fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Achieving Accessibility Across Your React Web Apps
By: Natalie Mclaren
Tags: React, Programming, JavaScript, Accessibility, Testing

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)

WCAG — developed by a W3C initiative called The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) — provides developers with technical specifications and guidelines on how to increase web usability for people with disabilities. The latest WCAG version is 2.1 with 2.2 scheduled to be released in early 2021. A working draft of version 2.2 can be seen here.

There are 4 main principles to the WCAG:

Perceivable — all user interface components must be presented to users in a way they can receive it i.e. it can’t be invisible to all of their senses.

Operable — users must be able to operate the interface.

Understandable — the user must understand how to use the interface. Functionalities must not be beyond their understanding.

Robust — it must be robust enough that if technologies advance, the content must still be accessible by users.

According to WCAG, if any of the above isn’t true, users with disabilities will not be able to access the web.

Each of the above principles will have sub-guidelines which in turn have success criteria. Below I’ve listed a few of the guidelines found within each principle. A full list can be found on WCAG’s website.

Perceivable Guidelines

Text Alternative — e.g. alt text in images. Any content that isn’t text should have a text alternative.

— e.g. text in images. Any content that isn’t text should have a text alternative. Distinguishable — separating foreground and background colour to make content easy to read.

Operable Guidelines

Keyboard Accessible — make all functionality available from the keyboard.

— make all functionality available from the keyboard. Navigable — provide ways for users to navigate, find content, and determine where they are.

Understandable Guidelines

Readable — make the content readable and understandable.

— make the content readable and understandable. Input Assistance — help users avoid and correct mistakes.

Robust Guidelines

Compatible — maximise compatibility with current or future user agents.

Each guideline will have testable success criteria based on three levels of conformance A (lowest), AA, and AAA (highest).

Check out the complete list on their website to find detailed success criteria.
Ghostface Killah: Sensitive Genius Poet, Also Backwards-Thinking Sexist
By: Dave Bry
Tags: Music, Rap, Ghostface Killah

Here is video of an interview Wu-Tang Clan MC Ghostface Killah did last week on Angela Yee’s radio show on the Shade 45 satellite station. It is a good example of how a hugely talented artist can be engaging and enjoyable to watch, even as he espouses horribly repellent views on matters of ethics or politics.

Here is a guy who can render the tenderness and intimacy of maternal love in twenty exquisitely chosen words: “But I remember this/Moms would lick her fingertips/to wipe the cold out my eye before school with her spit.” (From 1997’s “All That I Got Is You.”) And here is a guy who can say: “That’s what’s wrong with our people and shit, they put our women equal to men. We’re not equal… Don’t put me equal. I was here first!”

That’s a bummer, no way around it. It’s like my favorite rapper is a member of the Promise Keepers. Still, I love his music. I play his records all the time, I play his records for my kid. And I could listen to him talk all day. What does this mean? I don’t know for sure. Something about art being apolitical, I guess. Anyway, the clip is nothing if not interesting. (Note: it is full of curse words. Ghost is a renowned vulgarian. He once told me, at the end of an interview I did with him in the 90s, “Don’t take the curse words out and shit, those are my favorite shits.”)
by Martino Pietropoli
By: Martino Pietropoli
Tags: New York, Art, Drawing, Saturday

First thing in the morning: a glass of water and a cartoon by The Fluxus.

Follow
Social media trends in the Middle East and North Africa
By: Damian Radcliffe
Tags: Influencers, Middle East, Facebook, Saudi Arabia, Social Media

First published by IJNet, the International Journalists’ Network, and co-authored with Payton Bruni.

It’s now eight years since the Arab Spring rocked many parts of the Middle East. At the time, social media was identified as a major factor in the geo-political upheaval seen across much of the region.

With hindsight, that was probably overstated. Nonetheless, social media did play a role in bringing awareness of these protests to a global audience, and it also helped to provoke discussions about the role that social media can play as a driver for change.

I’ve been covering this topic since 2012, and earlier this year — with University of Oregon student Payton Bruni — I published my seventh annual report on social media in the Middle East.

Here are five ways we found that social media in the Middle East differs from other markets like North America and Europe.

1. Young people are still using Facebook

Jonathan Labin, managing director for Facebook Middle East. Image via Arabian Business.

In contrast to the #deleteFacebook movement in the United States, as well as wider stagnation in many Western markets, not only is Facebook usage continuing to grow in the Middle East, but Arab youth are using it more than ever.

Last year’s Arab Youth survey revealed that almost two thirds (63%) of Arab youth look first to Facebook and Twitter for news.

More widely, nearly half of young Arabs (49%) say they get their news on Facebook daily, up from 35% last year; and 61% of Arab youth say they use Facebook more frequently than a year ago.

2. Saudi Arabia continues to see massive social media growth

With a population of 32 million, Saudi Arabia (KSA) is the second most populous country in the region (behind Egypt, now home to more than 100 million). Social media use continues to grow rapidly across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a trend of interest to brands, agencies and media companies alike.

