fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Kyle Meagher (Anne With An E) Unveils “Know Better”
By: Randall Radic
Tags: Music Video, Anne With An E, Kyle Meagher, Music, Pop Rock

Kyle Meagher

Stylish pop-rock with emotional imminence.

Pop artist and actor Kyle Meagher launches the music video for “Know Better,” a song about the beguiling nostalgia of love, expectancy, and the pain of realization.

Speaking to the song’s genesis, Kyle shares, “I sent a message to an old girlfriend to see if she wanted to get together. She read the message but she never replied. I realized that she hadn’t changed, and it sparked this crazy lyric of ‘I should know better, that she’s no better’ and that was my inspiration!”

Originally from Ottawa, Ontario, Kyle was a bit of a musical prodigy, participating in music camps when he was only three-years-old, as well as taking piano, guitar, and saxophone lessons, which naturally led to him singing and playing in rock bands in middle school and high school.

Kyle skyrocketed to international attention with his continuing role on Anne With An E, CBC/Netflix’s popular series, followed by his debut EP, Beats in a Bagel Shop, which accrued millions of streams on Spotify. Ever creative, Kyle then developed, wrote, and produced the EP as a visual album. The visual album attracted a number of awards, including selection by The Orlando Film Festival and the Global Music Awards.

Kyle Meagher

If not for an fusion of luck, the sharp eye of an agent, and what seems tantamount to divine intervention, instead of acting and singing, Kyle might be playing in the NHL. It happened like this: Kyle and his mother went to an audition, along many other wannabe young actors. The line of participants wound on forever. Reluctant to miss hockey practice, Kyle and his mother were about to take off, when an agent noticed them getting ready to bolt, and escorted Kyle to the head of the line.

The agent’s gift for spotting talent resulted in Kyle surfacing in commercials, catalogs, television, and films.

“Know Better” opens on shimmering colors accented by a hefty snarling guitar riding an alt-rock melody flavored with coruscating pop tangs. A potent bassline and tight percussion infuse the rhythm with infectious flow, while Kyle’s deluxe tenor imbues the lyrics with searing timbres acknowledging his mistake in hoping his former lover had matured.

“She’s playin’ a game that I just can’t win / So why am I tryin’ / I’m gettin’ so tired of keeping score / Drunk dial, get no answer / Text you get no reply / But I’ve said I’m done with you before.”

Chock-full of surging energy, “Know Better” parades Kyle Meagher’s dazzling talent as a songwriter and vocalist.

Follow Kyle Meagher Spotify | Website | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube
Welcoming Our First Engineer in Asia — Shahul Hameed
By: Nick Poulden
Tags: Team, Ethereum, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Engineering

We are excited to announce that Shahul Hameed, our first engineer in Asia, has joined the Origin Protocol family!

Shahul is based in India, near Chennai, and has already contributed to every aspect of our platform, from the front-end and back-end to our smart contracts. He is currently working on improving the user experience of our DApp with gasless meta-transactions.

Shahul started programming at age 10 and began his career as a freelancer. He comes to Origin most recently from Zoho, where he was a front-end developer. He has also published several of his own applications on the Windows Store and Windows Phone Store.

Shahul’s path to joining Origin, or his “Origin story”, is a great example of a little bit of everything that makes Origin special. Our Head of Partnerships, Coleman, reached out to Shahul on Reddit because Shahul had been trying to buy Amazon gift cards for ETH on /r/giftcardexchange. Coleman was conducting research on how and why people trade crypto for gift cards. It turns out that Shahul is a huge Pokémon fan and was looking to buy a Nintendo Switch so he could play Pokémon Let’s Go. Unfortunately, the Nintendo Switch was not available in India yet, so Shahul needed to obtain American Amazon gift cards to purchase it. Cryptocurrencies helped him solve this problem.

Coleman told Shahul about the Origin Marketplace DApp and Shahul started poking around our GitHub. He picked up some “good first issues” on our project board and immediately began solving problems for us, without pay or any official relationship to us. Shahul’s rate of work increased and our engineering team started to take notice of this new open source contributor. We reached out to him to get him more involved and soon hired him as a contractor. Shahul’s code was exceptional and he developed an immediate rapport with our team. We asked Shahul to join the Origin team as a full-time engineer shortly after. To our delight, Shahul had been looking to work on an open-source blockchain project for quite a while and accepted our offer!

In addition to his passion for coding and Pokémon, Shahul is also an excellent Rubik’s cube speedsolver, averaging under 15 seconds. He can also solve a Rubik’s cube blindfolded. Shahul also is an avid blogger and YouTuber. We are lucky to have such an exceptional and multi-talented person to join our team!

Learn more about Origin:
6 interesting facts about the Yakuza you probably didn’t know
By: Kenji Farré
Tags: Tokyo, Japan, Society, Culture, Yakuza

2. The Japanese public recognizes them through their tattoos

While tattoos are widespread across the globe, they are frowned upon in Japan due to their associations with the Yakuza. This is to the extent that public facilities such as gyms, pools and, onsens (bathhouses) have banned anyone with tattoos to keep them out of these places.

