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Sustainable printing — we share our knowledge.

This guide Past Present Print emerged out of determination bordering on desperation. Whenever I was looking for more sustainable printing solutions, all I came across were marketing tricks advertising ostensibly eco-friendly products and machines, all in the “make printing green again!” vibe. More than once, I had to listen to the printers’ serenades (“No can do, M’am, no can do!”), and I most certainly had my fill of vaguely-ecology-related novelty solutions that only drag the designers and clients away from the simple and straightforward solutions. Having collected the materials and consulted my information with experts, I condensed it all into bite-sized chapters. I hope this project keeps on growing and expanding, starting with information on more sustainable packagings or labels, for example. This booklet has not been made on kale-enriched tofu paper, but I believe it can still help you with your work. This is not a complete, closed project. If you have any questions or ideas, go ahead and send me a message (CLICK). Share this guide with others, let it travel. If you want to show us your prints and experiences, we’ll be delighted to publish them, too. We share our knowledge Perhaps some of the information in this guide was surprising to you. Maybe now you will take a moment to think whether the print you’re holding in your hand should go to the paper recycling bin, or is it just a piece of single-use waste. I would like to simplify this process. Right now, we don’t even have clear and unambiguous pictograms to help us segregate waste properly. This is why we designed our own, easy-to-follow information on what every printed item is made of. I also encourage you to use paper certification icons on your prints and packagings. Such solutions are already very popular across Western Europe, where most packagings are no longer varnished or coated, and every box and envelope has a clear information on what kind of paper was used to make it. Let’s stay aware. If you take just one thing away from our guide, let it be this: hey, don’t print stuff on glossy double-coated paper! Our pictograms We have prepared a set of icons to help you transparently label your prints. You can use them in your products. You can use the full set (Polish and English) in EPS and PNG format here. Pre-production checklist Do I really need to make this? Do I know how I’m going to distribute this material and how long it’s going to be relevant? Do I know where the paper I chose comes from (what it’s called, who produced it, what certificates it has) Did I choose uncoated paper? Are the embellishments I chose affecting recyclability of my production? Did I inform my client what my production will be made of and how it can be utilised? Did I choose a local printing service provider? Did I make sure the shipment contains no single-use plastics? See the whole project Past Present Print

https://medium.com/@lenamitkowa/sustainable-printing-we-share-our-knowledge-372c470c6cf0

['Lena Mitkowa']

2020-11-16 17:38:39.878000+00:00

['Certification', 'Printing', 'Sustainable Design', 'Sustainability']

Great Souls?

Great souls appear to be missing today No inspiring leaders for just human causes None with the stature of Mahatma Gandhi Or unshakeable moral character like MLK Political integrity of RFK or John McCain. Our world could use some great souls now To set an example of what’s right and just Inspiring human causes for our greater good Initiating new golden era of human rights Breaking centuries racist barriers lingering. Until some great soul appears on the scene We should look to our own inner consciences To understand what contributions, we can make In creating equal opportunities for everyone Helping freedom’s bell to ring loud and true. Human rights, society’s perpetual challenge Destroying prejudices so long in existence Making progress towards equal justice for all, Looking deeply into our own great souls.

https://psiloveyou.xyz/great-souls-e054f1c309a6

['Randy Shingler']

2020-12-27 13:02:39.530000+00:00

['Poetry Sunday', 'Freedom', 'Poetry', 'Equality', 'Justice']

RHEA Smart Home System

Overview In developing this smart home system, our goal was to create a user experience that was as seamless as possible. We conducted extensive user research which helped us narrowed down our audience to a specific demographic: young professionals who needed to balance their work and personal lives while maintaining self-care. Through numerous surveys and interviews, we examined the pain points that exist between an individual and their at-home devices to identify how to make their experience easier and more user-focused. The research process was extensive and thorough. To get an understanding of how to design with the user at the forefront of our mind, Abby had us read User Friendly by Cliff Kuang and Robert Fabricant. After that, we worked as a team to conduct surveys with almost 200 people. We spent hours parsing through the research and brainstorming in order to create unique user personas and understand the needs of our target users. Each team member focused on multiple aspects of the project: branding, UX/UI, illustration, research, 3-dimensional renders, and more. We all had opportunities to jump into various facets of the project at different points which allowed us the balance the workload while giving everyone a chance to experience many areas of design needed to complete a project of this scale. While we envision a family of products that span the entire home, for the sake of time we selected four products to feature for our initial launch: a door lock, a coffee maker, an oven, and a central hub that connected the other three products. After putting together countless wireframes and user flows, the UI/UX team began designing the product interfaces. As the chosen devices held unique functions and interactions, we needed to develop a robust design system. Our semester was entirely online, so as a team we had to overcome various challenges. This included figuring out designing in Adobe XD collaboratively, working around our schedules to hold regular Zoom meetings, and planning work sessions without the benefits of meeting in-person. However, as a silver lining, we had the opportunity to meet many incredible people who were kind to stop by during class time. Several designers came to our class, shared their work with us, and gave us helpful feedback about our project. The guest speakers included: Lucas Ballasy — Partner/Creative Director at Barrel, interviewed us at the beginning of the semester to establish our unique roles within the team. Sergio Claudio, Global Creative & Experience Leader at Adobe, took a look at our branding and research in the early phase of this project and provided great insight on how to think moving forward. Jane Leous, Mechanical Engineer at Agilent Technologies, taught us about engineering, making sure that we would take care to think of material and tactile feel for the physical product design. Courtney Spencer, Global Manager, Design at ZX Ventures, visited us in class to chat and introduced us to her processes in working with design systems within a team, particularly in XD. Gavin Cooper, Senior Manager of UX Strategy at Vanguard, spent the time to critique our wireframes and UI for the coffee maker and shared his thoughts on the idea of “minimum vs maximum” interactions. Zachary Gibson, Art Director, Design Systems lead at Google Nest at Google, talked about his experiences at Google, and answered countless questions about his experience working on Material Design. Sara Hall, User Experience Practice Lead at the City of Philadelphia, gave feedback as we grew closer to the final UX systems of our products and spoke on her industry experience. John Ruiz, Design Lead (UX/UI) at Apple, provided industry insight on his background and growth into the UX industry and spoke about his specific experiences working at Apple. We give them all a special thanks for helping us with RHEA. Research Brainstorming Our prompt was: Create and design a series of devices under one parent brand for a smart home. When brainstorming how to approach this project, we asked ourselves a few questions. Who was going to be our main audience, and what was their demographic? What was their age, occupation, and how many people lived in their household? What cities were they located in? Should we take a realistic approach or can it be dystopian or fantasy? Was it set in the present or could it be in the future? From there, we came up with goals for our smart home devices. We definitely wanted these items to contribute to the comfort and safety of the home. We also wanted the brand to be light-hearted and visually appealing. After several (virtual) brainstorming sessions, we developed a survey and began to reach out to people for research.

https://medium.com/tylergaid/rhea-smart-home-fe8df9bd68e0

['Kat Brissette']

2020-12-17 17:34:05.191000+00:00

['Case Study', 'Branding', 'Smart Home', 'UX', 'Design Systems']

A Love Note From my Soul to my Ego

Photo Credit: Adrianna Calvo I know that all you’ve ever wanted are love and monetary abundance for a sense of stability, but you need to understand that the universe is sending you unquantifiable, unconscious pain towards your most vulnerable chakras as a signal to change your mentality. The universe does love you. We’re being guided to a better life. It’s true that we cannot yet see what our new existence will be like, but we must have faith in the process. We’re the lucky ones, my friend. This happening at such a young age means we could live in the light for longer than many other people who must watch their physical bodies literally disintegrate before acknowledging that their societal status means nothing in the bigger picture. Your horrible underlying beliefs are suffocating your confidence and inner beauty, though. For example, I hear you say things like, “there’s no way that girl would ever like me” or “I’ll never receive love or monetary abundance without a college degree”. It’s as if you’ve thought these ideas into existence. Life is like a beautiful woman, and this spiritual awakening process is like her smiling at us and holding out her hand. If you regain control over our body and slap her gentle hand away (like you’ve done with other human girls before) because you’re so uncontrollably afraid of defeat, then that’d be the coup-de-grace of your foolishness. I can see that your traumatic childhood has prompted you into becoming a great actor who’s chosen the role of an anxious, depressed guy who gives off negative vibes. And even when girls do show interest in you, you have tended to push them away, sometimes even when you really do like them. Go ahead and think about the handfuls of girls we’ve pushed out of our life over the years.The sad part about this is that you’re actually so physically gorgeous, but your self-absorbed, hateful nature sends ugly vibes into the atmosphere, and other people can sense those bad vibes. It’s understandable because your parents bombarded you with truly horrible pain throughout your entire childhood. Your parents should be ashamed of themselves, but I need you to break out of this cycle of negative thought patterns. All that happens is you reconfirm your underlying beliefs by not getting what you want, and you deal with both physical and emotional pain as a result. The universe isn’t punishing you; the universe is actually trying to help show you the illogical pain you inflict upon yourself. You’re actually very lucky. The universe will give you everything you want, but you must first overcome your horrible underlying beliefs. If you become the version of yourself that you were meant to be, love and acceptance will find you in time. Every ounce of our consciousness will be loved — even the negative tendencies that so many people would shield off from others. Your higher vibration will prompt the universe into shuffling the pieces around and setting you up with a girl who really connects with you at a spiritual level. It really will happen if you let it. Imagine how you would feel if you tore down the belief stating “no one will ever love you”, that your mother cruelly hammered into your fragile mind at a very young age. Imagine how you would feel if you didn’t believe that you needed a college degree in order to attain monetary abundance, and that monetary abundance is the only ticket to true love. You’re already so pretty and when you genuinely smile it’s beautiful. You will get everything you want. There’s no need to dim your own brightness with disempowering beliefs. This spiritual process, The Dark Night of The Soul, is a gift. You’re one of the few. One of our spiritual teachers calls it a “winning lottery ticket”, and to cash it in, you must mentally adapt to the pain you’ve been given. Trust the universe and your own actions and thoughts. Everything happens perfectly for you, whether it’s “good” or “bad”. You will attract your true passion and money. You will. “You’re safe and you’re set”, as our friend told us repeatedly. You’ve been chosen to be helped by the universe now. Your life will change for the (so much) better. There’s no need to doubt. All of your overwhelming doubt is disempowering all of your natural brilliance as a human being. Just let go. The more you allow yourself to trust in every single tiny detail of this perfect simulation, the more good luck will be attracted to your consciousness. Become the scriptwriter, actor, and audience at the exact same time, and life will take you further than you ever imagined you would go.

https://medium.com/@lpastor631/a-love-note-from-my-soul-to-my-ego-a7d661ab899

['Lou Pastor']

2020-12-20 08:49:11.837000+00:00

['Spiritual Growth', 'Love', 'Love Yourself', 'Consciousness', 'Spirituality']

How Facebook Outed Me and Endangered Me With Their Name Policy

I was late to the Facebook game. As where most people were on the social media bandwagon shortly after the trend began, I was still dealing with issues of insecurity, fear of judgement and the court of public opinion regarding my identity. I was, to be fair, never in “The Closet.” My gender was never a question I had to wrestle with. But, I knew my gender was an issue for others- a religious issue, a political issue, an issue met with misunderstandings, confusion and typically a default to allegations like “Pervert” or “Child molester.” I knew the alignment of my gender since I was young, but having been presumed gay due to my femininity and witnessing so many adult gay men and women experience harassment, abuse, isolation and, in one case I saw up close and personal, excommunication from a church, allowing other people permission to assess the quality of my character and project their ignorance onto me was something that terrified me and took years to reconcile with. A lot of people don’t realize that we transgender men and women were usually labeled gay or lesbian by society even before we developed the self awareness or courage to admit to ourselves that our gender mapping didn’t match our sex. I never told anyone I was transgender until less than a decade ago. Although I had spent years researching the internet to understand what it implied, the information was sparse and incomplete, often couched between fetishist advertisements and porn. Other websites offered up extensive and difficult to consume medical documents which often pathologize transgender people in rather sinister ways and of course, the conservative websites threatening the all-to-familiar hellfire and brimstone fate certain to befall men who dared to dress as women. To those who knew me, the way I looked, sounded and dressed was simply “eccentric.”A polite term for weirdo or freak, I understood. I had long nails and long hair and was called also called a hippie by older folks. Still, when being in public I experienced tremendous fear so I often dressed down, clipped my nails and did my best to disappear. That was the ultimate goal. I lived a rather isolated life for most of it, and I contribute that to much of my uncertainty. There was no one like me around. I had no support groups, no local community, no media representation or politicians advocating for people like me, no touchstone and no place I appeared to fit. The internet was a blessing in terms of giving me a reach beyond my grasp as a young person. Yahoo! Chat rooms taught me the word “Transgender.” Social media gave me the ability to represent who I was authentically without have to provide an explanation or tackle the inevitable discomfort that someone always has the desire to express while clutching their pearls and shouting out scripture. It was a relief to talk, share ideas, engage on a level I had not had the opportunity to do before without having my gender taking the lead and usurping anything I had to contribute in a social setting. And I hated social settings anyway- so Facebook and Twitter allowed me to feel humanized and in some way connected while still maintaining my privacy and distance from face-to-face interactions. Upon logging in one day I discovered my account had been suspended pending my participation in authenticating my identity. According to Facebook, I had to send a government issued ID in order to continue to use the platform. At first, perhaps due to my naivety, I believed it as simply a security measure to validate that a real person willing to be accountable for the activity and conduct was operating the account. I provided them the details they requested, having not yet legally gone through a name change for a multitude of personal reasons- such as a legal prerequisite of it being broadcast to your entire, albeit small, midwestern town in a heavily conservative area that “Mr.” is now known formally as “Mrs.” I hadn’t expected to log in the next morning to discover that Facebook had retroactively changed every post I made, every post made by other users in which I had been tagged and every photo that I appeared in to expose my birth name in spite of the name I’d been using for years. Friends, not recognizing the name, unfriended me. Family members who had abused and rejected me once upon a time had located me and attempted to open lines of toxic communication. I was inundated with questions and a few people who had deeply held convictions regarding LGBT identities asked things to the effect of; “Are you a man?” As it turns out, I wasn’t the only victim of Facebook’s sweeping enforcement of a Name Policy that impacted everyone from Drag Queens to women in hiding from dangerous and predatory ex-partners. However, as a person who had become heavily embedded in the LGBTQ community and friends with many drag queens, my name was lifted off a master list of targets using a Drag Queen’s friend list as a resource- and all of this chaos was the consequence of one single man. An international controversy ensued, with Facebook undergoing immense scrutiny for what clearly appeared to be an attack intended specifically levied at the LGBTQ community- with everyone else, like Native American users- simply being collateral damage. Soon, reporting people for having a suspected “fake name” became retaliatory- some users were reporting individuals they just didn’t like or who had expressed a sentiment in a group they disapproved of. A vast majority of “HuggieBunny” and “JacksGrandma” went unscathed. Sure, I complained. I submitted tickets which fetched a polite but dismissive response. I had an anxiety attack, deleted my profile temporarily then logged back in and changed all my privacy settings as not to lose all the content and contacts I’d spent years aggregating. As a person who lived in a rural area, Facebook had been pivitol in my efforts to not feel so alienated from the greater world. Enter Sister Roma, a San Francisco based humanitarian and Drag Queen who took up the gauntlet and challenged the administration of Facebook who had, up until that point, refused to consider the damage they were doing to their more vulnerable users. In the end, after a little more than a month of negotiating, Facebook announced it wouldn't remove, but would relax it’s real name policy. Thanks to Sister Roma, whom I had been instructed by a friend who is a trans man to reach out to. I was told to provide specific information regarding my case that would be passed on to a key contact Sister Roma had within Facebook. I woke up one day to discover my name had been changed back to the name I signed up as. I sat in awe over the next couple of weeks as I watched hundreds- not an exaggeration- literally hundreds of my performer and transgender Facebook friends return to their original identities. This was a direct result of Sister Roma’s activism on our behalf. That was in 2015. I thought that was the end. But I had no idea how far reaching the ramifications of that one month name-change would be. In the time since then, we’ve had a new President. New Government policies that directly impact or altogether endanger our rights as LGBTQ Americans. We’ve had a Transgender military ban, a banning of the word “Transgender” from the CDC, along with “Vulnerable people.” Religious extremism has usurped the rights of LGBTQ people to safe and equal access to healthcare needs. Instances of expressed hatred and threats of violence have escalated across social media, and in the world, especially for transgender people. After Facebook outed me publicly, I believed, in retrospect, it was a good thing. I was forced to face detractors and for the first time, in a the court of public opinion I had spent years fearing, really own my identity once and for all. Perhaps it was because they made me fight so hard for it; Perhaps because in that small window of time so many of us, mostly strangers, were placed in the cross-hairs of conservative outrage and we experienced injustice as a community. It is a battle we’re all familiar with and on greater scales have been fought by many before us, but this was on the new and altogether alien terrain of digital identity ownership. I became an accidental activist after Trump. The justified fears and rampant suppression of transgender men and women weren’t exclusive to America, as the UK reported an alarming 81% increase in hate crimes against transgender folks in just a short period of time. It was impossible, in fact, not an option to remain silent. I chose to be vocal. I chose to be visible and present. It seems to me a bit ironic how I longed for other things, other avenues I wanted to explore such as literature and film-making and acting that I never imagined myself a political person. I hadn’t even voted until 2008 and that was only to express my solidarity for Barack Obama. I wanted to live in a time so redeeming from a grotesque history as to experience life under the leadership the first Black President; A man who understood, by the sheer nature of his proximity to it, inequality, injustice and a desperate need to evolve our world view to be more inclusive. I had no interest in politics however, just the idea of progress and evolution. After that election, I slipped back into the quiet security of unwavering trust in the institutions I knew nothing about believing fully I simply didn’t need to understand. Good things were happening. Marriage equality was celebrated across the country. President Obama had repealed the discriminatory “Don’ Ask, Don’t Tell” Policy that squelched gay military members from openly serving the country. We were moving forward. I wasn’t smart enough to be an activist. That isn’t self deprecating. I didn’t know enough about the political realm to have a voice I could be confident in expressing. In fairness, I found it all to be quite boring as a young person, although the moments such as the aforementioned I wept about with joy. Blame it on my age, or my limited access to information- I simply had other, more pressing issues and interests. That wasn’t so long ago, and a stark contrast to the fact that everyone is an armchair political activist today, especially those so devoted to a President- those who never cared about politics- and many of whom still don’t, but align themselves with an ever narrowing world view that Donald Trump represents to them. They’re not smart enough to be activists either, but they’re more comfortable with their caustic opinions and bigotry that they shout from beneath a sea of red hats. Useful idiots, to be sure, many of whom lock themselves in an echo chamber and see those rallies not altogether differently than a sermon at a megachurch. Their reach into politics stops at knowing who they’re told to attack and who they’re told to vote for by a man they elevate and believe he knows more than they do- That he is smarter than they are. My unexpected shift into becoming more vocal about my opposition to radical ideologues and the terrifying future they were vying to steal from those seated in the LGBTQ+ acronym was an almost unconscious transition. And I certainly had no idea it would land me on kill lists of hate sites or result in graphically written death threats, many of which were addressed to my dead name… My birth certificate name which I’d protected with tremendous vigilance and kept far separated from my own identity, never intermingling the past with the present. A name that had been revealed only in one place for a short period of time: Facebook. A quick search revealed that even though Facebook returned my name to that which I created my account under, they never changed any posts made by others in which I had been tagged or posts put on my wall which indelibly tied one name to the other and was now being weaponized against me by radical conservatives and trolls, which published all of my details, home address, names of estranged relatives I don’t speak to, encouraging others to doxx me and saying “If you live nearby, show ‘him’ what’s what” and “F*ck it til it bleeds.” I had no idea this was a common thing that happens to vocal transgender folks who speak. I’m certainly not alone, unfortunately. Some hate group keep us on frequently updated lists, post all public records scraped from courthouses and civic divisions such as property deeds or mug shots. Some of it is acquired from data sales sites where, for a mere five or ten dollars, you can search anyone’s identity and be provided a google map leading you directly to their front door. In America, it is completely legal. It is not legal in other countries, including the UK, which subscribes to the Data Privacy Act which required every single website that provides access to UK residents to update their privacy terms and restrict the data they collect from visitors originating from that country. Facebook provided a pathway that made me, as a user in good faith, to be vulnerable and required me to take lofty measures to increase my safety at home. While I understand I elected to speak out in a deeply contentious arena where I might be heard by an opposition force, an opinion, regardless of position, should never result in anyone being placed in harms way. An opinion is not provocation of violence. And Facebook should have never placed itself in a position of authority over my personal record or who has access to it and then absolve themselves of accountability for the consequences of their negligence.

https://phaylen.medium.com/how-facebook-outed-me-and-endangered-me-with-their-name-policy-56f7d405b0e

['Phaylen Fairchild']

2019-10-30 20:58:15.700000+00:00

['Facebook', 'Transgender', 'Social Media', 'LGBTQ', 'Equality']

We are all biased, so how can we make journalism more inclusive?

It’s time to accept newsroom diversity efforts have failed. Despite decades of making a case for more inclusion and representation in journalism, despite numerous dedicated studies and initiatives, most newsrooms are still not an accurate mirror of the society they seek to capture and inform. Wherever you look, the numbers are grim. In Germany, where the European Journalism Centre held its last News Impact Summit of 2019, one in four citizens have a migrant background, but only two to three per cent of journalists are from migrant families, according to one study. The journalism industry in the UK is 94% white and 86% university-educated. That minorities and people of colour cannot find themselves reflected in those writing the news naturally leads to trust in the media remaining low. This hits journalists where it hurts. It is difficult for newsrooms to cast themselves as champions of truth if they are so homogeneous. At a time when media companies are increasingly turning to subscription or membership models for revenue, it is unlikely that audiences will pay for content that neither represents them nor reflects their concerns. During our Summit in Munich, we went through the latest developments on this pressing challenge. Here are eight learnings from our discussions: 1.Become an ally for inclusion “I am not sure I am the right person to be up here,” noted Charlotte Haunhorst, the managing editor of JETZT, a young cross-media magazine by national newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ). Charlotte is what most people would see as quintessentially German, but recognises JETZT needs to reflect greater diversity. Based in Munich, Charlotte has made it one of her key goals, as a young woman in a legacy media organisation, to push for diversity outside the Berlin media bubble. Charlotte Haunhorst, the managing editor of JETZT, shares the strategies put in place in order to make the newsroom and the content of the magazine more diverse. “I guess sometimes you just need to be brave,” she said, explaining how JETZT decided to go against the tide and convinced management at SZ to take active steps toward inclusion. As a result, the magazine adopted more inclusive language and updated its content with a dedicated column for LGBTQI issues. Lara Joannides from the BBC showed what men can do to advance gender balance in the newsroom. Lara leads the 50:50 project, the BBC’s biggest collective initiative to increase female representation in its content. The project was actually created by a man, Ros Atkins, who during a four-hour drive listening to the BBC realised that only male voices had been on air. He got his team to monitor the number of women on air in order to produce more balanced stories. 2. The problem comes from the top Many journalists in Dutch newsrooms still turn their heads around when they see a female journalist with a headscarf entering the door, said Hadjar Benmiloud, creator of Vileine Academy. The platform started out as a feminist magazine until Hadjar realised that no matter how popular the content was, it was still hard getting funds to sustain the project. That is how Vileine became an academy to train aspiring female journalists. This approach is paying off as 80% of Vileine’s students have secured jobs in newsrooms. But Hadjar’s plans have also pivoted to consultancy and media partnerships. “Selling diverse talent is not enough. There is no diversity success without inclusive management,” she said. This is why Vileine Academy wants its collaboration with newsrooms to have a real purpose, not simply be seen as a PR stunt. “Newsrooms need to look at the top to see power imbalances, blind spots, and lack of feedback mechanisms that trickle down to the rest of the workplace,” she said. Yet, not all of them are ready for such introspection. Part of the problem is that diversity is simply not a priority. While some improvements have been made, such as ensuring diversity through paid internships or making editorial meetings more participatory, in most cases, top management continues to be overwhelmingly white, male and middle-aged. Edith Heitkämper, from non-profit ProQuote Medien, talks with Lara Joannides, who leads the BBC Project 50:50 and Marverine Cole, a journalist and lecturer at Birmingham City University on how to improve gender balance in the newsroom. 3. Data can drive diversity “We’re so used to seeing a dominance of men in the media that we actually think it’s balanced, but data is key to understanding the actual balance,” explained Lara Joannides from the BBC. The numbers provided by the 50:50 project were key to making other team managers understand how one-sided, and therefore, inaccurate, their reporting was due to the lack of women’s voices in the stories. And what role do women play in the decision-making process? In 100 regional newspapers in Germany, only 7.4 per cent of editors-in-chief are female, according to a study on gender distribution in leadership positions. Gender representation is one of the challenges of the wider issue of diversity. “Migrants are barely a respected audience in Germany, neither adequately represented in newsrooms or broadcasting councils,” confirmed Christine Horz, a researcher at the Institute of Media Studies at the Ruhr-University Bochum, who is currently running a study on the participation of people with migration backgrounds in German newsrooms. “There is a lack of awareness of the necessity of diversity in newsrooms. We need a top-down strategy, otherwise, it will not work. That is why we focus on raising awareness among chief editors and politicians,” said Christine, recalling that the media, public opinion, and policymaking all influence each other.

https://medium.com/we-are-the-european-journalism-centre/we-are-all-biased-so-how-can-we-make-journalism-more-inclusive-23c814833119

['Vera Penêda']

2019-12-19 13:02:49.689000+00:00

['Inclusion', 'Insights', 'Diversity', 'Journalism', 'Media']

When a big company slows you down

When a big company slows you down Changing your perspective can be the key Every step in my career was an increase in the size of the company. And whatever they may say… Size does matter. Big fish, little pond Just before I came to Jumbo, I came from a company roughly around the size of 175 people. We worked on the latest technologies. I was writing Typescript, Erlang and Python. We successfully did infrastructure as code with terraform and puppet, wrote masses of microservices which we ran on Kubernetes, were early adopters of Google Cloud Platform and used the majority of their services. From Bigquery, looker, and pubsub, to Kubernetes, compute and so much more. No shame in discovering the frontline of technology, learning what you didn’t know and getting it to production. And we were good at it as well! With a relatively small team we managed to have a really healthy operation balancing backlogs between functionals and non-functionals. I was part of a group of 3 to 4 hands-on software architects we dove in any issue that needed extra hands, in depth knowledge or restructuring. Whether it was the tech that needed some help, or teams. Either by request, or by discovered necessity. We got stuff done, we knew what we were doing, and we did it well. Bigger pond I was open for internal vacancies, so I decided that I should be open for external vacancies as well. I knew the recruiter that worked at Jumbo at that time and I decided to check in with him to see if there where some roles that might match with my profile. Now, I swore to myself that I wouldn’t do any E-Commerce anymore The odds where slim that I would join Jumbo to be honest. I’ve done a lot of e-commerce before and the area didn’t feel challenging anymore. Somehow though, one of my now very valued colleagues managed to reel me in. Why I joined This super kindhearted guy was sitting in front of me, looked me dead in the eye and said something along these lines: Now let me be perfectly honest with you. We have some serious challenges ahead. We desperately need help, there’s so much to improve and it’s hard to say where to start. Something in the back of my mind, right then, right there, started screaming: “TAKE THE DAMN JOB”. Huh, wait but why? He says they have serious challenges, and it’s e-comm. Computer says no! But what I felt was: this is a big company where I can learn I can really make a difference here This guy is so honest, there can be no mistake here, I know exactly what I sign up for and I love the challenge I can be at the spot where I want to be, between structural and technical changes and talking with people I was sold. This time to a company with 90k employees, of which 400 with a technical job. I knew it would be a different game, but I underestimated just how different. Honeymoon was over Three months in and something changed. I was full of ideas, but even more so: real life solutions that solve a lot of the issues that I saw there. I was able to tell people about them, but somehow I didn’t feel the ship steering. We questioned the mandate of the group. Questioned how decisions came to be. Questioned everything we could question. But one thing was certain. The honeymoon phase was over. Constantly doubting my own value in this situation took a toll. Ever since I’ve been an entrepreneur, I have a strong bond with money. I’m super aware that there are no trees that grow money, and back in the days of having my own company I’ve struggled more than once to pay rent. When I work, I need to feel comfortable with the hourly price someone pays me versus the value of change that I bring. And at that moment I felt getting nowhere fast. That tugged me down more than a bit. I’m also one of these guys (like many others), that attributes his personal value to his successes at work. Thus, when I didn’t feel valuable nor valued at work, I felt bad as a person as well. Talking about it I’m an open book. I have an extreme sense of justice. When I see something that I think needs change, you’ll hear it. I think negativity is poisonous and needs to be dealt with as soon as possible. You shouldn’t want to infect your peers with it. It’s your leaders that you should talk to. It wouldn’t be fair to do it otherwise. So I told one of my superiors that I felt so insignificant. That things are moving so slowly, that we could and should do way better and that I had the feeling that I wasn’t making any progress. I knew what to do, and somehow I didn’t feel I was able to make a change. I honestly thought of quitting, but not unless I’ve tried everything I could possibly do to make it work. She told me the following: Dear Tim. You are used to steer a speedboat. When you turn the rudder, you find yourself briefly with your face to the wall of the boat and before you know it you are on course again. But take a step back. You are on a transatlantic cargo ship here. Appreciate the size! Change the course of this ship, even if it where for 2%, and you’ve moved millions and millions worth of value into a different direction. I never looked at it this way. I was looking at it from a technical perspective and I completely underestimated how big organisations have a hard time to get accustomed to new technology or even make decisions. That realisation was one of the things I signed up for. You might even say that 400 technical people isn’t that many people to begin with, but imagine how big the cargo ship would be if it needed 400 employees. It’s not necessarily the amount of employees that resembles the scale, but the amount of water it displaces when it’s moving. I was so happy to gain new insights and learn about how this works. Later she also added: You know what the fun thing is with such a cargo-ship. You now know how hard it is to steer such a behemoth. So when you become certain that we are on the correct course, leave your fears behind. Because the odds of us turning back to doing something that doesn’t work are slim to none. Let that one sink in for a bit. To frame it in other words: you might not feel that you have the pace you would like to have, but the things you do get done are affecting people far beyond the line of sight and will last for far longer than you can think of. In it for the long haul Being in a company for the long haul, enables you to really build relationships and a product. What I do to stay sane is defining my goals very clearly. There are so many things that happen on a day to day basis, that it’s easy to lose the bigger picture. With every subject or project that I’m working on, I validate against those targets. I assess if it brings me closer to my goals. And I prioritise against the expectations I have of the likelihood of it actually happening. The more projects that I do in this way and order, the closer I get. I’m so proud on how far we’ve come, and how we are building up steam and picking up momentum. Nonetheless, I still have that feeling from time to time. But perseverance is rewarded. I’m now standing at the stern of the ship looking at the crest on the path the engines made, and I can super clearly see the path that we’ve made, the cargo we are hauling and the direction we are going.

https://medium.com/jumbo-tech-campus/when-a-big-company-slows-you-down-a959e6e54f78

['Tim Meeuwissen']

2020-07-06 13:38:13.838000+00:00

['Technology', 'Enterprise Technology', 'Leadership', 'Life Lessons']

Digital Clock in React

This is my first post. So please forgive me in advance. I never wrote anything before. Even in collage I copied and pasted assignments. So I’m trying to post a blog in a week. This post is a part of my #100daysofcode challenge. This is my second attempt. My first attempt last long for 10 days. I took this challenge to learn a new thing everyday. I will be focused on JavaScript, React and NodeJs. On day 1 of this challenge I build a React Application that shows current time. I know this is not much but I will try to make it harder. You can check out source code here. https://github.com/ChikoDish/react-clock live demo: https://chikodish.github.io/react-clock/ Please leave you valuable comments. Thank you.

https://medium.com/@chikodish/digital-clock-in-react-e3804d63c9f1

['Ankit Kumar Gupta']

2020-11-23 15:34:27.742000+00:00

['React', 'JavaScript', 'Reactjs', 'Javascript Development']

An Idiot, An Imposter & An Iconoclast

I am all three. Undeniably, unapologetically and deliberately so. And that’s made me a better educator. An Idiot: I am often the resident idiot in the room (or on the zoom call), because I need the things I hear/ learn to make sense. I need them to be uncomplicated and easy to understand. If the content doesn’t fit these two criteria I’m not afraid to ask repetitive questions till it does. I’m certainly not shy about being the idiot. I often find that when things are complicated, it’s because either the person explaining it doesn’t understand it fully themselves, or is telling you that you’re too stupid to understand so please leave it to them — A huge red flag. I need to be able to break down the things I learn into easily digestible bits that are readily remembered and effortlessly recalled. Because then, I can explain it to an 9 yr old. I also need to see the relevance of what I’m hearing/ learning, or it doesn’t interest me. I say this makes me a better educator because teens actually like learning the same way I do. Being an idiot also makes me stubborn, because I don’t know any better. So when people much smarter than I, felt that I should focus on financial education for adults because it’s an easier and a more lucrative market — I didn’t listen. I didn’t want to get people out of financial conundrums, I wanted to make sure these kids never got there in the first place. (The teens we teach agree). When they said, I should digitize all the content and switch solely to an asynchronous/ pre-recorded delivery because that’s more efficient and scalable — I didn’t listen. I thought it was important for the teens to interact with the facilitator in live webclasses, and for the facilitator to build rapport and trusting relationships with the teens in her care. (The teens we teach agree). When they said I should partner with financial institutions and let them market their products directly to the kids — I didn’t listen. I thought that would be particularly distasteful. We are intentional about not partnering with any financial entity that would require this. (The teens and their parents agree). All the above mentioned points would unequivocally attest to me being an idiot. I actually think there is immense value in being one. Everyone should try it sometime. An Imposter: I am not an academic. I do not hail from the hallowed halls of academia. So for the longest time I demurred to them, thinking that they knew what was best for everyone. Until I realized they don’t — not for everyone, not in all circumstances and certainly not on all issues. While they may have the best intentions, this does not always translate into doing what’s best for the student. So while I initially felt like an imposter, when starting the Kids Finance Initiative; I had looked long and hard into what was being taught around money, how it was being taught, and more importantly what was not being taught — and it didn’t smell right. I knew there had to be a better way. This was too critical an issue to leave to chance or experience, especially when I needed my own kids to acquire this skill soon. I couldn’t risk sitting and waiting silently on the sidelines, and academia is famous for its glacial pace of change. I was intrigued by what the entrepreneur Naveen Jain said: Your ignorance is what makes you the best person to disrupt the industry. That’s true because you can ask questions the experts can’t. You can think in ways the experts can’t because they are boxed in by their assumptions. You can break rules the experts won’t ever dare to. People from within the industry tend to tweak incrementally. I knew that incremental change wasn’t going to cut it. A radical make over was in order. I was also enough of an outsider to have no stake in the way things have always been done. I could tell the emperor that he’s not wearing any clothes. But I was sufficiently affected by the imposter syndrome to ensure that I relentlessly questioned my thinking and my ideas. I read and studied incessantly, because I was insecure about my competence and profoundly curious about what I didn’t know. I wanted to ensure that I was throughly prepared and better informed than anyone who could question my credentials. As Adam Grant says in his latest book, Think Again: Humility is a crucial ingredient of the mind. And I made sure I was dosing up regularly. Being afflicted with the imposter syndrome led me to underestimate my skill; but that was okay because it made me a more intent learner. Being afflicted with the imposted syndrome didn’t douse my vision, it genuinely served to inflame it. Being afflicted with the imposter syndrome wasn’t debilitating, it fueled my motivation to do better, to think better and to be better. That’s why I actually think there is immense value feeling like an imposter. Everyone should try it sometime. An Iconoclast: A fancy word for a rebel. Someone who criticizes cherished beliefs or institutions. I am guilty. Read on for some of the cherished beliefs I wish to obliterate. That teenagers are moody, irritable and disengaged because of hormonal changes. No, there really is no evidence to prove this, in most cases they are this way because of a lack of proper sleep and diet — both nutritional and psychological. That grown-ups always know better. No, most times we are flying by the seat of our pants and just hoping for the best. We really have no clue how things are going to turn out. That kids cannot be trusted. They absolutely can. As John Holt says, “Nothing could be simpler, or more difficult. Difficult because to trust children we must first learn to trust ourselves, and most of us were taught as kids that we could not be trusted.” That fear and coercion are the most effective ways to get kids to learn. That’s not just manifestly false, it’s actively damaging our kids and turning them off learning forever. That teaching kids about money will somehow ruin their innocence and make them materialistic. No, getting kids and teens to understand how money works actually makes them appreciate it more, makes them more mindful about money decisions and ultimately makes them more successful. I am an iconoclast because I now know better. I am an iconoclast because I believe that our kids and teens deserve better. I think there is immense value in being an iconoclast. Everyone should try it sometime.

https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/an-idiot-an-imposter-an-iconoclast-e9aac80bd7f2

['Marilyn Lydia Pinto']

2021-06-08 09:51:47.139000+00:00

['Imposter Syndrome', 'Parents', 'Teenagers', 'Education']

Lean Startups Fail

San Francisco, CA Wednesday, 24 July 2013 Lean Startups Fail Lean Startups fail for these 3 reasons, but they didn’t tell you in the book (or at some conference) Most founders and their startup ideas are great; those that I’ve seen fail, don’t fail because they are building a product nobody wants, they fail for three very different reasons — all of which are preventable, none of which have to do with iterating, pivoting, or “MVPs”. I just realized something today. It’s been right in front of me for so long, I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. On the ride home last night, my Uber driver blew me away with his startup idea. Hang on. If I think a random person’s idea could work, then either I am going crazy, or my standards aren’t high enough, right? Or, of course, there’s a logical possibility that I am not crazy, and my standards are high enough, and that it can work. And that not only it can work, but we are living in a world so awash with opportunity, that there are so many well-conceived ideas addressing real problems with smart models, and that most of them canactually succeed. If that’s true, then why is it that, per common knowledge,“most startups fail”? The entire Lean Startup school of thought is based on the premise that most startups fail because they build products that nobody wants. That’s not at all what I’m observing. Over the last two years in Silicon Valley, I’ve built relationships with the CEOs of just under 100 startups with seed funding of at least $500K or more. In total, their companies have raised over $1.18B in venture funding. (I know, right? Crazy. I didn’t even realize this until I made a list this last weekend and counted. Go figure: it follows a power law.) Also, as a friend (or in some cases, as an advisor), I am currently tracking over 50 startups that are actively raising seed funding. This should be an adequate data set to test this premise against. Let’s ask some questions, like: Question #1 What percentage of these startups have “bad” ideas, in my opinion? … Ones I find stupid, or just don’t get? That I just can’t see consumers, users, or customers “getting” or paying for? Observation: Almost categorically, my answer is ‘no.’ About 80% of the funded companies and 30% of the pre-seed entrepreneurs pass the bar for me (after some tweaking, easily another 30% are salvageable, or even big, ideas — usually the problem is a real problem, the model is wrong). The “bar” being that : A) the idea is exciting to me, B) a priori, I believe that if properly executed, they will work, they will create value, there is a business that should exist here, and C) I believe in the founders and their ability to execute. That’s way higher than the cliché “99% of startups fail” (or the ‘majority’ and‘most’ variants of that statement). Help me! I am drowning in great entrepreneurs with great ideas. All of these have so much potential. I would give them money; along with some advice on getting to the next stage. Question #2 Are the startups that pass the bar for you successfully, raising seed money, at good terms, quickly? Observation: Again, almost categorically: no; in fact, I am observing just the opposite. Great entrepreneurs with great ideas and reasonable indicators (team, product, traction, etc.) that they will indeed be able to execute against their milestones, are spending large amounts of time, energy and ingenuity struggling to raise money, and when they do raise, the terms are often poorer, and the amounts, smaller, than would seem appropriate. Except in rare cases, this is not a seller’s market for equity. It’s a buyer’s market. If you’re a seed investor, you’re getting opportunities to set (or participate at) incredible, sometimes ludicrous, terms for companies that, under previous market conditions, would’ve been foregone opportunities, institutionally backed, and onto the next stage by now. Anecdotally, one founder I know who recently left a cushy, well-compensated job at a big tech company to start a company. He has been raising for a couple months and just got a lead for his first round. The post-money valuation, get this, is $1M. This is with A) a working product, B) a space with many potential acquirers, C) solves a problem that makes sense, that most potential users have, and D) two engineers and a designer. To me, this is shocking, angering, and just plain exploitative. But it is also stupid. Its stupid because it doesn’t position the company well at all for future rounds, or big exits. It’s bad signal. Enough capital raised on bad terms gives the entrepreneur a reason to sell pre-mature.It’s acting out of knee-jerk risk aversion. I am not observing healthy risk-taking behavior. I am observing both irrationally aggressive and overly cautious bets; some of the former, many of the latter, and very few in between. Question #3 Supposing one startup’s idea is relatively more exciting than its peers, is it more likely to raise money, at better terms, more quickly? Observation: No, unfortunately not. Again, the opposite, in some cases. A lot of the good, but no brainer, ideas raise money more easily than the complicated, ambitious, hard to execute, but truly fantastic ideas — the world changing ones. That’s a shame. Peter Thiel is adamant about working on “hard problems”. I admire that stand. It’s truly inspiring to hear such a prominent venture capitalist say that. But there’s a reason why he’s Peter Thiel, and Partner X at Y firm is Partner X at Y firm. Because partner X at Y firm will give you funding for your boring, no-brainer idea, because it is easier for him to wrap his head around it, and imagine it, because it is just a small step forward. It is closer to the world today. Question #4 Do these problems persist after the seed stage? Observation: Thankfully, no they do not. Once a startup has cleared the Series A hurdle, the success rate seems, from where I sit, to be very high. The outcomes, of course, are power-law distributed; but they seem to mostly be “in the money” for their investors. This accentuates the consequences of the #3 problem, above. If, in any cohort of startups that “pass the bar”, the startups with the qualitatively superior ideas experience more difficulty fundraising because they are inherently more aggressive vis-a-vis the status quo, then less of them will get to Series A, and realize their larger potential. When returns are governed by the power law, this is a disaster. All successful ideas are not created equal. One turns every $1 invested into a $20,000 outcome (Facebook for Peter), or 2,000X, or 200X, or 20X, or 2X. They’re all profitable. They are not all equal. I don’t know how I missed the memo. Geez, when I showed up, they told me that Venture Capital was all about avoiding Type 2 errors, with high tolerance for Type 1 errors. Wasn’t the attitude supposed to be: Okay guys, here’s the deal. Only one bet has to work to return the fund. So go out and make lots of crazy bets. It’s okay if most fail. What we can’t tolerate is making lots of reasonable, but safe, bets, none of which, nor all of which, summed together, return the fund; while one, some company we never met, or met with and passed, because it was too crazy, either gets scooped up by another firm and turned into the next Google, or experiences stunted growth because it never got the funding it needed, therefore never turning in to what it could have (imagine Larry and Sergey bootstrapping), or just dies entirely, because it can’t raise enough capital to test its hypothesis. That would be the disaster. Make sure that doesn’t happen. Leave no stone unturned. Go forth and invest. That’s what I thought the plan was. Boy, was I wrong. Instead, I have sat across the table from one MBA ex-banker after another (sorry, MBA ex- banker friends!) asking for models: financial models and comparables. I have been asked to cite research papers. When I do provide models or reference research in psychology, the numbers are too aggressive and the theory ‘sounds nice’, but please, prove it. “Let me get back to you after I talk with my partners.” Group think. How about some decisiveness and independent thought? Is your model really set up to expect that 10 people will unanimous decide to make contrarian bets, and win? Show us your numbers! Your numbers, please! Just give us your username and password for Mixpanel, please, and leave us to it. We’ll crunch the analytics for you, for free. (Data, data, yum, yum.) Thank you! “Come back to us when…” Lots of please and thank you, actually. Surprisingly polite industry, really. Nobody tells you no. Everybody acts like your friend. They are afraid that there’s some universe in which you turn into Mark Zuckerberg, and they loose their job because they pissed you off, so you turned down their deal when the time came, and as a result they don’t return the fund, and they are fired, and left out in the cold, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. How about some good, old-fashioned straight talk? It would help entrepreneurs to say exactly what you think and why, instead of trying to read all the subtlety and tea leaves. It’s the least they deserve. Not that there’s not enough VC>entrepreneur advice! Goodness, there’s so much of it. It’s just mostly wrong or not useful. Frankly. With some important exceptions, and those are the people you end up taking money from, because you respect them when they say no. Because they have a respectable reason. Maybe a reason you disagree with and prove wrong. It sure has taken me long enough, but now I, finally, have the clarity of knowing the game I am playing. It’s called momentum. Show them a graph of active users or dollars with, not just growth, but growth in the rate of growth, sustained for at least 3 months, and you are in control. Then, the tables turn. You have leverage. They come to you. They start bidding and you play the auction, watching the price go up. Fuck you, pay me. Zuck’s business card: “I’m CEO, bitch.” That’s the infamous Steve Jobs attitude too. I’d pay to see that and cheer from the peanut gallery. Especially for entrepreneurs in their early to mid 20s, it’s very, very hard to A) understand power dynamics, then get into a position of power, B) leverage that power in a negotiation, and C) not feel like a fish out of water, or an asshole, doing it, because you’ve spent your whole life being respectful to adults and generally speaking, a pleaser. Question #5 Are there any distinguishing factors that the founding teams of successful companies have that set them apart? Observation: There’s this myth that makes every entrepreneur insecure: you need a designer and an engineer as co-founders, and an amazing team, and a fully built product, and users, and revenue, and growth in the rate of growth, to raise money. By the time you’re done doing the things VCs tell you to “come back to me with”, you’ll have IPOd. Then there’s the cult of the engineer. Engineers are the only talent that matters, etc. That’s so wrong. Of course they are hugely important. But they are only part of the product development piece (the right designer also adds non-linear value). But even if you have the right designer and the right engineer and they are iterating towards building the right product (the one that everybody wants), there is no guarantee that they actually cross the finish line without a very different skill set on the founding team. The under-appreciated but absolutely necessary role to fill for a startup to succeed is someone in “the business role”. And not just anyone. But either someone who is good at it, or someone who can learn fast. Like, really, really fucking fast. If that’s you, and this is your first rodeo, like it is mine, then YOU are your company’s first scaling problem. The company is maturing at an accelerating pace (even before you’ve launched, this is true, it is just harder to measure) — are you? How well do you understand the problems you are facing? Do you have blind spots? What are your unknown unknowns? What’s your strategy? What’s your vision? What’s your plan? How are you going to execute on this? Is that the best way? Are your assumptions as sound as they can be, before actually testing them? How organized are you? The startups I’ve seen succeed, before my very eyes: Path, Square, Uber, The Climate Corporation, and most recently, Outbox. Behind every Dave Morin there’s a Matt Van Horn. He was also one of co-founders of Zimride, also known, more recently as Lyft. Matt is a company-builder. One of the best. Path’s trajectory is well managed. I am sure he has a lot to do with that. I’ve never met Jack Dorsey. But he’s already a legend. Do you know what, in my opinion, his differentiating strength is? I was in a cab once, trying to poach one of his engineers. I did my best. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get him. He was so loyal to Jack; so bullish on Square. They were already a big company with a hundred plus employees, so his equity, in percentage terms, wasn’t significant. I pressed him on it: ‘Why?! What’s so important about Square to you? Do you know what he told me? He said that the thing he wakes up in the morning for, the thing that inspires him to do great work, is that Jack is willing to crash and burn playing a $100B game, even it means throwing away a sure win for $10B. Jack is playing a bigger game. He’s got a Sean Parker state of mind. Uber is the most talked about startup these days. I don’t know if Travis remembers. I was on stage with him once in Berlin. We chatted in the green room. I was impressed. Impressed by the same traits above: he’s got a huge, strong, confident personality. He’s aggressive. I like the way it comes off, though. His super-verbal and non-verbal communication says, loud and clear: I knew this idea would change the world, and it has been, and I have seen its power in the flesh, as I have watched it, and helped it spread, as I have conquered, as its agent, one city at a time, and I am still conquering, and there is so much left to conquer, and I’m sorry, you can’t stop me, because you can’t stop it — it’s too late for that. Get ready for your personal private driver. Transportation will never be the same again. Dave Freiberg’s mind is so sharp, he’s one of the funniest guys I know. Always cracking jokes. Always has the line. He’s the CEO of The Climate Corporation, which falls into the category of “biggest company you’ve never heard of”. They sell weather insurance to farmers, of all things. Doesn’t sound like a tech company, does it? Their backers: Khosla, Google, and Founders Fund — and others. Peter Thiel — there he is again! Although, this time, he wasn’t the first investor. There are lots of reasons why Climate succeeded. They did a great job iterating and doing customer development (yay! lean startup! oops, this was before that was a thing.) in the beginning, until they honed in on the business model they have now, and then went deep on the tech around it. But, what the Lean Startup wouldn’t have told him, and his amazing co-founder Siraj, even if he had read it, was how to survive and persevere. It took years — years! — for them to get “there”, to the point where they, and every VC in the valley, could look at the model and see the magic numbers. I’m not sure if the company is profitable yet, because the model requires scale and the company has focused on growth — but it sure as hell will. How did Climate survive? How was he able to navigate that story, and keep raising money, without being completely annihilated by dilution? Dave learned that on the Corporate Development team at Google. That’s right. Buying companies left and right in the early days. Brett and Scott Crosby’s company, Urchin, for example, which became Google Analytics. He “gets” deals, and the psychology and needs behind them. He can structure them in his sleep. As a salesman, as a businessman, he came into the entrepreneurial journey with a training, a level of intuition and experience, that he has honed further until the point where it is effortless muscle memory. He’s a storyteller. It is beautiful to watch. Especially at weddings. Evan Baehr and Will Davis are the co-founders of Outbox. Neither of them is an engineer. They have a great team behind them. They are excellent leaders and great recruiters and great at execution and great at everything. Their differentiating skill-set, again — is that they know how to build, and finance, a business. When they decided they didn’t have time to wait around for Sand Hill Road VCs, they decided to play a different game, and they raised $5M on AngelList for their Series A round. Next time, everybody knows that they aren’t bluffing when they walk into the meeting and say, “Hey guys, we need to get this deal done by next Friday, because we need to move on to the next thing.” The “Super Advisor” and the “Company Builder” are two roles that every startup needs to rise to stratospheric heights. Sean Parker. Sean Parker doesn’t get nearly enough credit. But that’s okay, because his shares gave him plenty. With Facebook, Sean Parker was a joiner. Not a starter, a joiner. Then he did it again with Spotify. What a genius. There aren’t enough Sean Parkers in Silicon Valley. We need more of them. And we need them desperately. Think about the critical role he played in the company in those early days. A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A billion dollars. How about one hundred billion, Sean? When you have someone who thinks like he thinks, that person will not only raise your expectations, but through their coaching, you may outperform their already high expectations by as much as 100-fold. That’s how powerful this role is. The game you are playing is probably the wrong game to play. Play a bigger game. Raise the stakes. Open up the field. Founders need balancing forces to compensate for their weaknesses, but they also need accelerating forces to fortify their courage, vision and strategy. Startups have lots of scaling problems. This is the most important one: SCALE YOUR AMBITION. The talent of a Sean Parker figure is in seeing a big idea in a small idea. Or seeing a bigger idea in a big idea. Or a huge idea in a bigger idea. Or a “holy shit this will change everything about the world, forever, OMFG!” huge idea in a “this is going to be huge” idea. God, do we need more Sean Parkers. Like a parched throat of an exhausted pilgrim crossing the Sahara, needs water — we, founders, need more Sean Parkers. Some founders need more help with this than others. Although we can do a great deal of this for our own thinking, we need someone else; someone who is invested; someone who doesn’t need you because he is surrounded by plenty of very attractive alternatives to spend his time, energy and ingenuity on other than on coaching this startup, so isn’t incentivized to play you like a call option, like the investment bankers and VCs, yet he clears his schedule for you, and takes risks for you anyways; someone who believes in your idea almost as much, or more, than you do, but who understands that the idea — not the 15 second pitch, but the endless labyrinth of inter-related sub-problems and sub-solutions — is in your head, not his; someone who has some credibility and experience, and ideally, a powerful and responsive network — the kind that not only knows that Peter Thiel is the most likely person to make this bet, and the only person you need to get a meeting with, and who not only knows this, but has the relationship and can get you that meeting before Friday — and a strategic mind — to know how to price the deal, how to re-structure, who to get involved — to give us permission to dream big and do bigger. That’s how you get your seed round. That role, in that instance, was worth 4%. Or $2B. Equity well spent. (We are hiring Sean Parkers at Everest. You? Pitch me. Oh, by the way, how did Sean find out about Facebook before everyone else? All the VCs, etc? He noticed the college kids, specifically women, using it. Well, guess what: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/07/17/five-apps-for-college-grads/.) Then there’s your A round. When you need Matt Cohler. Matt’s a dude at Benchmark. So he’s a VC now. I’ve never met him, but I already know he’s the kind you can respect, because that’s true by definition: he’s been on your side of the table and won. I found it enlightening to read, in his own words, about the early role he played at LinkedIn and Facebook. He was basically their in-house VC. Matt’s not just good, he’s self-aware. He’s able to articulate, in two short paragraphs, a hugely valuable insight. Key insight: the startups that succeed are GREAT at corporate development. Corporate development — or as Matt puts it “company-building”, as distinct from “product-building” or “business-building” — is a role that is not native to most founding teams. And what is not native must be imported. So either grow or import great — no, not great — excellent corporate development into your startup as soon as possible. You need help. Not just more engineers. You need help grooming the company to be investable. You need help timing, coordinating, and orchestrating your late seed bridge rounds, if you need any, and all subsequent rounds. You need to be on a trajectory, and let that trajectory pace you, and let not heaven or earth stand in the way of you and whatever you need to stay on track. Move mountains. Warp space and time. You have a scaling problem? You need a growth hacker? A data scientist? Throw cash, and if you don’t have cash, throw shares at anyone you need. Fire, ready, aim. Don’t hesitate. He who hesitates is lost. The universe rewards speed. And it rewards strategists. A Matt Cohler will speed you, and everyone on your team, up. Give them a whip and the permission to use it. They are like the physical trainer to your athlete. “Plan all the way to the end” — Sun Tzu. “Battles are won before they are fought” — also, Sun Tzu. Read it. It takes four hours to read, and a lifetime to understand and put into practice. But you don’t have a lifetime. You have the lifetime of your startup. So start now. He got .8%. Or $680M. So, so worth it. (We are hiring Matt Cohlers at Everest. You? Pitch me.) How Snapchat turned the tables Power dynamics play themselves out. It’s not personal, it’s business. In other words: Either you winning, or they are. The only way to win in this valley is to beat the VCs at their own game. Ironically, that’s what they want, too. Really? Yes. As the venture capital industry has matured, the large firms have all become more comfortable investing after there is a “real business” (i.e. a working model for growth in place). I don’t see many taking many real risk bets in the consumer web or mobile software, for example. Fund sizes are into the billions now, so they can afford to pay a higher price for companies that do manage to cross the chasm. Here’s a story about how a startup turned the tables on them. Snapchat. It wasn’t that long ago I was sitting on the rooftop deck of their Venice Beach office with Evan, their CEO. That was five months or so ago. Progress is so non-linear. I’ve been shaking my head, amazed at how much has happened for that company since then. Amazed that it happened at all. Now, in retrospect, everyone is coming up with really brilliant explanations for why it makes sense, and why the product is genius. But how many saw it at the time? Lots of VCs passed on the deal. They talk about it now, because now they’re pissed. One I know who had conviction on the deal and begged his partners not to pass, ended up getting promoted after the fact. In retrospect, I can imagine how Evan’s style and tone worked to his advantage in raising this round. He’s the sort that makes you feel kinda stupid if you don’t get it, and might just walk out of the meeting. Given the sort of leverage his numbers gave him, basically the perfect negative-seller. Basically: “I don’t need you, you need me. What you have (money to invest), I can get anywhere. What I have (the next big thing), you can’t get anywhere. I may let you have it, if you do exactly what I want. Now listen carefully. The terms are… and the price is…” That takes balls, and I respect that ability. Admittedly, in retrospect. Furthermore, there was ZERO a priori (i.e. on its face, before you build it, does it make sense?) reason why Snapchat makes sense. I can’t imagine Evan selling this, as an idea, to a bunch of 40, 50, and 60 year old VC partners on Sand Hill Road. No way they’d get it. They came to him. What human need is it solving? Alright, in retrospect, there are reasons. There always are. The best explanation I’ve heard is that people share more if you take away the consequences. That may sound obvious, but it’s a very subtle insight, and it’s just one of many insights that went into the success of the app. When I asked Evan for the story of how and why they built the product, he talked about how they would do stuff like build something, showed it to RANDOM people — like homeless people — and watched them use it, with no explanation or guidance. Then they would ask questions, gain some insight, and iterate. For example, one insight I remember him remarking on was speed. People would move on from the app if it wasn’t lightning fast. So they invested really heavily into making it even faster than texting. Okay, yes, that’s lean startup-y, in theory, but it was a long time before they had something that people really wanted to use, and the progress, was again, non-linear. What if, like Edison, it doesn’t work 99 times. Does Lean Startup give you any reason to try the 100th time? No, pivot. It’s not working. Try a different idea. So, why do startups fail? We began with the Lean Startup premise that most startups die preventable deaths because they build products that people don’t actually want. Acknowledging the limits of my observational power, 2 years of experience, and ~150 startups, I asked myself, honestly, a series of questions, beginning with this: What percentage of these startups have “bad” ideas, in my opinion? Ones I find stupid, or just don’t get? That I just can’t see consumers, users, or customers “getting” or paying for? I set “the bar”: A) the idea is exciting to me, B) a priori, I believe that if properly executed, they will work, they will create value, there is a business that should exist here, and C) I believe in the founders and their ability to execute. Then realized that even while a high percentage of startups “should succeed” by this logic, they don’t, and it is NOT because they aren’t properly implementing lean startup tactics. Looking back over all my own experiences and conversations with fellow entrepreneurs talking about their problems, I am absolutely convinced that it is because most founding teams lack certain skill sets. These skill sets are the differentiators between those who succeed in getting to their A round, and seeing their idea’s potential fully tested and realized, and those that never cross the chasm. These skill sets can either be learned or imported, in varying degrees. Startups do not fail because they build products that nobody wants. In fact, the most successful startup in my data set built a product that, apparently, everybody wants, but nobody realized they wanted, until all of their friends were on it. Maybe that’s an insight in and of itself. No, that’s not why at all. Startups fail for three very different reasons: The founder is not playing a big enough game, does not have enough conviction, is not confident enough in how BIG his idea is, and is not aggressive enough in execution, ends up quitting too early because he doesn’t have enough money to pay rent and groceries. Needs a Sean Parker. The founder does not understand how to do company building and fundraising. Needs a Matt Cohler. There is a capital markets problem (opportunity!) and there is not enough risk capital available. How to Turn #3 — The Capital Markets Problem — into a massive opportunity I’m about as capitalist as it gets: shameless, hard-core, libertarian, entrepreneur. So when I see a problem, I don’t like to whine. I like to understand it, then identify the opportunity that it presents. As Tina Seelig at Stanford has in her office: The bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity. Amen, baby. I am happy to be the Sean Parker to anyone who wants to set up a VC fund that addresses the following problem/opportunity by playing the following strategy: What is the capital markets problem? — In the 90s, VCs used to do the risky seed deals — In the 2000s, the more wins, the more angels — Costs came down, you could launch for $500K and then build an investable model and momentum with another $1M or so — Then angels came in, en masse, because they could do that — Super angels dominated — Then the super angels raised funds on their reputation to have more capital to keep doing the same thing, while spreading out their risk a little bit — Then the funds dominated, and they raised bigger funds… WAY bigger funds. — Then their fund economics forced them to move later stage to deploy capital. — Without their super angels to think for them and lead them, there are very few angels left who are “smart money”. Most of them have invested in Everest :-) — Then mobile was invented — Mobile was more expensive than web. It costs $1-$1.5M to build a high-production quality mobile app, and it has less features, and you are fighting for smaller chunks of consumers attention on a smaller screen, and the code is lower-level, you’re speaking directly to the device, so it is more brittle, testing and analytics frameworks are still not caught up, iteration cycles and distribution are different, blah blah blah. — Then it costs another $1–1.5M to get to an investable model. — There wasn’t a bunch of wins for a while and angels got burned.Therefore, the stigma that it is hard to make money on mobile. — The only people who made money on mobile investments were infrastructure plays (Tapjoy, Kiip, etc.) or red-swan one-offs, like Instagram and Snapchat. Neither of which is structured as a true company or platform. Both as large, expensive acquisitions. With mobile there is no second place. You are either crazy-crazy blowing up, or you’re not. — Because so many angels came in to do all the seed deals, and now all the angels are burned out, and party-rounds suck, and the VCs aren’t set up to step in any more, who is KILLING IT? — Seed funds. First Round. True Ventures. All these guys. — In the past, you used to sell 25% of your company in the Series A and maybe 10% in seed. These days, their median deal is a $1.1M the company for 22.5% of the company. That’s roughly a $4M pre, I think. — Yeah, and guess what else? That CREATES smaller companies, why? Because their funds are small, that’s why they can write small checks. They only need a $100M exit to return the fund. So they will pressure you to sell. They will do the OPPOSITE of Sean Parker and Matt Cohler. They will be on your board, every month, moving you towards a stable, steady company exit. In fact, True Ventures likes to take all three of your first three rounds. Control! — Who is coming to save the day? The Bullpen Capitals and Venture51s of the world. These weird micro-VCs that help bridge late stage seed companies post angel round. But that’s not the long term answer either. — Entrepreneurs aren’t waiting for the capital markets to fix themselves, they are removing the possibility of defeat by pushing for break even. The old shibboleth of “just focus on growth and revenue will work itself out later” doesn’t work when the capital markets can’t recognize big ideas in the absence of business founders being there to sell it. What is the solution? Just go back to the original model, and set up a VC firm, except with two funds: one for seed and one for A. Almost like Andreesen, except Andreesen’s seed fund is basically an angel investor spraying and praying $100K for access to data and engineers and relationships and dealflow. That’s cool, but that’s not what I’m talking about, and that’s not even how they’re making money. I’m taking about a seed fund making $1–3M seed bets, but connected to an A fund making $5M-$10M A bets. This fund should be thesis driven and provide every startup it passes on with real reasons why it won’t invest AND if there is any hope, a benchmark upon which it WILL invest, so there is not a moving goal post. (As for which theses to invest in, you have to pay me. Or just keep reading everything I write. But then the ideas are in my head, not your fund. I’ll take 4% carry on all deals I send you. That’s my price.) Simple. But it will work. And by the way, when everyone is getting out of a space, like mobile or consumer or network — that’s obviously the time to go in. The capital markets problem is a big problem and a big opportunity. There is a practically infinite amount of liquidity in the world, so I am not saying that there is not enough capital. I am saying that there’s a structural problem that is preventing that capital from flowing efficiently to the people who are best positioned to give it a return and create the ecosystem that makes everyone rich. From my observations over the last two years on the ground, there is a massive shortage of concentrated seed capital in the “up to $3M range”, and the capital that does exist, is super risk averse, or super price sensitive, or not very thesis driven/smart — or some combination. The good news is, that, and I think this is the over-riding insight that made me happy and made me want to write this post, because it is so wonderful and so freeing, once you internalize it (Rejoice! Rejoice!): There may be shortage of capital flowing to the right startups, but there is not a shortage of ways to create massive value in the world, and create things that should be created. When I think about my friends who are entrepreneurs, and their beautiful startup ideas and amazing teams, there is no non-preventable reason for a high percentage them to fail. Many, many of them are BIG ideas. We are right to be excited. We don’t need to be skeptical and doubt our own excitement just because we know it’s not likely to work. It IS likely to work. We just need to get better at building businesses. We need to learn the business side fast. We need to import a super advisor and a corporate developer. We need someone reinforcing to us how huge this idea is, and raising our game, and someone guiding us along the narrow path. I will quote Peter Thiel quoting Tolkien: Still round the corner there may wait A new road or a secret gate, And though we pass them by today, Tomorrow we may come this way And take the hidden paths that run Towards the Moon or to the Sun. “The road isn’t infinite. It’s possible that, just around the corner, there’s a secret gate leading to a secret road. Take the hidden paths.” Oh, and one more time, the Lean Startup is wrong. Read the quote below. If that doesn’t strike you as so, deeply wrong, wrong, wrong, prima facie, I don’t know what will: Ries claims that despite the many proximate causes for failure, the most important mistake was that the company’s “vision was almost too concrete,” making it impossible to see that their product did not accurately represent consumer demand. Join the mutiny The age of the Lean Startup is over. The age of the Visionary Startup is here. If you’re interested in joining the mutiny, jump ship. Drink up me hearties, yo ho. Steve Jobs flew the Jolly Roger over the Mac division. Entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs. Us against the establishment, the bureaucrats, the suits. Welcome to our brave new world.

