fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Scoring Pennsylvania
By: Michal Migurski
Tags: Politics

On February 13 we launched PlanScore.org into the whirlwind of Pennsylvania’s disputed congressional plan. Our mission is to help citizens evaluate new redistricting plans for partisan skew and to elevate the conversation on partisan gerrymandering with new historical data for state and U.S. congressional district plans. It’s been an exciting couple of weeks. What did we learn, and how are we doing at reaching our goals?

Every district plan is designed to do a job: apportioning voters into Congressional districts so they can elect members to the U.S. House, typically following traditional redistricting criteria like compactness, contiguity, and preservation of communities and incumbents. Since 2010, we’ve seen the emergence of detailed computer models that allow for the creation of unfair, skewed maps that still conform to traditional criteria:

It’s also increasingly clear that the finely grained data available to map-drawers, which they can manipulate via sophisticated software, has made “traditional redistricting principles” less effective in combating gerrymanders. The Pennsylvania case in the news right now provides a great illustration: After the state Supreme Court told the legislature to come up with a new congressional map that was less partisan and also less disruptive of traditional redistricting principles, the solons promptly came up with a map that looked a lot neater and nicer but was just as partisan as the original. (Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine, Feb 20, 2018)

We are putting that same finely-grained data and sophisticated software to work combatting new partisan gerrymanders. Our predictive model of Pennsylvania, built by Eric McGhee from 2016 precinct-level election results and demographics, helped Ruth Greenwood rapidly score a cluster of maps all released during one day. In the past, Ruth and other experts have devoted multiple days to scoring plans and publishing results (such as this report on North Carolina from last year), often under enormous time pressure to meet legal deadlines. With our scoring feature for uploaded plans, this same analysis can take just minutes.

Seven different plans were published on February 15, from a spectrum of political and other interest groups. Ordinarily, evaluating such plans would require specialized knowledge, data, and time (the New York Times district-by-district analysis by Nate Cohn, Matthew Bloch, and Kevin Quealy is an excellent example). Here, we were able to rapidly compare the proposals in just a few minutes. Nicholas Stephanopoulos summarized the results in his Election Law Blog post: “it is not enough to say that we want an aesthetically attractive map; we also have to specify what kind of aesthetically attractive map we want: one that is skewed in favor of a party or one that is symmetric.” Four days later, we followed up with an instant analysis of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s remedial plan. Good news: it’s less skewed and more competitive, offering voters a more meaningful choice when they head to the polls this November!
Mixin Developer Competition Progress
By: Yasmine Moustatia
Tags: Php Developers, Blockchain, Technology, Mixinnetwork, Dapps

Last month Mixin Network online Competition was launched and until now we got developer contestants from 17 countries around the world

In the middle of the first Mixin Network Developer Contest, nearly 100 developers from 14 countries including China, the United States, Russia, Singapore and India participated, There is a mature business model of the blockchain development team, there are no lack of individual contestants. The competition invites excellent project and technical experts such as Monroe Coin Bottom Algorithmist, Uber, Airbnb, Bitcoin Early Investors to be judges to set up the Million Dollar Bonus Pool.

Mixin Network uses mature distributed accounting technology to develop environment-friendly, Has provided the industry CoinView, ONO, FoxONE, CandyONE and many other well-known projects to provide the bottom wallet technical support.

If you would like to be part of Mixin DApp ecosystem, or if you have any suggestions, please contact us at contact@mixin.one.
I Just Found 61 Bugs in Three Hours.
Tags: Product Development, Software Development, Testing

Product Craftsmanship

Everything I know, I try, and I Fail About Making A Product…
Acrobat
By: Anthi Psomiadou
Tags: Self, Personality, Soul, Awareness, Poetry

Walking between personality and Self.

That rope I’m on is as thin as a thread.

There’s a third “me”, somewhere aside

watching me from the outside.

— I know they’re all one;

just for earthly handling, they’re

seen as divided parts — .

The movements have to be delicate;

not fearful, just “awarenessly” made,

to know, to feel, to understand

what happens in, how the thoughts expand.

How the inner comes out.

Am I sometimes too loud?

What is my “why”?

What do I see with my third eye?

“Here’s the illusion,

here’s the real.

Take responsibility,

choose where to live”.

Declaring my position

within the non-stop re-composition.

Am I lying in front of the mirror?

Have I become my inner hero?

I know how to handle my ego.

My Self can manage this amigo.

As I act, observe and learn,

everything I lose, everything I earn.

Hands can be down or wide open,

legs can be straight or not, as I’m walking.

My balance isn’t about the body;

it comes from what I’m “downloading”.

This subtle acrobatic harmony

has from above great company.

No one can push me off the thread.

My earthly mind is the only possible threat.

There is no other real safety,

except for soul’s eternal melody.

