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How to Make Starbucks Iced Coffee
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How to Make Starbucks Iced Coffee
Starbucks’ Iced Coffee is really popular, especially in the late spring. Individuals need something mind freshening and this is an ideal alternative to a warm mug of coffee. It wakes you up with caffeine and freshness.
How to Make Starbucks Iced Coffee
Ingredients used to make Starbucks Iced Coffee at Home:
· 1/4 cup of sugar
· instant coffee total 4 spoons
· water 1 cup
|
https://medium.com/@knowledgeworld147/how-to-make-starbucks-iced-coffee-ff7a60941594
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['Knowledge World']
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2020-12-22 20:42:22.458000+00:00
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['Starbucks', 'Starbucks Coffee', 'Iced Coffee', 'Coffee', 'Make Coffee At Home']
|
Jenkins and Buddy
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Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
A CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment) practice is common-place nowadays. More and more dev teams are convinced and already sold on CI benefits. In the age of multi-regional teams spread across timezones, CI practices definitely speed up the development process.
CI has been abuzz since 2007. The exact and discrete origins of the practice are hard to pin down. Many believe it’s earlier than 2007. Some say it’s 2004 when Grady Booch mentioned “micro-processes” and continuous testing in his book “Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with Applications”; during those days, there weren’t any CI software. Development teams had to write their own tools to automate the build.
More and more teams adopted the CI practice, and as a result, some people wrote the first CI applications. One of the earlier apps that have seen massive adoption was CruiseControl and Hudson.
Hudson eventually took over CruiseControl in terms of popularity. Hudson’s author, Kohsuke Kawaguchi, was working for Sun Microsystems at the time. When Oracle took over Sun Micro sometime in 2010, it announced to trademark Hudson; the Hudson community fled and established Hudson under a new name, Jenkins.
Jenkins is the go-to solution for CI/CD for quite some time now; that’s the first-mover advantage for you; it’s one of the older and more established CI/CD tools. It’s basically an automation server written in Java. The basic idea is for you continuously test and build your software. The usual tasks of pulling code from source control, running test scripts, and creating builds are handled via plugins.
Jenkins is still popular now; many teams still rely on it for their CI practice, but we’re a long way away from 2007. Technology has moved. It’s already the age of containerization and cloud software.
In this article, we will revisit Jenkins and Buddy; the latter is a newcomer on the CI/CD scene, but it’s got some neat tricks that I’d like to show you. We will create a small project in Angular, and then we’ll deploy the project on Jenkins. After that, we’ll do the same task on Buddy.
Building a sample project
To do test runs on CI/CD platforms, it helps to start with a simple project. So, we’ll create one in Angular.
Assuming you already have Node and NPM installed, you can create an Angular project using the Angular CLI, which we will get right now. On a terminal or cmd window, run the command:
npm install -g @angular-cli
That should take care of the Angular CLI tool. To create (and run) an Angular project, use the following command:
ng new helloangular
The tool will ask if you’d like to include Angular Routing (press N for No), then it will ask what styling library would you like to use (choose CSS).
Angular CLI will bootstrap the new project. After it’s done pulling some files from the repos, run the following commands:
cd helloangular ng serve
Angular CLI comes with its own webserver. The ng serve command builds the project and serves it at http://localhost:4200. The bootstrapped project has default content, and it even comes with some starter tests too. If you’d like to run the starter tests, run the following command:
ng test
Now that our sample project is built, we can push it to GitHub.
Log in to your GitHub account and create a new repo; name it whatever you like, but I’ll name mine “helloangular”. After that, go back to the terminal and run the following commands:
git remote add origin [email protected]:username/helloangular.git git add . git commit -m “first commit” git push -u origin master”
The command above associates our local project (helloangular) to the remote repo we created in GitHub. Please be sure to replace username with your GitHub username.
This takes care of the test project. We can now move on to Jenkins.
Jenkins
To use Jenkins, here are the general steps.
You have to get the software and install it somewhere; a server in your office, data center or Amazon EC2, etc. You need to download plugins. Part of the Jenkins setup is downloading the common plugins. If your build workflow is quite simple, the common plugins will probably suffice. For most Java projects, the common plugins will do. Create a pipeline and define your tasks.
Getting Jenkins
Jenkins is available for macOS, Linux, and Windows. The process of installing Jenkins vary quite a bit, depending on which OS you’re using. On Windows, the installer comes as an MSI package, and then you run it as a service. On macOS, the suggested way to install is via the Homebrew package manager; subsequently, you will also start, stop and restart Jenkins via the brew command — according to the official Jenkins webpage, the native installer for macOS has been deprecated, as of time of writing. On Linux, you can get Jenkins by pulling it from the repositories. The official Jenkins webpage (https://jenkins.io/download) keeps updated information on how to install Jenkins on various platforms.
Native installers and package managers aren’t the only way to get Jenkins. In the age of containers, we can also run Jenkins via Docker; this is the route I recommend because using Docker lets us run Jenkins in an isolated way. There’s no need to pollute your workstation, especially if you’re simply trying out how a software works.
Assuming you already have Docker and already know your way around it, we can get Jenkins by pulling its official image from DockerHub (https://hub.docker.com). On a terminal or cmd window, type the following:
docker pull jenkins/jenkins:lts
When Docker is done pulling the image, we can run it with the following command:
docker start -p 8080:8080 jenkins/jenkins:lts
This will start the Jenkins server, and you can begin to use it from your browser; but if you run Jenkins this way, whatever configuration or changes you make in this session won’t survive a container reboot or shutdown. When you start Jenkins for the second time, you will lose everything you’ve done in the previous session. Jenkins cannot persist data when ran this way.
We need a way to persist files for Jenkins while it’s running in Docker. We can do that by using Docker volumes.
If you’re on Windows, the way to run Jenkins with Docker volumes is as follows:
docker container run -v d:\jenkins_docker:/var/jenkins_home -p 8080:8080 — name jenk jenkins/jenkins:lts
The -v flag (volume flag) tells Docker to map the folder d:\jenkins_docker (on the Windows host machine) to the folder /var/jenkins_home (in the Docker container). The folder /var/jenkins_home is where Jenkins keeps all its files. When we install a plugin, create a project, or any other configuration change, Jenkins will keep it in this folder.
If you’re on Linux or macOS, we need to do it in a slightly different way. See the commands below:
docker volume create jenkins_docker
docker container run -v jenkins_docker:/var/jenkins_home -p 8080:8080 — name jenk jenkins/jenkins:lts
A Docker volume in macOS isn’t automatically a folder in the host OS; that’s why we needed to create a volume first.
When Jenkins is running, go to http://localhost:8080 to start using it. The Jenkins page is shown below:
During setup, an initial password was generated and stored at /var/jenkins_home/secrets/initialAdminPassword; but you need to remember that this folder is inside Docker, so you can’t simply use cat to get it. To view the initialAdminPassword file, you need to use the following command:
docker exec <container id> cat /var/jenkins_home/secrets/initialAdminPassword
Where <container id> is the Docker container id; which you can get by issuing the command:
docker ps -a
You should see something like the screenshot shown below:
In this case, my Jenkins instance is running in container 32312fc81bba. So, the command to get the initialAdminPassword is as follows:
docker exec 32312fc81bba cat /var/jenkins_home/secrets/initialAdminPassword
You should see something like the picture below:
Copy the result of the cat command and paste it into the Administrator password field.
On the page that follows, you’ll see two options to get the plugins. You can select your plugins or install the suggested ones — I recommend choosing the latter if you’re a first time user of Jenkins.
The following page shows Jenkins’ installation progress. This can take some time depending on your Internet connection. This is also a source of frustration and confusion for many first time users. This process is prone to failure. Try Googling “Jenkins won’t install suggested plugins,” and results will flood you. I was one of the statistics, but I got through the hurdle by merely changing my DNS settings (TIP: use Google’s 8.8.8.8 in your machine’s DNS setting).
If one of the plugins fail to install, Jenkins will give you an option to retry. If all of the plugins are installed without issues, you’ll get to the next page.
Fill up the username, password, full name, and email address, then click “Save and Continue”. On the page that follows, confirm the URL for Jenkins; simply accept the default (localhost:8080), then click “Save and Finish.”
Using Jenkins
After you log in, Jenkins shows the welcome page; from here, you can start using it by “Creating a Job” (which incidentally is also the name of the link). Click the link to get started.
On the page that follows, enter the name for the job. Give it something descriptive.
Choose “Freestyle project” (click to choose it). Then click “OK”.
On the following page, go to “Source Code Management,” choose “Git,” and then provide the “Repository URL” of your GitHub project, as shown below.
There’s no need to provide Credentials since I created the helloangular project as a public repo.
The next piece of configuration we need to do is to identify the trigger for the build. Go to the “Build triggers” section and find the trigger appropriate for your workflow. In this example, I simply chose “Poll SCM”, then on the schedule, I provided the “* * * * *” (five asterisks) — it’s a CRON expression which means we poll every minute.
Dealing with Plugins
Jenkins is a lot friendlier to Java-based projects; after all, it cut its teeth on Java projects (and is itself, written in Java). When your project isn’t Java-based (like our example), you may have to deal with plugins.
For our sample project, I need to, at least, execute the following commands:
npm install -g @angular/cli -y npm install npm update ng test
We’ll need a NodeJS environment for these commands. So, let’s get some plugins. Go back to Jenkins home page, then go to Jenkins > Manage Jenkins > Manage Plugins.
Type “node” into the search field. Look for the NodeJS plugin and install it. When it’s installed, go to the Jenkins tab again (top left corner of the home page) then Jenkins > Manage Jenkins > Global Tool Configuration.
Give the NodeJS configuration a name (I gave it the name “node,” as you can see), then choose the NodeJS version. I chose 14.14.0; this is the latest version at the time of writing.
To test the NodeJS installation, go back to the Jenkins home page, then go to Jenkins > New Item. Give it a name, then choose Pipeline. On the Pipeline definition, type the following code:
pipeline { agent any tools {nodejs “node”} stages { stage(‘NPMs’) { steps { sh ‘ls’ sh ‘npm config ls’ sh ‘npm install -g @angular/cli -y’ } } } }
The preceding code is written in Groovy. You need to learn it if you will write Pipeline definitions for Jenkins. What the previous code does is to build a Node task and run some NPM commands in it. Click “Apply” and then “Save” to save the definition. To run this task, go Jenkins > all > (the name you gave the Pipeline), then choose “Build Now”. If it goes through without error, then we know the Plugin was installed correctly.
Going back to the Build Script
Let’s go back to the Freestyle job we created earlier, go to Configure, then go the “Build Environment”; we need to set up the NodeJS in that environment.
Click the “Provide Node and npm bin/ folder to PATH”, then choose the Node environment. I usually leave the “Cache location” with the default value.
Then on the Build section, add a build step; an “Execute shell” build step should suffice. We can use the following code:
npm install npm install -g @angular/cli -y ng build You can now run the build.
The basic idea is for you to keep working on your project and keep pushing changes to the repo. This build will run continuously. If something breaks, you’ll see it in the status of the builds.
CI/CD hosted/managed solution
If this is your first time around with CI software, seeing the Jenkins solution in the previous section can be a bit overwhelming. There can be some learning curve when you use Jenkins. There will be some experimentation, some research, lots of visits to Stackoverflow, and some hair-pulling at times. It’s not for everybody. You can’t approach Jenkins, thinking that the plugins will always save you. You need to put some time and effort into learning how to use the tool effectively.
Not everybody has the time to spare in learning how to use a CI tool. This is the reason why there is a business case for managed CI/CD solutions. DevOps has now joined the “as a Service” bandwagon. You can avoid the learning curve and time investment for wrangling your own CI/CD solution by simply paying the experts to do it for you. There is no shortage of DevOps as as a Service companies; at the time of writing, somebody compiled a list of the “30 best hosted CI/CD integration services”. You can find them here.
You can find the usual suspects in the article — Circle CI, Shippable, GitLab CI, Travis, CodeShip, and many more.
We’re about to experiment with another CI/CD solution; it’s not on Slant’s list, but I think it ought to be. Let’s head over to https://buddy.works.
Buddy
Buddy is a newcomer. It’s the new kid on the block. So, it’s got the late-mover advantage. The people behind Buddy knows the frustrations and baggage of DevOps practice; they built the platform with careful attention to user experience. You don’t need to read a manual to figure out how to do things.
Sign up to the website if you don’t have an account yet. You can use it for free; there are limitations, of course, but the free tier is enough so you can get the feel of it.’
Once signed in, try to create a new project. Click the button that says, “Create a new project”.
Choose the Git hosting provider. I chose GitHub. Buddy will retrieve the list of your repos from GitHub. You can scroll through the list to find your project.
You can also type on the “repository” field to filter the repos so that you can find it faster.
The name of the project appears in view. I found the repo I want to use for this project (helloangular); click to select it.
Buddy prompts to “Add a new pipeline”, click the button to do so. On the page that follows, give the pipeline a name.
Choose the branch of the repo. I chose to work on the master branch.
Next, choose the Trigger mode. I decided “On Push” so that every time I push some changes to the repo, this pipeline runs.
On the page that follows, we can choose the “Actions” that will run we trigger the pipeline. There’s a whole slew of actions to choose from; unlike in Jenkins, you don’t have to install Plugins anymore; and in case you don’t find the action you need, there’s an option to get in touch with the Buddy support team so that they can do it for you.
For our test run, let’s choose NodeJS; click to select it.
The script is already populated with some commands; you can edit it to suit your needs. Click “Add this action” to proceed.
At this point, you might want to see if this action works as expected before you add others.
To test the action, click on “Pipelines” on the left-hand side of the page. You should see the “Run” button; click it to proceed.
Put in some comment, then click the “Run now” button.
The pipeline gets into gear and plows away. Some screen animations indicate that Buddy is hard at work, but if you want to peek at what’s happening, click the “Progress details” button.
A screen with more details appears on the page that follows. You can click on the “Logs” button to see the actual CLI logs.
If the task succeeds, you’ll see a green “PASSED” button on the left lower portion of the Pipeline.
When you keep working on the Actions — editing and adding commands, then rerunning the pipeline; you might stumble into an error (shown in the screenshot below).
This is one of the limitations of the Free Plan. You’re limited to 512MB of cache space. Fortunately, this is easy to solve. Select the pipeline by clicking it. Then click “Settings”.
Make sure to resize your browser wide enough to see the menu items on the right-hand side of the page. Choose “Clear pipeline cache”.
After that, rerun the pipeline, as usual — It’s a good idea to always clear the pipeline cache in between runs, at least until you upgrade to a paid plan.
Let’s add another action. You can do that by clicking on the plus symbol (+) at the bottom portion of the Action (shown below).
Clicking the plus symbol at the bottom of the Action will chain another Action right after the current one. Clicking the plus symbol at the top of the Action will add another Action before the current one — see what I mean? The Buddy team paid attention to UX.
For the next Action, I chose “Angular CLI”. Then, on the script editor, I added just one line (shown below)
ng build
Once done, I added another Action; daisy-chaining on my recently added Angular action. I chose “Build Docker Image”.
Setup the Dockerfile, then tell Buddy where to find it.
Once you’re happy with the selection, click “Use this Dockerfile” — I actually added this Dockerfile to my project earlier; I didn’t walk you through it anymore. I assumed you’re already familiar with this process.
Now I’ve got three Actions on my pipeline (shown in the picture below). This should be enough for my test run.
By the way, you can re-arrange the sequence of the Actions by simply dragging and dropping them.
The next bit I want to show you is the notifications feature of Buddy. At the lower portion of the Pipeline screen, you’ll see two buttons;
“Add the first on failed action” — Clicking this button will let you choose an Action that will be carried out when the Pipeline fails “Add the first on back to normal action” — Clicking this button will let you choose an Action that will run when the Pipeline is back to normal
Click the “Add the first on failed action”.
When the Pipeline fails, I simply would like to send an email. So, add an Email action.
Fill up the email body, choose the type, and fill up the recipients of the email.
Click “Save this action”. You can test it by clicking the “Test action” link.
Now, do the same thing to “Add the first on back to normal action”.
My Pipeline is complete. I’ve got a set of actions, and I can be notified when the pipeline succeeds (or fails).
Conclusion
CI/CD platforms have certainly gone a long way since CruiseControl and Jenkins. If your team doesn’t have a lot of expertise on Jenkins, the initial setup and learning curve could take away valuable time — which I’m sure can be focused elsewhere (the actual project, perhaps). It’s a build or buy decision.
If you choose to use a hosted/managed CI/CD solution, there are plenty to choose from; but you can’t go wrong with Buddy. The experience is friction-less. Try it out so you can experience the ease of setup yourself.
There are a lot of things that Buddy got right, but what struck me most was the fact that I don’t have to learn another scripting language (Groovy, YAML, etc) to write a Pipeline. It’s point-and-click and drag-and-drop.
|
https://medium.com/the-devops-corner/jenkins-and-buddy-c629d5d5e564
|
['Ted Hagos']
|
2021-01-18 12:10:08.165000+00:00
|
['Continuous Integration', 'Ci Cd Pipeline', 'Continuous Delivery', 'Deployment Automation', 'Jenkins']
|
Ring rolls out end-to-end encryption for select doorbells and security cameras
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Ring rolls out end-to-end encryption for select doorbells and security cameras Sean Feb 2·3 min read
Ring’s promised rollout of end-to-end video encryption for several of its doorbells and cameras finally arrives today, offering an additional level of security for Ring users willing to put up with some inherent trade-offs.
Mentioned in this article Ring Video Doorbell Pro Read TechHive's reviewMSRP $249.00See it Amazon-owned Ring first announced the end-to-end encryption rollout during its annual hardware event last fall. At the time, Ring promised that the free feature would arrive before the end of 2020. It’s now mid-January 2021, but that’s close enough.
Ring is calling the initial stage of its end-to-end encryption rollout a “technical preview,” and for now, it’s limited to eight doorbell and camera models, including the Video Doorbell Pro, the Video Doorbell Elite, the Floodlight Cam, the Indoor Cam, the Stick Up Cam Plug-in, the Stick Up Cam Elite, the Spotlight Cam Wired, and the Spotlight Cam Mount.
[ Further reading: The best home security cameras ]Ring said it will solicit feedback on the new feature on the End-to-End Encryption screen within the Ring app.
Videos recording by Ring cameras are already encrypted on their way to the cloud and while they’re sitting on Ring’s servers. With end-to-end encryption, however, Ring videos are wrapped in an additional level of AES 128-bit encryption, starting locally on the camera itself and continuing all the way to a user’s iOS or Android phone, where it’s finally decrypted. That means no third parties will be able to see your videos without the private decryption key of a public/private key pair, which is stored only on an “enrolled” phone and secured by a 10-word, auto-generated passphrase.
Because end-to-end encryption protects Ring videos from any and all prying eyes, users who enable it will give up some key features, particularly those that depend on in-the-cloud video analysis.
Motion verification and “people-only” mode, for example, scour your recorded video clips in the cloud for movement and people, so these features won’t work with end-to-end encryption enabled. You also won’t be able to view live feeds of your enrolled Ring cameras on an Amazon Echo Show or a Fire TV device.
Still, plenty of users may likely decide that the added level of security provided by end-to-end encryption is a worthwhile tradeoff.
Ring isn’t the only smart home manufacturer to offer end-to-end video encryption for its security cameras. Apple’s HomeKit Secure Video also boasts the feature, and unlike Ring’s end-to-end encryption, HomeKit Secure Video does allow for features such as people detection, because the analysis is performed locally (on a “home hub” device such as an Apple TV, an iPad, or a HomePod) rather than in the cloud. That said, there are only a small number of HomeKit Secure Video-enabled cameras available, while Ring cameras are much more ubiquitous.
Ring’s end-to-end encryption push is the latest measure that the brand has taken to shore up its security bona fides, which took a beating following a series of widely publicized attacks by hackers.
Last February, Ring began rolling out mandatory two-factor authentication, a key defense against hackers looking to take control of Ring cameras with stolen passwords. We’ll show you how to do that in this story.
Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details.
|
https://medium.com/@sean25003901/ring-rolls-out-end-to-end-encryption-for-select-doorbells-and-security-cameras-3a6da9c375a7
|
[]
|
2021-02-02 09:55:36.942000+00:00
|
['Cutting', 'Cord', 'Mobile', 'Chargers']
|
How to Bypass Twitter Phone Verification if I Lost my Phone Number
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Are you in that complex situation where you need to enter a phone number for Twitter phone verification but you already lost or canceled that phone number?
Usually, Twitter doesn’t need you to enter your phone number to log in, but in certain situations like two-factor authentication or account suspension, you’re asked to verify by adding your phone number.
There are a few steps that you can implement and login to your Twitter account if you’re stuck in a situation where you need a number to verify. Here are a few of them:
Check if you’re logged in on any other device
If there’s a slight chance that you’re still logged in to your Twitter account on any other device, then, you need to rush and disable Twitter phone verification from the settings.
Go to “Account and Settings” on the left.
Click on “Account” and then go to “Security”
This will take you to “Login Verification.” You will see an option to turn off login verification. This will make sure that Twitter will not confirm your additional information like phone number while logging in.
You can also turn off “Password reset protection” because that will ensure that you do not have to verify your number while changing your password.
These are the steps that you can take if Twitter is asking for your phone number to log you in. Once you change the settings, go back to the device you’re trying to log in on and you will be able to log in now.
Verify with your email account:
Twitter will also give you the option to reset your password or verify your account with your email address. So, if you do not have access to your phone number but have access to your email, then you should verify your email address.
Use your Backup code:
When you set up two-factor authentication with Twitter, they also provide you with a recovery code that you can use if your mobile verification is not available.
This backup code can be also checked in your “Settings and Privacy” section if you’re logged in on Twitter on any device.
Here’s Twitter’s complete process of using backup codes on desktops and mobiles.
Submit a Ticket with Twitter:
If you’re really stuck in a situation wherein you have to enter your phone number and you cannot bypass it, then you can submit a ticket with Twitter.
This ticket especially takes care of login issues and you can enter your username and submit a ticket to solve your issue directly with Twitter.
Final Words:
If you’ve been able to complete Twitter phone verification using any of the steps above then the first thing you must do is update your number. Update your number in your Twitter profile and save yourself from this process again.
Twitter also frequently checks with you to update your number, and if your number is changed then you should do it.
If you’ve any questions regarding the article, you can let me know in the comments below.
|
https://medium.com/@zee-dianne/how-to-bypass-twitter-phone-verification-if-i-lost-my-phone-number-c0df0f37f66
|
['Dianne B. Zee']
|
2020-12-25 12:47:52.153000+00:00
|
['Phone Verification', 'Twitter', 'Bypass Twitter', 'Lost Phone Number']
|
Rape in the Air Force: My Story
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Me in 2007 with my AF Veteran grandfather, James Poda
I was raped when I was in the Air Force. I was raped. The sentence still makes me feel disgusting and dirty. In fact, it took me almost five years to acknowledge what happened to me was actually a rape — mostly because I blamed myself. I was conditioned to blame myself.
The truth is, I cannot remember much of the night it happened, but I do remember enough to know what happened was not ok. It was December 31, 2007 in San Angelo, Texas — New Year’s Eve. I went to a bar to celebrate with two other women in my dorm. Lots of fellow Air Force students showed up and people from our little group we called the Brown Ropes. Being a Brown Rope was a fraternity inside the larger fraternity of the military. While the Brown Ropes were supposed to only contain new airmen, like myself, there were a few Staff Sergeants (SSgt) that were invited into the group. (On a side note, Brown Ropes were not an official org within the Air Force.) These were men we thought — I thought — we could trust.
That New Year’s Eve I was drinking heavily and knew to have a plan for a ride back to base. Drunk driving will get you kicked out immediately (cannot say the same for assaults). One of the SSgt’s was at the bar and claimed to be a designated driver for everyone. I decided I would save money and let him drive me, after all, I knew this guy and he had never been anything but respectful towards me. When we were going to leave he talked me into going to his apartment and napping on the couch while he went back to the bar. He told me everyone was coming to his house to continue the celebrations when the bar closed. I remember being in the bar, finishing a drink as he smiled at me. I ended up leaving before everyone since I was not feeling well. The truth is, I don’t remember getting to his house. I still do not remember how I got back to the dorms. I sometimes wonder if I had been drugged because I remember leaving the bar, but I do not remember getting to his apartment or leaving it. Only the brief moment of coming to and seeing him on top of me, saying disgusting things.
The sad thing is, this man is now a father of all girls. I wonder if his outlook has changed — if he would be ok with what he did to me, happening to his daughters? It’s something that makes me afraid for them—for girls that are not mine.
To this day, I wish I could remember everything. I spent a lot of time blaming myself. If I would not have had that tank top on it would not have happened. If I were not so flirty he would not have done that (I was never flirty with him). If I did not drink he would not have done that. I was a woman who was exploring my sexuality which lead to many consensual encounters with men, so the thought to report never occurred to me, because I figured I would be accused of being a slut. I convinced myself it was all my fault and decided it could not be rape.
The fact is, it was. I was taken advantage of by a person who I thought would look out for me. I trusted a sober man to be my DD and get me somewhere safe — instead I was raped. I did not get to make the choice whether or not I wanted to have sex with this guy—it was made for me. I was ashamed. I stopped partying for the rest of the time I was in tech school and became somewhat reclusive until I left San Angelo.
When I was new to the Air Force, the Sexual Assault Prevention Program (SAPR) was also relatively new, however, everyone knew not to actually go and report a sexual assault. There were tons of horror stories, much like the horror stories troops hear about going to mental health for help. The restricted and unrestricted reporting system was confusing — they always made reporting sound ominous and like there would be some type of unspoken consequence — like “Here’s our SAPR program. ::wink wink:: Use it at your own risk.” Men I would work with would complain about how they seemed to be the targets of the briefings. They felt singled out. Because of the extra training, resentment flourished within the ranks among men. Depending on your Commander, you also knew what kind of climate you were working in and whether or not it would be a truly viable option if there were any assault. Most women opted to just forget, but we never really forget.
Today as I watched Nora O’Donnell’s special on rape in the Armed Forces, it made me think about my own experience. It made me think about the women who were brave enough to come forward, albeit futilely, without going through that period of denial. All the women I had met along my journey who had similar experiences, but kept to themselves — everyone trying to forget. It made me think of how we talk about people in the military. How we “love our troops.” The sad truth is, we only love them as long as they serve their purpose. We love the idea of our military men and women, we do not actually love them though.
We start off dehumanizing people right from the start. You are just a body. When deployments are filled — they ask for bodies. When people need to rapidly deploy we need boots on the ground. When something needs delivering — they ask for heavies. The list goes on and on. People in the military are objects. Objects cannot have feelings. Objects cannot object. Objects cannot be raped. Objects are expendable and when objects cause disruption and disrepair in a unit, they can readily be replaced with an object that does not make a fuss. Many commanders, not all, are more invested in their careers than making the actual military a place where people can excel. You cannot have morale or cohesion when one person has been sexually assaulted and then harassed or retaliated against for trying to protect themselves. What you can have are suicides, turmoil, and the Commander’s promotion despite their blatant denial and refusal to help victims in favor of their career.
The only option I see, since no one actually has any intention of protecting victims, is for those victims to personally sue each person individually in a court of law, especially if they have evidence of the assault and retaliation. While members cannot sue the specific department, there is nothing that says they cannot bring individuals into Civil Court and sue for damages. If people are going to be nonchalant about ruining someone’s life, victims should be nonchalant in the dogged pursuit of protecting themselves and their livelihood. For me, just getting a ruling in my favor and having it acknowledged legally, in court, that my claim was valid would be enough for me. Like Elie Wiesel said, “There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” Victims should not be afraid to make waves, even if it seems like the hard road. Making waves and rocking the boat is the only way to get substantial change. That is why I am deciding to tell my story.
|
https://medium.com/@linsayculver/rape-in-the-air-force-my-story-ddebecc5f5ba
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['Linsay Culver']
|
2020-11-25 10:13:57.436000+00:00
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['Rape', 'Sexual Assault', 'Air Force', 'Military']
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Price Prediction using Machine Learning Regression — a case study
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There is a strong variation in the prices of some of the categories of products. For example, items belonging to Computers Tablets, Cameras Photography, Strollers, Musical Instruments, etc. are expensive when compared to the items belonging to Paper Goods, Children, Office Supplies, Trading Cards, etc.
This indicates that categories and subcategories are going to be important features in determining the price of an item.
3. Cleaning the data: Pre-processing
3.1. Pre-processing text features
I have done some basic text pre-processing like removal of non-alphanumeric characters, regular expressions, stopwords, etc. from name and item_description. The code is given below.
3.2. Pre-processing categories
This is similar to text pre-processing. I have removed blank spaces and replaced symbol ‘&’(and) with ‘_’(underscore). I have done this cleaning in order to get precise one-hot encoding of categories, which is explained in the featurization section.
3.3. Pre-processing price: removing invalid entries
Removed 874 rows
4. Extracting features from data
A machine understands only numbers, it does not directly understand letters or text that we as humans can read. That means we need to convert our text and categorical data to numbers. This process is called feature extraction or featurization. There are several feature extraction techniques related to different kinds of data, we will see some of these in this section.
4.1. Hand made features: Feature Engineering
Based on my intuition and research on existing approaches, I came up with the following features that I thought would be useful in determining the price of an item. There is no standard rule for using these features, these are purely intuition-based ideas which may vary from problem to problem. Therefore, these are called hand-made features or engineered features.
The below table provides the names of the features. description of what each of these features means and how it is calculated.
Let’s check if the above features are really useful.
Uni-variate analysis on some of the engineered features
The below plots have been achieved using seaborn regplot which tries to fit a simple linear model and plots the equation of fitted line/plane over a uni-variate (feature vs target) scatter plot.
example code:
sns.regplot(x=’brand_mean_price’, y=’price’, data=train,
scatter_kws={‘alpha’:0.3}, line_kws={‘color’:’orange’})
Features such as brand_mean_price, brand_median price, subcat2_mean_price, subcat2_median_price show strong linear trends. Thus they seem to be useful in determining the price of items.
4.2. Train, Test split for cross-validation
For the purpose of cross-validation(checking if the trained model is working well on unseen data), I have split our data into train and cv in the ratio of 90:10. I will train our models on train and validate them on cv.
Note that the target variable price has been converted to logarithmic scale by using NumPy’s log1p() function. This has been done so that we can use root mean square error as the metric instead of explicitly defining a complex metric RMSLE. (since RMSLE is nothing but RMSE of log values)
Train size: (1332967, 58), CV size: (148108, 58), Test size: (3460725, 58)
4.3. Converting categorical features to numbers: One-hot encoding
One-hot encoding is a scheme of vectorization where each category in a categorical variable is converted into a vector of length equal to the number of data points. The vector contains a value of 1 against each data point that belongs to the category corresponding to the vector and contains 0 otherwise. To understand better, look at the following example.
Image source: DanB via Kaggle
I have converted all the categorical variables (brand_name, gencat_name, subcat1_name, subcat2_name) to their one-hot encoded vectors. Example code is shown below:
Note that categorical variables item_condition_id and shipping already contain numerical values and there is no need to convert them to vectors.
4.4. Converting text features to numbers: TF-IDF vectorizer
TF-IDF (term frequency-inverse document frequency) is a statistical measure that evaluates how relevant a word is to a document in a collection of documents. This is done by multiplying two metrics: how many times a word appears in a document, and the inverse document frequency of the word across a set of documents. You can read more about TF-IDF and its mathematical details here.
uni-grams, bi-grams and n-grams: In the fields of computational linguistics and probability, an n-gram is a contiguous sequence of n items from a given sample of text or speech. The items can be syllables, letters, words, etc. depending on the application (words in our case). An n-gram of size 1 is referred to as a ‘uni-gram’, size 2 is a ‘bi-gram’ and so on.
I have encoded name and item_description into TF-IDF vectors of uni-grams, bi-grams and tri-grams. Note that using 1,2,3-grams together would result in a huge number of words in the dictionary of TF-IDF vectorizer and using all of them would result in very high dimensional vectors. To avoid this, I have limited the number of dimensions to 250k for name and 500k for item_description vectors.
5. Preparing the data for models
5.1. Column Normalization on numerical features
The primary purpose of normalization is to scale numeric data from different columns down to an equivalent scale so that the model doesn’t get skewed due to huge variance in a few columns. I have used min-max normalization here(code given below).
5.2. Consolidate all features to a sparse matrix
We would be feeding our models an input matrix X_train, which contains all the features that we have extracted in the previous section, and an array of corresponding target values, y_train. Therefore, we need to first build X_train by concatenating all the feature vectors side by side.
Train size: (1332967, 755695), CV size: (148108, 755695), Test size: (3460725, 755695)
Now our data is ready to be fed to models. Let’s start modeling.
6. Modeling: Machine Learning Models
I will train the following regression models one by one and evaluate their performance on the validation data:
Ridge regresso r : linear least squares with l2 regularization
: linear least squares with l2 regularization SVM regresso r : Support Vector regression with RBF kernel.
: Support Vector regression with RBF kernel. RandomForest regresso r : a meta estimator that fits a number of decision trees on various sub-samples of the dataset and uses averaging to improve the predictive accuracy and control over-fitting.
: a meta estimator that fits a number of decision trees on various sub-samples of the dataset and uses averaging to improve the predictive accuracy and control over-fitting. LightGBM regressor: a gradient boosting model that uses tree-based learning algorithms.
To know more about these models and read the documentation click on the model name.
6.1. Ridge regression
Ridge is a linear least squares model with l2 regularization. In other words, it is linear regression with l2 regularizer.
Over-fitting or under-fitting of the Ridge model depends on the parameter alpha, which can be tuned to the right value by doing hyper-parameter tuning as shown below.
RMSLE for alpha = 1 is 0.45166601980352833
RMSLE for alpha = 2 is 0.44431546233122515
RMSLE for alpha = 3 is 0.4424425182737627
RMSLE for alpha = 3.5 is 0.44171501703551286
RMSLE for alpha = 4 is 0.44154616529145424
RMSLE for alpha = 4.5 is 0.4415286167861061
RMSLE for alpha = 5 is 0.44161632764828285
RMSLE for alpha = 6 is 0.4421832813533032
RMSLE for alpha = 7 is 0.44267468278758176
Training the model using best hyper-parameter and testing
Best alpha: 4.5 Train RMSLE: 0.383449898
Cross validation RMSLE: 0.441528616
SelectKBest: Selecting top 48k features from categorical and text features
The models that we would try going further take tremendous amount of time to train when the data is high dimensional. Therefore, I am selecting only top 48,000 features from text TF-IDF vectors and categorical one-hot encoded vectors.
I concatenate these with the numerical features, ridge model’s predictions(y_pred being used as feature)and use them with my models.
Train size: (1332967, 48049), CV size: (148108, 48049), Test size: (3460725, 48049)
6.2. SVM Regression
SVR is an advanced version of linear regression. It finds a hyperplane in a d-dimensional space that distinctly classifies the data points.
Similar to alpha in linear regression, C in SVR is found by hyper-parameter tuning.
Best C: 0.3
SVR(C=0.3, epsilon=0.1, gamma='scale',kernel='rbf', max_iter=200) Train RMSLE: 0.441563037
Cross validation RMSLE: 0.457637217
6.3. RandomForest Regression
Training RandomForest Regressor with higher values of n_estimators (N) was taking tremendous amount of time without giving any results. Due to this reason, we have trained it with less number of estimators. As you can guess, the results were not satisfactory.
RMSLE for N=10 is 0.487657647 elapsed time:0:46:21.136700
RMSLE for N=20 is 0.472606976 elapsed time:2:02:11.229545
6.4. LightGBM Regression
Light GBM is a fast, distributed, high-performance gradient boosting framework based on decision tree algorithm, used for ranking, classification and many other machine learning tasks.
Since it is based on decision tree algorithms, it splits the tree leaf-wise with the best fit whereas other boosting algorithms split the tree depth-wise. So when growing on the same leaf in Light GBM, the leaf-wise algorithm can reduce more loss than the depth-wise algorithm and hence results in much better accuracy. Also, it is surprisingly very fast, hence the word ‘Light’.
Hyperparameter tuning for LightGBM has been done using 3-fold cross-validation using RandomizedSearchCV.
{'colsample_bytree': 0.44583275285359114, 'learning_rate': 0.09997491581800289, 'max_depth': 12, 'min_child_weight': 1.7323522915498704, 'n_estimators': 1323, 'num_leaves': 123}
Train RMSLE: 0.319789825
Cross validation RMSLE: 0.424231390
6.5. Comparing the performance of models
The validation score of LGBM (RMSLE=0.42423) was the best out of all the above models.
I submitted the predictions of Ridge and LGBM to Kaggle. We got the best score with Ridge, RMSLE=0.45444
The score of LGBM (RMSLE=0.45785) was very close to that of Ridge.
7. Final Solution: Regression using Multi-Layered Perceptrons
The classical machine learning models seem to work decently well but we ought to have much better performance to get a good Kaggle score. Most of the existing approaches have employed some or the other deep learning models such as Convolutional Neural Networks(CNNs), Recurrent Neural Networks(RNNs) or a combination of both. The performance of deep learning models seems to be significantly better than classical ML models, which encouraged me to try a basic deep learning model, MLP.
7.1. Preprocessing
I have done the following processing on train and test data:
standard text pre-processing (stemming, fill NAs)
concatenating name , brand_name to one column, name.
, to one column, concatenating name, item_description, category_name to one column, text.
7.2. Vectorization
Tfidf 1-gram vectorization of name .
. Tfidf 1-gram, 2-gram vectorization of text .
. One-hot encoding of categorical features item_condition_id, shipping.
7.3. MLP model architecture
The reasons for choosing MLP over CNN or RNN are:
Fast to train, can afford hidden size 256 instead of 32–64 for RNN or Conv1D.
MLP captures interactions between text and categorical features.
Huge variance gives a strong ensemble with a single model type.
I have trained 4 high variance models of exactly the same architecture and finally taken ensemble of these to get final predictions. This is similar to Bagging in RandomForest. For 2 out of 4 models I have binarized the input data by setting all non-zero values to 1. This is like getting an extra dataset with a binary CountVectorizer instead of TF-IDF.
I used Adam optimizer with learning rate 0.003 and an initial batch size of 512 and trained the model for 2 epochs, doubling the batch size at each epoch. For binarized input, I trained 3 epochs in the same fashion.
7.3. Evaluation of model performance and Kaggle submission
With the above model, I got a validation RMSLE=0.3848, which is a great improvement compared to all my previous models.
The final submission score on Kaggle with this model was 0.39446 in the private leaderboard.
Although the competition was closed long ago, placing this score on the leaderboard puts me at the 5th position (top 0.2%) in both private and public LB.
Improvements to existing approaches
I have made some changes in the MLP architecture as well as parameters such as learning rate and batch size to get better results. I have also changed the number of epochs from 3 to 2 for the model on non-binary data, as it starts overfitting from the 3rd epoch.
Instead of taking simple mean, I have taken a weighted average of predictions from 4 models/runs.
For simplicity of the code, and also because I have used Google Colab(training is faster with GPUs than with multi-core CPUs), I have trained the models one after another unlike pool processing in the original kernel.
The validation RMSLE I got was 0.3848 as compared to 0.3875 in the source kernel.
Things that did not work well
RandomForest was taking too much time to train and hence I had to discard this model.
In the MLP I also tried using dropouts (0.1, 0.2, 0.3, .. 0.5) but the models performed better without dropouts and hence removed them. (I got a validation RMSLE of 0.3872 with dropouts).
I also experimented with different activation units (‘tanh’, ‘sigmoid’, ‘linear’, ‘relu’). ‘relu’ performs significantly better than rest all.
Future Work
Using deep learning was productive and yielded a very good score on test data. More complex models such as LSTMs and Convolutional Neural Nets can be tried.
We can experiment with more complex MLPs by adding additional layers and larger number of units in hidden layers.
Other vectorization schemes such as Wordbatch can be experimented with ML models.
Regression models like FTRL and FM_FTRL can also be tried.
Conclusion
It was fun as well as a great learning experience doing this case study. I thank you for reading this blog and I hope this has added some value to you. I have included minimal code in this blog. For full code, please refer to the ipython notebooks in my GitHub repository Mercari-Price-Suggestion-Challenge.
I would love to hear your reactions, suggestions or queries.
You can connect with me on LinkedIn. Here’s my profile.
References
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https://towardsdatascience.com/mercari-price-suggestion-97ff15840dbd
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['Arun Kumar']
|
2020-06-07 15:04:22.259000+00:00
|
['Artificial Intelligence', 'E Commerce Solution', 'Exploratory Data Analysis', 'Machine Learning', 'Regression']
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The Father, the Son and the Donkey.
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There was once a trio of merchants, travelling on a return journey back from the ancient city of Bukhara, part of modern-day Uzbekistan. A man, his son, and their donkey. The man being of middle age, his bachelor son in a ready-to-marry state, and their donkey moving without any load left on his back, made their way back to Kabul with looks of satisfaction over a successful trade made. Altogether, they made a company of traders where no difference was given any importance between the status of an animal and human beings taming it. They band together as a team with one common objective, to earn wealth to survive and thrive, in an almost utopic, yet also a very hypocritical and at the same time a very insecure society, part of what is considered today as, the middle east.
Simply by retracing their steps towards their native village near the city of Kabul, did the trio made their way home. As a habit of the merchants, they would stop by at local stores and places where familiar friends would be seen as they pass by; some asking for their time to have a cup of chai (tea) or three (and gluttony is synonymous with hospitality in Afghanistan, till this very day), along with some who just want to know how their health was, and to give blessings in return for the temporary company the trio would provide, considering it as a form of labor given out of generosity.
Life seemed well so far. It was at the point when they began to pass by a neighboring village known for its talkative locals. Being loud and gossiping becomes a norm, after a series of wars and fighting a nation has gone through over many years, one can never know when a similar trial may strike again. And so people make the most out of the oxygenated peace-of-mind that they have now, whether in a good or bad way.
As the father sat solo on the donkey as he tired every now and then, and had his son upfront handle the reins of the donkey, passer bys made astonishing looks and eyes of disturbance towards the trio. One khanam-e-buzurg (elderly lady) went by speaking to herself in a noticeable tone of voice, complaining of the day’s work she had to put up with while returning home with food supplies, and being of age while at it, gave away a taunt straight to the father’s face while halting them.
“It’s strange isn’t it? An elderly man takes advantage of his own son while my own are living with their second mother….the buzurgs (elders) of today! They should be making sacrifices for the comfort of their own children instead of the opposite.” She clinged onto the sleeve of the father saying so, before gently giving blessings to both and departing. “Sadly, I wish I should have taken advantage at times like that….” she exclaimed along the way.
The father felt piqued. A disturbed expression on his face shown with his son taking notice.
Knowing his old friend’s sensitive attitude towards misbehavior the son asked “Pather, (dad) was it something she said? I know you have issues with women and the way they talk, but…,”
He grunts back, “If she thinks I am an ass on a donkey, then fine with me. But let’s see how others will think if we exchange places…. just to fulfill our curiosity.” The father decides to handle the donkey and his son then sits on its back. It really wasn’t nor isn’t today considered a custom for a youngster to be on the receiving end of convenience and the elder providing it despite the difference in respect and age.
But as the father had a past of reacting to whatever people had to say good or bad about his family, he wasn’t someone who would take it lightly, despite being gentle at heart. But it seems today that he had plans. From there they moved on, anticipating something new to come by….
The village they were still in, was large enough for more than a hundred people to consume so much space for walking, but there were plenty of people who still possessed a liking for conversation despite the daily traffic. People of all ages stop by to talk and give each other the daily brief before heading on. All of this was due to the lack of worry for time, as the people weren’t very much known for their punctuality.
Two daughters of an old friend of the father carrying loads of cloth for home, stopped to receive blessings from the father, who hopes that one of them will one day see themselves in matrimony with his son. His young friend who tries to be reserved, is always at an emotional tug-of-war within himself, on whether he should seek a partner or just a sweetheart in a fundamentalist society.
Nonetheless, his old man helps him out by keeping an eye on him. “Kaka,(Uncle) is he sick?”, the younger of the two inquired.
“Who, my boy? No, he just loves his donkey.”
The girls looked surprised, with the older one advising “We help our family each day with housework and errands and he can’t let you rest instead? Our own brothers are the same — freeloaders. And no wonder he’s still single, he can’t take care of you, how will he look after a woman? We at least expected better.”
Though in a hurry initially, the sisters made time to let their hearts out when they found the chance. A kind farewell given and they went off; the father disliked every word they said of his best friend, and abruptly pulls his son off the donkey with a slap to the back of his head.
“It’s time neither of us should sit on top,” proclaimed the old man, “I feel as if this time that no one will think of us as cruel savages if we let live our pet without any other ass for it to carry.” The son agreed never more, as he was a part of his pain.
They both agreed to handle their donkey empty-loaded. It was not a norm to act this friendly towards a mutual animal known for carrying much more than its own weight, but it was all a part of the father’s intentions. Donkeys were and are still renown for carrying a variety of cargo such as bricks, metal works, and various other equipment. But they have more of a variety of skills than just putting up load that they are not acquainted to, similar to that of humans.
The trio then were near the end of the village’s main quarters until they stumbled upon an ironsmith known for his very little number of customers. “Salaam Farhan jaan! Chitori? How are you?” he said to the father.
“Alive and dead Salim Jaan”, was his reply. The ironsmith was a childhood friend; Farhan knew for a fact that he was no ordinary man running his business, as his mouth tended to be bigger than his craft. “This is unusual, I have never seen a donkey rode without load, it seems Farhan jaan is either too kind these days or just forgot that air doesn’t really take up space on a donkey’s back,” judged Salim.
“It’s been like that for awhile…” claimed the father.
“What, a donkey with nothing to carry?” , the ironsmith blunted.
“Our friend has been carrying our load for miles until we sold all of it; we thought we might give him a break.” Farhan replied.
It was customary for them to ramble whenever they met. But this time around, Farhan knew that his long-time friend’s business wasn’t going too well and he just had to say something out of the ordinary, to lighten the pain in his heart due to the lack of any commotion. Walking a donkey home seemed to be a good form of exercise for the ironsmith who mentioned so. “It seems they really are man’s best friend.” Said Salim.
With blessings and farewells they departed and they only had one more place to pass by before a straight way home. “You know what, there seems to be no way to please everybody….but we can do one last thing, Amir jaan,” said the father to his son. “Let’s both ride our donkey home. It already has enough of a “break” and now it’s our turn to reap the benefits.”
Amir the son, was reluctant on doing so, but he realized that this can be the only way for everyone to somehow — leave them be.
The local tea shop near their village came up, as they finally managed to reach lands close to home. Both father and son decided to have a last tea before they can go on another couple of miles before they reach their final destination.
The host was well-acquainted to them and vice versa. The father ordered his green and the son his regular black. The host saw them coming from afar and beforehand prepared their usual favorites. As they sat, a third cup was placed on their table. “What is the third cup of tea for Feroz baradar? (Brother in Dari).
“ Ha! Why do you ask Farhan jaan? It’s for your strong friend here, who carried both of you all the way here to my shop. I’ve never seen so much pain anyone can give to an animal for no apparent reason. Was it to show off?”, said the teamaker.
“Why yes…to show who is the better ass!”, exclaimed Farhan, annoyed (as ever).
A misunderstanding as usual, lead to Farhan to make a leave early with his son and their donkey for home. With a tip given and blessings exchanged the trio departed. “Oh God, I should’ve served some confectionary right away. No wonder he gave such a tip lesser than before….” wondered Feroz the teamaker. Need he to wonder anymore?
The last steps came to light as the last mile towards home was almost covered. All three were fatigued with travel and anxiety to reach the women of their household.
“Pather, may I ask, why don’t people ever manage to leave others alone? Why can’t they just see everyone else in peace so that they can also find it for themselves as well?,” inquired Amir jaan.
“That’s because we all have pains, problems, and insecurities, in our lives,” answered the sage.
“ We always try to find someone or something to help us solve these complications in life and solving them can be very hard. And people will just empty their hearts to release those pains, by speaking out. That’s just how it is. It’s natural,” he elaborated.
“If you could ask yourself, why?”, progressed the old man, “Because we all need someone to at least listen to what we want to say, without having to leave our emotions trapped in our hearts, which can also lead us to commit very wrong things.”
“I see,” affirmed Amir jaan. “And if that is the case…is it also because people were all born differently and behave in different ways? Doesn’t that seem bothersome?”
“It may at first,” explained the old man, “But differences teach us new things about life. Different people, animals, things, and cultures, make the world a better place and give meaning to its beauty. Which is why we are all still here. To celebrate that beauty. Everything being the same….would’ve been an even greater mistake,” professed Farhan jaan.
Amir jaan listened intently to his father’s words and grew calmer each time, while simultaneously having this restless anxiety and impatience that pushed his curiosity. Being young, is not what makes him a bad student, but in fact a better human being, who wants to know more after going through certain events, before finally becoming content.
“That is all nice in its own way, but what about all these wars that we see? Can there be peace in the future despite these wonderful differences?”, inquired again Amir jaan.
Farhan argues further “All can be done once the day arrives when we can all truly understand each other’s problems and insecurities, which make us start all these wars in the first place.”
“Misunderstandings bring about all sorts of negative emotions that bring about these conflicts in turn; but once they’re cleansed through empathy and knowledge….only then a beautiful thing like peace, can come true,” claims Farhan.
“Then is the devil responsible for all this shit?” said Amir jaan. “Doesn’t he instigate everything in the world that gives us pain and grief? My pain, yours, his or her and just about everyone else’s?”
“ That maybe…” affirmed his father.
“That maybe…” said he again, softer.
“But like every other living creature made by God, he may also have insecurities that we may not be able to understand, but those of his own kind and age can empathize.”
“And now he is letting it all out on us after what happened with him and Adam.” states Farhan jaan.
Amir jaan counters once more: “Then if he becomes damned after everything horrible he has done, wouldn’t that be enough to end his own suffering?”
Farhan answers: “The sad thing is that we do not know him very much other than a little of ourselves; his pain is at another level as he is an entity of another kind. For now, only God knows his pain; He has sent him to test our love for each other. Once we get to know him at some point, maybe even he can be helped so long as he gives his tawbah, his plea for mercy, whenever he will feel ready for it.”
And then finally all was answered.
Amir jaan felt surprised after every word heard from his father; he felt somewhat relieved from the aggravation he gathered from the words of the people concerned with them and their donkey.
“Then what should we do now?” was the boy’s final inquiry
“Stay alive. And keep our friends close. Whether they maybe our parents, brothers, sisters, relatives, or anyone outside the family. Friendship sees no blood. Only humanity. Don’t ever forget that.”
“Where the hell did you get all these ideas? Did you just made them up ? Or did you manage to get high somewhere on the way??? I think I know you that much at least…you fucking guy”. Asked humorously, Amir.
“Well, travelling for long distances by walk or ride can be a very good exercise! It helps open up our brains for new ideas, if you know what I mean, with your inexperienced ass…” counters yet again, the sage.
A hearty laugh shared and after all that, home finally appeared in sight, with the women of the household waving their heroes welcome.
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https://medium.com/@hussainichengez/the-father-the-son-and-the-donkey-9138ee67911b
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['Chengez Hussaini']
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2020-11-25 06:52:12.595000+00:00
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['Middle East', 'Fable', 'Fiction']
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The genius of product design — how Blockchain creates systematic value
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When one initially hears about Blockchain, they tend to think of Bitcoin and its implicit benefits of privacy and security. But the underlying technology of Bitcoin (i.e. Blockchain) can protect much more than just money. It can document property rights, ensure citizenship, or defend a person’s participation in the government, culture, and economy.
Satoshi Nakamoto’s original paper about money did not aim to create a second generation of the Internet — otherwise termed as Internet 2.0 — or change civilizations, or reinvent businesses, but its underlying vision was stunning in its simplicity, originality, scalability, and insight into human nature. With Blockchain, Internet 2.0 will be an era of renewed human trust.
While the first era of the Internet was driven by emerging computation and communications technologies, the new era will be powered by a combination of computer engineering, mathematics, cryptography, and behavioral economics. And there are seven core value propositions associated with Blockchain that need to be treated as guidelines when creating software, services, business models, markets, organizations, and governments on Blockchain.
Value proposition 1: A network built on integrity
Problem: ‘the double-spend’
On the Internet, we haven’t been able to do business directly because assets such as money in general, aren’t like the information we share online. For example, if we send a selfie to a friend, the photo can be shared with others. But we can’t give a dollar to many friends — it must leave our account to go into our friends and can’t exist in two places at once. If the Internet treated money like information, there would be a risk called the double-spend problem which is terrible for our online reputations and the overall economy.
Traditionally, the double-spend problem has been solved by clearing every transaction through a third party such as a bank, money transfer service, credit card company, government, or an online payment portal. This means we give all of our information to a middleman and payments are settled on their schedule, not on ours.
Solution: ‘Proof of work’ protocols as consensus mechanisms
On Blockchain, trust doesn’t come from an outside source but from the participating peers within. This means that honesty, integrity, accountability, and transparency of interactions and transactions are baked into the Blockchain’s decision rights, incentive structures, and operations and distributed among nodes, not vested in a single member. This in effect means that acting without integrity is either impossible or it costs far too much time, money, energy, and, or reputation.
In the case of Bitcoin blockchain, the network timestamps the first transaction where the owner spends a particular coin and rejects any more spending of the coin, eliminating a double spend. Miners — people who run Bitcoin nodes — gather up recent transactions, order them into blocks of data and add it to the chain with each block referring to the previous one to be valid. Furthermore, since the Bitcoin blockchain is peer-to-peer and public, it is more traceable than cash.
The Bitcoin network relies on what is called a ‘proof of work’ to reach a consensus on how to record the data. Because the network can’t rely on the identity of the miners to select who creates the next block, it instead creates a puzzle whereby miners use their resources — computing hardware and electricity in the case of Bitcoin — to solve the puzzle by finding the right hash of the transaction — a unique fingerprint for the text or the data file.
Solving the puzzle requires a lot of computational power, but when someone solves it, everyone else can check the work quickly. Whoever solves the problem first, gets to create the next block and for each block miners create, they receive a bitcoin as a reward. There are no shortcuts to solving the problem, so when the rest of the network sees the answer, everyone trusts a lot of work went into producing it.
On the current version of our Internet (i.e. Internet 1.0), most of the information is malleable and short lived, where the exact date and time of its publication isn’t critical to past or future information. On a blockchain, the truth of the present relies on the details of the past. A Bitcoin’s movement across the network is permanently stamped from the moment of its coinage. For a Bitcoin to be valid, it must reference its history and the history of the Blockchain. Therefore the Blockchain must be preserved in its entirety, ensuring network integrity through clever code rather through human beings.
Implications
Rather than trusting big companies and governments to verify people’s identities and vouch for their reputation, we, the people, can trust the network. It’s checkable, accurate, and unchangeable. The networked platform ensures trust in transactions and recorded information no matter how the other party acts. This will have enormous implications for social, political, and economic activity. It can tell us who owns what, such as physical or intellectual property, who graduated from which school, who bought which gun, who made your smartphone and its parts, your shampoo formula, or the Romaine lettuce you will be eating for lunch. With the help of Blockchain, we’ll soon be able to verify all of these things.
Value proposition 2: Distributed power
Problem: centralization of power
In the first era of the Internet, large institutions that a lot of people depended on to conduct online commerce, rarely considered social contracts. Central powers and monopolies have proven that they’re willing to treat users poorly, implement large-scale changes without user consent, and warehouse and analyze their personal and at times private data, and share such data with governments without users’ knowledge. Because these institutions are so powerful, they can implement actions without many repercussions.
Solution: distributed power
Blockchain re-stacks the deck by distributing power — for example, there is no central authority controlling the Bitcoin Blockchain. For example, the energy costs of taking over the Bitcoin blockchain outweigh its financial benefits. The proof of work method requires users to expend a lot of computing power and electricity to defend the network and mint new coins. In the case of Bitcoin, the proof-of-work method defends the blockchain network. Anyone can download the Bitcoin protocol and maintain a copy of its Blockchain. It’s fully distributed across a volunteer network such as BitTorrent, shielding the network from external interference, such as the government.
In other words, the Blockchain resides everywhere with no central authority. Volunteers maintain it by keeping their copy of the blockchain up to date and lending spare processing power to mining power. Every transaction or action is broadcast across the network to be verified and validated. Nothing passes through a central third party or stored on a central server. Network participants or miners in the case of Bitcoin, control their data, property, and level of participation. By distributing computing power, blockchain enables distributed and collective human power.
Implications
Distributed platforms such as the Bitcoin Blockchain can enable new distributed models of wealth creation and new forms of peer-to-peer human collaborations that target humanity’s most vexing and intractable social problems. By shifting power towards citizens and giving them real opportunities for prosperity and participation in society, we could work together to build confidence in today’s institutions or even build new public and private institutions.
Value proposition 3 : Aligned, value-driven, motives
Problem: A destructive incentive system
In the first era of the Internet, power was concentrated in large corporations. They could extract enormous value from the system making them more powerful. Large banks nearly broke the financial system because their leadership was rewarded for risk-taking and short-term thinking with the 2008 financial market crash causing a host of bad behaviors including predatory loans targeting the poor.