https://medium.com/francis-pedraza/lean-startups-fail-2e07091f7e1f

['Francis Pedraza']

2017-11-05 21:18:51.854000+00:00

['Philosophy', 'Venture Capital', 'Startup', 'Lean Startup', 'Technology']

OFFERS AT ONLINE CASINOS ARE OF GREAT HELP

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https://medium.com/@hallmarkcasinos/offers-at-online-casinos-are-of-great-help-49fcb76577b

['Hallmark Casino']

2021-12-20 04:10:28.889000+00:00

['Games', 'Hallmark Casino', 'Online', 'Casino']

F#, Back-End, and Thread-Safe Data Collection using MailboxProcessor

(F# Advent Calendar 2020: https://sergeytihon.com/2020/10/22/f-advent-calendar-in-english-2020/). Thanks to Sergey Tihon for organizing it again this year and to all participants for their early X’mas gifts! Objective Web Development using F# is now pretty common, well documented and represents a fast way to develop both Front and Back end using a functional-first approach. Using .NET 5 (the latest and now only .NET branch) and ASP.NET, supplemented by either Giraffe, Suave or Saturn is the approach used by the SAFE Stack (https://safe-stack.github.io/). During my first experience with it, I had to think of a proper way to implement, at the back-end level, a thread safe collection to contain data, configuration etc… It is clear that I also needed to implement additional functionalities such as retrieving data from a database, saving new data to a database, logging operations (and its potential errors due to the I/O functions…). That is where I have decided to use Dependency Injection and so I had to build a way to achieve, in a thread-safe manner the goals fixed before. Mailbox Processor, simplified message/actor framework Mailbox Processor is a native feature of F# which consists of an agent, receiving strongly-typed messages, stores them into its own queue/inbox and processes them one at a time. It can be seen as a simplified model from the Akka library (Scala/Java) and its equivalent Akka.NET for .NET. The communication can be bi-directional (equivalent to the Tell / Ask offered by the Akka framework). Let’s implement a simple printfn example without keeping a state in between message processing. As you can see on line #4, we enforce messages to be of the type string. We then create a recursive function returning an Async<unit>. The function is not able to directly return something else that unit. We will later see how we can reply to messages but first, let’s see how we can keep a thread-safe state. This time, our recursive function takes a parameter (for the first call of the function, we are passing an empty string list) and after processing a message (still being a string), will add it up as head of our list. Let’s now use a more complex message type which will allow us more advanced functionalities within our MailboxProcessor. F# offers us a perfect way to model this using Discriminated Union (DU) types (called as well Sum types). As well as making the model of our message type very easy to represent, they are perfect when we need to pattern-match (and any modern IDE would even let you know that not all cases are covered — or at worst at compile time with a warning, perfect for not forgetting any case) We are now using a more complex message time that let us operate more complex actions on our MailboxProcessor. AsyncReplyChannel<’T> is the way to do a PostAndReply (equivalent to a Ask in Akka). It also has its Async version, PostAndAsyncReply. We define here the type of the returned answer, int for the number of elements, and a list of string for all the elements. RemoveAllElements does not return anything as since the function is pure (no side effect), there is no need to return anything. Let’s now look at the implementation of the MailBoxProcessor taking our new Message type. Executing now a list of Post / PostAndReply shows you messages are processed one at a time and in the order of arrival. Defining MailboxProcessor as a class It is often useful to define a class containing our MailboxProcessor and methods to access it in a more transparent way (instead of having to Post / PostAndReply one of the case of our DU Message. This time, we will use .NET generics and instead of using a list to contain our ‘T elements, we will use a Set. A Set is an immutable data collection from the F# core library which contains only unique elements. That is why, to use it, you need to make sure that your type ‘T implements IComparable. For “basic” types (string, int, float …) there is no need to implement it (and same for F# Record types using these basic types) but it may be the case for more complex data types. Here, for demonstration, I have used the type string but we could consider something more complicated. Using a MailboxProcessor within our Back-end Now that we have seen how we could use a MailboxProcessor to keep a thread-safe, let’s adapt it to mimic the following process: A class containing all of our MailboxProcessor Possibility to load data into them at the start-up Possibility to know if the initial loading process has been executed For #3, we will now use a new Discriminated Union to reflect the current state of our MailboxProcessor. We will also now return a Result<’T, ‘TError> type to reflect the current state. Doing so will also us to manage in a functional way situations such as: Data were not loaded, Error during the loading of the data (as you may use non pure functions such as those reading databases. files etc…), data were unloaded etc… Let’s look at our new type to define the state of our MailboxProcessor. Instead of just being a Set<’T>, we have now a more expressive way to describe the current state of our MailboxProcessor. We are also adding a DU for the ‘TError type returned in the Result<’T,’TError>. we are now using a slightly more complex Message type. Async<Result<Set<’T>, exn>> is here a way to represent an Async job to be run within our MailboxProcessor in order to fetch the initial Data. It can represent anything. We could have also decided to initialize our Class with an original data set (not not ideal as you may want to wait before initializing data into your MailboxProcessor). This Async job may result in a failure reflected by the use of Railway Oriented Programming and the Result<’T,’TError> type. Let’s implement our revised MailboxProcessor. We have now implemented, using pattern-matching on the tuple (Message, State) all possibilities. We have also added methods to simplify the usage of our MailboxProcessor. Let’s now check what we get. We will first define a simple record Name which will get structural equality by default and then will not require us to implement IComparable. We define as well a value name1 as well as an Async job simulating an operation to get initial data (be it a database query, API query etc… By default these operations are not pure then a Result type and are asynchronous). Running a few tests in F# Interactive returns us the expected results: I have decided to use PostAndAsyncResult to return an Async operation. This offers us more freedom on how we want to get our result. Dependency Injection Now that we have defined, using MailboxProcessor, a thread-safe way to share data within our back-end, we just have to “add” a singleton service into our IServiceCollection. Conclusion This is just one of the many way to deal with Data collection in a thread-safe way on your back-end. For example, .NET offers you most of the collections available in a thread-safe way using lock. You may want to check https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/collections/thread-safe/ However, I do like the MailboxProcessor approach as it is by nature thread-safe (one message processed at a time) and very F# idiomatic. This is also a way, for those not familiar with MailboxProcessor to see what it can offer. This article lets a lot of things on the side and is just a very simplified example of Dependency Injection. As always, comments, corrections and questions are welcome. This article was published for the F# Advent Calendar 2020 (in English), more information here: https://sergeytihon.com/2020/10/22/f-advent-calendar-in-english-2020/

https://medium.com/@joffreydalet/f-back-end-and-thread-safe-data-collection-using-mailboxprocessor-7789839e1814

['Joffrey D']

2020-12-20 09:41:09.684000+00:00

['Dotnet', 'Fsharp', 'Functional Programming']

Top 10 Places To Live In Puerto Rico for 2021

So many times we want to start anew in a new place with a blank slate. Over my career as a REALTOR® specializing in Relocation to Puerto Rico, I have helped many clients who have reached out to me about moving to my beautiful country Puerto Rico. The first step to finding your dream home is to know the type of lifestyle you wish to have. Quite or Busy? Mountains or Beach Town? Active or Sedentary? All of these questions are answered with my Top 10 Picks for 2021: 1. Condado, San Juan PR Aerial View of Condado Vanderbilt Hotel and Ashford Avenue With its countless restaurants, hotels, bars, beaches, casinos and location it is no wonder people are drawn to Condado district of San Juan, PR. Also named the New San Juan it is an area that is extremely desirable to both locals and tourist. Homesofpuertorico.com has selected Condado as number 1 on the list simply because you have some of the most high end condos in the entire island. Condado is delineated by Puente Dos Hermanos to the West and Ocean Park Neighborhood to the East. The main avenue is Ashford Avenue and this is the holy grail for real estate. Keep in mind that there are only four entrances to Condado and it is a densely populated area so traffic will be quite heavy during rush hour from 4–6:30 pm. Some attractions of this area include The Condado Lagoon which is great for water sports such as Paddle Boarding, Kayaking and Swimming. You might be able to spot Manatees in their natural habitat in the Lagoon; walk along Condado Beach which runs parallel to Ashford Avenue and is famous for kite surfing, and of course enjoy many hotels such as La Concha, Condado Vanderbilt, OLV Boutique Hotel and Condado Plaza Hotel. Prices in this Area Range from mid 200’s thousand to 9 Million 2. Isla Verde, Carolina PR Isla Verde Beach in Carolina PR Also known as the Tourist Area of the Metropolitan Area (and for good reason), Isla Verde is located right next to International Airport Luis Munoz Marin. A short 5 minute uber or taxi will take you to possibly one of the best beaches of the metropolitan area. Located in the Municipality of Carolina, Isla Verde is situated east of Condado and features an exquisite beach with white sands and turquoise waters. The main appeal for purchasing an apartment on the beach is that it is a great investment as many of these apartments allow Short Term Rentals such as AirBnB and VRBO. Important to note that not all of the condos allow for short term rentals so make sure to ask the listing agent if this is allowed before going into escrow. This area has increased considerably in value and as of December, 2020 a Sellers Market dominates the supply and demand, making buyers pay over appraisal value. Prices start around the low 200s for a studio apartment or a 1 bedroom apartment. 3. Miramar, San Juan PR Sunset Views from Miramar, Puerto Rico Situated south of the Condado Lagoon, Miramar is a gem within the San Juan Metropolitan Area. It features old colonial houses with a mixture of modern apartments overlooking the lagoon. An elegant neighborhood, Miramar is for those who wish a quieter area compared to Condado but still enjoy being centrally located. There are many high end restaurants, speak easy bars as well as coffee shops and movie theaters. In the middle of the neighborhood is situated Perpetuo Socorro School which is one of the best private schools of Puerto Rico. 4.Old San Juan, San Juan PR Typical Cobblestone Street in Old San Juan, San Juan PR Where it all began, dating all the way back to 1521 Old San Juan is one of the most vibrant and colorful neighborhoods in Puerto Rico. This city was built by the Spaniards when they colonized Puerto Rico at the end of the 15th century. The city is a truly magical place as it features Spanish architecture with internal exposed wooden beams and checkered flooring. Some of the most interesting design layouts will be found on this area. The main attractions are all here: Castillo San Felipe del Morro, Castillo San Cristobal, La Perla, The Governors house “La Fortaleza” and so much more. Everywhere you look you will find a picture opportunity. Living in Old San Juan is not for everyone. With only two entrances and two exits the city can become quite unbearable for car owners due to high traffic. Also, a lack of parking is a definite challenge since parking can be quite tough to find on the street. Residents get a car label for street parking or they can pay a monthly fee at one of the many private parking available. The accessibility is the major tradeoff for living in one of the most beautiful zones in Puerto Rico. Homes of Puerto Rico has selected this zone as one of the best places to live because homes here enjoy tax benefits due to historical zoning. Combine this with all the restaurants, coffee shops, stores, art galleries and just a spectacular scenery and indulge in finding a place to call your home here in Old San Juan. Apartment start in the high 200’s and go all the way to 5+ Million for an entire building. 5. Dorado, PR Dorado Del Mar Aerial View with Embassy Suites Hotel Dorado is an oasis 30 minutes away from San Juan. Particularly popular with many Ex Pats, Dorado is one of the counties with the most beautiful neighborhoods and fantastic homes. Homes of Puerto Rico recommends Dorado Beach East, The Ritz Carlton Reserve Residences, Plantation Village, Dorado Del Mar, Paseo del Mar, Dorado Reef , Brenas and Sabanera Neighborhood. These all feature gated neighborhoods and one of the best schools in the Island. Tasis School and Dorado Academy. Many enjoy the total peacefulness of the area combined with easy access to the City of San Juan. Keep in mind if you are going to be working in San Juan and Living in Dorado the morning and afternoon commute will be very heavy so plan accordingly. There are many hotels in this zone and prices for homes in this area start in the 600’s and go well into the Millions depending on where you decide to live. 6. Rincon, PR Rincon Lighthouse Lets go West! Rincon has been a crowd favorite for its most amazing sunsets and surf. Many feel like Rincon is unlike anything else in Puerto Rico for its topography. You get a great shoreline with mountains rising up from the shoreline. Real Estate in this location is highly desirable and particularly if you have an ocean view. Very popular destination for surfers worldwide for its perfect waves Rincon has so much to offer its residents. Neighbor to Mayaguez and Aguada, Rincon is the most western tip of Puerto Rico. Keep in mind that many choose Rincon to disconnect from the rest of the Island as it is very peaceful and is great for those seeking the most romantic getaways. All of this info is important because Homes of Puerto Rico would say that Rincon is the Short Term Rental Paradise; Making an investment in a multifamily property to be a very smart option as you could possible live for free from rental income. Distance from San Juan is Approximately 2 Hours and 20 Minutes so keep this in mind should you work in San Juan. 7. Rio Grande, PR Neighborhood at the steps of El Yunque Rainforest; the only rainforest in the United States of America This city enjoys its prime location at the root of El Yunque Rainforest. Making an investment in this area is great for potential AirBnB rentals since clients love to be close to the Rainforest. It is 40 minutes to the east of San Juan and accessible by Highway 66. A popular area is Camino Las Picuas which features homes right on the beach with ample lots. Also any complex situated within the Rio Mar complex is a great investment. Attractions include the Carabali Horse Back trails and four track tours. Also Rio Grande is 20 minutes from Fajardo and 30 minutes to the Ferry Terminal in Ceiba which takes you to Vieques and Culebra Island. Top Hotels in Rio Grande include: The St Regis Bahia Beach Resort, Hyatt Regency Grand Reserve Puerto Rico and the Wyndham Grand Rio Mar Puerto Rico Golf & Beach Resort 8. Guaynabo, PR Martinez Nadal Highway in Guaynabo Guaynabo City is a favorite for those who want to live in a suburban area. You will find great neighborhoods such as Garden Hills, Torrimar, La Villa de Torrimar, San Patricio, Palma Real, among many others. Also it is a county with many walk ups and condos. Typically you will get more bang for your buck in this area and prices tend to be more in line with actual market value. However, due to an increase in prices in Condado, Isla Verde, Miramar and the rest of San Juan, finding housing in Guaynabo is starting to become difficult as there is high demand. The Northern part of the county is more popular for finding condos near San Patricio Shopping Center, the middle and southern part of the county has more gated communities. The southernmost part of Guaynabo is situated in the mountains so this county definitely has many options as to what you can find. 9. Ponce, PR Old Firehouse Station in the Center of Town Also named “La Perla del Sur” Ponce is a great city in the southern coast of Puerto Rico. Its old city has been preserved in mint condition and has luxurious mansions with traditional colonial architecture. Amongst popular buildings you will find the Centro Cultural de Ponce Carmen Sola. Attractions include the Ponce Art Museum famous for its European and Puertorrican Art Collection, Castillo Serralles, and La Guancha which is undergoing renovations. This region was affected by the earthquakes in January 2020 so prices have declined making this an excellent area of opportunity to invest. Thanks to its location in the center of the southern part of Puerto Rico, commute is 1 hour to San Juan and 1 hour to Mayaguez making Ponce very attractive for those who want to live in a Big City other than San Juan. 10. Cabo Rojo, PR Combate Beach, Cabo Rojo PR Last but not least on our list is Cabo Rojo. With perhaps the most beautiful beaches such as Buye, Combate, Boqueron and Playa Sucia, Cabo Rojo is also famous for its high content of minerals on the floor. Right towards the southwestern tip you will find the salt flats to be all different kinds of shades of pink and red, hence the name “rojo”. Also you can visit El Poblado de Boqueron with its lively music and amazing fresh sea food served daily. This county is 2 hours and 36 minutes from San Juan and making an investment here is surely for those who want to enjoy the peacefulness that comes from a smaller town while still having easy access to Mayaguez and Ponce. There are great opportunities for investing in real estate in Cabo Rojo as many people enjoy vacationing to this area during winter and summer months so surely if you were to find a place and want to use it as a second home, rentability of apartments in Cabo Rojo sure makes it a great investment.

https://medium.com/@bertranrealty/top-10-places-to-live-in-puerto-rico-for-2021-6cf7efb7d512

['Realtor Ricky']

2020-12-27 20:49:03.074000+00:00

['Top 10', 'Puerto Rico', 'Real Estate', 'Buying A Home', 'Selling']

Vender pan no era un delito, al menos eso creía yo

Periodista, editor, crítico. Cofundador de Matavilela. «I lie to myself all the time. But I never believe me» S. E. Hinton

https://medium.com/@danielucasec/vender-pan-no-era-un-delito-al-menos-eso-cre%C3%ADa-yo-e07f3f472821

[]

2020-11-05 18:10:24.598000+00:00

['Personal', 'Español', 'Inspiration', 'Historias', 'Relatos']

7 Painless Writing Tips That Make a Powerful Impact

1. Give me that title* “What does an algorithm know about creating intriguing titles?” I snorted when I first discovered the headline-analyser co-schedule somewhere in the ether. As an experiment, I ran my most and least successful blog titles through the search bar and was horrified to discover co-schedule judged them accurately. It’s actually a useful tool. OK, so it won’t get your puns and it’s not infallible, but it does analyse your title for a metrics you’re probably not aware of: Sentiment: decides if you’re being optimistic or a killjoy; titles with a positive sentiment typically do best. Keywords: measure your choices against words most commonly searched for by inquisitive Googlers. Length analysis: tells you off for being too wordy or too terse; there’s both an optimal character- and word-count for clicks. Word balance: takes a cold, hard look at the readability and attractiveness of your title. *Meghan Trainor, ‘Title’ When 2. becomes one* I had no idea how often I was writing “very embarrassed” when I meant “mortified” or “anxious and upset” when I meant “traumatised”. And while I’m on the subject, “I won’t” will always feel more natural than “I will not”. Two words are rarely better than one: be concise, make an impact. *The Spice Girls, ‘When Two Becomes One’ 3. I’d do anything for love (But I won’t do that)* I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again (and again until the end of time): go through your writing and remove every excess “that”. You’ll find an alarming amount and you’ll thank me. *Meat Loaf, ‘I’d Do Anything for Love’ 4. I came in like a wrecking ball* Begin with ferocity. It takes 2 minutes of rewriting or swapping sentences around to make sure your first line is a dagger to the heart. Edit with ferocity. “I stood there and watched while the building burned down to the ground” becomes “I watched the building burn”. Fire. Literally. *Miley Cirus, ‘Wrecking Ball’ 5. Let’s twist Again* I’ve read advice to “never use common phrases or cliches”. It’s a (partial) lie; you should absolutely use both, just remember to give them your own twist — however small. “through thick and extremely thin” will always be more interesting than “through thick and thin”. *Chubby Checker, ‘Let’s Twist Again’ 6. Why. do. we. crucify ourselves?* You never need to apologise for what you’re saying. This isn’t because you’re always right (you’re not) but because qualifiers make your work less impactful and we should believe what we write. You don’t need to say “I believe, in my humble opinion, xyz”: we know it’s in your opinion because you’re writing it — and we’re under no illusions you’re humble. *Tori Amos, ‘Crucify’ 7. Stop! In the name of love* This is my favourite all-time tip because it means doing absolutely nothing. After you finish writing, stop. Breathe. Step away from the laptop. Drink tea. Cuddle the cat. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been writing, no one can get away without editing after a break to clear their head. I should know: I once published an article that began “I once lived in a house in a house.” Sounds magical but is misleading. *The Hollies, ‘Stop in the Name of Love’

https://medium.com/blankpage/7-painless-writing-tips-that-make-a-powerful-impact-13c39d8ea7c7

['Jessica A']

2020-12-21 15:54:05.601000+00:00

['Writing', 'Writing Tips', 'Writing Life', 'Creativity', 'Creative Process']

Study in UK

The United Kingdom is one of the best study destinations in the world, comprising four countries, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, with about 5,00,000 foreign students enrolling each year. UK educational institutions in the world rankings are consistently performing well. This year the University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, UCL, Imperial College London, and 80 other UK universities have been rated among the best by the QS ranking agency for a moment. For more information, https://www.pyramideservices.com/UK/

https://medium.com/@pyramidservicesseo/study-in-uk-813f4db670f9

['Pyramid Eservices']

2020-12-19 11:12:03.406000+00:00

['Visa', 'Study Abroad', 'UK', 'Study In Uk', 'Study Visa']

Slave/Master Reversal

Slave/Master Reversal Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash Flip the board, queen becomes pawn, becomes the naked musician, the orgy of the winter raises its head, slaps the palms of those that had, and had, and took, and the servant is master for five days. The relation of human inhumanity to more inhumane decor, the scoffing spitting reversal shame pleading beating scorn heat heat heat damned by the posting of entitlement, stripped to the individual, not the aristocracy that was initially dreamed of. And is this a reward, or just a break? The licks all taken then discussed for the rest of the year by the oppressed portion, so many more of them, the disdain for a kind of life, or life in general by the constant reduction of the person. Flip the board, the king becomes rook, becomes a pole to use, to haul in the next batch of wine. And the darkness doesn’t subsist. And no one gets what they paid for.

https://medium.com/scrittura/slave-master-reversal-deb74eb0b7eb

['J.D. Harms']

2020-12-12 14:47:09.504000+00:00

['role reversal', 'Role Reversal', 'Prompt', 'Saturday Poetry Prompt', 'Scrittura']

BOOK REVIEW: Simply Verona; Breaking all the Rules

Author Verona van de Leur, Instagram @veronagymnast2 Simply Verona — Breaking All the Rules Verona van de Leur Hardcover, 476 pages Published March 2020 Gaudinum Gymnastics memoirs are a specific breed of sports stories. Typically they serve one of two purposes: to tell an all-ages inspirational story about a teenage girl with special abilities and how she overcame adversity to win the Olympics, or cautionary tales of the dangers and hardships of gymnastics, warning parents and athletes off the sport entirely. Simply Verona manages to do both splendidly. Dutch gymnast Verona Van de Leur describes her life as a gifted young athlete. Not everyone understands how a child can be so passionate and motivated. For most people, it seems that kind of focus is antithetical to what most of us think of as childhood. The assumption is almost always that a child doesn’t know any better and that the parents are forcing into the gym. Verona illustrates her childhood passion with a clarity other gymnastics authors haven’t always been able to accomplish. The ability of someone so young to not just survive under the watchful eye of an abusive coach and in the thick of a strained relationship with her parents, but to thrive is remarkable. It speaks of strong character; the innocence of a child with a big dream vs the sinister intentions of the adults around her. With all the stage parent charm of the Moceanus and nightmare hellscape coaching methods of the infamous Karolyis, the adults in Verona’s life took her dreams and her talent and wrung every last penny, every drop of sweat, and battered every earnest goal she had until there was nothing left for her to give. There is a culture of abuse in gymnastics that has been systematically covered up for decades. While the Larry Nassar scandal is the most recent and high-profile instance, Simply Verona discloses intimate details about the physical and emotional abuse she witnessed and endured for most of her childhood — sanctioned by both of her parents, her coaches, and the Royal Dutch Gymnastics Federation (KNGU). It’s a very appropriate time in history for stories like these to be told, and the perpetrators of abuse are put on blast. With her gymnastics career over, Verona was thrown away. Robbed of the money she’d earned doing gymnastics and with her reputation in tatters due to the vitriol of her now-estranged parents and former coaches, she took up with a mysterious older man with a history of criminal offenses. If you already know who Verona van de Leur is, then you already know how after her gymnastics career ended she became an adult entertainer. The story of how she got there is not unique: girl falls on hard times, girl makes mistakes, girl can’t get regular job, girl becomes sex worker. Only now, instead of stage parents from hell or a tyrannical coach, her business partner is her boyfriend — the very one that entered her life as her world got dark. Verona speaks frankly about her career in adult entertainment, from which she has since retired. Modeling, webcamming, and the sale of merchandise gave her an opportunity for a new beginning, a chance to get on her feet. Hers is a story of how a career in sex work can offer performers the freedom to more steady employment — something they may not be entitled to if they have even the most minor criminal activity on their records. She details how she has since embarked on a career as a lifestyle blogger and public speaker, using her platform to expand the conversation that’s been happening around the epidemic of child abuse in sports. Gymnasts can be such people pleasers. Even when we love what we do, we crave the approval of our parents, our coaches, our audience, and the judges. Verona is not so different. The subtitle of her book may be “breaking all the rules,” but she really, truly only broke one important one: shut up. And for that, the gymnastics community owes her a debt of gratitude.

https://medium.com/@StrangeWeather3/book-review-simply-verona-breaking-all-the-rules-25ccf320c452

['Sarah Benchley']

2020-03-17 22:54:12.607000+00:00

['Gymnastics', 'Sex Work', 'Simply Verona', 'Verona Van De Leur', 'Book Review']

Three Things You Can Do To Grow As A Writer

Three Things You Can Do To Grow As A Writer Photograph by Stephen Walker on Unsplash As a writer there are three things you can do to try to ensure healthy growth. 1.Re-edit 2.Re-purpose 3.Re-Market By way of example, I have just removed from submission a thirteen part story, The Island, originally published in thirteen seperate instalments. I then edited all thirteen parts into one piece and re-published the story. There was a side benefit to this process since I decided to re-read the story and came across all sorts of minor typos and certain sentences that could be improved. The resulting piece has more fluidity and an increased reading time. This is great because these days Medium pay according to reading time. Having said that, it remains to be seen if readers will take the time and trouble to read a piece that will now take a tad over an hour to read. I can but try. In this way I have done all three things, re-edit, re-purpose and re-market. However, I have gone a step further with this exercise. I have now sent the story to a formatting expert who will format the story and turn it into a book which I can attempt to sell on Kindle. I have already published three books of short stories on Kindle just yesterday and await what I hope will be good news in as much as having successfully reached out to a wider audience. In total, I have at least three ebooks more on the back burner and feel quite excited at the prospect of getting those ePublished as well. Moving on from ebook publishing, I am keen to then turn the ebooks into paperback books which, if nothing else, will give me a great sense of achievement. The important thing is to keep moving, not only developing your craft as a writer, but also in marketing the end product. If it turns out economically viable that would be wonderful. If not, at the very least I will have learnt a great deal and still have something to show for all my efforts. Below is a link to the three books I have already published.

https://medium.com/illumination/three-things-you-can-do-to-grow-as-a-writer-e4b432e918db

['Liam Ireland']

2020-12-26 08:04:29.458000+00:00

['Illumination', 'How To Grow', 'Writing Tips', 'Writing', 'Short Stories And Poems']

Writing Tips For Writers Who Use Twitter For Promoting Their Work

Twitter is a free and fun way to promote your work online. It is a simple platform that everyone can use. Plus, you don’t have to pay. How can you promote your work on Twitter and get more viewers? I am glad that you asked that question. Here are some suggestions: Set up a Twitter profile Include your website in your profile so people can find your writing, articles or business Follow people you find interesting Engage in comments with other writers Work together to promote each other and build up the community of writers and authors As you spend more time on Twitter, you will discover that you use it more than just writing and promotion. There is a lot of fun to be had there and you can also read about news, sports and finance. I hope you can use these ideas. Feel free to connect with me any time.

https://medium.com/@darrinatkins/writing-tips-for-writers-who-use-twitter-for-promoting-their-work-c4cb2368134f

['Darrin Atkins']

2020-12-22 22:47:11.678000+00:00

['Twitter', 'Writing Tips', 'Writing', 'Writer']

Developing my skills

In this video, the speakers talk about the genius or the perfect developer. But it is not possible because we are human and we make mistakes, we fail and that’s what makes us learn, grow and see what is next? What did I learn?. When you fail you learn but if it happens more than twice and in the same thing it means that you didn’t learn. Also remember that the practice is the key to being better in some activity, perhaps the first time you try something new the results won’t be the best but if you constantly practice and try again there will be a point where you will do it better. As humans we are vulnerables, vulnerability is not an option but it helps you to take responsabilities keeping in mind that not everything is easy to do, if you accept your vulnerability you help others to make feel them good because you let people express their fears and we know who we really are. In this video, Colt McAnlis explains the performance of web pages. He talks about the performance tuning loop A variable length code is a code in which a fixed number of symbols are encoded into a variable number of output symbols. Also a VLC allows the compression and decompression with zero error. Morse code: is a method used to encode text characters into sequences of two different signal durations that are dot and dash. Binary: is used by computers to process instructions. Use two symbols “0” and “1”. Claude Shannon: was a mathematician and computer scientist who conceived the foundations for the information theory. Entropy: is the average level of information in the possible outcome of a variable. Prefix property: no codeword is the prefix of any other codeword. Huffman code: is a method of compressing data. Use a tree with the frequencies of the characters and then generates a code for each character. The LZ77 compression algorithm is used to analyze and reduce data. Sections of the data that are identical to sections previously encoded are replaced by a small amount of metadata. Search buffer: contains characters that have been seen previously Look ahead buffer: contains characters that have not been seen yet Token: constains an offset, a length and the next token LZ77 is used in GitZip, WinRaR and 7-Zip. Is a mathematical system that undergoes transitions from one state to another state on a state space. In this example, we can see three different habits of a person that eats grapes, cheese or lettuce considering some rules: the choice of tomorrow depends on what he ate today. If today he ate lettuce, tomorrow he will eat grapes with a probability of 4/10 or he will eat cheese with a probability of 6/10. There are some states that could return to the same state, for example if today he ate grapes, tomorrow he could eat grapes with a probability of 1/0, or he could eat cheese with a probability of 4/10 or he could eat lettuce with a probability of 5/10. Surely we think the place to work should be in an office, with a set work schedule where each person does the activities that were asigned. But this talk describes how actually the places to work have changed and also the structure of a team. We might think that the leader has to give the ideas and take the responsability for the team but that is a big mistake. The video describes that the most important thing is being responsible for making things happen, getting the job done and being available to your team not just sitting in one place for an amount of time. Take risks, it is allowed to take ris and leave our comfort zone. Take initiative, implement new things because you do not know if that is favorable for the team unless you try it. Personall I consider myself part of the perple that do not make new things and take the initiative because of fear or the idea of losing my job but it is aloowed to be wrong. This video is focused in the social skills not only for developers. When we are at a team technical knowledge is not enough. The speakers present different situations that could happen on a team. Imagine that the expert or a member of a team was hit by a bus, who would solve the problems that the person had? Here comes the importance of mantaining a complete team where at least two people have the knowledge of the complete system. I said trying new things is not bad but there is someting that could be useful: the documentation. Here the ideas or activities that have been tested are described in a way that future generations try with other ideas. In this video, Dave Thomas explains the different levels of developing expertise: The novice: they don’t have experience, and don’t know how to respond to mistakes. A novice is gaining experience. Advancer beginner: they start trying task on their own. Competent: compared with the novice, the competents are able to solve problems by their own. They learn from the experience of others. Proficient: you could feel lost because you relize things that you don’t know. Expert: they have more context, are primary source of knowledge and information. Linda Rising videos Linda Rising is an independient consultant that has written and contributed to many books and articles. She present topics related to patterns, agile development, the cange process and influence strategies. In “Perfection is an unrealistic goal” she mentioned the Agile process, in a way that we sleep in cycles. When we feel tired and if you go to sleep for 25 minutes, you will wake up with energy. In the Agile process we work in cycles, where we increment the productivity. The video “The power of an Agile mindset” explains the difrerence between the Growth and Fixed mindset. Fixed mindset: get discouraged easily. They are limited and statics. Avoid the challenge because of helplessness and think that effort is for those with no talent. Effort mindset: enjoy the challenge, work hard. They see the better results of a person to learn. They can grow and learn. In challenges, they show resistance. Exit codes can be used to execute commandssing the operators && (and) and || (or). Also can use a semicolon ; to separate commands. If you want to find a file use the command find, example: find . -name src -type d #find all directories named src Finding code with the command grep, also have alternatives such as ack and rg.

https://medium.com/what-i-have-learned-1/developing-my-skills-54be7cd8bc10

['Patricia Yellianne Alonso Rojas']

2020-10-13 00:48:16.420000+00:00

['Learning And Development', 'Skills', 'Compression', 'Huffman Coding']

Five steps for achieving almost any ambition

Step 1: Recognize Priorities Playing cricket in video games isn’t going to make you a cricket player in real life. Photo by Phil Desforges on Unsplash I often hear people saying they are working hard to achieve their dreams, and that’s really appreciable. But the question arises, are you working hard in the right direction? I bet every day you must be doing a lot of work, ranging from small household chores to big tasks in your to-do list, but how often do you ask yourself that “is the task that I am doing currently, taking me any close to my dreams?” I have seen that most of us love being busy, after all, it gives us a sense of pleasure that we are working hard, and satisfaction that we are not wasting time. But, are you actually differentiating between productive tasks and unproductive busy tasks? If your aim is to become a programmer, but seeing others code, reading from books, and dreaming about a software engineering job is all you do, you aren’t going to make any good progress. If you want to become a coder, coding should be a priority for you. The same thing is true for everything, once you have your dreams clear, ask yourself, what are the things that bring you closer to your dreams, and what are the things that make no difference. Learn to identify the productive tasks, spend time on them. Learn to identify the unproductive busy chores, get them done quickly. Here’s how Amy did it Amy knows she wants to get the role of SDE (Software Development Engineer), and she also knows that to do so, she needs to be good at data structures, algorithms, problem-solving, and other core subjects. But sadly, her college keeps on bombarding her with tons of assignments and exams. Fortunately (unlike many), Amy has understood what should be her priority and has started taking action. She plans to spend more time doing competitive programming, and less time on college assignments (of course, she doesn’t plan to ignore the assignments, but she knows she can get them done real quick). Here’s how Jimmy did it Jimmy knows that if he wants to be a successful content creator, he needs to expand his reach over various social platforms. Earlier, Jimmy has tried putting lots of content on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, and YouTube. Much to Jimmy’s surprise, the content on LinkedIn and YouTube gets much more engagement, and the content he puts on Twitter gets almost no engagement. The reason might be anything, but this is a signal for Jimmy to start making more attention on LinkedIn and YouTube to scale his content (and later on, he can bring attention to his Twitter handle as well). Amy knows her priority is learning the skills that can fetch her a job. Jimmy knows his priority is putting more content on which platform

https://medium.com/@madhavbahl/five-steps-for-achieving-almost-any-ambition-c582728178bc

['Madhav Bahl']

2020-12-27 03:18:16.615000+00:00

['Self Improvement', 'Goals', 'Ambition', 'Personal Growth', 'Productivity']

Detecting Vulnerabilities With Vulnture

Introduction Securing assets and data is a challenging and important task, regardless of your industry or company size. On Airbnb’s InfoSec team, we are constantly thinking about how to quickly and effectively detect and remediate known security vulnerabilities that impact our assets. To address this challenge, we created a tool called Vulnture, which we are happy to open source and share with the software community! Vulnture vastly simplifies the otherwise laborious process of collecting your known assets in one place and identifying security vulnerabilities in a timely manner. Before we share how Vulnture works, let’s take a deeper look at the challenges we’re addressing. Background In 1999, MITRE and the broader security community launched the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) List. This list was developed to reduce gaps in security coverage, to enable interoperability between vulnerability databases and tools, and to provide a standardized basis for evaluating vulnerabilities across tools. Several years later, in 2005, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) launched the U.S. National Vulnerability Database (NVD). The NVD is populated with vulnerability data from the CVE List along with additional information associated with each vulnerability such as fix information, severity scores, and impact ratings in an effort to make the CVE information more useful and actionable. The NVD also provides more granular search capabilities such that vulnerabilities can be queried based on which product name and/or version they affect, how recently they were created, their severity, and more. In short, the CVE List provides a list of all known, publicly disclosed security vulnerabilities while the NVD provides more detailed and easily queryable information related to those vulnerabilities. Airbnb saw a great opportunity in these resources. Let’s see how we made use of this data! The Problem For the past twenty or so years these data sources have grown vastly, as have the consumers of the data. However, the data is not easy to ingest. To make use of it, you have to have a good way to compare all of your assets against the vulnerable products listed in the NVD. Additionally, the NVD is updated hourly according to the NVD FAQ, so you need to check back often, particularly if you’re on the hunt for critical severity vulnerabilities. Prerequisites for effectively utilizing data from the NVD include: Having a record of all of your assets (e.g., operating systems, applications, services, executables, hardware models, versions of each of these, associated IP addresses, owners) Having the ability to query often in order to pick up all updates, while preferably not reviewing the same vulnerabilities more than once (unless they’ve been modified) to avoid duplicating work Solving for these challenges starts to get even more complex when we look at the actual turnaround time for NVD updates. The NVD FAQ mentions that it can take 1–3 days for information to be published depending on the volume of new CVEs. According to a report from threat intelligence company Recorded Future, in 2017 there was a median lag time of 7 days before vulnerabilities were populated within the NVD. Obviously, waiting up to a week just to be notified about a known vulnerability is far from ideal. This means that in addition to searching the NVD, you probably want to consider searching other sources of vulnerability data as well, such as vendor sites of the products potentially affected. This way you’re more likely to find critical vulnerabilities that impact you before several days pass, thereby no longer granting attackers precious time to exploit those vulnerabilities. The challenge here, of course, is that you now have to: Seek out all possible vulnerability feeds from your vendors Craft a suitable query to sift out unwanted data Parse out the non-standardized results The latter of these two steps needs to be repeated for each separate vulnerability feed meaning exponentially more work for each vulnerability source you want to get data from. Considering the above, it may come as no surprise that, according to the 2020 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, nearly 85% of security breaches and 99% of security incidents are discovered by an external or partner source, such as a third-party monitoring service, security researcher, or customer report. That means most security breaches, and practically all security incidents, are detected by somebody other than the company experiencing the security incident or breach! Not all security incidents or breaches are caused by a known vulnerability, but the key point here is that overwhelmingly companies are relying on third parties to tell them that they have a security issue rather than being able to identify it themselves. Introducing Vulnture Vulnture is a completely serverless solution that ingests all of your known assets, searches for vulnerabilities that impact them, and then notifies you of all discovered vulnerabilities that you should know about. Let’s briefly go over how it works. Vulnture High Level Overview Diagram In the currently released version, Vulnture has the ability to pull asset information from an AWS DynamoDB table and then query the NVD, as well as Cisco Security Advisories publications, for vulnerabilities. For notifications, it sends emails to the recipient(s) configured in the configuration file: Vulnture is set to query its vulnerability data sources once per day to ensure that you’re never missing critical information related to vulnerabilities impacting your assets. If you don’t already have some type of asset management or inventory solution, you can start building one in a DynamoDB table which you can then have Vulnture reference. If you do have one, you can either export that data to a DynamoDB table or update Vulnture so that it is capable of querying your existing asset data (if you do make an update for your specific tech stack, consider making a pull request to make this a native feature of Vulnture!) Vulnture is written entirely in Python and deployed via Terraform using the included Terraform modules (.tf files). This makes it quick and easy to deploy without having to worry about manually managing various pieces of infrastructure or making code changes in multiple languages. We’re planning some exciting updates to Vulnture which are pending public release. These include an additional notification option (JSON files uploaded to an AWS S3 bucket) and support for more detailed asset information from a DynamoDB table (e.g., IP, FQDN, source).e have many more updates in the pipeline for future releases, including leveraging the relatively new NVD API to speed up and narrow down vulnerability queries. We’re also planning to support more sources of vulnerability data directly from vendors (e.g., Amazon, Microsoft, Ubuntu, Red Hat) to find vulnerabilities sooner. We aim to make Vulnture easily extensible with a plugin model to allow it to work seamlessly with various asset, vulnerability, and notification channels that can be quickly selected via straightforward configuration changes. Conclusion Although securing your assets is no simple task, you can feel more at ease knowing that you have a tool working for you by regularly querying industry standard vulnerability data repositories, comparing that data against your known asset information, and notifying you of vulnerabilities discovered. We’ve used Vulnture at Airbnb to replace some of our previous, less efficient methods of vulnerability identification and notification and hope that others find benefit in this tool as well. Beyond that, we would love to work with the community to continue to augment Vulnture so that it can become a more robust and feature-rich tool that’s simple to use and adaptable to various company environments and toolsets. Try out Vulnture today, you may be surprised at what you’re missing! Interested in helping protect people and data? Airbnb InfoSec is hiring! Check out our open positions and apply today! Appendix All trademarks are the property of their registered owners; Airbnb claims no responsibility for nor proprietary interest in them. Amazon Web Services, the “Powered by AWS” logo, AWS, AWS Lambda, and DynamoDB are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. Cisco is a registered trademark or trademark of Cisco Systems, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and certain other countries. Terraform is a trademark of HashiCorp.

https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/detecting-vulnerabilities-with-vulnture-f5f23387f6ec

['Mark Vlcek']

2020-12-17 18:33:44.740000+00:00

['Security', 'Infrastructure', 'Vulnerability', 'Infosec']

Impact of Increasing Penetration of Renewable Energy Resources

The problem of global warming and climate change has led to an increase in the use of renewable energy resources as a means to provide clean electrical energy whilst reducing CO2 emissions. The intermittent nature of renewable energy resources brings with it many challenges in relation to the stability of electricity grids. One particular challenge is the impact of renewables on frequency and voltage stability. In some cases, the addition of renewables may improve the voltage profile of a network, such as in times of high load demand, and in other cases may lead to overloading of the network for example, through excess generation. Some methods used to mitigate the problem of overloading are active curtailment and energy storage. Active curtailment is intentionally reducing the energy generated by renewables by for example, pitching the blades of a wind turbine to a sub optimal position although it may be argued that this defeats the purpose of including renewables in the generation mix. With energy storage solutions, excess generation can be stored during times of low demand and despatched at times of high demand. Increasing levels of electric vehicle penetration and the opportunities created by vehicle to grid schemes offer a possible solution. In radial systems where generation occurs at one end of a line and the load is located at the other, a voltage drop is experienced along the length of the line and consumers located at the far end of the line can experience unacceptably low voltages in times of high demand if the system is not well designed. Injecting power from renewables at the far end of the line can help to raise the voltage as shown in Figure 1. Figure 1: Voltage Along a Feeder With and Without Embedded Generation [1] Situating renewable generation close to loads can help to reduce active power losses in the network. However, after a certain point, depending on the hosting capacity of the network, active power losses can begin to increase as the power not consumed by the load flows back to the grid, increasing the loading on feeders and therefore i 2R losses. Much in the same way as voltage stability, the frequency stability of the network can be affected by renewables and system frequency may rise above acceptable levels if too much power is being generated from renewables and the frequency may fall below acceptable levels if not enough power is being produced by the system as a whole. Demand response is one possible solution to this issue where users are encouraged to use less or more power by being offered incentives by their utility depending on the situation. Coupled with traditional primary and secondary frequency response methods this can help to lessen the impact of renewables on the power system. Load scheduling may also be used to reduce strain on the network at times of high demand. In addition to frequency and voltage stability issues, introducing renewables into the power system can affect fault current level and protection strategies may have to be rethought in order to avoid the unintentional tripping of system protective equipment. References [1] A. Sahito, Z. Memon, G. Buriro, S. Memon, M. Jumani, and A. Ansari, “Voltage profile improvement of radial feeder through distributed generation,” Sindh University Research Journal, vol. 48, p. 498, 2016.

https://medium.com/@dilshan.c.subasinghe/impact-of-increasing-penetration-of-renewable-energy-resources-ef2bcceb944d

['Dilshan Subasinghe']

2019-03-09 11:35:31.225000+00:00

['Renewable Energy', 'Renewables', 'Energy', 'Impact']

Need a mood lightener?

