fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
How this watchmaker used Shotput to expand over 40 countries in 1 year
By: Akin Shoyoye
Tags: Fulfillment, Logistics, Customer Service, Watches, Startup

Mark Ang had enough of seeing poorly built designer watches sold at exorbitant prices to people who could barely afford them.

As a watch enthusiast himself, Mark knew what makes an excellent watch and it worried him to see them spend hundreds of dollars on brands that were far from reliable.

“The designer stuff isn’t that lasting. They’re pushing the brand name and a lower price point, but they aren’t pushing high quality materials,” Mark said.

So he saw an opportunity: to create elegant timepieces that wouldn’t make people bankrupt. A product they can wear proudly and show off to friends. He went straight to his drawing pad and sketched the first designs of Hastings & Co watches.

Set on heavily investing in the quality of the watch, Mark quickly launched his first KickStarter campaign in 2015 to sell the first watches and gain feedback.

“We did 125% of our goal which was modest at the time, but we learned what the industry was all about and then built on that.”

All these watches and no time to fulfill customer orders.

Mark wasted no time and launched his second campaign in 2016 and his business took off.

“We were doing way more in volume, but it was hard to fulfill all these watches. It wasn’t something we could easily do ourselves. We all had day jobs and it wasn’t feasible to do on our own.”

Mark found Shotput and reached out to us. After listening to his concerns we personally on-boarded him, walked him through the entire process, and explained how things would work.

“It made this insurmountable task much more doable and cost-effective, Mark said.”

“Having you guys take care of the rest was great because that was a huge thing we didn’t have to worry about. We can now focus on what we do best: designing more watches. You guys have really done a lot.”

Hastings & Co is now in over 40 countries and has been featured in GQ, Esquire, and other publications. Mark’s working on another watch for the coming months and getting his products in front of more people.
I Don’t Wanna Talk About It
By: Jesse Walters
Tags: Relationships, Religion, Friendship

Since I announced the release of The Church Next Door and started my mission, I’ve had a lot of people contact me. Some people share their experiences, some looking for help and others showing their support. I love it. It gives me the assurance that I’m doing the right thing and the drive to keep moving forward.

I noticed something though.

I’ve known a lot of these people for years. Some I’m very good friends with. Yet, I’ve never had a real religious talk with them. Now all of a sudden I am? Once I opened the door to this “unspoken” topic it was easy. We were all of a sudden comfortable talking about it when we wouldn’t have before.

Why do we push the subject of religion to the side even with our closest friends and family? Shouldn’t we be having these conversations?

I know, I know. Religion is a touchy thing to bring up, especially in today’s society. But now that I’ve gone public, I believe society is much more spiritual than it looks. We hide it because we think we may offend others. But with friends and family? I think we can all say we’ve had conversations that has upset one another and still remained close. Yet, we’re still scared to talk about religion like it will end every relationship instantly.

I thought I knew my friends well before, but now I’m learning things about them I never knew. We’ve grown closer. It’s amazing. Talking with them has helped me grow and I know it will lead to a deeper relationship with each and every one of them from now on. We (or at least I do) feel like we have another person to go to with our future struggles. We have someone that really cares about our wellbeing. Neither one of us may have the answers but having someone there to support you in that way is a BIG THING.

I’m really glad I went public with this “touchy” subject. It turns out it’s not so touchy after all.

Please share this with everyone you know. The more people that know my story, the more people I can help.

jesse-walters.com
Spreading the Word on Climate Change Education in Rural Liberia
By: Un Cc Learn
Tags: Rural Development, Climate Change, Education, Africa, Liberia

By Pilar Lagos

Clarance K.Gbarlo is a man with many talents. He’s worked as a teacher at a refugee school, as a communications officer, and most recently, as a public relations officer for the Christian Network Missionary organization.

Clarance (left) is teaching climate change effects at the school. / ©: Clarance K.Gbarlo

He strongly believes that climate change is a big environmental and economic challenge for developing countries, therefore it’s important to teach people about climate change - not only by raising awareness, which is crucial, but also by giving communities the opportunity to capacity building in this field.

Clarance is also a learner at heart. He took his first UN CC:e-Learn course in 2017. He signed up to take the Human health and Climate Change course as part of his personal development ambitions. He later took the Cities and Climate Change course to acquire more knowledge on the environment and climate. He eventually landed a job at the Christian Network Missionary organization, who was impressed by his motivation to teach others about the effects that climate change has on people, plants and animals.
Findex branch Crowe Horwath announces national initiative to support regional startups
By: Mat Beeche
Tags: Findex, Farmers, Crowe Horwath, Australia, Businesses

Crowe Horwath, the regionally-focused arm of accounting and financial advisory firm Findex, has announced that it will be launching FoundX, a new initiative to support regional startups and small businesses.

FoundX will look to facilitate meetups for startup communities across regional Australia, where they will have the opportunity to access mentoring and information designed to help them grow their businesses.

Crowe Horwath said the initiative was formed to help empower regional startups by leveraging the firm’s national regional network.

