fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Ex Libris Life
Tags: Literary, Lists, Bazaar Of The Bizarre, Heroes, Writing

An evolving list of my literary heroes

Photo by Ivo Rainha on Unsplash

"When a griot dies, it is as if a library has burned to the ground."

-- Alex Haley

griot (pron.: /ˈɡri.oʊ/; French pronunciation: ​[ɡʁi.o]), jali or jeli (djeli or djéli in French spelling) is a West African historian, storyteller, praise singer, poet and/or musician.

The griot is a repository of oral tradition. As such, they are sometimes also called bards. According to Paul Oliver in his book Savannah Syncopators, "Though [the griot] has to know many traditional songs without error, he must also have the ability to extemporize on current events, chance incidents and the passing scene. His wit can be devastating and his knowledge of local history formidable". Although they are popularly known as "praise singers,” griots may also use their vocal expertise for gossip, satire, or political comment.

As one of my college poetry professors once said, "Write, Rite, Right...Always write how and what you feel, but show me rather than tell me." And, he would always tell me to read the works of others, whether old or new, just to get a feel of what else is out there and what has and hasn't been done.

My Top 5 Influences:

1. Langston Hughes

2. James Baldwin

3. Pablo Neruda

4. Amiri Baraka

5. Charles Bukowski

A Few Honorable Mentions:

Alex Haley, Ralph Ellison, Cornel West, George Orwell, Richard Wright, Albert Murray
What is Set in Java?
By: Michael Tong
Tags: Data Structures, Java8, Java

Photo by Joe Green on Unsplash

To understand what a set is, let’s understand what collections are.

A collection is a group of elements bundled into one instance. This can be a set, an arraylist, a linkedlist or a map. Each represents a different way to handle all these elements

A set is a collection that cannot contain duplicate elements.

Hm….what does that mean? Sounds straightforward but aren’t all elements unique in a sense?

It means in a set there will never exist two values in the same set.

Let’s take this array as an example: [1,3,3,4,2,5]. If we insert this array into the set, the set will contain [1,3,4,2,5] as its values.

Here is an example of how a set can be instantiated and iterated to get all of its values:

Notice a few interesting things here:

I instantiated mySet as a HashSet, not a regular set.

I added null as a string and null itself both twice into the set.

First of all, set is an interface and therefore cannot be instantiated directly. You have to instantiate it either as a HashSet or a LinkedHashSet, the ordered and the unordered version of a Set. I will talk about the difference between the two later on.

Now to the second point. Notice I added null as a string twice and the null value itself twice as well. What will actually happen is the value null and the string null will both appear in the set once:

If you recall, I did mention about how HashSet is unordered. What does that really mean?

It means that the order in which I add the items will not be persisted.

When I create the iterator to iterate through the items above, the items are not accessed or printed in the order in which we add in(we add in 3 and then “apple” but in reality we get null and then “apple pie”).

If instead of instantiating a hashset, we set mySet to a new LinkedHashSet instance, the iteration order would be as following instead: 3, apple, null as the value, null as the string, and then apple pie. The order in which it is inputed into the LinkedHashSet would be persisted.

That’s pretty much it to sets in general but here are a few additional things I want to cover: how do you convert a set to list and how can we convert a list to a set, vice versa?

Here’s how to convert a set to a list, vice versa:

If there are any questions or comments, please comment below.

Happy coding!
Seduced by the Sea
By: Rebecca Jane Warrington
Tags: Mindfulness, Mental Health, Life Lessons, Life, Self Improvement

Silence is all she wanted, anonymity she craved

Emerging from the ice-cold water, Jo lifts her face towards the sky, takes a gulp full of air and plunges back into the silence of the water.

Just above the surface the sounds pierce her ear drums, the noise of the seagulls squawking, and the pandemonium on the beach.

Jo swims to escape from it all, she feels more at home amongst the sea creatures.

Silence and anonymity are what draws her to the sea.

Pretending to be a dolphin, slipping her flippers onto her feet, yanking a bathing cap over her long hair, tucking the strands in to hide her humanness.

In hopes that a family of dolphins may mistake her for their own.

She was obsessed by their permanent smile, nonchalant demeanour and sleek shape.

Dolphins lacked the pressure Jo faced, language that contained high-pitch screeches was sweet music to her ears; the simplicity of it.

A Childish fantasy that has never left her.

Diving into the waves, Jo felt no emotional tugs to the world out there.

To live on land was hard work, words staggered out like drunken soldiers, when beneath the surface no words were needed.

Making friends was equally laborious.

Oh, to be a dolphin, free to be themselves, slipping and twirling through the water, flippers and bathing caps already built in.

Little did she know a dolphin’s permanent grin did not signify an easy life.

They too competed for a place in the school of dolphins, adolescence could be as traumatic for them as for her.

It was the silence and anonymity Jo envied.

Life beneath the sea served as only a temporary refuge until the water puckered her skin and the cold entered her bones.

She knew she could not remain there.