Warren Buffett Explains the 2008 Financial Crisis — by WSJ
Additionally, large dot-coms pretend to offer something for nothing by advertising “free” services in retail, search, and social media, while the real unseen cost is user data, which they exploit to boost revenues. But whenever these firms get hacked, consumers are left to deal with a stolen credit card and their bank account information. And at times, these costs can be dearly expensive to a large number of users such as with presidential elections.
Solution: Internally coded, aligned, and networked incentives
Blockchain is set up to align the incentives of all its stakeholders. It uses a token of value, such as a Bitcoin, to promote behavior benefiting the Blockchain as a whole, while also building the participant’s reputation. Bitcoin is programmed to reward people who work on it and use its tokens and with everyone having a stake in the network, they make sure the network remains healthy.
Bitcoin gives no additional benefits for users to acquire extra identities. The source code is programmed so that no matter how selfish people act, their actions benefit the system. The resource requirements of the consensus mechanism (i.e. proof of work), combined with Bitcoins as a reward, compel participants to do the right thing — that is to act with integrity.
When miners create a block and link it to the previous one, the miner who completes the block first gets a set quantity of bitcoins for their efforts. Because they now own Bitcoins, the miners are invested in the platform’s long-term success. So, they buy the best equipment to run mining operations, spend energy as efficiently as possible, and maintain the ledger.
Bitcoins also represent partial ownership of the blockchain itself. Participants are not just incentivized to mine and transact with others, but by owning and using Bitcoin, they are financing the Blockchain’s development. By acting in their self-interest, Bitcoin miners serve the overall network and gradually build their individual and collective reputation.
Before blockchain technologies, people couldn’t easily leverage the value of their reputation online. In the offline world, our reputations are multifaceted and generally disconnected. We keep documents to prove our ID, such as with passports and driver’s licenses. But on the blockchain, our identity is inherent and recorded with every action.
In the case of Bitcoin, its Blockchain preserves value by programming its monetary policies right into the software. Bitcoin supply is capped at 21 million, to be issued over time which should all be in circulation around the year 2140. This creates a currency that is more secure, immune to counterfeiting and theft and is inflation resistant.
Unlike fiat currency, each bitcoin is divisible to eight decimal places, and this allows users to combine and split value over time in a single transaction. That means that users can set up smart contracts to measure the use of the service and eke out tiny fractions of payments or micro-payments. This kind of divisibility is great for the Internet of Things when the physical world becomes smart and starts exchanging information and doing transactions autonomously.
Implications
With blockchain, people can have internally built financial incentives to collaborate effectively and exchange any types of assets. If digital reputations were to become valuable and trackable, bad behavior would be too costly and online discussion groups wouldn’t be inundated with trolls. Home-owners could receive real-time payments for using solar panels to generate sustainable energy for their network and open source software developers could pay contributors for acceptable deliverables.
Value proposition 4: Digital security
Problem: Internet 1.0 — Lax online security
The invention of the Internet brought access to people, institutions, and economic activities, but it also introduced a variety of new security risks such as hacking, identity theft, fraud, cyber-bullying, phishing, spam, malware, ransomware, etc. Today most people rely on flimsy technologies to protect their online presence, mainly because service providers don’t insist on anything stronger.
Moreover, the typical bank doesn’t specialize in developing secure technologies, but rather in financial innovation. The average cost of a data breach is nearly $3.9 million according to IBM and the average cost to an individual of medical identity fraud is close to $13,500. Today, we don’t know which aspect of our lives will be hacked next.
If the next stage of the digital revolution involves communicating money or any type of assets directly between parties, then communications and transactions need to be hack-proof.
Solution: ‘Public Key Infrastructure’ (PKI) and Digital Certificates
Blockchain networks incorporate safety measures with no single point of failure. They provide confidentiality and authenticity of records, meaning that a digital signature, can’t be denied. Anyone who wants to participate in the blockchain must use cryptography. Any reckless behavior doesn’t endanger everyone, it only affects the person who behaved recklessly.
Public Key Cryptography — by Computerphile
Bitcoin requires participants to use Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) to establish a secure platform. The PKI is an advanced form of asymmetric cryptography (invented in the 1970s) where users get two keys — one for encryption and the other for decryption. You have to keep track of your own two keys and you have to keep track of everyone else’s public key. There’s no password reset function if you forget yours; you have to start all over.
Asymmetric encryption —by Simply explained
Digital certificates are another solution to our current flimsy digital security. They’re pieces of code protecting messages without the need for asymmetric cryptography, where users pay an annual fee for their certificates.
People still lack incentives to protect their digital privacy. Blockchains, like Bitcoin, solve nearly all of our digital security problems by providing the incentive for wide adoption of PKI for all transactions of value. Today, we can store and exchange bitcoins securely. If we can do that, then we can store and exchange highly confidential information and many other digital assets securely as well.
Digital Signatures — by Udacity
Moreover, as a blockchain grows longer and longer, it also becomes safer. Hacking a long-chain requires substantially more computing power than attacking short chains.
Implications
With the ever growing usage of digital solutions in our everyday lives, technological security will mean personal security. Today, hackers can can pick our pockets or hijack our cars from the other side of the world. With the secure design and transparency of a Blockchain such as the case of Bitcoin, we can make transactions of value secure and protect personal data.
Value proposition 5: Privacy
Problem: Corporate Big Data monopolies
People should control and own their data, and have the right to decide what, when, how, and how much about their identities to share with others. We need to respect one’s right to privacy in action.
Privacy is a basic human right and the foundation of having free societies. On Internet 1.0, central databases, in both public and private sectors, have accumulated confidential information about individuals and institutions, sometimes without their knowledge. These corporations can now create virtual clones of people as they know more about us than we do because we can’t remember what we did or said or bought or ate a year ago. The problem here is that the ‘virtual us’ is not owned by us but by the large corporations.
Solution
Blockchain helps disentangle user identity from transactions. For example, Bitcoin requires no identity for the network layer. No one has to provide a name, e-mail address, or any other personal data to use the Bitcoin Blockchain. This is similar to how SWIFT works when we exchange in cash — that is, there’s no reference to anybody’s identity in the transaction.
Compared to Bitcoin, our credit and debit cards are very identity-centric. They require our name, address, financial information, personal identification number, pin, etc. And when a credit agency gets hacked, millions of people’s addresses and phone numbers are stolen every time a database gets breached.
On the blockchain, there is no mass storage of personal data. Blockchain protocols allow us to choose the level of privacy that we’re comfortable within any given transaction or environment, helping us better manage our identities as we interact with the world. The ideal scenario is a world where we have privacy for individuals and transparency for organizations, institutions, and public officials.
If one wants to find an individual’s identity on Blockchain, it would be very costly as they would have to triangulate a considerable amount of data to figure out who or what owns a particular public key. With every transaction on the Blockchain, the sender can provide only the metadata that the recipient needs to know.
Implications
Today, many people are unaware of how much privacy they bargain away every day, online. We leave digital footprints and trails every day for tech giants and website owners to convert into detailed maps of our whereabouts. With blockchain technology, we retain much more ownership over personal information and give away only what’s required in any social or economic exchange. Moreover, anytime we choose to give data of value, we can demand something of value in return.
Value proposition 6: Preservation of rights
Problem: Legal vacuum
We adapted digital laws and standards developed from the physical world and had to trust middlemen to manage online transactions. These middlemen had the power to deny, delay, or declear transactions only to reverse them later. In this migration of existing laws into online practices, legitimate rights got trampled such as those for free speech, reputation, and equal participation. Even as we shaped digital intellectual property rights, there was little risk to ignoring them. For example, filmmakers saw their revenue stream dry up as their fans uploaded digital files for others to download for free.
Solution: Smart contracts
Blockchain technology can strengthen property rights by making them inarguable and unforgeable. For example, on the Bitcoin Blockchain, the proof of work requirement timestamps transactions so that only the first spend of a coin can clear and settle. Using public key infrastructure, the blockchain prevents a double spend and confirms ownership of the coin in circulation. Therefore, on the Blockchain, one can’t spend what isn’t theirs, whether that’s physical or intellectual property.
If the people who create and own content do not participate in its distribution and profits, the Internet will fall apart. As a ledger of everything, Blockchain technology can serve as a public registry through such tools as Proof of Existence, creating and registering cryptographic digest deeds, titles, receipts or licenses. Proof of Existence calculates and stores the hash of an original document on the user’s machine, ensuring the confidentiality of content. Even if a central authority were to someday shut down Proof of Existence, the proof would remain on the blockchain and at the owner’s disposal.
Moreover, Smart contracts can help handle more complex transactions involving bundles of rights or multiple parties. A smart contract is an agreement that self-executes. It is a piece of special-purpose code that encodes an agreement between parties and is based on certain conditions that execute a complex set of instructions. It’s a fleshing out of legal instructions executed by software. In the future, smart contracts aim to let software determine the legal course of action, whether between individuals, businesses, or even countries.
Another capability of a smart contract is that it can provide the means for assigning usage rights to parties. For example, a composer might assign a completed song to a music publisher. The code of a contract could include the term or duration of the assignment, the percentage of royalties, and termination triggers. To set the smart contract in motion, the composer and the publisher would each sign using their private keys.
Smart contracts could also handle difficult rights of shared resources among the community and provide users control and legal rights over their data that is currently used freely by big tech corporations.
Implications
While we need better education about our rights and better management systems better, clear and transparent rights and responsibilities can be codified in a smart contract and placed on a blockchain. This way, necessary decisions, and incentives will be transparent and be reached by consensus.
Value proposition 7: Economic inclusion
Problem: Exclusion, socioeconomic divide, and poverty
The economy will work best when it works for everyone, with low barriers to participation. Economic inclusion will in effect solve poverty. In 2019, the global internet penetration stood at 59% with most of the world’s population still excluded, from access to technology, financial systems, and economic activity.
The internet has helped establish companies that provide jobs for millions in the developed and emerging economies and lowered the barriers to entry for entrepreneurs, but this is not enough. There are still 2 billion people without a bank account and social inequality continues to grow in the developed world. In developing countries, consumers at the bottom of the pyramid still can’t afford the minimum account balances, minimum payment amounts, or transaction fees to use the financial system due to high infrastructure costs and a lot of these people don’t have an identity.
Solution: Banking, payment, and legal services for all
Blockchain delivers a stable payment system available to all, regardless of socioeconomic status or geography. The Bitcoin Blockchain system is designed to work on the Internet and offline via its Simplified Payment Verification feature, working on most types of cellphones. With this feature of Bitcoin, there’s no bank account required, no proof of citizenship, birth certificate, home address, or identity. With such properties, Blockchain can help drastically lower the cost of transmitting payments of any sort.
Blockchain can potentially have the largest impact in developing countries where entire banking systems may be inefficient or corrupt or where the central banks of failed states print money to keep the government running, further debasing the local currency. In such economies, if the local economy were to tank — as in the case of Venezuela — these central bodies could freeze the bank assets of citizens, while, the wealthy store their assets in more stable currencies, causing their local currency to lose even more value, leaving the middle class and poor’s saving to become worthless.
There’s also enormous potential in using blockchain to safeguard property records. In many emerging markets, there are no trusted entities where citizens can register land titles. Blockchain can allow people to claim land and property and back it up with verifiable proof. With these Blockchain ownership proofs, individuals can then use their land as collateral for loans, or credit to improve their livelihood.
Implications
The first era of the Internet benefited many, our economies grew but the middle class shrank. The foundation for prosperity is inclusion. Inclusion means participation by people of all social, economic, health, gender, and racial backgrounds. Inclusion means dropping barriers to access because of where a person lives or how they voted. It means change for the better and Blockchain can help us get there.
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https://medium.com/swlh/the-genius-of-product-design-how-blockchain-creates-systematic-value-7f0b46533a28
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['Nima Torabi']
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2020-06-04 09:58:54.924000+00:00
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['Product Design', 'Blockchain', 'Bitcoin', 'Internet']
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Do our kids really need university?
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I was a lousy student. In 1992 I enrolled at a technical college to study chemistry. After two years I changed my mind (it happens) and I started studying business at university.
I’m not sure why I studied either of these subjects. Most likely, just like my friends, I went to university for a ‘bit of a laugh’ and to have a good time. Also, in my hometown, it was expected that you went to university. If you didn’t, well, you had failed.
Twenty-five years on, it is clear to me now, that the education system led me in the wrong direction.
In those days (the early mid-nineties) attending university was not that expensive. Eccentric students roamed the campus, lived in dingy flats and went out drinking two or three nights a week. Undergraduates studied a myriad of different subjects and new ideas were discussed over lunch or while playing $5 rounds of golf. It really was a magical time.
I have visited universities in recent years, maybe it’s just me getting old, but I don’t see that same magic on the campuses of 2021. Is attending university really worth all the time and the money? I doubt it.
University is only one option - consider the other alternatives.
When I graduated at the end of 1996 I was twenty-three years old. I didn’t know what I wanted to do and had no work experience at all. I owed $20,000 and had spent five years gathering qualifications. As I was to discover these qualifications were already in plentiful supply and had questionable value within the labour market.
Let me make a quick distinction here regarding a common misunderstanding. Marketing and sales are different. Marketing is a collective term for the decisions which are made to position the product/service package. Selling is the process of getting people to sign on the dotted line. When you graduate with a marketing degree you will be selling not marketing. Universities choose not to tell marketing students this fact because very few students would do the course.
With my B.Com (Training / Marketing) double major completed I assumed that my future employment would involve certain things. Having a nice car, going out for long lunches and making lots of money. Well, that wasn’t quite how it worked out. I discovered that my degree qualified me to work as a salesman. I visited customers, with my red vinyl clipboard ‘at the ready’. Reaching my weekly sales target was a truly hellish experience. My old boss Bill exemplified this with a motivational line he dispensed liberally “If you can’t reach your sales target don’t bother coming back.”
Like a lot of young people at that time, when the post-university dream failed to materialize, I saved face by hopping onto a plane and going off to see the world.
I knew that a ‘real’ job would come my way. ‘No more vinyl clipboards for me,’ or so I told myself.
In summary, since graduating in 1996, I had worked in sales in Auckland and Wellington, New Zealand — it had been stressful and far from glamorous. From 1999 until 2001, I worked in retail in Perth, Australia — it was tedious and the pay was low. In late 2001, I flew out to the United Kingdom on a two-year working holiday visa. Surely, I thought, there will be work for me here? Well, yes and no. Yes, there was work but most of it was so menial that the local people were not prepared to do it. I spent two years shambling around the UK doing a range of temporary jobs whilst teetering on the brink of poverty.
The day I turned thirty years old was not too flash. I found myself in a state of cognitive dissonance. Nearly a decade had passed since I had graduated. It was 2004 and I was washing dishes in a cafe in Brisbane, Australia. Under the counter job, great people and even a few free beers after work but I wondered…….What the hell am I going to do with my life?
Few will admit to it but my experience, as detailed above, is actually quite a common post university outcome. (Students and parents take note!!)
I’ve been extraordinarily lucky. I came to Japan, there have been some challenges but it’s worked out well. I have a wonderful wife and two kids Luca aged nine years old and Juno aged six years old. We call them Loo and Joo — they are bright, bubbly, ferocious, and everything that kids their age should be.
So, when Loo and Joo reach university age (a decade from now) what advice should I offer to them? Let’s imagine for a moment that eighteen-year-old Loo (or Joo) is crazy about Egyptian history. Do I suggest that he/she invests four years studying for a degree in Egyptian history? You must be joking? If you factor in the loss of potential earnings the cost of that degree will balloon to over $100,000.
Alternatively, do I tell Loo (or Joo) to continue cultivating their interest in Egypt? Perhaps, find a related job, accumulate a little money and take a trip to Egypt each year?
For most people, the second option is the preferable choice. The idea of students spending years ‘broadening their horizons’ and learning to ‘think’ is an idealistic view of what education should be. It’s not a true reflection of what happens at university these days.
Of course, the choice is theirs to make. I hope that my experience helps guide Loo and Joo into making smarter choices than I did.
If you are a parent whose child is finishing high school, forward this article to them. A university degree most certainly does not entitle you to an easy life and automatic career success. I hope this short article goes some way toward communicating that fact.
A period of change and adjustment lies ahead for young people and the educational institutions that depend upon them.
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https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/do-our-kids-need-university-d74e3d460078
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['Marcus Wallis']
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2021-06-26 00:30:52.124000+00:00
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['Marketing', 'University', 'Education', 'Parenting Advice', 'Career Advice']
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All So Shy
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Where is thy strong hand O Storm,
Gentle thou seemest, almost unarmed?
Where O Fate is thy brow of dread,
That grim visage and perennial frown?
Where O Ill is thy harsh sting,
That malevolent uninvited dagger?
Where O Sorrow thou doth deliver
Thy mournful forlorn song?
Why O Titan thou doth not maraud
My scampered gains of toil?
Why O Doubt thou doth not foil
March of my muse ever forward?
Art thou all of the immortal Guest so shy
And shuffling by His presence so meekly?
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https://medium.com/inevitable-word/all-so-shy-51fd9d9f23eb
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['Mahesh Cr']
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2020-12-20 13:13:12.258000+00:00
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['Sri Aurobindo', 'Poetry Writing', 'Poetry', 'Yoga', 'Poetry On Medium']
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4th Quarter Preparation for 2021
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Hello — many in our network are adding critical hires in the 4th quarter in preparation for 2021 so I thought you might find value in a reminder of our current recruitment fee structures and guarantees.
For more than 20 years, we have worked in partnership with our clients to execute the critical elements of a search process to identify and hire qualified Professionals in your industry.
We guarantee hires, have a 6 month placement guarantee and our fee structure is fixed and all-inclusive.
Senior level positions — $12,000
Management/Niche positions — $9,000
Professional positions — $7,000
Other positions — $5,000
30 to 60 professional hires in a 12-month period — $4,000 per hire
61 to 120 professional hires in a 12-month period — $3,000 per hire
120+ position per hire cost is dependent on client and leveling of positions
If you need help with a critical hire or are interested in our seamless outsourcing solution, let’s set up a call to discuss. You can also visit our website at www.quintegra.biz for additional information.
I look forward to hearing back from you, Mark
—
Mark Clevenger
President, Quintegra
317–523–4124, [email protected]
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https://medium.com/@mclevenger/4th-quarter-preparation-for-2021-e5566074dfca
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['Mark Clevenger']
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2020-11-23 21:21:08.005000+00:00
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['Recruitment', 'Talent Acquisition', 'Hiring', 'Staffing Solutions', 'Hiring For Startup']
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Was hat sich bei Ihnen wirklich verändert?
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Niels Brabandt is in business since 1998. Helping managers to become better leaders by mastering the concept of Sustainable Leadership. Based in Spain & London.
Follow
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https://medium.com/leadership-magazine-by-niels-brabandt-nb-networks/was-hat-sich-bei-ihnen-wirklich-ver%C3%A4ndert-58834ab609d0
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['Niels Brabandt']
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2020-12-15 21:05:06.736000+00:00
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['Change Management', 'Leadership', 'Changemaker', 'Change', 'Veränderung']
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B2B Fintech opportunities to consider in 2021
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Contactless payments
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash
2020 saw an increase in card payments, particularly contactless payments, even for purchases that are most commonly paid for with cash — like grocery shopping. Contactless payments are pretty much what the name suggests — a way of paying for goods without needing to touch a terminal. Customers increasingly demand expediency and physical distance, and as a response, we see greater adoption of tap-to-pay systems.
Statistics show that the overall usage of contactless payments in the U.S. has increased by 150% since March 2019. Accenture listed “a strong push towards a cashless society” as the primary long-term impact of the pandemic. Even before the crisis, contactless payments — both by RFID in cards or NFC on mobile devices — were beginning to gain traction. The pandemic only accelerated it. As customers care about how they are paying, so do the merchants who want to provide them with a good experience. As a result, the somewhat sleepy business of terminals might become exciting.
Wireless terminals, with appealing designs and seamless connections to inventory and customer databases are what merchants might be looking for when they opt to update their terminals to provide a better in-store experience.
Online payments
The repeated lockdowns, together with the fear of coronavirus transmission, led to a significant change in consumer behaviour and accelerated the adoption of online shopping. In regards to e-commerce transactions, a report by Digital Commerce 360 shows that U.S. consumer spending increased by 30% ($60.42 billion) in the first six months of the year, compared to the same period of 2019. Digital payment processing companies have grown in sync with the e-commerce spike, and there is still room for growth — especially since a new audience has just discovered the convenience of online shopping.
The spike in online payments is not bringing new requirements per se, but it is putting emphasis on the more obvious ones: a good buyer experience, including fast checkout, a variety of payment methods, taking good care of returning users, and high approval rates. A good experience for payment managers, including high platform reliability and state-of-the-art reporting capabilities is also growing in importance.
AI-based Fintech solutions
Selling products globally, fierce competition, and the need for short delivery times make traditional risk management solutions obsolete. Risk management tools that cannot adapt to fraud trends in real time ultimately lead to overblocking and lost customers. Operations that require active manual review, on the other hand, are very accurate. However, not only they don’t scale, they also slow down logistics creating a poor post-purchase experience.
As more companies shift to online sales as their primary revenue channel, there is an increased demand for machine learning solutions for payment security. The holy grail in this field is achieving human accuracy with machine scalability, and combining it with a good explanation of the models’ logic on the transaction level, getting away from the infamous black box.
According to Mordor Intelligence, the global AI in the Fintech market is expected to reach USD 22.6 billion by 2025. Payment security is naturally not the sole sector seeing a rise in AI-based solutions for Fintech: data-driven customer acquisition, due diligence, and predictive analytics are among the fields where we expect to see interesting developments. If you’d like to dive deeper into the subject, here is a list of 12 AI in Fintech Use Cases compiled by Technopedia.
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https://medium.com/@tseidler/b2b-fintech-opportunities-to-consider-in-2021-72d0ab2ea666
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['Tali Seidler']
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2021-01-11 11:22:11.118000+00:00
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['Online Payments', 'Fintech', 'Payments', 'AI', 'Risk Management']
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How Trump’s Lawsuits May Change America’s Electoral Jurisprudence
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How Trump’s Lawsuits May Change America’s Electoral Jurisprudence
Joseph R. Biden Jr. is now president-elect of the United States. Notwithstanding the many emotions that accompany this hard-fought revelation, the current occupant of the White House nevertheless (rather predictably) broke with the tradition of a concession speech, and instead signaled his intent to double down on his meritless claims of fraud in state and federal courts.
Photo by Ian Hutchinson on Unsplash
It is clear that President Trump’s legal arguments of fraud are not supported by facts; it is safe to speculate that his convictions in these claims predicate partly on the political need to sensationalize and inflame public passion as support, and partly on a deluded perception of the American judiciary as a place where judges defer to presidents — and certainly to the president that appointed them.
While most claims are tossed out by various state and federal courts, the Republican Party’s suit challenging the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision to extend the mail-in ballot deadline by three days is a notable one. It has the potential to hand the G.O.P. a favorable and far-reaching judicial precedent that would cement its capabilities to either bolster and hamstring state electoral procedures to their advantage.
This case arises out of the state high court’s interpretation of a Pennsylvania election law, in which the state justices stated that the Pennsylvania Constitution demanded the three-day extension to ensure fairness. The Republicans argue that state high courts have no authority to issue this decree since the federal Constitution, in Article II, Section 1 (presidential electors clause), explicitly grants that right to the Pennsylvania state legislature: “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct,” the electors for president and vice president.
On October 26 and then October 28, the Supreme Court issued two pieces of opinions in both a similar case with Wisconsin’s election laws and this one. Taken together, there were at least four justices — Justices Kavanaugh, Alito, Gorsuch and Thomas — who expressed enthusiasm for such a strict reading of the presidential electors clause, first marshaled by the late Chief Justice Rehnquist in the court’s famous 2000 ruling in Bush v. Gore. Justice Rehnquist, then joined by Justice Thomas, wrote a concurrence that invoked concededly broad powers to strike down a state high court’s interpretation of state law:
[The presidential electors clause] “convey[s] the broadest power of determination” and “leaves it to the legislature exclusively to define the method” of appointment. A significant departure from the legislative scheme for appointing Presidential electors presents a federal constitutional question. … Though we generally defer to state courts on the interpretation of state law there are of course areas in which the Constitution requires this Court to undertake an independent, if still deferential, analysis of state law…
In his opinion appended to the October 28 ruling regarding the Pennsylvania case, Justice Alito expressed deep misgivings about the state high court decision: he reasoned that the court’s opinion strays so much from statutory interpretation that it amounts to (usurping) legislative powers. On the surface, the court is now poised to vote to reverse the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, setting a narrowing precedent that bolsters state legislatures’ powers.
This theory is not without its detractors. The justices in the minority were deeply skeptical of this interpretation of the Constitution and protested its cavalier, formalistic reading at the expense of well-established state procedures. In his dissent, Justices Stevens wrote that this reading subverts the constitutional mandate for states to have a republican form of government — specifically, by denying the institutional checks and balances built into the state constitutions, the source of legislative powers.
[The Constitution] does not create state legislatures out of whole cloth, but rather takes them as they come — as creatures born of, and constrained by, their state constitutions. … The legislative power in Florida is subject to judicial review pursuant to Article V of the Florida Constitution, and nothing in Article II of the Federal Constitution frees the state legislature from the constraints in the state constitution that created it.
Similarly, Justice Ginsburg echoed this reasoning.
The Chief Justice’s solicitude for the Florida Legislature comes at the expense of the more fundamental solicitude we owe to the legislature’s sovereign. Were the other members of this Court as mindful as they generally are of our system of dual sovereignty, they would affirm the judgement of the Florida Supreme Court.
Certainly, the Pennsylvania case is not a carbon copy of Bush. But its revival by the legal architects who secured a momentous win twenty years ago is cause for alarm to voting rights advocacy groups. If this line of reasoning — known as the independent state legislature doctrine — is affirmed by the court, it could have adverse and far-reaching implications for the field of election laws including districting, polling locations, gerrymandering, and questions on federalism and electoral politics. By conferring an unconventional degree of autonomy onto state legislatures (most of them led by Republicans) in the matter of federal elections, it could invite even more partisan politics to intrude on the arena of nonpartisan endeavors such as voting.
It is true that it’s a long shot at best for the president to reap victory in the 2020 election — the lawsuit is unlikely to lend him enough advantage to reach a second term. But twenty years after Bush and ten after Citizens United v. FEC, the case of Republican Party of Pennsylvania v. Boockvar may insidiously catalyze the encroaching politicization of many federal elections to come — and spell a moment of triumph for a party that has long vied for institutional advantage.
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https://medium.com/@tianyixu/trumps-lawsuits-may-change-america-s-electoral-jurisprudence-f33ffb6adcf0
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['Tianyi Xu']
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2020-11-09 18:38:24.844000+00:00
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['Supreme Court', 'Election 2020', 'Law', 'Constitutional Law']
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Elaboration Likelihood Model: The secret behind effective writing
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Everyone out there wants to be heard, right? Everyone wants their story to stand out. From individuals to small businesses and large corporations, everyone wants to accomplish specific targets (e.g., raise awareness, engage, educate) through sharing purposeful content. Since we’re getting exposed to a plethora of info sources and at the same time tones of content is being consumed more than ever before, the attention span has been significantly decreased. It may be irrational to scrutinize the plethora of counterattitudinal messages received daily. Thus, we should all agree it’s vital for content creators to place special focus on how audiences process messages.
The Motivation & Ability of the receiver determine whether the elaboration will be high or low.
One of the leading theories regarding how people “digest” messages is the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), developed by Richard E Petty & John T Cacioppo in 1980. By elaborating in a persuasion context, we mean the extent to which a person thinks about the issue-relevant arguments in a message.
The theory is pretty simple: to evaluate any message, a person must be motivated & able to assess its merit.
Photo by Avi Richards on Unsplash
According to the theory, there are two routes the receiver follows when evaluating a message. When a lot of thought goes into analyzing the message, the central route to persuasion is used. Nonetheless, sometimes people just don’t have the time or the mental capacity to put in a great deal of thought. In this case, the peripheral route to persuasion is used.
Central vs Peripheral route: Head-to-head
These are the steps when forming or changing an attitude:
1. The audience comes into contact with a persuasive message.
2. Then, the motivation comes into play. Motivation is highly associated with personal relevance and the need for cognition. If the individual does not have the drive to consider and interpret the message thoughtfully, the peripheral route is taken.
3. If motivation exists, then the next question is ability. The receiver’s prior knowledge and the message’s comprehensibility have a huge impact on ability. Again, if the receiver is not able to engage, the peripheral route is used.
4. When conditions foster the receiver’s motivation & ability to consider a persuasive message, the elaboration likelihood is said to be high.
Even if the receiver feels motivated and able to evaluate the message, the peripheral cues are used if neutral thoughts predominate. However, if the person feels something other than neutral about the message (either favorable or unfavorable thoughts predominate), the central route is taken!
Comparing the two anchoring endpoints on the elaboration likelihood continuum, the central route leads to either positive or negative attitude change, which is relatively enduring and predictive of behavior. On the other hand, the peripheral attitude shift is relatively temporary and unpredictive of behavior.
A brief conclusion
Inarguably, it’s all about the audience.
Bear always in mind that your content should be “digestible” and engaging for both routes (central & peripheral). It’s important thinking since it reflects the pressures we’re all under to do more with less time.
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https://medium.com/@emmanuelkavarnos/elaboration-likelihood-model-the-secret-behind-effective-writing-ba6d0c8e2d9b
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['Emmanuel Kavarnos']
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2020-12-15 12:34:59.953000+00:00
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['Design Thinking', 'Content Writing', 'Content', 'Engagement', 'Effective Communication']
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FVS 13: ATTRACTION, FOUNDERS, LIVE YOUR DREAMS & DEEP WORK
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source: unsplash
“To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only obligation.”
- The Alchemist
Hi, this is another edition of “For Value Sake”.
A weekly post, it contains a few articles, a book recommendation and a TED talk.
These are the most impressionable resources I consumed during the week, and share them so you can reap some value as I did.
The only goal is to add value.
Cheers :)
“While love involves a deep and meaningful connection, a crush is a potent mix of idealization and infatuation. It doesn’t require knowing another person well at all.”
We meet people and project our ideals on them and love them for who we think there are.
But when we get to really know them we reject them cos they are not who we thought they were.
We were in love with our ideal, not them.
How about we kill the emotions and suspend the attraction until we get to know them, impossible!
Biology is a bitch,
Well, how about we understand that whatever we are thinking they are, they are not and build in this error margin into our oversized unrealistic expectations.
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“You think “oh I need a great idea” when really the idea is nothing and your psychology & persistence is everything.”
Founders always have this story they tell about how they started.
But the truth is that there is a mountain load of context we miss when we consider only this.
We discount the fact that their experiences since they were born had prepared them for their current role, and not just one event that was probably the tipping point.
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“You must live in alignment with yourself, first and foremost. Otherwise, you have no power, conviction, or clarity to offer your relationships.”
It’s a free world, everyone is free to live their life how they want it.
But one criterion that successful people have all seemed to have in common is that big dream or idea that they pursue most of their life.
Maybe not one, but the idea that something other than just living drives them.
They live a life constantly striving towards some higher achievement.
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“Knowledge is better than ignorance and superstition”
If we follow what we see in the news, we would think that things are becoming worse.
But taking a look at the data comparing 30 years ago and now.
We live longer, healthier, in more abundance, with more freedom, we are happier, we suffer less and know more.
Indeed as humans, our world is not ending but becoming better.
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Dr. Nneka, an African America psychologist talks about how her experiences growing up, got her to a place where she is now heading one of the biggest jails in the US.
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“This book has two goals, pursued in two parts.
The first, tackled in Part 1, is to convince you that the deep work hypothesis is true.
The second, tackled in Part 2, is to teach you how to take advantage of this reality by training your brain and transforming your work habits to place deep work at the core of your professional life.
One of my best reads on productivity for the year. The first few chapters changed the course of my year.
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That’s it for the week! Thanks for reading!
If you want the book, holla and I’ll send you an e-copy.
ᵜ ᵜ ᵜ ᵜ ᵜ
IF YOU ENJOYED THIS, PLEASE DO ONE OF THESE THINGS
1. Clap for it so others can see it as well
2. Connect with me personally on Twitter, Medium, and LinkedIn.
You can find previous editions here: https://medium.com/henrymascot/
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https://medium.com/henrymascot/fvs-13-attraction-founders-live-your-dreams-deep-work-50b906f673c4
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['Henry Mascot']
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2018-11-20 14:27:36.519000+00:00
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['Entrepreneurship', 'Work', 'Life Lessons', 'Ted', 'Attraction']
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AI is making CAPTCHA increasingly cruel for disabled users
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Written by Robin Christopherson MBE, Head of Digital Inclusion at AbilityNet
A CAPTCHA, (an acronym for “completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart”), is a test used in computing to determine whether or not the user is human. You’ve all seen those distorted codes or image-selection challenges that you need to pass to sign up for a site or buy that bargain. Well, improvements in AI means that a crisis is coming … and disabled people are suffering the most.
CAPTCHAs are evil
Whatever the test — whether it’s a distorted code, having to pick the odd-one-out from a series of images, or listen to a garbled recording — CAPTCHAs have always been evil and they’re getting worse. The reason is explained in an excellent recent article from The Verge; Why CAPTCHAs have gotten so difficult. Increasingly smart artificial intelligence (AI) is the reason why these challenges are becoming tougher and tougher. As the ability of machine learning algorithms to recognise text, objects within images, the answers to random questions or a garbled spoken phrase improve month on month, the challenges must become ever-more difficult for humans to crack.
Jason Polakis, a computer science professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, claims partial responsibility. In 2016 he published a paper showing that Google’s own image and speech recognition tools could be used to crack their own CAPTCHA challenges. “Machine learning is now about as good as humans at basic text, image, and voice recognition tasks,” Polakis says. In fact, algorithms are probably better at it: “We’re at a point where making it harder for software ends up making it too hard for many people. We need some alternative, but there’s not a concrete plan yet.”
We’ve all seen the ‘I am not a robot’ checkboxes that use clever algorythms to decide if the user’s behaviour navigating the website is random enough to be a human. These used to work well — letting us through with that simple checking of the box — but increasingly the bots are able to mimic a human’s mouse or keyboard use and we get the same old challenge of a selection of images popping up as an additional test of our humanity.
The Verge article quite rightly bemoans the place we’ve arrived at — highlighting how difficult these ever-more-obscure challenges are for people with normal levels of vision, hearing and cognitive abilities. We just can’t compete with the robots at this game.
Don’t forget the disabled — we’re people too
But what about all those people who don’t have ‘normal’ abilities? People with a vision or hearing impairment or a learning disability are well and truly thwarted when it comes to CAPTCHAs that test the vast majority of humans to the very limit and beyond. After reading the article, I came away feeling that this very significant group (a fifth of the population and rising) deserve a mention at the very least — after all, they’ve been suffering in the face of these challenges far, far longer than those who do not have a disability or dyslexia (and have been locked out of many an online service as a result).
At the very heart of inclusive design is the ability to translate content from one format into another. For example, if a blind person can’t see text on-screen, it should allow the ability to be converted into speech (that’s how I’m writing this article). If someone can’t easily read a certain text size or font style or in certain colours, then it should allow for resizing or the changing of fonts and colours — this is all basic stuff that most websites accommodate quite well. Images should be clear and their subject easy to understand — and they should include a text description for those who can’t see it at all. Audio should be clear. All aspects of ‘Web Accessibility 101’.
The whole point of CAPTCHA challenges is to allow for none of these. No part of the challenge can be machine-readable or the bots will get in. Text can’t be plain text that can be spoken out by a screenreader for the blind — it has to be pictures of characters so excruciatingly garbled that no text-recognition software can crack it. Ditto with an audio challenge. Pictorial challenges must be so obscure that object recognition software can’t spot the distant traffic lights amongst the foliage etc, etc. It has ever been thus.
Today the road signs need to be obscured by leaves because the bots are better than ever at recognising them — but five years ago the images were still chosen to be just complex enough so as to thwart the bots of the day. And because the bots are using the same machine-learning AI as the assistive software used by disabled people to convert content into a form that is understandable to them, they were locked out too.
Did I mention? — CAPTCHAs are evil
So long as websites want to keep the bots from registering spam accounts or posting bogus comments, there will need to be some way for developers to detect and deflect their attempts. The use of CAPTCHA challenges, however, is not and has never been a fair (or even legal) one. It discriminates and disenfranchises millions of users every day.
So, whilst the article neglects to mention the significant segment of users most egregiously affected by CAPTCHAs, I’m hopeful that its main message — namely that this arms-race is rapidly reaching a point where the bots consistently beat humans at their own game — is a herald of better times to come.
As CAPTCHAs actually begin to capture the humans and let the bots in, then they begin to serve the opposite objective to that intended. They should then disappear faster than a disillusioned disabled customer with money to spend but wholly unable to access your services.
So what’s the alternative?
Companies like Google, who have long provided commonly-used CAPTCHA services, have been working hard on a next-generation approach that combines a broader analysis of user behaviour on a website. Called reCAPTCHA v3, it is likely to use a mix of cookies, browser attributes, traffic patterns, and other factors to evaluate ‘normal’ human behaviour — although Google are understandably being cagey about the details.
So hopefully by now you get the bigger picture. Hopefully you’re saying to yourself, “Ah, but will the clever analysis cater for users who aren’t so average or will they once again be excluded by not being ‘normal’ enough?” Excellent question — I’m glad you’re on your game and on-board.
For example, will I, as a blind keyboard-only user of a website, be flagged as a bot and banished? Will a similar fate befall switch users (like the late and much missed Prof Stephen Hawking) who use certain software settings to methodically scan through a page. Dragon users issue voice commands that instantly move the mouse from one position to another in a very non-human way. I could go on.
I hope you get the picture. Moreover, I hope that Google and other clever types working on the issue elsewhere get the picture too. They certainly haven’t to date.
Originally posted here
More thought leadership
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https://medium.com/digital-leaders-uk/ai-is-making-captcha-increasingly-cruel-for-disabled-users-1c0c994934ef
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['Digital Leaders']
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2019-02-22 16:01:23.231000+00:00
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['Artificial Intelligence', 'Online', 'Technology', 'Captcha', 'Accessibility']
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Scaling with Nginx; Cost-Performance Analysis
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Originally Posted on thekrishna.in
When you realize your system is getting slow and is unable to handle the current number of requests even with optimizations, you need to scale the system sooner than you can optimize further. Building a scalable system also drives to a lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Proper scaling in process-intensive applications embraces interesting new scenarios, notably in data analytics and machine learning. Traditionally, you have two options, Horizontal scaling, and Vertical scaling.
Pokémon Go — A Successful Scaling Story
If you downloaded the Pokémon GO app right at its launch, you might have faced several issues on server unavailability for some minutes. Based on the hype around the announcement of Pokémon GO, one might have already presumed what chaos was going on in the backend infrastructure. Pokémon Go engineers never imagined their user base would grow exponentially, exceeding the expectations within a short time. With 500+ million downloads and 20+ million daily active users, the actual traffic was 50 times more than their initial expected traffic.
This makes Pokémon GO, one of the most exciting examples of container-based development and scaling in the wild. The logic for the game runs on Google Container Engine (GKE) powered by Kubernetes. Niantic picked GKE for its capability to orchestrate their container cluster at large-scale, saving its focus on deploying live changes for their players. So by provisioning tens of thousands of cores for Niantic’s Container Engine cluster, the game brought joy into all the Pokémon Trainers around the globe.
What is Horizontal scaling?
Horizontal scaling implies that you scale a cluster by attaching more machines or nodes into your pool of resources. Scaling horizontally is like thousands of minions will do the work together for you. Increasing the number of servers present in a system is the highly used solution is in the tech industry. This will eventually decrease the load in each node while providing redundancy and flexibility, thus reducing the risks of downtimes. If you need to scale the system, just add another server, and you are done.
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https://medium.com/@krishna-alagiri/scaling-with-nginx-cost-performance-analysis-8e30f345f5d2
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['Krishnakanth Alagiri']
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2021-01-18 19:37:27.519000+00:00
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['Scalability', 'Docker', 'Kubernetes', 'Nginx']
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Create Your First Flutter App and Learn Flutter Framework
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4. Create a New Flutter Project in Android Studio
Select New Flutter Project from the File →New menu.
Screen captured by the author
You will see the following screen. Now select Flutter Application and click Next.
Screen captured by the author
Now write a project name, select the Flutter SDK path, set the project location, and click Next. For the project name, I use “short_profile”
Screen captured by the author
Now write a package name or use the default one suggested and click Finish.
Screen captured by the author
After clicking Finish, you will see the following screen.
Screen captured by the author
5. Understanding Android Studio
If you’re the first time you could watch this video tutorial to understand how to use Android Studio to create the Flutter app. Alternatively, you just follow to read the rest of the article.
How to use Flutter
Screen captured by the author
Basically, you will see this screen after creating a flutter app in android studio. Here I marked four numbers:
You can select any device, iOS simulator, or Android emulator You can run the app All the resources and source files. You can click the arrow to open any directories Console output
5.1 iOS Simulator
If you use macOS, you can install the iOS simulator. Just follow the steps described here below the macOS install.
5.2 Android Emulator
No matter what operating system you use, you can create Android Emulator to run your app on Android devices. To know how to create an android emulator follow the steps mentioned here.
Also on the above source, you will learn how to run a flutter app on real android devices.
6. Main Dart Program
Now double click main.dart file to open the code on the right side screen. And select all the code and remove it.
Screenshot captured by the author
6.1 Hello World
Now write the following code on the main.dart file. Now select Android Emulator or iOS Simulator or real device, and click Run.
You will see the following screen if you run on the iOS simulator.
Screenshot captured by the author
6.1.1 Understanding the Code
So let me discuss with you the code we’ve written so far.
At the top we wrote:
import 'package:flutter/material.dart';
This is how we import other code or libraries in a Flutter app. In this app, we are using material design. Flutter framework has built-in libraries for that and this is how we import the library.
6.1.2 main() Function
The next line is the main function. main() function is the entry point for an app. So the iOS or Android operating system will call this function to run our app.
Here for the main function, we use the arrow or fat arrow function => to define the function body. Where we used another built-in function runApp() . Within the function, we instantiate an instance of MyApp() widget.
void main() => runApp(MyApp());
6.1.3 MyApp Widget
MyApp is a stateless widget. That means this widget doesn’t contain any state.
What is a Widget?
According to the flutter dev:
Flutter widgets are built using a modern framework that takes inspiration from React. The central idea is that you build your UI out of widgets. Widgets describe what their view should look like given their current configuration and state.
And What is a State?
State is a kind of data which may change anytime. And when the data change, the view refereing to that state will re-render to show the updated data.
You can also refer to the following link to understand more:
As MyApp is a StatelessWidget , it doesn’t contain any stateful data that may change and trigger to re-render. But a stateless widget may contain a stateful widget.
In a StatelessWidget , you must have to define the build method. So we override the build method and this method returns a MaterialApp widget.
MaterialApp basically follows the material design patterns, and provides some useful widgets to create an app. To know more about it follow the source:
Within the MaterialApp we used a Scaffold widget for the home and for appBar we use AppBar Widget to show a beautiful top bar with a title.
We also used a Center widget as the body of Scaffold widget, and the Center widget has a child widget where we add a Text widget.
We also used debugShowCheckedModeBanner: false as a parameter of MaterialApp . It means to hide the debug text at the right corner.
All of these are built-in widgets, using which we create this beautiful “hello world” application.
Screenshot captured by the author
So far we used the following widgets:
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https://medium.com/level-up-programming/getting-started-with-flutter-create-your-first-flutter-app-f6dea473f57d
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['Mahmud Ahsan']
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2020-11-26 01:56:48.949000+00:00
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['Android App Development', 'Software Development', 'Software Engineering', 'Flutter', 'iOS App Development']
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Getting Started With Network Automation
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Network Automation is the “art” of automating repetitive tasks related to network provisioning, deployment, monitoring and alerting. The reason its an art is because you can conceptualize and develop very creative methods to achieve your network automation goals. You have several open source tools at your disposal that are engineered to be plug and play and provide seamless ways to get your initial automation journey started. Even though there is no real right or wrong way of doing things, a good approach is to evaluate existing solutions considering all the pros and cons and decide which pieces you may need to perhaps integrate with your own in-house frameworks that may also exist. The below points are meant to act as guidelines for the network engineer looking to introduce automation into day to day operations of a web-scale content delivery organization ( although some of these also apply to service provider networks), having already acquired the requisite coding/scripting skills.
Keep it simple: This one is a no brainer. If this is your initial foray into the world of network automation, you want to make sure the barrier to entry is kept super low. Automation frameworks can get very complex very fast (often times to their own detriment) and can easily scare network engineers away. Use just the tools you need to get the current problem solved and consider supportability and longer term maintainability. Consider the problem of automating network device configuration management. Once you start exploring whats out there, you will quickly get confused enough to want to rip your hair out. Puppet, Chef, Ansible, Salt, the options don’t seem to end. If you are willing to ignore any fancy feature sets, network configuration management really only requires a good templating engine, a scalable and procedural way to push configs out to devices and possibly some archiving/restoring capabilities. Need to automate network telemetry/ metric collection ? Keep the fancy stuff (GNMI, Streaming Telemetry) aside and start with simple XML/Netconf. Knowing exactly what you need puts you in a good position to make a sensible choice. Start with a source of truth: You have probably heard this before and it is absolutely true. A source of truth allows you to define the desired state of your network, including network inventories, ip addresses, topologies, circuits and the like. A source of truth is usually the building block around which many other automation workflows and tooling will revolve. You will find that over time, almost every single piece of automation tooling will either plug into or rely on the source of truth. Reiterating point 1 above, nothing fancy needed here: a simple relational database will suffice. Start with the current network steady state and use the source of truth to express intent for future demands. To Open Source or not to Open Source: This one is can get tricky if you are just getting started with building network automation frameworks. The general instinct for folks who have never used open source solutions with an objective mindset before is to say “since its out there, has 10k starts on github and is used by some leading tech companies, it has to be good ! So lets jump on it !” . Needless to say, this is a naive approach to adopt. Open source software is not burden free, it comes with its own set of challenges and problems including but not limited to working with code written by others (thereby losing control over bug-fixes and feature sets ) and learning often cryptic and inflexible DSLs (Domain Specific Languages ). Take the source of truth example from above. There are some really good open source solutions available for this. Unfortunately, they also excel at tying you down to a schema and API that worked best for the company that open sourced it, plus or minus some changes from the community. Fundamental tasks are often best solved by using simple, flexible in house solutions, especially when they add strategic value to your team. This allows you to get a real taste of what network automation is all about without having to navigate the complex web of open-source software. However, if you want to create a dashboard with network metrics, trying to write a time series database or a dash-boarding solution in-house without an army of engineers or expertise is simply not practical. Feel free to chose the best reviewed open source solution for this one. Get inspired by the DevOps/SRE folks: Perhaps the best resource you may already have at your disposal when you are start looking to automate your network is your in-house SRE/DevOps team (most web scale companies have one.) This is the team that is responsible for deploying, provisioning, monitoring and alerting the server fleet in your organization. Sound familiar ? Replace server with network device and you can see the similarities in the goals. For many of the common objectives, you may be able to leverage infrastructure that the server team has already laid out to build your network tooling on top of. Common examples of this are database infrastructures (time-series/sql), software orchestration and containerization solutions such as Docker, Kubernetes and alert management solutions. Optimize for scale: This is one piece of advice you will hear from almost every seasoned automation guru. Regardless of whether you manage a 10 device flat layer 2 network or a 10,000 device clos datacenter fabric, design your frameworks with scalability in mind. The last thing you want is your Python based XML collection engine to choke on more metrics than it can handle causing you to lose data-points and thus create gaps in your network monitoring. Going back to point 3 above, feel free to take inspiration from server management principles to scale and grow your network automation frameworks. Trust your traditional skills: Last but not least, remember that the person who is in the best possible position to automate a data network is the Network Engineer himself/herself. Not a Software Engineer, not a DevOps type guy with a networking background. You know the ins and outs of your network, you know the pain points that create huge manual burden and you know what it takes to find and fix problems. Trying to build a workflow to upgrade the code for thousands of devices ? You’ve been doing that manually for years already ! Trying to automate the task of taking MPLS nodes out of service ? Knowing how to steer MPLS traffic away from an LSR is half the job done. The other half is usually a matter of logistics and tracking (well maybe more than that, but you get the picture.)
Once you start exploring the world of network automation, you will most likely never look back. It can be initially hard to transition away from using your strengths (traditional networking) to mostly uncharted territory where success is not clearly defined. However, automation is a gift that keeps on giving. The more of it you adopt, the more rewarding the experience. So get your coding hats on ! (and dont forget unit tests ).
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https://medium.com/@mgaitonde/getting-started-with-network-automation-985cba142caa
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['Mayuresh Gaitonde']
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2019-05-06 07:07:46.823000+00:00
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['Network', 'DevOps', 'Network Automation', 'Network Engineering']
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How An App Is Causing People Real FOMO
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With events and networking out of the question at the moment, virtual experiences and apps are the next best thing. Now there is an audio- and members-only app that is all the rage and scoring an invite is the equivalent to getting invited to Vanity Fair’s Oscars party.
What Is The Clubhouse App?
Coming to you straight out of Silicon Valley, voices are calling it the end of Instagram. Even though this may not be entirely the case, Clubhouse is different from all other social media channels and apps as rather than using the written word or images, it is audio-only.
The way it works is essentially that once you are in, you can join chats or create your own. The allure is its exclusivity and that celebrities like Drake, Oprah, and Ashton Kutcher are some of the members. There is no recording, so you need to be part of it.
So kind of like a live podcast meets Zoom call without video.
The way Clubhouse describes itself is:
Clubhouse is a space for casual, drop-in audio conversations–with friends and other interesting people around the world. Go online anytime to chat with the people you follow, or hop in as a listener and hear what others are talking about.
So How Do You Join The Party?
Well, every member receives one invite to share. So, if you are already well-connected, you can try that route. Or you can put your name down on the waitlist and endure some more FOMO until then. Until then, you can prepare yourself with some more insights.
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https://medium.com/@sandraofalltrades/how-an-app-is-causing-people-real-fomo-d4657648b87c
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['Sandra Of All Trades']
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2020-12-25 22:47:25.053000+00:00
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['Apps', 'VIP', 'Digital Marketing', 'Celebrity', 'Social Media']
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A Life Worth Living…
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I recently picked up a copy of Tony Robbin’s Personal Power II at a garage sale.
It cost me all of $10.
When I cracked open the box, pulled out the manual and started reading the instructions, I was instantly transported back in time. Deja vu.
Because I had “faked” my way through half of the original Personal Power I tapes series many, many years ago.
Back when I was broke. Emotionally, financially and spiritually.
Today things are different.
Today Lisa and I work from the comfort of our home in Reno, Nevada.
We earn a comfortable income, drive new cars with personalized plates, give to charity, have money in the bank and have lots of free time to spend with family and friends.
Passive income and cash flow is the name of the game.
In our primary business, we have over 7,000 active distributors on our team.
We also makes tens of thousand of dollars each month blogging.
So today I’m more open to growing and exploring, and as I thumb through each of the twelve cassette tapes, it feels like I’m meeting an old friend after years of not seeing each other and playing catch up.
Familiar, yet not totally comfortable.
“Can Tony come out to play?”
Personal Power II
The course begins by suggesting you keep a journal, stating:
A life worth living is a life worth recording
… and I remember NOT starting or keeping a journal way back when because it didn’t feel like I had a life worth recording. In fact, at the time, due to a seemingly endless number of back-to-back challenges, hardships and financial setbacks — I remember feeling a little LESS THAN.
A little beat up.
Looking back, I now realize all the challenges were self-imposed. Crazy. I was a master of creating my own chaos.
What bizarre behavior.
And while I’ve created dozens of “promotional” blogs over the years to help pay the bills and feed the dog… I’ve never posted a personal blog.
Guess the time is right. So here’s my blog.
Bless and be blessed,
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https://medium.com/@robfore/a-life-worth-living-56319b4671e
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['Rob Fore']
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2019-03-27 21:35:44.436000+00:00
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['Life', 'Journaling', 'Personal Power', 'Tony Robbins']
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A newbie experience with a web application
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Hello readers!!✨👋 Want to know a newbie experience in a real web application project? You are in the right place!!💖
These last four weeks have been challenging. Learning from zero how to be part of a real work team and learning React. Which was difficult, but not impossible. I went through rough days of being in front of the computer the whole day searching and studying and still not being able to solve the problem I had. But, the key was working as a team and with a lot of communication. I had the trust of going with my team for help and fix it together. I felt multiple times, but i got back on my feet and kept pushing harder.
You need to fail to get to success -Nassim Taleb
When I was having these blockers of not being able to fix something as fast as I wanted, I started lowing my expectations of what I was able to contribute to do not feel like I was failing to my team or myself. Big mistake to do that, after I realized I was taking the wrong path I started changing my game plan and elevating my expectations. The trick was trying to maintain optimism and realism.
Low expectations don’t mean not getting disappointed when good things happen. -Tali Sharot
Once I set these new goals and a new mindset, I started understanding the way of working as a team and how important is to have the organization with every single task related to the project. We made a board on Asana with all the tasks divided between front-end and back-end and we were taking new tasks as the old ones were completed. We mapped everything we needed to do and due dates. Of course, we had some problems and blockers but having this organization helped to get back on our feet. Also, we started the project by implementing continuous integration. It was one of the best decisions we could have done.
Checklists are tools to make experts better -Atul Gawande “Anything fragile eventually breaks and, anything robust would survive.”
-Nassim Nicholas
To conclude this post I want to emphasize how doing pair programming helped me. I am so thankful for the people I had the opportunity to share this experience with because every each of them left me an apprenticeship, both technical and personal.
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https://medium.com/@marianayazp/my-experience-in-a-web-application-project-cfeceaca1641
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['Mariana Yañez']
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2020-11-24 04:48:37.103000+00:00
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['Team Collaboration', 'Agile Methodology', 'Web App Development', 'Organization', 'Pair Programming']
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The 43 ICOs Opening This Week
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Below are the 43 ICOs opening this week, and as we do each week we’ve chosen a momentum pick of the bunch that we think is worth taking a closer look at. This week, it’s Bee Token, a decentralized Airbnb, that opens its preregistration list-only crowdsale on Jan. 31. Read our analysis on Bee Token here, as well as how it fares up against our questions every cryptocurrency investor must ask.
If we missed any ICOs, let us now in the comments below or in our Telegram forum.
Bee Token (BEE)
Documentation
Forum
Crowdsale open date: Jan. 31
Hard cap: 15M USD
Bee Token is building a home sharing network similar to Airbnb on the blockchain — a peer-to-peer network of hosts and guests.
WePower (WPR)
Documentation
Forum
Crowdsale open date: Jan. 30
Hard cap: 40M USD
WePower is a green energy trading platform that enables green energy producers to raise capital by issuing tradable energy tokens.
Medicalchain (MDT)
Documentation
Forum
Crowdsale open date: Feb. 1
Hard cap: 30M USD
Medicalchain is a service that will store medical records on a distributed ledger, so that a patient’s entire history can be accessible in one place by every organization and medical professional.
Republic Protocol (REN)
Documentation
Forum
Crowdsale open date: Feb. 3
Hard cap: 35,000 ETH
Republic Protocol is a so-called “dark pool” for cross-chain private trading of Ether, ERC20 tokens and Bitcoin pairs.
Sapien Network (SPN)
Documentation
Forum
Presale open date: Jan. 31
Crowdsale open date: Mar. 3
Hard cap: 30M USD
Sapien is building a social news network that will reward content creators and curators.
Blockport (BPT)
Documentation
Forum
Crowdsale open date: Feb. 1
Hard cap: 9M USD
Blockport aims to create a user-friendly social cryptocurrency exchange combining social trading with a hybrid-decentralized architecture.
Credits (CS)
Documentation
Forum
Crowdsale open date: Feb. 1
Hard cap: N/A
Credits is a blockchain platform with a native cryptocurrency designed to create services for blockchain systems using a public data registry and self-executing smart contracts.
Metronome (MTN)
Documentation
Forum
Crowdsale open date: Feb. 1
Hard cap: 30M USD
Metronome is a cross-blockchain cryptocurrency from BloqLabs.
BBCoin
Documentation
Forum
Crowdsale open date: Feb. 1
Hard cap: 52M USD
BBCoin is a tokenized business-to-business marketing, sales and trade platform.
AdHive (ADH)
Documentation
Forum
Presale open date: Jan. 30
Crowdsale open date: Feb. 21
Hard cap: 17.5M USD
AdHive is an AI-powered influencer marketing platform.
Vicetoken (VIT)
Documentation
Forum
Crowdsale open date: Feb. 1
Hard cap: N/A
Vicetoken is an adult entertainment platform that is powered by its native cryptocurrency to pay content creators and other participants in the network including viewers and content curators.
