fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Your Three-Card Tarot Reading Awaits
By: Lauren Busser
Tags: Creative Coding, Tarot Cards, Halloween, Divination

In the spirit of Halloween, or, if you prefer, Samhain, I decided to create a past, present, future, tarot card reading.

With a physical tarot deck, a user would shuffle the cards and ultimately pull three at random to answer a question. It was the random part I focused on for this sketch.

The three cards presented to the reader are programmed to pull at random so that the reader gets a past, present, future reading with the meaning of each card.

I ran into problems accessing the images contained within the JSON and had to program a second array to access the images within.

Then when I realized that printing all the meanings would take up too much space I attempted to randomize them which resulted in something that looked like a slot machine.

As time went on, I decided to add an additional check to make sure that there was no chance that I would pull the same card twice while presenting this project. That was accomplished with an array and a callback function.

Additionally, I wanted to make sure that potential users could reset the window and get new readings whenever they wanted, so I created a button, but had some trouble calling the elements I needed to make it function.

It turned out that I was trying to call the constructor when what I really needed to be doing was referencing an array, and my “if” statement really should have been a “for loop.”

The last step was to try to ornament the altar somehow. I knew that I wouldn’t really have time to deal with sprites as I had planned, but I was able to decorate the space with some pumpkins.

There are still some things I would like to add including a voiceover when the mouse hovers over the cards, and I would really like to try getting some sprites in here.

I would also like to consider adding a welcome message in the future to direct users on how to use the tarot deck.

Overall though, I think this project turned out really well and I learned a lot from it.

I’ve commented through my code with the exact process and what each part of the code does. I also included copies of code from numerous meetings with Scott while I tried to figure out how I always managed to get just to the left of my objective.

The one thing that this project did give me was the ability to realize that pseudocode is a massive help to me when it comes to ideating and figuring out how to execute my code; even if I always end up to the left of the point.

See the complete code right here: Code || Present
Grandpa Reports • 3
By: Mark Starlin
Tags: Parks, Family, Life, Other Stories, Grandparents

We tried a new park today: Walnut Street Park. No snakes [see report #2.] Not many kids there for Preston to play with. Only 7-year-old, “Samantha. Like the American Girl Doll.” They had fun.

We walked down the colorful brick path. Preston stayed on the yellow bricks, and I stayed on the brown ones.

Preston said the bridge in the woods was a little scary.

He liked the dog water fountain and would still be there holding the button if I hadn’t made him stop.

While Preston was swinging, we sang a song. I would like to share the lyrics with you now:

A, b, c, d, e, f, COW!

h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, COW!

q, r, COW!

t, u, COW!

w, COW!

y and COW!

Now I know my a, b, COW! Next time won’t you sing with COW!

Bonus: Someone left a toy car in the sandbox. We did too.

Overall, Preston said he likes the Kids Together Park better.
Why I’ll Never Go on a Mission Trip Again
By: Mariette Williams
Tags: Poverty, Religion, Opinion, Christianity, Inequality

Why I’ll Never Go on a Mission Trip Again

Our well-intentioned attempts to serve Black and Brown people barely made an impact

Credit: Gabriel Perez/Getty Images

I grew up in a mostly White church, where a mission trip was a rite of passage. To fund a trip, we’d raise money through car washes, bake sales, or bottle drives. We prayed. We wrote letters to relatives asking for money. We believed we were being called by God to travel to poor countries and bring the gospel to Black and Brown people.

My first mission was in the summer of 2001. I had just graduated high school, and I traveled to Haiti for a week with a group of teens from my church. One afternoon, our group set out to Neply, a small village neighboring Leogane. Both villages were separated by a rocky dirt road that characterized most of the roads in Haiti. We piled into the back of an old Isuzu truck, and as we jostled past the palm leaf thatched houses, the Haitian children came out to wave at us. Some wore no shoes. Other wore no pants, dusty penises peeking out from neon t-shirts.

Someone ripped into a bag of candy, throwing it behind the truck, leaving a trail of junk food in our wake. As we crept along, more children came out of their homes. We heard frantic howling as the kids fought over the small pieces of candy. I laughed, watching more kids scurry behind the truck, grabbing at the cheap candy. I dug my hand into the bag and threw some candy out like birdseed to hungry pigeons. They hungrily scraped at the dirt, reaching up at us to throw more. Until we reached a curve.

The poor people around us were simply there to help us appreciate our lives back home. They became props in our journey to fulfillment.

A boy stood in front of his home, watching the truck come around the corner. When he saw the candy, his eyes lit up. He reached out to begin sprinting towards the truck, but just as he was going to take his first step, a hand came down on his shoulder. His father, I presume, held him back, fighting against his tiny jerks. The man turned to him and said something I couldn’t hear or understand. When he looked back at us, his face was a mixture of anger and disgust. In a few seconds, I had been taught a lesson about dignity.