With over 110 offices spread across Australia, Crowe Horwath has a number located in regional and rural towns, which connect customers to the firm’s 3000-strong financial advisor network.

The firm also offers a service tailored to agribusinesses, with a portion of its advisory network coming from agricultural backgrounds; it also acts as an advisory partner to the National Farmers Federation (NFF), an organisation supporting Australian farming businesses.

Focusing on networking opportunities will be key to each event, with the firm saying that FoundX will aim to connect entrepreneurs to “valuable networks” across Australia.

Planned to be rolled out nationally, Geelong will be the space for FoundX’s first “regional hub”, with a launch event set to kick off the initiative in the city next Thursday.

Mark Whelan, executive managing partner at Crowe Horwath, said Geelong’s strong local startup community makes it the ideal location for the launch.

“Geelong is one of Australia’s largest regional centres and was selected as the first regional hub in the national roll-out of FoundX due to its thriving startup and small business community. We have seen Crowe Horwath grow as part of that community and this is a great opportunity to give back,” he said.

Speaking at the launch event will be Con Raso, founder of Turned Global, and Tim Heasley of venture capital firm Artesian, who will provide insight into what VC firms look for when investing in Australian startups.

FoundX marks the latest supportive initiative Findex has developed to support regional startups and small businesses, with last year seeing the firm work beside the NFF to launch national agtech accelerator SproutX.

The first agtech-focused accelerator within Australia, SproutX was created to help spur on Australia’s agtech boom, with the program first offering an online pre-accelerator program to 100 startups across Australia.

SproutX also recently announced the first cohort of startups to be accepted into the program.

Out of a pool of 100 applicants, 11 startups were selected, with each set to recieve mentoring from agtech industry experts, as well as $40,000 in capital in exchange for eight percent equity.

The program will run in SproutX’s Melbourne coworking space over a six month period.

Image: Crowe Horwath Team. Source: Linkedin.
Statistics for 100 Days Since the Start of Bitbon Open Bidding
By: Bitbon System
Tags: Trading, Exchange, Asset Management, Digital, Bitbon

More than three months have passed since the start of open bidding on the Bit Trade Exchange of Digital Assets. On the one hand, it is not a very long period of time, on the other hand, it is long enough to start conducting comparative analysis of statistical indicators and, in doing so, to watch the dynamic of development of the Exchange and understand its future prospects. This conclusion can be reached by analyzing statistical indicators over this period that describe the promotion of Bitbon at the international level using the tools of the Bit Trade Exchange, as well as by taking into account the conducted planned updates.

Ever since its launch, the Bit Trade Exchange has been strictly following international standards of providing complex exchange services to its Customers, in particular, when it comes to openness and transparency of its activity. According to this principle, we publish the most relevant and useful information in due time in order to ensure the correct understanding of the occurring processes by Bitbon System Participants. To that end, in the news article “30 Days Since the Start of Bitbon Open Bidding” dated December 17, 2018, we stated that the next statistics for information purposes will be published for the period of six months of the Exchange functioning. However, due to the incoming questions for our Customer Support regarding the statistics on exchange (market) and direct (non-market) purchases and sales of Bitbons, we provide you with the data for 100 days of the Exchange functioning, i.e. for the period from November 16, 2018 to February 26, 2019:

10,589 Customers of the Bit Trade Exchange registered and became Bit bon System Participants.

Customers of the Bit Trade Exchange registered and became bon System Participants. Exchange turnover on the BITBON/USD trading instrument over 100 days constituted 2,403,770 USD .

. Total number of Bit Trade Customers to use the option to purchase and sell Bit bons was 7,773 .

bons was . We also managed to estimate the non-market turnover of purchases and sales of Bitbons, which constituted approximately 4,197,183 USD.

We would like to draw your attention to the dynamic of the Bitbon price fluctuation in the coming month predicted by our specialists. As we have mentioned before, the price of Bitbon against US dollar approached the oversold level and consolidated at a strong support level. In fact, the price correction at 4.7200 has slowed down and, presently, the buyers are starting to prevail. This is why our Company’s specialists expect the start of the Bitbon price growth ranging from 5 to 10% over the course of the next 30 days with its further increase.

The presented statistical indicators of the Exchange functioning fully comply with development stages of the Bitbon System specified in the White Paper and, together with the expected growth of the Bitbon price in March, suggest a stable and targeted development of the Bitbon System towards the launch of mining and expansion of Bitbon to other international exchanges.
Finally, the blog moved back to nicholasworkshop.com!
By: Nicholas Wong
Tags: Developer, Personal, Blogspot, Project, Hows

Today, I moved my nicholasworkshop.wordpress.com to my owned domain nicholasworkshop.com, integrated with my old portfolio website. Thanks to my subscribers, my blog has been having a steady viewing rate over time. However, all those traffics went to wordpress.com as the blog was hosted there. To redirect them back to my domain, I have been preparing the things needed for a long time.