So, I know what to do and how;

I’ll keep on trusting IT in every “now”.
Insurance cost prediction using linear regression
By: Merugu Akshay Kumar
Tags: Machine Learning, Data Science, Jovian Ml, Deep Learning

I would like to say that I’m thankful for the course Deep Learning with PyTorch: Zero to GANs by Aakash and the folks in Jovian.ml (this post is a supplement to the course’s seacond assignment). So far, I’ve felt that the course was solid and full of content. Despite being only a high schooler, I’m looking forward to learning a lot in this course! If you’d like to learn more about the course, follow https://bit.ly/pytorchcourse

In this assignment, we’re going to use information like a person’s age, sex, BMI, no. of children, and smoking habit to predict the price of yearly medical bills. This kind of model is useful for insurance companies to determine the yearly insurance premium for a person. The dataset for this problem is taken from https://www.kaggle.com/mirichoi0218/insurance

We will create a model with the following steps:

Download and explore the dataset Prepare the dataset for training Create a linear regression model Train the model to fit the data Make predictions using the trained model

First, we need to import libraries that we need to complete the project
let me tell you a story but I need to be a little drunk first (poem)
By: Kate Holly-Clark
Tags: Womens Health, Feminism, Poetry, Women, Resistance Poetry

MaxMedia CC0

because everything has edges and you’re going to

cut yourself on them anyway but you wear

dark clothing so it doesn’t show and you need to care a little less

if you’re going to get this out in once piece

or even several clumps

a study recently said that women are drinking more

and verging on alcoholism which used to be

the majority trick of men only

and it doesn’t surprise me at all

because we are barefoot on shattered mirrors

every single day and you can’t let the blood show

someone will catch the scent and

the circle will form up around you as everyone

takes a bite or two

a study said recently that women do 10 hours

more of housework per week than men

not much of a change from the study

in the 70’s and 64% of women are main breadwinners

and heads of households and that is

no surprise and yet 6 out of every ten women

have been raped or beaten. Probably the same six

who work long hours and clean the house

and when we fall it is onto broken metal

and when we fall it is into liquor bottles

and when we fall we break bones and have to say

it’s okay the pain is only a six out of ten

because if you say honestly it’s a 9 out of ten

they will think your pain is in your head and

not your broken bone

and when we fall it is into autoimmune diseases

and we are three times more likely to have them

than men and 37% less treated for them and it’s absolutely

not a surprise to a woman to have her own body turn on her

it always did

let me tell you a story and I have to be a little drunk

to take the edges off and of course I’m not

bleeding to death because if I say I’m bleeding to death

they won’t even stitch me up

let me tell you a story and we will stand here in the middle

of the mirror shards, examined from every angle and this

is the story — women broken and yet critiqued

dripping blood onto every mirror bit

breathing glass and trying to tell you

that this is the way it is

and the way it’s always been

and six out of ten of us

even count ourselves lucky

but we have to get to school now

we have to go to work now

we have to pick up the house now

of course it’s not as painful now

it’s maybe a six out of ten.
How to install Node.js on Ubuntu 16.04/18.04 using NVM (Node Version Manager)
By: Vishal Jagtap
Tags: Node, Nodejs, NPM, Nvm, Ubuntu

Installation of NVM

First download the NVM installation script using cURL as follows

$ curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.34.0/install.sh | bash

After downloading the script, run the script using bash as follows

$ bash install_nvm.sh

To reflect the changes for the current user session, use following command

$ source ~/.profile

Check installed NVM version as follows

$ nvm --version

Use following nvm command to list all available node.js versions

$ nvm ls-remote

It shows the output as follows

Install particular node version using following nvm command:

$ nvm install 10.15 # it will install node 10.15.0

To see all installed node version, use nvm list as follows:

To use particular node version use

$ nvm use 10.15 # it will use node 10.15.0

To check node and npm version, use following commands:
Creating test case using Web Recorder utility
By: Katalon Studio
Tags: Programming, Continuous Integration, Software Development, Web Development, Testing

Katalon recorder is a utility to capture all of user’s actions such as clicking and typing performed on the application under test and generate test cases automatically. This is a useful feature for quickly generating test cases, especially for users who are new to Katalon Studio.

If you are a beginner, the test cases generated by Katalon recorder can be used as a reference to understand how Katalon Studio works and what its test cases look like. If you are an experienced user, you can use this feature to quickly create test steps to verify whether they can execute correctly.

This tutorial walks you through the steps needed to use Katalon recorder. This guide assumes that you already create and configure a test project. If needed, refer to this tutorial for more details.

1. Click on the New Test Case button on the main toolbar. Provide a name for your test case and click OK. An empty test case will be created.

Where:

FieldDescriptionNameThe name of the test caseDescriptionYour description for the test caseTagThe tag you want to mark for the test case, which can be used for searching later.

2. Click on Record Web from the main toolbar

3. The Record dialog is shown as below:

Where:

SectionDescriptionCaptured ObjectsDisplay all captured objects during recordingObject PropertiesDisplay the details of the selected object from the Captured Objects section aboveRecorded ActionsDisplay all captured actions that users have conducted during recording

4. Click on Record to start recording the test case in your desired browser.

Where:

Refer to Katalon Addon for Chrome for more details

5. Perform your test steps on the browser. All of your actions performed on the browser will be recorded by Katalon Studio. (Let’s record the test case on demoaut.katalon.com as an example. Click on the Make Appointment button, then click on the Login button.)

6. You can Stop or Pause recording if needed. When you are done with recording, click OK to save recorded actions into Katalon Studio. You can edit or delete the recorded actions here if needed.