I guess I’ll not mention the fact that animal populations have declined 60% in our lifetimes, or that the Greenland ice sheet has melted past the point of no return. I won’t tell you coral reefs are nearing permanent collapse, or that the west coast is charred and we’ve run out of names for hurricanes and if that and covid doesn’t kill you, hunger will. I won’t even begin to get into rampant racial injustice and the death of a bulwark against rigged courts. I won’t point to the dumpster fire president. Instead I’ll point out your window and whisper look at that beautiful tree, the way it stands there, miraculously making sugar out of thin air, transforming CO2 into oxygen… Photo by Jan Huber on Unsplash I’ll remind you that you are loved, which is not something everyone can say. I’ll suggest that we lean on old Epictetus, who said, “There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.” Do this with me: take a deep breath from the bottom of your feet all the way up through the top of your head — fill up like a balloon and hold it, that sweet oxygen… hold it… now let it go in a rush until you are empty as a laundry sack. do that three times… I’ll wait… Now remember that the oxygen that gives us life killed off almost everything, 2.5 billion years ago, when blue-green algae pumped out enough corrosive oxygen to cause the greatest climate disaster in history: the Huronian Glaciation. That slimy gunk grew into vast microbial mats that removed the methane from earth’s atmosphere, slowly destroying nearly all of the other, non-oxygen-using life forms. So thank you, ancient slime mats, for making the world habitable for us humans, slumped over our laptops, sipping tea. Without all that blue-green algae you’d have never had your first kiss. Never heard Yo-Yo Ma play the cello. Never laughed until your stomach muscles seized. And perhaps one day, eons hence, the life forms that evolve from the Anthropocene will thank us, as we thank the slime mats, for transforming the earth’s atmosphere and for providing a plastic substrate and silicon nudge to manufacture whatever is next. So: nothing to worry about! We’re just a link in the causal chain of all existence, and like any organism that gobbles up all its resources and shits where it eats, we will vanish and the universe will continue hurtling toward its inevitable heat death, or whatever. And as hard as we try to ruin everything, we ain’t shit compared to those slimy algae patches that single-handedly destroyed, and then remade the world.

https://medium.com/@robertbevandalton/need-a-mood-lightener-488436d037e6

['Rob Dalton']

2020-09-23 17:56:17.443000+00:00

['Blue Green Algae', 'Climate', 'Covid', 'Rob Dalton', 'Mood Lightener']

Create an Agile Game based on Game of Thrones — Tutorial

For each of your participant tables, you will need the following material: Paper Post-its Scissors Black markers Marshmallow Foil paper Rubber band Sticky paper Wooden sticks or skewers Anything you find useful for craft I would also recommend having a sound system for ambient music. Letting participants crafting on Light of the Seven or Two Steps from Hell is awesome ! How it goes The storytelling situation is the following: the houses of Westeros need to gather together to create armies to defeat enemies coming: The savages horde of Dothraki horsemen, the frozen undead army of the Night King, and even the ferocious Dragon of the Dragonmother ! However, they are at peace for so long that they forgot how to raise an army. They need therefore to go find information on how to recruit these armies. As facilitator, you represent the War Leader. You organize the teams. Each team has to elect one Messenger. This Messenger will go read the panels and fetch the specifications on how to build armies and come to you for any questions. The First iteration — The Dothraki horsemen For the first iteration, the opponents are the Dothrakis, warriors fighting on horses. To defeat them, your participants need to craft 10 soldiers per team. They have 15 minutes to do this. Uncover the first panel (King’s Landing). During this first iteration, one messenger per table will stand up and go read the first panel displayed(the other are currently hidden). Then come back to his team and explain the requirements. The team then must proceed to craft 10 soldiers. At the end of the 15 minutes, each team presents their work to everyone. You can challenge them on the way they did it, if it respects all requirements, and compare the results of each team. These odd crafts are actually respecting the requirements… Morality: check your Acceptance Criteria’s ! This first iteration is quite simple and introduces the concept of the game to the players. Here the teams are doing simple Scrum: one Product Owner goes meeting the stakeholders, then brings the requirement for a single product for a single team. Because you said “10 soldiers per team”, the teams usually won’t chat together. Note that in my example, I added information about Golden Cloak: soldiers worth twice the value, but there can only be 6 maximum around all the tables. This type of requirement leads the teams to start speaking together. One feedback that I really like is that each time this game was done, there weren’t two teams having soldiers looking the same way. This is exactly what happens in the IT industry: for the same requirements, two Developers Teams won’t build the same product. This is both something wonderful and something that points out the need for guidelines when building a collaborative product with several development teams. And about that, communicating together is the next step ! The Second iteration — The White Walkers The second iteration goes over the cold and terrifying White Walkers. Zombies coming from the north frost, led by the Night King. For this iteration, we need 10 additional Soldiers, 10 Unsullieds, 10 horsemen and 10 Healers Maesters. Note that you can of course adapt these numbers, count around 10 characters to craft per table. The participants have again 15 minutes, and have access to 3 new panels that you’ll uncover. The important point now is that we need a product made of different kinds of elements. Now the teams need to communicate in order to reach the goal. The messengers should now speak together to know which team will craft which units. This is similar to a Scrum of Scrum in a situation of Scaled Agile. There is now a need for communication and alignment. This time, I spread the information between several panels. The messengers must read each of them. I added several specific information, like the fact that Unsullied must be crafted by 4, meaning they must craft 12 of them. An important feedback here is about the WHY of the product. I hid information about Dragonglass in the panels, saying it kills the White Walkers. To use it, the participant just needs to paint the weapon in black. Until now, none of the teams took account of this. Because I didn’t mention that I needed Dragonglass weapons. But they had access to this information, and should have brought it back to me, saying “You said you need to kill White Walkers, we found a way to be more efficient, should we implement it ?”. This is why the WHY of the request is important: if you know why the feature is needed, you can propose a product actually suited for it, not just answering a list of specifications. The Third iteration — The Dragonmother The final iteration: defeating a Dragon ! However, no one has ever succeeded in this task. So there are no requirements, no specifications. All you know is that a dragon flies. Now everyone must work together to find a solution for the next 15 minutes ! During this iteration, everyone is free to move and organize together. No structure predefined anymore (this will be a feedback point). There are no requirements so just enjoy the creativity of your participants ! The first major feedback point here is that since there is no structure anymore, you’ll observe a certain mess in the way the teams self-organize now. Some people are very active, others are not, some have nothing to do. This is a point that structure and organization are required at larger scale. A Scrum team is usually fine up to 9 people, so having 30 people working together, this is something else. The second feedback point is about creativity. Since there is no specific requirement, the participants go very wide in the field of possibilities. One first group workshop made a fake dragon to attract the opponent one and shoot him, the other group made a bait infected with a virus to weaken him ! These are incredibly original propositions. Do not restrict the creativity of your development team with overly detailed specifications, they will often propose solutions you didn’t think of ! This is something Design Thinking tries to reach with a process of open creativity. Beware the fake dragon ! How to debrief After each iteration, take another 15 minutes to present the result of the iteration and debrief the specific points explained above. This Agile Game is more about generating situations where you can find unawares learning than pointing a specific case you want your participants to get. Some very good insights were found by my co-facilitator Anna during the game. Here are several interesting learning to raise: At the beginning of the first iteration, the messengers must step up and go read the panels. During this time , the rest of the team has nothing to do. This is why you need a prepared backlog before the first sprint (and not a sprint zero). (and not a sprint zero). The craft result might look odd, but if it does match the requirements on the panels, then it is fine. This can be put in parallel with the Beautiful Meadow game. Be clear about your Acceptance Criteria and trust your team for providing you with a solution that matches them, rather than telling them exactly what the solution should look like. The Messenger can (and should !) come to you if they have questions. This is a feedback loop and it is important in a company to communicate horizontally but also vertically. What’s next This Agile Game was a success and I hope to facilitate it again ! I think the storytelling helps a lot. Some improvements an agile coach proposed to me include switching participants from team during an iteration, giving exclusive requirement information to the teams, add a fourth iteration, etc. The ROTI (Return On Time Invested) of the second event There is a cheatsheet and everything you need on the Google Drive. About that, you are free to facilitate it, and even improve. You might also change the universe, depending on your audience. I heard there is a Lord of the Rings series coming soon, that could be a nice occasion… Please let me know if you facilitate it and do not hesitate to send me feedback ! I’ll be pleased to read what this game becomes !

https://medium.com/@xjpm.dufour/create-an-agile-game-based-on-game-of-thrones-tutorial-f062a9f69ada

['Xavier Dufour']

2020-03-03 15:14:28.916000+00:00

['Game of Thrones', 'Collaboration', 'Facilitation', 'Scrum', 'Agile Game']

Is social media making us numb?

We all get our news quicker now than ever, the introduction of Twitter to everyones daily lives now means we find out the big news stories of today much quicker than main stream News outlets can deliver. However, is that always a good thing? We have all seen storied posted that turn out to be true. As maligned as the press can be at least they have to do some fact checking before posting their story, the general public on Twitter, well that more #Nofilter! The breaking news in the UK today has all been about MP’s running away from the Brexit mess that they had a hand in causing and the already uncertain future of the country made a little greyer! Along with this is the World Cup, Wimbledon, A Novichok related death and the poor kids stuck in the caves, this is a very busy week for the News. However, one of the things that social news and the ability to hear the views of 900 million Twitter users (granted they haven’t all tweeted this week!) is to make light of some of these troubling stories. There is always someone ready with a bank of memes about people in the news, funny quotes and photos of celebrities from years ago coming back to bite them on the ass (Twitter is perfect for catching Trump out this way!) and of course the gif’s, sometimes, but not always, including numerous cats! Is this as good as it seems though? Photo by Marten Bjork on Unsplash We all like a laugh, all giggle at the other people losing their heads about an issue and going on a 25 tweet rant about the situation. There is always a funny twist to make us smile, even in the darkest of days. Does that make us numb to these news stories though? I found myself thinking just that today, when the memes and comments started to come out about Boris and David Davis stepping down. People posting what he might do now he is no longer Foreign Secretary and I think some go it just right with the images of him on his way in to Love Island! But once the little giggle passed I got back to the thought about how worrying this whole Brexit situation is. And it made me think that maybe all these jokes, memes and gifs that do the rounds on days like today maybe making us forget about how bad a mess we are in? Does it make all the people that are just on the edge of politics, that don’t really get involved in a deep way just seeing it as one big joke, because I really don't think it is! While I get that we have to make light so some really dark stories or we would forever be miserable and disharted with the world I don't want that to be at the cost of people careing what is happening to their country or their communities. It maybe that this isn’t the case, that people really do understand the severity of news when it breaks worldwide but I think we might have all had that little escapism through a funny tweet or video I just hope that we don’t move completely towards the parodies and way from the reality.

https://medium.com/an-idea/is-social-media-making-us-numb-740242691677

['Andy Young']

2020-10-16 16:13:08.911000+00:00

['Brexit', 'Memes', 'Life', 'Twitter', 'Social Media']

Jornadas: como fazer acontecer o processo de fidelização?

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/sejaoutofthebox/jornadas-como-fazer-acontecer-o-processo-de-fideliza%C3%A7%C3%A3o-585ea98e75b3

['Out Of The Box']

2020-12-19 22:32:42.052000+00:00

['Fidelização', 'UX', 'Customer Experience', 'Experience', 'Medium Brasil']

COVID-19 Data Visualization using Python

Data Visualization is the first step towards getting an insight into a large data set in every data science project. Once the data has been acquired and preprocessed (cleaned and deduplicated), the next step in the Data Science Life Cycle is Exploratory Data Analysis which kicks off with visualization of the data. The aim here is to extract useful information from the data. I have used Python and its few powerful libraries to achieve the task. Also, I have used Google Colab Notebooks to write the code so as to avoid the hassle of installing any IDE or packages in case you wish to follow along. Let’s get started The first step is to open a new Google Colab ipython notebook and import the libraries we require. import pandas as pd import numpy as np import matplotlib.pyplot as plt import seaborn as sns import plotly.express as px ### for plotting the data on world map Loading the data These visualizations are based on data as of May 25, 2020. I have used the daily report data published by John Hopkins University for May 25, 2020. The next part of the code deals with loading the .csv data to our project. path = 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/master/csse_covid_19_data/csse_covid_19_daily_reports/05-25-2020.csv' df = pd.read_csv(path) df.info() df.head() In just two lines in code we have our data loaded and ready for use as a Pandas Dataframe. the next two lines display the information about the data (metadata) i.e., a total of 3409 rows of data and 11 columns. It also gives us a preview of the first five rows. Preprocessing the data Now since our data has loaded successfully, the next step is to preprocess the data before using it for plotting. It will include : Removing superfluous columns like ‘FIPS’, ‘Admin2', ‘Last_Update’ (since all the data is for single-day — 25th May). Removing columns ‘Province_State’ and ‘Combined_Key’ since statewide data is not available for all the countries. Grouping together data by ‘Country_Region’ and rename the column to ‘Country’ df.drop(['FIPS', 'Admin2','Last_Update','Province_State', 'Combined_Key'], axis=1, inplace=True) df.rename(columns={'Country_Region': "Country"}, inplace=True) df.head() The data can be grouped together by the ‘groupby’ function of the dataframe. It is similar to the GROUPBY statement in SQL. world = df.groupby("Country")['Confirmed','Active','Recovered','Deaths'].sum().reset_index() world.head() Finally our data is cleaned and ready to use.

https://towardsdatascience.com/covid-19-data-visualization-using-python-3c8bcfaeff5f

['Jaskeerat Singh Bhatia']

2020-05-27 15:29:19.394000+00:00

['Data Science', 'Coronavirus', 'Covid 19', 'Exploratory Data Analysis', 'Data Visualization']

How funding journalism in a crisis has impacted journalists and their communities

Informed communities need journalists. This was the foundation upon which, in April 2020, the European Journalism Centre launched a $3 million USD fund to support community, local and regional European news organisations and journalists during the COVID-19 crisis, in partnership with the Facebook Journalism Project. Today, we are publishing a report that gives an overview of the European Journalism COVID-19 Support Fund over the last 12 months, including how the Fund has performed against its objectives, and how grantees have used the core funding to continue to serve their communities and provide much-needed information and support throughout the pandemic. We hope that this report helps other funders, journalism stakeholders and publishers to navigate the ongoing COVID-19 situation and future crisis situations, to develop other support initiatives and to become more resilient. Through the Fund, we have: Supported 162 grantees across 35 countries in Europe, 49 of which are freelancers (including individuals and groups of freelance journalists); Provided core funding grants of €5,000, €10,000, €25,000 and €50,000, that have been used by grantees to cover staff and freelancer salaries and reporting travel costs, to pay office rent and utilities, and to purchase equipment and software to help them do their work remotely; Prioritised organisations and freelancers with a clear objective of serving specific communities with public interest news and information. Particularly those focusing on vulnerable and/or underrepresented communities, and communities of interest, and applicants based in countries where government support was not available. Benefits of core funding Across both Waves of the Fund, the decision to provide unrestricted core funding at a crucial time of need was met with approval from grantees, 82% of which said core funding had helped them/their organisations solve their own problems. They added that core funding enabled them to focus on fulfilling their mission, without being distracted by project-specific requirements, and that they felt trusted to spend the money wisely. 77% of grantees also said the grant had helped them either ‘fully’ or ‘mostly’ overcome the challenges posed by COVID-19 that they had originally described when they submitted their applications to the Fund. “Regarding obtaining a grant during the crisis, I think it is very important that the fund’s management is flexible enough to be able to adapt terms and conditions to the reality that we have been experiencing all these months. That has been important to us, and it is appreciated. We small media already have many difficulties to have to face many more issues. For this reason, the fact that the EJC has trusted us and allowed us to make the decisions that shape the reality that we were having, has been very important.” Emergency Fund grantee (Wave 1) In particular through Wave 1 of the Fund, which launched in April 2020, we were able to support many organisations that were at the brink of collapse. Feedback from grantees has confirmed that the majority of funding went to organisations in existential need and was used to cover critical business needs and salaries. For some of these organisations, the Fund was the first emergency support they secured, and played a crucial role in keeping them afloat long enough in order to secure additional revenue (or, in some cases, more emergency funding) at later stages of the crisis. Photograph by Eva Parey, a grantee of the Engagement Fund (Wave 1) Impact on community engagement The funding also enabled recipients to continue activities or develop new activities that increased engagement with and participation from their communities — 87% of all grantees said they believed that as a result of receiving support from the Fund, engagement with their communities and/or demand for their organisations’ services will continue to grow beyond the crisis, and this will positively impact their financial sustainability in the long term. Some of the community engagement initiatives developed by grantees include: special print editions for elderly people; a ‘community response network’ to enable third sector charities and organisations to share information, resources and support with citizens; a ‘service desk’ and 1-to-1 advisory service to answer people’s questions about COVID-19 and help them identify what subsidies and government support they qualify for; online training courses aimed at developing the journalistic skills of people with lived experience of homelessness; charitable campaigns to support hospitals and healthcare workers; fact-checking projects; radio programmes addressing mental health and wellbeing during the pandemic; and many others. “Community media must focus on issues affecting their community. We should focus less on news and information that members can easily get elsewhere. That makes us relevant. Focusing on issues affecting our community enables us to build a loyal readership base. Despite the endless news and information on the internet, many issues, especially affecting small communities, are still grossly underreported. As community media practitioners, we should identify these issues and address them.” Emergency Fund grantee (Wave 2) A boost of confidence and validation for journalists’ work Many grantees, both organisations and freelancers, said that beyond the financial aspect, receiving the funding and having their work recognised by and associated with the European Journalism Centre had also boosted their confidence, reinforced that their work mattered and that it was on the right track, and had ‘kept them going’ emotionally and mentally. For freelancers in particular, the grant provided them with a level of independence needed to report on topics that they felt were of particular public interest, and to engage with their chosen community groups, rather than having to chase stories that are more likely to be commissioned. “It meant a lot to have financial and also encouraging support from EJC, at a time when all other financial sources were declining rather than increasing. There should be more initiatives like this, and not just in times of crisis, especially to support those who are keeping minority groups informed, because our options are even more limited.” Emergency Fund (for freelancers) grantee (Wave 2) The report also includes eight key takeaways and recommendations for running a crisis fund. Among these, it is important for core funding grants and initiatives to continue after the crisis — core funding not only allows news organisations to keep the lights on and continue to inform their communities, it also gives them the time and breathing space to brainstorm and start developing new community engagement initiatives, or test additional revenue streams at their own pace. The full report is available here.

https://medium.com/we-are-the-european-journalism-centre/how-funding-journalism-in-a-crisis-has-impacted-journalists-and-their-communities-143defcb9d8d

['Madalina Ciobanu']

2021-04-13 12:08:59.504000+00:00

['Covid 19', 'Journalism', 'Funding', 'Community Engagement']

Small Area Rugs can be used to enhance the entryway.

Beautiful Small area rugs are ideal for creating a warm, welcome atmosphere at your entranceways. Place them in front of your console tables or full-length mirrors for the best effect. The design and color of your handmade rug are significant since they set the tone for the rest of your home’s interior decor. You can use either neutral colors that complement and improve the beauty of your space (but take in mind the heavy foot traffic and entering filth) or vivid colors that accentuate and enhance the attractiveness of your area. Wool, sisal, bamboo slat, seagrass, hemp, and polypropylene are all good, long-lasting entryway rug materials. Look for hand-knotted or flat woven constructions with low pile heights that can withstand the most abuse. Stain-resistant, water-resistant, and machine-washable, our 3x5 small area rugs are ideal for high-traffic areas such as your entryway or foyer, kitchen, or living room! We have the perfect 3x5 rug for you, no matter what color, pattern, or style you’re looking for!

https://medium.com/@ooptech123/small-area-rugs-can-be-used-to-enhance-the-entryway-208beab4ea5

[]

2021-12-13 22:17:51.198000+00:00

['Furniture', 'Rugs', 'Lighting']

Why Lightning and Raiden Networks Will Not Work

Now, when transaction fees for btc are constantly in $30 area pretty much every thread about scalability ends up with mentioning LN or eth’s Raiden (which recently raised $33M by selling a token the network never needed). I wrote this short memo specifically to demonstrate why LN is an ephemeral concept not applicable to reality. I learnt about LN back in 2015 from Jonathan Wilkins, CSO of Blockstream, but like everyone else didn’t pay any attention to it because there were no scalability problem. The abstracted idea, detached from reality, is great — everyone has a channel with someone else, everything is trustless, you can do onion routing and multi-hop payments to anyone else. Sounds too good to be true, right? I can only recall these posts with critics of LN by Jonald: He points to a problem that mesh-network between individuals is unlikely because the system gravitates to centralization. He is damn right. But he missed the obvious: even being centralized LN will simply not work due to broken (or, rather, non-existent) incentive model. Some people do 10 million node simulation to “prove” him wrong — which has nothing to do with real economy, that’s why it’s called a “simulation”. On a positive side, LN is not “vaporware” as many bcash fans call it — it’s a very real project. There’s massive work being done on lnd (which I follow closely) and I’m sure in 3–6 months there will be a fully-fledged production-ready daemon. The codebase, the team, the spirit , even the name ⚡— all of them are superb. It’s just the design that’s broken. Here is the question: LN is production-ready. Now what? How will the network grow from day one? Let’s assume all wallets (client and server side) add payment channel functionality, so I can open a channel to anyone else. Who I’d like to open a channel to? Given $30 fees, I will probably think hard before doing that… coffeeshop I’m using twice a month? Bob who I split bills with once a year? let me think… a hub! Hubs have connections to other users, that’s what “hub” means. Where do hubs come from? Let’s say there’s a respectable team FirstHub that wants to become a LN hub. Ok, here we go, Alice opens a channel to FirstHub. She wants to pay Bob. She sends a $10 commitment tx (LN terminology) or balance proof (Raiden terminology) to the hub. How the hub pays to Bob? An on-chain channel to Bob is a pre-requisite to routing any payment. Why would the hub open a channel to Bob? $30 to open a channel to random dude? Should Bob go through KYC or fund a channel himself with FirstHub? So Bob puts $30 in channel and hub what, $300? What if Bob doesn’t own any coins and is first time user? What if Bob is malicious and runs sybil attack to destroy hub’s liquidity so hub has no money to open new channels? Where does FirstHub get this kind of liquidity to start with? They are just programmers who run the software. They have just a few Bitcoins. But they need as much money as they have volume. Paypal’s volume is $100B. Who wants to give 100 BTC to FirstHub team running a freshly baked lnd daemon? What ROI? For ridiculous “sub-satoshi” off-chain fees? Nope, thanks, I’d rather HODL than lose my money being a “liquidity provider” for your questionable operation. What if there’s a channel to Bob, but the capacity is not enough to route $10? Risk FirstHub’s money and open a new channel? What if Bob transfers $100 to Bob2, then Bob2 to Bob3 and so on, how should the hub go about it? Open a ton of channels to Sybils, check their identity or ask them to bring just as much money as they want to receive so they would not have a leverage in attacking hub’s liquidity? How did we end up developing a technology that does not have a reasonable incentive model? So it will not work? Yep. When it will be released, no one will give a shit. A few enthusiasts will install it, play around in testnet, run “simulations” but that’s about it. Maaaybe some exchanges will have channels between each other in some way, but that has nothing to do with LN (mesh network of channels), that’s just channels that existed long before that. As a user, you will have no reason to open a channel to anybody, no one will have an incentive to open a channel to you, and no one will have an incentive to run a hub to join you guys together. Stale mate. Don’t trust me? Fine. Wait 3–6 months and see it yourself. Speaking of Raiden, it has much lower chances. Obviously, no one is going to transact in shittokens. People need liquid asset such as ether. So first things first, there would have to be a tokenized ether. Not a deal breaker, but would save quite some gas and code complexity if they started with pure ether instead of all kinds of CoffeeTokens. Solidity is pain to write in, so any simplification is a huge win. uRaiden is a gimmick — no one ever needed many-to-one unidirectional network. Paying per megabyte of Internet? Come on! It’s all about many-to-many bidirectional channels. Very strange Solidity patterns. Each channel requires a new contract to be deployed, while it’s not that hard to engineer the entire network (mapping many => many) running inside one contract. No benefits on the security side either — having 10000000 contracts vs 1 doesn’t make the system more secure, as all of them could be vulnerable to exact same bug. But is there hope? LN/Raiden incentive model is hopelessly broken, but it’s not a game over. The fix is ridiculously simple. The hub can give a signed promise to Bob (positive delta +10) for every commitment they receive from Alice (negative delta -10). Alice can settle whenever she wants (normally when positive delta is reaching 100x of current onchain fee, eg $1,000). A positive delta is not exactly custodian balance, as it’s possible to enforce the hub to pay you onchain as long as the hub is solvent. Sure, you don’t have 100% security for 100% of your money, there’s a trade-off to be made. But it’s a lot more important to keep first layer lightweight and bandwidth requirements as low as possible than going full Bitcoin Cash like newer blockchains promoting “100,000” tps do. Those who sacrifice first layer aren’t real blockchains but scammers who edited a single line of code that limits blocksize. In Fairlayer you get 100% security for 99% of your money (collateral) and 99% security for the other 1% (money in-motion, positive deltas). As long as sum of all deltas stored by a hub is <0 (more money owned in negative deltas than promised in positive deltas), the hub is solvent. Once it gets insolvent, it will be apparent fairly quickly as it stops settling collateral on time, and people would migrate to other hubs. Coming to you this January.

https://medium.com/fairlayer/why-lightning-and-raiden-networks-will-not-work-d1880e4bc294

['Egor Homakov']

2018-07-01 03:01:03.969000+00:00

['Bitcoin', 'Lighting', 'Raiden Network']

If You Have Mid-Life Burnout, Do These 4 Things — Quickly

You’re tired upon tired: short on energy, low on motivation. There’s always so much to do: work, relationship, family, chores, life admin — you’re on the hamster wheel and it never ends. Even a weekend away doesn’t refresh you. Mid-life is a common time for the cracks to appear. That’s when people are often sandwiched between raising kids, caring for elderly parents and trying to rise up the ranks at work. It’s also when we come face to face with the life choices we’ve made — and the consequences — and we begin to see life as finite. Time is running out. What’s Mid-Life Burnout? Burnout is the term commonly used to describe chronic work stress but it can be applied to life, generally. Burnout can be hard to spot because it starts slowly and presents in the same way as symptoms of mild-to-moderate depression that, if left unchecked, can morph into serious clinical problems. So it’s important to keep an eye on yourself as the years stack up. Here are the key signs of burnout as they apply to mid-life. 1. Physical and mental exhaustion. Many mid-lifers are hitting the peak of their professional careers at the same time as they are raising kids and looking after aging parents. The relentless demands and worries coming from all angles — along with the sameness of their days and little time for fun — gets to people. They’ll often report erratic sleep, problems with concentration and decision making, feeling flat, more anxious and “lost”. Physically, there may be stomach problems, headaches and unexplained aches and pains. People often explain these away as “getting older” but it’s often the fallout of all the stress they’re under. 2. Feeling cynical about work and relationships. Burnout, like depression, negatively colours our view of ourselves, our people and our future. And that can lead us to see the worst in our partners, family, close friends and the people we work with. And once we get into the habit of seeing the downside, it’s hard to see anything else. People often report less tolerance/more conflict with their partners — especially over chores, money and sex — and feel bleak about the future of their relationship. On the work front, people may feel professionally stuck which fuels feelings of discontent. 3. Feeling like you’re not doing anything well. Mid-lifers will often say they feel they’re they’re failing on all fronts. Everything is “once over lightly”. Or they’ll manage to do one thing well (like work) but be hyper-irritable and short on energy with partners and kids, which upsets them and causes guilt. A feeling of futility creeps in when they realise they don’t have the time or headspace to think about what they’re doing all this for and what their next step might be. What To Do: 4 Strategies That Will Help 1. Pay attention — and take a break. Seriously. Burnout is no joke. It’s the clearest sign you are desperate for a mental and physical rest. Take a break immediately if you can and put some boundaries around all the demands on your time. Only your family will care if your health is compromised — everyone else will just look around for someone to take your place. 2. Do the hard math on your schedule. Pause! Even when people are run ragged they’ll often keep saying yes; they’ll do that little bit of overtime for the boss, they’ll help out a friend in need, they’ll let their kids add another activity to their schedules. Maybe they’re kind by nature or like to please or are super-responsible — or it’s just habit. Be careful about continuing to operate on automatic pilot — it’ll come back to bite you. Take an inventory of your schedule, then ruthlessly clear out everything that’s unnecessary. Then make it a rule that if you can’t add something to your schedule without dropping something else — and stick to it. 3. Carve out some regular “me” time. This can be particularly challenging for people who don’t have any free time. But if you don’t do anything for yourself, you’ll be resentful (as well as burnt out). You don’t have to have a lot of “me” time to feel better, just a couple of regular slots you can count on AND enjoy. And some of it should be alone so you have time to think about your future or next step. 4. Find a way to get excited. When you’re struggling with burnout, all forms of positive emotion (except cynical laughter) seem to go walkabout on you. Don’t try to force yourself to feel happy — it won’t work. Just find one little (lawful) thing that gets you a little excited and go do it. It may be something you haven’t done for a while, or it may be a swerve in a new direction. But once you feel that buzz again, you’ll be up for creating ways to have more of it. As entrepreneur Tim Ferris says: “Excitement is the more practical synonym for happiness, and it is precisely what you should strive to chase. It is the cure-all.”

https://medium.com/on-the-couch/if-you-have-mid-life-burnout-do-these-4-things-quickly-c6971c787fe4

['Karen Nimmo']

2020-12-01 18:56:35.447000+00:00

['Self Improvement', 'Life Lessons', 'Mental Health', 'Productivity', 'Psychology']

How to Identify the Artist of a Painting?

You may have read my numerous Art Collecting Guide stories on how to safely buy an Old Master [including examining the painting surface, the frame, and the back of the picture]. Here I follow precisely the steps I covered in those elaborate articles you could use in the art research and discovery process of your own. I bought this intriguing female portrait by an unknown painter more than three years ago. “England, 19th century” — that’s basically all the details a provincial German auction house has included in the lot information space. The painting had a rather modest estimate which would be typically given to a no-name small-scale picture like this one. I must say, the story is not that much about the price hunting, but rather a sometimes miraculous process of art research and discovery. Nevertheless, to give you a rough idea, it was something around a grand [a safe bet for sellers and it really doesn’t matter if it is a misattributed Rembrandt or a 1800s study of a beautiful lady’s head] This is how it all looked online A gut feeling was urging me to sign up for the sale and hope the price wouldn’t go up much and leave me without the joy of a new acquisition waiting for its mysteries to be solved. Luckily, the fellow-bidders weren’t too aggressive that day [a coin flip, really] and I secured the deal knowing I wouldn’t regret it even if my own investigation failed. Jumping ahead I can say that it didn’t. Step #1. Always look at the back first Alas, the small low-resolution picture that went with the lot was the only piece of evidence I had to take the decision of going for the portrait or not. No backside photos, and no time to ask for one [chances were they wouldn’t send me anything taking into account the huge volume of the general sale and the lack of staff to deal of all those lots individually]. So, when the painting arrived, the first thing I did was a careful examination of the back of the panel.

https://medium.com/hidden-gem/how-to-identify-the-artist-of-a-painting-9d942f49c2c5

['Marina Viatkina']

2021-01-19 13:56:45.387000+00:00

['Art Collecting', 'Art And Culture', 'Art', 'Art History', 'Art Investment']

4 Amazing Tips For Successful Lead Generation With LinkedIn Automation Tools

4 Amazing Tips For Successful Lead Generation With LinkedIn Automation Tools Steve J Apr 7·4 min read If you’re a B2B marketer, LinkedIn should be the most important part of your marketing strategy — it has become the largest B2B platform where you find and engage with niche-specific leads, makes meaningful connections, and grow your brand. If you pay attention, using LinkedIn for lead generation would make a lot of sense to you. Unlike other social platforms such a Facebook and Instagram, prospects are much more eager to have professional conversations on LinkedIn. It’s a professional network where you don’t just scroll down to watch videos — you’re there to talk about business opportunities. Advanced LinkedIn automation tools have worked as a blessing for B2B marketers. These tools pointed them in the right direction, helping them find quality leads, and even turn them into customers with personalized messages. Now you can probably see where I am going with this: Here are some useful tips on how you can use the best LinkedIn automation tools to generate leads. #1: Optimize Your Profile 👏🏼 First things first — before you even start using LinkedIn automation tools to connect with people, make sure your profile is good enough to trust. The worst thing you can do to yourself is running an impressive campaign while having a bad profile. You know what will happen? Prospects won’t accept your request or respond to your messages even though your targeting was highly precise and you were using the best LinkedIn automation tools the right way. Here are a few things that you can do to leave a good first impression: Add a professional profile picture and background Add a professional profile picture ( not something with a Snapchat filter or a stock photo of a business person). It’s a good idea to add a picture that shows something you love; fashion, books, art, etc. Headline & Summary When adding a headline, make sure you add the most relevant keywords. This also goes for your summary. Just like you are using advanced LinkedIn automation tools to find prospects, they are also using LinkedIn automation tools to find reliable vendors. So, provide them something in your profile to trust you. #2: Add Connections (but within limits) Now that you have a great profile, you can confidently use the best LinkedIn automation tools to run outreach campaigns to add connections. However, this can be a bit challenging — sending too many connections in a day can get your account blocked. If you are using the latest LinkedIn automation tools to send connect requests but you haven’t set any limits, it can get you in trouble. This is because sending too many connected notes is considered spam. You can avoid this by using the best LinkedIn automation tools that offer the ‘Warm-up feature.” Here is how you can do that: Use LinkedIn automation tools to set daily limits for: Profile Engagement Connection Requests Messages And so on… Some of the top LinkedIn automation tools such as LinkedCamp have an inbuilt safety limit feature to keep a check on the number. Thus, you don’t have to do it manually as these tools can do it for you. #3: Follow Up There is a misconception that LinkedIn lead generation is all about numbers — Gathering as many leads as you can and hoping that some of them will work is like fooling yourself. If you’re sending messages to leads once and leaving them behind if they don’t respond — you’re doing it wrong. You’re missing an important step: Follow Up. As a B2B marketer, you must have an idea of how important it is to follow up. When you follow up with a lead faster, your chances to convert them into sales are 9 times higher. But many salespersons don’t recognize the importance of follow-up and leave hundreds of great opportunities at the table. It might be awkward for you to keep pressing someone once they have shown no interest. Don’t worry! There are some great LinkedIn automation tools that can do it for you. You can do this easily with LinkedCamp — to send personalized messages and follow up after regular intervals. This advanced LinkedIn automation tool is very easy to use and automates messages and follow-ups. It will automatically send follow-ups after a particular time period. #4: Generate Leads From Other Sources Using LinkedIn automation tools LinkedIn doesn’t mean there is no other source or channel for lead generation. Your leads could be anywhere on the internet, on any platform and you can use different means to find them. However, the place where you can certainly find leads without hassle is LinkedIn. Analysts and strategists have suggested that LinkedIn could easily change the game for marketers if they know how to use the best LinkedIn automation tools properly and what strategies to apply while using them. Good luck!

https://medium.com/@stevejohnsonstories/4-amazing-tips-for-successful-lead-generation-with-linkedin-automation-tools-61aee0bd0adc

['Steve J']

2021-04-07 12:27:11.841000+00:00

['LinkedIn', 'Technology', 'Automation', 'Lead Generation', 'Tips And Tricks']

2 Tips for Creating Shareable Content for Influencers

One of my ‘favourite’ SEO strategies has always been “link baiting.” Essentially this means writing an article to be eye catching and entertaining enough that people will want to share it, so that then when they read it on your site they’ll be more likely to want to post it on their own websites or on forums. This was a strategy that was around before social media marketing existed in a big way, and one that allowed for a piece of writing to go viral before the days of Facebook or Twitter. Fast forward a few years though and I’d argue that many of the social network influencer could stand to learn a thing from the technique. The point is that too many people think that having a big network of contacts on a social media site is enough to ensure that their content will spread. The strategy for many of them it seems is to simply develop a large number of “followers” or “friends” and then to just share everything they create and hope for the best. The problem is that not everything is well suited to that kind of viral sharing, and like the link bait articles that SEO gurus use, a better strategy would be to devise articles from the outset that will be more likely to get shared. Here we will look at how to do that… Write Articles With an Emotional Hook The first thing you need to do if you hope for your article links to spread quickly is to give them some kind of emotional resonance. If someone reads your article and they come away thinking ‘wow’ or even feeling angry, then they will be more likely to share, comment or interact with that content in some way. Write Articles With a Catchy Title For someone to share your article they first need to read it, and the only weapon you have at your disposal as far as that’s concerned is the strength of your title. While you could write an entire article just one that, the tenets you should follow are to make your title descriptive of your article so that people know what it’s going to be about, to make it engaging in some way (again by making it emotional, or by asking a question or making a statement) and to use hyperbole (the ‘ultimate’ list, not ‘a very good’ list).

https://medium.com/@meysamm/2-tips-for-creating-shareable-content-for-influencers-35332fc394a6

['Meysam Moradpour']

2020-12-20 03:17:15.383000+00:00

['Social Media Marketing', 'Influencer Marketing Tips', 'Influencers', 'Influencer Marketing']

WhatsApp Bot A Guide for India in 2021

To WhatsApp, India is a huge request. Still, for India, WhatsApp is a huge platform. A WhatsApp Bot brings these two parties together in perfect harmony. India is WhatsApp’s most important request. On the other hand, WhatsApp has an estimated 300 million yearly active druggies in India. bots for whatsapp Nearly 1 in every 5 WhatsApp druggies is from India. No other country indeed comes near compared to WhatsApp chatbot India. But flip the script and you ’ll find that WhatsApp’s request penetration for India is miserable. Only 28 of Indians use WhatsApp, ranking it 9th for the metric. Compare this to countries like Germany (65) and Malaysia (68), and WhatsApp’s eventuality for uninterrupted success in India is measureless. Indians love WhatsApp. Nearly 95 of all Android bias in India have WhatsApp installed. Socioeconomic trends would suggest analogous figures for iOs and Apple bias. And although utmost WhatsApp’s druggies come from civic areas, pastoral areas have recorded an adding share of the app’s relinquishment. This spread is also true across income groups. Companies follow guests onto platforms Businesses respond to this fidelity. 80 of small businesses in India are formerly using the platform to connect with their guests and expand their business. The company uses India to beta its most important launches and trials. WhatsApp Pay, the peer-to- peer UPI powered plutocrat transfer point is an India-only launch. Pending nonsupervisory blessings, the company will open up its frame to over 300 million guests. This stoner base will make WhatsApp a bigger payment interface than request leaders PayTM, Google Pay and PhonePe. Once you ’ve allowed guests to start transacting, the coming logical step is to give them someone to distribute with. Enter — A WhatsApp Bot. We ’ll ask and answer three questions in this post. What’s a WhatsApp bot? Why do I need a WhatsApp bot? How can I make a WhatsApp bot? Let’s launch with the first question. What’s a WhatsApp bot? Bots are a colloquial longhand used to describe Chatbots. Chatbots are pieces of software used to replicate mortal discussion. Chatbots can range from Google Homes’to automated textbook bots that you ( generally) find at the bottom of websites. We ’ll focus on the ultimate for now. These chatbots can be replicated beyond just websites, to Apps, Facebook runners and WhatsApp exchanges. But anyhow of where you interact with one, the backend functionality of a chatbot remains largely the same. Why does my business need a WhatsApp chatbot? Chatbots are great at two primary client commerce places — lead generation and client support robotization. Like all successful robotization sweats, client service chatbots can reduce costs, but the advancements they make in client experience are far more poignant.

https://medium.com/@valuefirst823/whatsapp-bot-a-guide-for-india-in-2021-ced624b3afc8

['Suraj Singh']

2021-12-24 09:45:52.149000+00:00

['Bot', 'WhatsApp']

10 Emerging Digital Marketing Trends That You Should Pay Attention To — Proof Blog

To say that digital marketing is dynamic is an understatement. Terms like influencers and podcasters were unheard of a few decades ago. Additionally, apps like Tik Tok and Instagram have become integral parts of marketing strategies. Digital marketing trends, along with Google’s search engine algorithms, are ever-changing. Further, many consumers have become more selective with the type of content they use. There’s no doubt that optimizing your website will help you get greater visibility. But, there are several other nuances you need to know about digital marketing. Let’s look at the 10 the most prominent digital marketing trends. Convert up to 300% more visitors into leads, demos, and sales. Newsletters Newsletters can be an excellent tactic of keeping your customers in the loop about the latest affairs in your company. They can also help you establish a loyal base. We aren’t claiming that newsletters are a replacement for personalized emails though. The hyper-dynamic lifestyles of people have made them more open to subscribing for someone else to give them a distilled version about the recent happenings in a specific niche. These can help bridge the gap created because of indigestible content. After all, nobody knows the legitimacy, accuracy or usefulness of most of the news sources presented on social media. This is one of the reasons why newsletters are making a comeback. Micro-Influencers The biggest advantage of influencers is the relatability that people share with them. This helps them become more trustworthy in the eyes of the general public compared to a “famous” star. Several incidents in the influencer world have made people realize how a celebrity endorsement doesn’t always guarantee quality. Besides this, investing money in a celebrity influencer isn’t exactly wise. Smaller influencers have a more loyal community among followers, helping them generate a good ROI for a sponsored post. You should try to look for influencers with genuine active engagement since there are several fraud influencers trying to make a quick buck. Making Data-Driven Decisions One of the most notable changes in the digital marketing arena is the rationale of how companies make marketing-related decisions. Instead of amateur experimentation, decision-makers and teams today use hard facts to boost the efficiency of their strategies. Data-driven marketing, backed by a plethora of marketing tools, can also help. You can also keep a record of relevant data safely and access it while being on the go. For example, Buzzsumo helps marketers determine the type of content relevant to their company trends on social media. The platform also enables smooth and efficient link building outreach. You have to keep an eye out for essential data to make better decisions with regards to your company. After all, the numbers don’t lie. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Email Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) can streamline many business processes for smoother operations; email is one of them. AI turned 65 years old this year. While it’s definitely not the latest trend, its accessibility and implications in the field of marketing still continue to grow. Some find these advancements threatening, but few can deny its advantages when it comes to ascertaining more efficiency. Business owners have started automating emails. Some of them include subject lines, product recommendations, and scheduling. Incorporating AI and ML in this activity can ensure better personalization. This, in turn, can help you get more customers. You can also use the software for analyzing the behaviour of website visitors and initiating engagement. Instagram is Slowly Dethroning Facebook More than 3.6 billion people use social media worldwide. About 84% of millennials use it as a means to support their income. So not utilizing social media to market your products or services would be unwise. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and even TikTok, should now be a part of your marketing strategy. That is if you want to raise awareness and engage with your target demographic of course. While it may not be struggling, Facebook isn’t the go-to social media app for the younger generation anymore. According to Forbes, 40% of the platform users are over the age of 65. As a result, running ads on Facebook may not be very suitable for certain campaigns. Especially those targeted to younger people. Another platform that people don’t really trust is Facebook because of recent data breaches. Instead, it’s Instagram that has seen colossal growth in popularity over the past few years. One potential issue that you should keep in mind is that Instagram is testing removing the likes feature from the platform, which already caused an uproar in the influencer community. This move can increase content quality, yes. But there are also chances that the user might drift away to other platforms in search of vanity metrics. Even TikTok could be a good option for brands to showcase their offerings. It’s one of the fastest-growing SaaS applications with 33 million downloads in a single quarter. Convert up to 300% more visitors into leads, demos, and sales. Posting Stories on Social Media The days where marketers could get away with using posts with basic captions and hashtags are gone. Social media stories are the latest fad in the digital marketing niche. The good thing about stories is that buyers perceive them as authentic and transparent. And who doesn’t like real-time updates as opposed to basic photos? No wonder HootSuite found out that 64% of marketers have already implemented Instagram stories into their social media strategy. Good Content is Still King, With More Emphasis On Interactive Formats Content marketing is an essential part of digital marketing. With Google developing a deeper and more sophisticated understanding of online content, companies need to make sure that whatever they publish on their blog adds value to their customers. The main idea here is to deliver tailor-made content that can solve the pain points of customers. According to the BERT update, Google search engines are prioritizing those websites that have “fast speeds, useful links, and well-written content.” The interactive part of the content will become more prominent in the digital marketing industry. Interactive content means anything that allows visitors to click on, swipe or interact with online. The most common content types under this include quizzes and polls, 360-degree videos, and augmented reality ads. These formats can deliver a more immersive and engaging experience from a customer’s point of view, thanks to its cutting-edge marketing technology. It also makes them feel more connected to the company, which is very beneficial for maintaining lasting relationships. Omnichannel Marketing Relevance Omnichannel marketing was actually one of the buzzwords of last year. Although the intrigue has faded out a little, the strategy still remains relevant in 2020. If you don’t know already, omnichannel marketing is the process of advertising your products and services across many platforms, such as email, social media, apps, and blogs. Doing this will allow you to connect with a greater number of prospects on more touchpoints. This also gives you the opportunity to enhance user experience while creating a cohesive brand reputation that forces people to take action and remain loyal to the company. It’s also necessary for all the strategies one uses to have an all-encompassing approach. Convert up to 300% more visitors into leads, demos, and sales. Chatbots Will Become a Crucial Part of Customer Service Chatbots are AI software that communicates with users and assists them in solving their doubts and the completion of goals. They have the ability to interact with humans and collect data insights about customers. You can get personalized, focused interactions without putting too much strain on limited human resources. So it can be very useful for small as well as large business owners. About 80% of businessmen want to incorporate chatbots into their customer service. They want to provide 24-hour service to customers to ensure the latter get instant responses to their queries. Chatbots also cut the need for vacations, bricks, or any overtime pay, making it a cost-effective option for businesses as well. Since both businesses and customers enjoy the involvement of chatbots, we can be sure that this digital marketing trend is here to stay. More Intuitive Web Design Over the past couple of years, web design has changed. Also, many companies want to SEO optimize their respective sites. Web designers who are aware of web designing trends understand that user experience is very important for customer conversions. Poorly-designed websites can affect the business’ growth. Further, they can have a crippling effect on its revenue and even lead generation. That’s why companies need to take measures to make their websites easy to navigate. Convert up to 300% more visitors into leads, demos, and sales. The Bottom Line Things are definitely moving fast in the world of digital marketing. In fact, change is an integral part of the job. Any company that wants to stay ahead of their competition needs to embrace new strategies, technologies, and tools to maintain an edge. AI technology, interactive content, and chatbots are some of the most prominent trends. You can definitely improve your customer’s journey and drive loyalty. All you have to do is keep these trends in mind when designing your next digital marketing campaign next! Convert up to 300% more visitors into leads, demos, and sales.

https://medium.com/@gmblogs/10-emerging-digital-marketing-trends-that-you-should-pay-attention-to-proof-blog-e0e6f426e491

['Ganesh Mulwad']

2020-12-26 15:06:29.917000+00:00

['Email', 'Email Marketing', 'Conversion Optimization', 'Sales', 'Social Media']

Queens of the Streets

Queens of the Streets A Poem, In Honor of the World’s Oldest Activists, Guides, and Protectors Being Pushed Off Platforms Due to Censorship, Stigma, and Violence Photo by Ｌａｒａ Ｓａｎｔｏｓ from Pexels Author’s Note: Trigger Warning for depictions of sexual exploitation, stigma, and police brutality. Sex trafficking and sex work are not the same but it should be noted that sex workers are often champions of self-love and self-care and deserve their platforms, which serve survivors and beyond. “If only I had looser morals,” she had told me pushing back a strand of blonde, “I’d make a fortune.” She said this while she encouraged me to embrace my ghosts of begging men on my knees for some safety and peace and begging men on my back for some mercy and freedom. Looser morals. Looser morals like tightening the straps of stilettos trying to feed dependents at home? with aching bodies the system demands we waste every day for minimum wage and sometimes less if we’re recognized as disabled, but we don’t need to beg for sick leave if we set our own appointments and we don’t need to worry about eating if we get paid well the day of and some of us do this to control a situation we had no control of before to remember we’re worth more than what was once stolen from us; our touch is worth what we decide it’s worth. For some of us, this is more than survival — for some of us, it’s our only way to survive. Looser morals, she said, like the women who judge the womxn who do this from the comfort of their suburban homes whose unhappy marriages reflect in how they judge our hard-earned dollars even though their husbands were selfish and unhappy before they looked us up. Looser morals, she said, like the system that protects the client but arrests the worker as if the bait isn’t our own abundance, joy, financial security, as if we’re not the ones with our mouth on the barrel to do what we do and to protect each other while we’re treated as if the cops don’t kill the strongest of us just because they’re so ashamed of who they’re lusting after. What can you tell me about looser morals, I had thought to myself, as you sit from your position of privilege complaining about how your boyfriend’s upset with you for cheating as soon as he needed some time to himself?

https://medium.com/the-rebel-poets-society/queens-of-the-streets-dcb5b3db725f

[]

2020-12-27 15:12:54.412000+00:00

['Survivor', 'The Rebel Poets Society', 'Sex', 'Sex Work Is Real Work', 'Healing']

What I’ve Learned about Investing in “Pot”

So here we go, I was definitely an early investor in “pot” as soon as it opened up on the exchanges. If you had told me 15–20 years ago that gay marriage would be legal before cannabis, I wouldn’t have believed you. However, he we are in a much better position for both. With that said, in anticipating for the opportunity to invest in such companies, I did my due diligence before pressing “buy”. Much of the initial investment advice I got from traditional investing publications was “wait” — it’s too early? As a long term investor, to me, it just made sense. I tend to look for value stocks, so I was loving the idea of buying cheap, but truth be told, I was not looking for immediate ROI. Know the Lingo & the Company. Or as somebody once told me, “beyond the flower”. The hierarchy is quite complex — different varieties of plants, indoor vs. outdoor, growing philosophies, derivatives, oils, edibles, etc. With choices when investing, many have their specialities. Know what the company does, their mission and where they fit in the industry. Treat the “Pot” Industry as It’s Own Sector. Before investing in any equity, I always look at the company in relation to the industry it’s operating in. I think that’s just table stakes, right? However, how do you define this kind of paradox? The paradox I’m speaking of is that it’s somewhat illegal, there’s a stigma, there’s supply/demand factors, it’s ultimately an agricultural product yet so many “products” are derived from the “flower”, you have everything from tech to pharma to tobacco to beverage companies taking an interest. Right now, you have to look at the industry as it’s own sector, and, for me, that’s part of what makes it fun. These are unique supply chains and the more you know about the supply chain and where the company fits in — that help create quite a potentially dynamic portfolio. There’s a little bit of the “Walmart effect” going on in the industry, so definitely be attune to that and diversify and adjust your portfolio as such. Know the Problems of the Industry. There are definitely issues within the industry as I’ve mentioned briefly above. For example, the legality, stigma and the growers having an advantage — and the latter can downturn the industry. There are a limited number of good suppliers. So be aware. Additionally, there are challenges in attracting “top talent” in the industry. I say “so what” they are still producing, but potentially, if not addressed, it could be a problem. Those are just a couple of examples. In summary, “pot” is complex. Besides a new industry (i.e. social media 20 years ago), there’s not a lot new here. Build your “pot” portfolio like you would build your “tech” portfolio.

https://medium.com/@hashtagmania/what-ive-learned-about-investing-in-pot-96f304aa3d0a

['Patrick Harris']

2019-02-02 15:35:36.965000+00:00

['Stock Market', 'Marijuana', 'Early Adopter', 'Investing', 'Weed']