Walking towards the water’s edge, looking up towards the sky, it was time to return home.
Python eval() built-in-function
By: Tanu N Prabhu
Tags: Python, Python3, Functional Programming, Programming, Python Programming

Let us understand the eval() built-in-function in python.

This would be a short article about eval function in python, wherein I would be explaining to you about eval function, its syntax, and few questions that are often asked in interviews so that you clearly understand it and answer those questions in ease. To get the full code, click on my GitHub repository down below:

Let's get started:

1. What is eval () in python and what is its syntax?

Answer: eval is a built-in- function used in python, eval function parses the expression argument and evaluates it as a python expression. In simple words, the eval function evaluates the “String” like a python expression and returns the result as an integer.

Syntax

The syntax of the eval function is as shown below:

eval(expression, [globals[, locals]])

Arguments or Parameters

The arguments or parameters of eval function are strings, also optionally global and locals can be used as an argument inside eval function, but the globals must be represented as a dictionary and the locals as a mapped object.

Return Value

The return value would be the result of the evaluated expression. Often the return type would be an integer.
Instant Worldbuilding
By: Mark Starlin
Tags: Worldbuilding, Tips, Tips And Tricks, Other Stories, Writing

You can build a world with only four numbers. Simply put a date at the top of your story. This technique is especially useful for flash or micro-fiction. Or any time you have a word count limitation.

If I put:

-1776 -

at the top of a story, most American readers will envision the setting of the American Revolution: powdered wigs, horse-drawn carriages, tall-mast sailing ships, etc.

Adding a city to the date can also be helpful. If I put:

Chicago, 1926

at the top of a story, gangsters, flappers, jazz, and prohibition come to mind.
How to Become a Better Writer — Even If You Just Started Out
By: Jessie Van Breugel
Tags: Freelancing, Writing Tips, Life Lessons, Personal Development, Writing

Ask for feedback

“Do you mean that I should share my non-perfect work with others so that they can judge it and perhaps share their feedback with me?”

Yes. That’s exactly what I mean.

Writing online can feel lonely at times. I can call myself lucky living together with 2 friends that both work from home, but I can imagine that fellow writers without this luxury can find themselves isolated.

Look for ways to collaborate and engage with fellow writers. There are many online communities. They might look hidden and they don’t appear to you automatically, but I know for a fact that there are many communities you could join. Even if you’re just starting out.

(Leave a comment below if you’re having a hard time finding like-minded people or writing communities, I’m happy to help you out)

Don’t forget — it all starts with you. You have to make the ask. It’s not hard. Every writer had to start somewhere. Tim Denning didn’t start with 139,000 followers either.

Recently, I set myself the goal of reaching out to at least 1 writer a week, and I’m grateful to have already spoken to some great minds out there. We talk about our progress, challenges, and achievements and we’re just having a good time. Writing online is much more than just the cycle of write — edit — publish.

Besides that, we agreed on checking each other’s work to make it even better. This is personally a challenge for me to overcome and that’s because of 2 reasons:

I’m pretty impatient and eager to publish my work. However, I learned along the way that waiting is also a skill a great writer needs to possess. I don’t want to bother others with my work all the time. However, if someone else agreed to revise it, that’s their decision and I should make use of it.

Receiving feedback from fellow writers is super valuable. Yes, it feels great when your mom or spouse tells you that your work is great, but let’s be honest: they won’t tell you when it’s shit or missing the point. Fellow writers will help you out, so make use of it. And don’t forget to pay back the gesture.
Send Emails Serverlessly With Node.js, Lambda, and AWS SES
By: Angad Singh
Tags: Programming, Nodejs, JavaScript, Serverless, AWS

Step 2: Creating a Lambda Function

Once your email is verified, it is now time to create a Lambda. If you have read this article, you already know how to create one, but let’s go through it quickly here too. Let’s head over to the “Lambda” service in the AWS dashboard. Once here, click on the orange “Create function” button. Give it a name, keep all other settings the same, and click on “Create function.”

Lambda function creation

After creating the function, if you scroll down, you will see the “Function code” section with some boilerplate code. Let’s replace that with something useful. I wrote this basic piece of code that responds to an event by sending an email:

Note: It may seem weird that we have not installed aws-sdk by running npm install and then uploaded a compressed project, but that is because AWS makes this SDK available for us when we are in their Node environment along with the core Node packages like fs and https .

So what does this code do? It extracts the to email address and subject from the body of the event request coming in. It then uses fs to read the HTML template, which we have not written yet for our email. Then it attempts to send an email with the relevant parameters and catches any errors. We then output these errors to the console so we can analyse if anything goes wrong in another AWS service called CloudWatch. Now let’s write up some HTML for our email template. You can customise your email to your requirements and use CSS to make it look beautiful. However, for the purpose of saving time, I simply used an email template that I found online. Feel free to use the same one, a different one, or write one up by yourself. To do this, right-click on the folder on the left and click on “New File.” As we decided to name our email template body.html in our JavaScript code, we must make sure that we name our HTML file accordingly and then paste/write our HTML code there.