That day, it was easy for us to think that we were doing good. Had that father not reached out to stop his son, it would have been an otherwise unremarkable event. That father shamed me that afternoon, made me question my good deed. I sat on the edge of the truck, thinking about that look, bumping along until we reached our destination.
California’s candidates for the 2018 midterm elections (Part 2)
By: Adriana Navarro
Tags: Politics, House, Congress, Elections, Midterms

According to FiveThirtyEight, the 11th to 20th Congressional Districts are predicted to go to the Democrats by at least 98 percent of the vote.

Publisher: FiveThirtyEight

Publisher: FiveThirtyEight

Publisher: FiveThirtyEight

Publisher: FiveThirtyEight

Publisher: FiveThirtyEight

Publisher: FiveThirtyEight

Publisher: FiveThirtyEight

Publisher: FiveThirtyEight

Publisher: FiveThirtyEight
UI/UX Design: The 7 Feature Limit
By: Nick Lawrence
Tags: Ui Ux Design

Overview

Many times as designers, we find ourselves being asked to design around, for, or with respect to additional features. It can be hard to know exactly when and where to constrain product scope in order to improve overall UX.

Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay

No user honestly wants the Walmart of apps: a boatload of low-quality, low-impact features that they have dig through by section, just to find something that sort of works for them, sometimes, if they’re lucky.

Today, we’ll be going over why limiting your product to no more than seven main features can really help you get clear on exactly what you’re designing, and how it will deliver value to your users.
Mixin Network is Seeking Global Contributors to Build High-valued Content Community
By: Mixin Evangelist
Tags: Content, Community, Announcement, Content Creation, Mixinnetwork

Fellow Mixin Member:

Mixin Network keeps striving to provide the leading blockchain technologies and products all the time. After the release of Testnet, besides products and Mainnet, Mixin Network determined to work on building the global tech driven community.

The official Medium of Mixin Network is created in July this year to share the latest news, technologies, products, campaigns, plans of Mixin Network with all Mixin members.

For the purpose of letting all members who are passionate about blockchain technologies and favor of Mixin Network be parts of Mixin Network, Mixin Network determined to launch the content community on Mixin Network’s official Medium.

Everyone could be a contributor on developing and enhancing Mixin Network’s content community by producing and delivering high-quality articles concerning the technology, products, mechanism, etc. of Mixin Network.

Currently, what we need most on building the valuable content community are: (but not limited)

Analysis of Mixin Network’s technologies, refer to the whitepaper Technical documentation on the DApps/Bots/Extensions built on Mixin Network, including but not limited to Mixin Messenger, OceanOne. Developer Documentation of Mixin Network More…

In order to create a friendly content community for all global Mixin members, please submit us the English content published on your platform with the related links and leave your contact info in:

To help build a high-quality content community, your efforts on creating strong technology-driven and innovative content mean a lot.

Thus, we prepare respectable rewards for all high-quality articles. Once your article is approved and adopted by Mixin Network’s content community, you will be rewarded with up to 5 XIN (valued $3,00 to $10,000 fluctuated according to the real-time market). The final rewards will be rated according to the quality and value of the content.

Note: The qualified articles submitted to Mixin Network’s content community must be free of copyright disrepute and plagiarism, if not, the articles will be invalid.
GrabAMeal: Enjoy Home-Cooked Food around the Globe with This AirBNB Restaurants
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Peer To Peer, ICO, Ethereum, Blockchain

GrabAmeal is the first blockchain integrated meal sharing global platform where cooks and cooking experts can offer their homemade meals to food buyers and food enthusiasts willing to buy healthy, freshly prepared homemade foods.

This is a unique meal sharing platform where buyers can enjoy trust, transparency, and convenience along with good quality foods.

How GrabAmeal works

No matter wherever you are, you can try the GrabAmeal platform both for buying fresh food as well as for setting your home restaurants like AirBNB accommodation sharing. As a food seller you can start your home restaurant wherever you are. As a buyer you can order your meal after checking the list of the GrabAmeal restaurants enlisted on the virtual meal sharing market.

How buyers are facilitated?

The platform GrabAmeal offers facilities to be unique in their ways: the buyer can select cooks from a list of food sellers available from the preferred area. They can select meal type, dining venue, and after having his meal can rate and review the seller and his food quality, which will be saved in blockchain and cannot be tampered further.

How food sellers are facilitated?

Alternatively, hosts can decide on the menu, the time of the day the meals would be available, and the price of the meals. If food buyers are interested in a specific type of meal, they can choose to book it and pay via the website. All transactions will be done on GrabAMeal via using GAM crypto token.

Both the buyer and seller have to maintain their GAM wallet along with certain GAM balance to do transaction on this platform.

If there is any dispute on the GrabAmeal marketplace, there are auditors who can solve the dispute where other users of GrabAmeal can help them in solving the dispute by casting their vote.

GrabAmeal: potential

In GrabAMeal, the scope for business growth in the meal sharing market is enormous. After all, we all need to eat more than a few times a day, many people eat out frequently and the community of healthy homemade food freaks is increasing. If the potential can be utilized and the blockchain technology is leveraged effectively, GrabAmeal food economy in the food industry could be disrupted as people may turn to shared meals more frequently rather than preferring take-out and restaurants.

While anybody can be the buyer on the GrabAmeal platform, cooks have to enlist their name and details.