As a record, I had my blog in BlogSpot and WordPress before, and now they are redirected to nicholasworkshop.

Anyways, it is finally here and thank you for checking out my blog!
New BoE governor must “green Britain’s financial system” say more than 100 leading figures
By: Ethan Shone
Tags: UK Politics, News, Climate Change, UK, Journalism

The letter calls on Bailey to “lead the way in aligning finance with the 1.5C target” and commit to a number of actions ahead of COP26, the international climate conference taking place in Glasgow this November.

According to the signatories, Bailey and the Bank of England should make it mandatory for firms to disclose climate risk “as soon as possible”, exclude fossil fuel assets from both future rounds of quantative easing (QE) and the assets the Bank accepts as collateral, and consider changes to the Bank’s macroprudential framework to see high-carbon lending penalised.

Fran Boait, executive director of Positive Money, said: “As the institution overseeing and underpinning our financial system, the Bank of England must lead the way and do everything it can to stop environmental breakdown being funded on its watch.

Former Greek finance minister Yannis Varoufakis is among those to have signed the letter

“With less than a decade to drastically cut emissions and avoid irreversible climate breakdown, Andrew Bailey must ensure that climate remains high on the Bank’s agenda. These steps are a necessary starting point.”

This public appeal is being made before a pre-appointment hearing at the Treasury Select Committee tomorrow, with Bailey scheduled to take over from outgoing governor Mark Carney on March 16th.

Speaking to this committee last year, Carney admitted that government “policy is not yet consistent with stabilising temperatures below 2°” and the financial system at large is funding an increase in global temperatures of more than 4C. Under Carney the bank has signalled that it understands the financial and economic risks associated with climate change, acknowledging in a speech last year that up to £20tn could be lost from stranded carbon assets.

The letter was coordinated by a number of research and campaign groups, including Positive Money, Greenpeace and the New Economics Foundation.

Signatories include academic and UBS senior scientific advisor and former government chief scientific advisor Sir David King, economist and author of The Case for a Green New Deal, Anne Pettifor and Professor of Geography at Oxford Univeristy, Danny Dorling.

You can read the letter in full here.
Distributed Tracing on Hybrid Cloud using Apache Kafka
By: Venkata Surya Lolla
Tags: Openshift, Kubernetes, Jaeger, Kafka, Aws Msk

R & D

To prove the findings in the whiteboard session (Figure 2), I started with our in-house OpenShift cluster and an AWS MSK cluster to test the use case and understand the nuances in the process,

Trial & Error

When the Jaeger Openshift Operator is deployed with a self-provision Kafka cluster, it deployed the following:

Four components of Jaeger (agent, collector, ingester, and query)

A Kafka Cluster using Strimizi Operator

Backend storage (ElasticSearch)

Trial & Error (Figure 3)

As per the design (Figure 2), I only needed the Jaeger agent, collector and a Kafka cluster, but I realized that there is no option in Jaeger Openshift Operator to enable or disable the backend storage such as Cassandra or ElasticSearch, ingester, or the query components (Figure 3).

Alteration

To overcome the above challenge, instead of using the Jaeger OpenShift Operator, I created the required Jaeger components (collector and agent) as raw Kubernetes YAML files:

Altered Sketch (Figure 4)

Collector has the Kubernetes Deployment, ConfigMap, and a Service YAML files

The agent has the Kubernetes Daemonset as it needs to run on every node in the OpenShift cluster and a Service YAML files

For the Kafka cluster, I used the Strimizi Kafka Kubernetes Operator to deploy a simple Kafka cluster and a Kafka topic.

Before deploying the Jaeger’s agent and collector to the OpenShift cluster using the raw Kubernetes YAML files, I set the backend storage type to Kafka with the Kafka Brokers and Kafka topic information in the Jaeger collector’s Kubernetes Deployment YAML file.

Hello World Spans

Now that the architecture is altered (Figure 4), I wanted to make sure that Jaeger collector can forward the spans to the Kafka cluster. I created and deployed a sample Python application instrumented with the Jaeger client libraries to the OpenShift cluster.

Hello World!! (Figure 5)

On the Jaeger side of the house, the agent was able to listen and batch the spans, the collector was receiving the spans from the agent. On the Kafka side of the house, the spans were actively streamed into the Kafka topic.

At this point, I confirmed that Jaeger successfully communicated and forward the spans to the Kafka.

Replication

Now to replicate the spans from the OpenShift Kafka topic to AWS MSK’s topic, I used the Strimizi Kafka Kubernetes Operator’s MirrorMaker. MirrorMaker is one of Kafka’s features used to replicate the events between multiple Kafka instances.

I configured the MirrorMaker Kubernetes YAML file with the consumer (OpenShift Kafka) and producer (AWS MSK) clusters information and deployed it to the OpenShift cluster (Figure 5).

VOILA, It worked! I was able to read the sample Python application’s spans in the AWS’s MSK topics events.