Lambda code editor

Once done, click on the “Save” orange button so all our code is saved.
ConsoleAppFramework v3 — command line tool framework for .NET Core
By: Yoshifumi Kawai
Tags: Csharp

I’ve renewed ConsoleAppFramework, a framework for easily creating CLI applications and many batches in C#.

The concept of a CLI framework on top of Generic Host, the basic structure, remains unchanged.

The method definitions become command line arguments, and help is generated automatically, as well as settings of loggers and DIs, and loading and binding of options in the Generic Host (also used in ASP.NET Core, etc.), so you can do detailed configuration with it. Since the foundation is the same, it can be shared with ASP.NET Core and others.

The simplest example would look like this

v3’s new feature is

Strictly argument parser

Show default commands(help, version) on help command

Automatic command definitions assign to class method command

command Filter(Middleware) extension

dotnet already has standard System.CommandLine package. However System.CommandLine is low-level API, it requires to create binding manually., You’ll need a lot of boilerplate lines. If you compare it to ASP.NET Core, System.CommandLine is Core only and you need to create your own Middleware. ConsoleAppFramework is ASP.NET Core MVC.
Horror Vacui, the fear of white space (UX Alphabet Series)
By: Rizwan Javaid
Tags: Visual Design, Design, UX, Design Thinking, Web Design

“There is just too much white space.”

When I started out as a designer, as soon as I would hear this phrase, all time would come to a screeching halt. I would roll my eyes in disbelief. Yes, there would be some internal cursing and disbelief in what I had just heard. I would then begrudgingly appease the stakeholder by filling all the white space with unnecessary content and end up hating the design and my life. I would think to myself, there goes another design I can’t be proud of. Does this sound familiar?

You might have seen The Oatmeal comic, “How A Web Design Goes Straight To Hell”. It’s the one where a bright eyed designer is excited about redesigning a website. Slowly but surely the client keeps asking for minor changes that take the redesign straight to hell. “There is too much white space.” is just an indirect request that adds to the demise of the designer. What makes this a sad yet hilarious comic is that the statement about having too much white space usually is the precursor to a website going straight to hell. Other statements such as, “Can you make it pop?”, “Make the logo bigger”, and “I don’t like blue” all speed up the process of a design going to hell.

Fast forward to now and I approach the statement about having too much white space as an opportunity to educate stakeholders. As a designer it is our job to help others realize why white space is an important part of design and an important part of a great user experience.
Everyone’s Calendar is One Meeting Too Full
By: Jake Daghe
Tags: Meetings, Leadership, Productivity, Time Management, Self Improvement

Everyone’s Calendar is One Meeting Too Full

Here are four things you can do about yours

Photo by Curtis MacNewton on Unsplash

If your friend, co-worker, or boss asked you today to add another meeting to your calendar, what is the first thing you’re going to feel?

For most of us: anxiety.

Or maybe this is a better question: How do you feel when you’re sitting in your third hour-long meeting of your Thursday, listening to the department manager list off the potential complications with your upcoming project launch?

For most of us: bored.

Why is that? Why does everyone feel like they don’t have space for one extra meeting on their calendar? Why is it so easy for meetings to not capture our attention.

Can you remember the last time you were at work and didn’t have a single meeting scheduled for the whole day?

We’ve got something backward about the time we invest on a daily and weekly basis in meetings. For the sake of our sanity, as future and current leaders, that needs to change.
How You Can Make Love Last
By: Jessica Lynn
Tags: Relationships, Relationships Love Dating, Love, Self-awareness, Pyschology

For most people, we don’t give up on love. Humans are tribal. We have a deep sense of wanting to belong. As Belgian psychotherapist Esther Perel says, “we are hardwired for connection.”

We don’t give up on love, even when it does us wrong.

The need for connection appears to be innate — but the ability to form healthy, loving relationships develops over time.

Some of us are naturally better at relating than others, while many of us keep trying to get it right because we are susceptible to the human condition — we crave connection.

One way to find out who you are and what your needs are is to be in an intimate relationship. When you meet the right person — someone you like spending time with — it can be one of the most fulfilling aspects of life, giving you a sense of deep satisfaction and companionship.

In John Gottman’s book, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, he writes about what it takes to thrive in a long-term relationship.
Angular 8 Differential loading — behind the scene
By: Suraj Kumar
Tags: JavaScript, Angular, Google, Software Development

If we look at the war of JavaScript frameworks and libraries the list is huge but the major 3 competitors are Angular, React and Vue.

Although angular is a complete framework which has its own package for network request, form validation and many more but the one one down side of angular apps is the app/bundle size.

In Angular 8, the team decided to find some new ways to fix this and reduce the bundle size and then the concept of differential loading comes into action.

What is happening till angular 7 when we build our apps with “ng build” command, our all the typescript files are converted to js and then the final application bundle is created for all browsers either modern or older one considering the application should run properly of older browser. which results in larger bundle size because all the modern JS/TS code need to be converted in JS which can be easily supported by older browsers.