To know more about GrabAMeal world or if you have any questions, look them up in our website: https://grabameal.world/ico/ or

FAQ https://grabamealworld.freshdesk.com/support/home

or

send us a support ticket

https://grabamealworld.freshdesk.com/support/tickets/new

or

feel free to email us at: contact@grabameal.world

To Stay updated on our company updates and announcements,

follow us on:

Telegram,Twitter, Facebook, Medium

Read Our White Paper and One Pager

Subscribe GrabAMeal Channel For latest updates and Press like Icon for updates :
MS Excel — Use #PowerQuery to Compare Two Lists
By: Don Tomoff
Tags: How To, Excel, Twinztechtip, Productivity Hacks, Power Query

A frequent task in business is to compare two lists of data.

Have a master customer, product, mailing list etc and need to compare it to another list to see what is missing and needs to be added? Typical scenarios…

Basic Power Query makes this easy!

Please don’t do this by hand. 😳

Common approaches include using Excel MATCH or VLOOKUP function (which generates errors which indicate items aren’t on one list).

However, power query makes those methods tedious by comparison!

Here are the steps to using Power Query:

1️⃣ Create a query from the MASTER list. “Connection Only” query.

2️⃣ Create a query from the comparison list. This is a “Connection Only” query as well.

3️⃣ Now, “compare” the 2 queries. This is done by MERGING the 2 queries and using an “Anti-join” relationship — so that just exceptions are listed.

Merge Two Queries to Generate Exception List — Right Anti-Join

Resulting Query is JUST Exceptions

4️⃣ Load it as a Table into Excel and you have your list! Want to see how this is done for real?
Communities: a space to be heard and seen?
By: Fabian Pfortmüller
Tags: Safe Space, Love, Network, Community, Community Engagement

Over the last two weeks I participated in several community retreats. At all of these gatherings the discussion circles with the full group took longer than they had been planned for and at the end of it people were still hungry to continue talking. People had a lot they wanted to say.

At first I felt exhausted by the people who would dominate the collective space, by speaking often and in long, winding monologues. It reminded me of the underlying, unspoken power dynamics, because the people who speak a lot tend to be men, often white men.

But then I realized that beyond the structural inequality (which is real) there is something else worthwhile paying attention to: I sense that so often in community circles, the contributions are less about deepening the conversation and more about being acknowledged. People just want to be heard and seen.

I have started paying attention to my own desire to speak up at gatherings and often it has less to do with advancing the topic at hand. Instead, I feel an urge to express myself. Below that is a worry that I might be invisible, irrelevant, forgotten about, glanced over, misunderstood and under-appreciated if I don’t speak up. How do I know I matter in this group if people don’t know I exist? How can I exist when people don’t see me?

What if this need to be seen and heard is at the very core of what a community is supposed to do?

For me there is a direct line between feeling seen, and feeling connected. If I don’t feel acknowledged (and to some extent: understood) for who I am, I will feel disconnected, alone. As therapist Michael Schreiner writes on his blog: “Most of us are desperate to be understood, to have that sense of isolation shattered by finding people in our lives who really get us on an intimate level. The unconscious fear that seems to always be lurking in the background is that if we aren’t understood it will be as if we never existed.”

Yet most of us don’t have many spaces beyond our intimate relationships where we feel heard and seen. We don’t have many physical circles we get to express ourselves. And yet we all have soooooo much to say and so much to make sense of. There is of course social media, in theory a digital space where we can constantly express ourselves. But do we actually feel seen when we post something on Facebook?

All of these observations make me wonder: maybe the human need to be seen and heard isn’t just a side effect of community, but actually one of the core functions a community can play? And how can we design spaces to provide more opportunities to feel seen? Curious to hear your perspectives!

Thank you to Jessica von Farkas to inspire me on this topic!
ADA: The Academic Approach to Smart Contracts
By: Digital Asset Research
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin, Cardano

On August 6, we published a 77-page report on the Cardano network and its native ADA digital asset to our clients. Cardano has been around since 2014, but its public presence until last year was mainly in Asia. In Q4 2017, Cardano became one of the most capitalized digital assets in the market and it has the potential to be one of the top smart contract platforms.

A lot of the attention was driven to Cardano because of its focus on security and formal verification; the process of using math to prove the correctness of software without having to test all potential execution outcomes. The team is following an academic approach to the development of the platform’s many modules, and uses both formal verification methods and peer review. While it remains to be seen whether this approach will eliminate all potential bugs, it is a considerable improvement in terms of security relative to existing platforms.

Cardano is pursuing the development of two virtual machines; a formally verified version of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (K-EVM), and a register-based virtual machine inspired by LLVM (IELE-VM). We find this approach interesting because it may enable Cardano to leverage Ethereum’s already existing ecosystem of developers, but also cater to applications that require a more secure execution environment.

The caveat is that this development occurs in an open-source fashion, and competing projects with larger ecosystems could repurpose Cardano’s research for their own benefit. Cardano is in its early stages and neither VM has been activated on its mainnet. Nevertheless, we were still able to perform several tests on the Goguen testnet and disclosed the results to our clients.