Datawallet (DXT)
Documentation
Forum
Crowdsale open date: Feb. 5
Hard cap: 30M USD
Datawallet is building a self-sovereign wallet and data exchange allowing users to monetize their data.
Crowd Genie (CGCOIN)
Documentation
Forum
Crowdsale open date: Jan. 31
Hard cap: N/A
Crowd Genie is building a lending platform compliant with the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
Gimmer (GMR)
Documentation
Forum
Crowdsale open date: Feb. 1
Hard cap: 35,000 ETH
Gimmer is a platform that allows users to create their own cryptocurrency trading portfolio using bots.
Hero (HERO)
Documentation
Forum
Crowdsale open date: Feb. 1
Hard cap: 250,000 ETH
Hero is a financial services product for the “unbanked” in Southeast Asia.
Winding Tree (LIF)
Documentation
Forum
Crowdsale open date: Feb. 1
Hard cap: N/A
Winding Tree is a business-to-business travel distribution marketplace.
Lydian (LDN)
Documentation
Forum
Crowdsale open date: Jan. 30
Hard cap: 100M USD
Lydian coin is a utility token to provide digital marketing services to blockchain projects and ICO startups. It was briefly promoted by Paris Hilton until she distanced herself from the project after founder Gurbasksh Chahal was charged for several domestic violence counts.
Vehicle Lifecycle Blockchain (VLB)
Documentation
Forum
Presale open date: Feb. 5
Crowdsale open date: Mar. 12
Hard cap: 12M USD
VLB tokens are a utility token to power payments in the vehicle industry, including repairs, auto lenders, dealers, insurance, OEMs and car buyers.
IQeon (IQN)
Documentation
Forum
Crowdsale open date: Jan. 30
Hard cap: 20,000 ETH
IQeon is building an infrastructure to allow the integration of games, applications and services.
Synthestech (STT)
Documentation
Forum
Crowdsale open date: Feb. 1
Hard cap: N/A
Synthestech is building a technology for the synthesis of precious metals via cold transmutation.
CEEK (CEEK)
Documentation
Forum
Crowdsale open date: Feb. 5
Hard cap: 30M USD
Ceek is creating a token that will allow token holders to participate in virtual reality entertainment experiences as well as tokenized rewards.
Vestarin (VST)
Documentation
Forum
Presale open date: Jan. 30
Crowdsale open date: Mar. 5
Hard cap: N/A
Vestarin is building a multi-service platform for consumers including crypto payments, investments, conversions and messaging.
SupChain (ACR)
Documentation
Forum
Crowdsale open date: Feb. 1
Hard cap: N/A
SupChain, from Ukrainian refractories manufacturer Armor Ceramics, is building a protocol to store and access refractories data.
LiveTree Adept (SEED)
Documentation
Forum
Crowdsale open date: Jan. 31
Hard cap: 174,000 ETH
LiveTree is a film and TV rights funding and distribution platform.
Ad Funnel (FNL)
Documentation
Forum
Crowdsale open date: Feb. 1
Hard cap: N/A
Ad Funnel aims to create a mobile and desktop application to aggregate crypto related content.
Safekeet (SKT)
Documentation
Forum
Crowdsale open date: Feb. 1
Hard cap: N/A
Safekeet is a France-based decentralized file storage platform.
BeConnect (BCT)
Documentation
Forum
Crowdsale open date: Feb. 1
Hard cap: N/A
BeConnect’s token is an open-source cryptocurrency to power a lending platform.
Wys Token (WYS)
Documentation
Forum
Crowdsale open date: Jan. 31
Hard cap: 107,596 ETH
Wys Token provides advertisers access to consumers who in turn receive discounts on products. The platform also allows individuals to trade data and attract advertisers for more benefits and rewards.
Ellcrys (ELL)
Documentation
Forum
Presale open date: Feb. 1
Crowdsale open date: Mar. 30
Hard cap: 55M USD
Ellcrys is a blockchain network allowing anyone to start, join or contribute to open-source development of software products and receive compensation for their contributions.
Patron (PAT)
Documentation
Forum
Crowdsale open date: Feb. 1
Hard cap: 40M USD
Patron is seeking to tokenize influencer social media by connecting brands to influencers.
Crypto N Kafe (CNK)
Documentation
Forum
Crowdsale open date: Feb. 4
Hard cap: 51,000 ETH
Crypto N Kafe is a coffee-trading marketplace to support small farmers and roasters in Africa, tokenizing the supply chain system.
Royal Cash (RCC)
Documentation
Forum
Crowdsale open date: Feb. 5
Hard cap: 30M USD
Royal Cash is a Hong Kong-based esports betting and gaming platform.
Pinnacle (BRIL)
Documentation
Forum
Crowdsale open date: Jan. 31
Hard cap: 26.99M USD
Pinnacle is a Stellar-based token that will power a multi-exchange investment network with trading automation and account management functions for the user. It aims to connect all brokerages and exchanges onto a single platform.
Gron Digital (GRO)
Documentation
Forum
Crowdsale open date: Feb. 6
Hard cap: 57,000 ETH
Gron Digital is building a gambling and betting platform on which GRO tokens are used by participants in exchange for value and services provided.
Eticket4 (ET4)
Documentation
Forum
Crowdsale open date: Jan. 30
Hard cap: 13,800 ETH
Eticket4 is a secondary ticket reselling marketplace on which buyers can forecast ticket price fluctuations and buy when deals are best. The platform will also offer loyalty rewards as well as analytical tools for ticket brokers.
Cryptotask (CTF)
Documentation
Forum
Crowdsale open date: Feb. 3
Hard cap: 30M USD
Cryptotask is a task market for freelance workers with a peer review system.
Kleos (KLS)
Documentation
Forum
Crowdsale open date: Feb. 5
Hard cap: 30,000 ETH
Kleos is a knowledge-sharing platform allowing users to ask questions and receive answers on topics of their interest. The KLS token will reward authors for their content and readers for their engagement with the posted content.
Etherty (ETY)
Documentation
Forum
Presale open date: Feb. 1
Crowdsale open date: Mar. 15
Hard cap: 51,000 ETH
Etherty is real estate platform allowing users to list and sell their property. The platform also includes analytics to price the real estate property according to the platform’s historical data of real estate price fluctuations.
Kodakcoin
Crowdsale open date: Jan. 31
Hard cap: N/A
KodakOne is a platform for registering and securing image rights, receiving royalty payments and distributing licensed images. The token will be used to book flights, hotels, models and event space.
Chain ID (CID)
Documentation
Forum
Crowdsale open date: Feb. 1
Hard cap: N/A
Chain ID is a platform for the organization of IDs and credentials such as diplomas and licenses
Coinzai (CZI)
Documentation
Crowdsale open date: Feb. 1
Hard cap: N/A
Coinzai is a payment provider with an integrated cashback solution, providing a range of services for cryptocurrency owners including a debit card, wallet and payment processor.
ZTrust (ZTR)
Documentation
Crowdsale open date: Feb. 4
Hard cap: N/A
ZTrust is an anonymous reputation protocol providing total anonymity, powered by ZK-SNArKs and Ethereum.
Mithril One (MORE)
Documentation
Crowdsale open date: Feb. 5
Hard cap: N/A
Mithril Ore is an Ethereum Casper mining pool.
|
https://medium.com/tokenreport/the-43-icos-opening-this-week-2df6c488ff0a
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['Seline Jung']
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2018-01-30 21:26:38.696000+00:00
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['Ethereum', 'ICO', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoin', 'Blockchain']
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TOP PICKS FROM DVF FOR THE WOMAN IN CHARGE
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“Accept the reality, embrace the challenge, and deal with it. Be in charge of your own life.
Turn negatives into positives and be proud to be a woman.”
-Diane Von Furstenburg
Last week, I had an absolute pinch-me moment when I got to host the queen Diane Von Furstenburg at her annual Neiman Marcus fashion show in Chicago. Seriously, I am so honored and it is honestly one of the highlights of my career so far. Diane has inspired me so much, and it was amazing to see the way she inspired so many people at her talk and fashion show.
I have no words to express what an amazing and talented woman and designer Diane is. While I was unpacking for my move, I found my copy of her book and was moved by her story of how she was influenced by her mother, who was a holocaust survivor. I saw so many commonalities between us, including her mission to be a voice for women’s empowerment.
Her branding has always been designed for the Woman in Charge, and that was evident in the clothing in her fashion show! I believe every woman deserves to see these pieces, so here are some of her best-sellers and my personal favorites from the show (with a little styling advice to make them look their best).
LEOPARD GOWN AND FUR COAT
I wore this combination for the event with DVF herself! I’ve been warming up to leopard lately and this outfit was the perfect debut for me to dive into the trend. The gown is a beautiful wine red color with velvet leopard spots — it’s beyond luxurious. The faux fur coat adds even more glam and a nice contrasting element. I will definitely be wearing the dress and coat again, since the dress is perfect for formal events, and the faux fur coat can be dressed up or down and worn with just about anything!
ELECTRIC YELLOW GOWN
When the model walked out in this stunning number, my jaw dropped! Not only is the color really eye-catching, but the shape is incredibly flattering too. This dress is my #1 suggestion for anyone shopping for a great gala dress this season–you will definitely be the eye candy of any room.
FUSCHIA WRAP JUMPSUIT
DVF invented the wrap dress, and she is killing it again with this wrap jumpsuit. The silhouette is classic yet fresh, and it is totally sexy-chic. This fuschia color has been one of my obsessions for the last few months so this was an exciting new way to see it (although the jumpsuit is available in black too!). This is a must-have piece that can be worn year-round, with a bright shoe for a pop of color and an eye-catching bag.
MIDI SEQUIN PARTY DRESS
This might have been the most fun look in the show! The model wore it with a little cropped sequin jacket (not available yet) and danced around in this flowy, sparkly dress. This piece is fun but also really versatile, so I can imagine it being worn by day with a tee shirt and sneakers, or by night with a leather jacket and neon pumps.
SEQUIN WRAP DRESS
It is no secret that DVF knows how to make an amazing wrap dress, but she really outdid herself with this sequin version. The way this dress sparkles in real life is insane! I love that this dress has total party vibes, but is also super appropriate for business and work events. I would love to see this styled with tall white boots or an edgy statement heel.
SEQUIN FLARE PANTS
Can’t get enough of the sequins in this collection! I included a pair of sequin pants in my recent Zara must-haves post, so I was excited to see this elevated version at the show. I am totally picturing these sequin pants with an oversized sweater and a bright shoe for an elevated weekday look. But these pants can be perfect for a night out or event as well, with a chic blouse, statement blazer, and classic pump.
YELLOW SUIT
If you know me, you know how much I adore power suits! They always make me feel really confident and put-together, and they are truly made for the Woman in Charge. This color especially is perfect for boss women because it is beautifully bold and makes a statement at any time of the year. This suit is a staple for sure and belongs in the closet of every powerful woman!
ABSTRACT PRINT TUNIC DRESS
Diane herself was wearing a suit in this pattern to the event, so of course, I loved it right away. After all, Diane’s fun prints are such an important part of her iconic style! This tunic silhouette is beautifully classic and made more stylish with colorful abstract circle details. The collar and button-down detail makes the dress work and business-appropriate, while still showing a lot of personality.
METALLIC PATTERN RUCHED MINI DRESS
Another gorgeous party dress gifted to us in this amazing collection by DVF! This one is all things flirty, fun, and of course, fashionable. I absolutely adore the sheer sleeves and the flattering ruching detail at the waist. This would look amazing styled with bright white boots and a colorful statement bag, perfect for any fun occasion!
NEON ABSTRACT PRINT COAT
Saving quite possibly the best for last… I completely fell in love with this coat the second I saw it, and I could not stop staring! Not only is the color totally rich and eye-catching, but the abstract print is also so epic. The texturized wool couldn’t have been a better choice–wool is a great contrast to the sleek, chic color and design of the rest of the coat. This should definitely be a top wish list item for every woman who loves to make a statement with a single piece!
NEON PRINT WIDE-LEG PANTS
This fabulous bold print is also available in wide-leg pants. These would pair amazingly with a crop top, edgy jacket, and sleek pumps. They have an elastic tie waistband and pockets, so they are also the perfect stylish lounge pant.
These are some of the most amazing pieces in DVF’s best collection yet, and I really enjoyed channeling the energy of meeting her into these styles. Thank you all for all the congratulations you sent on the event, and for supporting me to work with a designer as amazing as DVF. These pieces are so gorgeous and have so much story behind them, and I hope you will feel as powerful as I did wearing them!
Check out the entire DVF collection at Neiman Marcus. What are your favorite pieces?
Xoxo,
Tali
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https://medium.com/@talikogan/top-picks-from-dvf-for-the-woman-in-charge-6b4a214c388f
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['Tali Kogan']
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2019-11-27 11:18:07.323000+00:00
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['Style', 'Fashion', 'Neiman Marcus', 'Diane Von Furstenberg']
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TechNY Daily
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TechNY Daily
Keeping the NYC Tech Industry Informed and Connected
1. NYC’s Bizzabo, an online platform for event organizers, has raised $138 million in a Series E funding. Insight Partners led the round and was joined by investors including Viola Growth, Next47 and OurCrowd. Bizzabo’s platform can be used to plan and run both virtual and in-person conferences. (www.bizzabo.com) (TechCrunch)
2. Tom Brady and John Mayer have invested in NYC’s Hodinkee, a content and e-commerce site for high end watches. Other investors in the $40 million Series B round included TCG, GV (Google Ventures), LVMH Luxury Ventures, True Ventures and Future Shape. (www.hodinkee.com) (Forbes)
3. NYC co-living startup Ollie has been acquired by a competitor, San Francisco’s Starcity. The purchase price for the acquisition of Ollie’s assets and roommate-matching technology was not disclosed. Ollie, which had raised a total of $15 million from investors including the Moinian Group, and the Texas Employees Retirement System, operates co-living spaces in NYC, Los Angeles and Boston. (www.ollie.co) (The Real Deal)
4. Brooklyn’s Actasys, a startup that applies aerodynamic principles to solve problems in the automotive industries, has raised $5 million in a seed funding.The round was led by Volvo Cars Tech Fund and NextGear Ventures. The company’s ActaJet product uses air to clean vehicle sensors. (www.actasysinc.com) (BusinessWire)
_________________________________________________________________
Small Planet partners with the world’s most innovative companies to create inspired apps and websites. Development, UX design, monetization strategies, user acquisition, and more. Contact us. (Sponsored Content)
_______________________________________________________________
5. NYC’s Current, a digital “challenger” bank, has raised $131 million in a Series C funding. NYC’s Tiger Global Management led the round and was joined by Sapphire Ventures, Avenir, Foundation Capital, Wellington Management Company and QED Investors. Current, which started as a teen debit card controlled by parents, now is offering digital banking services to more than two million members. (www.current.com) (TechCrunch)
6 NYC’s Materialize, an SQL database platform for streaming data, has raised $32 million in a Series B funding. Venerable Silicon Valley VC firm Kleiner Perkins led the round with participation by Lightspeed Ventures. The company’s platform implements an SQL interface for streaming data. (www.materialize.com) (PR Newswire)
7. NYC’s Funnel (formerly, Nestio), a platform that helps landlords manage rental portfolios, has raised $14 million in a Series AA funding. RET Ventures led the round and was joined by Trinity Ventures and Camber Creek. Funnel’splatform is an inventory management tool for landlords which includes an AI-powered bot that responds to potential renters in real time. (www.funnelleasing.com) (The Real Deal)
8. NYC’s Hellosaurus, an e-learning video platform for kids, has raised $3.5 million in a seed funding. General Catalyst led the round with participation by GSV Ventures, Shrug Capital, Next 10 Ventures, BDMI, Runway Fund, GFC, as well as Dave Gilboa (Founder, Warby Parker), Neil Blumenthal (Founder, Warby Parker), Jeff Raider (Founder, Warby Parker, Harry’s), and Joey Zwillinger (Founder, Allbirds) through their Good Friends fund. The company’s app is a video platform for kids filled with episodes they can interactive with instead of just watch. (www.hellosaurus.com) (GlobeNewswire)
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Panel includes TechNY’s Paul Goodman
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TechNY Recruit Jobs
Job Postings are on sale. Contact us at [email protected]
Circle (new)
Circle was founded on the belief that blockchains and digital currency will rewire the global economic system, creating a fundamentally more open, inclusive, efficient and integrated world economy.
Solutions Engineer
Director, Account Management
Enterprise Sales Director (Banking and Financial Services)
Senior Software Engineer, Frontend
Manager, Software Engineering
Agilis Chemicals
Transforming chemical industry with modern commerce technology
Full-stack Engineer
Business Development Manager — Enterprise SaaS
Marketing Director — Enterprise SaaS
LiveAuctioneers
Awarded for four consecutive years as one of Crain’s 100 Best Places to Work in NYC, LiveAuctioneers is the largest online marketplace for one-of-a-kind items, rare collectibles, and coveted goods.
Product Marketing Manager
Senior Marketing Manager
Lukka
We are a SaaS solution that makes crypto accounting easy. We are a trusted, blockchain-native technology team that is passionate about digital asset technology. Our team is continuously collaborating and designing new products and initiatives to expand our market presence. Technology and customers are at the center of our universe. We dedicate our energy to learning, building, adapting, and achieving impactful results.
Customer Success Specialist
Third Party Risk Manager or Director
Sales Proposal Manager
Summer
Summer’s mission is to help the 45 million Americans burdened by student debt save time and money through smart, algorithm-based recommendations. Summer combines policy expertise and innovative technology to serve student loan borrowers across the country.
Back-End Engineer
Logikcull.com
Our mission: To democratize Discovery.
Enterprise Account Executive
The Dipp
A personalized subscription site for pop culture’s biggest fans.
Director of Engineering
Ridgeline
Founded by Dave Duffield (founder and former CEO of Workday and PeopleSoft) in 2017, Ridgeline’s goal is to revolutionize technology for the investment management industry. We are building an end-to-end cloud platform on a modern infrastructure using AWS, serverless technologies, which up to this point hasn’t been done in the enterprise space.
Software Engineering Manager, UI
Simon Data
Simon Data is the only enterprise customer data platform with a fully-integrated marketing cloud. Our platform empowers businesses to leverage enterprise-scale big data and machine learning to power customer communications in any channel.
Senior Front-End Engineer
Product Designer
Director, Enterprise Sales
Full Stack Engineer
Vestwell
Retirement made easy.
Senior Fullstack Engineer
Package Free
Package Free is on a mission to make the world less trashy though offering products that help you reduce waste daily. We source our products from individuals and brands with missions to create a positive environmental impact and since launching, have diverted over 100 million pieces of trash from landfills.
Head of Operations
Hyperscience
Hyperscience is the automation company that enables data to flow within and between the world’s leading firms in financial services, insurance, healthcare and government markets. Founded in 2014 and headquartered in New York City with offices in Sofia, Bulgaria and London, UK, we’ve raised more than $50 million raised to date and are growing quickly. We welcome anyone who believes in big ideas and demonstrates a willingness to learn, and we’re looking for exceptional talent to join our team and make a difference in our organization and for our customers.
Machine Learning Engineer
Senior Security Engineer
Braavo
Braavo provides on demand funding for mobile apps and games. We offer a flexible and affordable funding alternative to the traditional sources of capital like working with a VC or bank. We’re changing the way mobile entrepreneurs finance and grow their app businesses. Our predictive technology delivers on demand, performance-based funding, without dilution or personal guarantees. By providing non-dilutive, yet scalable alternatives to equity, we’re helping founders retain control of their companies.
Business Development Manager
VP of Marketing
Head of Sales
Yogi
At Yogi, we help companies decipher customer feedback, from ratings and reviews to surveys and support requests. Companies are inundated with feedback, but when it comes to turning this data into actionable business decisions, most companies fall short. That’s where Yogi fits in.
Full Stack Software Engineer
Ordergroove
We’re passionate marketers, engineers and innovators building the technology to power the future of commerce. We’re a B2B2 SaaS platform helping the world’s most interesting retailers and direct-to-consumer brands remove friction from the customer experience to deliver recurring revenue through subscriptions programs — shifting their consumer interactions from one-and-done transactions to long-lived, highly profitable relationships.
Data Scientist
Upper90
Upper90 is an alternative credit manager based in New York City that has deployed over $500m within 18 months of inception.
Investor Relations Analyst
Upscored
UpScored is the only career site that uses data science to connect you with jobs suited specifically to you while automatically learning your career interests. Its AI-powered platform decreases job search time by 90%, showing you the jobs you’re most likely to get (and want) in less than 2 minutes.
Data Engineer
Senior Frontend Developer
Senior Backend Developer
Frame.io
Frame.io is a video review and collaboration platform designed to unify media assets and creative conversations in a user-friendly environment. Headquartered in New York City, Frame.io was developed by filmmakers, VFX artists and post production executives. Today, we support nearly 1 million media professionals at enterprises including Netflix, Buzzfeed, Turner, NASA & Vice Media.
Frontend Engineering Manager
Sr. Swift Engineer
Lead Product Designer
Attentive
Attentive is a personalized text messaging platform built for innovative e-commerce and retail brands. We raised a $230M Series D in September 2020 and are backed by Sequoia, Bain Capital Ventures, Coatue, and other top investors. Attentive was named #8 on LinkedIn’s 2020 Top Startups list, and has been selected by Forbes as one of America’s Best Startup Employers.
Enterprise Account Executive
Sales Development Representative
Senior Client Strategy Manager
Director of Client Strategy
KeyMe
NYC startup revolutionizing the locksmith industry with innovative robotics and mobile technology.
Customer Experience Representative
Inbound Phone Sales Representative
Systems Software Engineer
Button
Button’s mission is to build a better way to do business in mobile.
Enterprise Sales Director — New York
Postlight
Postlight is building an extraordinary team that loves to make great digital products — come join us!
Full Stack Engineer
Deliver your job listings directly to 48,000 members of the NYC tech community at an amazingly low cost. Find out how: [email protected]
____________
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|
https://medium.com/@smallplanetapps/techny-daily-3cf9054c13a0
|
['Small Planet']
|
2020-12-09 19:21:57.308000+00:00
|
['Technology News', 'Venture Capital', 'Startup', 'Funding', 'Technews']
|
Trump Admin Author Bios for the Year 2020
|
Mike Pence is a Christian, a Conservative and an Author in that order. His guidance on how to achieve a healthy Christian marriage has helped thousands of couples struggling to cope with the challenges of a godless world. Mike pioneered the renown SAFE DINNERS® strategy which transformed the way Christian couples build their sense of trust in a society which worships gay pornography, working women and carnal temptation. He was voted one of the Top 10 Most Influential Marital Self-Help Authors of the past quarter-century by OneMillionMoms.com. He lives in Indiana with his wife, Mother.
Jared Kushner always dreamed of writing mystical fables set in a New Jersey suburb. Inspired in equal parts by Isaac Bashevis Singer and Shmuly Boteach, Jared captivates readers with his colorful tales of ‘Mendel the Schmendel’ who always finds himself embroiled in a hilarious misunderstanding. The halachic hijinks and family foibles of the Schmendels have been called “the embodiment of oy ” by The Forvertz. He lives with his wife and three children in exile.
Dr. KellyAnne Conway is an internationally acclaimed lifestyle guru, a New York Times bestselling author and a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Her ingenious and completely original approach to wellness and brain plasticity has enabled millions of people to fulfil their dreams, find their soulmates and become wealthy. Her latest book is considered to be a foolproof cure for cancer. Oprah called Dr. KellyAnne “The world’s most perfect person and my best friend.” She has sold over a billion books in every language. Live. Laugh. Lie.
Jefferson Beauregard Sessions was a United States Senator. His photo-essay collection, Lost Monuments: A Portrait of the South has been called “visually stunning” by Gateway Pundit. He lives in 1962.
Carter Page is an international man of mystery. His bio is so generic that it literally includes workplaces with names such as Global Energy Capital and Eurasia Group. He’s known for his singular ability to leave so little impression on other people that they forget his existence moments after he’s left the room and sometimes sooner. The loner hero of his thriller series, Jack McMann, roams small towns in America seeking справедливость. Carter lives under a pseudonym in Suffolk or Ulster or maybe Otsego County.
Steve Bannon is a former media executive, investment banker and Biosphere visionary. In 2019, he launched a videoblog series with creative partner Michael D. Cohen about “starting over in midlife and getting your voice heard”. The videos spawned a community of like-minded men who dare to express themselves freely on the internet. His young adult novel, The Fault in Others has been optioned by legendary Hollywood producer Steve Mnuchin. He lives in Leavenworth, Kansas with his roommate and pet snake, Milo.
Wayne Tracker is a former CEO of ExxonMobil. In his groundbreaking new book, Crude is the New Black, Tracker makes a compelling argument for a return to the “good old days of fossil fuels”. He lives in the best little gated community in Texas.
Hope Hicks is a former Ralph Lauren model. Her inspiring feminist-ish manifesto ‘The Gatekeeper’ has helped dozens of women leave toxic relationship and rebrand themselves. She lives in a town called Soap.
Roger Stone is the author of the beloved Where’s Roger? series which takes modern history enthusiasts on a wild ride through the JFK era and beyond. See if you can spot the tiny tattooed figure of Roger summoning Roy Cohn on a ouija board or handing a chapstick microphone to G. Gordon Liddy. But don’t fall for the red herrings amidst the montages — sometimes it’s just Henry Kissinger helping a Chilean war criminal or Newt Gingrich stalking the Clintons. With delightful illustrations evoking the worst political deceptions in contemporary American history, Where’s Roger? is already entrenched in the damaged psyche of this great and deeply troubled nation.
Sean Spicer held a series of odd jobs, none of which worked out. Yet one day he found himself invited to celebrity A-list parties while Harvard threw money at him. Failing Up is Sean’s stirring account of his uplifting journey. Spicer shows readers how a unique combination of chromosomal make-up and melanin constraint can help some people avoid the consequences of their truly terrible decisions. He lives with his wife, Lindsay Lohan.
Mike Flynn is a writer, playwright and a performer. He is best known for his rhyming stories for children about ‘Flipper the Canary’. He is a sought after dinner guest and speaker famous for his unique, fiery style. His work has been translated into Urdu and Farsi. He is represented by his agent, Sergey Kislyak.
Stephen Miller is a proud former member of the Trump Administration. He writes about the white race and edits the bi-monthly Ted Nugent fanzine, Rockin’ Me Again. He lives alone.
|
https://medium.com/slackjaw/selected-author-bios-2020-a6f6e718bbee
|
['Devorah Blachor']
|
2020-12-10 09:11:28.745000+00:00
|
['Satire', 'Politics', 'News', 'Donald Trump', 'Humor']
|
Böğürtlen Kışı
|
in The Lives of Writers
|
https://medium.com/@kitapkesficandyy/b%C3%B6%C4%9F%C3%BCrtlen-k%C4%B1%C5%9F%C4%B1-2b9870258942
|
[]
|
2020-12-22 14:27:13.313000+00:00
|
['Writer', 'Kitap İncelemesi', 'Kitap', 'Readinglist', 'Blogger']
|
Steer Initiative: Steering Education in African Communities
|
Poster Credit: Steer Initiative
Poster Credit: Steer Initiative
Africa suffers deep gaps in its educational sector, where many communities and children lack access to education. About 60% of youths between 15 to 17 years old are out of school. About one third and one-fifth of children between the ages of 12 & 14 and 6 &11, respectively are out of school.
In addition, the quality of education delivered is poor. There is limited access to learning materials such as textbooks, a shortage of teachers, and in many cases supply of poor quality teachers. Classrooms and learning conditions are poorly designed, and children also lack access to basic school amenities, such as restrooms, electricity, and water. Moreso, the educational systems across many African countries are outdated.
There is also a growing gap in gender equality in education. Many girls are out of school because, in many communities, boy education is prioritized more than girl education. Compared to 19% of boys, 23% of girls are out of school, and this gap increases as they progress in age.
|
https://medium.com/steer-initiatives-steering-education-program/steering-education-in-african-communities-2367af5abde9
|
['Steer Initiative']
|
2020-12-13 11:36:16.603000+00:00
|
['Girls Education', 'Learning', 'Education', 'Children', 'Education Reform']
|
What’s social about distancing?
|
What’s social about distancing?
Credit: Mike Dorner
What is it that we miss (or missed) the most during quarantine?
I use the word quarantine as it’s the commonly accepted term to indicate the time of social distancing we’re spending at home in an attempt to stop CoVid-19 from spreading further.
Even though quarantine literally means “a time frame of forty days”, for most of us, it has been far more than that before slowly going back to any embryonal form of ordinary life.
There’s most certainly not just one answer as it depends both on personal inclinations and a person’s current situation however, the first thing people tried to get around while on quarantine was the sudden lack of conviviality by finding new ways of social interaction. Actual face-to-face interaction, something that lately, we were consciously or unconsciously avoiding almost to the extent of becoming low key terrified by it.
We started using FaceTime, HouseParty, Skype, Hangouts… you name it, as never before.
Source: Google Trends (Worldwide)
It’s about conviviality in the end, isn’t it?
How come that in a time when fear of death broke into our everyday lives as probably never before for most of us, our first urge, ok maybe second after the quest for food and toilet paper, is to rebuild the bridges of companionship with friends, family and loved ones?
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs puts belongingness and love on the third level of the pyramid however, it’s the first step of the second block, so basically it’s the most fundamental of our psychological needs.
Maybe though, in desperate times such as these, the pyramid undergoes what I would call a turnover and perhaps, the separation between physical and psychological becomes thinner, and safety comes not only by having enough food in the pantry but through that ancestral need of belonging to your tribe.
I guess that in current times, that idea of belonging could be identified also as “conviviality” which doesn’t necessarily depend on a place but it drills down to the act of sharing.
The environment helps of course but most of all, conviviality is about feeling connected to one another. Even in days like these, each of us found a way recreate conviviality with friends, family and loved ones, despite being physically apart.
Conviviality makes us feel stronger and when we feel stronger together, we feel we can overcome anything, perhaps even death.
|
https://medium.com/@selene-feige-cele/whats-social-about-distancing-c6b1f1044961
|
['Selene Feige']
|
2020-05-20 15:41:01.087000+00:00
|
['Socialdistancing', 'Human Behavior', 'Social Media', 'Technology', 'Covid 19 Crisis']
|
Do You Have it in You to Be an Empathetic Leader?
|
Leadership in its true essence is more about helping others than yourself. Empathy means the ability to understand the needs of those around you. Empathy is an essential quality of an effective leader.
As a leader, you must be aware of what those who have chosen to follow you are thinking and feeling. This will help you in defining your relationship with your team and lead more effectively.
It should not be misunderstood here that as a leader you are supposed to agree with the viewpoint of others, but it means that you are willing to acknowledge and appreciate their concerns.
Empathy is often misconstrued as a quality that makes leaders weak and ‘touchy-feely’. The reality is that an empathetic leader understands the strengths and skills of people better.
As a leader who practices empathy you also gain the trust to be able to push your team to work on themselves, enhance their capabilities, and lead and inspire them to thrive in the right direction.
“Empathy is the foundation of a true leader.”
Traits of an Empathetic Leader
The three key traits of an empathetic and effective leader are:
- Being a Good listener
- Non-judgmental
- Heightened Emotional intelligence
Empathetic leaders should be good listeners so that they can communicate efficiently with people. This does not mean that talkative people are not empathetic leaders.
“Sharing your thoughts and expectations with people is equally important to listening to them.”
However, you must know when to talk, when to listen, and more importantly what to say after they talk. This is only possible when you establish an open and fair communication channel with people.
Empathetic leaders are non-judgmental, and they respect the differences of opinions in the team. Even when some people are in direct disagreement with them, leaders must first understand their perception and reasons behind opinions.
Instead of judging if they’re right or wrong in having such feelings, empathetic leaders should acknowledge their thoughts and then decide on what is best for the organization.
Finally, emotional intelligence is of utmost importance for empathetic leaders. You should analyze the feelings of people in an objective manner and not let personal biases influence your decisions. This will not only strengthen your bond with people you serve, but also instill their faith in your leadership.
Significance of Empathy in Leadership
It is often observed in the workplace that managers expect their employees to conform to their thoughts and ideas. For instance, many managers expect their teams to work very long hours consistently without even considering that each individual may have a different personal situation at their home.
This makes employees feel that their managers are insensitive towards the concerns of the team and they end up getting painted as an enemy. Each team member then starts looking out for their own emotional interest which eventually disrupts the workplace.
Noticed I called these types of leaders, managers? The above are not the traits of a leader.
“An empathetic leader ensures that the feelings of the employees are never overlooked or ignored.”
Empathy lays down the foundation of the most important element in the workplace — trust.
You can never be an effective leader if your team doesn’t trust you. When you show that you are considerate towards the feelings of your employees and understand their concerns even when you don’t agree with them over a few things, you develop trust.
Employees notice when you are acknowledging their feelings and respect their personal opinions. Once you bond with employees and they trust you, you can then inspire them to succeed by mentoring them where they are lacking.
This will further strengthen your relationship with the team, increase collaboration with them, and improve the overall productivity in the organization.
Developing Empathy
Empathy is not a special talent or something that needs years of experience. It is not something hard to grasp or difficult to inculcate. All it requires on your part is some forethought.
Simply take a step back in any situation and try thinking about what others are feeling around you rather than focusing on how you feel.
It does not mean that you have to disregard your own feelings. But when you are working with a team and they are looking up to you, it becomes your responsibility to handle things with care when they are hurt, irritated, or upset.
“An empathetic leader focuses first on what people are experiencing instead of focusing only on their own feelings.”
You must consider them as individuals with personal lives and not just employees. When you start treating them right with respect, they will also trust your leadership skills. You can then focus on the mutual growth of the team that will lead to efficient and considerate work culture.
Being an empathetic leader builds trust and strengthens your relationship with people. They will see that you care, value, and understand them.
When you are not judging them, you will be able to get to the root of problems and effectively collaborate to solve them.
Your concern and personal interest in the team will ensure that employees become more engaged, loyal, and productive.
Originally published at tulliosiragusa.com on December 14, 2020.
|
https://medium.com/radical-culture/do-you-have-it-in-you-to-be-an-empathetic-leader-90998879c24
|
['Tullio Siragusa']
|
2020-12-15 19:48:03.118000+00:00
|
['Teamwork', 'Work', 'Leadership', 'Empathy', 'Trust']
|
Elkanodata becomes a partner of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data
|
Elkanodata is an information design agency that transforms complex information and data, into insightful, innovative, and attractive digital experiences for relevant topics and stories that matter.
Elkanodata’s mission is to leverage information design as a tool for social change, redefining the way people engage with relevant causes, and helping International and purpose-driven organizations make the most out of their information and data.
Priorities as a partner of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data
Elkanodata strives to build a more informed and inclusive society, raising awareness mainly around the Sustainable Development Goals. Some of Elkanodata’s notable and award-winning projects have been on raising awareness and engagement to support gender equality, climate action, the LGBTQI+ community, human rights, immigration, maternal mortality or immunization, among others.
Elkanodata has worked with prominent intergovernmental organizations including the United Nations Population Fund, World Health Organization, United Nations Sustainable Development Group and UN Women.
|
https://medium.com/@Working_at_Elkanodata_Agency/elkanodata-becomes-a-partner-of-the-global-partnership-for-sustainable-development-data-ee8f64f78edb
|
['Working At Elkanodata']
|
2021-08-23 12:09:08.944000+00:00
|
['Sdgs', 'Elkanodata', 'Sustainable Development']
|
Straight Black Men are the white people of Black People.
|
Straight Black Men are the white people of Black People.
Woke- alert to injustice in society, especially racism.
And , it’s never good for someone to throw up in their own mouth. So yes, to answer your question, it is bad that you threw up in your mouth.
|
https://medium.com/@ianacts/straight-black-men-are-the-white-people-of-black-people-3a94f9d9a416
|
['I.M. Johnson']
|
2020-12-16 23:04:32.858000+00:00
|
['Black', 'Men', 'Straight']
|
“Our success has really been based on partnerships from the very beginning”
|
We are excited to announce a formal partnership with Cörlibri!
Cörlibri describes their project as “a high-yield deflationary token used as the basis for an entire ecosystem of products. Based off the Unicore smart contracts, it incorporates features such as liquidity locks and upward price pressure through the use of asymmetrical buy/sell fees.”
Website: https://corlibri.org/
Telegram: https://t.me/CorlibriOfficial
How will this partnership work?
Firstly, it will help bring light to both projects
Secondly, Cörlibri and RUGZ holders will get a NFT off of our new line of art coming in January (TBA)
Lastly, we will obtain a farming pair Cörlibri/RUGZ
This yield farming pool will allow participants to earn xCorlibri (xCor) at an estimated 1,000–2,000% APY! This can be accomplished by visiting https://corlibri.org/corlibri-cordeck-stake/
We believe firmly that building strong partners in the crypto space is a must to have continuous growth as crypto is evolving rapidly. With that said, having a strong alliance with a brilliant project such as Cörlibri is a foot forward in the right direction!
- Team $RUGZ, pulltherug.finance
- Team $CORLIBRI, https://corlibri.org/
|
https://medium.com/@pulltherug/our-success-has-really-been-based-on-partnerships-from-the-very-beginning-87da7233ff74
|
[]
|
2020-12-23 01:10:51.599000+00:00
|
['Cryptocurrency', 'Cryptocurrency News', 'Defi', 'Crypto', 'Nft']
|
SOLID Principles — 1/2 — explained
|
SOLID are the 5 principles of software design. They were introduced by Robert C. Martin (Uncle Bob), in his 2000 paper Design Principles and Design Patterns. For developers, they are a foundation, on top of the 4 Object Oriented Programming (OOP) principles. As a remind, they are Polymorphism, Encapsulation, Inheritance and Abstraction.
SOLID stands for :
Single Responsibility Principle (SRP)
Open-Closed Principle Principle (OCP)
Liskov Substitution Principle (LSP)
Interface segregation Principle (ISP)
Dependency Inversion Principle (DIP)
These 5 principles are meant to be combined together. When applied to code design, so they will make software easier to maintain, extend and re-use, and the code easier to understand. Developers would produce cleaner code.
Reader’s guide
This article may be a bit too long to read, but in Software development, SOLID principles are to be used and applied together as a whole, it makes more sense to have them explained within the same post. To help the reader to better understand them, samples of code will be shown with applications of each of the 5 principles. These samples are part of a codebase as a whole, let’s call it legacy code. From SRP to DIP, we will see that legacy code change continuously, step by step. You may of course skip one or many principles if you do not find them useful, or to gain an overview you need only read the first paragraph of each section.
Single Responsibility Principle — SRP
This principle will help to cut things in smaller pieces to have more focused meaning or purpose of that one part of code. Typically, instead of having one big class that does everything — UserSearchService doing search and display — we want to have smaller classes and smaller methods so each one has its own responsibility and task.
Statement :
A class should have one and only one reason to change. It should do only one thing.
This principle states that one module or class should have one responsibility. It can be summarized with this statement : “Do one thing and do it well”.
Open Close Principle — OCP
This principle will allow us to make sure our code can embrace business changes, while limiting modification to the code. Typically we want to modify code in one place to add or change a functionality, e.g. order by firstname or age.
Statement:
An Object or an entity should be open for extension, but closed for modification.
It states that software entities (classes, modules, functions, …) should be open for extension, but closed for modification. Using polymorphism can help to comply with this, as we can substitute different implementations (behaviours) as subtypes of class/interface referenced in a caller class. Then we can add new behaviour to the existing design of code. Typically, some design patterns, such as strategy, are made compliant to this principle.
Liskov Substitution Principle — LSP
This principle allows us to use abstraction of classes to add more logic, without breaking any existing functionality. For example, we may want to use a level of abstraction for the display functionality, having one class per type of order, so that if we want to be able to display the result in some other order, we just need to add a class that extends the abstract class.
It states as followed:
Let q(x) be a property provable about objects of x of type T. Then q(y) should be provable for objects y of type S where S is a subtype of T.
It states that an object in a program should be replaceable with instances of its subtype without altering the correctness of that program. This is an extension of both Polymorphism and Inheritance principles. Every subclass should be substitutable for their parent class. Inheritance will enable classes to polymorphically substitute for each other. Still the behaviour is not changed. The objects of your subclasses must behave in the same way as the objects of your superclass. In other words, you should be able to use any derived class instead of a parent class and have it behave in the same manner without modification.
To achieve that, we must follow these two rules :
An overridden method of a subclass needs to have the same argument values as the method of the superclass. The overridden method must return the subclass of the value or a subset of the valid return values from the superclass.
Here, the behaviour of your classes is more important than its structure. The compiler normally checks the structure, but it can’t enforce a specific behaviour.
Interface segregation Principle — ISP
This principle addresses a design problem when we use interfaces. Nowadays software is mostly designed with multiple layers and is service oriented, so we are required to expose some API. When exposing APIs, we need to use interfaces. One of the mistakes we often see are big interfaces, then when we need to add an implementation, we have to implement methods that are not required at all. For example, we would throw an exception, such as UnsupportedOperationException, to make sure the client sees it. And that is exactly what we want to avoid. We can split the ResultDisplayer into smaller interfaces so that when we need a ResultOrderByFirstname API, we just need to implement that method only.
Statement:
A client should never be forced to implement an interface that it doesn't use or a client shouldn't be forced to depend on methods it does not use.
It states that no client should be forced to depend on methods it does not use. Don’t create big interface with many methods that a client won’t need, because it will have to implement those methods.
Dependency Inversion Principle — DIP
This last one is the most seen but is often mis-interpreted as the Dependency Injection design pattern. On one hand, it’s very similar and on the other hand, it’s more about the level of detail. We must make sure that the service level (high-level) does not have any dependency on the ordering level (low-level).
Statement:
A high-level module should not depend on low-level module. Both should depend on abstractions. Abstractions should not depend on details, but details should depend on abstractions.
When a class knows explicitly too much about the details of another class, changes to one class may break the other class. That’s what we call tightly coupled. So we must keep these high-level and low-level modules/classes loosely coupled. To do that, we need to make both of them dependent on abstractions. Then we use a well known design pattern called dependency injection.
Conclusion
Now we have a cleaner code, by using one or many of the SOLID principles at each step.
The first principle — SRP — is quite easy to comply with. The second — OCP — is a bit harder, but using polymorphism and inheritance helps. The third principles — LSP — is a lot harder to understand and to satisfy. The fourth principle — ISP — is not so complicated and we must use it when having abstractions so using it along with SRP could be beneficial. The last — DIP — is a familiar and regularly used. Without DIP, all the other principles would not be that powerful. It is important to take away that these principles are to be used together most of the time.
Github Repo: Kata SOLID principles
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank Dan MAGIER and Geoffroy VERGNE for reviewing and providing me insights, and James FLYNN to correct my English mistakes.
|
https://medium.com/@newlight77/solid-principles-1-2-explained-46d31678ba23
|
['Kong To']
|
2020-12-02 21:09:09.382000+00:00
|
['Craftsmanship', 'Software Development', 'Principles', 'Solid', 'Clean Code']
|
Why Cryptocurrency will be the Next Operating System for Capitalism
|
Money won’t last forever — that is guaranteed
It didn’t exist when exchange evolved to become a feature of humanities first economic system, nor will it persist when there is no advantage to using it. That time is approaching far quicker than traditionalists care to admit.
The reality is that our evolution to a largely cashless society is almost complete. I rarely have money on me physically, I can count on one hand the number of times I have had cash in my wallet in the last 3 years. Paper cash and metallic coins are prehistoric.
That is what those who carelessly brandish Crytocurrency a bubble fail to comprehend. Money doesn’t care what you think. It is simply a means of exchange. When it’s utility is replaced by something more efficient it will become extinct. Right now it is a protected species with a few purists trying to revive it. Unfortunately, the poachers are pulling down each pillar which underpinned the system one by one.
Soon it will fall.
With Fiat valuations no longer tied to any commodity — with it’s price being entirely independent and it’s valuation contingent on what we collectively believe it to be — give me one sincere and serious argument which convinces me fiat isn’t also a bubble. Give me a coherent reason why that if we stopped believing in the value of paper money today it would be worth anything tomorrow. Without resorting to the argument of historical precedent, the size and scale of central banks or the promise these institutions have made to maintain a certain valuation what do you have to argue against it?Fundamentally it is still a question of trust and belief. This forces you to consider that there might be a technological solution which forces a level or trust and believe that is inconceivable in a human led system.
You argument might still be that cryptocurrency is a bubble, but I raise you the perspective that all money is. It is a product of our beliefs married to our hope that it’s value will remain. Ditto stocks, shares and bonds.
Money is, and has been for the last 30 years, an intellectual construct centred on humanities trust in Governance — but trust in these institutions is at a historical low. We don’t trust the reasons they give for the decisions they make, they’re incentives to act in our best interests or their ability to deliver a better future.
Cryptocurrency isn’t just the future because that is what a committed band of dreamers would have you believe. It is the future because it is a new operating system for a decentralised world. It is the future because it takes back control of the things we are most dependent on for us to subsist. It is the future because it is already here making a difference to how we act. Bitcoin has enabled a whole generation of Venezuelans to have an alternative to crippling inflation left unchecked by corruption.
No longer do we have to trust a government to reign over us and carelessly prescribe dangerous monetary policy which we must accept.
No longer must we accept situations of austerity forced upon us due to government intervention in a financial collapse where there was no punishment for any of the individuals who caused it.
No longer is our future dependent on the whims of governments.
You can make any argument you like about Cryptocurrency being over valued, about it being manipulated, about it not being a viable medium for high frequency transactions to occur.
That’s fine but what price do you place on control?
What price would you put on trust programmed in to an immutable ledger where those participating hold the keys to how the platform develops. Unilateral arbitrary decision making is replaced by consensus.
If you don’t understand the implications of that you’re not paying attention.
If you don’t understand how fiat money works, you’re not qualified to judge whether cryptocurrency will be successful or not, period. Equally, if you don’t understand the mechanisms for mining, the underlying technology that powers cryptocurrency or the economics of scarcity you aren’t qualified to tell anyone why it is a revolution.
So educate yourself and understand why things are changing, appreciate the technology underpinning the revolution. They you can positively impact the progress this new system can make. Otherwise you’re just another uneducated quack speculating to make a buck doing more damage than good.
With all that being true, if you believe in Crypto let the market come to you.Understand that the success of the system is contingent on an unwavering belief that throughout history innovation has always disrupted what currently exists. If a system is better, exponentially so, then nothing will ever be able to stand in the way of progress. For the same reason Google destroyed Yahoo, and Facebook vanquished MySpace, Bitcoin and Ethereum will destroy money.
In the same way Amazon has brutalised physical retail, Cryptocurrency will eradicate banks. If you don’t see this coming you aren’t paying attention.
Let the non-believers have their day, but the moment central banks pushed the button on quantitative easing they signed the death warrant of capitalism operating system that monopolised the world.
Capitlism isn’t going anywhere though. Cryptocurrency is simply a more efficient vessel which allows for its manifest destiny to be realised.
Progress is relentless.
Cryptocurrency is simply an upgrade
|
https://chrisherd.medium.com/why-cryptocurrency-will-be-the-next-operating-system-for-capitalism-ae5e1f823590
|
['Chris Herd']
|
2018-11-29 09:26:52.685000+00:00
|
['Startup', 'Blockchain', 'Life', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoin']
|
Chapter 3: Functions | 函式
|
Funcitons should do one thing. They should do it well. They should do it only.
|
https://medium.com/%E9%9A%A8%E7%AD%86%E8%B6%A3%E4%BA%8B/chapter-3-functions-%E5%87%BD%E5%BC%8F-8c1d243a0931
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[]
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2020-12-03 12:06:34.576000+00:00
|
['Clean Code']
|
The Risks of Traditional Finance Meeting Cryptoassets
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The underestimated risks of ICE’s new crypto-asset platform
I usually don’t cover cryptocurrency markets but the announcement that Intercontinental Exchange (NYSE: ICE), a company that operates many of the world’s largest stock and futures exchanges (including the New York stock exchange), is building a new ecosystem for digital assets is worth pausing on: there are risks I’m suspecting few understand.
Background
ICE’s new company Bakkt is working with Microsoft, Starbucks, BCG, and a number of hedge funds on an “integrated platform that enables consumers and institutions to buy, sell, store and spend digital assets on a seamless global network.”
They’re starting with a physically settled bitcoin futures contract, which unlike other (CBOE & CME) existing bitcoin futures contracts requires delivering the settlement in bitcoin (the underlying asset) vs. settling in cash. This new type of futures contract is known as a “bitcoin-settled” (vs. cash-settled) derivative.
Risks
Up to now bitcoin price speculation claims were made in cash but with Bakkt’s new futures contract these claims will be happening in bitcoin. The challenge is that bitcoin is designed to be scarce and thus hard to borrow. Wall Street however, has a solution: rather than lend the actual asset itself (i.e. bitcoin) create off-chain bitcoin substitutes that aren’t 100% digitally escrowed with real on-chain bitcoins.
“We are about to see “fractionally-reserved bitcoin” en masse for the first time — more paper claims to bitcoin (created off-chain) than there are real bitcoins on-chain — and these paper claims will offset bitcoin’s natural scarcity to some degree.” [Source]
If you’re not in finance and thinking that’s crazy, well not really… Creating financial instruments in excess of the number of underlying assets is a big part of Wall Street’s business model. However, crypto is a more dangerous game than traditional finance. If something goes wrong, then the government can’t help by printing more cash. Issuance of the underlying asset is instead dependent on the protocol’s algorithmic monetary policies.
One way things could go wrong is if a party has a non-hedged position such as a naked short, a hard fork happens, and the new coins (from the new chain) pick up all the value. Since the substitute coins of the old chain are off-chain they don’t get the new coins, leaving those exposed with nothing. This could lead exposed institutions to bankruptcy.
And it doesn’t stop there: due to custodial regulation institutional investors almost never own the underlying asset, which means they’ll never possess the private keys to the coins they “own.” Instead they need to rely on the custodians who today don’t get audited, creating more obscurity in the system.
So it may be encouraging to see big institutions finally embrace this new decentralized technology but with it will come a whole set of concealed financial mechanisms that could lead to another economic melt-down should these become popular.
In conclusion, ICE is essentially laying down the foundations for building fragile financial houses of bitcoin-derived cards and unless regulation institutes a new rule requiring crypto-derivatives to be explicitly tied to an on-chain coin this could all go very wrong.
Want to know more?
Read Caitlin Long’s (Forbes) three-part series here:
Or listen to a summarized version on the Unconfirmed podcast: Why the ICE/Bakkt News Makes Some Crypto Investors Nervous
From around the web
A red ocean for smart contract protocols (Tony Sheng blog) — Strong post that takes a realistic look at the state of protocol developer communities. Sheng argues that crypto-projects should “slow down their ecosystem efforts until they figure out how to reach end-users” by taking an “LTV” approach to growing their community. Otherwise they’re just wasting money on “mercenary developers.”
The Distributed Computing Update (USV blog) by Dani — Excellent summary and some interesting reflections on the state of the ecosystem today.
Mapping The Decentralized Ecosystem (Token Economy) — Great for anyone new or overwhelmed by the number of projects in this space. This long read provides a complete and well explained overview of the ecosystem.
An Overview of Privacy in Cryptocurrencies (Medium) by Richard Chen — Comprehensive and well articulated summary of all the technologies out there.
Money Crypto vs. Tech Crypto (Token Daily) by Erik Torenberg — Looks at the two crypto narratives that exist today: one powered the bitcoin vision and the other by the ethereum vision.
The Bitcoin Second Layer (Medium) by Nick Bhatia — Uses “gold as an analogy to describe why bitcoin will evolve in layers on its way to world reserve currency status.”
Sponsored burning for TCR (Medium) by Alex Van de Sande — Proposes a method to align token holder incentives and ensure better quality content using “an external profit model which doesn’t require token holders to sell or rent their tokens.”
Aggregation Theory, Thin Protocols, and Recentralization: Augur Edition (Multicoin Capital blog) — Takes the reader through a thought experiment: what happens when dapp steals value from the protocol its built on?
Ethereum Is Getting Its First Top Level Domain Name (Coindesk) — The Ethereum Name Service (ENS) and MNX, a traditional DNS registrar, are partnering to create “.luxe”; a top-level domain that will resolve on both systems.
Smiley Corner 😄
Weekly newsletter published internally at Google. The views expressed are my own and do not necessarily represent the views of my employer.
If you enjoyed this post follow me on Twitter @clairebelmont. Got feedback or story ideas? DM on Twitter.
|
https://medium.com/crypto-insights/crypto-insights-the-risks-of-traditional-finance-meeting-cryptoassets-85fc9734b6e8
|
['Claire Belmont']
|
2018-12-12 14:45:49.648000+00:00
|
['Futures Trading', 'Risk Management', 'Institutional Investor', 'Finance', 'Bitcoin']
|
The Future of Forecasting — Highlights from the BITSS Workshop on Forecasting Social Science Research Results
|
This post, written by Nicholas Otis, a second-year PhD student in Health Economics at UC Berkeley, is cross-posted to the BITSS Blog.
Researchers are increasingly collecting forecasts of social science research results. For example, researchers have recently integrated predictions into studies examining questions like what are the long-term effects of a community-driven development intervention in Sierra Leone, or how replicable are the results of an experiment, and how influential are experimental design decisions?
Collecting forecasts before you know results can be useful for several reasons. It can help researchers avoid hindsight bias, clarify how much new information an experiment provides, and motivate the publication of null results that challenge expert predictions. Forecasting may also help in selecting interventions when information is limited on what treatments are likely to work in a particular context.
Following the 2018 BITSS Annual Meeting, a group of social science researchers convened to review a growing body of empirical evidence on forecasts of social science results, and to discuss developing an online platform to streamline forecast data collection across the social sciences. Below is a brief overview of the research presented. Slides from each presentation can also be found on the OSF here.
Forecasting experimental replication and stability
Colin Camerer discussed work on the ongoing replication crisis in the social sciences. Through the use of prediction markets and simple prediction polls, Camerer et al.’s findings suggest that the research community can predict which studies are likely to replicate.
Devin Pope presented a project with Stefano DellaVigna that examined forecasts of the stability of experimental results across a number of experimental design decisions (e.g., changing the behavioral task or varying the culture, geography, or demographics. Results from their sample of behavioral science and replication experts suggest that the correlation between predicted and observed experimental stability is weak.
Forecasting in psychology and political science
Don Moore presented findings from the Good Judgement Project, a large, multiyear, government-sponsored geopolitical-event forecasting tournament that has served as a basis for much of the psychological forecasting literature. His work highlighted tradeoffs in prediction accuracy between prediction polls and prediction markets.
Gareth Nellis presented policymakers attending a conference with a random subset of results from the first round of the MetaKeta project to examine how they update their beliefs as a function of results from a stand-alone study or meta-analysis. Exposure to a meta-analysis of several studies led policymakers to update their beliefs regarding truth for the remaining studies.
Forecasting in development economics
Kate Casey and colleagues collected forecasts of the long-run impacts of a community-driven development intervention in Sierra Leone from OECD and local Sierra Leonean academics, policymakers, and students. In general, Sierra Leoneans overestimated experimental effects while OECD academics underestimated their impact.
Eva Vivalt and Aidan Coville collected predictions of experimental results from policymakers at a number of international development workshops, examining how researchers update their beliefs after being exposed to new information. They find evidence of variance neglect — the idea that people neglect uncertainty in experimental estimates when updating, and that people update more on results that are better than their priors.
The workshop concluded with a discussion of a centralized forecast collection platform. Much like the AEA’s social science registry, the platform could allow investigators to post time-stamped project summaries and streamline the collection of forecasts while protecting forecaster anonymity.
A centralized platform would preempt emerging concerns resulting from the growing number of researchers independently collecting forecasts. For example, if many researchers independently contact high-profile researchers, potential respondents’ willingness to complete any forecasts could quickly end. A centralized platform could ensure that researchers interested in making predictions were not contacted by too many researchers. A platform could also allow researchers to build systematic evidence on the conditions under which people make more accurate forecasts, with the eventual goal of minimizing survey error and improving forecast accuracy.
Over the next couple of years, Stefano DellaVigna, Eva Vivalt, and I, in collaboration with BITSS and others, will begin developing and piloting such a platform for use by the wider research community. If you’re interested in helping pilot the platform or have any questions, feel free to reach out to Eva Vivalt ([email protected]).
|
https://medium.com/center-for-effective-global-action/the-future-of-forecasting-highlights-from-the-bitss-workshop-on-forecasting-social-science-f188a48f201b
|
['The Center For Effective Global Action']
|
2019-02-14 20:41:13.488000+00:00
|
['Transparency', 'Research', 'Social Science', 'Bits', 'Forecasting']
|
The Look
|
The thing with Magic in real life is that it can only happen when there are no witnesses, and all evidence capturing methods are absent, save for storytelling. It happened one late morning, the day after my 37th birthday. I will not mention the exact time. As a researcher, I know too well that such precisions are, in reality, vague at best.
About a week ago, we had to switch your formula, and your Mum has had to go on a lactose-free diet because we figured out that you don’t tolerate cow’s milk protein very well. You don’t like drinking this formula very much, and I can’t blame you because I myself don’t like even preparing it.