Python args And kwargs Explained: All You Need to Know

Using args and kwargs can be quite cryptic especially if you are new to Python. Let’s find out together all you need to know about them. What are *args and **kwargs? *args and **kwargs allow to pass an arbitrary number of positional arguments (*args) and keyword arguments (**kwargs) to a Python function. You can use *args and **kwargs to make your Python code more flexible. We will start with a simple example that will show you quickly how to use *args and **kwargs. Then we will got through more examples to make sure you have a full understanding of them. We will also see where else you can use *args and **kwargs… Let’s get started! An Example of How to Use *args With a Function Let’s create a simple function that calculates the sum of two numbers: def sum(x, y): result = x + y return result Then we will call it with one, two or three arguments to see what happens: One argument print(sum(1)) We get back the following error because the sum function expects two arguments and we have only passed one: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/opt/python/codefather/args_kwargs.py", line 25, in print(sum(1)) TypeError: sum() missing 1 required positional argument: 'y' Notice how the Python interpreter is telling us that 1 required positional argument (y) is missing. You will see soon how positional arguments are related to *args… Two arguments print(sum(1, 2)) This time there is no error. Our program prints the correct sum because we pass the correct number of arguments when we call the sum function. Thee arguments print(sum(1, 2, 3)) We get back an error because our function doesn’t know how to handle three arguments: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/opt/python/codefather/args_kwargs.py", line 25, in print(sum(1, 2, 3)) TypeError: sum() takes 2 positional arguments but 3 were given We can solve this problem with *args… What is *args? *args allows to pass a variable number of positional arguments to a Python function. It’s accessible as tuple in the function itself. Let’s make few changes to our sum function: Add *args as last argument in the signature of the function. Check if args is empty and if it’s not empty add every argument in *args to the final result. def sum(x, y, *args): print("args value:", args) result = x + y if args: for arg in args: result += arg return result When we execute this code we get 6 as result and we can also see the content of the *args tuple: >>> print(sum(1, 2, 3)) args value: (3,) 6 Tuples are similar to Python lists with the only difference that they are immutable. How to Pass **kwargs To a Function Now that we have seen how *args works we will move to **kwargs. What is **kwargs? **kwargs allows to pass a variable number of keyword arguments to a Python function. Its content is available as dictionary in the function itself. Let’s see how it applies to our sum function… def sum(x, y, *args, **kwargs): print("args value:", args) print("kwargs value:", kwargs) result = x + y if args: for arg in args: result += arg if kwargs: for kwarg in kwargs.values(): result += kwarg return result We have updated the sum function to: Accept the **kwargs parameter. Print the content of the kwargs dictionary. Add any values in **kwargs to the final sum. When we call the function: print(sum(1, 2, 3, number1=6, number2=8)) The output is the following: args value: (3,) kwargs value: {'number1': 6, 'number2': 8} 20 You can see the content of the kwargs dictionary and the sum of all the numbers that is 20. Can you see how **kwargs works? Now… To make the sum function generic we could remove x and y, and just keep *args and **kwargs as function arguments. Give it a try! I will include the full source code at the end of this tutorial. And now let’s move to something else… Why Using the Names *args And **kwargs Based on what we have seen so far you might think that the Python interpreter recognises exactly the names *args and **kwargs. Let’s do a little experiment… I have changed our sum function, do you see the difference? def sum(x, y, *custom_args, **custom_kwargs): print("args value:", custom_args) print("kwargs value:", custom_kwargs) result = x + y if custom_args: for arg in custom_args: result += arg if custom_kwargs: for kwarg in custom_kwargs.values(): result += kwarg return result I have changed *args and **kwargs respectively to *custom_args and **custom_kwargs. Run the new program, you will see that the function still works as it was working before. So, it looks the names args and kwargs don’t really matter… …so how does the Python interpreter know how to deal with *custom_args and **custom_kwargs? Let’s apply another little change… def sum(x, y, args, kwargs): ... ... I have removed * and ** from args and kwargs. And the output becomes: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/opt/python/codefather/args_kwargs.py", line 37, in print(sum(1, 2, 3, number1=6, number2=8)) TypeError: sum() got an unexpected keyword argument 'number1' This shows that… What makes the Python interpreter understand how to handle *args and **kwargs is simply the * and ** before the parameter names. That’s why you can use any names you want. Using the names args and kwargs is just a convention to make code easier to read for all developers. The * is called iterable unpacking operator and the ** is the dictionary unpacking operator. Later on in this tutorial we will look deeper at what it means that * and ** are unpacking operators… Passing *args And **kwargs to a Function We will try something different now, to show why we say that *args contains positional arguments and **kwargs contains keyword arguments. Let’s go back to the first version of our sum function: def sum(x, y): result = x + y return result This time we want to use *args and **kwargs to pass arguments to this function. Here’s how… Passing arguments using *args We will define a tuple that contains the values of x and y. Then we will pass it as *args: args = (1, 2) print(sum(*args)) Give it a try and confirm the result is correct. In this case the values in the *args tuple are assigned to the x and y arguments based on their position. The first element in the tuple is assigned to x and the second element to y. If we add a couple of print statements to the sum function to see the values of x and y… def sum(x, y): print("x:", x) print("y:", y) result = x + y return result …we get the following result: x: 1 y: 2 3 Passing arguments using **kwargs We will define a dictionary that contains x and y as keys. To show that in this case the position (or order) of the dictionary element doesn’t matter, we will specify the key y before the key x. Then we will pass it as **kwargs to our sum function: kwargs = {'y': 2, 'x': 1} print(sum(**kwargs)) If you execute the code you will see that once again the result is correct. The values in the **kwargs dictionary are assigned to the x and y arguments based on their name. The value for the dictionary key ‘x’ is assigned to the x parameter of the function and the same applies to y. The two print statements we have added before to the function confirm that the values of x and y are the ones we expect: x: 1 y: 2 3 You can see how **kwargs can be quite a handy way to pass arguments to a function after creating a dictionary that contains the arguments required. What is the Type For *args And *kwargs? We have talked about the fact that *args is a tuple and **kwargs is a dictionary. But first, let’s not take this for granted… …we will use the Python type() function to verify their type. def print_args_type(*args, **kwargs): print("*args type:", type(args)) print("**kwargs type:", type(kwargs)) print_args_type(1, 3, number=5) Here is the output: *args type: <class 'tuple'> **kwargs type: <class 'dict'> So, what we have seen so far is confirmed when it comes to the type of *args and **kwargs. And now let’s have a look at something that could cause syntax errors in your Python code… Arguments Order For a Python Function When using *args and **kwargs together with standard function positional or keyword arguments there’s something you have to be aware… To show this concept I have modified the function we have created in the previous section: def print_args_type(*args, **kwargs, arg1): print("*args type:", type(args)) print("**kwargs type:", type(kwargs)) print("arg1:", arg1) print_args_type(1, 3, number=5, 6) Here are the changes I have applied to our program: arg1 added at the end of the parameters list of the print_args_type() function. print statement added to the function to print the value of arg1. additional argument (6) passed when we call print_args_type(). In theory we would expect the new argument passed in the function call to be assigned to the parameter arg1, but this is what we get back: File "/opt/python/codefather/args_kwargs.py", line 48 def print_args_type(*args, **kwargs, arg1): ^ SyntaxError: invalid syntax For some reason the Python interpreter doesn’t like arg1. But why? That’s because Python enforces a specific order for function arguments: Positional arguments go first in the following order: standard arguments followed by *args. go first in the following order: standard arguments followed by *args. Keyword arguments should come after positional arguments in the following order: standard arguments followed by **kwargs. This means that arg1 has to go before *args. Let’s see if it’s true, here is the updated function. Notice how I have also changed the position of the argument 6 in the call to the function: def print_args_type(arg1, *args, **kwargs): print("arg1:", arg1) print("*args:", args) print("**kwargs:", kwargs) print_args_type(6, 1, 3, number=5) And here is the output: arg1: 6 *args: (1, 3) **kwargs: {'number': 5} Python assigns the number 6 to arg1, the remaining two positional arguments (1 and 3) to *args and the only keyword argument to **kwargs. Let’s add also a fixed keyword argument that as explained before has to go between *args and **kwargs in the function signature: def print_args_type(arg1, *args, kw_arg1, **kwargs): print("arg1:", arg1) print("*args:", args) print("kw_arg1:", kw_arg1) print("**kwargs:", kwargs) print_args_type(6, 1, 3, kw_arg1=4, number=5) And the output matches what we expect: arg1: 6 *args: (1, 3) kw_arg1: 4 **kwargs: {'number': 5} Makes sense? Python Unpacking Operators Explained At some point in this tutorial I have mentioned that * and ** are unpacking operators. But, what does it mean in practice? Let’s start by printing the value of a tuple without and with the * operator: args = (1, 2, 3) print(args) print(*args) The output is: (1, 2, 3) 1 2 3 So, without the unpacking operator we see that the full tuple gets printed… …when we apply the unpacking operator * the elements of the tuple are “unpacked”. The print statement prints three individual numbers. This means that each one of the three numbers is a separate argument for the print() function when we apply the * operator. The * unpacking operator applies to iterables (e.g. tuples and list). Now, let’s have a look at what happens when we apply the * operator to a dictionary: args = {'arg1': 1, 'arg2': 2} print(args) print(*args) The output is: {'arg1': 1, 'arg2': 2} arg1 arg2 We only get back the keys of the dictionary back when we apply the * operator, this is not really what we want. To unpack dictionaries you should use the ** operator. Here is an example of how to use the ** operator to create a new dictionary that contains all the key / value pairs from two dictionaries: dict1 = {'arg1': 1, 'arg2': 2} dict2 = {'arg3': 3, 'arg4': 4} print({**dict1, **dict2}) The resulting Python dictionary is: {'arg1': 1, 'arg2': 2, 'arg3': 3, 'arg4': 4} Now you know how unpacking operators can help you in your Python programs. Using *args With a Python Lambda Function Let’s go back to our initial sum function: def sum(x, y): result = x + y return result Below you can see the lambda representation of this function: >>> lambda x,y : x+y <function <lambda> at 0x101dab680> And here is how you can pass two arguments to this lambda: >>> (lambda x,y : x+y)(1,2) 3 Now, let’s say we want to pass an arbitrary number of arguments to our lambda function… …we can do it using *args: >>> (lambda *args: sum(args))(1,2,4,5,6) 18 >>> (lambda *args: sum(args))(3,7,6) 16 I have written a full article about Python lambdas if you are interested in learning how to use them. One last thing you can use *args and **kwargs for… Args and Kwargs as Part of a Decorator *args and **kwargs are also very useful to define decorators in Python. You can use them in the definition of a wrapper function inside your decorator, with the aim of passing through any arguments to the function that is decorated. Here is an example of code: def verify_user(func): def wrapper(*args, **kwargs): if not user['logged_in']: print("ERROR: User {} is not logged in!".format(user['name'])) return else: print("INFO: User {} is logged in".format(user['name'])) return func(*args, **kwargs) return wrapper I have created an article about Python decorators if you want to learn how decorators wok and how to use *args and **kwargs as part of decorators. Conclusion We have learned together how you can pass a variable number of arguments to Python functions using *args and **kwargs. To recap what we have covered: *args allows to pass a variable number of positional arguments to a function. This is a tuple that contains the arguments in the order in which they are passed in the function call. allows to pass a variable number of to a function. This is a that contains the arguments in the order in which they are passed in the function call. **kwargs allows to pass a variable number of keyword arguments to a function. This is a dictionary, that’s why we talk about keyword arguments. Because arguments are identified by a key. What matters in the name of these parameters are the * and the **. The actual names args and kwargs are not enforced by the Python interpreter and can be replaced with anything you want. The main point of using *args and **kwargs is creating flexible functions that can adapt to multiple use cases. Consider, for example, a function that calculates the sum of two numbers as opposed as the sum of any numbers. And this concept can be extended to anything you want to do with your Python code. Finally, we have also: looked at the order expected by the Python interpreter for positional and keyword arguments. practiced the use of the unpacking operators * and **. And now it’s time for you to start using *args and **kwargs… …if you have any questions please let me know in the comments below.

https://medium.com/@codefather-tech/python-args-and-kwargs-explained-all-you-need-to-know-974ebae3f51d

['Claudio Sabato']

2020-12-27 21:59:07.573000+00:00

['Python Args', 'Python', 'Kwargs', 'Python Programming', 'Python Functions']

Company culture – what’s important to me?

Long story short: I woke up early and started thinking about company culture. What type of culture do I want to contribute building? Result: you are now stuck with my short thoughts on what I feel culture should/could be like. The observations below are preliminary thoughts meant for discussion. Let me know if you agree or disagree! Ground your vision and wear it like an armour “We want to elevate the world’s consciousness” …yeh… Let’s put it this way, it should be something you can go repeat home to your parents/grandparents and not be laughed at. A vision should be a badge one wears with pride, believe in and use as part of the company intros. I always felt they often become too abstract and do not really live in the everyday working life. It might be the millennial in me talking but I would rather be in a company focused on solving a specific problem, weather it’s curing cancer or fixing potholes in roads than in a company defined by a vanilla/peace in the world vision. Put pride and respect in every task Internally, make sure employees take pride in every task to be performed. Externally, be consistent with your message and the image you are projecting. More often than not, organisations tend to be “sales-driven”, “engineering-driven” or “something-driven”. That might create two classes of workers or tasks to be performed, the cool/important ones and the “oh but that’s some <department> crap” kind of tasks. Beside that being extremely unpolite, it polarises employees and decreases the pride and attention put into some tasks. An organisation should strive to treat all jobs respectfully and help employees take pride in their work and its outcome. There will always be actions with more impact than others but all actions contribute to move towards the same goal. It’s a company, not a family Let’s be honest, most likely the company exists to make a profit. That goal could and should be complemented with other goals, i.e. impact. But if profit is not n. 1 in the list it is certainly in the top 3. And it’s OK. I have found some of my closest friends in the work environment and it is healthy to build positive and strong social bonds. But at the end of the day, a company has very different social dynamics than a family, the two should not be confused. The Silicon Valley approach of creating a “family” might work in the short term but surely backfires in the long term as times change and the organisation adapts. A company can be generous towards the stakeholders, caring and attentive but needs to remain professional and always ready for change. All you should take away from this point is: “it’s OK if it’s not a family and it can still be a great place to be and grow together.” Fairness by design trumps transparency Treat all the stakeholders fairly. Fairness, should be a guiding principle of company building. A company acting unfairly towards a certain stakeholder or category of stakeholders might gain in the short term but will definitely pay a high price in the long one. Fairness is strongly linked to transparency, transparency being the control mechanism that keeps people accountable for fairness. Fairness however trumps transparency as it is the guiding principle for all decisions. Diversity and inclusion is an integral part of this. Disagree, commit & trust This one I stole from Amazon. Allow to disagree but make sure the team commits on a decision and that everyone is aligned behind it. Also, trust is king in teams. And, trust that a team is competent and fair will decrease the need for heavy control structures. As a team grows it’s important one discusses topics but also that, once a decision is made, everyone moves into action without double guessing or micromanaging each other. The culture rant is over for now but please do reach out if you have any comment! Breakfast time!

https://medium.com/@a-adp/company-culture-whats-important-to-me-ba7d65eebc12

['Andrea Di Pietrantonio']

2020-09-02 05:56:40.764000+00:00

['Startup', 'VC', 'Culture', 'Venture Capital']

How to increase revenue during covid

BTech Media Businesses more then ever are losing revenue to COVID-19, and some struggling to stay open. Today, we talk about the best ways to increase revenue. Customer shopping online Getting your business online Our suggestion to businesses looking to increase revenue and keep a good earning during these uncertain times is to put your business online. Customers are relying on businesses having a website to shop online, so they don’t have to go in stores. We spoke to Pier Solutions Chief Marketing Officer, where he explained why getting your business online is so important. Customers are looking for a way to avoid going into crowded stores, malls, all of it. If you have a business and your not online, your losing money, and lot’s of it. I heard this quote once, ‘If your business is not on the internet, then your business will be out of business’. That is 100% true. You don’t need anything fancy, just a simple, easy to use website. He says that you need to grow your social presence, offer sales, do things that will bring customers in. Ask yourself, what can I offer that provides a unique service to customers, what am I doing that different that will attract customers. For those looking for custom websites, check out piersolutions.ca where they offer custom websites, mobile apps, and will be offering a new service, ALLYE, which you can find more about in our other article. Social Media If you couldn’t already tell, the idea of today’s article is to try to enable people to get their business online. Instagram offers services such as instagram business, where you can sell products directly from your account. You can pay little money for ads to reach thousands of people. These tools help you gain traction, and could even result in sales. Even at a 1% conversion rate, you can buy an ad that reaches 3000 people, you may end up getting 30 new customers from that one ad, and all it cost way $20–30. We spoke to an Ex-Youtuber to get his opinon on social media views and ads, and the effects of doing such. He had amassed over 2000 subscribers and had hundreds of thousands of views on his channel before stepping away from the job. When I was doing YouTube, I started focusing on growing my platform, and for one year, I consistently posted every other day, and focused on growing my platform not just on YouTube, but on instagram. Don’t be afraid to post content daily, and multiple times a day. You have to take advantage of the algorithms these apps use. The same doesn’t only apply for YouTube, but for all social platforms. This YouTuber (who asked to have their name hidden), focused on gaining views more then subscribers, and started consistently getting 20k views or more on every video. He was able to make money providing ads and also from the amount of views he got. The moral of this story is, you need to post ads and gain views on social media. Social Media is the way, if your not on it, your losing out on so much money. Use YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and any social media platform you can to consistently post, upload content, provide offers to customers, and build your online business. For inquires on how to be featured in an article, or how questions about an article, email contact.btechmedia@gmail.com To ask a question to someone featured in our article, email the same email above. Featured in this Article: Chief Marketing Officer, Pier Solutions. contact@piersolutions.ca YouTuber, (undisclosed)

https://medium.com/@btechmedia/how-to-increase-revenue-during-covid-e6ed90aeabf2

[]

2020-12-16 15:47:30.637000+00:00

['Online Shopping', 'Covid 19', 'Tech', 'Business', 'Btechmedia']

Sentiments

Everyone has an emotion towards something, no matter how suppressed. I’ve found that it’s often the nonchalance you need to take stock of, not the grand theories. It tells you a lot more than you think. I don’t typically have opinions towards topics of current affairs. Why? It’s ongoing, changing and no-one really knows the truth. So commenting makes no progress, it’s all speculation. It also prevents too much emotional draining on topics that can change in an instance. Not a dependency I need. Sentiments

https://medium.com/@dnaqvi/sentiments-704896d1a13d

['Danial Naqvi']

2020-12-21 20:52:00.148000+00:00

['Opinion', 'News', 'Emotions', 'Nonchalant', 'Current Affairs']

🐟 แซลมอนราดซอสขิงแซ่บๆ

in In Fitness And In Health

https://medium.com/aroistory/%E0%B9%81%E0%B8%8B%E0%B8%A5%E0%B8%A1%E0%B8%AD%E0%B8%99%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%94%E0%B8%8B%E0%B8%AD%E0%B8%AA%E0%B8%82%E0%B8%B4%E0%B8%87%E0%B9%81%E0%B8%8B%E0%B9%88%E0%B8%9A%E0%B9%86-14da054511d1

['Mattika Singtosee']

2018-08-07 13:31:58.688000+00:00

['อาหาร', 'ซอสขิง', 'แซลมอน', 'Salmon', 'Cooking']

To drive feminist humanitarian action, listen to women experts

Prioritize the holistic needs of girls and women Sunee following-up with women in a village in Cox’s Bazar about how they are sustaining after WFP’s livelihoods project phased out one year ago. Photo credit: Saikat Mozumdar/WFP Girls and women do not experience their lives in silos — and issues concerning their sexual and reproductive health and rights, nutrition, protection, hygiene, education, and livelihoods are all interconnected. Together, WFP’s team in Bangladesh shows what it means to design a program that prioritizes the whole girl and woman, rather than just one segment of their lives. This is particularly important in a place like Cox’s Bazar, where the health, nutrition, rights, and education of girls and women are even more closely linked. That’s why the WFP team has shaped EFSN to tackle women’s empowerment from multiple directions — including with a focus on nutrition, protection, and economic participation. By providing a safe environment for girls and women to participate in technical skills trainings and self-help groups, over 9,000 participants have in turn been able to gain the skills and independence to improve their food security, hygiene, and education. Currently, an additional 20,000 women are also undergoing these empowerment schemes. “I am a big believer in the transformation of communities through women and girls. I didn’t learn this in university or research, this is through my own personal experience and observations that investing in women and girls is the best investment a community can make.” Ensure meaningful community engagement Foyzun and Sunee know that girls and women are the best experts on their lives and experiences, and must be meaningfully engaged in the design of programs for them. By providing opportunities for girls and women to help shape the EFSN program, Foyzun and Sunee say that participants feel greater ownership and trust in the initiative. While women are the primary targets, EFSN also engages men and boys through awareness sessions on gender-based violence, early marriage, and sexual and reproductive health and rights. Sunee says that these sessions help “change their conservative perceptions, especially in regards to women’s autonomy over their sexual and reproductive health.” Both Foyzun and Sunee also stress the importance of reaching influential community members such as religious leaders, elected bodies, teachers, and village heads. “In our experience, continuous engagement with these stakeholders means the community begins to unlearn the gender bias and learn that gender equality in the household and society ultimately brings harmony and opportunity,” says Sunee. “Being raised in patriarchal society, where discriminatory social norms are deeply rooted…my inner dream was always pushing me to do something that contributes to upholding women’s position in the society.” Think and act long-term to drive transformative change Sunee’s team member, Nusrat Jahir, is another role model for Bangladeshi women and girls. Nusrat is sometimes the only woman in meetings with humanitarian stakeholders in this setting. Photo credit: Saikat Mozumdar/WFP With support from women experts like Foyzun and Sunee and consultation with the community itself, WFP is providing opportunities to transform deep-rooted gender inequalities by developing programs that prioritize women’s long-term futures. Foyzun and Sunee, together with the EFSN team, work hard to ensure the sustainability of the program by linking participants to local government, elected bodies, and service providers which have a deep understanding of the communities and context. Women who are part of EFSN are now independently travelling into towns in Cox’s Bazar to purchase the goods they need for their businesses. This is an achievement compared to their limited mobility in the past, when they were hardly ever leaving the house. Women who participate in the EFSN program also meet twice a month to compile their savings and discuss their issues and community needs. Several groups have achieved actions that have brought benefits to the community. For example, one women’s group successfully lobbied for a well to be installed near their settlements, another group successfully pushed for road repairs, and another built a bridge which improves the community’s access to vital services. Sunee says that, “Amongst the women and surrounding communities that we have reached out to, we definitely see significant changes towards accepting women to have a more decisive role within the household, community, and public.” Women experts are ready to respond when emergencies strike Foyzun and Sunee’s expertise leading WFP’s EFSN initiative — which primarily works with Bangladeshi girls and women who have lived in Cox’s Bazar all their life — was invaluable when a massive humanitarian crisis struck the district four years ago. Since the start of 2015, more than 900,000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar have been forced to seek refuge in Cox’s Bazar due to atrocious levels of violence against them at home. Rohingya girls and women face significant risks before, during, and upon arrival in Cox’s Bazar, especially when it comes to gender-based violence, poor access to sexual and reproductive health services, and food insecurity. Foyzun shares that in the Rohingya community, “Women and girls are generally expected to stay in the home and be close to their family, whereas men and boys are more present in the public sphere.” The majority of girls do not attend school beyond grade five, and many parents will not send their young girls to educational or recreational activities unless they are gender segregated. Therefore, literacy among Rohingya women is low. Given their expertise designing programs that take holistic, community-driven, and sustainable approaches to meet the needs of girls and women, Sunee and her team were well-placed to rise to this new challenge. Meanwhile, mainstreaming gender across the WFP’s emergency programs has been Foyzun’s focus. Taking what they learned from the EFSN program, Sunee and her team led the development of WFP’s Self-Reliance program, which aims to improve women’s food security through broader empowerment initiatives. Similar to the EFSN, women receive a cash stipend to meet their immediate needs and gain technical and life-skills, which contributes to their empowerment.

https://medium.com/@womendeliver/to-drive-feminist-humanitarian-action-listen-to-women-experts-980ef8a15662

['Women Deliver']

2019-04-02 16:21:36.195000+00:00

['Gender Equality', 'Humanitarian', 'Women Leaders', 'Refugees', 'Wfp']

Moving to Brooklyn

Sheika Islam, Afnan Haq, and Abed Islam Abstract Out of all five boroughs, Brooklyn, New York is the most populated. It has a total amount of 71 square miles of land and approximately 2.51 million people living in it. As a group of young adults, we decided it would be interesting to figure out which neighborhoods in Brooklyn are the safest and most livable. To retrieve this type of information, we looked at poverty rates, 311 calls, energy usage, and automobile accidents. Big data analytics tools such as MapReduce and Hive, allowed us to clean and profile our data, join the new data, and come up with analytics of each zip code. We also used Pandas, Matplotlib, and Excel tools to make visuals so that it would be easier to look at. Using all of these tools, we found that the safest neighborhoods in Brooklyn were East Flatbush and Little Poland. Introduction In this project, we were studying the livability and safety of different neighborhoods in Brooklyn. This topic is important to investigate because the neighborhood you live in in New York has a very big impact on the life you live. Therefore, we set out to understand which neighborhoods were highly livable and which were not. Before we started our research, we already had an understanding that many parts of Brooklyn were highly segregated, so we were expecting quite a large variance between different neighborhoods in terms of 311 complaints, energy usage, and automobile accidents. By doing this study, we will further the knowledge that data analysts have regarding urban development in New York and can support urban policy to make the lives of New Yorkers better. We expected that certain zip codes like those in East Flatbush would be far more livable. The design diagram shown below (Visual 1) highlights our workflow. First, all of our datasets came from the New York City government through NYC Open Data. Then, we used MapReduce on HDFS to remove unnecessary columns. Then we stored our cleaned datasets on Hive which we used to transform each dataset as we needed to. We extracted all the new Hive tables as .csv files and then joined them together as one final Hive table. We extracted that file as a .csv and did data analysis on it. Visual 1: Data Flow Diagram Motivation The motivation behind our work was to understand Brooklyn and understand the issues the borough faces. The goal we had was to find the safest and most livable neighborhoods (zip codes) in Brooklyn, New York. There are two categories of people who will appreciate our research. Firstly, anyone who is planning on moving there soon will find this information useful. They can figure out what would be the most livable neighborhood to rent or buy a house in. Secondly, this is valuable analysis for the city government of New York in designing policy for Brooklyn. They can understand where the problems are in Brooklyn and exactly what those problems are. Based on the overall poverty rates, 311 calls, automobile crashes, energy usage, and further research, we wanted to capture a snapshot of life in different Brooklyn neighborhoods (zip codes). 3.1 Sheika’s Motivation My love for Brooklyn started during high school when I would go hang out at Brooklyn Bridge Park or go see the Dyker Heights Christmas lights with my family and friends. However, when my sister moved there recently, my curiosity about the neighborhoods of Brooklyn grew even more! Both the poverty and automobile crash dataset allowed me to explore more about the borough as these datasets contained a lot of valuable information. The poverty dataset contained information such as family type, age category, citizen status, childcare expenses, education attained, income, and many more things. One thing that stood out to me from this data was that some of the information was really specific which I absolutely loved. The automobile crash data was very interesting to me as well since I recently learned how to drive, and I haven’t really driven in Brooklyn as much as I would have liked to. The dataset contained information in regard to the number of accidents, type of vehicles that were involved, and how many people were injured or killed. 3.2 Afnan’s Motivation I really liked the 311 dataset and felt it was reliable. I liked how big it was, containing a huge amount of government data and was going to appreciate this challenge. This is why I chose this topic. I really loved the idea of getting a bird’s eye view of what life is like in different zip codes of Brooklyn and thought this could be valuable information for policymakers. I am interested in New York City politics so I would find this interesting myself. 3.3 Abed’s Motivation Lately, I have become more self-conscious about how my actions impact the environment. It comes down to small things like recycling and littering to the big things like where my food comes from. I was very interested in seeing how well neighborhoods use energy, oil, and other necessary resources. For me I find value in how well my neighborhood handles the use of energy. I feel in order to hold myself accountable in my pursuit of trying to be energy efficient, I need to live in a place that also values that. Related Works 4.1 Poverty Dataset A study was done regarding the neighborhoods in New York and the chance of getting cancer by Kamath, Geetanjali R. and others. Where one lives can be an indicator of getting multiple myeloma (MM) and impact mortality rates, especially if they live in NYC. The chances of getting MM are higher in NYC areas than other places in the United States. “Trends and racial differences in MM incidence and mortality for the United States [Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Cancer Registry (SEER), National Center for Health Statistics], and NYC [New York State Cancer Registry] were compared using Join point regression.” [3]. It was concluded that specifically places with large minority populations are more vulnerable to poverty related factors associated with MM and mortality. 4.2 Automobile Crash Dataset A similar study was done regarding automobile crashes by Azad Abdulhafedh. As we know, a lot of mishaps on the road can occur due to how the roads are constructed and any other dangerous road sites. Abdulhafedh collected data related to crashes from various systems and gained a better understanding of the problems that were causing these crashes. The goal was to come up with new measures and road safety programs by locating hazardous road sections, identifying the risk factors, and developing accurate diagnosis and remedial measures [4]. This was necessary as it would allow prevention of future accidents since there’d be less hazardous roads and the road safety programs would also be improved. People would know what to look out for during these programs and roads would be fixed almost immediately. 4.3 311 Calls A similar study was done in New York by Duygu Pamukcu regarding 311 calls during a global health emergency like COVID. 311 calls can be an indicator of the different dimensions of a community’s reaction to a crisis situation. New York City added new complaint types and descriptors in order to facilitate a better understanding of how citizens were dealing with the crisis. A municipality can aggregate and analyze this data (like we have) to better understand certain information regarding the current situation. This information can be vital in saving lives and solving problems. The paper by Pamukcu analyzes the existing 311 data and explains the actions taken by authorities in response to the data. The conclusion states that “the data from NYC’s existing 311 system can be used to characterize the different impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the community. It also showed that the city’s adjustments to that system were subsequently able to provide valuable new information about the ongoing crisis” [2]. 4.4. Energy Usage A similar study on energy usage in New York City buildings was done by John Schofield. Energy consumption is very high in New York City since it is a city that is heavily relied on by the economy. Schofield points out that since 2000, many non-residential buildings have been going for a LEED certification [5]. Since 2011, the city has been making this data public for its non-residential buildings. Schofield says that energy consumption decreased by 20% in buildings that had LEED Gold. This research can give more insight on the dataset used for this project. This report was written in 2013 and a lot has changed since then. It can help me get insight on if anything has changed. Description of Datasets All datasets were found on NYC Open Data and had a large amount of data regarding all the boroughs. 5.1 Poverty Dataset This dataset contained information regarding poverty and certain specifications for each borough from 2018 to August 2021. It had a total of 68.3 rows and 61 columns. The data was provided by the Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity. We reduced the number of columns to only 7 columns and primarily focused on the column that had information about residents being in poverty or not, based on the official government threshold, the column that had information about work status, and the column that had information about family structure. This information helped us get an insight of how an average family is in Brooklyn. This dataset, however, could definitely be improved if there were more information, such as dates and zip codes so that we would be able to get a timeline of each neighborhood. 5.2 Automobile Crash Dataset This dataset contained information about automobile accident reports in all the boroughs from 2014 to present day. It had a total of 1.85 million rows and 29 columns, and the data was provided by the New York Police Department. We reduced the number of columns to only 6 columns and focused on the number of people injured and the number of people killed in each zip code during an automobile crash. This dataset allowed us to get insight into the safety of drivers and pedestrians as cars are continuously developing and more people are getting behind a wheel. 5.3 311 Calls This dataset contained information on most 311 calls from 2010 to the present day with updates being made each day to the dataset. This dataset was massive containing 27 million rows. It contained information about the type of issue that existed, where the issue occurred, and whether it was resolved. We narrowed the dataset down to only 311 calls from the beginning of 2019 afterwards and only focused on 311 calls in Brooklyn. Otherwise, the data was proving hard to download. We focused on the following columns: Call ID, Date opened, Date accessed, Agency, Complaint Type, Zip Code, Address, Result, Longitude, Latitude. Using this information, we could correlate where 311 calls were coming from and what types of complaints they were. This would help us understand the problems that plague Brooklyn. 5.4. Energy Usage This dataset has information on the water and energy use in buildings throughout the city. It has data on energy star score, many different metrics on heat and water usage along with property types. For this project we narrowed everything down to some of the simpler metrics to measure energy, water, and gas usage. We also decided to drop all the columns on the property types since we wanted a general viewpoint on all the buildings in one zip code. We further organized the data to only have buildings in the Brooklyn area. Analytic Stages/Process We started off by finding common interests of each of our team members and decided we’d like to do something related to New York City as it’s the greatest city in the world. We chose datasets that dealt with common things one would be concerned about before moving to a new neighborhood — poverty rates which would tell us how affordable a neighborhood may be and the costs of living there, 311 calls which would tell us about some of the problems that frequently occur in a certain neighborhood, and energy and water usage which would tell us about the different types of resources are commonly used in each neighborhood and how efficient they are when it comes to waste. 6.1 Poverty dataset While cleaning and profiling, we narrowed down the number of columns. There were originally 61 unique columns, however we focused on 6 columns which were the borough, official government poverty threshold, number of people in a household, type of work in a household, and estimated nutrition related income. Unfortunately, this dataset wasn’t giving us the type of information we were looking for. It was rather too general, so we had to look for another dataset that would be more specific to each neighborhood. On the bright side, we were able to use information such as common family structures and type of work for Brooklyn as a whole as we used MapReduce to filter out the data for Brooklyn. We also came up with a few calculations to figure out the poverty rate, however due to no dates and different number of entries for each borough, it was a bit hard to tell. We ended up comparing our calculations to the most recent report of poverty rates and concluded that it would be best to just use the poverty rates mentioned in The Good News on NYC Poverty is Old News, Which is Bad News by Jarret Murphy. While our calculations said Brooklyn had a 31% poverty rate, Murphy reported that Brooklyn only had a 17.7% poverty rate, which decreased from previous years. [1] 6.2 Automobile crashes dataset Due to lack of information from the poverty dataset, we looked at automobile crashes that would allow us to retrieve information based off of zip code. There were originally 29 unique columns, but we only focused on 5 of the columns which were borough, zip code, longitude, latitude, number of persons injured, and number of persons killed. These columns allowed us to analyze how safe it was to drive in each neighborhood. It also gave us a sense of how safe it was for pedestrians as well. We used MapReduce to filter out the content of Brooklyn and used Hive to group by zip code: ​​SELECT zipcode, Sum(persons_injured) AS persons_injured, Sum(persons_killed) AS persons_killed FROM crashes GROUP BY zipcode; This code above grouped the cleaned data by zip code and output the sum of people injured and killed in automobile crashes. 6.3 311 Calls dataset We reduced the number of columns from 41 columns down to 10 which were the columns we needed. We wrote a Java MapReduce program for this where we split the columns and combined the specific columns We needed with commas. Then we exported that file as a .csv. We built a Hive table specifically for my new data and then copied the .csv into the Hive table. We wanted to figure out how different zip codes had different complaint types. Therefore, after playing around with HiveQL, we wrote the following code: SELECT zipcode, Sum(CASE WHEN complaintype = ‘Noise — Residential’ THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS Noise_Residential, Sum(CASE WHEN complaintype = ‘Illegal Parking’ THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS Illegal_Parking, Sum(CASE WHEN complaintype = ‘HEAT/HOT WATER’ THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS Heat_hotwater, Sum(CASE WHEN complaintype = ‘Blocked Driveway’ THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS Blocked_driveway, Sum(CASE WHEN complaintype = ‘Noise — Street/Sidewalk’ THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS Noise_Street_Sidewalk, Sum(CASE WHEN complaintype = ‘UNSANITARY CONDITION’ THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS Unsanitary_condition, Sum(CASE WHEN complaintype = ‘Street Condition’ THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS Street_condition, Sum(CASE WHEN complaintype = ‘Water System’ THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS Water_system, Sum(CASE WHEN complaintype = ‘General Construction/Plumbing’ THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS Construction_or_plumbing, Sum(CASE WHEN complaintype = ‘Noise — Commercial’ THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS Noise_commercial, Sum(CASE WHEN complaintype = ‘Noise — Vehicle’ THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS Noise_vehicle, Sum(CASE WHEN complaintype = ‘Damaged Tree’ THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS damaged_tree, Sum(CASE WHEN complaintype = ‘Sidewalk Condition’ THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS sidewalk_condition, Sum(CASE WHEN complaintype = ‘Rodent’ THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS Rodent, Sum(CASE WHEN complaintype = ‘Sewer’ THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS Sewer, Sum(CASE WHEN complaintype = ‘Graffiti’ THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS Graffiti FROM service_calls GROUP BY zipcode; All that is happening in the code above is we are calculating the number of times different complaint types show up in the dataset and grouping them by zip code. This allowed me to convert the number of times a complaint type shows up into its own unique column. With this information, we can analyze how many times different issues occur in a certain zip code. Then we exported the results into a .csv which we sent to Abed to join together on the other datasets based on zip codes. 6.4 Energy Usage dataset In order to get the columns, we wanted to first run a simple MapReduce job. However, the difficulty came in organizing the data. We wanted only buildings that were located in Brooklyn. The issue did not come in the logic, rather it was the data itself. The people that made the dataset struggled to spell “Brooklyn” correctly, having a variety of misspelled data. Abed had to analyze the dataset itself to understand this issue. To get around this, when using hive, Abed wrote a simple where clause to account for all the misspellings. He then averaged out all the metrics in each Brooklyn zip code to get the cleaned data. This is the query Abed ran to get his cleaned dataset. create table energyCleaned as select postCode, avg(energyStarScore) as eScore, avg(fuelOil1UseKbtu) as fuelOil1, avg(fuelOil2UseKBtu) as fuelOil2, avg(fuelOil4UseKBtu) as fuelOil4,avg(districtSteamUseKbtu) as districtSteamUse, avg(naturalGasUseKbtu) as naturalGasUse from energy where city = “brooklyn” or city = “Bklyn” or city = “Booklyn” or city = “BROOKLYN” or city = “Brooklyn” group by postCode; Visuals Visual 2: Combined Data for all Datasets Used Visual 3: Number of crashes per zip code Visual 4: Number of people injured in the crashes per zip code Visual 5: Number of people killed in the crashes per zip code Visual 6: Energy scores less than 61 Visual 7: Energy scores more than 61 Visual 8: Energy Score and Noise Complaints Visual 9: 311 Number of noise complaints per zip code Visual 10: Street condition complaints and number of people injured Visual 11: Street condition complaints and number of people killed Insights and Analysis The typical family type in Brooklyn is usually husband, wife, and child and majority of the population are working part time, which is less than full time, year round. Brooklyn has a 17.7% poverty rate and had a total number of 400,099 accidents. Of these accidents, zip code 11207 had the highest number of reported accidents while zip code 11241 had the lowest number of reported accidents. In terms of people injured, zip code 11203 had the highest number of people injured with a total number of 123 while zip codes 11241 and 11242 had the lowest number of people injured with a total number of 0. In terms of people killed (may they rest in peace), zip code 11234 had the highest numbers of people killed and zip codes 11241, 11242, 11251, 11385, and 11421 had 0 people killed. While making further analysis, we found that the number of automobile crashes correlated with street condition complaints. As the number of street conditions complaints increased, the number of persons injured and killed also increased. This could be because of the potholes, road construction, and ongoing construction which usually leads to the usage of less lanes. Neighborhoods with less complaints tend to have better infrastructure avoiding injury and death. On average it takes the city 1–3 days to fix the pothole issue if it gets reported[7]. The response time in Brooklyn is about 3 days and 22 hours. Seeing that it takes this long to fix it, many neighborhoods have bad street conditions and the worse they are, the more people get injured or killed in automobile crashes. Energy scores a big factor. On average, buildings with lower energy scores were receiving more heat and hot water complaints and buildings with lower energy scores got more complaints for unsanitary conditions. There is not a major difference between water system and sewer complaints. However, there was a negative correlation between energy scores and noise complaints. As the energy score increased, the number of noise complaints decreased. This could be that neighborhoods that are environmentally friendly are also paying attention to the way they contribute to noise pollution. A neighborhood that really stuck out in our analysis is Little Poland. For Little Poland our analysis has parity to how it is in the real world. Little Poland is a small community that is a subsection of Greenpoint. In Greenpoint, there is a huge community project called the “Greenpoint Community Environmental Fund”. According to their website, they have put more than 11 million dollars into improving the local environment [6]. This claim is backed up by our data well. The buildings in the neighborhood are eco-friendly and there are very few calls for unsanitary conditions. The people and local government are putting in the extra effort to keep the neighborhoods clean and environment friendly. Conclusion Based on this project, we were able to find the safest neighborhoods to live in. We prioritized energy score as we felt like that was the leading component of all of the datasets. Energy score ratings that were higher than 61, meaning that they were more eco-friendly, had less complaints and accidents reportings. We did this because typically for a neighborhood to be environmentally friendly, they need to have the proper infrastructure behind it. When seeing if there is parity between the data and work done in the real world, we found that our findings held true and that there is a continuation of improvement. While we were working on the project, we looked at other boroughs well. There were a few insights that caught our interest; however we didn’t get a chance to analyze them thoroughly. If we perhaps look at additional boroughs in the future, we’d be able to get an insight of the safest neighborhoods in all of New York City. We would also want to look at more features of a neighborhood such as income, food resources, diversity, building infrastructure and see how all that can connect back to the environment and overall living conditions. Acknowledgement We would like to thank Professor Malavet for helping us progress through this project by answering emails and the discussion board posts. We’d also like to thank NYC Open Data for allowing us to access this information. References

https://medium.com/@ai1138/moving-to-brooklyn-8b6748fffcc5

['Abed Islam']

2021-12-27 20:04:27.564000+00:00

['NYC', 'Brooklyn', 'Hive', 'Big Data', 'Mapreduce']

How good UX will allow blockchain to reach its full potential

Blockchain technology certainly isn’t known for its user-friendly nature. If anything, the majority of people view its users as an elite club, namely made up of the lucky few that had the tech and financial know-how to invest in cryptocurrencies like BitCoin at their conception. So, whilst blockchain has the potential to completely revolutionise the way that our modern world functions, influencing not only the finance sector, but healthcare, digital voting and beyond, it needs to radically improve its accessibility and usability to do so. Here at Snap Out, we make emerging technologies user-centric, allowing businesses to create experiences that generate more profit and more joy. Since blockchain has the potential to have such widespread applications, there is no cookie cutter formula for good UX in all products or services that use the technology. However, its implementation into the mainstream world is accompanied with its own set of general challenges, many of which could be solved with good user experience design. Challenge One: Forgetting about design. Of course, in its infancy blockchain has had to focus primarily on its tech. Whilst this was completely necessary, it means that blockchain based companies often leave user experience based design until the last minute or forgo it all together. Download any cryptocurrency app and it’s not difficult to tell why only 0.5% of the population have invested! Conor Fallon for Hackernoon talks about the UX design of blockchain apps here — it’s a great read for anyone interested in the topic. Whilst it’s impossible to suggest that blockchain couldn’t completely change the way we live, bad design will slow down its acceptance into the mainstream. Powerful technology can only reach its full potential when the user is considered and heavily accounted for. This is the key to building the positive customer experiences that will lead to higher retention rates and trust in this new tech. Challenge Two: Accessibility to “ordinary” people. As the case stands in 2018, you either understand blockchain and have some very strong opinions on it, or you’ve only heard of the term “BitCoin”. You either know it all or you know very little. In order for blockchain to become a mainstream part of society this “elite club” needs to be dismantled through positive user experience. Quite simply, the tech needs to be made easy to use and even easier to understand. For this to be the case, the user journeys in services, products and applications that use the technology may need to provide explanations related to it. That is to say, that businesses using blockchain need to fill in the knowledge gaps of their potential users whilst designing. They also need to understand the purpose they will be using it for and how they are struggling with it through observations and interviews. By conducting user research, it is possible for businesses to understand what their users need in order to remain informed whilst designing the technology. As such, they will be able to engage with and retain markets of people that want to use the technology (for example, those with a desire to invest in cryptocurrencies), but are put off by its complexities. Challenge Three: Implementing Blockchain for people that aren’t ready. Alternatively, positive user experience for blockchain may require the exact opposite of explaining the technology to users. In some cases, it may be better to forgo jargon entirely. In fact, Eamonn Burke for uxplanet.org suggests that it is one of the 5 key design principles for blockchain. When the vast majority of people outside of the tech world hear the term “blockchain” they think it’s interchangeable with “cryptocurrency”. The huge hype and the stories that have circulated about overnight millionaires have only fuelled this misconception. Of course, cryptocurrencies alone are a powerful tool and an integral part of blockchain, but they are only the beginning. One way to generate great user experience in this area is to create services and products that utilise the technology, but whereby the technology itself is not necessarily evident. After all, users can enjoy Facebook without understanding the coding. We can drive cars without an in-depth understanding of the mechanics. And, in much the same way, we could utilise blockchain without being able to draw a diagram of the system! This highlights what is ultimately the crux of creating blockchain technology with users at the heart: It is not necessarily about the tech itself, but about showing people the way that it can help them in their everyday lives. It’s about bringing it into the “real world” — a world that exists beyond tech enthusiasts and that considers average users — to provide services and products that people want, need and can be comfortable using. Our Thoughts Blockchain has a number of ‘real-world’ applications. However, from smart contracts to digital voting, it is the technology that is in need of design to allow people to use it. As the Blockchain Review suggests, blockchain needs to be a technology that people want, designed for humans, designed for trust and credibility, designed for understanding to be used intuitively and designed to stand out. Designing blockchain for people will reduce adoption barriers. The Snap Out Team 🚀

https://medium.com/snapout/how-good-ux-will-allow-blockchain-to-reach-its-full-potential-4fe4faa263c1

['Bethany', 'Snap Out']

2019-04-15 11:35:40+00:00

['User Experience', 'Snap Out', 'UX Design', 'Blockchain', 'UX']

What Traditional Automakers Cannot Catch up with Tesla

What Traditional Automakers Cannot Catch up with Tesla That is actually a lot less likely than many people believe. People tend to think the other big automakers only need to get their act together and they will make better EVs than Tesla which is a less experienced car maker. It is true that when it comes to a lot of the manufacturing process, Tesla is behind the competition. However when it comes to the key technologies of an EV, Tesla is far far ahead of their competition. Tesla has all the key technology inhouse. Tesla makes their own batteries, and own electric drive train. The other automakers don't. That means the key technology that can separate an EV from another, is not something the big automakers have a strategic position on. Say Tesla's competitiors put in a better battery and a better electric motor. So what? These will be sold by third parties which Tesla can buy from. Hence the way these automakers have organized themselves they have no ability to get an upper hand hand on Tesla. A much bigger problem for the big automakers is that Tesla is in fact the leading battery and drive train maker in the world at the moment. And they got the biggest volume. Doesn't matter how good you are at painting car bodies, fitting doors, or installing luxury seats if you cannot provide superior battery technology and electric motors. We have been told that the big auto makers where going to crush Tesla for a while now. What happened when Audi, Jaguar, Porsche and others came out with cars? Sure they made nice cars, but they just couldn't touch Tesla on price and range. Why? Because Tesla batteries are cheaper and denser. They motors are also more efficient giving better range. Thus for things like acceleration, top speed, and range, it is impossible to beat Tesla at the moment without making a significantly more expensive and heavier car. Next problem is, how are they going to catch up, when Tesla develops new models cheaper and faster than them? Yes they have an edge in manufacturing over Tesla, but not in the car design process. There the roles are reversed. This is no joke. Elon Musk really understand how to develop new technology fast. Look at the speed at which SpaceX makes new rocket designs and the much lower cost at which they do it. The key to this very rapid development is almost complete vertical integration with very rapid iterations. Tradtional automakers or space companies for that matter don't work like that. They have a slow length process where there is little iteration and instead lots of upfront specification and planning. E.g. one example is changing a blinking status symbol on the dashboard. That takes 3 weeks of negotiation and updates with suppliers to fix in traditional automanufacturing. Tesla does that in 10 minutes, because all the electronics and software is made in house. There are nobody to send over thick new specification documents to. So the question is what will happen first. Will Tesla catch up to the manufacturing quality of established automakers first, or will established automakers change their whole operations develop new cars the way Tesla does? I would say the former is far more likely. Large companies don’t fundamentally change the fundamentals of how they operate. This is the problem. There is a paradigm shift going on and these existing automakers are stuck in a mode of operation optimized for small gradual refinement of well established technology. But that is not the EV world. It is more like a startup scene where you got to try all sorts of new things and quickly innovate and experiment. And even if they could do that against all odds, they have made enormous strategic mistakes. They have no large scale battery factories. So even even they made a better car than Tesla, how would they scale up production? It takes many years to get all these Giga factories up and running. Tesla has even secured raw materials for these factories to make the batteries. They have made long term strategic choices over many years and made huge upfront investments. The other car makers are too late to the game. Even if they do everything right today, it will take them at least 5 years to catch up to where Tesla is today. But where is Tesla in 5 years? By that time they will have profits, volume and market recognition which will make them hard to unseat. But who knows. Elon Musk is kind of a volatile personality. He could quite possibly screw up. Anything is possible. But I would not bet against Tesla.

https://medium.com/@erik-engheim/what-traditional-automakers-cannot-catch-up-with-tesla-a78fae6b0dad

['Erik Engheim']

2020-11-22 04:20:35.420000+00:00

['Competition', 'Tesla', 'Electric Car', 'Cars']

The Psychological Reason You Need to Spend Time Distracted

Whenever I go for a run, I do best when I’m with a friend, or listening to a music or podcast. In other words, running is painful, and it’s easier to forget that and continue running when I’m distracted. It lets me run faster, run longer, and actually enjoy my outing. But distractions have been given a bad rap. People talk about clearing your desk of distractions, or focusing and avoiding distractions. We’re encouraged to stay as true to our course as possible, with no deviations. While it’s true that distractions can be a bad thing that detract from your everyday life, it’s also true that, harnessed correctly, distractions can be a beneficial source of inspiration, productivity, and uplift your mood. Your brain on distractions. People like to say that our brains are a one track machine. We can’t multitask, we’re easily distracted, we need to focus on one thing at a time to get it done. While it may seem that you are continuously focusing on reading this article, the reality is that you’re zooming in and out of attention up to four times per second. — Daphne Leprince-Ringuet, author on Wired But it’s not true: our mind is built to be distracted. We perform at our best when we are distracted. Think about how our species developed. It was much more beneficial for us to be constantly scanning the environment for danger, food, or anything else that could be useful or informative. That stone spear you were working on wouldn’t do you much good if you were so intently focused on carving it that you were eaten by a lion. Photo by Laurenz Kleinheider on Unsplash Ten thousand years later, we think that just because we can wear suits and attend the opera, our brains are much more sophisticated. They’re not. The same brains that helped us avoid danger back in the savanna are the same ones that can’t focus on one thing for too long, because we’re easily distracted. But what people never seem to realize is that it’s a positive, not a negative. Instead of trying to spend long hours doing a single task, we’re built to switch it up and try new things. The problem? Attention is currency these days. Video games, social networks, television: they’re all designed with this very feature in mind. They’re built to be engaging, distracting, to have us latch on with our full attention. Every generation of these unwanted distractions is more attuned to our brains than ever before. Meanwhile our work is just as uninviting and boring as it has been for the last couple of decades. It is easy to be distracted from it, and Candy Crush is just a few finger taps away. Photo by Alasdair Elmes on Unsplash So to circumvent that, you have to proactively build distraction gaps into your day. Give yourself carefully structured times to be distracted, and watch how easy it is to stay focused the rest of your time. When you notice that just about anything can pull you away from your desk, when you’re staring at the screen with all the attention and determination of a newborn housefly, when you’re dreaming of doing anything but what you’re currently doing — go get distracted. The benefits of distraction. There are two kinds of distraction: self-suppression and self-expansion. Self-suppression might be the kind we’re most familiar with, where we watch TV or play video games to numb whatever unpleasant feelings we’re feeling. People use this kind to self-medicate from the dire dullness of work, which is why it has such a bad reputation. But its powers can be harnessed for good, too. I use this one most often when running. When I go for a run, I’m normally out of breath, sweaty, sometimes with a cramp, not to mention experiencing general fatigue. So I put on a distraction to make all that go away, at least a little bit. A funny podcast, or a boppy playlist. And it helps. Photo by Jenny Hill on Unsplash Maybe if I were trying to focus on my best performance ever, distractions would be detrimental to my workout. But all I’m trying to do is make it as fun and simple for me to go out three or four times a week. I won’t do that if I’m not enjoying the run, or at least am being distracted by how much I’m disliking the run. “Listening to music you like while exercising has been shown to help release the endorphins that relieve stress and depression,” — Dr. Vijay B. Vad, sports medicine specialist at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York. Especially while not at the ultimate level of sports, distractions can really help lessen our typical dislike of exercise, resulting in more exercise, which is only a good thing. Self-expansion distraction is where the real magic is found, though. With self-expansion, you can use distractions not to tamp down unwanted emotions or feelings, but rather to express natural avenues of interest. If you get distracted by things like wanting to know what that particular species of butterfly is, or by being interested in learning a new language, or daydreaming about visiting a new country — follow those distractions, because they will lead you to where you really want to go. These kinds of distractions reveal where your true interest lies. You’ll grow as a person for following them, developing skills and experiences that will enrich your life. A writing example. I was writing a story earlier on something I don’t quite remember now, when I started browsing on Twitter, because I was bored. Angry at myself, I closed the tab to try to focus on my story with no distractions. Photo by Joshua Rawson-Harris on Unsplash I realized I was bored because I wasn’t actually interested in the story, I just felt like I needed to write it. I stopped writing it, left it in my drafts folder, and started writing this one instead. I’m fascinated by the topic, and this story has absolutely flown out of my fingers. By following my own interests, by following anything that distracts me to wherever it leads me, I’ve had a much more enjoyable hour of writing, and learned a lot more about a topic that is interesting to me. What’s the takeaway? Honestly, if you can focus on a task for three hours at a time with no distractions, more power to you. Me, I’ll be over here with the rest of the mortals, trying to make the most of the inevitable distractions that will come my way. Distractions are a necessary part of our lives. Any kind of stimulus might trigger a total distraction from our daily lives, and it’s important to recognize and minimize the ones we don’t want, for example by turning off our notifications. But once you understand what’s driving them and how they work, you can start using distraction to improve your life. Build them into your workday and watch how your productivity improves. Find out what triggers a lapse in attention — it might be a new hobby or passion that you’ve been suppressing up till now. And if you absolutely must do something unpleasant, well, there’s no harm in being distracted while you do it.