Data from We Are Social and Hootsuite found that social media users in KSA grew by 32%, compared to a worldwide average of 13%, from January 2017 to January 2018.
Master Modern JavaScript — Array includes, Array reduce, Map object and much more
By: Yogesh Chavan
Tags: Angular, JavaScript, React, Vue, Programming

Photo by Julien Pouplard on Unsplash

Over the past few years, there have been many updates to the JavaScript language. And these updates are very useful if you want to improve your coding skills.

So let’s look at some of the things added in JavaScript which you need to be familiar with to improve your skills and get a high paying job.

Note: This is the final short preview of content from Mastering Modern JavaScript book. There is a lot more covered in the actual book.

Check out my previous post to get more preview content if you missed it.

So let’s get started.

Array.prototype.includes

ES7 has added this function that checks if an element is present in the array or not and returns a boolean value of either true or false .

// ES5 Code

const numbers = ["one", "two", "three", "four"]; console.log(numbers.indexOf("one") > -1); // true

console.log(numbers.indexOf("five") > -1); // false

The same code using the Array includes method can be written as shown below:

// ES7 Code

const numbers = ["one", "two", "three", "four"]; console.log(numbers.includes("one")); // true

console.log(numbers.includes("five")); // false

So using the Array includes methods makes code short and easy to understand.

The includes method also comes in handy when comparing with different values.

Take a look at the below code:

const day = "monday"; if(day === "monday" || day === "tuesday" || day === "wednesday") {

// do something

}

The above code using the includes method can be simplified as shown below:

const day = "monday"; if(["monday", "tuesday", "wednesday"].includes(day)) {

// do something

}
Dream WiFi
By: Leor Grebler
Tags: 5g, Wifi, IoT, Ideas, Future

Dream WiFi

What could WiFi look like in 10 years?

Photo by Fabian Horst / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)

Maybe it wouldn’t look like anything we’d see now. Instead, WiFi might actually be a repeater for 5G or other technologies that are on the market.

In such a scenario, ISPs might position more around being an in-home 5G repeater service than hauling cable. Perhaps a fibre to 5G connection could allow for better streaming in home.

Devices themselves would be 5G and connect directly to the Internet with no setup. The process of a device being associated to you would come from a notification on your phone. After that, you could associate / disassociate devices through an app or portal.

Locating devices would be down to the centimetre. The connectivity protocol would allow for a “Find My Phone” type of service to be able to make the ring.

Because setup would be so easy, IoT devices would finally proliferate. Lightbulbs and outlets could be controlled and send power consumption information. Faucets and plumbing could truly become smart without scaring a plumber.

The dream of Internet connected devices could finally be realized.
Anger is a Mystical Warning
By: Tim Shapiro
Tags: Neuroscience, Religion, Family, God, Anger

Something is Awry

Family Archives

I’m with a married couple. They sit on the plaid couch in my office. I am their pastor.

“Would two weeks from Sunday work?”

The husband and wife are planning a party to celebrate their 40th anniversary. They want it at the church.

He says, “We’d like to make it during fellowship hour after worship. Most of our friends are from church anyway.”

“And if they aren’t, then you will have extra people in worship. How about that?”

She was born in Madison, Wisconsin. They were married in Milwaukee. His job at Wright Patterson, Air Force Base, brought them to Xenia, Ohio, a thirty-minute drive to work.

“I used to listen to cassettes in my car. The drive went faster,” he said. “My new car doesn’t even have a CD player.”

I say, “Tell me a highlight or two of your marriage.”

“Of course our two sons,’ she says, “We couldn’t be prouder of them.

He says, “You know, in all these years we have never argued. Never. Not once.”

For a moment, the three of us sit still, me in the wood chair (did it come from a yard sale?) and them together on the couch. I think I noticed, or imagined, a slight twitch in her face. She crossed her arms.

Five more minutes of conversation and the party is planned. There will be cake and balloons. Their friend Nancy will make bean soup. (The soup will simmer all Saturday and during worship too).

The husband asks, “Will you offer a prayer? I suppose before the soup is served.”
Who defines your startup’s success?
By: Matt Carroll
Tags: Journalism, Stats, Media, Pokemon Go, Data

By Matt Carroll <@MattatMIT>

July 19, 2016: A trio of news media stories, videos, and data viz compiled weekly. Get notified via email? Email 3toread (at) gmail.com.

Get notified via email: Send note to 3toread (at) gmail.com

“3 to read” online

Matt Carroll runs the Future of News initiative at the MIT Media Lab.
What is the difference between Git and GitHub?
Tags: Version Control, Git, Software Engineering, Software Development, Github

What is the difference between Git and GitHub? pandaquests Follow Oct 4 · 2 min read

Often new programmers confuse Git and GitHub. Both are used by software developers on a daily basis. These two are complementary, but they are not the same. In this article I’ll explain the main difference between these two, so you’ll never confuse them ever again.