For the Yakuza, tattoos are used to recognize members, demonstrate commitment, and boast about their wealth. They are designed using an extremely painful process called irezumi, in which the tattoos are hand-poked. The process not only hurts from the traditional needle, but also from the pigment injected into the wounds, which often causes fevers and liver problems later on. Through this “art” — often lasting several days — Yakuza members send a strong message of commitment to the lifestyle and a permanent rejection of mainstream society.

Given the considerable costs of irezumi (hand-poked tattoos), members boasting full-body tattoos indicate they’re successful in their business practices, and therefore contributing to the syndicate’s profitability. Unfortunately, in modern society, the rise of machine tattooing has undermined both their pain tolerance and flamboyance.

The tattoo designs themselves are based on Japanese mythology. Typical features include dragons, Samurais, and Koi fish, as they represent wealth, honor, and prosperity, respectively.
Here’s Something Simple You Can Do With the Photos on Your Computer
By: Lance Baker
Tags: Life Lessons, Memories, Family, Creativity, Photography

I bought my first digital camera in preparation for a cross-country road trip some friends and I took one summer in college. It was about 4 years before smartphones existed so having a dedicated camera was the only way to dabble in photography. I immediately fell in love with it. I loved the photos and the ability to capture memories, but more than anything I loved the way it changed how I viewed the world.

Whenever my camera was in my hands, I’d scour the landscape looking for interesting objects, unique angles, or distinct interplay between light and shadow. I recall laying in the grass to get a closeup of a purple violet or trying to capture the soft glow of a wispy reed backlit by the sun. The photos weren’t as significant as the feeling I got after crawling around on my knees paying attention to the folds of a flower, the arrays of light, and the brilliant combinations of colors. To this day, I feel like my camera is a sort of dowsing rod leading me to magical little things and moments that I’d otherwise not pay attention to. The photo is merely a souvenir of my experience with that magic.

After we had kids, photography became a way to concretize sacred moments in time. We wanted to preserve and remember those silly faces they made when they were 9-months old and capture their first steps. I don’t think I’m an obsessive photo-taker. I make a concerted effort to enjoy life’s fleeting moments without the need to take a photo, but there are still occasions that feel too precious to not capture in some manner.

Of course, as the years go by these photos accumulate, my hard-drive slowly fills, and it becomes more difficult to go back through and appreciate these once-lived moments in time. And despite regularly backing up my computer I’m often worried about our memories existing in digital form alone. The massive photo albums of printed 4x6s that were commonplace when I was a kid aren’t any better really. They are cumbersome and just seem to end up in basement bins somewhere hardly looked any more than their digital counterparts.

We don’t post photos of our kids on social media so it just felt like we needed some sort of creative outlet for all these photos to get some of them off our computer. Then, my wife and I decided we should create something like the annual yearbooks we had in school.
3P — People, Product and Process
By: Alok Tyagi
Tags: Development, Organization Development, Personal, Software Development

Last few days, I was busy clearing much of the boxes that I had brought back from my office. It was walking down the memory lane going over various folders, documents and depositing them to recycle.

One thing I noticed was how long 3P — People, Product Process has been part of my work. I found meeting agenda starting in year 2001 that included 3P. Managing around these dimensions became an integral and central part of the work. Although, the concepts got molded over the period of time.

I don’t recollect how I got exposed to 3P initially — but I recall managing to these dimensions got re-enforced after I read “Execution” by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan sometime in 2002–03.

In “Execution”, these three dimensions were referred to as “Strategy” — focusing on why/what; “Operations” — focusing on how; and “People” — focusing on who.

Coming from the Product Development organization, “Strategy” seemed to me as something that result into a “Product” and “Operations” was all about “Processes” needed to build an efficient organization.

So what surfaced in my staff agenda in 2001 — still remains an integral part of the agenda today.

Also one thing about opening old boxes — sometimes I think, it is better to keep them closed. It helps save time and grief.
4 Things I Learned from Reading the React Hooks API
By: Chad Murobayashi
Tags: React, Hooks, JavaScript, Web Development, Programming

1. Cleaning up a useEffect Hook

Cleaning up a useEffect hook is the same functionality as calling componentWillUnmount in a class-based component. This function will be called before a component is removed from the DOM. Some examples of when we may use this are removing event listeners, invalidating timers, canceling network requests, or cleaning up any subscriptions that were created in componentDidMount, or in our case when useEffect was run.