Now Whats happening in angular 8 when we build an app with “ng build” command.

output of ng build command

when we build the project it created two different bundles one is for older browser(marked with red) and another is for browsers that supports modern javascript(marked with blue), and have a look at the file size of both the bundles.

During deployment both the bundles are deployed and when a client opens your web app then based on browser compatibility the JS bundle is loaded.

But the question is how the application knows weather the browser is older or modern?

Have a look at at index.html where scripts are imported.

from the above image you can easily understand how it is working . when nomodule is true then it will load js for older browser and ignore the next script otherwise it will load the js for modern browsers. if you are still confused have a look at this nice video tutorial on Demos with Angular Channel on youtube.

Keep Exploring!
The Missing List of JupyterLab Keyboard Shortcuts
By: Jeff Hale
Tags: Machine Learning, Data Science, Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Jupyter

With keyboard shortcuts, you can whiz around Jupyter notebooks in JupyterLab. You can save time, reduce wrist fatigue from using your mouse, and impress your friends. 🙂

Below is the missing list of common JupyterLab keyboard shortcuts from a GitHub Gist I made. Enjoy! 🎉

If you want to make your own JupyterLab shortcuts, I wrote a guide to doing that here. 🚀

I write about Python, SQL, Docker, and other tech topics. If any of that’s of interest to you, sign up for my mailing list of awesome data science resources and read more to help you grow your skills here. 👍

Happy JupyterLab-ing! 🎉
Cash Mode Now Live in TriviaSpar!
Tags: Mobile App Development, Blockchain, Mobile Games, Ethereum Blockchain, Ethereum

In addition to tournaments and quickplay matches that reward players with KNW Tokens, TriviaSpar players will now be able to partake in quickplay and tournaments that reward $USD.

Play cash mode trivia by pressing the GO PRO button at the top of the home screen menu in-app. Deposit $USD to participate in cash reward tournaments and quick matches. Users will be required to activate their location settings to play cash mode, geographical restrictions will apply.

TriviaSpar QuickLinks

Download TriviaSpar: https://triviaspar.com/download/

Create a Knowledge account: https://account.knowledge.io/sign-up/get-started
Cold Darkness
By: Sylke Laine
Tags: Self-awareness, Haiku, Poetry, Solstice

Haiku is a form of poetry usually inspired by nature, which embraces simplicity. We invite all poetry lovers to have a go at composing Haiku. Be warned. You could become addicted.

Follow
Prototyping Design Ideas with Chatbots
By: Under Armour Makers
Tags: Automation, Customer Research, Chatbots, Design Research, Design

At Under Amour®, we’re committed to our mission: Under Armour makes you better — not just through our gear but also through our fitness apps. As software designers, it’s our job to craft digital solutions that give our users what they need to be better.

How do we know what people need? Asking users directly doesn’t always get accurate answers. Human beings can often be poor judges of their own behavior. As anthropologist Margaret Mead put it: “What people say, what people do, and what people say they do are entirely different things.”

A more fruitful tactic for learning about customer needs is to make ideas tangible. When we build working prototypes, we can let our users interact with them. Rather than asking users what they would do, we can observe what they actually do. However, building high-fidelity prototypes can take a lot of time. As part of a recent research study, we came up with an idea to speed up the prototyping timeline: we used a chatbot to prototype our ideas. What a visual prototype might uncover after months of development, a chatbot can discover in weeks or even days.
Local Magazine Editor Just Extremely, Devotedly, Obsessively Involved
By: Choire Sicha
Tags: Self-awareness, Adam Moss, Media

New York mag editor Adam Moss finally goes on the record: he is not, contrary to the last ten years of reports, a micromanager. “I totally dispute it.” God bless!
Sending Transactional Emails With Sendinblue in Kotlin
By: Antonello Zanini
Tags: Mobile, Marketing, Programming, Kotlin, Tutorial

Sending a Transactional Email

Time to see how can we send a transactional email in Kotlin. This can be easily achieved with the following lines of code:

Transactional parameters must be defined in a Map<String,String> object. A Map is a collection that holds pairs of <key,value> objects. In each pair, the key is the name of a parameter as defined in the template, and the value is the corresponding value we want to give to the selected parameter.

The Sendinblue API client requires a list of SendSmtpEmailTo objects, each of which represents one recipient.

Each recipient must have an email, while a name is optional. The former should be a contact registered in Sendinblue and assigned to a contact list, and the latter is the name that will be attached to the email recipient, which will appear in the email headers, but not in the email body.

If you created a template as described in the previous step, this is the result you should get:

Extra
فيروس كورونا: لماذا يجب عليك التصرف الآن؟
By: راقية بن ساسي
Tags: الصحة العامة, 1st, فيروس كورونا, كوفيد 19, Coronavirus

Coronavirus - When Should You Close Your Office?