https://medium.com/the-ascent/the-psychological-reason-you-need-to-spend-time-distracted-e8ecb94b0351

['Zulie Rane']

2019-05-17 08:55:47.098000+00:00

['Psychology', 'Science', 'Productivity', 'Self', 'Creativity']

Amazon clinches top spot in Most Valuable Global Brand for 2019

Since 2018, Amazon’s valuation has surged by 52% to $315.5 billion. The company ranked third in last year’s ranking, just behind Google and Apple. This is the first brand to debut in the first position over the last 12 years. According to BrandZ’s latest ranking, Amazon’s valuation grew 52% between 2018 and 2019, while Apple’s increased by 3% to $309.1 billion and Google’s by only 2% to $309 billion. Microsoft, which sits in a comfortable fourth place with a value of $251 billion, recorded the second-best increase in value in the top 10, up 25%, followed by Visa in fifth place, up 22% to $178 billion, and Alibaba in seventh, up 16% to $131 billion. “Enabled by developing technologies, and not being afraid to try and fail at times, Amazon has diversified into a range of offers from cloud computing to smart devices, from payment systems to the best in entertainment. As the boundaries between traditional businesses blur, Amazon has been ideally positioned to seize emerging opportunities.” — says Graham Staplehurst, BrandZ’s global strategy director. The only brands in the top 10 to decrease their value are Facebook (sixth) down 2% and Tencent (eighth) down 27%.

https://medium.com/gmtdigital/amazon-clinches-top-spot-in-most-valuable-global-brand-for-2019-1f1322b80888

['Gmt Digital Marketing']

2019-06-17 11:07:03.534000+00:00

['Social Media Marketing', 'Social Media', 'Brands', 'Cloud Computing', 'Amazon']

Don’t always go the extra mile

Don’t always go the extra mile Why some things just don’t deserve your best effort. Photo by Kalen Emsley on Unsplash Always do your best. Your parents probably told you that. Or maybe a cartoon did. They meant well. But they were wrong. Sometimes, you should do less than your best. On purpose. Don’t throw your time and energy away on jobs or expectations that don’t matter. Save it for big projects and people who appreciate you. Back in college, I worked my ass off at my first job — a bar that served “food.” Until the owner threatened to fire me for saying hi to some friends. That night convinced me to stop trying so hard. It didn’t matter how great I was at serving patrons. The only thing that did was looking busy. After a month, I stopped caring so much. Good enough was fine. Not like a promotion was waiting for me. Assholes will tell you to give everything your all. They don’t care about your life goals. They just want a flirty waitress who refills drinks before they have to expend an ounce of their precious breath. They want the perfect amount of foam on their latte. And if you can etch their name on it with caramel, that means you’re really going places. Maybe an extra twenty five cents per hour. Everyone always doing their best sounds great, in theory. But that’s not what people really mean when they say that. What they want is for everyone else to always do their best. That way, they’re always guaranteed exactly what they want. Value your own time Because nobody else will if you don’t. The world isn’t a hundred percent evil. But it’s pretty close. Lots of would-be bosses stand ready to exploit your talent and your can-do spirit. We hate letting people down. We’re afraid how we’ll look if we let something slide. Even if that thing isn’t so important. That restaurant owner who threatened to fire me also liked to inspect the silverware. If he found one smudge on a fork or a glass, he’d lecture everyone in earshot about work ethic and attention to detail. So we were constantly buffing and polishing to keep him quiet. One time he asked me if it was possible for the silverware to be perfectly shiny and smudge free. Silly me, I said I didn’t think so. He called me lackadaisical, and threatened to fire me again. Ever since, I’ve loved the word lackadaisical. It’s the perfect word to describe how baby boomers think about my generation’s attitude toward sparkling silverware and calling everyone sir. In truth, it didn’t matter how much we polished the silverware. At some point, I finally realized what was happening. He was smudging them himself. You can’t fondle silverware without getting your own finger oils on it. Or you can, I guess, if you use a napkin. But he wasn’t doing that. He was inspecting the forks, the knives, or the pint glasses over and over until he made them dirty himself. You just can’t win that battle. So I gave up. Embraced the futility of life. Became happier. We play mind games with ourselves. We let the least important things become the most important. Worse, we worry that letting one little thing slide will start some kind of avalanche. Go one day without answering everyone’s emails, and you’ll turn into a binge-drinking slob by the end of the month. The silverware ordeal taught me a great lesson. Not everything that matters to other people has to matter to you. That one person’s email can wait a little while. Not every meeting requires your rapt attention. Yeah, believe it. You actually have important things to do. Those things might not line up with other people’s opinions about what you ought to be working on. Like committee reports, or evaluations of said reports. Which are really just reports on reports. Yeah, that happens a lot. Sometimes giving your all makes no difference We like to think all hard work matters equally. Like some fairy godmother’s watching you and keeping track of everything you do. If you never slack off, you’ll certainly be rewarded with a glass slipper. That’s just a fat lie. Part of success is knowing where to focus your energy, and when to detect when nobody really cares. One year, I wrote a 10-page report at the request of my dean. The report explained why we needed another computer lab on campus. Poor little me worked on that report for 20 hours. I wanted to impress him. It was the dean, after all. The dean never read my report. In fact, he called a meeting to discuss his own thoughts on the matter. The bastard never told me thanks for my work. Didn’t even hang my report on the fridge. At least I could’ve listed that on my C.V. Report displayed proudly in dean’s kitchen. For the win. Sometimes you can cut corners You should never feel guilty for putting some projects ahead of others. Or phoning it in when clearly nobody else gives a shit. That sounds pessimistic. Defeatist. But it’s freeing. A few years ago, I gave a conference presentation at 8 am. On a Saturday morning. Three people showed up to hear me talk about some topic I can barely remember now. Two of those people were the other presenters. Imagine if I’d gone full presentation mode. To three people. That wasn’t happening. It felt wrong. Foolish. Instead, we got coffee and talked each other through our projects. It was casual. Maybe to some people that sounds lazy. To us, it felt sane. Later that day, I saw a woman read her conference presentation from crayon scrawled on the backs of menus. So cut me some slack. You don’t have to justify your priorities to everyone. Only yourself. Maybe you’ve got a ton of busy work keeping you from an important task. Kill the busy work. Just get it done. Odds are, that’s all that matters. Don’t feel embarrassed that you did one thing less well because you were trying to kick ass at something else. That’s your call. Take pride in the right things Sometimes it pays to be a perfectionist. Nine out of ten times, you’ve sacrificed sleep for nothing. You could’ve spent half the hours for the same result. Trust me, I understand. My brain tends toward the perfectionist side. At my worst, I used to spend ten minutes on diction in emails to people who barely read past the subject line. What a waste of effort. Someone once told me I was slow to respond to emails. It pissed me off at first. Because I thought my emails were beautifully crafted, and everyone appreciated my attention to sentence rhythm. I’m not kidding. I treated emails like poems. And nobody cared. These days, I know better. Fuck it if someone thinks I’m terse. Maybe the occasional typo or extra word slips into my replies. That doesn’t matter. I’ve seen vice chancellors make typos in emails. Of course, some emails enjoy more importance than others. Like announcements. Those matter. You don’t want a typo in an email that goes out to thirty people. Even then, it’s not a huge deal. People tend to forgive imperfection when you do an overall good job. Accidentally attaching nudes, though. Less forgiveness there. So I’ve heard.

https://jessicalexicus.medium.com/dont-always-go-the-extra-mile-c81e6de00b2c

['Jessica Wildfire']

2018-09-26 03:05:05.959000+00:00

['Self Improvement', 'Life', 'Productivity', 'Work', 'Humor']

Please Let Me Be In The Zone

FLOW STATE | WRITING | POETRY “Unleash your creative energy and let it flow. Relish the possibilities.” — Nita Leland Photo by Anastase Maragos on Unsplash Here I am again, at a loss for words, I can’t explain; fumbling, and complaining, Like a bat under my hat let me see not, with my mere set of eyes. Let me cross the threshold of this elusive crossroad, whom athletes call “being in the zone” y’all. Whom others point to as, “a heightened state of consciousness” as what his prominence, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi tells me, But oh, who is he, propel me Mr. Flow State, you see. Oh, powerful gods of penning, send me into a state of tending; Let me feel the pleasure of this ultimate treasure. Harness me with wings and let me rose into nothingness, Gift me a tail and gills; Let me swim into the depths of the ocean of musings, where calmness is harnessed; transcendency resides. Let me not be distracted by thee surrounded; even so with my inner critic, Let me not mind the buzzing world behind. It's just me and my pen, my immature notions and my phenomenal muse; Nothing, no one will hinder me, in this state of uncontrollable heights, happiness, and productivity. Never will I be settled by anything, nor anyone; not even you my loyal one. This is just me unrivaled with my soul and my composing; intense, full of emotions, like a lover to his beloved ane. I will be for you and you for me alone, together we will be, now and evermore. I don’t care how or what will soon be, as long as I pick up how to cheer me up; “Never be afraid to fail, even as stale as a snail you can try now and later as well.” Thus, soon I will be in the zone leave not a stone unturned; Barely through this way, I’ll make this world merry, simply by just writing my story.

https://medium.com/illumination/please-let-me-be-in-the-zone-79a77d2fc45b

['Josh Balerite Acol']

2021-02-23 13:01:09.563000+00:00

['Illumination', 'Illumination Poetry', 'Flow State', 'Poetry', 'Josh Balerite Acol']

Ethereum Sharding Passes Proof-of-Concept

Author of Casper CBC, Vlad Zamfir has finally put the ethereum sharding concept into code. Vlad’s program demonstrates an operation of a sharded blockchain at a primitive level. Vlad and several other hackathon participants built a system of three shards: a root shard and two child shards. Like a regular blockchain, each shard is a chain of blocks containing transactions. Unlike a regular blockchain, each shard stores cross-shard communication information: logs of messages received from other shards and logs of messages sent to other shards. Watch Vlad’s video explanation: This attempt at sharding is far from the production-ready version but some parts of the code will be important in the actual implementation of sharding. The proof-of-concept repository is available on GitHub for everyone to download and try out for themselves. Quick info on sharding Sharding is a proposed solution for Ethereum’s scalability problem. Each Ethereum node needs to process and store all transactions, which puts insurmountable constraints on the network’s scaling. Sharding proposes to break the blockchain into smaller fragments called shards which are then allocated across the network. For more information, read the Casper + sharding specification.

https://medium.com/finrazorcom/ethereum-sharding-passes-proof-of-concept-487c67f09c9c

['Finrazor Team']

2018-10-03 10:59:54.956000+00:00

['Ethereum Blockchain', 'Ethereum', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Crypto', 'Blockchain']

What’s Up With The VIX?

What Does The VIX Actually Tell Us? Anytime you put the word “implied” in the name of a metric like implied volatility, people like to assume the existence of a mystical ability to predict the future. Yes, the VIX is a crowd-sourced measure of expected market volatility; but in this case, the crowd despite all its “collective wisdom” is not very good at predicting market volatility. Look at the plot below, which compares VIX implied volatility and realized volatility. They pretty much move in lockstep. The key is that the orange line plots the volatility of S&P 500 returns over the PREVIOUS 30 days, not the next 30 days — meaning that VIX implied volatility is highly correlated with backwards looking volatility, not future volatility. VIX implied volatility (blue) vs. realized volatility (orange) To hammer in this point, here is a similar plot, except instead of backwards looking vol (previous 30 days), I graphed forward vol (next 30 days) in its place. If the lines line up perfectly, that would mean that VIX does predict future volatility. Instead, what we see is the orange line clearly leading the blue line (for example, the orange line spikes up first before the blue line follows). This is expected, if we could use the VIX to predict future changes in the stock market, we would all be rich (or this benefit would quickly be arbitraged away). VIX doesn’t predict future volatility VIX Tends To Move Opposite The Stock Market VIX is commonly called the Fear Gauge by market pundits. That’s because it tends to spike when stock prices crash (inducing investors to panic). The following scatterplot shows the relationship between daily percentage changes in the S&P 500 and daily raw changes in the VIX — as you can see, there is a strong negative correlation (market goes down, VIX goes up). VIX moves opposite the S&P 500 Astute students of statistics are probably thinking, “If VIX is a measure of volatility, why doesn’t it also go up when markets spike up?” Great question. Pure statistical volatility doesn’t care about direction, a big move is a big move regardless of if it’s up or down. And yes, a huge and unexpected up move in the stock market would put some upward pressure on the VIX (giving ETFs indexed to percentage changes in the VIX a convex relationship with the stock market). But overall, VIX’s strong inverse relationship with the market holds due to the following factors: Big Up Days Tend To Happen In Bear Markets Big up days in stock markets usually happen in the midst of large drawdowns (like after a few weeks of crashing, stocks take a breather and shoot up 8% in one day). So these big up moves don’t impact the VIX that much because the preceding crash already caused the VIX to spike up. Said differently, usually by the time big up days occur, VIX is already really high and investors are already expecting large moves in either direction. If big positive days in the stock market started occurring out of the blue during bull markets instead of primarily occurring in bear markets, the observed statistical relationship would probably change. But until then, it remains a hypothetical. Complacency Vs. Fear It’s important to keep in mind that the VIX is not a purely statistical construct. It’s a measure of investor uncertainty that embeds the aggregate emotions of market participants as well. To that end, market participants tend to associate rising stock markets with stability, optimism, and certainty causing the VIX to decline. And when markets crash, we are filled with feelings of dread, fear, and uncertainty causing VIX to spike. The Fear Premium There is a fear premium baked into VIX, especially when it’s low. Look carefully at the first plot (implied vol vs. previous 30 days realized vol) — when volatility is low (and markets are calm), the orange line tends to be below the blue line. This means that options markets tend to systematically price in a higher level of volatility than that which actually gets realized. It’s basically an insurance effect. When calculating your insurance premium, insurer’s look at the actual probability of your house catching on fire (based on history and data) and then add a premium to that so that on average they can turn a profit (this compensates them for the risk they take on). The options markets work the same way — investors use options and VIX related derivatives to hedge. In order to motivate people to take the other side of this trade and bear the risk, they need to offer compensation, which comes in the form of a vol premium (the excess of implied over realized). Over time, because the implied probability of a big market move tends to be greater than the actual realized probability, investors willing to provide stock market insurance get paid a premium (in return for bearing substantial risk). So why does this matter? Well, the size of the premium is a function of two things — expectations about future market volatility (extrapolating the recent past) and the supply and demand for insurance against market crashes. During good times, the supply of insurance goes up because more and more investors view the premiums as easy money (and write put options). At the same time, the demand for insurance goes down because investors get tired of paying for insurance that never turns out to be needed (fewer buyers of put options). This compresses the fear premium (a.k.a. the cost of insurance), putting downward pressure on the VIX when markets are calm or in an upwards trend.

https://medium.com/alpha-beta-blog/whats-up-with-the-vix-88b0a724d9fb

['Tony Yiu']

2020-09-03 16:59:30.102000+00:00

['Economics', 'Investing', 'Business', 'Data Science', 'Finance']

Is (500) Days of Summer Misunderstood?

Tom is a hopeless romantic, an embodiment of the “nice guy” trope. Summer, on the other hand, is a free spirit who doesn’t believe in the so-called fairy tale of love. It’s a fairly familiar premise and we’ve seen this theme of Opposites Attract over and over again on screen. Two seemingly mismatched people that are destined to be together (Ross and Rachel, Jack and Rose, Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, to name a few). In reality, opposites don’t attract. We’re far more likely to be attracted to people who are similar to us. But, as an audience, we’ve been conditioned by countless movies and TV shows to believe that Tom and Summer will overcome their differences. We think that Tom will somehow convince Summer that true love does exist. That the girl who thought she wanted to be independent would change her mind once the right guy came along. So, even though Summer continuously tells Tom throughout the film that she’s not looking for a relationship, we (like Tom) don’t believe her. When Summer does eventually break up with him, he’s left heartbroken and we, the audience, are left empathizing with him. According to The Take, though, we shouldn’t be. After all, Summer did tell him that she didn’t want a relationship. And she said that the whole time, never giving him any indication that she’d changed her mind. As the movie flashes across timelines, we also see signs of her discontent — their early infatuation is juxtaposed with their later incompatibility. It should, then, be fairly obvious to Tom that she’s unhappy. He shouldn’t be shocked when she dumps him. The fact that he IS just goes to show that he wasn’t truly listening to her.

https://medium.com/@datingbitch/is-500-days-of-summer-misunderstood-b3214f3991f

['The Dating B.']

2021-01-09 19:22:45.300000+00:00

['Breakups', '500 Days Of Summer', 'Relationships', 'Relationships Love Dating', 'Psychology']

A Gift Overdue

“Firstly, I would thank to my Allah.Who helped me in my all circumstances” When i started to thinking about that person who helped me a lot in my all circumstances.After a long time, i found out that person who deserve thank.She is my mom who helped me in my all circumstances.Here i want to discuss the most important part of my life when everyone left me but my mom stand with me.(At the time of university fee) We are living in a joint family.I hoped that you knew about the joint family situation.One head person (economical strong) ruled and decided all the things that do in house.After intermediate, i wanted to study in university but all the family members didn’t want that.Everyone said me you should go for the job and do started your education in private college.Due to financial issues, i also knew that i couldn’t survive but my all friends did go to the university.I thought that what they think about me.That time was really difficult for me.But i had a craze to went the university. On the other side of the room,my mother was listening every situation she stood stand and saying the sentence i shall pay your fee.That really amazing moment for me that i never forget that in my life.She also knew about that she couldn’t do like that and i also knew that, how single she managed.After that family members was against to my mom.But my mom fought for me.After that first time she loaned for me.So i want to say that what i am at this time due to only my mom.I fulfilled my dream because of my mom. I can also discuss here the success story of myself after one semester i did get the inter-loop company scholarship for my next semester studies.That’s moment was awesome for me i think i gave a little bit,a little bit happiness to my mom on that act.But this was a small thing in front of my mom love. THANK YOU MY BEAUTIFUL MOM❤. At last,”THANKS TO AMAL FOR THIS PROJECT”

https://medium.com/@syed.asad131/a-gift-overdue-fb0790c07c5e

['Syed Asad Kazmi']

2020-02-22 02:04:56.614000+00:00

['Love', 'Care', 'Mothers', 'Sacrifice', 'Moms']

A prison diary — part three. Everyone had a sad story.

Everyone had a sad story. Domestic abuse, childhood trauma, homelessness. I felt like the odd one out. I had a wonderful childhood. I hadn’t experienced anything traumatic and had never been homeless. I felt like a fraud. Nonetheless, a weird alchemy of events had brought us all together. Kirsty never wanted to leave prison. She got out and then would commit a minor crime to come back. I thought she was insane. Why on earth would you want to stay here? I thought to myself. It turns out she had no one on the outside. No relatives, few friends and prison provided the support and company she craved. I could not think of anything more tragic than Kirsty’s story. Anita was pregnant. She told me one evening that she would pretend to give birth to leave prison for the night. When I heard an almighty scream from her cell that night, I knew it was the test run. She gave birth a few weeks later but couldn’t keep the baby due to her mental illness history. She begged me to help her write a letter to the judge. It didn’t help. She and her baby were separated, and that was that. There were prison romances. One night, as I was trying to get to sleep, I heard the prisoners on either side of my cell shout sweet nothings to each other. I was literally stuck in the middle of an intimate, extremely graphic conversation. It was agony. One of the saddest stories was of Katya. Katya had a scar across her throat from where she had tried to slit it. She had killed her baby after suffering months of emotional abuse at the hands of her partner. She was very well-read and upbeat. I kept thinking to myself, how could she live with herself having killed her baby? Then I realised it was not my place to judge. In fact, it was not my place to judge any of these prisoners. Some of their stories were truly harrowing. Sarah set herself on fire, having lost her son, which was classed as arson. Julie, who, while having a psychotic episode, lit a BBQ in her house. Again, arson. Laura had jumped off a bridge with her child, only to survive the fall. It was not my place to judge. It was a place of broken minds and traumatised bodies. It was a place of rehabilitation as well as punishment. Of lives cut short, dreams shattered. It was a place I will never forget. A place called prison.

https://medium.com/@jenmcp50/a-prison-diary-part-three-ca41d19d4cd4

['Jen Mcpherson']

2021-08-22 20:54:17.030000+00:00

['Mental Health', 'Prisoners', 'Prison', 'Prison Reform', 'Incarceration']

Mobile test automation practices — Part 1: verifications, modules and basic actions

Bumble is the parent company that operates Badoo and Bumble, two of the world’s largest dating and connection apps with millions of customers worldwide. Delivering new functionality as fast as possible is a priority. However, it is important that the speed with which we work in no way compromises the quality of our apps. Automation is a great help in that regard. The position of automated testing has changed a lot over the past two years. The number of people currently actively involved in test development has quadrupled from 10 to 40. And any new functionality in our applications now has to be covered by tests prior to release. (Find out more about how we got there in Katerina Sprinsyan’s talk.) Operating in our particular conditions, it is highly important that we develop tests as quickly as possible. And, at the same time, they need to be stable — so we keep maintenance time to a minimum. In this article, we share the practices we use both to speed up the development of tests and increase their stability. My name is Dmitrii Makarenko and I am a Mobile QA Engineer working on both apps, Badoo and Bumble. I am involved in testing new functionality manually and covering it with autotests. My colleague Viktar and I have spoken on this at several events but now we want to make the info more widely available. In this article, we cover the following: How we chose the test automation framework Practice no. 1. Where and how to write verifications Practice no. 2. Automated testing of several apps Practice no. 3. Steps for basic actions Summary. The examples we look at in this article are relevant not only for those just starting to roll out automated testing in their project but also for everyone actively using it already. Let’s begin with a brief account of the automation framework at our company so the context of the practical examples we use is clear. How we chose the test automation framework Our Badoo and Bumble apps are native: i.e. Android apps are developed by one team, in Kotlin and Java, while iOS apps are developed by another in Swift and Objective C. At the same time, functionality in Android and iOS apps is to a major extent similar. It is precisely for this reason that one of our main criteria when choosing an automation framework was having the option of reusing test scenarios. Guided by this, we chose Calabash, a cross-platform automation framework. We write tests in Ruby and use the Cucumber framework for writing scenarios. Later, we also added another cross-platform framework, Appium. It is important to say that it doesn’t really matter which framework you use. We have generalised our recommendations here to make them easy for you to apply. Practice no. 1. Where and how to write verifications To better understand where you can write verifications let’s look at the test structure. This structure consists of three levels. Scenario. This is where the test itself is written in Gherkin, a human-readable programming language; all the necessary actions and verifications are described here. Step definitions. Depending on the actions and verifications from the first level, the relevant Ruby code is put in place, which then performs them. Pages. This is where we describe our app’s screens, and actions we can perform on them — for example, obtaining the text of a required element, tapping on a required button etc. Now to the practical side of things. Task definition We need to create verification for a particular element. As this formulation is very general we shall consider a specific example. This will be the verification of a message about a missed video call. Dialogue with a test user Examples of solutions Let’s begin with a scenario for verification of this message. In the text of the scenario you may notice an abbreviation, QaApi. This is an API, which allows us to change the status of the system during testing. For example, we can send messages, or upload profile photos for test users, using ordinary client-server requests. (We talk about QaApi in more detail in this article.) Let’s first focus on the step for verifying a required message (the final step in the code example). Scenario verifying a message about a missed video call Now to define what we need to verify. This is the text of the message and the “call back” button. Let’s review one possible approach to this task. A step for message verification. Approach 1 In this example, at the level of step definition, we create an object of the ChatPage class and call the “await” method to wait for the necessary screen to load. We then call the verify_missed_video_call method to verify that the necessary elements are displayed. At the page level, this is what it looks like when we implement this method. First, we define the expected results for the lexeme, taking this from the static method, declared in the CallLexemes module, using the class << self technique: We then take the actual result from the screen: ui is an object which provides us with access to the framework methods. We then compare the expected value with the actual value: We get the following method as a result: A method for a missed video call message verification. Platform 1 You may have picked up a mistake here. The person who developed the method for one of the platforms omitted something important: verification of the “call back” button. A test developer for another platform, in turn, added this verification and created the following method: A method for a missed video call message verification. Platform 2 Here are the drawbacks of the first method: High risk of error. Of course, it is difficult to imagine some verification being omitted in a case involving two elements, as in our example. However, when we are verifying five or even ten+ elements, there is an increased risk of the test developer omitting or incorrectly implementing a particular verification. Duplication of code. As you may have noticed, the implementation of verification is duplicated on various platforms, and this slows down test development. What can we do to overcome this? Instead of implementing verifications at a page level, we move verifications over to the step definitions level: A step for message verification. Approach 2 And we implement two new methods on the pages. One will return the message text: The other will return the button text: It is a lot more difficult to make a mistake in such methods, even where there are lots of elements. What is more, verifications implemented at the level of step definitions get reused by different platforms — and so we avoid duplication of test code. Takeaways This is what we recommend: Create verifications at the level of step definitions Keep pages simple i.e. create them so that page classes return information on the status of the app screen, and do not contain implementation of verifications. Generic recommendations: Implement verifications at the top level, i.e. where you are writing the body of the test Implement simple test objects (do not mix the test logic with the object itself). Practice no. 2. Automated testing of several apps Now let’s explore how the approach from the previous example helps us not only when working with two platforms, but also when working with two apps. The recommendations from this example are also relevant when working with a single application. Task definition We needed to implement a shared chat page for two applications, based on the example of Badoo and Bumble apps. (This came up when our developers created a shared chat component and used it in both apps. In the tests we needed to do the same thing.) Solution example We started by dividing the chat screen into logical modules, namely: Upper panel (toolbar) Dialogue area (conversation) Input field (input source). Dialogue with test user We divided the conversation area into smaller modules for various message types: text, audio, GIF images and photos. Dialogue with test user The input module also consisted of smaller-scale modules, such as a field for sending photos, text, GIF images and audio messages. Dialogue with test user After that, we created a module structure for Android and for iOS similar to the one in the screenshot below. After this, it became easier for us to create classes for chat pages in both applications. Essentially, the only difference is in the usage of different base pages. This is because these differ a little between applications. Now we simply include the required modules into the page for each application. At the same time, we are only including modules that are relevant for the app in question. In Badoo, for example, this could be a message about a gift — something that doesn’t exist in Bumble: On the other hand, Bumble has another type of message which does not exist in Badoo, namely “reactions”: The existence of this component allows us to easily create a chat page in any other new application should our company implement the application in question — it literally takes just a couple of minutes. We also use the same steps for both applications. This is where we return to the methods for obtaining the text of a message about a missed video call, and the “call back” button from practice no. 1. They are located in the module for video call message type. A module for the video call message type This module is included in chat pages for both Bumble and Badoo. That is to say, the module is written once for each platform, while a message in four of our applications (Badoo for iOS and Android, and Bumble for iOS and Android) can be verified in a single step. So, writing new tests to verify the chat functionality in different applications is certainly not onerous. Takeaways We create similar components in those cases where we do not need to reuse them in different applications, for example for screens with a high number of UI elements. This approach in one application allows you to avoid what is called God object (more information here and here), classes with a large number of properties and methods. It is far simpler to support pages broken down into modules as well as to extend them when new functionality is introduced. Drawing conclusions from this example, we see that using components helps us in: Creating tests for different applications, using existing steps and saving lots of time along the way Supporting and extending classes of pages for screens with a large number of UI elements. Generic recommendation: in the case of objects with a high number of properties and methods, you need to create components comprising logically separated modules. Practice no. 3. Steps for basic actions We begin the examination of this next example by identifying the actions we consider to be basic. For example: waiting for a page to open, verifying a page, closing a page, or going back from a particular page. We call them basic because they are relevant for practically any page in our applications. Task definition We need to implement basic actions for different pages. Examples of solutions Imagine this situation: two QA engineers have created steps for waiting for chat and profile pages to open: Steps for waiting for different pages Here we spot the following problems: The names of the steps are somewhat different so they are going to be difficult to find when we need to use them in new scenarios Implementation of the steps differs only in terms of the classes of objects: ChatPage and OwnProfile. Bearing in mind that our applications have many more than two screens, if we create different steps to wait for each one of them to open, it will lead to a lot of duplicated code. Now let’s see another example that implements the steps for going back from a particular page: Steps for going back from different pages Here is yet another problem: pages contain methods (tap_back, go_back, press_back), which are responsible for one and the same action but which are named differently. This has happened because different people have added them at different places in the repository. In this way, the shared problem in these examples is code duplication, and this significantly slows down test development. We see duplication, both of the steps themselves, and also of actions implementation on the pages. This all makes it more difficult to reuse steps for basic actions in different tests, given that it is practically impossible to remember all the possible variations of these steps. How can we get around this? Go from a simple approach to a more complex one. We can create an object of the page class using a string from the step parameter. To this end, we created the page_object_by method. This is what implementation of the page_object_by method looks like: We are creating the name of the class based on the name of the page passed to the step. Then, if this class exists, we return an object of this class. If not, we raise an exception. In this way, all we need to do to wait for any page to open is just to write a single step. We also use a similar approach for all other basic actions. And this significantly simplifies development. We have also eradicated method duplication for basic actions on pages by implementing generic methods such as press_back. Implementation of this method can be found on AndroidBumbleBase, IOSBumbleBase, AndroidBadooBase and IOSBadooBase pages, from which the classes of the other pages in our tests are inherited. It should be said that this is not an ideal solution. If this approach is taken, pages that do not have a “back” button can use a method for tapping on this button. It would be better to extract tapping on the “back” button into a separate module such as Navigation::Back, and to include it in all the necessary pages. But we have not used a module of this kind because it would mean having to add it to nearly all the pages in our project — and we opted to make life a bit simpler for ourselves. Takeaways So, in the context of this example this is what we recommend: Creating generic steps for basic actions Creating generic methods for performing basic actions on pages (going back etc.) In the previous section we recommended creating modules and reusing them on pages. Whereas here we are saying that you need to create methods on pages. We might seem to be contradicting ourselves somewhat but that is not the case. If you really do have lots of methods on a page, or if you need to reuse code only on some pages, it makes sense to identify modules and to add them to the necessary pages. However, where an action is relevant for all pages this should be implemented as a method in a class providing the base for all other pages in our tests. Generic recommendation: where you have lots of similar code, implement generic methods. This recommendation may seem obvious but we want to stress the importance of applying it. I would remind you that we have about 40 people actively involved in the development of end-to-end tests. It was important for us from the very beginning that we choose the right approach and thereby avoid the need to refactor multiple similar steps and methods later. Summary We have considered three examples of solutions to different tasks typical for autotest development. Based on these we offer the following general recommendations: Implement generic methods for reusing similar code — both in steps and in methods on pages Create verifications at the top level — where you write the body of the test Implement simple test objects Create components that consist of logically separated modules, for objects with a large number of properties and methods. It is possible that these recommendations might seem obvious to some. But we would like to draw your attention to the fact that it can be (and should be) applied in different situations. In Part 2 of the article, we will review another four examples of common test automation tasks, add to our list of recommendations, and will share access to a test project with all the associated practices. Stay tuned!

https://medium.com/bumble-tech/mobile-test-automation-practices-part-1-verifications-modules-and-basic-actions-92f2e645d9ce

['Dmitrii Makarenko']

2021-09-02 09:51:59.289000+00:00

['iOS', 'QA', 'Mobile', 'Automation', 'Testing']

What have we learned about emergencies in 2017?

The CommsCamp session grid CommsCamp 2017 I pitched this session at CommsCamp. I find that the best sessions, from my point of view, to pitch are the ones where I don’t know anything so I have to ask a few questions and shut up. I didn’t take notes I’m afraid so this is a combination of my hazy recollections and personal reflections. There was a decent gathering as you might imagine at an unconference focused on public sector communicators. I had a mild concern that it might degenerate into back seat driving over Grenfell but I needn’t have worried. Public sector communicators have plenty of experience of their own to draw on. I’ll take that problem We were great assisted by having a number of people who had been involved in the response to the Manchester attack in fire and local authority comms. They had some very interesting things to share including the rather wonderful insight that so many people took to social media to thank the emergency services for their work that it threatened to swamp the Fire Service comms team. Something worth feeding into planning and exercising, but a problem I imagine any public service should be very proud to have. One (local authority) comms officer highlighted how the learning from a multi-agency exercise had fed into their team and made them more effective in the wake of the Manchester attack. I have to say I exchanged a glance with Steph Gray on that. He organised that comms exercise and I was a player in the scenario. Exercise, exercise…. People also chipped in with their experiences from other emergencies. Overall a very strong message that the key is exercise, exercise, exercise. It’s good to plan but most people agreed that, at best, the plan has to be adapted on the fly and, at worst, it goes out of the window. What always remains are the skills, behaviours and abilities of your team. Rumours Even where comms teams from different agencies are well practiced and work effectively together there are always points in an incident where rumours may start and it’s hard to get the definitive line from the responsible agency. This, in my view, particularly affects local authorities. They have a more local focus than many other agencies and a particular role around community leadership and safety. So what do you do if rumours are spreading about police action, or a health issue in your community but you’re struggling to get a clear line from a partner agency (presumably because they are focused on another patch)? I don’t think we got a consensus on that in this session. My own view is that the right response is to confirm that you are aware of the rumours. Ask people not to spread them. Promise that you are talking to the relevant agency and you’ll get back with the truth as soon as possible. Spontaneous volunteering Though we didn’t use the jargon, issues around spontaneous volunteers came up a lot. It’s entirely understandable that in the light of an emergency people want to do stuff. The Internet gives them the opportunity to coordinate and take action. This happens fast, much faster than many agencies are set up for. At the very least comms teams can be monitoring for spontaneous volunteer groups setting up and opening lines of communication to them. I wrote a bit more about spontaneous volunteers here. Though as I type that I’m aware that that is a whole other task on top of the warning and informing that comms teams expect to be doing. Politicians I was also interested in the fact that politicians came up a lot in people’s stories. This is a fairly recent trend in emergency management in the UK. Maybe 10 years ago the advice to, at least local, politicians was to stay out of the way and let the professionals get on with the job. A couple of things have changed that, fundamentally, social media and the face that politicians are and are expected to be much more accessible, people will turn to them in a crisis online as easily as turning to the police or their neighbours new types of local elected officials, the Mayors of Manchester and London have explicit responsibility for police and fire services. But all of the metro mayors have leadership roles in their communities. The rest of us have Police and Crime Commissioners and increasingly visible local authority leaders Involving politicians in emergency response and recovery without politicising emergencies is a balancing act. We heard that some areas are involving local and national politicians in planning and exercising so that they have a much clearer idea of what’s going on when an incident actually occurs. Please sir, can I have some more? All of this points in only one direction. More exercising, more work for comms teams in emergencies, more work for comms teams in recovery. In a time of austerity, how do you make the case to spend more on things that you hope won’t happen. I don’t know. But a few things that have proved effective in my experience (which is very local authority focused): point up the wider benefits of multi-agency training and exercising. Training and exercising local authority and police comms teams helps in emergencies, but it also helps when they need to work together over child protection cases, or licensing decisions, or community relations. integrated emergency management is actually a useful way to manage other things. We manage emergencies in quite a distinct way in this country. It’s a very flexible and responsive way to tackle complex situations. It works outside emergencies. I’ve heard of IEM approaches being used in a multi-agency inspection of dangerous accommodation for migrant workers for example. make emergency management a positive skillset. The prospect of delivering public services in emergencies can be daunting. The consequences of getting things wrong can be terrifying. Many people try to avoid things they find daunting and terrifying. So let’s point out that there are tried and tested approaches to managing emergencies. It’s a set of skills that can be developed like anything else. Train people and design exercises that push them but not too far. Managers who come out of an exercise feeling that they were challenged but were ultimately up to the task are much, much more likely to encourage others to go through the same process. Blue lights, in my experience and in the main, do this much better than local authorities or health providers Thank you Thanks to everyone who took part in this session and thanks to the awesome CommsCamp organisers. See you next year?

https://medium.com/the-satori-lab/what-we-have-learned-about-emergencies-in-2017-9654a01b96b6

['Ben Proctor']

2017-07-19 12:06:45.156000+00:00

['Government', 'Commscamp', 'Crisis Communications', 'Emergency', 'Local Government']

NO PAYWALLS, NO POP-UPS! 🎉 You Can Now Monetize Stories on HackerNoon.com

HACKER NOON + WEB MONETIZATION = ❤️ FYI: Medium Publication Editors blocked this newsletter from sending. Well except for sending it to one person. That lucky person. Here are the official stats: So, you wanna earn a little spending crypto in exchange for the valuable reading time you create on HackerNoon.com? Good news for HackerNoon.com Contributors! You can now accept a stream of micropayments from your loyal readers, based on the time they spend reading your words on hackernoon.com. No need to sellout while you work toward your dream influencer status and land a huge Red Bull or Red Hat deal. How To Start Monetizing Your Content with Hacker Noon and Coil in X Steps *if you haven’t yet created a Hacker Noon profile, click here to get started, and here to read our complete guide to getting published on Hacker Noon. When Hacker Noon readers subscribe to Coil for just $5/month, they’ll automatically stream micropayments to your digital wallet, based on the time they spend reading your words. This applies to all sites that are Web Monetized, not just Hacker Noon. What’s more: everything Hacker Noon earns from Writers who don’t add their meta tags will added to the #BackToTheInternet Pool, to be donated to an internet-improving NPO chosen monthly by a vote of contributing writers. Write more, earn more - let us know you've added your payment pointer by using the tag #web-monetization on your next Hacker Noon submission, and we'll make sure it gets top story treatment when it comes to distribution.💚 THE INTERNET WAS INVENTED TO DEMOCRATIZE KNOWLEDGE, NOT PAYWALL IDEAS. YES: it is possible monetize content online, without resorting to the abuse of personal data, targeted advertising, paywalls, or pop-ups. Both the Hacker Noon and Coil teams are super excited about building a better internet for all right now, in collaboration with you: our valued community of over 12k+ global contributors. ADD YOUR PAYMENT POINTER TO YOUR HACKER NOON PROFILE The Hacker Noon Team

https://medium.com/hackernoon/no-paywalls-no-pop-ups-you-can-now-monetize-stories-on-hackernoon-com-fb7960d77ab8

['Natasha Hacker Noon']

2020-06-29 16:11:28.504000+00:00

['Web Monetization', 'Hackernoon Top Story', 'No Paywalls', 'Paywall', 'Hackernoon']

Before deciding to pursue Cyber Security Career

Working in Cyber Security field is never for the faint of heart. It requires lifelong constant learning and experiments in addition to 9–6 job. Lifelong means it is really a lifelong — 20, 30 years from now as long as you work in the field. Learning on the job may be limited as most of the times you may be applying what you’ve learned. No companies may give you enough time to study for each assigned project. You may be offered yearly 5-day bootcamp training which is definitely never enough. Cyber security professionals do not disclose their worklife balance to the public. In fact, we don’t really care about worklife balance. We simply keep showing off our achievements, certification, CVEs, Hall-of-Fames, and bounties because we’re proud of ourselves. Thus, one should only pursue this field only if he is driven by passion. Passion is the only driving factor for all cyber security professionals. For those who like to switch to this career or want to try it out, one must ask the following questions and think carefully. Can I commit to ongoing learning, research, experiment? This includes your personal time after work (both weekdays and weekends). You can rest some time but you will still have to go back to this default time spending. Why do you need to learn lifetime? We’re living in digital world and our economy is largely digital driven. There are always room for improvements which makes new technologies to be evolved. In digital world, the possibility of creation is boundless. With everyone accessibility to education materials at low or no cost, the possibility of learning is boundless. These two facts create endless creation. With each creation comes with insecurity. For each insecurity, you can’t attack stuff unless you know the basics of creation. 2. Can I commit to renew existing certification or take evolving new certification as per job requirements (every 3–5 year)? 3. Can I handle work stress and work hong hours in long term? 4. Can I handle relationship problems for not being able to give enough time to my partner? Can he/she accept the nature of job requirement? 5. Can I handle frequent work life balance issue?

https://medium.com/@cybersecuritywtf/eternal-career-requirements-of-cyber-blue-teamers-red-teamers-purple-teamers-and-penetration-4270c6a370b8

[]

2020-12-23 04:16:17.703000+00:00

['Careers', 'Career Development', 'Career Advice', 'Cybersecurity', 'Career Change']

I May Have an MA in Philosophy

I remember after my dad died, one of my mother’s friends lost a beloved dog. Though you can’t compare a dog death to that of a person, my mother later shared with me: The best way to deal with death is to live a good life. That was sufficiently profound when I was twelve, thirteen. Now I look at that and go, what the Hel does that mean? I think now of Derrida: (heavily/inaccurately paraphrased) death isn’t the opposite of life, it is its goal. Or something to that effect (forgive me for not opening up The Gift of Death, but it isn’t my intention to be too academic here, title notwithstanding). This seems to make more sense to me: ultimately, all the things we want to accomplish, be, do in this life is thrust against a horizon that inevitably includes a death. Does the same hold true for suffering? Is the possibility of suffering what actually awards the “good” things in life with exceptional flavour? Or maybe, it’s simply the idea that you’ve got some time: what are you going to do with it? Deciding that might open up a whole world.

https://medium.com/@j-d-harmsworth/i-may-have-an-ma-in-philosophy-cb2d746d35c7

['J.D. Harms']

2020-12-22 21:07:11.103000+00:00

['Pain', 'Suffering', 'Blogging', 'Thinking', 'Reflections']

Difficulties Transgender People Face in Accessing Higher Education: My Personal Experience

It’s a fact of life that people who have been discriminated against — people who are continually oppressed, have myriad roadblocks to opportunities and institutions that others barely have to think about. Throughout history, some of these oppressions have been mitigated or, more realistically, chipped away at by those seeking to create change for the less-privileged. Affirmative action comes to mind, though it is seemingly always still under attack by some enraged group or another. Scholarships have been and remain a way for underrepresented and underprivileged groups to gain access to colleges and universities, though problems may remain for oppressed students beyond the financial realm. I believe that there are a few roadblocks for trans students attempting to gain access to higher education: financial and that of mental health. I cannot speak to what it is like to be a black or a disabled student seeking entry to a university. I can only speak to my own experience- that of being a transgender, non-binary person in the year 2020. I first applied to university at age 17, as a false girl. My time in college was marred by extreme, debilitating depression and anxiety, and I ended up leaving halfway through my junior year. My true self was so suppressed by the cisgender binary culture we live in that it took me nine more years to come out, to both myself and to the world. Suddenly, things I had always taken for granted prompted huge fear and doubt. Simple decisions that I had made countless times were now a landmine of confusion. In a world where there are still only two options, what box should I check? Who do I lie to about who I really am? Can I get fired for this? Even now, the government thinks that my name has an F next to it. Job interviews have been fraught when previously I excelled — I even worked for two years undercover at a grocery store, listening to my coworkers say that transgender people were disgusting, day in and day out. My confidence in applying for jobs and interviewing was effectively destroyed by doubt: will they understand, will they take it seriously? At a recent interview I asked if a department I’d be working in was “trans-friendly,” and my interviewers (two men in their 60s) gave each other a potent look. I declined the position. At another job, I became embroiled in a fight with the HR department about why they shouldn’t take away access to the store’s only gender neutral restroom. I have been misgendered at work constantly, which despite being extremely damaging to the psyche remains a trendy joke for most of the population. I grew up, unlike many people in this country, with a certain amount of financial privilege. The initial years I spent in college were paid for by my family, and when I came out as trans to them, I was not disowned. A financial burden that thousands of teenage transgender prospective students face is that they receive no financial support from their parents after coming out as their true selves. It’s difficult to support oneself in the USA during one of the most difficult economic periods of the last 50 years, LGBT+ status notwithstanding. While I was not disowned or kicked out of my home, as a 30 year-old non-binary person without a college degree, I barely make enough money to pay rent. My parents support me emotionally, but for my second time around in college, the burden of my tuition is on me. My story is not special or unique to trans people, and I feel empowered knowing that I might not have to bear the full weight of college debt for the rest of my life. Scholarships and financial aid exist to help people like me, and people only like me in that they too, need help. It’s hard to be transgender, but there are resources available, and the world is hopefully getting a little kinder every day. (If you’re transgender, reading this, and interested in a scholarship that could help you access higher education, be sure to check out the Transgender First scholarship here: https://www.onlinedegree.com/transgender-first-scholarship/ )

https://medium.com/@kenhwashburn/difficulties-transgender-people-face-in-accessing-higher-education-my-personal-experience-93d89f7f1986

['Ken H. Washburn']

2020-12-08 03:04:48.645000+00:00

['Transgender', 'Nonbinary', 'Applying To College', 'Scholarship', 'Transgender Rights']

Best Practices for Integrating Freelance Developers With Your In-House Team

Hiring third-party developers on a freelance basis has become an increasingly common strategy for development teams looking to round out their skill sets. This approach helps teams save capital, meet project requirements, adhere to project deadlines, and deliver a quality product. However, there remains a degree of skepticism about whether adding third-party developers to your team is a viable long-term strategy for companies. How can you consistently introduce outside resources to your team in a way that is predictable, productive, and successful? We have put together a complete guide for your company to understand the best practices for adding freelance developers to your team. From onboarding third-party developers to permanently embedding them in your team, we’ve got you covered. Contractual Relationship with Third-Party Developers Companies looking to bring in a third-party developer will issue a contract that outlines the expectations, responsibilities, expected goals to be attained, timelines to be adhered to, and communication protocols to be followed. The contract also outlines the invoice terms for the hours of work to be provided by the developer. This contract can usually be extended with due notice to the third-party if the work exceeds the planned deadlines. It will also often be coupled with a Statement of Work (SOW) that will outline the specifics of the project assigned. Advantages of Third-Party Developers as Part of your Team Save Time and Capital According to Glassdoor, the average time to hire a full-time software engineer or senior application developer is 35 days or 28.3 days, respectively. The interviewing, shortlisting, and training process requires an investment of time and capital. These numbers are reduced when onboarding third-party developers who are already up-to-date with their skills. This is particularly handy when project deadlines are at hand and the team needs added labor power. Additionally, your company will be saving capital in overhead costs like company benefits, office space, office supplies, and electricity and system use. Specialized Experience It is very probable that while building your product, you will come across a scenario where the existing team members do not have a specific skill set that is needed. It may also happen that while trying to onboard employees within your organization, you realize that the employees are less proficient in a given skill than you expected. In such a situation, your best bet would be to hire a third-party developer with specialized skills and relevant experience. Faster Time to Market A third-party developer generally requires very little or no training and can start working almost immediately. Take a look at these statistics from an Upwork Survey: 62% of hiring managers said they prefer to engage with independent professionals to get jobs done more quickly. 53% of hiring managers found that working directly with independent professionals reduced costs 49% of hiring managers pointed out that access to highly skilled talent is the key reason to use independent workers Overall Team Agility Skills from third-party developers will keep your company’s full-time employees motivated to stay up-to-date with their own skills. Additionally, making a third-party developer a part of your team introduces “flexibility” among team members, which can be scaled and modified as the need arises to adapt to market changes. Risks of Adding Freelance Developers to Your In-House Team Outsourcing your project development needs can be intimidating. Here are some common risks that third-party developers may introduce. Please note that these risks are generally time-variant and can differ based on the length of the contract. Communication Gaps It is quite possible that a developer can be hired via a phone or video interview without personally meeting the person. It is also possible that the developer is in a different time zone. This may give rise to communication difficulties where setting up meetings at a particular time can be an issue. How to address this: At the time of signing the contract, agree on a time that the developer will be available for a status/task assignment call every day. The requirements in the contract should also state that the developer accounts for their time and tasks performed in a report that will be updated on a daily or weekly basis. Collaboration Difficulties Additionally, once onboarded, the third-party developer may have difficulty working alongside other team members. This typically happens due to the feeling of being an “outsider” to the company. How to address this: Since the developer is now officially onboarded, it is the duty of the team members and the Engineering Manager (EM) to make them feel like a part of the team. This means not only involving the developer in work-based decision making, but also requesting that they participate in other aspects of team building and getting to know members of the team. Sensitive Data Exposure While working as a part of the team, the third-party developer may be exposed to project data that is of a sensitive nature. There is a risk that, through negligence or ill intent, they mishandle the information and release private information to unauthorized recipients. How to address this: After the developer’s contract has come to an end, all the project- and organization-related access should be revoked to ensure none of the information is used outside the organization. The contract should also mention that none of the company or project information should be used for personal reasons, and it should highlight actions that may be taken if the developer is found to leak sensitive information. Educate the third-party developers on the critical terms and conditions of this provision. Failure to Grasp the Project in Detail The SOW may contain information that is not clear to the developer. They may make assumptions about the project only to find that it does not meet their expectations. Often, the work or task may turn out to be more complicated than anticipated, which can lead to delays in the agreed-upon timelines. How to address this: At the time of handing over the SOW, the developer should be given a demonstration that explains the working of each task in detail. Based on the demo, the developer can then clarify any misunderstandings from the SOW. Risk Variation Based on Contract Length The above-mentioned risks will differ based on the length of the contract. For example, the third-party developers that are hired until a project is completed will find that communication and collaboration gaps reduce over time, in contrast to the developers that are hired for a mere 2–3 weeks. It is likely that the latter would not have enough time to overcome these difficulties. The key to minimizing risks is forward planning, timely communication, consistent follow-ups, and empowering your team members with relevant project and deadline information. Best Practices to Seamlessly Integrate Third-Party Developers Into a Team Here are some field-tested ways to seamlessly onboard third-party developers into your team. Get them up to speed Ensure that knowledge transfer sessions are organized before the developers begin their work. These sessions should strive to give them maximum information without overcomplicating the information transferred. Similarly, the developers should be provided all the relevant documentation and platforms in advance, so they can explore the same and prepare to start working with minimal supervision. Enable them to communicate with your team A work report on a daily or weekly basis can be the primary means for communication and feedback between the developer and the EM. This report can outline the tasks to be performed and the deadlines for each. It can also highlight the developer’s progress and issues faced. This can then be communicated on time to avoid future roadblocks. Daily task assignment and status update meetings can be set up to discuss the plan for the day. Account for differing work approaches Every individual has their own approach to performing a task. As an EM, it is advisable to encourage an employee’s preferred approach to get the most productivity from them. This should be done while still ensuring that the tasks are performed efficiently and on-time. Play to the third-party developer’s strengths and always align them toward the team’s common goals. Find out what motivates them to work the way they do, instead of forcing them to conform to a strict work approach. Vet their skills and assign tasks accordingly It is advisable to conduct a live interview to get an overview of the developer’s skills and strengths. Ask clear questions with regard to their skillset and comfort level of working with new platforms, tight timelines, key strength areas, etc. You can also conduct a short test to verify their skills. Set proper expectations based on the length of their contract Default to an agile methodology and designate tasks to be done in “sprints.” Set realistic goals to be completed in each sprint and plan for backlogs (if any). Give the developers a holistic view of how the timelines are split into sprints. Where to Best Incorporate Third-Party Developers It is advisable to add third-party developers to projects like App Development, Software Development, Quality Assurance, Web Applications Development, Web Designer, UX/UI Professional, Product Specialist, Data Entry Operator, Content Developer, and Customer Support Engineer. Projects like these can be picked up either from the inception phase or even midway. Less time can be dedicated to training the third-party developers since the methodology in these project types remains almost constant. It is NOT advisable to add third-party developers to projects as Database Administrators, Project Implementation Specialists, or Project Managers. These roles require an in-depth understanding of the project from start to finish. In case there are issues with extending a third-party developer’s contract, you will be left with the job of training an in-house employee completely from scratch. Preparation and Standardization Go a Long Way Successful placement of resources within your existing team can encourage long-term partnerships between developer firms and encourage mutual growth for both third-party developers and the companies they are deployed at. Fifty-nine percent of hiring managers agreed that organizations that aren’t adopting a flexible workforce are falling behind. Crowdbotics recognizes these advantages and provides managed app development services with vetted developers. Crowdbotics’ developers can work as part of your team or take over the entire project for you. We have broad experience in a number of sectors, and our development experts are prepared to give you a detailed project estimate right now — just get in touch.

https://medium.com/crowdbotics/best-practices-for-integrating-freelance-developers-with-your-in-house-team-e41fa5bdf4c2

['Nakul Shah']

2020-11-13 21:51:45.071000+00:00

['Hire Freelancer', 'React Native', 'Freelance Developer', 'Mobile App Development', 'Django']

