines a certain type of body, hair color, makeup or fashion choices and a woman can finally choose who she wants to be without being pressured by the expectations of her culture.
You can see plus-size women looking just as gorgeous as their fellow skinny models in a famous underwear show as well as a stunning girl without any makeup embracing her flaws while promoting natural beauty.
Women are different. But whether we like to grow our body hair or remove it completely, or whether we prefer to do our full makeup before leaving home because it makes us feel confident and sexy, or wear no makeup at all because we want to showcase our natural self,no matter what kind of woman we chose and are comfortable to be, the bottom line is — it sure does cost a lot of money to be a woman.
Like any other woman, my mood is unpredictable. I can feel sexy and beautiful with messy hair and no makeup walking to the local coffee shop with my boyfriend in his oversized hoodie just as often as when I wear my best makeup and outfit to go out on a date night.
I can feel beautiful and attractive in any state and appearance as long as I feel confident about myself.
It’s not a secret that confidence comes from the inside. It is a complex feeling and most of the time depends on many factors — from being with the person who loves you and makes you feel more beautiful than you ever felt, to being happy about yourself at work and at home.
But sometimes, even when I’m in love with someone who brings out the best in me and makes my eyes brighter, I need an extra boost in my confidence. Maybe my period is getting closer, or I’m not so secure about my life at that moment, or maybe I simply don’t feel that good about myself. The fact is, sometimes (often) I find myself lacking confidence and immediately need to change something about myself. In response to this feeling, I typically buy new lingerie, put on some makeup, or go to a nail salon.
Recently, I’ve been thinking about what my life would be like if I constantly treated myself this way, making those beauty practices an essential part of my feminine life. So, I’ve decided to calculate how much extra money I or any other woman would have to spend every month in order to look our best on a day-to-day basis.
It turns out, it would cost a lot, and I’d be better off getting in touch with my inner beauty sooner:
$30 for your well-groomed nails you’ll be biting in two days
I rarely do my nails professionally. Not because I like the natural look of my nails, but because I don’t really care about them. I bite them and I rip off the hangnails when I’m nervous (read — always).
Most of the time I’m too ashamed to go to a nail salon knowing that a person who works there won’t be able to do anything but lecture me. At the same time, I always adored women with beautiful and fresh manicures. Their nails are always shiny, with appropriate length and color. It’s such a simple detail I always neglect that makes me want to start growing my nails back and take care of my hands until I forget about it the next day and rip the fuck out of my hangnails while watching a new Joker movie.
And don’t forget $40 for your pedi even though no one would see it.
Because, as 5 gay men on Netflix taught me — you deserve it, queen.
$45 for your glorious armpits and fresh bikini
I like to shave, not because of how it looks but because I feel more comfortable with a shaved, smooth body. I feel very itchy and most of the time, more sweaty as soon as my hair grows back.
I shave every other day, which I’m perfectly fine with since I like taking long baths almost every night, but being able to go to a specialist every 30 days to remove my hair for a whole month would sure save me a lot of time and provide much smoother results.
However, it’s too painful. And even though your body gets used to it the more you do it, if I want to experience unbearable pain, I’d rather get another tattoo or text my ex-boyfriend.
$50 for your Kardashian I-woke-up-like-this-lashes
I have very long and fluffy eyelashes. Mostly because of genetics, but part of it is the fact that I never wore mascara while my friends in school were experimenting with their bright and cheap makeup as most girls do in their teens these days. Still, I’m obsessed with eyelash extensions. And not the most natural kind.
For two years of my life, I saw my lash lady more often than my friends, updating a new set of 3D-volume-with-foxy-eye-and-wing-effect every month on a schedule. I love to wake up not even feeling guilty for being too lazy to do my makeup because I simply don’t need it with lashes like that.
One time, an officer on the American border couldn’t let me go without complimenting my extensions for 10 minutes before letting me in. I used to consider my lashes as something very essential and therefore, I was willing to use emergency money for my extension appointments. But it’s been over 6 months since I’ve gone there and lately, I always find more important things to spend money on. In fact, I got used to my natural lashes and don’t even care about going for extensions again. Or maybe I just gave up on my life.
$20 for I-swear-I-have-eyebrows
I don’t know about you, but I always had weird eyebrows. They’re thick and brown though they weirdly disappear near the base. It makes me look 10 years younger, and since I’m 21 I’m not always happy to look 11. Thus, I went through all the stages of learning how to fill my eyebrows from less successful (and equal) to more appropriate attempts. Luckily, there are places that are ready to turn any eyebrows into perfection and somehow magically keep it this way for a whole month. Eyebrow botox, lamination, henna — you name it as long as you’re ready to sacrifice $240 alimony per year to your eyebrows.
$300 for your post-breakup sugar coma
It’s almost summer and I realize that I’ve been leaving chocolate wraps all over my sheets at night, and my body has seen more sweets than water ever since my breakup. I am now a proud owner of a double chin and 5 extra kilograms beyond my comfortable weight. I convinced myself that it is time to buy a gym membership even though I usually use it one time, get scared of all the massive equipment and jocks and don’t return there until the next time I find myself sporting extra weight. I’ve always been more comfortable with home and outdoor workouts but since this is an emergency, I have to go for it.
$100–$2000 for your inner makeup artist
Most of the time, I don’t wear makeup unless I’m going to an important event, photoshoot or a date. Don’t judge me — I’m not trying to impress the guys, but being 5'2” with no makeup, I barely pass for a high school student. And even though I’m all up for student-teacher role-playing, I don’t want my new date to think he can actually go to jail.
I can’t say I’m very comfortable with my natural self and prefer myself without makeup most days, but I’m extremely lazy and would rather spend an extra hour watching one more episode of a show or playing with my cat instead of spending it in front of a mirror.
At the same time, I love experimenting with makeup. I’m passionate about beauty products and new makeup and have more points in Sephora than in my local grocery store. There’s a good chance I already have all of the expensive makeup that’s coming out any given month.
Makeup can be quite pricey. I wonder how much money I’d save on it if I was a man and never had to buy it.
And don’t let me start on skincare.
$140/month to make everyone believe blond is your natural color
I am one of the few people who never colored their hair. Even though experimenting with hair color is one of the most popular things in high school and college, I always loved my natural color and never felt the need to change it.
Nevertheless, most of my friends chose to change their natural color. As always, blondes go brunette, brunettes go blonde, and the less blonde go even blonder.
It turns out, it’s not as expensive to pay for your coloring, as it is to pay for your monthly appointment to maintain your color and touch up your roots.
In addition to it, here’s $100 worth of shampoo and hair care products to prolong your blonde and not make it go yellow after two showers.
And last, but not least,
$200 for emergency Amazon shopping while on PMS
Because you feel sad and those pillows look really good with that queen comforter.
Of course, not every woman needs or does all the things from this list. Some women don’t wear makeup, some have great skin they don’t need to take care of, and some just don’t spend all their money on useless stuff out of PMS-induced despair. All women are different and require their own things in order to feel more confident, prettier, or to occasionally cheer themselves up. But the fact remains, it’s really expensive (and time-consuming) to always look your best like most influencers and TV stars convince us to do.
But even though I sometimes feel jealous about men who only need a bar of soap, deodorant, and two pairs of underwear to look good, it’s still fun to be a woman. Because when we’re bored, or have some extra money, there’s a whole variety of things we can do to treat ourselves and feel better. | https://medium.com/the-haven/the-struggle-of-being-a-woman-2f366abfb037 | ['Julia Beaudett'] | 2019-11-02 04:49:57.807000+00:00 | ['Women', 'Money', 'Humor', 'Beauty', 'Life'] |
GET MORE RETAIL SALES THIS HOLIDAY SEASON!!! | FOLLOW THESE 3 STEPS NOW…
Okay, this year has gone by WAY too fast.
I can’t believe they’re playing Christmas music in the stores and on the radio already. I haven’t even started my holiday shopping!
But I’m in the minority. According to a recent poll, 64% of U.S. consumers have!
On that note…
Here’s some good news for small business owners:
Consumers are expected to spend an average of $1,121 each, an increase of 10% over 2015 ( PwC )
58% plan to take advantage of holiday deals to make non-gift purchases at an average of $140 — up 4.4% from last year ( NRF )
Only 48% are finished shopping by Cyber Monday on Nov. 28 (NRF)
That means there’s still time to take action to get them to buy from YOU this Holiday Season. And I’m not just talking to retailers, either! Network Marketers and Direct Sellers, please take note too…
Read on for an easy guide for generating more holiday retail sales for your business!
1: Come up with an offer or special event to get your prospects and customers interested.
Like I said:
You don’t have to be a retail business to capitalize on the holiday shopping frenzy!
Direct Sales/Network Marketers can benefit greatly too…
Come up with a great offer and find a way to tie it into the holiday season. Here are some ideas:
Tax preparers: Happy New Year! Start off 2017 with more money in your pocket! ($30 off, 25% off, etc.)
Happy New Year! Start off 2017 with more money in your pocket! ($30 off, 25% off, etc.) Construction: Why wait for your tax refund? Save $1,500 on new windows now!
Why wait for your tax refund? Save $1,500 on new windows now! HVAC: Our holiday gift to you — $19.95 system checkup and $49.95 electrical safety inspection!
Our holiday gift to you — $19.95 system checkup and $49.95 electrical safety inspection! Salons: Look your best for the holidays! Take 30% off any service!
Look your best for the holidays! Take 30% off any service! For Network & Direct Sales Marketers who retail products directly or online and also host parties. You can do a “Book With Me & Get Your Christmas Gifts FREE From Me!!!” Promotion. This promo works really great in four (4) ways!!!
1. It will get you lots of retail sales this holiday season,
2. It will get you hosting more parties,
3. It will get more persons to know about your business & products,
4. And it will get persons to join your business opportunity.
Contact me NOW for more info on how to run this promotion for the holiday season and watch you retail sales GROW?
I could go on and on and on with ideas…, but you get it!
Here is one of the promotions that I am doing for my business this holiday season.
Name That Perfect Christmas Gift Song Promotion…
Watch the video below and give the name of my Perfect Christmas Gift Promo Theme Song & The Singer and you will Win A Jewelry In Candles Christmas Scented Candle with a piece of jewelry of your choice for FREE! Visit, Like & Post your answer on my Facebook Business Page at www.Facebook.com/LightsOfSurprize . The first person with the correct answer is the Grand Prize Winner!!! P.S. — Everyone who posts an answer whether it is right or wrong gets a gift in keeping with the spirit of the Holiday Season. Offer closes Thursday, December 15, 2016 at 11:59 pm. Get your answers in now and win!!! | https://medium.com/rohan-mcleod-recommends/get-more-retail-sales-this-holiday-season-f909e54da837 | ['Rohan', 'Java Mac'] | 2016-12-01 21:21:25.186000+00:00 | ['Christmas Marketing', 'Retail Sales', 'Work From Home', 'Retail', 'Christmas'] |
See You Again | Modúpẹ́ọlá passed 7 days ago… and it has taken me that long to shed a tear. I am ashamed that I am crying for the wrong reason. You see where I’m from, depending on what part of the country your family is from, funerals can be a big deal. When a person passes on, their age at the time of death is a determinant for the kind of funeral they get, it could be a solemn affair or a full blown jamboree. Hers is about to be well, quite something— after all she did reach the beautiful age of 80.
I miss you Grandma, not for the wise words or great conversations we’ve had (we did not share a lot in common after all), you being deeply rooted in Christianity while my nihilist self would merely nod to your preaching and beliefs. Didn’t stop me from picking selective nuggets from the several holidays at your house though.
The funeral visitation book we have for you is filled with a lot of nice words about you, very admirable Mama Nurse. I think you must have stopped loving me when I didn’t want to study medicine. Perhaps that or your memory had started to fail you about things going on with me. After all, you still asked me when I’ll be going for service in October even though that chapter of my life wrapped up in March. But I remember the night there was a power failure and I slept in your big bed, you stayed up blowing me with a hand-fan for hours just so I could sleep soundly — without a complaint.
Grandma, we spent a large part of today shopping for aṣọ ẹbí for your party. You would have loved it, after all you were the proper turn-up queen. We’ve had to hush people up who brought back the memories of how you could never say no to a party. I plan to go through your wardrobe with endless materials soon to see which might find home in mine. Might select one aṣọ ọkẹ and have my tailor turn it into something modern and rad. Perhaps I’ll carry on your legacy.
I miss you Grandma. We spent a large part of today walking in the market for aṣọ ẹbí for your passage into greater glory. The sun was out all noon and I fear that I may be down with fever. My body is burning up and a reenactment of WWII is going down in my head. So I miss you Grandma because you would have been the first person to call and you would have arrived at our house with your bag containing drugs. I never did like the pain that comes with your injections which was your standard remedy for malaria to aid speedy recovery. Being held down during these sessions is a memory I am not proud to recall.
The thought of you not being here is well, tears inducing as expected. But the way death plays out even when you probably expect it, still has the factor of not being dated, and then there is no hope that I’ll see you again — see you again in live, warm, camphor smelling form of course. You should be at peace now, peace from this world of turmoil and that, and only that warms my heart.
December 10. 10.44pm | https://medium.com/@mystique-dammy/see-you-again-7e2f2d84d4b2 | ['Dammy Ajibike'] | 2019-12-14 13:11:02.252000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Death', 'Diary', 'People', 'Life'] |
Four Areas Where the Incoming Biden administration, Allied with Serious Conservatives, can fight Socialism While Upholding Progressive Values | With Senate control on the line in two Georgia runoff elections next month, Republicans are claiming that President-elect Joe Biden and the Democrats are “socialists.” That’s their shorthand for government interference in the economy, corruption, failure to enforce the law, incompetence, and subsidizing people who should support themselves.
Let me suggest four areas where the incoming Biden administration, allied with serious conservatives, can fight “socialism” while upholding progressive values.
► Eliminate farm subsidies and farm support programs (which will cost $46 billion this year — up from $22 billion last year — and will account for about 40% of this year’s farm income) that interfere with agricultural markets. As Chris Edwards at the Cato Institute noted: “Agriculture is no riskier than other industries and does not need an array of federal subsidies.” Also from the Cato Institute: “About 97% of all farm households are wealthier than the median U.S. household. Farm income was 52% higher than median U.S. household income.”
I know of no progressive organization that supports these farm subsidy programs. However, America’s farmers are different from other Americans. They are 95% white and do one thing the majority of Americans refuse to do: Farmers overwhelmingly vote Republican (President Donald Trump may have gotten as much as 85% of the farm vote this year).
► Eliminate the money-losing “socialist” National Flood Insurance Program. From the point of view of progressives (who believe climate change is a real and pressing concern), NFIP makes no sense. It encourages living in flood-prone areas (where progressives believe flooding will get worse due to climate change) by offering subsidized federal flood insurance. As the General Accounting Office noted: “NFIP premiums do not reflect the full risk of loss, which increases the Federal fiscal exposure created by the program, obscures that exposure from Congress and taxpayers …”
In 2017, Congress wrote off $16 billion in losses from this program. But by March 2020, it had already accumulated another $20 billion in losses. About 60% of NFIP policies were issued in Florida, Louisiana, and Texas, which all voted for Trump this year.
► Invest $10 billion per year to fund IRS tax enforcement, targeted at the very wealthy — those making over $1 million a year. According to a recent estimate by former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, University of Pennsylvania law professor Natasha Sarin and former IRS Commissioner Charles O. Rossotti, this investment would yield about $100 billion a year in extra Federal tax revenues.
If you’re a conservative who thinks defunding police enforcement is a bad idea, you should think the same about the recent defunding of IRS tax enforcement (by cutting the IRS budget). The IRS budget shrank 20% in real terms from 2010 to 2019, while in the same period the U.S. economy grew about 25%. The result is that the number of audits of Americans making over $1 million per year declined by about 75%. At the same time, the IRS was pressured to focus its scarce resources on auditing low income Americans. Notably, the main driver of this IRS defunding is the GOP.
► Make states routinely subsidized by the rest of the country get their act together. Most American states are roughly in balance between what their residents pay into the federal government and what they receive back. A few states (mainly Democratic) are “maker” states (among them Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York) that pay vastly more to the federal government than they receive.
‘Taker’ states do bad job for citizens
Then there are states that get back a lot more than their residents pay in taxes. These “taker” states are mainly low-income states in the southeast, most of them dominated by Republicans. Given our progressive tax system and safety net, federal money tends to automatically flow to these states.
If you’re a conservative, transferring money from “makers” to “takers” is generally frowned on. If you’re a progressive, it makes sense to ask some hard questions about what’s going on with these “taker” states. Because, despite all the money these states receive, they don’t do a good job for their citizens.
Mississippi illustrates just how bad this situation is. Annually, Mississippi receives $19 billion more from the federal government than it pays into the system. Despite this support, Mississippi has the highest homicide rate, highest infant mortality rates and lowest median household income of any American state.
It’s time the leaders in these poorly run states make changes to improve the lives of their citizens — hopefully while reducing their hefty dole from the rest of the country. If they are unwilling to reform, maybe federal money and programs should be cut off.
Some of what I’m proposing will require legislation, and the devil’s in the details. But if you’re an ideological conservative, you should be willing to work with the Biden administration to implement some or all of these proposals.
If you’re a hypocritical member of the GOP (that is, you want to keep using federal tax dollars to buy the farm vote for Republican candidates), and-or a Trumpist, you probably loathe everything I’ve proposed. But it’s time for the incoming Biden administration to pull back the curtain on which is the true party of socialism in America.
Steven Strauss is a lecturer and visiting professor at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors. Follow him on Twitter: @Steven_Strauss | https://steven-strauss.medium.com/four-areas-where-the-incoming-biden-administration-allied-with-serious-conservatives-can-fight-dd49151473f9 | ['Steven Strauss'] | 2020-12-21 15:59:30.601000+00:00 | ['Biden', 'Income Tax', 'Climate Change', 'Farming'] |
The 4 biggest challenges to starting a career in UX | illustration credit: Luke Prater, Rewired UX
I entered the UX world twelve years ago — let’s see…carry the one — that’s like infinity in Internet years. And I’ve been self-employed for six years now. So how in the heck would I know anything about today’s entry-level job market challenges? Great question.
I know because I mentor a ton of people entering UX. As an organizer of Ladies that UX, the founder of the UX Hustle Summit, and having personally mentored dozens of incoming UX designers, I hear the stories and I commiserate on the reg. Here are the four patterns I’ve detected — the most pressing challenges new UXers are facing today when getting started in UX — and my suggestions on how to tackle them.
ONE: The Overwhelm
illustration credit: Luke Prater, Rewired UX
Welcome to UX: here’s 15,931 things you need to learn, from 15,928 different sources. If you are just getting started, chances are you’re drowning from the firehose of blogs, podcasts, articles, books, online courses, YouTube channels, and email newsletters coming at you.
Each resource links to about 18 other pieces of content that you feel compelled to bookmark. And not a drop from that firehose seems to be accredited by the UX-truth police, so it’s hard to tell what’s valid and what’s empty calories.
My Advice:
Follow your enthusiasm.
Once you have a big picture foundation from a bootcamp or an introductory online course or two, just dig into what’s most fascinating to you. You’re not going to be captivated by everything in this field and that’s OK. Picture yourself as an explorer (or a detective!) looking for those magical, glittering nuggets of interest.
Once you discover one of those shiny nugs, crack it open. About 1,000 more nuggets will be inside. The more you learn, the more you realize how much more there is to learn. Reframe this as a good thing! Of those 1,000 new nuggets, not all will be shiny. Find those that are, bag them, and keep digging. As you do, you’ll be differentiating. And guess what? The riches are in the niches. Finding your special niche in UX is going to make you more valuable, and more importantly, happier. So drop the fear of missing out — on content that doesn’t captivate you.
Follow your instincts.
Surprise! There are no UX truth-police. This is an industry figuring itself out and even the most senior among us are experimenting and testing out ways to do this work better (hopefully). But there’s good news! This is an industry of idealists, who are, for the most part, smart, talented, and well-intentioned. There isn’t much truly bad content out there. The UX field doesn’t seem to attract charlatans, so don’t worry too much about unvetted or “wrong” content.
Find a curated-yet-diverse set of voices that resonate with you. And when you inevitably run into conflicting viewpoints? Don’t get frustrated. Instead, see it as an opportunity to test your own good sense and opinions. If the contradictions really fire you up, take note of that enthusiasm. Start a conversation, do more research, and start forming your own point of view, honing-in on your exciting and valuable niche.
Follow a schedule.
Make time for professional development and PUT IT ON YOUR CALENDAR! I am well-established in my career but I am not coasting — I schedule two hours a week for “continuing education.” So, for you, depending on your time, resources, and how much you want to hustle, this might look like an hour a day or 10 hours a day. Or a five-hour block every weekend. You do you and decide what you can commit to. But once you’ve determined your bandwidth, make a pact with yourself and your calendar.
Show off what you are learning.
Just finished Designing for Emotion? Just wrapped a certification program on object-oriented UX? Let the world know! Write up a summary of what you learned, questions you have, and thoughts that came out of the content! Showcase your progress on Medium, LinkedIn, or your website and you’ll soon have a new wing of your portfolio that can supplement your project work: a professional development playlist.
Potential employers will eat this up. They will see your enthusiasm, your curiosity, your self-sufficiency, and your hunger for growth; qualities, which can trump that all-too-common “at least three years of experience” requirement. (PSA: check out Amanda Worthington’s UX Portfolio Power Play Course on how to upgrade your website with Object-Oriented UX.)
As an added bonus, when you play with your new knowledge, repackaging it in your own words and pictures — what you learn sinks in deeper. Even if you aren’t getting traffic on these posts and you feel like you are publishing into a void, that’s okay. This practice of articulating what you’ve learned will help you understand your enthusiasm and become more confident in your new skills.
“I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.” ― Flannery O’Connor
TWO: The Saturation
illustration credit: Luke Prater, Rewired UX
Yup. There are quite a few people entering UX. You go to meetups and feel like you are “just another newbie UXer” swimming in a sea of other job-hunters. Hundreds of entry-level UXers are getting pumped out of bootcamps on 10-week cycles and new certification courses are cropping up like Internet dandelions (here’s info on mine 🤣).
The market desperately needs UXers — but hasn’t figured out how to gracefully onboard them into their teams. It’s definitely a problem. But it doesn’t mean you are late to the party and all that’s left to eat is watery hummus.
Last year, I posted this on Twitter:
Our friends over in engineering are barreling forward, pushing AR/VR/MR/AI/VUI experiences into the mainstream. Business and technology are introducing new platforms and paradigms that are permeating culture at an exponential rate. UX design is NOT keeping up. We are scrambling to figure out ethical implications, privacy issues, and even basic best practices. Seriously, Gmail has major usability issues. GMAIL.
Just because the job market is in a weird place right now with hiring and onboarding does not mean the job market doesn’t need you. Keep practicing, keep learning, and you will get a UX job. The first one or two jobs might even suck. You could very likely end up somewhere with no UX leadership, no UX process, no UX love — welcome to the club. So if you are on the hunt for your first UX job or a better UX job, here’s how to get an edge on the “competition.”
Reframe your fellow newbie UXers.
These are your collaborators, not your competition. Ok, maybe they are your competition technically, but philosophically, try not to think of them that way. Help them with their portfolio. Send them job posts you think they would be a good fit for, even if you are applying for that job too.
Karma is a real thing, ya’ll. And even though the UX community is growing, it’s still a small town. Relationships are going to be key for you. Remember that all ships rise with the rising tide!
See previous coping mechanisms!
Keep differentiating, learning, and sharing what you are learning. THE RICHES ARE IN THE NICHES! Take note of what areas of UX you keep gravitating to over and over. What do you have opinions on and feel compelled to write and talk about? These are going to be your special sauce. And special sauce gives you confidence. You’ll feel like an expert, because with a little effort and consistency, when it comes to ethics in AI, or user research for children, or mobile UI, you will be an expert.
Spin your roots!
If you are coming into UX with no prior professional experience or post-high-school education, maybe skip this one. But I bet most of you have something to build on. Recently, I was reviewing a mentee’s portfolio and clicked on her unassuming “download resume” link. On scanning her resume I saw — in fine print at the bottom of the page — that she has a MASTERS in psychology.
Umm. Yeah. That’s relevant. And so your previous life as a 4th-grade teacher, a social worker, a quality assurance analyst, a customer service representative, a library assistant, a sociologist. Don’t hide the fact that UX is a second (or third) career. Celebrate that fact! Use your previous career to prop up your hodge-podge UX education and spotty UX experience. (Amanda’s course will help with this, too!)
Interview your Interviewer.
Do your research before the interview (duh). Know the industry, the company and the interviewer. After you feel “prepared” — do another 20 minutes of digging. You’ll have 20 minutes more insight than everyone else who stopped after they felt they’d done enough. Oh, and as you are interviewer-stalking look out for ice-breaker questions you can ask them.
Spend 2–3 minutes building rapport to set the stage for the rest of your conversation. For example, “I saw on Linkedin that you just moved to Atlanta last year to work here. Do you like Atlanta compared to Miami?” This will NOT be creepy. Resourcefulness and the ability to do your research are key UXer traits. In addition, make sure you have a list of intelligent questions about not only the company but also the industry.
While recently pitching a company that builds software for blood labs, I made sure to bone-up on antibodies, antigens, and the basics of lab testing before showing up for our initial conversations. I prepared questions like, “I kept reading about cross-matching and compatibility testing — are these the same type of test?” Impressive, huh?
Follow-up, creatively.
I was in an Uber in Chicago on the way to the airport and chatting with my driver. He was a film school student and had just interviewed with a very popular YouTube channel. He was gushing about how well the interview went and how much he wanted the job. I asked him how he planned to follow up. “Oh! Yeah…I should probably write a thank you email?” Kids these days. 🙄
Yes, sure, write a thank you email. Or an actual hand-written note. Or, blow the competition out of the water and get creative. I suggested to my driver, “What about making a thank you video? In the style of their channel?” He was floored! I hope he made that video and landed the job.
So, just had an interview at ShootProof? Make a thank you note in the form of a ShootProof Gallery. An interview at CNN.com? Redesign the article detail page — and embed the thank you note in the copy.
THREE: Validating UX to your Mom (and yourself)
illustration credit: Luke Prater, Rewired UX
Even though every modern human uses digital products basically every minute of the day, UX is still not a household name. If you don’t live in a tech-hub city where terms like “progressive disclosure” and “responsive design” are tossed around at dinner parties, you might be scaring the crap out of your friends and family.
Most aspiring UXers are transitioning from another field; this is a career shift, not a career debut. Both are scary in their own way, but career-shifting is often considered a risk, a self-indulgent caper, a do-over that means the first-career was a failure. And the family that supports a shift to electrical engineering or a going back for an MBA might not be as open to a transition into this newfangled “UX.”
I see a lot of fears and self-doubt around how to defend this career-change, fears that play off the fears of their loved ones. Many people have practical worries about finances, but the deeper worries seem to revolve more around:
Do I deserve such a fun career? No one around me has loved their job. What entitles me to pursue a creatively-fulfilling career?
Am I good enough for this? I don’t even know if I am creative or technical — I don’t know how to draw or code! Who the hell am I?
My advice:
Start slow.
You don’t need to drop everything immediately if kids, partners or a financial situation is holding you back. Start learning a little every day and practicing every day. Remember that firehose? A ton of that content is free. Start showing your family how interested you are in this path. And if the more you learn about UX, the more you love it, you can start gaining confidence that this is the route you need to go.
Side hustle to prove it to yourself (and others)
Learn Webflow inside and out and start building cheap websites for your friends, neighbors, friend’s grandparents, anyone who will let you.
If you can, do little UX-y odd jobs (prototyping, user interviews, secondary research) for friends who are already in the field.
Any money that comes in, use it to bankroll that course or bootcamp or Center Centre education that will level you up. Create a goal like, “let’s see if I can make $5,000 next year in odd jobs. If I can, then I will get serious about making the switch.” Prove it to yourself and others. (Check out the UX Hustle Podcast episode 16 with Matt Trinetti for more on how to prototype a big life move or also my Side Hustle Bootcamp course.)
FOUR: Dealing with Complexity!!!
illustration credit: Luke Prater, Rewired UX
UX Designers, from newbies to directors, are looking for ways to untangle design challenges that continue to grow more complicated as our global technology stack becomes more layered, more interconnected, and more pervasive.
My very first UX project back in 2009, as a “UX Analyst” at Accenture, was with Blue Cross Blue Shield. We were designing internal software for insurance professionals to build custom insurance packages. I thought that was complicated. But I can only imagine how much more complex this same project would be today.
There would be more legacy code, more regulations, more interconnected systems, higher expectations, and probably a larger, more siloed team. As our profession matures and as the work we produce takes on more responsibility, dealing with complexity comes with the territory.
Unfortunately, many UX bootcamps, courses, and even masters programs don’t teach information architecture. (Don’t quote me, but I’ve been told that General Assembly checked off the IA box by dedicating one day to “site maps.”)
Most ~14 week programs do a relatively good job (considering the insane timeframe) of teaching research methods, design thinking, ideation, sketching, prototyping, and interaction design best practices. But they don’t provide clear tools to construct strong bones for complex systems. In other words, they cover research and design, but they don’t really teach a methodology to deliberately convert research findings into design structure.
I often meet UX designers who don’t understand metadata or database basics. They don’t know how to find the core objects in a user’s problem domain and model the relationships between them. So my advice to you is simple: learn some information architecture. And specifically, I of course recommend Object-Oriented UX. My ORCA process (objects, relationships, calls-to-action, and attributes) is a repeatable, structured process for breaking down complexity. If you are feeling like you need to sharpen your ability to organize tons of information, requirements, and business logic…I’ve got you.
If you want to learn more about OOUX, check out the first couple episodes of the OOUX Podcast for an introduction, an audio workshop, and a deep dive into how OOUX connects to interaction design. And I hope to see you at a future OOUX Happy Hour! | https://medium.com/design-bootcamp/the-4-biggest-challenges-to-starting-a-career-in-ux-6b9aa04e7fe5 | ['Sophia V Prater'] | 2020-12-18 20:44:14.076000+00:00 | ['User Experience', 'Careers', 'UX Design', 'Information Architecture', 'UX Research'] |
Introducing Voltaire CashBack | Coins flying into your Voltaire wallet.
We’re excited to announce the launch of Voltaire CashBack. CashBack is an innovative scheme which rewards trading by enabling users to earn Bitcoin Cash and other cryptocurrencies for each trade made.
CashBack pays an astounding 0.2% of the value of each maker order filled on Voltaire. We’re delighted that this is the first time an exchange has used an explicit fee structure to pass on all trading fees to users for maker orders executed. CashBack is currently live on our BSV/BCH and BTC/BCH trading pairs, and soon will be available for ETH/BCH and LTC/BCH. CashBack is available for a limited time only. You can find out how to start earning coins here.
With the launch of CashBack, we’ve updated Voltaire’s trading fees.
If you’d like to learn more, we’ve answered some of the more obvious questions regarding CashBack below:
How do I earn coins?
You can earn coins by placing an order on any of Voltaire’s markets, provided that the order is a maker order. As soon as your order is traded against, either in full or partially, your Voltaire balance will be credited with coins in the currency which you used to make the trade. An example:
Alice is selling 1 BTC at a price of 10 BCH. Bob creates a buy order to purchase 1 BTC from Alice. In this trade, Alice receives 10 BCH, plus some CashBack coins in BTC. The CashBack currency is BTC, as this was the currency Alice used to create her order.
What is a maker order?
A maker order is one which is resting in the order book before being filled. Maker orders can be completely untouched orders, or the remaining part of a partially filled order. In the latter case, only the remaining part can be considered to be maker, as the filled part did not rest in the order book and filled immediately.
In simple terms, if your order remains in Voltaire’s order book after you have placed it, it’s considered a maker order.
Where can I see my CashBack?
Your total earned CashBack is visible in your preferred fiat currency in the bottom left corner of the trading page, available for all currency pairs. You can see a breakdown of earnings by trading pair and currency by clicking on this element.
For detailed information about the earnings from each trade, see the Fills tab on any trading currency page.
Where do the CashBack coins come from?
It’s not a money printer. CashBack coins are deducted as a fee from the taker of any maker order. As of the time of publication, this fee is used in full to pay for CashBack.
In our example of Alice and Bob:
Alice is selling 1 BTC at a price of 10 BCH. Bob creates a buy order to purchase 1 BTC from Alice. In this trade, Alice receives 10 BCH, plus some CashBack coins in BTC. Bob receives 1 BTC, minus the taker fee charged. This taker fee is used to pay Alice for creating liquidity on Voltaire.
How do I claim and withdraw CashBack?
CashBack is credited automatically to you Voltaire wallet when a maker order is filled. You can withdraw CashBack coins just as you would withdraw regular coins on the wallet page.
How much CashBack can I earn?
You can use Voltaire’s interactive trading calculator available here.
— The Voltaire Team | https://medium.com/hello-voltaire/introducing-voltaire-cashback-de92b08ff63b | ['The Voltaire Team'] | 2019-03-08 12:45:51.599000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency Investment', 'Crypto', 'Trading', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoin'] |
User Activated Soft Forks: the BIP 148 alternative | The following is borrowed from UASF.co with permission
What is a UASF?
UASF stands for User Activated Soft Fork. It’s a mechanism where the activation time of a soft fork occurs on a specified date enforced by full nodes, a concept sometimes referred to as the economic majority. A UASF requires a lot of industry support and coordination, which is good practice for eventual hard forks which requires even more industry coordination. In the past, a UASF was successfully carried out to activate the P2SH soft fork (BIP16). The UASF concept was combined with SegWit activation in the BIP148 proposal which can be found here: github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0148.mediawiki.
What is a MASF?
MASF stands for Miner Activated Soft Fork. It’s a mechanism by which miners trigger activation of soft forks when a majority signals the readiness to upgrade. This allows for a faster activation time for the soft fork, leaving full nodes to upgrade at their leisure. This method is a tradeoff, because it puts trust in the hash power actually enforcing the new rules. If they do not, it can cause various invalid chains on the network. For example, this was the case with BIP66, when hashpower indicated they had upgraded when in fact more than 50% had not. The other tradeoff is that the method allows a small number of hash power to veto activation of the soft fork for everyone on the network. Overall, if everyone cooperates, this method is very convenient and has been used to successfully activate multiple soft forks in the past such as BIP65 CLTV and BIP112 CSV.
What is BIP148?
BIP148 is a UASF that is designed to cause the existing SegWit MASF deployment to cause activation in all existing SegWit capable node software (which currently is 80% of the network nodes). How does BIP148 Work? From August 1st, 2017, miners are required to signal readiness for SegWit by creating blocks with the version bit 1. This will cause all SegWit ready nodes, which make up over 80% of the network, to activate and begin enforcement. Link for reference: luke.dashjr.org/programs/bitcoin/files/charts/software.html. Miners must also check blocks prior to their own and ensure that they also signal for SegWit, and only build on those blocks.
Distribution of Bitcoin nodes according to software version (source)
Why BIP148 and not a direct flag day UASF for Segwit?
To be clear, BIP148 is a soft fork that requires miners to activate the existing SegWit deployment. This is not the standard for UASF because normally nodes would just begin enforcement on a given “flag day”. However, almost 80% of the network has already upgraded to SegWit capable node software, in anticipation of miner triggered activation. A new “SegWit UASF” deployment would require all nodes to upgrade again which will take considerable time. For this reason, the shortened route to SegWit activation is to require blocks to signal for SegWit activation. In general, the block signalling mechanism is only supposed to be a coordination method that makes accelerated activation possible. In 2012, P2SH was activated by UASF with a simple flag day.
BIP148 was created to avoid having to force most users to upgrade their software. A vast majority of the nodes currently deployed are aware of the BIP9 signalling for SegWit. BIP148 is designed to motivate miners to signal for SegWit so that it is activated in a way that even users who are not running BIP148 will get the benefits of the activation of SegWit. For more information on the benefits of SegWit, please visit: segwit.org.
What do users need to do to enforce BIP148?
Users should use clients that enforce BIP148. Users that run full nodes would upgrade to one that enforces BIP148, or run their node behind an upgraded border node. Users of light clients (like mobile wallets) should check with each vendor to see their support for BIP148. We plan on documenting any public responses from wallets regarding BIP148 support. Satoshi Portal Electrum Server for UASF: 158.69.102.114 port 50002
What do miners need to do to enforce BIP148?
Miners should update their mining software to produce blocks with version bit 1 enabled prior to August 1st, 2017. Miners do not need to create SegWit blocks or make any other changes. After activation of SegWit, at a minimum, miners should also make sure they have a border node that filters out invalid blocks.
What are the various scenarios that could happen from BIP148?
BIP148 requires support from the economic majority, particularly exchanges and wallets. If this does not occur, node software supporting BIP148 should not be run after August 1st as it will cause a chain split leading to the abandonment of BIP148. There are strong economic incentives in the Bitcoin system for nodes to cooperate and remain in consensus to prevent chain splits. If the economic majority is signalling as of August 1st, miners have many incentives to follow along. Not following along would make it difficult to sell coins mined after August 1st as the blocks would not be accepted by the economic majority. Essentially, miners would be producing an altcoin not recognized by users and exchanges, making them less useful and in lower demand.
Some miners could opt to ignore the BIP148 rule and attempt to split the chain, but this would require a majority of miners who would be out of consensus from the rest of the economic majority.
If a majority of hash power follows BIP148, all nodes will follow the chain regardless of if they are running BIP148. Non-compliant blocks will be orphaned. All SegWit nodes will eventually activate SegWit.
If a minority of the hash power (under 51%) follows BIP148, nodes running BIP148 will be fine, but those not running BIP148 will be out of consensus with the rest of the economy. In this scenario, the more of the economy that runs BIP148, the better. Miners will find it difficult to sell their coins leading economically motivated miners to start enforcing BIP148.
Why was the date of August 1, 2017 chosen?
Because BIP9 is time based, BIP148 needs to account for the possibility for some of the hash power to exit (eg. to mine another fork) which would make block intervals longer. The August 1st date allows for the economic majority to successfully activate SegWit. Theoretically, if the hashpower drops by up to 85%, it might take up to 13 weeks to complete an activation period. In this scenario, SegWit will still activate for all BIP148 compliant nodes.
How can we show support for BIP148?
The best way to show support is to champion it through social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc…) and petition businesses and wallets to support it. Many users are also altering their node’s user agent string to include BIP148.
Can BIP148 be cancelled?
Yes. In the event that the economic majority does not support BIP148, users should remove software that enforces BIP148. A flag day activation for SegWit would be the next logical steps and require coordination of the community, most likely towards the end of 2018.
Does node count determine activation?
No. Users that decide to enforce the new rules will only follow blocks that conform to the existing rules which will in turn cause miners to activate SegWit. A UASF could be enforced by any number of economic nodes, although hash power may only choose to follow such rules if there was significant economic weight behind it.
Will a UASF cause a chain split?
Soft forks rely on the economic incentives of the majority of miners and economic actors to reject invalid blocks based on the new ruleset. Since the new BIP148 rules are a stricter set than the old rules, any chain split means the chain with the old rules would be in danger of being wiped out. If the majority of miners enforce the new ruleset, all blocks produced that are invalid in the new ruleset will become orphaned. This economic incentive pushes miners to enforce the new rules. A UASF uses similar economic incentives. If the majority ofhashing power enforces the new rules, chain splits remain temporary as with a solely miner enforced soft fork.