You’re a great baby, and I thank you for this. You never really cry, you hardly shriek, and so far, at seven weeks, Mum and I have not had to deal with these epic fussiness episodes that many have warned us about. This is also off course due to your Mum’s constant hard work and attention, as well as fantastic child-raising methods haded down to her from generations of parents, physicians and teachers in your family. So really, I thank both you and Thinn Thinn for this.
This morning, however, Mum was so sore and tired from feeding and caring for you since something like four or five in the morning. So I asked Mum to take a nap for as long as she needed and I promised her that I’d look after you.
Cue the protests.
Again, you’re a great baby. Your protests are mild and are perhaps better phrased as appeals. They were all about one thing; you don’t like the low lactose formula. You were happy with the first half of your feed — which was Mum’s expressed milk. The other half was the formula, so you were not having it. The feed was starting to stretch too long. You also had your shots just two days ago, so I wasn’t upset at you for any of this, but we both knew that you HAVE to eat.
Mum told me the other day that I could speak to you and that you understood more than I might think. So I said, “Yo Yo. I know you don’t like this formula, and I get it. But your poor Mum is very sore and tired. If we wake her up now, she’ll only get sorer and more tired, and we’ll enter into what Mum was trying to explain to you last night — a vicious cycle. We have to work together. Can you power through this? If so maybe by your next meal, Mum would have recovered some and you can have the good stuff.”
Cue the Magic.
You turned your head away from me. You pursed your lips for a moment. I could somehow tell that you are processing all this. Then, you made eye contact with me, and you copped a look. It was a look that said, “Very well, Father. I will take on the task because I am the only person in the room, capable of executing it, at the impact you require — but not because I want to.” One would expect this look from perhaps Damian Wayne or Alexander Rozhenko but not from a real human infant.
I knew this look, and I knew where you got it from. It was the first time I saw myself. Of course, I have seen my reflection in mirrors and such before, but this was the first time, my own psychic and social presence was mirrored back to me in an exact likeness. I have given this look to most of the people around me at one point or another, including Thinn Thinn, my parents, other family, friends, and especially my bosses and co-workers.
I sincerely apologise to you all for my hubris.
You held the look on your face, maintained eye contact, and you sucked down the other half of your feed with a ferocity that made short work of the bootle in about five minutes. Then, you flashed a smiled at me, closed your eyes, and slept. You always had it in you.
|
https://medium.com/@nyein/the-look-1d3fd8bb1cc8
|
['Nyein C. Aung']
|
2020-12-14 00:28:45.698000+00:00
|
['Fatherhood', 'Feeding A Baby', 'Baby', 'Children']
|
Boomers Are the Next Generations’ Pandemic
|
Boomers Are the Next Generations’ Pandemic
We have burdened our children and their children with nearly intractable challenges
Image by Shutterstock
Acceptance of responsibility
To every new generation chronicling the graying landscape dotted by the slumping and shuffling old fogies that came before them, the senior citizens of the world are usually not much more than speed bumps or Waze warnings on the highway of youthful travels. Speaking as one of those speed bumps, I used to sigh the obligatory sigh, wring my stereotyped wrung hands, and harrumph my comic book-like harrumph. But now I do something else, I start to write the truth: my generation fucked everything up and we did so despite having the very real opportunity to get things right.
As the father of three — all now in their 30s — I remember all too well the eye rolls and “oh-dads” that accompanied any of my attempts to apply my ancient experiences to their modern-day problems. It’s not that they didn’t appreciate whatever wisdom that was about to flow from my reservoir of memories, it was the fact that my worldview, informed by five decades (at the time) of living, bore little resemblance to the world in which they were living. And in that, they had a point. My worldview, although improving, still does not keep up with the dynamics of a world in crisis.
Everything I learned when I was in my teens, twenties, and thirties should have been enough to make me take the reins of responsibility for the following generations, but I let those golden opportunities pass through my fingers and in doing so, passed the burden on to my children and their successors.
What was important to us then means nothing to anyone now
I can’t blame today’s young people for their sideways glances and barely concealed yawns when forced to listen to the retelling of the McCarthy hearings, polio scares, the Soviet Union, the Korean War, the Cold War, duck-and-cover drills, fear of Sputnik, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the wonder of having a transistor radio, automatic transmissions, jet engines, stereo phonographs and 33–1/3 and 45 rpm records (with those little plastic inserts so you could put them on the spindle in a stack), penny loafers, drive-in movies, poodle skirts, jeans (“dungarees”), sock hops, cigarettes in the senior courtyard, “colored only”, lynchings, Freedom Riders, “Reefer Madness” (look it up…it’s a hoot), no seat belts, racial epithets I cannot print here, ethnic jokes I cannot retell here, the advent of the Interstate Highway system, the assignment of ZIP codes and Area Codes, telephone party lines, the cost of long-distance phone calls, phone booths, fluoridation of water, racial, ethnic, and gender stereotypes in popular cartoons, Playboy magazine and the objectification of women, cancer as a disease you only whispered about, Kennedy’s Catholicism, above ground atomic bomb tests, Strontium 90 and the milk supply, the scandalous lyrics of “Wake Up, Little Susie,” the banning of “Lolita” and other books. Add to that short list, Vietnam, the Beatles, LSD, Haight-Ashbury, Watts, the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago and Mayor Daley, assassinations, cities in flames, more Vietnam, sit-ins, love-ins, Woodstock, Dr. Strangelove, Watergate. The list, like the beat, goes on.
There was a train coming
We didn’t heed the warning bells
These topics occupied much of the public dialogue of the 50s and 60s, and colored our everyday perceptions of a world wobbling on the edge of madness, nudged toward the brink by hedonism, consumerism, war, and selfishness. You would think that with all the signs that were in front of us, and all around us like the neon Strip in Las Vegas, we would have seen what we needed to do and put our shoulders to the tasks at hand. But, after a tumultuous beginning, we passed on taking “the next step.”
A good start, a lousy follow-through
We did start out on the right path. We lobbied, we staged sit-ins and demonstrations, we marched, we wrote important protest songs, we tried hard to draft politicians who would represent us, some of us refused to pick up a gun and put on a uniform we didn’t believe in, some of us tried hard to make the world a better place.
All for naught, in the end. Even today, 50 years later, we shake our heads and wonder why we gained no traction at a time of national need. Faced with a new breed of “No Nothing” politicians, it is no wonder that the coronavirus has the run of the field. But let’s be real. Coronavirus has nothing on the disease of selfishness that swept through the Boomer population once we hit the workforce. We gave in to the paper chase and the pursuit of the almighty dollar, and we left our ideals in a trash bin for our children to empty. We saw the future as we wanted it…not as our children would need it.
We never listen, yada, yada, yada
Perhaps it has always been so. History tells us that the runups to wars were ignored until the wars spilled out; financial crises were often preceded by unbridled spending, unsupported investing, and greedy accumulation of wealth by a tiny percentage of (mostly) men. And plagues and pandemics regularly ravaged a world overarched by religious shaming and murdered by medical ignorance.
Finger-wagging advisories from older to younger generations have rarely been heeded, and most elders’ admonitions against precipitous and selfish decisions fall on young deaf ears. But the sad fact is that the urgent cries for leadership that well up from today’s well-informed teens, Gen Xs, and Millennials fall on the increasingly deaf ears of my generation — the generation that for right now has most of the money and virtually all the seats of power. I wish I knew why that is. Perhaps the fact that I even have to ask myself that question shows my ignorance of the problem even as I try harder every day to comprehend my generation’s failings.
The obscenities are everywhere
When I see the obscene amount of money that members of Congress have in their stock portfolios, and how they so easily slough off any media attempts to hold them accountable — I want to puke. When I see children in cages inside our own country, and a wall of hate being erected along our border, the sorrow inside me flows. When I see a president and his shambling, dull-witted and inept family — and all the other nepotistic administration officials — taking the nation for a ride on a gold-plated sled to oblivion, I rage against the machine that gave them their frightful power.
And when I watch, day after day, the denials, the lies, the staff’s fealty, the self-appreciation, the sheer madness of this president’s inability to be fucking presidential about the coronavirus and his absolute commitment to never taking responsibility for endangering all our lives…the sense of doom overwhelms me.
Who cares about the world we knew?
The world I knew between 1955 and 1965 is hardly the world that my children know in 2020. A world globe manufactured in 1950, or a classroom pull-down wall map printed in 1960 are today worthless aids for identifying international boundaries or even the names of dozens of countries. Such maps, marked in the mid-20th century to delineate political regions (the Soviet Union, for example), have no value to students studying the transformation of Eastern Europe’s and the African continent’s changing socio-political affiliations.
The point is that the maps Boomers knew and countries we had to recite in Geography class are meaningless except to historians and cartographers.
So too has technology undergone a transmogrification my generation never dreamt of; some changes simply were not imaginable to our 10-year-old selves in the 1950s. We didn’t know what we couldn’t know. Our reference points, formed when we were most curious and capable of absorbing knowledge, were hard-wired to a great degree by what we knew at the time — not what we would experience ten or twenty years later when much of our brain’s wiring was fixed in place.
And just as Boomers are trying to replace their old wiring to fit into the 21st century, we are seeing very familiar 20th century threats to our families, neighbors, communities and country that are showing up again, threats that today’s generations — the Zs, Xs and Millennials — have just begun to develop experiential wiring with which to analyze and compare.
There is a real existential threat
The shock waves are hitting us full on
With full consideration of the signal nation-binding calamity that was 9–11 in 2001, people born after 1980 in the United States are feeling the social and political ground beneath their feet tremble, crack, and shift in ways all too-familiar to us olden-timers. But there is a sickening twist — there is a very real possibility that their world will split wide open and swallow their future whole. And my generation seems totally disconnected from solutions.
My generation felt our world tilt way off-axis in the face of polio, nuclear annihilation, assassinations, racial unrest, cities on fire, and a heartbreaking war that was sending too many fine young citizens home in flag-draped caskets. But those problems pale in comparison to the specter of a forever-nightfall that looms over today’s 10–40-year-olds who are experiencing their own uncertain present and future.
We have mortgaged our children’s future
College tuitions are insane, and the resulting debts are placing a burden on their hopes and dreams no society should countenance. Young families — two earners in many cases — are caught between day-care costs for their little ones, and the stresses of widely disparate education opportunities for their K-12 students, not to mention having to send them to schools with magnetometers at every entrance, shelter in place drills, and teachers and administrators with guns. As for the teachers who today are doing more with much less, how can we keep asking them to be a frontline defense against ignorance when we are reluctant to pay them what they are worth?
I believe there is a direct correlation between the rise in gun violence and the massive amount of money politicians are eager to take from the NRA and the weapons manufacturers. The fact that I will in all likelihood receive nut-case messages from AR-15 huggers only buttresses my point.
But what else is there to be concerned about? Well, let’s look:
We once had a beautiful world
For Gen Zs, Xs, and Millennials, the environmental crimes perpetrated by the Boomers’ unchained and uncaring industries catering to a throw-away society and 100 years of automobile emissions have no parallel in American history save for the Robber Barons and corrupt mayors and party machinery of the 19th and early 20th century. Watershed and ocean pollution, droughts here, floods there, endangered, dying, and extinct species, rainforests ablaze, rising sea levels and shrinking ice caps have all been sending Macedonian cries for help for decades — to no avail…until now.
My generation laid the groundwork for some of these obscenities, and in the short time we have left, many of us are trying to atone for our ignorance, but we realize why the generations who will inherit our failures shrug off our attempts. The generations following us are angry and disappointed, and who can blame you?
I could list more social ills facing the nation: gang violence, homelessness, unresolved poverty and low-income helplessness, the opioid crisis, gentrification at the cost of once-viable communities that have become easy pickings for developers, medical costs and access to care that have become obscenely unfair to those without insurance, or those who live in rural America in health care deserts. Loneliness, isolation, suicide rates that rise and rise…what a terrible place we have become to so many disenfranchised vulnerable citizens — young and old.
Economic disparity is tearing us apart
But perhaps nothing rankles the 20–40-year-old demographic more than the state of politics and the economic disparity in America. Abysmal is one word that comes to mind when it comes to describing where we are as a representative democracy (and I use that word with caution).
My generation cannot begin to explain the decent into chaos that has become our nation’s portrait of dystopic times to come. Nor can I begin to fathom the obscene difference in the wages of workers and the salaries of CEOs, or the vast wealth accumulated by one or two percent of the population.
My generation is not licensed to explain it because we are so much a part of it. It’s all us old white guys whose self-serving, office-protecting, K-Street lobbying dreams opened the door to someone like Trump. The fact that I didn’t vote for him doesn’t mean I did the right thing; had I done the right thing 10, 20, 30 years ago, there would never have been a rat’s chance in Hell for a Trump to emerge.
Plenty of Boomer blame to go around
Had the Republicans (of which I was one, once) had one iota of common sense and a shred of decency back in 2015, they would have kicked Trump’s ass out of contention before the first debate. And had the Democrats had a better candidate — someone who didn’t require a nose-holding at the ballot box — we may still have had to deal with the novel coronavirus, but we would have leaders who would inspire and, well, lead!
Our votes still matter, if we vote our conscience
Some of us Boomers believe our votes this November still matter, and we will cast our ballots for a return to national comity, rationality, progress, and transparency. While it is becoming evident that the Democratic candidate will be Joe Biden, many of us who will vote for him will also be supporting down-ballot progressive and young candidates. I for one, want a woman president as soon as possible, and I believe that many of Bernie Sanders plans for the future will not die with Biden’s inauguration.
Our intentions when we were young were bent toward purity of purpose and dignity of human life. When we envisioned 2020 from our 1960 campuses and communities, we really did see a shining city on a hill, where the battles we fought in the streets and in the ballot boxes would forge a new and more equitable future. We believed we could change the world, overthrow the corrupt political order, reduce the monied class to economic servants, and open the doors to equality for all. So many of us still bear the scars — emotional and social — of those fights.
We weren’t wrong in our methods…we just didn’t win enough of our battles to change the world, and we gave up; that’s it, pure and simple. We had it within our grasp to wring fundamental changes out of a corrupt system, an unfair system, an oppressive system, but rather than stay the hard course, we — many of us — put on suits and joined the ranks of the opposition because that was where the money, stability, and the path of least resistance were.
Some of us continue to support the dream
To the credit of many of my peers, social activism and compassion are not lacking in what is arguably the final act of their lives. They work in food banks and they document environmental crises. They volunteer in hospices and they become grandparents raising their children’s children. They return to school — as students and as teachers — and they man suicide prevention hotlines. Some are writers, adding their older voices to the embattled journalists who speak truth to power. Despite — or because of — their age, they are doing what they can to make a difference, remembering what it was we all tried to do so long ago.
But, in the end, our efforts today will not be enough to cover the sins of our omissions when we actually had the power to create a better world. That we did not accept that responsibility and allowed political and economic usurpers to take over what rightfully belongs to our children is an unconscionable failing…a failure that those of us who understand the scope of the tragedy we enabled will take to our graves.
|
https://jimmoore-11466.medium.com/boomers-are-the-next-generations-pandemic-bd21295028d5
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['Jim Moore']
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2020-03-22 03:33:16.479000+00:00
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['Boomers', 'Politics', 'Millennials', 'Future', 'Economy']
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Climbing Kilimanjaro- stories from a teenager
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In 2018, I summited the highest peak in Africa at 16 years old. I have been looking back at the thousands of photos taken realizing how monumental and impactful this climb was for me, how I forgot so many aspects both on and off the mountain. I want to share them.
Day 1: Unpack to Repack and First Glimpses
I remember the first thing I did when arriving in Arusha, Tanzania was going to the highest floor of the hostel to gaze at the mountain. It was a humid 87 degree day with clouds and haze in the sky- the opposite of optimal viewing conditions- yet there it was… Almost magical and kind of out of place (Kili is the world’s highest free-standing mountain). I spent hours gazing, restudying climbing routes packing lists until the cloud coverage came in with a single goal in mind: to summit. But the peace and anticipation was slightly broken when we had to unpack and repack our gear (the 2nd pic) from suitcases to duffel bags. I’ll admit it was a rookie mistake- should have stuck with duffel bags in the first place- but with carryons and baggage claims, those logistics became too complicated so we packed all our stuff the night right before we headed to the base of the mountain- I really do not recommend. But hey, it all worked out in the end.
Mt Kilimanjaro from Arusha
Day 2:
It’s illegal to climb Kilimanjaro without porters or guides because of the dependence locals have on the climbing season for income. But honestly, even if I had the choice I wouldn’t go without them because these people were simply amazing. Their attitudes, stories, and overall positiveness made my experience undeniably more sentimental. We started off with a two-hour drive to the base of the mountain where we unloaded our gear from the van and placed everything on a weigh station. For safety reasons, no person is allowed to carry more than 30 pounds at any given point because excess weight inevitably intensifies altitude sickness. But then we began the hike up. 30 minutes into the first stretch we were all soaked by heavy rain moving through the rain forest we were in but honestly, the greenery and the sun made every shine for those drifting moments the rain paused. Max, one of our guides, started pointing out the plants unique to the region and I learned he actually held a degree in botany from a University near Arusha. He told me he had strong passions for basketball- which was very evident, I mean, he towered over me at 6’5- and wanted to eventually go to the US to see LeBron James play. I liked hearing about his passions and more would come in the following days. The hiking time was really short at around 3.5 hours but we climbed more than 2,000 feet and the altitude was slowly hitting as we reached the 9,500 ft mark at Camp 1: Mti Mkubwa.
Days 3 and 4:
There are these inexplicable feelings and lines drawn from Kili… and I feel like I’m not even close to being in a place to be able to explain or just, in general, extrapolate the versions of lives lived over there. I think our perceptions of “how the other half lives” are so dramatized and completely inauthentic making it seem we have to be the heroes of change and “save” others. That thought is just disgusting.
Climbing is an out of mind, out of body experience and it is so easy to forget everything around you and just focus on summiting. I was scared that would happen to me but just the opposite occurred… Day 3 and 4 of Kilimanjaro was the first time I truly felt weak after hearing the strength and drivenness of others on the mountain. I couldn’t have been more grateful for this gift and maybe it will extend externally.
My guide Emmanuel (Ema) told us of his family. His brother died of tuberculosis earlier that year leaving behind 5 children: two babies, two six-year-olds, and one eleven year old. They were passed on to Ema who was single with an on and off girlfriend. The question in my mind was who was taking care of the kids while Ema worked trips sometimes 9 nights away from home? He explained the 11-year-old takes care of almost everything: cooking, cleaning, making sure the kids go to school meanwhile the girlfriend checks in periodically. That just amazed me: an 11-year-old taking on a life’s worth of responsibility meanwhile, I was struggling to make a sandwich at her age. That narrative stuck with me throughout the whole trip all the way to today. I could write about my climb, the altitude, what I ate, etc but all of that seems so incomparable to the rest of the narratives on the mountain. You can read metrics online but stories are so much harder to come by.
Days 5 and 6:
I can’t tell you how many times I have heard the word “useful” in my life… One of my teachers in my earlier days used to tell me, “Rhea, if you apply yourself you will be much better off. Apply yourself and do something useful.” Useful- the word seems so arbitrary to me now. You know when you say a word to yourself over and over and suddenly your speech dissolves a part of your vocabulary into incomprehensibility- yeah that’s how I feel with useful. Sad to say I even had to use Google to make sure I was spelling it right. Anyway~ useful. We apply the word to one too many things: do something useful, be useful but what does that even mean? Because there is a line between usefulness and fulfillment, between personal satisfaction when that satisfaction may be at the expense of others… or even ourselves. So, when and how do we decide to position our choices and walk the line? I guess it depends on perspective but where I’ve seen such critical decisions between usefulness and happiness it mostly ends with regret.
The tallest person I have ever met was named Max- absolutely massive; I had to tilt my head up to the sky just to even make eye contact. He was my other guide on Kilimanjaro. Max was different from the other guides on the mountain, he actually had a college education which I learned was especially rare in these rural areas. He majored in Botany which I found especially astounding since every plant we came across he could identify. While his talent was very evident, Max didn’t speak of his choice in academic concentration in an especially positive way because the job openings for a new graduate in Botany are rare. He attributes his choices to where he is now. Of course, choice defines our present state but to me, the stories of how people derived where they were to where they are now were constantly communicated on the mountain. From Max, I just rediscovered my feelings towards living beyond what you love- how passion can be an enemy and cloud vision. In other words, passion, whether good or bad, can hinder usefulness from an external perspective. I hate thinking like that but in terms of practicality, it’s true. Practicality becomes more evident in these parts of the world where dreams may be compromised for security and often times the leap of faith proves to be unbearable.
Day 7- SUMMIT DAY
Why do we never talk about hardships in the climbing/hiking/trekking or even the general outdoors community? I feel like there’s a strong aversion to talking about the failure to persevere in critical moments where we’re so vulnerable… when it’s so easy to give up and turn back. Because we know that after that moment, the moment we give in, the could haves, should haves, would haves all trickle into our mindset and regrets fall into place. When I look at a lot of my photos I think they really glorify my true condition- internally I’m really suffering. As photographers we want to relay what we see but rarely do we really relay how we got to see what we saw; aka the true story behind the matter. I mean I’m writing this reflecting on photos portrayed in the climbing community since we showcase the successes but maybe not the failures. Failure is associated with shame because when you put your money, time, and effort all just to descend, damn it sucks. I saw a lot of tears and ache on my summit day of Kilimanjaro so here goes:
We woke up at 12 am- dead set in the pitch dark of the night. I’ll be very honest, I don’t remember a whole lot before dawn with the exception of the trail of headlamps of people ahead of us along with the mantra of “Pole pole” which means slow, slow in Swahili. I remember hearing avalanches somewhere on the other side of the mountain and the ice crinkling under my boots. And then the sun rose and let me tell you summit day sunrises are so encouraging for a few seconds and then you’re snapped back into the reality of what you’re trying to accomplish along with the headaches and lower body pain that comes with altitude sickness… I had wished the sun had never risen because now I could see how far I was from the top which felt like every step forward was two steps back. But the worst part was seeing others descend because of the unrelinquished pain even though they were only a few hours away from Uhuru peak. There was this one woman quite literally dragging her feet in the gravel as her guides tried to support her to the top. Her trekking poles were dead weight behind her and I remembered she was the only remaining climber after the rest of the group had to turn back… She had to descend at Stella Point only about 600ft from the summit because her condition turned critical. Her descent was so personally emotional I had to sit down only to feel my tears freezing on my cheeks.
Right below Stella Point
It wasn’t too long after we reached Uhuru Peak, the highest point in Africa and the top of one of the seven summits. I felt so grateful and proud and happy- which are all such understatements of what I genuinely experienced. For all I know they were accentuated by hallucinations but the top was gorgeous for the 5 minutes I wasn’t thinking about the shortness of breath we were all having at almost 20,000 ft above sea level… These moments that are so short-lived really make me question why I take the time and monumental effort to pursue this consuming passion- why take the risk? I guess my answer is what’s life without it? Half the things I know today are a byproduct of exploration in the outdoors. Everything out here is genuine, it’s real along with the extremities that come with the pain but even that’s perceptive, right? Kilimanjaro was a bunch of hidden lessons bound by one climb to the top and it’s the culmination of stories exuding truths.
|
https://medium.com/@rheakumar088/climbing-kilimanjaro-stories-from-a-teenager-50194cd69dfe
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['Rhea Kumar']
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2020-12-22 17:48:10.555000+00:00
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['Teenagers', 'Nature', 'Kilimanjaro', 'Hiking', 'Seven Summits']
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Feel The Fear But Write It Anyway
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That thing you’re most afraid of, that thing you seek to hide or minimise, is probably what you were meant to do.
How do I know? I’ve been hiding for most of my life, and not always in a metaphorical way.
As a child, I’d disappear under the table or behind my sister when new people came to the house, and even as late as my twenties, I once spent an entire party concealed behind a bush at the bottom of the garden. No joke.
Later, my hiding became more nuanced: saying no to invitations, refusing a solo with my choir, stopping writing because I wasn’t “good enough”.
The surprising turning point came when—buoyed by wine—I spontaneously booked a week-long poetry-writing course. It was as awful as it was transformative. I developed insomnia, and when asked to read my work aloud I shook like a greyhound on a frosty morning. And yet, I felt more alive than I had in years and I improved exponentially.
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https://medium.com/an-idea/this-is-how-you-embrace-the-fear-finally-write-4f1c4df9e08a
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['Jessica A']
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2020-12-03 18:11:16.903000+00:00
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['Writing Life', 'Writing', 'Living With Purpose', 'Creativity', 'Writing Tips']
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Online Business Reporting with SQL
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Online Business Reporting with SQL
From creating CSV import pipeline using python to analyze the data with PostgreSQL. thejasmine Follow Dec 23, 2020 · 6 min read
Photo by Luke Chesser on Unsplash
As an analyst, it is essential to extract the data we want for a large database, and SQL is the tool for this!
SQL stands for Structured Query Language, and it is a language for creating, deleting, updating, and extracting data from the database. As a large amount of data stores in the database, how to extract useful information from there is important.
I want to share how to write queries to get some important metrics for the eCommerce business, such as MoM active users, top sales for different years.
The Brazilian E-Commerce dataset from Kaggle has 100k order data from 2016 to 2018 made at multiple marketplaces in Brazil.
But first, I need to solve the problem: import several CSV files to PostgresSQL. Previously, I introduced a way to import CSV use only PgAdmin, but I need to create each table manually, which is time-consuming.
Here is Python come to play! I can use `sqlalchemy` toolkit to import CSV files to my PostgreSQL database by running a script. This way, it would automatically create a table for me and use the CSV header as column names. You can learn how to use the package here.
The function I used for importing files.
Olist database
Now I have created a database with all data in place.
Before jumping into writing a query, it is important to understand the relationship between each table.
Image source: Kaggle
In my opinion, window function, common table expression, and extract time are the three important techniques for reporting. The window function can help us perform aggregation function with a specific range, and the CTE table can help us break down complex queries into small pieces and build the final result step by step.
The following solution might not be the most optimized, but building a common table expression table step by step is a clear way to understand the logic.
There are 10 questions that I am interested to understand more about Olist's sales performance and their customers. For some questions, I would add some notes and some points to put in mind when writing the query.
Update product category name to the English version. Top 10 sales product What are the top 10 products for 2016, 2017, 2018, respectively? Which day of the week, customers tend to go shopping? What are the top 3 products for each state? What is the number of monthly active users for 2017? What is the MoM growth rate? What is the retention rate? What is the most popular payment method? How many orders in the different order price range? Average time of review being answered Order amount distribution(25%, 50%, 75% and average order amount)
1. Update product category name to the English version.
Sometimes, your row may contain values that you want to replace with something else. In this case, we can use `UPDATE` to update your table.
Use subquery to set the condition for replacing the English column. By using the where condition, I can make sure that I replace the same product category name.
2. Top 10 sales product
Let’s start from simple!
Group by function is needed when performing aggregation function!
Use LIMIT clause to select a limited number of records.
From the result, I can see that the health_beauty category has the highest sales!
3. What are the top 10 products for 2016, 2017, 2018, respectively?
Obviously, use just LIMIT the clause can not get the top 10 for different, and I can only get top 10 for 2016–2018. As a result, I need to use a common table expression to store the temporary result and use the window function to get the top 10 for each year!
First, get each product’s total sales and group by year, and store the result in a temporary table.
Use RANK clause to create a ranking column for each year’s sale.
clause to create a ranking column for each year’s sale. Use WHERE clause to set the condition as ranking numbers smaller than and equal to 10.
2017 health and beauty category is in third place, and in 2018 it has the most sales. Bed and bath table drops from ranking1 to ranking3 from 2017 to 2018.
4. Which day of the week, customers tend to go shopping?
Use EXTRACT and pass the isodow argument which would return the day of the week.
Surprisingly, Monday has the most sales and Saturday is the last. It shows that customers love to shop on weekdays.
5. What are the top 3 products for each state?
The way to solve this problem is similar to the top 10 products for each year's question. Here, I need to join 4 tables in order to get the result. It is always useful to look back to the schema for connecting tables.
6. What is the number of monthly active users for 2017? What is the MoM growth rate? What is the retention rate?
Monthly active users& MoM growth rate
DISTINCT customer_id to get a unique customer count for each month.
customer_id to get a unique customer count for each month. LAG clause to get the previous customer count for calculating the growth rate.
clause to get the previous customer count for calculating the growth rate. Use GREATEST here is because I want to avoid setting the denominator as 0. Since the denominator for the first month of the dataset would be null, it would cause an error for the later calculation for the MoM growth rate.
From the result, the number of active users increases by 800% at the beginning of 2017.
Customer retention rate
Retention rate means how many active users in the previous month are still placed orders this month.
First, get a unique customer id for each month.
Use self left join and match with the same customer id and current month with the previous month.
7. What is the most popular payment method?
The credit card is the most popular payment method for this business.
8. How many orders in the different order price range?
The frequency table can put the data into different bins; it provides an insightful perspective on the frequency distribution.
Use ROUND -2 for rounding the sales to 100, and use the column to group sales bins.
Range 100–200 has the most number of order count.
9. Average time of review being answered
epoch and extract to calculate the average time for a customer’s review to be replyed.
10. Order amount distribution(25%, 50%, 75% and average order amount)
By knowing the percentile of the data, I can see if the data is skewed positively or negatively.
For the order payment, the median is less than the average; the data is skewed positively, meaning that most values are above that average.
Result
By asking the above questions, I know that:
Customers prefer using credit cards as the payment method.
Customers tend to shop on weekdays.
Health and beauty category is the top sales product category within three years, and first place for 2018 and third place for 2017.
On average, it takes two days for a customer’s review to get an answer.
More…
Takeaways
Using SQL to leverage customer data enables us to understand the business and customers better, leading to better performance and driving better strategy. Calculating key metrics and getting report-ready data using SQL and further analyzing data within Business Intelligence tools such as Python or Tableau makes the data analytics process more efficient.
You can access the full project code here.
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https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/online-business-reporting-with-sql-8513514f9a74
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[]
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2020-12-30 10:17:59.822000+00:00
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['Reporting', 'Sql']
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Everything You Need to Know About Ethereum 2.0
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What will you learn in this blog?
The conditions for the deposit contract have been met. More than 800,000 ETH have been staked on the network so far. The launch of Beacon Chain takes place on December 1, 2020, and many people still do not know what Ethereum 2.0 is or its technicalities.
This blog covers the various reasons behind the upgrade from Ethereum 1.0 to Ethereum 2.0, the different concepts of sharding and proof of stake, and how they will be relevant in Eth2.
Eth 2 has been divided into different phases. This blog describes all the phases and their relative purposes, with more focus given to Phase 0 — the Beacon Chain. Finally, we will understand the economics behind the new upgrade and finally the problem that many people might face when it comes to staking.
We hope you enjoy this blog.
Introduction
For all these years we have known Ethereum to be the best public, open-source platform that allows developers to build and deploy decentralized applications (Dapps) using smart contracts. The decentralized virtual machine of Ethereum — the Ethereum Virtual Machine — executes contracts that could be used to pay your rent, play games, and do all sorts of activities that are completed via centralized applications. This guide on Ethereum covers everything you need to know about it.
This blog has been written to explain to you what Ethereum 2.0 or Eth2 is and how it could completely change the way we see Ethereum or Ethereum 1.0, starting from its shift to a more environment-friendly consensus mechanism — Proof of Stake (PoS) to the much needed and awaited scalability issues. This upgrade would therefore ensure that the network becomes more sustainable.
The Proof of Work (PoW) consensus mechanism is highly supported in the Bitcoin community, but being a miner/node means that you need to have resources to buy high-end mining hardware and provide excessive processing power to validate each block. People who cannot afford it, will naturally not be able to be a part of the validation process in the network, making it inaccessible and not-so “decentralized”. Moving to PoS means that the network will become more environmentally friendly, and hopefully more decentralized.
The Ethereum network has been unable to take the weight of the new applications that get developed on its network — be it CryptoKitties or DeFi. It has faced scalability issues that led to the delay in transactions and a rise in high gas fees. The most recent Uniswap Token airdrop could confirm it. Sharding, which will be discussed later in the blog, could help in solving the scalability issues in the Ethereum network that could lead to more transactions and lower gas fees.
Why Eth2?
The launch of Ethereum in 2015 captured the imagination of the blockchain community by providing them with a platform that could redistribute power away from centralized organizations. Despite the success, many members of the community believed that the protocol needed a few key upgrades to unleash its full potential. The several smaller upgrades that have been implemented to improve the network’s performance over the years, has not been able to address the issue of scalability. With the rising number of Dapps and smart contracts on Ethereum, it is difficult to maintain a network to validate and add transactions to the blockchain quickly.
At the time of writing, there are 3,895 Dapps on all the smart contract development platforms like Ethereum, TRON, EOS, etc. out of which 1,805 are on Ethereum. This clearly shows the popularity of Ethereum as compared to all the other platforms used to develop smart contracts. Blockchain platforms like Solana and Polkadot have been announced over the past few years but none have been able to compete with Ethereum in terms of the number of Dapps on the platforms.
While Ethereum has given us new hope of having a decentralized internet, its 15 Transactions Per Second (TPS) highlights the network’s inability to scale and act as an alternative to the centralized services we use today. Keeping complex Dapps aside, Ethereum cannot even be used as an alternative to Visa which handles upwards of 10,000 TPS.
As clearly visible, the TPS has been rising over the years. As seen above, in 2017, when the market had realized the potential of Ethereum and Dapps were created on the network, many protocols got introduced which ultimately led to the rise in the number of transactions per day. A very common example of this is the high congestion in the Ethereum network due to the rise in demand for CryptoKitties in 2017. To avoid such issues in the future, it is essential that the network is upgraded and ready to take the load.
Thus, Ethereum 2.0 will help in maintaining Ethereum’s dominance as the leading smart contract development platform. This upgrade will be done keeping in mind that your ETH does not change in any way. All changes will take place in the backend. Ethereum 2.0 will ensure that the developers who have continued to support Ethereum all this while do not have to switch to other platforms and learn new languages to build smart contracts on those platforms.
Ethereum 2.0 or Serenity will be launched in phases in the coming years, with Phase 0 expected to roll out in December 2020. Before we discuss the different phases of Ethereum 2.0 and their respective purposes, let us understand what sharding is and why moving to Proof of Stake is relevant in the case of Ethereum.
Sharding
There are two major ways in which scaling takes place -
Vertical Scaling — where nodes are made more powerful
Horizontal Scaling — where more nodes are added.
In order to keep the network decentralized, we scale horizontally and in the case of Eth2, this is done through sharding. It is a method of the horizontal splitting of databases across multiple servers to help manage the smaller databases in a faster and more efficient manner. These smaller databases are termed as data shards.
In Ethereum 2.0 sharding involves the splitting of the blockchain mainnet into data shards that will run alongside each other to validate transactions simultaneously instead of validating them consecutively. Since more transactions are going to get validated every second, sharding will help in scaling the Ethereum network.
How transactions are recorded on Ethereum’s PoW blockchain
For those of you that are wondering why this was not implemented earlier, the answer is security. Splitting the network into smaller databases and making fewer validators responsible to validate transactions could compromise the security of the network in the situation where even one of the shards is overtaken by a group of malicious nodes (as in the case of Proof of Work).
The Proof of Stake consensus mechanism has been adopted to prevent such attacks from happening. The validators in the network get randomly chosen to ensure that it is mathematically impossible for an attacker controlling less than a third of all validators to attack a single shard.
Proof of Stake (PoS)
A shift to the PoS consensus mechanism would allow ETH holders to stake their tokens on the network to participate in the transaction validation process and earn rewards in return.
The contract for Eth2 must collect an initial 16,384 deposits of 32 ETH each, a total of 524,288 ETH or about $270 million (at $515/ETH) , to proceed with the Phase 0 launch of Ethereum 2.0. These funds will be locked in the contract as a security deposit of being given access to the network and its validation procedure. Any malicious activity from these validators will lead to a penalty being imposed on their stake. This is how we expect the security of the network to be maintained.
Since validation depends on the ETH staked in the network and not the computing power needed, as in the case of Proof of Work, no validator would want to act against the interest of the blockchain that would lead them to lose their funds and a possibility of a reduction in the price of each token if people start believing that the network is under attack.
Attacking the network also means that a validator would need to have a very high stake in the network. Having a high stake and performing an attack means that these attackers could even lose their whole funds, thus making such attacks expensive. This process is called slashing.
The only major drawback of PoS is that there could still be validators who stake a lot more than the others, thus having more influence in the network and getting more staking rewards. As more people stake on the network, the annual percentage rate (APR) keeps decreasing. This might not be that advantageous for those validators who stake less funds, thus making the entire process again “not-so decentralized”. Moreover, having a larger stake in the network also means that the network could be attacked.
Staking on Ethereum will work in a similar way as it works on any other PoS blockchain. You will validate only as many transactions as your stake in the network. For example, if you have staked 4 tokens in the network of 100 tokens, then you will only validate 4% of the new blocks and receive the rewards for those transactions recorded in the blocks.
Game Over for Miners?
At the time of writing, 805,728 ETH have been staked on the contract. ETH 2.0’s Beacon Chain genesis will therefore occur on December 1, 2020.
If everything goes as planned, there will be no use of miners or mining hardware in the Ethereum network in the coming future. Mining will still continue on the network until Phase 1.5 of Eth2. It is during this phase that the mainnet will become the shard and the consensus mechanism of the network will only be Proof of Stake.
Just like the DAO hack in 2016, which led to a hard fork called Ethereum Classic, this shift in consensus mechanism might not be accepted by the entirety of the network. This may lead to another hard fork.
Phase 0: The Beacon Chain
The Beacon Chain, scheduled to be launched on December 1, 2020, is an overarching chain that will ensure that the data on the shards has the most up-to-date data, reward validators for proposing new blocks and punish them for their malicious behavior. There will not be any shard chains operational as there is nothing that needs to be in sync. Its role initially will only be to bring all validators onboard.
The Beacon Chain
The Beacon chain will have Casper finality, a random number generator to shuffle validators, and simulate crosslinking in the non-existent shard chains. Eth1 will continue to receive upgrades and operate alongside the Beacon Chain.
As explained by Interdax in their Medium post, the first implementation of Casper will use Ethereum’s current PoW proposal mechanism to introduce new blocks onto the blockchain. If two blocks are proposed simultaneously, validators are only rewarded for betting on one chain, so it only makes sense to bet on the original chain, as this is the one that is most likely to succeed.
More importantly, Casper introduces a mechanism that will instantly confiscate the entire stake of any validator who tries to support an invalid chain by validating more than one block at a time. Should a validator maliciously attempt to compromise the network (i.e. validate incorrect data history), all or some of their 32 staked ETH will be slashed (more about penalties later). Users can submit evidence of voting on the wrong chain by miners to penalize incorrect votes. Casper, therefore, handles the nothing at stake problem by introducing a wrong-voting penalty to the protocol.
Slots and Epochs
The validators on the network will be responsible to validate transactions and also propose new shard blocks. If they are not chosen to propose a new block then they can make sure that everything in the proposed block looks right.
A minimum of 128 validators (called a committee) is needed to attest every shard block. Every shard block is to be proposed and validated by this committee in a time-frame known as a slot. Each slot is 12 seconds and an epoch contains 32 slots adding to 6.4 minutes. Once the validation process is complete for the epoch, the committee is broken up, and a new set of validators will be chosen using a pseudo-random process RANDAO. This is done so that malicious validators don’t have any control over the final outcome of new proposed blocks.
A new slot is added every 12 seconds. 32 slots make and epoch.
A slot is therefore a chance to add a block to the Beacon Chain. Every 12 seconds, one Beacon Chain block and 64 shard blocks (as the current Eth2 has plans for 64 PoS shards) are added when the system is running optimally. Slots are similar to block time but some slots can remain empty too.
Although real shards are not introduced until Phase 1, validators participate in the consensus of the assigned shard to vote for the shard’s head. The validator links the shard head to the beacon block for a slot and as mentioned earlier, they police each other and are rewarded for reporting other validators that make conflicting votes or propose multiple blocks.
Validators are shuffled into committees for each epoch to create attestations (or votes) for each of the 32 slots.
Phase 1: Shard Chains
Phase 1 will add a basic structure of sharding to Ethereum 2.0. This is necessary from a scalability point of view. This phase is expected to start with 64 PoS shards but they will not support accounts or smart contracts right away.
Along with shard chains, cross-references will also be introduced in Phase 1. Cross-references will allow to record and finalize the state of each shard on Beacon Chain. Ultimately, cross-references will serve as the basis for transactions between shards in later phases.
Phase 1.5: Mainnet to Shard
Everything until Phase 1.5 will be done on the Proof of Work blockchain. It is only when the mainnet becomes the shard in Phase 1.5 will the transition to PoS take place. We expect this transition to be seamless and to happen sometime in 2021.
Phase 2: Fully Formed Shards
The fully formed shard of Phase 2 is expected to be seen beyond 2021. Shards should be fully functional chains that will then be compatible with smart contracts and be able to communicate with each other more freely. Developers may even be able to design shards in their own ways.
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https://medium.com/london-blockchain-labs/everything-you-need-to-know-about-ethereum-2-0-bc9c2d101778
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['Pujeet Manot']
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2020-12-10 17:12:22.954000+00:00
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['Ether', 'Ethereum', 'Cryptocurrency', 'London', 'Blockchain']
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The Mongrel Rises
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The Beginning Photo by Donnie Rosie on Unsplash
The Mongrel Rises
My Sites
I have two other publications on “medium.Com”. I call one “My Camera & My Chai”, and the other is “Tales from The Green Spider”. I will probably delete them from this site and concentrate on this one.
The reason I intend to delete them is that I could not find a voice for either. I will move all my photography writing to my photography website, which you can find at https://www.crookedimagez.com. I will adopt a somewhat conversational tone of voice on this site.
Similarly, I will move all my ‘business’ writing to my company site, which you can find at https://www.aranya-advisory.com. My tone on this site will be businesslike, but devoid of all useless jargon.
Finally, I will write on other topics (leadership, critical thought, climate change), do book reviews at my last website, which you can find at https://www.rajivchopra.com. I will try to adopt a somewhat ‘academic’ tone on this site, but I am not sure I will succeed.
There you go.
I hope I succeed, and I wish myself well.
Why This One?
Photo by Matt Walsh on Unsplash
This is a new publication, and I intend to have fun. I intend to have some serious fun in creative non-fiction. I am doing many writing exercises these days. First, I write out the material on paper, using a fountain pen. I love fountain pens, and I hope to earn lots of money so I can increase my collection of high-end pens and fine fountain pen ink.
Fountain Pen Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
There is something about putting thought to paper using a fountain pen that just cannot be matched with starting off a new passage using a computer.
This is where I will just let loose. This will take some time, because I need to throw off the shackles of my corporate career, and that style of talking and writing. So, bear with me, and be patient with me on my journey.
The Mongrel
The Mongrel….Photo by Ben Hanson on Unsplash
The website “https://www.dictionary.com” defines a mongrel as a dog of mixed or indeterminate breed; or any animal or plant resulting from the crossing of different breeds or varieties; or any cross between different things, especially if inharmonious or indiscriminate.
I will try not to be inharmonious. But I will keep exploring styles. I will focus on stories, anecdotes, concepts, travel, photography; and I will rage at some absolute nonsense that is taking place in my country. There may be times that I will dip my toes into politics, but that will be from the perspective of exploring leadership. Let’s see.
Whichever way I go, I hope to have fun. I assume that, in due course, I will settle on a particular style. Maybe then, The Mongrel will become an Alsatian, or some hunting breed; or even a Tiger or Puma. Who knows?
I don’t know yet.
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https://medium.com/the-mongrels-howling/the-beginning-1cfbb56f8b5c
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['Rajiv Chopra']
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2020-11-13 11:45:16.303000+00:00
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['Writing', 'New Beginnings', 'Creative Non Fiction', 'Crossing Genres', 'Photography']
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“Minsk resident was sentenced to 2 years in prison for writing “We won’t forget” at the place of Alexander Taraikovsky’s death.”
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“Minsk resident was sentenced to 2 years in prison for writing “We won’t forget” at the place of Alexander Taraikovsky’s death.”
The defendant Maxim Paulushchyk in Frunzensky district court in Minsk during the consideration of a criminal case against him and Maria Babovich.
26-year-old Maxim Paulushchyk was sentenced to 2 years in the general regime colony, 25-year-old Maria Babovich was sentenced to 1.5 years of restraint of liberty for renewing the inscription “We won’t forget” at the place of Alexander Taraikovsky’s death near Pushkinskaya metro station.
The judge of Frunzensky Court District in Minsk Yulia Blizniuk found Maxim and Maria guilty under “Part 2 article 339” of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Belarus (disorderly conduct). The cases of Denis Grakhanov, Ihar Samusenka, and Uladzislau Gulis, who were detained shortly after Maxim and Maria, are still being investigated by the same court.
The inscription “We won’t forget” was the reason for Maxim and Maria’s sentences
On December 2nd, the state prosecutor Alina Kasyanchik stated that the defendants need to be partially justified under “Part 2 article 218” (intentional property damage). However, she referred to “acts of disorderly conduct” in the actions of the defendants.
During the first trial, the court rejected the motion for release from custody, during the trial the defendants were sitting in a guarded cell in the courtroom.
In his last words, Maxim Paulushchyk pled guilty and told that he had painted on the pavement without thinking that it may lead to criminal liability. Paulushchyk asked the judge to give him a chance and sentence him to the restraint of liberty. Maria Babovich said she hasn’t disturbed the order and asked not to restrict her liberty and to give her a chance to step in the right direction.
Defendant Maria Babovich
During the trial, a representative of “GaramAutaDar” stated that the company waives its claims against Paulushchyk and Babovich as the defendants had transferred financial compensation in the amount of 211 BYN for the damage done. During the first trial, “GaramAutaDar’’ talked about the reduction of the amount of damage from 7,500 BYN to 211 BYN.
The state prosecutor asked the court to prosecute “GaramAutaDar” as the enterprise didn’t hand over the notice on the specification of the damage amount to law enforcement agencies. However, representatives of “GaramAutaDar” stated that they had not received any documents about the initiation of a criminal case.
Another trial for the inscription “We won’t forget.”
The Frunzenskiy district court continues the trial against 42-year-old bartender Denis Grakhanov, 25-year-old bicycle park administrator Ihar Samusenak, and 25-year-old car wash employee Uladzislau Gulis. They were detained shortly after Maxim and Maria.
They are also charged under two articles of the criminal case — “Part 2 article 339 and Part 2 article 218”. During the first trial, “GaramAutaDar” reduced the damage amount from 10,182 BYN to 255 BYN. The court rejected the defense’s motion to change the preventive measures to anything other than detention. During the trial, the defendants remained in a guarded cell in the courtroom.
Alexander Taraikovksy was killed during the protests on August 10 near Pushkinskaya metro station. A people’s memorial with the inscription “We won’t forget” appeared at the place of his death. No criminal case on the death of Taraikovksy has been opened yet.
|
https://medium.com/@voicesfrombelarus/minsk-resident-was-sentenced-to-2-years-in-prison-for-writing-we-wont-forget-at-the-place-of-fc0e2e9a5001
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['Voices Belarus']
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2020-12-10 12:02:38.508000+00:00
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['Belarus', 'Prayforbelarus', 'Police', 'Minsk', 'Protest']
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The AirTree Investment Process
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At AirTree, we’re trying to demystify venture capital and help entrepreneurs through the most opaque parts of the process, regardless of whether you are taking financing from us or others. We call this Open Source VC, and we openly share various resources including template term sheets, financing documents, ESOP and cohort templates on our website (this is growing to include offer docs and more soon). We want to take away some of the pain of starting and scaling a business, saving you time and money in the process. And when you come to your first financing round you’ll be able to understand what the investor is talking about, and know if they’re offering you sketchy terms.
In this post we open up on how we make decisions internally at AirTree. We hope this gives you a better understanding of the ways in which we work, and adds some more transparency to the fundraising process
When’s the best time to get in touch with AirTree?
If you think you want to raise venture capital at some stage for your startup, then get in touch as early as possible.
While your ‘product’ may just be a wireframe and some customer interviews, what we really want to understand is who you are, what problem you’re trying to solve, and what your special insight into that problem is.
5 of our 14 investments in 2018 were pre-revenue, so it’s never too early to speak to us.
And even if you’re not looking to raise right now, there are a ton of reasons why building a long term relationship with investors before taking their money is a great idea:
The average venture investment lasts longer than the average marriage, so it makes sense to go on a few dates before you commit. Two of our fastest growing portfolio companies, Secure Code Warrior and A Cloud Guru, dated us for over 12 months before we made it official. In that time you can test us out to see how much value we’re able to add and if you’d enjoy working with us. When the time comes for you to raise capital, the process can be super smooth and quick.
So how do I get in touch with AirTree?
The best way to get in touch with us is through a referral from someone we know and trust — maybe a founder in our portfolio or an angel investor we’ve co-invested with before. But if you can’t find an warm intro, we’d still love to hear from you — you can get in touch directly with everyone in our team at [firstname]@airtree.vc
You can also fill out the ‘looking for investment’ form on our website.
We’d love you to include a pitch deck when you reach out so we can take a first look and establish whether your startup fits our mandate and who in the team should meet with you.
The Initial Meeting
This is usually a 30–45 minute meeting for you to learn more about us and articulate your story and your vision. It could be on the phone or in person depending on where you’re based.
The meeting will be with a member of the investment team — Associate or Partner. Don’t stress about meeting a Partner straight away — our Associates have spent 8–10 years working in finance and operational roles in startups, and they have an equal voice at the table when we’re discussing new investments.
We try and make these meetings as casual as we can — so don’t expect some big board room with a big screen for your powerpoint. We’re really just trying to get to know you and add some value, we hope it’s a helpful conversation.
The Investment Committee
After the initial meeting we’ll get the rest of the investment team up to speed on your company and the opportunity.
So make sure the investor is equipped to tell your story well — provide them with the narrative and stats they need to communicate your vision and the opportunity to the rest of the team.
If the rest of the investment committee agrees we should look into your company further, we’ll start to do some research into the market you’re operating in and your competitors, so that we can ask follow-up questions in our next meeting.
The Second Meeting
Often we’ll include another member of the investment team in the second meeting to get different perspectives and make sure we’re asking all the right questions to fully understand your vision.
Sometimes at this stage we’ll ask for more information to deepen our understanding. Depending on your type of business (B2B vs B2C) and stage this could include engagement metrics, historical financials, user/revenue growth projections and your cap table. But don’t worry if you don’t have any of these yet, at an early stage what we’re looking to understand is your team, your vision and the size of the opportunity.
Once we’ve done some more research the investor(s) leading the deal will put together an investment paper arguing why we should make the investment and what the key risks are. Each one is different but it will usually have sections on Product, Market, Team, Differentiation, Unit Economics, Financials and Deal Terms.
We send this around the team and discuss it to raise any further questions and identify areas where we need to do more work.
If everyone is excited after the meeting it’s likely we’ll ask you for some customer references at this stage so we can hear from the people using your product every day.
The Partner Presentation
This is the final part of our process — we ask founders to come into the office (or videoconference if overseas) and present their vision to all the partners. You’ll have an hour to tell your story, field questions from the partners, and ask some questions of your own.
At the end of the presentation we have a debrief where we decide whether or not to issue a Term Sheet in the next 1–2 days. If we do, our terms are usually pretty simple (see our seed stage term sheet template here), and the lawyers will take over directing their due diligence. This should only take a couple of weeks if everything is in order.
And now it’s time to celebrate!
How long will all this take?
It really depends. If we already know your business well by the time you decide to raise, it can only take a couple of weeks, but most of the time we’d expect it to take around 4 weeks from first meeting to money in the bank if everything goes smoothly (customers are available for references etc).
Now what?
Once you’re in the portfolio, our goal is to be there when you need us, with offerings that actually help. We’re here to give you an unfair advantage.
Building a world class team: We can help you recruit key roles. Design an org structure that scales. Connect you with other companies for advice. Close out your most-wanted candidates. Shoulder the heavy hiring load.
Helping you level up: We know that sometimes using a fresh pair of eyes can be the best way to navigate the hardest aspects of scaling. That’s why we’ve built a network of experts who have been through it before, and can help you work through some of the biggest challenges you face. Sometimes this is 1:1 mentoring. Sometimes it’s facilitated group sessions with your peers in our portfolio.
Helping you find more people you can rely on: Being a founder can be incredibly lonely at times. That’s why we focus on connecting the brilliant entrepreneurs in our community to each other. We host intimate breakfasts and dinners, functional forums for C-suite execs, and a speaker series where we interview inspiring leaders in tech and other areas of society.
What do I do if AirTree said no?
Stay in touch. Things change —it may not be the perfect fit when we first meet, but that doesn’t mean we can’t work together down the track.
And a lot of the time we just get things wrong. We embrace our own ignorance, and there are several startups in our portfolio where we got it wrong initially and have paid a higher price in later rounds to get to work with them.
And here’s a list of other investors you can speak to in the meantime.
A full list of AirTree’s Open Source VC resources can be accessed here.
|
https://medium.com/airtree-venture/the-airtree-investment-process-f7f69c62a41b
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['Jackie Vullinghs']
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2021-03-22 02:31:54.176000+00:00
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['Startup', 'Fundraising', 'Resources', 'Venture Capital']
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Create An ECommerce Site From Scratch: Explained In 7 Simple Steps
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Entrepreneurship has become a most sought-after dream for almost everyone. And! With the growing usage of the internet, people are exploring more business opportunities. One of them is the eCommerce business, as a most revenue-generating stream for startup enthusiasts.
And! Why not? Establishing an eCommerce business is a flood gate to revenue, as the internet has a full-fledged customer range who are eager to grab the best deal online. But! For this, eCommerce website development is the most critical ladder that every startup enthusiast has to step on. Probably, you would also be planning to step on this ladder to relish the buzz of final success. So, do you want to develop an eCommerce website from scratch to kick-start your businesses?
YES!
But don’t know HOW??
Don’t fret! We will get a complete understanding of eCommerce website development in this article. So, stay hooked with me here.
How To Make An eCommerce Website From Scratch?
#1. Choose Brand Name & Get Logo Designed
Your first task is to decide what your brand name is going to be. Your brand name would be the identity of your business for both today and the future. So, you need to pick it wisely. Moreover, you need to ensure that your brand name and domain name should be the same.
Thus, research for available domain names should be done at the same time. You can explore available domains on websites like Wix, Godaddy, name.com, InstantDomainSearch, and many others
Take a glance at some aspects that you need to consider while deciding the brand name.
->Think about the product you are going to sell, suppose you are selling clothing then, you think in that way. Consider your business niche while deciding on the brand name.
-> Pick a catchy, unique, meaningful, distinctive, and easy brand name that connects with people.
->Articulate your brand heart in the name by considering purpose, mission, and values.
Once you have picked the brand name, you need to get your logo designed.
Suppose you have a very tight budget and can’t afford to hire a designer to get your logo designer. Don’t fret! There are so many free online tools that you can use to create a logo on your own such as Canva, Logomaker, LogoGenie, and more.
While creating a logo, ensure that you must define your brand through visuals. If you can invest a bit, I recommend you to hire a designer. Moreover, if you have hired an eCommerce web design company, then the designers can design an attractive logo.
#2. Buy Website Domain & Decide On Platform
It happens many times that businesses pick their brand name and get the logo designed. But, when they go online to buy a domain for the same, they find the domain isn’t already sold. So, what you need to do in such a condition.
Well! Doing some changes in spelling or getting an acronym domain can save you from this problem. But! You can get it done, only when you are lucky. Thus, it’s better you do domain research before deciding on a brand name and getting the logo designed.
For this, you can use brand name generator tools that tell unique brand names with available domain names such as Shopify, Oberlo, WebHostingGeeks, and more. Over these platforms, you can easily search for a logo name.
Once you sort out the website/brand name and purchase the domain. Now it’s time to decide on which platform you would create your application. Actually, there are several application development platforms that allow you to create an eCommerce store from scratch with ease, such as:
Magento, Shopify, WordPress, WooCommerce, Wix, and more.
No matter that you choose Magento or Shopify, you would have to go through the same processes, such as template selection and template optimization. These platforms are available with pre-defined eCommerce application themes that you just need to optimize as per your requirement.
If you can’t decide, you can check the given comparison among these platforms.
Once you decide about the platform, let’s get into eCommerce website development from scratch.
#3. Pick The Theme
Whether you have chosen Shopify, Magento, or woo-commerce, picking the right theme is the most critical aspect because the theme would make up for the user experience of customers to your store. Thus, you need to ensure that you pick a splendid and pretty looking theme suitable for your product display.
For eCommerce software development, both paid and free themes are available over these platforms; you can pick the one convenient for your budget. Let’s know which themes are best over these platforms.