To clean up a useEffect hook, we need to return a function. This function will be run when it is time to clean up. Because useEffect runs for every render, the cleanup function will also cleanup effects from previous renders before running the effects the next time.

useEffect(() => {

// do something return () => {

// clean up

};

}, []);

As an additional note, the useEffect function can take a second argument, which is an empty array as seen above. Whatever values you pass into the array will determine when the hook is run. If you pass an empty array as the second argument, the Hook will only run once, upon initial render,

2. When to Use useReducer

useReducer is an alternative to useState. useReducer will usually be used when there is complex state logic or when your next state depends on your current state. The logic and setup for useReducer is similar to how Redux works, using actions, reducers, dispatch, and state.

Learning more about useReducer led to me think about whether Hooks’ useContext and useReducer could replace Redux in React apps. The article below has helped me to understand more on this topic.

TL;DR

Use useState for basic and simple/small size applications.

Use useState + useReducer + useContext for advanced/medium size applications.

Use useState/useReducer + Redux for complex/large size applications.

3. What is Memoization?

I was not sure what memorization was, so after coming across the useMemo and useCallback hooks, it led me to learn more about it. For those of you who are not familiar with it, memoization is a performance optimization technique used to help speed up computer programs. It does this by storing the result of function calls and returning the cached result.

Keep in mind, the useMemo and useCallback functions should only be used for expensive calculations. For simple tasks, it can actually be worse for performance and have other side effects. Here is an interesting article I read about it if you would like to learn more.

4. Managing Focus with the useRef Hook

The useRef hook has two main uses; accessing DOM nodes or keeping track of mutatable variables. If you are familiar with class-based components, this is similar to createRef. One example of when this will come in handy is managing focus, text selection, or media playback. This can be done with the useRef hook. In the example below, we are creating a reference to the search input and setting the focus on the button click.
Three Different Things: October 29, 2018
By: Sean O'Brien
Tags: IBM, Addiction, Linux, Creativity, Digital Transformation

in In Fitness And In Health
4 Advanced Tricks With Python Functions You Might Not Know
By: Erik Van Baaren
Tags: Programming, Data Science, Python3, Python, Software Development

2. Using * and ** for Function Argument Unpacking

Some functions require a long list of arguments. Although this should be avoided altogether (e.g. by using data classes), it’s not always up to you. In such cases, the second-best option is to create a dictionary with all the named arguments and pass that to the function instead. It will generally make your code more readable.

You can unpack a dictionary for use with named keywords by using the ** prefix:
Do You Want To Predict Your Future?
By: Randy Wolken
Tags: Business, Self-awareness, Leadership, Self Improvement, Life Lessons

Action

Take responsibility for your daily decisions and moments. They will define your past, present, and future.

You only can live in the moment. We can learn from our past.

Our future is in no small measure defined by what we decide to do and act on today.

Spend time reflecting on your life. What has it been? What can you learn from your past? What will you do with today? How will today create the future you want?

We are thinking about people. And, our actions, more than any words, will define what we are and what we are becoming.

Invest in your future daily by being your authentic self. This does take commitment, learning, and bold action.

However, if you do it well, you get to create the exciting future you want to have. Never underestimate the power of daily decisions and actions to create the future you always dreamed of.
How To Convert Your Google Sheets Spreadsheet Into A Web App
By: Abhay Parashar
Tags: Google Sheets, Technology, Programming, Python, Software Development

How To Convert Your Google Sheets Spreadsheet Into A Web App

For Receiving Form Response with Just One Line Of Code

We are in the era of technology and advancements. every day we fill out many forms or receive responses from many forms. whether we are getting an order for any product or asking for a refund for a product everything is circled around forms.

I Know Many of you might know that to receive a response from an HTML form we have to use a backend language like PHP, flask, Django, or Node.js. choosing a backend language for the form is not enough we also need to have a database to store all the responses but that's not enough to make sure that anyone around the globe can check out your form for that you also need a server. I have worked on many projects and I know it's not easy to handle forms.

In this blog, I will introduce you to a simples way of receiving responses using google sheets with just one line of code. Let’s start,

The first thing you need is a google account to use google sheets. I know you might already have one but still, if you don’t have one or don’t want to use your personal Gmail account then go and create one.

Visit Google Sheets and Log in with the account you want to use. Create a Blank new sheet by pressing the Blank Tile. Give You Columns Appropriate Names and Save the file.

4. Click On Tools and then Script editor.

5. Copy the Code File from here and paste it into the browser.

6. Now Click On Run➡Run Function➡initial setup.

7. Next Review Permission. Then Choose an account.

8. Click on Advanced and then Go to _FILE_NAME_ and Allow it.

We have successfully created a connection now let’s publish the sheet as a web app.

Click on Publish. Deploy as a web app Project version➡Version 1.0 Who has access to the app ➡ Anyone, even anonymous Deploy Copy the generated URL and paste it somewhere safe.

Now To test the sheet let’s create a simpler HTML form. You Can Download the code for the HTML form here. Paste the generated URL according to the HTML code.

Demo

Now Let’s See How We Can Send The Google Sheets Entry as an email automatically.
Why It’s Important That Women Like FKA twigs Speak on Abusive Relationships
By: Estrella Ramirez
Tags: Relationships, Self, Abuse, Mental Health, Healing

Why It’s Important That Women Like FKA twigs Speak on Abusive Relationships

Abuse doesn’t recognize status. Everyone’s experience matters.