If the majority of hashpower does not enforce the rules, a chain split would occur. If there is a greater demand for the blocks produced by the BIP148 miners, then profit-driven miners would eventually flock to this chain, leading to the orphaning of the pre-soft-fork chain. If the demand is less for the soft-fork chain, then both chains may co-exist indefinitely.
Is BIP148 a hard fork?
No, BIP148 isn’t a hard fork. A hard fork is often confused with a chain split. A hard fork is a type of chain split where the rules are loosened to allow previously disallowed blocks or transactions. A soft fork is a tightening of the rules. A soft fork will result in a converged chain if the majority of hashpower enforces its rules. For a more detailed explanation of types of forks and chain splits, see Chain Splits and Resolutions.
I thought miners vote on proposals?
Miner activated soft forks are a convenient shortcut to activating soft forks because it allows the changes to activate before a significant portion of the economy upgrades. The signalling process is just to coordinate when a supermajority of hashrate has upgraded, nodes can then activate and begin enforcing the new rules. It was never intended to be a vote although it has an unintentional veto where a small amount of hash power can hold up the process.
Ultimately consensus is decided by the economic nodes in the ecosystem since they validate the chain and engage in economic activity. Ultimately even miner activated soft forks (MASF) are enforced by the nodes. The miners simply trigger activation in the nodes.
A UASF forgoes the need for miner signalling because economic nodes are given more time to upgrade to the new rules and begin enforcing in the future. A UASF in no way impedes the operation of non-upgraded miners, nor disenfranchises them in any way. Miners always have the freedom to produce blocks following any rules they wish, but if they fall out of consensus with the economic nodes, their blocks will be rejected by the network.
Can miners attack the chain in the event of a split?
Miners can always attack any chain at any time, but must do so by exerting real opportunity costs — they have to stop mining for profit. There are two main types of attacks. The first attack would be mining empty blocks. In the case of a chain split, this kind of attack would actually be beneficial — it would allow the chain to reach a difficulty retarget period faster. The second kind of attack is an active 51% attack on the chain. This type of attack requires a majority of hash power colluding to orphan valid blocks that have been mined. This kind of attack is always possible in Bitcoin, but can be defeated by changing the Proof of Work. These types of attacks are discouraged due to economic incentives- there typically is more to gain by cooperating than attacking.
Won’t blocks become very slow if there is a split?
Both sides of a chain split will produce slower than normal blocks until the difficulty period resets. This time will be dependent on the allocation of hash power. For example, if 25% of the hash power was left on a chain, it would take four times as long (8 weeks) to reach a retarget period. After this period, blocks would return to 10 minutes. Congestion would also likely result in higher fees, which would encourage more mining on this chain and faster blocks until equilibrium would be reached.
How can I make sure I am protected in the event of a chain split?
This will depend on what type of wallet you use. In the case of a wallet using a centralized service’s nodes, make sure the nodes their service uses are upgraded. In the case of something like Electrum, make sure the Electrum server you are using is upgraded. Ultimately, any non-fully validating wallet will derive information about balances from a fully validating node. You must take whatever steps you have to in order to ensure your wallet is connected to an upgraded BIP148 nodes. | https://medium.com/segwit-co/user-activated-soft-forks-the-bip-148-alternative-28e87ffdb76f | ['Segwit Resources'] | 2017-04-05 05:54:53.109000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Bitcoin', 'Featured Posts'] |
United States of Race Guidelines | Welcome to United States of Race, a publication about experiencing race in America — from our earliest childhood memories to navigating the social constructs in which we live and operate today.
The topic of race — and all its social, cultural, economic, and political implications — is one of the most divisive of our times. When we talk about race, it is from well-entrenched positions, each of us representing a unique perspective, different from anyone else in the world.
Most of us are taught about race at such an early age, we may not even realize when our opinions on the topic were first formed or the ways it impacts how we navigate relationships for the rest of our lives.
Tackling this divisive topic, this publication aims to broaden perspectives on race through the power of personal storytelling. Some heartbreaking, some uplifting, and some downright infuriating — all personal stories of how our earliest childhood memories determine a lifetime of relationships.
By sharing the stories of when we first learned we are all different, we find the common thread that shows us how much we are all the same.
Do you have a compelling story you want to share about your earliest memories of race?
We are looking for deeply personal and poignant stories from people of all races, ethnicities, ages, genders, political and social beliefs, and geographic locations.
Think back to when you were young, navigating social interactions for the first time and learning about the world around you. How did you learn about race — what were you told, who were you with, how did it feel, what did you understand, and how did it influence future interactions?
Think back to when you were a teenager or a young adult or a young professional. What were your experiences with confronting or addressing race — in school or in the workplace or in your community?
Submission Guidelines
If you have a compelling story to share — send us a message at [email protected]
Include your profile
Include a link to your article
Your piece can be in draft form or already published
You’re free to use Medium’s Partner Program, although we prefer to not have articles behind the paywall in order to keep the publication open for any and all readers
Please submit professional-quality work. We can work with you on some edits, but we don’t have the staffing to fix your writing.
Please share your article with everyone and share this publication! The more readers we have, the more impact we can achieve!
Response time: Our response time varies, but most of the time we revert back within 48 hours. We will endeavor to respond to every submission — either to accept it, to ask for edits, or to suggest a different approach.
New to Medium?
This article will give you a primer on how to write and post on Medium | https://medium.com/united-states-of-race/united-states-of-race-guidelines-126dbff1511f | ['Db Crema'] | 2020-12-30 05:57:52.984000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Race', 'Publication', 'Culture', 'Guidelines'] |
5 Keys to Raising Wise Children | When I was growing up my parents reminded me that they were raising me to leave home. I always felt this was a bit insensitive — didn’t they love me and want me around forever? My parents, like every other parent out there, had the ultimate goal to raise competent, capable and independent adults. When we are intentional with our parenting we are not just leaving it up to chance, but working together with our kids to help them become the best version of themselves.
Kindness Matters
Of all the characteristics to help our kids develop kindness is one of the greatest. Our culture has slowly put more emphasis on personal happiness and achievement rather than the care or concern for others.[1] Raising caring and kind children teaches them to be moral, humble, patient and compassionate — doesn’t the world need a little bit more of that? Kindness is learned by example. We teach more through our example than any other way. Emphasize how important it is to be kind — more important than making the team or getting good grades. Remember, “arrogance is used by the weak while kindness is used by the strong.”[2]
Encourage Independence
As each of our children reached different developmental milestones it also meant an increase in independence and responsibility. Every consideration should be age/maturity appropriate, but always be on the lookout for ways to encourage your kids to be more than just an appendage of you and your spouse. By the time our kids were in high school they were getting themselves up in the morning, making their own breakfast and lunch, taking full responsibility for their school work, doing their own laundry and helping with the occasional meal. I was a big proponent of teaching life skills that would prepare them for the world when I wouldn’t be there to do it for them. Sometimes it was too much too soon and we adjusted, but we were always moving towards the independence line.
Nurture Confidence Not Fear
Our belief in our children’s capabilities increases their self-confidence. Do you remember the Olympic commercials where the mom is cheering on her hockey-playing son from the sidelines? The commercial showed flashbacks to where he was just learning to skate and playing his first hockey games. We aren’t shown if she questioned the safety of the sport or her apprehension that he might fall — repeatedly. But we can safely assume whatever concerns and fears she had, she didn’t allow them to keep him from conquering the world. Never let your fears hold your kids back.
Failure Is an Option
Any mother can relate to the fear of watching her child fail, but that paralyzing fear doesn’t do anything to help raise a confident and well-adjusted adult. Widen+Kennedy, an international advertising agency, has adopted the phrase “Fail Harder” as their mantra.[3] Failing means that we are trying, and the harder we fail the harder we are trying. As parents we teach our kids to try, we watch them fall on their faces, help pick them back up and encourage them to try again and again. It’s these moments of failure and encouragement that help them gain the confidence to go and do something extraordinary.
Never too Early, Never too Late
When our children are young it seems we have all the time in the world to teach and prepare them for what might lie ahead, but before you know it your kids will have kids of their own and the opportunity seems to have passed. I remember being told something along these lines as a young mother, and now here I am on the flip side looking back. When our children are but babes in our arms they are learning from us. Our tone, attitude and very presence teaches them — good or bad — about how to become an adult. As we become more intentional in our parenting we are better preparing our children for what lies ahead. In the same regard just because your child is now an adult doesn’t mean that you don’t have anything to offer. Keeping an open relationship where your adult kids might come to you for advice or instruction is important. As the wise prophet Isaiah said: “line upon line; here a little, and there a little.”[4]
At times I think my kids thought I was the meanest mom in the world, and I guess I am okay with that. They know I love them no matter what, but they also know that I want them to be the best they can be. Time has taught us that the only real failure is to not learn from one. Teaching our kids wisdom is an ongoing lifelong process. | https://medium.com/mormon-writers/5-keys-to-raising-wise-children-152b3ae2e12a | ['Lori Jackson'] | 2017-04-08 01:31:28.130000+00:00 | ['Independence', 'Kindness', 'Confidence', 'Parenting'] |
An Open Letter to Marc Benioff | An Open Letter to Marc Benioff
Photo by Denys Nevozhai on Unsplash
Dear Marc,
First of all, I want to say that I really respect you and the work you do. You are a force in the business world and truly must be an awesome sense of accomplishment entering this building in downtown San Francisco everyday.
That lobby is really amazing! I was so nervous and arrived early just to hang out there while waiting for someone to come down and collect me — the bears and the forest motif chilled me. I think birds were even chirping.
Having flown in about early on the day before from Russia, my jet-lag was beginning to catch up to really make me feel a bit punch drunk. The very nice woman who saw me up to your floor, however, then proceeded to give a really powerful coffee — I was ready to go.
Do you need anything else, she asked? Yes, can you show me how to link my computer so it can be viewed on the screen? She helped and left me alone to wait for you.
You and I first met in Tianjin, China at the World Economic Forum. I had been meeting with Klaus Schwab, WEF’s founder and executive chairman as we were finalizing the details of my upcoming employment at WEF. The offer to join him would be presented to me in the next month.
Arriving late to panel as a result of that meeting, I entered at the moment you and the Minister of Education from Singapore were chatting about the need for creating a system of apprenticeships in the world. As one of the CEO’s on Trump’s economic council, you mentioned that the president had promised he would work with you to create some really huge number of apprenticeships to help make America competitive again — I was so excited to hear that, to say the least. It completely tied in with my own thoughts.
Afterwards in the lounge for WEF members, I was working on the program that had led to my pending job offer at WEF when you walked in. Feeling empowered and impressed by your speech, I introduced myself and we chatted about my program called CityToken.
CityToken is a blockchain program that tethers a token to a city’s intrinsic value. Creating a new, local economy of value for community residents, CityToken would be the first program — and one using the blockchain technology — to combat the effects of income inequality. Add value to the community and earn value usable in that community. Chatting near the refreshments, you commented on how the program sounded quite amazing and that you would be happy to read more about it — I told you I was seeking a financial and strategic partner for it.
Send it over to me, you added.
At that very moment, one of the board of directors of WEF, a woman named Cheryl, walked in to meet with me at the request of Klaus. She seemed unnerved seeing us chatting, I recall. I thought it had impressed her. Here I was, the new guy entering into the WEF upper management, her peer, and I was already making linkage to you and sharing information about the program I was building for Klaus.
A month later, you read my materials and again commented on how timely and unique the approach was. Perhaps, you were being nice but you wrote that when in San Francisco, I should drop by and let’s chat some more.
At this very same time, I received a note from Professor Schwab that our mid-July meeting, the one where I was supposed to receive my official job offer, was canceled. It would not be rescheduled. He would not be able to move forward as there was just too much on his plate and the board was against hiring new people for upper management.
Marc, you may know this already but WEF is a cut-throat organization and the top-level people eat each other for lunch. Klaus is a visionary and a great, and very tough, man. It seems that a massive power struggle was underway in WEF at the time and Cheryl, with whom I met for 7 minutes, decided that I needed to be stopped — Klaus was too enamored with my idea and my energy according to people close to him.
The other guy Klaus asked to me meet, some Jeremy Jurgens, a fellow in charge of digital mapping issues — something WEF is very proud of — was so charming. He shared with me the mapping ideology and we even began to brainstorm how my project would benefit from his data.
It turns out, though, Jeremy had already joined forces with Cheryl to stop my candidacy from going any further. A few months later, Jeremy, the man truly in charge of WEF, ate Cheryl and she was removed. I am sure you know him. He remains there today mapping away, a force for the sake of himself inside of WEF. What will WEF be when our buddy Klaus leaves? Assassins like Jurgens will run it into the ground, it seems.
Not only was I shocked by the very sudden turn of events — Klaus had literally been telling me about the wonderful nursery school my son would be attending — but it shook my professionally. My heart had already bid farewell to my job in Russia and I was dreaming of finally making a real difference in this world with the CityToken. Nothing could better begin to chip away at income inequality than my program, I believed. America had voted a “Trump” into office because of the effects of income inequality and I had a solution many, including Klaus, told me.
Needing time to recoup and gather my wits, our meeting would be delayed.
Literally, one year after we met in China, a meeting with you and your chief of staff, Joe, was confirmed. I booked my flight on my own dime and off I flew. The whole flight I went over and over my presentation. I imagined how in five years CityToken would be set up in at least a dozen 3rd-tier cities throughout the US.
Stepping out the elevator, I saw you up in your office. My nervousness vanished and a certain calming technique I have when meeting celebrities kicked in. Celebrities are just like us and maybe even more nervous — we fail and no problem. You guys are obligated to always be on and to avoid failure like plagues. I was going to calm you. I had done it when I met Dave Letterman, Bruce Springsteen, Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep — she let me kiss her cheek — and a slew of lesser greats, I would chill you out with “Brian energy.”
Ten minutes went by; twenty passed on and now the meeting was thirty minutes late and my coolness was heating up. A tightness was spreading across the back of my neck. My head began to hurt bad. My wife sent a message asking how it had gone. Hasn’t started yet, he is late. Good luck, honey, she wrote. Regardless, we are proud.
Finally, your chief of staff, Joe, walked in and apologized profusely for the tardiness. Just trying to get so many meetings done in so little time. I leave for vacation today. So let’s begin? Shall we wait for Marc? Oh no, he won’t be joining us. He isn’t here today. (I had just seen you descend the steps from your office moments before Joe walked in.)
The pain in my head entered into my teeth and mouth and dried up all of the saliva. I grabbed for my little cup of now-empty water and almost jammed my tongue into it to absorb the final three droplets hanging on the bottom, laughing at me. I will have to go to my next meeting in 15 minutes, so…perhaps we just skip the presentation and you tell me about the program?
18 minutes after I began, I sat there in the meeting room alone. Gathering my things and drinking more water. I took an anti-migraine pill because all the signs that I was about to be hit were there. Joe left 14 minutes after I began talking. He didn’t want to be late to the next meeting, he told me.
This is really an amazing program. I mean really. But, you know, Marc is more into saving the oceans now. Combating income inequality isn’t really his thing, Joe said. But thanks for coming anyway. It was a pleasure meeting you.
Desperate, I literally pleaded, you really don’t think there is someway this could be presented directly to Marc so perhaps he or Salesforce could help launch just one city with a small investment?
No, I don’t how that would be possible. It simply doesn’t help our bottom-line at all.
Marc, desperate Americans selected a racist, fascist president because they are so economically strapped and Joey’s only concern was Salesforce’s bottom-line. In order to launch one city with the CityToken program, I pretty much only needed the table in your meeting room and half of the really cool furniture in your lobby. That would investment would finally start a conversation about how to reverse the effects of income inequality.
You know what I did, Marc? I left. Turned off my phone. My head was exploding and so I went to a Giant’s afternoon game to just melt into my favorite sport. I drank 6 IPA’s and got really sunburned.
The oceans are still a mess, though, buddy; and, income inequality is worse than ever but your worth $7.8 billion as of May 2020. You work hard and are very talented. You deserve your success — but so do others.
Salesforce revenue in 2019 was nearly $14 billion.
Come on, man, really? | https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/an-open-letter-to-marc-benioff-88dc6e725d2c | ['Brian Kean'] | 2020-11-12 11:11:44.195000+00:00 | ['Silicon Valley', 'Salesforce', 'Blockchain Technology', 'Fundraising', 'Marc Benioff'] |
Amor e paixão | 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/me-ajude-a-crescer/amor-e-paix%C3%A3o-bf296a34cea4 | ['Karan Alves Pereira'] | 2020-12-23 20:58:56.798000+00:00 | ['Amor', 'Paixão', 'Jesus', 'Deus', 'Evangelho'] |
The Four Actions Framework — Guide your Student Life with This Business Concept | “Relate the text to yourself” may have been one of the most valuable lessons from my elementary school teachers. With this mindset, any reader can dismantle a piece of writing and apply it to their personal experiences.
For instance, I recently read a business book on market competition. Although the professional advice was catered towards large companies, I somehow related these corporate strategies to my life as a teen.
The book was called Blue Ocean Strategy written by Renée Mauborgne and W. Chan Kim. Here’s a line from the book that summarizes its purpose:
“The aim of the blue ocean strategy is straightforward: to allow any organization — large or small, new or incumbent — to step up to the challenge of creating blue oceans in an opportunity-maximizing, risk-minimizing way. The shift from competing to creating new market space and hence making the competition irrelevant.”
Book: Blue Ocean Strategy written by W.Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne — Highly Recommend!
Instead of trying to find ways to compete with similar companies, Mauborgne and Kim encourage businesses to find innovative ways to create untapped markets. The book discusses the effectiveness of Blue Ocean Strategy and the various methods to identify new markets.
Although my intention in reading this book was to gain more knowledge as a business student, I gradually realized that much of this advice was not only applicable to large coorporations — it was equally valuable to students like me.
As a student, I often catch myself in “red oceans”: oversaturated markets with lots of competition. In this “ocean”, I find myself facing numerous teens who all join youth-run organizations, school clubs, and other extracurriculars.
Don’t get me wrong, my goal is not to criticize these endeavours. Rather, I am looking to answer the why. Why are these positions important to us? What is the purpose of these activities?
The answer lies in the changing expectations that are imposed upon students. One of the greatest differences between the highschoolers of Gen Z and its preceding generations is that Gen Z is working hard to be “well-rounded”. In other words, not just high G.P.As and honour roll grades — we need to be the leaders of school clubs, debators on the National Team, and interns at Microsoft.
how my accomplished friends can make me feel sometimes
What is the purpose of all these experiences? Are they really as valuable as they claim to be? Better yet: how can I ensure that these activities “contribute to my life in a positive manner”?
I am not claiming that these activities are time-wasters. However, I believe that we could use the Blue Ocean Strategy to stand out from the crowd and simultaneously gain valuable experiences.
The Blue Ocean Strategy proposes the Four Actions Framework, which “asks four key questions to challenge an industry’s strategic logic and business model”.
In our context: how can students change their daily activities to face competition while (more importantly) living a productive lifestyle?
The four questions that the book proposes are:
Which of the factors that the industry takes for granted should be eliminated? Which factors should be reduced well below the industry standard? Which factors should be created that the industry has never offered? Which factors should be raised well above the industry standard?
Let’s answer these four questions.
First, what should you eliminate?
These are the commonly overlooked activities that are frequently used by everyone. A familiar example is a volunteer position at the local summer camp. As one of the most common occupations for high school freshmen, many students automatically turn to the opportunity. Although it may be a valuable experience for some, it could easily be a mundane position that was pursued without much thought. It’s easy to follow the crowd when scouting for opportunities — but if you don’t think the experience is valuable to your learning, eliminate it.
Another experience that you could eliminate is the low-commitment role. I used to tutor a kid every Sunday. I earned money and it was easy. However, eventually I found the tutoring sessions tedious and mundane. At a certain point, I quit the job and I couldn’t have been more grateful for this decision. Every Sunday, I have two more hours to invest immerse myself in activities that I’m more passionate about.
Some may argue that low-commitment jobs are useful for resume-padding. Wouldn’t it be easier to fill the page with several low-commitment roles instead of a few high-commitment positions?
There is definitely a contrast in number, but let me ask you this: how are you different from all the others who do the same thing? What valuable experience can you talk about? When you invest yourself in a greater commitment, you push yourself to learn and improve. There is nothing more valuable than building individual skills from personal commitments.
Finally, you should eliminate the things that you don’t like. This seems pretty obvious, but it applies to many commitments that begin in childhood. Under parental influence, many children partake in extracurriculars that they grow to love or hate. By the time they’ve grown old enough to realize their displeasure in the activity, they’ve already invested so much time and effort that it’s just too difficult to let go.
For me, it was dancing. I started dancing 12 years ago and spent thousands of dollars on my lessons. However, I was never enthusiastic at practices, and the applause I received on stage didn’t satisfy me the way it motivated the other dancers. It was difficult for my family to accept that I wanted to drop my greatest investment, but I was adamant. By discontinuing dance, I was free to pursue something that I genuinely enjoyed: volleyball. It became a sport that I not only loved but also learned important life lessons from.
In summary, evaluate your activities to identify the ones that are taken advantage of, require low commitment, or simply do not enjoy. You’ll be relieved and more ambitious when you let go of things that hold you down.
Let’s move on to the next question.
What factors in your life should you reduce?
The difference between the reducible activities and eliminatory ones is that reducible events are still important, but often deserve less attention. The way I like to think about it is: if I spend less time on this activity now, will it impact my future significantly? If the answer is “no” or “I don’t know but I’m doing it anyway”, push it down the priorities. This could include unproductive meetings or endless conferences that you attend with no specific purpose. We don’t want to stop having meetings or attending conferences, but the benefits of reducing the frequency of these events often outweigh the costs.
A common example for teens is: social hangouts. It’s undoubtedly important to spent time with friends — but if I go to Starbucks with my best friend biweekly instead of weekly, will it negatively impact my future? Oftentimes, the answer is no. By reducing (not eliminating) the amount of time I spend leisurely, I’m able to advance in the academic goals that do directly impact my future.
when you get caught up in all the exciting social events, what do you do?
Now that we’ve reflected on the things we can eliminate or reduce from our lives, what do we do with this extra time?
We think about the factors that could be raised and created.
Factors that should be raised
Factors that should be raised entails the requirements to achieve a certain result. For instance, grades and test scores are an essential component for university applications. Most students recognize that good grades will increase their chance of getting into their dream college. Although high grades do not always correlate with success, it is important to think about the requirements in the area you want to pursue… and then excel at them.
Another factor to raise is your strength. If something comes easier to you than others, you should keep at it! Your talent combined with hard work will achieve outstanding results.
Factors that you should create.
In Blue Ocean Strategy, they ask: which factors should be created that the industry has never offered?
This is probably the most difficult and compelling factor that you should focus on. How do you truly stand out from the others? What unique experiences contribute to your exceptional candidacy?
As the book said:
“This is the chance to identify the core value, or the major unique attribute/difference that your company will offer in order to attract new markets.”
In my mind, I think of it as:
what are the unidentified holes in our society that require mending?
Just like all the Youth Non-Profit Organizations that try to improve society, what is something unique that I can offer? Being able to identify this “hole” and proposing a creative solution validates your role as an active member and ambitious innovator for the community. Together, we can mend the holes and build a stronger foundation for society.
How will you stand out amongst the others?
Even though this is the most challenging factor, I encourage you to think about it — then take action.
While I reflect on my personal experiences in an attempt to compose a brilliant academic journey, I hope that you can use the four actions framework to reflect on your life now. Regardless of your age, this framework can apply to all, allowing us to improve our lives by categorizing the four different factors.
Before You Go
My name is Julia Li, and I’m still figuring it all out… but I’d like you to join me :) | https://medium.com/@julia2002.zl/the-four-actions-framework-guide-your-student-life-with-this-business-concept-82bbf8ac8b13 | ['Julia Li'] | 2020-05-27 20:42:30.429000+00:00 | ['Productivity', 'Strategy', 'First Post', 'Teenagers', 'Student Life'] |
What are On-Demand Feature Environments? | On-Demand feature environments
In this current world, when people are moving towards trunk-based development patterns and using feature flags to have frequent deployments to reduce the time to market, Is it worth to think about having feature environments?
Short Answer: YES!!!!
Continuous Delivery has always been a hot topic where we endlessly discuss and continuously improve to reach our products to the hands of users, safely and quickly in a sustainable way. This article brings continuous delivery to the next level by introducing a concept of “feature environments”.
A feature environment is an on-demand environment to test your “short-lived” features independently and without any dependencies before being deployed to production.
In this approach, you can run a dedicated test on your features before being merged into the master w/o blocking any of your team members’ ongoing works. These feature environments will be spun up on-demand when you create a feature branch from the master in your GitHub repository and the environment will be destroyed once the feature development is completed. Thus you will always have a clean production-ready master branch that can be deployed anytime to production.
Why Feature Environment?
Mostly, you see a setup with a shared staging environment, where a lot of features are mashed together, often motivated by an ineffective release process, making the team bulking features for every release. Feature environments enable you to have a staging environment for every single short-lived feature branch you create. This means that QA for a feature can access and test that feature separately without hindering other development works.
Faster Delivery — Chunks
Using the concept of Feature environments, you won’t have the hassle of cherry-picking or worrying about untested features deployed to production, because all the features (or feature branches) that are merged to master branch are been tested in feature environments. Once these feature branches are merged to master, it kicks starts the automated regression test suite to run against the master branch to make sure the existing features are also working as intended.
Thus features are not pilled up in the master or staging environment for 2 weeks until all the features are ready to be released to the production.
We have feature flags, isn’t it? Why do we need both feature flags & feature environments?
Lets first understand what is Feature Flags! Feature flags allow you to decouple features rollout from code deployment. Or in other words, it is the ability to decouple deployment from release and achieve fine-grained control of when new code gets exposed and to who allows teams to move faster with less risk.
At the same time, the Feature Environment is a feature branch hosted on as a separate environment enabling QA to test that feature separately before merging into master or deploying it to production. Thus if you have to release several enhancements of an exiting feature in a sprint or if you have some hotfixes to be tested and deployed, you can best utilize the feature environments.
Feature flags will be best suited for bigger initiatives with target release dates, where you can turn off the features are continue deployments to production w/o holding the code changes.
Again to make it clear, feature flags are important or useful for having frequent deployments and feature environments will be more contributing to have quality releases.
Do we need feature environments for all the features developed?
Emm..not really! It doesn’t mean that each and every feature that is built needs to have a feature environment. A new initiative that is developed in phases probably doesn’t need to have a dedicated feature environment but it could be just behind feature flags. Having said that at the time of releasing this initiative, you can still utilize the feature environments.
Below are the scenarios, you can best utilize feature environments.
When you have to release several enhancements of an exiting feature in a sprint.
To release bug and defect fixes in the application.
Hotfix releases to production w/o hindering on-going developments of the team.
Current Situation
Below is the high-level pictorial representation of the current development process
Big staging environment
Highlights
Team members develop features in their feature branches.
Merges the feature branches to master branch and deploy to staging/non-production environment for QA.
After QA’ing in staging, deploy to production.
What are our pain points?
Big staging environments.
Untested codes in staging environments or master branch
Testing or releasing a feature could be blocked by another buggy feature in the staging environment.
Ideal Solution
Below is the high-level pictorial representation of the ideal development process
On-Demand Feature Environment
Highlights
Team members develop features in their feature branches.
Each “git push” to a feature branch will deploy the latest code changes to dedicated isolated feature environments.
Dynamically generated feature environments URLs are given to the team for testing.
After QA’ing the feature, the Pull Request of that feature branch is merged to the master branch.
What are the required changes from our current way of working?
Below are the areas to change in order to achieve the feature environment concepts.
Changes in Development Practices. Delivery Pipeline changes. Infrastructure Changes
Below are the detailed explanations for each section.
Changes in Development Practices
In order to effectively start utilizing the feature environments, we need to have some amendments to the current development practices.
1.Naming convention of GIT branches — The important catch here is that the GIT branching name is the first decision point to have a feature environment associated with a feature branch. The feature branches with the prefix “feature-” can only have a feature environment associated with it; which gives you an option that if you don’t really want to have a feature environment you can use your existing naming convention.
Samples:-
Branch Name — feature-ACO-23
Feature Environment — https://feature-ACO-23.staging.xxx.com
Branch Name — hotfix-ACO-24
Feature Environment — https://hotfix-ACO-24.staging.xxx.com
2.Complete Feature Testing before PR Merge — With this approach, we want to complete the testing of a feature developed in its respective feature environment before the Pull Request(PR) is merged to the master branch. Below are the action or steps for the PR process.
- Once you create a “feature-” prefixed feature branch, a feature environment is dynamically spun up for you.
- Each push you do to the feature branch will be deployed to the feature environment.
- After the feature development, the PR should be raised for code review.
- Once the code review is completed, leave a message in PR that it’s ready for Automation/Manual feature testing.
- Now the feature testing will be carried out in the dedicated feature environments and the feedback is captured in the PR.
- If all good, the PR should be approved(min of 2 approvals — code review & testing outcomes) and the feature branch is merged to master.
3.Merging & Deleting the GIT branch will shut down the Feature Environments — This will be the final step from the side of Continuous Integration point of view. Once the PR is merged and the branch is deleted, this will automatically remove or shut down the feature environment created from the respective feature branch. Again this is more into stressing the best practices and moreover housekeeping of your feature branches and environments.
Delivery Pipeline changes
As a reflection of the changes in the Continuous Integration part, below are the changes in the pipeline side.
1.New Delivery pipeline for Feature Environments — You will have a new pipeline in your CI tool dedicated to managing the build & deployment to your feature environments.
2.Stages in Feature-Based Delivery Pipeline — Below is the pictorial representation of the feature delivery pipeline and the stages involved in each feature pipeline.
stages in feature pipeline
3. New serverless (Lambda) function to shutdown the Feature Environment — As mentioned before, the feature branches are merged back to `master` after the development, and testing is completed for that feature. After the merge, once the feature branch is deleted, the corresponding feature environment is also destroyed.
Sample:-
Merge branch to master -> Delete feature branch -> Auto trigger Lambda function to clean up the feature environment.
Infrastructure Changes
Certainly, we have to modify the current infrastructure and add new services to achieve the said functionalities. Below are the key areas involved in the infrastructure side.
1.Routing of feature Environments — The feature environment URL will be registered into the Route 53 and ALB, thus whenever developers hit the feature environment URL, then it will forward it to the corresponding ECS service.
2.Automate Deployment to Feature Environments — As mentioned previously, for each ‘git push’, the code is been deployed to the feature environment. Below are the configuration settings that are done in Buildkite for the same.
3.Removal of Obsolete Feature Environments — The logic behind the removal of the feature environments is invoking the GitHub webbook on the deletion of the feature branch which will invoke the Lambda function in AWS to delete the specific ECS service that is related to that branch.
Remove obsolete feature environments
Advantages
Below are the benefits we are entertaining with this feature environment concept.
Faster time to market
Ensure the features released are tested and verified.
No dependency to release features.
Increasing product quality.
Run experiments and spikes in isolated environments
Hotfix’s doesn’t need to override the builds in the staging environment or block any other development works.
No single Integration Testing Environment.
Happier Teams
Hope this helps you guys and wishing you all the success in your works! Cheers! | https://medium.com/techbeatly/what-are-on-demand-feature-environments-982eaa96fdd5 | ['Arun Surendran'] | 2020-09-22 15:15:15.712000+00:00 | ['Feature Flags', 'Feature Environments', 'Continuous Delivery', 'Ci Cd Pipeline', 'Continuous Integration'] |
Case Study: CNN Indonesia app redesign to improve readability | Overview
This project is an exploratory project for UI redesign. In this project, I tried to understand the UX, dissect the appearance of the user interface in the CNN Indonesia app, create an information hierarchy, and redesign the user interface.
Role: UI/UX Designer
Tools: Figma
Timeline: 3 days
CNN Indonesia App
CNN Indonesia presents the latest news & selected information quickly & reliably. Various latest news can be accessed 24 hours a week & equipped with various interesting topics, such as Political news, world news, economy, modern lifestyle & football news.
With the new design provided by CNN Indonesia, we can explore various news categories more easily and quickly than before, simply by tap or swipe the news category you want to read. You can also enjoy CNN TV Live Broadcast for Free. Some of CNN Indonesia’s superior features include live streaming of CNN Indonesia TV, news focus, live reports, push notifications, night mode, and breaking news.
Design Process
There are several stages of process design including:
1. Understand the UX
2. Dissection
3. Make Information Hierarchy
4. Redesign the UI
Understand the UX
The first step is to know the UX on each page. In this project, two pages of the CNN application will be used, namely the home and article. | https://medium.muz.li/case-study-cnn-indonesia-app-redesign-to-improve-readability-21d32b59bd4c | ['Fildzah Zata Syauqina Izzati'] | 2021-09-12 09:55:30.962000+00:00 | ['User Research', 'User Interface Design', 'Redesign', 'Ui Ux', 'News Apps'] |
A high school graduation forecast from WICHE | How does the high school to college pipeline look?
Many American colleges and universities recruit undergraduate students from the pool of recent high school graduates. This is usually the stereotypical first-year college student image, a bright 18-year-old who transitions from their senior high school experience to being university frosh over a short (if dramatic) summer. It’s only one segment of the higher ed student body, as more and more adults enroll, but let’s focus on it for now.
The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) just released an updated report on high school graduate population projections, and it’s sobering for those who haven’t been tracking this issue in particular or demographics in general.
tl;dr version: high school grads will peak in 2025, then decline.
Let’s dig into the report and bring out some highlights.
WICHE situates their projections in recent history. Consider their graph:
From the early 1990s on high school graduation numbers really soared. This helped feed into the major higher ed expansion at the same time. But starting in 2025 those numbers will start ticking down. That downward slope continues for more than a decade. “The U.S. high school graduating Class of 2037 is projected to be about the same in number as Class of 2014 (3.5 million).”
This is a national overview. Regional differences can be strong. WICHE forecasts midwestern and northeastern graduate numbers to keep falling, while the south (mostly Texas and Florida) continues to produce bigger graduating classes. In the west, it’s mostly about one state:
The number of California graduates continued to increase heading into the projections, but at about half previous rates of increase: total California high school graduates increased 2 percent annually, on average between 2003 and 2011, and 1 percent annually, on average between 2011 and 2019. Predicted stagnation in high school graduate numbers for California, and then predicted contraction…
In terms of race and ethnicity, WICHE supports the consensus view: declining white numbers, unchanged black graduates, and rising Asian and multiracial populations. One surprising detail for some is that Latinx birthrates have started dropping. “[A]fter 2007, the greatest decreases in births accrued with Hispanic mothers — with 17 percent fewer Hispanic births in 2018 than 2007.”
One key point, and WICHE is careful to make this right away: the report does *not* account for COVID-19. It’s based on data extending through the year 2019. National Student Clearinghouse data indicates that 2020 saw a major drop in high school grads enrolling in higher ed. WICHE thinks that 2020 grad numbers might actually be higher, as schools tried hard to be flexible, but that 2021’s class may shrink.
What does this mean for higher education?
On the one hand, the rising numbers for the next five years may cheer admissions offices and those who pay attention to their work. Amid the many difficult short- and long-term trends, this looks like a medium-term opportunity, at least for campuses seeking to fight against enrollment decline. It helps that the actual numbers for 2019 were higher than WICHE anticipated.
On the other, the 2025 peak is right in line with Nathan Grawe’s model. Some of you will recall that Grawe forecast a drop caused by the 2008 financial crash and its negative impact on childbirth. 2008 + 18 takes us right to 2026. Inside Higher Ed quoted a WICHE leader on this:
“That good news really can’t escape demography,” said Patrick Lane, vice president of policy, analysis and research at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. “There are simply fewer students available that were born in and after the Great Recession to fill college seats going forward.”
The WICHE report may also encourage people in and around academia to pay more attention to demographics, because changes to birthrates are a fundamental driver behind those high school graduation numbers. And the powerful trend here is for fewer births.
Some campuses may decide to expand ties with high schools in order to improve the flow of students from the latter to the former. There are all kinds of ways to do this, of course, including letting high school students take college classes, colleges loaning advanced scientific equipment to K-12 districts that can’t afford them, and so on.
Another strategy may be to recruit more from private high schools, as they are now doing better that publics:
Nationally, private high school graduates are now projected to increase in number by as much as 13 percent from Class of 2017 to 2025… Then, even as the number of U.S. public school graduates is projected to begin contracting after 2025, 9 percent more private high school graduates are projected by Class of 2030 compared to Class of 2017. Private high school graduates are projected as 10–11 percent of U.S. total high school graduates over the course of the projections. So, while public school populations still drive the overall number and patterns for total U.S. high school graduates, these positive private school trends contribute some “cushion” to the overall downward trend that is predicted by annual decreases in the number of young children beginning with 2007.
We could also see the reverse, as some campuses cut back on recruiting 18-year-olds in favor of adults.
Another strategy: improving outreach to students of color, as they constitute a growing aggregate. Obviously this is a major concern in 2020. Perhaps the WICHE report will spur institutions to keep focusing on that in the future.
(cross-posted to my blog) | https://medium.com/@bryanalexander/a-high-school-graduation-forecast-from-wiche-265a1111f2c4 | ['Bryan Alexander'] | 2020-12-17 01:49:29.826000+00:00 | ['University', 'High School', 'Forecasting', 'Higher Education', 'College'] |
SPAC Is the New Black | FINANCIAL MARKETS
SPAC Is the New Black
The IPO-alternative has made a massive comeback and investor appetite will keep the party going in 2021
The last few years have seen a 2000s Wall Street favorite — the special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) — returning to former glory.
Using SPACs to take companies public was an uncommon practice in the decade following the financial crisis of 2008. But activity has surged in recent years. In 2020, SPAC IPOs represent around half of all capital raised via IPOs.
This year has seen sports betting firm DraftKings ($DKNG), electric vehicle project Fisker ($FSR), Richard Branson’s aerospace bet Virgin Galactic ($SPCE), and esports monetization platform Skillz ($SKLZ) amongst other exciting names go public through SPAC mergers.
Several SPACs already announced acquisition targets. Those expecting merger in 2021 includes DMY Technology Group II ($DMYD). They’re targeting sports data and statistics provider Genius Sports. The price is an estimated $1.5 billion.
AMCI Acquisition Corp ($AMCI) will attempt a merger with hydrogen fuel cell technology firm Advent Technologies in a deal worth $500 million.
SPACs have become a viable alternative to IPOs.
Churchill Capital II Corp ($CCX) will take over digital learning provider Skillsoft, valued around $1.3 billion. After the merger, they will acquire Global Knowledge Training for an additional $230 million.
Amongst the most notable are CC Neuberger Principal Holdings I ($PCPL) looking to acquire SaaS Supply Chain Software developer E2Open in a whopping $2.2 billion deal. E2Open was publicly listed until 2015 where a private equity fund bought and delisted it.
The increasing amount of SPACs — and the increasing amount of high-profile companies involved in SPAC mergers — raise several questions.
Why has the alternative road to the stock exchange experienced such a rise in traffic? Are SPAC companies worse investment opportunities than those taking the IPO route?
