fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
How to Make Your Development Department More Productive
By: Dieter Jordens
Tags: Agile, Management, Leadership, Programming, Software Development

Start Prioritizing in Terms of Value

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash.

In the development world, things change fast. Priorities change, technologies change. The one who adapts fast comes out ahead. As a manager or lead, you understand this.

You know that something can’t wait a month to get fixed, so you tell the development team to drop everything they are currently working on. They need to get that important bugfix or feature out there.

There are two possible outcomes.

Outcome #1

The development team understands and makes some time to do this in between other tasks. It negatively affects the amount of other work they get done, but they don’t want to be slowing anyone down. They care about the client as much as you do.

These interruptions can become a problem very fast — especially if you or somebody else asks them to drop everything multiple times a week. In my experience, that is often the case.

In the past, one of my superiors had an important meeting coming up. I’d just started to work on something new when the first issue arrived. I dropped my work to get that issue resolved as soon as possible. But before I got to finish that issue, three other issues came my way. I’d finish fixing issue after issue, feeling like a hero. It felt important, so we’d do our best for our client. After a week of fixing issues, the demo day finally arrived. Guess what?

The demo got postponed.

After something like that happens, it’s hard to believe that the issue you set aside for more than a week is now the most important one.

Both the development team and the manager sometimes end up with the feeling that nothing gets done.

Outcome #2

The team refuses to do the task in the upcoming time period. They are doing something they call agile. The development team says they will do it in their next sprint. Developers don’t like to change their focus.

They try to make a short-term goal of two or three weeks and try to get as much done as they can. This allows them to focus. Well, that sounds really frustrating for you as a manager. The team has become partially self-managing, but if you don’t intervene, the business will suffer.

Don’t give up. Things are not set in stone, so if it’s really urgent, you’ll probably get it done from them either way.

You may end up looking like someone who understands nothing about scrum or agile, but that’s not always true. I believe a manager can still provide value in this situation. And actually, your way of working will not change.
4 Old-School Ways To Slow Down Your Fast, Modern Life
By: Todd Brison
Tags: Life Lessons, Self, Lifestyle, Inspiration, Work

1. Keep Your Work in One Room

After getting fired, I had to buy a new computer. I procrastinated on this purchase, so by the time I needed a new computer, I needed one that day.

The local computer repair shop had one: a desktop. A Dell desktop. All my cool hipster energy instantly trickled down my body and out through my toes. They would take away my scarf, glasses, and French press if word got out that I was trying to do creative work with a Dell.

Nevertheless, I scooped up the device and took it home. After a few adjustments, my ugly Dell was equipped for the modern world. The one thing it still couldn’t do was move from my office to the living room.

But as the weeks passed, I realized something beautiful — I couldn’t carry my work machine from the office to the living room. That meant I worked in the office, cooked in the kitchen, watched TV in the living room, and ate in the dining room.

What a concept.

Different areas of your home have different names for a reason. It’s probably much cooler to walk around your house without a Macbook glued to your hip. It sure is freeing without one, though.
Shane Koyczan: “This Is My Voice”
By: Tania Sheko
Tags: Human Rights, Poetry, Protest, Voice, Shane Koyczan

This is my voice

there are many like it

but this one is mine

and it’s a fine line

when you’re trying to define

the finer points of politics

politics being a latin word

poli meaning many

tics meaning blood sucking bastards

but too many live in countries

where it’s bullets instead of ballots

where gavels fall like mallets

when held in the hands of those

whose judgments can be bought

as easily as

children can be taught to covet

and the only ones willing to speak up

are forced to live so far beneath the radar

that the underground is considered above it

this is for the ho chi minhs

and the michael collins

for the marquis de sades

and the muted gods

this is my voice

there are many like it

but this one is mine

and this time it’s for the sons and daughters

who watch mothers and fathers drown in shallow waters

while panning for the american dream

in the polluted creek called the mainstream

this is for the homeless people sleeping on steam vents

making makeshift tents out of cardboard and old trash

trying to catch 40 winks in between the crash of car wrecks

risking their necks by surviving another day

so that they can starve

so that famine can carve their body into a corpse

before their heart stops beating

so that men in a board room meeting

can make it harder for them to get welfare or healthcare

it’s no wonder some of them pawn off their own wheelchair

and every time I walk by I can’t help but feel at fault,

that maybe I didn’t search myself hard enough

for the control alt s

so I could save the world.

