fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Good Friends
By: Jl Matthews
Tags: Storytelling, Short Fiction, Microfiction, Friendship, Relationships

Good Friends

50-word story

Photo by Scott Walsh on Unsplash

“And we were good friends,” he said.

“But you haven’t seen him in more than a decade?” I asked.

“That’s right.”

“Why?”

“Two reasons,” he said, producing a worn photograph of a woman from his wallet. “First, I married her.” He handed me the picture and sighed. “Then, he did.”
Have you heard the sad tale of Little Miss Lachrymose
By: Sarah Healy
Tags: Storytelling, Creativity, Creative Writing, Short Story, Writing

Have you heard the sad tale of Little Miss Lachrymose

Read with caution as it may make you feel sad.

Little Miss Lachrymose (created and illustrated by Sarah Healy)

‘’Why can’t they hear me?’’

Wailed Little Lachrymose, as she screamed into face or eardrum of each and every passer-by.

The greyness of the sky did little to ease her pain.

She felt dizzy but did not know why.

‘’Why won’t anyone help me?’’

she thought, feeling utterly helpless.

‘’Arrrrgggghhhhh!’’

she shrieked with a shrillness that sent fierce ripples off the harbor and through the Atlantic that was an eerie black in color. A blackness reflected in the color of her own eyes.

She sank down heavily on the rotten wood beneath her at the edge of the harbor. Feet dangling over the dark unwelcoming cold water.

The harbor was always neglected during winter time here in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Seldom few ventured here at this time of the year.

She felt an odd kinship towards the rotting wood beneath her, at least it too knew the result of negligence.

She started to sob.

Embarrassed at first as she was not a public crier, but soon realized she felt detached from herself and society.

She felt so alone in the world.

‘’Why will no one help me?’’

she thought, filled with pity.

She could feel the wetness of the harbor seep up into her bones. She started to shiver and feel very cold. This cold feeling felt familiar, it was something she had felt before.

She racked her brain but came up empty. The memory had retreated somewhere in the dark corner and could not be readily found.

Her sobs turned into uncontrollable wailing.

She could not make sense of anything.

She knew she had lost something. Something very important but could not remember what it was.

She could not understand why no one would help her. She knew that perhaps she did not look her best, with tear-stained cheeks, and remnants of black mascara tracing the directional flow of the tears, but surely this was more of a reason to help her rather than shun her.

Her sadness began to veer left towards anger.

How dare they ignore me, she thought. How dare they ignore someone obviously in pain.

Suddenly she noticed a man crouch down by the harbor. There was something familiar in the way he moved.

She thought maybe she knew this man.

She rushed towards him and reached him quite quickly, the speed she now moved at frightened her.

She was oddly drawn to this man who was crouching over something she could not see.

He looked like a broken man, so sad. A sadness she recognized in herself.

She was just about to touch his shoulder when she froze.

The sign was a memorial. For her. She had lost control of her vehicle and plunged into the sea. Her little girl had been in the black seat.

Everything became dark as she sank in unconsciousness.
Inbound.org is Shutting Down, Being Replaced with Growth.org!
By: Daniel Imbellino
Tags: Inbound, Marketing, Community, Marketing Platform

The long running platform for marketers Inbound.org is coming to an end. A recent post from HubSpot co-founder Dharmesh Shah gives a bidding farewell to the platform that served as a community for SEO’s, marketers, and other professionals in the IT space. Shah states Inbound is being replaced with a new platform called Growth.org. Although, not much is being said as to how the new platform will work; other than the fact Inbound users would be able to migrate their pre-existing profiles. But the question remains, why is Inbound shutting down?

Shah seems to note how the ways in which internet users find and share content has greatly evolved, with users often receiving the bulk of their daily news through social recommendations. This seems to signal that less people were making use of the Inbound platform as a means to find information. Shah also seemed to note the struggles with managing the Inbound platform and finding developers to help keep it running.

Shah states, “For me personally, in terms of content — mostly the content now “finds me” (via twitter, email and Facebook).”

Here’s a link to Dharmesh Shah’s post on Inbound that better explains the situation: Farewell to inbound.org and hello to Growth Hub (growth.org)

Inbound served as a social community for marketers for years, often being the place where online professionals went to discuss various tactics in marketing, SEO, web publishing, and other related subjects. It was also a platform for promoting content in the marketing space. Marketers often used Inbound as a first point of promotion to gain traction on their latest stories, and help them to better market their services to the public.

It seems kind of odd that Shah would insist on shutting down a platform that helped to bring so much awareness to his platform for marketers Hubspot. After all, Hubspot reported strong revenue gains last year: HubSpot Reports Strong Q4 and Full Year 2017 Results .