Many of us know the statistic. Over 43 million women and 38 million men have experienced psychological aggression by an intimate partner in their lifetime.

You may have been one of those 81 million people. I have.

But who am I? I’m a college-educated woman in psychology, no less. Someone raised in a staunch Catholic family where divorce wasn’t an option. I make a decent living working my 9 to 5, meaning I would have been able to survive on my own. So why did I stay, you may ask? There are many many reasons.

In the end, I am no one. I am just one of the 81 million people who have lived this experience.

Do you know who else is one of 81 million ? FKA twigs [born Tahliah Debrett Barnett].

Her experience doesn’t matter more because she’s a celebrity.

Her experience isn’t more traumatic because it’s in the public light.

But her decision to share her experience publicly is so incredibly important because it supports the fact that abuse can happen to anyone.
Plotting business locations on maps using multiple Plotting libraries in Python
By: Karan Bhanot
Tags: Data Visualization, Technology, Productivity, Data, Programming

I was browsing through Kaggle and came across a dataset which included locations in latitudes and longitudes. I haven’t worked with plotting on maps so I decided to take this dataset and explore various options available to work through them. This is a basic guide about what I did and the inferences I drew about those libraries.

The aim was to look for a library that was very easy to use and worked seamlessly out of the box for plotting on maps. Another aim was to find a library that could print all the points in the dataset at once (190,000+ points).

Here, I explored four libraries, gmplot , geopandas , plotly and bokeh . I’ll import the libraries as and when needed rather than importing them all in the beginning. The complete code is available as a GitHub repo:

Let’s begin!!

Dataset

I took the dataset from Kaggle and saved it inside the data folder as dataset.csv . It includes a list of businesses complete with their address, state, location and more. I extracted the latitude, longitude, state, unique_states and name in separate arrays. I also extracted the minimum and maximum latitude and longitude values which would help me zoom into the specific area on a world map which we’ll see below.

For each library, I’ll plot the first 1000 locations and then try to plot all the points.

gmplot

gmplot is a library that generates the plot by creating an html file which we can load in our browser. It is one of the easiest and quickest way of getting started with plotting the data on a map. It plots the information on Google Maps and hence looks really nice.
The Last Musician
By: Tien Skye
Tags: Life, Fiction, Dreams, A Cornered Gurl, Music

Onophrian Fountain, Dubrovnik | Tien (2018)

He rests the rebec on his knee. It is that moment — the moment when the crowd has thinned and the next group of tourists has not arrived yet. The brief window of break when his time belongs to him and his thoughts begin to wander.

He had a dream. Once.

It is difficult to believe but once upon a time, he was young. I am young, he tells himself. But once upon a time, when he was younger, he had a dream. He wanted to bring the music of his village into the world. The gentle song of the river, of the grassland and of the trees; the world is more interested in the harsh sounds of the metal, of the rock and of the electric.

“He rests the rebec on his knee.”

He had a dream. And once upon a time, he naively thought the world owed it to him to listen to his music. The simple songs of his village’s river, of his village’s grassland and of his village’s trees. He felt he was entitled to the success. But the baffling sounds of the metal, of the rock and of the electric prevail.

He prevailed too — not in a manner he is proud of, but he prevailed. Forty years, he has been singing the meaningful songs of his village to tourists who listen. Forty years, he has been singing the meaningful songs of his village to tourists who do not listen. And forty years, he has been singing the meaningful songs of his village meaninglessly.

“The gentle song of the river, of the grassland and of the trees; the world is more interested in the harsh sounds of the metal, of the rock and of the electric.”

As his rebec techniques improve, his rebec playing becomes hollow.

“Look Ma!” a child points excitedly. “What a funny violin!”

“Shh, don’t point. That’s rude,” the mother pulls her child away and they hurry off to rejoin their tour group.

I am still young, he reminds himself. Both the village and the world are far away, with him straddling in between. He is the last musician of his village to the world, the only one who still remembers the songs of his village.

“Forty years, he has been singing the meaningful songs of his village meaninglessly.”

He resumes his playing.
Analytics for Small and Medium Sized Firms
By: Opex Analytics
Tags: Big Data, Analytics, Data Science, Business

Analytics for Small and Medium Sized Firms

by Michael Watson

A lot of press around analytics is focused on large and exciting projects. But, analytics can be applied to firms of any size.

Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management’s recent magazine published an article entitled “Think you’re too small for big data?”. The gist is that few businesses are too small to benefit from data-driven methods.

At Opex Analytics, we provide a variety of advanced solutions for small and medium sized businesses. For example, in the area of transportation analytics, you can do quite a lot with relatively simple tools. In addition, map portals can be easily deployed. They are hosted in the cloud and are ready for mobile devices. You can gain a lot of new insight into your business by combining your current data on a map. And, since the application is mobile-ready, you can deploy to your people in the field.