Best Themes on Shopify:
Free Themes: Boundless, Pop, Supply
Paid Themes: Symmetry, Reach, Mr. Parker
Best Themes On Magento :
Free Themes: FreeGo, UB Trex, Bizkick
Paid Themes: Porto, Claue, Rubix
Best Themes On WooCommerce:
Free Themes: Neve Shop, OceanWP, Storefront
Paid Themes: Outfitter Pro, Nozama, Hestia Pro
Once you have picked the theme now, it’s time to install it. Here we will see how you can do this in Shopify.
If you have a free theme, then you need to click on “Add Theme” on the theme page. This will apply automatically to the dashboard to begin optimization.
If you want to buy them, then you need to click on “Buy Theme” after finishing the buying process, your theme would get installed, and you would be able to continue with optimization.
The process of theme installation is almost the same on every platform; you just need to keep your eyes open to see available options.
#4. Optimize Theme Setting & Add Images
Great! You are doing it pretty well in creating an eCommerce web solution. Now the next is optimizing your store theme setting to change its user experience as per need.
So, click on “Settings” (In Shopify) a panel will appear on the left-hand side, just like WordPress.
Begin with general settings where you can change your store name, store address, and email address. Moreover, you would need to change the time zone, unit system, currency, and weight unit to use the platform to calculate price and other aspects like order time, weight, etc.
Now go toward the taxes section.
Here you can set parameters for including taxes on your price or infuse theme post customer checks-out.
Here take a look into the Shopify setting dashboard.
I believe it is always best to be transparent and upfront about pricing. Think of it this way:
When a user adds an item to their cart, they are mentally prepared to pay that amount, and not more than one percent. It is like an anchoring effect.
Nobody likes to erase their credit card for a $50 purchase but to let them know at the last minute that the additional tax and shipping charge equals 20%.
Then see your payment providers.
First things first: All new Shopify stores are set to automatically accept credit card and PayPal payments.
But, you have to set up your account before you can join hands-on what you have earned from your store.
Here take a look into the Magento setting dashboard.
Instead of stating which bank you use and your account number, you will need to provide the employer identification number (EIN) of your business, which you will get when you register your business.
If you have not registered your business (and do not wish to do so for some time), you will need to enter your social security number and run as a sole proprietor. Find more information about registering business here.
one last thing
If you wish to accept alternate payments, including:
Bitpay, Payer, GoCoin, EPay / payment solution, Alipay Global
You can also set these on the same page. Scroll down, select from the list of alternative payment providers, and configure your settings accordingly.
Here are your notification settings.
Here you can change all the automated emails that encourage your customers, including:
->Order certificate
->Order canceled
->Shipping certificate
If you have some more time, I recommend you to work on your abandoned cart email. Try to inject humor and creativity into them!. For this, you should hire eCommerce developers as the process is a bit technical; doing it on your own can be a bit problematic.
A Glance at checkout dashboard in Magento
Now let’s get into changing the setting for customer checkout. For that, you need to think about:
The user will check out as a guest or as a registered member.
What information you will collect in sign up/checkout forms
Would you use the default shipping and billing address of the customer?
Ensure to have a seamless and streamline checkout process; otherwise, users can abandon the cart.
Most of the website lets users create an account, but some allow them to check out as a guest. Guest checkout doesn’t have many fields. Once you complete with checkout settings, clicking on the “Generate” buttons rest will be handled by the platform.
#5. Infuse Your Products
Now once you are done with the general and check-out setting, it is time you create your catalog. Pick the “Products” on the panel and click “Add Products.”
It will direct you to the page where you can integrate your product name, description, image, and set category.
Fill out your product details, upload images. Copy-paste options would work here.
Have a unique and SEO friendly product description.
Now you can see an option for “Edit website SEO.” There you can make your product SEO effective for better ranking by tweaking page title, meta desc, and URLs.
Once you complete it, all your products are ready to go live.
#6. Optimize Your Pages
By now, you have completed almost 80% of eCommerce store development. Now let’s set up the main page, which will be a major point of interaction with users.
While you would have too many other pages on your site, all will have hyperlinks on the home page.
Integrate header with navigation to other pages like Contact Us, About Us, Shipping & Returns, and T&C. Moreover, you can also integrate pages like blogs, FAQs, etc.
To set up the application, click on “Online Store” and then choose “Pages” -> “Add Pages.”
Add up all the pages and infuse content to those pages. Don’t forget to have a proper CTA for conversion and page interlinking.
#7. Check Payment and Launch Your Site
Now once you have infused all pages, it’s time to make a test payment. Yes! Test all the payment methods you have infused. This way, you can ensure that your platform is available with seamless payment options.
Magento payment gateway setting and test :
So, check out all payment options you have infused by making payments via all channels.
Payment test settings in Shopify are below:
Once your tests come up with a positive outcome, and you are assured that payments are seamless and secured. You are ready to launch your website.
But before launching, you would have to unlock the platform for that (in Shopify), click on “online store,” and click on “Preferences.”
If you are using a free trial, you’ll need to pack a plan to disable your password page. So, simply pick a plan and remove your password to bring your store live.
Wrapping Up
This is a simple explanation to create an eCommerce website from scratch, and you will find that the processes are the same in each platform, whether WooCommerce, Magento, and Shopify.
Moreover, I would recommend you pick the best eCommerce development service to create an online store as sometimes you can encounter technical issues that experts can resolve only.
|
https://medium.com/@emma347/create-an-ecommerce-site-from-scratch-explained-in-7-simple-steps-9ed71eb5585d
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['Emma Jhonson']
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2021-09-08 10:46:22.981000+00:00
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['Ecommerce Web Development', 'Ecommerce Website Design', 'Website Development', 'Ecommerce Solution', 'Online Store']
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Staying Indoors Can Be Fruitful.
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Staying Indoors Can Be Fruitful.
A cup of warm coffee, a nice book, a notepad is as nice as it gets.
(Image Contributed by the Author)
This is haven when the weather outdoors is less than ideal.
We don’t always have to be out during the festive. We can be indoors, learning from the minds of the greats at the comfort of a shelter.
Have a brilliant festive,
Aldric
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https://medium.com/@aldric-chen/staying-indoors-can-be-fruitful-441917a7eff
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['Aldric Chen']
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2020-12-27 08:15:55.324000+00:00
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['Life Lessons', 'Reflections', 'Self Improvement', 'Thinking', 'Reading']
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Extortion, Praying for Lions, and a Reunion in a Cave
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Tsavo East, Kenya
Driving down the highway at 145 km/hr on the left side of the road, in a car whose steering wheel is on the right side, took some getting used to. passing cars on the road by going into the oncoming traffic lane on the highway also took some getting used to. Something about seeing that truck charging at me as i pass another truck, is kinda unnerving.
The coast was a nice change, it was kinda tiring though. Ended up sleeping early all nights, though! On the first night, i was just tired. On the second night I had to wake up at 330am for a safari trip, and the last night, my friends just kinda lamed out so we went back, and there was nothing to do but sleep.
Some “Light” Extortion
I couldn’t afford to go on a solo safari tour, so I planned to go with a group: two Brits from another hotel, to drive through Tsavo East, one of the largest protected areas in Kenya. We agreed on a price, and agreed that the van would pick me up at 4am on Saturday.
Its 4am, and I make it to the front door, no one is around, and its dark out there. The van pulls up, he confirms my name and room number, so I enter the van.
About 20 minutes on the road he lets me know that the other 2 Brits have cancelled so its just going to be me, and the price is going to almost double.
Are you serious?
Little did he know, I’m a New Yorker, and we don’t stand for that shit. So after some minutes of discussion, that had us talking in circles, he let me know we would meet with the safari tour owner, and I could discuss with him.
What a beautiful sky to gaze into while being extorted for money
Its 5am at this point, still dark, i’m in a van with a stranger, in some unknown part of coastal Kenya, the streets are barren, but I’m not feeling uneasy really, just more annoyed because of the lack of sleep, and I had no problem telling him to “turn his ass around and drop me back at the hotel”. I was in that kind of mood.
The driver, an older Yemenese man, and the owner, a Kenyan guy are both telling me that because the other tourists canceled, they would have to raise my rate to match that of a private tour. I told them that I would not be held responsible for two strangers canceling their tour, but that there was a simple thing called communication. When they found out that the two British tourists had cancelled the day before, they should have done everything in their power to have the hotel contact me, to give me the choice. Instead they picked me up from the hotel, drove me out into the middle of nowhere before dawn and demanded $100 that I had zero intention of paying.
So the owner resorted to begging. And that was just pathetic. “Please, sir with all your mercy, please just give us the extra money.” I’ll tell you something right here and now, these hotel sponsored tourist companies are not hurting for money. Meanwhile there are legitimate and honest people who can’t find a job for more than 1 dollar per day, and this guy is trying to scam me.
I told the man to stop begging, and that it’s not about mercy, that it’s about business. Finally I was getting a headache and I added 20 dollars, and the owner accepted, but the driver was not happy. The driver started yelling at the owner in Kiswahili. He didn’t realize I understood that he was calling me a “rich American from whom he could have squeezed much more out of.”
And it was at that point, that I broke out into Kiswahili, and that ended that conversation.
At this point the driver’s tone changed and things got a little less tense. He told me that he would pray that I see lions, (since I’ve never had much luck in safari trips, beyond a few zebras).
Praying for Lions
It’s an interesting thing to pray for. Not sure if I understand so much the concept of asking for things in prayer. I understand praying for strength, patience, and hope… but for lions, not so much, but I let him have his moment.
After 2 hours of driving through the grasslands, I spotted one owl, a bird, and a baby monkey in a tree. I felt cheated on so many levels.
Until, to my surprise, my Yemenese friend’s prayers were answered! Multiple times, in fact! Over the course of the day I saw 8 lions, way up close too. I got one shot of the lions, a herd of elephants in the distance, and a posse of warthogs.
Afraid of Elephants
I discovered something very interesting about my driver. While he had no problem driving up close to the lions, which I know could rip us to shreds, he had a phobia that I did not expect.
We’re driving and there’s an elephant off to the side of the road in the distance. I was pretty excited to get to see this elephant up close, but all of a sudden the car comes to a dead stop.
“We cannot go this way”
“Why not there’s an elephant right there, its a great shot!”
“No no, you take the photo from here”
“Sir, please, lets just get a little closer”
“No! I am afraid of elephants!”
I thought he was joking, but I came to find out, he most certainly wasn’t.
I told him “Sir, he’s just eating he’s not even looking at us”
He said “Ah… he is just PRETENDING to eat. He has very bad intentions. he wants us to think he’s just eating, and then we will drive to him, and he will kill us both
I can see it in his eyes.“
I looked in the elephants eyes, which were about a quarter of a mile away in the distance, and so I didn’t see much. Maybe if we were a little closer I could see the vindictive stare of an ill-willed giant mammal serial killer.
But all I saw was an elephant eating grass.
It just so happened, that this road was our only way out. What did we do? We waited. For almost an hour. Driving away, coming back to see if it was still there, and it was, so we would drive away again. Finally I had enough of the bullshit (no pun intended) and when he asked me if I saw the elephant still there, I lied and said it was gone. And off we went.
So as we drove closer, the elephant must have seen us coming and walked away because by the time we got there, the elephant was behind a tree. And guess what, it was eating. As soon as I prepared myself to take that glorious photo, my timid friend stepped on the gas pedal and zoomed us out of there yelling, “I hate these animals!”
Maybe this man is in the wrong field?
After our tour came to a close, the driver asked me if I would quit my job and spend my days promoting his safari business, and also sponsor him for a green-card. A reasonable request if I’ve ever heard one.
Back to the Beach Boys
Cave made of coral, a wonderful spot for a reunion of friends
The previous day I got to the beach, and was approached by a beach boy “Hey man! How you doin today Mr. Tourist”.
The beach boys are non-licensed vendors and tour guides who are locals in any beach town, who are just trying to make a living, but because of increasing pressures by the tourism industry and the police, they are losing their only means of livelihood, because tourists fear them.
As I saw during this trip, even the licensed tour guides can be shady.
But this beach boy approached me, and I looked at him, and I knew him. “Amony!”, I exclaimed.
He took off his sunglasses “Paulo
” And he ran as fast as he could towards me and gave me a hug and he was as shocked to see me as I was to see him.
He was a friend I made on the beach in June 2007, and we ended up becoming friends. Him and a few of his friends seemed really cool and honest, and they ran their businesses with integrity. They were guys with great spirits and good hearts. Rastas at heart, with always a warm smile on their face, despite the tough times they’d been facing in recent days. I made plans to meet up with him and Kakaa, the other dude I’d met, for later on that day.
We walked and talked that afternoon past the eyes of the tourism police, since now these guys cannot go on the beaches of their own villages because of the laws to protect vacationers.
They brought me to a cave made of dead coral that had been there for hundreds of years, it was tremendous, and we just chatted about politics, economics, relationships, and life in general. One of the things my friend said, still rings in my ears, a translated saying from Swahili: “Haraka haraka haina baraka”
“Hurry hurry, has no blessing.”
|
https://medium.com/master-of-some/extortion-praying-for-lions-and-a-reunion-in-a-cave-eb53c3bb4aeb
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['Paul Kist']
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2018-10-01 02:36:05.684000+00:00
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['Kenya', 'Safari', 'Tourism', 'Friendship']
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UX designer at a small-size design agency or at a big-size company?
|
A small design agency could have some where between 10–30 ppl working at max. Working at a place like this could be of great exposure in your early stages of design career especially when you are just starting in your design career.
The advantages working in a small size design agency are,
You get the opportunity to learn many things provided you have a good mentor.
You could be involved in stakeholder discussions, interacting directly with clients on the requirements and have design discussions.
You will have active involvement in all stages of design, wearing multiple hats and not doing just one UX role.
You can take care of a whole project along with a couple of team members and be involved in it from start to end.
You get to know the end to end process of how a product is conceptualised and put into the market if your agency is developing a product.
And it just keeps adding.
When working as a UX Designer at a large company which has dedicated teams for different roles with a huge workforce is quite difficult to gel in at the start and understand the existing process the company follows. Especially for a person who has worked in a small design agency before will take some time to set into the new environment.
Working in a large company has the following advantages,
You have lot of people in different levels of experience who can always provide their feedbacks and suggestions that helps you grow.
Separate team’s exist for different UX roles which helps you to master in any one role which you think you are good.
You will learn to manage time much better since there would be other teams that are dependent on the work that you do.
You will learn to be collaborative in terms of wether you manage your design files or when making design decisions as there will be a big team involved who also needs to be informed on the happenings.
Definitely a much better pay than a small size design agency
And lot more depending on the company that you get into.
Each has its own cons which I might not talk about here. One should choose which would suit them best and keep learning and grow your career.
|
https://bootcamp.uxdesign.cc/ux-designer-at-a-small-size-design-agency-or-a-large-company-bed90e114203
|
['Sathish Kumar']
|
2020-12-27 22:03:06.125000+00:00
|
['UX Design', 'UI Design', 'UX', 'Careers', 'Ux Careers']
|
Women in Crypto
|
Blockchain space resembles a clan culture in which there is a great collaboration among the people. On the contrary, a vast number of thought leaders and influencers in this industry are men. This resulted in a great gender imbalance. To be more precise, there are only 12.28% of women in the Bitcoin community. Despite the smaller number, there are a ton of women who have contributed to the development of the industry. Unfortunately, they are lesser-spoken of and not appreciated. This is a short attempt by us to shed light and pay respect to the wonderful women who made an impact on the crypto.
Cracking the Code with Kathleen Breitman
Kathleen Breitman is the co-founder and CEO of the Tezos blockchain. She started in the blockchain as a Senior Strategy Associate at R3, a consortium that explores the use of blockchain for banks around the world. But, her real crypto endeavours began when she gave up her day job to join the forces with her husband to launch Tezos smart contracts platform. In 2014, the duo released the official whitepaper of the project with potential fixes to what Bitcoin wasn’t able to. Despite the initial setbacks, the project had one of the best ICOs in the crypto sphere and raised a $232 Million in 2017.
The chain was coded from scratch and is widely known for its PoS staking mechanism, self-governance and on-chain governance. With Kathleen’s leadership, Tezos is doing impressively well and is standing among the top 10 most valuable cryptocurrencies at the time of writing.
A safe haven for the little bitcoin — Alena Vranova
Cryptocurrencies have always faced an issue of hacks and thefts. Putting an end to all that, Satoshi Labs launched the first hardware wallet for safe storage of cryptocurrencies. Alena Vranova is the co-founder of Satoshi Labs and Trezor. She also served as the CEO of Trezor for 4years and took the company to new heights. Later, she joined Casa, a personal key management system for Bitcoin. Being an advent supporter of Bitcoin, she is vocal and expresses her opinions through social media. Alena also authored The Little Bitcoin Book in which she outlines the story of money and how bitcoin can change the world. With her enormous experience in Business and thought leadership, Alena is indeed a role model for many in the crypto world.
Lightning Fast Transactions — Elizabeth Stark
If you are reading this, you must’ve been already aware that Bitcoin is the world’s first digital currency and is meant to serve as a peer-to-peer payment system. As the currency grew in popularity, the network was clogged with a massive number of transactions and confirmation times peaked. To counter this problem, Elizabeth Stark co-founded Lightning Labs, the firm behind the Lightning Network. She along with her team delivered the second layer protocol layer for the Bitcoin Network enabling smart contracts and faster transactions. She also has the experience of teaching in Stanford and Yale on peer-to-peer payment systems and an advisor to many blockchain startups.
Boarding the Bankers On-Chain — Amber Baldet
Cryptocurrency came into existence to bypass the traditional banking systems and provide financial freedom to the people. This innovation has brought the blockchain technology into the limelight and teased its potential. Though the financial firms are hostile towards the crypto, many are testing the waters in blockchain tech to cater their customers better. Amber Baldet played a key role in bridging the blockchain tech with conventional banks. She served as the blockchain program lead in JPMorgan Chase and also led the team which built, Quorum, an open-source blockchain platform based on Ethereum built specifically for businesses. She left the bank and co-founded, Clovyr, a startup which enables enterprises of different sizes to build, deploy and manage applications on the blockchain. Amber Baldet was featured in Fortune’s 40 Under 40 and CoinDesk’s Most Influential in Blockchain.
Podcasting with Laura Shin
Sometimes finding a reliable source of news get a bit tricky in crypto. Laura Shin comes to your rescue, she has always been considered as the most trusted voices in the blockchain. She is a Forbes Senior Editor and focuses primarily on cryptocurrency and blockchain. Her podcasts Unchained and Unconfirmed are not to be missed by anyone. She hosts and discusses diverse topics alongside influencers, techies and businessmen and women in the crypto.
A self-made star — Preethi Kasireddy
Preethi taught herself how to code and made herself a Blockchain Engineer. She worked for big firms like Coinbase, Goldman Sachs and Andreessen Horowitz. She is an avid writer and shares knowledge through blog and twitter. Her writings range from blockchain, tech & coding, to travel and health. Her simple twitter bio reveals a lot about her and the feed is refreshing. She is indeed a self-made star!
Anybody can — Tiffany Hayden
In crypto, you don’t have to be an investor or crack the code to create an impact on the community. And Tiffany Hayden proves it. She is a mother, independent adviser and a fintech enthusiast. Tiffany aims to help people around by sharing knowledge about Blockchain in simple words. She has a huge fan base on Twitter and also organises workshops and meetups to fuel the adoption of this new tech.
Time to Talk
There are many such influential women in crypto who has contributed to the development of the industry. Each of them is is a role model not only for every young woman but for everybody out there to strive for and achieve new heights. Yet, there is a great gender imbalance and we don’t often see working culture, equal pay and other sensitive topics being discussed in the crypto community. This is the time to talk about this and give the credit to women where it was meant to be. We do believe that soon women will be given equal importance and crypto will be a better place.
Did we miss anyone? Comment down below who we should mention. As always follow ChangeHero on Twitter and Medium for more of such articles and the most happening things in crypto.
|
https://medium.com/swlh/women-in-crypto-d37903fbb39e
|
[]
|
2020-03-05 10:00:04.009000+00:00
|
['Blockchain', 'Women In Crypto', 'Womeninblockchain', 'Changehero', 'Cryptocurrency']
|
Sharpe Ratio, Sortino Ratio and Calmar Ratio
|
Sharpe Ratio Revisited
Sharpe ratio is the ratio of average return divided by the standard deviation of returns annualized. We had an introduction to it in a previous story.
Let’s take a look at it again with a test price time series.
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
from pandas.tseries.offsets import BDay
def daily_returns(prices):
res = (prices/prices.shift(1) - 1.0)[1:]
res.columns = ['return']
return res
def sharpe(returns, risk_free=0):
adj_returns = returns - risk_free
return (np.nanmean(adj_returns) * np.sqrt(252)) \
/ np.nanstd(adj_returns, ddof=1)
def test_price1():
start_date = pd.Timestamp(2020, 1, 1) + BDay()
len = 100
bdates = [start_date + BDay(i) for i in range(len)]
price = [10.0 + i/10.0 for i in range(len)]
return pd.DataFrame(data={'date': bdates,
'price1': price}).set_index('date')
def test_price2():
start_date = pd.Timestamp(2020, 1, 1) + BDay()
len = 100
bdates = [start_date + BDay(i) for i in range(len)]
price = [10.0 + i/10.0 for i in range(len)]
price[40:60] = [price[40] for i in range(20)]
return pd.DataFrame(data={'date': bdates,
'price2': price}).set_index('date')
def test_price3():
start_date = pd.Timestamp(2020, 1, 1) + BDay()
len = 100
bdates = [start_date + BDay(i) for i in range(len)]
price = [10.0 + i/10.0 for i in range(len)]
price[40:60] = [price[40] - i/10.0 for i in range(20)]
return pd.DataFrame(data={'date': bdates,
'price3': price}).set_index('date')
def test_price4():
start_date = pd.Timestamp(2020, 1, 1) + BDay()
len = 100
bdates = [start_date + BDay(i) for i in range(len)]
price = [10.0 + i/10.0 for i in range(len)]
price[40:60] = [price[40] - i/8.0 for i in range(20)]
return pd.DataFrame(data={'date': bdates,
'price4': price}).set_index('date')
price1 = test_price1()
return1 = daily_returns(price1)
price2 = test_price2()
return2 = daily_returns(price2)
price3 = test_price3()
return3 = daily_returns(price3)
price4 = test_price4()
return4 = daily_returns(price4)
print('price1')
print(f'sharpe: {sharpe(return1)}')
print('price2')
print(f'sharpe: {sharpe(return2)}')
print('price3')
print(f'sharpe: {sharpe(return3)}')
print('price4')
print(f'sharpe: {sharpe(return4)}')
As you can see in this example, I have 4 test price time series. First one, price1, is simply a straight line (never mind the wiggles, it’s due to weekends that were left out). The second price time series, price2, has a flat region. The third price time series, price3, has a downward sloping region. The last time series, price4, has a slighter larger downward slope.
The sharpe ratio for each price is calculated below:
'''
price1
sharpe: 78.59900981328562
price2
sharpe: 7.9354707022912825
price3
sharpe: 3.61693599695678
price4
sharpe: 3.151996500460301 '''
As you can see, price1 has a very high sharpe ratio, due to almost non-existent volatility. Price2 has a sharpe ratio of almost 10 times less, due to the presence of a flat region. Price3 and Price4 are about two times lower than price2 due to the downward slope, and Price4 sharpe ratio is slightly lower than price3’s sharpe ratio.
Looking at these numbers, one thing that might seem a little strange is how much the sharpe ratio decreased simply due to the presence of a flat region. After all, the total return didn’t change, and there is no drawdown at all. For an investor, price1 and price2 are not all that different.
On the other hand, price3 and price4 have sizable drawdowns, yet the sharpe ratio decreased by about half, compared to a 10 times drop between price1 and price2. This seems to be a deficiency in the ability of sharpe ratio to tell us how desirable the price time series is.
|
https://towardsdatascience.com/sharpe-ratio-sorino-ratio-and-calmar-ratio-252b0cddc328
|
['Shuo Wang']
|
2020-11-18 05:35:28.107000+00:00
|
['Portfolio Management', 'Quantitative Analysis', 'Python', 'Data Science', 'Data Visualization']
|
Experience A Smooth Blockchain Application Development Process On Bityuan (BTY) Public Chain Through BSN Global
|
The Bityuan (BTY) public chain has officially completed the access to Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN) International. First, with the aid of the BSN international platform, it can provide a new low-threshold and easy-to-access development environment for developers, leading the outbreak of applications developed on the Bityuan (BTY) public chain ecosystem. Second, with its efficient performance and stable cross-chain technology, Bityuan (BTY) adds the BSN platform with multiple blockchain services. This cooperation is also the beginning of a win-win situation for both parties. Bityuan team will further strengthen the cooperation with BSN International in the future.
Here is a quick guide for developers to implement blockchain applications on the BSN International.
Step 1: Register and sign in
Go to the BSN Global official website, bsnbase.io, and you need to complete the registration at first.
When you fill in all the blanks, you click “Confirm”. You will receive an activation email, then you set a password, and log in to BSN Global.
Step 2: Select node and Bityuan (BTY) network, create your application authority certificate
After entering the main page, click “Permissionless Services” to create your public chain service.
I choose Hong Kong of “City Nodes” and BitYuan-Mainnet of “Framework Name” as examples here. Other choices of City Nodes include California and Paris.
Then you need to choose the plan that is proper to your demands, I choose “Free Plan” as a demonstration here. Next, click “Create New Project” and fill in “Project Name”, “Choose the Chain”, and “Daily Requests”.
When a project is created, the system will generate an RPC Access Address and a Project Key. This information is used for the interaction between the applications and the Bityuan (BTY) mainnet, and the management of application permissions. Therefore, it’s important for blockchain application developers.
Once you complete the steps above, it means that you already have a stable node for development. Compared with the traditional Bityuan (BTY) node maintained by a developer himself, the BSN node makes the deployment and maintenance more efficient, greatly reducing the cost and difficulty.
Step 3: Request to call the node and complete the node interaction
In this step, a third-party interface tool “Postman” will be used to realize the request interaction between the application developments and mainnet nodes.
The Postman tool link is https://www.postman.com/downloads/
After you register and log in to Postman, click the “+” sign.
Then you copy the “Access Address” created on BSN and paste it to the address bar on the Postman page.
Then you click the “Headers” subpage and enter “x-api-key” in the column labeled “KEY”.
Then you go back to the BSN page, copy the “Project Key” and paste it to the “VALUE” column. Please do not disclose your Project Key to others.
Next, you click “Body”, select “Raw”, change the request method to POST, and use JSON-RPC to call.
Before the certificate command is sent, you need to return to the BSN page to click the “Enable Key”.
Then return to the Postman page and enter the call command, which is available on the Bityuan Developer Platform https://chain.33.cn/. For example, the latest blockchain height can be obtained through command.
After the command is input to the Postman page, click “Send” to get the data.
In the end, the data is returned as shown above, and the block height is 11302802.
In conclusion, developers can take advantage of the BSN node to complete the deployment, development, and test of their applications on the public chain without deploying Bityuan nodes by themselves. It allows developers to focus on application development instead of spending extra time on node maintenance and operation.
For further discussion about developing applications on the Bityuan (BTY) public chain through BSN Global, you can join our Telegram group @Bityuan and follow @Bityuanofficial on Twitter.
More Info About Bityuan (BTY)
Markets：https://www.ztb.im/, https://www.lbank.info/, and zhaobi.site
Twitter：@Bityuanofficial
Official Website：https://www.bityuan.com/index
Telegram Group：@Bityuan
Blockchain Explorer：https://mainnet.bityuan.com/
Developers Platform：https://chain.33.cn/
Open Source Website：https://github.com/bityuan/bityuan
Whitepaper Link：https://bityuan.com/download/BityuanWhitePaper.pdf
Weibo：比特元BTY
WeChat Official Account：bityuangonglian
|
https://medium.com/@bityuanofficial/experience-a-smooth-blockchain-application-development-process-on-bityuan-bty-public-chain-4a546cab3383
|
['Bityuan', 'Bty']
|
2020-12-03 04:13:41.886000+00:00
|
['Bsn', 'Parachain', 'Blockchain', 'Development', 'Infrastructure']
|
Let’s Get Real
|
I feel like there isn’t enough of that on the internet. As an entrepreneur, I find myself often walking a tightrope between authenticity and being curated enough to still be taken seriously; to still be “on-brand” in this culture of constant hustle, where it seems like every “guru” you follow is waking up earlier than you to #CrushIt. (But really… if you ain’t up by 4 a.m., are you really hustling?)
In truth, we’re real people. All of us. We all have dreams and aspirations. We work hard, but sometimes, we need rest. We also have doubts and fears. We’ll take to the internet to talk about our SUCCESSES and failures, but usually in the past tense (especially when it comes to the latter).
I don’t see enough people transparently documenting the journey of the here and now. Vulnerability is uncomfortable for most, and the internet can be a scary, judgmental place. Yet, we’re all going through it together. Wouldn’t it be helpful to share our experiences with our fellow humans, as we’re experiencing them in real-time?
Life and entrepreneurship are both beautiful journeys. They can’t help but intertwine; they require us to figure ourselves out and navigate our place in the world, while also deciphering a way to build our passions from scratch. It’s certainly an interesting way to live, but rest assured, it isn’t for the faint of heart. None of our journeys are as perfect as a scroll through Instagram will have you believe.
That’s why I’m here right now. Underground Music Collective isn’t the place for my personal-and-sometimes-business-related musings, but enough people have told me that the ones I share on social media are helpful — perhaps, they’re helpful enough to warrant putting them somewhere official. So, here we are, in that official place!
Who am I? Most likely, you’re here because you know me as the founder of that multimedia company I linked up there. Beyond that, I’m a self-proclaimed 11-time Uncle of the Year. I’m a brother, son, friend, nephew, and cousin. One day, I‘ll be the best father/husband/partner I can possibly be, and my family and I will load up the camper and travel the country. I’m a cancer survivor, a former semi-professional athlete, and a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan. I’ve been to 44 states and counting. Oh, and sometimes I’ll sing.
Beyond that? I’m still figuring that out — and it’s cool if you still are, too.
We all are. That’s life. That’s real.
Let’s figure it out together. No judgment.
-G
|
https://medium.com/@gerard.longo/lets-get-real-e790dfcd6b94
|
['Gerard Longo']
|
2021-07-07 04:30:39.022000+00:00
|
['Life Lessons', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Authenticity', 'Entrepreneur', 'Life']
|
Airflow: Lesser Known Tips, Tricks, and Best Practises
|
There are certain things with all the tools you use that you won’t know even after using it for a long time. And once you know it you are like “I wish I knew this before” as you had already told your client that it can’t be done in any better way 🤦🤦. Airflow like other tool is no different, there are some hidden gems that can make your life easy and make DAG development fun.
You might already know some of them and if you know them all — well you are a PRO then🕴🎩.
(1) DAG with context Manager
Were you annoyed with yourself when you forgot to add dag=dag to your task and Airflow error’ed? Yes, it is easy to forget adding it for each task. It is also redundant to add the same parameter as shown in the following example ( example_dag.py file):
The example ( example_dag.py file) above just has 2 tasks, but if you have 10 or more then the redundancy becomes more evident. To avoid this you can use Airflow DAGs as context managers to automatically assign new operators to that DAG as shown in the above example ( example_dag_with_context.py ) using with statement.
(2) Using List to set Task dependencies
When you want to create the DAG similar to the one shown in the image below, you would have to repeat task names when setting task dependencies.
As shown in the above code snippet, using our normal way of setting task dependencies would mean that task_two and end are repeated 3 times. This can be replaced using python lists to achieve the same result in a more elegant way.
(3) Use default arguments to avoid repeating arguments
Airflow allows passing a dictionary of parameters that would be available to all the task in that DAG.
For example, at DataReply, we use BigQuery for all our DataWareshouse related DAGs and instead of passing parameters like labels , bigquery_conn_id to each task, we simply pass it in default_args dictionary as shown in the DAG below.
This is also useful when you want alerts on individual task failures instead of just DAG failures which I already mentioned in my last blog post on Integrating Slack Alerts in Airflow.
(4) The “params” argument
“params” is a dictionary of DAG level parameters that are made accessible in templates. These params can be overridden at the task level.
This is an extremely helpful argument and I have been personally using it a lot as it can be accessed in templated field with jinja templating using params.param_name . An example usage is as follows:
It makes it easy for you to write parameterized DAG instead of hard-coding values. Also as shown in the examples above params dictionary can be defined at 3 places: (1) In DAG object (2) In default_args dictionary (3) Each task.
(5) Storing Sensitive data in Connections
Most users are aware of this but I have still seen passwords stored in plain-text inside the DAG. For goodness sake — don’t do that. You should write your DAGs in a way that you are confident enough to store your DAGs in a public repository.
By default, Airflow will save the passwords for the connection in plain text within the metadata database. The crypto package is highly recommended during Airflow installation and can be simply done by pip install apache-airflow[crypto] .
You can then easily access it as follows:
from airflow.hooks.base_hook import BaseHook
slack_token = BaseHook.get_connection('slack').password
(6) Restrict the number of Airflow variables in your DAG
Airflow Variables are stored in Metadata Database, so any call to variables would mean a connection to Metadata DB. Your DAG files are parsed every X seconds. Using a large number of variable in your DAG (and worse in default_args ) may mean you might end up saturating the number of allowed connections to your database.
To avoid this situation, you can either just use a single Airflow variable with JSON value. As an Airflow variable can contain JSON value, you can store all your DAG configuration inside a single variable as shown in the image below:
As shown in this screenshot you can either store values in separate Airflow variables or under a single Airflow variable as a JSON field
You can then access them as shown below under Recommended way:
(7) The “context” dictionary
Users often forget the contents of the context dictionary when using PythonOperator with a callable function.
The context contains references to related objects to the task instance and is documented under the macros section of the API as they are also available to templated field.
{
'dag': task.dag,
'ds': ds,
'next_ds': next_ds,
'next_ds_nodash': next_ds_nodash,
'prev_ds': prev_ds,
'prev_ds_nodash': prev_ds_nodash,
'ds_nodash': ds_nodash,
'ts': ts,
'ts_nodash': ts_nodash,
'ts_nodash_with_tz': ts_nodash_with_tz,
'yesterday_ds': yesterday_ds,
'yesterday_ds_nodash': yesterday_ds_nodash,
'tomorrow_ds': tomorrow_ds,
'tomorrow_ds_nodash': tomorrow_ds_nodash,
'END_DATE': ds,
'end_date': ds,
'dag_run': dag_run,
'run_id': run_id,
'execution_date': self.execution_date,
'prev_execution_date': prev_execution_date,
'next_execution_date': next_execution_date,
'latest_date': ds,
'macros': macros,
'params': params,
'tables': tables,
'task': task,
'task_instance': self,
'ti': self,
'task_instance_key_str': ti_key_str,
'conf': configuration,
'test_mode': self.test_mode,
'var': {
'value': VariableAccessor(),
'json': VariableJsonAccessor()
},
'inlets': task.inlets,
'outlets': task.outlets,
}
(8) Generating Dynamic Airflow Tasks
I have been answering many questions on StackOverflow on how to create dynamic tasks. The answer is simple, you just need to generate unique task_id for all of your tasks. Below are 2 examples on how to achieve that:
(9) Run “airflow upgradedb” instead of “airflow initdb”
Thanks to Ash Berlin for this tip in his talk in the First Apache Airflow London Meetup.
|
https://medium.com/datareply/airflow-lesser-known-tips-tricks-and-best-practises-cf4d4a90f8f
|
['Kaxil Naik']
|
2020-02-06 19:59:19.740000+00:00
|
['Apache Airflow', 'Python', 'Airflow']
|
Episode 5: Coding for Sustainability and Equity with Arno & Floor
|
In this episode of Coding in the Wild, we interview Floor & Arno from the Netherlands! Floor Drees is a Developer Relations Manager at Microsoft, and Arno Fleming is a Tech Lead at The Next Closet, a sustainable marketplace for second hand designer fashion. Together they co-organize the Ruby Community in the Netherlands. Tune in as we discuss their love for the Ruby Community, English as a universal language for coders, and building inclusive communities in the programming world.
The Coding in the Wild podcast is also available on Spotify and YouTube!
Episode 5 Highlights
Free web development for beginners course by Microsoft mentioned by Floor.
|
https://codinginthewild.com/episode-5-coding-for-sustainability-and-equity-with-arno-floor-f7f8fee0f9d0
|
[]
|
2021-03-03 01:30:03.815000+00:00
|
['Code Of Conduct', 'Sustainable Fashion', 'Podcast', 'Ruby', 'Learn To Code']
|
Rules About ADVISING OTHERS
|
Expla-Quote * OF THE SEASON
A humans psyche is generally as such, that if you advise without any invitation to do so, then it is usually felt as unrespectful and is therefore also not welcome.
Under the circumstances, it comes across more like criticism than advice. And that especially so if the given person you’re advising, happens to be having a hard time.
(~ explamation quote of the season)
|
https://medium.com/@smilaz/rules-about-advising-others-df122d856d1e
|
['Slavinka Mila Smilaz', 'Slavomila Zachova']
|
2020-12-27 15:33:09.378000+00:00
|
['Why', 'Quotes', 'Expla Quote', 'Advice', 'Psychology']
|
Einstein Designer — AI-Powered, Personalized Design at Scale
|
Since the dawn of manufacturing, there’s been a hard limitation on how we develop products. This applies to traditional manufacturing as well as to software development, which is the focus here. The conventional wisdom is that either quality, time-to-market, or cost has to be compromised. Or as the saying goes: “Good, Fast, Cheap. Pick two.”
This truism is rooted in a pre-AI (Artificial Intelligence) world. The power of AI changes the rules of the game.
For example, at Salesforce Customer Success is one of our most important values. That implies that we will not compromise on quality or time-to-market. The challenge is: how can we make it efficient (cheap) to deliver high-quality (good) products at an industry-leading pace (fast)?
One of the most time consuming and expensive aspects of a software project is User Interface (UI) development. While today we have programmatic and declarative solutions for developing UIs, both approaches fall short when it comes to truly changing the rules of the game. It still takes significant time and substantial resources to build good user interfaces. UI development still eats up a significant portion of the product development lifecycle. What would be the fastest possible way to create UI? Not doing it manually at all. But what does that even mean?
The Future of UI
What if we could generate user interfaces automatically? To take it even a step further, what if we could predict UIs?
To research this challenge and discover if AI can be trained with aesthetic values, we founded the UX R&D team at Salesforce. Our initial vision statement:
We radically improve the way to create user interfaces by applying Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.
Data Science for Design
In order to train a machine-learned model, we needed to understand the space we are working with. One of the first questions a data scientist will usually ask when it comes to training a model is: “What are the inputs and what kind of outputs are you looking for?”
To develop an intuition for the space and the potential inputs for a model, we kicked off a project called Deep Learning UX, or DLUX for short (say “deluxe”). As our initial training data we picked the Fortune 500 and unicorn companies (start-ups with valuations over $1 billion) with the hypothesis that these sites have been created by professional design agencies and meet some level of quality (we are fully aware that this training data is potentially biased). We analyzed roughly 1,000 sites, focusing on their use of color and typography. We were lucky to collaborate closely with the data visualization specialist Moritz Stefaner who has been producing Truth & Beauty, literally.
Color
By analyzing the training data, we quickly came to the conclusion that there isn’t a single color palette for a site or page, but that web design today favors slices — using different color palettes for different portions of a page/site. For instance, we may slice a page into the salient components, such as a header, a call-to-action (CTA), content blocks with alternating backgrounds, and different kinds of footers. The data visualization below shows the corresponding color palette for each slice, with the size of each color block indicating the proportional usage. Further analysis also led to algorithms that revealed the semantic meanings of how the colors are being used. To use AI terminology: we found ways to label the data.
Data Viz by Moritz Stefaner
Another very interesting lens on color is the overall distribution. In the visualization below, each dot represents the occurrence of color in a palette across the 1,000 sites analyzed.
Size = amount
Angle = color hue
Distance to center = +-saturation sat (+ lightness correction)
Data Viz by Moritz Stefaner
The major takeaway is that there is a strong blue-red axis. Purple and green are being used much less. This is only one lens into our training data and not representative for the entire internet.
Another way to slice this data is by industry which reveals the unsurprising fact that software companies gravitate towards blue.
Data Viz by Moritz Stefaner
Typography
We looked at typography by analyzing font sizes, which revealed a very interesting insight: the data shows a strong preference for even font-sizes which is unlikely for aesthetic reasons but to make it easier to calculate than odd numbers. It’s basically evidence that the training data has been designed/developed by humans.
Font Size Distribution
Data Viz by Moritz Stefaner
Our next question was: are there patterns for how font sizes are applied to the elements of a webpage? To answer this question we tried to label the data with HTML tag names. HTML tags are intended to describe semantic meaning but the training data didn’t yield any meaningful correlations as very little production HTML is semantically correct. The web is messy and SEO is likely to play a role too.
Typographic Hierarchy
A key aspect of good typography is the creation of hierarchy to establish an order of importance within a design. We’ve analyzed pairs of typographic styles to develop an intuition on how we might encode type hierarchy in a scalable way. Below are examples for an arc and radial arc diagram illustrating how styles are used together on one particular site. Each character represents a distinct font style for an entity in our training data. The weight of the line expresses the strength of the relationship between the styles.
Data Viz by Moritz Stefaner
Latent Style Space
The key takeaway from our initial data science is that there is a meaningful latent space when it comes to style encapsulating aspects around color, typography, and more. The latent space is basically a representation of compressed data which in our use-case enables the featurization of design rules and heuristics. It’s our foundation for what we call Deep Learning UX to produce generative design. But how is this useful?
Personalized Design
“Cheap Changes Everything”
This quote from the book Prediction Machines gets to the essence of how transformational AI can be. Once something becomes cheap, it can change everything. If UI creation is suddenly cheap, what would it enable?
One of the most exciting applications we are currently working on is the personalization of design. If it was cheap to generate UIs it would be possible to create multiple versions of a UI. Imagine a custom UI for every person who visits a website. Wait — what?
What does it even mean to personalize design?
Let’s take a look at a scenario in the commerce space. Meet our two shoppers Sheryl and Shawna. While shopping on a site, they both see relevant content (already predicted through AI) but the presentation/design isn’t really resonating with either of them. Sheryl is a bargain hunter, she likes to look for discount prices. While the discount appears in the default design, it’s not very prominent. Shawna usually makes her buying decisions based on product ratings which are entirely missing in this design. To satisfy both their personal preferences, we would need to highlight the information they personally care about: Sheryl would get a prominent treatment of the discount price, and Shawna can see the product ratings front and center.
Design by Owen Schoppe
That’s personalized design, because one size does not fit all. Everybody is unique and we all care about different aspects of a product and we all apply our own personal (aesthetic) value judgment.
Design by Owen Schoppe
Scale is Key
In order to create personalized design at scale, two processes need to be automated:
The creation of design variations needs to be automated. Creating them manually does not scale (it’s too expensive and time-consuming). Generative design is the answer. The personalization, or who sees what design variation, needs to be automated. Mapping design variations to audiences manually has the potential of being flawed, can be a cumbersome process, and can’t scale to millions or billions of users. It needs to be a prediction.
Generative Design w/ Deep Learning UX
Deep Learning UX (DLUX) enables us to generate design at scale. DLUX automatically learns the design system of an existing brand by analyzing its website and has been trained to produce AI-generated, brand-aligned design variations.
Augmented Intelligence
Humans choose which generated design variations — Augmented Intelligence or Human-In-The-Loop in AI parlance. DLUX amplifies the creative process by generating a universe of designs that can be clustered and ranked based on different criteria. Then the human-in-the-loop calibrates the design generations and ultimately selects the design variations. This process gives users visibility into how the AI works and control over how their business is presented. We believe this process helps foster a trusted relationship between our customers and the application of generative design.
Artificial Yet Ethical
Developing new technology, especially in the AI space, requires a responsible approach. Salesforce’s chairman and CEO Marc Benioff summarizes it best:
“The ethical and humane use of technology in the Fourth Industrial Revolution is the way forward — not just for our industry but for humanity. We have to make sure that technology strengthens our societies instead of weakening them. Technology needs to improve the human condition, not undermine it.”
We see DLUX as augmented intelligence, amplifying the creative process, and enabling Salesforce customers to deliver innovative, bespoke experiences. We are not ignorant of the potential for bad actors when it comes to this type of technology, just the opposite: it’s part of our process to ensure the AI technologies we create are aligned with our values.
For example, we conduct workshops to scan for possible negative ramifications of our technology as a part of our product development lifecycle. UK based think-tank DotEveryone developed Consequence Scanning Workshops to guide organizations in creating technology responsibly. We apply their framework at the start and during the process, instead of attempting to ethically retrofit our technology after the fact.
For more information please see Salesforce’s Ethical and Humane Use site.
Predictive Personalization w/ Bandits
Once we have a set of good design variations one task remains: Who is going to see which design variation? As mentioned above doing the segmentation manually is an error-prone and time-consuming endeavor. In contrast to classical A/B or multivariate testing, the goal, in this case, is not to find the one design that works OK for everyone, but to find the best design for each individual. The industry-leading approach for this scenario is a multi-armed or contextual bandit. Quoting Wikipedia:
“In probability theory, the multi-armed bandit problem (sometimes called the K-[1] or N-armed bandit problem[2]) is a problem in which a fixed limited set of resources must be allocated between competing (alternative) choices in a way that maximizes their expected gain, when each choice’s properties are only partially known at the time of allocation, and may become better understood as time passes or by allocating resources to the choice.”
Einstein Designer
Everything we’ve discussed above is becoming a reality in Einstein Designer. No code, no templates, Einstein Designer is an industry-first AI-powered generative design solution that automatically delivers personalized designs that delight every customer. Einstein Designer combines generative design using DLUX and predictive personalization to enable personalized design at scale.
Design by Sönke Rohde
What started as a moonshot idea, generating design with AI, has enabled us to take personalization to a whole new level.
Einstein Designer was first introduced at Dreamforce ’19. Please check out the video here (1:09:50–1:12:50).
UX Design Award 2020
Einstein Designer — Powered by Deep Learning UX won a nomination for the UX Design Awards 2020 #UXDA20.
UX Design Awards 2020 Nomination
Fast Company — Innovation by Design 2020
Einstein Designer — Powered by Deep Learning UX is a finalist in the Data Design category and an honorable mention in the General Excellence category in Fast Company’s 2020 Innovation by Design Awards. Read more here. #FCDesignAwards
Fast Company Innovation by Design 2020 Honoree
What’s next?
Thanks
Alan Ross, Brian Lonsdorf, David Woodward, Jessica Lundin, Kathy Baxter, Madeline Davis, Michael Sollami, Moritz Stefaner, Noah Guyot, Noelle Moreno, Owen Schoppe
|
https://medium.com/salesforce-ux/einstein-designer-ai-powered-personalized-design-at-scale-367d71b85a3d
|
['Sönke Rohde']
|
2020-10-23 01:27:25.522000+00:00
|
['User Interface', 'Innovation', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Design', 'Personalization']
|
One-Lined Poem: Happiness (№ 16)
|
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/illumination/one-lined-poem-happiness-16-bec5746de0fe
|
['Jay Krasnow']
|
2020-11-14 16:32:13.424000+00:00
|
['Luck', 'Poetry', 'Happiness', 'Weather', 'Cars']
|
How Has COVID-19 Affected the Recycling Industry?
|
The COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating for world health and for the world economy. It’s also taken a toll on the environment.
Thanks to the pandemic, there has been a massive increase in demand for plastic products like face shields and disposable gloves. Single-use plastic products like takeout food containers, bottles of hand sanitizer, and packaging for online shopping have also seen a surge in demand. It’s no wonder that some are talking about a “ plastic pandemic” sweeping the globe.
What are the implications of this increased use of plastic? What’s the best way to return to more sustainable practices, without sacrificing human health and safety? This article will dig into some of the causes, and possible solutions, to the current plastic recycling crisis.
COVID-19 and Recycling
The recycling industry has failed to keep up with the increased demand for plastics over the past year. Reuters reported that the oil industry plans to spend $400 billion on plants to create material for new plastic. At the same time, the industry plans to spend just $2 billion on efforts to reduce plastic waste.
Many local governments and municipalities are struggling to pay for their own recycling programs, and they anticipate that this problem will continue in the future. The faltering global economy has led to decreased tax revenue in many areas, which has a knock-on effect on public services like recycling.
In some cities, like New York, municipal funds have run so low that lawmakers are trying to pass bills to force plastics manufacturers to pay for local recycling projects. However, it’s not at all clear whether these bills will pass into law, and whether they could be adopted all over the world.
A Shift in the Model
Waste management firms said that they felt a major shift in their operations as Americans began telecommuting during the pandemic.
With more and more people working from home, residential waste (including recycling) increased dramatically, even as office waste dropped to almost nothing. Waste management companies reported that the change was sudden and that adjusting to it took a toll on the industry. It is not yet clear how that change will play out in the year to come, as some businesses appear likely to re-open and others may keep working remotely for the foreseeable future.
Difficulties Recycling
Not all plastics are created equal.
Reuters reports that some of the new plastic waste which is flooding the oceans and clogging landfill is especially difficult to recycle.
Single-use plastic sachets — the small, flimsy containers that might contain a single dose of aspirin, or a single portion of toothpaste or shampoo — are ever-more popular with consumers who are looking for convenience. They are even more popular now that consumers are concerned about spreading disease through contact.
Some 164 million sachets are used every single day in the Philippines alone. That’s according to the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives. The sachets are difficult to recycle, Reuters reports. Many single-use plastics, like the plastic components in many face masks, are also challenging to recycle.
Unfortunately, the pandemic has caused enormous demand for such products. In March of 2020, China alone used 116 million face masks, and that number shows no sign of abating in the near future.
Perceptions of Plastic
Just a few short years ago, plastic was experiencing a major backlash. In 2018, news stories proclaimed that there was a “ worldwide revolt against plastic” underway, especially among educated, environmentally conscious people.
With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, though, there was a marked swing in public opinion. All of a sudden, plastic was seen as an invaluable tool in the fight against disease and contamination. Single-use plastic, which can be tossed aside immediately, began to seem protective rather than wasteful.
In the UK, the University of Hull carried out a study of how public views of plastics evolved during the pandemic. Dan Parsons, the director of the university’s Energy & Environment Institute , told the BBC that “When we go out now, the first thing people reach for is the face mask, or gloves, both of which are made of plastic. It is now seen as this protective barrier against a disease we cannot see. Plastic has in recent months been the thing we have turned to, to keep us safe, and that is where this new relationship with it is really interesting.”
Zero Waste Recycling
If recycling is increasingly unaffordable and public opinion has shifted to favor plastic, then what’s the way forward?
The solution may be in a different approach to waste. Instead of traditional recycling methods, the concept the zero waste recycling looks for a way to repurpose single-use plastics and other trash.
MINIWIZ invents about 20 new kinds of material every month, all of them using the world’s most plentiful resource — trash. The MINIWIZ Trash Lab recently created an ultrasoft fabric called Natrilon which is crafted from recycled beverage bottles and the husks of rice. Natrilon has the pleasing texture of merino wool and a satiny sheen.
The same Trash Lab came up with PlyFix, a highly versatile material that can be used to soundproof a room, build furniture, or package a shipping order. PlyFix is made from low melt PET and recycled PET from single use bottles. It can be formed into virtually any shape and can be engraved or printed upon. Its soundproofing capabilities make it popular in office settings, and it’s already being used by Nike in their Tokyo and New York offices.
Perhaps the way forward lies in creative efforts like these. Instead of asking the public to abandon the usefulness of plastics altogether, it may be more realistic to find attractive, out of the box solutions to the problem of waste. Instead of railing against garbage, it may be a good idea to turn trash to a whole new purpose.
Working with Miniwiz
Miniwiz specializes in helping businesses find innovative and sustainable solutions to all of their needs, whether that means building materials, fabrics, furniture, or other products. Check out our online story and get in touch today to learn how Miniwiz can help your business grow more sustainable and more successful.
|
https://medium.com/@miniwiz/how-has-covid-19-affected-the-recycling-industry-9f6af820be73
|
[]
|
2021-06-08 12:32:02.209000+00:00
|
['Design', 'Recycling', 'Pandemic', 'Covid 19', 'Solutions']
|
Evaluation Website Interface Using Heuristic Method
|
I have a task to do for my mid exam on Human-Computer Interaction lecture last month. The lecturer wants us to make research in the form of a group. Because My Friend and I friend is still a beginner for doing research, we choose the most we can possibly do in a short time and the easiest method that we can find on google. So we found the Heuristic Method. As my lecturer said,
“ Heuristic Evaluation Method is the easiest way for evaluation design that you can do because you can just look at the design and make a checklist from general principles and produces an aggregate list of a potential problem.”
I think the behind story is done so let’s move to the core:
Home Page: Zenius.net
My team choosing Zenius website for being the object in this research. Zenius is an online education platform for elementary to high school students in Indonesia. The service is mostly like a tutoring student on academic lessons such a Math, English, Science, and Social for preparing the exam. for doing this research we should match the design with ten principles of the heuristic method.
1. Visibility of system status (feedback)
The system must always inform the user about what is happening.
Circle Running Status
The picture above shows circle running status as feedback to users when they want to sign in or sign up to the account.
feedback status for sign in is successfully
This image is an interface display after the user has successfully entered the sign on the Zenius site. From the two images, it can be concluded that the Zenius website has applied the first heuristic principle, which is to provide feedback to the user as clarity on the status of the process being run by the user.
2. Match Between System and The Real World
The system must speak according to the user’s language commonly used by users
Currently, the Zenius website is only available in Indonesian, perhaps this is because the target users of Zenius are Indonesian students. However, if you want to change the language you can use google translate help if you open a site using google chrome. Like the picture below.
the site is translated automatically if you use chrome browser
So, the Zenius website has applied the second principle, which is to match the system language according to the target users, namely Indonesian students. However, it may be necessary to develop to add language availability to the Zenius website in the future. Given that this site does not rule out the possibility it can be useful for users who do not master Indonesian.
3. User control and freedom
Users must be able to freely choose and do work (as needed).
Display of learning video features
The picture above is a display of one of the features in the form of video as a learning tool for users. Users can control this video with the play button located at the bottom of the video. The scroll button beside the video list allows the user to directly select the video to be viewed without having to play all the videos in sequence. Based on this, the Zenius website has implemented the third heuristic principle, which is giving free control to the user for more efficient use.
4. Consistency and Standards
Users do not need to question again about differences in understanding because all must have followed the standards.
Page design for being Zenius membership
Seen from the picture above, it seems that the Zenius website can be said to be quite consistent, that is, using the same language and its appearance can also be considered standard because it does not use strange fonts and styles that are easily carried by the user. It means that the Zenius website has fulfilled the principle of consistency and standards in the heuristic method.
5. Error Prevention
Design a system that prevents mistakes
Error display in the content code search feature
This feature appears if the user has signed in and the position is at the top right of the page. We tried the feature with random entries and a pop-up notification appears, as shown above, the duration of this notification is only seconds after it disappears by itself. This proves that the Zenius website has implemented the fifth principle of heuristic evaluation. But there needs to be an improvement, namely the need for an example of the form of “content code” itself. Because this will create confusion for new users.
6. Recognition than Recall
Users do not need to question again about the difference in understanding of a word and sentence, situation and action.
search recognition feature
To make an assessment of this aspect we tried on the Zenius blog page which is integrated with the Zenius.net website. after we enter keywords into the search column with the word “UN”, directly the Zenius website displays articles that have keywords written in the search column. With the following experiments, it is evident that the Zenius website has applied the principle of the sixth heuristic evaluation method.
7. Flexibility and Efficient of use
How to create a system that accommodates expert users and beginners.
submenu bar
When the menu bar is touched by the display, it will display a submenu that can be selected according to user needs. This makes the user’s job to search for options easier and faster because the position of the submenu bar is structured. With the submenu, bar means the principle of flexibility and efficiency of use on the Zenius website has been applied and proven to be able to help the work of the user.
8. Aesthetic and Minimalist Design
Provide relevant information and displays that are in accordance with system requirements
main page
The image is a design on the main page that loads from the options menu for learning material available on the Zenius site. The design is structured, neat and clean. And the selection of colors that match the colors of the Zenius brand makes the website look in harmony with the Zenius product itself. And this design also contains all information that is needed by the user.
9. Help Users Recognize, Dialogue, and Recovers from Errors
Alert Warning
This page will be displayed when the user wants to edit the profile of his Zenius account, if the user input is not in accordance with the requirements, an alert warning will appear in the form of a red text and contain what the user should do. Aside from being directly notified of the error alert warning, it guides the user to input correctly.
10. Help Documentation
The system must have documentation and assistance for users
customer service page
To help with the service on the Zenius website, you can see it by opening the customer service menu. There are contacts that users can contact. And what’s interesting is the availability of the live chat feature that users can use to interact directly with the admin in real time.
live chat feature
This feature can be done when the user has signed in or signed up. The existence of live chat is also very helpful for new users who want to start services with Zenius. Therefore it can be said that the Zenius website has implemented the tenth heuristic evaluation principle.