As clarified below, SPACs have become a viable alternative to IPOs. There is no sight of the tide turning anytime soon, but despite their popularity, they carry significant risk for retail investors. | https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/spac-is-the-new-black-296947838e2e | ['Asger Bruhn'] | 2020-12-27 04:43:02.334000+00:00 | ['Innovation', 'Investing', 'Finance', 'Business', 'Venture Capital'] |
Setting up a CI/CD machine with TeamCity | CI/CD in a nutshell
Continuous Integration & Continuous Delivery, or CI/CD for short, is a software engineering practice to automate the process of integrating, producing and deploying software application in short time cycles. This helps detect problems earlier during application development and reduces time and costs associated with changes made to the code during incremental updates. This practice requires the project manager to maintain a code repository, automate the build process, enforce a self-testing code policy, require daily commits, building and deploying to test systems often.
Since the early days when Jenkins was the leading platform for CI/CD in 2005, a lot of tools have appeared. Stackify lists 50 tools related to CI/CD. For a comparison, you may see the Wikipedia page or visit this GitHub page.
Installing TeamCity
In this article, we review the steps to set up the TeamCity from JetBrains on an Ubuntu virtual machine. The first step is to download the tarball from the vendor and extract it to a, say /opt, directory.
Next, download the recommended version of Java run-time (JDK or JRE) as the underlying framework for TeamCity. JetBrains recommends a 32-bit JDK 1.8+ from AdoptOpenJDK to be used. Initially, I had difficulty pointing the TeamCity to use the JRE, even when I had set the JAVA_HOME & PATH environment variables correctly:
export JAVA_HOME=/opt/{JDK location where bin exists}
export PATH=$PATH:JAVA_HOME/bin
To avoid any possible problem, please copy the extracted JDK contents to /opt/TeamCity/jre folder.
Next, you have to create a database for use by TeamCity. I used PostgreSQL for two reasons: it’s free of charge, and is compatible with SonarQube 7.9, which I use for source code analysis. The latest versions of SonarQube does not support MySQL server anymore!
Installing PostgreSQL
The installation is very easy. Update the apt repository and install it with apt:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install postgresql
Next, run the command line interface, “sudo -i -u postgres psql” and create a database and user for TeamCity.
CREATE DATABASE teamcity;
CREATE USER tc WITH ENCRYPTED PASSWORD ‘password’ ;
And grant the user all the required rights for management.
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE teamcity TO tc;
Then, enter \q to exit the command line interface.
Initializing TeamCity
To run the main service by just type “/opt/TeamCity/bin/runAll.sh start”.
If you want to configure the service to run at start-up, open the /etc/rc.local:
sudo nano /etc/rc.local
And, add the above command inside it, and make sure the file is executable (chown +x /etc/rc.local). Now, open up your Firefox and go to the default service address: http://localhost:8111
TeamCity’s initial page after installation
Choose a data directory and proceed to the next page. You need to select the database type. You can opt for the internal DB or select the PostgreSQL you set up earlier.
Database Selection Page
To connect the TeamCity with a database, the appropriate JDBC connector should be copied to .BuildServer/lib/jdbc folder. To get the PostgreSQL connector download the .jar driver from PostgreSQL page.
Enter Database Connection Info
Next, you need to accept the license agreement and create an administrator account.
Creating the Admin Account
The installation is complete, but that’s just the beginning of another journey with TeamCity! Hope you have a smooth installation process. | https://medium.com/@alirezamustafa/setting-up-a-ci-cd-machine-with-teamcity-a6944b8003ce | ['Seyed Alireza Mustafa'] | 2019-10-04 14:13:25.964000+00:00 | ['Postgresql', 'Teamcity', 'Installation', 'Ci Cd Pipeline', 'Ubuntu'] |
IBM Automation Decision Services wins a 2020 platinum Spark Design Award | The IBM Automation Decision Services (ADS) design team is closing out 2020 on a strong note as Platinum level winner of the Spark Design Awards’ in the Digital category. As we plan to head into the winter holidays, I couldn’t be more excited to see our designers recognized for the hard work they put in this year.
The Spark Design Awards is an international design competition that seeks to “promote better living through design.” The evaluation criteria focused on innovation i.e., does the design “Spark,” i.e., innovate, change the game
and in some way help humanity or the environment we live in. When their global jury of design experts, looked at submissions, they first and foremost assessed if design broke new grounds and improved quality of life.
How Automation Decision Services breaks new ground
See how ADS enables business analysts to worker smarter
Business users have to analyze documents, extract the policies, and ask their IT department to change the rules in the application code. This is a complicated and lengthy process.
IBM Automation Decision Services (available as part of IBM Cloud Pak for Automation) helps business users make the business decisions through a simple interface that requires no coding. Because conditions evolve, business users can also quickly change the way decisions are made and stay aligned with important business requirements.
Decisions are made with well-known conditions and well-defined policies. But they increasingly require you have a view into the future. ADS makes the link between AI predictions and concrete decisions simple and actionable for workers without AI expertise.
Setting up users for success
ADS gives business users an introduction to the primary concepts of diagram building
This design team worked to ensure non-technical users had all of the information and guidance they need to succeed. ADS’ clear, simple, and compelling visual layout provide meaningful engagement to users.
They also provided sample projects and instructive empty states to give users a starting point and show them how they can use decisions in specific domain contexts. Every detail matters.
Empty states are a simple yet powerful way to keep a user informed and supported.
The user can easily complete a preconfigured predictive model with the help of a tutorial to configure the invocation to Machine Learning.
The team conducted extensive user research to understand the pain points and needs of their existing customers. As the project progressed, we continued to apply the IBM Enterprise Design Thinking framework and involve sponsor users to help us verify our hypotheses, and to gain valuable feedback on our designs. In the initial steps of the design process, they regularly shared wireframes with sponsor users to get early feedback. To ensure great user experience made it to production, they also organized several usability tests with early versions in live code.
Helping businesses through uncertain times
As businesses constantly adjust and readjust to meet public health needs, IBM is proposing ADS to companies that need to decide in real time how they can make working conditions safe and anticipate risk.
Through design that has democratized decision-making, this team has given business users the potential to help their companies and colleagues with some of their greatest challenges to date.
Winning team | https://medium.com/design-ibm/ibm-automation-decision-services-wins-a-platinum-spark-design-award-c259b90c467 | ['Arin Bhowmick'] | 2020-12-09 05:17:25.874000+00:00 | ['Design', 'UX Design', 'Automation', 'UI', 'UX'] |
Chess and Mathematics | A common way to tie mathematics to a game is through probability. Popular games such as poker and craps can be analyzed very thoroughly with probability concepts. That is because these games deal with chance and incomplete information. Chess however, has no randomness or hiding of information. Because of this, we say that chess has perfect information putting it in the same category as games like go and checkers.
Why, then, has chess not been solved yet? In other words, why don’t we know the exact best move for every situation? Simply due to the complexity of chess (Claude Shannon found that there are 10⁴³ legal positions), it is way beyond the scope of modern computation. However, the notorious Zermelo’s Theorem does have something to say on this matter.
Ernst Zemelo, most famous for his work in Axiomatic Set Theory. Source
Widely regarded as the first theorem in game theory, Ernst Zermelo was interested in applying set theory to chess. This came as mathematics was undergoing a radical revolution in the early 20th century. He comes to the conclusion “in chess either White can force a win, or Black can force a win, or both sides can force at least a draw.” While this seems to be a very obvious statement, the paper had an incredible on developing the theory of games! If you are interested in the details of his proof and the historical context, I recommend you check out this article.
So we’ve heard about a mathematicians who proved something about chess, what about famous chess players who are also mathematicians? As you can see on this page, there are a lot! I’m going to focus on two, Emanuel Lasker and Max Euwe, who were world champions during their respective eras.
Lasker in the 1930’s. Source
Emanuel Lasker was born in 1868, and started studying math very early in school. He eventually studied mathematics in Göttingen, the most prestigious mathematics university at the time, under David Hilbert. There, he did very important work in algebraic geometry. Lasker proved that every polynomial ring can be decomposed into finitely many prime ideals in 1905. This theorem was generalized by Emmy Noether in 1921. Noether extended Lasker’s work to include all ideals, and this theorem is now known as the Lasker-Noether Theorem.
In the meantime, Lasker was also incredibly busy playing chess. He was the world champion from 1894 to 1921, the longest period of any other world champion. At the time, he was considered a psychological player, meaning he intentionally played weak moves to confuse his opponents. It is now accepted that he was just incredibly ahead of his time and was actually playing very strategically. Even today, his plays are difficult to follow and modern chess players struggle to classify them.
One more notable thing about Lasker: in addition to being advised by David Hilbert, he was very good friends with Albert Einstein. The two would converse regularly about a variety of topics, ranging from physics to chess. Upon Lasker’s death, Einstein had this to say: | https://www.cantorsparadise.com/chess-and-mathematics-2f801fb15878 | [] | 2021-01-14 07:56:03.305000+00:00 | ['Chess', 'Mathematics', 'Game Theory', 'Study', 'History'] |
The Greatest Weather Hazard While Flying | Instrument Meteorological Conditions (IMC)
Today I will be presenting why I believe Instrument Meteorological Conditions (IMC) are the most hazardous conditions to fly in.
IMC conditions can be defined as: “meteorological conditions expressed in terms of visibility, distance from cloud, and ceiling, less than the minima specified for visual meteorological conditions.”
What does VMC mean?
VMC stands for visual meteorological conditions, and its minimums are dependent on what kind of airspace you’re in.
How Do Clouds Form?
according to weather.gov
“Clouds form when the invisible water vapor in the air condenses into visible water droplets or ice crystals. For this to happen, the parcel of air must be saturated, i.e. unable to hold all the water it contains in vapor form, so it starts to condense into a liquid or solid form.”
Currency Vs Proficiency
The words proficiency vs currency are often heard within the aviation world. Currency means that a pilot is technically legal to fly based upon a certain amount of experience in a certain time frame. Proficiency means that you can safely fly in certain conditions. For pilots wanting to fly in IMC conditions, they must hold an instrument rating for each specific category of airplane they fly. This simply means that a pilot who is instrument rated in a single-engine airplane could not fly in IMC conditions without being rated in a multi-engine airplane.
If a pilot wants to fly in IMC conditions they must meet the currency requirements described in the Federal Aviation Regulations (61.57)
The regulation states: Within the 6 calendar months preceding the month of the flight, that person performed and logged at least the following tasks and iterations in an airplane:
(i) Six instrument approaches.
(ii) Holding procedures and tasks.
(iii) Intercepting and tracking courses through the use of navigational electronic systems.
Pilots who mistake currency as the same thing as proficiency are at a high risk of making a fatal mistake, especially when operating in IMC conditions. An easy way to understand the difference between proficiency and currency is currency simply means you’re legally allowed to fly. To me, proficiency means would I feel comfortable flying in IMC conditions with my parents/friends on board with me? The regulations simply states that If I accomplish all of these activities within 6 months I’m good to go. In reality, would I feel comfortable if I did all of these activities in one day then waited till the last day I was current to go fly in poor IMC conditions? The answer is no, when dealing with proficiency, especially when operating in IMC conditions your situational awareness and flying abilities diminish very quickly if you do not practice on a regular basis.
One of the greatest killers in aviation is either private pilots who are not rated to fly in IMC inadvertently entering weather conditions where they cannot tell where the horizon is. This leads to them entering an usual nose-high or nose-low attitude. On average, Private pilots who enter IMC conditions only last about 3 minutes before being killed. The other killer in general aviation would be a pilot who holds an instrument rating but is not proficient to fly in IMC conditions. This scenario is sometimes very difficult to make a judgment call on because it's hard to determine how much proficiency has been lost since the last time you either simulated these conditions or actually flew in IMC conditions. One way pilots can mitigate the risk proficiency is to set personal minimums. Setting personal minimums can be thought of as you personally making your own set of experience/weather minimums to go out and fly in. An example would be not flying is visibility less than 2 statute miles. As your experience goes up pilots can lower their minimums as they deem fit.
Overall, I believe pilots need to be extremely careful when operating in IMC conditions, especially if they do not have an autopilot to rely on. When pilots make personal minimums they need to draw a hard line in the sand and not break them because it could very possibly be that pilot's last flight.
References —
Weather.gov. (n.d.). What causes clouds? https://www.weather.gov/source/zhu/ZHU_Training_Page/clouds/cloud_development/clouds.htm
AirSafetyInstitute. (2014, September 03). 178 Seconds to Live. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7t4IR-3mSo
Singleton, B. J. (2016, March 11). AOPA Online Members Only — Currency vs. Proficiency: Current vs. Proficient. https://www.aopa.org/training-and-safety/active-pilots/safety-and-technique/currency-vs-proficiency/currency-vs-proficiency-current-vs-proficient
Word Count: 697 | https://medium.com/@johndebrey/the-greatest-weather-hazard-while-flying-81a121f14d29 | ['John Debrey'] | 2020-12-18 21:27:28.150000+00:00 | ['Aviation Industry', 'Weather', 'Pilot', 'Aviation', 'Flying'] |
How (and Why!) to Build Killer Bulk APIs — Part 1 | Looking into boosting your application with bulk APIs? Working on a feature that requires bulk actions and can’t find any standards or best practices? You’re in the right place!
This is the first of two posts; in this Part 1 we will cover fundamental bulk API concepts and design approaches, while Part 2 will focus on architecture and implementation.
In this post, we will:
Run through what Bulk APIs are
See how they can bring value to you as an API provider and to your clients consuming it
Explore some design approaches while giving concrete examples of how some of the biggest API providers are doing it
Whether you’re taking your first steps in writing APIs or you’re an experienced API guru writing REST controllers in your sleep, whether you’re a developer, an architect, a tech lead or any other R&D stakeholder (even a product manager!) looking into adding bulk capabilities to your product, this post (and the one that follows) will introduce you to some useful bulk API design tips and best practices we learned at CyberArk. These will help you enhance and scale up your application’s API layer, regardless of your technology stack.
What is a Bulk API?
Just so we’re aligned, the basic idea of a bulk API is applying multiple operations using a single HTTP request/response round-trip. This concept is sometimes referred to as ‘batch’ (more on that later). In this post, we’ll be focusing on write-oriented operations (writing, updating, deleting) in the context of bulk, since read operations are usually supported out-of-the-box.
Got It… Why Do I Need It?
Bulk APIs can be of value in several use-cases:
Bulk UI operations: sometimes your application’s UI displays a grid with multiple items being modified at the same time. While this list of items can be very large, it makes sense to make a single request to the server when hitting the ‘Save’ button, instead of initiating a bunch of individual requests, overwhelming the server and dealing with the responses one-by-one.
sometimes your application’s UI displays a grid with multiple items being modified at the same time. While this list of items can be very large, it makes sense to make a single request to the server when hitting the ‘Save’ button, instead of initiating a bunch of individual requests, overwhelming the server and dealing with the responses one-by-one. Offline sync: your mobile users’ devices might lose connectivity at times (when switching from Wi-Fi to a cellular network or when taking the subway) while users expect continuous UX when working on something. A bulk API can be useful by gathering all the things the user did while offline and sending them to the server when the network is back up.
your mobile users’ devices might lose connectivity at times (when switching from Wi-Fi to a cellular network or when taking the subway) while users expect continuous UX when working on something. A bulk API can be useful by gathering all the things the user did while offline and sending them to the server when the network is back up. Performance: an API request has the overhead of the HTTP round-trip. In an API intensive application, this overhead might have performance impact on the client, the network and the server. Instead of sending 100 requests with 100 HTTP request/response cycles, with a bulk API we’re doing it once.
an API request has the overhead of the HTTP round-trip. In an API intensive application, this overhead might have performance impact on the client, the network and the server. Instead of sending 100 requests with 100 HTTP request/response cycles, with a bulk API we’re doing it once. Transactional behavior : a bulk API allows your client to bundle a group of actions into a single transaction that can succeed or fail together as a whole.
: a bulk API allows your client to bundle a group of actions into a single transaction that can succeed or fail together as a whole. Rate limiters: it is very common for SaaS API providers to apply some kind of rate limiting strategy (usually using some Web Application Firewall or an API Gateway) to protect their infrastructure and prevent it from being stressed by non-legitimate traffic that might undermine its stability. This is generally a good practice when it comes to API architecture but might also victimize legit users and prevent them from using your application. The utilization of Bulk APIs, in this case a set of APIs that you might choose to only expose to specific consumers like B2B’s or other integration partners, will decrease the number of requests and will most likely pass-through the rate limiters.
it is very common for SaaS API providers to apply some kind of rate limiting strategy (usually using some Web Application Firewall or an API Gateway) to protect their infrastructure and prevent it from being stressed by non-legitimate traffic that might undermine its stability. This is generally a good practice when it comes to API architecture but might also victimize legit users and prevent them from using your application. The utilization of Bulk APIs, in this case a set of APIs that you might choose to only expose to specific consumers like B2B’s or other integration partners, will decrease the number of requests and will most likely pass-through the rate limiters. API robustness: if your API is heavily used in integrations and in customer automation processes, enhancing your API layer with bulk will benefit both your infrastructure and your customers, by reducing the number of calls and integration complexity and by simplifying it and making it less error prone.
How to Design Bulk API’s ?
OK, so you’re convinced (or thinking about it…) that you need a bulk API, great!
So let’s go and write an API endpoint that receives 100 objects in a single request, instead of one, and process them one at a time. Well, sometimes it’s that straight-forward. But, while working on one of CyberArk’s major features that required bulk APIs, I dug into this a bit more and conducted some research — and found that there’s more to it.
There aren’t well-defined common standards for designing bulk APIs, nor popular frameworks that can help with implementing them. Not everyone is doing bulk (at least not exposing it on their public API) — monster SaaS providers like Slack, Twitter, Pinterest, Spotify or even AWS don’t provide this functionality. But some do, and we’ll take a look at their examples.
Let’s look at 4 design approaches for bulk APIs. The examples you’ll see are mostly relevant to APIs designed according to the RESTful architectural style, and refer to resources and operations. Even if your API does not tightly conform to these principles, you can still get value and inspiration for your implementation.
We’ll be assuming that you already have an API in place for serving individual requests, and the business logic to process them — for the purpose of the examples, we’ll be using a simple customer/level model, where each customer has a name and level. Let’s go!
#1 — The No-Brainer (resource specific, operation specific)
With this approach, we’re designing an API for a specific HTTP operation (e.g. POST) that receives a collection of resources (objects) from a specific type (using a specific resource endpoint) in the request body (e.g. a collection of customers), each can be seen as a ‘sub-request’.
This is what a request might look like:
The API endpoint /api/customer_bulk is specific to bulk operations, you should avoid using the same endpoint that handles single requests (e.g. /api/customers) for your bulk API — this way you’ll have more control over your API. Also, using the same endpoint doesn’t conform with RESTful API standards.
In this example, we’re creating 3 new customers at once, while the implementation of this API controller will typically be using the existing single customer API logic. The response will follow the same pattern.
This is how Zendesk (one of the biggest customer service SaaS platforms out there) and SalesForce are doing bulk.
Being a straight-forward and simple design, this one is quicker to implement — but less flexible, and will probably require additional development for each new bulk API (although there is some room for code re-use).
#2 — The Multi-Tasker (resource specific, operation dynamic)
In this design, we’re building an API that can be applied to any type of operation on a specific resource endpoint. The idea is to receive a bulk of sub-requests, where each contains the operation and some data about the resource and invoke the appropriate API controller you already have in place in the backend (serving individual requests) according to the operation type.
This is what a request will look like:
This design will cover any bulk operation on the resource, but validations might be more complex. You might be required to resolve conflicts of dependent resources or resources with the same IDs in the same request — depends if this is relevant for you, and also depends on your server-side implementation and if it guarantees some order, more on that in Part 2.
Authorization should also be considered, as the user making the request might not have the appropriate permissions for all types of operations.
This approach is a good balance between complexity and flexibility.
#3 — The Killer (resource dynamic, operation dynamic)
With this approach, we’re implementing an API that can be applied to any type of operation on any resource. As in the previous approach, the idea is to use the same API controller logic being used for single requests, according to the resource and operation.
Since this design is fully dynamic (covers any bulk operation on any resource), you probably noticed the request is sent to a generic /api/bulk endpoint, which is aimed at handling any bulk request. The resource endpoint relative URL for each sub-request is explicitly stated in the body.
In this example, we’re creating a new ‘Bronze’ level, using the api/levels resource endpoint, creating a new customer named Josef in that level, replacing customerId=5, and updating customerId=2 to the Bronze level.
This is how Google Cloud implemented their Compute bulk API (you’ll find the same pattern in the Google Drive API). This makes sense, since the usage of Google’s Compute engine service involves many automations and provisioning of multiple environments at once.
Google are calling this ‘batch’ and have defined a very flexible scheme for using it, having the request body contain sub-requests — each being a complete HTTP request (the response follows the same pattern, each with its own HTTP status code). This approach also allows the sending of different authorization tokens to different requests and using different content types.
Facebook and Microsoft 365 are taking similar approaches to bulk.
This method is extremely powerful if your API consumer needs to perform composite operations that are related to different business domains, or perform complex migrations using your API. You’ll still have to do more validations, handle conflicts between resources and verify permissions on different operations.
Having said that, this is by far the most flexible design, yet probably more complex to implement.
#4 — The Killer’s Little Brother (resource dynamic, operation specific)
This one is a simplified variant of the fully dynamic #3 approach that limits the bulk request to a specific operation. Doing so mitigates the need to resolve conflicts between dependent sub-requests.
These examples show a bulk POST request and a bulk DELETE request:
Take away
We’ve seen 4 design approaches for Bulk APIs, let’s compare their pros and cons:
This graph outlines the 4 different approaches considering flexibility vs. implementation complexity:
So before you run-off to option #1, challenge yourself and carefully consider your application’s future needs and the flexibility you would want to provide in its API. By choosing the simplest solution, you might find yourself implementing it over-and-over again for each new feature or API requiring bulk functionality. Eventually reaching the accumulative cost you would have invested if you had chosen a more complex but flexible solution in the first place.
Summing Up So Far
Bulk APIs have many benefits to both your infrastructure and your API consumers. We have seen that there are a few ways to design bulk APIs, each with its trade-offs. You should choose the one that fits your product’s requirements and application’s constraints.
In the next post — How (and Why!) to Build Killer Bulk APIs — Part 2, we will discuss some of the challenges in developing bulk APIs and will show how to address them by sharing architecture considerations & implementation best practices. | https://medium.com/cyberark-engineering/how-and-why-to-build-killer-bulk-apis-part-acbbe78f3404 | ['Arik Shaikevitz'] | 2020-07-20 07:02:32.488000+00:00 | ['Software Design', 'Software Development', 'Web Development', 'Software Architecture', 'Api Development'] |
Conflicted | Conflicted
Some jobs aren’t all just fun and games
Image public domain, courtesy of comicbookplus.com, modified from original.
“We don’t know anything about them!” Wilma’s partner shouted as she left for work. But what did she know?
Trish was on point today. Her mech warrior, controlled remotely from the cubicle next to Wilma, was as graceful as a ballerina as it sprinted forward and flourished multi-ton arms to efficiently level buildings and indigenous species as it went. A leaderboard awarded a point for each kill and she was currently in the lead. On her way to snagging this quarter’s bonus. “Not this time,” Wilma muttered as she donned her headset.
Driving the mechs on a planet over 4 light years away required anticipation. A.I. filled in the gaps, while the driver marked “keyframes” and approved or (rarely) rejected kill recommendations. Wormhole tech provided a communications tether between the Oklahoma facility and the remote planet of orange tripeds deemed Earth’s existential threat.
Their squad of mechs formed a line, spaced about half a klick apart, paused to recon the valley before them.
“That looks like the cul-de-sac where I grew up,” Trish remarked over group chat.
They then marched forward, destroying everything in their path with minimal resistance. Wilma’s display showed an abode at 12 o’clock where a group of orange aliens had gathered on the front lawn. They were holding each other, looking up defiantly with their oversized eyes in the shadow of Wilma’s killing machine.
“Wait!” Trish yelled. Wilma eased up on her controls and peered over the cubicle half-wall.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s… that’s a family! What are you… what are we…” Suddenly Trish yanked off her headset, leapt from her seat and vomited in the nearest trash can. Then she sobbed.
This was Wilma’s opportunity. She refocused. We don’t know anything about them echoed in her head. But then she eyed Trish’s current score.
She released the shoulder brake and fourteen tons crashed down.
A klaxon sounded, and Wilma looked at the leaderboard. ‘Winner’ displayed next to her name.
“Yeah, baby!”
A wave of energy flowed over her, and she was instantly transported. No longer just vicariously observing through the mech, she was now on their distant world. Breathing their air, hearing grinding metal, smelling death. Standing before a newly formed crater smeared with remains. One of the tripeds stood nearby, holding some sort of device that Wilma felt strangely connected to.
“You here now,” it said in a way she somehow understood. “You see us. You feel us. You know us.”
“I… what?” Wilma stammered. At first she wanted to know how she was brought here. Then she felt a curiosity about these creatures and their world. They seemed… benign. But all of that was quickly replaced by a primal desire to be back home, and to collect her reward.
“Let me go!” She dropped to her knees. “Let me out of here!”
Suddenly Wilma was traveling through a tunnel of kaleidoscopic light. But not at light speed. The trip home would give her a very long time to think. | https://medium.com/sci-fi-shorts/conflict-cbd251c1fcdd | ['Don Franke'] | 2020-11-29 20:03:40.984000+00:00 | ['Short Fiction', 'Fiction', 'Regret', 'Flash Fiction', 'Science Fiction'] |
Speak to Me-Vishuddha | Speak to Me-Vishuddha
Throat chakra — communication, self-expression, ability to speak truth
Photo by Joakim Honkasalo on Unsplash
Fear and hesitation
Strife and no designation
What unknowing fools we were
Not to speak up in this world that’s a blur
It was then that I said, ‘no more!’
This internal conflict I need to slay
Greatness and confidence were held in store.
Once you, Vishuddha, told me to go my own way
I long to feel once again.
That soft aquamarine touch of yours
There is just so much to gain.
From that nurturing caress of yours
That once hesitant fool has now evolved.
From a mere prisoner
And has now come to be loved.
Ah, Vishuddha! How you cause one’s courage to spur. | https://medium.com/mystic-minds/speak-to-me-vishuddha-c9e74d45e7fe | ['Gayle Kurtzer-Meyers'] | 2020-12-01 20:42:55.807000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Chakras', 'Spirituality', 'Chakrahealing', 'Mindfulness'] |
What It Really Means If You Dream About Cheating On Your Partner | What It Really Means If You Dream About Cheating On Your Partner Refinery29 UK Follow Oct 6 · 4 min read
By Kasandra Brabaw
PHOTOGRAPHED BY MICHAEL BECKERT.
When you’re single, sex dreams are kind of the best. Your unconscious mind gets to go on sexual adventures your awake self might never be brave enough to try. But, when you’re in a relationship, those sexy dreams can turn tumultuous because they don’t always feature your partner in the starring role.
Often, we wake up from dreams about infidelity drenched in sweat and guilt. What do these dreams mean? Even if you know that your sexual thoughts haven’t strayed from your partner, and you’d never cheat in real life, having sex dreams about someone else can make you feel like there’s something majorly wrong in your relationship. After all, didn’t Freud say that our dreams reveal our subconscious desires?
Despite what Freud said, having a cheating dream doesn’t necessarily mean that you want to cheat on your partner. There’s another famous psychologist we have to consider here, says Danielle Forshee, Psy.D, a psychologist and social worker: Carl Jung. And according to Jung, a dream doesn’t necessarily reveal repressed wishes. Instead, it’s meant to be used as a symbol of something going on in your life. “A cheating dream may not suggest cheating at all, but instead suggests looking deeper into what the of symbol cheating means to you,” Dr. Forshee says. The “symbol of cheating” could mean many different things, depending on what your culture and upbringing taught you about cheating.
For some, cheating might be a symbol for breaking promises. Maybe there’s some other commitment you’ve made that you now want to take back, like wanting to quit your job or skip the group hang you said you’d show up for this weekend. Subconsciously, if you’ve been thinking about breaking a promise of sorts, that could show up in your dreams as infidelity, says Stephanie Gailing, a life coach who does dream work. “If we think about cheating on a partner, that’s a place where you gave your word but you’re going back on your word,” she says. So breaking any other kind of promise is the same theme, and your worries over that are showing up in a different (and sexier) storyline.
So maybe your sex dreams aren’t about sex at all. But then again, maybe they are. Dream interpretation isn’t a solid science, so a dream about cheating isn’t going to mean the same thing for everyone who dreams it. For some, an infidelity dream might come from real flirting with or attraction to someone who isn’t their partner, says Jessa Zimmerman, a certified sex therapist and author of Sex Without Stress. “If your sex dreams are about a particular person, especially someone you know in your real life, you should consider whether there is a real life attraction (not a problem) and any sort of dalliance or flirtation with them (a problem),” she says. Maybe your dreams are playing out the same fantasies you’re having when you’re awake, and that might call for a conversation with your partner.
You don’t necessarily have to bring up the dream (in fact, Zimmerman suggests you don’t), but you do need bring up any issue that might be manifesting in those dreams. Even if you aren’t flirting with anyone in your real life, having a cheating dream gives you an opportunity to take stock of your relationship, Zimmerman says. “How happy are you, really, with your sexual relationship with your partner? Think about whether there’s stress around sex, whether you’re happy with the frequency of sex in your relationship, whether you’re expressing your desires and having them met, and whether you feel good enough about your partner that you want to be having sex together,” she says. If you’re unsatisfied with your sex life, dreams about cheating could be a symptom. So, again, you’ll want to chat with your partner to figure out how you can start feeling more satisfied.
Remember, the dreams that indicate real problems in your relationship don’t happen in a vacuum. So chances are good that you already know something is off before you ever see an explicit movie starring you and your neighbour play in your head. And if there aren’t any signs that your relationship is in turmoil, then the sex dream is probably just a dream. So step number one when you wake up shaking with worry is to chill. “You don’t need to feel guilty about what you think about, especially when it’s unconscious during sleep,” Zimmerman says. “We don’t know where dreams come from or what purpose they serve, so we can’t attribute ill intent.”
Dreams serve plenty of purposes, Gailing says. Sometimes they really do reveal the deep desires of our souls, but sometimes they’re just there to entertain our sleeping minds. So don’t worry so much (unless you have something to worry about). | https://medium.com/refinery29/what-it-really-means-if-you-dream-about-cheating-on-your-partner-383ab65e04e4 | [] | 2020-10-06 10:42:00.843000+00:00 | ['Sleep', 'Dreams', 'Cheating', 'Relationships', 'Dream Meanings'] |
U.S. Involvement in Vietnam. The long and hopeless Vietnam War… | U.S. Involvement in Vietnam
Viet Cong prisoner awaits interrogation. Credits: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/20/books/review/max-hastings-vietnam.html
The war in Vietnam started in 1945 lasting until 1975 and was officially fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. The North was supported by the Soviet Union, China, and other Communist allies, while the South was supported by the United States (U.S.) and other anti-communist allies. The war was brutal, with casualties and deaths varying but detailed studies have shown that from 1965 to 1975, when the U.S. was most engaged, approximately 1,353,000 Vietnamese were killed, including deaths of both militaries and civilians, with far more dying between 1945 to 1965.
The war was one of the most controversial in history with mass protests occurring, leading to what was known as the ‘Vietnam Syndrome’ describing how the public and politicians no longer wanted to support any further foreign interventions after the Vietnam War.
This article will address how and why the U.S. was involved in Vietnam, starting with the political and financial support for France from 1945 and throughout the Indochina War, going against their anti-colonial beliefs to secure an ally against the threat of communism in Europe. Continuing onto how Washington’s involvement in Asia became publicly direct following the ‘fall of China’ to communism, fearing what became known as the ‘domino effect’ resulting in the U.S. being heavily involved in the formation of South Vietnam and conducting covert operations against North Vietnam. Once the Cold War intensified, the U.S. feared the ‘falling’ of South Vietnam to communism, resulting in Washington using the Gulf of Tonkin incidents to escalate the Vietnam conflict and to deploy conventional U.S. forces, in attempts to suppress the spread of communism within Asia.
French soldiers capture Viet Minh soldier in the First Indochina War. Credits: Paul Hanger Pinterest
French Indochina and Covert U.S. Involvement
The primary goal of the U.S. after the Second World War was to secure their influence within Europe and to establish new market places to which they could export American products by instigating the Marshall Plan in 1948. This would simultaneously reduce poverty and increase the standard of living to deter the appeal of communism to post-war Europe, as the continent was a priority for Washington.
U.S. involvement in Vietnam began in the 1940s, following Washington’s reluctant support for the French efforts of reclaiming its former colony Vietnam, which briefly experienced independence in August/September 1945, with Ho Chi Minh proclaiming the formation and independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). France was aided by the Marshall Plan in 1948 providing the country with $2.3 billion as well as further credits and loans to France from 1946 to 1953 totalling to $4.9 billion helping rebuild the nation while also funding its colonial aspirations. The French used large portions of the funds provided for the war effort in Indochina, resulting in the U.S. indirectly paying for around three-quarters of France’s war.
The U.S. was conflicted as Washington’s stance was anti-colonial and wanting all colonial empires dissolved. However, the U.S. also wanted to strengthen Western Europe, maintaining a good relationship with France to contain the spread of communism. This led the U.S. to provide France with covert support against the Viet Minh, the communist insurgency led by Ho Chi Minh, who sought U.S. support against the French but was ignored as the threat of communism outweighed his bid for an independent Vietnam, leading Ho Chi Minh to initiate insurgencies against the French. However, despite initially being reluctant to support France, not wanting to assist in a colonial war, the U.S. felt more and more inclined to become actively involved as it became clear that communists were the driving force for independence and due to the need to maintain France as an anti-communist ally.
Washington claimed to not send troops into Indochina to help with the colonial war. But information recently uncovered reveals that Washington covertly supplied U.S. Air Force pilots to support the French throughout Operation Castor in 1953 and the following year two U.S. pilots were killed at the siege of Dien Bien Phu but remained publicly neutral until the 1950s.
An American poster calling for containment, a foreign policy directed to suppressing communism wherever it arose, distributed in Aisa and depicting Juan dela Cruz defending the Philipines from communism. Credits: National Archives at College Park.
U.S. Involvement Intensifies
Washington’s involvement became publicly direct in the 1950s after the foreign policy changed following the ‘fall of China’ to communism in 1949. The U.S. foreign policy shifted to containment in Asia, fearing the spread of communism to neighbouring states, seeing war erupt in Korea. President Truman, in response to Mao turning to Moscow, adopted the National Security Council NSC 48/2, creating the basis for Washington’s involvement in Asia, increasing the levels of assistance for the French in their fight against Ho Chi Minh. Alongside the ‘fall of China,’ the State of Vietnam was proclaimed on the 2nd July 1949, led by Bảo Đại, who fought Ho Chi Minh for legitimacy and control over the entirety of Vietnam.
Washington quickly recognised the State of Vietnam in February 1950 deeming it as the legitimate state, following the Soviet Union and China’s recognition for the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in January 1950, constructing the foundations for the future Cold War conflict. A revisionist approach would deem that the anti-communist stance was strengthened firstly by the supporting of foundations of the Associated State of Vietnam. Secondly, by the Mutual Defence Assistance Act of 1949, aimed at tackling the worldwide threat of communism and raising the morale of friendly nations, which Washington could side with against communism, binding France and the U.S. together in the Cold War.
The loss of Hainan island to Chinese communist forces, instigated Truman to covertly authorise direct financial support to the French in their efforts during the Indochina War, to later expand upon and openly engage with the Mutual Security Act of 1951. Washington was fearful of Ho Chi Minh winning the war, believing North Vietnam would be tied to the Soviet Union, becoming a puppet state with the Soviets controlling all affairs. During the same period, the Korean War also broke out causing a fear of communism taking over the whole of South-East Asia. Potentially resulting in what Dwight D. Eisenhower referred to as the domino effect in 1954, seeing the fall of one nation to communism causing neighbouring countries to fall.
The Mutual Security Act (MSA) of 1951 was highly influenced by the Korean War and the fear that communism would spread in Asia. The act provided financial aid to help poorer nations develop in efforts to steer them away from communism. The act provided U.S. allies, such as France, with aid of up to $7.5 billion to be spent on militaries, technologies, and the economy, continuing the support of the Indochina War. Additionally, it was also supposed to strengthen the ties with Western allies in Europe in order to tackle the threat of communism. The MSA was renewed each year up until 1961 and led to the U.S. by 1954 funding up to 80 per cent of the Indochina War.
It began to appear that Washington’s support for France during the Indochina War became a proxy war between the U.S. and communism, fighting it and supporting those that opposed it wherever it would arise on the globe. Washington ensured that they did not send troops into Indochina to help with the colonial war. However, information that has been uncovered recently reveals that Washington covertly supplied U.S. Air Force pilots to support the French throughout Operation Castor in 1953 and the following year two U.S. pilots were killed at the siege of Dien Bien Phu.
Mỹ Lai massacre, March 16, 1968. The massacre of over 400 unarmed Vietnamese civilians, including women and children. Credits: https://time.com/longform/my-lai-massacre-ron-haeberle-photographs/
The Creation of South Vietnam
The U.S. continued their support for the French via further U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force assistance, along with covert central intelligence operations being carried out from March to May 1954. The CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) carried out hundreds of airdrops from March to May, providing the French with airlifts of paratroopers and other military materials, such as barbed wire, medics, and ammunition. However, despite the efforts of the CIA and the French by June 1954 their dominance began to collapse, and they slowly lost control of Indochina, leading to the Geneva Conference of 1954 in the summer. In this conference, the U.S., French, British, Soviet, and Chinese delegations met to discuss the fate of Indochina and other Cold War issues.
The Geneva conference resulted in the Geneva Settlement forming the states of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the State of Vietnam, with the Kingdom of Cambodia, and the Kingdom of Laos becoming neutral monarchies. Vietnam was divided from the 17th parallel, the Ho communists would control the North and Emperor Bao Dai, alongside his prime minister Ngo Dinh Diem, would administer the territory South of the 17th parallel. Elections were to be held in July 1956 to determine the leadership of a unified Vietnam, but neither the U.S. nor South Vietnam signed the agreements. Knowing that Ho’s victory at Dien Bien Phu prior to the Geneva Settlement increased Ho’s popularity and that if elections were held he would easily win, resulting in a unified Vietnam falling to communism.
Washington needed to ensure the survival of South Vietnam, preventing the domino effect, which led Eisenhower’s administration to strengthen the military of Bao Dai/Diem regime by sending 300 military advisors in 1954, increasing gradually to 948 military advisors in 1961, later rising to 12,000 by the end of 1962. Washington also developed and maintained a close relationship with the prime minister Diem, helping him survive several coups from 1954 to 1956 and rigging the 1955 election that ousted Bao Dai.
8 May-21 July 1954: The Geneva Conference. Credits:https://vietnamtheartofwar.com/1954/05/08/8th-may-to-21st-july-1954-the-geneva-conference/
The U.S. supported and attempted to stabilise South Vietnam, improving the educational systems and rural infrastructure, while simultaneously discrediting the North by destroying government printing presses, encouraging migration, sabotaging bus and rail lines, all attempts to weaken the communist North. One of these operations was highly successful and was known as Operation Exodus, convincing 1.25 million Vietnamese Catholics to flee the North and emigrate to the South.