The current iteration Ouroboros operates like existing Delegated Proof-of-Stake implementations, but only three entities are currently producing blocks on the mainnet: IOHK, Emurgo and the Cardano Foundation. The recently unveiled Ouroboros Praos, on the other hand, is a protocol built from the ground up that attempts to address many of the shortfalls of Proof-of-Stake following a semi-synchronous security model. We also analyzed Praos in-depth and evaluated its theoretical foundation, as well as its extensive use of Verifiable Random Functions.

Given Coinbase’s announcement that it might support ADA, we also evaluated ADA using the company’s published framework and assessed whether Coinbase is likely to eventually support the token.

For institutional investors who would like to subscribe DAR’s research, please submit a request for information here.

If you would like to sign up for our free daily newsletter, please sign up here.
Sepia Magic
By: Jessica Lee Mcmillan
Tags: Poetry, Home, Connection, Presence, Nature

Given such brief glimpses of sun

in mechanized cloud

of punching the clock

I watch

that skim ribbon of light

singe the horizon

and transform utility sky

to feast colour

in this supple hour

and make vignette in sepia magic,

in the midst

of bewitched shapes

wayside, bowing to rest

in shelter of this loosened pace,

feet tucked, shoulders soft

from the shell of day,

each page

a leaf drifting on fire

sparking on dark wick

for this unravelling

to fuse with lull and glisten

in lamplit warm

before you come home
Join the world’s largest birthday party!
By: Sarah Weiss
Tags: Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Crypto, Updates, Bitcoin

To celebrate our first year of existence, we’re adding another 1.7 million tokens into a new bounty competition! As part of our continuing bounty campaign, we will reward the top 2,000 bounty hunters with an additional 1,700,000 tokens.

This is coming right after the epic success of our initial bounty campaign and demonstrates that we’re not resting on our laurels. On the contrary, we aim to remain as close as possible to our eager bounty hunters. Our newest competition will be done both as an expression of gratitude for the massive interest shown in our initial bounty campaign, and as a way of celebrating our first year with the community. The Bethereum B-day Party Bounty will be just one part of our upcoming celebration, the aim of which is to express a big thank you to our loyal community!

We’ve seen first-hand how gamification elements were well received among our bounty hunters. By changing the entire bounty campaign into one big contest, we’re mirroring the gamified nature of our betting platform. The competitive element reflects the very nature of betting itself. Our bounty campaign is perfectly representative of Bethereum — successful, fun and engaging, with big rewards for those who are unafraid of competing!

The Bethereum B-Day Party Bounty ends on the 10th of April and on this day, we will distribute the token in accordance to everyone’s rank. To promote some healthy competition, we are going to reward more tokens to those higher up on the leaderboard.

Further details:

We’re very excited about having created an effective and sustainable bounty campaign, and we hope that our newest contest will be met with a similar level of enthusiasm and interest from our bounty hunters.
Lesser Things
By: Elle Rogers
Tags: Poetry, Resilience, Poetry On Medium, Humanity, Life

In shadows we find

lesser things than we

and study forms

we tell ourselves

shouldn’t be —

for we can turn

our backs upon

these quiet horrors,

bowing heads

in grim quiescence,

as we stumble onward,

frail forms braced

against prevailing winds

that remind us

once again

of all that

never should

have been.
Modern Finance Chain Partners with Loopring
By: Modern Finance Chain
Tags: Ethereum, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, ICO

Modern Finance Chain is pleased to announce a partnership with Loopring. The partnership adds another powerful tool for the Modern Finance Chain payment solution by delivering access to various liquidity pools within the Loopring protocol. Additionally, MF Chain is able to provide retail processing integration for the Loopring token. Loopring token holders will have the ability to use their Loopring tokens at retailers worldwide utilizing the MF Chain payment solution.

Partnering with Loopring solidifies another strategic move for us, one that we are very proud of. The Loopring protocol has great potential and is lead by a brilliant team. Adding a high caliber partner like Loopring represents exactly what we are striving for here at Modern Finance Chain; Build a great platform and integrate with the best and brightest projects. Expect more partnerships of the like.

Loopring integration will be available in the Modern Finance Chain MVP. Full function of Loopring exchange services will be available for usage with the full application launch scheduled later this year. MF Chain is excited for the addition of Loopring to our services and look forward to the benefits this partnership will afford for both communities.
Presenting: The Shift Forum Ignite Series
Tags: Work, Diversity, Culture, Business, Tech

NewCo Shift Forum 2018

Presenting: The Shift Forum Ignite Series

Four remarkable and unique voices on the future we all share.

If you’ve never heard of Ignite talks, you’re in for a treat, as they’ve spread to hundreds of cities around the world and range across a heady set of topics. They’ve been called “TED talks on speed,” and feature a unique creative box: each presenter gets 20 slides, which automatically advance every 15 seconds. The result is a fast and impactful experience. At this years Shift Forum, as we did the year before, we partnered with the founder of Ignite, Brady Forrest, who curated four of the best Ignite talks around the theme of “the future of work.” We’ve now published each one, and curated them here as well. Each is worth your time and attention. Special thanks to Ignite founder Brady Forrest for curating these extraordinary talks.
When This Is Over
By: Michelle Saade
Tags: Empathy, Hope, Love, Kindness, Gratefulness

Photo by Hean Prinsloo on Unsplash

When this is over, treasure the little things.