Inbound was also well indexed in Google search, and you’d think if anything the platform would’ve retained some monetary value worth holding onto. Another option would’ve been to try and sell the platform outright and allow someone else to rebrand and repurpose it. But securing revenue with social platforms today is hardly a simple endeavor. Just look at what happened to Vidme this past year.
“White Men”
By: Jess Brooks
Tags: Dating, Racism, Gender

“When race keeps intruding into your romances, you start to wonder why. You look for patterns. I used to think the problem with white men is that they want control, a childish and obvious hankering. They’re used to it, socialized to seek it. But over time, I started to believe that the problem is that they’re unformed, shapeless. White men have had nothing to battle against or fight for; their identity is this amorphous default. They ooze around, taking up space. They manspread and mansplain. Even the ones who know better mandream on the sly. It always breaks my heart when I get wind of my white boyfriends’ secret fantasies: to rescue, to rebel, to rule. Every single one of them wants to own a motorcycle. It’s all so boring. It’s all just history.”
Deterrence (In Support of the Death Penalty)
By: Editor, The Dialogues
Tags: Death Penalty, Politics, Articles

Deterrence (In Support of the Death Penalty)

The death penalty prevents future murders.

Society has always used punishment to discourage would-be criminals from unlawful action. Since society has the highest interest in preventing murder, it should use the strongest punishment available to deter murder, and that is the death penalty. If murderers are sentenced to death and executed, potential murderers will think twice before killing for fear of losing their own life.

For years, criminologists analyzed murder rates to see if they fluctuated with the likelihood of convicted murderers being executed, but the results were inconclusive. Then in 1973 Isaac Ehrlich employed a new kind of analysis which produced results showing that for every inmate who was executed, 7 lives were spared because others were deterred from committing murder. Similar results have been produced by disciples of Ehrlich in follow-up studies.

Moreover, even if some studies regarding deterrence are inconclusive, that is only because the death penalty is rarely used and takes years before an execution is actually carried out. Punishments which are swift and sure are the best deterrent. The fact that some states or countries which do not use the death penalty have lower murder rates than jurisdictions which do is not evidence of the failure of deterrence. States with high murder rates would have even higher rates if they did not use the death penalty.

Ernest van den Haag, a Professor of Jurisprudence at Fordham University who has studied the question of deterrence closely, wrote: “Even though statistical demonstrations are not conclusive, and perhaps cannot be, capital punishment is likely to deter more than other punishments because people fear death more than anything else. They fear most death deliberately inflicted by law and scheduled by the courts. Whatever people fear most is likely to deter most. Hence, the threat of the death penalty may deter some murderers who otherwise might not have been deterred. And surely the death penalty is the only penalty that could deter prisoners already serving a life sentence and tempted to kill a guard, or offenders about to be arrested and facing a life sentence. Perhaps they will not be deterred. But they would certainly not be deterred by anything else. We owe all the protection we can give to law enforcers exposed to special risks.”

Finally, the death penalty certainly “deters” the murderer who is executed. Strictly speaking, this is a form of incapacitation, similar to the way a robber put in prison is prevented from robbing on the streets. Vicious murderers must be killed to prevent them from murdering again, either in prison, or in society if they should get out. Both as a deterrent and as a form of permanent incapacitation, the death penalty helps to prevent future crime.

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Over half of institutional bitcoin investors believe market has bottomed
By: Crypto Inferno
Tags: Crypto, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain

Fundstrat’s survey of 25 institutions and 9,500 public Twitter responses suggested big players think the bottom is in.

We’re always a little wary about surveys like this, because the ‘Wisdom of the Crowd’ is an oxymoron: the herd is always wrong. Plus the ‘institutional’ part of this survey was a small sample of 25, even if the public Twitter poll was larger. With those disclaimers in mind, the results of Tom Lee’s survey were still interesting, and we’ll summarise them here.

54% of the respondents to the institutional survey believe bitcoin has bottomed for the year. That shows an interesting contrast to the ‘dumb money’ Twitter poll, in which only 44% of respondents said they thought bitcoin had hit its low. Just 40% of Twitter replies saw BTC heading to $15k or above by the end of 2019 — versus 57% of institutions.

If you want to watch Lee’s interview segment and can face the shame of visiting CNBC, it’s here. (Warning: it’s very poor sound quality, and the trading segment after that may lead you to tear your face off.)

Lee himself apparently is still sticking by his $20k+ prediction for 2018 — a number that currently seems unattainable given the lacklustre state of the market. He is also exceptionally bullish on Ether, predicting almost $2k by year end.

This kind of dramatic move would likely only be fuelled by institutional money gaining the conduits it needs to invest safely in BTC. Bakkt may provide one channel for that, but it would probably need the Shortseller Enrichment Commission (as Elon Musk now calls it) to approve an ETF.

Red hot news, scorching wit and searing opinion pieces from Crypto Inferno.

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Tiny Subversions
By: A Singular Story
Tags: Poetry Sunday, Love, Self, Creativity, Poetry

I’m a French-American writer, journalist, and editor living out of a suitcase in transit between North America and Europe. To continue the conversation, follow the bird. For email and everything else, deets in bio.
332 Incredible Headlines With Over 10,000 Claps Each
By: J.J. Pryor
Tags: Headlines, Writing Tips, Medium, Writing, Publishing

It’s headline month here in my brain, and I’ve been collecting information from anywhere and everywhere on the subject.

Why?

To learn how to write better, to get more eyeballs on my work — and to share the knowledge, of course.

I collected a crapload of headlines from several of the largest publications that each had over 10,000 claps.

Yes, it took a long time.

No, I don’t have much of a life.

Yes, the technical definition of a ‘crapload’ is 332.