Photo by Luke Chesser on Unsplash

Git

Git is a software to manage different version of your code. These functionality is also called version control or source code management. It runs locally on your computer as a command line tool, i.e. you typically interact with it via the terminal, even though there exists plenty of Git clients in order to make working with Git more convenient.

Git is not the only tool for version control or source code management. Besides Git you have Subversion (SVN), Mercurial, CVS, etc.

Here is a list of different version control software.

GitHub

GitHub is a web service where you can upload your code repository. As a web application it provides a web interface with buttons, textboxes, etc. that you can use to interact with it. It provides functionalities of Git and also some of its own.

Besides GitHub there are also other similar web services, for example: GitLab, BitBucket, SourceForge, etc.

Here is a list of GitHub alternatives.

Summary

Below I list the main differences between GitHub and Git

Do you have any questions? Did I miss anything? Share your thoughts and comment below
The Holy Trinity of Anal Sex
By: Tracey Folly
Tags: Health, Relationships, Sex, Sexuality, This Happened To Me

I have been thinking about anal sex a lot lately — I mean, who hasn’t? After careful consideration based on my own personal experience, I’ve come to realize that a successful anal encounter requires three things: communication, lubrication, and consent. Subtract any one of those three factors from the equation and you have a recipe for failure. Trust me. I learned the hard way.

I’ve had anal sex with exactly two men. Although I was married to the first, our anal experiment took place long before I had a ring on my finger. While we were still dating, I convinced my ex to try anal in the back seat of my secondhand sports car. He consented. Consent works both ways.

With my lower body in the back seat and my upper body dangling into the front, I thought I was ready for anal penetration. We were two consenting young adults who didn’t know the first thing about communication or lubrication. We knew even less about anal sex.

Thus, my only communication was saying, “Push harder,” which I realize now needed to be said both because I was a back door virgin and because we didn’t use any lube — not even saliva, which would have been insufficient anyhow.

Although we successfully achieved anal penetration, it lasted a split second before I tapped out, wailing like a banshee. It took weeks for my body to recover fully. We never tried it again, despite a nearly five-year marriage and ample opportunity.

That fledgling experience was when I learned the importance of lubrication while attempting anal sex. Not using lube was a mistake, but it was my mistake. As such, I learned from it, and who doesn’t love a good learning experience?
Bitcoin: to be or not to be — the future of cryptocurrency!
Tags: Cryptocurrency News, Future, Cryptocurrency, Crypto, Bitcoin

Bitcoin or Dream of all Pirates

Let’s listen to the experts: Valentin Katasonov, the economist and professor at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, believes that the emergence of Bitcoin is not by accident. It is a sort of test step that will be followed by bigger deals.

Now, he is comparing cryptocurrency with gold, building his forecast upon the market price of precious metal.

To confirm his words, the economist offers to examine a quite impressive chart. Exchange fluctuations of Bitcoin and gold are almost similar. Coincidence? I think not!

What about foreign experts?

Some time ago, Paul Krugman, a well-known American economist, said that the usefulness of Bitcoin was more obvious than the usefulness of precious metal. Besides, he stated that Bitcoin could prove to be more useful than “dead gold” for people.

At the same time, an entrepreneur and investor John Feffer believes that Bitcoin is the first viable means able to replace gold.

Thus, do not consider the coin obsolete for the hundredth time, because the drop in the currency rate can be nothing but a wise step of investors or a lull before the rapid jump. Don’t forget about the boom-and-bust economy.

Despite the significant slump of exchange and the absence of coin hype, the number of crypto optimists is not reduced. Success stories just encourage Bitcoin fever.

A certain Mr. Smith, a programmer from Silicon Valley, invested in bitcoins in 2010. He spent only 3 thousand dollars. As of today, he is a millionaire who has quitted, converted cryptocurrency into cash, and started traveling all over the world.

However, there were opposite examples: the American Laszlo Hanyecz bought two pizzas for 10 thousand bitcoins in 2010.

The Briton James Howells is paying lots of money to garbage workers so that they investigate the landfill site. In 2013, he threw away his laptop with 7.5 thousand bitcoins on the hard drive.

Prediction of happy future

How can the price of Bitcoin grow? Saxo Bank predicts that next year the value of cryptocurrency can exceed 60 thousand dollars and the capitalization can reach 1 trillion dollars.

Nevertheless, the bank supposes that, after the dramatic bounce in 2018, Bitcoin will face a rapid fall in 2019 up to the cost of production of 1000 dollars.

According to Vadim Merkulov, a Senior Analyst at Freedom Finance, Bitcoin can reach 40 thousand dollars, but its actual value will be several times lesser in the future. “40 thousand is not the limit, but now, the majority of people who just start investing in Bitcoin do not realize its concept,” the expert stresses.

Outcome:

If you have invested in bitcoins at the proper time, like me, do not hurry up to sell them before it’s too late. The main point here is calm and cold blood.