Touch a flower, feel the sun, watch how the bird sings.

When this is over, say hello. To your friends and many more.

To the neighbor, to the stranger, to the kid who likes Avengers.

When this is over, smile often. You are so blessed to be alive. There are just so many people that due to the virus died.

When this is over, be more patient. You know nothing about their battles. Everybody has an issue, give a hug, offer a tissue.

When this is over, be more grateful. Complain less, it’s just painful.

Count your blessings, there are many. You are truly loved by plenty.

When this is over, keep clapping the daily heroes. The doctors, the mothers, and the person in the mirror.

When this is over, remember what really matters. Say I love you, tell your feelings, even if your heart gets shattered.

When this is over, remember nothing is certain and we don’t know what time will bring. But united we are stronger.

United we are infinite.
Benefits of Reexamining Sin In A Positive Light
By: Erik Brown
Tags: Self Improvement, Philosophy, Ethics, Inspiration, Religion

The Literary History Of The Word ‘Sin’

“Harmartia arose from the Greek verb hamartanein, meaning “to miss the mark” or “to err.” Aristotle introduced the term in the Poetics to describe the error of judgment which ultimately brings about the tragic hero’s downfall. As you can imagine, the word is most often found in literary criticism. However, news writers occasionally employ the word when discussing the unexplainable misfortune or missteps of übercelebrities regarded as immortal gods and goddesses before being felled by their own shortcomings.” — Merriam-Webster.com

I tend to let YouTube play in the background sometimes when I do other things. One of these times, it happened to come upon a random Jordan Peterson lecture. He mentioned that the original definition of sin was as an archery term that meant to “miss the mark”.

I found that surprising. So much so, that I checked it out myself. The early versions of the Bible were originally written in Greek and they did use the word harmartia to refer to sin. The word’s base hamartanein, can be used loosely to mean “miss the mark”.

Of course, in translation of ancient linguistics, there can be contention. Words can have many meaning, even in present times. When you add ancient terms into the mix, it can make word meanings even more nebulous.

As for it being an archery term, that’s a bit sketchier. If you browse Google, you’ll find a number who mention it applied to archery. However, they tend to mix archery into their religious teachings. The straight archery sites don’t really appear to use that terminology.

Despite the arguments over the origins of ancient words, I found this idea of “missing the mark” very appealing. Especially since we’re all flawed and regularly fail. Instead of seeing these failings as stains and punishing ourselves for our mistakes, why not see ‘sins’ as things we can improve on?

Imaging each act we perform as an arrow being shot at a target gives us something to build upon. We may fire wide left or wide right, but we can slowly and progressively move towards the center of the target as we improve.
This 450-Year Old Painting Contains Over 100 Hidden Proverbs We Still Use Today
By: Kamna Kabir
Tags: History, Painting, Literature, Art, Culture

The Netherlandish Proverbs is an oil-on-oak painting that was created by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in 1559. This masterpiece encapsulates approximately 112 proverbs and idioms that are identified in the English language and some of them are still in popular use.

The Netherlanders were fond of proverbs and used them in their language; 100 years before Bruegel’s painting. Desiderius Erasmus, the Dutch philosopher, and scholar were the first to publish Adagia which is a wide collection of rich proverbs and idioms.

Bruegel painted several art pieces portraying hidden proverbs and idioms but this was one of his most notable works and praised for his ordered portrayal and integrated scene.
Visualising Singapore’s changing weather patterns: 1983–2019
By: Chua Chin Hon
Tags: Data Visualization, Data Science, Climate Change, Singapore, Data Journalism

The lack of seasonal variations lull many into thinking that Singapore’s weather is predictable and unchanging. Nothing is further from the truth, with climate change making the city state’s weather even more unpredictable.

We are beginning to feel the impact of warmer days and more intense storms. At the ground-level, it feels as if Singapore is getting much warmer at an earlier hour.

On many days, the 8am sun that greets me upon stepping out feels more like something I would expect in the late morning. The mid-afternoon blaze has never felt more intense.

In this project, I’ll attempt to illustrate Singapore’s changing weather patterns using classic as well as new visualisation libraries like Plotly Express.

The repo for the project is here. The charts in this Medium post can be found in this notebook, while the data can be found here and here (raw version).
Bitfolio — February update
By: Francesco Pretelli
Tags: Blockchain, iOS, Cryptocurrency, Apps, Bitcoin

A little bit later than usual but don’t worry, the February update of you favourite crypto app is here! 😃

How many of you were too scared to open the app and check their balance in February? Well you are not alone!!

Quite a lot of people, me included, weren’t really happy to see their numbers going down.

Luckily, Bitfolio launched in Japan and this balanced a bit the reduced usage from old users.