And yes, I will accept your praise in the form of claps and kisses blown across the Pacific.
How Barstool Upended Sports Media
By: Aaron Schnoor
Tags: Startup, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Business, Social Media

Polarizing. Humorous. Irreverent. Satirical. Misogynistic. Brilliant.

All of those words have been used to describe Barstool Sports, the upstart sports and pop culture media powerhouse that has emerged as the new leader in edgy, satirical content.

When compared to its competitors, Barstool is the bad kid on the block — a title that the company has quickly embraced.

Don’t believe me? A quick Google search will yield a trove of controversies and scandals.

From The Daily Beast:

[Barstool Sports] has developed a reputation for trafficking in misogynistic and boorish blog posts, which now can total close to 100 per day.

From The Washington Post:

Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy caused yet another wave of controversy Wednesday, disparaging the appearance of a female employee during the company’s “Barstool Radio” program.

From NBC News:

Last year, several female reporters accused Portnoy and Barstool fans of verbal harassment, making light of sexual harassment and doxxing them.

That’s only a small fraction of the negative headlines that have hit the company. Such a backlash would force any other business to shut down, but not Barstool Sports. Instead of ignoring the controversy, Barstool has decided to embrace it. As Dave Portnoy, Barstool’s founder and president, has continually emphasized, the company is “uncancellable.”

For a brief moment, let’s move past the scandals and focus solely on the company. How did Barstool Sports become so popular? How did the media company emerge as a leader in sports content, becoming an alternative to ESPN, Bleacher Report, and others?

To understand the company’s meteoric rise, it’s important to first understand how Barstool began.
Deno: Create Your First Web Application in Oak
By: Miroslav Pillar
Tags: Nodejs, Programming, JavaScript, Deno, Web Development

Deno: Create Your First Web Application in Oak

Learn about serving static files, routing, and error handling in Deno

Photo by the author.

It looks like there is now silence after the hype. However, the Deno community is still growing fast, so if you're interested in learning back end in Deno, it's the right time.

Deno came after Node.js, another runtime for JavaScript created by Ryan Dahl. It's built in Rust, supports TypeScript, and is secure by default.

Are you wondering why Dahl created another library? Check out the key differences between Deno and Node.js.

Anyway, in this article, you will learn how to set up and create a web application with Oak, GitHub's most popular framework of Deno. Since Deno is server-side-oriented, we're going to create a web app with the ability to serve static files, provide API, and handle errors.

To follow and code along, you need to have Deno installed on your computer. Check out the installation guide in the official docs and follow the instructions.

Here's the full version of the GitHub repo we're going to build.
The Power of Being Against Emptiness
By: Christopher Mackinnon
Tags: Personal Growth, Books, Creativity, Personal Development, Self Improvement

The Power of Being Against Emptiness

Why taking a stand against the void is so vital for us all

Outside writing for Medium, I happen to do a lot of research in the book stacks of some fairly major libraries. I’m often intrigued by the names of the obscure and arcane volumes I come across. But recently I stumbled on a title that absolutely stopped me in my tracks.

Against Emptiness is cataloged as a 68-page book of poems published by Harper & Row back in 1971. From what I can tell, just a handful of public libraries in all of North America still hold a copy.

I wasn’t able to physically access the book, but as a writer in the self-improvement and personal growth space, those two deceptively simple words — against emptiness — fascinated me for days.

Since coming across the boolean listing, I’ve thought hard about against emptiness as an idea that can make huge ripples in the way we think about life.
Being seen, feeling heard
By: Katie Mccurdy
Tags: Healthcare, Health, Design Process, Data Visualization, Design

Many patients have ‘given up’ and feel abandoned by our health system

I was struck a few months ago when three people told me, in the span of a few days, that they had lost all confidence in doctors and so were going to either take a break from the medical system or give up on it completely. These three people, all women, had what I would consider ‘invisible’ illnesses and symptoms: Endometriosis, Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, and an endocrine disorder. All have fought to get a proper diagnosis and to be believed by doctors, and all have been repeatedly demoralized and dismissed. One told me she has PTSD from dealing with our medical system, a phrase I have heard uttered multiple times recently.

It occurs to me that the key transgression on the part of doctors is a failure to listen, a breakdown in trust, and a stance of suspicion and mistrust — a failure to believe. This is emotionally damaging. Even if your doctor has a hard time effectively treating you, it’s important to feel that they believe and empathize with you, and that they are your partner on this journey. To a patient, knowing that you are not alone is already a step toward healing.

When I hear from patients that they have decided to give up, it makes me feel desperate to do something to help them. I want them to have hope and to believe that it’s possible to have a healthy partnership with their care team. I struggle with the limits of my own influence; I can listen to their story and make it visual, validating them and making them feel heard, but I can’t guarantee that their doctor will act the same way.
Weekly News Roundup #1
By: Parul Gujral
Tags: Bitcoin News, Blockchain News, Crypto, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency News

Welcome to our Snowball cryptocurrency media digest. Here we will provide you with regular updates on trending news from the blockchain and crypto space.

Rundown of what happened last week:

The New York Times Is Planning to Experiment With Blockchain Publishing: The New York Times, the second-largest newspaper in the U.S. by circulation and a storied institution in American journalism, is getting ready to experiment with blockchain technology for publishing. Read more.