The Ultimate Sketch

Following the alterations through the trial and error phase, here is the final design
Async Messaging With Kotlin and RabbitMQ
By: Nuno Brites
Tags: Messaging, Programming, Rabbitmq, Asynchronous, Kotlin

Async Messaging With Kotlin and RabbitMQ

Let’s interact with RabbitMQ by creating a simple message producer and consumer in Kotlin

Asynchronous messaging is a mechanism that allows systems to communicate using messages and without having an immediate response. The messages are published by one system into a queue and then consumed, from the same queue, by another system later in time. The message broker is responsible for the queue and by implementing the messaging protocol.

Message brokers allow distributed applications to become more resilient so that when a request is made to our application backend, and for some reason, it fails to be attended, we can guarantee that it’s not lost forever and that we can re-process it when possible. They also promote decoupling between different parts of our distributed system (e.g. from other services or frontend applications) avoiding the communication point to point, instead, a queue is used to communicate.

In this article, we’ll use a Docker image packed with RabbitMQ as the implementation of the message broker.

RabbitMQ is lightweight and easy to deploy on premises and in the cloud. It supports multiple messaging protocols. RabbitMQ can be deployed in distributed and federated configurations to meet high-scale, high-availability requirements.

We will use Kotlin with amqp-client to create a message producer and consumer to interact with our instance of RabbitMQ.

📝 I’ve used IntelliJ IDEA to create a Kotlin project with Gradle as the build system.

📝 For the sake of simplicity, this article doesn’t address exception handling or taking care of open connections when an exception occurs. For further reading on these topics check the official documentation.

Running RabbitMQ With Docker

To run our instance of RabbitMQ, we will use rabbitmq:3-management Docker image.

docker run -d --hostname rabbit-mq-node --name rabbit-mq-instance -p 15672:15672 -p 5672:5672 rabbitmq:3-management

The Docker arguments above:

-d — to run the container in the background (detached mode)

— to run the container in the background (detached mode) --hostname rabbit-mq-node — name of RabbitMQ node

— name of RabbitMQ node --name rabbit-mq-instance — name of the Docker image

— name of the Docker image -p 15672:15672 — port for RabbitMQ management console

— port for RabbitMQ management console -p 5672:5672 — port for RabbitMQ service

— port for RabbitMQ service rabbitmq:3-management — Docker image name

After running the command above we can go to the browser and check if the RabbitMQ instance is running. Go to http://localhost:15672 and input “guest” as username and password.

By now you should be able to access the RabbitMQ management console and see your RabbitMQ instance running.
Zero Values and Complex Data Types In Golang
By: Neel Modi
Tags: Golang Tutorial, Programming, Web Development, Software Development, Golang

Our code from the last blog.

In the photo above, you can see that initially, when we are declaring the variables, we are not assigning the values at the time of declaring the variables.

Now, let’s look at what will be the output if we print the value of our variables before assigning values to them.

We print the values of the variables before assigning any values to the variables using the Println method from the package fmt.

If you have followed the guide, you may get an output similar to this.

In the terminal, you may notice that we are only seeing two zeros. But in reality, we are looking at two zeros and two empty strings "" . A question may arise in your mind that if we haven’t assigned any value to those variables, how can it decide on its own the values of the variables.

This is because whenever we declare a variable without assigning values to it, the Go language does that for us by automatically assigning Zero Values or Default Values. Each variable is given a default value as per its type.

Default values corresponding to their types are given below:
Communism
By: Elaine Ee
Tags: History, Islam

While nationalism was still young in South East Asia, Communism had entered the political arena as a third contestant, almost immediately after the Russian Revolution. Often it took sides with nationalist forces, partly out of its evident anti-colonial character, and largely to exploit the powerful urge of freedom for its own ideological benefits. But it did not hesitate to ally itself with colonial or reactionary forces, if Party considerations so demanded. It acted, as is well-known, not in the interests of the nation concerned but of International Communism. Asian Nationalism was to be the vehicle of Communism, for it was Lenin’s opinion that the victory of Communism in the West could be speeded up by nationalist revolutions in the territories which were then dependent on the European powers. He therefore suggested that the communist movements should unite with the nationalist movements for independence in their respective countries. (Nationalism and Communism in South-East Asia. A Brief Survey Author(s): D. P. Singhal Source: Journal of Southeast Asian History, Vol. 3, №1 (Mar., 1962), pp. 56–66) (Damien)
Consensus Episode 1
By: Justin Lyle
Tags: Assignment, Podcast

On this episode of Consensus, we ask one of the most heavily debated questions in existence: does pineapple belong on pizza?

To answer this question we bring world-renowned chef Luca Nottingham to the plate. Luca has been accredited with multiple awards due to his successes within in the kitchen, but can he successfully persuade his opponent that pineapple does not, in fact, belong on pizza.

And now to the opposing side of the argument. Jeff Panopoulos believes that it is acceptable, if not mandatory, for pineapple to be on pizza. Jeff is the Great grandson of Sam Panopoulos, the accredited inventor of Hawaiian pizza.