7. You will be prompted to save captured objects into Katalon Studio’s Object Repository. Click OK to continue.

8. Captured objects will be saved into Object Repository and captured actions will be saved into the test case as shown below.

9. Click on Run on the main Toolbar to execute the test case’s script. You can specify the target browser to run by selecting it from the drop-down list.

Congratulations! You have automated your first test case using the recording feature of Katalon Studio. For advanced features such as branching, looping or validation, you can refer to the following articles:

Learn more: Top 10 Automation Testing Tools Review
去中心化交易所的运作机制
By: Caterina Lu
Tags: 以太坊, Research Reports, 交易所, 区块链, 去中心化

DEX.top

News, updates and industry insights from the DEx.top team.
Welcome to Birmingham!
By: Oasis Church Birmingham
Tags: Faith, Community, Christianity, Articles, Life

Welcome to Birmingham!

So, you’ve just arrived in the greatest city in the world. What’s all the fuss about?

It’s big — over a million people.

It’s diverse — one in three residents is from an ethnic minority.

It’s young — nearly 40% of the population is under 25.

It’s historic — settlements here date back thousands of years.

It’s green — over 600 parks and open spaces covering 8000 acres, with easy access to the rolling hills of the surrounding countryside

It’s scenic— over 56km of canals, more than Venice.

It’s famous — home to brands like Cadburys, HP Sauce and Typhoo Tea.

It’s foody — six Michelin starred restaurants, the Balti Triangle, and a whole host of delicious and independent places to eat.

It’s sporty — Premier League football at Aston Villa, international cricket at Edgbaston Stadium, and Athletics at Perry Barr, with the 2022 Commonwealth Games to come.

But beyond the stats, Birmingham is an incredible place to live, work, and build community. If you’re just starting your journey to make our city your home, you are incredibly welcome! Whether you’re moving here for work, university, family reasons, or anything else, we think you couldn’t have picked a better place. At Oasis, we love our city, and we’re sure you’ll grow to love it too!

Especially in this strange season though, moving to a new city can be a daunting experience. But we are here to help! One of the best ways to quickly feel at home is to get stuck into a local church community — somewhere that will encourage you, support you and challenge you; somewhere you can both receive and contribute, somewhere you can know others and be known. There are many fantastic churches in Birmingham, but if you’re looking for a family of believers to belong to, we would love you to check us out.

Currently, we are meeting online every Sunday, from 10:15am for a pre-service welcome slot before the meeting proper gets underway at 10:30am. It’s hosted live on Zoom, and you can expect a very warm welcome, engaging worship, impactful teaching from the Bible, time for prayer and stories, plus an opportunity to connect after the service for a virtual tea and coffee via a separate link. For our Sunday Service, you won’t be able to be seen, so you can even try us out incognito, or get a taste beforehand by watching back previous meetings via Oasis On Demand.

We are also currently running Small Groups, Daily Devotionals, Kids, Youth and Students & 20s online as we work towards building in more in-person gatherings over the autumn. For all the details on our Online Services, take a look at this blog or check out the Events section of our website.

Thinking of taking a look? There’s no need to sign up to anything in advance, just turn up and see what you think. If you did have any questions, drop us an email on admin@theoasischurch.com or join our weekly mailing list, the Oasis Weekly Blast, via the Contact section of our website. We hope to meet you soon!
UI/UX Design: Converting Users
By: Nick Lawrence
Tags: Ui Ux Design

How to successfully convert users

There are three things that you need in order to successfully convert users and make your app profitable:

You need to offer an outcome that your users really need and want. You need to offer it in a way that is simple, straightforward, and easy to get to. The outcome you offer and the way your users access it needs to be unique enough that your process is the obvious choice.

These are the prerequisites for a successful monetization attempt. Failure to adhere to these principles will result in failure to monetize.

I will use Uber and Facebook as cases in point.

Uber

Hailing a cab, dealing with fare, and all the B.S. that entailed sucked. Uber thought: “Hey, what if we can offer an outcome that people need (transportation), but in a way that is straightforward and easy to get to (application/platform), that we position for ease of access and usage (solid UI/UX principles)?”

As you can see, they adhered to the rules, and now their company is worth billions, and it didn’t happen by accident.

Facebook

“What about Facebook? People don’t pay for that platform but they’re still highly valued!” Yes, that’s because certain users don’t pay, while others do. Advertising users pay Facebook to push ads to users who use the platform for free; which makes them, in turn, the product.

Again, Facebook abstracted online marketing, put everything you need in one spot, built a monopoly around it, and have so far done a very nice job defending that monopoly from other companies.

They followed the rules, and they got the reward. You can too.
Positive Moody Rating for Small Start-Up Nation Re-Issued
By: Gil Rifkin
Tags: Economy, Investment, Credit, Israel, Moody

Recently, the prestigious credit rating agency Moody released its updated credit rankings. The Moody credit ratings are used in the business world as a tool for investors to make informed business decisions. The rating agency’s reports are considered to have a high impact on the future success of a company or country. Due to this, the recent report reaffirming the State of Israel's upper-medium rating is something to be lauded by such a small Middle-Eastern country.