Nasdaq Licenses Tech to a ‘One-Stop-Shop’ for Crypto Trading and Mining: Bcause LLC, a self-described “full-stack cryptocurrency ecosystem,” plans to use Nasdaq technology to operate its markets. The company announced it would be using Nasdaq’s matching engine, clearing and market surveillance tools through the Nasdaq Financial Framework platform to operate a spot cryptocurrency market, to be launched within the next few months. Read more.

IBM Quietly Enters Crypto Custody Market With Tech Designed for Banks: IBM is coming to the crypto custody space. Later this month, Shuttle Holdings, a New York investment firm, will launch the beta version of a custody solution for digital assets built on IBM’s private cloud and encryption technologies. Read more.

Fidelity’s Digital Asset Platform Goes Live With Select Clients: Fidelity Digital Assets, the digital currency wing of United States financial services giant Fidelity, is now live with a select group of clients. In a tweet, the firm wrote: “We are live with a select group of eligible clients and will continue rolling out slowly. Our solutions are focused on the needs of hedge funds, family offices, pensions, endowments, other institutional investors.” Read more.

Tweet of the week:

This week one of our favorite tweets comes from Brendan Blumer with a bold prediction for future of Bitcoin, we will definitely save this tweet to see how accurate Brendan is:

Join our Snowballin’ community:
Spreading Milkweed, Not Myths
By: U.S. Fish, Wildlife Service
Tags: Gardening, Nature, Conservation

Myth #4: Because milkweed is toxic, you shouldn’t plant it.

Milkweed does contain toxins that can be harmful to pets, livestock and people. The milky sap for which it gets its name leaks out from the stem or leaves. This sap contains toxins called cardiac glycosides or cardenolides, which are toxic to animals if consumed in large quantities.

The good news? Milkweed does NOT taste good.

“Animals usually do not eat milkweed unless good forage is scarce or under conditions where plants freeze, etc. “ — USDA

The myth here, is that you shouldn’t plant milkweed at all. The truth is…most animals won’t eat it because of the taste, and here are some tips for handling milkweed if you’re hesitant.

Being careful and aware goes a long way.

Wash your hands and use gardening gloves like you would any other plant. Be careful to not include it in the hay of grazing animals and make sure there is always plenty of other food for them to forage. Know that your pets will likely avoid it, but if you’re nervous, research the milkweed species you plant to see toxicity levels. Take steps to prevent accidental ingestion, such as instructing children that the plant is poisonous and to avoid any contact with their eyes after touching the plant.

Monarch on milkweed by Tom Koerner, USFWS

All in all, planting milkweed is a sure way to help save the monarch. So let’s spread milkweed and cut back on the myths. Find native milkweed seeds near you.

The blog was inspired by Milkweed misconceptions from Monarch Joint Venture

Additional References:

Milkweed FAQs

Conservation Practitioner’s Guide

USDA Milkweed

Posted by Danielle Brigida, USFWS
The Results are in …
By: Jitender Tokas
Tags: Bitcoin

Our first trading competition ended this morning. The 3 days (22nd — 25th June) over which the competition ran turned out to be a fortuitous period that saw BTC price fall from $6683 to $5866 before recovering to $6146.

This high volatility presented many trading opportunities on both long and short side. That, combined with our zero downside trading opportunity, led to some interesting developments:

We crossed 100 user registrations!

We had a trading volume of ~$5mn in our BTC-USD Futures!!

Judicious use of leverage shone through in the top 5 traders doubling their initial capital (of 0.5BTC)!!!

Here’s how the leader board looked at the end of the competition:

A big thanks to all our users who not only participated in the competition, but also gave us important feedback and suggestions. We value your inputs and will be incorporating them in our product over the coming days.

This trading competition was a small but important milestone for us at Delta. This was the first time we had opened our platform to the public and it was exhilarating to see everything working smoothly. We are pumped and are making steady progress towards our next big milestone — a full launch!

We have lot more updates in the pipeline. Stay tuned!
What My Atom-Built Body has Forgotten
By: Gregory D. Welch
Tags: Life, Cosmos, Poem, Poetry, Poetry On Medium

My atom-built body has since forgotten

all that primal potential of the primordial Genesis

written in star-script of chaos burning the inky-rich night sky

an endless scrawl no human mind can comprehend

Where the first fires crawled up the night sky

ever higher and higher from depths unimaginable

fire feeding fire, burning in quiet contrast against the cold

branding the new flesh of that first night sky

Until all those fires settled, and chaos gave rise to spinning stars

galaxies swirling on a tide of cosmic waves

and the rising and falling of all these mighty forces was the first day

and the infinite day-less nights that followed

How far can the night sky stretch?

a mystery written in the scrawl of night-script

infinity piling on layers of itself

what mysteries my atom-built body has forgotten
東吳巨資＋金科學程修課心得
By: Jack Chang
Tags: Data Science, Big Data, University, Fintech, Review

As a graduate student in data, I wanted to share some of my perspectives and experience in the data science world. What’s more! I wish that you come along the journey!