How To Use Coronavirus Work From Home Model If you want to use this model, make a copy. I can't allow editing, as there…
Reshape R dataframes wide to long
By: Hause Lin
Tags: Machine Learning, Data Science, Technology, Software Engineering, Programming

How do you reshape a dataframe from wide to long form in R? How does the melt() function reshape dataframes in R? This tutorial will walk you through reshaping dataframes using the melt function in R.

If you’re reshaping dataframes or arrays in Python, check out my tutorials below.

Why melt but not other functions?

Common terms for this wide-to-long transformation are melt, pivot-long, unpivot, gather, stack, and reshape. Many functions have been written to convert data from wide to long form, melt() from the data.table library is the best. See melt() documentation here. Why?

Python’s pandas library also has the equivalent melt function/method that works the same way (see my pandas melt tutorial here)

function/method that works the same way (see my pandas melt tutorial here) melt alone is often enough for all your wide-to-long transformations; you won’t have to learn pivot_longer or gather

alone is often enough for all your wide-to-long transformations; you won’t have to learn or Other functions like gather and pivot_longer are often just wrapper functions for melt() or reshape() — these other functions simplify melt and often can’t deal with more complex transformations.

and are often just wrapper functions for or — these other functions simplify and often can’t deal with more complex transformations. melt is more powerful but isn’t any more complicated than the other functions.

is more powerful but isn’t any more complicated than the other functions. data.table package’s implementation of melt , which is extremely powerful—much more efficient and powerful than the reshape library’s melt function. From the documentation:

The melt and dcast functions for data.tables are for reshaping wide-to-long and long-to-wide, respectively; the implementations are specifically designed with large in-memory data (e.g. 10Gb) in mind.
Why I (Still) Clap
By: Mark Starlin
Tags: Clapping, Medium, Money, Writing, Partner Program

I have never clapped to bring attention to great writing.

Before the change to read time rewards, I saw several writers write that they clapped to bring attention to great writing. This sounds like a worthy cause. Some say they will continue to do this. I applaud them (pun not intended.)

However, I am not convinced clapping brings attention to writers or writing. For some, it might. But I have never read a story because it got thousands of claps. Most of the writers (with a few exceptions) whose stories get huge numbers of claps write stories I am not interested in. The number of claps a story receives has never influenced what I read.
5 Must-Read Data Science Papers (and How to Use Them)
By: Nicole Janeway Bills
Tags: Machine Learning, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Programming, Data Analytics

5 Must-Read Data Science Papers (and How to Use Them)

Foundational ideas to keep you on top of the machine learning game.

Photo by Rabie Madaci on Unsplash

Data science might be a young field, but that doesn’t mean you won’t face expectations about your awareness of certain topics. This article covers several of the most important recent developments and influential thought pieces.

Topics covered in these papers range from the orchestration of the DS workflow to breakthroughs in faster neural networks to a rethinking of our fundamental approach to problem solving with statistics. For each paper, I offer ideas for how you can apply these ideas to your own work

We’ll wrap things up with a survey so that you can see what the community thinks is the most important topic out of this group of papers.
Swirling Thoughts
By: Brian Kurian
Tags: Mental Health, Life Lessons, Poetry, Poem, Life

Swirling Thoughts

Free Verse poem.

Image by Hamed Mehrnik from Pixabay

Swirling thoughts

go round and round

I have no idea when

they will finally

stop torturing me.

Swirling thoughts

give me things

to constantly think about

to concern myself with

I must bear the burden.

Swirling thoughts

have been weighing

heavily on me

for quite some time

I shall meet my demise soon.

Swirling thoughts

I don’t know how

to make them stop

one thing I do know

is that I’m at the end of the road.
KAT VON B
Tags: Technology, Digital Nomad, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Travel

What we know, and totally dig about legendary digital nomad Kat Von B.

She’s a coffee sipping, wine slurping, international travel blogging hotel snob that means what she says and says what she means. She’s the only one that tells her what to do… GOALS! She’s created a mean team of creatives that support her in her quest in changing social media norms and exploring what is possible in destination marketing and beyond. Kat Von B’s motto? “Over deliver!”

Since late February Kat Von B has also been focusing on expanding the public’s awareness of SingularityNET. She’ll be working hard to expand their reach and influence.

SingularityNET has a dedicated following of well over 100,000 people. With Kat’s close to a decade of experience working with major online communities, and the huge respect SingularityNET has for their fans and token-holders across Reddit, Twitter, and Telegram — this is a match made in heaven!

SingularityNET is becoming the go-to provider of AI resources for the blockchain industry. They are receiving a large amount of demand from decentralized networks, with numerous projects requesting that they integrate their network’s to provide first-mover advantages in AI.

These guys have a super confident team that know the impact SingularityNET can have, and they want to make sure that their vision is reaching as many people as possible, especially those who may not be an expert in AI technologies. In cahoots with Kat and her rock solid ability to mobilize millions of people across global communities, even your toddler is gonna be all over this!