I’ve got to cash in my reality cheques

so I can drop the world some spare fantasies

because the most valuable thing I’ve ever learned

is to believe people when they say please

so don’t tell me there are no heroes

this is for them

the women and the men

for helen keller who against all odds found a voice

for the choice veronica guerin made

for martin luther king who stayed just long enough

to share his dream with us

this is for that day on a bus with sister rosa parks

this for the joan of arcs who believe even in the face of sparks

becoming flame this is for the game louis riel refused to play

for the day the dalai lama finally goes home

for dr. jeffrey wigand who alone stared down big tobacco

for nelson mandela who continues to go the extra mile

for the trial that finally found a man guilty of shooting medgar evers dead

this is for everything malcolm x said

remembered by

athletes who left the olympics double-fisted

for arthur miller blacklisted for calling a witch hunt what it was

for galileo locked up because he said the earth revolves around the sun

for anyone who was told to be quiet but instead had their say

and imagine if we could still hear john lennon play

this is for the someone who stood up today and said no

for edward r. murrow who shut down mcCarthy

this is for salman rushdie

mahatma gandhi

you

me

this city

this country

we will always have a choice

when you stand up to be counted

tell the world this is my voice

there are many like it but this one is mine
Designing a COVID-19 data visualisation dashboard — a UX case study
By: Abhishek Chitranshi
Tags: Information Technology, Data Visualization, User Experience Design, Dashboard Design, Covid 19

COVID-19 Stacked Bar Graph : Design by Abhishek Chitranshi

In this ongoing unprecedented global situation of COVID-19, where everyone wishing and waiting for the end of this ‘game changer evil’, same time billions of us are curious for its daily update on numbers of globally affected cases. It has almost become part of our routine to refer couple of our favourite dashboards out of many which are being provided by various providers.

As a designer and one of the user of these dashboards, I felt that this is the product being used by billions of users around the globe and should be designed simple enough to be understood by maximum users. Considering, this dashboard and data visualisation is a live design challenge, I decided to pursue this self realised design challenge and share the design and it’s crisp design rationale here .

Design Challenge

I see an interesting fact of this dashboard design— It is a kind of hybrid use-case of enterprise and consumer product (kind of G2B2C), as this web product need to show complex data, graphs and analytics (typical enterprise product’s home page and data stream scenario) and being used by almost anyone around the globe (typical consumer product’s users scenario).

“It is a hybrid use-case of enterprise and consumer product.”

Focus of the Design — Simplicity and Intuitive Visual Relationships

Data it accommodates are complex but the information it reflects used by almost anyone, thus it is important to keep the design simplest and make it intuitively interactive for informative analytics with minimal learning.

Since attention was more on simplicity and lesser content, some challenges I added to make the screen less busy, are —

Can visuals communicate the information itself without colour legends? Can info graphics be self explanatory without labels?

Design and Data Visualisation

On type of information priority, data are sequenced in,
Our Restaurants Are Suffering. How Bad? Let’s Look at the Numbers
By: Ed Newman
Tags: Restaurant, Restaurant Business, Covid 19, Current Events, Business

CURRENT EVENTS

Our Restaurants Are Suffering. How Bad? Let’s Look at the Numbers

“You are what you eat.”— Victor Lindlahr

Photo by Dan Gold on Unsplash

When the pandemic began I knew from the start it was going to be bad for area restaurants. My son is in the restaurant trade and he said this spring that 1/3 of our local restaurants would be out of business when this was over.

I don’t know where that guesstimate came from, but it was clear that government mandated shutdowns and inequitable “relief” packages from on high were going to leave a lot of business owners hurting. There was no question that damage was being done. Quantifying it was something I was unable to wrap my head around, until this announcement from the National Restaurant Association (NRA) was released 10 days ago.

Photo by Edgar Castrejon on Unsplash

The headline is stark: Restaurant Industry In Free Fall; 10,000 Close In Three Months.

The following numbers come from an open letter to Congress from the NRA. The source of this data is a survey conducted the latter half of November.

— Eighty-seven percent of fullservice restaurants (independent, chain, and franchise) report an average 36% drop in sales revenue. (EdNote: Profit margins in this industry average 5–6%_

— Eighty-three percent predicted things would be worse for the next three month.

— As of today 110,000 restaurants are closed permanently or long term due to shut downs.