The majority of serious analysts and specialists think that the Bitcoin rate will increase on the New Year’s Eve and will range from 12 000 to 19 000 by March. Moreover, this is just the beginning of the vigorous and continuous rise of cryptocurrency.
Introduction to Weight & Biases: Track and Visualize your Machine Learning Experiments in 3 Lines of Code
By: Khuyen Tran
Tags: Data Science, Machine Learning, Machine Learning Tools, Python, Data Visualization

Introduction to Weight & Biases: Track and Visualize your Machine Learning Experiments in 3 Lines of Code

Seamlessly Compare Different Experiments and Reproduce your Machine Learning Experiments using Python

Photo by Solé Bicycles on Unsplash

Motivation

If you have applied machine learning or deep learning for your data science projects, you probably know how overwhelming it is to keep track and compare different experiments.

In each experiment, you might want to track the outputs when you change the model, hyperparameters, feature engineering techniques, etc. You can keep track of your results by writing them in an Excel spreadsheet or saving all outputs of different models in your Jupyter Notebook.

However, there are multiple disadvantages to the above methods:

You cannot record every kind of output in your Excel spreadsheet

It takes quite a bit of time to manually log the results for each experiment

You cannot keep all outputs of your experiments in one place

You cannot visually compare all outputs

What if there is a way to track and visualize all experiments like below in 3 lines of code?
Optimizing Customer Satisfaction With Machine Learning
By: Frederik Bussler
Tags: Data Analysis, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Customer Experience, Machine Learning

Optimizing Customer Satisfaction With Machine Learning

Analyzing an airline satisfaction dataset.

Photo by Chris Brignola on Unsplash

Flying can be a hassle. Long lines, uncomfortable seats, bad food… the list goes on. Now, mandates on mask-wearing, physical distancing, PCR tests, temperature checks, health forms, and more make the whole process a dizzying ordeal.

This is bad news for airlines. Airline revenue is already way down, and traffic isn’t expected to fully recover until 2024. Flying is more stressful than ever. Given this, airlines need to optimize customer satisfaction to recover faster, and emerge successfully out of this downturn.

I analyzed an airline passenger satisfaction dataset using the predictive insights tool Apteo to find what factors impact flyer satisfaction the most.

Inflight Wi-Fi is King
The Market will always have room for Cryptocurrencies that are more Centralized than Bitcoin
By: Eric Martin
Tags: Facebook Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Facebook

Landon, you mentioned in your article: “ETH is a Bitcoin offshoot with debatable credibility, due to its centralized organization structure.”

It’s interesting that you mention this, because I think it helps to prove my point that a semi-centralized blockchain can work. Even though Ethereum is not as big as Bitcoin, its current market cap is about one fourth the size of Bitcoin… so I think that’s proof that some centralization (like the centralization that I proposed that Facebook initially take for their coin) can be accepted by the market. A 43 billion dollar market cap for Ethereum is hard to argue with. That cap will probably go down at some point, but it could also go up.

I think the market of cryptocurrencies, which currently consists of over one thousand varieties of them, will always consist of variants that include more centralization as well as ones that try for the most pure decentralization. The beauty of a free market is that consumers get to enjoy tremendous variety, and while one variety may generally be favored and given a premium by the market, it doesn’t mean that other varieties will totally die out. Those other varieties may serve a particular purpose or be especially useful for a specific use case.
Cornell scientists develop “killer cells” to destroy cancer in lymph nodes
By: Cornell University
Tags: Cancer, Research, Health

Cornell biomedical engineers have developed specialized white blood cells — dubbed “super natural killer cells” — that seek out cancer cells in lymph nodes with only one purpose: destroy them. This breakthrough halts the onset of metastasis, according to a new Cornell study published Nov. 2 in the journal Biomaterials.

“We want to see lymph node metastasis become a thing of the past,” said Michael R. King, the Daljit S. and Elaine Sarkaria Professor of Biomedical Engineering and senior author of the paper, “Super Natural Killer Cells That Target Metastases in the Tumor Draining Lymph Nodes.” King worked on the study with lead author Siddarth Chandrasekaran, Ph.D. ’15; Maxine F. Chan ’16; and Jiahe Li, Ph.D. ’15, biomedical engineering.

For tumor cells, the lymph nodes are a staging area and play a key role in advancing metastasis throughout the body. In the study, the biomedical engineers killed the cancerous tumor cells within days, by injecting liposomes armed with TRAIL (Tumor necrosis factor Related Apoptosis-Inducing Ligand) that attach to “natural killer” cells (a type of white blood cell) residing in the lymph nodes.

These natural killer cells became the “super natural killer cells” that find the cancerous cells and induce apoptosis, where the cancer cells self-destruct and disintegrate, preventing the lymphatic spread of cancer any further, said King.

“In our research, we use nanoparticles — the liposomes we have created with TRAIL protein — and attach them to natural killer cells, to create what we call ‘super natural killer cells’ and then these completely eliminate lymph node metastases in mice,” said King.