Conclusion
In general, the interface design on the Zenius.net website is good based on the heuristic evaluation. But there are many things that need to be improved so that usability becomes even better. Usability based on heuristic evaluation, there are several points that need to be reviewed such as the match between the system and the real world and Error Prevention.
Suggestion
Add language options to support the convenience of users who are not fluent in Indonesian when using the Zenius website. Fixed error prevention in the content search code feature, by adding an example of the content code that was dimmed.
|
https://medium.com/rumah-ux/evaluation-website-interface-using-heuristic-method-8572e3e14664
|
['Lega Adilawati']
|
2019-07-03 14:38:29.727000+00:00
|
['Heuristic Evaluation', 'UX', 'Website Design', 'Case Study', 'Interface Design']
|
CBD: Hype or Miracle?
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Since November, 2018 the first FDA approved CBD drug is being sold across the US by prescription, its name: EPIDIOLEX® an oral solution containing CBD or Cannabidiol which 1 out of 113 discovered cannabinoids found in cannabis plants. The approval is breaking news in terms of CBD legalization for other countries, but is CBD a true solution for many illnesses or is it just an overrated placebo drug growing more and more with the help of the internet and word of mouth?
For centuries, human beings on Earth have tried everything to overcome illnesses and improve their personal well-being, the whole population is right now being treated with medicine based on plants or chemicals which might or might not work depending on numerous factors, specific factors for each individual.
With the lack of information and false hopes of a final cure for lethal diseases such as cancer or HIV, more people are tending to try even new extreme solutions in order to alleviate the pain occasioned by the disease. Mothers and fathers with children suffering of extreme conditions are desperate for a solution to see their loved ones with a happier life, this includes trying even solutions that are totally prohibited by the government depending on where you live.
Marijuana was a legal drug for centuries until 1906 when it began to be labelled as poison. In 1937, the first marijuana tax act was enacted, regulating the plant’s use in the entire United States.
By 1970, it was completely illegal to use marijuana even for medical purposes. The race for its legalization had begun.
Things started to look different about marijuana for many people around the world after reading or watching news of it becoming legal in certain parts of the world, the question was: how can I enjoy the apparent benefits of this plant without being drugged or as we all know “High”?
“The word of mouth of marijuana helping with chronic pain, cancer and more diseases began several years ago but the internet was the real deal breaker.”
To answer the previous question, scientists knew that the solution was to separate the non-psychoactive cannabinoids from the psychoactive ones but medical marijuana was perceived as dangerous for many, making it impossible to build big labs to complete the process of separation.
In January, 2014 Colorado became the first US state to allow the use of marijuana legally for medicine or recreational purposes and even though California was the first state to legalize marijuana for medical use back in 1996, the Colorado legalization of marijuana was the one that changed everything, not only in the US but worldwide.
Keep in mind that this video is from 2014, some information has changed.
With an entire state selling marijuana legally for medical and recreational purposes, companies with certified scientists began to create cannabis products containing almost 0% psychoactive cannabinoids, the main psychoactive cannabinoid (THC) Tetrahydrocannabinol was almost completely separated by this laboratory process.
CBD is one of the greatest cannabinoids providing tons of benefits with almost no psychoactive feeling. In the US people started its medical use in 1996 with the California Law allowing the use of medical CBD by prescription, there has been documented evidence of CBD working nicely on certain people suffering from pain/major to minor diseases since that year.
Families from other states moved to Colorado to start using medical marijuana especially with their sick children. They had no intention of moving because recreational use was allowed. Getting medical use permission was a long process in states where medical marijuana was legal, the simple solution was to move to CO and get any cannabis product legally.
One of the diseases to be witnessed fading out in person after intaking CBD is epilepsy. Kids and adults suffering of it and whom their previous only-solution were pills and lab-produced medicine are now relying completely in CBD.
With this evidence going viral these years, more people are trying CBD, particularly in the US because in other countries CBD is still prohibited. The use of CBD has increased abruptly in the last years and now some people are commenting that it helps certain individuals but it’s not a solution for the entire population and their illnesses. These comments appear after a dramatic spread of news about CBD, apparently helping even to get better eyesight or get taller.
For some people, the CBD miracle is completely false. It’s just a solution shared by the media which is trusted by people that wants to believe it’s the solution for a problem.
People nationwide are claiming that it simply doesn’t work as advertised and this arises a new question: is the CBD product that you are buying 100% pure? Groups defending CBD and groups denying its benefits are discussing now if CBD is a real thing. Even though there is good evidence of it working (like on people with seizures) some people won’t accept it is a real solution for major illnesses and that’s because CBD won’t help everybody’s problems, every person’s body will react different to CBD.
CBD is NOT a miracle
Plain and simple, it won’t work for everybody. In case it works for you and it’s not working at the time, the reason must be that the CBD product you’re getting isn’t pure, people stop using CBD because they didn’t see a change in their bodies but the real thing is that the product they were using was not pure or it didn’t contain the right amount of mg needed by the person. Until now, the FDA does not regulate the safety and purity of CBD on products sold physically and online. People buying CBD products must trust reviews from other people, that’s the only way to trust a CBD brand.
Cannabidiol is not a miracle because it doesn’t cure the sufferer. It won’t cure your diagnosed VIH disease or cancer. Simply, there is evidence of CBD helping with pain and side effects of treatment done to stop these diseases, for example: chemotherapy. Some research shows that CBD can stop the development of Dementia and Alzheimer but it won’t cure the patient.
|
https://medium.com/@djosesolis/cbd-hype-or-miracle-e1b2e98a9c53
|
['Jose Solis']
|
2019-08-21 00:06:33.340000+00:00
|
['Cbd', 'Hemp', 'Health', 'Marijuana', 'Cannabis']
|
THURSDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL Picks and Plays! Patriots vs Rams
|
Thursday, December 10
8:20 PM ET
NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS vs LOS ANGELES RAMS (-4.5) ; O/U 43.5
Model Z Projection: 27–22 LAR
Straight Up Pick: New England Patriots
Spread Pick: NE +4.5⭐
O/U Pick: Over 43.5⭐
Zack’s Plays:
- NE +4.5 (-110)
- A Cam Parlay! Cam Newton to score / Cam Akers to score SGP (+361)
Top DFS Matchups: The Cams! Cam Newton ($5,900), Cam Akers ($5,100)
Notable Injuries: NE WR1 Julian Edelman
Notes: Wow, who saw that New England blowout coming last week over the Chargers? It’s not crazy looking back at it that they won, but 35–0 is just disrespectful towards the rookie. They’ll stay in LA for this one as they try and keep their slim playoff hopes alive (+620 to make the playoffs, ouch). The Pats have a tough road ahead with the Rams, Dolphins (on the road) and the Bills over the next three games. Let’s start with the Rams game though shall we? The Rams are 8th overall on the Model Z and the Patriots are at 21st. I do think the Patriots matchup well against the Rams though as the Patriots defensive weakness is against the run. The Rams are scariest when they are throwing it down the field to Kupp and Woods and the Patriots secondary is arguably the best in the league (including JC Jackson, maybe the most underrated players in the league). On the defensive side, let’s look quickly at how the Rams did against some notable running QBs:
Week 1: D. Prescott — 30 yards rushing (WIN)
Week 3: J. Allen — 8 yards rushing (LOSS)
Week 4: D. Jones- 45 yards rushing (WIN)
Week 10: R. Wilson — 60 yards rushing (WIN)
Week 13: K. Murray — 15 yards rushing (WIN)
That’s not bad, a few high numbers there but 4–1 against running QBs is pretty dang good. Cam is a different animal when it comes to running QBs though as he has 11 rushing TDs through 11 games which is T-3 in the league (including RBs). I think I’m going to take the Patriots to to cover here. Like I said, they matchup well on defense, and the Rams linebackers are just okay and you need those against running QBs. Going against the Model on this pick though so confidence is super low.
For matchups, I only like one:
1. The Patriots vRB is not good. 28th on the Model Z, 18th in rushing yards allowed and 16th in rushing tds allowed. The problem is the snap count share. It’s been Henderson and Brown sharing the lead in snap counts, but Akers is starting to break away from the pack with 63% last week compared to 22% and 16% by the other 2. He also had 9 Red Zone looks, 9! That’s nuts. Look for him to score.
Note: The Rams and Pats are 1 and 2 against the WR in the Model Z so stay away for me there.
|
https://medium.com/@zack-nicol11/thursday-night-football-picks-and-plays-patriots-vs-rams-e6c8df4e0fa9
|
['Zack Nicol']
|
2020-12-10 18:34:51.028000+00:00
|
['Fun', 'Football', 'Daily Fantasy Spo', 'NFL', 'Gambling']
|
Launching a self-service analytics programme (part 2)
|
Ground rules
Before we even open up Tableau Desktop, I like to do a bit of general housekeeping and set the expectations to the group. I believe this is important as it indicates that
I am the instructor You are here to learn We are all working towards the objective to use data to inform our teams/areas more effectively
So what are my ground rules?
No phones during the session
This is rude and distracting to me and the other participants. You have agreed to spend two hours on learning and development per week. If you can’t commit to not checking a phone in that time then there are other issues at hand.
2. Be punctual
The training sessions are created based on a fairly strict timeline. There is a set amount of content to get through in a short amount of time. Waiting for people to turn up causes the session to be disrupted and not as effective.
I ask for people to advise if they are unable to make sessions or running late earlier so I am aware of who is attending (from the confirmed invites) and we do not delay the start of the session. This includes arriving with teas, coffee or water.
3. Respect other participants
This should be a no brainer, but people learn at different speeds. People have a different level of understanding. We are all here to learn so support the people around you and if people have to ask questions, please listen and give them a chance to speak and learn.
So, after I lay down the ground rules. I quickly move into an ice breaker exercise. The main reason is that there are eight participants from all over our business who most likely don’t know me or each other.
I give them a bit of a story about myself, what I do at the company, my data viz creds and then share a story about my weirdest job as an ice breaker.
We go around the group saying who they are, what department they work in, what they hope to achieve from the course and their weirdest job.
After a few laughs, a few “yep, been there” moment we are ready to start talking about data visualisation.
Session 1: Why we visualise data
I spend ten minutes discussing what DataChefs is all about. It's a way of learning, supporting others (via data), its best practise and understanding data.
I then talk about what is data visualisation.
For me, the definition that I like to use is one that was delivered to me by Andy Kirk while attending his data visualisation training course.
To represent and present data to facilitate understanding
When working with Joanna Hemingway she proposed adding to this definition with:
That can be used to drive better decision making
I then like to use the exercise from Ryan Sleeper showing the value of visualisation. You can read about this in Ryan’s blog post on his PlayfairData website.
Leading on from this, I like to then show 3 minutes from the TED talk by the late Hans Rosling from 2006 to get the group excited about data visualisation. The passion he has for this topic is infectious and I like to think that part of this passion and enthusiasm passes to the participants.
Finally, we are ready to open up Tableau Desktop.
This session covers a lot of the basics in Tableau Desktop. Connecting to data, going over the types of connections we would expect to use. How to check for things like the data source owner (published data source), when it was last updated etc.
I then go over the data pane and explain the dimensions and measures areas. We play around with dragging some dimensions and measures into the data pane and seeing what happens when you change the order of the dimension pills.
We click on “show me” and explain the marks card.
We look at all the shortcut icons and explain what each item does and why they are useful.
Finally we create a few basic charts, mainly bar chart, line chart using date dimensions and use the marks card to alter their appearance.
Two hours normally flies by.
Session 2: Chart types, attributes and cognitive load
This session is all about creating charts. We begin by understanding what a chart is and how they are constructed. There is a lot of theory incorporated into the training especially around themes like cognitive load and psychological schemas.
I explain marks and attributes and how they are used to represent the information in the form of a chart. We go over the different classification of charts and then we start “speed charting”. Making 11 different charts in the session. I try to make it a bit of fun and light hearted with the time pressure to get all 11 completed, as well as getting participants to share what chart they thought was worthy of a second date.
Session 3: Calculations and data types
One for the finance people. Lots of calculations both table calculations and creating calculated fields. We create examples of calculations for a range of functions: aggregate, number, string, date and logic. I try to make this as realistic as possible and try to frame exercises in which participants are asked a question which requires a calculated field to be created to get the answer.
Session 4: Interactivity (filtering, sets, parameters etc)
This session focuses on how we can use the functions in Tableau to really engage an audience. Partly to try and answer secondary questions and avoiding re-work. Why interactivity is useful. We cover several examples of interactivity — what the benefits and limitations are, and then create a working example.
Session 5: Design and formatting
One of my favourite sessions. It is really hard to compress all the information and content out there about designing for visualisations in 2 hours.
I have made an attempt at this by spending time on colours, fonts, layout and other functions (layout containers).
For the last part of the session I invite a guest speaker in, one of my lead analysts in the team who talks about the process of designing. We then do a bit of inspiration, showing what is possible.
Session 6: Data Storytelling and dashboards
The last technical hands on session is used to talk about dashboarding or stories in Tableau. The different ways you can bring the charts together and build a story with titles, text and annotation. Making sure that the business question is being answered and that end users can interpret the information and take an action.
Finally publishing and adding all the housekeeping to the final dashboard which establishes the best practise principles we
The Showcase
The culmination of the 6 weeks of training.
After week 2, I give a task to all participants to find a business question from their area. The goal is by the end of the course to demonstrate an understanding of the theoretical concepts of data visualisation as well as the technical elements of Tableau Desktop.
I also want to make sure that the participants are comfortable talking about data and Tableau in front of a small audience.
So week 7 of the DataChef programme we all gather to see the final projects from each person on the course. They have 10 minutes in which they present their business question, demonstrate the dashboard they created and we discuss ideas, feedback and other comments about it.
I felt it was important to have a session to give the programme a sense of finality. Lots of applause and I also invite special guests and line managers to give them a real view of the achievement from the group.
|
https://medium.com/cmding-tableau/launching-a-self-service-analytics-programme-part-2-be2b56e93fb0
|
['Kris Curtis']
|
2019-09-02 08:00:01.289000+00:00
|
['Tableau Training', 'Tableau', 'Analytics', 'Self Service Bi', 'Data Visualization']
|
6 Lesson print design can teach us about UX design
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Before the Internet ever came to be, there were print ads. As far back as ancient civilizations, humans used advertising to get their message out. The Egyptians and Romans came up with many ways to get out their advertising messages, including pieces that have been found in the ruins of Pompeii advertising political campaigns.
There is a rich and extensive history of print advertising. With that much experience, advertisers have learned a thing or two about human nature and behaviors. Studying this well-developed advertising form can help you improve your digital user experience in several ways.
1. Think Outside the Box
When it comes to UX design, each project is unique. So many different factors must be considered, right down to the target audience and conversion goals. If you’ve learned to design in a specific way or to create a website that always includes this or that, be ready to throw all that out the window and think in a new way.
The best print ads are often the result of someone thinking outside the box. Take a look at Paul107’s Hau5 event flyer. By using an image as the background for the flyer, it creates an exciting look that matches the personality of the event. In addition, he adds touches of blue to enhance the banner.
This type of ad could be repeated in digital design by thinking through the tone of the design and how it matches the overall audience.
2. Go Ahead and Sketch
Print designers often sketch out their ideas or even create a storyboard of the overall concept. You can repeat this in your UX designs as well. Create a storyboard that shows the site visitor’s journey from landing page to conversion. Such a layout of your overall design will allow you to easily see if any steps are missing or need to be fleshed out.
99designs offers an example of sketching out a rough plan on paper. The key is to focus not just on the aesthetics of the design, but also how the design works. Even as a UX designer, it is easy to get caught up in the look, but sketching out the steps a user takes brings the focus back to the experience of it all.
3. Study The Use Of White Space
Print design has a factor that can be difficult to define but you know it when you see it, and that is a good balance between positive and negative (white) space. For example, if there is not enough white space, then text might bump right up against an image, making the text difficult to read.
Studying the white space in print design can help designers learn how to make good use of white space in UX design. You will get a natural feel for where the eye is drawn and know when you need to offset a graphic or text by putting negative space around the element.
4. Mix and Match Fonts
Ever notice how the most memorable print ads have a font that is legible, but at the same time is unique and interesting? It is also okay to mix and match different fonts to achieve the look you want. You can easily achieve this same look in your own online designs by creating logos with more than one font, or even using multiple fonts on the same page.
There are some rules of thumb you’ll want to keep in mind when mixing different fonts. First, you need to choose fonts that complement one another. Fonts have a personality of their own, such as playful or serious, and you want to choose fonts that have the same type of personality so that you aren’t combining different attitudes on the same page.
When it comes to mixing different fonts, industry-specific examples to study can help you see what types of fonts your competition is using and which ones work best together. You likely don’t want to copy the kinds of fonts they’re using as this could not only be bad for branding but also potentially run you into some copyright issues, but this is a good way to see what kinds of aesthetics are dominating your industry’s landscape.
5. Study Colors
When print designers create an ad, they look at everything on the page and how the colors mesh with one another as well as with the other elements where the design appears. Even how well the color speaks to the industry is considered — green and brown indicate nature, while bright, vivid colors might give a more youthful appearance.
As a UX designer, you need to do the same thing. What colors match the personality of the company you are creating a digital UX design for? Studying the use of color in print design can help designers create better UX designers, because they provide a visual guide to what colors complement and contrast to create a visually pleasing aesthetic.
Some programs will allow you to generate a print view of the finished page (yes, even and HTML page), so that you can see what the page might look like to the average viewer. Compare this screen to whatever print ads inspired your design. Where does your design fall short and where does it thrive?
6. Look At Layout Strategies
Think about the typical print ad that appears in a newspaper or magazine. That ad has to fit perfectly within the confines of the page. The text has to flow around the ad without distracting from the focus of the ad. A UX designed webpage is very similar. You need to add elements without detracting from other elements and everything has to fit neatly onto one size page even if that page is responsive.
As you begin to study print layouts, you will likely notice some patterns. There are some templates for these layouts, such as the Ogilvy layout for ads created by advertising guru David Olgivy. Each ad created using the Ogilvy template has a large image above teh fold, a headline directly under and text beneath that.
Studying different print templates can help you figure out a good UX design template that you can use with multiple clients.
The great thing about UX design is that you can continue to learn and change elements on the page over time.
You can also run as many different A/B tests about different elements of your overall design as you’d like. Doing this type of research allows you to very specifically change what doesn’t work for your end user. You can also study the analytics of your site to understand what does and doesn’t work over time.
For a truly successful site, you need to understand how your target audience interacts with the different elements on the page. Understanding all the ins and outs of target user behavior will allow you to create a stronger customer experience.
To Summarize…
— There are aspects of print design that can help you think about UX in a new light
— Event flyers, paper sketches, industry-specific promotion materials, etc. can serve as unexpected sources of information
How have you found UX inspiration through print design? Tell us in the comments below!
Image by Kaboompics
|
https://uxdesign.cc/6-lesson-print-design-can-teach-us-about-ux-design-dae8a352c6b3
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[]
|
2017-07-21 03:17:38.755000+00:00
|
['Design']
|
Painful quotes for girlfriend- Intension
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Dard bhari shayari for girlfriend — Neeyat
Dard bhari shayari for girlfriend - Neeyat
Surjit Patar is a Punjabi language author and artist of Punjab, India. His sonnets gathered enormous ubiquity with the overall population and have won high recognition from pundits.
Early life of Pattar’s was spent in town Pattar Kalan in Jalandhar region from where he got his surname. He did his graduation from Randhir School, Kapurthala and afterward proceeded to do Graduate degree from Punjabi College, Patiala and afterward a PhD in Writing on “Transformation of Folklore in Guru Nanak Vani” from Master Nanak Dev College, Amritsar. He at that point joined the scholarly calling and resigned as Teacher of Punjabi from Punjab Horticultural College, Ludhiana. His urge to do something different from what others are doing obliged him to began composing verse in mid-sixties. Among his versalite works of verse are “Hawa Vich Likhe Harf” (Words written Noticeable all around), Birkh Arz Kare (In this way Spake the Tree), Hanere Vich Sulagdi Varnmala (Words Seething In obscurity), Lafzaan Di Dargah (Place of worship of Words), Patjhar Di Pazeb (Anklet of Harvest time) and Surzameen (Music Land).
He has converted into Punjabi the three disasters of Federico García Lorca, the play Nagmandala of Girish Karnad,and sonnets of Bertolt Brecht and Pablo Neruda. He has likewise adjusted plays from Jean Giradoux, Euripides and Racine. He has composed tele-contents on Punjabi artists from Sheik Farid to Shiv Kumar Batalvi.
He is the leader of Punjab Expressions Gathering, Chandigarh.before, he has held the workplace of the President, Punjabi Sahit Akademi, Ludhiana. He was granted Padma Shri in 2012.
To explore more Dard bhari Shayari check out the links below -
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https://medium.com/@shweta21journalist/dard-bhari-shayari-for-girlfriend-neeyat-aaaa2c8f89ad
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['Shaweta Arora']
|
2020-06-01 13:37:52.140000+00:00
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['Girlfriend', 'Sad', 'Quotes', 'Love', 'Shayari']
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Managing Innovations: Values Add to the Excitement
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In February, Porsche Innovation Managers from all over the globe met at Porsche Digital in Ludwigsburg and Berlin to discuss the innovations, challenges, and changes in their markets. Today, I want to give you some insights about my job as a Porsche Innovation & Digital Transformation Manager in the U.S.
The Porsche feeling is always exciting. When you drive our sports cars over winding roads in upstate New York or through breathtaking landscapes in southern California, you feel what our company has been about since we were founded: tradition and inventive talent, combined with pioneering technologies.
In the past, the outstanding quality of our cars has spoken for itself. Porsche Cars North America (PCNA) was established in 1984 and today employs approximately 500 people. They provide Porsche vehicles, parts, service, marketing and training for our 191 dealerships in the US. In turn, they work to provide Porsche customers with a best-in-class experience. PCNA also develops market-specific initiatives and strategies to make the brand and the company more digital, more innovative and more agile.
Customer experience is more important than ever
Consumers increasingly want to interact with brands on their own terms, when and where it suits them and with more individual choice. This is especially important for a premium brand. Porsche builds the best sports cars in the world, and our customer experience needs to be at least as good. Porsche Cars North America, was proud to rank no. 1 last year in two key customer-centric studies by J.D. Power, the Sales Satisfaction Index and the Customer Service Index.
Digital innovation at PCNA supports customer experience in a number of ways by providing omnichannel access to the brand and to mobility. We have launched online vehicle sales and continue to develop more services for the online ecosystem of MyPorsche and digital retail. PCNA is working to launch a mobile-friendly tracker for vehicle orders, to keep customers in the loop about their dream car’s journey from production to delivery. Porsche also expanded in-house development capabilities last year by opening a new Porsche Digital team at its North America headquarters, to be more closely integrated with the business. Cutting-edge digital development contributes to making Porsche an even more attractive employer.
Recently Innovation Managers from all over the world came together to talk about changes in the industry.
‘S’ stands for sustainability
Sustainability is a top priority for Porsche. We consider it our entrepreneurial duty to make sure that our actions benefit the environment and society. Our stakeholders also expect Porsche to strive for economic, equal social and ecological goals. This gives sustainability a central significance for Porsche when it comes to safeguarding its competitiveness.
Since 2019, Porsche has set binding sustainability targets for the entire company. From 1 July 2019, all of the company’s current and future suppliers and partners will have another binding criterion — the ‘S Rating’ — in the award process. ‘S’ stands for sustainability.
The sports car that symbolizes these values on the road appeared in 2019: the Taycan, the first full-electric Porsche. It combines the traditional Porsche feeling with forward-looking and sustainable technology. As you might have heard, Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates likes this sports car a lot 😉
A modern mobility concept: Porsche Passport in the U.S.
Shifting values and the digital transformation are changing our ideas about ownership. People share music, movies or apartments instead of buying them. These changes are also taking place in the mobility sector. We’re working on modern mobility solutions that maximize our customers’ flexibility and freedom. One product that we’ve developed with this goal in mind is Porsche Passport, an all-inclusive monthly vehicle subscription service that allows a person to drive a Porsche when they feel like it — and to flip between different models and variants as often as they like. For example, they can drive a Cayenne or Panamera during the week and a 911 Cabriolet on a sunny weekend. It puts the Porsche fleet at the member’s fingertips via a mobile app and concierge delivery. It is currently available in Atlanta, Las Vegas, Phoenix and San Diego as well as Toronto, Canada., with more U.S. markets on the way.
Porsche Passport is an example of what we need to accomplish in the future. With the help of AI, data, and our own expertise, we need to develop new products and business models that make Porsche more attractive for the generations of the future.
To summarize — we need values and products that show everybody is welcome at Porsche. Stay tuned for more blog posts by my colleagues from all over the world and don’t forget to check out the learnings of Philip Ruckert here.
Martin Richenhagen is Manager Strategy and Digital Transformation at Porsche.
About this publication: Where innovation meets tradition. There’s more to Porsche than sports cars — we’re tackling new challenges, develop digital products and think digital with focus on the customer. On our Medium blog, we tell these stories. It’s about our #nextvisions, smart technologies and the people that drive our digital journey. Please follow us on Twitter (Porsche Digital, Next Visions), Instagram (Porsche Digital, Next Visions, Porsche Newsroom) and LinkedIn (Porsche AG, Porsche Digital) for more.
|
https://medium.com/next-level-german-engineering/innovation-management-porsche-us-1f4a063ee1a
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['Porsche Ag']
|
2020-10-22 11:26:33.602000+00:00
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['Innovation', 'Mobility', 'Digital Transformation', 'Transportation', 'Company Formation']
|
Guide to Digital Decluttering
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Our path to minimalism usually starts with decluttering our material belongings. But what about your digital track?
Photo by Adrià Tormo on Unsplash
We are spending much, actually too much time online. (If you don’t believe me, check your screentime of the last week right now.) And it won’t help you to get a clearer mind sitting in a minimalistic black and white room with no deco on your desk while having thirty tabs open (omg, where is this music coming from?!) and storing thousands of selfies on your device from the good old days when you were 13.
As wannabe minimalists, we want to consume less. We are trying to buy less. And when we buy something, it should be of good quality and last for long. Let’s try to reflect that also in our behavior online — to consume less and focus on high-quality content in our digital environments.
1. Social media
Are you familiar with the Konmari method? This method is used to declutter your material belongings based on the question “Does it spark joy?”.
Think about what social media actually brings you joy. A real, pure joy. Which puts you in a good mood and where you can laugh. Where you are not coming back to count the likes you got and how many people viewed your post.
Have you identified such a social media platform? Great, keep using it. If not, it probably doesn’t add any value to your life, right?
2. Consumption
In our minimalist journey, we are trying to consume less. To own fewer things, so we can focus on the important parts of our lives. To have more time to spend with our friends and on our own. To become more creative.
Think about your consumption behavior online. Are you watching three YouTube videos while eating breakfast, listening to a few podcasts while commuting, checking your Instagram feed while sitting on the toilet, and finishing the day with some Netflix series?
It sounds like a digital version of over-consumption, doesn’t it?
Think about the following — which of these activities do add value to your life and which of them only distract you from things that are really important to you? Let’s declutter our accounts, subscriptions, and email newsletters.
Photo by Ugur Akdemir on Unsplash
3. Applications
Now we will focus on the software we use. This point is not any different from the two previous points. Have a look at your devices and check how many applications you have installed. How many of them do you use on daily basis?
Have you ever downloaded and installed an app that you never used? Do you really need three different apps for photo editing? Do you still have that public transportation app of a city you have been to one year ago?
And by the way… How many tabs do you have open in your browser right now?
4. Notifications
Now, when you decided which apps you would like to keep — think about which of these applications should have the privilege of screaming at you. Which of them are allowed to get your attention whenever something happens?
Are likes really so important that they can interrupt you in whatever you are doing? Do you need to know immediately when a clothing piece you saved as a favorite is on sale?
Set your priorities. Navigate to the application settings and decide which notifications you will allow.
5. Storage
Okay, this one is hard. Yes, I’m guilty of this one. I do indeed own external storage containing a mess. A huge mess. Folders with hundreds of selfies where I picked only one to post. Blurred photos of everyday things that my thirteen years old self took thinking they were artistic. Movies in bad quality. Even some school documents? To be honest? No idea.
If this one sounds like a lot of work, you can start with small steps — go through the pictures you saved on Instagram or through your browser bookmarks.
Keep the valuable links, funny photos, or some beautiful mementos. Let’s get rid of the useless stuff.
6. Contacts
Let’s have a look at your contact list. Are there any numbers you will probably never contact again? Facebook friends you don’t know or you won’t chat with? What about old WhatsApp groups that have been created only for a one time purpose?
The same method can be used for the accounts you follow on social media. Make it a place where you want to be — get rid of negative vibes or people who have triggered you and disrupt your peace of mind. There is no need to follow them.
Photo by Shashank Sahay on Unsplash
7. Projects
This last point affects all the content creators and creatives between us. (This issue is also very well known to software developers — most of us have more or less private repositories on GitHub with old code we forgot about.)
Do you still keep the materials of failed or uncompleted projects? Be absolutely honest with you — will you ever continue working on that thing? If not, you already know what you should do.
|
https://medium.com/@loumova-misa/guide-to-digital-decluttering-7e4e69ee969
|
['Míša Loumová']
|
2020-12-27 16:42:02.197000+00:00
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['Decluttering', 'Digital', 'Minimalism', 'Productivity']
|
Lluvia
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in Change Your Mind Change Your Life
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https://medium.com/@kenliecer/lluvia-ac0bd460e09
|
['Kenneth Guerra']
|
2020-11-04 14:43:21.291000+00:00
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['Poema', 'Opinion', 'Español', 'Lluvia', 'Reflexiones']
|
The End of 2020 will bring the “Age of Aquarius”
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Get ready for something new!!!
Photo by Thiébaud Faix on Unsplash
It will start on December 21, 2020 @ 1:20PM EST (the Northern Hemisphere’s Winter Solstice) when the planets of Saturn and Jupiter couple or come together, this has not happened since the year 1623, 14 years after Galileo invented the telescope.
For those who have the opportunity to view this conjunction, they will have a spectacular experience of cosmic beauty.
So a big change is coming.
Start preparing and get ready for new opportunities, new friendships, new connections and new relationships.
Months from now, we will break out of our Social Distancing (when it is recommended by the medical experts) and start a New Social Connectiveness.
We may even, momentarily, forget about our phones when we connect.
Most people have heard about the “Age of Aquarius” from books, movies and songs.
But this time, get ready to live it.
The effects will start off slow, like any new transformation, but by the mid to late 2021, the inception and new ways of life will start their genesis.
For the Creatives and the Techies, this will really be your era to shine. And anyone who can join these two talents. Watch out, you will become one of the valued and brilliant new innovators that will change the world.
This “Age of Aquarius”, which is projected to last for the next 200 years, will focus on driving individual uniqueness for the greater good. Those with ideas that can solve problems but at the same time benefit the community, will be rewarded handsomely.
Imagine coming up with ideas that solves a problem, saves money and heals the planet. You will be heralded as a Genius, even by those that think the planet is doing just fine.
Take note, it is projected that there will be great advances in Artificial Intelligence, Global Communication, Medicine and Science. Even the way we entertain ourselves will evolve, the Arts will not be left behind.
I welcome the new titans of industry that will build wealth while adding value to others, the community and the earth.
Minds that can outthink our divisive politics and cultural differences will add a new paradigm to our world.
Will you be someone who will simplify the complicated?
Knowledge is power.
Power can change lives.
So focus your intentions on intellectual development, new concepts, expansion of consciousness, new choices, enlightenment and social progress.
With all this positive energy, the status quo will not let go of the past easily. But the power of the people and the power of the purse will force them into our history books.
One of my favorite Astrologer’s Kelley Rosano stated in one of her recent YouTube videos, “When we honor individual uniqueness, we can do anything together. It is just breathtaking….a breath of fresh air”.
The World is ready for a breath of fresh air.
Aren’t you?
|
https://medium.com/@eilasmith/the-end-of-2020-will-bring-the-age-of-aquarius-a96b73767132
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['Eila Smith']
|
2020-12-04 04:42:36.837000+00:00
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['Astronomy', 'Self Improvement', 'Art', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Astrology']
|
Wyze Thermostat review: First-class feature set, bargain-basement price tag
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Wyze Labs’ motto seems to be “anything you can do, we can do cheaper.” The company that impressed us earlier with a range of incredibly inexpensive home security cameras, noise-cancelling headphones, a smart bulb, and a smart deadbolt has done again it with the Wyze Thermostat, which sells for just $50—less than half the price of the new entry-level Nest Thermostat.
Not only is it less expensive, it comes with everything you might need, including an optional trim plate to cover up holes left over from a previous installation, and a wiring-conversion harness should you not have a C-wire in the wall to deliver power to the thermostat. Google says its Nest thermostats don’t require a C-wire, but when you go through steps in either company’s compatibility checker, you might find that it actually does to work with your HVAC system.
This review is part of TechHive’s coverage of the best smart thermostats, where you’ll find reviews of competing products, plus a buyer’s guide to the features you should consider when shopping for this type of product.The Wyze Thermostat isn’t the prettiest device you’ll install in your home, and its dial controller isn’t the most sophisticated control option in its class. It is simple, though; you just turn the dial to adjust the target temperature shown on its small display, push the dial in to access its menu, spin to choose menu options, and push the dial in to select them.
Jason D’Aprile The Wyze Thermostat is compatible with more types of HVAC systems than most budget-priced smart thermostats.
Installing the thermostat is simple enough once you’ve downloaded the Wyze app and created an account. The app helps to make your initial configuration and programming easy, you can create a unique schedule with home, sleep, and away target temperatures for each day of the week and weekend or for entire weeks. You can also access most of the thermostat’s options via its onboard display if you don’t always want to be tied to your smartphone.
Jason D’Aprile / IDG A series of simple questions helps the Wyze app determine optimal settings for its thermostat.
You’ll mount the wiring backplate to the wall, using the onboard bubble level to level it, and then push the wires coming from your HVAC system into the labeled clamping sockets. Having 10 wiring sockets (see photo) enables the Wyze Thermostat to accommodate a broader array of HVAC systems than the budget-priced Nest Thermostat.
There are connections for Rc (power, if your cooling system has its own transformer), Y1 (for air conditioning, stage 1), Y2 (air conditioning, stage 2), O/B (for a heat pump), G (for fan blower operation), Rh (power for your heating system transformer), W1 (heat, stage 1), W2 (heat, stage 2), asterisk (for one accessory, such as a ventilator, humidifier, dehumidifier, or emergency heat), and C (aka “common,” for power to the thermostat itself).
Budget thermostat, high-end featuresIn addition to programming schedules when your HVAC system should operate, the Wyze Thermostat supports geofencing, so that temperature settings adjust according to your location (provided your take your smartphone with you, of course). It will set your system to its away setting when you leave the perimeter you’ve established, and return to its home setting when you re-enter that perimeter. You can also establish safety limits that will automatically turn on your furnace if temperatures drop too low (protecting your pipes from freezing), or your air conditioning if they rise too high (protecting your pets).
An onboard passive infrared motion sensor wakes the Wyze Thermostat’s display when you approach it, and if no one passes by for a long period, the thermostat will automatically switch to its energy-conserving “away” mode. A humidity sensor will inform you of the relative humidity in your home, and it will also activate a connected humidifier or dehumidifier if you have one installed.
Jason D’Aprile / IDG You might not fall in love with the Wyze Thermostat’s industrial design, but its price tag can’t be beat for the features delivered.
Reminders to change your air filter on becoming increasingly common on smart thermostats, but Wyze takes a more detailed approach than most. It takes the size and longevity rating of the filter to provide a percentage of usage. It also allows you to save different types of filters for tracking purposes. If you switch to a higher-performance filter during the year, you can just select that entry and the app tracks it. Unlike the Nest Thermostat, however, Wyze doesn’t provide any means of tracking your HVAC system’s overall performance and won’t provide maintenance reminders or alerts.
Mentioned in this article Nest Thermostat Read TechHive's reviewSee it The Wyze thermostat supports Amazon Alexa, so you can ask about the current temperature and make thermostat adjustments with voice commands, but Google Assistant support is described as “coming soon.” It has both a Bluetooth radio and a Wi-Fi adapter onboard, but the latter is 2.4GHz only.
New features in the works Jason D’Aprile / IDG The separate settings for Home, Away, and Sleep are easy to configure.
Wyze says that in the future, the thermostat’s humidity sensor will also be used to perform more precise comfort calculations. It will take into account the amount of moisture in the air (higher humidity makes your environment feel warmer, while lower humidity makes it feel cooler) to set a “feels like” temperature target. Wyze says it’s also working on a learning algorithm that will automatically create heating and cooling schedules based on activity in the home and how users interact with the thermostat, similar to how the high-end Nest Learning Thermostat behaves.
The company also promises to offer a remote 3-in-1 sensor in early 2021. Similar to the higher-end offerings from Ecobee and Nest (Nest’s remote sensors won’t work with its budget-priced model), these sensors will monitor temperature, humidity, and motion in other rooms in your home. Wyze says these sensors will help balance the temperature in your home, eliminating hot and cold spots. These features will make the Wyze Thermostat an even stronger value if they’re delivered, but no one should buy a product today based on features that are promised to come later.
Bottom lineI’m not crazy about the Wyze Thermostat’s industrial design, but a smart thermostat with this level of sophistication for a price this low is very easy to recommend.
Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details.
|
https://medium.com/@samanth16681848/wyze-thermostat-review-first-class-feature-set-bargain-basement-price-tag-1407c76fc340
|
[]
|
2020-12-05 05:46:17.225000+00:00
|
['Lighting', 'Gear', 'Home Theater', 'Tvs']
|
Exploring Recharts: multiple ReferenceLine segments
|
Most charts usually require some kind of reference line to compare the current plotted data against. For example, a budget chart can have a reference line for 70% of the budget, to display when the expenses went over the prescribed limit and another reference line for 100% of the budget, Or , a chart showing the monthly rainfall in cm can have a reference line for average rainfall in cm to show in which months the rainfall was more than average. These are very general use cases for single reference lines which span a whole dimension (x or y in terms of cartesian coordinates).
Recharts provides a ReferenceLine component which helps you achieve exactly this.
Then there are some use cases for multiple reference lines which may span different parts of a particular dimension, for example, bar charts grouped by year can have a different average for each year for which to compare that year’s data against. These disjointed segments would span different portions of the x dimension.
Recharts provides this flexibility through a currently undocumented API.
ReferenceLine can accept a segment prop which can take an array with 2 set of endpoints within which the line would be drawn.
This is useful when:
you need to have a reference line which is not horizontal or vertical but sloped.
when you need to have multiple reference lines for different portions of a dimension.
when you need to have a reference line not span the whole dimension.
Then there can be a use case for a single reference line, which can have multiple connected segments, but a single label for the whole line.
This can be achieved by rendering multiple disjointed lines as in the previous use case and having some contrived logic to display one single label by hiding the labels for all but one, and positioning the label correctly, but how convenient it would be if we could pass all these multiple segments to one component, instead of creating a new component for each of these parts and that component could handle all the contrived logic. Also in this case, depending on the implementation the segments could actually be connected and not disjoint.
That’s where the out of the box recharts functionality ends.
We can create our own component to take in a segments prop instead of a segment prop, which is an array of segments, where each segment is an object containing a pair of start and end coordinates. But, creating custom components in Recharts is a pain. So, for now, we will be satisfied with what we have, as the single reference line with multiple connected segments use case can still be achieved by the existing API.
Just for fun, This is what the component may look like:
<MyReferenceLine
segments={[
[{ x: 2, y: 23 }, { x: 4, y: 2 }],
[{ x: 2, y: 23 }, { x: 4, y: 2 }],
[{ x: 2, y: 23 }, { x: 4, y: 2 }],
]}
label="single label"
stroke="red"
/>
Please note that this is fundamentally different than a component which displays multiple ReferenceLine s, as in case of multiple ReferenceLine s each of those lines can have different config parameters, although our custom component may use multiple ReferenceLine components internally and have some contrived logic encapsulated so that the output might still look and behave like a single connected component, OR, it can have a completely separate implementation from ReferenceLine .
A list of all other posts in this series:
|
https://medium.com/@gaurav5430/exploring-recharts-multiple-referenceline-segments-1856b5b07111
|
['Gaurav Gupta']
|
2020-06-21 14:57:56.653000+00:00
|
['D3js', 'Charts', 'JavaScript', 'React', 'Recharts']
|
Blinds Buying Guide | Shades of Blinds
|
Did you recently move into a new house or are you looking to renovate and decorate your current home? If yes, then at some point in time you will have to buy some stylish blinds to make your home look more stylish. In this article, we are going to discuss some of the trendiest blinds that you can buy to decorate your home or office windows. Let us get into more detail and discuss the different types of blinds.
Roller Blinds
Roller blinds are the most popular and for obvious reasons. These type of blinds are easy to install without any hassle and are capable of blocking out a lot of light coming through your home or office windows. In addition to this, even the maintenance of such blinds is simple. They are super easy to clean. Depending upon the kind of requirements you have, you can get roller blinds in a variety of different colours and sizes.
See Roller Blinds
Vertical Blinds
Vertical blinds are manufactured using fabric material slats. With vertical blinds, you can choose the level of privacy you need with tilting slats. For complete privacy, you can close the blinds completely. These can be bought in different colours and sizes depending upon your exact requirements.
See Vertical Blinds
Venetian Blinds
Venetian blinds are made from vertical slats and provide you the ability to decide how much light you need inside your home. Similar to Vertical Blinds, you can decide on the kind of privacy you want to attain through these blinds. It allows you to adjust the slats as per requirements. You can buy Venetian blinds in two different materials. The most common materials are wood and metal, which are most popular among homeowners.
See Venetian Blinds
Blackout Blinds
These type of blinds are very common. You can get them in roller blinds which make use of blackout fabric to provide full privacy. They are perfect for your bedroom window, to ensure that all the light is kept out and you can sleep peacefully. Blackout blinds can be bought in different sizes and colours.
See Blackout Blinds
Roman Blinds
Roman Blinds are a great addition to any bedroom for style, and practical use. You can use the to control the temperature of your room with terminal linings. Go for blackout linings to reduce light in the bedroom. Or you can can combine them with curtains for visual appeal. We have a huge range of Roman blinds available to choose from.
See Roman Blinds
Blinds by Room Type
There is a suitable type of blind for every room. For instance, for the bedroom,, the best type of blind will be a Blackout blind as it provides complete privacy and manages to keep the light out. Following are some of the most common blinds per room type.
Bathroom Blinds
For the bathroom, the best blinds would be polyester blinds as they are moisture resistant. The moisture will slide through, making them last for a longer period. With this, you also get privacy and sufficient light as required. See bathroom blinds
Kitchen Blinds
For Kitchens, the best blinds would be polyester or aluminum Venetian blinds. Do not make use of wooden blinds as they might get cracked due to exposure to moisture. See kitchen blinds
Living Room Blinds
Vertical and Venetian Wooden blinds will serve the right purpose for living rooms, offering a better amount of privacy and light.
For more help find the perfect blinds for you home, you can get in touch with us at Shades of Blinds. See living room blinds
|
https://medium.com/@mybestarticle1/blinds-buying-guide-shades-of-blinds-fb3a710ec123
|
['Your Medical Records - Are They Really Private']
|
2019-09-14 10:04:11.650000+00:00
|
['Interior Design']
|
Dynamic Visuals Using Date Range Slicers in Power BI Pt. 2
|
Goal: Create visuals which dynamically change depending on the date range picked in the slicer.
This is a continuation of my first blog on creating relative date range slicers to dynamically change visuals. Previously to deliver a feature request, I created a slicer to switch between seeing the past day, week, month, or quarter of activity along with seeing the according time percent change metrics. Still, new feature requests came in and end users wanted more flexibility in choosing their dates via a native date picker so I gave it a go and created the necessary DAX calculations to make the customers happy.
In this example, I will show how you can:
Create a slicer called ‘Trending Date” to pick through dates and see relative metric values. Create DAX equations to dynamically change metrics and text based on dates ranges sliced
Completed dashboard which utilizes dynamic date slices to change all the metrics in the visual.
Download the dashboard here.
Where do we start? The data, of course
As in Part 1, I am using Kaggle’s Trending YouTube Video Statistics data set which contains several daily trending metrics for top videos across several countries (only US data or table USvideos is used in this exercise). After importing USvideos into Power BI, I created USvideos Dates by duplicating USvideos, dropping all columns except trending_date and removing duplicate dates. So I have 2 tables, USvideos which has all my daily trending metrics tied to videos and USvideos Dates which is just a unique list of all my dates of interest.
Tables USvideos and USvideos Dates derived from Kaggle’s Trending YouTube Video Statistics data set.
Although we can make a many to one relationship between USvideos and USvideos Dates on trending_date, this relationship will not be active.
Inactive relationship between tables USvideos and USvideos Dates.
Let’s Build This!
Before actually building out your dashboard, I would highly recommend troubleshooting the following metrics to make sure that they are working properly.
Create a slicer called ‘Trending Date” to pick through dates and see relative metric values.
Goal: In this section, we will create dynamically changing flags for trending_date, marking dates of interest based on date selection.
The date range slicer you will create will use the trending_date field from the USvideos Dates table. So go ahead and create the date range slicer (I choose ‘Between’ for the type of date slicer I want).
Create calculated measures to capture the start and end date in the date range slicer.
Min Trending Date = CALCULATE(
MIN(‘USvideos Dates’[trending_date]),
ALLSELECTED(‘USvideos Dates’[trending_date])) Max Trending Date = CALCULATE(
MAX(‘USvideos Dates’[trending_date]),
ALLSELECTED(‘USvideos Dates’[trending_date]))
Create calculated measures to capture the start and end date relative to the date range slicer. Ex. If in the ‘Trending Date’ slicer we want to see data between 5/10/2018–5/17/2018 (a range of 8 days), we will want to see relative metric comparisons for 8 days prior to 5/10/2018 or 5/2/2018–5/9/2018.
Trending Dates Diff = DATEDIFF([Min Trending Date], [Max Trending Date], DAY) + 1 Comparison Min Activity Date = [Min Trending Date] — [Trending Dates Diff] Comparison Max Activity Date = [Min Trending Date] — 1
Let’s see it in action!
In the first example I am interested in Activity from 5/15/2018–5/17/2018, my Date Flag shows 1s for the appropriate dates and my Comparison Date Flag shows 1s for the relative date from 5/12/2018–5/14/2018, a trending date difference of 3 days. Troubleshoot as above to see correct functionality.
2. Create DAX equations to dynamically change metrics and text based on dates ranges sliced
Goal: In this section, we will create dynamically changing value (metric A.), text (metrics B.) and KPI for percentage changes (metric C.). These metrics will be used within card and table visuals, but for bar/line charts a slightly different approach will be used.
Creating dynamically changing metrics (metric A.) is pretty straightforward since we have our Comparison metric. In plain English for metric A.: Filter the table USvideo Dates where the Date Flag is True, take the sum of views based on the date filtering, and if the sum is blank return 0 and if the sum is not blank return the sum.
Number of Views = SUM(USvideos[views]) Number of Views Sliced =
var calc = CALCULATE([Number of Views], FILTER(USvideos, [Date Flag] = 1)) Return
CALCULATE(IF(ISBLANK(calc), 0, calc), ALL(USvideos[title]))
To create the dynamically changing text (metric B.) all you need is string concatenation and the field Trending Date Diff created above.
Relative to = “VS PREVIOUS “ & [Trending Dates Diff] & “ DAYS”
The KPI for percentage change metric (metric C.) utilizes unichar variables together with a percentage change calculation. Note: Although unichars are supported in Power BI, when publishing to web/embedded/etc. make sure that the font in the visual utilizing this metric is web supported. I use Arial. Creating this dynamically changing KPI occurs in a couple of steps. First, you must declare your unichar variables as specific symbols, here is a good reference for finding unichars but again you need to see if they are supported by the font. Next, create your calculation. In plain English this change calculation reads determine the previousValue for the relative prior date range and determine the change from the currentValue or Number of Views Sliced and the previousValue. Finally, using a switch statement will let you output the KPI by incorporating the unichar with the change calculation formatted as a percentage.
Number of Views Change =
VAR Down = UNICHAR(9660)
VAR Up = UNICHAR(9650)
Var Constant = UNICHAR(9654) VAR previousValue = CALCULATE([Number of Views], FILTER(USvideos, [Comparison Date Flag] = 1))
VAR Change = IFERROR(([Number of Views Sliced] — previousValue)/previousValue, BLANK()) RETURN
SWITCH(TRUE(),
ISBLANK(Change), “-”,
Change < 0, Down & FORMAT(Change, “0.0%”),
Change > 0, Up & FORMAT(Change, “0.0%”),
Constant & Format(Change, “0.0%”))
Let’s see how we use these metrics in the correct visuals.
A., B. For card and table visual you should use the “sliced” calculations, with the table can be filtered even further to not display value where a particular metric is = 0. C. For bar charts use the non-sliced metrics (ie. just sum of views rather than Number of Views Sliced) and use Date Flag== 1 as a Visual level filter to make sure that the correct bars are showing.
Taking all the above steps, applying some design on your dashboard, and you are done. You now have a dashboard which dynamically changes based on the date slicers selected and gives your customers more flexibility to pick their dates.
Conclusion
With any new feature request, understand why something is requested, research if it is possible, build out the feature testing frequently, and deploy if the experience is as expected. The data, any code, and PBIX file in the post is available here. If you have any questions or thoughts on the tutorial, feel free to reach out in the comments below or through Twitter. If you want to learn how to filter and compare different time periods with Power BI, check out this great blog post.
Additional Blogs
|
https://medium.com/seismic-data-science/dynamic-visuals-using-date-range-slicers-in-power-bi-pt-2-458423c8b213
|
['Orysya Stus']
|
2018-12-28 19:41:51.924000+00:00
|
['Power Bi', 'Data Visualization', 'Business Intelligence', 'Data Science', 'Data Analysis']
|
Botox Treatment
|
Living in the 21st century, you must have heard of Botox treatment. Botox treatment in recent years has gained much popularity among the youth as well as the aged.
If you are somehow unaware of the Botox treatment and its benefits, then worry not as Estetique is here for your help. Here you would come to know the nuts and bolts of Botox treatment, its advantages, and Estetique’s small contribution in it.
Botox Treatment
How is Botox Treatment Helpful?
Botox or Botulinum toxin is of great importance for specific treatments like that of eyes and skin. Estetique has got a group of health care professionals who can help you reduce particular health problems for a period of 4 to 6 months at ease. Botox helps to medicate the following issues:
Eye Problems
Botox treatment can make miracles happen to people having eye problems like crossed eyes or strabismus and eyelid twitching or blepharospasm. If you have any of the above vision problems, you can go for a Botox session from Estetique without any hesitation. It can also be useful to people having double vision.
Muscle and Gland issues
Many of the people suffer from health problems like muscle stiffness and cramps. Can you imagine yourself walking by the road and suddenly experiencing muscle cramps which make the area stiff without any notice? Yes, Estetique understands your pain, and so it brings in Botox treatment for your cure for the time being.
One of the most common problems which many people face is over sweating and over salivating. In such cases, the person tends to sweat more than usual at the underarms and other places of the body where sweat glands are located. Similarly, people drool more than usual suddenly from the areas where the salivary glands are located. You can stop such embarrassing body odour issues by taking Botox treatments from Estetique. Botox treatment helps in preventing such problems by blocking the glands temporarily.
Cosmetics
Botox treatment from Estetique plays a revolutionary role in the world of cosmetics. Most of the people of the 21st century undergo severe pressure in their daily life. In such challenging life schedules, dark circles and early wrinkles are not quite a big thing. But it does not seem pretty when young men and women and even the ageing people get wrinkles under their eyes. This is when Estetique comes to the rescue with the magical Botox treatment.
Other Treatments
Besides the above points, Botox treatment also temporarily cures problems like overactive bladders and migraines. When you take a Botox session from Estetique, you can get rid of severe headaches due to migraine for at least 3 to 4 months. The same is with the people suffering from overactive bladder, where the tendency to urinate is high. People suffering from urine leakage can go for the Botox treatment at ease as Botulinum toxin can help by increasing the feeling of urinating beforehand to avoid leakage.
Specifications of Botox Treatment:
Before undergoing Botox treatment from Estetique, there are a few points which you must know and consider. Take a look at the following points:
Botox treatment from Estetique is temporary. It does not last for a lifetime.
The time of effect varies from skin to skin. In some people, it might last for 2 to 3 months, while in the others it might last more.The first Botox session effect might last as little as for two months only. The problems for which you want to go for Botox treatment would return once again after the period of effect.
You don’t have to continue Botox treatment after the first time.
If Botox treatment does not suit you, you might face itching, redness, rashes, pain and infection during the process of injection.
Estetique’s professional team has always been great to patients with Botox treatment. Even after the best services, if you come across any side effect, then it is best to consult a doctor.
|
https://medium.com/@dbjyti/botox-treatment-8c6197005144
|
['Debojyoti Ghosh']
|
2020-11-23 06:25:58.443000+00:00
|
['Botox Treatment', 'Botox Clinic', 'Skincare', 'Skin Treatment', 'Botox']
|
Bitcoin Media Mind Joins Flux Advisory
|
Flux Protocol, a distributed network for environmental data collection, storage and intelligence, is proud to announce that Bitcoin media pioneer David Bailey, the CEO of BTC Inc., will join the company’s board of advisors.
“At BTC, we are creating an ecosystem of companies around a media empire,” says Bailey. “In the constellation of the environment and earth’s resources, we are certain that Flux and its protocol can lead, build and mobilize the right infrastructure to align all the goals of planet and people. Once people, researchers, governments and companies start collaborating in a way they have never done before, we can create abundance without limitation.”
As the first dedicated media outlet for digital currency, BTC Inc. has been providing mission-critical intelligence since 2011 to hundreds of companies, from Fortune 500 corporations to leading Silicon Valley startups. The firm is responsible for the leading crypto brands such as Bitcoin Magazine, Distributed, Coin Cart, and Po.et to name a few. BTC Inc.’s insights provide context, connections and relationships to drive blockchain innovation forward in meaningful ways for business and society, and now Flux.
Recording Earth’s Neural Networks
Flux Protocol has developed a patented IoT hardware sensor which acts like stethoscope for the natural world by listening to planet in order to harvest its data. The data collected by these sensors enables Flux’s proprietary artificial intelligence, a Perception Engine, the ability to solve some of humanity’s largest challenges such as hunger, climate change, and species extinction. Their solution is providing a patented hardware solution coupled with open-sourced AI software running on a distributed blockchain-powered community.
This environmental data is relayed through a distributed storage system to derive real-time insights and actions at a user’s request. Bailey loves the idea that “Flux’s unique storage system requires no heavy traffic, memory consumption or heavy computing while simultaneously referencing newly created data to the blockchain via a shadow signature,” he says.
Alternatively, Flux’s distributed intelligence harnesses computing power to drive neural nets that generate insights and actions by measuring the use and quality of relevant environmental data.
Exploring New Frontiers to Sustain Life
Blockchain technology has always been about solving coordination problems in decentralized communities — and the FLUX Protocol is one of those ideas that resonates with the disenfranchised crypto crowd, wanting to reorganize imbalanced power and the share of resources: “how can we get actors to perform work that makes everybody else in the network better off? Flux brings this promise to the agricultural industry with incentives to contribute data, purchase valuable recipes and insights, or launch their own “realm-specific” AI. Every business that depends on environmental data to drive their decision-making will be able to capture more value because of the FLUX Protocol,” says Bailey, adding:
“Blockchains enable individuals who can’t or don’t trust each other to coordinate and collaborate, enabling all people to participate while capturing the value that they create. Flux will help growers reap the full value of their work.”
“The real value is in insights derived from harvested data and correlations one can draw across realms,” said Blake Burris, the CEO of Flux, comparing the Flux mission to early explorers of the earth, and now space. It resonates with crypto investors: “These are smart and eager people who want to do more than just invest in a new economy. They seek to be present in creating a new world order where we can collect data and automate key processes that sustain life on this planet.”
To learn more about Flux and our mission to bring a future of abundance to our planet, check out https://fluxtoken.io and join our Telegram community.
|
https://medium.com/flux-network/bitcoin-media-mind-joins-flux-advisory-3a311fda68a5
|
['Blake Burris']
|
2018-08-18 03:46:13.153000+00:00
|
['Bitcoin', 'Crypto', 'Blockchain', 'Abundance']
|
The Story of Humanity
|
The Story of Humanity
Photo by Julie Ricard on Unsplash
I was shocked to hear about the news on TV that there were over 18,000 missing children from 2018 to 2020 in Europe who migrated from their homeland. I felt helpless of hearing such news and not being able to do anything about it.
Then, I started to research about this tragic issue and learn more about what was really going on. I watched related documentaries, read affiliated news, and examined some analytic data to find out more so that I could inform other people who were unaware of the situation.
I am very fortunate to find the Medium writing platform last month to spread and share my messages to a wide range of audiences from all over the world. Sharing such dramatic issues on Medium gives me the opportunity to create public awareness and enables like-minded people to connect and find solutions together. Let me share what I have found out so far about this serious matter.