Nicknamed “The Start-Up Nation” it should be no surprise that since 2000 Israels Moody's credit rating seen a significant rise. Jumping from an A2 rating to an A1 is no small accomplishment. On top of that, this past week the rating was re-issued. This being an indication of Israel's strong economy. The implications of having a rating this high coupled with a positive outlook can be expected to help attract foreign investors. Potential investors will now look at Israel as a country that year after year and decade after decade creates a more stable economy.

What makes all this more impressive is the issues that Israel has managed to overcome and prevent form affecting the economy. Namely, conflict with the Palestinians and an extended election cycle. This only goes to show the true stability of the economy. Additionally, it can be expected that Israel's strong democratic culture will eventually put an end to the election cycle. When this happens there is potential for an even further improved economic outlook.

Graph of Israels credit rating-Taken from CountryEconomy.com-https://countryeconomy.com/ratings/israel

The most striking analysis from the Moody report touches on Israel is one of only a number of countries that suffered from the 2008 international economic downturn that now has a lower debt to GDP ratio than prior to the crisis. “Israel’s economic growth has outpaced most other advanced industrial countries over the past decade, driven by a strongly competitive high-tech export sector and a diversified economic base that now includes energy exports,” said Evan Wohlmann, a Moody’s Vice President — Senior Credit Officer and the report’s author.

The economic outlook for Israel is strong. Whether it be in the fields of AI, Technology and the Start-up field as a whole or in natural gas. Prospects for the small nation are good and only look to improve in the next decade. An increase in foreign direct investment are likely. These investments will further the Israeli economy and market strength.
Time Travellers Love Bitcoin
By: Mark Kelly
Tags: Time Travel, Science Fiction, Cryptocurrency, Fiction, Bitcoin

I’ve always been interested in time travel. An avid consumer of every episode of Doctor Who since childhood, and a connoisseur of all of the twists and turns that Hollywood has proffered on the topic. I started looking, first as an innocent hobby, then later as a full-blown obsession, for the tell-tale signs that time travel was real and that travellers were among us.

One assumption that I always swallowed wholesale was that travellers would quickly ensure their own enrichment, as they would have a uniquely accurate read on the financial markets or gambling outcomes.

So I decided to follow the money.

Initially I found work in the market abuse department of the UK regulator, trying to spot the people or firms who transacted with perfect market timing over and over, as they must surely be prime candidates for possessing the ultimate insider knowledge.

Lead after lead petered out. Some people, it seemed, just had a knack for picking winners, or had developed superior software, got lucky or actually had normal insider knowledge. Fraudulent and criminal certainly, but not of much interest to me.

Then I started to focus on cryptocurrency. If someone was to make as much money as possible as quickly as possible, then this was the place they could do it. Valued at $1 in 2011 and rising to $20,000 by 2018, someone would just need to buy a thousand bitcoins back then to be a multimillionaire after the first few price spikes.

In July 2020 some of the very earliest bitcoin addresses, which had not seen any movement in ten years, came back to life, with large transfers to other more recent addresses. My interpretation of this was that time travel had indeed just been perfected and that people from my time had travelled back to make the investment and were now cashing out.

The exact person behind a bitcoin address is normally opaque, for as long as the owner leaves the coins on the blockchain. But when they cash out, that’s a different matter. The crypto to fiat exchanges need to know who they are paying. So I was able to join the Compliance department of a major crypto firm, with full access to their customer records, and bring to the surface all of the details of who was behind the latest movements in the oldest bitcoin addresses.

Which was what brought me three months later to the shores of Lake Geneva.
Blue Whale Foundation — Un écosystème décentralisé pour les travailleurs indépendants
Tags: Blue Whale Foundation, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, Gig Economy, ICO

La vision de Blue Whale Foundation :

“Blue Whale will empower the world’s freelance community by creating the largest worker-centric decentralized ecosystem where independent workers can pursue their passions and get the value their deserve from the gig economy.”
pale wings
By: Ashley Capes
Tags: Home, Memory Loss, Poetry, Australia, Literally Literary

( LauraLisLT via pixabay)

I cannot find home

here

it seems it lacks, most utterly

lacks

a few things that lock in my mind

from those other places, things that somehow

make it to the new address:

warmth

not from the sun

but from patterns of sunlight on the wall

early morning

pale wings

from certain angles

or the deep afternoon orange blush

or the scent of eucalypt

almost-burning

and

sometimes, I can draw stuff like that

up from the grey

myself,

sometimes it’s as simple

as being still

late at night when only two-rooms across

the hum of the fridge

is left to

keep time,

and by whatever accident

my mind grows still too

because all the restlessness has fallen out

and behind,

in the space that was once

occupied by a squirming mass of notes-to-self

there it is,

there’s clean glass

and the sill

too

both of them waiting

for me

to go and rest my hands there
Am I More than Just a Piece of Meat?
By: Gillian Sisley
Tags: Self, Body Image, Feminism, Equality, Women

To the boys at my first-part time job who held a bet to see who could score my virginity first.

To the men on the street who leer at me with ogling eyes when all I'm doing is sitting on a park bench reading a book.