The U.S. continued their support of South Vietnam, suppressing communist guerrilla campaigns fighting against the authoritarian Diem regime. One way in which the CIA attempted to suppress these groups was by the establishment of the Civilian Irregular Defense Groups made up of 93 CIA operation officers. These officers were asked with defending the civilian populations from the Viet Cong via the village-based programs in the hopes that it would lead to defeating communism within the South. Washington continued their support as they believed a defeat for the U.S. backed South Vietnam would lead to more guerrilla wars breaking out in other areas of the globe, whereas a victory — Washington determined — would change the course of action, deterring other communist guerrilla insurgencies from doing the same.
A group of South Vietnamese army soldiers and an American soldier with two captured Vietcong suspects. Credits: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/26/opinion/what-was-the-vietnam-war-about.html
A False Flag and Escalation of War
The Gulf of Tonkin incidents involved one confrontation and one falsely claimed engagement between North Vietnam and U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin, which led to a justification for U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson to become more directly engaged in the Vietnam conflict, deploying conventional U.S. forces, and engaging in open warfare from 1965.
North Vietnam’s General Giap believed DESOTO patrols (DeHaven Special Operations off Tsingtao) were sent to the Gulf to provoke North Vietnam into providing an excuse for escalation, various officials aboard the USS Maddox (the U.S. destroyer ship allegedly engaged in the conflict) also present the same theories as General Giap.
The second incident is surrounded with doubts within Washington and North Vietnam, as it is known that government officials such as William Bundy were seeking an opportunity to initiate escalations during the Vietnam conflict even suggesting an invasion of China. These claims are supported by many statements and records of Washington officials such as Alexander Haig, who was an assistant to Secretary McNamara. Endless attempts were made to verify that an attack happened rather than question if one actually took place. Other government officials also began to have doubts, such as Daniel Ellsberg who stated that he was sent, not to find out if an attack happened, but rather on a mission to shore up the case. Former U.S. Navy Intelligence Analyst James Bamford in his book Body of Secrets outlined how the primary purpose of the Maddox was to act as a provocateur to get a reaction needed for escalating the war.
The highly contested second incident and the evidence provided makes it is a clear case of a false flag, and from a revisionist approach, the U.S. continuing their support for South Vietnam and the Gulf of Tonkin incidents led to an escalation of the Cold War. Soviet involvement in Vietnam was limited until 1964–65, but as the conflict intensified with U.S. troops being deployed, the Soviets became far more active, causing Soviet military and economic assistance to increase dramatically, from 40 million dollars in 1964 to one billion dollars annually from 1967 to 1972.
Female Viet Cong guerrilla, 1972. Credits: https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/female-viet-cong-guerrila-1972/
Conclusion
Washington’s attempts to prevent Europe from falling to communism led to the supporting of authoritarian leaders and funding colonial wars. The U.S. involvement in Vietnam dates back to 1945 and continues throughout the Cold War, with its role intensifying as the Cold War does, even more so after the ‘Fall of China’ in 1949. Washington’s fiscal and military support for France and later South Vietnam only further escalated the Cold War.
Overall, Washington’s involvement in Vietnam started with their budgetary and military aid to France to ensure them as an ally fighting the communist threat in Europe, expanding into Asia to support the French during the Indochina War. U.S. support was then given to South Vietnam to put continuous pressure against the North, intensifying year by year until a false flag incident justified the deployment of U.S. conventional army in 1965 — leaving Washington chasing communist insurgencies wherever they may arise on the globe, shutting them down with sly and brutal tactics. | https://historyofyesterday.com/the-u-s-involvement-in-vietnam-a04765408317 | ['Tarik Ata'] | 2020-12-14 15:01:28.165000+00:00 | ['Cold War', 'History', 'Vietnam War', 'Vietnam', 'American History'] |
Sealed modifiers | In this article, I will discuss what is a sealed modifier, how to use it and what’s its impact on your application’s performance.
First of all, let’s start with a definition; sealed is a modifier that, if it’s applied to a class makes it non-inheritable and if applied to virtual methods or properties makes them non-ovveridable.
public sealed class A { ... }
public class B
{
...
public sealed string Property { get; set; }
public sealed void Method() { ... }
}
An example of its usage is specialized class/method or property in which potential alterations can make them stop working as expected (for example, the Pens class of the System.Drawing namespace).
...
namespace System.Drawing
{
//
// Summary:
// Pens for all the standard colors. This class cannot be inherited.
public sealed class Pens
{
public static Pen Transparent { get; }
public static Pen Orchid { get; }
public static Pen OrangeRed { get; }
...
}
}
Because a sealed class cannot be inherited, it cannot be used as base class and by consequence, an abstract class cannot use the sealed modifier. It’s also important to mention that structs are implicitly sealed.
Performance
Using as reference for our test the following code, let’s analyze the Microsoft intermediate language (MSIL) information generated by the compiler by using the Ildasm.exe (IL Disassembler) tool.
public sealed class Sealed
{
public string Message { get; set; }
public void DoStuff() { }
}
public class Derived : Base
{
public sealed override void DoStuff() { }
}
public class Base
{
public string Message { get; set; }
public virtual void DoStuff() { }
}
static void Main()
{
Sealed sealedClass = new Sealed();
sealedClass.DoStuff();
Derived derivedClass = new Derived();
derivedClass.DoStuff();
Base BaseClass = new Base();
BaseClass.DoStuff();
}
To run this tool, open the Developer Command Prompt for Visual Studio and execute the command ildasm.
**********************************************************************
** Visual Studio 2017 Developer Command Prompt v15.9.13
** Copyright (c) 2017 Microsoft Corporation
**********************************************************************
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Community>ildasm
Once the application is started, load the executable (or assembly) of the previous application
Double click on the Main method to view the Microsoft intermediate language (MSIL) information.
.method private hidebysig static void Main() cil managed
{
.entrypoint
// Code size 41 (0x29)
.maxstack 8
IL_0000: newobj instance void ConsoleApp1.Program/Sealed::.ctor()
IL_0005: callvirt instance void ConsoleApp1.Program/Sealed::DoStuff()
IL_000a: newobj instance void ConsoleApp1.Program/Derived::.ctor()
IL_000f: callvirt instance void ConsoleApp1.Program/Base::DoStuff()
IL_0014: newobj instance void ConsoleApp1.Program/Base::.ctor()
IL_0019: callvirt instance void ConsoleApp1.Program/Base::DoStuff()
IL_0028: ret
} // end of method Program::Main
As you can see each class use newobj to create a new instance by pushing an object reference onto the stack and callvirt to calls a late-bound of the DoStuff() method of its respective object.
Base on this information seems that both sealed, derived and base classes are managed in the same way by the compiler. Just to be sure, let’s get deeper by analyzing the JIT-compiled code with the Disassembly window in Visual Studio.
Enable the Disassembly by selecting Enable address-level debugging, under Tools > Options > Debugging > General.
Set a brake-point at the beginning of the application and start the debug. Once the application hits the brake-point open the Disassembly window by selecting Debug > Windows > Disassembly.
--- C:\Users\Ivan Porta\source\repos\ConsoleApp1\Program.cs --------------------
{
0066084A in al,dx
0066084B push edi
0066084C push esi
0066084D push ebx
0066084E sub esp,4Ch
00660851 lea edi,[ebp-58h]
00660854 mov ecx,13h
00660859 xor eax,eax
0066085B rep stos dword ptr es:[edi]
0066085D cmp dword ptr ds:[5842F0h],0
00660864 je 0066086B
00660866 call 744CFAD0
0066086B xor edx,edx
0066086D mov dword ptr [ebp-3Ch],edx
00660870 xor edx,edx
00660872 mov dword ptr [ebp-48h],edx
00660875 xor edx,edx
00660877 mov dword ptr [ebp-44h],edx
0066087A xor edx,edx
0066087C mov dword ptr [ebp-40h],edx
0066087F nop
Sealed sealedClass = new Sealed();
00660880 mov ecx,584E1Ch
00660885 call 005730F4
0066088A mov dword ptr [ebp-4Ch],eax
0066088D mov ecx,dword ptr [ebp-4Ch]
00660890 call 00660468
00660895 mov eax,dword ptr [ebp-4Ch]
00660898 mov dword ptr [ebp-3Ch],eax
sealedClass.DoStuff();
0066089B mov ecx,dword ptr [ebp-3Ch]
0066089E cmp dword ptr [ecx],ecx
006608A0 call 00660460
006608A5 nop
Derived derivedClass = new Derived();
006608A6 mov ecx,584F3Ch
006608AB call 005730F4
006608B0 mov dword ptr [ebp-50h],eax
006608B3 mov ecx,dword ptr [ebp-50h]
006608B6 call 006604A8
006608BB mov eax,dword ptr [ebp-50h]
006608BE mov dword ptr [ebp-40h],eax
derivedClass.DoStuff();
006608C1 mov ecx,dword ptr [ebp-40h]
006608C4 mov eax,dword ptr [ecx]
006608C6 mov eax,dword ptr [eax+28h]
006608C9 call dword ptr [eax+10h]
006608CC nop
Base BaseClass = new Base();
006608CD mov ecx,584EC0h
006608D2 call 005730F4
006608D7 mov dword ptr [ebp-54h],eax
006608DA mov ecx,dword ptr [ebp-54h]
006608DD call 00660490
006608E2 mov eax,dword ptr [ebp-54h]
006608E5 mov dword ptr [ebp-44h],eax
BaseClass.DoStuff();
006608E8 mov ecx,dword ptr [ebp-44h]
006608EB mov eax,dword ptr [ecx]
006608ED mov eax,dword ptr [eax+28h]
006608F0 call dword ptr [eax+10h]
006608F3 nop
}
0066091A nop
0066091B lea esp,[ebp-0Ch]
0066091E pop ebx
0066091F pop esi
00660920 pop edi
00660921 pop ebp 00660922 ret
As we can see in the previous code, while the creation of the objects is the same, the instruction executed to invoke the methods of the sealed and derived/base class are slightly different. After moving data into registers of the RAM (mov instruction), the invoke of the sealed method, execute a comparison between dword ptr [ecx] and ecx (cmp instruction) before actually call the method.
According to the report written by Torbj¨orn Granlund, Instruction latencies and throughput for AMD and Intel x86 processors, the speed of the following instruction in an Intel Pentium 4 are:
mov : has 1 cycle as latency and the processor can sustain 2.5 instructions per cycle of this type
: has 1 cycle as latency and the processor can sustain 2.5 instructions per cycle of this type cmp: has 1 cycle as latency and the processor can sustain 2 instructions per cycle of this type
In conclusion, the optimization of the nowadays compilers and processors has made the performances between sealed and not-sealed classed basically so little that is irrelevant to the majority of the applications.
References | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/sealed-modifiers-7baa59d2eb0d | ['Ivan Porta'] | 2020-08-23 14:39:08.204000+00:00 | ['Coding', 'Csharp', 'Programming', 'Dotnet', 'Tutorial'] |
Colossus | Methanococcoides burtonii (image by the author)
The snow falls heavy; the world is going white. How long has it been since the expedition disbanded? Since the rest returned South and I continued alone? I once kept time wrapped around my wrist, but after my last fall it stopped ticking, and I threw it into the swallowing fog.
There was a blizzard that screeched for months, battering the skin of our tents and keeping us zipped up with threats. It paced outside in frustration, spitting and bellowing because we would not come out to die. Whilst it slept, the others fled, unwilling to brave the ice fields and the turning winds again, but I would not go. My life’s work lies here in the North; in these cathedrals and amphitheatres of the ancients.
Icicles dangle from my face in the outside, but I have kept to the ruins for warmth. Most sleep rigid beneath white blankets, but here and there, the drifts are low, and I can cut a swath within. The ice preserves, and I rest in these tombs while the world howls outside. I cannot leave whilst history lays so closely beneath my feet, so I will stay here, where no one has been for centuries, and see what was lost.
Moonglow draws the night in silver, and the snow has grown tired of falling. I struggle across the ice sheet seracs to a mound tipped by two steeples where an avalanche has swept the top of a window clear. I tread across desolate fluff, setting down to pick away at the frosted entrance, and though it takes time (my arms are but bone and blood), I manage to shovel an area large enough for me to squeeze through and shatter the glass. My legs go dangling first into the past, before the rest of me plops down after.
The dark echoes my footsteps as I edge forward, so I take a flare from my backpack and, shivering, spark it red.
Not once have I seen ruins as lavish as these. Flocks of colourful shapes hang in clear mausoleums along the walls; the remains of creatures, rock boned and paddle limbed, are splayed out flat as if they were flowers crushed in books; My face shines ruddily back at me in a looking glass full of fractal eggs. So thin. So very thin.
There are parchments and hieroglyphs, things that even I cannot decipher, beside each of these treasures. There are too many to read as I make down a hallway opening into a cavernous chamber.
I look up and see that I am in the body of a stone colossus; its ribs curving from the spine above me, down ossuary columns to my sides. The crimson bounces off of glaring eyes of marble; tongues of rock, long silent in the mouths of unknown animals carved into the giant’s ancient bones.
The entrance doors next to me, collapsed by the weight of the compacted snow centuries ago, are poured through with ice drifts. A flood frozen in time.
I pace deeper into the silence, and slowly perceive the skeleton of a great beast held aloft in the air on wings of wire. It is as if I am standing still whilst its bulk skulks towards me in the gloom. The jaws of its long skull are held in a wide-open bellow, and as I inch beneath it, I can make out the lick of its tail receding, segmented, up into the black.
To my sides are alcoves; chambers filled with alien shapes. One holds a banded obelisk, its polished side resembling the cross section of an inane gut; another houses the crumbling remains of a demon stood expectant of a long forgotten embrace; within a third, there is an upturned dress, its banded frills petrified and chipped away; and in the last, a large, glass tank sits delicately, bone dust floating atop its gelatinous contents.
Running now, and breathless with all this discovery, I approach a set of stairs as my flare ebbs and sputters away. No. Not when there are so many questions left unanswered. In the darkness, I grope around my supplies for another, but my flares are all gone. How could I have been so clouded by the carelessness of excitement? I search my pockets and I hear a matchbox rattle. I clasp it with the desperate numbness of frostbitten fingers, feeling foolish and wretched as I weep and drop match after match in the hollow dark. There is a spark as I hold my breath, and a small flame comes to life in my fingers.
I see the steps in front of me. I hear the hiss of the match. I ascend as my thin frame shudders. The fire picks out the contours of a statue at the zenith of the stairs. Carved in rock, with a bearded face weighed with a burden of deep concern, this statue surveys the great hall of treasures set beneath him in cross legged contemplation, as if these artefacts and beasts were some eternal mystery that he must unravel for the sake of mankind.
The match sparks pain through my hand and I drop it as space disappears. I trip and fall, and my face is like porcelain against the frozen floor. I taste blood between my chattering teeth. I breathe light and low by the statue’s feet, groping as I go, to trace the runes beneath the icon with my chilled fingers. They read:
C H A R L E S D A R W I N | https://medium.com/literally-literary/colossus-d6f0ea78a2c6 | ['Theo Beecroft'] | 2019-12-21 22:32:41.229000+00:00 | ['Fiction', 'Archaea', 'Exulansis', 'Archaeology', 'Short Story'] |
Smart Restroom | Smart Toilet Management System | A rapid change of delivery and more rigid, developing conditions don’t need to lag your operations. With Faststream Technologies’s Smart Restroom solution, we’ll provide you everything you need to digitize your bathroom and toilet operations and get the most out of your cleaning supplies, staff, and customer satisfaction.
We offer integrated solutions connected with the sensors, gateways, networks, and the cloud to get your data flowing into the software dashboard or platform. Our Smart Restroom systems will give data space usage or consumption of paper, hand wash, and soap in your washrooms.
Faststream ’s smart restroom solution is ideal for client places such as large airports, shopping malls, stadiums, hospitals, and schools where large footfalls are common as it is able to identify any hygiene or operational issues, leaks or breakdowns, and send SMS alerts so your team can address the problem.
Features of our solutions
Data Gathering Process in Our Smart Toilet Management System
The data gathered includes:
People counting — Faststream’s Ultra-low-power passive infrared sensors give an exact signal of the no. of users enter a particular restroom
Ammonia level — Our Restroom Solutions aids facility manager to perceive the odor concentration in the restroom to the least amount as 0.1 ppm which indicates its state of cleanliness
Fall detection — The alert is sent to management should a toilet user accidentally fall into the restroom
Vacancy indication — Our Dashboard shows which stalls are empty, how many stalls are available, and the approximate queue time. This sensor data can also be connected to an alert notification system which will generally send an email to supervisors should certain pre-programmed triggers be reached.
All those above features make the smart Toilet Management system useful for controlling multiple restrooms and make for a cleaner, safer, and more pleasant experience for users. Faststream’s cloud connect dashboard also allows management to monitor usage across multiple restrooms for even more effective planning of resources.
Soap and Toilet Dispenser
Soap and toilet roll dispensers are one of the major parts of Smart Restroom Solutions. These dispensers are equipped with Faststream’s connected sensors which deliver data and alerts to management to help them decide when consumables need to be replenished.
Faststream’s smart devices eliminate the need for fixed duty rounds and ensure that consumables are only replenished as and when needed, while also ensuring users always have soap and toilet roll available. The data gathered is also useful for management to have a clear view of how much soap and toilet roll is being used so they can plan how much will be needed going forward.
Our Smart soap and toilet roll dispensers also help to reduce waste by supplying only the optimal amount of each to users.
Air Quality Monitoring
The Air Quality Monitoring in Faststream’s Smart Toilet Management System monitors Ammonia(NH3), Hydrogen Sulphide(H2S), Temperature and Humidity using sensor data and analysis on dashboards.
Benefits with our Smart Restroom Solutions
Improved Customer Satisfaction
Optimized Cleaning for washroom
Energy Saving with Optimized Heating and Air Conditioning
Cost Saving in Inventory, Delivery, and Logistics
Slowed down of Virus and Bacteria with good Hygiene
Good ROI by increasing cleaning Supply sales.
Share your thoughts on our solutions | https://medium.com/@harin-30907/smart-restroom-smart-toilet-management-system-4b1de45b587b | ['Hari Narayana'] | 2021-06-23 10:02:11.805000+00:00 | ['Smart Home Solutions', 'Smart Toilet', 'Smart Cities', 'Smart Bathroom', 'Smart Home'] |
Redis 6 Deployment with TLS Authentication on CentOS 7 | Redis is a popular in-memory data structure store, that can be used as a database, cache, and message broker. It supports data structures such as strings, hashes, lists, sets, sorted sets with range queries, bitmaps, hyperloglog, geospatial indexes with radius queries, and streams. Redis has built-in replication, Lua scripting, LRU eviction transaction, and different levels of on-disk persistence, and provides high availability via Redis Sentinel and automatic partitioning with Redis Cluster. There is so much that you can do with Redis. In this post, I will go through a step by step process on how to install and configure Redis securely with TLS authentication on a CentOS machine. Let begin.
Please note this demonstration is done on a fresh installation of a virtual machine with limited packages available. Your system might be different depending on what you might have installed and configured in the past. Also, I’m using a root account. If you are not using root account, you would have to use and account with a root privilege and add sudo to the beginning of the commands
We begin by updating the CentOS package repository
[root@redis-host ~]# yum update -y
Next, we need to install a couple of packages that are needed to compile and install Redis from source.
[root@redis-host ~]# yum install wget -y [root@redis-host ~]# yum install tcl -y [root@redis-host ~]# yum install gcc -y [root@redis-host ~]# yum install centos-release-scl -y [root@redis-host ~]# yum install devtoolset-9-gcc devtooset-g-gcc-c++ devtoolset-9-binutils -y [root@redis-host ~]# yum install openssl-devel* -y
Run the following command to update GCC
[root@redis-host ~]# scl enable devtoolset-9 bash [root@redis-host ~]# echo "source /opt/rh/devtoolset-9/enable" >> /etc/profile
Next, we create a Redis user, create directories used by Redis, and set necessary permissions on them. Execute the following command.
[root@redis-host ~]# useradd --system redis [root@redis-host ~]# mkdir /var/lib/redis [root@redis-host ~]# chown redis:redis /var/lib/redis [root@redis-host ~]# mkdir /var/log/redis [root@redis-host ~]# touch /var/log/redis/redis.log [root@redis-host ~]# chmod 660 /var/log/redis [root@redis-host ~]# chmod 640 /var/log/redis/redis.log [root@redis-host ~]# mkdir /etc/redis # we'll store redis.conf file here [root@redis-host ~]# chown -R redis:redis /etc/redis
Now that we have installed the packages and set up directories and files for Redis, let’s download and install Redis. We will be doing the installation in the /tmp/redis directory
[root@redis-host ~]# cd /tmp/ [root@redis-host tmp]# mkdir redis [root@redis-host tmp]# cd redis/ [root@redis-host redis]# wget http://download.redis.io/releases/redis-6.0.5.tar.gz [root@redis-host redis]# ls redis-6.0.5.tar.gz [root@redis-host redis]# sha256sum redis-6.0.5.tar.gz # view/confirm the shasum of the downloaded file. 42cf86a114d2a451b898fcda96acd4d01062a7dbaaad2801d9164a36f898f596 redis-6.0.5.tar.gz [root@redis-host redis]# tar -xzvf redis-6.0.5.tar.gz # untar the downloaded file [root@redis-host redis]# cd redis-6.0.5 [root@redis-host redis-6.0.5]# make BUILD_TLS=yes install
Note: incase you get an error related to memory during the compilation, you may want to use this command instead. make BUILD_TLS=yes MALLOC=libc install We are using BUILD_TLS=yes to enable Redis to compile with TLS support.
If the installation is successful, we should have the redis.conf file in the current working directory. We need to move it to the /etc/redis/
sudo cp redis.conf /etc/redis
[root@redis-host redis-6.0.5]# cp redis.conf /etc/redis/ [root@redis-host redis-6.0.5]# chown redis:redis /etc/redis/redis.conf [root@redis-host redis-6.0.5]# chmod 640 /etc/redis/redis.conf
Now, the installation is complete. We should be able to start our Redis server and test the installation. Any of the following commands will enable you to start the Redis server.
[root@redis-host redis-6.0.5]# redis-server [root@redis-host redis-6.0.5]# redis-server /etc/redis/redis.conf [root@redis-host redis-6.0.5]# /usr/local/bin/redis-server /etc/redis/redis.conf sudo runuser -u redis /usr/local/bin/redis-server /etc/redis/redis.conf
You can append & to the command to run the redis-server in the background if you do not have access to another terminal.
run redis-cli to start the Redis command-line client. You should be presented with a prompt from which you can communicate with the Redis server.
[root@redis-host redis-6.0.5]# redis-cli 127.0.0.1:6379> ping PONG 127.0.0.1:6379> ping hello "hello" 127.0.0.1:6379> 127.0.0.1:6379> get name (nil) 127.0.0.1:6379> set name "John doe" OK 127.0.0.1:6379> set email [email protected] OK 127.0.0.1:6379> get email "[email protected]"
Our Redis server is now functional. How about having the server started automatically each time the system reboots? Let create a systemd unit to take care of that for us.
User-defined systemd units are placed in /etc/systemd/system/ with the .service extension for service units and that is what we are going to do here. Open the create the file by /etc/systemd/system/redis.service and add the following configuration.
sudo vi /etc/systemd/system/redis.service open the file
[Unit] Description=The Redis Server After=network.target [Service] PIDFile=/run/redis.pid ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/rm -f /run/redis.pid ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/redis-server /etc/redis/redis.conf Restart=on-failure RestartUSec=100m KillSignal=SIGQUIT TimeoutStopSec=5 KillMode=process PrivateTmp=true [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target
The following commands will restart the systemd daemon, enable and start the Redis service.
[root@redis-host redis-6.0.5]# systemctl daemon-reload [root@redis-host redis-6.0.5]# systemctl enable --now redis.service Created symlink from /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/redis.service to /etc/systemd/system/redis.service. [root@redis-host redis-6.0.5]# systemctl status redis.service # check the status of the service ● redis.service - The Redis Server Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/redis.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled) Active: active (running) since Wed 2020-12-09 11:51:38 UTC; 18s ago Process: 13526 ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/rm -f /run/redis.pid (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS) Main PID: 13527 (redis-server) CGroup: /system.slice/redis.service └─13527 /usr/local/bin/redis-server 127.0.0.1:6379
The next time the system reboots, the Redis service will automatically be started. Well, we can start the service right away, run the following command.
In systemd you can enable a system by running systemctl enable redis.service and start the service with systemctl start redis.service . You can combine both operations in one command as we’ve done above systemctl enable --now redis.service
Great, our Redis server can now run as a systemd unit. This is just a simple demonstration of how to create a systemd unit to run your services.
Let’s now connect with the Redis server using the redis-cli issue the command in your terminal.
[root@redis-host redis-6.0.5]# redis-cli 127.0.0.1:6379> get name (nil) 127.0.0.1:6379> set name godfrey OK 127.0.0.1:6379> get name "godfrey"
We have successfully installed and configure Redis to run automatically on boot.
Redis 6 provides the capability to secure network communication to Redis using TLS. In the remaining part of the article, we will be configuring TLS in our Redis deployment
We will now demonstrate how to set up an SSL/TLS authentication to maximize the security of our Redis server and prevent the service from attacks. Let’s begin by creating a self-signed certificate.
We will perform the task of generating the keys and certificates in the /tmp/certs directory. Thereafter we move them to the appropriate locations, create the directory.
[root@redis-host redis-6.0.5]# mkdir /tmp/certs && cd /tmp/certs
In the following commands, we are generating an issuing certificate signing private keys. With the private key generated we are creating the issuing certificate with output save to ca.crt .
[root@redis-host certs]# openssl genrsa -out ca.key 4096 [root@redis-host certs]# openssl req -x509 -new -nodes -sha256 -key ca.key -days 365 -subj '/O=Redislabs/CN=Redis Prod CA' -out ca.crt
In the next two commands, we are generating the server private key. We use the server private key and the issuing certificate and certificate signing key to generate the server certificate.
[root@redis-host certs]# openssl genrsa -out redis.key 2048 [root@redis-host certs]# mkdir /etc/ssl/private [root@redis-host certs]# openssl req -new -sha256 -nodes -key redis.key -subj '/O=Redislabs/CN=Production Redis' | openssl x509 -req -sha256 -CA ca.crt -CAkey ca.key -CAserial /etc/ssl/private/ca.txt -CAcreateserial -days 365 -out redis.crt
[Output]
Signature ok subject=/O=Redislabs/CN=Production Redis Getting CA Private Key
Next, we move the files to the appropriate locations and set necessary permissions on them.
[root@redis-host certs]# mkdir /usr/local/share/ca-certificates [root@redis-host certs]# cp ca.crt /usr/local/share/ca-certificates/ [root@redis-host certs]# cp ca.key /etc/ssl/private/ [root@redis-host certs]# cp redis.key /etc/ssl/private/ [root@redis-host certs]# cp redis.crt /etc/ssl/ [root@redis-host certs]# chown redis:redis /usr/local/share/ca-certificates/ca.crt [root@redis-host certs]# chmod 644 /usr/local/share/ca-certificates/ca.crt [root@redis-host certs]# chown redis:redis /etc/ssl/private/ca.key [root@redis-host certs]# chmod 400 /etc/ssl/private/ca.key [root@redis-host certs]# chown redis:redis /etc/ssl/private/redis.key [root@redis-host certs]# chmod 400 /etc/ssl/private/redis.key [root@redis-host certs]# chown redis:redis /etc/ssl/redis.crt [root@redis-host certs]# chmod 644 /etc/ssl/redis.crt
Now we need to update our redis.conf file with the server certificate information. open the file /etc/redis/redis.conf
vi /etc/redis/redis.conf or use your preferred editor. You need to locate the lines shown below and make the appropriate changes
# port 0 port 0 # tls-port 6379 tls-port 6379
# tls-cert-file redis.crt # tls-key-file redis.key tls-cert-file /etc/ssl/redis.crt tls-key-file /etc/ssl/private/redis.key
# tls-ca-cert-file ca.crt tls-ca-cert-file /usr/local/share/ca-certificates/ca.crt # tls-ca-cert-dir /etc/ssl/certs # tls-auth-clients no tls-auth-clients no
# tls-protocols "TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3" tls-protocols "TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3"
# tls-ciphersuites TLS_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256 tls-ciphersuites TLS_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256
# tls-prefer-server-ciphers yes tls-prefer-server-ciphers no
With the configurations in place, we are ready to restart the Redis service.
[root@redis-host certs]# systemctl restart redis [root@redis-host certs]# systemctl status redis [OUTPUT] ● redis.service - The Redis Server Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/redis.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled) Active: active (running) since Wed 2020-12-09 12:38:34 UTC; 3s ago Process: 14318 ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/rm -f /run/redis.pid (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS) Main PID: 14319 (redis-server) CGroup: /system.slice/redis.service └─14319 /usr/local/bin/redis-server 127.0.0.1:6379
To test the configuration, we first connect to the Redis server with redis-cli without providing the TLS credentials.
[root@redis-host certs]# redis-cli 127.0.0.1:6379> get name Error: Connection reset by peer [root@redis-host certs]#
As you can see, the connection is closed by the server. We can’t transmit packets to the server with been properly authenticated. Now let’s try the connection again, this time providing the required TLS credentials.
[root@redis-host certs]# redis-cli --tls --cacert /usr/local/share/ca-certificates/ca.crt 127.0.0.1:6379> get name "godfrey" 127.0.0.1:6379> get email (nil) 127.0.0.1:6379> set email [email protected] OK 127.0.0.1:6379> get email "[email protected]" 127.0.0.1:6379>
Now, nobody can send or receive packets from our Redis server without being properly authenticated.
As a final part of the authentication process, we would like the Redis client to authenticate itself before connecting to the Redis server with client authentication. So, we need to enable client authentication in our redis.conf . With client authentication enabled in the Redis server configuration, clients wanting to connect to the server must present a certificate issued by a trusted certificate authority. We will use our previously generated issuing certificate along with a new client private key which we will generate to generate the client certificate that the Redis server can trust to allow connections.
cd /tmp/cert/ change working directory
In the following commands, we will generate the client private key, then use the key along with the issuing certificate key and certificate to generate the client certificate.
[root@redis-host certs]# openssl genrsa -out client.key 2048
openssl genrsa -out client.key 2048 generate the client private key.
Next, we use the private key along with the issuing certificate to generate the client certificate.
[root@redis-host certs]# openssl req -new -sha256 -key client.key -subj '/O=Redislabs/CN=Redis Client' | openssl x509 -req -sha256 -CA ca.crt -CAkey ca.key -CAserial /etc/ssl/private/ca.txt -CAcreateserial -days 365 -out client.crt [Output] Signature ok subject=/O=Redislabs/CN=Redis Client Getting CA Private Key
Next, we move the client key and certificate to the appropriate locations and set permission on them. Run the following commands.
[root@redis-host certs]# mkdir /etc/ssl/client [root@redis-host certs]# cp client.key /etc/ssl/client/ [root@redis-host certs]# cp client.crt /etc/ssl/client/ [root@redis-host certs]# chmod 400 /etc/ssl/client/client.{key,crt}
Note: I’ve skip a step that might be necessary here depending on you need. you might want to create a Linux user to that you can use for making client connection to the redis server. Say for example the application that can connect to the server. In that case you would want to make sure that only the application have read access to the client credentials. You should run the command chown app:app /etc/ssl/client/client.{key,crt} assuming your application user is app .
Now we can enable client authentication, open the redis.conf file
vi /etc/redis/redis.conf Search for and set tls-auth-clients to yes
# # tls-auth-clients no tls-auth-clients yes
Restart the Redis service for this change to take effect.
[root@redis-host certs]# systemctl restart redis.service [root@redis-host certs]# systemctl status redis ● redis.service - The Redis Server Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/redis.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled) Active: active (running) since Wed 2020-12-09 13:05:35 UTC; 3s ago Process: 14717 ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/rm -f /run/redis.pid (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS) Main PID: 14718 (redis-server) CGroup: /system.slice/redis.service └─14718 /usr/local/bin/redis-server 127.0.0.1:6379
Let test the new configuration with a client connection to the server.
[[root@redis-host certs]# redis-cli --tls --cacert /usr/local/share/ca-certificates/ca.crt --cert /etc/ssl/client/client.crt --key /etc/ssl/client/client.key 127.0.0.1:6379> get name "godfrey" 127.0.0.1:6379> get email "[email protected]" 127.0.0.1:6379> ping PONG 127.0.0.1:6379> ping hello "hello" 127.0.0.1:6379>
The configuration is working. What happens if you don’t provide the client credential on connecting to the server? Well, let’s try that out. Close the current connection and make a new connection. This time without providing the client certification and key.
[root@redis-host certs]# redis-cli --tls --cacert /usr/local/share/ca-certificates/ca.crt Could not connect to Redis at 127.0.0.1:6379: SSL_connect failed: sslv3 alert handshake failure not connected>
You see that! We must be properly authenticated to be able to connect to the Redis server.
In this demo, we have used a self-signed certificate, in production, you will have a certificate authority issue the certificate for you.
What have we done so far? We created directories and files required for our Redis installation, set ownership and permission on the files, download, extract, and compile Redis. Then we created a systemd unit to manage the Redis server as a service, that way the service will always be life when the system reboots. Finally, we generated private keys and self-signed certificates for configuring TLS in our Redis deployment. I hope this article proves helpful to you in the secure deployment of your Redis server. Leave you likes, claps, and comments. Thanks for reading! | https://medium.com/@godfrey-tutu/redis-6-deployment-with-tls-authentication-on-centos-7-8b6e34d11cd0 | ['Tutu Godfrey Oritseshutieyimi'] | 2020-12-10 11:16:57.724000+00:00 | ['Deployment', 'DevOps', 'Tls', 'Redis', 'Centos'] |
10 tips to help improve your metabolism | Get Your Metabolism Trigger That Surely Help You to Boost Metabolism level.
By relying on foods that accelerate metabolism, you will become much more energetic, forget about sleep problems, feel stronger, more resilient, and in a couple of weeks you will notice that your clothes are too big for you. Follow a few rules to keep your metabolism at the right pace.
1.Cut back on calories, but in moderation
By drastically reducing the calorie content of the menu for the sake of losing weight, you risk harming your metabolism. By receiving less energy for basic biological functions (about 2,000 calories for most women), the body slows down the absorption of food - obviously wanting to keep it feeling full. According to Dr. Dan Benardo, assistant professor of nutrition and kinesiology at Georgia State University, an undernourished body is destroying precious, calorie-burning muscle tissue for energy. “Eat enough to avoid hunger,” he insists. "Two snacks of 150 calories between three meals of 430 calories each - and your metabolism will start working at the right speed."
2.Enjoy a healthy breakfast every morning
Many people know that breakfast speeds up metabolism and energizes the whole day. But did you know that women who skip this meal are 4.5 times more likely to be obese? These are the ruthless statistics, according to Dan Benardo. If you're too lazy to cook Benedict eggs, eat at least yogurt. Although it is much more correct to refuel with oatmeal in low-fat milk, topped with walnuts for protein support.
3.Add more fiber to the diet
Vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and legumes can help keep you feeling full and curb your cravings for tempting treats. It would be good for women to get 21-25 grams of fiber a day, men - from 30 to 38 grams. Among the vegetables and fruits with the highest fiber content are raspberries, pears, apples, green peas, broccoli. For example, one medium carrot equals 1.5 grams of fiber, a slice of whole grain bread equals 2 grams, and a cup of raspberries equals 8 grams. Aim for the right balance of protein, fiber, and fat in your daily menu to keep hormone levels in check and not build up fat around your waist.
4.Increase your protein intake
The body needs protein to maintain muscle mass - feel free to add 100 grams of lean meat, a couple of tablespoons of nuts (remember, peanuts are not nuts) or 200 grams of low fat yogurt to your main meals. Like fiber, protein will keep you feeling full for long and curb cravings for obscene high-calorie refined foods.
5.Go on iron-rich foods
This element is very important for transporting the oxygen needed by the muscles to burn fat. In addition, we women lose our iron stores every month due to menstruation. If you do not replenish the reserves, the energy will decline, as will the metabolism. Recommended sources, besides the well-known buckwheat, lean meat and liver: shellfish, beans, quinoa, lentils, spinach, peas, chickpeas, pumpkin seeds.
6.Look for sources of calcium and vitamin D
Calcium deficiency, common in women, can slow down the metabolism. In addition, research confirms that skim milk and yoghurt prevent weight gain from other foods. Vitamin D, in turn, is required to support muscle metabolism. Unfortunately, most people lack it, so it is worth choosing the right supplements or introducing foods rich in this vitamin into the diet. 90% of the RDA is hidden in a 100-gram serving of salmon, tuna, shrimp, tofu and eggs are just as healthy.
7.Drink plenty of clean water
Drinking water maintains overall body hydration, aids weight loss by reducing calorie intake and, as confirmed by Dr. Benardo, boosts metabolism by promoting lipolysis - the breakdown of fats.
8.Limit alcohol consumption
Alcohol slows down the metabolism, especially cocktails with a high sugar content, as it is primarily used as fuel. It is not necessary to categorically refuse alcohol, you just have to stick to moderate portions: beer - preferably up to 330 grams, wine - 100-150 grams, liqueur - 30-50 grams. Take your time, sip sip after sip as you sip on your drink.
9.Master intense interval training
Of course, regular daily activity is needed, and any exercise and long-distance walking will be beneficial. But recent research shows that high-intensity interval training is far more effective at burning fat and boosting metabolism than your regular cardio workout. A set of alternations of intense exercise with short rest intervals will speed up your metabolism, and due to excess oxygen consumption, the body will continue to “burn calories” for several more hours. In English, this phenomenon is called excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC), which encourages metabolic processes to work intensively after exercise.
10.Best foods to boost metabolism
And finally, a top list of products ready for cooperation in accelerating metabolism:
Avocado
Cheese
Black beans
Greek yogurt
Spinach
Salmon
Eggs
Hemp seeds
Lentils
Lean beef
Tofu
Milk
Get Your Metabolism Trigger That Surely Help You to Boost Metabolism level. | https://medium.com/@maryasmith/10-tips-to-help-improve-your-metabolism-f787cab8a4a7 | ['Marya Smith'] | 2020-12-26 15:36:45.480000+00:00 | ['Weight Loss', 'Metabolism Diet', 'Metabolism Trigger', 'Metabolism', 'Burn Fat'] |
Our monitoring of attendance has never been more important. | Our monitoring of attendance has never been more important. Recently major sporting events have made the decision to have no fans at their events. What impact will this have on the financial services industry? Our blog this week will examine how we are social distancing and measuring attendance at the same time.
Status Quo
The methods we used to track our progress have been neutered by COVID. It is no longer a good practice to look at the bottom of a box score to see the attendance. We know that the attendance is zero and time will tell if fans meant more than the trophy acceptance speech. Early on, LeBron even questioned not having fans, but realized that attendance matters but has a larger impact on his compensation. Businesses and Universities have drunk this medicine too. Acceptance rates, monthly production and asset growth are correlated to tuition and revenue. COVID does not care if you are an elite school or a top producer. Finally, our fancy office does not matter as much as it used to. A good video and a nice picture background will work.
Social Media
Social Media is a double-edged sword for businesses and for our children. One edge of the sword is the tracking attendance of our website and social media posts. This data is accurate, but the platforms know the addictive power of Google Analytics Data and the followers and likes from Facebook and Twitter. Parents warn their children about this addictive data, but I too want to have as many followers as Josh Brown.