The (low) numbers of February

5000 monthly active users

500 daily active users

2500 sessions per day

50 new daily users

We were honestly expecting this, due to crypto prices falling and less users investing. 🤷‍♂️

What’s new

Bitfolio now support TouchID and FaceID authentication, as well as speaking Japanese. ✌️

It’s also possible to specify the coin price when entering an exchange transaction and have the calculations based on that. You can read more about this in the FAQ and decide if it will work for you.

Also new:

Edit transactions

Search pair in tickers

Gemini, Bitflyer and Coinbase support

Few tweaks in transactions

Coming in future updates

The next version will finally include few requested features, here is what are we working on at the moment:

Multiple portfolios

Assets historical value

More portfolio insights

BTC valuation

In app crypto news

Live tickers

Exchange sync

And much more, check out the Bitfolio roadmap on trello, you can vote on your favorite feature and keep an eye on the development. 👍

Crypto News

Useful Links

Thank you ❤️

We’ve received a lot of feedback and we love it, please keep it going, keep sending feature requests and if you see a bug or an issue, send a complaint! (but please don’t be rude 😉).

Please consider sharing Bitfolio with your friends and coworkers, it would help us tremendously.
Keep Your API Keys Safe. Get those important strings out of your…
By: Peter Friese
Tags: Open Source, Xcode, iOS, Swift, Programming

Keep Your API Keys Safe

Get those important strings out of your code and into PLIST files

Image is based on Security by Komkrit Noenpoempisut from the Noun Project

Many APIs require developers to provide an API key and/or API secret to be able to access the API.

This is both to identify the app that is accessing the API and to limit access to the API for apps that are known to the API.

Both the API key and the secret (if you have one) should be treated as a secret: Anyone who knows these can access and use the API, impersonating your app. This results in all sorts of security concerns: Depending on the type of API, an attacker might be able to access your application’s data, compromise your users’ data, and access information that is protected by the terms of service established between you and the service provider. They might also thrash the API, causing a large bill for you at the end of the month.

All of these are good reasons to make sure to keep your API keys and secrets safe and secure.

In this article, we’re going to look at how to make sure your API keys and secrets don’t accidentally leak to your version control system. The easiest, but also the most dangerous, way to store your API key is to define a constant in your app’s source code. You might have seen code like this:

When committing code like this to your version control system, anyone who has access to your repository can go ahead and use the API key in their app to access the API. This might not be a big deal if your code lives in an in-house repository with tight access control, but it is a huge security risk for open source projects.

The easiest way to work around this is to externalise your API key into a configuration file that you don’t check in to your repository. You can then keep the API key in a secure location (such as a password manager) and hand it out to developers on a need-to-know basis. For example, you might want to use the API key for accessing the production endpoints only on your CI/CD server and provide developers with API keys to the development endpoints (which might have stricter rate limiting and tighter cost caps).

In iOS, we traditionally use PLIST (short for property list) files to store and manage configuration data. PLIST files essentially are XML files with benefits. For example, Xcode provides a graphical editor to make editing PLIST files more pleasant, and there’s an easy-to-use API for reading PLIST files.

Let’s have a look at how this helps us to keep the API key in the above code snippet safe and make our code more secure.
‘Axis’ for December 16, 2020
By: Thomas Whitfield
Tags: Comics, Axis, Grammar, Gender

Artist, rockstar, recovering designer, and general all-around do-gooder; that’s me. Please add to this that I am intrepid, dogmatic, and fastidious.

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Bitpie v3.4.6 Launched
By: Bitpie Wallet
Tags: Cryptocurrency Investment, Bitpie, Cryptocurrency News, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin

Supports Zcash Overwinder Version;

2. Supports the purchase of EOS CPU/NET/RAM by another account;

3. Supports Copay Wallet multisig accounts import.

Find us on

Telegram: t.me/BitpieInternational

Twitter: @BitpieWallet
Fact Sheet: Everything You Need to Know About the Secure Wallet
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Crypto, Bitcoin Wallet, Cold Wallet, Bitcoin

The world of crypto-assets has climbed out from the dark corners of the Internet and into mainstream investment portfolios. Rarely a day goes past where the topic isn’t discussed in the news or at the local pub, and whilst every second person claims to be an expert, there has already been more than $2b USD lost since the start of 2018. With the increasing value of these assets and the personal liability of holding them, safe and secure storage solutions have never been more essential.

Introducing the ECOMI Secure Wallet, the first in a line of product releases by ECOMI and most secure means of storing crypto-currencies and assets available.

What is the ECOMI Secure Wallet?

In development since 2010, the Secure Wallet is a physical cold-storage hardware device. Designed to be completely impenetrable to malicious attacks, the wallet and its infrastructure ensure that it is never connected to the Internet, nor connected directly to an online device, maintaining the most secure asset protection while providing a user-friendly interface.

Physical Design

The Secure Wallet is literally the size and thickness of a credit card. Designed to be ultra-portable, the storage device fits easily in whichever wallet/case you currently use to store your credit cards. By using printed circuitry and an e-paper display screen the Secure Wallet is almost weightless, coming in at a meager 20 grams, is waterproof, and comes with 15 degrees of flex.

Moreover, the wallet features a single button for confirmation of transactions and one-time-password generation, allowing the overall design to remain sleeker whilst providing an added level of security.