To my first love who decided he was entitled to my virginity, whether I gave it willingly or not.

Am I a human being to you?

Or am in nothing more than a piece of meat?
How to Bite Your Tongue
By: Rachel Wayne
Tags: Social, Humor, Advice, Life Lessons

Photo by Vinicius Benedit on Unsplash

How to Bite Your Tongue

And avoid totally catastrophic faux pas

Do you walk a fine line between asserting yourself and getting yourself fired every day? Have you been told you have no filter? I’m here to help. Here’s how to successfully bite your tongue.

1. Open your mouth to get ready to say something, but don’t.

Maybe your boss just gleefully shared how excited he is for his month-long vacation to Tahiti. Or maybe your best friend just moaned that she’s gained 10 pounds and can’t fit into her wedding dress. They look to you for validation. Your mouth opens, ready to word-vomit and eye-roll at the same time. Resist! Open for dramatic effect, then close.

2. Think carefully about the implications of your next few words.

I know this is hard to hear, but responding with your confession of how your meager pay only allows you to take a vacation to the local Days Inn with a pack of wine coolers might not be the best course of action. Nor would telling your best friend that she should just feel lucky someone is marrying her.

3. Gently press your teeth against your tongue.

Keep your lips closed so that you don’t accidentally hit on the person you’re talking to. Be careful to not bite too hard — you don’t want to go to the hospital.

4. Find something constructive yet noncommittal to say.

Instead of, “You jerk, why didn’t you approve my raise?!” try “Oh, Tahiti! I understand it’s the most populous island of French Polynesia. You’ll have a great time!” Instead of “Well, I gained 15 pounds after Kyle dumped me and you told me to ‘get over it,” try “You’ll look beautiful no matter what. Maybe hit up Planet Smoothie?”

5. Smile!

Engage the muscles in your cheeks to pull up the corners of your mouth. Be sure to keep your eyes open and your teeth somewhat contained. Bonus points if you add a little crinkle at the corner of your eyes and give a little shrug of your shoulders or head tilt.

By following these simple tips, you should be able to navigate any awkward social situation without putting your foot in your mouth. And don’t forget to brush your tongue while you’re brushing your teeth. Oral hygiene is very important.

Rachel Wayne is a writer and artist based in Orlando, FL. She earned her master’s in visual anthropology from the University of Florida and runs the production company DreamQuilt. She is an avid aerial dancer and performance artist, and also dabbles in mixed-media. She writes nonfiction stories about herself and other awesome people, as well as essays on feminism, societal violence, mental health, politics, entrepreneurship, and whatever cultural topic strikes her fancy.
A Good Defense
By: Ani Vidrine
Tags: Poetry, Compassion, Personal Growth, Mindfulness, War

A Good Defense

Poems From The Porch

photo by Boudewijn Huysmans on Unsplash.com

The world is grey this morning,

light mist contrasted with heavy water

pooled beneath the trees.

Two drops of liquid

are clinging tenaciously to the top of a rocker,

despite the fortitude of the breeze.

My heart is with the flickering votive today,

a visual intention for world peace

and the relief of all those who are suffering.

For there are so many forms of misery on earth

and painful conflict that longs for compassionate buffering.

External strife is easy to address

because it is tangible, obvious, and seen.

It is the internal discord

that goes without notice

but is felt, projected, and keen.

The bigger threat is posed by this hidden ache,

gun powder awaiting spark

igniting quarrel, attack, and spar.

Your wounds and mind

when acknowledged and tended

are the best defense against war.
ผู้บัญญัติกฎหมายในรัฐ Ohio วางรัฐเป็นศูนย์กลางในอนาคตสำหรับเทคโนโลยี Blockchain
By: Chawakorn Lertrungsi
Tags: Thailand, Cryptocurrency, News, Blockchain, Bitcoin

Ohio Lawmakers Pitch Their State As a Future Hub for Blockchain - CoinDesk

Lawmakers in the U.S. state of Ohio say they are interested in blockchain - but they're still figuring out how to put…
Imbalance
By: J.D. Harms
Tags: Poetry, Balance, Musing, Image, Disability

Imbalance

A Poem

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

I set out to visit

an empty mailbox

I am sure, now

that I am full of

rust

Over the dimpled

ground of imperfect

ice, I slide into

the car that holds

on and on

I come to this

imbalance honestly

touching everything

even those things

behind the caution tape

I have bracketed my house

in lines I found

in one mystery or another

Taken tea with all

the gods I think are

thinking about me

But holding this mug

aloft, I feel the sinking

that always comes around now

and I put my arm back down

recoil a bit

because I don’t want to make

another mess
Underneath It All
By: Gillian Brassil
Tags: Packing, Comics, Underwear, Parents, Family

I write, draw, fact-check, and translate. Once I was on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. (I did not become a millionaire.)

Follow
Unmarsahl Nested JSON in Go. It is undeniable that JSON (JavaScript…
By: Julia Álvarez De Eulate Sainz
Tags: Json, Golang, Nested Json, Go Programming, Decoding

It is undeniable that JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) has gained a lot of popularity in the last years. According to Stack Overflow Trends, more questions are asked about it than for any other data interchange format.