In cancer progression, there are four stages. At stage I, the tumor is small and has yet to progress to the lymph nodes. In stages II and III, the tumors have grown and likely will have spread to the lymph nodes. At the stage IV, the cancer has advanced from the lymph nodes to organs and other parts of the body.

Between 29 and 37 percent of patients with breast, colorectal and lung cancers are diagnosed with metastases in their tumor-draining lymph nodes — those lymph nodes that lie downstream from the tumor, and those patients are at a higher risk for distant-organ metastases and later-stage cancer diagnoses.

In January 2014, King and his colleagues published research that demonstrated by attaching the TRAIL protein to white blood cells, metastasizing cancer cells in the bloodstream were annihilated.

“So, now we have technology to eliminate bloodstream metastasis — our previous work — and also lymph node metastases,” King said.

This study was funded by the nonprofit organization Lynda’s Kause Inc., started by Lynda King, who died from cancer in July 2014. Lynda King is no relation to Michael King. The foundation funds metastatic cancer research and patient support, and Michael King’s laboratory received the organization’s first two research awards.
React Native Can Help You Cut Your Mobile Development Costs By Up To 33%
By: Lukasz Sajkowski
Tags: React, React Native, Business Development, Software Development, Web Development

The framework implements a new way of building native apps, thanks to which you’re able to save development hours.

React Native allows you to build native mobile apps using JavaScript and declarative UI components. The components correspond to the native UI components of iOS and Android.

One code

So, in development for both platforms, we can use Javascript instead of e.g. Swift and Java. This is the biggest advantage of React Native, and thanks to this feature we’re able to share the code between both mobile platforms. This is why you can use the code developed for iOS on Android also. Of course, you’re not able to share the whole codebase, because you use native modules for specific platforms. Still, with React Native you can significantly reduce development time building an app which will be used on both iOS and Android.

One team

Having one team for both mobile platforms gives you flexibility in creating and managing the team. One lead developer in place of two in native approach. As a result, you can have a smaller team that is less costly and easier to manage. Especially, when you decide to simultaneously develop a web app using React.js. You can share some parts of the code between three platforms instead of two. Android, iOS and Web. Then, you can use the approach to have separate modules based on features instead of a specific platform.

Faster results

React Native is a real alternative to native mobile app development. We’ve trusted React Native with one of our mobile apps that took 1.5 months to develop. Based on our experience we’ve been able to estimate that using the native approach would have cost us 0.5 month more, which equals 33%. Summarising, shorter development time, reduced manpower and an easily manageable project are good reasons to consider React Native for developing your next mobile app for both iOS and Android.

This article was originally taken from Briisk Blog.
Why Monoliths in the Middle of Nowhere Won Marketing This Year
By: Nitish Menon
Tags: Memes, Business, Marketing, Brands, Social Media

The Possible Truth

The story behind the monoliths has likely been solved, and here’s a possible explanation for these mysterious events. After weeks of popping up, then disappearing without a trace, somebody has finally claimed responsibility for the Monolith.

The Most Famous Artist took to Instagram to seemingly claim responsibility for the installation of the monoliths, while also flogging each one for a whopping $45,000 USD. So, if you’re in the market for a big silver monolith in the middle of nowhere, you know who to call.

Image by The Most Famous Artist’s Instagram Page

The Instagram account is a collective of stunt artists who all work under the title ‘The Most Famous Artist’, which was originally founded by Matty Mo (the guy behind the “Hollyweed” stunt)

I’m not quite sure who the target demographic is for the $45,000 hunk of metal, or if there has been any luck selling them yet. But got to give it to them for trying.

“I am not able to say much because of legalities of the original installation,” Mo told Mashable when asked about the monoliths. “I can say we are well known for stunts of this nature and at this time we are offering authentic art objects through monoliths-as-a-service. I cannot issue additional images at this time but I can promise more on this in the coming days and weeks.”

Obviously, there’s no real way to prove if Mo and his team are actually behind this stunt, but this is the best possible explanation we’ve got so far, so I’m going to accept it.
Never Experienced These Things? That’s White Privilege
By: Shawn Laib
Tags: Politics, Society, Race, Racism, White Privilege

You come to school for the first day of the new year. You’re entering into the third grade, excited to spend time with your old friends and make some new ones, too. The teacher seems nice and welcoming enough, and he or she starts calling out the attendance of the class.

When they get to your name, there are a couple of very wrong pronunciations, followed by an apology, and then the teacher asking you how to say your name properly. Once you do, they still can’t get it right and say that they will learn it as the year goes on.

Embarrassed and disappointed, you have just come to accept that your name, the name given to you by your parents with meaning and love is just never going to be given its due in a classroom. You will always be the kid with the “weird” name. The name that is not “Steve” or “Jessica”. This should make you feel unique, but in America, it makes you feel like an outcast.