Next Steps
How can we pivot our professional and personal lives to address the Virus? Surveys of our clients and our co-workers are a good place to start. The dramatic market moves, and the high unemployment claims reinforced that we need a personal and a business CFO to monitor our bank accounts. We cannot rely on the Government to cover our insufficient funds charges. Our attendance matters.
I am not enjoying the fan-free golf tournaments. Let’s see if attendance is important for baseball and football. | https://medium.com/@jspears12/our-monitoring-of-attendance-has-never-been-more-important-2fa3e8a14278 | ['Jeff Spears'] | 2020-07-01 17:24:14.975000+00:00 | ['Masks', 'Social Distance'] |
COVID and the deep battle. Or lack of it. | Image from Dan Myers via Unsplash
How can we campaign, and not just respond?
The military has frameworks to help thinking about strategy, operations and execution. Lots of frameworks. Having been schooled in these frameworks in my first career in the UK military, I find myself applying these frameworks all the time, whether consciously or not. Sometimes that are helpful, and sometimes they aren’t. But just now, when looking at COVID, they are not just useful but also alarming. I’d like to share some of them here — and explain why I’m worried about what comes next in the UKs response to COVID.
The powerful thing about these frameworks is that they require that you think and act in a genuinely comprehensive way. You can cherry pick to a degree, but if you apply these frameworks in the spirit in which they are developed and offered they demand that you think genuinely through a problem. All of it, over time, not just the bit that’s in front of you now.
Strategy, Tactics and Operations
The first framework if like to share is the framework of the different levels at which operations need to be conceptualised and connected. They are the strategic, operational and tactical level. The way these work is best described with an example.
Let’s take the example of the UKs involvement in operations in Afghanistan. I’ve got nothing to say here about the rights and wrongs of that involvement, but want to use it as an example to bring these levels to life.
First the strategic level. This is about rationale, about the long term purpose and framing justification of an endeavour. In my example, the strategic rationale was about things like staying close to and preserving a relationship with the US, preventing ungoverned space from becoming a safe space for threats to our interests developing, or about securing long term access to rare metals. Again, no value judgement here, just examples. So the strategic level is about why you are doing what you are doing. To what end?
I will now jump down to the tactical level. This is about everyday activity — on the ground. It’s about who is doing what when over the next day or week, and how we coordinate it. It’s the actual activity and how it is syncronised and organised. Day to day stuff — the operations you see on the screen in the ops room right now.
The operational level is what links these together. It’s also the most opaque and difficult to grasp — in the military those generals that really understand the operational level have a status akin to sages or wizards. The big top level narrative is easy, as is the day to coord. But finding the shape that connects to and makes sense of both is not. In the example I’m using the operational level was about the operational design — in this case most simply described as developing indiginous capability across the security, economic, political and social domains and stepping back as this capability developed. That’s the core design principle that gave shape to day to operations, and linked to the strategic purpose.
So, we have strategic, tactical and operational levels. They are connected, comprehensive and they work together in a sort of gearing that sometimes moves fast and linear, sometimes is more of a fluid coupling. But the key thing is that successful operations (in the round) requires us to think about and set out our plans in terms of these three levels, and to recognise the dependencies between them. Just thinking about tactics doesn’t work, it’s an ever decreasing circle. Just doing strategy doesn’t work, you end up shouting into the wind. And just operational level is no good either, because without strategy it has no purpose and without tactics has no manifestation. Strategic, tactical, operational level. All connected.
OK — so lets now think about COVID. Can you detect in the UKs response a clear articulation of these three levels? I can’t. I can for the response in places like New Zealand — look at the way the team of 5 million has tackled this societal challenge and you can detect these layers in action — and most crucially you can see the operational level, the shape, the operational design and how it changes and develops over time. I just can’t do this for the UKs response. I haven’t heard the strategic narrative — the rationale seems purely the need to respond. The tactics are clear, most recently with regard to the vaccination programme which has been a textbook example of this level working well. But the operational level, the design and the shape? The phases and the transitions and the agility — where is this? I don’t think it exists. I may be wrong, but i just can’t detect it. The UK is all response and all tactics — the other two layers are generally missing.
Deep Close and Rear
The next framework is deep close and rear operations. This is a powerful framework that forces you to think and act in a way that recognises two obvious but easily forgotten things. First, operations are subject to and need to change over time. And next, that success on an endeavour depends on enabling conditions and that creating these conditions, not just doing stuff, is the key to success.
Close operations are the here and now — the activities that you aim to have an impact or effect (key word) in the short term, however that’s defined. It’s the stuff you’re doing now and the purpose of doing that stuff.
Rear operations are the things that allow you to keep doing what you plan to be doing. It’s the supply lines, the logistics, the legal frameworks that enable you to work. The things that if you neglect or get wrong will stop you in your tracks. Think dull, but essential. A sort of cash flow for your plans.
Deep operations covers the stuff you are doing now to shape or create the conditions for future success. Again, a bit like the operational art the deep operations can have a sort of mystical status among military planners, and those that grasp it can seem gifted with a sort of foresight that is unusual. But it’s not magic, it’s simply recognising the constantly transitioning nature of operations, that the conditions for success are what makes or breaks campaigns, that these conditions change over time, and that a key element of effective operations requires that you commit resources to creating those conditions.
This framework is the one that’s got me really worried. The UK is all over the close battle. The numbers of vaccines, the collective ticking off of the different vaccination cohorts. The rear operation too is obviously important in terms of logistics (think PPE) but has enough consideration really been given to public attitudes and behaviour as a key rear operational factor?
But it’s the deep operation — the deep battle — where the biggest hole is. Effective operational design requires some sense of the shape of a campaign over time, and the ways in which this will change and develop, and the tactics that will be employed as this ebb and flow takes place. As I write we are firmly in the middle of a close battle to vaccinate — but what is the deep battle? I have no idea, because no-one has said what comes next after the vaccine has been rolled out. Even 100% vaccination won’t be the end of our campaign, because the virus will still exist, it will still mutute, it will still break out. What will we be doing then? What will our close battle be when we have got through the current phase? No one seems to know. So we keep fighting different close battles that pop up as opposed to investing in deep operations now that will shape the conditions in the future. We have literally no idea what comes next. So we don’t know what conditions we need to set to be successful. So we probably won’t be.
Perhaps the best example of what this means in practice is test and trace. What is it for? Is it part of the deep operation? How is it being developed and in relation to achieving what conditions? It’s impossible to say — because we don’t have a deep operation.
You can see the problem this creates. Without a deep battle we are stuck (as we always seem to have been) in the close battle. React, react, react. Not react, shape, change, move forward. We are collectively stuck on a close battle hamster wheel — and until some proper thinking, perhaps using some of these frameworks is applied — that’s where we will stay.
In summary
So, I think applying the two frameworks of Strategic/tactical/operational level, and
Deep close and rear operations to the UKs COVID response is both very useful and very worrying. I admit I may have a partial, outside the tent view of all this, and I’d love to be proved wrong, but my fear is that our collective thinking is simply not comprehensive enough. It doesn’t take into account the design, the shape of what we are trying to do, and how this will change over time. What is the shape of the overall campaign, not just the latest daily number? How can we lift our eyes from the close battle and shape the conditions we need to succeed in the future? How can we campaign, and not just respond?
If you have read this far, I’d love to hear what you think. And if you are working for HMG, I’d also like to help. [email protected] | https://medium.com/@dcjrwork/covid-and-the-deep-battle-or-lack-of-it-f4cc2d8106f4 | ['David Relph'] | 2021-02-16 14:38:05.678000+00:00 | ['Strategy', 'Leadership', 'Systems Thinking'] |
#86: On roadtrips we podcast? | #86: On roadtrips we podcast?
Dear Bellos,
Summer is just around the corner, and for me that means I’m spending less time in my headphones. To be honest, my podcast queue becomes a little neglected.
Last summer, while on an hour-long drive, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to introduce my dad and grandma to podcasts. I scrolled through my favorite shows, trying to find one that fit the circumstances of our shared listening, and settled on an episode of Planet Money.
After I explained a little more about what a podcast is (“It’s a radio program, but I don’t have to wait for it to come on the radio — I can listen whenever I want!”) and gave a setup for the story we were about to hear, my dad and grandma fell into an expectant silence.
I hit play.
A first, everyone in the car stared straight ahead, listening. Three minutes in, my grandma started digging around in her purse. Five minutes in, my dad leaned over to whisper something about directions. They tried so hard to be polite, but this kind of absorbed, communal listening felt uncomfortable for them: Why eschew conversation when you have two perfectly good people here to enjoy it with? Entertainment was for those times when you had nothing more to say.
I find that there are very few places where another person and I can select a podcast together and enjoy it in companionable silence. Even my partner and I have very little overlap in the Venn diagram of our listening habits. So, Bello, I’m here for your advice: have you managed to make podcast listening a social habit? If so, how?
Find me on Twitter and let me know your ways.
Ashley
A black and white image of three young, male-presenting people fixing radios. (Library and Archives Canada)
1. I listened to Phantom Power: Sounds about Sound’s episode “Dead Air “— on unmoving air — and it moved me, a lot. I felt the claustrophobic stillness within the eye of a hurricane, as well as the complete brain shutdown of not being able to read silently after a traumatic event, all while moving myself around a noisy city. (Ma’ayan)
2. Two of my favorite women interviewing two more of my favorite women has become a trend on ZigZag. This season is taking a long, hard look at business culture, and community-driven startup founders Mara Zepeda and Jenn Brandel talk about the Zebra movement as an alternative to Silicon Valley’s “unicorn” companies. It had me yelling, “YES, THANK YOU!” every minute or two. (Ma’ayan)
3. The Deca Tapes! OH MY GOSH The Deca Tapes! I’ve been holding off on recommending this because each episode has gotten progressively better, so I waited until the narrative arc was complete. It’s a little bit of Clue (everyone has a role), a little bit of Agatha Christie (everyone involved is in a confined space and something happens), a little bit of confessional-style audio (everyone is trustworthy… or are they?). The reveals in each episode are fantastic. Set aside a few hours to listen in full. (Ma’ayan)
4. I have been waiting for Jeff Wright’s sequel to Trojan War: The Podcast since 2016. Now we have Odyssey: The Podcast. Jeff’s style is relatable, yet epic, enjoyable and well-researched — he truly is a master storyteller. (Calen)
5. The Explorer’s Podcast just finished an 8-part series on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The host, Matt, gives a detailed and balanced account of the journey with a healthy dose of perspective. (Calen)
6. The Ways We Are is probably the most interesting find of the week: two mixed-race Canadian women talking about the power of names and how that defines who we are and how we interact with the world. The first two episodes are interviews with their mothers about how they got their names. (Calen)
7. BBC recently released a new fiction, Forest 404, along with talk episodes and soundscapes. I elected to just listen to the main story without the extras, and it was easy to be transported to this strange world absent of nature sounds. Some of the best sound design I have heard in a podcast. (Calen)
8. Phoning It In is an improvised comedy “phone-in” show, and it’s very funny. I particularly enjoyed Episode #31, which includes an interview with Rev. J. W. Peacemaker, Bounty Hunter and star of the reality show God’s Gonna Cut You Down (warning: U.S. listeners may need to ignore the hilariously terrible American accents!). (Conor)
9. When the Mueller report finally came out, I, like the rest of the Internet, watched a livestream of someone reading it out loud page by page by grueling page. It felt like a shared cultural moment for our democracy, trying to figure out what really happened. The livestream ended, but now we have something better: The Mueller Report, an audio dramatization that gives us the report as well as all of the side commentary going on in dear old Bob’s head. (Dana)
10 .The Documentary Podcast from BBC World Service published an episode piecing together the evidence of what happened at Grenfell Tower, a 24-story apartment building in London that burned down in January 2017, taking 72 lives with it. It uses interviews, emergency calls, and testimony to zero in on one floor, and then one flat — flat 113, where 8 people huddled together for safety and only 4 survived. (Dana)
11. I hesitate to recommend “The Body Genius” from The Truth only because you will then be stuck in the same hell of having to wait for the next episodes to come out. With a buff jock as a main character, it would be easy for the show to be full of simple jokes and cheap blows. Instead, you get a murder mystery with one of the more gruesome (yet hilarious and ironically satirical?) deaths I’ve heard of in a while, as well as a deep fondness for the meathead who needs to solve the crime. (Dana)
12. Has the hero’s journey worn out its welcome? That’s the question Eric Molinsky of Imaginary Worlds asks in “The Hero’s Journey Endgame.” As one guest puts it, this staple within sci-fi and fantasy storytelling “is a machine designed, intentionally or not, to make you a narcissist.” (Erik)
13. Working in a hospital is an act of distilling some of life’s most dramatic events into a single shift, day after day. To hear some of these stories, check out The Nocturnists, which is like The Moth if it focused on stories told by medical professionals. Start with “Enjoy Your Life,” which I found quite moving. (Erik)
The Bello Collective is a publication + newsletter about podcasts and the audio industry. Our goal is to bring together writers, journalists, and other voices who share a passion for the world of audio storytelling.
Subscribe to the Bello Collective fortnightly newsletter for more stories, podcast recommendations, audio industry news, and more. Support our work and join our community by becoming a member. | https://bellocollective.com/86-on-roadtrips-we-podcast-60c204233a50 | ['The Bello Collective'] | 2019-05-09 17:53:13.797000+00:00 | ['Podcasting', 'Bellocollectivenewsletter', 'Newsletter', 'Newsletter Marketing', 'Podcast'] |
Rights After Prison | Once you or a loved one goes to prison, either for a long time or maybe a short amount of time, you become a felon and get rights taken from you after serving your sentence. There’s many different things that can happen to you and your mindset. Transitioning into the real world is not easy. Does the sentence ever really end?
Post-prison experience can turn your life upside down. Prisoners might experience culture shock, depression, anger, rejection, addiction and will have to avoid negative influences and learn to communicate their frustration in a positive way. What is culture shock? Culture shock is a feeling that prisoners get when you suddenly have to adapt to a new environment, unfamiliar culture, or a way of life. The longer a prisoner is in confinement the greater their culture shock may be. Rejection will most likely come from loved ones, friends, and jobs. But they have to learn to accept rejection.
Many rights will get taken away once a felon gets out of prison. One of those rights is possessing and purchasing a firearm. Congress has not set this as a law because in different cases, some felons have a right to purchase a firearm. There’s a big argument over if nonviolent felons should have the right to buy a firearm. After so many years of being a felon you can apply to get your gun rights back depending on the reason of your sentence, and if you were convicted by the federal or state government. It would be a quicker process if a felon was convicted by a state government.
Felons will also get their voting rights taken away. In some states you can get them taken permanently or just temporarily or not at all. In Maine and Vermont, felons never lose their right to vote, even while they are imprisoned. In 22 states, felons lose their voting rights during the time they are in prison, and for a period of time after, normally while on parole or probation. Voting rights are automatically restored after this time period, but if a felon happens to vote when not supposed to (based on the state laws in spite of the crime they committed), the vote is illegal. In five states convicted felons on probation may vote, but not those on parole.
In most states, convicted felons may not serve as jurors until the the very end of their sentence, which includes probation and parole. However, in all but four states, felon-jury banning laws prevent all guilty felons from serving on any type of jury like grand, civil or criminal.
A convicted felon cannot purchase a passport. So they cannot travel outside the country if planning on coming back. If they wanted to leave while on probation, or on parole they may do so with prior approval. A felon may go through a process to get a passport to be able to leave the country. Only felons who were guilty of drug trafficking across the United States of American border will never to accept to get a passport.
Employment and certain professions won’t be an option anymore once your become a certified felon. Individuals who have been convicted of a felony often have a difficult time in finding employment because many employers choose not to hire them. However, a series of laws may prevent an employer from having a policy against leaving out employees who have been convicted of a felony. Felons who are convicted of another felony while employed, put themselves in the position of having to tell their employer. Employers may legally fire an employee for pending charges and felony conviction depending on the charger and sentence time. A felony charge does not have a time limit it could be on there forever and may hurt one’s chances of getting any good job ever again.
When a person is called for jury duty in the United States, that person must attend. Failing to report for jury duty is illegal. If you are a convicted felon, you usually will not or cannot be called for jury duty service. That is because the names for jury duty are drawn from a registrar of voters. Usually, felons cannot register to vote. Therefore, their names will not be included on a registrar list. In habit to not being allowed to serve on a jury in most states, convicted felons are not allowed to apply for federal or state grants, live in public housing, or receive federal cash assistance, SSI or food stamps, among other benefits.
Depending on the crime, convicted felons don’t always lose all parental rights (unless the person was convicted of a more serious offense like murder). Although, in situations where the convicted felon was the only parent involved in the child’s life, and the child was put into foster care for an excessive amount of time, the convicted felon may lose parental rights. While convicted felons may not legally lose parental rights at the time of they were charged, it may affect parental rights down the road, especially in the case of custody battles or divorces. A felony conviction is almost always a red flag for any judge to award custody to the other parent.
Even if these are not necessarily lost rights, he or she may find it hard to get a lease, applying for a loan or filing official paperwork in any capacity. Once your a convicted felon you will lose the right to voting, traveling abroad or getting a passport, the right to bear arms or own guns, jury service, employment in certain fields, public social benefits and housing, and parental benefits. After being convicted you will have many rights taken away including the right to vote, gun privileges, and traveling out of the country and many more.
Sources :
“Can Felons Leave the Country?” JobsForFelonsHub.com, 22 Dec. 2018, www.jobsforfelonshub.com/can-felons-leave-country/.
Minnesota Public Radio News, www.mprnews.org/
Remember Those In Prison.” Prison Fellowship, www.prisonfellowship.org/.
“What Rights Do Convicted Felons Lose?” The Law Dictionary, thelawdictionary.org/article/what-rights-do-convicted-felons-lose/. | https://medium.com/human-rights-blog/rights-after-prison-e5cffd152d31 | ['Alyssa Camacho'] | 2019-03-08 14:13:53.697000+00:00 | ['Prison Reform'] |
Quality Assurance for Insurance — Getting Automated Claim Adjudication Right in the First Attempt | Despite many attempts to improve first-pass auto-adjudication, claim errors remain one of the most significant sources of cost.
The U.S. suffers an approximate 275 billion loss every year due to fraud and other issues related to claims accuracy and administration. (Source: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services)
Why is QA Assurance for Insurance so Challenging?
The issue with the QA assurance for insurance is not about implementing new technologies or deploying new tools. It is even not about adopting the right approaches.
The problem is Test Coverage:
Even though human tester can create test cases, they can’t provide the required test coverage. There is a high chance that the false positive or false negative cases will go unnoticed.
Whether it is a top-down, bottom-up, or functional-analysis approach, each of them or a combination provides some testing coverage. However, this level of planning and execution is often skipped in the interest of time by the organizations. They neglect the coverage plan, without which much of the test coverage is skipped, resulting in error-prone testing.
As a result of the poor performance of QA assurance for insurance, no one expects it to work. They assume that they will get mediocre results and are ready to accept the cost of recovery as a standard cost of doing business, instead of improving test coverage.
Is A.I.-Powered Testing a Solution to the Woes of QA Assurance for Insurance?
To get better results in the QA Assurance for Insurance, there is a need to focus on the basics like:
Clearly-defined test objectives with comprehensive test coverage planning
The utilization of well-prepared test data
Functional analysis of the objects and systems
For optimum utilization of data and comprehensive test coverage, machine learning and artificial intelligence testing services can do wonders. A model-based testing tool, which generates intelligent software testing procedures and scenarios automatically using models of system requirements, can drastically increase test coverage. Similarly, a process accelerator can transform insurance companies’ QA and testing practices by assessing processes, procedures, tools, skills, and risks.
The regression optimization tools can further enhance the accuracy of the tests. They automate the collation of the dependent test cases/scripts-based on the changes. The predictive analytics tools utilize machine learning algorithms to leverage the data available to predict the results of a case and display results in the form of graphical dashboards. It helps insurance businesses in decision-making.
Conclusion
Healthcare insurance needs automation testing that does away with most of the limitations of manual testing, which includes less coverage for test cases. However, the true potential of the massive amount of the data available with the healthcare service providers can only be leveraged with a testing approach that involves the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Published By | https://medium.com/@milesadrian/quality-assurance-for-insurance-getting-automated-claim-adjudication-right-in-the-first-attempt-be57d426afff | ['M. Anas', 'Miles'] | 2020-12-13 22:05:41.191000+00:00 | ['Ai For Healthcare', 'Insurance', 'AI', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Insurance Claim'] |
How Does US History Affect You? Historical Accuracy & John Adams | How does US History Affect You?
I love the United States and our history. I love to study it, read about it, and research it. A few of my favorite historical authors are David McCullough, Ron Chernow, Bruce Catton, and Jon Meacham. McCullough wrote John Adams, a great biography of our second president. The movie miniseries John Adams is based on this book. I strongly recommend you read the book and follow that up with the movie.
John Adams by Gilbert Stuart
Near the end when he is nearly 90 years old, Adams is asked to come view a newly painted depiction of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The artist, John Trumbull, expects Adams to compliment his work and gush about his awe-inspiring creation of the scene that took place almost 50 years earlier.
When Adams does see the large 12 by 18-foot painting he is aghast at the incorrect portrayal. All he can focus on is the inaccuracy of the interpretation of the scene. Adams is angry and offended and lets Trumbull know of his disgust. He feels the painting should accurately represent history and not depict a grandiose and romantic setting that never occurred.
Declaration of Independence by John Trumbull
I will try to do history justice here and be as accurate as I can. I will not romanticize history although that is sometimes difficult as we discuss men who we revere and who accomplished so much so long ago, especially when we have learned from history books which romanticize history and historical figures.
How does US history affect you?
This blog will be about everything United States and its history. Extensive focus will be placed on the history part and even more focused on colonial history and the birth and infancy of the nation. The impact that this history has on us living in the 21st century will be a recurring topic as the decisions made by our Founding Fathers impact us greatly, more than many understand.
This blog will not be partisan. Current events may creep into our discussions at times but I will do my best to keep politics out and hope you will do the same if you comment.
I am doing research now for a book I am writing. The writing for the book is minimal at this point as my efforts are focused on research, outlines, and thought organization. This research is what led me to this blog. I was discussing some research with my sister, Jill. She is the one who had the idea of a blog to write about the things I research as I organize things. Some of the topics in this blog will certainly find their way into the book and others will not.
As an introduction to this blog, I want to communicate to you the love I have for the United States, the US Constitution, and the Founding Fathers. I am in awe of the sacrifice and risk which went into the forming of this nation. I’m not sure we can comprehend all they risked. Enemies were everywhere. Their neighbors were sometimes Loyalists (those who were loyal to the crown) who reported their actions and words back to the British government. Loyalists and spies were all around but they continued nevertheless.
Understanding the Founding Fathers
I hope that you will be entertained and maybe learn something in reading this blog. I really hope it will not only cause you to reflect on what makes this nation great but also understand mistakes were made. The Founding Fathers were human and they indeed made errors. They argued, they lied and coerced at times, and disagreements were common.
But I also hope you will think about what your life might be like if you lived in a time or place where certain things that are important to you were illegal or punishable by law. Put yourself in their place and try to understand things as they did. Atticus Finch put it best when he told Scout “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view — until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
Thank you and God bless America! | https://medium.com/@perkins-douglas/my-fellow-americans-1-fbf7a2efb323 | ['Douglas Perkins'] | 2020-12-31 05:58:58.216000+00:00 | ['United States', 'Accuracy', 'History', 'Us History', 'Founding Fathers'] |
Reading: ShuffleNet V2 — Practical Guidelines for Efficient CNN Architecture Design (Image Classification) | Reading: ShuffleNet V2 — Practical Guidelines for Efficient CNN Architecture Design (Image Classification)
In this story, “ShuffleNet V2: Practical Guidelines for Efficient CNN Architecture Design” (ShuffleNet V2), by Megvii Inc (Face++), and Tsinghua University, is presented.
Indirect Metric : Currently, the neural network architecture design is mostly guided by the indirect metric of computation complexity, i.e., FLOPs .
: Currently, the neural network architecture design is mostly guided by the indirect metric of computation complexity, i.e., . Direct Metric: e.g., speed, depends on the other factors such as memory access cost (MAC) and platform (GPU or ARM) characteristics.
In this paper:
Practical guidelines are suggested for efficient network design using MAC and experimental observations using GPU/ARM.
using MAC and experimental observations using GPU/ARM. ShuffleNet V2 is proposed according to the practical guidelines, which obtains high accuracy with also high speed as shown above.
This is a paper in 2018 ECCV with over 700 citations. (Sik-Ho Tsang @ Medium) | https://medium.com/@sh-tsang/reading-shufflenet-v2-practical-guidelines-for-e-fficient-cnn-architecture-design-image-287b05abc08a | ['Sik-Ho Tsang'] | 2020-10-05 11:58:55.849000+00:00 | ['Object Detection', 'Convolutional Network', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Image Classification', 'Deep Learning'] |
Referral Rewards | Important Update | Referral Link sign ups require the referred (person using your sign up link) to complete an order on the exchange before the referral reward will be given. Note that fair usage policy applies, for example if your referred deposits 0.1 DGB in order to score rewards, then this is flagged as abusive.
*0.01% of the trade value is awarded in ARTIS for each trade conducted by your referral. Remember that all ARTIS HOLDers continuously share in trading fees and is paid out daily through AARP.
*Due to the nature of referral rewards, many people in the world try and exploit such systems by creating multiple accounts and then start referring themselves in order to gain rewards. In lieu of our terms and conditions, multiple accounts is a Prohibited Activity, and we are screening for this through behavior analysis, deposit analysis, i.p sessions etc. We will not honor self referred multi accounts with referral rewards. | https://medium.com/artisturba/referral-rewards-important-update-bf3743175eb | ['Artis Turba'] | 2020-01-20 10:21:13.533000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin', 'Blockchain', 'Referral', 'Artis Turba', 'Ether'] |
Resolving nested queries in GraphQL | Originally published at https://www.wisdomgeek.com on December 9, 2020.
When creating a GraphQL server with relational data, we want to return the data in a hierarchical format with those relationships in a single query. After all, that is where GraphQL comes in handy, right? Let us look into how we can do this using nested queries in GraphQL.
This post assumes you have knowledge of GraphQL queries and how to create a GraphQL server using Apollo Server. You can reference those posts if you are new to GraphQL.
Let us assume we have a blogging application wherein we have users and posts. The types for these are defined as:
type Post {
id: ID!
title: String!
authorId: ID!
}
type Author {
id: ID!
name: String!
posts: [Post]
}
Adding some sample hard coded data for our application,
const posts = [
{
id: 1,
title: 'Why GraphQL?',
authorId: 1,
},
{
id: 2,
title: 'Creating a GraphQL API with Apollo Server',
authorId: 1,
},
{
id: 3,
title: 'This should not be returned',
authorId: 2,
},
];
const authors = [{ id: 1, name: 'Saransh Kataria' }];
Now that we have our initial setup done. Let us look at what we are expecting out of our query:
The expected output
For the hardcoded values above, we want to query all users and get their corresponding posts. So our query will look like this:
query {
authors {
id,
name,
posts {
title
}
}
}
Posts are related to an author, we are querying for the authors and then sub-querying their posts. Since the posts are not a scalar type but a custom type, we need to specify which of their properties must be retrieved.
And we expect the output for our use case to be:
{
"data": {
"authors": [
{
"id": "1",
"name": "Saransh Kataria",
"posts": [
{
"title": "Why GraphQL?"
},
{
"title": "Creating a GraphQL API with Apollo Server"
}
]
}
]
}
}
Creating the query and resolver for the authors
Without worrying about the posts field, we can set up the resolver for the authors query. This will be:
const resolvers = {
Query: {
authors: () => {
return authors;
},
},
}
We are returning the authors array when we receive the query for authors. This is pretty straightforward. The object already has all the corresponding properties that the type needs, they get resolved, and we get the expected response.
But for our relational field, posts, we do not have that. We only can determine the relationship of an author from the posts array.
Resolving nested queries in GraphQL
When setting up a field whose value is a custom type, we have to define a function that tells GraphQL how to get that custom type. In our case, we want to tell GraphQL how to get the posts if we have the author. We do that by defining a new root property inside resolvers.
Alongside query, we will add a new property that will tell GraphQL how to resolve an Author. The author property will be an object, and we will create a method for each of the fields that are to be resolved.
Apollo Server can automatically resolve the scalar properties. We only need to create a resolver for nested properties. To resolve nested queries in GraphQL, we only create a method for the properties that reference other custom types. In our case, we only have the posts field which we are looking for. So we will define this as:
const resolvers = {
Query: {... },
Author: {
posts: () => {...},
},
}
Since posts is a resolver method exactly like other methods in Apollo server, we get access to all the 4 parameters that we get in other methods. The goal of this method is to return the correct posts corresponding to the author. To do that, we need some information from the author object, like the author id.
The posts query is invoked by the author resolver, the parent for the posts resolver will point to the current author. Thus, to resolve this nested query, we will be using that parameter that is passed to it. We can call it parent, but we already know that it will be an author. Thus, we can name the parameter as author.
Using the author, we can easily figure out which posts need to be returned.
const resolvers = {
Query: {
authors: () => {
return authors;
},
},
Author: {
posts: (author) => {
return posts.filter((post) => post.authorId === author.id);
},
},
};
Final code
const { gql, ApolloServer } = require('apollo-server');
const posts = [
{
id: 1,
title: 'Why GraphQL?',
authorId: 1,
},
{
id: 2,
title: 'Creating a GraphQL API with Apollo Server',
authorId: 1,
},
{
id: 3,
title: 'This should not be returned',
authorId: 2,
},
];
const authors = [{ id: 1, name: 'Saransh Kataria' }];
const typeDefs = gql`
type Post {
id: ID!
title: String!
authorId: ID!
}
type Author {
id: ID!
name: String!
posts: [Post]
}
type Query {
authors: [Author]
}
`;
const resolvers = {
Query: {
authors: () => {
return authors;
},
},
Author: {
posts: (author) => {
return posts.filter((post) => post.authorId === author.id);
},
},
};
const server = new ApolloServer({ typeDefs, resolvers });
server.listen(4000).then(({ url }) => {
console.log(`Server started at ${url}`);
});
Conclusion
When we run the query now, we get our desired output:
The first function to be invoked is the authors resolver function since that is what the query asks for. It returns the id, name, and title for all the authors. In our case, we have only one, and that is returned.
Next, GraphQL checks what data was requested. If only name and id were requested, the function execution would end there since those are scalar types.
But we asked for posts. And posts do not exist on the authors object. So GraphQL is going to call the posts function for every individual author. And that is where our resolution of nested queries in GraphQL comes into the picture. Our posts resolver function gets invoked with the parent set as author ({ id: 1, name: ‘Saransh Kataria’ }).
If multiple authors were present in our hardcoded example, the posts function would be individually called for both of them. We use the id of the passed parent author to retrieve the author’s posts and return them.
We can define the relationship differently by having posts defined in the author type and then create a nested GraphQL query in that manner. The schema definition, declaration, and it’s execution is all up to us. And we can resolve nested queries in GraphQL however we want to, once we know how to do it.
If you have any questions, feel free to drop a comment down below. | https://medium.com/@saranshk/resolving-nested-queries-in-graphql-a60f2f2ee1b7 | ['Saransh Kataria'] | 2020-12-09 16:12:51.859000+00:00 | ['Web Development', 'GraphQL', 'Apollo Server', 'JavaScript'] |
How to reframe your thoughts | Let’s try a thought experiment:
Suppose you’re riding a bike and you get hit in the back of the head with a rock.
For the sake of the story, let’s assume that you’re completely fine. So you pull over on the side of the road to collect yourself.
How would this event affect you? First, we’ll ask why it happened.
Scenario one: a teenager in the park throws the rock at your head.
This could be traumatic. You will probably call the authorities, and as a result, may never ride your bike through the park again.
But now let’s imagine scenario two: you’re riding a bike next to a cliff on a windy day and a stone fell onto your head.
The physical sensations of getting hit in the head with a rock will be quite similar. But your emotional response will be dramatically different.
This is because of the difference in how you psychologically frame the events in question.
If a teenager throws a rock at your head, you’re going to be pissed! Even if the rock doesn’t physically hurt you.
But if a rock fell from a cliff and hit your head, you will probably think, “What is the chance!?” and carry on with your day.
The point of these scenarios is to explain the psychology behind Framing. And we’re going to explore how to use different framing tactics to minimize psychological suffering in our life.
Here’s the psychological strategy of framing, best described in William B. Irvine’s book, The Stoic Challenge.
When presented with a setback, take a moment to consider how best to frame it.
Put it in the wrong psychological frame and we may be traumatized by the event.
Put it in the correct frame and we can brush it off and carry on with our day.
Let’s consider the frames available:
Suppose we don’t get something we’re expected to get; we can’t get the time off from work we expected for the holidays.
One response is to put this event into the unfairness frame. “I’ve worked hard and this is unfair!” Do this and we will likely get angry and upset.
The better frame to put this scenario in, one that reduces our psychological suffering, would be the competing obligations frame. This would mean stopping to consider why your boss can’t give you the time off. Maybe the holidays are so busy that your job would suffer if you couldn’t work and take care of the customers.
That said, maybe it is possible your boss cheated you. But even if it’s the case, allowing ourselves to get upset just increases the harm done.
Let’s turn to a different disappointment.
Imagine someone is late for a meeting, therefore wasting your time. We can put this into a spiteful frame. “He did this on purpose, just to upset me!” you could say.
Alternatively, we could put this into an incompetence frame: assuming that the person just has a hard time managing their time.
We may still get upset, but it will take away the sting of being insulted by the person. We may even have empathy towards the person for being late.
Another strategy to combat this is to expect less from people.
Lowering expectations takes the sting out of these situations, and alternatively allows us to be pleasantly surprised when people are on time.
Let’s discuss two more ways how to reframe your thoughts.
Suppose things just keep getting worse and worse. There’s a snowstorm, your flight is canceled, and now you can’t get a ride from the airport.
The first frame coming to mind is the storytelling frame: think about this scenario in autobiographical terms.
This domino effect of setbacks is creating materials for your autobiography. It represents an opportunity to add a sentence, or a paragraph, or in the case of really bad setbacks, an entire chapter to your autobiography.
Use the storytelling frame to act on the assumption that we will someday write our own autobiography. We will honestly and fully describe the challenges we faced in daily living and the manner in which we handled those challenges.
Now most of us will not actually write an autobiography on the story of our lives. But we may be able to use the content to work with the last frame I’m going to mention.
The comedic frame: to make the bad things that happen to you the basis of a joke.
Even though we may never write and publish an autobiography on our lives, we will share stories with our friends and family. And there’s nothing better than turning a major challenge into a joke that you can laugh off with your favorite people.
By using these frames, we can greatly reduce the chance of being angered or upset by life’s setbacks.
And in return, these frames will increase the chance that you will respond to the setback in an effective manner.
So go ahead and start reframing your setbacks. It’s an intelligent way to play this game we call life.
And how will you know you’ve found the right way how to reframe your thoughts?
You’ll know when your anger or frustration begins to dissolve. Or better yet, you come up with a funny story to share with your friends and family 😉
Here’s an exercise you can do right now to practice, How to reframe your thoughts. | https://medium.com/@teambluedoor/how-to-reframe-your-thoughts-7a1f66dfb67e | ['Danny Trifone'] | 2020-12-30 01:03:05.079000+00:00 | ['Self-awareness', 'Self Improvement', 'Stoicism', 'Reframing', 'Self'] |
Cycling around Taiwan in 9 Days | Documenting my experience from cycling around the island of Taiwan in 9 days. If you are also a noob biker like me that didn’t know much going in, included are my lessons and learnings acquired along the way.
Purpose
The purpose of this trip is to —
Try New Experiences — see Taiwan up close and in all the elements in a new and unfamiliar method.
Strengthen Relationships — the bond between us close friends (Ian & Joy) who did this together will become timeless memories.
Challenge myself physically and mentally — a long trip like this is always more mental than physical from my experience. It’s also a great time to get some headspace back from busy normal life to think or just be present and mindful while riding.
Planning
This was the rough plan we had before we started.
More detailed breakdown of each day along with difficulty rating form 1–6 stars. We combined day 8 and 9 to make it 9 days instead of 10. | https://medium.com/curious/cycling-around-taiwan-2020-210a083c40d8 | ['Jacky Wang'] | 2020-09-07 19:50:18.152000+00:00 | ['Travel', 'Taiwan', 'Challenge', 'Cycling', 'Adventure'] |
Imagery update for February 2019: What’s new in Google Earth | By Eric Kolb and Matt Manolides, Google Imagery team
It’s a new year, and we’re excited to be adding more great imagery to Google Earth and Google Maps. Because we’re often asked about the age of our imagery and how often it’s updated, here’s a summary of what we’ve been up to recently.
New 3D imagery: Ready for some (American) football?
In the past several months, we’ve added new high-resolution 3D imagery for nearly 190 cities and metro areas, covering nearly 32 million people. Some of our favorites include Liverpool, England, home of the Fab Four; Supertree Grove in Singapore, featured in the movie “Crazy Rich Asians”; and just in time for Sunday’s Super Bowl kickoff, new imagery of the Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia
In case you missed it, we announced a new layer in Google Earth that shows you the cities and towns where we have 3D imagery available. Check it out in Google Earth.
Other new locales in 3D:
Croatia: Split, Zagreb
Germany: Essen, Magdeburg
Norway: Trondheim
Poland: Bydgoszcz, Oswiecim
Sweden: Uppsala
USA: Allen Hills, North Carolina; Carbondale, Illinois; Crystal Lake, Illinois; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Santa Ana, California; San Antonio, Texas
UK: Cardiff, England; Glasgow, Scotland; Kingston-upon-Hull, England; Lilford, England; Liverpool, England
New satellite imagery
Since last we checked in, we’ve updated or added enough satellite and aerial (2D) imagery to cover more than 2.4 billion people across the planet. Explore new imagery for Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen; Mykonos in Greece; and parts of Puerto Rico, including San Juan. Tip: Turn off the 3D toggle in Google Earth to view our freshest 2D imagery around the globe.
Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen
Until next time, keep exploring and enjoy the view! | https://medium.com/google-earth/imagery-update-for-february-2019-whats-new-in-google-earth-a8e5c2c33dfe | ['Google Earth'] | 2019-02-03 02:02:50.162000+00:00 | ['Google', 'Google Earth', 'Super Bowl', 'Google Maps', 'Satellite Technology'] |
Adobe Illustrator course in Rawalpindi Pakistan | Adobe Illustrator course in Rawalpindi Pakistan
Adobe Illustrator is a professional vector-based design and drawing program. Used as part of a larger design workflow, Illustrator allows for the creation of everything from single design elements to entire compositions. Designers use Illustrator to create posters, symbols, logos, patterns, icons, etc. | https://medium.com/@coursescomputer7/adobe-illustrator-course-in-rawalpindi-pakistan-68ca05a49d39 | ['Icp Institute'] | 2020-12-24 07:22:57.258000+00:00 | ['Logo Design', 'Graphic Design', 'Institute', 'Brouchers', 'Adobe Illustrator'] |
Trump’s Paean to America First | Terry H. Schwadron
Sept. 26, 2018
To no one’s surprise, President Trump yesterday served up a serious, wide-ranging, if sometimes wandering dose of “America First” thinking to the United Nations’ general assembly. There was no mistaking his rejection of globalism, even global responsibility for issues like refugees, unless the specifics would serve America’s interest.