JSON will often be the best choice when working with data and writing JavaScript code, because it is a natural format of the language. However, there are implementations for many languages, Go being one of them.

Paraphrasing from the dictionary, decode is:

to convert something into a human readable form

Photo by Clément Falize on Unsplash

Go json package

The package json implements encoding and decoding of JSON. For this post we will focus on decoding, specifically nested JSON to a Go struct.

Unmarshal or decode?

Unmarshal is the function used for decoding. There is also a method called Decode in the json package, where its name is self explanatory of what it does. There is often a misconception between these two.

Which one should you use? As to every good question, the answer is, it depends. If you are reading values from an input stream, decode will be the right option for you.

We will be using the unmarshal function in this post. So let’s decode some JSON in Go!

Unmarshal

Let’s say that we have a list of libraries in JSON. And we want this information organised in a struct like this:

type Libraries struct {

LibrariesList []struct {

Name string `json:"name"`

City string `json:"city"`

Country string `json:"country"`

Books []struct {

Title string `json:"title"`

Author string `json:"author"`

Availability bool `json:"availability"`

} `json:"books"`

} `json:"libraries"`

}

The json values are important since they make it possible for the Go package to map the values correctly. If the value is missing for a specific field, it will be initialised with a zero value.

The value of librariesInformation variable is printed out with its field names and the variable will look like this:

If you want to check the code you can do so here:
Why You Should Move Your Office Pool to a Lottery App
Tags: Mega Milions, Powerball, Features, Lottery Pools, Tips And Tricks

Why You Should Move Your Office Lottery Pool to the Jackpocket App

All the lotto fun. None of the hassle.

You’ve been running your office lottery pool all year. Is it time for a break?

If you like your lottery play to be all fun and no hassle, here’s why you should move your office pool to the Jackpocket lottery app.

1. Mo’ money, no problems

Fact: Lottery pools are a fun way to get better odds.

And with Jackpocket’s Private Pools feature, the app takes care of everything for you — from purchasing your tickets to distributing the payout if your pool has a winner. Just create a Private Pool group on Jackpocket, invite your coworkers to join, and presto. Your part is done!

WATCH: How Private Pools works

2. No more waiting in line on your lunch break

Normally, lottery pool managers collect money from their coworkers and then buy lottery tickets for the pool at the store. But with the Jackpocket app, your pool members place their ticket orders right from their phones. The more tickets a player gets, the bigger their slice of the prize.

3. In-app tools make your life easier

Jackpocket keeps track of who contributes what, so you don’t have to. Handy tools like our Prize Share Calculator and Activity Feed help you keep tabs on what the rest of the group is up to.

4. Enjoy the easiest payouts in lottery pool history

Jackpocket takes care of calculating the share for each group member and distributing the winnings. Prizes under $600 go straight into your Jackpocket account. You’ll never have to worry about tracking anyone down or *gasp* having to do math.

5. Avoid any legal drama

Lawsuits over winning lottery tickets? It’s been known to happen. Our prize-sharing agreement lays out the Pool Rules beforehand and explains exactly what happens when your group has a winning play. Wouldn’t you rather say “See you in Cancun!” instead of “See you in court?”

Go ahead. Be the Office Hero.

Start your office lottery pool on Jackpocket today! Just download the Jackpocket app to get started.
Appendix: Complex Variables
By: Hair Parra
Tags: Forecasting, Statistics, Mathematics, Timeseries, Machine Learning

These notes are intended to provide a “fast” collection of theoretical definitions, theorems, and concepts for Complex Variables as a refresher and a collection of some basic definitions, theorems, and corollaries only, and as an Appendix to my “A Complete Introduction to Time Series Analysis” series.

Basic Definitions

Unit Circle and Unit Disk

Operations with Complex Numbers

Polar Complex Numbers

Complex Exponentials

Calculus with Complex Numbers

Main page

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Building a Data Driven Organisation at Beamery
By: Matthew W. Noble
Tags: Business Strategy, Data, Data Science, Data Visualization, Data Analysis

Many companies make the mistake, whereby they think that in having multiple dashboards populating TV screens on their walls or generating a plethora of reports, they are now data driven. Whilst dashboards and reports are an intricate element of a data driven organisation, they are typically backwards looking. This is not to imply that dashboards and reports are regressive, but it is to highlight that they are descriptive in nature. They describe where one was, they do not provide recommendations of where one is to go next.

The forward looking analysis embraced and enacted upon by a data driven organisation involve answering the W-Questions; those of “who”, “what”, “when”, “where”, and “why”. The W-Questions enable the making of recommendations and predictions, they allow the telling of a story around the findings which the dashboards and the reports describe.

The transition from a descriptive outlook to a predictive outlook requires the collection and processing of the correct data. Quoting from Creating a Data-Driven Organisation by Carl Anderson:

“ … such insights require collecting the right data, that the data is trustworthy, the analysis is good, that the insights are considered in the decision, and that they drive concrete actions so the potential can be realised.”