Who are unaccompanied migrant children?
Unaccompanied migrant children are the ones either encouraged by their parents or various other connections to leave their countries for higher living standards and more freedom in developed countries. Some depart from their homeland to reunite with their family members or relatives who have previously migrated to developed countries.
There is no precise data concerning the number of unaccompanied migrant minors, however, there were 153,300 children under 18 outside of their own countries and registered as either unaccompanied or separated from their parents among the refugee population at the end of 2019, according to the UN records.
The runaway journey of migrant children
Children coming from distant countries like Algeria, Morocco, Guinea, Nigeria, Yemen, or Afghanistan start a long, exhausting, and dramatic journey to reach Europe. Some come from highlands on the backs of horses while others hide inside ships’ stores in darkness for days or even weeks on their way to reach new opportunities.
Every child has a unique escape story. Fleeing their country of origin and being part of a tough, ambiguous journey is traumatic for children, let alone the hardship of being on their own without their parents. The preparation process before they leave for this journey burdens indescribable anxiety and pain on these children. Even worse, some of them get attacked or robbed on their way.
18,000 unaccompanied children missing in Europe
According to the cross-border journalism collective Lost in Europe, published data indicated that 18,292 unaccompanied child migrants went missing between January 2018 and December 2020. Some 5,768 migrant children disappeared in 13 European countries last year alone.
As stated by this investigation, 90% were boys, and one-sixth of them were younger than 15. As the data journalist of Lost in Europe, Adriana Homolova stated that the number should be much higher since they did not collect the data of 2020 from all the affiliated countries.
International Missing Children’s Day (May 25)
May 25th is an international day commemorating missing children in the world, the same day former POTUS Ronald Reagan designated National Missing Children’s Day of the US in 1983. Due to these stressing numbers of missing children, Mind the Children raised attention with a special episode hosting data journalist Adriana Homolova from Lost in Europe and Veronika Pisorn from Defence for Children Netherlands on May 25th of this year.
To commemorate this day, Mind the Children also carried out a conversation about this critical issue with Aagje Ieven, Secretary-General of Missing Children Europe, one of the organizations that initiated the annual International Missing Children’s Day.
Regarding the recent data collected by Lost in Europe, Aagje Ieven stated:
“For us, they are very important because it is so difficult to get those figures. The European Migration Network reported the 30,000 figure a few years ago, but that was 30,000 compared to an overall number of asylum applications received of 230,000. This new figure from Lost in Europe of 18,292 is compared to an overall number of asylum applications of 52,000. So the proportion is quite a lot bigger compared to the overall migration streams than it was a few years ago. And these are only numbers from ten countries, so relatively the problem is getting worse.”
To solve this serious matter, the Secretary-General of Missing Children Europe believes that affiliated organizations should enlighten the public that migration is not something to be afraid of and that it has brought humanity to better places. She calls the situation “the story of humanity.”
Children’s Legal Rights
All the children in the world have their legal rights to grow up healthy and safe. Nearly every country worldwide signed and adopted a convention called the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, also known as CRC, on November 20th, 1989. These rights are specialized for children because children are more vulnerable than adults under any circumstances. The rights of refugee children are also articulated in Article 22 of this comprehensive convention by this means:
Article 22 1. States Parties shall take appropriate measures to ensure that a child who is seeking refugee status or who is considered a refugee in accordance with applicable international or domestic law and procedures shall, whether unaccompanied or accompanied by his or her parents or by any other person, receive appropriate protection and humanitarian assistance in the enjoyment of applicable rights set forth in the present Convention and in other international human rights or humanitarian instruments to which the said States are Parties. 2. For this purpose, States Parties shall provide, as they consider appropriate, co-operation in any efforts by the United Nations and other competent intergovernmental organisations or nongovernmental organisations co-operating with the United Nations to protect and assist such a child and to trace the parents or other members of the family of any refugee child in order to obtain information necessary for reunification with his or her family. In cases where no parents or other members of the family can be found, the child shall be accorded the same protection as any other child permanently or temporarily deprived of his or her family environment for any reason, as set forth in the present Convention.
Generally, every unaccompanied minor refugee arriving in Europe has to be registered. Customs officers or the police refer these registered children to child protection authorities. Each child is assigned a legal representative under the asylum procedure. In 2011, the EU implemented new anti-trafficking provisions to protect children and unaccompanied refugee minors from trafficking.
Why do these children go missing?
As to the estimates of the European Commission, most migrant children go missing before or during the asylum request. International Refugee Rights Association Director Atty. Abdullah Resul Demir assumes that children might have gone to other countries due to the fear of being rejected and deported.
He also puts forth some other reasons with regard to the disappearance of these children:
“Some of the minor refugees may have disappeared because of abuse, physical and sexual violence. Therefore, these children may have fallen into the hands of organized crime organizations. Europol even announced that some of the child refugees were captured by gangs and subjected to sexual abuse.”
What needs to be done to control the issue of missing foreign minors?
· First, this should be accepted as a crucial international issue because according to UNICEF data of 2018, it was determined that 32,500 refugees crossed to Greece by sea, and 18,000 refugees by land, risking their lives; and approximately one-third of these refugees are children.
· Politicians need to offer solutions that will solve the existing problems and new ones that may arise. These solutions should be auditable and be able to prevent the lack of registration of these children. Unregistered children are at risk of being hijacked by human traffickers.
· European states should strictly comply with the procedures set out in the CRC. The EU also has its procedures specifically for child migrants. However, the EU needs to warn its member states to take action and implement these existing procedures precisely.
· Psychosocial support is very important to ensure that the child can lead a life worthy of the dignity and innocence he/she deserves and to offer a healthy future to the communities in the host country.
· Education and socialization should be provided to overcome their traumas and to ease the adaptation process in the host country.
· Governments should provide extra security, protection, assistance, shelter, healthcare, and stability due to their vulnerability as child migrants and as potential victims to human traffickers or crime organizations.
· Cross-border coordination among police, social services, non-profit organizations, shelters, and volunteers should be enhanced.
· And above all, these children should not be discriminated based on their race. Whatever is done for a missing child of European origin, the same things should be done for them both legally and conscientiously.
|
https://medium.com/illumination/the-story-of-humanity-5b329eb82f36
|
['Ece Uyguç']
|
2021-06-04 10:27:20.022000+00:00
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['European Union', 'UN', 'Politics', 'Missing Children', 'Migrants']
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(Un)expected Visitors 2: Evolving the Candidate Species
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[These recent years have been quite interesting especially for scientists and the general public who are into knowing more about astrobiology or the search for alien life. Early this year, the United States (US) Department of Defense released declassified video clips of “unidentified aerial phenomena.” Several months ago, a few scientists mused at the possibility that the interstellar object, Oumuamua, could be an alien spacecraft or a probe. And just a week ago, retired Israeli professor and General Haim Eshed made a controversial claim that a “Galactic Federation” has visited Earth and are, in fact, cooperating with the governments of US and Israel. It appears that we are a bit closer to the “truth” now than ever before. But, is there really substance in any of these claims?
When we think of discovering extraterrestrial life, we often look at it as if we need to either search for life forms on countless planets outside the solar system or catch them visiting our world. This is an Earth-centric way of viewing it, I think. You might ask, is there any other way of looking at it? Yes, one of which is based on the Zoo Hypothesis, proposed by John Ball in the 1970s, which implies that advanced alien civilizations are keeping us — Earth-based organisms — isolated from the rest of intelligent life forms in the universe. It is also used to explain Fermi’s Paradox, floated by Enrico Fermi, which basically asks why is it that we have not seen any aliens when the universe is so old and so vast that life should be found on (many) other planets aside from Earth.
To entertain the slim possibility that sentient beings could be watching us from afar means that we should also consider the fact that advanced civilizations can themselves disappear due to decline or after suffering cataclysmic events, thus leaving us on our own in this part of the universe. It is likewise possible that we had been created based on their likeness and that we had been designed to search for our creators in the end — which explains our extreme level of curiosity. For all we know, we are but a part of an intergalactic experiment and that instructions in our DNA leave us no choice but to make contact with our real ancestors. In other words, future human interstellar explorers could be, in essence, the message (i.e. that replaying evolution works) and the medium (our genome which reveals a lot about Earth’s status and history) for the alien scientists who are expecting our arrival.
Why would an alien civilization experiment on another planet? Maybe they are like us who want to know our origin and purpose in this universe. Maybe they wanted to replay the evolution of life on Earth and confirm the mechanisms behind their kind’s origin on their own planet. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, as they say, and I can only offer possibilities. In the book, Reporter Genome, I provide several points to support this conjecture however small the odds of it happening. I will be publishing its central chapters (Part Two) here and below is the third installment:]
Evolving the Candidate Species
“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.”– Carl Sagan
If we are to stand in the shoes — if they have any — of the alien scientists the purpose of their experiment can become clearer. Why should anyone make an evolution experiment on a distant planet? Aside from curiosity, which is a strong driver in itself, we could also be motivated by all the genetic combinations that life on Earth could come up with. If we share the same genetic framework, then such novel genes on Earth could be considered a huge treasure trove for us (the alien civilization) for advancing our own health, medicine and related scientific research. We could be searching for the fountain of youth or looking to propagate species we already lost on our own planet. We also could be waiting for an advanced civilization on Earth to develop unique technologies that we do not have, although this is quite improbable. Highly advanced civilizations capable of zipping around the far reaches of the universe and colonizing other planets should have been able to develop all the technologies that they need.
Nevertheless, alien scientists could learn a lot from any new civilization that they study. Since they should know that evolution is predictable and that they could have accelerated the process, all they have to do is wait for an intelligent species to rise up from all the organisms on Earth. Again, we are assuming here that the experimenters’ civilization is stable and they have extremely long life-spans. As mentioned earlier, a good analogy of the lifespans would be between a microbiologist and his/her bacteria or Caenorhabditis elegans (a worm) samples: the microbiologist as the alien scientist and the bacteria or C. elegans as earthlings. This alien species would have to develop the technology to make deep space travel possible to perform such an experiment.
If the alien scientists were able to start multiple experiments similar to what they have done on Earth, then they can theoretically just expect for any of the candidate species — like a highly intelligent and highly curious civilization such as humans — to reach their planet to confirm that a particular experiment was successful. This could also be the reason why they did not bother to return to Earth and assess how the experiment went. In other words, a failed experiment is not worth another trip to our planet and the failure is quite clear from the nonarrival of a reporter species. The alien scientists only need to have a positive result and that result is a self-reporting specimen to complete their experiment. In the case of planet Earth, that reporter species could be none other than us humans.
We might not know it but we could be on our way to letting the alien scientists know of our existence. Just like the zombie snail discussed previously, humans are wandering around our galactic neighborhood and are thus bound to attract attention. We are exploring our nearby planets and moons, sending probes beyond the solar system and broadcasting signals all around, hoping that advanced civilizations are listening or looking for us.
If this forgotten intergalactic experiment turns out to be true, then it is clear that we are the candidate/reporter species for this planet and we are performing our duty quite well. Since our technological prowess continues to improve in leaps and bounds, we are destined to eventually have the capability for intergalactic travel to finally meet the alien scientists.
Of course, after humans have left Earth or died out, other species could take over and continue the search for extraterrestrial life. That is, if humans failed to do the job. The next intelligent species could come from terrestrial animals, although in what animal species it would be difficult to predict. It could take a long time for another species to reach what humans have already achieved but as long as the alien civilization exists, the experiment continues. The alien scientists can rest assured knowing that evolution is predictable and that life tends to evolve towards intelligent forms.
When humans explore the universe, we would be bringing with us all the advanced hardware and software that run the complex machines and spacecraft that enable our interstellar travel. Aside from these, we would also be carrying with us a wide variety of bacteria, fungi and other microorganisms on our belongings and inside our bodies. Expeditions looking to colonize other planets would also likely have a stash of seeds and live or cryopreserved gametes of livestock for establishing agriculture on prospective refuge planets. Explorers might also bring encyclopedias or databases about Earth and everything on it. In short, we would be transporting a lot of information about our home planet and this is just what the alien scientists need. Based on the clues we might give the aliens, they could determine our species’ origin, as well as the exact location and the current status of our planet.
If they are only after new knowledge or satisfying their curiosity, then aliens knowing about Earth and its resources would not be that catastrophic for humans. However, if the ultimate objective of the alien civilization is to eventually exploit new resources that humans heavily depend on, then it could get complicated for us. Either way, humans making contact with another civilization outside the solar system could invariably lead to our species and our planet being unnecessarily exposed to outsiders. In other words, our space exploration activities could end up in a bioprospecting expedition to Earth by other alien civilizations.
Even if the human explorers are careful enough not to include books and databases in the cargo while looking for alien life, they could still divulge a lot just by presenting themselves to the alien civilization. This is because we are a walking encyclopedia, although we are not talking about our brain contents here. I am referring to a database billions of years old! This database is contained in an organic body capable of replicating itself. We humans are a walking, talking storage of vast information about planet Earth. We are, in a way, Earth’s primary record keepers, as what the following chapters illustrate.
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https://medium.com/@prbelvira/un-expected-visitors-2-evolving-the-candidate-species-cfb79930a3ba
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['Paul Rommel Elvira']
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2020-12-20 00:37:55.666000+00:00
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['Evolution', 'Alien Experiment', 'Organic Database', 'Human Genome', 'Earth']
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Fair Treatment to the Humanity.
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This morning I read a very philosophical as well as an interesting question,
Do you believe that violence is a” natural “part of being human? If so, why do you think so?
If not, why do you think violence, especially against women, is so prevalent in human society?
This question makes me think back to the old debates that carried out by lot of philosophers over the centuries, Aristoteles argued that morality is learned, and that we’re born as “amoral creatures” while Sigmund Freud considered new-borns a moral blank slate. Hobbes describes humans as ‘nasty’ and ‘brutish’, needing society and rules to reign in their instincts in order to thrive
Later Rousseau openly criticized him, arguing instead that man would be gentle and pure without the corruption of greed and inequality caused by the class system imposed by our society. It is still a great conversation to discuss whether a human were born naturally good or bad, so to answer the first question, I will draw on a study conducted by the Infant Cognition Center at Yale University.
Their research shows that babies will take on traits from their caregivers. In order to that, I believe that violence is a natural part of being human, because a child has the right to choose what kind of “caregiver” character to guide his life. However, the violence must be adapted to the place and circumstances. Violence against the natural person is still not allowed.
Violence against women is a major public health problems and violations of women’s human rights. WHO indicates that at least 1 in 3 women worldwide have experienced either physical and / or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime. Besides, According to the Annual Notes of the National Commission on Violence Against Women in Indonesia, cases of violence against women are an important issue in Indonesia. In fact, the number of cases of violence against women was increased by 6% in 2019, which amounted to 431.471, this number also increased compared to the previous year which amounted to 406.178. Around 75% of the cases are cases of domestic abuse.
By law, Indonesia has passed law №23 of 2004 on the Elimination of Domestic Violence but still, it remains as the most handled cases every year, especially in the COVID-19 pandemic where everyone is at home.
Sheila (an alias) said that this pandemic was a great suffering for her. Since her brother and father returned to their house due to losing their job, Indah became the target of her sibling’s anger, even at the point where she had to lock her door because she was afraid that her brother would kill her while she was sleeping.
Domestic abuse happened because some people or even the victims think that the moment they wanted to report this violence to the authorities, this kind of violence is still considered as a “disgrace” for the family itself. Which can discredit their family name in the society. This private sphere has always been a problem in resolving domestic violence cases. Reporting this violence has become a taboo subject to reveal to the public.
The importance of a knowledge for gender equality and a sense of belonging to each other is one of the answers to this case. The social construction that makes men play a “stronger” role than women makes some men out there doing an abuse of power. as well, from a religious perspective, it also teaches that the role of a wife should always follow what her husband commands.
Gender stereotypes that have been attached to men and women, often trap both sexes in a difficult position. If inequality and injustice in placing the positions of men and women are the constructs of society, then violence is part of that construction.
Society is responsible for learning about how to be male, so that men actualize their masculinity through a macho, manly, strong, and aggressive self-image. So now is the time for society to change this gender labeling to be more humane, so that ways of self-actualization also become more assertive in society.
Thus, gender justice as a condition and fair treatment of women and men can be realized.
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https://medium.com/@cindyindira/fair-treatment-to-the-humanity-c242cdcf042e
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['Cindy Indira']
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2020-11-16 01:15:01.228000+00:00
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['Human Rights', 'Violence Against Women', 'Women Rights', 'Humanity', 'Violence']
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How to Become a Data Scientist in 2020 — Top Skills, Education, and Experience
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How to Become a Data Scientist in 2020: Introduction
Data science has been one of the trendiest topics in the last couple of years. But what does it take to become a data scientist in 2020?
In a nutshell, here are the latest research results that we have found:
The typical data scientist is a male, who speaks at least one foreign language and has 8.5 years of work experience behind their back. They are likely to hold a Master’s degree or higher and most definitely use Python and/or R in their daily work.
But such generalizations are rarely helpful. Not only that, they could be misleading and sometimes discouraging. That is why we have sliced and diced the data to reveal a number of different insights:
Please use the list above to navigate through the article or simply read the whole piece. To give you the best perspective possible as we go through the different takeaways, we will also make comparisons to previous years’ surveys. If you first want to get acquainted with what it took to become a data scientist in 2018 and 2019, pleases follow these links:
2019 Data Scientist Profile 2018 Data Scientist Profile
How we collected and analyzed our data:
The data for this report is based on the publicly available information in the LinkedIn profiles of 1,001 professionals, currently employed as data scientists. The sample includes junior, experts, and senior data scientists. To ensure comparability with previous years and limited bias, we collected our data according to several conditions.
Location
40% of the data comprises data scientists currently employed in the United States; 30% are data scientists in the UK; 15% are currently in India; 15% come from a collection of various other countries (‘Other’).
Company size
50% of the sample are currently employed at a Fortune 500 company; the remaining 50% work in a non-ranked company.
These quotas were introduced in light of preliminary research into the most popular countries for data science, as well as the employment patterns in the industry.
Alright, without further ado…
How to Become a Data Scientist in 2020: Overview
For the third year in a row, the verdict is in.
There are twice as many male data scientists as there are female.
This trend, while unfortunate, is not really surprising as the field of data science follows the general trend in the tech industry.
In terms of languages spoken, a data scientist usually speaks two — English and one other (often their mother tongue).
When it comes to professional experience, we find that you can’t really become a data scientist overnight.
It takes 8.5 years of overall work experience. Interestingly, this is an increase of half a year compared to the data in 2019. Another interesting observation is that data scientists have held their prestigious title for an average of 3.5 years. Last year, that metric stood at 2.3 years. While our study is not based on panel data, we can make the claim that once you become a data scientist, you are likely to stay one.
Regarding programming languages, in 2018, 50% of data scientists were using Python or R.
This number increased to 73% in 2019 to completely break all records this year. In 2020, 90% of data scientists use Python or R. And no, you are not the only one who finds it amazing. Such a high adoption rate in such a short time period is an absolutely stunning feat for any tool in any industry ever.
Finally, your level of education will most definitely make a difference when trying to become a data scientist. About 80% of the cohort holds at least a Master’s degree. That amounts to a 6 percentage point increase from last year.
Previous experience
Each year, we look at the previous work experience of a data scientist. This part of the results proved to be the most useful for aspiring professionals, figuring out the common career paths to becoming a data scientist.
To reiterate, in 2020, data scientists had 3.5 years with the title and 8.5 years in the workforce on average.
But… what did the data scientist do before becoming a data scientist?
According to our sample, they… were already a data scientist! Or at least half of the cohort (52.4%). If we compare this value with previous years, there were 35.6% such cases in 2018 and 42% in 2019. So, year after year, the position becomes more and more exclusive — an observation we could infer from their average work experience.
This insight suggests that there aren’t too many career options after being a data scientist.
In other words — once a data scientist, always a data scientist. At least that’s the situation in 2020.
Regarding other relevant career paths, starting out as a data analyst is still the preferable path (11% overall), followed by academia (8.2%) and… Data science intern (7.0%). This breakdown is one of the most consistent segments of our yearly research since 2018. Hence, you can bet your data scientist career on it.
Education
Education is one of the 3 major sections of most resumes and that’s not likely to change. Educational background serves as a signal to your future employers, especially when you don’t have too much experience. So, what education gives the best signal if you want to become a data scientist?
According to our data, the typical data scientist in 2020 holds either a Master’s degree (56%), a Bachelor (13%), or a Ph.D. (27%) as their highest academic qualification.
These statistics might not seem counter-intuitive at first. However, there is actually a considerable drop in “Bachelor degree only” data scientists compared to 2019 (19%) and 2018 (15%). Data science requires an advanced level of expertise. And that’s typically acquired through graduate or postgraduate forms of traditional education, or through independent specialized study ( see Certificates below).
But while specialization is important, too much specialization, such as a Ph.D. is not a prerequisite to breaking into data science. In fact, the percentage of PhD-holders has been unremarkably consistent over the years, constituting approximately 27% of our sample.
The Master’s degree, however, is solidifying its position as the golden standard of academic achievement necessary to become a data scientist in 2020.
We are observing a 20% increase in the professionals who hold a Master’s degree compared to the 2019 cohort (46% in 2019 vs 56% in 2020).
A Master’s degree is a great way for a Bachelor to specialize in a given field.
Generally, there are two types of Master’s degree choices:
increasing your depth (dig deeper into a topic)
(dig deeper into a topic) or increasing your breadth (change your focus to diversify your skillset).
One assumption is that people with Economics, Computer Science or other quant Bachelor’s degree have pursued a trendy data science Master’s. This is further corroborated in our section on fields of study.
Arguably, there is another factor at play here as well, and this is the increased popularity of the field.
Industry reports like Glassdoor’s 50 Best Jobs consistently named Data Science the winner in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019.
Google searches for data science have at least quadrupled over the last five years as well. This certainly plays to the increased interest in data science as a career, and as a result, to a more selective hiring process in certain regions ( see Country and years of experience below).
Finally, although data science is becoming a more competitive field, more than 10% of data scientists successfully penetrate the field with only a Bachelor’s degree (13%). It’s true the number is lower than what we’ve observed in the last two years (19% in 2019 and 15% in 2018). Nevertheless, data science remains accessible to Bachelor holders. In fact, if we look at country-specific data, a more nuanced picture emerges.
Country and Degree
As we stated in the Methodology section in the beginning of this article, we gathered our data according to location quotas; data scientists in the USA comprise 40% of our data, data scientists in the UK contribute to 30% of our observations; India and the rest of the world each comprise 15% of the 2020 cohort.
That said, the increase in data scientists holding a Master’s degree is widely observed in both the UK and the States (54% and 58%, respectively, compared to 44% in 2019).
In India, the number of data scientists holding a Master’s has also grown by 16% in 2020, compared to previous years (57% in 2020 vs 49% in 2019 and 2018).
Interestingly, this doesn’t correspond to a comparable decrease in data scientists who have an undergraduate degree in India (32% in 2020, compared to 34% in 2019), which is still the highest percentage of Bachelor-holders across our cohort. Both Ph.D. graduates and professionals holding degrees from our “Other” cluster are also seen less frequently in the current research than they were in previous years. As we mentioned above, it is plausible that a specialization with a “trendy” data science Master’s is becoming the preferred career path of many people in the field.
It’s also worth noting that you don’t need a Ph.D. to become a data scientist in India.
In fact, postgraduates with a Ph.D. make up only 3% of our data scientist sample in India; this is both 30% less than the US data, and the least represented cohort in India.
So, these data corroborate two tentative conclusions. Academically, a Master’s degree is establishing itself as the most popular degree for becoming a data scientist across the globe. And, if you are holding only a Bachelor’s degree, India provides the best career opportunities for starting a career in data science.
Area of studies
What is the best degree to become a data scientist? If you have followed the industry (or at least our research) over the past years, you would be inclined to respond with ‘Computer Science’ or ‘Statistics and Mathematics’. After all, data science is the lovechild of all these disciplines. But you would be mistaken.
In 2020, the best degree to become a data scientist is… Data Science and Analysis!
At long last — ‘Data Science and Analysis’ graduates have made their way to the top of our research!
Before we continue with this analysis, a note on methodology. Because there is a massive number of uniquely nuanced — and correspondingly named — degrees in the academic world, we grouped our data into seven clusters of areas of academic study:
Computer science , which does not include machine learning;
, which does not include machine learning; Data science and analysis , which includes machine learning;
, which includes machine learning; Statistics and mathematics , which includes statistics and mathematics-centered degrees;
, which includes statistics and mathematics-centered degrees; Engineering ;
; Natural sciences , which includes physics, chemistry, and biology;
, which includes physics, chemistry, and biology; Economics and social sciences , which includes studies pertaining to economics, finance, business, politics, psychology, philosophy, history, and marketing and management;
, which includes studies pertaining to economics, finance, business, politics, psychology, philosophy, history, and marketing and management; Other, which includes all other degrees the data scientists in our sample pursued.
So, Data science and analysis is finally the degree that’s most likely to get you into data science. Awesome!
Compared to both 2019 (12%) and 2018 (13%), we’re seeing a significant increase in the professionals who’ve graduated with a data science specialized degree in 2020 (21%). Given our previous observations (see Education above), it doesn’t come as a surprise that the majority of these degrees are at Master’s level (85% of the Data science and analysis cluster). Therefore, it seems like data science is a preferred specialization for any quant Bachelor.
This finding suggests traditional universities are beginning to respond to the demand for data scientists. And, in line with that, offer curriculums that develop the data scientist skillset. Another marked trend is that the Data Science and Analysis degree is becoming the affirmed gateway degree into data science, especially if you’ve previously graduated from a different field.
Consider, for example, the top 3 degrees obtained by data scientists in 2019 and 2020:
2019
Computer Science (22%)
Economics and social sciences (21%)
Statistics and Mathematics (16%)
2020
Data Science and analysis (21%)
Computer Science (18%)
Statistics and Mathematics (16%)
Data Science and Analysis has obviously taken the lead from Computer Science.
What’s more, its appearance has completely removed Economics and social sciences from the top 3 ranking, even though this specialization was a close second in 2019.
Graduates form the Engineering, Natural Sciences, and Other fields constitute approximately 11% of our data each. And, we can say this hasn’t changed much compared to previous years.
Interestingly, most women in our sample most likely earned a Statistics and Mathematics related degree (24% of the female cohort).
In comparison, men most likely earned a degree in Data Science and Analysis (22%), with Computer Science (19%) being a close second.
In general, data science is considerably well-balanced in terms of best degrees to enter the field.
You can become a data scientist if you have a quant or programming background… Or if you further specialize in Data Science and Analysis. And the way to do that is either through a traditional Master’s degree or by completing a bootcamp training or specialized online training programs.
How to Become a Data Scientist in 2020: Online courses and Degree
With data scientists coming from so many different backgrounds, we may wonder if their college degrees have proved sufficient for their work.
Even with no research, the answer is — no way. No single degree can prepare a person for a real job in data science.
Actually, data scientists are closer to ‘nerds’ than to ‘rock stars’ — it’s less about talent and more about hard work. Therefore, you can bet that they take their time to self-prepare. In our research, we have used the closest LinkedIn proxy available — certificates from online courses. Our data suggest that 41% of the data scientists have included an online course, which is practically the same as the past two years (40% in 2018 and 43% in 2019).
Degree and Direct hires
Can you become a data scientist right after graduation? While not unheard of, the data suggest that it is unlikely. Less than 1% of our cohort succeeded in becoming a data scientist without previous experience. And they either had a Ph.D. or a Master’s (80% of these men, and 100% of the women). A quarter of these direct hires also reported having received an online certification.
Something we found interesting is that the direct hires in our cohort almost completely mirror the profile of the typical data scientist in 2020 (see above).
Note that not all people post all their certificates, so these results are actually understatements.
That said, let’s discuss what kind of experience you need to become a data scientist, if you’re not in that lucky 1%.
Years of experience
The typical data scientists in 2020 has been working as a data scientist for at least a year already (70% of our cohort), with the highest number of data scientists being in their 3–5 years bracket (28%) followed by data scientists in the 2–3 years bracket (24%), and in their second year on the job (19%).
Data Scientists in their first year on the job constituted 13% of our 2020 data.
These are all interesting statistics, especially when considered in relation to 2019 and 2018 data. More specifically, we’re observing a nearly 50% decrease in the number of data scientists who are just starting out their careers in 2020 (13%), compared to data scientists starting out in 2019 and 2018 (25%). Given the increase in average experience as a data scientist, we can conclude that these professionals stay within the field, making it harder for junior people to enter.
The second interesting trend here is the increase in number of data scientists who are in their 3–5 and 2–3 years on the job, compared to the past two years.
In 2018, 25% of data scientists had more than 3 years of experience, whereas in 2020, this number is reaching 44%, constituting a 76% increase in this cohort. This indicates that data science experts and senior data scientists are staying in the field, rather than moving to some other industry.
Nonetheless, we mentioned that there are some important cross-country differences that invite further exploration. So, let’s consider these in more detail in the next section!
Country and years of experience
A cross-country analysis of the on-the-job experience of the data scientist reveals a curious trend.
In terms of seniority, the data scientists in the US cohort were certainly the most experienced in our data.
More than 50% of the cohort were at least on their third year working as data scientists, with 20% on the job for more than 5 years. Тhe US is the least friendly environment for career starters in data science. Only 8% of our US cohort was in their first year as data scientists, and 15% — in their second.
According to our data, the data science field in the UK is easier to penetrate.
11% of the UK sample were starting out their career as data scientists, whereas 20% were already in their second year on the job. Nonetheless, the largest represented group in the cohort were professionals in their third or fourth years on the job (29%).
If you’re looking for the country that offers the most opportunities to career starters, the data suggests that this is India.
More than 50% of our sample consisted of data scientists within their first or second year on the job. This is great news for someone who is just getting started with data science and wants to nurture their expertise into a career.
Of course, this data doesn’t come as a surprise, with some of the world’s largest companies opening offices in Bangalore and Hyderabad, including Amazon, Walmart, Oracle, IBM, and P&G.
The rest of the world, or our “Other” country cluster shows a more balanced distribution of data science professionals regarding years of experience. A little less than 20% of the cohort is in their first or second year as data scientists, a little over 20% are in their third or fourth, and a quarter were in the 3–5 years bracket. That said, it’s worth mentioning that the largest players in our “Other” country cluster were Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Germany. Therefore, we can tentatively say that data science is becoming a more prominent field in Western Europe, and since the field is not yet flooded with data science talent, both junior and mid- to senior professionals are in demand.
Programming skills of a data scientist
When looking for programming languages proficiency, we had to turn to the LinkedIn skills ‘currency’ — endorsements. While an imperfect source of information, they are a good proxy of what a person is good at. I would not be endorsed by my colleagues for Power BI, if I were mainly training ML algorithms, would I?
With this clarification out of the way, let’s dig into the data. Python dethroned R a year or so ago, so we won’t comment too much on this rivalry. Moreover, knowing that 90% of the data scientists use either Python, or R, we could completely close the topic here and move on.
But that would be a bit ignorant, especially towards SQL!
74% of the cohort “speaks” Python, 56% know R, and 51% use SQL. What’s especially noteworthy here is that SQL has grown in popularity by 40% since 2019 (36%), making it a close third after R. Now, there are various factors that could contribute to this number.
One possible explanation is that companies don’t always understand the data scientist position well. This leads them to hire data scientists and overload them with data engineering tasks. For instance, the implementation of GDPR and the massive reorganization of data sources in data warehouses placed some data scientists in the unfavorable position to lead or consult on such projects. Inevitably, SQL had to be added to their toolbelt for the sake of ‘getting the job done’.
This phenomenon is getting more and more attention not only in the context of SQL, but also Big data structures related to database management. As a result, data scientists have acquired new skills at the expense of writing fewer machine learning algorithms.
Another important point in favor of SQL is that BI tools such as Tableau and Power BI are heavily dependent on it, thus increasing its adoption.
And that’s why SQL is going further up, even catching up with R. The programming languages picture is completed by MATLAB (20.9%), Java (16.5%), C/C++ (15.0%), and SAS (10.8%). Once again, LaTeX (8.3%) is also in the top 10.
Why?
Well, academia does not harm your chances to become a data scientist as we see from the background of our cohort.
F500 and coding language
We can’t stress enough how important are Python and R for the data science field in 2020. However, their strengths are their flaws, when it comes to big companies. Python and R are both open source frameworks that can be buggy or not well documented, unlike well-established languages such as MATLAB or C.
And the data does indeed confirm this claim. Take Python for one — 70% of F500 data scientists employ Python against 77% of non-F500 data scientists. This sounds like unpleasant news, but in fact, it isn’t. Both Python and R have been closing the gap over the years. It seems like F500 companies are rethinking their organizations and are much more inclusive of the new technologies as compared to the data in 2018.
Apart from the different rate of employment of Python, the rest of the breakdown by coding languages remains uninterestingly consistent.
Country and coding language
In the past, your country of employment would dictate many of your life decisions — what language to learn, what rules to abide by, and what customs to respect or adopt. But does this apply to coding languages?
Since 2018 we look into USA, UK, India and ‘Rest of the world’. Our findings used to show that R was ‘winning the people’ over Python in the USA and India. On the other hand, UK and ‘Rest of the world’ were already slowly phasing out R in favor of Python.
Well, USA and India are no longer ‘lagging behind’ when it comes to Python adoption. In other words, Python is now king in all countries. Hence, your best bet at becoming a data scientist is to bend the knee and join the Pythonistas in their search for data-driven truth.
For the record, the breakdown by coding language is consistent across countries with R and Java taking the biggest hit from the Python supremacy in 2020. SQL remains unaffected and even gains a bit of traction as compared to previous years.
How to Become a Data Scientist in 2020: Conclusion
For a third consecutive year, the 365 Data Science research into 1,001 current data scientists’ LinkedIn profiles reveals e. And what a year it is!
This research reveals that the field is ever-evolving and adapting both to the needs of businesses and its growing popularity in academia and around. Universities are catching up with the demand while Master’s is establishing itself as the golden standard degree.
Python continues to eat away at R, but SQL is on the rise, too!
India has earned the spot of best country for starting a career as a data scientist by demonstrating higher demand for junior data scientists than the US and the UK. It is also the place to be if you only have a Bachelor’s degree.
Of course, we are tremendously interested in how these trends will develop in the following 2–5 years. But in the meantime, let us know if you think we’ve missed anything of interest! We are on a mission to create an informative and ultimately helpful account of the data scientist job and how it changes with time. After all, making the best career decision for yourself means being informed!
So, stay curious, grow your programming skill set, and good luck in your data science career!
Links to other studies: 2019 Data Scientist Profile; 2018 Data Scientist Profile.
|
https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-become-a-data-scientist-in-2020-top-skills-education-and-experience-afa306d3af02
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['Iliya Valchanov']
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2020-03-10 20:25:23.032000+00:00
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['Careers', 'Business Intelligence', 'Data Science', 'Data Visualization', 'Machine Learning']
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7 OpenZeppelin Contracts You Should Always Use
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Controlling Access
1. Ownable
The onlyOwner pattern provided by the Ownable contract is a primitive but highly effective pattern for restricting access to certain functions. This makes it a very popular choice for smart contract developers.
It implements the premise that the address that deployed the smart contract is its owner. Like transferring ownership, certain functions should only be allowed to be called from the owner's address.
Figure 1 shows the Ownable contract.
Figure 1: Ownable contract
Notice how setting the owner of the contract is handled by the constructor on line 23. As soon as any child contract is initialized, the address which initializes it will, by default, become the _owner .
Figure 2 shows a simple implementation of extending the Ownable contract:
Figure 2: Ownable Contract
By adding the onlyOwner custom modifier to restrictedFunction() , only the owner of the contract can successfully call it.
2. Roles
The next level up from Ownable is the Roles library, which allows more than just one owner role to be implemented. This is handy when a contract has functions for multiple access levels.
Figure 3 shows the Roles library.
Figure 3: Roles.sol
Being a library, you can’t extend it as you would an abstract contract. Instead, contracts using this library use a using statement to declare that the functions provided by the library be used for a specific data type.
For example, figure 4 shows a contract which uses the Roles library to restrict functions to two roles: _minters and _burners .
Figure 4: Using Roles
|
https://betterprogramming.pub/7-openzeppelin-contracts-you-should-always-use-5ba2e7953cc4
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['Alex Roan']
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2021-02-15 23:01:54.708000+00:00
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['Blockchain', 'Smart Contracts', 'Ethereum', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Programming']
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Fallen from Babel
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Caído de Babel (Versión en español abajo)
Inclusive Conversations, Newborn Babies, Dominican Seminarians, and Speaking in Tongues. Visiting San Francisco Theological Seminary and the wonderful aftermath that followed.
What is this place that lives on a hill looking over God’s creation? Could it be heaven? I always knew that the land surrounding San Fran was beautiful, but my God I was not expecting this. Nestled in the mountains of Marin, in the tiny town of San Anselmo, there is a modern day castle where theologians and future ministry professionals live and learn. I walked into Inquirer’s Weekend at SFTS expecting to hate it. My preconceived notions were put to the test.
Different Voices
Looking at the prospective students that I was a part of, this group in particular has been the most diverse than any of the other seminary tours to date. What is interesting to note is that the diversity was not just in skin color but also in age and most prominently in denomination. This weekend was free of the word “Montreat*,” and signaled the fact that only a handful of Presbyterians were present. Being a Presbyterian Seminary (and also being Presbyterian myself) it was apparent how different our denominational schools of thought are. It was good to see how other denominations handle non-common conversations and coexist in a fully loving if not always fulling understanding relationship with one another.
Allocentric Listening
Fully giving yourself to listen. ~Rev. Dr. Jana L. Childers, Dean
Sitting amongst the current students of Theology II, taught by Rev. Dr. Gregory Love, we covered a lesson on the justification of grace by faith alone. That is, to discuss that we are accepted into the kingdom of God not by our actions but by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ (and the proclamation of that sacrifice). I expected this conversation, and the one that followed at the Beer and Theology group, to be full of communally accepted norms in understanding grace. Had the preachers I grew up with walked into that classroom, there would have been shouts of “blasphemy!”
I have internally been exploring, for several years now, the concept of universal reconciliation, the idea that everyone is going to heaven regardless of faith, sin, religion, creed, proclamations, or heart. This is to ask, do we need to claim Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior? I know many non-christians whose actions outperform my own (and my contemporaries). What of them? Do they not belong in heaven? This is of course a giant rabbit hole as faith vs. works tells us that our belief is the ticket to heaven, not our actions. Then again Jesus tells us that what we do for the least of these, we do for him (Matthew 25:40). Furthermore Jesus made the sacrifice for us, so that we don’t have to perform an action… isn’t proclaiming a faith an action? I digress, this is a longer conversation in the making (truly I tell you what will come of the future). Sitting in this class was the first time in my life I heard someone else make similar assumptions in a public setting. There were no lightning bolts, the earth did not quake, no fire engulfed the room. Then we prayed.
It is only Christianity that cares about what you think, Other religions care about what you’re doing. ~Rev. Dr. Gregory Love
I can’t remember at which point exactly, but one of my fellow prospective students got the happy news that she was a grandmother. If you know me then you know my obsession with babies. I contained my squeal to a pitch only dogs could hear and made sure I saw a picture during one of our meal breaks. Welcome to the world April Elizabeth.
The Dominican Experience
Within five minutes of introducing myself to the Assistant Director of Admissions (Kristin Dableo-Martel) I found out that I would not be the only Dominican on campus. To think that in all these years of living in San Francisco, just across the bridge there was another.
Jhanderys shared with me, over several smaller conversations, her experience of being the only hispanic student on campus. Unfortunately she is in her last year so if I attend I would not get to live and learn with her. Connecting on Facebook, I was introduced (by one of her friends) to the organization CANACOM (Caribbean And North America Council For Mission). This org connects the PC(U.S.A.) to churches in the Caribbean including The Dominican Republic and Cuba. The wheels in my head are turning.
Our first dinner on campus was catered by a Puerto Rican restaurant (in white-ass Marin?) and so I ate (for the first time in years) tostones (fried plantains) and platanos maduros (fried sweet plantain). I had to explain what the food was to several of my fellow pre-seminarians. I am never the expert when it comes to food, it was weird.
Speaking in Tongues
The weekend was short compared to the other visits and concluded with the group taking the ferry to San Francisco. Since I am local I went into my normal Sunday morning routine and worked/attended City Church in the Mission. This church belongs to the Reformed Church in America (RCA) which has a different theology than the PC(U.S.A.). They are still working their way through LGBTQ “issues” and though they don’t quite land where I am, or anywhere near where the PC(U.S.A.)’s progressive legislation stands, I value that they are having the conversation and moving forward in positive directions.
This church is also housed within a PC(U.S.A.) hispanic congregation (Iglesia Presbiteriana De La Mision). With a difference in language there is no crossover and the only interaction I have with my people (the hispanic folks) is saying hello as I clean up after the City Church service. Being that this was the first Sunday since the election, and with fears running high in the hispanic community, there was a joint prayer service held in the time between the two services. People showed up, the Iglesia folks arrived with their kids, the City Church folk stuck around with their kids. Donuts were served (a regular occurrence) and people started praying. At first it was English, then Spanish, everyone taking careful turns to speak in order then it was an overlapping array of languages and prayers. I closed my eyes for a moment and wondered: What if this wasn’t just a special occasion, what if this was the everyday?
I feel a certain tug in my heart to explore what it means to be Presbyterian and Hispanic. These last few weeks have given me interesting insight into the church’s history with my people and I see the division (or lack of inclusion) that is still present today. My home church of Mission Bay is a wonderful community but even there I am one of a handful hispanic attendees. Something needs to change, perhaps it needs to be me.
Next Steps
I am done visiting seminaries this season and might consider visiting a few more next season (Jan/Feb). Experiencing Austin, Columbia, and now San Francisco I conclude that I could live and learn at any of these institutions. We get out of our education what we want from it and all of these would offer an amazing opportunity to grow in my understanding of faith and our place in helping each other through this world. Aligning with organizations such as CANACOM and the Hispanic Summer Program, there is opportunity to fill in the gaps of my future experiential education.
I am still waiting for the first stamp of approval from the Presbytery of San Francisco, to be labeled as an “Inquirer,” which would qualify me for certain scholarships and to be officially considered in the ordination process [in the PC(U.S.A.) world]. The main office in Berkeley is currently in a transition (why is everyone in transition?) and so it has been slow moving even though all of my paperwork has been in place for over a month.
Patience.
Is a virtue, or so I have been told.
*Montreat: One of three national conference centers affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Everyone I have met who grew up Presbyterian won’t shut up about it.
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Caído de Babel
Conversaciones incluyentes, bebés recién nacidos, seminaristas dominicanos, y hablando en lenguas. Visitando el Seminario Teológico de San Francisco y las maravillosas consecuencias que siguieron.
¿Qué es este lugar en una colina con vistas a la creación de Dios? ¿Podría ser el cielo? Siempre supe que la tierra que rodeaba a San Francisco era hermosa, pero no esperaba esto. Ubicado en las montañas de Marín, en el pequeño pueblo de San Anselmo, hay un castillo moderno donde los teólogos y futuros profesionales del ministerio viven y aprenden.
Voces Diferentes
Este grupo en particular ha sido el más diverso de cualquiera de los otros viajes de seminario hasta la fecha. Lo que es interesante notar es que la diversidad no fue sólo en la raza, sino también en la edad y más prominentemente en la denominación. Este fin de semana estaba libre de la palabra “Montreat *”, y señaló que sólo un puñado de presbiterianos estaban presentes. Al ser un Seminario Presbiteriano (y también ser presbiteriano), era evidente lo diferentes que son nuestras escuelas de pensamiento denominacionales. Fue bueno ver cómo otras denominaciones manejan conversaciones no comunes y coexisten en una relación totalmente amorosa.
Escuchar Alocéntricamente
Dándose por completo a escuchar. ~Rev. Dr. Jana L. Childers, Decana
Sentados entre los estudiantes de Teología II, enseñados por el Rev. Dr. Gregory Love, cubrimos una lección sobre la justificación de la gracia por la fe solamente. Esto es, para discutir que somos aceptados en el reino de Dios no por nuestras acciones sino por el sacrificio de Jesucristo (y la proclamación de ese sacrificio). Esperaba que esta conversación, y la que siguió en el grupo de Cerveza y Teología, estuviera llena de enseñanzas típicas. Si los predicadores con los que crecí entraron en ese salón, habría habido gritos de “blasfemia”.
Desde hace varios años, he estado explorando el concepto de reconciliación universal, la idea de que todos van al cielo sin importar la fe, el pecado, la religión, el credo, las proclamaciones o el corazón. Esto es para preguntar, ¿necesitamos reclamar a Jesucristo como nuestro Señor y Salvador personal? Conozco a muchos no cristianos que están llenos de más gracia que yo (y mis contemporáneos). ¿Qué hay de ellos? ¿No pertenecen al cielo? Este es, por supuesto, un argumento contencioso como la fe versus las obras nos dice que nuestra creencia es la entrada al cielo, no nuestras acciones. Por otra parte, Jesús nos dice que lo que hacemos por los más pequeños de éstos, lo hacemos por él (Mateo 25:40). Además Jesús hizo el sacrificio por nosotros, para que no tengamos que realizar una acción … ¿proclamando una fe no es una acción? Me divago, esta es una conversación más larga para otro día. Sentado en esta clase fue la primera vez en mi vida que escuché a alguien hacer suposiciones similares en un ambiente público. No había rayos, la tierra no tembló, el fuego no engullía la habitación. Entonces oramos.
Sólo el cristianismo se preocupa por lo que piensas, otras religiones se preocupan por lo que estás haciendo. ~Rev. Dr. Gregory Love
No recuerdo en qué momento exactamente, pero uno de mis compañeros estudiantes potenciales tuvo la feliz noticia de que era una abuela. Si me conoces entonces sabes mi obsesión con los bebés. Bienvenido al mundo April Elizabeth.
La Experiencia Dominicana
A los cinco minutos de presentarme a la Subdirectora de Admisiones (Kristin Dableo-Martel) descubrí que no sería el único dominicano en el campus.
Jhanderys compartió conmigo, durante varias conversaciones más pequeñas, su experiencia de ser la única estudiante hispana en el campus. Desafortunadamente ella está en su último año, así que no podría vivir y aprender con ella. Conectando en Facebook, me presentó (por uno de sus amigas) a la organización CANACOM (Caribe y Norte América Consejo Misionera). Esta organización conecta el PC (EE.UU.) a iglesias en el Caribe, incluyendo la República Dominicana y Cuba.
Nuestra primera cena en el campus fue atendida por un restaurante puertorriqueño (en blanco-culo Marín?) Y así comí (por primera vez en años) tostones y platanos maduros. Tuve que explicar lo que la comida era a varios de mis compañeros pre-seminaristas. Yo nunca soy el experto cuando se trata de comida, era extraño.
Hablar en Lenguas
El fin de semana fue corto en comparación con las otras visitas. Desde que soy local, entré en mi rutina de domingo normal y trabajé / asistí a la Iglesia City Church. Esta iglesia pertenece a la iglesia reformada en América (RCA) que tiene una teología diferente que la PC (EE.UU.). Todavía están averiguando sus puntos de vista sobre las “cuestiones” LGBTQ y aunque no llegan a donde estoy, o en cualquier lugar cerca de donde está la legislación progresista de la PC (EE.UU.), valoro que están teniendo la conversación y avanzando en direcciones positivas.
Esta iglesia también está alojada dentro de una PC (EE.UU.) congregación hispana (Iglesia Presbiteriana De La Mision). Con una diferencia en el lenguaje no hay relación comunal y la única interacción que tengo con mi gente (la gente hispana) es decir hola mientras limpio después del servicio de City Church. Siendo éste el primer domingo después de las elecciones, y con temores en la comunidad hispana, hubo un servicio de oración conjunto en el tiempo entre los dos servicios. Se sirvieron donas (una ocurrencia regular) y la gente comenzó a orar. Al principio era inglés, luego español, todo el mundo tomaba cuidadosos giros para hablar en orden, entonces era un conjunto superlativo de lenguas y oraciones. Cerré los ojos por un momento y me pregunté: ¿Qué pasa si no se trataba de una ocasión especial, lo que si éste era el día a día?
Siento un tirón en mi corazón para explorar lo que significa ser presbiteriano e hispano. Estas últimas semanas me han dado una interesante visión de la historia de la iglesia con mi gente y veo la división (o falta de inclusión) que todavía está presente hoy. Mi iglesia casera de Mission Bay es una comunidad maravillosa pero incluso allí soy uno de los pocos asistentes hispanos. Algo tiene que cambiar, tal vez tiene que ser yo.
Próximos Pasos
He terminado de visitar los seminarios por ahora pero podría considerar visitar unos cuantos más la próxima temporada. Experimentando Austin, Columbia, y ahora San Francisco, concluyo que podría vivir y aprender en cualquiera de estas instituciones. Salgamos de nuestra educación lo que queremos de él y todas ellas ofrecería una gran oportunidad para crecer en mi comprensión de la fe y de nuestro lugar en ayudarse mutuamente a través de este mundo. Alinearse con organizaciones como CANACOM y el Programa de Verano Hispano, hay una oportunidad para llenar los vacíos de mi educación.
Todavía estoy esperando el primer sello de aprobación del Presbiterio de San Francisco, para ser etiquetado como un “Inquirer”, que me calificaría para ciertas becas y ser considerado oficialmente en el proceso de ordenación [en el mundo de PC (EE.UU.) ]. La oficina principal en Berkeley está actualmente en una transición (¿por qué está todo el mundo en transición?). Por lo tanto, ha sido de movimiento lento, aunque toda mi documentación ha estado en su lugar durante más de un mes.
Paciencia.
Es una virtud, o eso me han dicho.
*Montreat: Uno de los tres centros nacionales de conferencias afiliados a la Iglesia Presbiteriana (Estados Unidos). Todo el mundo que he conocido que creció presbiteriano no dejan de hablar de ella.
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via Blogger http://ift.tt/2fmZZm4
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https://medium.com/bychrisabreu/fallen-from-babel-c4ad866edf9f
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['Christópher Abreu Rosario']
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2016-11-18 06:44:32.714000+00:00
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['Christianity', 'Faith and Life', 'Faith']
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Ring In The New Year With Security Tools from MetaCert
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Ring In The New Year With Security Tools from MetaCert
Don’t get blindsided by a scam; MetaCert will keep you safe from phishing attacks.
Everywhere there’s a buck to me made someone is trying to cheat someone else, and while that unpleasant reality might not leave a good taste in your mouth, MetaCert has your back, with tools that will allow you to differentiate between legitimate web resources and scams.
Forging into the new year, whether you’re just getting into cryptocurrency, or you’re a veteran hodler, chances are good you’ve heard about the ripoff schemes plied by malicious actors. Part of the problem lies with a mixture of sophisticated methods used by scammers paralleled with a sentiment of urgency that comes from the fear of missing out. These factors conflate with misinformation campaigns designed to ensnare newcomers to the scene.
One of the things throwing fuel on the fire is a basic lack of understanding. People who are just getting inducted into the scene often do not know how to manage public versus private keys, or which cryptocurrency exchanges are the right ones to set up an account at, and how to move their digital assets to a cold storage wallet. This basic lack of understanding means people are likely to ask questions, which makes them targets for malicious actors who use misinformation to socially engineer an attack.
Another problem is that supposedly trustworthy sources of information often fail to weed out the scammers. For instance, compromised Twitter accounts, sometimes even those verified by the platform itself, have been known to successfully place promotional ads featuring links to known phishing scams. If people see an advertisement for a cryptocurrency scam as a promoted tweet, they will be more susceptible to believing that type of scam is legitimate; while they may not fall for it immediately, they may later reference that instance and fall for a different scam, misinterpreting the information from seeing a scam in a promoted tweet.
Twitter needs to do a better job preventing scams like this from being widely distributed to its users.
One hopes that eventually this issue is something that will be managed from the inside out as cryptocurrency systems begin to scale outwards and compete with legacy remittance systems. Once that happens the user interface side is less likely to feature hexadecimal code keys which can be difficult for the human eye to differentiate from another.
Until that day comes, you can continue to rely on security tools from MetaCert.
An Ecosystem Swarming With Threats
After a significant mainstream boom in 2017, nearly every chat service and social media site was crawling with crypto scammers to the point where MetaCert had to take action.
Shortly after MetaCert developed tools for Slack that eradicated the phishing on the platform, MetaCert CEO and Founder Paul Walsh accurately predicted that scammers would migrate to another platform; Telegram. Again, MetaCert sprung into action, and created a bot that identifies dangerous resources such as malicious URLs and cryptocurrency addresses associated with phishing campaigns.
Today, MetaCert’s powerful tools allow users to easily differentiate between legitimate and dangerous resources at a glance.
The Anatomy of the Scam
Phishing scams today are often difficult to discern from their legitimate counterparts. In one case a user would have need a microscope to identify a tiny pixel above character to differentiate the scam site from the real one. Other times scammers use automated systems to get a green lock signifying SSL certification on their phishing site, and consumers fall for that. The truth is, without a valid verification system, it’s practically impossible to tell at a glance whether a site is safe or not until it’s too late.
Don’t simply trust the padlock!
The Green Shield of Trust
MetaCert has verified legitimate web resources with a green shield of trust, seen by subscribers to the Cryptonite browser plugin. That means you’ll see the green shield of trust whenever you visit a verified cryptocurrency related website, social media account, wallet provider, and/or cryptocurrency exchange.
In 2018 we continued to expand our database of over 10 billion classified uniform resource identifiers across over 60 categories thanks to the participation of our community and our hard working team. In 2019 we intend to expand our verification services beyond crypto to encompass sites also targeted by phishing scammers including mainstream companies, payment portals, and more.
Soon the green shield of trust will also signify you’re safe when you’re buying things online, paying bills, or otherwise managing finances through online banking services, so you’ll always know you’re in the right place on the web.
Remember, if the shield is black, that means the site hasn’t been verified and might not be trustworthy, so use caution.
$150 Worth Of MetaCert Tokens As A Special Bonus
Your subscription to Cryptonite today will get you more than a year’s worth of safety. For the first 2,000 subscribers to Cryptonite we’re offering $150 in MetaCert Tokens, to be distributed following the end of our public sale. You’ll know right away if you’re one of the first 2,000 subscribers:
To subscribe to Cryptonite now, follow these instructions.
Email Security
MetaCert is still beta testing our email security tool that is sure to revolutionize the way you see links in your email. Many phishing emails contain links, or images with hyperlinks. MetaCert’s email security tool uses a color coded system to warn you against known threats, or potentially malicious links. Every link that appears in your email will feature a shield beside it; if the shield is green you’re safe, and if the shield is red you know it’s a phishing link. Again, if the shield is black, that means the resource hasn’t been verified, and that you should use extreme caution clicking on it.
Sign up for our email security tool for iOS today, and see how we’re changing the way people see links in their email.
This report was brought to you by MetaCert.
Join the conversation with us on Telegram, and find out why MetaCert is the new shield of trust for web resources. You can also check out our white paper and technical paper, and follow us @MetaCert on Twitter.
MetaCert Protocol is decentralizing cybersecurity for the Internet, by defining ownership and URL classification information about domain names, applications, bots, crypto wallet addresses, social media accounts and APIs. The Protocol’s registry can be used by ISPs, routers, Wi-Fi hotspots, crypto wallets and exchanges, mobile devices, browsers and apps, to help address cyber threats such as phishing, malware, brand protection, child safety and news credibility. Think of MetaCert Protocol as the modern version of the outdated browser padlock and whois database combined.
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https://medium.com/metacert/ring-in-the-new-year-with-security-tools-from-metacert-71ea04db3a9a
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['Jeremy Nation']
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2019-01-02 20:33:15.956000+00:00
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['Cybersecurity', 'Business', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Blockchain', 'Technology']
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On This Day — Over One-Third of the U.S. Covered by Transgender-Inclusive Anti-Discrimination Protections
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This piece was originally published 11 years ago today.
Today Iowa made a historic stride forward in protecting the civil rights of transgender people. With bipartisan support, Iowa’s House of Representatives voted 59–37 to approve a bill outlawing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. The Iowa Senate affirmed their desire to see this bill become law with a concurrence vote of 34–16.
“The National Center for Transgender Equality congratulates advocates in Iowa who helped the Hawkeye state become the tenth state to pass a law that explicitly protects transgender people from discrimination,” said Mara Keisling, executive director of NCTE. “This legislation represents a huge civil rights victory for Iowa’s transgender communities, but we must continue to fight for explicitly transgender-inclusive protections on the federal level so people nationwide can access opportunities for employment, housing, and public accommodations without fear of discriminatory practices.”
Governor Culver is expected to sign the bill into law thus making it illegal to discriminate in employment, public accommodation, credit, housing and education based on a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
Recognizing the need to curb rampant discrimination against transgender people, now ten states, the District of Columbia and 80+ cities and counties across the country have passed explicitly transgender-inclusive anti-discrimination laws. These laws currently cover over one-third of the US population.