Interaction and Connectivity

Operation of the ECOMI Secure wallet is done via an encrypted Bluetooth connection on a paired Apple or Android device. By removing the need for a wired connection to a computer/phone the device ensures it can never be compromised, whilst still allowing for the highest degree of portability.

Interaction with the device is done via the companion app. This comfortable and recognisable use of app technology has created the most user-friendly cold storage device available. By using the companion app, owners of the Secure Wallet are given control over the seamless transfer of crypto-assets in and out of the device, safe and secure storage, as well as the ability to create up to 5 individual wallets per asset.

It is also important to note that there are no fees for the use of the Secure Wallet (other than the associated blockchain confirmation fees).
Tips to generate quality backlinks
Tags: SEO

Links play an important factor to every webmaster as they control the web. With the beginning of Google, SEO start its growth to promote a band on this major search engine and for this backlinks becomes the main element of SEO.

Backlinks

Since generating backlinks is a very crucial process of any webmaster, because you have to be more particular about the links that you have generated. You have to make sure that the links you build are from valid sources and here are few techniques that will help you to generate quality backlinks.

Social Media platform: This method is one of the great and best to get quality backlinks. As we know that many websites and social networking sites have high page rank. This factor is the foremost to gain some link popularity. So wisely try this one as you can find sites with high DA and PA that will surely count towards your backlinks.

Social Media

Article Marketing: Though very old method but it has its own importance in the field of generating quality backlinks. If you want to get some benefits from it then make sure only do article marketing on relevant websites. Don’t promote your brand on some irrelevant website as it harms your brand promotion.

Link Exchange: Very old method but still used by many webmasters to get quality backlinks. The only thing that you need in this process is a separate website, so that you can easily put other people’s link on that.

Link Exchange

Guest Blogging: The backlinks that we built through guest blogging are of high quality and high authority. This is because they don’t publish duplicate contents and are trusted by Google. So it is beneficial to do guest blogging to get backlinks that matters.

Blog Commenting: There is a question asked by many of us that whether or not blog commenting can be used to get backlinks. Blog commenting is a great source of building quality backlinks but there is only one thing that you should keep in mind is post your comments on DO-Follow websites because NO-Follow comments are useless.

If you follow the above techniques you can easily get better results and instant improvement in your ranking. Generating quality backlinks can surely lead to better SEO and which in turn means to get more organic traffic. So build backlinks wisely because all links are not equal.
Part 4: Bitwise Patterns
By: Cédric Bellet
Tags: Programming, JavaScript, Bitwise, Data Visualization

(a ⊕ b) + (a ∧ b) = (a ∨ b). XOR has just enough light in its high-value quadrants (bot-right, top-left) to turn the dark AND pattern into a bright OR pattern. Alternatively, (a ⊕ b) = (a ∨ b) − (a ∧ b): a XOR b is everything that is in a or in b, minus everything that is in both a and b.

Bitwise addition

The observant ones will have noted that the addition is the only operation here that I defined numerically only, without explaining what it did on a per-bit basis. In fact, the addition is the only operation on this page that does not qualify as a bitwise operation according to Wikipedia, for it does not “operate on one or more bit patterns or binary numerals at the level of their individual bits”.

It is possible however to define the addition as a bitwise operation, i.e. as an operation defined first and foremost by what it does to the bits of two n-bit strings. Let’s do it.

We note a, b the two n-bit strings, and s their sum modulo 2ⁿ: s = a + b; and we note aᵢ, bᵢ, sᵢ, the i-th bits in those bit strings, so that for instance, a can be written as: aₙ₋₁aₙ₋₂…a₂a₁a₀.

We set s₀ = a₀ ⊕ b₀, and note c the carry of that operation: c = a₀ ∧ b₀ For any 0 < i < n-1, we define: sᵢ = (aᵢ ⊕ bᵢ) ⊕ c, and we redefine the carry c so c =((aₖ⊕ bₖ) ∧ c) ∨ (aₖ ∧ bₖ) Finally, for i = n-1, we simply set s = aₙ₋₁ ⊕ bₙ₋₁ ⊕ c

This method is very similar to the addition algorithm we’ve all learnt in elementary school. First step, compute the sum of the rightmost digits. If they add up to more than 1 (i.e., a₀ ∧ b₀ = 1), carry 1, and jolt down a zero (a₀ ⊕ b₀ = 0). If not, do not carry (a₀ ∧ b₀ = 0), and jolt down a one if either bit is a one, or a zero if both bits are zeros (a₀ ⊕ b₀). Repeat the steps for all numbers to the left, but taking into account this time the carry if any, etc., etc.

And… We’ve done it! We now have a bitwise definition of the addition. Real question though, is do we need one and if so, why? Well, as far as understanding what the addition does, we probably don’t need one. However, these instructions actually enable us to create a basic electronic adder using only logic gates. In turn, those adders and logic gates help create arithmetic logic units, which are building blocks in CPUs, GPUs, FPUs. And so — who knew — by examining simple bitwise operations, we got our first glance at the world of computing using electronic circuits.
Inserting rows to data frame at any position [R]
By: Priyanshu Madan
Tags: Learn To Code, Data Analysis, Data Cleaning, R, Data Science

While I was extracting text from PDf to a CSV file (Link), I was stuck at a point where I had to insert multiple rows to a data frame at different indexes. Though this seems to be easy I couldn’t find any solution to this online.