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If you liked this blog post, check out more of our work, follow us on social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook), or join us for our free monthly Academy webinars.
Creating an Ambitious New Web Platform for The Lancet Countdown
By: Univers Labs
Tags: Climate Change, The Lancet, UX Design, UI Design, Development

A Bespoke Website and Data Platform for The Lancet Countdown

Our team developed and designed a new bespoke website for The Lancet Countdown with a flexible modular layout CMS, allowing administrators the ability to easily create new pages, amend content including all text, images, resources and video.

We also introduced a bespoke data platform into the new website, integrating with the Flourish visualisation platform. This new data platform features 41 data visualisations, allowing users to observe and navigate through the key indicators from the report in a more engaging way. We also designed and implemented five illustrations to represent graphically the five main categories into which the various indicators were grouped within the 2019 report.

Bespoke data platform integrated with Flourish visualisation.

Video Production

In addition to the new data platform, our production team at Univers Labs produced an animated video, interactively presenting the key findings from the 2019 Lancet Countdown report. Our team oversaw numerous critical aspects of this video, including the storyboarding, voice over, design, animation and musical composition.

Lancet Countdown’s video, interactively presenting the findings from their 2019 report

A Redesigned Resources Page

The Lancet Countdown produces a range of highly regarded research materials which are extensively used by governments, policymakers, health professionals and the public. We redesigned the resources page, allowing users to explore the data, resources and reports, ensuring that users can quickly and easily access pertinent information in a format that’s most relevant to their work and needs. We also implemented search filters into the resources page, allowing users to search by year and country.

Illustrations

In addition to the newly developed resources page, our team at Univers Labs redesigned a range of resources for The Lancet Countdown, refreshing policy briefing templates and developing a range of illustrations to be used within their marketing efforts.

Redesigned Policy Briefing Templates

Illustrations and Infographics for The Lancet Countdown Marketing Activities

“Our partnership with The Lancet Countdown has enabled Univers Labs to work on an ambitious web platform to coincide with the launch of their annual report. This project required content across a range of digital media types, calling on many different skills from our talented team, including video production, musical composition, and illustration to communicate the work of The Lancet Countdown in a number of ways that speaks to a wider audience”. — Max von Seibold, Head of Production.

This project launched on Wednesday 13th of November, in time for The Lancet Countdown’s annual report on climate change and human health, which has received excellent worldwide media coverage and recognition. Full case study coming to our website soon.
Top 10 Python Libraries for Data Science
By: Akhil Sonthi
Tags: Data Science, Python, Libraries, Data Analysis, Scikit Learn

“T he goal is to turn data into information and information into insight.” Carly Fiorina — Former chief executive officer, Hewlett Packard.

There are so many wonderful libraries being added to the Python ecosystem every single day but these are the ones I’ve found the most intuitive and useful (and unsurprisingly the most popular)!
Myanmar still using landmines, global casualties ‘exceptionally high’: report
By: The New Humanitarian
Tags: Conflict, Data Visualization, World, Landmines, Myanmar

The report — an accounting of casualties and global stockpiles, as well as on progress towards mine removal and victim assistance — is released annually by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. The coalition of NGOs spearheaded the anti-mine movement, leading to the 1997 treaty that banned the weapon’s use.

The coalition says 164 countries have signed on to the treaty. But 33 others have not, including some of the world’s largest stockpilers of landmines: the United States, Russia, China, Pakistan, and India.

From mid-2018 to October 2019, government security forces deployed mines in only one country, Myanmar, underscoring the ongoing conflicts raging on multiple fronts in the Southeast Asian nation. Accused of widespread rights abuses, Myanmar’s army largely operates without civilian oversight.

Conflict between the military and the Arakan Army, a militant group drawn from the country’s ethnic Rakhine minority, has displaced about 40,000 people this year, the UN says. The Landmine Monitor report says there’s evidence of landmine casualties in previously uncontaminated areas.

Ongoing conflicts in parts of Kachin and northern Shan States also continue to trap civilians, and a surge in landmine use is also fuelling a migrant exodus in some areas.

While Myanmar’s army was the only government security force to deploy landmines in the last year, anti-government groups in Afghanistan, India, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Yemen also used the weapons. Researchers said they were unable to confirm allegations of landmine use in Cameroon, Colombia, Libya, Mali, the Philippines, Somalia, and Tunisia.

Afghanistan, where the civilian toll continues to hover near record highs as its conflict intensifies, topped the list of landmine casualties in 2018.

Even though most countries have signed on to the landmine ban, there’s still a large global stockpile among treaty signatories, which are allowed to retain mines “for training and research”.

Still, these totals are just a fraction of the stockpiles held by countries who haven’t signed on: Russia’s cache of anti-personnel mines is estimated to be at least 26.5 million.

il/ag
Square’s Open Approach to Code
By: Square Engineering
Tags: Engineering, Open Source

Square’s Open Approach to Code

A quarter of a million lines of code later.