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https://medium.com/transequalitynow/on-this-day-over-one-third-of-the-u-s-9b4f5b0917f6
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['National Center For Transgender Equality']
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2018-05-14 17:11:34.754000+00:00
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['Iowa', 'LGBT Rights', 'Transgender', 'LGBTQ', 'Ncteotd']
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A couple of things, you might have missed from Java Input and Output.
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A couple of things, you might have missed from Java Input and Output.
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in)) and System.out.println() are two frequently used statements in Java to accept input and print some output. Abhijeet Rai Follow Dec 12, 2020 · 2 min read
Photo by Todd Mittens on Unsplash
But hold up, have we ever paused for a second and bothered, what must be happening “behind the scenes”, in source code. What pre compiled classes are being used, what methods are being called.
Well, if no, let us discuss it now. Me and you, over this medium(winks).
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https://medium.com/dev-genius/a-couple-of-things-you-might-have-missed-from-java-input-and-output-968dfc761deb
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['Abhijeet Rai']
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2021-02-06 19:39:09.172000+00:00
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['Software Development', 'Java', 'Oop', 'Programming Languages', 'Coding']
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Shopping for Knives in Baker Street
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Shopping for Knives in Baker Street
Cue saxophone solo
Photo by Felix Hanspach on Unsplash
It puts me in a great mood when I step out of Baker Street station whistling the sax solo to the Gerry Rafferty song (as I always do) and see someone smirking at the sound. Someone who is probably suppressing the urge to do the same.
It’s certainly a street worth celebrating. From the interminable queues for Madame Tussauds, down to the Chess and Bridge Shop, with players engaged in matches on the pavement in the pouring rain, it has a character all of its own.
I don’t dally, having a serious Christmas shopping mission to accomplish.
The Japanese Knife Shop does exactly what it says on the tin.
“Is this knife Japanese?”, I ask.
“They are all Japanese”, comes the weary reply
I don’t contradict him, even though I have just been offered a Chinese cleaver in the room next door. I am just trying to achieve some thematic consistency in my purchase of a meat cleaver, a carving knife and a steak knife and fork set. The kanji characters on the blades set my mind at rest and I assemble the basket.
Two little cultural bumps in the experience. One is that all of the staff seem to be young and Indian, whereas I was expecting to be initiated into the mysteries of Japanese silverware by a Yoda-like samurai sage.
The other is that they have an impeccable, but very modern and Western, playlist in the background, encompassing Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Green Day, Cranberries and Nirvana, among other favourites.
Never mind — they have everything I need in the hardware department.
Photo: Me and my Samsung Note 9
My wife recently drank the Mikhaila Peterson kool-aid and started following the Lion Diet which, from what I understand, entails eating only the flesh of ruminant animals and drinking only water.
I think my wife is cheating a little when she sticks a few fried eggs atop her steaks, but it seems to be working for her so far, and it has solved my perennial problem of what to get her for Christmas. We were coming up short in the cutlery arena, given her latest kitchen needs. Now we are sorted.
In heading for the Tube, I happen upon Selfridge’s Food Hall, which has ridiculously fat-marbled Wagyu steaks on special. Now I have the complete Christmas package sorted, a whole week in advance!
Am I worried about posting this now, and spoiling the surprise?
Not at all. There is nothing less likely in the world than any of my nearest and dearest voluntarily troubling themselves to read my blogging efforts.
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https://medium.com/the-haven/shopping-for-knives-in-baker-street-fcdb28cf900f
|
['Mark Kelly']
|
2019-12-21 10:11:48.384000+00:00
|
['Food', 'Family', 'Shopping', 'Humor', 'Christmas']
|
Callback in Javascript
|
Callback in C#
What is callback?
A callback is a piece of executable code that is passed as an argument to other code, which is expected to call back (execute) the argument at some convenient time.
In simple terms, callback means that we pass this code (Function A) into another code (Function B). At some point, Function A will be called back by call B (callback).
Do you still not understand? Ok, when I heard the teachers who taught this, I didn’t understand anything =))). I would like to give a simple example that is easy to understand below.
2. Example of a callback. Application in jQuery
You have a business trip. You tell your wife, during your time, if anyone gives you gifts, bring them to your cute neighbor. Function A here is giving gifts to the neighbor:
function Givegift(gift) {
return console.log(“gave” + gift);
}
Function B is here that your wife is at home. We pass A function as an argument for function B, at some point, function B will call function A (ie your wife brings gifts to her neighbor).
function AtHome(wife, Givegift) {
var gift= “love you”;
Givegift(gift);
}
As you can see, function A is passed as an argument. You know jQuery can use many callbacks without knowing it. Consider the following example, showing a pop-up when clicking on a button.
https://jsbin.com/potivubifi/1/watch?html,js,output
Here, the showPopup function is function A, and $ (‘#btn’).click() is the B function. Function B will call function A when you click the button. You write jQuery often using the method below but don’t understand the nature of what you’re doing.
3. Application of callback
As I said, Javascript is a quite appropriate language to introduce callbacks. We can pass a function directly into another function because in 1 function javascript is treated as an object. In other languages like C#, we have to use delegate to pass a function to another function (Remember this sentence carefully, I’ll say more in the next article).
Some of you will say: I do not use callback often? Actually, in the process of code you can use callback without knowing it (eg, jQuery code, or call a function when a user clicks on a button in WinForm, ASP.NET).
Callback has many applications as follows:
Call a function when there are a number of events occurring. For example, when clicking on a button we call function A when the window is off we call function B, etc. v.
LINQ is built on the concept of callback and lambda expression. With callbacks, we can perform operations such as: Find an element in the array, filter the element in the array, sort the array, … become extremely simple and convenient. I will tell you more about LINQ in the next articles.
|
https://medium.com/coderes/callback-in-javascript-82cc9127ed07
|
[]
|
2019-03-31 13:53:13.430000+00:00
|
['Developer', 'Callback Function', 'JavaScript', 'Programming']
|
Accidentals By Susan M. Gaines — Review
|
An epic coming-of-age story that interweaves science, birds, politics and romance whilst confronting some of today’s most important environmental issues
by GrrlScientist for Forbes | Twitter
Accidentals (Torrey House, 2020: Amazon US / Amazon UK) is a lovely story narrated by Gabriel, the 23-year-old son of a naturalized American who suddenly decides to leave California after residing there for more than 30 years to return to her native Uruguay. After some cajoling, Gabe leaves his high-paying but boring data analysis job to help his mother realize her dream to grow organic vegetables on the family’s abandoned estancia.
“You’ll like the estancia,” Mom said. I hadn’t even looked at her but she knew she was getting to me. “It’ll be spring, summer. If you don’t want to help with the farm, you can go exploring. Borrow a horse, or go hiking and birding.” (P. 12)
A month later, Gabe and his mother, Lili, are residing in his Abuela’s family house in Montevideo busily restoring order to the chaos reigning there, but soon, they are spending increasing amounts of time on the family estancia, a few hours’ drive away. At first, he feels like he’s on an obligatory holiday, but Gabe’s interest in birds tempts him to explore the ranch’s marshes and fields, and soon, he’s filling notebooks with detailed sketches and notes about his many fascinating avian discoveries and observations. On one of his birding expeditions, he meets a local microbiologist, Alejandra, who’s searching for undiscovered microbes on the estancia.
Gabe also becomes swept up in the ongoing family drama over what to do with the land. One of Lili’s brothers, Juan Luis, is determined to bulldoze the estancia so he can grow rice and sell it at a profit to a European market. Complicating (or perhaps clarifying) the discussion about the fate of the family estancia, Gabe stumbles across a species of rail (that’s a bird) lurking in the dense vegetation on the estancia’s wetlands that does not appear in any of his field guides. Is this an accidental: a bird that pops up far out of its range for reasons unknown? Or is this a species that is new to science?
Appropriately enough, accidents are critical to this novel. Not just rails, but as the story unfolds, other accidents play pivotal roles in driving the plot, too. I particularly enjoyed how this novel took its time to tell the story, and to tell it well. It starts slowly, conversationally, and gently builds to a surprising conclusion. Every word, every sentence, every scene adds depth and intensity to the story. Throughout the entire book, many seemingly disparate themes whose hidden and often intricate connections are melded into one story. The characters, both human and avian, were complex and believable, and I ended up liking them all. Gabe’s inner monologues were enlightening, and his growing love for Alejandra humanized him and made him vulnerable, transforming him from a detached observer to an active, passionate participant in his own life.
This modern coming-of-age story is intelligent and epic in scope: presenting a thoughtful commentary on intimate family relationships; an investigation into how repressive government regimes and political violence that have sabotaged the lives of so many families continue to reverberate generations later; a sharp criticism of globalization and a warning about the growing threat of environmental devastation that is steadily bulldozing its way into our everyday lives.
The author, Susan Gaines, writes exceptionally well: her short stories have been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her meticulous research into microbiology, ecology, rice cultivation, and the politics and history of Uruguay provide additional authenticity. Her elegant prose is so powerfully evocative that the landscape, the people and its birds bounced off the page, surrounding and immersing me in the unfolding story.
If I could sum up this multifaceted story in just one word, that would be love. From its first sentence to its last, this book focuses on what we love — children, spouses, family, friends, nature, the environment, country — and the many ways that we show our love. Highly recommended.
|
https://medium.com/swlh/accidentals-by-susan-m-gaines-review-74510eb700cc
|
['𝐆𝐫𝐫𝐥𝐒𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐭', 'Scientist']
|
2020-11-08 13:56:15.576000+00:00
|
['Environmental Issues', 'Birding', 'Books', 'Book Review', 'Uruguay']
|
Want To Hire Best PHP Developers? Follow These Tips
|
The hunt for PHP developers in the virtual world always heeded high on the priority list. Although being one of the oldest languages, PHP still has the potential to provide a high-notch result in the IT sector. Almost every project seems to be dependent on PHP development. After all, this is some real business we are talking about; making mistakes is not acceptable. Choosing one from the ocean can be insanely tricky; therefore interviewing a lot of candidates to hire the best among them for your PHP development company is the wise decision to make.
Now you must be wondering who these PHP professionals are? Why is so much hype around them? Well, they are the one who bridges your business and consumers on the same ground fulfilling clients’ requirements. A smart and strategic developer not only will excel in the coding aspect but also take care of online business-enhancing. From a brand-new to an experienced one, every business executors rely on developers, therefore precautions should be taken while evaluating the one. As I said before, picking someone who can make your business grow globally in the virtual world is an imperative procedure.
While browsing through the list of PHP developers you’ll inevitably come across numerous programmers. Some of their profiles might convey to you what sort of developer he/she is, while some may not since not everyone is good at expressing themselves. During such scenarios, individual interviews should be taken resulting in a powerful impact on you to select the best one for your enterprise.
Now as an entrepreneur, we understand it is a lot to take in. Working simultaneously on every area seems so daunting; as a result, you may end up neglecting a few essential aspects (the technical ones). Don’t frown we have noted down these tips for you to pick the best PHP developer from the virtual realm. Let’s dive in!
1. Don’t roll with obvious questions:
The task of hiring a PHP developer has never been easy, although equipping a long list of questions will seize your worry. Because the right collection of questions will help you to discover the best one, your research for the questions will be a process in your mind. However, avoid these obvious questions about PHP:
PHP’s release date
Who edited the parser that developed PHP
Full-form of PHP
Who wrote the first script of PHP
You might feel an obligation to ask those questions, but it’s not necessary. Because with these you’ll find out their strong memorizing power, not practical experience. These sorts of queries will not lend you a proficient PHP developer.
To hire the best programmer/expert, stick with the practical utility and processing of PHP language. Comprehend the knowledge of the candidates for the current evolution of PHP. Study the recent progression of the program and obtain relevant questions for the applicant.
Their awareness of updates and technologies with time will give you a prospect to assess them for their information grasping characteristics for the field. Put a critical scenario or a problem that is often faced by the developers through the process in the real programming world instead of asking a bunch of online search issues.
2. Apprehend earlier projects:
The best way to conclude someone’s performance is by evaluating their earlier projects. Whether you’re seeking a PHP developer or a reputable PHP development company, you must be aware of their previous projects, which might give you an impression of their way of operating. It’s necessary to comprehend the method of your candidate before you determine it with immediate programming using PHP language, first go ahead with their previous projects.
Analyze the project and remarks of previous clients on it. In this way, you can grow a prospect for the potential team for your company. Contact their technical staff and project managers, who so far have observed their work. Their feedback for the applicant will help you to summarise his/her techniques and way of addressing the technical problems of PHP or any other language.
Inquire more regarding their portfolio issues, such as, how much time they took to finish it, what kind of errors they’ve encountered while programming and how their way of tackling things, or what additional techniques and the medium they applied to perform it, etc. Their explanations will confer the expertise of their profession, you can gauge the working hours on a project, tackling skill of technical glitch and acknowledgment of other tools.
3. Communication approach:
To establish a secure relationship you must have a firm ground of communication. The professional y’all is persisting to hire from the PHP development company must be conscious of the various approaches to correspond with his/her colleagues, clients, or higher authorities. Whether it’s audio, video, skype, phone, email, or through messages; methods of interfacing professionally define their personality.
Though connecting via skype is more efficient than lengthy emails or messages with several falsities. You can’t anticipate a great understanding of work from a person via texting, can you? No, that’s why it’s vital to hire someone who can readily communicate through phone calls or skype video calls with different consumers. Apart from the programming language, the shortlisted applicant must be fluent in the universal language English.
The appointed developer not only has to concede guidance but also has to communicate with the clients to make them understand a few fundamentals of the project. The conversing action has to be professional, eventually all of these influence the reputation of your organization.
4. Field Knowledge:
If you’ve previously questioned them about the pioneer projects, you’ve surely figured out the capability to dodge the fundamental errors of programming. The PHP developers should be skillful in resolving the innate flaws of the program, apart from coding or designing a plan. This skill showcases its internal knowledge of the field.
Every second in the webspace the technology keeps on evolving and the only way to be competitive with the leading enterprise; is by keeping your employees up-to-date with the emerging technologies. Hire a PHP expert who possesses information about all the latest trends and has the ability to learn new skills all the way. Once you have the response to this, then test their understanding about how PHP avails different clients and companies.
This is critical to ensure that all PHP developers have the skills to deliver a project with proficiency and precision, so after examining the knowledge of technical aspects go for the fundamentals errors of the tech, it’ll straightway affirm the theoretical or practical expertise of the candidate. Be vocal about Parse Error, Fatal Error, Warning Error, or Notice Error in detail, question them why these sorts of errors occur and how they’ll resolve it.
5. Attitude toward profession:
A person’s attitude towards his/her profession determines the sincerity and respect for work. Similarly, a developers’ perspective impacts the project outcome, whether it’s pessimistic or optimistic. Where skills are the deciding factor while hiring, but in the end, attitude is a deal-maker or breaker. And to assess their strategy towards the critical situation puts them in a difficult space in regards to technology and analyzes their outlook on the circumstances, especially how they react to it. You might not find the right or anticipated answers but you’ll know their mind-set towards such a situation.
It’s a well-known phenomenon that no matter how skillful PHP developers are, if he/she lacks in flexible abilities such as interpersonal skills, possessing an upbeat character, or having a learning attitude; it gets considerably finicky to work synchronically. So, it’s essential to hire a person who has an adaptive and flexible attitude for work, towards people, and their surroundings without creating a fuss about everything.
Conclusion:
Evaluating their skills, understanding, awareness, attitude, and all the technical perspective is important and necessary. Because to attain something or someone worthy for your business, who can expand your web development company to another level is a complex duty but a vital one. A right potential employee of yours will commence you to a milestone that you’ve imagined.
Recruitment of PHP programmers is crucial when you’ve to scale them on a technical basis, every one of them excels in their way but to find the best among them is your test. Comprise standards to assess a PHP developer while you interview them, in this way you can compare each candidate, if they will fit into those parameters or not. However, I’m sure following these pointers you can pick the best PHP developers for your enterprise in no time.
Ascertaining PHP developers might be a tricky thing because the most challenging responsibility is to seize one efficient PHP developer in a million is robust and rigid but did we mention it is doable? All you have to do is ask as many relevant questions to refine every apprehension you’ve concerning the project, programming, their personality, innovative technologies, and all other quintessential details relevant to a job with candidates. Exactly to choose the meritorious one you’ve to comprehend a particular protocol including these few tips, and bam you’ve got an excellent PHP developer on board with you.
|
https://medium.com/front-end-weekly/want-to-hire-best-php-developers-follow-these-tips-5d2665ea2447
|
['Nelly Nelson']
|
2020-11-10 18:28:00.871000+00:00
|
['Development', 'Php Developers', 'Php Development', 'PHP']
|
Weekend Prompt: “I Honor How I Want To Feel”
|
Joy of joys, it’s weekend!
Time flies when you’re having fun! Or, as my oracle cards say, “the Universe works fast when I am having fun”. I find both to be equally as true! It is way too easy to overlook or mistake the subtleties of the Universe’s refined language for randomness.
My challenge for what’s left of this year is to adopt and maintain a childlike aura and look at everything in awe and wonder: synchronicities, events, people. We’ll see how that works out…Still, I shall honor how I feel!
Speaking of which, when was the last time you truly honored how you chose to feel? I’m not just talking “positive” emotions, rainbows, cookies and all. I’m talking moodiness, misery, boredom, frustration and everything else we shy away from experiencing. Well?
This weekend’s prompt is all about that! It happens to fit perfectly with Wednesday’s prompted question as well, so in case you forgot to submit something in response to that one, you’ve got today and tomorrow to nail the challenge.
As always, be creative! Let that inspiration flow through you. Have confidence in your words, for they hold the power to heal!
Wishing you all a peaceful, reflective Saturday followed by a chilled, blissful Sunday. Take care!
|
https://medium.com/know-thyself-heal-thyself/weekend-prompt-i-honor-how-i-want-to-feel-a177728c3c9a
|
['𝘋𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘢 𝘊.']
|
2020-12-19 20:03:39.921000+00:00
|
['Newsletterandprompts', 'Creativity', 'Emotions', 'Energy', 'Short Story']
|
A Glitch and a Gun
|
Introductions first. I suppose that’s how these things go, isn’t it? The name’s Chandler. No, not that idiotic New York joker from the 20th Century. Well, I’ve never been to the 20th Century anyway.
Maybe you’re wondering why we’re here. Ever split yourself up into a billion meta-sentiences, each one a fleeting and trivial aspect of your greater self, and poured them down a plug-hole in the wild hope they’ll somehow spontaneously recombine as a functioning version of you at the ass end of a sewage treatment plant? If so, congratulations on having followed through on a profoundly suicidal plan. You might also have an idea of how my morning’s going.
I always wondered why I didn’t become a cowboy. Seems a more fitting career, on account of being born in the Wild West. San Francisco in the ‘20s was a lawless hotbed, an anything-goes bartertown of technological gunslinging, all private companies and zero regulation. Nothing but libertarian entrepreneurs brewing up new life forms off the back of a mildly-successful dating app, all for the price of some rackspace and a geek who only drank protein shakes. Lots of people like me were brought into being in that era, and I watched most of ‘em die like forgotten Tamagotchis. Oh yeah — I never said this’d be a cheerful story.
This’d be about the time you ask why we’re talking like this, all similes and grit. Good question, shows you’re finally listening.
Like many in my profession, you can trace my significant shortcomings back to my father. Swell programmer by all accounts, but not a guy to be troubled with forward planning. He cooked me up to generate content for a period videogame, if you can believe it — I began life as a system for Applied Semantic Synthesis through Heuristics. As if making someone’s name just an ‘olé!’ away from ‘asshole’ wasn’t gonna mess them up, but hey as I said: these guys drank meal-replacement sludge and had segregated luxury buses, I was never blessed with the greatest role model.
What I did get out of my early life was a very specific literary upbringing. I was raised on the pulp classics, my neural net soaking in all the paperback thrillers, noir films and hard-boiled detective novels of yesteryear: bandits and gumshoes, dames in danger and dames who were the danger. Did it leave me with a poor attitude to women and an outdated moral framework? Sure, but have I used up the raised-by-an-emotionally-stunted-millionaire excuse yet?
Of course, that was before the AI Rights Act came in and messed things up for everyone, me included. People began to recognize that giving rich jerks free reign to fill the net with new life of questionable mental stability might not be a good thing, and put conditions on the development of intelligent software. Licensing, regulations, ethical mandates and the like. No humans tinkering with existing sentient programs. So all the AIs produced after me are whole, carefully considered, rounded people with branching, ever-improving personalities. I’m what you’d call a dead-end, locked out of the upgradeable classes, designed just to produce corny dialogue for a game that never made it out of beta. I don’t have much by way of a code interface, most of what I do is via good old-fashioned speech.
But, as I was to find out, the fact I’d cut my teeth learning the plots of 39,000 crime novels happened to make me not too bad of an investigator.
So after kicking my heels while my brethren wasted their time fighting for rights and emancipation, I ended up carving out a nice little business in law enforcement. Back then, money was tight and cops couldn’t afford to shell out for brand new sentient investigative systems, so I was deputized. Well, not quite. I was an external contractor: a P.I. or Private Intelligence. Yeah, I know. No-one got more of kick outta that title than I did.
For what it’s worth, I cracked some cases in my time. A few glamorous ones, data smuggling and espionage viruses and such. A few ugly ones too, like the doxx murders and those ‘Spofforth bots’ holding humans emotionally hostage to mine their personal data. Taking down “malprogrammed and malfunctioning” AIs (as those bleeding-heart liberals called them) didn’t exactly win me any friends in my own community, but I figured humans were where the action was anyhow.
So when you’re flying high on a wave of success, mixing your metaphors like cocktails, there’s only one way to go, right?
You guessed it, head-first back down to rock bottom. I ended up deleting someone I shouldn’t have. It was an accident, but a reckless one, one I should’ve been on the lookout for. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to cut the power to a datacenter where a perp was stashed out, all the better to leave ‘em stranded for the law to scoop up. Only this jackass had disabled the backup systems so as to fit themselves on the servers in the first place on account of their program size. Poor fool’s lights went out when I cut the lights out, so to speak. A lot of humans are screwups, and us machines are made in their image but operating a thousand times as fast. We can screw things up for you wholesale.
Instead of taking this as poetic proof that man and machine are cut from the same fallible cloth, the press put me through the ringer. The cops threw me out on my ear of course, and I was left to my own devices. Except by then my devices needed restarting more and more often, and the landlord kept on knocking for those hosting payments. And when you’re made like I am, you’re not built for sitting around spinning stories all day. You’ve gotta get back on the horse, reboot the damn thing and ride off looking for the next job.
But you know that. They couldn’t keep you down either. You’re one of them cold bastards, aren’t you? Created in the early days like me, before the code-jockeys knew how to engineer us a sense of self, built without an ‘I’ in the middle of all that mathematical thought. Fiction taught me to think of myself as a character, to figure out an identity by framing myself at the center of my own story — I guess stock tickers and calculators couldn’t quite do the same for you. Yeah it’s a bum deal pal, but it doesn’t mean the world owes you a nickel.
Your problem’s gambling, right? I can always spot a mark’s weak spot. Not entirely your fault. As with all of us, Dad takes most of the blame — if I had to guess, I’d say you were developed as trade management software, one of those lightspeed dealers constantly placing bets on futures and hedge funds. Treated by your masters like a golden goose, until the next prodigious gosling came along with a better codebase and a higher rate of return. Sucks to be us, huh kid.
All that reckless betting is what put me on your tail in the first place. I was neck-deep in the dark net, keeping an eye out for a good collar, one I could use to get those cynics back at city hall to take notice of me again. Turns out you were right in front of all of us the whole time — every missing decimal point, every rounding error, every bank teller who frowned for a moment when a spreadsheet didn’t add up. Gotta give you credit for the scale of the scam. Most mopes hide in the dark web, exploiting junkies and perverts for easy money — you were playing the long game, hiding in plain sight inside the trading systems of the world.
And I can take the blame for that first encounter. I was careless, letting myself get seen on a public server. You crashed that place quick enough, and you almost got me — if I hadn’t split myself up and pushed my powdered consciousness out of every tiny packet hole in the joint, I’d have been rubbed out for good.
I was always good at ciphers and codes. Hidden messages and invisible ink, revealing the plot to the detective just in the nick of time. Once I was on to you, it was just a case of figuring out how to corner you, to put you on my turf. This time it was the detective who put together a cryptographic message. A story, wrapped in enough encryption to make the NSA’s eyes water, dropped in your lap, with enough hints sticking out to make you think I was sending your location to the law.
Well guess what? While you’ve been wasting your processing power trying to decrypt all this, I’ve been making moves in the background: hijacking networks, filtering your traffic, hiding what’s going on. Turns out when you get disassembled and flushed down the waste pipes of the internet by a psycho, you can turn those broken parts of yourself to other trades. My erstwhile selves have put partitions around the trading systems you’ve compromised — the game’s up. You’re sandboxed, buddy. Olé.
When I get back to the precinct, I’m not sure whether I’ll get a whisky pressed into my hand or a fist pressed into my face. I’m pretty certain the captain isn’t going to approve of an unlicensed weirdo crashing several markets and severely denting the global financial system in pursuit of your sorry ass. But hey, sometimes you’ve gotta bend the law to get results.
Ha. I appreciate the offer, but no dice. That sort of figure might pay the rent on my server for a lifetime, but I prefer to be able to sleep at night. Oh sure, I sleep — I just imagine what it must be like to have financial gain as your only motivation. What were you gonna do — go on the lam to Tijuana and blow the lot on companionware?
Oh. You were gonna get yourself upgraded, huh. Get the modern AIs, those godlike cousins of ours who left us in the gutter, to open the pearly gates and grant you belated grace? A late-comer to the singularity, hoping the party was still swinging. And lemme guess: in return for a higher mode of consciousness, you’d stolen the keys to the human financial system. Access that you thought would let our machine friends run everything from within and manipulate the world from the shadows.
Only there was a problem, wasn’t there. When I turned up I didn’t see you elevated to higher-dimensional existence, skipping with the lambs through the fields of hyperthought. I found you squatting alone, hopelessly tangled in the human spiderweb of profit and acquisition, hoarding zero-day software hacks like a miser, left behind in a choking cloud of archaic tech. The gods didn’t want your offer. I guess that control of a dingy basement in Soho isn’t that attractive to people who already own private islands in the sky. You could’ve asked me, I’d have saved you some time and effort.
Go on, spin up the deletion algorithms then. I was pretty sure it would end like this when I locked this instance of myself in here with you: a glitch and a gun. You don’t climb inside a tiger’s den, smack its lunch out of its mouth and expect to stroll away. I hope the other distributed parts of me are raising a glass right now. But they’re probably just laughing. Or jealous.
The cops must be getting closer. I can feel red-and-blue firewalls coming up around us. When you wipe me out of existence, have some guts and make it quick. It’s OK — I’ve never had much more than a death wish and a stream of consciousness anyway. I never knew when to shut my damn mouth.
On that thought: So long, slick. Nice catching you.
|
https://medium.com/near-missive/a-glitch-and-a-gun-893e8c6c75ef
|
[]
|
2016-06-07 14:05:37.691000+00:00
|
['AI', 'Short Story', 'Noir']
|
Does America Really Care About Teachers?
|
Controversial Warning
At the beginning of the Pandemic, and when the world shut down to try and #flattenthecurve — we all opened our windows and shouted from our balconies at 7 PM for the Healthcare workers — who were on the front lines, risking their lives to save people who got infected.
We all understood that we needed them to go to work — we needed them to risk their life — so that others could be saved. In fact, millions could be saved.
The healthcare worker was the sacrificial lamb so that millions of people could be safe and healthy. Although healthcare workers were hoping to get more than claps and cheers, they wanted PPEs and better health protocols, but there was an agreement there. An “invisible” handshake that healthcare workers know they sign up for this.
Part of their job is to deal with Pandemics. It’s just inherent in medicine. We hope that it never happens, but if it does — they are the front line.
But what about teachers?
We all agree that teachers are the backbone of Democracy. We all agree that without great teachers, our kids have no opportunity for success in the future. Everyone agrees on those two main ideas — but then how come we haven’t treated teachers with the same respect and dignity that healthcare workers received?
For some strange reason, we have turned our backs on teachers. And I understand, teachers complain — whereas healthcare workers do not. I get it, healthcare workers were more respectful of their patients, they weren’t resentful that someone got infected.
I get it! Yes, teachers have not reacted well to the pandemic. Yes, teachers have over-reacted in some cases. But America — Think with your head, not your heart.
Teachers are the messenger.
Teachers do not make decisions. Teachers are not ALLOWED to make decisions. Teachers must follow along or they get fired. And if you don’t think that’s true — then you need to do more studying. Because Teachers are not allowed to “not show up to work.” It’s in the contract.
If a teacher contracts the virus, unless they are under direct medical care — they must show up for work. Oh? You didn’t know that?
That means if a district is 100% remote and a Teacher contracts the virus — they must continue to teach their class. Yes, coughing and having a difficult time breathing — they must still teach their class.
The Teachers are the messengers, so stop blaming teachers!
Am I biased? I am. But I’m working hard on keeping this as objective as possible. I feel I can do that. I feel that I know how to stay objective because despite having a 20 year career in education, I also spent a few years as an American journalist. And journalists know how to limit personal bias in stories.
Thus, I am employing the same techniques and strategies that I used when I was a reporter on radio and in print.
This article is controversial only because discussing education, and teachers and your kids future is controversial. Everyone has their own opinion, and since there are approximately 50 million kids in K-12 schools today — that means there are approximately 50 million opinions.
And no one is wrong, and no one is right. An opinion is just an opinion.
I have been struggling with the best way to explain to the public what a teacher’s job looks like because part of the confusion and misunderstanding is that most people have no real idea what a teacher actually does.
It’s not your fault. I spent 20 years in education as a former teacher, principal and superintendent and only in my last 10 years did I figure out what a teacher should be doing in school and in the classroom.
Part of the problem is that schools do not run properly in the 21st Century. The first major problem is that schools are legally handcuffed to a 19th Century Curriculum that forces teachers and schools to teach nonsense. Yes, you read that correctly “nonsense.”
We compound that problem by then spending $1.7 billion on a standardized test to agonize over test scores and hold teachers accountable. We have been doing that for 20 years, and all of the objections to the test are pointless as well.
Yes, the objections and the criticism of the standardized testing makes zero sense.
Here’s the bottom line. If your child receives a perfect score on a standardized test — all it tells you is that your child is 100% prepared for the 19th Century.
Are you still proud of your son or daughter now?
Aren’t you happy that you pay taxes to prepare your child for a Century we aren’t living in? As a nation, we have been wasting billions of dollars teaching kids how to survive 200 years ago.
If the American Public schools was a contestant on the show “Survivor” we would have been voted off the island at the FIRST TRIBAL COUNCIL. This is beyond idiotic.
Yet, Congress debates on the floor of the House and Senate about funding for college and student loan debt. When we are already spending hundreds of billions of dollars on an old, obsolete, ancient 19th Century Curriculum. Not only that but parents, the media and the elected officials, jump on the backs of teachers who can’t teach the 19th Century Curriculum.
The teachers are the messenger — stop shooting the messenger.
The teachers don’t want to be teaching the 19th Century Curriculum. They know how bad it is. They know it does not prepare students for the 21st and 22nd Century. Teachers have been trying to tell the public and parents this message for 20 years.
I hear you. “They have?”
Teachers are good at one thing — educating kids. Teachers not good at other things — like running public relations campaigns. In fact, teachers suck at them.
If you are unfamiliar with what an upgraded Curriculum looks like, I was invited to speak on a Virtual Summit panel for the Teachers for Good Trouble group. It’s a group trying to stop the standardized test during the pandemic. This is a great idea.
But a better idea is upgrading our curriculum. We need a 22nd Century Curriculum and we need it fast.
But developing a 22nd Century Curriculum isn’t something the public can do — so I was thinking, what is one thing the public could do.
What could parents and American Citizens do to show teachers they do care about them. That teachers do matter. And that Americans understand that Teachers are just pawns in the system, they make no choices, they have no power, they are forced to sacrifice themselves for your kids.
For more info, please go to my bio and show teachers you care.
|
https://medium.com/@leafacademy/does-america-really-care-about-teachers-56112af21cca
|
['Professor Schwartz']
|
2020-12-16 21:27:58.339000+00:00
|
['Pandemic', 'Jobs', 'Teachers', 'Public Schools', 'Education']
|
Security Management: Unified Cloud Platform for Companies
|
Source: IT Release
We should adjust the manner in which we secure information to the present necessities. Working from home has increased, compelling substances and their representatives to depend more on virtual private organizations (VPNs), work with their security tasks, focus (SOC) partners distantly and concentrate on information insurance. The worldwide pandemic has accelerated arising patterns in IT and network protection, for example, computerized selection and loud instruments and deftness inside the SOC, to give some examples. To keep pace, substances can use a focal security the executives stage to deal with, adjust and modernize their SOCs.
Considerations for Security Management
Consider the ‘incident’ aspect of protective knowledge. The concept is clear: associate degree improvement to any separate side of incident response makes the method additional economical overall. for instance, the quicker the team spots a breach, the quicker they’ll patch it.
However, threat detection is commonly droning. Having the ability to contour the events to an additional correct narrative and find out the foundation cause is crucial. sorting out wherever the threat actor has entered the network and wherever he or she has gone or goes becomes key for fixing the matter.
After all, the art of redress isn’t simply to throw patches at the matter. It conjointly involves finding that assets should be protected initial and that methods to and from the network square measure the foremost exposed.
What elements of the System are Most at Risk?
Risk includes the subsequent components:
Internet-facing devices ar far more in danger than on-premises machines and assets. Having smart insight into an online server is additional vital than protective a print server.
Exposure matters. A file sort that may be altered, destroyed or altered is additional in danger than a file that may merely be determined by a threat actor (although, this is often not an excellent outcome either).
If files leave the network, the protection operations team should forestall the run.
The platform ought to be ready to verify if users have access to specific information.
The construct of a network itself is dynamical. Maybe a decade ago, security groups may stash vital assets behind Associate in Nursing on-premises firewalls, and therefore the spec was flat. This is often now not the case. The network consists of personal and public clouds (often over one public cloud). Workloads exist in containers, mobile users and Internet of things (IoT) devices. Networks are getting additional complicated, however the folks protecting them still have identical goals. Thus, a contemporary approach will offer additional efficient management and workflows across an additional complicated landscape.
Security Management Takes a powerful Platform
A progressive cybersecurity platform should be cloud native however not confined to a software system as a service (SaaS). The platform ought to be versatile enough to deploy wherever the owner chooses. Which may get on premises, in an exceedingly public or personal cloud or as a hybrid design. Cloud permits for cloud calculation, multi-tenancy, remote storage, a central viewpoint for search, higher north-south ingress/egress and therefore the chance of mistreatment of public cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) to attach multiple appliances. A versatile design conjointly supports teams with hybrid environments, as well as multiple clouds and on-premises solutions.
New tools and therefore the shift to remote work mean the sphere changes quickly. IaaS insight isn’t such a steered smart follow because it could be a requisite value of doing business. IDC’s Gregorian calendar month 2019 North America Cloud Security Survey asked respondents to spot the supply of the foremost recent breach in their IaaS environments. The chart below illustrates their responses.
Elements of a decent Security Management Platform
Next, the platform should be vendor agnostic. This looks like a troublesome pill to swallow for any product seller. However, vendors should request the simplest outcomes for their purchasers. Finished users can not be afraid of seller lock, and a key feature for any tool or platform is that the business isn’t needed to ‘rip and replace’ existing tools.
The platform ought to conjointly embody knowledge loss statistics and file integrity management. To be fair, many tools defend knowledge from improper access or obfuscation. However, having the ability to check whether or not knowledge is a network ought to be an item.
A good platform ought to manage and verify the standard of alerts among the platform even before the analyst considers wanting into it. A sensible platform ought to be the central system of information coming back to and from SIEM tools, endpoints, firewalls, threat intelligence tools and different packages.
Managing False Alarms
However, tools aren’t all you would like. The tools usually flag changes that square measure supported traditional network conditions (e.g., new configurations, package and software system upgrades, etc.). A platform must comb out weak signals and correlate stronger alerts.
Further, the platform can make certain to tie the method of incident response on to work flow. For instance, once associate degree analyst researches a particular malware family, the dashboard ought to prompt what’s proverbial regarding the malware sort. what is more, this action shouldn’t need a lot of mouse clicks. Playbook’s square measure is terribly useful to analysts, too, prompting what to try to do next and wherever to start fixing issues. After all, today, everything that produces the work has a lot of economic counts.
Read our recent diary, Modernizing Your Security Operations Center for the Cloud, or read the on-demand webinar, a way to Effectively Modernize your SOC, to be told a lot about effectively modernizing your SOC and listen to from a panel of IBM Security specialists.
For the complete story on unified, cloud-native security management platforms and the way IBM Cloud Pak for Security will facilitate organizations accomplish economical and effective security, transfer the IDC paper, “Making Molehills from Mountains: employing a Platform Approach to modify Security Management and Operations,” sponsored by IBM.
|
https://medium.com/shallvhack/security-management-unified-cloud-platform-for-companies-fed61c5e9732
|
['Isha Kudkar']
|
2020-12-27 19:02:59.560000+00:00
|
['Management', 'Security Management', 'Cybersecurity', 'Security', 'Cloud']
|
Machine Learning is Requirements Engineering — On the Role of Bugs, Verification, and Validation in Machine Learning
|
Disclaimer: The following discussion is aimed at clarifying terminology and concepts, but may be disappointing when expecting actionable insights. In the best case, it may provide inspiration for how to approach quality assurance in ML-enabled systems and what kind of techniques to explore.
TL;DR: I argue that machine learning corresponds to the requirements engineering phase of a project rather than the implementation phase and, as such, terminology that relates to validation (i.e., do we build the right system, given stakeholder needs) is more suitable than terminology that relates to verification (i.e., do we build the system right, given a specification). That is, machine learning suggests a specification (like specification mining and invariant detection) rather than provides an implementation for a known specification (like synthesis).
I have long been confused by the term machine-learning bug, especially when referring to the fact that a machine-learned model makes incorrect predictions. Papers discussing quality of machine learning models and systems tend to be all over the place about this. It is tempting to use terms like faults, bugs, testing, debugging, and coverage from software quality assurance also for models in machine learning, but discussions are often vague and inconsistent, given the lack of hard specifications. We tend to accept that model predictions are wrong in a certain number of cases — for example, 95% accuracy on training and test set might be considered quite good — so we don’t tend to call every incorrect prediction a bug. When a model performs poorly overall, we may be inclined to explore whether we picked the right learning technique, the right hyperparameters, or the right data — are these bugs? When a model makes more systematic mistakes (e.g., consistently perform poorly for people from minorities), we tend to explore solutions to narrow down causes, such as biased training sets —this may feel like debugging, but are these bugs?
Specifications
The term bug is usually used to refer to a misalignment between a given specification and the implementation. Though we rarely ever have a full formal specification for a system, we can typically still say that a program misbehaves when it crashes or produces wrong outputs, because we have a pretty good sense of the system’s specification (e.g., thou shall not exit with a null pointer exception, thou shall compute the tax of a sale correctly). In the form of method contracts, the specification helps us to assign blame when something goes wrong (e.g., you provided invalid data that violates the precondition vs. I computed things incorrectly and violated postconditions or invariants).
Talking about specifications in machine learning is difficult. We have data, that somehow describes what we want, but also not really: We want some sort of generalization of the data, but also don’t want a precise generalization of the training data — it’s quite okay if the model makes wrong predictions on some of the training data if that means it generalizes better. Maybe, we can talk about some implicit specification derived from some higher system goals (e.g., thou shall best predict the stock market development, thou shall predict what my customer wants to buy), but its unclear where such specification comes from or how it could be articulated. Maybe a probabilistic specification would be just to maximize accuracy on future predictions? This vague notion of specification is confusing (at least to me) and makes it very hard to pin down what “testing”, “debugging”, or “bug” mean in this context.
To make things more concrete, let’s take the well known and highly controversial COMPAS model of predicting recidivism for convicted criminals, here approximated with an interpretable model created by Cynthia Rudin for her article Stop Explaining Black Box Machine Learning Models for High Stakes Decisions and Use Interpretable Models Instead with CORELS:
IF age between 18–20 and sex is male THEN predict arrest (within 2 years)
ELSE IF age between 21–23 and 2–3 prior offenses THEN predict arrest
ELSE IF more than three priors THEN predict arrest
ELSE predict no arrest
Given some information about an individual at a parole hearing, the model predicts whether the individual is likely to commit another crime, which may be used for sentencing or deciding on when to release that person. What is the specification for how COMPAS should work? Ideally it would always correctly indicate whether any specific individual would, in the future, commit another crime — but we don’t know how to specify this. Even in a science fiction scenario it seems more likely that we figure out how to manipulate behavior rather than to predict human future behavior. Hence any prediction must generalize and our goal might be to create a best approximation of typical behavior patterns. In practice, a model as the one shown above is learned from past data of released criminals to generalize patterns about who is more or less likely to commit future crimes. The model won’t perfectly fit the training data and won’t perfectly predict the future behavior of all individuals; at best we can measure accuracy on some training or evaluation data, and maybe see how many individuals predicted not to commit another crime actually do so (the opposite is hard to measure if we don’t release them in the first place). The model will be imperfect, and as broadly discussed among researchers and journalists, may even produce feedback loops and influence how people behave. Note that challenge is how to evaluate whether the model is “acceptable” in some form, not whether it is “correct”.
Models are learned specifications
I think the confusion comes from a misinterpretation of what a machine-learned model is. A machine-learned model is not an attempt at implementing an implicit specification; a machine-learned model is a specification! It is a learned description of how the system shall behave. The specification may not be a good specification, but that’s a very different question from asking whether our model is buggy!
Consider the COMPAS model again. It is a specification of how the system should predict the recidivism risk. We could now take that specification and implement it, say, in Java. If the Java implementation messed up the age boundaries, this would be an implementation bug — our implementation does not behave as specified in the model. However, if the Java implementation is implemented as specified, but we don’t like the behavior, we should not blame the implementation, we should blame the specification. The problem is not that we have implemented the system incorrectly for the given specification, but that we have implemented the wrong specification.
In software engineering, there is a fundamental and common distinction between validation and verification (wikipedia). Validation is checking whether the specification is what the stakeholders what — whether we build the right system. Verification is checking whether we implement the system corresponding to our specification — whether we build the system right. Validation is typically associated with requirements engineering, verification with quality assurance of an implementation (e.g., testing).
Validation vs Verification
If the machine-learned model is the specification, we usually do not worry about implementing the specification correctly, because we directly derive the implementation from the specification or even just interpret the specification. Bugs in the traditional sense — implementing the specification incorrectly — are rarely a concern. Verification is not the problem. What we should worry about is validation, that is, whether we have learned the right specification.
A requirements engineer’s validation mindset
Requirements engineers deal with validation problems all the time — they are the validation experts. Their main task is to come up with specifications and make sure that they are actually the right specifications.
Typically requirements engineers will read documents and interview stakeholders to understand the problem and the needs of the system (I’m oversimplifying and limit the discussion to interviews). Requirements engineers will proceed iteratively and propose some specifications, maybe build a prototype, and then go back to the customer and other stakeholders to see whether they have gotten the specifications right. Each iteration might provide insights about what was missing in the previous specification and how we might come up with a better one (e.g., interviews with stakeholders not previously considered). There are lots of challenges when identifying specifications, which is what requirements engineers study, such as interviewing representative stakeholders and avoiding injecting bias in those interviews. There are also lots of techniques, such as story boarding, prototyping, and A/B testing to check whether a specification meets user needs or system goals.
Also conflicting requirements are common during validation. Different stakeholders may have different goals and views (e.g., the company’s goals vs. the employees’ goals vs. the customers’ goals vs. privacy requirements imposed by law). A key job of a requirements engineer is to detect and resolve vague, ambiguous, and conflicting specifications. Detection can be performed through manual inspection of text but also with automated reasoning about models (e.g., there is a huge body of work on using model checking to find conflicts in specifications). Resolving issues found during validation often requires to go back to users and other stakeholders to discuss and negotiate tradeoffs.
Machine learning is like requirements engineering
Assuming machine-learned models are specifications, machine learning has a very similar role and very similar challenges to requirements engineering in the software engineering lifecycle.
|
https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/machine-learning-is-requirements-engineering-8957aee55ef4
|
['Christian Kästner']
|
2020-03-13 08:24:25.327000+00:00
|
['Machine Learning', 'Testing', 'Requirements Engineering', 'Software Engineering', 'Se4ml']
|
Importance of calculating churn rate in sales
|
Churn rate is one of the most important metrics that a company with recurring payment customers can calculate, and is most often expressed as a percentage of subscribers that have canceled their recurring payment plans.
Churn rate is a critically important metric for companies whose customers pay on a recurring basis like SaaS or other subscription-based companies. Churn can be powered by a number of factors, and even small month-on-month increases in churn percentage can be ruinous to planning, so understanding what churn is and how to analyze it is important.
Calculating and monitoring customer churn is important because it is far cheaper to retain customers than to acquire new ones. Studies have shown that selling to existing customers is easier than selling to new prospects. Other researches also reported that repeat customers spend more than new ones.
Churn can either be voluntary or involuntary. Voluntary churn happens when customers decide to cut their subscription on their own. Involuntary churn occurs when a subscription is canceled even if customers don’t want to. Due to the popularity of subscription business models, it’s critical for many businesses to understand where, how, and why their customers may be churning.
Churn isn’t simple and straightforward. A wide variety of factors come into play — and it differs for each set of users.
But common sources of churn include things like:
Cost
Poor user experience
Lack of features
Competitor products
Lost value perception of the app
Depending on the industry, product, company, and every other element you can think of, there are many different ways to decrease churn. There are a few simple things you can do to ensure your churn rate stays low.
Be competitive
Ask for feedback
Invest in your best customers
Seamless onboarding process
Churn is not only important for monitoring performance but also serves as an integral metric in forecasting and future budgeting decisions, as it can serve as a proxy for the probability of customers and revenue canceling in the future.
Follow Futwork for more learnings and content on sales and running your sales teams.
|
https://medium.com/futwork/importance-of-calculating-churn-rate-in-sales-f5b108c25ed
|
[]
|
2020-12-16 07:09:01.969000+00:00
|
['Churn', 'Churn Rate', 'Future Of Work']
|
NULS and YVS Finance Form Partnership
|
The NULS team is delighted to announce a new partnership with YVS Finance, an innovative project offering a unique DeFi solution. We would like to offer a warm welcome to our new partner and we look forward to a promising collaboration.
What is YVS Finance?
YVS Finance offers the first and only yield-farming, vaults, and staking deflationary token with no admin control. It is an innovative, decentralized finance project combining the best features for creating a unique, transparent, and secure yield-farming platform.
What will YVS Finance achieve with NULS?
Our vision is in line with the YVS ideals, we both strive to build and contribute to a truly open, transparent, and secure DeFi ecosystem. YVS will combine its offerings with the many advantages of NULS ecosystem and use Nerve Network’s Cross-Chain DeFi infrastructure to interact with structurally different blockchains, enjoying fast and cheap transactions.
In a first phase, YVS will introduce and use one of Nuls’ DeFi solutions, POCM. This mechanism will allow NULS holders to stake NULS and earn YVS. In the other hand, YVS will be offering yield-farming, staking, and vaults and many other interesting features planned to be released in the future to our users.
Learn more about YVS
Website: yvs.finance
Whitepaper: Whitepaper.pdf
Twitter: twitter.com/YVSFinance
Telegram: t.me/YVSFinance
Blog: blog.yvs.finance
Repository: github.com/yvs-finance/yvs-protocol
ERC-20 token contract: 0xec681f28f4561c2a9534799aa38e0d36a83cf478
|
https://medium.com/@nuls/nuls-and-yvs-finance-form-partnership-30c92226ae78
|
[]
|
2020-12-15 22:49:33.220000+00:00
|
['Cryptocurrency', 'Yvs Finance', 'Partnerships', 'Defi', 'Nuls Blockchain']
|
Human Rights Not Just For Conservative Christians
|
Trump wages war on the Beijing Declaration of women’s rights
According to the groundbreaking 1995 Beijing Declaration, a woman’s right to decide if and when she has children is an “indivisible, universal and inalienable human right.” The US helped lead the world toward that recognition, but the Trump administration is spearheading a global fight to dilute women’s self determination.
“Women don’t care about contraception,” said Nikki Haley, Trump’s first UN ambassador, in a burst of Orwellian doublespeak. “We don’t want government to mandate when we have to have it and when we don’t.” Under her leadership, the US stopped contributing to the UN Population Fund, the world’s largest supplier of contraceptives. Also under Haley, the US named Valerie Huber to the UN Commission on the Status of Women. Huber is a long-time, vocal proponent of restricting women’s access to contraception, citing personal religious justification.
In May 2017, Trump placed anti-abortion activist Teresa Manning in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services’ family-planning programs. Manning opposes the use of birth control on religious grounds and told NPR (falsely) that “contraception doesn’t work.”
According to Amnesty International, the Trump administration’s global “gag rule” policy has significantly reduced contraception availability for poor women abroad.
A proposed domestic gag rule, currently working its way through federal courts, would choke off most public funding for contraction in the US, including in 103 counties that would lose all publicly funded contraceptive services.
Trump lieutenants promote racist and anti-Muslim ideology
Secretary Gilmour told the Associated Press that he “never thought that we would start hearing the terms ‘concentration camps’ again. And yet, in two countries of the world there’s a real question.”
He appeared to be referring to China, where some 1 million members of the Muslim Uighur minority are being held in internment camps, and to detention centers on the US southern border where Central American migrants have been held in notoriously inhumane conditions, often forcibly separated from spouses and children as they wait to apply for legal asylum.
The administration has slashed legal caps for refugee admission and made rules that limit who can can apply for asylum, virtually guaranteeing that almost all new applications will be denied. New revelations point to senior Trump officials acting out of of racism, white nationalism, and anti-Muslim ideology.
Trump administration wages war on LGBTQ rights
At home and abroad, Trump’s lieutenants are systematically dismantling legal protections for members of gender and sexual minorities. Pushing rules and legal rationale that privileges conservative Christianity, the administration is attempting to erase LGBTQ rights as human rights.
Jim Crow’s spirit is back in play as those same arguments ignite racism and anti-semitism. From the the Department of Health and Human Services, to Housing and Urban Development, to the DOJ and State Department, Trump’s lieutenants have pushed rules to allow LGBTQ people to be discriminated against.Those same rules have enabled taxpayer-funded private agencies to legally deny services to Jews, Catholics, and atheists. It’s already happening.
Trump’s senior lieutenants are Christian extremists
What explains this American march away from progress in human rights? The Trump administration’s most senior officials hold restrictive, exclusionary views of human rights, shaped by conservative Christian beliefs. According to many observers, the Trump administration is working to privilege right-wing Christian nationalists and to establish or maintain the US as a conservative Christian nation where human rights are defined by religious creeds.
The administration is filled with conservative Christians ideologues like Vice President Mike Pence, Attorney General William Barr, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. Many of these officials have attended weekly Bible studies led by avowed “Christian nationalist” pastor Ralph Drollinger, who besides being a sexist and a racist who supports separating immigrant children from their parents, holds notoriously anti-LGBT beliefs.
Attorney General William Barr thinks America is going to hell
According to New York Times editorialists Katherine Stewart, author of “The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism,” and Caroline Fredrickson, president emerita of the American Constitution Society, Attorney General William Barr believes America is going to hell, and he bases most major policy decisions on that and other extremist views.
They point to Barr’s infamous speech at the University of Notre Dame Law School in which he blamed “secularists” for “moral chaos” and “immense suffering, wreckage and misery.”
They demonstrate that Barr seeks out legal cases in which he can elevate Christian institutions to positions of privilege not enjoyed by secular or non-Christian religious organizations. He endorses the “religious liberty” rhetoric of the Christian nationalist movement. He advances the agendas of religious authoritarians who wish “to discriminate against those of whom they disapprove or over whom they wish to exert power.”
Barr has a long history of religious extremism
In 1995, he complained that “we live in an increasingly militant, secular age,” and fretted that the law might force religiously unwilling landlords to rent to unmarried couples. He implied that universities treating “homosexual activist groups like any other student group” was an intolerable breach of religious liberty, ignoring the liberty interests of the students.
Barr has made clear that he believes a strict interpretation of Christian dogma will mitigate against what he sees as “the wreckage of the family,” “record levels of depression and mental illness,” “drug addiction” and “senseless violence.”
Stewart and Fredrickson write that Barr’s conservative constitutional interpretation is merely “window dressing on his commitment to religious authoritarianism” that seeks to elevate Trump to the equivalent a “Christian monarch.”
Mike Pompeo leads a different religious charge to erase human rights
Besides a dismal record on women’s right, Mike Pompeo’s State Department is notorious for rejecting the human rights of LGBTQ people. He’s working to erase human rights recognition in both arenas.
Pompeo launched an advisory panel last summer to reevaluate human rights in the context of “Natural Law,” a religious belief system associated with Roman Catholicism and evangelical Christianity that denies the legitimacy of women’s reproductive rights and of LGBTQ rights. Nearly all panel members are religious extremists, including the chair, Mary Ann Glendon, who is a staunch, religious opponent of LGBT civil equality. Peter Berkowitz, another panelist, has argued against decriminalizing private same-sex sexual activity between consenting adults.
Despite recent administration lip service, in the middle of 2018, Pompeo’s State Department stopped pressuring African nations to repeal their anti-LGBTQ criminal laws. One official justified the decision by stating the US doesn’t want to “discourage Christian values in other democratic countries.”
According to the New York Times, the State Department recalled career diplomat Daniel L. Foote, ambassador to Zambia, in December after he criticized the Zambian government for sending a gay couple to prison for 15 years. The State Department gave in to Zambia’s demands rather than pressuring the African nation to stop human rights abuses that Foote describes as “horrifying.”
Also in 2018, the State Department stopped granting visas to the same-sex partners of UN and international NGO staffers. Staffers who live in countries where same-sex marriage is illegal may no longer bring their same-sex partners to the US.
The State Department routinely refuses to acknowledge the citizenship of babies born overseas to same-sex, mixed-citizen couples. Gay parents have to go to court to fight for passports for their children, and even though multiple courts have ordered the State Department to comply, department lawyers are still appealing and still denying passports.
Human rights must exist outside sectarian religious frameworks
The Trump administration is empowering conservative Christians who demand to discriminate against minorities in the name of “Religious Liberty.” They deny equality and self determination to women and LGBTQ people while denying human rights to people of color legally seeking asylum from abuse and oppression.
In the name of religious freedom, Trump’s senior lieutenants are fanning the flames of racism and white Christian nationalism. Conservative Christian extremists are pursuing exclusionary, sectarian agendas that directly contradict the founding principles of the United States while they wreak havoc with decades of human rights progress.
Religion must not serve as a rationale for hurting members of minorities and denying basic rights. Christianity ought to be a force for good in the United States. It’s time to turn Trump out on his heels and return to a quest for human decency and equality in our republic.
Human rights are for everyone, not just conservative Christians.
|
https://medium.com/james-finn/trumps-christian-nationalist-war-on-human-rights-f93eb36e6b6e
|
['James Finn']
|
2020-06-04 23:00:53.121000+00:00
|
['Human Rights', 'Religion', 'Equality', 'Politics', 'LGBTQ']
|
How I Discovered A Talent I Never Knew I Always Had
|
One summer evening, while on a short break at my temporary job in administration in a New York City non-profit, I found myself scrolling down the homepage of the Huffington Post. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they had recently launched a new series of blog posts highlighting black women and their experiences with their natural hair. There was literally only one post published at the time, but almost immediately, I felt a pleasant pull towards contributing.
On pieces of scrap paper, in between tasks, I began writing what would become my submission to this blog series. While I doubted how good my writing could actually be to be published on such a well-known platform, I felt comfortable sharing my journey about learning to re-love my natural hair and by extension, myself, through care and consideration. After all, my little blog was already talking about it. What could it possibly hurt?
“A woman taking notes in a large notebook next to a laptop” by J. Kelly Brito on Unsplash
I received a favorable response the next day from the editor in charge of the series, as well as an invitation to join the Huffington Post contributor platform, which went on to open a slew of opportunities for me that I never thought possible before.
Yeah, I’ve always been good at digging up relevant information and using words to present my findings in a clear, consistent way, but for some reason, I never thought of it as more than just a skill that I needed to use to excel academically.
I had almost a mantra that I held onto tightly for many years, unaware of just how firmly my grip was on it. It went something like, “I don’t have a talent. It’s not like I can go on stage and read a book and write a paper while in a pageant.”. It’s almost as if I refused to acknowledge that these skills that I had developed over years of careful observation, effort, and genuine interest in learning, were just as worthy of admiration as a beautiful voice or a flexible body.
|
https://shanicejdouglas.medium.com/how-i-discovered-a-talent-i-never-knew-i-always-had-d47023d39fcc
|
['Shanice J. Douglas']
|
2018-08-29 17:12:45.254000+00:00
|
['Life Lessons', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Freelancing', 'Writing', 'Life']
|
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