With both challengers now in the spotlight, it’s now time for Consensus! But what is Consensus exactly? Well, if you have never listened before, the premise of the show is to take two individuals with opposing opinions and have them try to form some sort of agreement on the topic. There is one catch to this however. The contestants are required to reach an agreement on the topic before they are allowed to leave the studio.

Our goal in creating this podcast is to teach others about the importance of agree-ability. Just because two people such as Jeff and Luca have vastly different opinions on a topic does not necessarily mean that they have to despise one another. We believe it is truly beneficial for people to keep an open mind and to really hear someone out before you completely oppose what they have to say. At the end of the day, everyone is still learning and simply trying to figure out this crazy place we call the world. So please, listen today and see if you may change your mind right here on Consensus!
Interstellar
By: Evren Yildiz
Tags: Film Dizi, Teknoloji, Benden, Yaşam, Epic

in Queens of the Bs
Chocolate Colored Eyes
By: Sarah E Sturgis
Tags: Poetry, Writing, Haiku, Colors, Eyes

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By Scribe

The Story Box is a lovingly written newsletter featuring delightful stories and all updates from the publication. Every Sunday, just for you. Take a look
For the Team
By: Calvin Loftis
Tags: Leadership, Team, Sports, Athletes, Teamwork

Individual commitment to a group effort — that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work. - Vince Lombardi

Right now we are in a unique situation where sports, schools, and businesses are shut down or temporarily proceeding with all responsibilities taking place at home… on one’s own. Everyone is scrambling to find a way to make things work and progress individually to ensure that teams, groups, and companies can continue strong when we come together again.

Now more than ever, it is important to understand how each and every person plays a vital role in the success of their team. You may be physically apart, but you are still in this thing TOGETHER.

Photo by Jeffrey F Lin on Unsplash

There is a major difference in one’s job on a team vs one’s role on a team. What most people believe to be their job is actually their role or position. Each and every person has the same job on every single team — to help fulfill the goals and mission of the team. We accomplish this by attacking our tasks within our ‘specific’ role. For example, a quarterback and linebacker have the exact same job — help the team WIN but they accomplish it in two very different roles.

Now it DOES NOT MATTER if you are the CEO, Intern, 1st Team All-State, 2-Year Letterman, 3rd stringer, Varsity, JV, or Freshmen — EVERYONE still has a job to do and a role to fulfill it! Each of you are a piece to the puzzle and without you the picture is not complete. The conditions right now can give the false narrative that your job is not big enough or important enough to be noticed or missed when the team returns, but that is a lie. Without your preparation and commitment the team will suffer.
Featured AI2er: Matthew Peters
Tags: Featured Ai2er, Allennlp, NLP, Machine Learning, AI

Matthew Peters is a Senior Research Scientist on the AllenNLP team.

What put you on the path to your current role?

I studied math as an undergraduate and graduate student, but was always interested in software engineering and machine learning. After finishing my PhD, I worked in the finance industry developing mortgage models for a few large banks. Then, I transitioned into the tech industry and led a team responsible for machine learning related product development at a Seattle startup before joining AI2.

What’s the most surprising or interesting thing that happened with your work at AI2 recently?

After our team published a paper last year describing an algorithm named “ELMo,” other research groups around the world followed suit, publishing papers with names like Bert, Big Bird and Ernie. As several members of our team have young children, we couldn’t be more pleased that the natural language processing community is now talking about algorithms honoring adorable children’s TV characters.

What are you looking forward to with your work this summer?

Summer is traditionally the season for conferences, when all of the work from the last 6–9 months is presented, and they provide an opportunity to catch up with colleagues we haven’t seen in a while. This year, I also co-presented a tutorial at the NAACL conference in June. We have also been working recently to incorporate large scale structured knowledge bases such as Wikipedia into models such as ELMo, and are planning to apply the technique to some of the specialized knowledge resources in use at AI2 (e.g., for processing biomedical articles for Semantic Scholar).

One piece of advice you’d give an aspiring researcher:

Although most researchers follow a path that includes a PhD in Computer Science, it is also common to take other routes. For example, I do not have any formal training in computer science, machine learning, or natural language processing, instead learning requisite skills via self-study and related work experience. Opportunities such as AI2’s Pre-doctoral Young Investigator Program also provide an alternate path to research that does not necessarily include a PhD in CS.

Most underrated activity or place in Seattle?

Seattle isn’t known for its beaches, but we do have some nice ones both on Lake Washington and Puget Sound. The beaches on Puget Sound such as Golden Gardens are particularly nice as they face west and have amazing sunsets behind the Olympic Mountains. Sitting around a campfire on the beach with close friends and enjoying the long summer evenings is highly enjoyable!
What are the properties of a true Bitcoin wallet?
Tags: Bitcoincash, Best, Wallet, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency

There are dozens of different wallets on the App Sore and Google Play, and their developers all claim they have created the best wallet. And every product has its pros and cons. Let’s define some important properties of a true cryptocurrency wallet.