— On average these restaurants had been in business for 16 years, and 16% had been open for at least 30 years.

Many of the difficulties have been complicated by the hasty manner in which legislation was cobbled together for the initial bailouts and CARES Act. You can read the NRA’s letter to Congress here to see their recommendations for a more equitable solution for our nation’s restaurant owners.

LETTER TO CONGRESS HERE

https://restaurant.org/downloads/pdfs/advocacy/nat-l-restaurant-assoc-ltr-to-congress-12-7-2020.pdf
Rushing to New Year’s Day
By: Dr John Rose
Tags: Self, Philosophy, Meditation, Procrastination, Poetry

Self Philosophy Poetry.

Rushing to New Year’s Day

Meditating About Rushing Around Like a Dead Chook.

Hurtling Toward New Year. Zen Garden by John Rose.

I am being rushed and

feel like a thrown

rock or dead chook

hurtling inevitably into

an uncaring unknown

New Year’s Day.

I like my Zen Garden

careful raking and

placing of

grandchildren’s rocks.

This one for

meditation on

New Year’s Day.

Thought it was clever,

but just my conceit.

Finished and photographed

now I see the faults,

but a thrown rock

has no time for

second-guessing when

rushing through time.

Started a research project,

AI-Songlines I call it,

adding an ethics component,

that should make it

commercially popular.

Set a target to test some code

New Year's Day.

Cleaning apartment by

New Year's Day.

Picking strawberries by

New Year's Day.

Marking student submissions by

New Year's Day.

Writing some lectures by

New Year's Day.

Just realised

that’s in five days

New Year’s Day.

Might rename it

“Muttering day”.

I am being rushed.

Son told me

procrastination was

my name and in the blood.

Guess that’s why we’re

drinking another round of coffee.

Forget New Year’s Day.

Might go for a walk,

talk to Kookaburra and crow,

I’m sure they have

better things to say than

“remember New Year’s Day”.

Blessed be.

I’m sure bees

don’t give a fig

about New Year’s Day.
3-minute introduction to blockchain technology
By: Rohas Nagpal
Tags: Blockchain

Imagine a world without computer databases. There would be no e-commerce, no ATMs, no Internet banking, no Facebook, no Gmail, no WhatsApp! Almost everything that makes the Internet so powerful and useful depends upon computer databases.

The digital world relies very heavily on computer databases, even though most users are unaware of it. Now imagine a database that is provably immutable/unchangeable and almost impossible to hack. That’s a blockchain. At its core, a blockchain is an ordered and time-stamped sequence of “blocks of information”.
Solidity Fundamentals
By: Ferdi Kurt
Tags: Smart Contracts, Cryptocurrency, Programming, Blockchain, Ethereum

Integers

Solidity can manage integers signed/unsigned of various sizes (up to 256 bit) and also fixed point numbers for development (in the form of unfixed/fixed) which are not fully supported by the language yet and can be declared but can not be assigned to or from.

Watch out folks, we are going to talk about a very scary scenario which can cause huge harm.

When uint (unsigned integer) reaches its byte size, the next value added will return the first variable element.

note: 1 byte = 8 bits

Let’s say we have a uint8 , which is 8 bits. This means that the largest number we can store is 1111111 that is equal to 255 . Look at below example. If we execute increment function what will happen? This is called Overflow — it means that our new num_one is 0.
Tinkle, Tinkle Little…?
By: Background Noise Comics
Tags: Humor, Ghosts, Sleep, Comics, Horror

Having a partner with an active imagination is great — until you’re alone in the dark.
I Failed My Coding Interview
By: Shane Shown
Tags: Software Development, Coding Interview, Coding, Interview, Programming

Why Coding Interviews Are Standard

If you ask an engineer about their experience in a coding interview, every engineer’s answer is going to be drastically different depending on their background. It is a very sensitive and controversial topic. You do not want me to repeat some of the comments and stories that I’ve heard over the years. (You may end up with bloody ears or a sore stomach from laughing.) Most engineers believe that technical interviews are not relevant to the actual position, nor do they show the individual’s true technical competency.

And these people have a point — these interviews don’t represent real work. Developers never really have to write in-depth code on a whiteboard during the day-to-day job. In addition, the majority of topics covered in coding interviews are never seen outside of interviews. How often, for example, will a front-end developer specializing in React have to traverse a B-Tree in a specific, algorithmic way? Never, unless they’re doing something deeply wrong.