And whilst I’m on the girl power trip, I just wanted to remind you that SingularityNET was born from a collective will to democratize the power of AI. Sophia, the world’s most expressive robot, is one of the first use cases. For more on this click.

SOURCES: SINGULARITY NET BLOG
We Have to Define What Edge Computing Is
By: Juan M. Tirado
Tags: Technology, Software Development, Data, Future, Programming

We Have to Define What Edge Computing Is

Edge Computing promises millions of dollars of revenue. However, we do not yet have a definition of what it is.

Photo by Edurne Chopeitia on Unsplash

The first time I heard about edge computing was back in 2015. Since then, I have been working for startups to enable distributed data-driven solutions for the edge. It looks like everybody (or almost everybody) is aware of what edge computing is. However, all this time I have been working in a technological paradigm without a clear definition statement.

At the moment of writing this post, there is no clear definition of what the edge is. These are some definitions you can find online. Some of them are the ones used in the Wikipedia entry for edge computing.

all computing outside the cloud happening at the edge of the network, and more specifically in applications where real-time processing of data is required

Karim Arabi

Your mobile phone and all your wearables are the edge according to this definition.

anything that’s not a traditional data center could be the ‘edge’ to somebody

ETSI

This may include elements such as server proxies.

the edge node is mostly one or two hops away from the mobile client to meet the response time constraints for real-time games’

Gamelets — Multiplayer mobile games with distributed micro-clouds

In this case, the edge is not the final user device. It is something between the cloud and the user.

computing that’s done at or near the source of the data, instead of relying on the cloud at one of a dozen data centers to do all the work

Paul Miller

This definition points out the idea of data proximity.

Well, I have to say that all these definitions are correct. Why? Because the edge is so abstract that it admits almost any definition. The edge is so vaguely defined, that becomes something blurry and difficult to demarcate in any architectural design. Also, we have the cloud and the fog. What does the edge have to do with the cloud? And the fog?
Why all Writers Can’t Be Content Creators
By: Robert Turner
Tags: Content, Content Writing, Content Creation, Content Marketing, Writing

Why all Writers Can’t Be Content Creators

Do you have what it takes to create effective online content? Not every writer does

Image/Monoar/Pixabay

Most writers, be they aspiring or long-established have a love for the written word and many develop very distinctive styles, suited to their chosen genre. Your ability to write, however, does not guarantee your success as a content creator.

It is possible to dabble in both forms and some writers can make the transition between the two disciplines appear effortless. It isn’t.

I am going to examine the very specific skills that are required of a content creator and also look at motivating factors for pursuing this field.

The Content Creators Toolbox

A brief overview of the things I consider to be essential to the success of effective content creation.

Journalistic discipline with regards to content

Flexibility in terms of adopting an amorphous style

Rigorous research

Sound knowledge of the mechanisms of social media

An understanding of search engine optimization (SEO) and a firm grasp of online marketing strategies and self-promotion

An ability to remain completely objective

Not all content creators are born equal and whilst it is true that anyone can generate online content, few do it well, and even fewer enjoy the benefits of real financial reward. Let’s examine the points raised above.
Attempted Writing
By: J.D. Harms
Tags: Image, Musing, Poetry, Writing

Attempted Writing

A Poem

Photo by sydney Rae on Unsplash

The intention might have been there, the tools, the motive; absentee mind, colloidal atmospheres of fog, and other mists, atrophy, the retreat in the face of just another day.

The scars from other broken hooks, from pages that now only scatter in your equivocal memories of other apartment rooms, none like this one, so big, so unwilling to totally capitulate and open up to the field of the paper.

What I’m looking at is the attempt: the page, the screen was blank, was forcibly blinking away, waiting, instigating nothing. Or, the instigation was over, and now with a cracked coffee mug in the periphery, expected to deliver today’s sermon.

But where the other forces failed, the fingers got relentless, got criminal, decided to go against that particular grain, open up reverie, open-heart reverie, or something surgical and brave. And bright.

This was an attempt at writing something like that…
My New Outlook on Life
By: Simran Kankas
Tags: Self, Life Lessons, Motivation, Poetry, Life

My New Outlook on Life

Poetry

Photo by Lee Luis on Unsplash

A walk into fog

Wearing a thick layer of doubt

Changed me forever

It changed my outlook

I don’t fear the unknown

I don’t fear the fall

Fight your fears

Is the title of my new book

It is now my new attitude

Playing with fire

was my past

Swimming into the mystery of life

is now my favorite part

No one else holds

the strings of my kite

Flying with birds

is the motto of my life

I am not afraid of walking

down the streets alone at night

The darkness does not scare me

I hold the torch of hope

I can bring myself back to light
Web Scraping MQL5 Signals With Python
By: Matheus V De Sousa
Tags: Python, Mql5, Vscode, Web Scraping

Python

First things first, you need to have at least Python 3.7 installed. You can check this guide if you don’t feel comfortable doing it all by yourself.

Using global dependencies over your python projects is not a good practice.

Imagine having several projects depending on the same files — in our case the dependencies. Whenever one of those dependencies is updated it could break all your other projects.