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Help, My Son Is Broken
By: David Farr
Tags: Moms, Tech, Breakups, Humor, It

Best Buy Geek Squad Logo (Fair Use)

The following is a phone call placed to Best Buy by a concerned mother.

Geek Squad: Hello? Can I help you?

Mom: Yes, I’m calling about my son. I think he’s broken and I don’t know what to do.

GS: Is that him sobbing in the background?

Mom: Yes.

GS: How long has he been acting like this?

Mom: Ever since that girlfriend of his broke up with him. He’s completely malfunctioning.

GS: Have you tried resetting him for ten seconds?

Mom: I’ve tried everything. I bought him some new clothes, I introduced him to a nice young lady. Hell, I even left him in a bucket of rice.

GS: Have you noticed him making any unusual noises? Or does he mostly just sit there and weep?

Mom: Actually, now that you mention it, he has been repeating this one phrase over and over again.

GS: What’s that?

Mom: He says, “I’m never going to find anyone as good as Denise, so what’s the point in living?”

GS: Wow. That’s really pathetic.

Mom: I know. It’s been four months. I figured he would get over it by now.

GS: Have you tried taking him outside? Sometimes all these devices need is a little solar energy.

Mom: It’s an impossible task. Most days, he just sits there looking at old photos of the two of them while listening to ‘Nothing Compares to You' by Sinead O' Connor.

GS: Glad to hear he’s keeping to himself, at least. With some of these earlier models, they’ll continue to contact the ex through repeated phone calls and text messages. It can get pretty ugly. Consider yourself fortunate.

Mom: …

GS: Ma’am? Are you there?

Mom: Last night, he left her six drunken voicemails.

GS: Oh, boy.

Mom: He had “their song” playing in the background the entire time.

GS: Jesus.

Mom: I’m afraid there’s more. Tomorrow, he plans on writing her a letter. He’s going to mail it to her. He bought the stamps and everything.

GS: Fucking hell.

Mom: I know.

GS: Sounds like it could be the red light of death.

Mom: Excuse me?

GS: It’s a tech term. Would you mind taking a look at your son’s lower left calf? You don’t see a flashing red light, by any chance, do you?

Mom: Hold on.

Ten seconds pass.

Mom: Yes. Yes, I see it. A flashing light. Is this good or bad?

GS: Ma’am, it’s time to start thinking about a factory reset.

Mom: Oh, no. That doesn’t sound good. Will he still remember me?

GS: Sadly, no. All of his memories will be wiped clean. But it should be enough to get his balls back up and running.
How to Prep Your Kid for Disney World
By: Ernio Hernandez
Tags: Disney, Humor, Parenting

And then not be prepared for any of it.

We had been “prepping” our 1½-year-old for her first trip to Disney.

Yes, it was perhaps way too early to bring her. But, her aunt and uncle were going with her 2 cousins; as were her nana and papou (that’s Greek for babysitters). We hadn’t nailed down any plans for the summer yet, and our little tax deduction basically paid for the trip herself. So: Done.

Our “prepping” involved: taking her to Liberty Science Center months prior, when they had a visit from Elmo — so we could gauge her reaction to larger-than-actual-size characters. We didn’t have her go up to (or bother with the incredible line to take a picture with) the human-size version of her favorite furry Muppet. But we did see Elmo walk right by us and waved at him while other kids stepped up to meet him. She seemed to be okay if not nonplussed about him. Good.

We had ordered the Now That’s What I Call Disney CDs — Volumes I and II (for regular car rides, really, but it also helped her brush up on her Disney tunes). II has her favorite, “Under The Sea” from The Little Mermaid, and (unfortunately) the incessant “it’s a small world” from the hellish ride my wife insisted on booking FastPasses for a month or so in advance. Fine.

Being a child under the age of 2, my wife and I choose not to let her have much screen time — yes, this is recommended by doctors for little developing minds, but it is nonetheless a choice. We did, however, let her watch a couple short videos of Winnie the Pooh and friends (she also has a lovely little book set and she loves books, so that helped), a few The Lion King and The Little Mermaid songs, and a smattering of Mickey and Minnie Mouse (also a fave) cartoons.

Our child is rather open to new things and often good about new environments, so we really weren’t terribly worried. We had been to a number of zoos and she loves animals, so there was the Animal Kingdom park to visit. If nothing else, there was a bunch of pools and splash pads where she could play at back at the hotel. And really, she’d be completely happy just seeing her cousins*.
Shortest Paths and Dijkstra’s Algorithm
By: Shuo Wang
Tags: Algorithms, Programming, Dijkstra, Graph, Python

Performance Analysis, Min Heap

Let’s discuss a little bit regarding the performance of the new algorithm.

Starting at the first node, we set its distance to zero and add it to the min heap with its current distance as the sort key. Then, as long as the min heap is not empty, continually pop off the node with the minimum key, loop through all of its connected nodes and update their shortest distance and push them onto the min heap if the new distance is a shorter distance.