Written by Lindsay Wiese.

Heads up, we’ve moved! If you’d like to continue keeping up with the latest technical content from Square please visit us at our new home https://developer.squareup.com/blog

Nearly 3 years ago we open sourced our first project at Square: Retrofit. Since then we’ve released more than a quarter of a million lines of code in more than 60 open source projects — a project, on average, every 2.5 weeks.

As a member of the open source community — and a company that’s benefited from many open source libraries — we have a responsibility to pay it forward. Our open source efforts also benefit our customers: making internal work suitable for public consumption requires an extra layer of polish that helps to improve our products across the board.

So thank you to everyone who has submitted patches to our open source projects. We have much more to contribute.

If you’re interested in learning more about open source at Square, you can read about our efforts here. For more information about the broad technical challenges we face at Square, visit squareup.com/careers.
10 Project-Based Tutorials for Learning JavaScript
By: Ann Adaya
Tags: JavaScript, Software Development, Software Engineering, Learning To Code, Programming

10 Project-Based Tutorials for Learning JavaScript

You don’t have to spend any money. You just have to be resourceful

Photo by Photoholgic on Unsplash

“I am still learning.” — Michelangelo

After taking these free courses, don’t forget to leave a thumbs-up and a token of gratitude for our teachers, instructors, and mentors for providing these awesome courses for free.

They gave so much time and effort just so they can share their knowledge and hoping to help fellow developers, and just a thumbs-up and a thank-you would mean a lot to them, that’s for sure.

Let’s be the best developer by simply helping each other. Always remember that in this developer world, the farthest stranger could be your greatest supporter, so learn the value of giving and you will receive abundance in unexpected ways.

Kindness is free.
Real-time Forecasting Using R and Watson Studio
By: Natasha D'Silva
Tags: Big Data, Forecasting, Data, Tutorial, Streaming

Use an R model to generate forecasts from live data.

After training and tweaking any model, using it to score streaming data is a great way to extend its value. When you score a model on static data, you gain hindsight into past events. However, when you score a model on streaming data, you can detect and respond to patterns and trends as they occur.

The video below shows how you can integrate existing R models into a streaming application created with Watson Studio Streams Flows, including how you can change the model without having to restart the application.

Background

Streams Flows is is a lightweight tool in IBM Watson Studio for creating streaming analytics applications called flows. Using the simple drag and drop interface, you can create a flow to ingest and analyze data from IoT devices, Apache Kafka, and more. The flows run on the Streaming Analytics service, a platform for real-time analytics in the IBM Cloud.

If you’re completely new to Streams flows, check out this introductory video on YouTube.

A Streams flow running in Watson Studio, showing the live data

The problem — forecasting using live data

Imagine you have developed a model in R to predict how many users will connect to network in the near future (next hour, half hour, etc.), based on how many are currently connected.

You already have a Streams flow that is receiving data from Event Streams or Apache Kafka and computing current usage metrics. All that’s needed is a way to feed those statistics to the model, and you’ll have your predictions.

Creating a forecasting microservice

To score R models from a Streams flow, a simple solution is to create a forecasting microservice. The microservice will also run on the Streaming Analytics service, and is written in Streams Processing Language (SPL).

The microservice loads the R model and scores the stream of metrics it receives from the flow. Finally, it publishes the forecasts back to the flow.

Diagram showing the interaction between the flow and the microservice

See it in action

The video below is a short demo of how to extend an existing Streams flow to add forecasting with R.

Video: Using R to score streaming data in Streams flows

Try the sample

All the code shown in the video is available on GitHub.

The repo includes:

The Streams flow,

Microservice source and binary

Step by step instructions of how to run the sample.

Learn more
What is PropTypes in React
By: Anastasia Orlova
Tags: Reactjs, React, JavaScript, Libraries, Prop Types

Recently, while working my way through this tutorial, I came across a React library called prop-types. I’ve never used this library before, so I made a quick research on why we need prop-types and how to use is.

JavaScript is a so-called “untyped” language. That means JavaScript will figure out what type of data you have and make a function work without any required adjustments. For example, it can convert a number into a string if it is what a function expects. Sound great, right? However, it can be a blessing until it turns into a curse.

As your app grows, this JavaScript feature can lead to bugs and errors when the data type we expected is not the one we’ve passed. So, to check that data type seems like a smart decision. That’s where React built-in type checking ability comes into play. PropTypes is a library that helps to check whether the props you pass have the type you’re waiting for.

Anyway, our first step is to install the library.

npm install — save prop-types

The second step is to import the library.

import PropTypes from 'prop-types';

Our third and last step is to assign special propTypes property. This library offers a great range of validators that can be used to make sure the data you receive is valid. All we need to do is to call the propTypes property on our component and specify the data type.