Carl describes this sequence as the analytics value chain and places notable emphasis on the final link, that of driving concrete actions such that their potential can be realised. This is what it means to create a data driven organisation; a data driven culture. If the analyses results are not taken seriously, if they are not acted upon by those whom make the decisions, then they will be ineffectual and a waste of time. For a company to be data driven then the processes and the culture must be in place to drive critical business decisions as a result of these analyses.

Creating a data driven culture at an organisation is a non-trivial task due to it being a multi-faceted problem. It involves the collection of high quality data and the sharing of that data, the hiring and training of data analysts, data engineers, and data scientists, the succinct and effective communication of the analyses, the building and organisation of analytical structures, the defining and designing of metrics and key performance indicators, the setup of A/B testing environments, and the implementation of data driven decision making processes.

The Roadmap to a Data Driven Organisation

Creating a data driven organisation does not (sadly) occur overnight. It is a complicated process with many moving parts. In the series that follows, we will explain how exactly we built a data driven organisation at Beamery from start to finish. The series will consist of the following:
Year of the Rat
By: Background Noise Comics
Tags: Lunar New Year, Chinese New Year, Humor, Rats, Comics

It’s good luck for the new year to welcome visitors to your home- and not to bite their heads off.
How the Japanese Concept of “Kaizen” Can Lead You to Excellence
By: Alvin Ang
Tags: Self Improvement, Lifestyle, Life Lessons, Self, Life

Dramatic Change Often Results in Failure — Instead, Aim for Incremental Improvement

Studies have shown that 80% of New Year’s resolutions fail by February. Radical change is a double-edged sword. On one hand, few things are more exciting than picturing a future utterly different, and infinitely better, from your current reality. On the other hand, such lofty visions can be terrifying. Big goals often have the counterintuitive effect of intimidating you into inaction. Here’s a personal example.

I have a friend, let’s call him Ralph. Ralph and I both got into self-help at the same time, and Ralph somehow got it into his head that in order to lead the life he wants, he would have to make $5,000 per month passively within the year. Keep in mind that he has yet to make a single cent of income independent from his job at that point.

A year passes, and Ralph’s passive income stream is still at zero. His ambition, though commendable, gave him a lot of anxiety, and that anxiety paralyzed him. A wiser move would’ve been to gun for a modest improvement, say $100 per month in passive income, and work his way up from there. Critics might scoff and say that $100 is a paltry sum, but keep in mind that a $100 increase from $0 is an enormous feat.

The secret is to start so slow and build momentum over time. Here are some examples of incremental growth in action:

If you’ve been overweight for decades, don’t aim immediately for a Greek God’s physique. Seek to shed a kilo first.

If you’re broke, don’t shoot for a million dollars. Instead, start a side hustle to earn some cash on the weekends.

To inculcate a writing habit, don’t stress yourself by trying to write perfect 2,000-word articles from the get-go. Aim for one good paragraph, and see where your muse leads you.

There is a saying among rock climbers that goes something like, “Keep your eyes on the handhold in front of you, not the wall above.” It is best to keep the magnitude of your task at the back of your mind and focus instead on what you can do in the here and now. Implement not grand goals that fall apart within a month, but tiny, lasting changes that will stand the test of time. As the Chinese proverb goes,

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

So take one small step. Then another. And another. Before you know it, entire years will have flown by and you’ll have made it further than you would’ve guessed even in your wildest imaginings. Start small. Start slow.

For slow and steady wins the race.
About A Philosopher’s Stone
By: Brenden Weber
Tags: Ideas, Philosophy, Life, Education, Life Lessons

Hello everyone, Brenden Weber here, editor of A Philosopher’s Stone. A publication about the many ideas in philosophy that are all around us––in our society and culture. Philosophy is everywhere and my goal for the publication is to bring magnificent writers of these ideas to a place for dialogue and discussion.

Even if you disagree with various ideas in philosophy there's always a lesson to be learned from them and applied to your everyday life and thinking. This publication takes a deeper dive into those ideas––finding new perspectives and outlooks.

Never before have significant, fundamental questions of how to live and what to believe felt more important.

Immigration, abortion, gay marriage, drug policy, and gun control — the list of controversial topics demand our attention as they surround our lives in the age of social media. But even more, substantial questions beyond the scope of politics are at play. Our existence, the meaning of life, and the understanding of our values are philosophical concepts framed as moral issues on which one must have a stand. But have we been equipped with the tools to apply these fundamental concepts to our lives or even have a dialogue about them?

Many young peoples first(and only) exposure of philosophy comes from “textbook coverage” of big names and popular ideas taught in the classroom. When they learn in this unrelatable way, they never develop a deeper interest in discovering why philosophical questions are important, or how they shape our understanding of life itself. They are left with no mechanism to apply the array of philosophical concepts to their own lives. When they walk away from the classroom, they leave philosophers and their theories behind on an ivory tower — untouchable ideas from ancient men.

This publication looks to change all of that, with a goal of helping people develop a well-rounded intellect in virtues, integrity, humility, civility, empathy, a sense of justice, and a confidence in the ability to reason.