1. A wallet should be lightweight and mobile.

Paper wallets, hardware wallets — those are good for long term storage only. Most people would use cryptocurrency on a day-to-day basis to receive money and pay the bills.

2. It should provide a real control over user’s funds, not an imaginary one.

There must be the full access to private keys, they must be stored securely, and connection to the blockchain network must not involve any intermediate servers or schemes that can potentially block access to transaction broadcasting or balance retrieval. The most robust solution is to use the Simplified Payment Verification[1] protocol that was initially described in ‘Bitcoin — P2P Electronic Cash System’ white paper and allows light clients to be full-fledged users of the network without a middleman[2]. Besides direct connection to ordinary networks nodes there are some other solutions, such as connection through publicly available Electrum servers or Insight blockchain explorers.

3. It should be private.

The Bitcoin’s blockchain is as transparent as a glass. During the time when ‘the big brother is watching you’ we need a special privacy for our transactions. There are specialized opaque blockchains such as Monero or Zcash, yet they are on the dawn of their existence, and mobile wallets are yet to come (if we do not count surrogate products that neutralize all the privacy).
Dussehra: A Religious-cum-Spiritual Festival
By: Simran Kankas
Tags: Festivals, Religion, Spirituality, Spirit, Short Story

Dussehra is a Hindu festival. It symbolizes the triumph of good over evil.

One of the stories behind this festival is Ram’s victory over Raavan.

Raavan was the powerful king of the demons. He did penance for years to please Lord Brahma. As a result of which Lord brahma appeared and granted Raavan his boon where he asked not to be killed by gods, demons, or spirits. As time passed by, he got more powerful and arrogant. The demons began to disturb the sages and seers. Lord Vishnu incarnated on Earth as Ram, a human being, in order to defeat and kill him, thus circumventing the boon given by Lord Brahma.

One day, Raavan kidnapped Sita, the wife of Ram. When he ignored Ram’s request to release Sita, the situation escalated and led to the war. A fierce battle took place between Rama and Raavan in which Rama killed Raavan and ended the evil rule. Dharma was restored on the Earth. Thus, this festival is a reminder of the victory of Good over Evil.

On Dussehra, effigies of the demons Raavan, Kumbhkaran, and Meghnaad are burnt with fireworks, marking evil’s destruction.

“I did not kill Raavan. His ego killed him.” — Ram

I see Dussehra as a religious-cum-spiritual festival because conquering one’s own demons is the true spirit of it and One need not be Hindu to follow this path.

Seeing Dussehra through Lord Ram’s Eyes

I killed Raavan once

I saw him today again

He is hiding in us

He is among us

I won’t kill him this time

I, Ram, want every one of you

To stand up for yourself

Take that one big step

Kill the Raavan inside of you

Kill the Raavan around you

Carry the spirit of Dussehra with you

When you burn his effigy

Carry on my legacy

Kill the evil inside

That is your real enemy

I am Ram

I am always on your side

When you fight the good fight

Join me and add more light,

Shine and grace to your aura

Happy Dussehra
Mother Nature Did What We Couldn’t
By: Brenda Fredericks
Tags: Self-awareness, Personal Growth, Life, Relationships, Self

In 2012 my house was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy. It ripped through and flooded the bottom of my 3 story home. Made it unlivable.

We lived on the South shore of Long Island and as the storm was rolling in and upleveled to a category 3, we were told to evacuate.

Before we evacuated, we brought everything of value upstairs.

…how does one choose what is valuable?

The room downstairs and our family room was slowly falling apart. Much like everything else in our lives, namely our marriage.

We put the old couch on cement blocks and milk crates to lift it up a few feet.

We couldn’t move the piano or the TV. We brought up the photo albums and some other sentimental items and hoped for the best.

We were choosing what we were willing to sacrifice.

The house was in disarray and the news was blaring from the radio. A feeling of fast paced fear in the air. People were evacuating all over our neighborhood but some refused to go. One of our cars was destroyed in Hurricane Irene a year earlier and I was reminded of the power of these storms.

Mostly we were leaving to save the cars, I told myself.

I had this weird thought — I want things to get destroyed. It shocked me to think such thoughts — it made no sense really. Everything else in our lives was falling apart and somehow I wanted this hurricane to wreck something in that house — like it would be a marker of what was really happening underneath.

After we discussed the cars and whether we should leave or not, we decided yes, we would evacuate. It seemed like the safest option.

Tony said to me, “You go to your sister’s, I’ll go to Brian’s,” a friend of his. I was shocked that he didn’t want to stay together, but I felt relieved and absolutely loved this idea.

I called the next few weeks my Hurricane Separation. Tony & I barely spoke except when necessary. I slept on the top mattress of my niece’s pink princess bunk bed and noticed how odd it felt to be apart from this man I slept next to for 21 years.
Final Project Review : Loakin by Alterra Academy Batch 3
By: Alterra Academy Writer
Tags: Software Developer, Alterra Academy, Software Development, Codingbootcamp, Software Engineer

Alterra Academy is a tech talent incubator that gives everyone (even non-IT background) a chance to be a professional Tech Talent.