Having your name pronounced with ease and respect is white privilege.
Alternative Way to Perform OR Query in Cloud Firestore
By: Mendhie Emmanuel
Tags: JavaScript, Java, Firebase, AndroidDev

If you are using Cloud Firestore for your project’s database, you may have tried performing OR query but soon realized that there’s no function for that. I also encountered the same problem. As a matter of fact, many of us had encountered the same problem and here’s the proof. At the time of writing this article, Google hasn’t provided OR, IN, NOT IN operators for WHERE query.

Therefore, the only approach now, though unpleasant, is to run several queries in a loop and then merge the query results on the client side. I would show you how to achieve this in java. For javascript, use Lim Shang Yi’s approach here.

Cloud Firestore

So here in my database, I have books collection, and each document has three fields- author , genre , and title . In this example, I want to retrieve books from more than one genre. So here we go:

This actually does the job, but it’s not quite efficient because it uses more resources on the client side. I hope Google will provide a more efficient way of doing this soon.

By the way, I used the result to populate this RecyclerView

Books App

…and here’s the source code.

I would love your feedback! Thanks for reading!
Introducing the Pinterest chat extension and bot for Messenger
By: Pinterest Engineering
Tags: Platform, Pinterest, Facebook, Developer, Bots

Hayder Casey, Pinterest engineering manager, Growth

More than 200 million people use Pinterest every month to find ideas to try, from recipes to gifts to decor for the home. Family and friends are often a big part of these plans, and that’s why nearly 1M Pins are shared to Facebook Messenger each week. Today we’re making it easier for Pinners to collaborate with others on Messenger by launching a new chat extension and bot.

Pinterest chat extension for Messenger

We’re rolling out a Pinterest chat extension to make it simpler to share Pins and collaborate with family and friends directly from Messenger. Now Pinners can easily share ideas without ever having to leave the Messenger conversation. And starting today, Pins shared from our mobile apps to Messenger will link to our chat extension using a newly launched SDK from Messenger.

With an improved sharing experience, now the full Pin’s image will be shown in Messenger once shared. If you tap on a Pin in Messenger, you’ll see a richer, more integrated experience through the chat extension which makes responding to ideas, sharing new Pins and accessing Pinterest Search and Related Pins quicker and easier than ever.

We designed the experience with the most popular ways people share Pins to Messenger in mind. We scoped the requirements to:

Performance–Users will be on the go, so it needs to load fast.

Viewing–Show the full image and make it simple to visit the article when available.

Ease of use–Enable people to browse and search related content on Pinterest and easily share it back to the conversation.

We built the extension on top of our mobile web platform in React. This was an efficient route to leverage existing infrastructure. We removed all the chrome and banners to take advantage of the available space to show content.

Pinterest bot for Messenger

We’re also rolling out a Pinterest bot to bring the power of Pinterest Search to Messenger, and help Pinners find recipes, products, style inspiration and other ideas. To get started, chat the bot and select a topic like “food,” “home” or “DIY” to get recommendations from our dataset of +100B ideas.

You can also search for ideas to try, from cocktail recipes to holiday outfits, right from the Pinterest bot.

This is an early exploration into AI interactions for Pinterest, allowing users to engage with the product in a more natural and conversational way. Although this is a first step, we’re excited about the potential for future iterations.

The Pinterest chat extension will be rolling out to Pinners using the English language version of our app on iPhone and Android over the coming days, and the bot will be available across all platforms, mobile and web. Be sure to update your Pinterest app to version 6.40 on iOS and 6.45 on Android.
5 ways to make a unstoppable business
By: Joe Veix
Tags: Entrepreneurship, Self Improvement, Business

a lot of people ask me at the conferences, what makes a unstoppable business? how do i keep businessing late into the night when my gums hurt and i’ve had enough business for the day??

as a leading thought leader, i have 5 secrets about business that will blow the lid off the whole damn thing

1. people

first off, what is a business? it’s people. think about it. it’s you and me, rubbing our hands together over data-sheets, igniting the sparks of a global econo-fire. that’s the blod and guts of the system okay?

that’s why diversity is so important, and why i constantly surround myself with all different kinds of men, tall men, fat men, men w/ confusing hats, etc. you want as many men in the boardroom as possible, so not a single man excluded

2. just graph it!

one mistake i notice many young founders make, is that they don’t measure things. this is why they always fail. measure everything. all aspects of my life are measured. even how much i’m measuring things. i know exactly how many things i have, and how many things i don’t have, at all times, forever. do you?

3. ideas, but more of them

you cant have a business without an idea. that’s why ideas are so rare, right?

WRONG. trick question. ideas are all around us. right now, you are inhaling 1,000,000s of potential ideas. ideas are just “electric words” and you need to monetize all of them, starting yesterday

4. take a breather somtimes, alright?

phew!