For submissions: Apply to be a writer through Smedian or email me at thephilosophyguy2@gmail.com

Publication Newsletter: Join our community newsletter– A Philosopher’s Stone

Check out the podcast: Here

Otherwise, give us a follow on Medium!
Deploy and test an application with Remote System Explorer (Eclipse plugin)
By: George Calin
Tags: Embedded, Eclipse Ide, IoT, Ssh, Beaglebone Black

Prerequisite

If you are a beginner, I recommend you check first the tutorial for writing your first C language programs with Eclipse IDE on Windows/Linux :

Step 1. Connect USB to Serial TTL cable to the embedded device

Additionally, you will have to enable USB-to-Serial TTL via ‘Devices’ in the Virtual Machine menu, in case you are using the Linux Operating System from a Virtual Machine.

The reason you need the USB to Serial TTL connection is that you will have to get the IP Address of the embedded device before using the Remote System Explorer in Eclipse IDE.

Here is an example with screenshots considering Linux Ubuntu 18.04 running on an Oracle VirtualBox machine. The Embedded device in the example is a BeagleBone Black development board.
24hr Crypto Market Round up
By: John Fenton
Tags: Blockchain, Investing, Cryptocurrency, Ethereum, Bitcoin

24hr Crypto Market Round up

The Crypto roller coaster ride continues but the dips shouldn't make you loose your lunch today!

Most coins holding onto the majority of the bounce back gains but slipping a bit.

Only 1 double digit loss today I’m happy to report, let’s hope we can get through the weekend in a steady Crypto ship (if not ride the waves people)

Remember Follow me via https://medium.com/@john.l.fenton)

So lets get to it Crypto Pickers!

Bitcoin (BTC) $11674 dips 0.58 % which hasn't me shaking in my boots!

Ethereum (ETH) 1.03% down @ $1054

Ripple (XRP) 5.55 % down @ $1.54

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) @ $1788 down 3.53 %

Cardano dips 5.49% @ $0.650815

LiteCoin (LTC) @ $193.34 down 3.5%

NEM slips @ $1.10 down 1.67%

NEO overtakes Stellar in market cap @ $140.89 down 6.38%

Stellar (XLM) @ $0.504784 down 7% this still looks great value for me, a coin with such potential

IOTA down 12% @ $2.56

Please Check Out https://carbonwallet.com/ the Wallet I Co founded, Currently supporting BTC and ZCL More coins coming soon

(ZCL for me is a great entry point into the upcoming fork for bitcoin Private BTCP as is BTC)

Note: These are my opinions and I like to think I am right all the time, but have been known on the ODD occasion to be wrong, so the here is the legal bit

My opinions on the blog do not constitute investment advice.
What is Bitcoin Cash?
By: Meredith Davis
Tags: Cryptocurrency Investment, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoincash, Crypto, Bitcoin

Hold up. Aren’t Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash the same thing, like Ethereum and Ether? Well, that depends on when a person first bought their Bitcoin. Anyone who held Bitcoin before Bitcoin Cash split from Bitcoin on August 1st, 2017 now has an equal amount of Bitcoin and Bitcoin cash. That’s because on that date, a decision was made to fork, or split the project because a general consensus about the modifications to the system couldn’t be reached. The folks that thought it should continue unaltered just kept truckin’, and the folks that thought it should alter in specific ways to address certain issues essentially made an exact copy of Bitcoin and then made their changes. Don’t worry — it was all above board and legal. It was democratization in progress! The good news is that people holding Bitcoin at that time now have both! If you held 50 Bitcoin, after August 1st you then held 50 Bitcoin plus 50 Bitcoin Cash.

Bitcoin cash took what was working well and improved on it, with some important changes that were stalling the original Bitcoin system. The increased block size creates faster transactions, faster confirmations and better long-term scaling without sacrificing reliability or stability. The changes also allow for lower transaction fees, making it easier to use for daily, small purchases. It is a popular cryptocurrency with active trading across many major exchanges. And of course, it continues the decentralized nature of the original framework.
[GEEKY] Where are the east coast Rails / Ruby conferences?
By: Pito Salas
Tags: Ruby, Tech, Programming, Rails

“So yet another way you can help Ruby and Rails Activism is by attending

(supporting) a conference. Below you’ll find conferences coming up in

the next 6 months. If you think I’ve missed one, or if the information

is incorrect, please post a comment.” (from Riding Rails)
Freezer Burn
By: Background Noise Comics
Tags: Home Improvement, Humor, Cartoon, Relationships, Comics

Household repairs aren’t as bad when you do them together- right?
Money Race For The White House
By: Liza Donnelly
Tags: Politics, Trump, Editorial Cartooning, Biden, Election 2020

I did the drawing above during my daily live broadcasts on Instagram TV, and HappsTV. I wanted to draw something about Jaime Harrison’s fundraising, but thought it should reflect the trend for the election in general. I gave Biden aviator glasses in hopes of distinguishing him, as he often wears them. I love drawing Kamala because she has so much energy! Trump has short pants, because he is a schoolyard bully. And Pence, well, flies seem to like him.

Below are some sketches I did beforehand, trying to narrow down the idea. I decided that donkeys and elephants as political symbols might be outdated.

And this is a sketch I did that made me feel this approach is the best version!

Follow me on Instagram to watch me draw something in the news each day during the week. 5pm ET. Also 5:30 on HappsTV , where you can also sponsor me if you are so inclined!