Here is what I have for my recent project. I have a Question component whose prop.content supposed to be a string. Now, if I pass an object of a different type, I’ll get a warning. Also, I added .isRequired to make sure a warning is shown if the props isn't provided.

Hope you find this short blog helpful!

Source:
The Things That I Saw Senior Software Engineers Do
By: Michael Chi
Tags: Software Development, Startup, Self Improvement, Work, Programming

The Things That I Saw Senior Software Engineers Do

How I learned and progressed from them

I was fortunate enough to start working as a junior developer with a senior as my mentor. It means I had the opportunity to learn from someone who walked the path I’m going to walk and has more experience than me on this journey.

Having a senior engineer in your team who is willing to teach and guide you is such a blessing. If your career goal is to become a senior developer, it can save you an enormous amount of time.

In this post, I’d like to share the things I saw my mentor and other senior developers do, and the lessons I’ve learned from them.
Building an Application: Pre-Work
By: Hannah Kofkin
Tags: Programming, Best Practices, Software Development, Web Development, Startup

1. Outline Features

List of desired feature set (created using Trello).

When you have your app concept determined and are ready to start laying the groundwork, one very important first step is to decide what you actually want your app to do and how you want it to function. Writing out a list of features is a good way to compile and condense your thoughts. There are endless possibilities, so narrowing your focus from the start will eliminate wasted time down the road.

Once you have a list of features, thinking through your MVP (or minimum viable product) is crucial. The MVP is basically the state in which your app is fully functional and able to be tested in the market for user feedback, but it leaves out some of the “stretch” features that can be added once you know your app is on track. Reaching MVP and testing in the market is useful to ensure your resources are not wasted on something that is either not necessary or is not working properly. A great tool I have used to start outlining features and deciding on MVP is Trello.

If this step is skipped, you run the risk of trying to execute too many ideas or trying to build a feature that doesn’t relate to your user story. This is not only a waste of everyone’s time but also adds to a lack of clarity in the process and will only lead to frustration.

Questions to ask yourself
Branding for Solopreneurs — How To Stand Out!
By: Kahli Bree Adams
Tags: Branding, Business, Entrepreneurship, Solopreneur, Freelancing

Four steps to branding success:

Bear in mind the following four principles of successful branding:

Photo by Slidebean on Unsplash

1) Brand identity

This is your brand personality. How do you want to be perceived by (potential) clients and peers? It’s important to realize that you can create your brand around your personality. As freelancers, there’s no need to try and become someone else. Stay true to yourself and be who you are. This will also make your brand more credible.

2) Brand consistency

As already mentioned, brand consistency is essential. Take care that your website, brochures, business cards, Facebook page, personal appearance, the way you present yourself, etc. are all homogenous and consistent to avoid confusing and driving away potential clients.

3) Brand recognition

Simply put: get your brand seen, and be everywhere where your target audience is. Once you’ve identified your ideal client and have researched them, start getting your name out there using a targeted approach. Your market will think you are everywhere, which will again boost your credibility.

4) Brand engagement

Unlike just a few years ago, today is all about brand engagement. Any small business owner should be active on social media, participate in forum discussions, write a blog or at least comment on other blogs, have a video blog, and so forth.

This type of online presence is good for SEO purposes and will drive traffic to your website. It is also crucial to engage with your followers or ‘fans’ to make them feel part of your business and enhance their brand experience.
EHTAERB
By: Harper Thorpe
Tags: Poetry, BlackLivesMatter, One Line, Racism, Music

EHTAERB

As in, “ … T’NAC I” — an acrostic

Senator Mitt Romney marched and tweeted his support for Black Lives Matter. Predictably, Donald Trump mocked his participation, while other GOP lawmakers cowardly avoided Trump’s shade. (Image Source)

Every recipe for solving problems

Has one necessary ingredient —

The problem must be acknowledged.

Addressing systemic racism in America,

Especially inequality in justice,

Requires whites to acknowledge

Black Lives Matter!

©2020 HHThorpe. All rights reserved.

Inspired by Owen Banner’s delicious poem, “Ritual and Ruin”, and prompt, “recipe”. Thanks to our hosts, Kathy Jacobs and me (🙃), and also to the rest of the talented Chalkboard team!
10 Must-Know Statistical Concepts for Data Scientists
By: Soner Yıldırım
Tags: Data Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, Artificial Intelligence, Data Analysis

5. Covariance and correlation

Covariance is a quantitative measure that represents how much the variations of two variables match each other. To be more specific, covariance compares two variables in terms of the deviations from their mean (or expected) value.

The figure below shows some values of the random variables X and Y. The orange dot represents the mean of these variables. The values change similarly with respect to the mean value of the variables. Thus, there is positive covariance between X and Y.

(image by author)

The formula for covariance of two random variables:

(image by author)

where E is the expected value and µ is the mean.

Note: The covariance of a variable with itself is the variance of that variable.

Correlation is a normalization of covariance by the standard deviation of each variable.