5. forget the handshake

handshakes are relics of the past (more on___t_this in a future post_s). so stop shaking hands already! you’re wasting time wagging another person’s fleshmeat when you could be businessing!

instead of shaking hands, look new clients directly in the eye and whisper, “i am now inside you”

5.5 push the limits to the max (…and beyond)

boundaries are artificial barriers that keep you from excelling. an empire can’t expand beyond the castle walls its build for its elf. that’s why i always “push the limits” to the MAX. example: you thought there were only going to be 5 secrets on this list, but count how many now.

you can’t get ahead unless you’re willing to go further, leave the limits behind in the star dust of the stratosphere ,,,,, b/c you deserve it

NEVER STOP >>

~Live as if you were to die tomorrow; learn as if you were to live forever~ — gandhi

(this article originally appeared on linkedin)
The No-Nonsense Guide to Deep Work
By: Petr Zaparka
Tags: Programming, Deep Work, Software Development, Remote Working, Productivity

Willpower is Not Enough for Deep Work

The first changes that I made are the obvious ones. But sheer willpower will not keep you to stay focused for long. You also have to think about the environment. Where you work and what surrounds you makes a big difference. This might be more difficult for some than others, but it’s an essential part of deep work.

A few things you should focus on

Noise

Unless you are working in a quiet cabin in the middle of the woods, or your room is soundproofed, you need to think about removing noise from your environment.

Whether it’s screaming birds outside your window or kids in your house, you need to invest in good headphones — ideally, noise-canceling ones. I can’t stress enough what difference it will make to your focus.

What you listen to is up to you, but I would recommend something that you can listen to in the background, without thinking about it.

The view

Yes, the view. You don’t need a picturesque landscape for deep work. What you need is a view that doesn’t provide distractions. You should face a wall. Or even a window but without too much going on behind it. One thing that you don’t want is to face a room where things are happening — where TV is on, or someone is constantly walking, or your cat is playing.

Comfort

How you sit and look at the screen matters. It might not matter when you check your emails in the evening on your sofa, but it matters when you need to focus. You don’t want to change your position every ten minutes.

Even if you can sit on your sofa with a laptop, it’s not good for your back and neck muscles. You need a desk and a comfortable chair. I’m not going to talk about ergonomics here, but you should be aware of the right setup.
Instacart Data Science Interview Questions
By: Vimarsh Karbhari
Tags: Machine Learning, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Interview, Data

Interview Process

The interview process is pretty straightforward. It starts with a data challenge, followed by a technical phone interview. After you pass these two, there is a round of technical and culture fit interviews on-site. The interviews are short and targeted and provide you a good insight into the job and the teams you’ll work with at Instacart.

Important Reading

Data Science Related Interview Questions

When an item isn’t available, what algorithm should we use to replace it?

How would you staff the team based on delivery data?

What other products or revenue opportunities will arise from Instacart’s data?

Write a script to format data in a text file.

Estimate the demand and supply

How might you have optimized parameters for this model differently?

How would you tune a random forest?

Given a OLTP system which tracks the sales of items with order processing, returns and shipping, create a data warehouse model to find gross sales, net sales and gross sales by product.

Given a movie database, identify whether a movie has well defined genre.

How should we solve our supply / demand problems at Instacart?

Reflecting on the Questions

The data science team at Instacart publishes blog articles regularly Engineering Instacart blog. At Instacart, data drives product decisions which reflects in their questions. The questions are aimed to get information on how you will meld within the existing team and if you can think in terms of the problems they are trying to solve. The scale of the items they catalog is huge. Something as day to day as groceries are looked from the purview of data science is interesting. A good knack to solve problems related to logistics and scale can surely land you a job with the largest grocery catalog in the world!
Caution! Scams Targeting Freelancers
By: Kahli Bree Adams
Tags: Business, Startup, Work, Advice, Freelancing

Scammers who want to steal your identity

It has become quite a common occurrence that scammers without the necessary skills impersonate reputable freelancers to obtain projects from unsuspecting clients. The scammers steal reputable freelancers’ résumés (from the freelancers’ websites or job portals where full résumés can be uploaded), and edit just a few contact details such as the email address.

Unsuspecting clients order services from the fake professionals under the assumption they are getting a quality product after checking out the impersonated freelancers’ solid online profiles. The projects are then performed poorly by the scammers or outsourced to reputable freelancers under a fake client name with no intention of ever paying them (see ‘Scammers who want to steal your work’ below).

The client pays the scammers the invoiced amount, and by the time the client notices that the result is unusable, the scammers have long disappeared. The client ends up complaining to the real freelancer who allegedly provided the product or service. Ultimately, both the client and the real freelancer are the victims in this case. The client has lost money, and the real freelancer, whose résumé was stolen, has lost their reputation.