One important thing to pay attention to is the following lines in the loop:

# check if the nodes has been updated

if cur[0] != cur[1].distance:

continue

This checks if the key of the object on the heap is the same as the current shortest distance of the node. Consider the following situation:

nodes = [1, 2, 3, 4]

edges = [(1, 2, 1), (1, 3, 4), (2, 4, 10), (3, 4, 2)]

If I have a graph of 4 nodes: 1, 2, 3, 4

node1 — node2, distance 1

node1 — node3, distance 4

node2 — node4, distance 10

node3 — node4, distance 2

Start: push start node onto heap with distance 0

[(0, node1_dist0)]

Iteration 1: During the first iteration, the min heap contains node1 with key 0, it is then popped off and its neighbors added to the heap.

[(1, node2_dist1), (4, node3_dist4)]

Iteration 2: node2 is popped off and its neighbors added.

[(4, node3_dist4), (11, node4_dist11)]

Iteration 3: node3 is popped off and its neighbors added.

But wait! node3’s neighbor, node4, is already on the queue, the only difference is that its shortest distance is updated to 6 now:

[(6, node4_dist6), (11, node4_dist6)]

You see, there are actually two entries for node4 in the heap, one with key 6 and one with key 11, only one entry has the key equaling to the current node4’s distance value.

In the next iteration, the entry with key 6 is popped off since it’s the minimum key, and its neighbors processed, but since its neighbors all have shortest distance already, they won’t make it onto the queue. and only one entry is left:

[(11, node4_dist6)]

In this case, you will obviously want to ignore it, since node4 is processed already, and the way you can tell is that the key and the node4’s shortest distance doesn’t equal each other.
Hayallere Ramak Kala
Tags: Mutlu Son, Hayal Kırıklığı, Mutsuz Son, Türkçe, Hayaller

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Parenting in the Apocalypse
By: Jan M Flynn
Tags: Writing, Love, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Short Story

Because we can’t let them see us. Yes, they’re all bad men.
টেস্টিংয়ের স্তর( Levels of Software Testing) — চলমান পর্ব: ৭
By: Rafayet Hossain
Tags: Engineering, Careers, Testing, Software Development, Career Advice

Excelling Essential Skill Sets for future you. We are not going tell you what should be done rather how it is done.

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Kindness a Cure for Polarization?
By: Duke University
Tags: Kindness, Politics, Election 2020, Divisiveness, Political Polarization

By Leonor Corsino

As we wait for the transition of power after the recent contingent elections, we continue to face difficult challenges. The number of coronavirus cases is increasing, the uncertainty around the elections has frayed our nerves, and millions in this country face economic hardship.

Now more than ever, the United States needs kindness. It doesn’t matter who you voted for, or what you believe. Now more than ever, we must show each other that despite our differences we all can be kind and respectful to each other.

We do not know what direction the country will take going forward. We don’t know how many more COVID cases will be diagnosed, how many more people will die, or how many more of our fellows Americans will lose their jobs. We do know that this is a resilient country full of brave, amazing individuals.

What we’re missing is kindness. We should recognize that we are all in this situation together regardless of what we do, where we come from or who we voted for.

The elections have proven once more that we are divided. That should be no surprise, as we are very diverse when it comes to race, ethnicity, values, socioeconomic status and religious beliefs.

Yet our diverse country has been successful for many years. What is different now is that we have lost the capacity to work with one another with respect, honesty and love.

We must embrace the opportunity to change course and do what is needed to move us forward towards a positive future. That future will only be different if we all do more to treat one another kindly. Only then can we build a nation where we all can live lives full of joy and respect.

Dr Corsino is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the Department of Medicine, Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Nutrition, Associate Dean of Students Affairs, Associate Director of the Duke Master of Biomedical Sciences, and Co-Director of the Duke Clinical Translational Research Institute/Community Engaged Research Initiative (CERI) Duke University School of Medicine.
Do We Know How to Lead?
By: Paul Myers Mba
Tags: Ideas, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Future, Business

LEADERSHIP

Do We Know How to Lead?

Five leadership questions

Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash

In the article “How to Lead Tomorrow” I wrote about past leadership lessons for the next generation.

I maybe wrong!

Now I’m beginning to wonder — what lessons will our generation leave behind, lessons that the next generation can benefit from, or even consider.

With that in mind, I’d like to ask five questions.
El caso de Rocky Aoki
By: Ivan Flores Hurtado
Tags: Supply Chain Management, Español, Logistics, Inteligencia, Eficiencia

in Eudaimonia and Co
Visualization of customer feedback to get insights of main reasons behind their feedback — Word…
By: Rajesh Gudikoti
Tags: Word Cloud, Data Science

Visualization of customer feedback to get insights of main reasons behind their feedback — Word Cloud

This article will focus on visualization of major reasons for customer giving negative reviews.

On technology front, I will be using “wordcloud” python library. I will be using airline industry dataset from kaggle.

https://www.kaggle.com/crowdflower/twitter-airline-sentiment/discussion

When we think of airline industry, the common causes are flight delay, baggage issue, hospitality etc. For one airline provider, delay may be the major issue and for other it can be baggage issue. Here, we just try to represent the reasons in the form of word cloud.

As usual, data is pre-processed before applying analytics. I will skip data pre-processing details and focus on word cloud generation.

To create word cloud in python, we just need few lines of code.

from wordcloud import WordCloud wc = WordCloud(stopwords=stop_words, background_color="white", colormap="Dark2", max_font_size=150, random_state=42) wc.generate(data_nouns_adj.reviews[c])

Initially, I picked up nouns and adjectives expressed in customer reviews, and generated word cloud as shown below.