Along the way, Trump skewered China, Iran, Cuba, Palestine, Germany, Venezuela and others who, in pursuit of their own versions of their national sovereignty — Trump’s dominant theme — might have acted in ways that do not put American interests first.
Indeed, the U.S. president warned that whether the issue involves trade or security, Trump’s America will be offering foreign aid only when it serves the needs of the United States, and that the UN itself should be reforming its ways before U.S. aid is cut further.
Here’s the good news: The president was strong, on point, mostly clear before becoming occasionally incoherent, and totally serious about the positioning of America in the time of Trump in the world, and about having made progress on some important world crises, like North Korea.
The ever-present bad news, of course, is that this is a president who cannot heal divides at home, and certainly cannot do so in the world. His message of isolationism came from someone who is pretty isolated, and his remarks lacked heart and any sense of conciliation with and for others who cannot compete.
Of course, it seems easy for Trump to utter successes and harder to find measurable success in reality. Stepping back, we can see North Korea still holds its nuclear weapons, that Iran is holding back from nuclear development only because it is hanging onto European allies who did not withdraw from the treaty, that Syria is still leaking tens of thousands of refugees, moving the embassy in Israel to Jerusalem has only worsened the prospect of two-state solutions, that Russia and China are growing friskier in international arenas, challenging U.S. supremacy and on and on.
For other world leaders, White House aides told The Washington Post,“The president’s remarks were aimed, aides said, at elevating the theme of “American sovereignty.” That view did not necessarily have much support from the leaders from the U.N.’s 192 other countries, however. “In the first moments of the speech, Trump declared he had made more progress than ‘almost any other administration in the history of our country’ — prompting audible laughs in the cavernous U.N. chamber. A startled-looking Trump appeared thrown off-balance for a moment” before resuming his teleprompter remarks.”
The real audience may have been voters at home, pressing his point of American toughness. That toughness, he said, had won friendship with the North Korea leader, with whom he intends to meet again soon, and should warn foes like Iran to mend their bad regional, state-sponsored terrorism ways.
The speech set up an odd dichotomy. Our president could make demands of other nations, but somehow other nations are not supposed to make demands of us. Our president could see how others were pursuing their own sovereign ways, but those ways should work for U.S. interests.
The president rejected the idea of America participating in some UN efforts because they are not helping U.S. interests, but expects that others should do so. Stylistically, it seemed familiar to matching campaign rhetoric and bombastic announcements from the Oval Office with the reality of dealing with Congress, for example. It’s okay that Democrats put forth an ideology, but, it would be best if that ideology were the same as his own, for example.
Trump recounted cutting funds for UNESCO, the UN humanitarian arm, and restated opposition to supporting the International Criminal Court or the UN Refugee Migration effort. “We will not be governed by an international body that is unaccountable to our own citizens,” Trump said.
The idea of nations working together on common problems like Climate Change or housing for refugees don’t figure into any kind of must-do list for this president. Human rights are no longer an issue, just a nice-to-have, so long as the trade numbers are favorable or the support for a border wall in place.
The president previewed sanctions starting in November against Iran, defended tariffs, and indicated that the United States will act on its own where and when it feels a need to do so.
To me, the idea of floating a slogan like America First across the globe in place of a layered, structured approach to foreign policy seems inadequate and ineffective. But the president believes he is winning global success by doing so. It’s just a little hard to measure the achievements he claims with the reality on the ground.
##
www.terryschwadron.wordpress.com | https://terryschwadron.medium.com/trumps-paean-to-america-first-af56516bc9c9 | ['Terry Schwadron'] | 2018-09-26 11:02:37.141000+00:00 | ['Trade', 'White House', 'Foreign Policy', 'UN', 'Trump'] |
TryHackMe(c4ptur3-th3-fl4g) walkthrough part 1 | Hello friends this is my second writeup. in this i will discuss about how i solved cryptography challenges. in most of the Capture The Flag competitions crypto category will be there. so this blog will help you to solve beginner level crypto challenges.
Link of challenge:
[Task 1] Translation & Shifting
c4n y0u c4p7u23 7h3 f149?
Answer: can you capture the flag?
This is an amazing challenge. many of us are heard of fancy usernames of hackers. so this basic cipher called Leet Code encoding.
2. 01101100 01100101 01110100 01110011 00100000 01110100 01110010 01111001 00100000 01110011 01101111 01101101 01100101 00100000 01100010 01101001 01101110 01100001 01110010 01111001 00100000 01101111 01110101 01110100 00100001
Answer: lets try some binary out!
it looks like binary values. so we have to decode it to a readable format that is a text format.
Binary to text
3. MJQXGZJTGIQGS4ZAON2XAZLSEBRW63LNN5XCA2LOEBBVIRRHOM======
Answer: base32 is super common in CTF’s
this text looks like base 32 text. as I played many ctfs I see that base32 encoded text much more equal to(=) signs. so I decoded to base 32 and I was correct.
base32 decoding
4.
RWFjaCBCYXNlNjQgZGlnaXQgcmVwcmVzZW50cyBleGFjdGx5IDYgYml0cyBvZiBkYXRhLg==
answer: Each Base64 digit represents exactly 6 bits of data.
As per the previous question, we saw that the base encoding has an equal sign. as I know base64 encoding have == sign at the end of the encoded string.
base64 decding
5. 68 65 78 61 64 65 63 69 6d 61 6c 20 6f 72 20 62 61 73 65 31 36 3f
Answer: hexadecimal or base16?
As we already know this is in Hexadecimal format.so we have to decode to to text format to get the flag.
Hexadecimal decoding
6. Ebgngr zr 13 cynprf!
Answer: Rotate me 13 places!
as I see in the question some hint is already there. 13 was the direct hint to solve this challenge. in crypto, there is one ROT encoding to encode the text.
ROT13 Decoding
7.
*@F DA:? >6 C:89E C@F?5 323J C:89E C@F?5 Wcf E:>6DX
Answer: You spin me right round baby right round (47 times)
this cipher is totally new for me because I never saw this encoding in previous ctfs I played. so I quickly searched on google with some I examples I got to know that this is ROT47 cipher.
ROT47 decoding
8. — . .-.. . -.-. — — — — ..- -. .. -.-. .- — .. — — -.
. -. -.-. — — -.. .. -. — .
Answer: TELECOMMUNICATION ENCODING
this is a known encoding technique for every ctf player.because in most of the beginner level ctf you will get this type of decoding challenges. so it was Morse code cipher,
Morse code decoding
9. 85 110 112 97 99 107 32 116 104 105 115 32 66 67 68
Answer: Unpack this BCD
so at very first look, these numbers look like normal numbers,
right?
but we are wrong for every computer/technical personal know that is decimal numbers. so yes it’s very easy to identify this number. so that was decimal number decoding.
Decimal to text decoding
10. 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Answer: Let’s make this a bit trickier…
so let’s start for the battle for the last challenge of task 1.
so very first moment i confused that i first see this last challenge. but when i scroll down i see = at the end of the string. so think that it might be base encoding.
now chain will be
Base64 -> Morse code -> Binary ->ROT47 -> Decimal
this type of challange require logical thinking. from = to flag.
this multiple encoding challenger over. | https://infosecwriteups.com/tryhackme-c4ptur3-th3-fl4g-walkthrough-part-1-e1fb19a0ee7c | ['Cyber Defecers'] | 2020-07-06 16:41:56.868000+00:00 | ['Capture The Flag', 'Cryptography', 'Tryhackme', 'Cyber Defecers', 'Mayur Parmar'] |
Trading the trade war : A trade idea for the US-China trade war, Long small caps, Short large caps | This is a trade idea report i wrote for my university’s traders club. I compiled this on August 9th 2018 — before any of the actual tariffs were enacted
Trade idea: Long Small Cap US Equities, using an ETF that tracks the Russell 2000 Index. The Russell 200 serves as the benchmark for small cap stocks in the US. Our ETF of choice being IWM, an ETF which is essentially a mirror of the Russell 200, tracking its performance at a 1x level. We are essentially long the Russell 2000.
The second part of this trade idea is to short US large Cap Equities, using an ETF that tracks the S&P 500 index. The S&P 500 is a market cap weighted index of the largest 500 publicly traded US companies. Our ETF choice being SPY. An ETF which is a mirror of the S&P 500, tracking its performance at a 1x level. We are essentially also short the S&P 500.
Presuppositions Of The Trade
Preface: I believe the presuppositions behind a trade are just as — if not more — important than the actual trade itself. The reason behind why you enter a trade is what determines your entry and exit and it also allows you to control your emotions when price action goes against you. This is why such a big focus is placed on the why behind the trade. Without the why, a trade is just an order to buy or sell a security.
This trade along with the other 6 trade ideas we will be presenting, all center around the effects of a trade war between the US and China, which has the potential to expand to the rest of the world. A good example of this contagion being the recent tariffs on US imports by the EU. The effect that this trade focuses on is the tariffs imposed on US exports by China, and most recently, the EU. The core relationship here being that increased tariffs on US exports will result in higher prices for imported US products, resulting in lower revenue and lower earnings. This will negatively affect the profit of companies heavily reliant on exports. The theme of export dependence is central to this idea.
A question that breaks down the main presupposition of this trade is: “What if the trade war doesn’t happen?” Now this is a valid and very important question. We believe that trade war developments have reached a critical stage. An inflection point from being a possibility to now being an inevitability. The inflection point I’m referring to was Trump’s recent announcement that there would be $200 Billion worth of Chinese imports subject to a 10% tariff. This is in addition to all the prior tit-for-tat tariffs between the US and China. This announcement was important for 3 reasons:
Market Sentiment — After this announcement was made, not only the US but global markets where badly offended. The US expanded its losses after the announcement for the rest of the week while China saw some of its worst losses for the year. Up until this point, the market has had a fairly subdued reaction to trade war news. It is a well-known fact that in the short term, price movement is highly tied to market sentiment. And a clear change in sentiment has been observed. Reaction by the Chinese government — After Trump’s announcement, the Chinese minister of commerce made the following harrowing statement: “The US has initiated a trade war,” adding that it will respond with “comprehensive quantitative and qualitative measures and retaliate forcefully”. This all but confirms the inevitability of a trade war and paves the way for further tariffs. EU involvement — Nearing the end of last week, the European Union announced tariffs on $3.4 Billion worth of US imports. While this amount is dwarfed by the hundreds of billions being thrown back and forth between the US and China, it has opened up a second front of conflict and a second headache for the US economy along with US equities.
Why Small Cap stocks ?
Firstly, what exactly is a small cap stock? Small Cap is short for small capitalization. It is used to classify companies with a relatively small market capitalization — the market value of its outstanding shares.The definition of a small cap stock differs between brokers but it is generally considered as a stock with a market cap between $300 million and $2 Billion. To put this into perspective, the market cap of a large cap tech giant like Amazon (AMZN) is $820.56 Billion.
Small cap stocks are companies who operate on a small scale and as a result have a much lower global presence than large cap companies and focus on domestic markets. This means that less revenue is derived from global markets. Essentially, small cap companies are less export dependent than large cap companies. We mentioned how export dependence is central to this trade idea. This is because companies who are heavily export dependent could potentially take a large hit to bottom lines because of the tariffs imposed by China and most recently the EU. Very simply, our small cap companies who aren’t export dependent will not be affected by this.
Essentially, trade tariffs attack multinational companies and stocks that derive most of the revenue from the domestic US market have the advantage. To put this in numbers: the S&P 500 (Large cap) generates 38% of their income from foreign markets while those in the S&P Small Cap 600 only derive 20% of their income from foreign markets.
Very simply, the same reasons why we want to be long small cap stocks with a smaller exposure to global markets and hence lower export dependence are the same reasons why we want to be short their large cap counterparts with greater global market exposure and higher export dependence. Being short large caps is simply another way of expressing this trade and another potential source of alpha. The same factors driving investors away from large cap stocks: import tariffs hurting export dependent companies — are the same factors which will push investors into short cap stocks.
Now For a Quick Look At The Proposed Securities For The Trade: IWM & SPY
Below: 1 year graph of IWM and SPY with 1 day intervals.
Green line: 50 Day SMA; Pink line : 200 Day SMA
IWM:
IWM has had great market beating performance for the year. Returning just under 20%, beating out the 13% of the S&P 500 in the same period. The small cap trade has been a popular one in 2018, as market participants fear for the health of large caps because of the possibility of the trade war and other geopolitical issues which small cap’s have lower exposure to. It’s safe to say that momentum is on our side in this respect. It must be noted that we have also selected iShares due to its high daily trading volume.
Now for a quick look at SPY:
There is not much more to say about SPY other than it has performed worse than IWM. It is also important to not that SPY has recently tested its 50 day SMA.We put these graphs here for our more technically inclined members as we do realise that our trade ideas are heavy in fundamental analysis.
Time Horizon Of The Trade And Entry & Exit
This trade is one reliant on macroeconomic development. Because of this, we are not reliant on a technical indicator for entry and exit but can use them to better aid us.
When it comes to entry I see now as the perfect time for entry because of the reasons explained above. In short: it seems as if we have reached an inflection point in the trade war narrative and at this point, a trade war seems inevitable.
Because this is macroeconomic trade, exit depends solely on if the narrative surrounding trade wars change. What would change this narrative would be policy coming from either China or the US aimed at cooling down the prospect of a trade war. For this reason, our exit is not at a specific price level but is rather situational.
The entry and exit of this trade also explains the time horizon when dealing of a trade of this nature. From the offset, this seems to be a medium-long term trade. While sentiment can and has driven price action in the short term, it will take some time for the effects of tariffs to be seen in earnings.
Now let’s get to the possible shortcomings of this trade.
Devil’s Advocate
I want to quickly go over what can wrong with this trade idea. There are two main factors I want to address:
A possible bear market in equities — There are many potential headwinds when it comes to US equities, including geopolitical issues, macroeconomic issues such as trade wars and regulations as well as rising rates pushing investors out of risk assets. All of these factors could spark a possible bear market in equities. If this were to happen, our short position in large cap equities could soften the blow that our long position in short caps would take. In this sense, we have some kind of protection from the prospect of a bull market. Nevertheless, this is a valid fear to keep in mind. Policy aimed towards defusing the trade war — While at this point it seems unlikely, there is always the possibility that either the US or China takes steps to ease trade war tensions. Again, if this were to happen, we would see a rally in both small and large cap equities. In this case, the long position in small cap equities will help soften the blow that our short position in large cap equities will take.
Playing devil’s advocate with this trade reveals one strength of the trade. Because we have both a long and a short position (essentially a pair trade) we have reduced risk. As pointed out in the above scenarios, having both positions offers some kind of protection in the event that our thesis is wrong. This is the beauty of pair trades.
To conclude: This trade idea is a simple one that plays off of the possibility of a trade war. We are essentially entering a pair trade being long small cap stocks and being short large cap stocks. The reason behind this being that larger firms who have a higher export dependence will be hurt by import tariffs, causing investors to turn to small cap equities.
Return isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.
Keeno Ruark Koopman | https://medium.com/unstoppable-alpha/trading-the-trade-war-a-trade-idea-for-the-us-china-trade-war-long-small-caps-short-large-caps-97fbae398dc4 | ['Keeno Ruark Koopman'] | 2018-08-21 12:50:00.231000+00:00 | ['Stock Market', 'Tarrifs', 'Economics', 'Trade War', 'Trading'] |
Top-secret Cloud Platform for Classified Data from Microsoft | Microsoft revealed the launch of its newest cloud offering, Azure Government Top Secret, at the beginning of the month (April, 2020). For its US government clients who deal with classified information, Microsoft has customized Azure Government Top Secret.
The new cloud service extends Microsoft’s tactical edge portfolio for the US government, including Azure (public cloud), Azure Government, and Azure Government Hidden.
Azure Government Top Secret is claimed to have the same functionality as the commercial edition of Azure, Azure Government and Azure Government Secret to enable a continuum of project cloud computing to the tactical edge.
“The consistency between Azure (commercial), Azure Government, and Azure Government Secret is also starting to change the game as software development may happen from anywhere, while the code itself can be promoted to enclaves with higher classification levels. There it can interact with data of higher classification levels. At the end of the day, this means doing more for the mission at a lower overall cost,” said Carroll Moon, CTO of CloudFit Software.
In the classified space, the wide range of services can meet the demand for higher performance, particularly the need to gain deeper insights from data sourced from any location, as well as the need to allow remote work to grow rapidly.
Microsoft is collaborating with the US government, according to sources, to obtain accreditation for its new cloud. In the meantime, the building of the Top Secret regions of the Azure Government has already been completed.
Microsoft has also announced upgrades to its Azure Government Secret service, which the US Department of Defense, law enforcement, and other agencies have approved and actively used.
Azure Government Secret will now add Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and Azure Container Instances, according to Microsoft. The enhancements aim to allow developers of software to more effectively deploy and manage containerized applications.
Azure Sentinel and Azure Security Center are now now available in Azure Government Secret for intelligent security analytics services, allowing unified security across digital properties and promoting proactive threat management. | https://medium.com/@cio-jrajitha/top-secret-cloud-platform-for-classified-data-from-microsoft-676d47a217d4 | ['Rajitha Jayawardena'] | 2020-12-23 12:57:06.219000+00:00 | ['Microsoft', 'Azure'] |
Introducing the VideoCoin Network’s Rewards Program | We’ve made earning cash and VideoCoin tokens(VID) simple on the VideoCoin Network. If you are a holder of the VID token, you have the opportunity to participate in the VideoCoin Network’s Rewards Program. The three key topics you need to know about the Rewards Program are the Network participants, how to stake and how to get paid for participating.
Network Participants
Before we jump into the details on Rewards, it’s important for you to understand how to participate in the VideoCoin Network. There are two ways you can participate in the VideoCoin Network: as a worker, and as a delegator.
Workers are responsible for doing “work,” which for VideoCoin Network means processing, storing, or delivering video services.
Delegators are individuals or collective groups of participants that elect to provide(“stake”/”delegate” in industry terms) a number of tokens to a worker in the Network in order to support their reputation and receive a portion of the payment the worker received. Workers benefit from staking because the support increases their reputation and increases the change they will receive more work.
How to Delegate
Each VID token holder first has to decide which worker(s) to support. The list of workers will be published and updated in real-time. This list will show worker reputation and commissions the worker is paying out to delegators. The token holders can use this list to select a worker.
Once you have decided on a worker to support, you find a worker’s public delegating address through the VideoCoin Delegating Tool in the Publisher Studio interface. Use the VideoCoin Delegating Tool to finish the delegating process, locking up your tokens and commit your tokens to a worker.
Getting Paid for Participating
From then on, whenever the worker completes a job on the Network, that worker will be paid. Workers will be paid rewards in the mix of fiat(cash) and in VID tokens that they specify. From each worker reward, a minimum of 20% is paid to the delegators. If multiple delegators are involved, rewards will be shared out proportionally to the number of tokens delegated to that worker.
Cash rewards are automatically paid on a third-party blockchain. VideoCoin token rewards are automatically paid on the VideoCoin blockchain.
That’s pretty much the basic way the Rewards Program works. Not too complicated in general. Of course, there are details that are still being worked out as we head toward release, including what happens when a worker does not perform well — there will be penalties the Network will impose to make sure workers deliver on their commitments, and stakers will take on that risk as well — that’s why it’s important to stake those workers you believe to be reputable and worthy of your support. More on this will be detailed closer to commercial launch following Everest.
Click here to learn more about our Rewards Program: https://www.videocoin.io/rewards/ | https://medium.com/videocoin/overview-of-staking-program-for-token-holders-77c3043d3968 | [] | 2020-06-01 22:01:36.327000+00:00 | ['Staking', 'Videocoin', 'Blockchain', 'Development', 'Mining'] |
nyI Never Regretted Leaving Germany | I spent almost my entire career as an expatriate chef in foreign countries. I worked in 11 countries on four continents, starting off in Germany, then going to Switzerland, the United States, New Zealand, China, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, Saudi Arabia and lately to Jordan.
In Hanoi, Vietnam, 2010
In the beginning I never seriously thought of moving to any foreign country. In hindsight, my decision to leave Germany was the best I ever made. A normal expat contract is no longer than two years, so what are you going to do after your time is up? Look for the next job, or go home to Germany? I never liked going back to Germany, even it was only for a short period of time. Sure, I had my friends and my mother there, but I was never a guy who missed those people too much and was never homesick. I always wanted to go back out into the world. I was drawn to it. The world is my home.
I feel so comfortable among different people, different languages, and different food. My greatest asset really is my ability to adapt. I relate very well to many different cultures, but without my flexibility that would not have been possible. I’ve lived in the jungle of Borneo, and in world class cities like Zurich, Phoenix and San Diego.
I’ve stayed in fully furnished apartments on Hong Kong Island, lived in tiny rooms of less than ten square meters in Arosa, Switzerland and shared apartments in Auckland, New Zealand. This is what I call adventure. If I had to make the same decision again today, I know the answer already. I would go again!
The experiences I’ve gained, professionally and personally are invaluable and priceless. They’ve made me what I am today. They have broadened my horizon and I have been learning every day since I moved to Zurich on June 4, 1998. I really cannot imagine having stayed in Germany and working in a bank, like my mother wanted me to do. I did not listen to my mom, but listened to my heart, which very clearly and loudly said: “Marcel, go out, earn your own money, and become independent!”
Since June 4, 1998, when I took the night train from Berlin to Zurich, a twelve-hour long ride, I have never ever regretted one single second. Sure, I would do a few things differently today, but I would make the same decision again. I have seen so many countries, and travelling is my hobby anyway. Whenever I was employed at some place, I always used that location as a kind of a hub for further travel adventures. Travelling the whole world, working where other people spend their vacations, that sounds like a dream. It is!
Of course, it is also a job, it is work. It is the same work as it would be in Germany, just a thousand times better. Moving abroad is not everyone’s thing. Most people miss their family and friends. Well, that’s true and I missed my friends too, family not so much. At the beginning of my journey, when I moved to Switzerland, I missed my friends, so I visited Berlin quite often, every few weeks. Later I adapted to my new lifestyle and started to love it.
Soon I moved on to Arizona, California and even New Zealand. At that time, I was so used to being on the road and travelling, I honestly did not know what it meant to feel homesick. As a matter of fact, I felt sick when I had to go back to Germany and stay there for a while waiting for a new job opportunity. I couldn’t wait to escape the country again!
I want to clarify something here. I am grateful to my home country. Germany has enabled me to become what I am today. I spent my childhood there, and enjoyed my apprenticeship there. Thanks to the German dual-training system I was trained very professionally. German chefs are sought after because of their expertise and training and perhaps some other traits. That’s why I am grateful. Germany is an incredibly beautiful and diverse country, so it is good to be back for a short holiday. I know where I am coming from and I also know where I want to be. The world is my home, at least at present.
The great thing about being an expat is the exposure to foreign countries and cultures. You learn a lot and meet tons of interesting people from all facets of life. They influence you. You become a different person. You broaden your horizon. You expand your consciousness.
I always say that one year spent in a foreign country equals five years of staying home. You grow, you develop differently, and in my opinion also faster. Expats are made from different wood, that I can tell you. We are different. Not everybody can do this job and live this kind of lifestyle. We are a minority, this is not a mass movement, though it can seem that way when you see how many foreigners work in countries like the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, or Bahrain.
It depends on the region and part of the world where you are employed.
For example, I’ve lived at places like the Borneo jungle in Sabah, Malaysia. I literally lived in the middle of one of the oldest rainforests of the world, among monkeys, snakes, and giant cockroaches. This Borneo rainforest is about a 140 million years old and our resort hotel was located right there. I loved every single second of it and I always made sure that I enjoyed my time. It was so peaceful there. No noise from cars or city life. No pollution and always fresh air. I did not enjoy the cockroaches though.
Travelling as a tourist is not the same as living amongst the local people and embracing their culture. Diving deep into their soul is not what I was after, but that is what you experience, depending on how deep you want to dive. I learned so much about different countries and cultures by living and working with the local people, sharing good and bad times. You don’t learn this in university or by watching TV documentaries. This is how you get things done. You mingle with the locals if you want to learn the most about them.
I always found it fascinating. Of course, it’s not all roses, as I come from a Western European background. And there are still things I am not used to, especially in South East Asia. Still today it is hard for me to understand why certain things a certain way is. On the other hand, you learn how to take different perspectives on things, which can help you to open your mind, learn and grow.
If you are curious for more then check out my BOOK for extra stories, great tips, tricks and other tools you need to get what you want out of your kitchen career and life!
Have a good one and Merry Christmas everyone!
Marcel
This blogpost was originally published on: https://www.marcelr.com/post/i-never-regretted-leaving-germany | https://medium.com/@riemer-marcel2-0/i-never-regretted-leaving-germany-ec6ea26157d1 | ['Marcel Riemer'] | 2020-12-23 04:36:42.966000+00:00 | ['Chefs', 'Expat Life', 'Germany', 'Travel', 'Expat'] |
Journaling | I know how to write. I know how to read. I was taught both at an early age.
Lately, journaling has entered my life. I consider it a monumental task. To write my own story feels something like locking myself within my own prison. Filled with all the different shades of criminal.
When I listen to music, I feel invigorated and focused. While writing, the same feeling blazes, but is doused only after a few short words. The Placebo Effect shortly follows. I feel I’m doing something, but the result only ends in circles. It’s like the old saying, “Saying a whole lot, without saying much at all.”
One of my concerns is revealing the story altogether. I’m not fond of sharing. Others will dissect my situation, and tear into me like a parasite. I’ll look back on all this one day, and see my story scrutinized by critics and readers alike. They’ll shame me for the misfortunes of telling verbose tales. They’ll hate me for sharing my memories. Worst of all, they’ll get to know me on a more intimate level. The cycle that follows is filled with avoidance.
I’ll move away, or look at the requirements to enter a foreign country. I’ll pick up all I’ve ever known and start over. This cycle will repeat until I forget what day it is. Losing my sense of reality and forget where, and who, I actually am. Over time, the writing actually comes to life, and I’m no longer writing about my past, I’m locked in its application. A journey of uncertainty and avoidance recycled into a personal narrative.
When I journal like this, I try to imagine that this will shield me from outsiders drawing speculation on my goals. Defining me, through their own personal viewpoint. I just want to be treated the same as everyone else, without the fear.
If I reveal my story, these characters will become alive again. People I have known throughout my life. In order to preserve their honor, I’m not sure if I can bring myself to revive the dead?
I’m not sure if I want to remember. | https://medium.com/@joshb8961/journaling-57befc80303c | ['Joshua Boisvert'] | 2020-12-18 20:01:33.015000+00:00 | ['Confessions', 'Journalism', 'Life', 'Journal', 'Military'] |
Would you give someone another chance in a Relationship? | Within you, there are infinite energies to resolve any kind of conflicts, no matter how severe they may be!!
So, today, as we try to find the answer to your question, we shall learn how to invoke these energies, by taking the help of the Enlightened view of Gnani; for that is indeed the ideal way to go…
Prejudice ruins worldly interactions.
If someone has deceived you or has behaved badly according to you, why keep remembering and reminding it? It is not at all a helpful thing. You simply have to see what the person is doing at present; or else it is called prejudice. Prejudice means you keep the other person’s past doings in your constant awareness. Who knows the person who behaved with you in a manner that you didn’t like before, has come to bring you very good fortune today?
Therefore, when time comes to interact with that person, do not hold any prejudice against him. It is harmful, both for you and the other person too, because when you have prejudice, you are all set to ruin your further interaction with that person.
The person behaved with you the way he did, due to ‘your’ past karmas.
Whatever suffering you undergo, is due to your past karmic accounts coming into effect. The other person is only doing the duty, like that of a postman, to deliver what is addressed to you. In other words, it is actually your own past deed, which is making him do it. When it’s time for particular past karma to unfold, if your unfolding karma is good, his conduct towards you will be positive, and vice-versa. The law of karma is as simple as that!
Our happiness is halted because of our opinions only.
Once you understand the law of karma surely and correctly, you will not have opinions for anybody. This will take some time though. But until then, at least know that it is very wrong and harmful to have opinions for somebody. You cannot see things as they are because of opinions; you cannot experience bliss of freedom because there is this veil of opinion. To bind an opinion for anyone is our own fault, it is our mistake and not anyone else’s.
When we understand our fault, we must do pratikraman.
Pratikraman means to recall every mistake of ours, and clear each one of them through the 3 steps:
1. Confess your mistake before God,
2. Repent for the mistake with a true heart,
3. Vow never to repeat this mistake, asking for strength from God.
Until we don’t do pratikraman as stated above, our negative opinion continues to send out negative vibes and keeps causing hurt to the other person, as a result of which that person will not have a positive feeling for us. But when we start doing pratikraman sincerely and heartily, the effect of the hurt that we’ve caused due to our bad opinions for the other person begins to disappear.
You can become faultless when you do not have any opinions at all. So with all the love in your heart, you may forsake all the opinions and forgive your partner; and taking responsibility for your mistakes, seek forgiveness for the hurt caused to each other so far. When whatever happens is because of our unfolding karmas, why not pay off our karmic debt with a loving heart then?
The amount of pratikramans that you must do is directly proportional to the amount of strong opinions you’ve had for the person; only then your inner intent becomes clean and pure. Based on our inner intent, we bind new karma, which in turn brings new suffering in future. Therefore, your intent should always be, “May no living being be caused any hurt through my thoughts, words or actions. May the person, with whom I’m in relationship, never be caused any hurt through my thoughts, words or actions.”
The common human tendency is: I am correct; I’m not at fault…
…it is always others who are incorrect, it is all their fault. Whereas the Enlightened Ones can see thousands of evidences which prove how the other person is not at fault. Only when we see how the other person is not at fault, we stand a chance to start seeing our own mistakes in the entire matter. And it’s in our own interest because only when we can see our own mistakes, can we change ourselves for the better, isn’t it?
For any unhappiness in our life, no one, but our own ego is responsible!
The very thought that “should I or would I give someone another chance…” smells of egoism. Who are we to give or not give someone a chance? The entire world stands on egoism, not knowing that this ego is the root cause of all our pain and suffering; because if there is no ego, no binding of karma takes place, and if there is no bound karma, no suffering takes place either.
This ego is not worth protecting. Our ego can come to zero only when it attains the awareness of really, ‘Who am I’. And the easiest and the best way to get there is by attaining Self-Realization. Our current generation is fortunate that we have amongst us the Living Gnani, with whose grace, we can attain Self-Realization and know really, who am I; because only a lit lamp can enlighten the others!!!
After attaining Self-Realization, we get to experience what is real love! because only where there is no ego, there is real love.
Relationship loses its significance if there is no love in it…
Owing to the odds, one may have to make a few detours, but those who truly love each other, will always find out ways to be back together, for love always unites and love is naturally forgiving!
There is never any adverse reaction in real love. Hence, no matter how many ups and downs come in life, the relationship of those who truly love, remains intact and unaffected… | https://medium.com/dadabhagwan/would-you-give-someone-another-chance-in-a-relationship-682ccdf88155 | ['Dada Bhagwan'] | 2020-12-23 05:33:07.219000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Relationship Advice', 'Karma', 'Relationships', 'Marriage'] |
2016: Or, how a fake death sentence made me rethink my life. | 2016 has really sucked.
On January 1, I developed a cough. About half of the people in San Francisco had done the same, so I wasn’t too worried initially. But after a few days, it just felt different than a simple bout of bronchitis. I wasn’t quite sure why. Turns out I was right.
I went to the doctor three times in three weeks, eventually leading to a chest x-ray. I was supposed to get results within a few days, but got a call about 12 hours later. My doctor said, “Do you have a minute? We really need to talk.” My immediate reaction? Shit.
He informed me that there were several nodules on my right mid-lung. He said it “could be a wide range of things — Lung cancer, tuberculosis, an autoimmune disease, Lymphoma, a Fungal infection.” I responded, “or…nothing?” to which he also hesitantly replied, “possibly.”
Wide range there, huh? Assuring.
He urged me to immediately schedule blood work, TB tests, and a CT scan. I wouldn’t get initial results back for four or five days, at earliest, and even still they’d likely be inconclusive. After that, I’d need to get into a Pulmonologist that specializes in lung nodules and cancers.
After about Five Weeks of testing, here are the results:
I have five nodules on my lungs.
Four nodules are on my mid-lung area.
Those are all calcified, meaning they are old, dense scar-tissue
One nodule is on my upper lung area, it is not calcified; It is very small.
None of them are malignant.
They were likely caused by a bout of histoplasmosis I had at one point in my life. I probably thought that sickness was a bad case of bronchitis or the flu and was lucky that my body fought it on it’s own.
I will have to do CT scans yearly to monitor the growth of the non-calcified granuloma until it calcifies or becomes larger.
My cough was completely unrelated to this, but I would’ve never found these if it weren’t for the cough in the first place.
That’s great! I don’t have cancer or tuberculosis or any of these other things that scared the living hell out of me.
But, I did have a whole hell of a lot of time to take a look at the world.
A fake death sentence can really make you think about life.
I tried to stay positive, but I couldn’t help thinking about watching my dad die five years ago. I couldn’t get past him struggling to breath. That day when he woke up and you could see that the look in his eyes had changed — that he probably wasn’t with us mentally anymore. I was scared that would be me.
I thought about what Sallie would do if I got sick. She has enough on her plate with a three year old constantly yelling “MAMA!!!!.” I couldn’t bear putting her through that. I thought about how she’s always strong for me, and she’d be up for whatever is thrown at us. And I kept thinking about how I couldn’t be more fortunate to have her by my side no matter what the outcome.
I thought about how Jebediah wouldn’t understand. I thought about me not having a fully-funded college fund for him. I thought about missing him develop passions, or missing his soccer games. I though about how there’s so much room for me to become a better, more compassionate father. I thought about how he looks like me and that scares me because I was trouble incarnate.
I couldn’t help but go there.
I thought about the millions of people on this earth that went through the same situation as me but got much worse results. I thought about how we need to work fervently together to prevent that from happening to anybody. Technologists, scientists, journalists, capitalists, and even politicians working together to eradicate needless death of all kinds.
I thought about what I want in life. How for years I’ve had these plans and goals that I wanted to see come to fruition, but I might not have that opportunity. About all the places I want to see but keep waiting for a better time.
I thought about work. What do I want to do when I grow up? Where do I want to do it? What makes me happy and what makes me sad in an office? Am I where I belong?
I thought about what I want to read. Assuming I have 50 years left, and I read at my current pace of three books per month, I’d have 1800 more books in my life. I don’t want to waste any of those. They all need to help me become a better me somehow.
I thought about the people that have invested in me and how I need to do a better job of investing back in them.
These are just a few of the thoughts I had during that time, but most of all I thought about how I wished I’d thought about these things earlier — And how I don’t want to rely on a medical scare to process my purpose ever again.
And I thought about how you shouldn’t either.
Take some time today and ask these questions. Go home and kiss your special person, or apologize to the person you burned, or apply to the job you really want, or pick up that book you’ve been meaning to read. Just do it and stop saying tomorrow.
There’s a whole hell of a lot of life left to live and we shouldn’t wait until it’s (fake) over to live it. | https://medium.com/heath-w-black/2016-or-how-a-fake-death-sentence-made-me-rethink-my-life-7a3a03c7d9e9 | ['Heath W. Black'] | 2016-02-10 01:18:16.560000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Health', 'Inspiration'] |
AB 2147 Success Story: Jose Santana | Jose Santana at the beach with his family in freedom.
We’re thrilled to share with our community an amazing AB 2147 success story. Please meet Jose Santana, an alum of Ventura Training Center (VTC) and the first person to receive an AB 2147 expungement earlier this year. We want to thank Asm. Eloise Reyes and all the advocates who helped pass AB 2147 so that lives and futures can be transformed. Hear Jose’s story in his own words!
“Originally from Los Angeles, I was sitting in Santa Barbara County Jail from January 15, 2017 to November 17, 2017. I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. It seemed over, and I was getting older and I was going to be going to prison for a fair amount of time at 85%. I started talking to the other individuals that had been to prison. It was going to be my first time going and they were trying to “lace me up” on prison. The one thing I kept hearing was that I should go to fire camp. Better food, more privileges, you got to go out and work. I even heard that if you really tried you could maybe get a job as a firefighter one day. I felt I was getting older and running out of career choices. So I made the decision to do everything I could to get to fire camp once I got to prison.
I was at fire camp, Mountain Home Conservation Camp #10 in Springville, CA. I arrived July 12 2018, and left (paroled) December 25 2019. I was on Crew 2, Lead Saw.
I’m doing fire work now because it has given me self confidence and self worth that I feel I used to lack. Nowadays I hold my head up high and take pride in everything I do because what I do has value that I truly appreciate. I’m no longer hurting the community, I’m giving back to it. I’m constantly humbled when I see my friends, family and strangers and they thank me for my service. I get a bit embarrassed by it to be honest.
Santana at work.
I saw this quote in jail, and it really stuck with me: ‘Things work out best, for those who make the best of how things work out.’ I was tired of doing bad, and when I finally got to fire camp, and CAL-FIRE believed in us, trusted us and made us feel worthwhile my life changed. I’ll always be so thankful to all my Captains along the way who believed in me, and helped me get into Ventura Training Center. Not to mention the Captains at VTC who are just amazing people and continued to help us better ourselves mentally, physically, and educationally. I can’t say enough good things about CAL-FIRE. It’s just an absolutely amazing agency who has helped change my life for the better.
Santana with his family on Christmas.
I came home on Christmas Day 2019. My original release date was for late January 2020. I worked really hard and did all the available credits so that I could get time off my sentence. I wanted to be home before Christmas so that I wouldn’t miss another one with my kids. Since coming home it’s been amazing, but also hard at times. I hadn’t seen my kids for over 3 years. They were 8 and 11 when I got out, both are boys. I hadn’t spoken to their Mother since September of 2016, and my boys since that time also. It was a bit difficult with them at first.
When I was locked up, I wasn’t able to talk to my children, but I remembered the movie “The Notebook.” I was able to get a hold of a few composition notebooks, and so every day for 3 years (35 months) I would take a few minutes to write to my children about how my day was, and let them know that I missed them. Even on fires I carried a notebook in my fire pack so that I could write to them when we were sleeping on the mountain. I just never wanted my kids to think that I didn’t love them, or think about them all the time. Anyways after the initial few months, it was a bit of a struggle, them testing their boundaries. We’ve settled into a relationship that is so wonderful. We talk everyday through phone or through text. I have an amazing relationship with their mother. Now that I’m doing the firefighter thing, she’s started doing EMT. She’s currently getting her EMT license. I never imagined that my life could be this wonderful. There’s still bumps in the road, but there’s so many resources I have nowadays that come to my aid to help, ARC being one of them.
I am so fortunate to be granted this AB-2147 expungement. It was such an amazing feeling to stand before the same judge that sentenced me, only to have him congratulate me and thank me for what I do now. I’m currently almost done getting my associates degree in Fire Technology from Allan Hancock College. With this expungement I will be able to do EMT classes and hopefully get my EMT license upon completion. Over the summer of 2020 I was on the road for 60 days on most of the major fires. Creek Fire, El Dorado Fire, LNU lightning complex, and River Fire. I was able to work with the Santa Maria Fire Department, which is where my kids and kids’ mom live, and they encouraged me to apply. However with a felony I would not be able to work for a municipal fire department. Now I have a shot at being a firefighter paramedic and if I ever choose to, work for a municipal fire department.
Jose biking with his family.