Power or Policy, Rural Voters Demand Neither

Last week, I wrote that rural voters deepening support for the Republican party, and Trumpism in particular, has been a poor investment. My father corrected me where I used soybean farmers as a rhetorical stand-in for rural America, in that soybeans are at a record global high right now. Considering, however, that the current high price of soybean futures is due to a number of factors completely unrelated to Trump, and rural America as a whole is not entering another Golden Age on the strength of the mighty soybean, I figured I would let it stand. No, what I want to look at is the nature of the return groups get on the “investment” of their support. It can be a tricky subject to tackle. The more obvious the transactional nature the easier it is to measure, but also more unseemly and possibly illegal. If a man gives a mayor $100,000 in cash, and the mayor turns around and awards a $1,000,000 contract to the man’s company we call that bribery. If that same man gives the same money to a PAC who then donates it to/spends it on the same mayor, and the man gets his contract, we call that free speech. Either way, ethics aside, one can certainly argue that this hypothetical shrewd operator is getting a good 10 to 1 return on his investment. Of course, it gets even harder when you consider that the most common form of support is a vote instead of money, and the most common form of return is emotional validation rather than policy change. Only the super-rich are actually in a position to seek contracts from the government or plead for personally lucrative tax and regulation exemptions. The vast majority of us are not Bond villains or Koch brothers. We don’t have personal requests from the government. We have broad notions of what is good and bad and support people we think share our values. We usually share these views with the people we identify with the most closely. It is to these aggregate worldviews that political leaders pay attention. I would argue that the desired return from political support falls onto a Power to Policy spectrum. On the far right of that spectrum, the most pure example I can think of is the NRA. Though odious, the NRA has traditionally been highly effective because their ask is so limited. They don’t care if NRA members are elected to high office. They don’t want veto power over Supreme Court nominees. They don’t care about Senate rules, tax policy, or foreign affairs. All they want is complete inaction on guns in the United States; all they require is a sufficient base of single-issue supporters. A clear set of examples for the Power end of the spectrum are black Americans and Evangelicals. There are, of course, policy goals in both groups, but what they really desire is a political home. Black Americans vote overwhelmingly for the Democratic party, and, despite what a few cherry-picked and highly-touted contrarians say, have clearly gained a lot of power in the Democratic party. A black President, now a VP and the Secretary of Defense, Senators and a Congressional Black Caucus with more than one member, they are arguably the single most powerful constituency in the party. Like Evangelicals in the GOP, black Democrats have veto power over most things from presidential nominees to the Supreme Court. They often get leaders who either look and speak like them, or at least go out of their way to show that they understand and appreciate them. Which brings us, finally, to rural voters. I would place rural voters weakly on the left-hand side of this Power to Policy spectrum. They don’t make consistent and clear policy demands. If they did, the agricultural economy would be treated as lovingly as the energy sector, and family farms like tech start-ups. There would be federal support for rural hospitals and schools, and curbs on Big Agra. As there are not, the confusion is widespread and spawns books like What’s the Matter with Kansas? Yet the demands from rural America are not effective Power demands either. The last farmer President was Carter, 45 years ago and a Democrat to boot. They don’t demand rural leaders or rural policies, a seat at the table, or veto power and thus hold very little influence over the party that depends almost completely on their support. What they get instead are conspiracy theories, tribalism, and cultural validation. Again, this is separate from any ethical or partisan calculation. I will readily admit the NRA and Evangelicals get a solid return on the investment of their support from the GOP, even if I generally disagree with their aims. The current wave of rural support for Trumpism however, feels like watching my grandmother put her savings under her mattress. It may have made her feel safe, but in the end she gained nothing.

https://medium.com/@evancwolf/power-or-policy-rural-voters-demand-neither-f886db6c0b18

['Evan Charles Wolf']

2020-12-22 04:50:28.217000+00:00

['Rural', 'Politics', 'Power', 'Investment', 'NRA']

Make sure you watch this guy fail

Awe, this is cute…. That unoriginal dad from suburbia is back at it writing things again. Can someone please share with us what exactly it is that he expects to accomplish? It’s doubtful he’s ever had an original thought (even though he fancies himself an “explainer” of sorts.) Clearly, those close to him are afraid to tell him how it is. He’s like the poor fellow that’s allowed to wander onto the set of one of those America’s Got Talent, The Voice, American Idol, or name your reality singing competition shows…what he hopes might be his “gift” is, in actuality, more like a curse on those that carry the burden of having to experience it each and every time shares it in public. And yet somehow, it seems everyone has neglected to feed him the real talk he needs. For the sake of humanity, will someone please just do the loving thing and shower him with a double dose of reality once and for all? Why is he still doing this to himself? It’s hard to imagine this poor soul surviving the crash and burn that’s waiting for him, much less envisioning him experience any kind of reasonable level of success. He doesn’t even know what success looks like — much less how to grab hold of it. He wants to write, but he doesn’t really know what he even wants to write about. So he hits the reset button… …again…and again…and again…and again…each time telling himself, “this is the time I’ll be more consistent.” “This is the time I’m really going to keep some momentum going.” “This is the time I’m going to finally nail down an efficient schedule, and I’m really going to rattle off some good stuff…this time.” “…This time will be different.” And yet he fails. He forgets that he has 4 children under the age of 8 that swallow up most of his time and the best of his energy. He forgets that he has a full time job at a competitive corporate gig and has REAL responsibilities he should be worrying about — not pipe dreams of vocational pontification. And he’s a meat head… He forgets that he picked a career in the construction industry for crying out loud — not exactly a breeding ground for critically acclaimed creatives. He knows nothing of being a marketing professional. He’s never conducted research for a renowned author. He’s never worked professionally at any level of qualified journalism. Ever. He’s never received any formal instruction on writing, and he certainly doesn’t read enough books. Not to mention the biggest elephant in the room…he is WITHOUT A DOUBT too old to be just now launching out into this sphere. He’s the classic picture we’ve all seen before — guy sitting at his typewriter with an overflowing waste basket next to his feet. Each wadded up piece of paper represents all of the swings and misses he’s incurred on his writing journey. Each crinkled sheet an unfinished blog post. Each crumbled up ball just a story or an idea that never left the incubator. It’s hard to imagine this guy’s journey taking him anywhere noteworthy. But…this is him launching out one more time. …trying to change the narrative yet again. …soldiering on while everyone around him wonders when he’ll finally get a clue. This is cute. Follow along and see if he proves this post wrong.

https://medium.com/the-closet-creative/awe-this-is-cute-92a77ccfc6d4

['Ryan Douglas Martin']

2020-04-29 22:08:54.148000+00:00

['Writing Life', 'Writing', 'Writer', 'Writing Prompts', 'Writing Tips']

Durham Bulls Takes On Innovation In Concession Management

Interview with David Levey, Director of Food and Beverage at Durham Bulls “I view the future of placing orders as this: Fans can place them whenever they want, not have to wait in line, and get it delivered if they want to.” That’s how Dave Levey, Director of Food and Beverage at Durham Bulls, envisions concession ordering at sporting events in the near future. And that’s why he picked FanFood to help Durham Bulls bring that vision to life. FanFood interviewed Dave Levy, Director of F&B at Durham Bulls. After coming across articles about mobile ordering solutions and reading about FanFood, Dave decided to give the app a try. Like many Minor League Baseball ballparks, Durham Bulls sometimes experience extra long concession lines on popular nights, which greatly discounts the fan experience. And the possibility of faster service and easier concession management was an attractive enough idea for Dave to jump on board. While the Bulls were founded in 1902, Durham Bulls Athletic Park officially opened in 1995. In 1998, the franchise was converted to Triple-A and joined the International League. As a result, the arena underwent infrastructure renovations and many more seats were added to the stadium. The crowds got bigger, and the stadium started rolling out strategic concession promotions for a better fan experience: every Thursday the fans are offered “$1 concession nights”, whereby a variety of items are available for only a dollar. The downside? Concession lines started to build up. “I wanted to be able to offer an alternative to place your order at your seat for pickup: You can get out of the long line, go off to grab your beer or go to the restroom. Then you’ll get a notice and come grab your food,” Dave said. When FanFood was first adopted at Durham Bulls, Dave said the main goal was allowing people to skip the lines with the express pick-up option, rather than offering in-seat delivery services. And FanFood achieved exactly that. During peak nights, fans had the alternative to order on their phones and that was a huge relief for the concessionaires overwhelmed by the amount of orders. As expected, the popular Thursday one-dollar concession nights became less hectic, as FanFood takes the pressure off the lines and allows fans to wait less for their food. “It’s [FanFood is] definitely a more convenient way to order concessions,” Dave said. Durham Bulls using FanFood app. Now that concession ordering is made more convenient, Durham Bulls fans are placing bigger and more frequent orders — and they know that it won’t take more than a few clicks of a button. In fact, concession revenue per person has tripled if fans are ordering with FanFood. Encouraged by potentially a huge increase in revenue, Dave and his team have since implemented in-seat delivery starting last summer. This initiative has really helped mobile ordering take off within the stadium. Especially when bad weathers hit, delivery becomes a very popular option as fans just don’t feel like leaving their seats. Dave said that his goal this year is to further develop the in-seat delivery team. Durham Bulls fans on average watch only three games per season, which means at any one game, over 60% of the fans would be first-timers of that season. That means at any given game, the vast majority of orders would be by new customers who are using FanFood for the first time. However, by looking at the order data after each game, Dave has found that since the implementation of FanFood, the percentage of returning fans has increased. “That’s telling me that we have found the right system and conveyed it to the fans, and now they are returning to use it again and again,” Dave said. The most effective promotion, as discovered by Dave, to get fans to download the app has been seat stickers. Every other seat in the ballpark has a QR code for downloading FanFood, which made it easy for fans scan and get the app. Once fans open the app, they’d realize that using the app is pretty much a no-brainer. “If you look at the trend…everyone has an app and everyone is ordering [from restaurants],” Dave said. “And the customers have already been trained to use an ordering app [like FanFood] at a ballpark.” Mobile ordering has become such a prevalent trend within the food & beverage industry that whether it’s a customer’s first or 20th time using the app, they know the drill: place the order, grab the bag with your name on it and go. “Because that’s how it works at other places, there’s no reason it doesn’t work at a ballpark the exact same way,” Dave says. While Dave still needs to wait and collect more data before he can conclusively say what percentage has FanFood increased his overall revenue by, he’s already taking steps to better integrate the technology with his staff and the structure of the stadium to make the concession operations even more seamless for the Durham Bulls fans. “I want to take a step forward; I definitely want to [use FanFood] and make [concession sales] better,” Dave said. “It’s something I keep wanting to push, and I tell people it’s worth giving it a try.” Watch Dave’s full interview here.

https://medium.com/fanfood-playbook/durham-bulls-takes-on-innovation-in-concession-management-149ed200013a

['Isabella Jiao']

2019-06-18 14:22:45.125000+00:00

['Success Story', 'Concessions', 'Minor League Baseball', 'Sports', 'Durham Bulls']

Virtual Insanity: 20 Music Videos That Defined The 90s

The 60s saw the birth of the music video, while MTV took it to a new level in the 80s, but the medium truly thrived — both creatively and commercially — with 90s music videos. Thanks to the mass proliferation that MTV afforded, it not only brought audiences and artists closer together but provided a fertile testing ground for exploring new ways of storytelling. This golden era of music videos also brought forth a second wave of music-video directors led by David Fincher, Hype Williams, Jonathan Glazer, Mark Romance, Chris Cunningham, Peter Care, Michel Gondry and, most notably, Spike Jonze — talents that were given artistic license to create grand-scale short films. From flashy spectacle to low-fi realism, surreal fantasy to retro fetishism, here are just some of the greatest, decade-defining 90s music videos. 20: R.E.M.: ‘Crush With Eyeliner’ (1994) Director: Spike Jonze Just as R.E.M. evolved with the alternative music scene, they were also hugely influential when it came to music videos. From ‘Losing My Religion’ to ‘Everybody Hurts’ and ‘Man On The Moon’, the Athens group are synonymous with MTV — and yet, for much of their career, they were largely absent from the videos, with Michael Stipe famously disliking having to lip sync. When the band shifted their sound dramatically for the glam-inflected ‘Crush With Eyeliner’, from Monster, the video imagined R.E.M. as a hip Japanese band that represented the band’s identity swap. 19: Sinéad O’Connor: ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ (1990) Director: John Maybury The promo for Sinéad O’Connor’s cover of Prince’s ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ stands in stark contrast to the majority of 90s music videos. Stripped of any surrealist imagery and flashy visuals, it depicts the shorn O’Connor in a tight close-up and unflinching manner while she sings of her heartbreak. Almost as recognisable as the song itself, the clip led to the Gaelic singer becoming the first female artist to win Video Of The Year at the MTV Video Music Awards. 18: Blind Melon: ‘No Rain’ (1993) Director: Samuel Bayer When it came time to make a music video for the band’s career-defining single, ‘No Rain’, Blind Melon used the artwork for their debut album (a photo of drummer Glenn Graham’s sister in a bee outfit) as inspiration and created one of the most indelible and relatable characters in music video history: an awkward youth searching for companionship, otherwise known as “Bee Girl”. 17: George Michael: ‘Freedom! ’90’ (1990) Director: David Fincher Starring a coterie of supermodels including Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, Tatjana Patitz and Cindy Crawford, with plenty of soft lighting, piercings and sensual closeups, you’d be forgiven for mistaking this promo clip for a CK One advert. Helmed by the most in-demand music video director at the time, David Fincher managed to create one of the most iconic 90s music videos, fusing music and style in smouldering fashion. 16: Fiona Apple: ‘Criminal’ (1996) Director: Mark Romanek In the days when 99 per cent of everyone’s photos were littered with red-eye, Fiona “This World Is Bullshit” Apple was brooding in 70s rec rooms like a seedy Polaroid come to life. In other words, ‘Criminal’ exemplified 90s music videos. The provocative visuals aligned with the lyrics about exploiting your own sexuality, but Apple faced severe backlash for it. ‘Criminal’ remains the most successful single of Apple’s career — and yet it also paved the way for every American Apparel ad that followed. 15: Radiohead: ‘Paranoid Android’ (1997) Director: Magnus Carlsson By the time the 90s rolled around, MTV was not only a destination for music videos, but had expanded into animated series that used contemporary music. So when Radiohead debuted their animated epic for ‘Paranoid Android’, it felt right at home on the network. Created by Magnus Carlsson, the Swedish creator of the animated series Robin, the surrealist and somewhat graphic short both horrified parents and fascinated that sweet 12–34 key demographic. 14: The Verve: ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ (1997) Director: Walter Stern Like Sinéad’s video, just hearing the symphonic intro of this Britpop landmark conjures up images of a lanky Richard Ashcroft loping down the streets of Hoxton in East London. Seemingly inspired by Massive Attack’s single-continuous shot video for ‘Unfinished Sympathy’, the video sees Ashcroft making his way through a bustling metropolis completely unaffected and colliding with pedestrians along the way. Is it a metaphor for self-actualisation or self-entitlement? You be the judge. 13. Smashing Pumpkins: ‘1979’ (1995) Directors: Jonathan Dayton and Valeria Farris Has a music video ever epitomised suburban ennui more than Smashing Pumpkins’ slice-of-life promo for the smash single ‘1979’? From the fisheye lens to the teenage-party scenes, it stands apart from the otherworldly visuals for the rest of their double-album, Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness, and remains an invitation to adolescent nostalgia. 12: 2pac (Feat Dr Dre): ‘California Love’ (1995) Director: Hype Williams Tupac’s galvanising West Coast anthem was such a smash, it needed two music videos to accompany it. While the majority of hip-hop’s 90s music videos at the time were characterised by the blinged-out productions favoured by Bad Boy Records, this Hype Williams-directed joint had an equally large budget but a much more exotic locale, resulting in a Mad Max meets Burning Man dystopian epic set in a post-apocalyptic Oakland. At the end, Tupac wakes up from his “dream” for the Part 2 remix video, which swaps out desert jeeps for hydraulic cars and house parties in Compton. 11: The Prodigy: ‘Smack My Bi__h Up’ (1997) Director: Jonas Åkerlund Dubbed as “Snap My Picture” to the pearl-clutching censors on the radio, electro- punks The Prodigy scandalised MTV with their provocative music video for their big-beat single. Shot strictly from the first-person POV, it depicts a protagonist’s wild night full of sex, drugs, vandalism and fighting — only to reveal at the end that it’s a woman who’s wreaking havoc. The graphic video drew instant backlash which only added to its popularity. 10: Busta Rhymes: ‘Gimme Some More’ (1998) Director: Hype Williams We could easily devote an entire list to the unbridled vision of music video director Hype Williams, who took hip-hop imagery to the outer limits. Like Michel Gondry with Björk, Williams found his match and muse in Busta Rhymes, bringing to life this twisted version of Loony Tunes and single-handedly perfected the fisheye-lens trend that everyone adopted. 9: The Chemical Brothers: ‘Elektrobank’ (1997) Director: Spike Jonze Before she was an indie auteur director, Sofia Coppola was an acrobatic gymnast starring in this Spike Jonze-directed video. The intricate twists and turns of her gymnastic floor routine align perfectly with the heavy breakbeats of the instrumental track from The Chemical Brothers’ sophomore album, Dig Your Own Hole. With muted colours and cinematic flair, the whole thing plays more like an art house short than a music video. 8: Beastie Boys: ‘Sabotage’ (1994) Director: Spike Jonze There are two kinds of people in this world, those who think the Spike Jonze-directed ‘Sabotage’ music video is Beastie Boys’ finest, and others who prefer the robot-B-Boy antics of ‘Intergalactic’, but we’re inclined towards the former, which essentially created the blueprint for parody music videos that homage 70s cop shows. 7. Michael and Janet Jackson: ‘Scream’ (1995) Director: Mark Romanek What’s better than a Michael Jackson music video? Two Jacksons in space! Who could forget the larger-than-life blockbuster video for Michael and Janet Jackson’s ‘Scream’, from Michael’s 1995 HIStory album? Allegedly the most expensive music video ever made, the space-age film sees the two siblings spitting refrains over industrial beats courtesy of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. The futuristic black-and-white video came with a hefty price tag (a cool $7 million to build seven sound stages and the like), but it also created one of the most era-defining 90s music videos and reunited the siblings in the studio for the first time since ‘PYT’, from Michael’s 1982 smash, Thriller. 6: Missy Elliot: ‘The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)’ (1997) Director: Hype Williams No other director fit the poetic absurdity of Missy Elliot more than Hype Williams, who astutely combined the shiny-suit aesthetic of the era with Afrofuturism and the flyest garbage bag the world has ever seen. The cameo-heavy video, featuring the likes of Timbaland, Da Brat and Puff Daddy, made Elliot’s cover of Ann Peebles’ 1973 single the one to lunch her solo career. 5: Daft Punk: ‘Around The World’ (1997) Director: Michel Gondry Michel Gondry cut his teeth creating fantastical 90s music videos before moving onto feature films. He also birthed another key music video trend (the single-take video). Out of the 50-plus videos to his name, one of his classic cuts is the synchronised dance masterpiece he created for Daft Punk’s world-conquering single, ‘Around The World’. With each dancer synching up with each beat, synth and sound, it’s a masterclass in co-ordination. 4: Nirvana: ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ (1991) Director: Samuel Bayer Just as ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ catapulted Nirvana to mainstream success, its gritty video served as the benchmark for grunge culture and the teen rebellion to the MTV-watching masses, who ate it up with their morning breakfast. A familiar scene to most American high-school students, the video depicts a pep rally gone wrong, with anarchist cheerleaders and Kurt Cobain’s raw performance inciting a riot. 3: Nine Inch Nails ‘Closer’ (1994) Director: Mark Romanek Shot on a vintage hand-crank camera with stylistic yet perverse shots of a disembodied heart, a twirling pig’s head and Trent Reznor in full S&M gear, the music video for Nine Inch Nails’ ‘Closer’ resembles found footage from a Victorian snuff film rather than something you’d find on MTV. Despite its very NSFW visuals and lyrics, the track and video went on the become a massive hit. For the record, the monkey was not harmed during the making of the video. 2: Björk: ‘All Is Full Of Love’ (1999) Director: Chris Cunningham For some artists, music videos are not merely a tool for publicity, but an extension of their artistic expression, and no musician embodies that more than Björk. Since her first foray into the medium with ‘Human Behaviour’, she’s pushed the boundaries of music videos, making them an integral part of the song, as evidenced by her sci-fi vision of love for ‘All Is Full Of Love’. Directed by Chris Cunningham (who’s responsible for the disturbing video for Aphex Twin’s ‘Come to Daddy’), his “karma sutra meets industrial robotics” concept came to life thanks to his background in prosthetic and modelling work for films such as Alien 3. 1: Jamiroquai: ‘Virtual Insanity’ (1996) Director: Jonathan Glazer No list covering 90s music videos would be worth its salt without the mind-bending promo by UK pop-soul act Jamiroquai. A literal take on their album title, Travelling Without Moving, the vertigo-inducing video made the band a global sensation and had everyone scratching their heads at both the technical wizardry and Jay Kay’s fuzzy top hat. End Credits Britpop may not have made as much of a global impact as its US cousin, grunge, so whether you think it contributed to the truly decade-defining 90s music videos likely depends on what side of the pond you’re from. Needless to say, however, that the clip for Oasis’s ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ is likely to cause many of a certain age to shed a wistful tear. Meanwhile, Blur’s ‘Parklife’ video combines a particular type of British over-confidence, strains of Benny Hill humour and the emerging “lad culture” aesthetic to create something so uniquely British it hurts. If your memories of the era are more jaded, however, then Pulp’s ‘Common People’ certainly enters the pantheon of great 90s music videos, its mix of social commentary and retro ennui managing to seem somehow dated and evergreen at the same time. Also worthy of mention are Guns N’ Roses ‘November Rain’ and Beck’s ‘Where It’s At’ promos, which sit at opposite ends of the spectrum of notable 90s music videos. The former, which, like the song’s lyrics, is based on a short story by journalist and author Del James, stands in a long line of narrative music videos — though, while a classic clip, more vividly evokes the 80s than it does the 90s. Anyone coming fresh to the ‘Where It’s At’ video, however, may be forgiven for wondering what decade it came from. The references to 80s block parties, 60s Thomas Crown Affair-style split-screen edits, 70s fashions and timeless good ole boys’ line-dancing offer a cornucopia of references to be decoded. Ultimately, however, its postmodern hijinks could only come from one decade, making it unique among 90s music videos for arguably having more ideas than there were minutes to cram them into. Listen to more classic hits of the decade on our 90s playlist here. Join us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter: @uDiscoverMusic

https://medium.com/udiscover-music/virtual-insanity-20-music-videos-that-defined-the-90s-bbe18f8a1929

['Udiscover Music']

2018-07-11 15:19:42.147000+00:00

['90s', 'Lists', 'Music', 'Pop Culture', 'Videos']

End to End Air Quality Index Prediction Of Bangalore

Introduction and Overview of the problem: Air Quality Index (AQI) is a tool to showcase air quality status. It transforms complex air quality data of various pollutants into a single number and colour. AQI has six categories of air quality. These are: Good, Satisfactory, Moderately Polluted, Poor, Very Poor and Severe. Each of these categories is decided based on ambient concentration values of air pollutants and their likely health impacts. As the AQI increases, an increasingly large percentage of the population is likely to experience health effects. Problem Statement: Build a model to predict PM2.5 levels. Data Collection: First I will collect the data by web scrapping. I am extracting the data from http://en.tutiempo.net/ With the help of this web scrapping I am able to extract the independent features which has the average data of each day. Now, I am going to collect PM2.5 which is dependent feature from 2013 to 2018. So, for the PM2.5 I am able to get the data from the weathermap.com. But while extracting PM2.5 I am able to get the data of each and every hour. So, I will combine the data and take the average of the day. And the data is not clean I am also going to do some cleaning. I can also plot the graph between PM2.5 and Day. I am going to import Plot_AQI.py file in my next BeautifulSoup to extract the data from html. I will combine both the independent and dependent variables. So, our data will look something like this. We are perfectly able to web scrap the dependent and independent variables. Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA): Exploratory Data Analysis or (EDA) is understanding the data sets by summarizing their main characteristics often plotting them visually. This step is very important especially when we arrive at modeling the data in order to apply Machine learning. Importing the required libraries for EDA: Loading the data into the data frame: Check for null values: Dropping the Missing values: After dropping the values: Separating the Independent and Dependent features: Pair Plot: Pair Plot produces a matrix of relationships between each variable in your data for an instant examination of our data. Correlation Matrix with Heatmap Correlation states how the features are related to each other or the target variable. Correlation can be positive (increase in one value of feature increases the value of the target variable) or negative (increase in one value of feature decreases the value of the target variable) Heatmap makes it easy to identify which features are most related to the target variable, we will plot heatmap of correlated features using the seaborn library. Index(['T', 'TM', 'Tm', 'SLP', 'H', 'VV', 'V', 'VM', 'PM 2.5'], dtype='object') Feature Importance You can get the feature importance of each feature of your dataset by using the feature importance property of the model. Feature importance gives you a score for each feature of your data, the higher the score more important or relevant is the feature towards your output variable. Feature importance is an inbuilt class that comes with Tree Based Regressor, we will be using Extra Tree Regressor for extracting the top 10 features for the dataset. ExtraTreesRegressor() [0.19026977 0.10797685 0.18725173 0.14832213 0.08656328 0.18485114 0.05135576 0.04340933] Train Test Split Selecting and Training Machine Learning Models: Since this is a regression problem, I chose to train the following models: Linear Regression Decision Tree Regressor Random Forest Regressor XGBOOST Regressor ANN It’s a simple 4-step process: Create an instance of the model class. Train the model using the fit() method. Make predictions. Evaluating the model using Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Mean Squared Error (MSE), Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE). Linear Regression LinearRegression() array([ -2.69090829, 0.46219975, -3.86705184, -0.04494855, -1.21193616, -40.11490762, -2.53563257, 0.56148181]) 448.11616967588736 Error rate getting with respect to x_train and y_train. Coefficient of determination R^2 <-- on train set: 0.551516808175875 Error rate getting with respect to x_test and y_test. Coefficient of determination R^2 <-- on train set: 0.4852533130856792 0.4710569304807392 Model Evaluation Interpreting the coefficients: Holding all other features fixed, a 1 unit increase in T is associated with an decrease of 2.690 in AQI PM2.5 . Holding all other features fixed, a 1 unit increase in TM is associated with an increase of 0.46 in AQI PM 2.5. The difference between y_test and prediction looks almost good. MAE: 44.836241266286365 MSE: 3687.5430309324165 RMSE: 60.72514331751236 Creating a pickle file for Deployment: Comparison Linear, Ridge and Lasso Regression Linear Regression -3686.201777339885 Ridge Regression I am going to implement Ridge regression and see that whether I can get a value that is much more nearer to zero as compare to Linear regression. Suppose if I get a value -3500 that is much more towards zero so I will select then ridge regression model. GridSearchCV(cv=5, estimator=Ridge(), param_grid={'alpha': [1e-15, 1e-10, 1e-08, 0.001, 0.01, 1, 5, 10, 20, 30, 35, 40]}, scoring='neg_mean_squared_error') {'alpha': 40} -3664.3648996071743 Lasso Regression Lasso Regression is similar to Ridge Regression but it is slightly better then ridge. GridSearchCV(cv=5, estimator=Lasso(), param_grid={'alpha': [1e-15, 1e-10, 1e-08, 0.001, 0.01, 1, 5, 10, 20, 30, 35, 40]}, scoring='neg_mean_squared_error') {'alpha': 1} -3666.78325343702 Model Evaluation MAE: 44.50831198875126 MSE: 3627.8109390424697 RMSE: 60.2313119485411 Creating a pickle file for deployment: Decision Tree Regression DecisionTreeRegressor() Coefficient of determination R^2 <-- on train set: 1.0 Coefficient of determination R^2 <-- on test set: 0.6836721835465965 0.4315969249390227 As we can see that our model is overfitting so we will do hyperparameter tuning. Tree Visualization ['T', 'TM', 'Tm', 'SLP', 'H', 'VV', 'V', 'VM'] Model Evaluation Hyperparameter Tuning Decision Tree Regressor Fitting 10 folds for each of 10240 candidates, totalling 102400 fits [Parallel(n_jobs=-1)]: Using backend LokyBackend with 4 concurrent workers. [Parallel(n_jobs=-1)]: Done 24 tasks | elapsed: 3.1s [Parallel(n_jobs=-1)]: Done 1108 tasks | elapsed: 6.3s [Parallel(n_jobs=-1)]: Done 3668 tasks | elapsed: 13.1s [Parallel(n_jobs=-1)]: Done 7252 tasks | elapsed: 21.8s [Parallel(n_jobs=-1)]: Done 11860 tasks | elapsed: 33.0s [Parallel(n_jobs=-1)]: Done 17492 tasks | elapsed: 47.9s [Parallel(n_jobs=-1)]: Done 24148 tasks | elapsed: 1.1min [Parallel(n_jobs=-1)]: Done 31828 tasks | elapsed: 1.5min [Parallel(n_jobs=-1)]: Done 40532 tasks | elapsed: 2.0min [Parallel(n_jobs=-1)]: Done 50260 tasks | elapsed: 2.4min [Parallel(n_jobs=-1)]: Done 61012 tasks | elapsed: 3.0min [Parallel(n_jobs=-1)]: Done 72788 tasks | elapsed: 3.6min [Parallel(n_jobs=-1)]: Done 85588 tasks | elapsed: 4.3min [Parallel(n_jobs=-1)]: Done 99412 tasks | elapsed: 5.0min [Parallel(n_jobs=-1)]: Done 102400 out of 102400 | elapsed: 5.1min finished Time taken: 0 hours 5 minutes and 8.58 seconds. {'max_depth': 8, 'max_features': None, 'max_leaf_nodes': 20, 'min_samples_leaf': 4, 'min_weight_fraction_leaf': 0.1, 'splitter': 'best'} -3131.6489619178874 MAE: 23.674504573170733 MSE: 2266.109651031081 RMSE: 47.60367266326287 Creating a pickle file for Deployment: Random Forest Regressor RandomForestRegressor() Coefficient of determination R^2 <-- on train set: 0.9737825275525134 Coefficient of determination R^2 <-- on train set: 0.7790383481598548 0.7298539095199639 Model Evaluation Hyperparameter Tuning [100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900, 1000, 1100, 1200] {'n_estimators': [100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900, 1000, 1100, 1200], 'max_features': ['auto', 'sqrt'], 'max_depth': [5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30], 'min_samples_split': [2, 5, 10, 15, 100], 'min_samples_leaf': [1, 2, 5, 10]} RandomizedSearchCV(cv=5, estimator=RandomForestRegressor(), n_iter=100, n_jobs=1, param_distributions={'max_depth': [5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30], 'max_features': ['auto', 'sqrt'], 'min_samples_leaf': [1, 2, 5, 10], 'min_samples_split': [2, 5, 10, 15, 100], 'n_estimators': [100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900, 1000, 1100, 1200]}, random_state=42, scoring='neg_mean_squared_error', verbose=2) {'n_estimators': 500, 'min_samples_split': 2, 'min_samples_leaf': 1, 'max_features': 'sqrt', 'max_depth': 15} -1541.722112688083 MAE: 24.300982342479678 MSE: 1582.925388467951 RMSE: 39.78599487844876 Creating a pickle file for Deployment: XGBOOST Regressor XGBRegressor(base_score=0.5, booster='gbtree', colsample_bylevel=1, colsample_bynode=1, colsample_bytree=1, gamma=0, gpu_id=-1, importance_type='gain', interaction_constraints='', learning_rate=0.300000012, max_delta_step=0, max_depth=6, min_child_weight=1, missing=nan, monotone_constraints='()', n_estimators=100, n_jobs=0, num_parallel_tree=1, random_state=0, reg_alpha=0, reg_lambda=1, scale_pos_weight=1, subsample=1, tree_method='exact', validate_parameters=1, verbosity=None) Coefficient of determination R^2 <-- on train set: 0.9997717196147036 Coefficient of determination R^2 <-- on train set: 0.8123312956923813 0.725127678258157 Model Evaluation Hyperparameter Tuning [100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900, 1000, 1100, 1200] {'n_estimators': [100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900, 1000, 1100, 1200], 'learning_rate': ['0.05', '0.1', '0.2', '0.3', '0.5', '0.6'], 'max_depth': [5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30], 'subsample': [0.7, 0.6, 0.8], 'min_child_weight': [3, 4, 5, 6, 7]} RandomizedSearchCV(cv=5, estimator=XGBRegressor(base_score=None, booster=None, colsample_bylevel=None, colsample_bynode=None, colsample_bytree=None, gamma=None, gpu_id=None, importance_type='gain', interaction_constraints=None, learning_rate=None, max_delta_step=None, max_depth=None, min_child_weight=None, missing=nan, monotone_constraints=None, n_estimators=100, n... validate_parameters=None, verbosity=None), n_iter=100, n_jobs=1, param_distributions={'learning_rate': ['0.05', '0.1', '0.2', '0.3', '0.5', '0.6'], 'max_depth': [5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30], 'min_child_weight': [3, 4, 5, 6, 7], 'n_estimators': [100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900, 1000, 1100, 1200], 'subsample': [0.7, 0.6, 0.8]}, random_state=42, scoring='neg_mean_squared_error', verbose=2) {'subsample': 0.8, 'n_estimators': 1100, 'min_child_weight': 3, 'max_depth': 30, 'learning_rate': '0.05'} -1380.5446667169047 MAE: 19.580280400079683 MSE: 1344.4213246754996 RMSE: 36.66635139573475 Creating a pickle file for Deployment: ANN Model Evaluation MAE: 25.245581808943093 MSE: 1681.8142776645072 RMSE: 41.009929013161035 So, XGBOOST Regressor is performing well among all the models. Now, we are going to deploy our model on Heroku. Setting Up For Deployment This is the folder that we want to deploy onto Heroku. The static directory contains your CSS files, and the template contains the HTML file, which is used for rendering. Create your app.py file: Below is how my result.html file looks like We are almost done with the coding part, and now it’s time to deploy our flask app. Before deploying the app, first, check the flask app on the localhost. Deployment Steps Login to your Heroku account using CLI heroku login 2. Create a web app on Heroku We can create a new application on Heroku using the following command heroku create your_app_name 3. Create requirements.txt file in the same project directory 4. Create a Procfile Procfile is a Process file which is required for all Heroku applications. Procfile specifies the commands that are executed by the app on startup. 5. Now click on to the option Github and select project from github and then deploy that. Our app is live Now we can see our web app using generated URL https://airqualityprediction20.herokuapp.com/ The source code for this is available on Github https://github.com/INZA111/Air-Quality-Index

https://medium.com/@khaninza/air-quality-index-prediction-of-bangalore-1af920a50d33

[]

2020-12-07 18:15:54.658000+00:00

['Data Science', 'Heroku', 'Flask', 'Python', 'Machine Learning']

nahmii, a Gateway to Scalable Virtual Economies (Part 2)

Scaling on nahmii nahmii is a second-layer scaling solution which can act as an interoperability bridge between different blockchains. Referring back to the ‘Blockchain Trilemma’, discussed in part one, nahmii’s architecture aims to maximise Scalability and Security while relying on base-layer blockchains to achieve a degree of Decentralisation. The protocol is currently live on Ethereum, with plans to port nahmii to other blockchains in the near future. The nahmii scaling protocol is implemented by a set of Ethereum contracts and an operator backend that together manage transaction states in a trustless way. Its SDK encapsulates the knowledge of how to interact with the protocol. Our previous article outlined a number of issues that blockchain scaling solutions must address before the technology will be ready for commercial adoption. Before we dive into a technical demonstration of how nahmii solves these problems, let’s begin with a quick summary of what makes nahmii special: Real-time finality What is done is done. Finality of payment plays a crucial role in any economy. Yet in some traditional centralised payment systems, it is common to take hours or even days to settle a transfer of value. Even when confirmed, some transactions can still be revoked or reversed at a later point. Taken together, slow confirmations and reversible transactions create uncertainty for businesses which rely on real-time transactions. These risks can be mitigated by blockchain technology, but only when applied correctly. Most blockchain solutions are designed to maximise decentralisation and security, often at the expense of transaction finality. This is a key failing, as many commercial use cases for payments require real-time transactions. nahmii regards the real-time finality a must-have feature for its payment function. Both parties to a payment on nahmii can be confident that their transaction is final as soon as the operator publishes a signed receipt. This process typically takes a fraction of a second, comparable to the leading centralised services. The instant finality in payments contributes to nahmii’s advantages over both the centralised payment systems and many rival blockchain solutions. Lower latency Recent work on UX supports the common-sense idea that poor performance on a website or mobile app will drive customers away. Taking a noticeable amount of time to process a request breaks users’ focus flow, even when the delay is a matter of milliseconds. These negative psychological effects become even more obvious when it comes to making digital payments in a physical setting. In commerce, one key goal is to minimise the number of actions required by a customer to complete a transaction. Every click, confirmation or button press matters and more actions almost always translate into fewer sales. In a physical payment scenario, a simple transaction like purchasing a cup of coffee can become embarrassing for both cashier and customer if the payment takes more than a few seconds. Speed and ease of use are therefore of paramount importance when designing payment systems. Payments within nahmii are processed directly by the operator of the system. This means that, unlike base-layer blockchains, there is no consensus mechanism underpinning the transaction. The off-chain transaction performance of nahmii is therefore simply a question of how fast our operator node can process a transaction request. Latency is currently at the millisecond level, comparable to the best centralised commercial payment services. If required, we can improve nahmii’s responsiveness even further by upgrading the operator nodes. Scalable throughput In general, conventional businesses benefit from wider adoption of their third-party services. As these services grow, suppliers can usually offer more cost-efficient products to their customers creating a win-win scenario. In the current blockchain world, we have seen the opposite. When the network became congested with transactions, consumers either have to pay a much higher gas price for their transactions to be mined in a relatively short time or wait for hours even days until the congestion is relieved. On nahmii, the throughput capacity can be flexibly tuned based on the demand. Technical speaking, horizontally scaling operator nodes can achieve scalable throughput. Predictable fees As we all know, there is no such thing as a free lunch. It is not sustainable for a business to provide free services forever; eventually, users will always need to pay something for the services they value. This value exchange can take many forms, from straight payments to viewing advertisements or giving up user data. For traditional centralised infrastructure, suppliers calculate the value of their services by balancing cost, affordability for the user and profit. While prices can vary over time, users can normally predict how much a service will cost them in advance. Predictable fees of this type lower the risk of doing business. On the other hand, the cost of using today’s blockchain services is unpredictable. For the majority of base-layer blockchains, transactions are processed if and only if they secure a place in the next block. This competition between customers to have their transactions mined creates conditions of uncertainty. When the network is busy, customers must pay more to ensure their transaction goes through. Given that we cannot predict how busy the network will be at any given time, transaction fees are necessarily unpredictable. As with predictable fees, so the opposite is true here: unpredictable fees introduce new risks for businesses, making adoption of blockchain technology less likely. nahmii is designed to provide predictable, low fees at all times. This is a key requirement for making blockchain technology comparable with the best of centralised financial systems. The fees on nahmii are at a constant ratio of the currency being transferred and, unlike many rival scaling solutions and blockchains, including Ethereum, transaction fees within nahmii are paid in the currency of the transfer — no additional ‘fee tokens’ are required. Currently, payments on nahmii have a fee of 0.1% of the total transfer value; however, our fee structure is flexible and will soon include substantial discounts for larger transfers. Usability In some blockchain scaling solutions both parties must be online when making a transaction, while knowing how to sign the transaction using certain tools. There are a number of drawbacks to this approach, beginning with the high barrier to entry for both parties — particularly the recipient. These prerequisites for making transactions are a clear problem for the typical user experience and a significant barrier to adoption. No one really wants to wake up in the middle of the night to sign a transaction from a counterparty on the other side of the world. There is a better way: nahmii aims to make trustless payments happen as seamlessly as on the base layer. To make a payment, the sender only needs to own a wallet and have a sufficient balance. As long as the recipient owns an Ethereum wallet, the recipient doesn’t have to be aware of the existence of nahmii in order to receive the funds sent from the sender. The goal here is to match the trustless features of the base layer while bettering the user experience of centralised payment systems. A smoother, flatter learning curve The majority of ICO projects have failed to ship a single usable product, why? In many cases, the answer lies in the complexity of developing software using immature developer tools. When combined with the tendency for ICOs to over-promise in order to attract investment, it’s easy to see why so many blockchain projects have failed to deliver on their vision. The ability to evaluate and comprehend the complexity of the underlying requirements plays a key role in software development. This process encompasses a wide range of elements: teams must be able to understand the potential risks and rewards associated with their development tools and dependencies, while determining the resources and strategies to best fit their business model. This principle applies to almost every software project. For blockchain technology, the complexity of a typical blockchain project is escalating compared to the conventional B/S or C/S architecture. Complexity leads to uncertainty, which is further multiplied by the shortage of proficient and experienced developers in the blockchain industry. Building high-quality software products is difficult, developing high-quality blockchain-based software is even more challenging. It is therefore unsurprising that so many ICO projects have failed, primarily because they have underestimated the time and expense required to build their promised products. Complexity in development leads to increased risk and higher costs. Familiar, easier to understand developer tools can mitigate these risks and lower the barriers to entry for new blockchain projects. nahmii has been built with these principles in mind, with simple tools to help developers of all backgrounds build on the protocol. Under nahmii protocol, developers simply need to know how to use the nahmii SDK. The development experience is therefore similar to integrations with SaaS platforms.

https://medium.com/hubii/nahmii-a-gateway-to-scalable-virtual-economies-part-2-32b697d6831e

['Katat Choi']

2020-03-11 09:42:54.095000+00:00

['Scaling', 'Blockchain', 'Tutorial', 'Ethereum', 'Economics']

Wunderlist is almost dead!

The next 6 months might see the demise of Wunderlist. Officially! Microsoft To-Do, the application “replacing” Wunderlist has now released their Mac application and with this step-up in development from the team, I think it’s safe to say the end is nigh for Wunderlist and it’s story. ☠ ️So, What Will Happen to Wunderlist? Wunderlist is still usable on all platforms right now. But for how much longer?! Chances are Microsoft will press the magic switch off button on Wunderlist in the next 6 months now that their To-Do application is available on all devices — iOS, Android, Mac, Windows & Web. Many people won’t like this. Agreed, but for Microsoft, it’s the next logical step. Despite Wunderlist having 10M+ users worldwide (logged back in 2013) the platform wouldn’t be worth having around for the sake of everyday users like this. Bets are that Microsoft aggressively drives Wunderlist users over the To-Do platform in a hard switch date that will see the shutdown of Wunderlist and the title replacement of To-Do. 🗑 ️To-Do Doesn’t Suck Anymore! The good news, is that To-Do doesn’t suck anymore. Very much like Google Tasks, on launch, Microsoft To-Do lacked features. A rushed released in my eyes saw no sub-tasks, only mobile roll-out and no robust task manager that shouted “download me!”. Now, To-Do with it’s Planner Integration, File Attachments, New Mac app and more, shouts “I’m a good, easy to use lightweight to-do list app”. 💸Will Todoist & TickTick Benefit? Of course they will, I can see a big push for both applications to bring Wunderlist users onboard. Wunderlist was a fairly robust application, but suited the lightweight category well, for those looking at Wunderlist alternatives, many will move to Todoist and TickTick thanks to the familiarity of features.

https://medium.com/@francescod/wunderlist-is-almost-dead-e90eb873d2ea

["Francesco D'Alessio"]

2020-01-13 21:06:04.294000+00:00

['Productivity', 'Microsoft', 'Apps', 'Startup', 'Software']

What Magnum P.I. Can Teach Us About Visualizing Urban Resilience Data

Ferrari 308 GTS, courtesy of FurLined / Flickr CC Like many older millennials, I grew up building with Legos on the floor of the living room while Tom Selleck sped around on the TV in a bright red Ferrari 308 GTS solving crimes of all types with a level of mustache-powered suave that remains unmatched to this day. Decades later — as an investigator of urban resiliency — I often find myself shamelessly channeling the wisdom of Thomas Magnum, P.I. By Brian Barnes From flooding in Phnom Penh to a food shortage in Mozambique, our newsfeeds are continuously overflowing with incomplete fragments of urban narratives. Nearly instantaneous digital access to photojournalism and videography gives us real-time glimpses of “how it must feel” around the world — on the ground, in the moment, at the time. As an urban designer and resiliency analyst, I want to know more. What led up to this? Where did it come from? What could have been done proactively beforehand to lessen the negative impacts? All 1980’s mustache references aside, Magnum P.I. knew it just as well as I do: there is always a hot trail to be followed and you can’t catch up to anyone or anything of value without having the fastest car. HOT PURSUITS: CHASING DOWN URBAN ISSUES The urban situations we study often behave a bit like fugitives. They tend to show us false identities on the surface, and we have to go backstage with them for a while to truly understand them. In getting to know a city, we can only go so far with singular data. A value such as overall economic growth means very little until we overlay it onto other conditions like educational accessibility or public health indicators. As we approach cities with this type of systems thinking, we see that binary yes-or-no questions and answers have almost entirely lost their relevance. As our modes of questioning grow in complexity, the standard out-of-the-box MS Office visualizations are falling to the wayside. Even as flashy as Microsoft has tried to make them in recent years, the multi-colored bar graphs of yore simply cannot keep pace with the intensity of urban analytics in the network age. Like distant galaxies without the Hubble Space Telescope, the fleeting relationships at play in a city are simply not visible without powerful analytics and multi-layered data visualization tools. UNDER THE HOOD WITH PROCESSING TECHNIQUES For a number of years, digital artists and designers have been experimenting with processing techniques to transform these elusive data patterns into crystal clear visual communications — nuances and all. Their crime-fighting vehicle of choice? A fleet of liquid-cooled multi-core processors glowing with blue LED’s and humming away at multi-thread calculations somewhere in a distant data center. Aaron Koblin has focused his work in this realm of network data visualization. Manipulating datasets with millions of entries of various content types, he is finding fruitful ways to build bottom-up visualizations that can help us understand human and infrastructural networks in poetic and almost indescribable ways. Through a comprehensive multi-scale animation, he shows us the real-time paths of nearly every flight in the world for 24 hours. The critical takeaway is not the binary fact that the FAA is monitoring 140 and some-odd thousand aircraft at any given time, but how the individual flight paths dance rhythmically in time around the world. We see blue paths diverging and converging around the world, perfectly matched with the daily human pulses of waking, sleeping, moving, and connecting. Zooming in to individual airports, Koblin shows us highly-specific holding patterns and adaptations in flight paths as air traffic densities and wind directions shift throughout the day. GOOD DATA GENERATED THROUGH RECREATION Similar data sets are showing up in the fitness apps world. Platforms like Strava allow running and cycling enthusiasts to map, record and share their routes through GPS recording. The overlay of these pathways in a city help us to assess its fitness (and vis-a-vis, its overall health) landscape. These highly-accurate heat maps show us both hot and cold physical exercise areas of the city over time. As urban designers, we can begin to take cues on specific locations which could benefit from fitness-related development to help bridge geographic gaps in the fitness network and bolster the overall health and well-being of the city. SYNTHESIS WITH ANIMATED INFORMATION In other aspects of health, there are big issues that we can begin to attack more rigorously through data visualization. We’ve known for decades that Africa struggles with AIDS, but it is not enough to simply quantify the number of infected individuals. In urban resilience, we need to understand it in greater contextual nuance. We need to see the dynamics of the problem over time and in juxtaposition to other contributing and resultant factors like poverty, social/cultural views, public health education, etc. Hans Rosling is adopting animated blobs for contextualizing these urban health issues with a dynamism and clarity that we just can’t see through pages and pages of traditional stationary line graphs. His animated graphic nodes grow, shrink, and float freely through x and y coordinates, reflecting specific shifts in global health patterns throughout decades of changing cultural, political, infrastructural, and financial conditions. Through animation, Rosling’s blobs show us not just notable trends, but dynamic rates of change. He’s effectively using a calculus framework of visualization while everyone else is stuck in the static land of algebra. RESILIENT SOLUTIONS 21 In our own work at Resilient Solutions 21, we’re developing similar traction by merging data sets which have historically been represented as their own autonomous figures. Traditionally, climatic indicators have been pigeon-holed into bar or line graphs with a separate graph for each layer of information — one for average high temperature, one for average low, one for humidity, and so on. Moving beyond this singular methodology, we are developing parametric tools which allow us to understand dynamic relationships between weather patterns and the ways cities actually operate every day. In the example above, we are displaying a wide range of factors which are all related to one another, but are rarely visualized in this way — together as a system. Temperature, precipitation, snowfall, length of day, wind patterns, and expected demand for heating/cooling systems are all displayed simultaneously. This layered format helps to quickly highlight primary correlations among data sets. Then, by adding significant civic events to the weather calendar, we can start to look at additional relationships of how weather and culture are interacting and influencing one another within the city. Like a fingerprint, the anthropo-climatic signature of every place is unique. These types of dynamic visualizations help us more clearly see the real idiosyncrasies that define a city and its true resilience characteristics. LOOKING DOWN THE ROAD It’s now been 27 years since Magnum P.I. turned in his badge, and the world is a vastly different place. In our systems approach to urban resilience, data visualization is more than a passive mechanism for communicating one-line statistics and simple geographies. As our tools develop increasingly robust capabilities, they are becoming active participants in analyzing, dissecting, and nimbly responding to otherwise inaccessible urban relationships. As a discipline, we are just getting started and there will be great wealth of innovation in the space in years to come. The bright red visualization Ferrari is in the garage, getting highly tricked out. Soon, it will be chasing down even the fastest of urban problems. Brian is a resilience analyst and urban designer with nearly ten years of experience working on problems of architecture and resilience in Haiti, Korea, and across the U.S. He thrives on collaborative opportunities to engage complex urban situations with in-depth and synthetic research techniques. Resilient Solutions 21, or RS21, pulls from a wide array of disciplines to create solutions for cities, countries, agencies and businesses challenged by the physical, social and economic forces that will drive our world in the 21st century. For more information, contact charles@resilientsolutions21.com.

https://medium.com/rs21/what-magnum-p-i-can-teach-us-about-visualizing-urban-resilience-data-5df1683877dc

[]

2019-03-14 16:59:06.969000+00:00

['Urban Resilience', 'Data Visualization']

The GDPR and how the U.S. can (is) learn(ing) from it

Data breaches have become a standard part of our news cycle these days 2019 is on pace to be the worst year for data breaches on record. According to a report by Risk Based Security, a cyber threat intelligence company, in the first half of 2019 alone, over 3,800 data breaches were reported, up 54% when compared to the first half of last year. The business sector accounted for 67% of the reported breaches and 84.6% of the 4.1 billion in ultimately exposed records of data, according to the report. In a world where data collection, preservation, and usage is more prominent than ever, how are companies protecting our personal data? Well, as we have seen in recent years, many have not been doing so, or have been doing so unsuccessfully, and the public has suffered as a result. The private sector has historically pushed back on cyber security legislation, arguing that behavioral economics should incentivize companies to protect their data. Others in the tech industry also believe that privacy regulations have the potential to hinder innovation. However, based simply on the sheer amount of personal data that private companies now hold, and therefore, the continuing, increasing likelihood of additional data breaches, we can‘t simply leave this up to market dynamics. While the private sector has begun implementing new cybersecurity protections, the federal and state governments must also act. As is the case with most legislation, data privacy laws have been reactionary, in the sense that laws have been passed in response to the plethora of data breaches that have occurred over the last few years. Europe and California have been the so-called “trailblazers” of this process. The GDPR In Europe, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), signed into law on April 14, 2016, established a set of data privacy guidelines by which businesses in the EU and EEA must abide. It is the most comprehensive law globally that regulates the collection and use of personal data. The law requires that companies anonymize personal data so that it cannot be used to identify an individual without having additional information, which must be stored in a separate location. The regulation also states that companies which expose data will be fined up to 4% of their annual global revenue, or €20 million, whichever is greater. Additionally, the GDPR makes notification of breaches mandatory within 72 hours of companies becoming aware of the breach. Perhaps, from the perspective of a consumer like myself, the most impactful part of the legislation expands the rights of private citizens with regards to their own data. EU citizens have the right to ask companies if their data is being held and what it is being used for, as well as request a free copy of their data, which can then be transferred to a third party data controller. Individuals can also request to have their data erased and no longer allow the company to disseminate their information. What is the United States doing? At the federal level, a number of bills have been introduced in the House, but as is typical of federal legislation, the bills will likely take longer than any state laws to come to fruition. A federal law would ensure consistency across states, much like the GDPR in the EU, but it is more likely that we will see states pass their own, unique laws and companies will unfortunately have to comply with varying, inconsistent regulations across the U.S. Given that reality, a number of states have introduced their own state legislation. For example, in June 2018, California became the first state to enact basic laws around data privacy in the passing of the California Consumer Privacy Act. The law, set to go into effect in 2020, expands the definition of personally identifiable information (“PII”) to include biometric data, geolocation, internet browsing history and even inferences a company might make about the consumer based on their data. Specific requirements for companies include: disclosing what kinds of information they are collecting about California residents and why deleting personal data upon request from the customer allowing customers to opt out of the sale of their information, even requiring that websites have a “clear and conspicuous” place to click that is specifically titled “Do Not Sell My Personal Information.” providing customers with a “readily useable format” of their data, which can be easily transferred to other firms Does this sound familiar? It should! Many of these rights were introduced by the GDPR. In fact, some have described the law as “almost GDPR in the US.” The CPPA generally isn’t as strict on businesses when compared to the GDPR. The California law also introduces new regulation around online advertising which prohibits “third-party behavioral profiling.” If a person reads an article on a website about popular handbags, that website has the right to advertise handbags to the reader. However, the reader won’t see additional ads for handbags on a third party website, as the original site is not permitted to share the behavioral data. In addition to California, Maine and Nevada have passed data privacy laws, while several other states’ bills are in the “In-Committee” step of the legislative process The passage of California’s privacy law seemingly sparked a flood of new state bills. While many of these proposals will end up dying somewhere along the way, both Maine and Nevada have passed their own, albeit slimmed down, versions of the CPPA. To the left is a great overview from the IAPP Westin Research Center, which details the current status of data privacy laws in each state in which a bill has been introduced (last updated on July 31, 2019). In this graphic, the 17 common privacy provisions are broken into two categories — consumer rights and business obligations — many of which exist in both the GDPR and CPPA. Closing thoughts It is evident that data privacy bills are well on their way to being official state law. The GDPR and CPPA are currently the most impactful and robust legislation to date and have set a precedent for those that will follow. Eventually, once fully implemented, these laws will no longer simply force companies to pay a fine and deal with some bad PR, but will require better systems and controls around data protection and provide citizens with increased control of their personal data. Sources and further reading:

https://medium.com/swlh/the-gdpr-and-how-the-u-s-can-is-learn-ing-from-it-d8c3e5b01491