I have a data frame with the title of abstract in each row. Now I wanted to add author names after each title row which is stored as a list. The number of authors may vary.

This is the author list with 209 elements and each element has names of different authors who contributed to that abstract.

Let me show you how I did this.

I used tibble package. Its a package for data frame manipulation.

library(tibble)

add_row() is a builtin function of tibble package that lets you add one row after/before an index.

Now for this purpose, I used a nested for loop. first for loop will iterate from 1 to the length of the author list (1:209).

for (each in 1:length(insert_count$charac_count)) {



}

The second for loop will iterate over the count of elements in each row of the list. For example, the first row of the list has 4 author names. So the Iteration will be from 1 to 4.

for (in_row in 1:(insert_count$charac_count[each])) {



}

Now inside this nested for loop is the add_row() function.

author_insti<-add_row(author_insti,.after = which(author_insti$s.no==each))

author_insti is the data.frame to which I want to add rows to. .after = is used to define the index after which I want to add rows. I used which() function to define the position based on the serial number "s.no" of the rows.

The reason I did this because the index of the rows change after row insertion and if I had used just the index, the rows would have been inserted at the same position and would have been a series of empty rows at the beginning.

The whole code

for (each in 1:length(insert_count$charac_count)) {



for (in_row in 1:(insert_count$charac_count[each]-1)) {

author_insti<-add_row(author_insti,.after = which(author_insti$s.no==each))

}



}

This is how it looks after inserting rows

Rows inserted

now just use simple replacement to add values to these rows.

The same thing can be done to insert columns by using add_column() function
Papua New Guinea Mobile Network Coverage Maps — Oct 2019
By: Neo Malesa
Tags: Mobile Network, Digicel, Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea Mobile Network Coverage Maps — Oct 2019

Digicel and Bmobile

This is just a presentation of network coverage maps for the two existing mobile telecommunication companies in Papua New Guinea, Digicel and Bmobile.

Digicel Coverage in Papua New Guinea
Is It Better To Love Or To Be Loved?
By: Jocelyn Soriano
Tags: Poetry, Relationships, Love, Poem, Life Lessons

It's not the one who is loved

Who's got everything,

It's not the one who is

Showered with gifts,

The one thought about,

The one whose life

Is cared for

And saved.

But the one who is happy

Is the one who cares,

The one who gives

The one who knows

What it means

To go out of oneself

And live

In the heart of another.

It is the lover who sees,

And the lover who feels,

It is the lover who discovers

That save for love

There is no life

And save for love

There is no meaning

To everything else.

We are most happy

When we love,

We are most ourselves

When we think about another.

And though at times

Love may hurt

And love may not

Be returned,

It is better still

To love

Than not to love.

Those who are loved

May not want it,

May not feel it,

May not allow it

To enter their very being

To be changed.

But those who love,

Those who truly love

Have already been changed,

Have already seen

Beauty,

Eternity,

And goodness

That never fades.
I’m Only Human
By: Paul Austin Murphy
Tags: Poetry, Piety, Human Nature, Only Human, Narcissism

Image from Unsplash.

It’s not my fault that I’m a human being…

It’s not my fault that I have flaws, emotions, vices.

It’s not my fault that, as the purest altruist, I always put myself first.

It’s not my fault that the world stretches only as far as I can see.

It’s not my fault that I always desire more and more… and more.

It’s not my fault that I wrote a best-selling book called How Not to Desire More and More… and More.

It’s not my fault that I egotistically transcend the ego.

It’s not my fault that my Transcendence of Self does my self so much bloody good.

It’s not my fault that I feel so good about not feeling so good about myself.

It’s not may fault that I rise above the snare of money only in word, not in deed.

It’s not my fault I often talk about not talking about my charity work.

It’s not my fault that I wear a t-shirt which says I Care So Much — which was the product of a child’s 14-hour workday.

It’s not my fault that I want Social Change only as long as that change doesn’t affect my lifestyle.

It’s not my fault that I have two decent cars because I definitely need two decent cars.

It’s not my fault that I need a wide-screen television in every room.

It’s not my fault that my Soul requires at least four foreign holidays each year.

It’s not my fault that I’ll only shop in M & S and never at Pound Shop.

It’s not my fault that I refuse all wines that go for less than a tenner.

It’s not my fault the World requires my carbon footprint in order to

decrease its own carbon footprint.

It’s not my fault that I hate the Haters with a perfect hate.

It’s not my fault that I foam at the mouth in response to people who foam at the mouth.

It’s not my fault that I’m hugely intolerant of the intolerant.

It’s not my fault I believe Bigots should be hung, drawn and tortured.

It’s not my fault that I only believe in free speech for those who believe exactly what I believe…

It’s not my fault that when (as the poet put it) someone pricks me, I bleed.