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Notice on Delisting READ/BTC Trading Pair
By: Coinegg Exchange
Tags: Exchange, Announcements, Altcoins, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency

Dear Supporters:

Upon agreement by CoinEgg and the project party, CoinEgg will delist the READ/BTC trading pair on Nov 30, 2019.

If you have unfilled READ pending orders in BTC market, please cancel orders as soon as possible. When the pair is delisted, the system will automatically cancel all unfilled pending orders of READ in BTC market. The deposit for READ now has been disabled. You can withdraw your READ in your account to a personal wallet or transfer to other exchanges by Dec 30, 2019.

Thanks for your support.

Risk Warning:

Digital assets are innovative investment product, and the price is volatile and unpredictable. Please make rational decisions when investing.

CoinEgg Team

Nov 20, 2019

Join our Telegram to communicate: https://t.me/CoinEggEnglish
Broken Heart
By: White Feather
Tags: Humor, Love, Music, Fiction, Flash Fiction

Danny had entered puberty. He had a cassette player that his dad gave him when he got back from Korea. It was battery-operated. Danny took it with him to the “outpost,” a place out in the forest where he went to be alone and listen to music.

There was so much great music coming out at the time. Danny had an hour-long cassette of all of his favorite songs. He listened to it all day and his favorite place to listen to it was the outpost. He would sit on his favorite boulder and put the headphones on. He would look up at the tree tops and be swept away to different worlds.

One of Danny’s favorite songs was a number one hit song by the Bee Gees called, How Can You Mend a Broken Heart? It was a beautiful song he listened to as he imagined a future love life.

Danny had never had a girlfriend. He had no idea yet what a broken heart felt like. Listening to that song, he figured it must be a very, very intense feeling. And it must be beautiful somehow.

“I hope to someday experience that,” he thought to himself.

…and so it eventually came to pass.
On altered orbits
By: Anne Mccrossan
Tags: Science, Religion, Digital Transformation

As far as change management challenges are concerned, Galileo Galilei was faced with one of the toughest ones going. Unfortunately for him, it didn’t go too well.

Between 1615 C.E. and 1632 C.E., debate was raging about whether the long-held view first put forward by Aristotle was still a valid one, that the Earth was the center of the universe.

As an alternative, theories that had been developed by Nicolaus Copernicus between 1511 C.E. and 1546 C.E. were suggesting it was the Sun around which all else orbited, an idea that was known as ‘heliocentrism’.

Galileo, who was called the ‘Father of the Scientific Method‘, defended heliocentrism. It was a stance that set him against the perceived teachings of contemporary scripture generally, and against Pope Urban VIII, who was Pope at the time, in particular.

In 1632 C.E., an Inquisitorial commission in Italy declared heliocentrism to be ‘foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture.’ This is a copy of their original pronouncement.

Faced with a changing world view (quite literally in his case), Pope Urban and his Inquisition reacted out of anger and fear. Galileo was put under house arrest, which is how he lived until his death, a few years later.

This is a classic story about the clash between faith and science, facts and beliefs. Yet, we know today that a changing world view is part of life. Without ideas, innovation cannot exist. New knowledge is continually causing us to revise previously held assumptions as we evolve.

An exponential rise in human possibility is being created from code that asks us to be teachable. As the world gets more wired up and connected, a human ability to learn and adapt, using initiative and all the information and frames of reference available, is an important part of our response to it.

That trade-off between facts and beliefs is in some ways a distraction. Because, at its core, emergence is neither one nor the other. It is a next-generation synthesis of both, reconciling the previously unreconcilable, going beyond them and ushering in new horizons that had been unimaginable before.

When entrenched views and methods are challenged by emerging ideas, it can be hard to give up old assumptions and respond to them positively. But if we were still thinking the earth was the center of the universe, imagine how much of the last five centuries of progress we would have been missed as a result of that rigid thinking.

Holding onto industrial economy ideas in a connected age is very similar. With code, we have an altered orbit. It is asking us to think about how we revolve around it in ways that are fit for today’s age.
Tron Integrates 100 Million Bittorrent Users
By: Token News
Tags: Tron, Blockchain, China, Trx, Cryptocurrency

There has been much news lately in regards to the Tron (TRX) purchase of Bittorrent for a staggering $140 million USD. With Tron looking to decentralize the entire internet, it would make perfect sense for them to purchase Bittorrent, which is considered one of the first decentralized p2p services created. Founded in 2001, Bittorrent allows users to share information in a decentralized way. With Tron’s acquisition, they will integrate all of the current Bittorrent users into the Tron ecosystem, essentially creating the largest decentralized service through blockchain technology. Justin Sun announced in a letter to the community:

” Created in 2001, the BitTorrent protocol is a file sharing communications protocol based on a peer-to-peer network. It is the first decentralized Internet protocol with large-scale global application. Even today, the BitTorrent protocol retains its status as the world’s largest decentralized protocol, once transmitting 40% of daily Internet traffic. BitTorrent created and shaped the protocol, with 70% of BitTorrent users using the product. The company aims to decentralize the Web by promoting and further developing the BitTorrent protocol.”