So instead, create a python virtual environment, this way all the dependencies will be locally in the project’s folder.

To do this, go to your terminal, cd to the project’s root folder, and type the code below.

python3 -m venv env

The virtual environment named env is created. Now let’s activate it!

source env/bin/activate

By doing this your terminal should have an (env) prefix indicating that you’re now in the virtual environment.

Let’s add some dependencies for the project.

pip install requests pip install beautifulsoup4

Now we’re good!
After the Fall
By: Adam Millett
Tags: Self-awareness, Healing, A Cornered Gurl, Self Love, Poetry

The rise

went almost entirely unnoticed;

gradual as it was.

Moment by moment,

Hour by hour,

Day by day.

Bright things grew back

And dead things fell off

And while most things didn’t seem

to be growing at all;

They were.

The fall

Had planted many scars

But the pain of healing

Drew focus away from

The delicate progress they enabled.

Moment by moment,

Hour by hour,

Day by day.

It can be hard to know

You’re rising

Whilst amongst

The thickest clouds,

‘Till suddenly, you see the sun, and

You are back where you belong.
Start Machine Learning in 2020 — Become an expert from nothing, for free!
By: Louis, What S Ai
Tags: Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, Online Learning, Tutorial

Who can become a machine learning expert in 2020?

This guide is intended for anyone having zero or a small background in programming, mathematics, and/or machine learning. There is no specific order to follow, but a classic path would be from top to bottom, following the order given in this article. If you don’t like reading books, skip the section, if you don’t want to follow an online course, you can skip this one as well. There is not a single way to become a machine learning expert, and with motivation, you can absolutely achieve it by creating your own steps.

But the goal of this article is to give a path for anyone wanting to get into machine learning and not knowing where to start. I know it can be hard to find where to start, or just what to do next when learning something new. Especially when you don’t have a teacher or someone to guide you. This is why I will list many important resources to consult ordered by “difficulty” with a linear learning curve. If you are more advanced, you can just skip some steps.

All resources listed here are free, except some online courses and books, which are certainly recommended for a better understanding, but it definitely possible to become an expert without it, with a little more time spent on online readings, videos and practice.

Don’t be afraid to replay videos or learn the same concepts from multiple sources. Repetition is the key to success in learning something new!

Find the complete list on GitHub

Tag me on Twitter @Whats_AI or LinkedIn @Louis (What’s AI) Bouchard if you share the list!
You Don’t Like Me Because I’m Vegan?
By: Rosemary, Summers
Tags: Relationships, Vegan, Life Lessons, Lifestyle, This Happened To Me

For him to express his disdain for someone who has been in his wife’s life for longer than he has, one would think it would be for a decent reason.

Maybe we got in a fight about animal rights and I said some hurtful things? Or maybe I’m just one of those annoying, pushy vegans.

But I know that neither of those are the case because the last time I saw Jay, six years ago, was before I committed to this lifestyle.

There was never any confrontation around this issue because we’ve never even talked about it.

So why does he, or anybody else, find the need to criticize me because of what I eat? Not just criticize and judge me, but hate me for it. It’s just food, dude.

It’s not like I’m murdering sentient beings that I claim to love just for my taste buds. Sorry, a pretentious vegan couldn’t help herself.

I just don’t eat some of the stuff that he eats. That’s all.

When Beth told me her husband hates me because I’m vegan, she was concerned that I would be offended. Sorry, but I’m not.

If he has had any emotional effect on me, it’s flattery. I’m flattered that being vegan is the worst thing he could find wrong with me. Jay couldn’t find any other reason to not like me other than one of what I consider my greatest strengths? I’m honored indeed.

But then, after the laughter wore off, it did start to bother me.

The thought of many other people in the world just like him really started to get to me. People that are so insecure that they are threatened by anyone with an opinion opposite of theirs.

I’m flattered that being vegan is the worst thing he could find wrong with me.

This idea that there could possibly be a great portion of the population that is so bothered by my food choices that they will go to any lengths to prove me wrong is severely troublesome.

I’m not sitting five states over talking about what he eats for dinner. Why is he so concerned with what’s on my plate?

I know why the meat and dairy industry spends so much effort convincing us that consuming these things is “natural,” but why does the average Joe (or Jay) care so much?

Why is he so bothered by what I’m not eating?
Are you having trouble figuring out what to capitalize in your title?
By: The Dozen
Tags: Short Form, Writing Tips, Illumination, Grammar, Writing

Are you having trouble figuring out what to capitalize in your title?

Here’s a useful tool that I use to double-check my titles.

Capitalize My Title is an easy straight forward tool.

Simply paste or type your title in the provided space and then select from seven different options.

Screenshot by Author — https://capitalizemytitle.com/

Happy writing.
#101 | Writing Daily For 100 Days Straight
By: Kelvin Zhao
Tags: Musings, Daily Blog, Thoughts, Writing, Daily Thoughts

What

I do believe that I’ve achieved my initial goal of improving my writing. But I have stopped my daily routine a couple of days back. While the enforcement of daily writing has pushed my creativity and grit, it’s starting to get way too disruptive to be beneficial now. That’s what it has become.