['Kristina Barounis']

2019-09-03 20:14:30.023000+00:00

['Data Breach', 'Legislation', 'Privacy']

WordPress: One of the Best Content Management Systems

WordPress is an impressive content management system (CMS) built upon a PHP / MySQL foundation. By all counts, it is the most utilized CMS in the world, installed on some 60 million plus websites and used by over 20% of the top 10 million websites. WordPress enables people to maintain and manage website content through a web-based “backend” system. It provides relatively simple mechanisms for creating blog posts and static pages, then organizing those posts and pages into categories and menus. It also provides a nice media library tool useful for managing the image assets in use within your site. The media library handles technical overhead like thumbnail generation. For developers, WordPress delivers well-documented mechanisms for extending its core functionality through a theming architecture, a plugin architecture, function overrides, and action hooks & filters. This flexibility has given birth to a huge community of developers who have contributed themes and plugins that help people customize their site and get more functionality out of it. And of course, expert WordPress developers can use this functionality to build wholly unique themes and features for their clients and employers. Pros: Provides a working CMS “out of the box” Simple customizations are pretty easy to do Lots of themes and plugins to satisfy common needs Relatively fast, especially with performance plugins Great for SEO with SEO plugins Non-technical people can maintain and manage the site content Great for news, opinion, magazine, and small business marketing sites where the focus is on content It’s free and open source! Cons: Its flexibility enables inexperienced developers to implement bad practices that can make upgrades difficult or impossible Not well suited for use with highly custom sites where unique functionality is the focus Not well suited for use in situations with many different structured document types Does not naturally take advantage of many of the latest techniques and technologies in web development Is WordPress Right for Me? Great question, and, of course, it depends. The question of which platform to develop your project on is an important one, and should be carefully considered with respect to the vision for your site. If you expect your site’s success will be driven primarily by the content you (or your writers) produce, and that content will have a relatively simple organizational structure, then WordPress is probably a great platform for your site. On the other hand, if you expect the primary value of your site to be in its unique features, or you have complex data structures, or expect lots of growth in unpredictable ways, then you may want to consult with some experts and consider alternative platforms. Endertech’s WordPress Tips & Tricks Use the Yoast SEO Plugin For most sites, SEO is a very important consideration. You need to be producing content for your site that searchers will find relevant, and you need to structure the content so that search engines know what the page is about. The Yoast SEO plugin provides both tools and a lot of helpful guidance to assist in these matters. Use the W3 Total Cache Plugin Performance is a critical component of your site’s success. People are used to the speed of Google and other top echelon sites, and can quickly get frustrated with slow performing sites. Many of the techniques for achieving top speeds are quite sophisticated, and the W3 Total Cache Plugin does a great job of simplifying their implementation and providing an interface for switching various performance features on and off. Use Child Themes Many amateur developers, just trying to do things quick and easy, will hack away at installed themes and core files to get the desired look or function for a WordPress site. This is the wrong approach. The proper way to extend a theme is by following the established process for creating a Child Theme. This pattern will prevent you from hacking on core files, and enable the underlying WordPress installation to be safely updated. Don’t Hack the Core Similar to using Child Themes… don’t modify core WordPress files. This breaks future compatibility, and can introduce serious security concerns. Extend functions within your Child Theme, or create your own plugins for most advanced functionality. Be aware that the best WordPress plugins often times provide hooks you can use to override default functionality with minimal effort. Interact with Us! → Instagram | Facebook | Twitter See our latest and most read stories on our new Medium publication, Endertech Insights !

https://medium.com/endertech-insights/wordpress-one-of-the-best-content-management-systems-ef1273b673ef

[]

2017-09-12 18:55:20.862000+00:00

['WordPress', 'Content Marketing', 'Development', 'Web Development', 'SEO']

An abuse of any kind…

They show you the stars… and your eyes light up and then ……… Growing up in Kuwait, ‘Nausheen’ (name changed) was my neighbor and one of my best friends. She was one of 8 or 9 children (I forget!) at that time. We had been together since we were in kindergarten. Nausheen was the oldest at 16 and the youngest was a baby. There was always a baby. They were Muslims from south of India and I was a Hindu from the north. Our families were poles apart. I was perpetually at their house all the time. We ate together, studied together, played together. My parents were educated modern Hindus and never stopped me. I was basically like one of the children. I learned to speak their language and some of the verses of the Koran. Nausheen was very intelligent, topped in all the classes and very docile. We were inseparable. We were in the same classes , went to school together, shared teenage secrets. Like her, I used to call her mother, ‘amma’. To me it was a fun house. Ten people living in a 3-room apartment! Amma used to literally have a child every other year. I just remember her being pregnant all the time. She was a plain, frail, petite little thing always in a nightgown and lips stained red from chewing paan(beetle leaves). Their house was always warm, full of chatter and food and kids of all ages and sizes everywhere doing something or the other. All the children were brilliant. Their father was a quiet, unprepossessing, pious man. Swarthy complexion , always in a pristine white robe, an Islamic skull cap and rosary beads running between his fingers. Although I knew their father was very autocratic, I never personally saw any abuse. I always left when their father came home from work. One night, when I was about 14 years old, I heard loud wailings coming from outside our front door. We lived in one of the umpteen, ubiquitous buildings prevalent in Kuwait. Ours had 3 apartments on every floor. It was around midnight. It was the most heart wrenching sounds I had ever heard, like it was coming from an injured animal. I can still hear it even after 35 years! I ran to see what was going on and looked through the keyhole. I saw Nausheen’s mother huddled in a fetal position on the floor and heaving and crying. I opened the door and ran to her and wrapped my arms around her. I didn’t understand what was happening. The other neighbors also opened their doors and collected to see what was going on and as soon as they saw her, they apparently figured it out and started to move away. My mother came out and saw me with amma in my arms and immediately understood and asked me to come inside. I refused and banged on Nausheen’s door asking her to come out. Nausheen opened the door with tears in her eyes, refusing to look me in the eye. I looked at her incredulously and told her that amma was sick and on the floor crying and asked her to take her mother in or to the hospital. I thought she didn’t know. All the other children were up and standing solemnly. Her father came out the door and stood at the doorway with his arms stretched refusing entry and standing smug. It was then I realized that he had been beating her and then threw her out. I was livid. I could not believe it. Living in the middle east I had heard about Arab men beating their women, and here was a monster right next door and I never knew! My mother tried to pull me away. She later said I look like a little tigress, panting, with my eyes red . I yelled at him that I would call the police. The other neighbors just walked away with their heads bowed.. The father just stared at me literally laughing at my threat. Somehow, I managed to pick amma up and shove her in their house. Nausheen helped. I went back to my house and did not get over it for a very long time. I never went back to their house again. I never spoke to Nausheen or any of the other children or amma ever again. I couldn’t believe that this was a routine ritual for them and they allowed it. Years and years later, when I lay crying, huddled on my bed late one night in a similar fetal position, I finally understood. The modern, educated me finally got it. She must have refused sex. There were so many children around, she may have wanted respite or privacy . But who can quell the lust and ire of the man….. Years and years and years later, my youngest daughter told me how when she was little, she could hear me through the bathroom door, crying as he yelled, regurgitating abusive expletives. How she would dig her nails in her arms wondering why was her mother so weak and why she couldn’t stand up to herself and how she could help me. Amma gave in as we all do…… She went back in…….as we all do The children kept quiet….as they all do. And when it came to me, the tigress in me was just a weak nidget…..as we all are. It was almost 35 years later after I left my own abusive marriage, when I joined Facebook that I found Nausheen and we ‘friended’ each other. She is actually the principal of a school now! Funnily enough, I saw her give a heartfelt eulogy to her father on her Facebook….. ……and I felt nothing. Sonia Handa

https://medium.com/@soniahanda/an-abuse-of-any-kind-ae6f11327d6f

['Sonia Handa']

2020-12-03 16:12:29.097000+00:00

['Abuse', 'Metoo', 'Sexual Abus', 'Marital Rape', 'Divorce']

The Dust Formerly Known as Earth

The Dust Formerly Known as Earth Photo by Usukhbayar Gankhuyag on Unsplash and so it seems on course that the prediction of the Great Meteor has leaked and even though the story is being hushed, it said, “the great slingshot is complete, and we all know the earthlings are the loudest beings in the universe, so at long last, we’ll shut them up.” straight for us gone is the evolution of humans in a flash history is at the end, nothing progress of thought, no matter friendships, alliances, grievances, corruptions, religions all of it obsolete and what is left, even if truly the laws of physics are proven and even if those proofs, destroyed could we keep the light of love? the great cover-up in the pandemic is the rock in the sky when not even your neighbors’ germs actually matter was this part of the plan? not even knowing the plan and who knew what when will matter your aim to save my soul the aim of your poisoned mind your aim at the target, nothing no movements no words staying unfamous will matter what else could matter more than love? but brain cells, language, facial expressions, memory nostalgia, academia, psychology, your work out plan, astrology, and anything else your home and debt your wishes and lists your journal your losses no human construct or understanding of society can exist when our planet is gone that’s it. you can keep your eyes open to witness the end of the world post it quick to your network of choice but no one will know that you are there when the dust formerly known as earth settles and is gone.

https://medium.com/assemblage/the-dust-formerly-known-as-earth-abb3be03d053

['Samantha Lazar']

2020-12-18 13:06:53.569000+00:00

['Life', 'Earth', 'Poetry', 'Society', 'Humanity']

The Professional Gambler

Photo by Keenan Constance on Unsplash There’s a great analogy at the start of Malcolm X’s biography. In it, he talks of the law of averages and probability. If you were playing cards, blackjack or roulette or doing any kind of gambling, and one person was winning all the time, every single time eventually you would say they’re cheating. That they’re dealing from the bottom of the deck. They’re playing the system. Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash And it’s the same with if someone loses every single time. You would say eventually this doesn’t seem right, this game must be rigged. In a game of chance, surely you’d win here and there — even if overall you lose your money. Even if they’re a professional gambler with years of experience, playing against an amateur. Sure, the extra skill and experience will count for something and ensure they minimise their risk and make better decisions but even they wouldn’t expect to win every single time. Life doesn’t or shouldn’t work like that. Even casinos themselves, whilst the saying goes ’The house always wins in the end’ — and they admittedly bias each game with a ‘house edge’ so they are likely to gain the longer someone plays at the table, do incur losses from time to time. Photo by Macau Photo Agency on Unsplash He compares this to white folk — how is it they’ve engineered life in such a way, where they’re winning all the time, literally and that black people, are constantly losing at this game of life. Is it just luck? Is it just science? Or is it engineered? When you watch documentaries like ‘13th’ on Netflix you begin to see that ‘freedom’ is an illusion. This little analogy is simple but profound in explaining institutional and systemic discrimination, the impact of colonisation and the whitewashing of history on those we may consider as not being ‘privileged’ today.

https://medium.com/@faisal-amjad/the-professional-gambler-bb868d36765a

['Faisal Amjad']

2020-11-03 11:27:09.146000+00:00

['Malcolm X', 'Racism', 'Discrimination', 'Institutional Racism', 'Gambling']

Change User Account Control Settings Windows XP

Change User Account Control Settings Windows XP In this tutorial, we will tell you how to change user account control settings in Windows XP. SEOOutreachers Apr 7·1 min read User Account Control was firstly deployed on Windows XP by Microsoft and the setup wizard created accounts as Local Administrators. Since then numerous updates have been added to make it a newer version like Vista and Windows 7. User Account Control is the technology with security infrastructure that is being introduced by Microsoft’s Windows Vista & Windows Server 2009 OS, but one can find more comfortable versions in Windows 7 & Windows Server 2009 R2. The aim is to improve the security of Windows by adding limitations on application software to standard- user privileges. It has its boundary until the authority increases its viability. To be simpler, the user is entitled to access administrative privileges, but by default the applications would be restricted. The applications will not run until approved beforehand or the user authorizes it explicitly. UAC is for restricting unauthorized changes that are being done on the Windows configuration and file system. Windows 8 was more prone to unauthorized alterations like violating local user’s system configurations. If else user is attempting any administrator task, he would be asked to click yes or no before he can access the full administrative task. Click here to read the detailed step-by-step process…

https://medium.com/@seooutreachers/change-user-account-control-settings-windows-xp-52bdfac697a4

[]

2021-04-07 05:17:53.372000+00:00

['Windows', 'Software', 'Technology']

How To Boost Your WordPress Website With Digital Marketing And SEO

It’s important to have a website for your business as this is a vital part of your digital marketing efforts. So, you decide to make one using WordPress since it’s the most popular website creation tool or Content Management System (CMS) right now. Plus, it’s free and easy to use. Next, you should aim to make your website more visible to online users, and SEO is what you need to make that possible. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it’s a powerful tool that can push your website to the top ranks of search engine results pages or SERPs. Here’s how you can use the power of SEO to boost your WordPress website: Choose a Trusted Web Host Before you focus on SEO, you will need to make your website visible first. WordPress is only used for building your website, but when it comes to making your website live or accessible in the World Wide Web, you will need a web server for it. You can get a web server for your WordPress website from a web hosting service provider or web hosts. Web hosts are companies that own many servers to cater thousands of websites on the internet. The rule of thumb here when choosing a web host is that it has to be closer to your location so that your website loads and performs faster. Some of the most used web hosts for WordPress are HostGator, SiteGround, BlueHost, and Dreamhost. Consider CDN As mentioned earlier, it’s ideal that your web host’s server should be located near you. But what if the closest web server to you is still miles away from your target audience and your location? Even if you have the best web host server and you employ the best SEO strategies, when your website fails to load, your efforts will be for naught. The solution to this problem is CDN or content delivery network. Whereas web hosting servers have limited locations and only provides a limited number of servers per client, CDN uses a network of super servers called edge servers to transmit your website’s data to online users. This means that no matter how far your website’s servers are, with CDN, online users and potential leads can still access it at a fast speed. Optimize the First 100 Words Once you’re confident that your website will run smoothly when it gets life, it’s time to pack up your WordPress site’s SEO muscles. Your priority for in-page content SEO should be the first 100 words that you write. An intro paragraph that’s packed with relevant keywords can make your WordPress site more noticeable to search engine spiders or crawlers. Customize and Shorten Your Site’s URL On a generic form, URLs or your website’s address would look topsy-turvy. Plus, by default, it would bear WordPress on it. You want to put your business or your name upfront, so it has to be reflected on your URL. To own a personalized URL, you will have to pay and register your very own domain name. Once you secure one, make sure that your URLs are trimmed. You can use URL shorteners like TinyURL, Goo.gl, and Bitly. Short URLs also make it easier to send through emails and share on social media sites, especially Twitter, which has a character limit. Better structured short URLs are also easier for web crawlers to read and retrieve. Write Long, Juicy Content The best way to keep visitors coming to your website is by making sure that you’re producing quality content. Quality means you are giving your readers relevant information related to what they’re searching online with additional pertinent data. It’s also important to remember that all other parts of your content will also need to have relevant keywords in it. It’s also ideal if you can keep your content long so visitors can take their time digesting what you’ve written. The longer they linger on your website, the more it boosts your website on the ranks as it becomes a recommended page to visit. Update Your Content Regularly Aside from maintaining long and quality content, you also have to make sure that you update your content regularly. Every time a new topic or information comes up that’s relevant to your niche, use it to produce fresh content. If your old topics need revisions, update them as many times as necessary. The more you produce new content on your WordPress website, the better it gets noticed by search engine crawlers and online searchers. Install SEO Plugins If you’re not an WordPress SEO master, but you want to push your WordPress site’s SEO to the next level, you can use an SEO Plugin instead. SEO plugins are tools to help you add and manage in-page optimization for your WordPress site. Some of these SEO plugins have automatic optimization features, too, so you can avoid the hassle of manually doing the work. Some of the best SEO plugins are Yoast SEO, All in One SEO Pack, SEMRush, and Google Keyword Planner. Meta-Tags Another sneaky yet legal way of making your WordPress site more searchable is by using meta-tagging. Meta-tags are HTML codes that you hide within your web page’s source code, so visitors will only see your content. The most crucial parts of your web page that need meta-tagging are: Header Tags — This is the meta-tag you add to the headers on your content such as H1, H2, H3, and so on. Image or Alt Tags — Alternative text that replaces images on your web page if it fails to load, and it’s what makes these images readable to web crawlers. Title Tags — The title of the content found on your website that shows up on the search engine results page. Meta-Description — The text description found below your content’s title that shows up on the search results page. Incorporate Links Adding links on your WordPress website content also adds a boost to its ranking. You can add links to external sites by linking them into relevant keywords called anchor texts. You have to make sure that the external websites you are linking on your WordPress content are secured and authorized websites. It’s also important to add anchor texts that link to other web pages within your website. These are your internal links. Internal links also help keep visitors from leaving your site, thereby increasing its relevance. Activate Social Media Buttons Social media is an important driver of leads in digital marketing. After all, there are millions of users found on these sites. You can leverage on the relevance of social media to boost your website by adding and linking social media buttons that will redirect visitors to your social media pages. Create a Sitemap You can make your WordPress site even more accessible to search engine web crawlers with the help of sitemaps. Creating a sitemap of your website’s content will make it easier for search engines to index your website because sitemaps act like an overview and quick access file. The most preferable format for a sitemap is in .xml as it’s made up of multiple directories. Mobile Capability and Responsive Design To make your WordPress site more accessible by online users anywhere and anytime, you have to enable it for mobile view and make sure that it is responsive. When your website is mobile capable, it’ll have a mobile viewable version when accessed through a phone. Having a responsive design for your website will also make it accessible to other gadgets as the web page automatically adjusts to the screen size of any device. Search engine companies like Google have noticed how important the ease of use feature for users is and have made it a criterion when ranking websites, making it a must. Conclusion Reaching online success for your WordPress website will greatly help you achieve business success. This is how digital marketing and SEO in WordPress are making such a great impact on businesses worldwide. The tips mentioned above should be useful for your digital marketing efforts, but you don’t have to limit yourself on the list. You are free to find other ways to add to it as long as you are persistent and committed to reaching your business goals.

https://medium.com/visualmodo/how-to-boost-your-wordpress-website-with-digital-marketing-and-seo-696a3a9a68d0

[]

2019-05-02 01:09:48.535000+00:00

['WordPress', 'Boost', 'Marketing', 'Digital', 'SEO']

The realities of twin parenting

Pregnancy is scary. Twin pregnancies are higher risk than singleton (one baby) pregnancies. Mothers are 2–5 times more likely to develop preeclampsia (high blood pressure) which can be deadly if not treated quickly. There’s higher risk of iron deficiency, gestational diabetes, birth defects and miscarriage (and you may not even know you’ve miscarried!). These statistics are scary. I had about twice as many check-ups as other pregnant mums — around one every month — but I was always a bit on edge. Near the end of the pregnancy I’d gained 20kg in babies and accessories (like placenta and amniotic fluid). I didn’t realise at the time, but the ‘me’ part of me had actually lost 5kg by the end of the pregnancy. 20kgs is a lot to carry around. I couldn’t walk. My mental health suffered because of my physical limitations. I could even read a book. All I did was lie in the bath and desperately hope I’d make it to 37 weeks. Which brings me to… Birth? Also scary. More than 60 percent of twins are born premature. Babies born at 37 weeks don’t have fully developed bodies and organs. The lungs and liver are the last parts of the body to develop. It’s common for twins to have a low birth weight and need time in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit to help them breath, eat and fight infection. About two thirds of twin births are by caesarean — doctors are reluctant to allow a vaginal birth when babies’ positions aren’t ideal or where they share a placenta. Even if you get the option of a vaginal birth, you’re required to have an epidural, so pain relief is already established if there are complications. No one asks if you want a spa or a TENS machine for labour, let alone what flavour of scented candle. There’s also a higher chance of needing intervention during birth — like an episiotomy, forceps or suction. My twins were born at 37 weeks. I was induced for a vaginal birth with an epidural. 12 or so hours into labour, I developed HELLP syndrome (Hemolysis, Elevated Liver enzymes, Low Platelets) which meant the babies needed to be removed quickly. Platelets are needed to clot the blood, so having low levels meant I haemorrhaged an estimated 1500ml. While my babies were taken to NICU, I was taken to theatre to get an inter-uterine balloon inserted to stop the bleeding. This acts like a pressure bandage on the internal wounds, and I was given whole blood and platelet transfusions. The balloon needs to be in place for 24hrs, and I had blood tests and other checks every hour. Meanwhile I couldn’t see my babies, but expressed colostrum which my partner took to NICU. I needed a wheelchair to leave the birthing suite and I finally held my babies about 36 hours after they were born. Source: Author’s own Breastfeeding is hard. I was told it’s possible to breastfeed twins if you’re ‘committed’. Oh good. I’m committed, patient and good at problem solving, this should be easy! No mother can produce a double-quantity of milk, so twins are expected to survive on a little less. My boys were not strong enough to feed breast-only. When I tried, my smaller twin actually lost weight despite spending up to 4 hrs a day on the boob. Expressing and bottle-feeding was the only other option given to me. This means spending 20 mins (each baby) breastfeeding, 20 mins (each baby) bottle-feeding and 30 mins expressing — every 3 hours. If you have even one unsettled baby at any point in the day, that routine becomes extremely difficult. You can multitask some of it. I found tandem feeding ok when they were new-borns, but once they got too big for that position, it never felt right to have them tucked behind me. Some mums swear all you need is 12 pillows placed correctly (and a system for getting both babies safely on and off the tower of pillows). But it got too hard for me, so I gave one baby the boob while the other got a bottle of formula and swapped for the next feed. So, breastfeeding became the same as for a single baby — minus one hand, plus 8 bottles to prepare and clean each day. Twins: Because baby wrestling should have weight divisions. You only have two hands. In theory you can carry two babies (in the event of a truck hurtling towards you, house fire, rabid dog etc), but the reality involves one in a carrier strapped to your front and the other wedged next to them on your hip. It’s really heavy. You get tired after about 5 mins. They wriggle and feel like they’re slipping. You cannot wipe their nose or the dribble from their chin. You cannot reach or lean forward. So your options are either: pick one up, move them somewhere, put them down, then go back for the other baby, or take a pram everywhere. The pram is the far better option. They have a safe spot where they can’t roll/crawl, find anything to put in their mouths, and you can always see them. But, the pram has its issues too… The pram doesn’t fit. There was a period when I despised singleton mums. I was so jealous of their lives — I couldn’t bear to look at them walking down the street and see what I was missing. Have you ever tried to take a shopping trolley into a cafe? That’s what having a twin pram is like. There were friend’s houses and favourite shops that I had to abandon because they had steps, or the aisles were too narrow. Twins: Because toddler mischief is more effective with a distraction. There’s no time for that. All new parents have it tough — a baby is a 24hr-a-day job — but twin parents somehow have to find a way of fitting two 24hr-a-day jobs into each day. Basically, you cut corners. Sometimes you can combine things, like feeding both solids, or breastfeeding one while bottle-feeding the other. But things like nappy changes are just going to take twice as long. You have to multitask to the extreme. Like, being attached to a breast pump, while rocking two bouncers with your feet, while eating lunch, while ordering groceries on your phone. I thought about my days in 10-minute increments. Where will I fit a shower, or a load of washing? ‘Dinner’ was pasta with a can of tuna. I gave up on vacuuming. Cutting my toenails was a luxury that would sometimes take 6 months to get to. Date night!? Ha! Hahaha. There wasn’t enough time even for the necessities of life like sustenance, basic hygiene and sleep. Every day was a cruel experiment where you could only choose two — I usually chose sustenance and hygiene over sleep. At its worst, blinking felt like a trap. My eyelids would stick and I’d have the sensation of a micro-sleep. It certainly would have been unsafe for me to operate heavy machinery. Instead, I had responsibility for two helpless lives. There isn’t even time for your kids. But the hardest bit? I didn’t have enough time to enjoy being with my babies. I couldn’t cuddle them while they slept, I couldn’t carry them around while I did chores. Even playing with them one-on-one was a rare luxury that only happened if one slept longer than the other (and I’d have to wake them after 20 mins to keep them in sync). I was always dividing my attention and they didn’t get the share they deserved. The thing keeping me from spending quality time with my beloved baby, was another beloved baby. It was a profound catch 22.

https://medium.com/counterarts/the-realities-of-twin-parenting-e151a733473b

[]

2021-08-25 22:45:17.549000+00:00

['Trauma', 'Twins', 'Life', 'Parenting', 'Baby']

Wednesday~Seas & CT’s

“Our oceans are at risk of becoming death zones, and if they die so do we. Carbon Dioxide is the prime ingredient of ocean acidification which dissolves the calcium in countless shells of marine animals. They are at risk of dying off and CO2 emissions are the reason why.” J Allen Edit: I’m adding something of interest as to the climate change were all are hearing about these days. Yesterday in Albuquerque, New Mexico we set a record high of 96F for September 8th. Today we are going to set a record low of 48-50F for our high. A 48–50F difference in one day! So tell me our climate isn’t totally unstable. Congress? Chirp, chirp…. I found an article about the fires in California today. We have also had some forest fires here in NM. From CounterPunch \/ link Continuing On…\/ Seas & CT’s Well today I go get a special CT scan to map out my chest cavity for my upcoming radiation therapy, an effort to stem the new cancerous growth in my right lung. I already have had half my left lung removed back in November of ’08. I am unable to undergo another surgery, I probably wouldn’t survive the ordeal this time around. It was unequivocally the most unpleasant, painful event in my life. I wouldn’t wish this ordeal on anyone. Such is the risk one takes by smoking cigarettes. My health is faltering. So are Earth’s oceans, the focus of my short report today. We collectively are also causing the oceans ill health. By — imagine that — burning fossil fuels. To power our industrial society. Smoking kills. Either on an individual scale, such as myself, or the world’s oceans as CO2 emissions change the ocean’s chemistry for the worse. Lungs or oceans the chemistry is affected by smoking. Either way is a loss. I found a good story about ocean acidification the killer of our oceans. So the seas give us life. They give us oxygen. The coral reefs are fully 25% of the shallows of the world’s oceans. And they are dying off. Equivalent to losing all the forests of North, Central, and South America combined. So I leave you inquiring folks with the link to a fine story on our oceans. And I’ll get scanned and mapped for my radiation therapy. Stay safe, Peace, The Ol’ Hippy \/link

https://medium.com/@jrallen1200/wednesday-seas-cts-1eff621d4a27

['John Allen']

2020-09-09 15:44:28.108000+00:00

['Global Warming', 'Cancer', 'Oceans', 'Ecology', 'Health']

How digital money will include the unbanked

‘The Streets — Colourful Miraflores’ by Geraint Rowland available here under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0. How digital money will include the unbanked Basic financial services are more expensive and exclusive than they need to be. If we can strip digital finance down into a lightweight, near-free service, we can offer it to everybody, including those currently excluded from the sector. Approximately half of the adult world does not have a bank account. Billions rely on cash and informal credit arrangements to manage their finance, arrangements which tend to be slow, expensive, and unreliable. Given that we are finally making progress on the basic challenges in development, such as those in the Millennium Development Goals, it is not unreasonable to put some focus on second-order obstacles like connectivity, energy, and banking. Interestingly the Gates Foundation, which has long focused on public health, sanitation, and education, signalled this month it was shifting some of its focus to financial inclusion. So how bad is it? Access to banking is minimal in large parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. Many middle-income countries also fare poorly, according to the World Bank four fifths of Indonesians, two thirds of Indians, and one third of Chinese have no formal banking services. Account at a formal financial institution (% age 15+), World Bank Financial Inclusion Database 2011 The problem is not exclusive to the developing world, an astonishing 12% of Americans do not have bank accounts. While Europe and Australia fare relatively better, across the developed world there are millions classed as unbanked or underbanked. The reasons some residents of rich countries remain excluded from banking are complex, but are closely linked with poverty and other forms of exclusion. Citizen’s Advice Scotland found in its 2010 research that among its unbanked clients, almost half had been denied a bank account because of poor credit history and a further one fifth because of current or historic debt with the bank. Many of those were initially pushed out of the banking system because of bankruptcy proceedings. Thus the very people struggling to get back on their feet are the ones being locked out of our financial infrastructure. The same research found that one third of unbanked clients had been denied a bank account “due to lack of appropriate identity documents”. “Thus the very people struggling to get back on their feet are the ones being locked out of our financial infrastructure.” In this part of the world most people excluded from banking end up using a family member’s bank account by proxy, so people are forced into informal banking arrangements by the very measures designed to ensure that the name on an account matches the person using it. This is part of wider problem of how restrictions designed to target wealthy criminals create a financial burden that falls largely on the poor, a topic which financial thinker Dave Birch has written on in more detail. There is also a non-trivial number of people living in rich countries who are “unbanked by choice”, a result of mistrust, suspicion, alienation, concerns about unresolved debt, or a general sense of a bank account not being for them. The reason the banks themselves allow this to continue is that the cost of servicing these prospective customers would generally outweigh the economic benefit they may bring. In other words, it is very difficult to make money out of somebody living on the fringes of society. A source at a UK high-street bank tells us that for a bank to profit from a customer it needs them to hold about £1,000 at any time in their current account. For anything below that, the marginal cost to the business, from running a network of branches and so on, outweighs the benefit of an additional customer. “The reason the banks themselves allow this to continue is that the cost of servicing these prospective customers would generally outweigh the economic benefit they may bring.” The impact of digital money and digital banking A number of companies are racing to resolve this conundrum by building the first truly digital bank, a lightweight service without the overheads of traditional high-street banking. One of the more prominent contenders in the UK is Atom Bank, though others exist. If that goal is achievable, a digital bank will quite suddenly be in a position to target populations that are currently underbanked, providing them with near-free banking services while still turning a profit. At CoinJar our focus is on digital tokens rather than traditional monetary forms, but the question of unbanked populations goes to the core of what we do. Our goal is to take the efficiencies of Bitcoin, port them to a platform that is safe, simple, and secure, and push them out to the market at near-free prices. We do not believe in tiered pricing or access, every customer gets the same rates and support, regardless of the numbers involved when they want to buy bitcoin and other digital currencies. “…the question of unbanked populations goes to the core of what we do” As a company we are betting on two broad trends in finance. The first is the unbundling of consumer finance products. In a world of bricks-and-mortar banks it makes sense to get your current account, mortgage, payment card, and insurance via the same relationship. In a digital world, it should be much easier to shop around for each of those services separately, and have them seamlessly interact with each other where necessary. Our second expectation is that people will get used to interacting with a much richer variety of digital tokens. These might include air miles, loyalty card points, tokens for various corporate and community schemes, in-game currencies, tokens on social networks, kilowatt hours, carbon credits, contracts, and various other forms that don’t even have names yet. Such an ecosystem would allow rich and nuanced social and economic activity, and has interesting echoes in the past. To quote political economist Benjamin J Cohen, this would be a return to the “heterogeneous multiform mosaic that existed prior to the era of territorial money”. Among these digital tokens is of course Bitcoin, the first big proposition in this latest round of monetary debate. One of the easiest ways to understand how Bitcoin behaves is to think of it as digital cash, albeit cash denominated in the currency of a distant, imagined country. While most discussion of Bitcoin focuses on the technical and socio-political aspects of the protocol (open and distributed security, a transparent but noisy ledger, a volatile market value, and a governance method modelled on open source software schemes), the very mundane functionality of a digital currency has massive implications for the underbanked. The creation of an account (or digital “wallet”) is effectively free and instant, largely unrestricted, and serves rich and poor with equal speed. Indeed it is this detachment of the service from a bank-customer relationship, this unbundling, that may allow digital currencies to thrive among communities currently neglected by finance. As anthropologist Bill Maurer described: “The un- and underbanked traditionally haven’t been served by traditional banking institutions. They’re the ones who are going to check-cashing outlets and pawn shops. They’re the ones where there really are pain points associated with checks and cash, for whom prepaid cards or prepaid wallets on a phone might actually be very attractive.” The ability to store and transfer value is ultimately an informational good, so the sector likely faces a transformation comparable to what we’ve seen in music, publishing, and the visual arts. Some of those changes will be good (services get cheaper and faster) and some will be bad (services fall under oligarchic control and lose the human touch). Research by digital agency Heist indicates this transition has already commenced, with young adults having an increasingly “transactional” relationship with their bank rather than something more personal or advisory. Making finance competitive is a hugely complex problem, the sector serves as a unique form of infrastructure which supplies us with money (created via fractional reserve lending) and the facilities needed to move that money around. The importance of appearance and legitimacy mean that much of the sector’s cost structure resembles that of a luxury goods company, with glass-and-steel skyscrapers, oak-panelled lobbies, and a general air of largesse which assures the client that everyone in the room knows what they’re doing. You can’t run a bank like a budget airline when your customers still expect you to operate out of a city-centre building with Roman columns and reassuringly lush reception. Add to these peculiarities a few decades of overlapping regulation, uniquely powerful entrenched stakeholders, widespread misconceptions about how the sector works, and the shadow of both national politics and class politics, and it becomes clear that it will take more than a Napster-style disruption to shake up the sector. “You can’t run a bank like a budget airline when your customers still expect you to operate out of a city-centre building with Roman columns and reassuringly lush reception.” Nonetheless, banking is steadily evolving into a digital service, and in the process it should become easier to ensure that those who need it most have access. Nobody needs a credit check to start using a physical wallet, a digital wallet should be no different. If we want this infrastructure to be truly inclusive and competitive it should be built around an open platform with open standards. We want to see the Email of Money, not the Facebook of Money. And finally, we want this platform to undermine the imbalances between developed and developing worlds, rich and poor, not reinforce them. — Article by Lui Smyth — UK Lead at CoinJar. Tweet him @yablochko

https://medium.com/coinjar-blog/how-digital-money-will-include-the-unbanked-cf98fda1cfc7

[]

2020-02-26 16:33:06.592000+00:00

['Social Justice', 'Unbanked', 'Bitcoin']

Do you own an Amazon Fire HD tablet, and want to use the Google Play Store app?

Do you own an Amazon Fire HD tablet, and want to use the Google Play Store app? I’ve used the below guide on 3 Kindle Fire HD 10 (9th Generation, 2019 Model) tablets this year, and everything worked out great. It lists directions for all sizes of Fire tablets, and for older models too. So even if you don’t have the 2019 or 2020 models, you should still find what you need to unlock the potential of your tablet, and get access to many more apps than the built in Amazon App Store has to offer. Read and follow all the steps carefully in the Android Police article link below, and you‘ll be up and running in no time. https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/10/03/install-play-store-amazon-fire-tablet/

https://medium.com/@jonathan-hawkins/do-you-own-an-amazon-fire-hd-tablet-and-want-to-use-the-google-play-store-app-d8830077270b

['Jonathan Hawkins']

2020-12-11 19:55:13.687000+00:00

['Amazon', 'Technology', 'Tablets', 'Guides And Tutorials', 'Google']

5 Reasons Why You Should Apply to Join Our Team

I’m passionate about talent management and culture. My objective is to make Osedea the best workplace for our team. Follow

https://medium.com/osedea/5-reasons-why-you-should-apply-to-join-our-team-c2480876f56c

['Ivana Markovic']

2020-09-09 15:00:12.702000+00:00

['Recruiting', 'PHP', 'React Native', 'React', 'Design']

Hydrogen-Powered Airliners — What Are The Possibilities?

I t is clear that all-electric aircraft’s feasibility in the airlines on a mass scale is still some time ahead of us, as the current battery and motor technologies are not up to the task of flying in the flight levels with hundreds of passengers. With current battery technology, the battery pack required would take up most of the space and weight limitation of an airliner. However, hydrogen-powered aircraft are another story. In this week’s On Aviation™ Digest, we will take a look at some articles relating to hydrogen-powered aircraft, their current development, and their possible application as airliners. The Hydrogen Revolution In The Skies A record-breaking commercial-scale hydrogen plane has taken off in the UK, with more set to join it soon. How far can such planes go in cutting the aviation industry’s emissions? By Caspar Henerson | BBC Future Planet United Becomes Largest Airline to Invest in Hydrogen-Electric Engines for Regional Aircraft United became the largest airline to invest in zero-emission, hydrogen-electric engines for regional aircraft, the latest move toward achieving its goal to be 100% green by reducing its GHG emissions 100% by 2050, without relying on traditional carbon offset By Renewable Energy Magazine Large Hydrogen-Powered airliners Could Be In Service By 2030 In May 2021 Clean Sky 2 published its first Technology Evaluator1. One of its main conclusions is that “the main focus on decarbonising aviation should be on short-range aircraft flying distances of less than 4,000km, however with much larger passenger capacity, well over 300, even over 400 passengers in the cabin. This type of aircraft does not exist today.” This article, however, will show that the ideal type of aircraft almost exists now if liquid hydrogen is the preferred fuel. By Chris Ellis FBCS, Prof. John Coplin CBE | H2 View A New Hydrogen Plane Can Fly Halfway Around the World Without Refueling A U.K. government-backed research firm, Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI), revealed a new liquid-hydrogen-powered airliner concept called FlyZero. In theory, this 279-seater aircraft will have the same performance capability as a traditional midsize aircraft, but without producing carbon emissions, the ATI says in a press release. By Chris Young | Interesting Engineering

https://medium.com/@onaviation/hydrogen-powered-airliners-what-are-the-possibilities-790c6f2f2f40

['On Aviation']

2021-12-22 02:43:10.649000+00:00

['On Aviation', 'Airlines', 'Aircraft', 'Aviation', 'Hydrogen']

Doctailor — Self Customisable Smart Contracts & Agreements on the Blockchain

Be careful when investing in crypto There is no such thing as free money. I cannot recommend highly enough this list: https://chrisdunn.com/50-crypto-trading-investing-lessons/ Chris Dunn drops nuggets of knowledge, it’s seriously good stuff. Some of my favourite picks: 9. The best way to day trade cryptocurrencies is — DON’T! 29. You WILL make every mistake in the book. Don’t beat yourself up when you make mistakes, just learn and try not to make the same mistake twice. I totally admit I made most of the mistakes on the list. Now I’m a little bit wiser and the more I know the more cautious and sceptical I become… Manage your private keys Be careful how you keep your private keys and backups. Hardware wallets surely the best. Quite seriously — you don’t want programs on your computer to have access to your private keys. Keeping private keys on a separate device is by far the best protection against a hack or a virus. Private keys never leave the device, they are used to sign the transaction that is then broadcasted to the network. Markets are… Markets can remain irrational a lot longer than you and I can remain solvent. — so you think printing Tether is a scam and crypto bubble will pop? Ride the wave, trend is your friend. Personally I don’t have energy for day trading, I just buy and hodl, or earn (directly in crypto) and hodl. Sure fire research questions DYOR — do your own research, ask difficult questions. I wish everyone investing was asking these: How much tokens issued pre-pre-pre-ICO for strategic investors, what is their discount, what is their lock-in period? Check Bloomberg, Reuters, Fortune logos on the website — anyone can include an image, not everyone can get press coverage. Check with advisors and partners — are they really committed to the project, did they update their LinkedIn? DYOR — do your own research, it will save you a lot of stress. To have faith and confidence, to know that you did the work is a great feeling. Handy links once again:

https://medium.com/ico-fomo/doctailor-self-customisable-smart-contracts-agreements-on-the-blockchain-ef57a323f8dd

['Mars Robertson']

2018-03-04 13:52:42.103000+00:00

['Blockchain', 'Token Sale', 'Ethereum', 'ICO']

Thailand, Coronavirus spreads fast among migrant workers

Thailand’s local community blames migrant workers for the quick spread of coronavirus across the country. According to Thai Health authorities, COVID-19 cases pass 5,000. Only yesterday, officials have reported 548 new contagions, almost all of them among migrant laborers in the seafood production in Samut Sakhon district. From the beginning of the pandemic, Thailand’s total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases surged past 5,000 as hundreds of migrant workers resulted positive, posing a major challenge for the Government. Thailand has been one of various Southeast Asian nations that were managing relatively unharmed by the coronavirus emergency. But on Saturday, the Ministry of Health announced a daily record of 548 new cases, practically all of them between migrant workers in the seafood business in Samut Sakhon province, 34 kilometers southwest of the capital Bangkok. Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha stated yesterday his executive would wait to see how the circumstances looked in a week’s time to establish any special limitations for New Year’s holidays. The new cases in Samut Sakhon, most not presenting manifestations, were found by mass testing after a 67-year-old shrimp merchant at a seafood market resulted positive to the COVID-19 swamp. The Klang Koong seafood market, one of the country’s largest, and its associated house were sealed off by security forces and police agents. The province imposed a night lockdown and other movement restrictions until January 3. Several public places, including shopping department stores, schools, gyms, cinemas, spas, and sports stadiums, have to remain closed until this data. Some 360 of the 382 new contagions reported yesterday were migrants working in the province, the Center for Covid-19 Situation Administration affirmed. There were 14 other cases described as locally transmitted and eight discovered in COVID isolation facilities where essentially all people coming from overseas must wait for fifteen days. The majority of migrant workers in Samut Sakhon province are from neighboring Myanmar, which is witnessing a breaker in coronavirus contagions starting from last August. The circumstances in near Myanmar had produced great concern among Thai authorities, spending great efforts to clearly decrease border passage. Last month, several cases were found among Thai women who had worked in Myanmar and then evaded health checks when coming back home to northern Thailand generating panic among their communities. Most of the people from northern Thailand who recently traveled to Myanmar and resulted positive for the coronavirus tests were traced just after having already arrived in Bangkok. According to the Worldometer and John Hopkins University, Thailand recorded a total of 5,289 coronavirus cases and 60 deaths from the beginning of the global emergency. https://www.theworkersrights.com/thailand-coronavirus-spreads-fast-among-migrant-workers/

https://medium.com/@theworkersright/thailand-coronavirus-spreads-fast-among-migrant-workers-58a39bdba8c9

['The Workers Rights']

2020-12-23 13:25:42.169000+00:00

['Coronavirus', 'Migrant Workers', 'Ministry Of Health', 'Thailand', 'Covid 19']

How technology is driving new environmental solutions

One example will be new approaches to measuring and reducing emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that has pound for pound more than 80 times the near-term warming power of carbon dioxide. Human-made methane emissions are responsible for a quarter of all the warming we’re experiencing today. That’s a problem, but it’s also an enormous opportunity. One of the largest sources of methane is the oil and gas industry. Indeed, natural gas is mostly methane. And it turns out that reducing these industrial methane emissions is the fastest, most cost effective way to slow the rate of warming, even as we continue working hard to decarbonize our energy system. But we didn’t know that until recently — or at least we couldn’t prove it — because nobody knew how much methane was coming from the oil and gas sector. Data Reveals Problem, Opportunity Five years ago, Environmental Defense Fund set out to measure methane emissions from the U.S. oil and gas sector, launching an unprecedented scientific research effort involving more than 140 researchers from 40 institutions, along with four dozen oil and gas companies that provided site access and technical advice. Researchers used a range of technologies — including sensors mounted on drones, airplanes, and even Google Street View cars — to measure emissions at every link in the supply chain, from remote wellheads to pipes under your local street. Results were published in over 30 peer-reviewed scientific journal articles. A synthesis paper published this summer in Science concluded that the U.S. oil and gas industry emits 13 million metric tons of methane each year—nearly 60 percent more than current Environmental Protection Agency estimates. But these emissions can be controlled, often through simple maintenance. Data from the project has been instrumental in convincing both industry leaders and policymakers that they have a serious methane challenge. The findings helped shape new regulations in states such as Colorado, Wyoming, California, and Pennsylvania, and national-level policies to reduce emission from oil and gas production on federal and tribal land. Now, we’re using the data to hold the line against misguided attempts by the current administration to roll back those standards. Driving a Global Emissions Goal Worldwide, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reckons that oil and gas methane emissions are about 75 million metric tons – enough to generate all of Africa’s electricity twice over. The IEA estimates that industry could reduce those emissions 75 percent using existing technologies (two thirds of that at no net cost). We at EDF are calling for a 45 percent reduction in global oil and gas methane emissions by 2025. That would have the same 20-year climate benefit as closing one-third of the world's coal plants. Results on such a scale are conceivable thanks to growing digitization in the industry. For example, reliable, low-cost sensors, remote monitoring and oilfield internet-of-things can help energy companies reduce emissions (and eliminate waste of saleable gas at the same time). To help realize these prospects, EDF is working with Shell and Equinor (formerly Statoil) to test continuous monitoring technologies developed by entrepreneurs who took part in our Mobile Monitoring Challenge. We’ve also partnered with Stanford University and ExxonMobil to look at mobile detection technologies using aircraft and drones. Data-driven transparency is sparking competition within the industry itself. In April, BP set its first quantitative methane target. Last month ExxonMobil committed to cut emissions and flared gas volumes. Shell, Qatar Petroleum and other producers have also committed to reduce methane emissions across the natural gas supply chain. Watch Fred Krupp’s TED Talk here. Heading into Space Now we’re pushing the technological envelope even farther, by developing MethaneSAT – a satellite mission due to launch in 2021, and designed to continuously map and measure methane emissions with exacting precision almost anywhere on the planet. MethaneSAT will make it possible to ‘see’ emissions in places where they’re difficult to track today. Data from MethaneSAT will be available for free to anyone. It will help countries, companies and citizens spot problems, identify reduction opportunities, and measure progress over time. It’s just one of several space-based methane monitoring tools now in the works. The European Space Agency, for example, launched its TROPOMI satellite in 2017. A private company called GHGSAT has one satellite in orbit and another due to launch within the year. Some have likened this to a new space race. But I see it as a wave of transformational change emerging from multiple nodes across an innovation ecosystem. Each has different, but complimentary, capabilities, together offering multiple streams of data to paint an unassailable picture of the problem. Just as we have used the U.S. methane data to spur new policies and better business practices, we will use data from MethaneSAT and our allies to help reach our 45% reduction goal by 2025, and our aim to virtually eliminate the industry’s methane emissions by 2050. Sensors, Sensors Everywhere We’re deploying advanced sensor technologies to help create a healthier environment in other ways, too – from Google cars mapping air pollution and its health effects to wearable bracelets that track your daily chemical exposure. Elsewhere, retailers and consumer brands are using blockchain to improve accountability and sustainability across far-flung supply chains. Sensors can help farmers reduce the amount of chemicals on their fields, and “smart boats” can help fishermen manage their catch effectively, increasing profits and fish in the sea. It’s no coincidence the Global Climate Action Climate Summit is happening in California, the heart of America’s most innovative sector and the state that has led the nation in environmental stewardship. California has proven time and again that a strong economy and a healthy environment go hand in hand. Now more than ever, technology is the key to making this a worldwide success story.

https://medium.com/the-fourth-wave/how-technology-is-driving-new-environmental-solutions-ef7739d42c1a

['Fred Krupp']

2018-09-11 02:00:11.932000+00:00

['Global Warming', 'Space', 'Climate Change', 'Sensors', 'Environment']

Bell heading to Nationals in trade with Bucs Bell — heading to Nationals in trade with Bucs

Bell heading to Nationals in trade with Bucs Bell — heading to Nationals in trade with Bucs | News Break Fanjiramdan Dec 25, 2020·3 min read The Nationals addressed their vacancy at first base on Thursday by acquiring switch-hitter Josh Bell from the Pirates. In exchange, Washington sent right-handers Wil Crowe, its №3 prospect per MLB Pipeline, and Eddy Yean, its №6 prospect, to Pittsburgh. “We are thrilled to be adding a player of Josh Bell’s caliber to our team,” Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo said in a statement. “He adds a switch-hitting power bat to our lineup. And we know Josh will be an outstanding addition to our clubhouse and our community.” Bell, 28, is entering his sixth Major League season. Last year, he slashed .226/.305/.364 with a .669 OPS and eight home runs in 57 games. Bell was an All-Star in 2019, when he ranked in the top 10 among National League players in RBIs (116, sixth), OPS+ (142, seventh), doubles (37, eighth), homers (37, ninth), slugging (.569, ninth) and OPS (.936, 10th). In his career, Bell has hit 261/.349/.466 with an .814 OPS. He averages .271 against righties compared to .232 against lefties. “I think in this case, this is one of those where I can honestly say that Josh is someone that we really respect and appreciate what he meant to the Pirates and how he played and how he wore the uniform and — on a personal level — truly liked and learned from,” Pirates general manager Ben Cherington said via Zoom. There was a hole at first base following a season in which the position was manned by committee. Howie Kendrick announced his retirement on Monday, while Asdrúbal Cabrera and Eric Thames are free agents. Ryan Zimmerman, who was part of the Nats’ plan at first before he elected not to play in 2020, also is a free agent. It remains to be seen how Washington will back up the first base position. Last season, Bell started 35 games there, where his fielding percentage dipped to .984. He DH’d his other 21 games. Bell already received a welcome from the Nationals on social media. Trea Turner tweeted his excitement shortly after the trade was announced. Bell joins another Josh on the Nationals — former Pirates teammate Josh Harrison. Crowe is a former second-round Draft pick who earned the Carolina League Pitcher of the Year award in 2018, when he went 11–0 with a 2.69 ERA for Class A Advanced Potomac. Last season, the 26-year-old made his Major League debut and went 0–2 with a 11.88 ERA over three starts. Yean, 19, signed with the Nationals out of the Dominican Republic for $100,000. In two seasons of pro ball DSL Nationals, GCL Nationals and Class A Short Season Auburn, he is 3–5 with a 4.70 ERA in 21 games (20 starts). Jessica Camerato covers the Nationals for MLB.com. Follow her on Twitter @jessicacamerato, Facebook and Instagram. , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

https://medium.com/@fanjiramdan11/bell-heading-to-nationals-in-trade-with-bucs-bell-heading-to-nationals-in-trade-with-bucs-news-58e19bdcf529

[]

2020-12-25 06:54:32.010000+00:00

['Facebook', 'Nationals', 'Sports', 'Twitter', 'Social Media']

Getting up to speed on crypto

Bitcoin Price & Market Cap. Source: coinmarketcap.com Many of my friends & family have asked what they should read/watch to get started understanding cryptocurrencies. I first send them the Bitcoin whitepaper and the Princeton class first (first 2 links below). Depending on how much they’ve been infected by the crypto virus after that, and their level/approach, I suggest more of the below links. There’s a trove of material and this is by no means exhaustive. That said, it’s a decent start. Enjoy! Start here: Why crypto matters: [Watch] Naval’s first Periscope which discusses crypto at length How to value Cryptoassets: [Read] John Pfeffer’s paper “An Institutional Investor’s guide to Cryptoassets” (paper is at the bottom of the linked post) [Read] Chris Burniske’s Cryptoasset Valuations [Read] Letter to Jamie Dimon by Adam Ludwin @ Chain Go Deep on Bitcoin: Cryptoassets other than Bitcoin: Write some code: [Code] CryptoZombies, a simple game on Ethereum platform Stay up to date: [Follow] There are lots of fun crypto people to follow on Twitter. Some of the funniest are Neeraj Agrawal and Kevin Pham. [Follow] All the folks above are on Twitter. They’re good follows too. [Follow] Naval Ravikant (whom you should follow) has a great list. If you like the above, follow me. Enjoy!

https://medium.com/yanda/getting-up-to-speed-on-crypto-195e5d494bb7

['Yan-David Erlich']

2018-03-06 16:54:06.466000+00:00

['Cryptocurrency', 'Ethereum', 'Bitcoin']