At this moment in 2021, I’m in Kern County on a fire, and have been so for 40 days. My future goals are to stay on with CAL-FIRE, and someday hopefully become a Captain, to finish my fire technology classes and get my associates degree in Fire technology. Lastly to get my EMT license and become a Firefighter Paramedic.” | https://medium.com/@theantirecidivismcoalition/ab-2147-success-story-jose-santana-a5c269d357b5 | ['Anti-Recidivism Coalition', 'Arc'] | 2021-08-19 21:33:48.883000+00:00 | ['Hope', 'Hearts And Minds', 'Firefighting', 'Prison Reform', 'Fire'] |
Bible do’er not a Bible study! | So many people in this world are so quick to join a bible study and sit around to read and study the Bible,during the Bible study though they ask questions about thoughts on what you read,and what you think that verse would mean to your life today,they ask things such as what do you think the character in this story is feeling and so much more.
During a bible study we are forgetting the true meaning of how God wants us to read the Bible with others and live it out.
We need less bible study’s and more Bible do’ers which means we need to read the Bible together. ask questions about how that could apply to our life today,what it’s speaking in our lives today and contuine to live it out throughout each day we live. It is time we stop studying the word of God to find out what he wrote thousands of years ago,it’s time we read the word and learn how to apply it to our life,we need to learn what those verses mean for the chapter were in today. The world is going crazy and now is the time more than ever to dive deeper into word and develop a deeper relationship with Christ like never before. | https://medium.com/@courtneyflowers715/bible-doer-not-a-bible-study-3d0b6748aff5 | ['Courtney Flowers'] | 2020-12-14 17:03:05.687000+00:00 | ['Christian', 'Read', 'Follow Me', '2020'] |
Django; Customizing Built-in User Model | In this very short story I want to tell you how you can customize the built-in Django’s User Model and how you can have a customized username using Regex (Regular Expression).
I assume you know the basics of Python and Django, so I just start the step by step stages of customizing the Django’s User Model from “django.contrib.auth.models”.
The python and Django version for the sample codes in this story are:
Python 3.9.1
Django 3.1.4
Step 1:
So first start with the “models.py” file in one of the apps of your project. Lets say our app here is “myapp”.
Then in in this file you need to define two classes:
MyUser
MyUserManager
Actually these are two names that you decide, so you can choose what ever name you want.
Here is the sample code for these two classes in file “myapp.models.py”:
from django.contrib.auth.models import AbstractUser, UserManager
from django.core import validators
from django.db import models
class MyUserManager(UserManager):
def create_user(self, username, password=None):
user = self.model(
username=username,
)
user.set_password(password)
user.save(using=self._db)
return user
def create_superuser(self, username, email=None, password=None):
user = self.create_user(
username,
password=password,
)
user.is_admin = True
user.is_superuser = True
user.is_staff = True
user.email = email.lower()
user.save(using=self._db)
return user
class MyUser(AbstractUser):
username = models.CharField(verbose_name='Username', name='username', max_length=30, unique=True,
validators=[
validators.RegexValidator(regex=r'^(?!_)(?!.*\.\.)(?!.*\.$)[a-z0-9][a-z0-9.]{4,29}$',
message='Valid Characters: Lowercase Alphanumeric and a Dot(.)',
code='Invalid username'),
validators.MinLengthValidator(limit_value=5)
],
error_messages={'unique': 'A user with that username already exists.',
'invalid': 'Valid Characters: Lowercase Alphanumeric and at most one Underscore(_)'})
objects = MyUserManager()
In this example we are going to accept usernames that are only lowercase alphanumeric characters and dots. you can change the regex and accept what ever pattern you would like.
Ok, in “MyUser” class which inherits from “AbstractUser” class from the package “django.contrib.auth.models” you can define what ever field you want to have for your user model.
in the “MyUserManager” class which inherits from “UserManager” class form the package “django.contrib.auth.models” you should define two methods.
The “create_user” for the signups of frontend users.
The “create_superuser” for the staff and admin users.
Again these two methods you can do what ever validations and procedures you want to do, but this code that I have provided to you here is the basic code that you should have.
If you don’t define the “MyUserManager” you might get the following error:
Manager isn’t available; ‘auth.User’ has been swapped for ‘myapp.MyUser’
Step 2:
Next you should tell to Django that you want to user “myapp.MyUser” instead of the built-in Django’s User Model. So you should add the following line to you “settings.py”:
AUTH_USER_MODEL = 'myapp.MyUser'
Step 3:
To link your customized “MyUser” user model with the signup form you should link “UserCreationForm” from package “django.contrib.auth.forms” with your signup view. Here is a sample code for that:
from django.contrib.auth import authenticate, login
from django.shortcuts import render, redirect
from django.urls import reverse_lazy
from django.views import generic
from django.contrib.auth.forms import UserCreationForm
from django.views import View
from myapp.models import MyUser class MyUserCreationForm(UserCreationForm):
class Meta:
model = MyUser
fields = ('username', 'password1', 'password2',)
class SignUp(generic.CreateView):
form_class = MyUserCreationForm
success_url = reverse_lazy('home')
template_name = 'myapp/signup.html'
def post(self, request):
if request.user.is_authenticated:
return redirect('home')
form = MyUserCreationForm(request.POST)
if form.is_valid():
form.save()
username = form.cleaned_data.get('username')
raw_password = form.cleaned_data.get('password1')
user = authenticate(username=username, password=raw_password)
login(request, user)
return redirect(self.success_url)
ctx = {'form': form}
return render(request, self.template_name, ctx)
def get(self, request):
if request.user.is_authenticated:
return redirect('home')
form = MyUserCreationForm()
ctx = {'form': form}
return render(request, self.template_name, ctx)
I must emphasize that to link your signup form to your customized user model you should define “MyUserCreationForm” and inherit “UserCreationForm” from the package “django.contrib.auth.forms”. The name of the class you define is arbitrary and you can choose what ever name you would like to use.
In your signup view you should use the “MyUserCreationForm” as the form class and pass this to your template to populate your signup form.
The source code for this tutorial is here:
https://github.com/faridmv/DjangoCustomUserModel
And that’s it you successfully customized your user model. If you want to have control on your users in the “Admin” panel you have do some other coding that you can read about them in the Django documentation link that is provided here.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
for more information you can read the Django documentation about “Customizing authentication in Django” at the following link:
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.1/topics/auth/customizing/ | https://medium.com/@faridmv/django-customizing-built-in-user-model-88e6ca47e33 | ['Farid Mv'] | 2020-12-27 20:08:18.177000+00:00 | ['Authentication', 'Customization', 'User Model', 'Django', 'Python'] |
8 Tips to Keep Your Baby Warm on Cold Winter Nights | One of the most common challenges faced by all mothers is to keep their little ones cozy and warm during the cold winter days. In the winter season, especially when it’s freezing outside, it becomes really difficult for babies to regulate their body temperature, which makes them more vulnerable to cough, cold and flu.
Thus, it’s very important for you to be knowledgeable about how you can help your baby maintain a consistent body temperature during the wintertime, especially the nights. Read on to know what you should do to keep your infant warn and comfy in those frigid winter nights.
Dress Your Baby Right:
In the winter, the best way to keep your little one warm during sleep is dressing him in ‘easy to put on and remove’ layers. Instead of overloading your baby with heavy or woolen clothes, wear him a few thin layers of warm clothes that you could easily remove during diaper changes. A good rule of thumb is to dress your baby in one more layer than you.
Set the Room Temperature Right:
To make sure you newborn doesn’t feel neither too hot nor too cold, try keeping his room at a comfortable temperature of between18 to 20 degree Celsius. Use a room thermometer to check whether or not your baby’s room stays at a safe, comfortable temperature. Ideally, the room temperature should feel cozy to a lightly clothed adult.
Swaddle or Use a Sleeping Bag:
Sometimes, when the weather is too cold, dressing your infant in one piece suits is not enough to keep him warm. To provide your baby a comfortable, restful sleep in those freezing nights, you’re required to wrap him in a thick swaddling blanket. In case your little one kicks the blankets off very often, you can put him into a sleeping bag (also known as a wearable blanket) to sleep.
Keep the Wind off of Baby:
The position of your baby’s crib in the room also affects how comfortable he will feel during sleep. Place the crib or bassinet several feet away from air vents, drafty windows, fans and outside walls. Also, close any windows and doors to prevent cold air from entering the room.
Use a Firm Mattress:
To keep your baby’s crib warm from underside, use a firm baby mattress covered with a well-fitting waterproof mattress protector sheet. Mattresses made of too soft material not only put your little one at the risk of a smothering hazard but also increase his chances of getting sick due to the cold air entered into the mattress. So it’s better to avoid them.
Cover Your Baby’s Head and Hands:
As babies lose a lot of heat through their head and hands, it becomes really important to get hold of a soft baby cap and lightweight mittens to provide your little one an extra layer of warmth. In case your baby is a thumb sucker by nature, you can have an extra pair of mittens ready. Furthermore, you can keep his feet toasty using a pair of socks.
Preheat the Crib Before Putting Your Baby Down:
If you find there is too much cold in the house, you can consider preheating the crib to create a warm and cozy sleeping space for your child. In order to achieve the purpose, you need to place a hot water bottle or heating pad over the crib sheet at least 30 minutes before you put your little one to sleep in the crib. Most importantly, remove it before laying your baby down to avoid any overheating or burns. | https://medium.com/@computer5039/8-tips-to-keep-your-baby-warm-on-cold-winter-nights-2bdc693784b6 | ['Happy Mom'] | 2019-08-02 08:18:57.723000+00:00 | ['Baby Care', 'Parenting', 'Baby', 'Baby Clothes'] |
Top Highlights from AWS’ re:Invent 2020 Conference for Innovators and Builders | AWS Community Builders at re:Invent
Since becoming an AWS Community Builder on the Data, Databases and Analytics team this fall, I have often explained the experience to friends, family, and colleagues as one of drinking water from a fire hose. I had known that cloud computing was rapidly transforming how we build, develop, and deploy software, but I did not know what this pace felt like at the center of a company like Amazon Web Services.
AWS’ Community Builders program is fantastic for so many reasons, but specifically for how they offer technical resources, mentorship, networking opportunities, and exclusive training to a global team of AWS enthusiasts, emerging thought leaders, and developers.
From learning about how to deploy AI/ML models in the cloud with SageMaker and DeepComposer, to securely encrypting and storing data in the cloud, this community continues to inspire and push each other to new heights. It might not be possible to learn everything, but we all certainly try as Community Builders.
Especially now that many of us are working remotely from home, there’s no better use of extra time than these types of “drinking water from a fire hose” type experiences; such as going to AWS’ re:Invent virtual conference this year. The entire programming was seamless and I was blown away by the ingenuity, precision, and organization that went into planning the conference. The AWS team and their sponsored partners have done a standout job of making the virtual experience welcoming, collaborative, and interactive — something that is quite hard to coordinate in a remote setting.
I have received so much value from the sessions that I attended over the past few weeks and I wanted to share the highlights for anyone who might be interested in learning more about DevOps, the cloud, serverless computation, and app development.
Let me know what you think and learned about from these sessions! | https://codeburst.io/top-highlights-from-aws-re-invent-2020-conference-for-innovators-builders-d67c749791c8 | ['Brian H. Hough'] | 2020-12-25 17:39:01.769000+00:00 | ['AWS', 'Digital Transformation', 'DevOps', 'Cloud', 'Cloud Computing'] |
Django’da Dinamik ModelForm Kullanımı | 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/stingy-developer/djangoda-dinamik-modelform-kullan%C4%B1m%C4%B1-ffc8c4d791fa | ['Furkan Zerman'] | 2020-12-05 21:17:16.461000+00:00 | ['Django', 'Forms', 'Development'] |
Ingredients to a WhatsApp Chatbot | The Basic Ingredients
WhatsApp Business API Server-Side Endpoint A Conversational AI Platform A WhatsApp Chatbot Builder (optional)
Firstly, you will need to procure a WhatsApp API. To do this, you would need to find a Licensed Facebook Partner. Currently, there are more than 100 companies that you can choose from. However, choosing the right partner can save you a lot of cost and time. These partners pitch to WhatsApp on your behalf to convince them that your requirement of Business API is valid on the basis of your business use case. Certain businesses are barred from obtaining a WhatsApp API, e.g. dating companies, liquor establishments. If everything goes well, you should ideally end up with a WhatsApp API enabled phone number. This process takes anywhere from a week to a month. Getting a Facebook verified green tick to your number can take much longer. Very few companies end up with a green tick, a good API partner can be crucial for this.
Secondly, you would need a hosted server endpoint for the messages to be delivered to you via a web-hook. You additionally, may require another endpoint to receive message delivery reports for the messages sent from you to the end-users. This can help you keep track of the messages that failed to get delivered. I recommend using a cloud platform like AWS or GCP for hosting the server.
Thirdly, and most importantly, you need to choose an appropriate conversational AI platform. A good AI platform should provide you with the following:
a. Natural Language Understanding
b. Text & Voice Support for Multiple Languages
c. Easy integration with your server
d. Scalability
e. Natural Language Generation (Bonus)
There are many platforms out there in the market today that can be of help. Some of the notable ones are Dialogflow, RASA, IBM Watson and Amazon Lex. Currently, none of these platforms support direct integration with WhatsApp, you will need to write some code to get these platforms hooked with your WhatsApp API. I will be sharing a simple integration tutorial shortly.
Fourthly, and the most easy way to get a WhatsApp chatbot up and running is to partner with a chatbot builder. An ideal chatbot builder should take responsibility for all the grunt work starting from applying for the WhatsApp API on your behalf to marketing your WhatsApp number to your target users. It should be able to do this while providing you with the state of the art conversational AI in multiple languages tailored to fit your business use case. | https://medium.com/@praveenprashant/ingredients-to-a-whatsapp-chatbot-69baac2730fe | ['Praveen Prashant'] | 2020-12-25 19:48:40.419000+00:00 | ['Chatbots', 'Conversational Ai', 'WhatsApp', 'Naturallanguageprocessing'] |
A new framework for PHP 8.0 — Aphiria | pronounced “Ah-fear-ee-ya”
Links: Documentation and source code
I already know what you’re thinking — another PHP framework? Why not use Laravel/Symfony/Slim/etc? Before, I dig into that, first, a bit of history.
How it all began
Back in February, 2014, I started work on what would eventually become my first PHP framework — Opulence. I still recall laying in bed, sick with a fever, and bored. I was reading about REST APIs — a new concept to me at the time. As so many developers do, I started off by trying to write my own libraries to help me understand REST and ORMs better. I never thought they’d see the light of day, but soon the company I was working at had a need for exactly the type of stuff I was building. And thus, Opulence was born. I was proud of how feature-full the framework was, but, over time, I realized I went too broad in my feature set rather than focusing on a few things and doing them exceptionally well. Trying to keep up with other full-stack frameworks on every front just wasn’t possible for an up-and-coming framework like Opulence. It was deflating.
Around that time, I changed jobs, and got into ASP.NET Core development. I was mesmerized by how great the developer experience was. Writing an API was trivial.
This sparked something in me to try and port what I learned in .NET over to PHP. In 2017, I started writing Opulence 2.0. My first action was to ditch the parts of Opulence that I just didn’t have the energy to support, eg its ORM, and instead put all my effort into building a great REST API framework that borrowed the best parts of ASP.NET Core. I poured many months into getting the syntax just right. It became clear, though, that Opulence 2.0 was such a huge departure from 1.0 that I could not in good conscience call it by the same name (think of the AngularJS 1 vs Angular 2 debacle). I decided to port over my work from Opulence 2.0 into a new GitHub repo, and thus Aphiria was born.
Thanks for the history lesson. Now what is Aphiria?
Aphiria is a simple, yet extensible REST API framework for PHP. It lets you focus on writing your application without bleeding into it, ie not having to extend base model classes. Like ASP.NET Core, Aphiria automatically performs content negotiation (ie figuring out what format and language a client is sending and is asking for back) of your POPOs. So, if a client sends XML in the request body but wants JSON back in the response body, Aphiria will automatically deserialize the request XML to the model you specify, and serialize your response model to JSON — all without any configuration on your end.
Let’s look at the Aphiria equivalent to the above .NET example:
In just 31 lines of expressive syntax, you can write a controller, configure dependency injection via a “binder”, and register global middleware. Aphiria is organized around the concept of “modules” (chunks of your domain) and “components” (pieces of your app that are shared across modules). Each module can register whatever it needs from components — binders, middleware, routes (if you’re not using attributes), exception-to-response mappings, validation rules, and console commands. You can even write your own components. Then, just plug-and-play modules into your app.
What features does Aphiria have?
Lots.
What features does Aphiria lack?
Aphiria is tightly focused on helping you write REST APIs. As such, it does not provide:
An ORM or database wrapper
A templating language
Custom authentication or authorization logic
Native PSR-7 support (learn why), but an adapter is provided
However, you can incorporate any 3rd party libraries you’d like into your Aphiria app to do these things.
Why should I use Aphiria as opposed to X?
Each framework is a tool with pros and cons. What I didn’t like about the current offerings are:
When a framework only works best when you’re all in on its stack
Inexpressive or verbose syntax to do the most simple things like configuring your app
A lot of magic, making it harder to grasp what’s happening under the hood
Obviously, I’m biased, but I feel that when it comes to REST API development, Aphiria provides the best developer experience of any of the popular PHP frameworks. I’ve gone into more detail comparing Aphiria with other frameworks here.
You’ve piqued my interest. How do I get started?
Aphiria provides a skeleton app to help you get up and running quickly via Composer. If you’d prefer to use individual libraries rather than the whole framework, you can. Interested in contributing? Read our contribution guidelines and check out some good issues to tackle. Have an idea for a cool feature? Create an issue for it. Want to ask for help or connect with others in the community? Check out our GitHub Discussions.
As with most other open source project authors, I have spent an incredible amount of free time building and maintaining Aphiria. If you’re able to spare a few bucks, I’ll always appreciate GitHub sponsorship. If you can’t, no worries.
Parting words
I’d like to thank my wife Lindsey for putting up with my countless late nights, buried in a computer working on something she didn’t understand. She saw how happy it made me, and was gracious enough to support my passion. Aphiria is a labor of love for me — I make no money off of it. I hope that the years I’ve put into building it are apparent, and that they make your life easier as a PHP developer. If not, open a pull request :) | https://medium.com/@davidbyoung/a-new-framework-for-php-8-0-aphiria-715f03608db8 | ['Dave Young'] | 2021-01-04 20:48:11.311000+00:00 | ['PHP', 'Programming', 'Framework', 'Rest Api'] |
What the F*!k is Wrong With These Social Media Influencers? | What the F*!k is Wrong With These Social Media Influencers?
Photo by Artem Podrez from Pexels
Guess What?
While you hustled away at your 9–5 and came home to a soggy TV dinner and Netflix, influencers were making billions. Influencer Marketing Hub says the influencer economy had grown from a $1.7 billion industry in 2016 to around $6.5 billion in 2019.
And even though the influencer marketing industry is set to grow to approximately $9.7B in 2020, they took a big hit like everyone else when the pandemic struck. Sure, influencers are still there, chugging away on Instagram, making cash money. But the all-expense-paid trips on private jets with designer clothes have gone by the wayside. Instead, more favor content that touts the benefits of hunkering down and spending less on non-essentials.
Travel influencers have stopped pushing $800 carry-on backpacks and $100 Merino wool T-shirts and started advising us on the best facemasks and hygiene essentials to carry when we need to go grocery shopping.
But, there are still those influencers that just don’t get it. They don’t see that it is no longer “business as usual” and continue to act as if our lives are not upside down. We all need to realize that we live in a new reality, and if we all get on the same page, will be much better off.
The fact is, people will always look up to the beautiful and famous humans in society. They will gravitate towards the movers and shakers wearing designer handbags, drinking Voss water, and snapping selfies with the latest iPhones. There will always be a place for the faux-fluencers as long as unbridled capitalism reigns supreme.
The problem with these influencers and their economy is that the number of people who can afford these luxuries is getting smaller every day. Sadly, most wage-earners are under the impression that if they keep slogging along to their job, they will be able to afford an Instagram lifestyle one day.
What’s sad is: It will never happen in this society as it is now.
Well-meaning working-class citizens will go to their graves standing up for the billionaires and the beautiful people because they hope to be just like them one day. But, the chances are that regular folk, like you and I, will never see a billion or even a million dollars. If we are working 80-hours a week at our desk jobs, no matter how frugal we are, we will never get a lifestyle like the hashtag-homies on social media.
Are we living vicariously through the lives we see on social media, or are we romanticizing the life we want to live?
The influencers are doing us a disservice by normalizing uninhibited spending on a designer lifestyle we are never likely to be able to afford. Most get their products free on top of a hefty check for convincing you to max out your credit card buying expensive shoes and hair products made from the tears and blood of marginalized people.
It’s time the pandemic did some good and showed us a new kind of influencer, or better yet, an anti-influencer. Instead of blonde twinkies telling us which sports-drink to buy, we need more people advising us how to start businesses and get better jobs. Instead of movie stars pouring their tequila down our throats (sorry Dwayne, I do love your work, man), we need more nutritionists advising us on foods that best boost our immune systems.
Instead of suntanned teeny-boppers bringing us along on their all-expense-paid trip to Bali, we need more experienced travelers showing us how to travel safely post-pandemic.
We need more influencers giving away information and experienced-based advice and less uncontrolled spending of money none of us have anymore. Instead of trying to get us to buy things we don’t need, we need anti-influencers who focus on the things that will give us a better life.
How much longer do we keep giving power over our lives to the people and corporations who only want to profit?
They try to capitalize on your goodwill and your hope that someday, you can have the luxuries they all seem to have.
It’s time that more influencers step up to the plate and start doing what it takes to make everyone’s lives better
It’s time we call out influencers who lie to you and make you think that the only thing that defines success is excess
It’s time we stopped using pretty faces, fit bodies, and fat stacks of cash to get people to buy more shit they won’t ever need
It’s time to JUST BE REAL
Who is watching out for you? Perhaps it’s time to take back our own best interests and become our own influencer or start putting our trust in the right kind of people.
Call me your anti-influencer.
When I try to tell you the truth, you are not looking at a botoxed talking head. I won’t use sex, power, greed, and shame to make you buy things you are never likely to need.
I may suggest something to make your life better, but you can rest assured it can enhance or improve you. I may provide advice contrary to what the so-called “gurus” and life coaches say, but I will always give it to you straight, and it will reflect what I have already done myself and had success doing.
I want to help you find success, whatever your definition of success is, even if you think you want to be a billionaire, or even an influencer yourself.
It’s time to shake things up, and together, we can do that.
These words may be coming from a nobody, but they are not empty promises and platitudes. It’s time you expect more from your influencers!
So, if I call out a movie star for bad behavior or give you my take on the latest advice from the internet marketing gurus, you can be sure it’s coming from a good place. If I see an opportunity to make you think, I will take it. We will not always agree, and that is okay. If you have a differing opinion, make your stance known. I don’t want to exist in an echo chamber, so get your voice heard!
I want to help, and I hope you let me prove that to you.
It’s time for a new kind of influencer. We need to unsully the word and make it mean something.
Let’s do this! | https://medium.com/@jasonjamesweiland/what-the-f-k-is-wrong-with-these-social-media-influencers-b91139b597a2 | ['Jason Weiland'] | 2020-12-21 16:26:02.965000+00:00 | ['Social Media Marketing', 'Influencer Marketing', 'Influencers', 'Social Media'] |
The Machine Learning Lifecycle and MLOps: Building and Operationalizing ML Models — Part I | The Machine Learning Lifecycle and MLOps: Building and Operationalizing ML Models — Part I Kevin Petrie Follow Jul 1 · 7 min read
Source: Eckerson.com
This article was originally published at eckerson.com
Machine learning was supposed to make things easy by computerizing human cognition. But it made life harder than ever for the data teams tasked with implementing it.
A rising number of enterprises implement machine learning (ML) to improve revenue and operations as they digitally transform their businesses. But ML introduces operational complexities and risks that need careful attention. Data teams must holistically manage the ML lifecycle to make their projects efficient and effective.
This blog kicks off a series that examines the ML lifecycle, which spans (1) data and feature engineering, (2) model development, and (3) ML operations (MLOps). This blog defines machine learning and then examines the data and feature engineering stage. Part 2 of the blog series will examine model development and MLOps. Subsequent blogs will examine the roles of key stakeholders — the business leader, data engineer, data scientist and developer — because these roles in particular must acquire new skills and collaborate to make ML work. The stakes run high because many projects today fail due to siloed roles and disjointed processes.
What is Machine Learning?
Let’s start at the beginning. Machine learning (ML) is a subset of artificial intelligence in which an algorithm discovers patterns in data. These patterns help people or applications predict, classify, or prescribe a future outcome. ML relies on a model, which is essentially an equation that defines the relationship between data inputs and outcomes. ML applies various techniques to create this model, including supervised learning, which studies known prior outcomes, and unsupervised learning, which finds patterns without knowing outcomes beforehand.
Once you create and train the ML model on historical data, you apply it to live production data. The model generates a score that helps people and applications create business value by predicting, classifying, or prescribing future outcomes — and taking action.
While the AI pioneer Arthur Samuel coined the term “machine learning” in 1959, the technology really gained steam in the 1980s and 1990s as an alternative to manual predictive models.
Machine learning (ML) is a subset of artificial intelligence in which an algorithm discovers patterns in data that help predict, classify, or prescribe an outcome.
Enterprises address many types of business problems with ML. For example:
Fraud detection: A commercial bank uses ML to classify whether a transaction has a high risk of fraud based on merchant identity, merchant location, and size vs. prior transactions. Transactions classified as high risk trigger an extra authentication request of the merchant.
A commercial bank uses ML to classify whether a transaction has a high risk of fraud based on merchant identity, merchant location, and size vs. prior transactions. Transactions classified as high risk trigger an extra authentication request of the merchant. Price predictions: A real-estate firm uses ML to prescribe the market price of houses based on zip code, recent transactions, and local school ratings. These prescribed prices guide the asking and offer prices that agents recommend to their clients.
A real-estate firm uses ML to prescribe the market price of houses based on zip code, recent transactions, and local school ratings. These prescribed prices guide the asking and offer prices that agents recommend to their clients. Health services: Nurses in a hospital use ML to classify the risk of major infections based on demographic data and patient vital signs. High risk classifications alert the nurses and prompt them to proactively treat patients.
Nurses in a hospital use ML to classify the risk of major infections based on demographic data and patient vital signs. High risk classifications alert the nurses and prompt them to proactively treat patients. Document processing: A law firm uses ML to classify documents and extract information, such as key concepts, relevant laws, and primary stakeholders, to expedite research efforts.
A law firm uses ML to classify documents and extract information, such as key concepts, relevant laws, and primary stakeholders, to expedite research efforts. Preventive maintenance: A manufacturer uses ML to study physical sensors and factory service records to predict when robotic arms will break down. A prediction below a certain threshold triggers an alert for the plant manager to deploy a service technician.
To address use cases like these in large and complicated enterprise environments, you need to manage the ML lifecycle holistically. This entails three stages and nine individual steps.
Data and feature engineering: Ingest and transform your input data (i.e., your historical data), label your outcomes, then define and store your features.
Ingest and transform your input data (i.e., your historical data), label your outcomes, then define and store your features. Model development: Select the ML technique you will use (such as linear regression, classification, or “random forests” that make use of decision trees), train your models, then store and manage them.
Select the ML technique you will use (such as linear regression, classification, or “random forests” that make use of decision trees), train your models, then store and manage them. ML operations (MLOps): Put those models to work! Implement them and operate them in production workflows. Monitor their performance and the accuracy of their output.
Most importantly, data teams must rinse and repeat. They must identify data drift — i.e., changes in market conditions or other aspects of your environment — then pull their ML models out of production, re-train those models and re-implement them. Figure 1 illustrates the three stages of the ML lifecycle.
Figure 1. Stages and Steps in the Machine Learning Lifecycle
Source: eckerson.com
Data and Feature Engineering
Let’s define each step of data and feature engineering, and who performs it. To set the table for upcoming blogs, we’ll also describe (in italics) the key challenges that make ML projects an “all-hands-on-deck” endeavor. Busy business leaders, data engineers, data scientists and developers need to acquire new skills and help one another.
Ingest and transform input data. First, data scientists, data engineers, and ML engineers need to collect all the historical input data that’s potentially relevant to the business problem they need to solve. They design, configure and deploy data pipelines that ingest the input data into a repository such as a data lake. They merge, cleanse and format the data, The data scientist provides close oversight to ensure the resulting dataset fits analytics requirements.
Data engineers need to manage high volumes, varieties and velocities of data across heterogeneous hybrid and multi-cloud environments. They collaborate with data scientists to transform data into a usable format and structure for ML. Data engineers also need to create pipelines that data scientists can access and manipulate.
2. Label the outcomes. Next data engineers, ML engineers and data scientists collaborate with business owners to “label” various outcomes in their historical data sets. This means they add tags to data to easily identify historical outcomes, such as robotic arm failures, fraudulent transactions or the price of recent house sales. While data labeling is trivial in those examples, it can get tricky with unstructured data. You need to label historical images — for example, “dogs,” “cats,” etc. — to help the algorithm create an accurate ML model for image recognition. Similarly, you need to label customer emails and social media posts as “positive” or “negative” to create an accurate model for classifying customer sentiment. You can view a label as the variable you want to predict.
Data engineers and data scientists need to label outcomes accurately and at high scale. This requires a programmatic approach, automation, and assistance from business owners that best understand the domain.
Note that labeling applies to supervised ML only. Unsupervised ML, by definition, studies input data without known outcomes, which means the data has no labels.
3. Engineer the features. Now the data scientist, data engineer and ML engineer employ feature engineering, which means to extract or derive, then share “features” — the key attributes that really drive outcomes — from all that input data. Features become the filtered, clean inputs for an ML algorithm to study, so that it does not drown in data while creating the model. Feature engineering can dictate the success or failure of ML projects: without it, you have “garbage in, garbage out.” It entails some artwork because it requires domain knowledge and judgment as well as statistical techniques. For example:
The data scientist finds from conversations with realtors that home buyers always cite recent sale prices when determining their own offer price. The recent home prices therefore become a feature.
The data scientist and data engineer use a program to count the number of times keywords appear in the service records of (1) repeat customers and (2) former customers. The most frequent words or phrases — perhaps certain product names, adjectives such as “thrilled” or “unacceptable” — become features.
Some enterprises now use feature stores to assist their feature engineering efforts. Feature stores are platforms for defining features, curating them and then serving them to various ML algorithms and models. They also can assist with data transformation as described in step 1 above.
Data scientists need to consult business domain experts to make the right judgment calls about features. They also need to work closely with data engineers to create, manage and reuse the right features for numerous models in their organization.
Now that data teams have ingested and transformed their historical input data, labeled the historical outcomes and engineered their features, they are ready to start building the ML model. This model will define the relationship between features and labels, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: ML Model, Features and Labels
Source: Eckerson.com
The ML model is an equation that defines how “features,” or key attributes of your input data, relate to outcomes or predictive variables known as “labels”
Data and feature engineering steers the success or failure of MLOps, which in turn steers the success of enterprise ML projects. Data teams that assemble all the right data, label their outcomes correctly, and devise the right features, will make sure those machines do good rather than harm. They might just make things easier for the companies that implement them.
Now that we understand the data and feature engineering phase, we will examine ML model development and operationalization in Part 2 of our blog series. | https://medium.com/data-for-ai/the-machine-learning-lifecycle-and-mlops-building-and-operationalizing-ml-models-part-i-742a15dd953e | ['Kevin Petrie'] | 2021-07-01 12:46:23.439000+00:00 | ['Feature Engineering', 'Ml Model', 'Ml Model Deployment', 'Machine Learning', 'Mlops'] |
Green Thumb 101: Houseplants | So, you’ve got a black thumb? Maybe you’ve killed your Great Grandma’s Peace Lily, murdered your Cactus or ruined that gorgeous Orchid you got as a housewarming gift? Well, I’ve got some news for you:
There’s no such thing as a black thumb.
So you’ve killed a few plants. So have I. No worries! Don’t let it hold you back. You lacked the knowledge before but you’re here now. And today I am going to give you the basics you need that will help you to start becoming a plant guru.
Nobody is born gifted with the innate wisdom of how to garden and grow. Anybody interested in plants can become a master gardener! You just need to start somewhere…
So you want a green thumb? Let’s get to it!
Part 1: Know your plant
Houseplants are weird.
Okay, maybe not all houseplants. But most of the plants we keep are from very different areas of the world: rain forests, deserts, even bogs! They evolved to thrive in these different conditions. The secret to happy, healthy indoor plants is to mimic their natural environment.
Now I don’t mean they need to live in a climate controlled bubble. Plants are much tougher than that. But they do need similar light, water and living conditions. If a plant is from the rain forest, it’s most likely going to thrive in bright but indirect light and high humidity. If its from the temperate forests, it may prefer to be on the dryer side and less sun. Deserts? You guessed it: Lots of sun and very little water. Makes sense, right?
So get to know your plant! If you have more then one (and I’m sure you will eventually….) they may need different things to survive. Make sure you understand each one’s requirements.
This information is usually on the tag when you purchase your plants. But should you have no idea what kind of plant you have there are many apps and people on social media who will be happy to identify it for you!
Also, it’s good to get to know your plant on an individual level. Just by stopping to admire it for a moment a few times a week will help you become acquainted with your own plant’s leaves, colors and form. When something changes (for better or worse) you will know immediately. So stop to say hi to your plants every now and then, they will let you know how they’re feeling!
Part 2: Watering
Most houseplants die from being over-watered. There are a few plants that like to stay moist but on a whole most plants want to dry out a bit before the next drink. The best way to tell? Stick your fingers in the dirt (about 2 inches, a little less for small pots, a little more for larger ones) If the soil feels moist, then it doesn’t need water. And if you’re not sure, its better to wait another day or two. Plants usually tolerate being dry more than staying too wet.
Over-watering causes most of the problems people have keeping houseplants. Root rot is one of the most common and, while it is curable when caught in time, will kill your plant if left unchecked! Constantly moist soil also creates a perfect breeding ground for different bugs as well as diseases and fungus.
No worries though! Keep any eye out for my lesson Green Thumb 101: Plant Doctoring on how to heal your plants. Remember though: the best medicine is prevention. So watch your watering!
Part 3: Lighting
A plant’s need for light differs from plant to plant. All houseplants need some amount of light to survive. Typically there are 3 different types of lighting: low, medium and high.
Low light is usually found in rooms with windows that face to the north or east, or in brighter rooms far from the windows. Low light plants cannot tolerate any direct sun light but will often tolerate or even thrive in medium light.
Medium light is near an eastern facing window, or in brighter rooms away from sunny windows and any direct contact with the sun.
High light is found in rooms with southern or western facing windows and can actually be split into two different types: direct and indirect. This is important because some high light plants will actually burn if they receive direct sun light while others won’t thrive without it! Make sure you know what type of light your plant needs.
In love with a high light beauty but live in a low light environment? Not a problem! Thanks to human ingenuity, we have grow lights and they come in all shapes and sizes! Just supplement your babies with a few hours of artificial sunlight and they will love you for it!
Finally- it’s important to turn your plants! You will notice that as your plant grows it will begin to turn towards the light source. The leaves are going to try to face the direction of the sun to maximize photosynthesis. If you turn your plants (an easy habit to develop is to turn them whenever you water) you can prevent it from growing at an awkward angle or only developing new leaves on one side.
Part 4: The Pot
For many, a new pot is almost as exciting as a new plant! Its a great way to accessorize, decorate and express yourself. They come in thousands of shapes, sizes and colors to fit every taste and decor. But first and foremost- the pot is your plant’s home.
A few things that you need to consider when purchasing a new planter is drainage, size and material.
Its highly recommended, especially for new plant owners, to only purchase pots that have drainage holes. Remember over-watering? Well, without a drainage hole its very easy for water to sit in the bottom of the pot, drowning the roots. There are ways to get around this but for now, choose something with a hole that will allow the excess water to escape. Plants in pots without drainage holes can be tricky to keep.
Next is the size. Believe it or not, many plants don’t want to go from the little 4 inch pot you bought it in to a giant 12 inch mansion! We may think “Yay! My plant has so much space! He will be so happy!” But this is not the case.
Typically when upgrading pots, you want to choose a pot only an inch or two larger than the pot it currently resides in. You shouldn’t need to re-pot more than once a year for most plants, maybe even less! Re-potting can cause stress for the plant. Plants mostly just want to chill.
Lastly is the material of the planter. You can get a planter in any material you want but its good to note the way they will effect your plants.
Clay and terracotta pots are porous. They wick water from the soil and help add oxygen to the roots. Because of this your plant will dry out much faster. If you have a plant that prefers to be dry like cactus this is perfect. If not, you may have to water it quite often.
Plastic, resin and glass are not porous. The soil is kept moist for a lot longer so you will need to water less. Remember to check before you water!
Part 5: Fertilizing
So, we all know that plants make their own food from sunlight. But they also take in vitamins and minerals from the soil to help them grow and produce their food! The soil in a pot is finite and has only so much nutrients in it and when the plant finishes it off it needs some supplement. That’s where fertilizers come in!
Fertilizers come in three different types- liquid, sticks and granular. Its important to read the package thoroughly and never fertilize too much or too often. Fertilizers can burn or kill your plant if over used. Also consider that most potting soils have fertilizer in them. If you have re-potted in the last few months you may want to skip a fertilizer dose!
There are many different fertilizers and you can get nitty gritty about the exact percentage of nutrients you need for your specific plant. But were here to talk basics and most of the time an all purpose houseplant fertilizer is all you need. And how often should you fertilize? Well, it depends on the time of year.
Plants go semi- dormant in the winter and don’t do much growing, so they don’t need any extra nutrients. Fertilizing in the winter may do more harm than good so as a rule of thumb it’s best to just avoid it.
When springtime approaches, wake your plants up with a solution of fertilizer at half strength. Begin this around 8 weeks before last frost and continue until closer to summer (around May or June in most of the U.S.).
Summertime is growing time! Feed your plants according to the package label all summer long. Never use more than recommended though!
Continue until about 8 weeks before the first fall frost, then start to cut back to half a dose of fertilizer again. Continue this half dose for about month, then stop fertilizing and let your babies rest til the spring!
Part 6: Where to put it?
So this is just a quick consideration but can make all the difference between a beautiful, healthy plant and a struggling, wonky looking one. Where is the best place to put your plant?
Well, we’ve kinda already covered this. Put it in a place where it will get the light it needs! But after that there are a few things you also should consider.
The first is- do you have any pets or kids? Children and animals may play with your plants, dig them up or pee in them (yes we’re looking at you, kitty cat!)
They might also eat them. Do not let this happen! Most houseplants are poisonous, so keep out of reach of children and pets! It’s not likely it will kill anyone outright, but it might. Or it might just give you a long night of cleaning vomit from your carpet. Either way, not worth it.
There are plants that are non toxic though, and if your worried check them out in my Top 10 Beginner Houseplants! Otherwise, there are many great ways to display plants that will keep them out of reach. Shelves, hangers and plant stands will all help to keep them out of the way of curious claws and grabbing hands!