When a candidate does run into an interview that represents real-world problems that would need to be solved in the day-to-day of the actual position it’s mind-blowing. I have had candidates leave an interview with a coding assignment that they were actually excited to complete because they felt like they would understand the company’s problem and add real value.

Even more aggravating? Coding interviews are often entirely unfair. Even the creator of Brew — with tens of millions of installs — was invited to interview at Google and then rejected because he couldn’t solve a B-Tree problem.

Software engineers love to trick the interviewees and give extremely challenging questions. If you get the initial problem, it’s then common practice for an interviewer to throw a wrench in your solution, make the problem even harder, and create arguably unnecessary stress.

So why are they given?

For all their faults, coding interviews prove three things:
Blockchain, Digital Identity, and Health Records: Considerations for Vulnerable Populations in California
By: Citris Policy Lab
Tags: Technology, Policy, Government, Blockchain, Digital Identity

In the early 2000s, blockchain took the private sector by storm. In addition to gaining notoriety for its applications in cryptocurrency, the technology was touted as a solution to dozens of organizational problems, from supply chain tracking to identity management. Although commercial applications of blockchain continue to show promise and are being pursued by startups and established companies alike, applications in the public sector have attracted far less attention. A few pilot projects in the United States and abroad have used blockchain platforms for voting, paying taxes and fines, and tracking educational credentials. But in order to build on promising cases in the public interest, further research is needed to guarantee secure digital identity systems, especially for programs that serve vulnerable populations like the unhoused.

In a research project conducted over the past nine months, we asked: What opportunities might blockchain-based digital ID and health records management systems offer to improve services for housing-insecure and homeless populations in California? And what risks unique to this cohort should be considered before launching such programs?

Through a combination of expert interviews, surveys with state chief information officers, and findings from a year-long process with the State of California’s Blockchain Working Group, we find that blockchain-based identity and health records management systems may indeed offer advantages for unhoused populations in California. These technologies could streamline applications for public benefits, improve the management of medical records and facilitate sharing of medical data among healthcare organizations.

At the same time, challenges must be overcome for vulnerable populations to share in the benefits of blockchain-based identity and health records management solutions. First, reliable means of authenticating users may be problematic; the same circumstances that make it difficult for homeless individuals to retain their physical IDs will also hinder them to retain a smartcard or password, and evidence indicates that these individuals would be reluctant to use biometric data to access digital identity systems. In addition, it is unclear whether state or county governments will be willing to move to blockchain-based health records management systems given the millions of dollars that have already been spent to solve the current fragmented state of access to such records. Finally, concerns regarding long-term security of sensitive data must be addressed.

Overall, blockchain holds potential to improve public service provision for homeless residents in California and other states. However, issues with user authentication, cost, and trust must be addressed for these benefits to be realized. For more information on our project, please see Blockchain, Digital Identity, and Health Records: Considerations for Vulnerable Populations in California.
Screw Magazine Launches SCREW TV as a Free Subscription Service.
By: Phil Autelitano
Tags: Entertainment, Television, Streaming, Media, Sex

www.screw.wtf

In 2018, SCREW TV launched on the Roku platform as a subscription channel just to see what would happen. Despite being nothing more than a collection of sexy and/or whacky videos that was rarely updated, SCREW TV grew and grew. Since then, SCREW TV has garnered over a million active subscribers on a platform where 50- to 100,000 subscribers is the average for a successful channel.

SCREW TV is free-to-add on the Roku platform with plenty of free content to keep the average viewer entertained. You can add it to your Roku account using code “screw” or by going here: http://my.roku.com/add/screw.

SCREW TV also offers a variety of premium content — including full-length films and more — exclusively to paid subscribers of SCREW MAGAZINE online. If you like SCREW TV, you’ll love SCREW MAGAZINE — America’s Most Notorious Magazine–since 1968! For as little as $2 a month, you can have both SCREW TV and SCREW MAGAZINE — and get the full SCREW EXPERIENCE. Visit www.screw.wtf for details.
cURL Tips: Making Post Requests. cURL
By: Reina Mitchell
Tags: Code, Scripting, Bash, Programming

Photo by Alex Korolkoff on Unsplash

Introduction

I am currently in the middle of working with a brand new API and while I will usually test APIs using Insomnia or using JavaScript’s built-in fetch function, I have decided to learn a little more about bash and scripting. This has led me to cURL and all of its wonderfulness for making HTTP requests quickly in my terminal.