It did not give right sense as required for my use case. I wanted to understand the main pain points shared by customers.

Next trail, I picked the verbs and generated word cloud. This gave me better insights of customer reviews. As shown in below image, for few airlines, cancellation of flight is the main pain point, for few airlines, delay is the paint point.

(We can club delayed and waiting keywords as both words tend to mean same)

The word cloud is good visualization technique to understand text data. In this technique the size of each word indicates its frequency and significance.

Business Use Case for Word Cloud

1. Finding customer pain points — and opportunities to connect

2. Understanding how your employees feel about your company

3. Identifying new SEO terms to target

The more details can be found below

https://www.boostlabs.com/what-are-word-clouds-value-simple-visualizations/

Previous Article

IBM Code Content for Developers
10 Reasons to not start blogging
Tags: Blogging, Thinking Out Loud, Writing

If I’m staring I’m probably turning you into paper and ink or this medium thing. Lists and stories and random stuff…

Follow
A Taiwan Referendum Change My Opinion on Democracy
By: Pei-Hsiang Lee
Tags: Politics

In 2018, Taiwan government hold a first referendum in Taiwan’s history.

When I was a student, I believe that democracy is the best political system. Under democracy political system, we can criticize the politics and politician without worrying being arrested by police officers, and we can express our ideas without any restriction. However, the last year Taiwan referendum change my opinions on democracy, and it seems that democracy does not ensure minority’s rights and dose not beneficial to those vulnerable.

One of issues is about same-sex marriage: do you agree that marriage defined in the Civil Code should be restricted to the union between one man and one woman?, and do you agree that the Ministry of Education should not implement the Enforcement Rules of the Gender Equality Education Act in elementary and middle schools? Unfortunately, most people agreed with those two questions, and I was disappointed at the results. The outcomes inspire me to ask if it is appropriate that we let majority decide minority’s rights. Do it what we I try to find the answer. Great philosopher Socrates was hugely pessimistic about hold business of democracy. His point is that voting in an election is a skill, not a random institution. Like any skill, it need to be taught systematically to people. Letting citizen vote without an education is as irresponsible as putting them in charge of trireme sailing to Samos in a storm. Although democracy has some flaws, I still think it is better than dictatorship. All we need to do is encouraging people thinking and reading, and educating our people. Let Taiwan become a more mature democracy political system.
Index usage monitoring in Oracle
By: Michal Táborský
Tags: Performance, Oracle

Indices (or indexes, if you will) are always good, right? Well, Tom Kyte would disagree with you and so would I. In fact, indices will always impede data manipulation performance, so they should be used only where they are useful in queries. But determining if an index is useful can be sometimes pretty difficult, mainly in a complex application with thousands of different queries, some even dynamically generated.



In this case, one of the approaches is to create indices on all columns where it possibly may make sense and monitor, if they are actually ever used by the CBO planner. I will show you how to do that. This method was tested in 11g, but should work in 10g as well.



The magic is done by an ALTER INDEX indexname MONITORING USAGE.



Starting the monitoring



You will need an ALTER INDEX privilege on te indices you want to monitor, so preferrably you do it as a SYSDBA. Fire up your SQL*Plus and connect to the database. First, we will create a script to enable the monitoring. Replace the MYUSER with whatever user you want to monitor the indices for.

set heading off

set echo off

set feedback off

set pages 10000

spool startmonitor.sql

select 'alter index '||owner||'.'||index_name

||' monitoring usage;'

from dba_indexes

where owner ='MYUSER';

spool off

Then we simply run the script from within the console.



SQL> @startmonitor.sql



You might see some error messages when the script tries to alter a LOB index, which is not possible, just ignore that.



Now you want to keep your application running for some time. At least for it to perform all kinds of work and jobs it normally does. So for example if you have jobs planned for every hour, leave it running like that for at least an hour. If you have daily jobs, leave it on for a whole day.



Stop the monitoring



In the meantime you can prepare a script to turn monitoring off.

set heading off

set echo off

set feedback off

set pages 10000

spool stopmonitor.sql

select 'alter index '||owner||'.'||index_name

||' nomonitoring usage;'

from dba_indexes

where owner ='MYUSER';

spool off

After you reach your desired monitoring period, again, simply run the off-script:



SQL> @stopmonitor.sql



Results



Now, for the results. The index usage overview is stored in the v$object_usage system view. The tricky part here is, that you only see the indices for a currently logged in user. So, even if you were doing the monitoring under a SYS or some other user, now you must login as the user whose indices you were monitoring, in our example MYUSER.



When you do that, identifying those harmful indices is as simple as this:

SELECT INDEX_NAME, TABLE_NAME

FROM V$OBJECT_USAGE

WHERE USED='NO';

Some of those indices might be primary keys, so you don’t want to be dropping those, but all other unused indices should go. Unless, of course, you know you will need them in a very near future.