The second thing is air conditioners and heaters. Heaters dry out the air and will suck the moisture from the leaves of plants that are too close to them, drying them to a crisp. Air conditioners, as well as drafty windows and doors in the winter time, blast the poor plant with cold air that it’s not equipped to deal with. This will kill leaves and can even freeze your poor plant! Keep these things in mind and put plants in a place where they will be kept at a more stable temperature. Most houseplants want to be kept above 45 or 50 degrees.
Wrapping it up!
So that’s it! These are the basics that, if you follow them, will lead you to success in keeping almost any houseplant. There is certainly more to learn though! The world of flora is extensive and fascinating, and there are so many amazing plants out there! But it’s hard to learn all the intricacies if you don’t have a good base to build upon.
From here the next step is to practice and that means it’s time to buy a plant! There are tons to choose from but I suggest starting with one that’s beginner friendly. Check out my Top Ten Beginner Friendly Houseplants to help you choose the best one for your home!
Keep a look out for more articles as I teach you everything you need to know to grow your Green Thumb!
Peace, Love and Sunshine-
Greenweave | https://medium.com/@greenweave/green-thumb-101-houseplants-b5fefeb827a5 | ['Cassie Greenweave'] | 2021-07-10 15:33:10.908000+00:00 | ['Gardening', 'Green Thumb', 'Plants', 'Houseplant', 'Beginner Houseplants'] |
Broken | I can’t even call my bed my own with your smell of cologne. The bathroom we once shared is now the place i cry and mourn for your return. The living room doesn’t even own up to its name because i feel so much as dead standing in it. The places we used to go now have no place on this earth in my mind. You are long gone but also so close to my heart and it’s close to it’s last pump. | https://medium.com/@fortnitesux15/a-boy-once-i-loved-stole-my-heart-and-crushed-the-pieces-in-his-hands-without-a-warning-or-feel-4f51a28f3a3d | ['Lily Storey'] | 2020-12-18 07:12:51.244000+00:00 | ['Lost', 'Love', 'Heartbreak'] |
Are you making these common management mistakes? | 1-Not providing feedback:
failing to provide feedback is common mistake leaders make. When you fail to provide prompt feedback to your people, you’re taking away from them the opportunity to improve their performance.
To avoid this mistake, try learning how to provide regular feedback.
2-not making time for your team
When you’re a manager, it’s easy to get so busy with your work that you don’t make yourself available to your team. Without you being available to lead them, your people won’t know what to do, and they won’t have the guidance that they need to achieve their objectives. Avoid this mistake by setting up a time in your schedule specifically for your people, and learn how to listen actively to your teammates. Work on your emotional intelligence so that you can be more aware of your team’s needs.
3-being too friendly or too hands-off
Many managers and leaders try to avoid micromanagement, but doing the opposite (with a hand-offs management style) isn’t any better you need to get the balance right. The article, Laissez Faire versus Micromanagement will help you find the right balance for your own situation. Most people want to seem friendly and approachable to their team. However, sometimes you have to make tough decisions regarding people in your team, and some might be tempted to take advantage of your relationship if you’re way too friendly. You do need to get the right balance between being the friend and the boss. Learn how to avoid this mistake, set clear boundaries, so that your teammates won’t take advantage of you, also with the article, Now You’re the Boss.
4-failing to define goals
When your people don’t have clear goals, they can’t be productive, especially if they have no idea what they’re working for, or what their work means.
Avoid this mistake by learning how to set SMART goals for your team. Use a Team Charter to specify where your team is going, and detail the resources it can draw upon. Also, use principles from Management by Objectives to align your team’s goals to the mission of the organization. | https://medium.com/@themaym4/are-you-making-these-common-management-mistakes-eea643fba57d | ['Fast Way'] | 2021-06-17 11:27:35.230000+00:00 | ['Work From Home', 'Mistakes', 'Money', 'Management', 'Bussiness'] |
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: ELIMINATES or FUELS DISCRIMINATION? | image from depositphotos.com
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: ELIMINATES or FUELS DISCRIMINATION?
The phrase “affirmative action”, since its emergence in the 1960s to end discrimination against people of color, particularly against nonwhite ethnicities and women within the workplace, has been in the center of the most intense debates. Among the fiercest controversies is the question whether this act ensures equality and diversity or reversely fuels biases based on race and gender. In other words, since President Kennedy introduced it to American life, affirmative action has been contested in terms of its focus on and accomplishment of creating and improving opportunities for already discriminated, disadvantaged or excluded groups. In order to discuss the questions and arguments about affirmative action, we should take a look initially at the roots of the problem.
To be more precise, we should first ask why certain groups are considered as disadvantaged or why the administrative bodies would need such an act for equal recruitment or admission. Are not the companies, corporations, universities and such institutions and organizations already accessible to all people regardless of their sex, gender, race, religion and class? If not, then the next question would be what are the challenges and barriers for those particular groups to be recruited to a job or admitted to a university? Let me ask more explicitly. What are the odds for a black girl from a low-income family living a fully black community where the schools have mostly black students to be able to get accepted to an Ivy League university? Is it really achievable for a Muslim immigrant man to be appointed as a high level director in a prominent corporation? Could a Latinx LGBTQ individual easily have a tenure position in a prestigious university? I will play the advocate of the devil and answer all these questions by saying “No”! More precisely, even if they ultimately reach their dreams/goals, that would not be easy and quick.
In light of the ideas above, I would like to discuss most controversial pro and con arguments about affirmative action more closely. A great deal of the debate about affirmative action goes round the paradigm of meritocracy. Opponents argue that affirmative action, specifically race-based, undermines the fairness aspect of admissions or recruitments which could only be maintained through the idea of meritocracy. Advocates of affirmative action respond to this critic by stressing out the fact that race (or gender) is not the only determinant for decisions. It is rather among the many other influential factors that impact the selection proceedings for those who are already equally highly qualified. Another controversial issue about affirmative action is the dilemma whether it creates stereotypes regarding the interpretation of underrepresentation. Supporters of the affirmative action challenge this dispute through the proposition that not all disadvantaged people in terms of interlocking systems of race, sex, gender and class undergo the same kind of inequalities and discrimination. On the contrary, just as the discriminatory factors, their experiences are also intersectional with reference to the variety of socioeconomic issues. Thus, it is claimed by the advocates that an argument of creating further stereotypes would be void.
Coming back to my original discussion about affirmative action, I will repeat the aforesaid suggestion that it is a very complicated issue so that claiming it to be conflict itself or solution of the conflict is almost impossible. Some support the idea of affirmative action by arguing that it eliminates discrimination based on the above said dynamics and reassures diversity in educational institutions and the workplace. On the other hand, critics claim that the affirmative action creates reverse discrimination by rejecting the idea of meritocracy. This approach of the critics brings another controversial paradigm front which implicitly suggests that discriminated people are not qualified for the position or the admission. Another significant issue related to this point is the alleged idea that discriminated people who are addressed by the affirmative action unfairly take the positions of dominant group. Such an approach again targets women, people of color and disadvantaged individuals as non-merit people and actors of reverse discrimination.
To conclude, I would argue that affirmative action paves the path which are full of obstacles, barriers and challenges for discriminated people who are already as qualified as other dominant peers to be able to equally access to resources. Yet, along with affirmative steps, further improvements in terms of policies and regulations must be developed to eliminate the discriminatory conditions in all parts and institutions of the society. Moreover, discriminatory discourses and acts based on sex, gender, race, religion and so on should be eradicated through education and laws. | https://medium.com/@hafza-girdap/affirmative-action-eliminates-or-fuels-discrimination-cdd309da9730 | ['Hafza Girdap'] | 2020-12-11 17:11:03.862000+00:00 | ['Affirmative Action', 'Discrimination', 'Gender', 'Equality', 'Race'] |
5 Practical Hints: Experience Design Job Hunting Journey of a Junior | Let’s put it straight- your very first job hunting process will not last forever. Sometime soon you will get a job as an experience designer or researcher depending on your aspirations. I was in your shoes a couple of months back looking for an experience designer or researcher role abroad. Upon completing my masters in TU Delft’s Design for Interaction, I headed to Berlin by truly following my heart and applied to more than 120 positions with titles Product Designer, UX Designer, UX/UI Designer and UX Researcher. As you might imagine, I received dozens of rejection emails, similar amount of ghosted applications and 12 interviews some of which went till the final stage but couldn’t be concluded with an offer. At the end, with the pandemic, I returned to Istanbul and kept looking for a job that would save my soul from rejections and ambiguities. In this article, I share my learnings to inspire newly graduated designers/researchers who are actively looking for a job. I do this as a person, who got mentally tired for 9 months of job hunting and as a product designer, who does user research, experience and interface design now in Turkey’s leading service marketplace- armut.com
1. Keep it together with your community
Your community is the people that you did projects with, grabbed a beer after submissions or simply the ones who were around working hard like you did and probably had/having a similar experience of what you are going through now. Talking to them on a regular basis will enable you to exchange knowledge and simply share experiences. Especially if you find someone who is as excited and curious as you are [waving to my friends Ece Çelik, Selman Yücetürk and Anniek Moll now], job hunting may become even fun. Chatting about a case that you’re working on, asking for feedback or simply talking about concepts that trigger you as a designer would open multiple different nodes of your brain. So don’t hesitate to talk about your questions, designer or researcher dreams, and exchange opinions.
2. Read, watch, experiment and communicate
The act of applying is not enough on its own, we need to grow our designer self in some ways. I tried this four-stepped growing which helped me to know why I am doing what I am doing. An example: (1) You are reading an article about measuring success of your design iteration, after that (2) watching a video from NN/g about how design is operationalized in an organization, then (3) write an imaginary case for yourself. It would make sense if the context you create is from an industry/product that you’re willing to apply to [or even already applied to]. Then come up with questions, user scenarios, anything that serve you to approach your imaginary case. (4) Communicate your design/research result in whatever form you want -obviously no restrictions about final outcome here unless you put one; it may be a research procedure, a research approach that sets ux measures aligned with product KPIs- and bring it out to the world. While doing this quatro-steps back in the days, I had thoughts like “This is for nothing”, “I am just wasting my time, this is not even real”. Well turns out that the trick is- our ideas are as real as we picture and tangibilize them.
3. Job titles shouldn’t scare you, most probably you will define what you are capable of doing
Designer job titles vary depending on the organization’s structure that you’re applying to. Some sub-issues I observed are how collaborative and interdisciplinary development processes are, how research and design fit in these processes and resource allocation which eventually relate to ux-maturity of an organization. You can sense this by looking at how many interface or experience designers, researchers, writers [list may go on] an organization currently has. Putting this reality aside, what an organization cares about are the ways in which you will feed them that also correspond with the generic requirements defined in the job post. Some questions to further elaborate my point: What are some capabilities of yours which would contribute to that organization in a novel way? How your design/research cause may link with that organization? How do you imagine the design/research vision that particular organization needs to have and how can you help them go there?
4. Think aloud and use your walls while working
Say you are thinking through an article you read about Figma’s last updates, or preparing for an interview and going through some imaginary cases. Naturally what you have is some hypothetical methods/ways of structuring content, or a try-out design with the new Figma feature. Thinking aloud about your process would help you to make clear connections between your points and identify poorly structured ideas so that you can revise. Another thing that I did was to document both my job hunting process and content I generated for the interviews [imaginary cases, redesigns, research methods…] on my living room’s walls. This helped me to remember what I’ve been researching, designing and how the thinking process behind connects with each other.
An example from content-mapping for an imaginary case that I did for Adahealth
5. See this process as your first design/research project
Alright- think of your job hunting process as your first design/research project; some sort of an Inception. You have a problem/opportunity in your hand [you are looking for a job which is not easy and you want to find your way out] so you need to design a process for this job hunt. What are your users’ [yes, it’s you] aspirations, desires or what are their pain-points, concerns? Which motivators you need to use to flip these pain-points into opportunities? How would you approach designing a job search process for this persona? Trying to answer these questions may be a different way of looking at your own experience. | https://medium.com/@me-yagmurgokce/5-practical-hints-experience-design-job-hunting-journey-as-a-junior-d4050fda3d72 | ['Yağmur Gökçe'] | 2020-12-08 06:38:56.829000+00:00 | ['UX Design', 'Ux Process', 'Tips And Tricks', 'Job Hunting', 'Ux Jobs'] |
Now, Next and Beyond | Let me start with the most important question: How are you doing?
As many of you, I find myself in a “💩 is hitting the fan”-moment of epic proportions. And we are truly he lucky ones — we have a business which, I expect, will make it through these batshit crazy times; we have enough money in the bank to keep paying our employees for the short- and mid-term. It’s hard, but it will be okay.
The other day I spoke to a dear friend of mine who heads up EYQ, EY’s global think tank. EYQ looks at the world in three time dimensions: Now, Next and Beyond. In the world BC (Before Covid-19) “next” was 1–2 years out, and the beyond was somewhere past the five year mark. Today Now and Next are happening in parallel and at the same time, while Beyond is AC (After Covid-19).
It requires a very different view of the world and leaders to show up in very different ways. Fluidity has replaced stability. Now, more than ever, we ought to fall back to scenario planning. You need to know what the boundary conditions are, to give yourself the option space in which to navigate in.
And double-down on your financial planning. Now, more than ever, cashflow is king.
I hear people talk about this recession being a V-shape (a sharp dip with an equally as sharp rise) or a U-shape (same thing with a bit more time in the dip) or even a W-shape (as Covid-19 might rear its ugly head again in the fall). From all I can see (and the many people I talk to who know this much better than I do), we are in an I-shape: A complete fall of the cliff like nothing we have seen before. And it will take a while to get out of this. Better be prepared for a long winter.
Now here is the good news: We will get through this. A lot of new opportunities will come out of this. It will make us stronger and more resilient. We need to dig our heels in, do the work and care for those who are less fortunate.
P.S. In case you haven’t done so, sign up for the radical Briefing; we just published a great post on this very topic. | https://read.theheretic.org/now-next-and-beyond-4708b696b286 | ['Pascal Finette'] | 2020-04-06 17:41:04.995000+00:00 | ['Entrepreneurship', 'Covid 19', 'Leadership', 'Startup'] |
The CoVid-Vaccine prices have leaked | Image: Angelo Esslinger/pb
While the prices paid by the EU for CoVid-19 vaccines are supposed to be kept secret, some information about the various products leaked on Thursday. A Belgian state secretary had, probably by mistake, posted a table including prices on Twitter and deleted it shortly afterwards. The Belgian newspaper HLN was on the spot in time and published a screenshot of the prices of six manufacturers on its website.
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Assuming the data is correct, AstraZeneca’s vaccine is by far the cheapest, costing just €1.78 per dose, followed by Sanofi’s offering at €7.56. Johnson & Johnson charges $8.50 for its vaccine, and CureVac is asking about 10 euros for its mRNA candidate. The BioNTech/Pfizer mRNA vaccine costs 12 euros. By far the most expensive is the Moderna mRNA product at $18.
The prices apply to the European Union only and could vary in other regions. The EU is expected to approve the BioNTech vaccine this year. It has already pre-ordered a total of 1.3 billion doses from various companies. | https://medium.com/@ghopa-ghop/the-covid-vaccine-prices-have-leaked-2afd6bfe0247 | [] | 2020-12-18 16:11:11.994000+00:00 | ['Coronavirus', 'Europe', 'Covid 19', 'News', 'Vaccines'] |
My Mandalorian Christmas Miracle | Last year my wife had tears in her eyes as she watched The Mandalorian season one finale with me.
We just found out we’d had a miscarriage.
We had been trying to have a baby for a while, and the heartbreak of losing what we expected to be our first child was especially hard on my wife.
She was never a Star Wars fan, but she seemed to get a profound sense of comfort on a weekly basis watching “Baby Yoda” appear on our TV screen.
She grew attached to the little guy.
He seemed to fill part of the hole our unborn child left in my wife’s heart.
All she wanted for Christmas was to hold her own Baby Yoda.
But Disney had not created any merchandise for The Child. So I had to get scrappy.
I eventually found a friend of a friend who owned a 3D printer who agreed to help me create a model of the little guy.
When I presented it to my wife, she was stunned.
She understood what that little statue of The Child represented.
He became the first piece of the Baby Yoda shrine we’ve established in our living room.
Fast forward one year.
It’s been a crazy year.
We’re watching The Mandalorian season two finale.
But this time, I’m the one crying.
Watching the battered X-wing fly onto the screen, the green lightsaber ignite in the gloved hand of the hooded figure…
Watching Din (Mando) remove his helmet, look into the eyes of baby Grogu, and be touched on the face for the first time in his life.
The finale definitely got my emotions going.
But what sent me over the edge was the wiggly little baby that was sitting on my lap, watching the show with us.
That’s right, now we are a clan of 3.
I wanted to name her “Amanda Lorien” (A Mandalorian), but my wife squashed that idea.
Her reason?
“I’ve known too many Amandas that I’m not a fan of.”
But really, I know she just didn’t want to be that mom who named her kid after a Star Wars character.
Fair enough. I can’t really blame her for that.
I’ve been a Star Wars fan for as long as I can remember. But I never thought Star Wars would become a healing balm in a time of profound pain for my family.
I’m very grateful for the creators of the show who brought this story, and these characters to life. It gave us a new hope (pun intended).
For those of you who might be having a difficult holiday season this year (like ours was last year), please hang in there. Continue the journey. Things get better in the next chapter, I promise.
This is the way. | https://medium.com/@natebagley/my-mandalorian-christmas-miracle-ef397b22a754 | ['Nate Bagley'] | 2020-12-24 16:49:42.072000+00:00 | ['Star Wars', 'Fatherhood', 'The Mandalorian', 'Infertility', 'Family'] |
Homecoming | He was away for long. Too long it felt like eternity. The days roll faster when the bread winner of a family is whisked off to prison in another man’s land. Drugs it was. His life was an unending spin. He would be deemed successful but that was a mediocre’s language. He wouldn’t settle until he had built the dream home for his gorgeous wife who meant the world to him.
She had aged a lot in his absence and considerably so. She took on the role of a father to their three sons. Each day saw her looking paler, the veins in her neck stretching like roots. She would sit in the compound with a gaze toward the heavens searching for answers. None came.
He tightened his face as he made past the main gate. This used to be home before prison. This was where he first heard the cry of a baby. His first son. The memories hit him so hard that he staggered. Integrating with his family was all that mattered to him at this point. The world was vain and the pursuit for riches pointless.
“Who are you?” A voice behind him called. It was tender and innocent, a version of him some forty years ago. “Who are you now?” The six year old repeated.
“I am your daddy" he answered trying to fight back the tears that was starting to well up in his eyes. How could one be a stranger to his own son? This boy was barely one when he was imprisoned. He looked so emaciated.
“I don’t have a daddy, it’s only mummy I have" the little boy retorted quizzically. Confusion was starting to get a better grip of him.
His father lifted him to his shoulders and proceeded to the back door of the house where his wife usually sat. She met him halfway, jaw-dropping. She would have run into his arms but for the extra weight. Her protruding stomach housed a life that was not his. The silence between both was laced with palpitations and tremor in what seemed like a lifetime. Her water broke. | https://medium.com/@miraokpala_81004/homecoming-dc8ada12ba00 | ['Mira Okpala'] | 2020-12-10 22:18:36.197000+00:00 | ['Homecoming', 'Prison', 'Poverty', 'Fatherhood', 'Family'] |
One of Face ID’s under-appreciated perks: aging | One of Face ID’s under-appreciated perks: aging
In my experience, Face ID seems to be much more reliable than Touch ID for aging people and senior citizens.
There are plenty of pros and cons to discuss about Face ID and Touch ID. One that I rarely see mentioned, however, is aging.
A common complaint I’ve seen since Touch ID’s early days is that the sensor can eventually lose accuracy, requiring multiple attempts to unlock the device. Most of the time, Touch ID just needs to be reset and re-trained, which makes me wonder if the technology has trouble with changes to our fingerprints and environment.
While I have seen people have trouble with Face ID recognizing them, it feels to me like this occurs less frequently than Touch ID.
One group I have regularly seen have trouble with Touch ID across the board is aging people and senior citizens. As far as I can tell, Touch ID has a much higher failure rate with them, including at setup. Throw in factors like drying skin and fingers that can change significantly with age, and I suspect the tech just can’t keep up.
On the other hand, Face ID seems to have a much higher success rate with older folks. Apple touts the tech’s ability to learn as our faces change with makeup, beards, wrinkles, and hats. Whether it’s by design or an indirect perk, I wonder if Face ID is more adept at authenticating us throughout the days of our lives.
Liked it? Take a second to support me on Patreon! | https://medium.com/finer-things-in-tech/one-of-face-ids-under-appreciated-perks-aging-60697fdac582 | ['David Chartier'] | 2019-03-05 17:02:25.309000+00:00 | ['Security', 'Apple', 'iPhone', 'Face Id', 'UX'] |
New Research — How 1 M&M Drives Better Stories | Chocolate, Choices, and Cycling. They’re all connected.
Hey storytellers.
Behavioral Economics is fascinating. It reveals our brain’s biases when making decisions. Bottom line? Our decisions are often irrational.
But if you know these biases, human behavior becomes more predictable and lets you craft more compelling stories.
Sounds like a superpower, right? It is.
Check this out…
Results from a recent study we did: We asked people to rate common foods on a “Good Choice” to “Bad choice” scale when watching what you eat.
Here’s the rub.
✺ Half of them were told the calories of the food.
✺ Half of them were told how much exercise they’d need to work it off.
You can probably see where this is going…
“An M&M has 3 calories.”
16% thought it was a bad choice
vs.
“An M&M is equal to walking the length of a football field.”
35% thought it was a bad choice (that’s 2x!)
How about Ben & Jerry’s Frozen Yogurt?
“Frozen yogurt has 170 calories.”
8% thought it was a bad choice
vs.
“Frozen yogurt is equal to 24 minutes of cycling.”
45% thought it was a bad choice (that’s more than 5x!)
Wild, right? The only difference is the frame. Same offering, different mindset. When your approach isn’t working, think about flipping the script. Just reframe it.
👉 Check out this short 6-minute presentation I gave at the STORY Conference if you want to see the other results.
🥗 Hot Tip: You won’t believe the salad results! | https://medium.com/behavioral-storytelling/new-research-how-1-m-m-drives-better-stories-c8f5e92bbd5c | ['David Paull'] | 2021-06-08 21:04:32.565000+00:00 | ['Storytelling', 'Persuasion', 'Marketing', 'Sales', 'Stories'] |
PHP 7.x — P1: Basic Syntax. PHP is leaps and bounds above where it… | PHP is leaps and bounds above where it started. It’s a modern programming language that has Object Oriented capabilities. It’s the backbone of popular frameworks like Laravel. It’s great for the web and it makes writing web-based applications enjoyable. It can be used to produce both full-stack and back-end applications. With back-end applications, you have a choice for your front-end library or framework. With the Laravel backend framework, front end libraries like React or Vue tie in nicely.
I still see countless arguments against PHP, so I finally had enough. I’m going to show you how elegant this language can actually be. If you’re a beginner to programming in general, follow along and not only will you learn PHP, you’ll learn Computer Science concepts along the way.
If you are going to be following along, it’s probably beneficial for you to have a local development set up on your computer. PHP runs on the server, so you’ll need to make your computer think it’s the server. You can do this easily by downloading one of the following virtual servers and installing it onto your computer.
Windows: WAMP Server
Mac: MAMP Server
Linux: LAMP Server
I’m sure that you already guessed what the W, M, and L stand for: Windows, Mac, Linux. The AMP stands for Apache, MySQL, PHP, where Apache is the server software, MySQL is the database management system, and PHP is the programming language that we’re discussing. Just google your favorite stack and download/install them onto your machine. You can check out the video at the bottom of this article for a how-to-guide.
You’ll also need some sort of IDE like JetBrains PHP Storm (paid) or Visual Studio Code (Free). I use both. There is nothing that you’ll read over the next 100ish articles that you will not be able to do with Visual Studio Code.
Create a new file in your IDE and name it index.php. In order for your scripts to run, they need to end with the .php extension. Why index? That’s the default name that the Apache server will look for when you visit your site.
Your PHP code needs to be surrounded by PHP tags:
<?php
Your Code Here;
?>
The first piece of code that we’ll write is a simple echo statement. Echo just means, take this string and output it to the screen. Each statement needs to end with a semicolon in order to be considered valid PHP syntax.
<?php
echo "Hi my name is Dino Cajic";
?>
Save your file in the folder where you installed your local server. For example, C:/wamp/www/. If you’re developing on your local machine, head over to http://127.0.0.1 or http://localhost. You will not need to specify index.php after the localhost since Apache already looks for it. If you named your file about.php, you will need to specify it: http://localhost/about.php.
The following example is what gives PHP a bad name so we’ll try to avoid it as much as humanly possible. We can embed PHP into HTML. Let’s create a standard HTML script and inside the body create a PHP variable that we’ll call $name. We’ll cover variables shortly but for now just know that they are storage containers that have the capability of storing numerous different data types. They also have to start with a dollar sign followed by a letter or underscore, followed by any combination of letters, numbers, and underscores.
We’ll be storing our name as a string. If you’re familiar with other programming languages, like Java, you might know that with those languages you have to explicitly state what type of data type you’re storing. So, if you specify that you’re storing a string and you try to store an integer, an error will be thrown. In PHP, we don’t have to do that. PHP will figure it out, which is sometimes good and sometimes bad. Before we dwell too deep into that, lets create a variable.
$name = "Dino Cajic";
We can jump in and out of PHP as much as we want. Inside of the <body> tag, we’ll start by typing some standard text and them jump into PHP.
<body>
Hello there <?php echo $name; ?>
</body>
See the full example below. If we save the file and open it up in our browser, we get: Hello there Dino Cajic.
If you inspect the code, you’ll see that the HTML is the only code that’s displayed. To inspect the code, right click and click View Page Source.
Where’s the PHP? It was interpreted by the Apache server and once the server was done processing it, it sent HTML code to the browser. All of your PHP code will be processed on the server.
That’s it for the introduction. We’ll be building on from here. We’re going to cover most of the PHP concepts in what I predict to be a hundred or so articles. I’ll be posting these each Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday/Sunday. I’m trying to keep up with writing Algorithms articles every Monday/Wednesday/Friday. If you haven’t seen those, and Algorithms interest you, make sure to click on my profile and go through a few of them.
I’m also going to be doing a video walkthrough to accompany each of these articles. If something is not making sense, check out the video for a more visual explanation. All of the code will be posted on my GitHub account, so if you need access to it, grab it from there. | https://medium.com/dev-genius/php-7-x-p1-basic-syntax-2e8ca5265e9c | ['Dino Cajic'] | 2020-06-21 20:35:05.891000+00:00 | ['Computer Science', 'Programming', 'PHP', 'Php7', 'Software Development'] |
Stop Grasping for a Diagnosis. | As the technology for imaging has improved over the years, our ability to see the internal parts of our bodies in great detail has improved. In the management of most low back pain, the detail with which we can see the structures of the spine has turned out to be a curse. The reason for this is because there is not a strong cause and effect relationship between what is seen on imaging and the patient’s symptoms.
Now the unfortunate thing with most people in the medical profession nowadays, is that they do not read this type of research. Because of this, imaging is ordered way too early and way too often with the belief that we will be able to find the exact cause of a person’s symptoms.
Treatments, whether it be medication, injections, or surgery are then recommended to “correct” something that is likely not the cause of the problem. The other negative to this type of approach to “diagnosing” the cause of low back pain, is that now you have a label.
The reality is, bulging discs are the equivalent to wrinkles on the face. As we age, our body changes naturally.
Researchers are now saying that these things we see in the spine as we get older are basically “grey hairs on the inside.” We would not expect that we would have head pain because our hair is turning grey (or in my case falling out), so we should not expect that just because a spine shows some age-related changes that we should have pain!
Once the patient gets a hold of an image or diagnosis, the damage has been done. This shiny new label can lead to a spiral of fear, shame, avoidance behavior, and ultimately the dependence on pharmaceuticals or invasive interventions. | https://medium.com/runners-life/stop-grasping-for-a-diagnosis-4df9fe1ac341 | ['David Liira'] | 2020-07-08 00:14:59.448000+00:00 | ['Wellness', 'Health', 'Lifestyle', 'Education', 'Running'] |
Crypto-Relevant Companies Hiring in February 2019 in US, UK and remote | OpenSea
Focus: Peer-to-peer marketplace for crypto collectibles and rare digital items. Strong backing, partnerships and market.
Looking for: Coders and marketers. There are three job openings in New York City — backend and frontend development from the tech side, and one director of marketing. Calls for some experience, pays 6 figures and shares.
More
Stellar
Focus: Cryptocurrency focused on remittances, transaction speed and regulatory compliance with growing environment of dApps and platforms on top of it. Since recently including an IOU stablecoin with full reserves in US-domiciled banks.
Looking for: Engineers and marketers. There is a bunch of roles opening in San Francisco and Austin, mainly in engineering, HR and communications.
More
Tutanota
Focus: The most advanced private e-mail service provided by a small German company.
Looking for: Quantum cryptographer. This is an advanced role, the main task will be to make Tutanota quantum-resistant. Great opportunity for those who feel like they might be up to the task!
More
Focus: Blockchain game development studio residing in Tokyo that recently got over 1.8 MM USD in funding.
Looking for: Tech and non-tech roles — Blockchain Engineer (Solidity), Front End Developer (nuxt.js), Graphic Designer, Game Content Planner (production, game management).
Send CVs to recruit[at]doublejump.tokyo
More
Hypergrowth Consulting
Focus: Metric driven marketing.
Looking for: Growth Hacker / ICO expert — Advertising specialist for ICO and post-ICO marketing of blockchain and decentralized projects. London, Berlin or remote.
More
Clause
Focus: Blockchain-based legal tech for business contract management.
Looking for: JavaScript Developers — Clause opens several positions for developers well versed in React and node.js for their offices on NYC and London.
More
Focus: Platform to allow settlement of large assets on public blockchain. Backed by ConsenSys.
Looking for: Tech positions and a paid sales internship — JavaScript and Solidity or full-stack/backend experience required for the tech roles. All positions open in MindSpace London.
More | https://medium.com/cryptolounge/crypto-relevant-companies-hiring-in-february-2019-8e601fabe898 | [] | 2019-06-14 02:42:48.309000+00:00 | ['Businessofcrypto', 'Blockchain', 'Blockchain Career', 'Careers', 'Blockchain Startup'] |
To Cautious Asian Americans, This is Why I am Alarmed by the issue of Climate Change | When reflecting on myself, I attribute most of my values to my identity as a second-generation Asian American who comes from a comfortable background. If I’m being completely honest, the climate crisis has never really been an issue that I was motivated to fight for. My community values education and stability over anything else, so issues that don’t directly threaten our well-being are often ignored and tossed aside. I wouldn’t generalize Asian Americans as selfish, but our Asian background inclines us to focus on our own self-interests as we are expected to progress through higher education in pursuit of a successful career. As a result, climate change is not an issue that many Asian households value, resulting in inaction from second-generation Asian Americans like myself. Out of the six Americas, Asian Americans are most likely cautious about the climate crisis.
I never doubted the existence of man-made climate change, but I’ve always sat on the sidelines as I viewed it as someone else’s issue, instead of my own. But seeing the impacts of climate change in my community, more recently through the Northern California wildfires, has made it a personal issue for me. Nothing but safety and health mattered to my family as we drove across the Bay Area to pick up my grandparents. As my family was forced to evacuate, my ignorance dawned on me as I realized that climate change doesn’t discriminate nor does it care for your socioeconomic background. All of my school work, extracurriculars, and interests were forgotten as all I could focus on was the uncertain future. Even though my neighborhood was lucky enough to avoid damage that day, I learned my lesson during the evacuation process; living in wealth and comfort can only protect you for so long. I saw the first-hand effects of climate change and I finally understood why so many people viewed it as an issue that they were willing to fight for.
This map, from the National Wildfire Situational Awareness website, depicts the wildfires that forced my family to evacuate in August. Wildfire locations are shown in yellow, orange, and dark red (with dark red being the most serious).
As a result, I started to transform my once closed mindset after that traumatic experience. I decided that any issue that affects those around me is an issue that needs to be taken seriously. After reading Roser-Renouf’s report about global warming’s six Americas, I aligned my past beliefs with the cautious group, the second largest of the six Americas at around 25% of the population. I would classify myself as cautious for most of my life as I paid little attention to the climate crisis and lacked the motivation to be involved in this issue. I believed that my individual actions were insignificant in fighting against climate change, resulting in my view of climate change as a problem that did not need immediate attention. That has now changed as I strive to become both an environmentally sustainable individual and an advocate for this planet’s environment. I will start participating in both individual and, more importantly, collective action to combat climate change.
What can we do as a Group?
Climate change is not a distant issue for us as Asian Americans. We shouldn’t use our careers and education as a reason to ignore such pressing issues that will continue to increasingly threaten the well-being of our communities. We don’t need to choose one or the other, we can strive for success in our fields of choice while protecting our families and future generations by calling others to join the movement for climate justice. We need a full effort from everybody, individual efforts like recycling a few times a week and driving electric cars are not enough to save our planet if only a few people do it.
As Asian Americans, we have the power to bridge the gap between our Asian background and the community that we live in today. I aim to educate my family and my relatives on issues that don’t seem important to them. Regardless of if they agree with me at first, I will make a concerted effort to educate them about the seriousness of climate change and how it is a personal issue for all of us. Focusing on education and prosperity doesn’t mean that we need to avoid these issues and take a backseat on issues regarding politics and legislation. As we fix the disconnect between the political and social climate of America to the values of our Asian communities, we can create unity as combating climate change will require all of us to take part in the movement for climate justice.
What can we Achieve?
We need to participate in voting, instead of sitting back and watching the chaos unfold, we need to take action and fulfill our civic duties. Voter turnout among Asian Americans has been historically low, but we can change the trend. Even though there was a significant increase in Asian American and Pacific Island (AAPI) voter turnouts in 2018, it was still relatively low at only 40.2 percent. I have recently turned 18 and I hope that this can inspire my fellow Asian American college students to use their civil duty to make a difference in federal and local elections. Our voice could be a key group in deciding elections in swing states that will affect how our government reacts to issues such as climate change. In this past election, climate change was an extremely divisive topic as the two candidates disagreed on climate policy and the seriousness of climate change. The presence of climate change as a wedge issue will only increase as the environment around us worsens. For those who are too young to vote, you guys can still make your voice heard. Join environmental and green clubs on campus, spread the word about future events such as walkouts, sign petitions that advocate for environmental justice.
In this day and age, especially with the current global pandemic, social media has become ubiquitous in our everyday lives. The impacts of social media can be monumental, as information regarding climate justice can be spread to frequent consumers of social media. The internet allows us to work together and connect from all around the world. To my fellow Asian Americans, even if you’ve been inactive in the climate justice movement like me, it’s not too late to make an impact. Make your voice heard, educate your community and peers, and fight to protect our environment. Even though we may be young, our voices and our unity will be our weapon against climate change.
References and Sources
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Mike Gainey who has provided me feedback and instruction during this writing process. His lectures have helped me improve my writing strategies throughout this year. I also thank my classmates, Sumedh Prasad and Abel Seyoum, who peer reviewed my rough draft. They provided thoughtful suggestions that were incredibly helpful during my revision process. | https://medium.com/@ahchu/to-cautious-asian-americans-this-is-why-i-am-alarmed-by-the-issue-of-climate-change-acb39605c44c | ['Andre Chu'] | 2020-12-15 06:15:56.049000+00:00 | ['Climate Change', 'Bay Area', 'California', 'Climate Action', 'Asian American'] |
Dating in a COVID World is a Strange Reality | Dating and meeting people is hard in normal times and especially difficult for those who do not partake in the drinking lifestyle but during a pandemic it has been hard for everyone. For those in recovery both of these issues make it more difficult and make meeting people a challenge, but even for those not in recovery it becomes a challenge.
Dating has always been hard. It can difficult for men and women alike and a challenge for both straight and LGBTQ people too. The difficulties in meeting people have always been there. For women it is more of a standards issue and for men it is more of a competition and availability issue but for all it can be a challenging situation and can become frustrating when things tend to just not work out.
Then you have the pandemic and things change drastically and meeting that special person or finding a date for a Friday night becomes a whole new ballgame and the obstacles mount up. For those who drink it has become hard to meet people with bars and other social gathering spots closing down and for those in recovery who tend to meet people in 12-step meetings, coffee shops, and the like has turned into a brick wall.
The pandemic has created a sense of isolation and loneliness for so many and the real need for human connection yet we have no outlet to meet people and find cures for this isolated feeling. We are told to self-quarantine and stay away from others (for good reason) and this can make finding a date and not feeling alone an impossible task. This is the one aspect of the pandemic that impacts us all equally whether we are gay or straight, man or woman, sober or not.
Of course, we have dating sites but those places that are normally hard enough to find connections become even more so. People become much more selective in the people they swipe right on and this can make you feel like you are not good enough and perpetrate this feeling of utter solitude that is so very common during the COVID-19 pandemic for people all across the U.S. and the world.
These sites have always been difficult to meet people on. You have to have the perfect picture, the most spot on bio, and be exactly what a person is looking for and that is not based in reality. It is like Facebook, people are not what their profile suggests and this is what many try to put out there, an image of who they want you to think they are. The other thing is that it is difficult to find the “just right” photo for your profile, some people look much better in person than they do in photos. All of these things make the dating site world much more challenging, making finding someone even harder in our new and strange isolated world.
If anytime was a time when we needed connections, it is during this pandemic and the sense of being alone it has created. However, finding these human connections that we crave is harder than it has perhaps ever been and this makes the isolation even worse. I think that at a time like this people should ease up on their standards in the online dating communities because when we go out in the real world, finding someone to date and connect with in the socially distanced 6-feet away and masked up is a very difficult thing and for many reasons.
One of those reasons is that people are afraid to catch the virus so the act of approaching someone to meet them and make that introduction is not very much of a possibility these days. People want to keep their distance from others and that makes the act of meeting people out and about much more difficult than in the past.
We all strive for a connection and to have that physical and emotional bond with someone but it is difficult to achieve during a time like this. For this reason, many feel isolated and lonely and are dealing with things during all of this and strive for love and companionship. That is not so easily achieved during a global pandemic with a deadly virus out there and so many locked down and quarantined away from society.
It is very hard to find dates during this time. The world has changed and the normal places that we would go to meet people are all shut down or have changed dramatically due to the new normal. This makes it hard to connect to others and find someone to share our time with. This also creates a situation where our mental health suffers and where we may not feel our usual selves and that complicates matters.
Suicide rates are up, depression is on the rise, and loneliness is more prevalent now than it has been in some time. Not only is dating harder than ever with people being closed off to new experiences but even when we do meet someone we wonder if it is safe to gather with them and let our newly developed “virus guard” down and trust that they are free from having the COVID-19 illness.
These are all very legitimate concerns and reasons why people are feeling isolated and lonely at a time when they just want to meet people and mingle.
Finding someone to share things with is hard enough but add a pandemic and everything that goes with that in with it and it becomes even more difficult to meet people and develop a connection to. This is a hard time for us all but in the end, we all need love and we all want to have that companionship, so let us be mindful of that when we are dealing with each other. The feeling of being alone is a hard thing to go through at any time , especially at a time like this. | https://medium.com/@robshaw-69571/dating-in-a-covid-world-is-a-strange-reality-ff2ec1a90020 | ['Rob Clewley'] | 2020-12-18 23:04:09.385000+00:00 | ['New Normal', 'Lockdown', 'Loneliness', 'Dating', 'Covid-19'] |
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