(image by author)

where σ is the standard deviation.

This normalization cancels out the units and the correlation value is always between 0 and 1. Please note that this is the absolute value. In case of a negative correlation between two variables, the correlation is between 0 and -1. If we are comparing the relationship among three or more variables, it is better to use correlation because the value ranges or unit may cause false assumptions.
A Transcendental Journey of the Soul on a Saturday
By: Kevin Ishimwe
Tags: Life Lessons, Self Improvement, Happiness, Love, Creativity

Approaching a crossroads of diverging paths, the weary boy ruminated on which path to embark on. Zealously uttering for a plead of serendipity, the universe graciously surfaced from the weary boy’s haven. The weary boy entranced with newfound thrill continued on his journey towards his treasure.

You ever wake up in a mesmerizing state of awe? Astounded by the fact that you made it another day above ground?

Life truly does take a turn when one adopts this mindset. As the end of 2020 is upon us, I can’t help but be thankful for what this year had to offer. It was not altogether exuberant, quite the opposite if I may add. Nonetheless, life’s blows unveiled numerous aspects of life that I may have taken for granted.

Life allowed me to be more appreciative of the simple things in life. to brightly wonder about the marvels of this abundant universe.

The need to better one’s life is a fundamental necessity. But, as a whole, I think we have placed a higher reverence on the realization of our dreams rather than the journey. You must find admiration for the process as well, just as a lion exuberates the same vigor in the hunt of prey.

In a way, Paulo Coelho’s vibrant fable was an omen of mine. A sign to continue forward, that I indeed may be approaching my oasis. Change is undoubtedly a rugged path, for this reason, only a few bring to life their own Personal Legend, as Paulo would put it.
MIT 6.00.1x/2x : A Course to Close Your Computer Science Gap as a Data Scientist
By: Michael Li
Tags: Data Science, Python, Education, Data Structures, Algorithms

Overview

You can find the courses here and here. The course full names are:

“Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python” “”Introduction to Computational Thinking and Data Science”

XSeries of the two courses

They belong to the “Computational Thinking using Python” program on EdX. It used to be one course(YouTube playlist here) for MIT on-campus students. They split it into two parts, so it’s more digestible for online education. We can still treat them as one course since the lessons are closely related to each other.

Having taken both courses, here are my two cents if you don’t have the time to read through the rest of this article:

Start from ‘level 0’, well-designed learning curve, but still challenging Problem sets are challenging and fun, worth putting efforts in It covers most of the key concepts in Python, OOP, Data Structures, and algorithms (sorting, dynamic programming, etc.) The last part on Machine Learning somewhat lacks if you came from a Data Science/AI background. Some creative and fun way of teaching (Don’t miss the ‘archery in class’ one, really cracks me up)

Overall, it’s an excellent course to invest your time in if you find yourself lacking basic programming training coming from the math side of data science. Let me elaborate a bit more if you are still interested.
Things That May Hold You Back From Unlocking Your Full Potential as a Developer
By: Roberto Hernandez
Tags: Careers, Software Development, Programming, Startup, Advice

Impostor Syndrome Became Your Best Friend

Imposter syndrome is a collection of feelings of inadequacy that persist despite the progress you have gained and the evident success.

Let’s break down this collection of feelings. Firstly, let me remind you of something you’ve probably experienced and felt more than once along your coding voyage. This especially happens when you start something new. When you started a new project, in the first meetings, did you feel completely lost? Your mind was struggling with what other developers, clients, and managers were talking about. Your brain played against you and made you feel useless yourself.

So, after going through that tough moment, you most likely thought you were a fraud. This brings you a mix of feelings that, far from reflecting your personal talents, confuse you. Your head spins with silly comments such as feeling you are not qualified for that project, the recent job, or the promotion you got.

Have you ever been worried and thinking that everyone will find out your flaws because you constantly check Stackoverflow even for the simplest things you forgot? Come on! The most experienced developers forget things as well.

Another aspect where this syndrome blocks you is that you admire people who have achieved what you aspire to, but at the same time, you think you are not good enough to achieve it and belong to that elite. You’re making a lot of assumptions here.

Don’t worry! All of us suffer this feeling. So bear in mind that you are not the only one; even highly successful people experience this. Behavior is not related to self-esteem or lack of confidence.

To close this point, this behavior sometimes is caused by our personal behaviors. Experiencing tough pressures may lead you to become a perfectionist. Somehow, please, avoid it!
Hot or Not
By: Kelly Abeln
Tags: Comics, Music, High School, Dating, Identity

Kelly is an illustrator, designer and comic artist living in Minneapolis. See more of her work here: kellyabeln.com

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臉書廣告 2017 廣告尺寸指南
By: Henry Hu
Tags: Facebook, Digital Advertising, Facebook Ads, Editors Pick, Digital Marketing

Co-Founder of Chigyosha Marketing Copr. based in Taipei. Addicted in data mining and content marketing. Passionated by visions and dreams.

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