Sun went on further to state the following:

“The BitTorrent acquisition embodies TRON’s “All-In Decentralization” strategy. TRON and BitTorrent share the same vision for a decentralized Web. I believe BitTorrent will gain new life from integrating into the TRON ecosystem, and TRON will continue BitTorrent’s protocol legacy.”

So far, Justin Sun is living up to his promise to the world to decentralize everything. Tron is currently integrated into Kitty live, GSC, Mico, Peiwo and SAMY. By adding these 100 million new users, the Tron Network has grown to a staggering 200 million users. With their continued development of decentralized applications, aggressive marketing towards new users, and acquisition of current businesses to be integrated into the Tron Ecosystem, it is obvious that Tron is on their way to decentralize the internet.

https://www.facebook.com/TokenNews/
Michael Novogratz: before the adoption of the cryptocurrency, it remains five or six years
By: Ico, Crypto News
Tags: Blockchain, South Korea, Michael Novogratz, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency

Former top-manager with Wall Street and founder of Galaxy Digital Capital Management Michael Novogratz considers that the mass acceptance cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology will take place through five or six years. About it reports edition of Blokt.

At conference of Beyond Blocks in South Korea Michael Novogratz expressed a confidence, that in the nearest two-three years the great number of the new organizations and companies will come in cryptocurrency industry. Without it, in opinion of multimillionaire, “we will go about in circles”.

“We won’t see the mass acceptance blockchain until users will get used to technology, but five-six year stayed till it”, — Novogratz declared.

Among basic obstacles for development industry the founder cryptocurrency bank marks the ever-increasing cost of services blockchain specialists, and also doubts of traditional investors.

“Think about that, how institutional investors work. Difficult enough to walk up to the boss to say that money lie in the place of that he was not even heard. A reliable and well-known trustee will be required is the Japanese bank, or organization level of Goldman Sachs, HSBC, or ICE. Only then an institutional investor will feel comfortably”, — Novogratz explains

The banker noted the importance of regulating cryptocurrencies. In particular, he expressed satisfaction with the work of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) aimed at prosecuting scammers and market manipulators.

Also Michael Novogratz believes that the penetration of blockchain into the lives of ordinary people should be accelerated, and for this it is necessary to make the technology more transparent. In this case, the user does not need to know the details of its operation in detail.

Let’s note, Michael Novogratz has long supported cryptocurrencies and is convinced that the technology of the distributed registry is a people’s revolution. Previously, he also urged each investor to have in his portfolio at least 1–2% in the cryptocurrency.

Join our Telegram channel https://t.me/blockchaininvestio
Beautifun
By: Harnoor Bhullar
Tags: Poetry, Poesia, Sunset, Poem, Poetry On Medium

Its addicting

To watch the sun set

The same way every day

It’s beautiful

How the departing sun

Outlines the clouds

With golden glitter

Turning them slowly reddish

Making them blush

It’s beauty having fun!

~Harnoor Bhullar
Betelgeuse
Tags: Obsessions, Companionship, Science, Relationships, Marriage

Betelgeuse

upon them hath the light shined.*

Image by sl1990 from Pixabay

I’ve always been a science nerd, so when my wife showed me the article about Betelgeuse of course I found it fascinating. A naked eye supernova explosion could happen in my lifetime! But the author poured cold water on that idea by pointing out that no one really had any idea when it would blow, that is, the window is 100,000 years wide, so there is no reason to stare expectantly at the sky.

It happened that we were talking about it as my wife and I drove home from visiting family for a Hanukkah party. She mentioned that she can’t detect Betelgeuse’s red color when she looks at it. I pointed out that it was a clear night so maybe we should find someplace to pull over. Maybe on a really clear night like this one she could see it. Not sharing my fascination with science, she dismissed this idea. When we got home, however, I tried to get her to take a look at it with me. She gave me her there he goes again look and went inside.

I found that I simply could not stop looking. It seemed to me that it was brighter than the last time I looked. Yet according to what I’d read it should be dimming. Wait a minute. Was I imagining this? Or was I actually witnessing a supernova explosion in real time? Wasn’t the brightening supposed to take place over a matter of months and therefore be imperceptible if you were just standing there looking at it? I mentally compared its brightness to a nearby star and said to myself, OK, right now it’s just a smidgen dimmer than that star. If their relative brightness reverses, that will be a good indication.

It must have been rather a while until my wife came out to check on me and found me still with my neck bent up staring at the sky. She cleared her throat and asked if I was coming in any time soon. Something in her voice indicated that she thought I was acting rather oddly. “I’m checking something!” I said with a whine. “Shbshbshbbbch,” she expelled air between loosely pursed lips as she turned and went inside. I kept staring. And staring. Sure enough, the relative brightness of the two stars had reversed! I couldn’t look away.