Trans Men Are Not Gender Traitors

One of the first things my mother said to me when I came out as trans was, “Can’t you just be a boy on the inside and a girl on the outside? It hurt. We were headed down the highway to the closest clinic prescribing hormones. An hour-and-a-half away and across state lines, I figured the drive would be a good time to discuss my transness with her. I would have my first testosterone shot that day and brought her along as support. “Because I’m not a girl,” I remember saying. “I never was.” I understood Mom’s worries. I had recently applied for a position at the local college. She feared if my transness became noticeable, I wouldn’t get the job — a job I desperately needed and was qualified for (and one I later didn’t get). I couldn't live in a lie anymore. I was a trans man, always had been, and entering my late-20s, it was time to make that reality known. I came out in a time where transgender identities had become mainstream knowledge. Growing up, I had never heard of the word transgender. I barely knew what gay or lesbian meant, either. From a young age, I knew I didn’t fit into my assigned-female-at-birth body. I spent years rationalizing my feelings by calling myself a masculine female lesbian. Lesbian didn’t fit, either. In my heart, I knew who I really was, and it wasn’t a woman. It took years of self-reflection and discussion to come to terms with my truth: I am a trans man — not a woman, not a lesbian. A man. But to a select few in our community, coming to terms with who you are isn’t something to be celebrated. Trans men are, in these people’s words, gender traitors. Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash This week welcomed another member to the trans community after actor Elliot Page, known for his work in hits like “Juno” and “The Umbrella Academy,” came out as trans non-binary. “I can’t begin to express how remarkable it feels to finally love who I am enough to pursue my authentic self,” Elliot wrote in a letter posted to social media. The LGBTQ+ community exploded with joy at the announcement. But then there were the Debbie-downers, who were quick to dampen the mood. “I honestly worry that we are going to see less and less strong women because they can just be men,” wrote one user on Twitter. Another wrote how their “heart … breaks as the lesbian community grows smaller. Again. And loses a role model. Again.” The same writer also deadnamed Elliot in their post. “I find it depressing how many young lesbians now feel that, because they do not perform or feel invested in conventional femininity, they can no longer be women,” they added. “And so they shift from identifying as lesbian women to straight men. Compulsory heterosexuality all over again.” Excuse me? Being LGBTQ+ isn’t about tallying which “letter” has the most bodies. This isn’t a war recruiting lesbians on one side and trans-masculine or non-binary persons on the other. It isn’t a betrayal of one community by living in authenticity as part of a different one. I did not become a trans man because I wasn’t “invested in conventional feminity.” I became a trans man because I am a man. And in embracing my truth, I feel more in tune with the masculine and feminine parts of myself. No one pushed me to become a man. I know plenty of lesbian women who present masculine but continue to identify as women. I’m just not one of them. In Elliot’s case, he did not appear to specifically come out as a trans man. Most news reports identify him as non-binary. His pronouns are he/they. Coming out as trans and non-binary does not mean Elliot does not identify as lesbian. It also does not mean he does. Gender identity and sexual orientation are different, and what he is or isn’t is his business. Elliot does not owe us masculinity or feminity; doesn’t owe us to be trans masculine or to be lesbian. Elliot is a grown adult with his own life ahead of him — a life where he deserves to live as his genuine self. If he is straight, a lesbian, or anything else, good for him; as non-binary, awesome; trans-masculine, so be it. But he is betraying no one by being who he is. To insist those of us who are trans-masculine or non-binary are traitors of the female gender is wrong. Trans men are men. Non-binary people are non-binary. To say otherwise or insist we are traitors is transphobia, period. Think of it this way: Grieving over a trans person is like grieving over an empty coffin. The person is still here, still very much alive. While their pronouns and name may have changed, it is not the death of the person you knew: It’s growth into the person they know themselves to be. I did not transition to escape sexism. I did not transition because “being a woman is hard.” I did not transition because of “internal misogyny.” I transitioned to embrace my personal truth. I am a straight trans man. I am not a straight trans man to mimic heterosexuality. I am a straight trans man because that’s who I am: a straight trans man. It is no one else’s business but our own on how we identify. It is an intimate, often complex internal struggle to discover ourselves, and it’s disgusting when we are degraded because we are men, are masculine, or non-binary. Our orientations and our genders are not a choice. We are who we are, and I, nor any other trans men, should apologize for being men. My existence as a straight trans-man is not an act of rebellion against women or lesbians. I exist as I am meant to exist. All trans people — men, women, and non-binary alike — do. Let us live our truth. Elliot, I celebrate you. I’m proud of you. Your courage is inspiring, not only to me but to many trans men, trans-masculine people, and non-binary persons. Trans truly is beautiful and I am honored to have you in our community.

https://medium.com/an-injustice/trans-men-are-not-gender-traitors-3520b2b4865

['Cassius Corbin']

2020-12-04 23:09:42.699000+00:00

['Feminism', 'Gender', 'Self', 'Transgender', 'LGBTQ']

Bicycle Frames Market Size Worth $32.8 Billion By 2027

The global bicycle frames market size is expected to reach USD 32.8 billion by 2027, registering a CAGR of 6.1% over the forecast period, according to a new study conducted by Grand View Research, Inc. Bicycle frame is one of the key components while purchasing a bike. It plays an important role in the bicycle performance as it influences weight balance of the vehicle. Aluminium and steel were the most preferred materials used for forming the bicycle frame traditionally. However, the development of modern composites is also leading to the adoption of materials such as titanium and carbon fiber to form frames in order to reduce the bike weight and improve the performance. Bicycle demand is now gaining prominence after years of decline in demand mainly due to increasing influence of automotive industry. Rising adoption of bicycles as a mode of transport on account of their environmental and health benefits is anticipated to positively influence the market growth. Cycles are also widely used for recreational touring and sports activities. All the aforementioned factors are anticipated to supplement the market growth over the forecast period. Click the link below: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/bicycle-frames-market Further key findings from the study suggest:

https://medium.com/@marketnewsreports/bicycle-frames-market-b093e1694384

['Gaurav Shah']

2020-12-24 11:41:34.418000+00:00

['Steel', 'USA', 'Canada', 'Transportation', 'Automotive']

Introduction to Character/Text Encoding in Web

Character Encoding in JavaScript ASCII is one of the most popular encodings still in use today. It is a 7-bit fixed-length encoding scheme that uses 7 bits to encode a character. This encoding can only encode characters in the English language and some commonly used symbols like dash (-) and period (.). However, JavaScript engine stores string literals in the UTF-16 encoding format. UTF-16 is 16-bit variable-length encoding scheme. UTF-16 can encode all the characters in Unicode character set with 1 or 2 code units. If you are coming from the article I mentioned before, then you know what a code unit is. The code unit is the building block of the character’s encoding representation. For UTF-16, the code unit is 16 bits. If a character needs more memory, it can add another code unit making a total of 32 bits. Some old JavaScript engines might use UCS-2 encoding. UCS-2 is fixed-length encoding which uses only 16-bit to encode a character. Since UCS-2 and UTF-16 both use the UTF character set, their encoding is identical. Since UTF-16 can use 16 or 32 bits to encode a character, it can encode more character than UCS-2 which only uses 16 bits of memory per character. However, the USC-2 character encoding scheme is old and obsolete. Newer versions of the JavaScript engine uses the UTF-16 encoding scheme to encode characters in a string. As of ECMAScript 2015 (ES6), strings literals are stored in UTF-16 encoding⁰ and have full UTF-16 support. If you are coming from the article I mentioned before, then you know what a code point is. A code point is the integer value assigned a character that is used by a program to identify the character. The code point is important because no matter how a character is encoded, this unique decimal value will always point to the same character. For ASCII encoding, since we have 7 bits to encode a character, a total of 128 (2⁷) characters can be encoded with ASCII encoding with the value from 0 to 127. Hence the code point of the character ranges from 0 to 127. The code point of character A is 65₁₀ or 41₁₆. For UTF-16 encoding, we can encode a character in 16 bits or 32 bits. If you look at the UTF-16 encoding table, characters with a code point from 0₁₆ to FFFF₁₆ are represented with 1 code unit (16 bits) and characters with a code point from 10000₁₆ to 10FFFF₁₆ are represented with 2 code units (32 bits). In the UTF charset, the code point of character A is 65₁₀ or 41₁₆ and the character आ, the code point 906₁₆. Since the code point these characters fall in the 0₁₆ - FFFF₁₆ range, they can be encoded with just one code unit of UTF-16. Hence these character takes only 16 bits of memory. However, characters with a code point greater than FFFF₁₆ need two code units. For example, emoticon character 😊 (happy face) has code point 1F60A₁₆. Hence it needs two code units or 32 bits of memory to encode. When a character needs two code units, each code unit is called a surrogate code unit and together they are called surrogate pairs. For character 😊, the surrogate pair is D83D₁₆ DE0A₁₆. Unicode Escape We can store any character in a single using string literal in JavaScript, which is by putting character or sequence of characters in a single or double-quoted string. JavaScript will store this string in UTF-16 encoding for us. However, can also use code point of a character to represent a character. For this, we need to use \u prefix followed by the hexadecimal representation of the character’s code point in the UTF-16 encoding scheme. \u prefix is called Unicode Escape character. A code unit represented with Unicode Escape character forms Unicode Escape. Hence for characters encoded in a single code unit of UTF-16, a Unicode Escape looks like below. '\uXXXX' Here, XXXX is exactly 4 digit hexadecimal representation of the character’s code point. In this case, the code unit is identical to the code point. When characters are encoded with two code units, we need two Unicode Escapes for each surrogate code unit. '\uYYYY\uXXXX' 💡 When one or more unique escapes are put together, they are called Unicode Character Escape Sequence. ⦿ — — — — ⦿ ASCII Charset All the characters with the code point between 0 (0₁₀) and 7F₁₆ (127₁₀) belong to the ASCII character set. Since these characters are encoded with just one code unit of UTF-16, we need only one Unicode Escape to represent these characters individually. For example, For character A with code point 41₁₆ (65₁₀), its code unit looks exactly like its code point. Hence, its code point can be represented as 0041₁₆. Its Unicode Escape is rather simple. var characterA = '\u0041'; console.log( characterA ); // logs: A This applies to all the characters from the ASCII character set. If we want to represent characters from ASCII and extended-ASCII (like ISO 8859–1) character set only, we can use \x prefix which is called as the hexadecimal escape character. \x is followed by a single-byte hexadecimal number of 2 exact characters which is the code point of the character from Unicode character set. Hence, hexadecimal escape sequence for characters A© is as below. console.log( '\x41\xA9' ); // logs: A© ⦿ — — — — ⦿ UTF Charset UTF characters can either take one or two code units of UTF-16. Hence, how we write Unicode Escape depends on the code point of the character. For character आ with code point 906₁₆, since it can be encoded in just one code unit, its Unicode Escape looks like below. console.log( '\u0906' ); // logs: आ The character 😊 with code point 1F60A₁₆ needs two code units of UTF-16. D83D₁₆ and DE0A₁₆ are the values of each code unit (16-bit number). Hence the Unicode Escape Sequence of this character looks like below. console.log( '\uD83D\uDE0A' ); // logs: 😊 You can find UTF-16 code units of a character using this online tool. However, dealing with the UTF-16 character is not always easy, as we need prior knowledge of the number of code units a character can take. Also, each code point must be exactly 4 digit hexadecimal number to represent as a Unique Escape. Else, JavaScript won’t be able to decode the escape sequence, as shown in the below example. console.log('\u41'); Error: Uncaught SyntaxError: Invalid Unicode escape sequence console.log('\u0041'); A ES6 provides a new way to represent a character with Unicode Escapes using the code point of the character. Using \u{} notation, a character can be represented using its hexadecimal code point. console.log( '\u{41}' ); // logs: A console.log( '\u{906}' ); // logs: आ console.log( '\u{1F60A}' ); // logs: 😊 ⦿ — — — — ⦿ Mixed Characters Unique Escape is nothing but a fancy way to represent a character using the encoding information of the character. Hence, it is valid to mix regular characters in their encoded (plain) form with the Unicode Escape sequence. console.log( '\x41\u0020\uD83D\uDE0A\u0020\u006d\u0061\u006e' ); // A 😊 man console.log( 'A \uD83D\uDE0A man' ); // A 😊 man console.log( 'A \u{1F60A} man' ); // A 😊 man 💡 You can check this ASCII table to find out the code points of the characters from the ASCII character set. Or you can use this UTF character set. ⦿ — — — — ⦿ Length of a string In JavaScript, we use .length prototype property on a string that returns the number of characters in a string. console.log( 'Ab'.length ); // logs: 2 However, we have been deceived by this definition. In practice, String.prototype.legth returns the total number of UTF-16 code units used to encode the string. This is demonstrated in the below example. console.log( '😊'.length ); // logs: 2 Since the character 😊 needs two UTF-16 code units, we get 2 as the length of the string. There is no built-in method in JavaScript to return Unicode aware length of a string. But using ES6 spread operator, an easy fix would be to convert characters to an array and get its length, as shown in the below example.

https://medium.com/jspoint/introduction-to-character-text-encoding-in-web-4b315c4244f2

['Uday Hiwarale']

2020-09-01 06:45:39.996000+00:00

['Website', 'Programming', 'Web Development', 'Encoding', 'Internet']

Migrate a Keestash App from jQuery to Vue.Js

Keestash Logo When starting Keestash back in late 2018, I was focused on the PHP backend and how things might work “out of the box”. The frontend needed just some click handlers here and there and thus, jQuery was the choice. Now, about two years later, things have changed a bit. The frontend got a boost with Bootstrap, Webpack, a package manager (NPM). The overall code is splitted up into the core and several apps. Handling software in this way requires a key module (Keestash Core) and the app modules. And as you can imagine, jQuery is not the first choice for that kind of software architecture. Further, the frontend JavaScript (not limited to jQuery) code has grown and grown. While seeing how Keestash get’s improved makes me happy, however, on the other hand, jQuery is a real thorn in the eye. This blog accompanies the attempt to integrate a new JavaScript framework into the existing ecosystem: Vue.Js. Vue.Js should be introduced to Keestash without breaking existing functionality (without reinventing the wheel). I am aware of that many things described below will not be perfect. The aim is to introduce Vue.Js without breaking things and enabling a modular migration while extending and developing Keestash. Modular Keestash: Apps I believe in modular code structures and am firmly convinced that monolithic software structures will get unmaintainable. Therefore, I structured key components of Keestash as modular parts of source code, called apps. The central app in Keestash is the password_manager. A lot of PHP and jQuery code is here and disqualifies the app for being a frontend jQuery-Vue.Js migration candidate. Instead, I will keep this as it is and migrate another smaller app: installation. The installation process is splitted up into two apps: install_instance and install where the former installs the whole instance whereas the latter cares about the apps. As you can imagine, the installation process takes mainly place in the backend and has a small frontend part which makes both apps a perfect candidate to migrate to Vue.Js. Keestash Installation Process Keestash asks for several input data in order to install databases, checks file and directory permissions as well as for missing files or directories. If missing or incomplete, a simple web UI asks for the input or points to the files/directories and provides a button to check again. App installation is done by a similar way: Keestash checks installable app candidates and shows them to the user. When clicking on the install button, all apps in the background get installed. So far, this was a task for jQuery. App Webpack Config As I stated before, we are using Webpack for module bundling in Keestash. Since source code is — mostly — organized as apps, we can simply create a webpack config for each app. This decouples the code from the core, enables a modular structure for which we are looking for and lets us define app specific requirements. Each webpack configuration is merged into a “global” configuration. The global config contains default properties, such as the (config) modules defined, the “resolve” option which defines how modules are defined as well as the mode (NODE_ENV). The global webpack defines also rules that assert module files (such as files with vue, scss, etc. extensions). Because we are still using jQuery (unfortunately) next to Vue.Js, we need to consider module rules for both. Further, we need a loader for scss/sass and exclude code from node_modules: module: { rules: [ { exclude: /node_modules/, loader: 'babel-loader', }, { test: /\.js$/, loader: 'babel-loader' }, { test: /\.vue$/, exclude: /node_modules/, loader: ['vue-loader'] }, { test: /\.scss$/, use: [ 'vue-style-loader', 'css-loader', { loader: 'sass-loader', }, ], }, ] }, The global webpack configuration is merged with all app configs: const appModules = glob.sync("./apps/*/js/webpack.config.js"); .... const webpackConfig = [].concat( baseModule , toConfig(appModules, baseModule) ); function toConfig(modules, baseModule) { let conf = []; for (let i = 0; i < modules.length; i++) { const configPath = modules[i]; const config = require(configPath); config.mode = baseModule.mode; config.node = {fs: 'empty'}; config.module = Object.assign(baseModule.module, config.module || {}); config.resolve = Object.assign(baseModule.resolve, config.resolve || {}); conf.push(config); } return conf; } module.exports = webpackConfig; Notice that this approach is not optimal. There are other ways to for webpack merge, but this approach is acceptable for Keestash (so far). Vue.Js integration Vue.Js needs an div container to mount it’s virtual DOM. Further, before mounting, we need to provide plugins and — if we want use Vuex — configure the store[efn_note]Currently not used, but introduced in the future.[/efn_note]. The created Vue instance get’s an component injected that denotes the entry point to the app. We call this the “bootstrapping process”: import App from "./InstallInstance/App"; import BootstrapVue from "bootstrap-vue"; import Vue from 'vue'; import store from "../../../../lib/js/src/Store/store"; window.addEventListener( 'DOMContentLoaded' , bootstrap ); function bootstrap() { const vueConfig = { store, render: h => h(App) }; Vue.use(BootstrapVue); new Vue(vueConfig) .$mount("#install_instance_app"); } The bootstrapping is very simple and self-explanatory. Once the DOM is loaded, the bootstrap function is called which configures our Vue instance, tells it to use BootstrapVue-Plugin as well as the div container id to mount. Further Work Keestash Installation can now get implemented in Vue.Js in the frontend. The webpack config enables this for the install_instance app and all other apps. The bootstrapping has to be done for each app seperatelly, but however, Vue.Js enables us to think in components, allows us to reuse it and has overall a better and more modern development approach. There is a lot of thing to do with Keestash and Keestash apps. And we are also open for new ideas and contributors. If you are interested in developing and extending Keestash, just write me an email or open a PR on GitHub. Originally posted on my personal website: https://www.dogan-ucar.de/migrate-a-keestash-app-from-jquery-to-vue-js/

https://medium.com/@doganoo/migrate-a-keestash-app-from-jquery-to-vue-js-d9895aeb1d51

['Doğan Uçar']

2020-10-17 15:00:03.541000+00:00

['Vuejs', 'Migration', 'Jquery', 'PHP', 'Keestash']

The five themes that made ‘Star Wars’ an epic for the ages — Ultimate Movie Year

Ultimate Movie Year finds the best films from weekends past to build an all-star lineup of cinema. “Star Wars” Released May 25, 1977 Directed by George Lucas No movie’s been written or talked about more than “Star Wars.” The original film that took us to a galaxy far, far away was an immediate, pop culture juggernaut hit upon its release in 1977, and it’s only grown larger since then … for better and worse. “Star Wars” changed the way we absorb and engage with movies, including going to screenings on premiere night, buying merchandise to continue celebrating the franchise, and now fans passionately debating the highs and lows of a series that’s now a cultural religion. I refer to the first movie as “Star Wars,” although marketing has updated the title as “Episode IV: A New Hope.” Taken on its own, it’s a simple story: A young man heeding the call of adventure, alongside a mentor and a rogue, to rescue a princess from an evil dark lord. Creator and director George Lucas were inspired by several sources (including Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces,” which examined the hero’s journey). Still, when it’s all said and done, the simplicity works foundationally. The imaginative world-building on display is just icing on the cake. As a lifelong fan, I lament the toxicity that’s grown around the franchise, but if there’s one thing that’s aged better with time, it’s the original score by John Williams. Simply put, “Star Wars” has the greatest film music of all time, and it continues to pay dividends as the series has continued over the following decades. Williams excelled at composing beautiful arrangements that also drew feelings out of the audience like excitement, yearning, fear, and courage. “The films themselves showed us characters we hadn’t seen before and planets unimagined and so on, but the music was — this is actually George Lucas’s conception and a very good one — emotionally familiar,” Williams said in a 1997 interview with Film Score Monthly. “It was not music that might describe terra incognita but the opposite of that, music that would put us in touch with very familiar and remembered emotions.” The score also helps raise the epic stakes of this grand conflict, sometimes even better than the dialogue and action. Lucas said this was intentional, connecting “Star Wars” with the traditions of early cinema like silent films and weekly serials. “The music has a very large role in carrying the story, more than it would in a normal movie,” Lucas said. “In most movies, the story is carried by the dialogue. In Star Wars films, the music carries the story. Without that music there to smooth it out and take you from point A to point B in an elegant way, it becomes very jerky and confused, and the story doesn’t work very well. The film doesn’t work very well. Let’s take a look at some of the best musical moments from “Star Wars.” Main Title, or “A New Hope” The movie opens with the most recognized musical cue in cinematic history, a moment of silence before the loud horns blare, and a giant “Star Wars” logo fills the screen. The opening theme allows Williams to bring the audience into the story that’s about to unfold, filled with adventure, peril, heroism, and even a little romance. The scrolling text is meant to bring audiences up to speed on what’s happened so far, but it’s the music that truly sets the mood for us. It’s a perfect summarization of everything about Star Wars, and it’s the only music that’s remained unchanged as it continues to introduce every saga film. Princess Leia’s Theme, or “Help Me Obi-Wan Kenobi” Leia is one of the most essential characters in the entire franchise. Still, she was mainly the only active female in the original trilogy of movies, so she had the burden of being representative of a whole gender in this space fantasy. Fortunately, Carrie Fisher, who gave us one of the sharpest and most capable heroes in the saga, played her. The Williams theme compliments Leia, first heard when she entrusts R2-D2 with the plans of the Death Star. The theme begins with soft melodies of flutes and clarinets and gradually builds with more strength as other musicians join in with the repeated leitmotifs. Leia’s theme doesn’t get as much play as the other music on this list, but it’s still vital, as she is one of the only characters with her own individual melody and confirms the gentle strength of Fisher’s hero. It was also the highlight of a memorable scene in 2017’s “The Last Jedi” when Leia is put in mortal peril, adding real drama a year after Fisher passed away. Blown out into space, Leia floats lifelessly, but then the music stirs. She opens her eyes, and she saves herself. You have to be made of stone to not get emotional at that moment. Binary Sunset, or “Use The Force” Early on in “Star Wars,” Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), our hero, faces rejection from his family to move on with his life. He stares out wistfully to the horizon, as the two suns of Tatooine set in the distance. It’s the central scene of “Star Wars” that summarizes Luke’s motivation: He knows there’s something out there that calls to him, but isn’t quite sure what it is. At this moment, Williams drops the soul of the Star Wars franchise for the first time, a leitmotif now known as the Force theme. The Force theme connects us with the heart of Star Wars and is tied to its most memorable moments, from the beginning whispers of the teaser trailer to “The Phantom Menace” to Rey accepting her destiny in “The Force Awakens.” The motif and visuals of the binary sunset even return in “The Last Jedi,” as Luke faces his fate to bring it all full circle. And to think some people don’t like “The Last Jedi,” which is crazy! Cantina Band, or “A Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy” Both visually and musically, the Cantina scene in “Star Wars” opened up a new world, and what the franchise could be. The majority of the movie falls into a good vs. evil conflict with humanoids. Luke and Obi-Wan search for a pilot in the Cantina, and encounter dozens of different alien races are socializing in a bar. For the first time, we see a world and galaxy beyond the central conflict, and we are only following one story. For the scene, Williams composes a fast-paced jazzy space song for the band to play in the background. Musically, it also stands apart from the rest of the score. Williams said he tried to imagine what it would be like for an alien race to interpret and play the music of Benny Goodman’s swing band. It’s a fun sound, and one that lets us take a break from the space opera we’ve been engaging with. The Throne Room, or “Great shot, kid!” In the final moments of “Star Wars,” the heroes celebrate their victory over the evil forces with an awards ceremony, free of dialogue, and set to the triumphant march of Williams. The Throne Room music has similarities to the main title but feels like a salute to the adventure we were all just on, as the cast takes a spiritual bow to the audience to send us out. Having just one film theme become instantly recognizable to the populace is a feat in itself. Still, Williams wrote several iconic compositions in “Star Wars,” and then many more throughout the series. The score to “The Empire Strikes Back” is excellent as well, as it introduces the famous Imperial March that accompanies Darth Vader, the melodic Yoda theme, and the thrilling chase through the asteroid field. It’s just as good as the “Star Wars” score, but it would not be possible without building upon the original. The score is just one of the fantastic elements that brought “Star Wars” to life in 1977. While the reputation of Lucas absorbed damage following his direction on the prequels, the original film is an astonishing accomplishment. He crafted a sound archetypal story about heroes and villains and surrounded himself with master artists, craftsmen, and technicians that brought their best, most creative work to the screen. “Lucas combines excellent comedy and drama and progresses it with exciting action on tremendously effective space battles,” wrote Ron Peddington in his original Hollywood Reporter review of the movie. “Likeable heroes on noble missions and despicable villains capable of the most dastardly deeds are all wrapped up in some of the most spectacular special effects ever to illuminate a motion-picture screen. The result is spellbinding and totally captivating on all levels.” “Star Wars” was a genuine phenomenon when it was released, breaking the record for the biggest box office gross of all time with $461 million in sales, still good enough to remain in the top 20 in 2020. It was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Lucas. It ended up winning seven, including a Special Achievement Award and Best Original Score for Williams. The movie rates high on the American Film Institute’s Best Films list and the music is ranked first on the AFI Film Scores edition. I suspect if the Academy Awards ever did an all-time ceremony, Williams would again walk away with a statue for his work on “Star Wars.” The legacy of the film is almost too vast to contemplate. At a basic level, it launched an entire franchise of movies, but also connected books, television series, games, toys, theme park attractions, and other assorted merchandise. Behind-the-scenes features and documentaries about Star Wars is almost a genre into itself. And then there is the fandom. There are millions of Star Wars fans, but each has found their own way into it, and thus, have a different interpretation of what is good about Star Wars. In many cases, their love has become an entitlement, leading to toxic discussions, negativity, and gatekeeping that have become super-sized with social media. The common critique about the community, “Nobody hates Star Wars more than Star Wars fans,” is correct because nobody else would let the franchise live in their heads rent-free. I still love it because of its contributions to cinematic innovation and its grand, epic mythos. I like thinking about my childhood fandom when my memories are more tied to reliving moments through action figures and baseball cards than seeing the movies in theaters, and I enjoy new contributions like “The Last Jedi,” “The Mandalorian,” and “The Clone Wars.” There’s so much of it now that it’s easy to ignore the stuff that’s not good. However, if I could only keep one aspect from Star Wars, the natural choice is Williams’s soundtrack. Each score tells a story on its own, as it inspires, haunts, and excites through the incredible compositions. Listening to the soundtrack allows me to remember my favorite moments from the films, but is beautiful enough that I can be lost in my own worlds for a while. More than four decades after its debut, the music of “Star Wars” remains a foundational element of our shared cultural memory. Given the onslaught of choices we face in culture, John Williams has become our modern master classical composer by creating orchestral music that is instantly recognizable around the world. I believe half the reason the current movies score such big box office numbers is that they are marketed with the classic themes composed by Williams. All it takes is a few notes from your childhood, and you have instantly transported back into a galaxy far, far away. “What is the greatest film score,” asked composer Nicolas Buc on “The Art of the Score” podcast. “‘Star Wars’ is definitely up there. Greatest is hard to quantify, but yes, I would have to say it’s one of the most influential film scores ever written. It really caused, not only in film but with music, a whole generation to look at the way we listen to film music ever since.” The Force is with us, always, through the work of Williams. The ultimate score for the Ultimate Movie Year. The Weekend: Memorial Day weekend is one of the biggest weekends of the year for movie fans. It’s an extra day off to catch a flick at the theaters and gives us a signal to start looking forward to summer. In cinema, that weekend tradition started with “Star Wars” in 1977, established the template and rollout of the biggest movies of the year. For the next 25 years, the most high-profile film on the calendar was released on Memorial Day weekend, and grossed enough money to rank in the top 10 box office draws of the year. “Star Wars” is not only excellent in all the ways we go to the movies for, but also its legacy as one of the first movies of the so-called summer blockbuster cemented its place for inclusion in the Ultimate Movie Year. The success of “Star Wars” also set the stage for the release of the sequels. “The Empire Strikes Back” was released on Memorial Day weekend in 1980, and is considered as one of the best sequels of all time, and possibly even better than the original. It would be a strong contender for the Ultimate Movie Year as it extends and deepens the Star Wars mythos even farther than the original, but as great as it is, it stands on the shoulders of the 1977 film as the music does. “Return of the Jedi” followed this weekend in 1983 to close out the original trilogy. Lucas returned to the franchise with the first of the prequels, “The Phantom Menace,” which debuted in theaters in 1999. It would mark the last of a Memorial Day weekend premiere for the Star Wars franchise; the next two prequels were released a week earlier in the calendar, and most of the recent Disney-era films were released in mid-December. However, “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” was released in this familiar spot in 2018. While “Star Wars” welcomed audiences into a space fantasy, director Ridley Scott modernized science fiction in film in 1979 to let them know no one can hear you scream. “Alien” turned the idea of a spaceship on its head, designing a vessel that resembled more of an oil rig than a smooth, shiny future. The workers upon the ship encounter a new organism that turns into a vicious xenomorph, and all hell breaks loose. “Alien” showed another side, grittier of the future, creating another film series and influencing many of the science fiction movies that followed, including “Blade Runner,” “The Terminator,” and “Total Recall.” The second sequel in the series, “Alien 3,” also debuted on Memorial Day weekend in 1990, and was the feature film debut of director David Fincher. Scott would go on to direct another modern classic, “Thelma and Louise,” with Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis. The “women on the run from the law” action drama was released in 1991. Circling back to that glorious year of 1980 when audiences were just starting to wrap their heads around the events of “The Empire Strikes Back,” one would think what movie could be crazier than that ending? Welp, you didn’t have to wait long, because Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” came out the same weekend. Based on the famous horror novel written by Stephen King (who hated the movie adaptation), “The Shining” sees Jack Nicholson take his family up to an empty remote hotel resort to care for during the winter, and well, all work and no play makes Jack go a bit crazy. Despite the misgivings of the author, Kubrick’s adaptation would become one of the most stunning and astonishing horror films of all time. Imagine what went on in the minds of the people who saw “The Empire Strikes Back” and “The Shining” for the first time on the same weekend. The summer of 1982 is probably one of the best three-month spans of movies for an entire generation. That year’s Memorial Day offering was “The Road Warrior,” the sequel to the cult hit “Mad Max” from director George Miller and starring a young Mel Gibson. The second movie really expands Miller’s vision of a post-apocalyptic future, becoming an influential work for many young filmmakers. Miller would top his work here more than three decades later with “Mad Max: Fury Road.” Gibson would go on to become a director himself, helming the historical adventure drama, “Braveheart,” which premiered here in 1995 and went on to win several Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. Once the Star Wars trilogy concluded, another Lucas property, collaborating with Steven Spielberg, secured the coveted Memorial Day weekend opening. “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” opened during the holiday weekend in 1984, followed by “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” in 1989 and “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” in 2008. Spielberg also directed the sequel “The Lost World: Jurassic Park,” which opened in 1997. A star for years, Tom Cruise mostly avoided the kind of long-running film series many of his peers signed onto until he appeared in Brian DePalma’s “Mission: Impossible” in 1996. Based on the old spy show television series, Cruise and company successfully updated that world for a modern audience. “Mission: Impossible 2” recruited John Woo as a director when it was released Memorial Day weekend in 2000. While the Mission: Impossible series proved to be successful for more than two decades, the other sequels were released at different weeks of the year. By the time the Fast and Furious franchise became a global sensation, the heat you could get from opening your movie on Memorial Day had largely vanished. Still, the series was coming off its best installment, 2011’s “Fast Five,” when it premiered “Fast and Furious 6” this weekend in 2013, which speaks to how confident the producers were at the moment. That confidence paid off, as the franchise continues to get bigger and bigger. Other franchise sequels include “Rambo: First Blood Part II” in 1985; “Beverly Hills Cop 2” in 1987; “Back to the Future Part III” in 1990; “Godzilla” in 1998; “Shrek 2” in 2004; “X-Men: The Last Stand” in 2006; “The Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” in 2007; “Terminator: Salvation” in 2009; “Shrek Forever After” in 2010; “The Hangover Part II” in 2011; “Men in Black 3” in 2012;” and “X-Men: Days of Future Past” in 2014. That’s a lot of re-heated content for not much quality, and I’d suspect the run of subpar to horrible sequels that began in 2006 through 2012 did as much as anything to kill the attraction of a Memorial Day weekend opening. There have been several amazing films released to counter the big bangs if you’re in the mood for movies without explosions. Terry Gilliam brought his surreal touch to the adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” in 1998. Coming off the success of his breakout film “Memento,” director Christopher Nolan followed up with the thriller “Insomnia,” starring Al Pacino, Robin Williams, and Hillary Swank, in 2002. The distinctive Wes Anderson released one of his most beautiful and heartfelt films, “Moonrise Kingdom,” in 2012. Director Richard Linklater and stars Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy reunited to conclude their trilogy in 2013’s “Before Midnight.” Finally, Olivia Wilde updated the high school seniors comedy genre with her directorial debut, “Booksmart,” a 2019 film starring Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein. Other notable films include “Willow” in 1988, “Bruce Almighty” in 2003, “Madagascar” in 2005, “MacGruber” in 2010, and the live-action “Aladdin” remake in 2019. Next Week: “Wonder Woman”

https://ultimatemovieyear.medium.com/the-five-themes-that-made-star-wars-an-epic-for-the-ages-ultimate-movie-year-d5f892636f23

['Mark Ciemcioch']

2020-05-21 11:39:09.320000+00:00

['Star Wars', 'Ultimate Movie Year', 'Film', 'Movies', 'George Lucas']

From Predator To Virtually Prey

It’s been eleven days since I’ve posted a single thing on Medium. I probably wouldn’t even be writing this story right now if I wasn’t between freelance assignments with a newly acquired client. Over the last two business weeks, I’ve been lucky enough to secure writing work outside my creative niche which has actually paid me 50 times more in two weeks than I’ve ever made here in an entire month. So why even spend my time writing this? Because I can, that’s why. I can and I will. Am I concerned nobody’s going to read what I write? Shit folks, before choosing to step back I went from an average of 2 to 3 hundred reads a day, to 20. Yeah, you read that right, 20 reads a day. And that was before I chose to step away for a bit. So, no. If you don’t read this, it means you won’t be reading this, so I guess I can tell you I don’t give a shit. I mean, because you aren’t reading this, right? Besides my obvious lackadaisical attitude toward whether or not you read what I have to say, remember this. I pay my dues each month for the privilege to read and the privilege to write. I can write what I want to — read when I want to — and sometimes do neither whenever I want to. Just like the last eleven days. Which has been interesting, by the way. A few of you sent me emails trying to get a read on my absence wondering if I was “right with the world”. Of the 1.6K people following me, only three or four reached out to see what was going on and inquire as to why I wasn’t posting anymore. For you that did, bless you and I love you for it. For those that didn’t even realize I had backed away uh <fill in the blank with any expletive you wish> yourselves and the horse, you rode in on. Hell, I even backed away leaving a Henry James story right in the middle. And nobody said a flipping word. Nobody shot me an email bitching me out and telling me to finish what I started. No one complained. No one said a damned word. It was like with the exception of only a handful of people, everyone in this community turned their backs on me. Maybe I deserved it, and then maybe I didn’t. But one thing this experience taught me. We’re all here thinking we’re kicking ass and taking names when we’re not. We think we’re the predators in this game of words? Oh, hell no. We’re the prey. Every dime we shell out to Big Ev won’t come around to us, ever. Never the entire dime, just a few pennies. For a large percentage of us, that’s how it’s supposed to be. We’re the fodder, the prey that keeps the Ev boat sailing along. We’re what feeds Ev’s monolith. Think of us as tiny rodents scurrying from the protective shadows and Ev and his folks as a flock of wood hawks or night owls flying high in the night sky. They’re constantly circling, always looking for another of us rodents to come out from our hiding places and take another chance. Patiently circling high above waiting. Waiting for us to take another chance with the narcotic allure of this platform which we use to feed our ever-growing addiction. And when we do, when we once again, score an eightball or a dime with a story or two, we start believing the euphoric dreams once again. We tell ourselves we might be able to make a little change with our writing on this platform. And Big Ev and his flocks of predators simply smile at each and then draw straws to see which of them is going to get to take us out. We may be writers and we may write every day on this platform, but most of us never intended to make a decent living here. In fact, Big Ev and his folks are counting on that fact. They’re making bank on the numbers of writers here who don’t give a shit whether they make any pocket change or not. But whether you hope to start making some coin or you don’t to predators like Big Ev and his flocks, they don’t really care as long as you continue to pay your dues. This platform doesn’t care whether we want to make some dough or don’t give a shit that we do. In the eyes of Big Ev and his birds, we’re all the same. This platform lets us drop this platform’s acid and trip euphorically thinking we’re the predator. All the while encouraging us to think we’re rocking it when in actuality we’re nothing but a food source for Ev’s success. After three years of this addiction, and then spending two weeks getting sober (and making more with my writing than I ever did here) I’m learning to see things a little more clear. For so many years I had the blinders on, listening to the siren’s call, buying off on the bullshit, taking hits on Ev’s bong hoping to get a little higher. Not any more. Now when I come here to write, it won’t be because I’m trying to support my retirement check. It’ll be to say something when I have something to say. Or it will be to read some of the shit writers who think they’re so great on one of these cult-driven publications and laugh my ass off. Hey, that’s entertainment in my book and it’s sure worth $5.00 bucks a month. Thank you so much for reading. You didn’t have to, but I’m certainly glad you did. Let’s keep in touch: paul@pgbarnett.com © P.G. Barnett, 2020. All Rights Reserved.

https://medium.com/dark-sides-of-the-truth/from-predator-to-virtually-prey-c02a29003225

['P.G. Barnett']

2020-10-15 21:16:48.521000+00:00

['Writers On Medium', 'Medium Publications', 'Money', 'Dark Sides Writing', 'Scam']

Ansible and Its Use Cases

Before understanding what is ansible let us first understand what are the problems that were faced by industries before Ansible. Let us take a little flashback to the beginning of networked computing when deploying and managing servers reliably and efficiently has been a challenge. Previously, system administrators managed servers by hand, installing software, changing configurations, and administering services on individual servers. As data centers grew, and hosted applications became more complex, administrators realized they couldn’t scale their manual systems management as fast as the applications they were enabling. It also hampered the velocity of the work of the developers since the development team was agile and releasing software frequently, but IT operations were spending more time configuring the systems. That’s why server provisioning and configuration management tools came to flourish. Consider the tedious routine of administering a server fleet. We always need to keep updating, pushing changes, copying files on them, etc. These tasks make things very complicated and time-consuming. But let me tell you that there is a solution to the above-stated problem. The solution is — Ansible. What is Ansible? Ansible is a software tool that provides simple but powerful automation for cross-platform computer support. It is primarily intended for IT professionals, who use it for application deployment, updates on workstations and servers, cloud provisioning, configuration management, intra-service orchestration, and nearly anything a systems administrator does on a weekly or daily basis. Ansible doesn’t depend on agent software and has no additional security infrastructure, so it’s easy to deploy. While Ansible may be at the forefront of automation, systems administration, and DevOps, it’s also useful to everyday users. Ansible allows us to configure not just one computer, but potentially a whole network of computers at once, and using it requires no programming skills. Instructions written for Ansible are human-readable. Whether we’re entirely new to computers or an expert, Ansible files are easy to understand. What can Ansible Automate? Provisioning: Creating a suitable environment for the application/ software to live is necessary. Ansible provides a way to automate the environment created for the application’s existence. Configuration Management: Perform a wide variety of configuration tasks, such as start/ stop services, change the configuration of a system, device, or application, etc. Application Deployment: Automate the defining of deployment with Ansible and manage the deployment using Ansible tower. This makes the entire application cycle from production to deployment efficient and manageable. Continuous Delivery: Creating and managing a continuous integration/ continuous delivery pipeline can get cumbersome. That’s where Ansible steps in and makes the developer’s lives easier. Security and compliance: Working with the projects, always sets boundaries and is integrated with the company’s security policies. Having security policies integrated automatically with the deployment can make complying with policies easier. Orchestration: An entire project is a collection of many different instances having a different configuration. Ansible merges and manages these different instances as a whole. What is Ansible Architecture? Ansible architecture is fairly straightforward. See the below diagram understand the Ansible architecture: As we can see, in the above image that the Ansible automation engine has a direct interaction with the users who write playbooks to execute the Ansible Automation engine. It also interacts with cloud services and Configuration Management Database (CMDB). Components in Ansible Architecture : Networking: Ansible can also be used to automate different networks. Ansible uses the same simple, powerful, and agentless automation framework IT operations and development are already using. It uses a data model (a playbook or role) that is separate from the Ansible automation engine that easily spans different network hardware. Hosts: The hosts in the Ansible architecture are just node systems that are getting automated by Ansible. It can be any kind of machine — Windows, Linux, RedHat, etc. Playbooks: Playbooks are simple files written in YAML format which describes the tasks to be executed by Ansible. Playbooks can declare configurations, but they can also orchestrate the steps of any manual ordered process, even if it contains jump statements. They can launch tasks synchronously or asynchronously. CMDB: It is a repository that acts as a data warehouse for IT installations. It holds data relating to a collection of IT assets (commonly referred to as configuration items (CI)), as well as describes relationships between such assets. Cloud: It is a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet to store, manage, and process data, rather than a local server. We can launch our resources and instances on the cloud and connect to your servers. The Ansible Automation engine consists of: Inventories: Ansible inventories are lists of hosts (nodes) along with their IP addresses, servers, databases, etc. which need to be managed. Ansible then takes action via a transport — SSH for UNIX, Linux, or Networking devices and WinRM for Windows system. Ansible inventories are lists of hosts (nodes) along with their IP addresses, servers, databases, etc. which need to be managed. Ansible then takes action via a transport — SSH for UNIX, Linux, or Networking devices and WinRM for Windows system. APIs: APIs in Ansible are used as transport for Cloud services, public or private. APIs in Ansible are used as transport for Cloud services, public or private. Modules: Modules are executed directly on remote hosts through playbooks. The modules can control system resources, like services, packages, or files (anything really), or execute system commands. Modules do it by acting on system files, installing packages, or making API calls to the service network. There are over 450 Ansible-provided modules that automate nearly every part of your environment. Modules are executed directly on remote hosts through playbooks. The modules can control system resources, like services, packages, or files (anything really), or execute system commands. Modules do it by acting on system files, installing packages, or making API calls to the service network. There are over 450 Ansible-provided modules that automate nearly every part of your environment. Plugins: Plugins allow to the execution of Ansible tasks as a job build step. Plugins are pieces of code that augment Ansible’s core functionality. Ansible ships with a number of handy plugins, and you can easily write your own. Advantages Of Using Ansible Agentless –There are no agents or software deployed on the clients/servers to work with Ansible. The connection can be done through SSH or using Python. English Like Language — To use the Ansible, configure, and deploy the infrastructure is very simple and it is English like the language used called YAML. Modular — The Ansible uses modules to automate, configure, deploy, and orchestrate the IT Infrastructure. There are around 750 + modules built-in Ansible. Efficient — There are no servers, daemons, or databases required for Ansible to work. Features — Ansible comes with a whole lot of features and can be used to manage the Operating systems, IT Infrastructure, networks, servers, and services in very little time. Secure and consistent — Since Ansible uses SSH and Python it is very secure and the operations are flawless. Reliable — The Ansible Playbook can be used to write programs or modules and can be used to manage IT without any downside. Performance- The Ansible’s performance is excellent and has very little latency. Low Overhead — As it is agentless and does not require any servers, daemons, or databases it can provide a lot of space in the systems and has low overhead in terms of deployment. Simple — It is very simple to use and is supported by YAML Ansible Case Study: Arista Arista’s software-driven cloud networking model is helping to redefine cloud architectures as data centers adapt to achieve better agility and economy. Arista enables the use of standard provisioning and automation systems such as Ansible through our open Linux approach, bringing Net-Ops and Dev-Ops unification. So here Ansible helps Arista to improve speed and accuracy as well as when Arista uses Ansible it doesn’t require third-party EOS extensions and additional switch configuration. Arista has complete control of your configuration with idempotency built-in with Ansible that makes it intelligent, dynamic decisions in your playbook. Now Arista enables continuous compliance of EOS configuration with the configuration of Ansible. Ansible Case Study — A Real Life Usage by NASA Challenged face by NASA : NASA needed to move 65 applications from a traditional hardware-based data center to a cloud-based environment for better agility and cost savings. The rapid timeline resulted in many applications being migrated ‘as it is to a cloud environment. This created an environment that spanned multiple virtual private clouds (VPCs) and AWS accounts that could not be managed easily. Even simple things, like ensuring every system administrator had access to every server, or simple security patching, were extremely cumbersome. The solution was to leverage Ansible Tower to manage and schedule the cloud environment. Hence, to solve the problems that NASA had with a lack of centralized management and a diverse environment, they evaluated multiple solutions and decided on the implementation of Ansible Tower. NASA is now leveraging Ansible Tower to manage their environment in a very organized and scheduled way. How NASA is using Ansible: Ansible Tower provided a dashboard that provided the status summary of all hosts and jobs which allowed NASA to group all contents and manage access permissions across different departments. It also helped to split up the organization by associating content and control permission for groups as well. Ansible Tower is a web-based interface for managing Ansible. One of the top items in Ansible users’ wishlists was an easy-to-use UI for managing quick deployments and monitoring one’s configurations. Ansible management came up with Ansible Tower in response. Further, Ansible divided the tasks among teams by assigning various roles. It managed the clean-up of old job history, activity streams, data marked for deletion, and system tracking info. Refer to the diagram below to understand how Ansible has simplified the work of NASA. As a result, NASA has achieved the following efficiencies: • NASA web app servers are being patched routinely and automatically through Ansible Tower with a very simple 10-line Ansible playbook. • Ansible is also being used to remediate security issues and was leveraged to re-mediate OpenSSL issues. This not only saved time but allowed us to quickly re-mediate a very daunting security issue. • Every single week, both the full and mobile versions of www.nasa.gov are updated via Ansible, generally only taking about 5 minutes to do. • OS-level user accounts for mission-critical staff are continually checked and created if missing. Now, everyone who needs access has access, even if that means adding or removing a user almost instantly from all servers. • NASA has also integrated Ansible facts into their CMDB, CloudAware, for better management visibility of the entire AWS inventory. As a result, it became possible to organize the inventory of AWS resources in a very granular way that was not possible before. • Ansible is also used to ensure that the environment is compliant with necessary Federal security standards as outlined by FedRAMP and other regulatory requirements. Results: Achieving near real-time RAM and disk monitoring (accomplished without agents) Provisioning OS Accounts across an entire environment in under 10 minutes Baselining standard AMIs (Amazon Machine Image) went from 1 hour of manual configuration to becoming an invisible and seamless background process Application stacks set up time reduced from 1–2 hours to under 10 minutes per stack. The Wrap-Up I have done my best to give you all a basic idea about Ansible and How it provides benefits in the current Scenario. In the upcoming days I am going to publish lots of articles on different automation Tools and other Technologies, So definitely follow me on Medium. Here is my LinkedIn profile if u have any queries definitely comment below or DM me on Linkedin Thanks, Everyone for reading. That’s all… Signing Off… 😊

https://medium.com/@abhayagarwal4483/ansible-and-its-use-cases-3cdcc2b4a18c

[]

2021-03-18 18:15:53.115000+00:00

['Automation', 'NASA', 'Ansible Playbook', 'Ansible', 'Benefits']

How to be the first product marketer

Many startups I work with haven’t hired their first marketing person yet. When they do, that person is going to be focused on product marketing. I help hire them, and sometimes mentor them, as they go through the trials of being the first person in a role. Some things I’ve learned from being that person, hiring that person, and helping that person succeed. Start before you start There are things you should understand before day one, that you can discover during the interview process. What does product marketing mean here? How do they think about it? What specific business goals do they think product marketing will advance? What specific challenges do they have in marketing right now? What does everyone think you’re going to be doing: the founders, your boss, product, engineering? Chances are that you will be working for founders, working with people, and reporting to a manager-who are largely unfamiliar with marketing. You should make sure you know what it means to them and what they think it’s going to do for the company. Make a dent Software engineers will often ship something on their first day. That’s considered part of successful onboarding. As the first product marketer, no one is going to onboard you. If you started before you started, you should have a list of marketing challenges the company is facing right now. Figure out what you can move the needle on and do it as a mark of your own successful onboarding. On day one. Talk to everyone Talk to everyone you can get your hands on-founders, product people, engineers, sales, support, customer success, users, customers, buyers, people who didn’t buy, people who churned, investors. Everyone. You’re trying to get a feel for what really matters about the company and what it’s building. What did the company build? Who did they build it for? Why does it matter? Why do people use? Why don’t people use it? Why did they stop? Why did people buy it? Why didn’t they? Why did they churn? What would happen if it was taken away? What were they doing before? How does it make their life, or at least the workday, better? How does it fit into their workflow? What are their favorite things about it? What about the least favorite? Was it hard to figure out what it does at first? What’s the experience of trying to understand what it does via the website, docs, etc? What’s their wishlist for the product? How do they describe it to other people inside their company? Outside their company? How would they explain it to a peer in another organization? What does it compete against? Where does it fit in the landscape of other ways to do the same thing? What do the founders want it to be compared to? What does it get compared to in real life? Find the gaps Pay special attention to the difference between how people inside the company talk about these things vs how users and customers do. Write down what you hear from the company so everyone can see it. Do the same with what you hear from customers. Then drive a conversation about the differences between the two, so you can start figuring out how to close the gaps. This is the start of your messaging and positioning platform. In a lot of ways, this is your one job. This will be the thing you return to again and again to make sure that you’re communicating the right thing to the right people at the right time. Not just in emails, or on the website, but also in things like docs or the messages that users get from the product. Here’s a basic messaging & positioning template I made as a starting point. Feel free to copy and put it to work! And read: 10 questions that tell your startup story and turn it into great messaging. Can you answer them? Understand users Through this process, you should begin to develop a deep understanding of your users and customers. This is important. How can you figure out how to communicate with a person you don’t work to understand? For every person that your product touches or that is involved in the decision making process of whether or not to use or buy it, you need to have on the tip or your tongue and in the front of your mind: What their daily pains are What their goals are How they’re measured What success looks like for them in their role in their company What their pressures and constraints are Who or what influences their thinking about using or buying products like yours Learn the product It’s incredibly hard to build internal credibility as a product marketer if you don’t know the product as well as a product manager. Which might be a big task. But I guarantee that it’s worth the work. Go through a product onboarding, learn how it’s used and what features matter most Shadow anyone who gives demos or pitches, learn to do it yourself Attend user research Look at all the dashboards, queries, reports, and metrics that exist about usage and user behavior You should be able to, in a pinch, act at as an acceptable product manager or sales engineer. Write it down Write it down. Write everything down. Make sure that everyone can see it. For the company to be pulling in the same direction, everyone not only has to be building the same thing-they have to be doing it for the same people, thinking and talking about it in the same way. Drive growth If you can do all these things, you can help real growth. Write copy for the website, for emails, for campaigns, for ads, for landing pages, for talks, for chat bots, for in product communication, for press pitches, for press releases, for analyst briefings Run webinars, create videos, write blog posts Interview customers for case studies and then create them Create things like pitch decks, data sheets, and email templates Help people understand the product better, faster Launch something Bring a new feature or product to market. Figure out how to talk about it, where to launch it, whether to try to get into the press, or if you want to launch on Product Hunt, etc. Once you know what you’re launching and how you’re going to launch it, the rest is logistics. Remember, every successful launch does exactly one thing -drive more growth. Keep things connected Keeping product, sales, marketing-and maybe some other functions-connected is going to fall on you. Because product marketing sits at the intersection of these disciplines. How do sales people know what’s shipping and how to pitch it? How does product know what the biggest functionality frictions are that exist in competitive deals? How do performance marketers know what keywords to run campaigns against for a new feature? Become an important voice Become the voice of the customer and the market. You want people to look to you to know if a value proposition will appeal to customers. Or if a feature is going to be competitive. Keep the company informed of what’s going on in the industry. Stay up on what your competitors are doing. Know how users, buyers, competitors, journalists, analysts, bloggers, and influencers are thinking about your space in general and your company+products in particular. Bring that viewpoint to everything you do. Ask for help You’re not going to know everything. No one does. Ask for help! Find a mentor! Tell your founders you’d like an advisor! Embrace change Any job where you’re the first doing something is going to change over time. Embrace the ever changing nature of your role! You might go from creating messaging to training sales to writing email copy to interviewing customers to presenting on a webinar to briefing analysts to preparing the CEO for a Techcrunch interview-all in the same week. You might report into the CEO on year, the VP Product the next, and a new VP Marketing the year after that. You might be the difference between success and failure, so make the most of it. :) — Have questions? Find me at twitter.com/aneel.

https://medium.com/@aneel/how-to-be-the-first-product-marketer-9241fb2852af

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2020-12-23 13:56:46.023000+00:00

['Startup', 'Startup Lessons', 'Marketing', 'Product Marketing', 'Startup Marketing']

Eat these foods to reduce the risk of liver infection in winter know how to keep liver healthy and strong

Eat these foods to reduce the risk of liver infection in winter know how to keep liver healthy and strong MyPhpHost Dec 26, 2020·2 min read Liver Disease Home Remedies: Cinnamon is considered effective in curing liver disorders. It is said that taking one spoon of cinnamon on an empty stomach daily can make the liver strong. Diet for Strong Liver: Due to poor diet and lifestyle, liver damage is seen more in today’s time. Liver is the second largest organ of the human body. The liver plays an important role in ensuring that the physiological system functions smoothly. Metabolism, energy accumulation and the removal of waste toxins from the body is the function of the liver. But at present, liver is weakened due to obesity or excessive consumption of alcohol and unhealthy diet. Due to this there is an increased risk of serious diseases like fatty liver, liver cirrhosis, hepatitis and liver cancer. To avoid these troubles, people should include some essential foods in their diet. Turmeric: According to health experts, turmeric has been considered very effective for liver. The anti-bacterial and anti-oxidant properties present in it make the liver infection free. Those who are prone to liver problems should take turmeric. Oatmeal: People with weak liver are also advised to eat oatmeal. Oatmeal contains abundant fiber. This serves to make the digestive system stronger, as well as easier to digest soluble fiber. This causes less pressure on the liver. Coffee: Coffee is also helpful in reducing the risk of liver diseases. Drinking a limited amount of this caffeine-rich beverage makes it easier to control liver enzyme content. Also, coffee is beneficial in protecting the liver from infection. Green Tea: The anti-oxidants present in Green Tea are helpful in keeping the liver healthy. These drinks are effective in improving liver functioning. Consumption of green tea ensures that fat and inflammation surrounding the liver can be removed. Fatty fish: Omega-3 fatty acids are found in abundance in fatty fish. Additionally, it has anti-carcinogenic, anti-oxidative and anti-inflammatory properties that strengthen the liver Cinnamon: Cinnamon is considered effective in curing liver related disorders. It is said that taking one spoon of cinnamon on an empty stomach daily can make the liver strong. Subscribe by Email Follow Updates Articles from This Blog via Email

https://medium.com/@myphphostin/eat-these-foods-to-reduce-the-risk-of-liver-infection-in-winter-know-how-to-keep-liver-healthy-and-4170b4872384

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2020-12-26 18:23:21.532000+00:00

['Healthcare', 'Health Foods', 'Healthy Lifestyle', 'Healt', 'Health Recipe']