Some clues to watch out for: Sometimes, scammers don’t even bother to change the legitimate author’s name in the document properties, the real address or even the photo in the résumés they steal, but change only the email address. What’s more, the language used in their messages is usually uneducated and contains many typos and grammatical errors.
17 Python Interview Questions and Answers
By: Juan Cruz Martinez
Tags: Python, Software Development, Coding Interview, Interview, Programming

17 Python Interview Questions and Answers

Get familiar with some common Python interview questions so they don’t catch your off guard in your next interview

Photo by KOBU Agency on Unsplash

The tech industry is growing like never before. Every now and then, we see new software products released in the market. So no matter whether you’re fresh on the scene or an experienced Python developer, there are always opportunities waiting for you.

The only requirement is you have to convince your potential employer using your skills. This can be made possible by appearing in Python programming interviews.

But you’ve got to prepare yourself; otherwise, someone else might get the job. You can either try Python programming challenges or simply overview the frequently asked Python interview questions and answers.

Today, I’m gonna share my personal experience of Python interviews with you. I’ll list the questions they asked me, including their possible solutions. So it’ll be an ultimate guide for you to get hired as a Python programmer.
Apply: Virtual #SDGs4Universities Symposium — By ICCDI AFRICA
By: Iccdi Africa
Tags: Sdgs, University, Climate Change, Economics, Environment

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals launched in 2016 is an agenda that requires all sectors of society to participate actively in bringing the target Goals to fruition, exploring the many challenges in Economic, Social and Environmental development while proffering integrated solutions to achieve the mandate.

#SDGs4Universities

It is with this that ICCDI launched its SDG4Universities project to educate more young people about the SDG goals

The SDGs4Universities Symposium is a project curated by ICCDI to disseminate the knowledge of the Sustainable Development Goals to various tertiary institutions across the country and Africa.

This initiative aims to localise the knowledge and application of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals among university students, as well as position students to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems. Hence, since 2018, ICCDI Africa has hosted physically the SDG4Universities session six different times, in various universities, reaching over 5000 tertiary institution students across Nigeria.

This year, the prolonged ASUU Strike and COVID-19 situation has made the organisation leverage ”the new normal” by hosting the SDG4Universities Symposium virtually.

Event Date: 25th — 27th November 2020

Time: 10am — 1pm

Apply Here:
WebSockets on Demand With AWS Lambda, Serverless Framework, and Go
By: Enrico Piccinin
Tags: Programming, AWS, API, Go, Serverless

Setup of the Components in the Cloud

Now that we understand what the clients can do and what the server is called to do, we can start building the infrastructure in the cloud. As we said, we are going to use the Serverless framework to do this.

The configuration of the API Gateway and the Lambda function(s) is pretty simple. We start linking the Lambda function(s) to the types of event they are asked to manage. This is the Serveless yaml configuration that defines such links.

Serverless configuration yaml

In the above snippet, we define a service, a provider, and a Lambda function to be executed when the WebSocket events reach the server. The route property links an event to its function, meaning that when the event occurs, the function is triggered. The handler property points to the code that the Lambda function will execute, which in this case is bin/handleRequest , a Go compiled executable.

In this example, the same function (implemented by bin/handleRequest ) manages the connect , disconnect , and default events. We could have defined different functions to manage different events, but we opted for a single function for the sake of simplicity and to allow some forms of optimisation which we will discuss later.

Let’s go back to the events. We know what connect and disconnect are. But what is default ?

When a client sends a message to the server, the meaning (i.e., the semantic) of the message is embedded in the content of its payload. For instance, if the message carries a JSON payload, then the JSON could have a property action to identify the logic the message is supposed to trigger. We could then configure AWS API Gateway to react with different Lambda functions to messages with different semantics. In other words, we could attach different Lambda functions to the different values of the action field (if we follow the example above). If no match is found, then the system reverts back to the default event and the Lambda function linked to it.
10 Habits to Increase Your Productivity While Working Remotely
By: Harsha Vardhan
Tags: Programming, Self Improvement, Productivity, Software Development, Web Development

10 Habits to Increase Your Productivity While Working Remotely

You should have a set time to work, a defined workspace, and a daily routine, even though you’re at home

Photo by Nelly Antoniadou on Unsplash

Ever since work from home began, my productivity has had its ups and lows until I found the right way to do it. Since then, it has been at a constant high. During the initial days, all of us must have had mixed feelings. I first thought it would be fun for a while to wake up five minutes before the first meeting and spend all day in pajamas. And I thought avoiding traffic and travel was the best thing that could ever happen to me.

But later on, when burnout kicked me pretty hard, I decided to not let it get to me. I thought it was just me, but later on, when I’d talked to my colleagues who live with their parents or the ones that have kids at home or a noisy neighbor who loves to yell all the time, I realized what the real deal was. Also, being prone to get distracted or to procrastinate has also become extremely common as we are all at home in our own space. We’re the master of our time now as there’s no one around us that we’re scared will judge us.

I’d decided to figure out what was actually going wrong. Following these few, simple habits will give you enough focus and concentrated time to work. I had inculcated these habits the tough way because, honestly, if remote working is not planned, there are at least a thousand ways it can go seriously wrong, sucking up your time and energy.