UPDATE:

You can query the monitoring results for all users too, but you have to build the query yourself from system tables:
Restless Love
By: Ashwini Dodani
Tags: Temptation Prompt, Poetry, This Happened To Me, Love, Intimately Intricate

Restless Love

Yearning verse

Ah, Temptation, the word says so much itself

like a bible of unheard desires

unattended helpless pleas of love

so much to return

so much to ask for

this love is not a game, honey…

Reasons, sometimes we need just a few

to spill out what we want

what we have always needed, to

fulfill our souls to the brim

and clink to the celebration

called life and togetherness…

All I ask for is your love, your time, your eyes

on me, my moves, my breath,

could you spare some and

see what makes my heart quench?

For I don’t have enough time

you need to rush, honey

Let’s Drench!!!
Ruined
By: Anna Da Silva
Tags: Flash Fiction, Equality, The Bad Influence, Family, Short Story

She wanted to surprise mummy; she’d make her a birthday cake.

They’d baked lots together.

“Two-four-four-four,” she chanted, “Eggs-butter-sugar-flour.”

She beat the ingredients, tipped them into the tin, into the oven.

It came out hard, and flat as a pancake.

She burst into tears. She’d forgotten to use self-raising flour.
ABCC Platform Token will be issued in early July
By: Abcc Exchange
Tags: Blockchain, Abcc Announcements, Airdrop, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency

Launched on 28th April, ABCC Exchange has witnessed a rapid growth in the initial stage.

ABCC Exchange has now decided to issue ABCC Platform Token, an ERC20 token, to build up and further nurture a cryptocurrency investing ecosystem and reward our active users. ABCC Platform Token will be generated via Trade-to-Mine (ToM) mechanism. To reward our users, we will distribute 80% of our daily transaction fee income to our users in proportion to his / her token holding.

Register here: http://t.cn/RBFed5S

Issuance

The total supply of ABCC Platform Token is fixed at 210 million without any future offering. 50% of the total supply will be generated via ToM mechanism. The other 50% of the total supply will be distributed to ABCC Exchange, ABCC team members, investors and etc. at the same pace with ABCC Platform Token generated via ToM mechanism.

2. Trade-to-Mine Mechanism

ABCC Platform Token will be generated automatically by crypto trading activities on ABCC Exchange.

3. Transaction Fee Income Distribution

We will distribute 80% of our daily transaction fee income to our users in proportion to his / her token holding.

4. Registration — Join Now

Deposited cryptos of at least 50USDT equivalent to be eligible for the pre-registration privilege. Please also make sure that you keep the funds that you have deposited until 12am on June 30, 2018

If you have any questions, check our website announcement: https://help.abcc.com/hc/en-us/articles/360004937312-Issuance-of-ABCC-Platform-Token

Or approach admin in ABCC official telegram groups:

Telegram EN: t.me/abcc_en

Telegram RU: t.me/abcc_ru

Telegram CN: t.me/abcc_cn

Stay tuned! Referral program is coming soon.
Midnight Thoughts
Tags: Poetry, Fiction, Sleep, Poems On Medium, Micropoetry

My Priceless Need

50-Word Poetry Fiction

Photo by Nathan Anderson on Unsplash

Why do you run away from me

when I need you the most?

Don’t you see

without you

I become weak and weary?

Turn off my crazy brain

and lead me into oblivion.,

Creep into my exhausted body

Oh, my priceless sleep.,

You are the secret

of my well being.,

Chirag @ 2020

Thanks Muhammad Zunair
Three Factors To Determine Supplier Delivery Frequency
By: Opex Analytics
Tags: Supply Chain, Transportation, Delivery, Optimization

Three Factors To Determine Supplier Delivery Frequency

by Michael Watson

Determining the best delivery frequency for suppliers into your facilities involves trading off three key factors.

First, you need to to consider transportation costs. If your vendors ship frequently, you end up paying more in transportation per unit. What makes this analysis complex is that transportation rates are not linear. As you move from Truckload (TL) shipments to the Less-Than-Truckload (LTL) market your costs per unit rise quickly. And, with truckloads, you need to also consider the capacity of the truck.

Second, you need to consider the inventory costs. If your vendors ship frequently, then you have less inventory. You have less cycle stock because each order needs to cover a smaller amount of demand. And, safety stock is lower because if you experience higher than expected demand, you can quickly get another order to make up the difference. Of course, with less frequently deliveries, cycle and safety stock will both increase.

Third, you need to consider your vendor quantity discounts. If your vendor gives you a quantity you need to decide if it is worth it to order more than you want to get the quantity discount.

What makes this interesting is that the relationship between these factors changes over time. As oil price increases, the transportation costs are more important. As interest rates rise or your products have shorter life cycles, inventory costs become more important.

___________________________________________________________________

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AVer 본사 방문 미팅, 스케치 영상 — It was a Awesome!
Tags: News N Events, Uprism, Uprismio, Aver, 화상회

지난주 22일 AVer 본사에 방문 미팅이 있었습니다.

상호 협력 방안을 찾기 위한 미팅이었으며, 그동안의 어떤 비지니스 미팅보다 심도있는 미팅이었습니다. 스케치 영상에서 확인해 보세요~

친절히 맞이해 주신 AVer 임직원 분들께 감사 말씀 드립니다.

Sketch movie of uPrism / uPrism.io business trip to AVer in Taiwan.

You! Prism! Thank you for Ever!