100 days. I think it’s good enough. I still have a lot of things I want to share, a lot of thoughts that go through my mind every day, but I would like to take a little more time now to put them to words.

My question is should I split it out from Medium to a personal blog? My posts are also all over the place. I write about learning to code, I write about interesting things I’ve came across, I write my thoughts and opinions. Should I continue forth or segregate my articles into their different categories?
How to Use Workbox With Next.js
By: Cansın Yıldız
Tags: Nextjs, Programming, React, Progressive Web App, Pwa

Introducing next-with-workbox

next-with-workbox is a Next.js plugin that aims to encapsulate such configuration and enable them to be reusable. It provides a fully customizable interface so you can implement whatever you need to through Workbox.

To use the library, let’s first install it to our Next.js app:

yarn add next-with-workbox workbox-window

The next step would be to enable the plugin in your next.config.js :

// at next.config.js const withWorkbox = require("next-with-workbox"); module.exports = withWorkbox({

workbox: {

// .

// ..

// ... any workbox-webpack-plugin.GenerateSW option

},

// .

// ..

// ... other Next.js config values

});

Then, ignore the autogenerated files through .gitignore :

public/sw.js

public/sw.js.map

public/worker-*.js

public/worker-*.js.map

That’s all there is to configure your Workbox service-worker setup. You can then register your Workbox instance at pages/_app.js :

import React, { useEffect } from "react";

import { Workbox } from "workbox-window"; function App({ Component, pageProps }) {

useEffect(() => {

if (

!("serviceWorker" in navigator) ||

process.env.NODE_ENV !== "production"

) {

console.warn("Progressive Web App support is disabled");

return;

} const wb = new Workbox("sw.js", { scope: "/" });

wb.register();

}, []); return <Component {...pageProps} />;

} export default App;

And you’re done! Congratulations, you just set up Workbox for your Next.js application. Under the hood, the next-with-workbox plugin will configure things like making sure cache busting is only enabled for nonhashed filenames, adding public/**/* folder content to your precache, modifying URL prefixes for _next/static files, and more!

Using workbox-webpack-plugin.InjectManifest

The above introduction assumes you were trying to use the GenerateSW plugin. If you instead want to use the InjectManifest plugin to have more control over your service worker, it’s also straightforward to use with the next-with-workbox plugin.

First, install one more dependency that you’ll need to rely on:

yarn add workbox-precaching

Then, simply add the swSrc option to your next.config.js as:

// at next.config.js const withWorkbox = require("next-with-workbox"); module.exports = withWorkbox({

workbox: {

swSrc: "worker.js",

// .

// ..

// ... any other workbox-webpack-plugin.InjectManifest option

},

// .

// ..

// ... other Next.js config values

});

And create a worker.js file at the root of your project:

import { precacheAndRoute } from "workbox-precaching"; precacheAndRoute(self.__WB_MANIFEST);
Catalyst Programme Week 1
By: Thomas Rocca
Tags: Professional Development, Events, Entrepreneurship, Shortcut Lab

Who are you? What do you want? What can you do?

To successfully integrate into a startup, we must all be able to articulate what we are seeking and what we can offer. Therefore, our group began by developing answers to these critical questions. Two days of reflection in group discussion, written reflection, and a variety of tools helped articulate the fine points of our intentions beyond gaining employment in the Finnish startup scene. One exercise we did, for example, was Tim Ferriss’ fear-setting framework, which is designed to show that inaction born of fear may have worse consequences than the perceived fear itself; another, the Purpose 15, provided a framework for identifying the people, causes, and motivations that instill our work with purpose.

A template for step 1 of the fear setting exercise made famous by Tim Ferriss. Credit to: mindfulambition.net

The self-reflection period culminated in personal goals that will guide and measure success in the program according to our unique motivations and intentions. This reflects that, while we all have the same ultimate goal, the paths we take will be different. I, for instance, want to understand the roles existing at the intersection of technology and people that require considering the balance between optimal technical efficiency and consequences on us as individuals and community members.

Equipped with this understanding, we spent the second half of the week branding ourselves. Through CV workshops and a session from Marko Oksanen, a LinkedIn expert, we improved our existing applications to materials to better reflect our skills and motivations, especially as it suits the startup world. Tips ranged from the highly specific — don’t use Times New Roman — to broader discussions of best practices. The takeaway: in a multimedia world, a one-page summary should only be one of the tools in an arsenal of materials showcasing competency, creativity, and personality.

We head into Week 2 with a greater understanding of our professional selves. Familiarization with the varied startup ecosystem in the capital region and an “Entrepreneurial Challenge” are on the agenda. It promises to be another week packed with learning, stay tuned to find out how it went.

**If you are interested in joining the Catalyst Programme the next batch starts on January 28th and you can apply by January 18th here!**