What is cURL?

cURL or ‘client URL’ is a command-line utility that is used for file transfers using a URL. Curl is universal and many people have access to it already if you are on a UNIX based machine, which is why it is such a popular choice for making HTTP requests. It has support for various protocols such as FTP.

For this tips blog post, I wanted to discuss using cURL to make POST requests and I will show you two ways you can go about doing that.

Post Request with a Body

When making a POST request with cURL you will want to use the -X flag as that tells the CLI that we are making a custom request as the default for cURL is the GET method. Next, if the data you want to send has parameters that will go in the body to the POST, then we will add the -d to send data followed by your params. This is the skeleton of what your post may look like:

curl -X POST -d "<param1>=<value1>&<param2>=<value2>"

However, you should note that when sending your requests this way, the default content-type is application/x-www-form-urlencoded . So if you want to work with JSON specifically, you will need to change that. We can do this by using the headers symbol or -H in our request.

We can change it to application/json like this:

-H “Content-Type: application/json”

I’ll show you an example using the free API resource JSONPlaceholder:

curl -X POST -H “Content-Type: application/json” -d ‘{“title”:”hello”, “body”:”test”, “userId”:2}’ https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts *

*make sure to wrap the object in single quotes.
The Hardest Part.
By: Lisa Martens
Tags: Travel, Spirituality, Short Story, Blood Orange, Fiction

Blueberry usually knows where the cafe is.

I let her lead.

“But I want to do some sightseeing, too. It can’t just be about what the cafe tells us to do.”

Blueberry nodded.

We passed by a street lined with colorful umbrellas. We passed a restaurant that sold savory crepes.

Then, we saw it. It was in English. It always is.

“There it is. The cafe.”

We entered. Orion was tending bar. He always was.

The cafe looked the same. All white, with carved wooden animals as decorations.

“Do you want a coffee? A latte?”

I sighed. “Orion, I already know that all of your drinks are made of blood. Why do you always pretend?”

Orion shrugged.

“It’s something to do. But we did get these new chocolates in.” Orion handed me one.

“This better not be blood,” I said.

Orion just smiled. I was just a human. He could pretty much fuck with me however he wanted.

Blueberry plucked the chocolate out of my hand. “I’ll try it for you. Orion, please don’t start. We are just here for the mission.”

I looked around the cafe. It looked the same. It was dark in the back. I never knew why.

I looked at Orion. He scared me. And I wanted him. He was this impossible creature, I knew.

And he looked different every time I saw him. Different, but still himself. That confidence that bordered on arrogance.

This time, he had dark, thick hair. Bushy eyebrows. He was dressed in form-fitting jeans and a button-down shirt. He had eyes that were almost black.

“Aw, Blood Orange knows I’m just playing around,” he reached over the bar to give me a sideways hug. He pressed his stubbly cheek against mine. Please kill me, I thought.

“So, what are we supposed to do here?”

Orion pretended to read a piece of paper. I could see it was just a receipt.

“Go to the European side and go to the bazaar. Take photos of lamps. That’s all it says here.”

“It doesn’t say anything, Orion,” I said.

“Someone is getting fresh.”

“We can go now,” Blueberry said. “We have to catch a ferry.”
The average price of an avocado in the U.S.
By: Adriana Navarro
Tags: Data Science, Millennials, Money, Economy, Food

Grafiti

Grafiti is the first search engine for graphs & charts.
You Are Water
By: Toni Crowe
Tags: Relationships, Love, Poetry, Poem, Water

Relationships

You Are Water

Love Poetry

Image by Dimitris Vetsikas from Pixabay

When I think of you, I think of water. Smooth, beautiful, stunning in so many forms. The sun reflecting off the warm blue in the Caribbean makes me think of you in my arms. The dusty blue of the coast of Spain is lying/floating together with the rock in our view. The sunlit pool water shining like returned love. Catamaran rainbow colors splashing through the water spraying us, your head up, laughing. Cubed ice in a glass waiting for a liquid reminding me when respect is required. I want you here, always, besides me, warm, cold, cubes, mine, blue, grey, liquid flowing around me.
desert life
By: Vince Ferraro
Tags: Classic Haiku, Desert, Haiku, Haiku Hub, Poetry

post-punk father of two hybrid boys & husband to an amazingly patient wife. sometimes writes about life and parenting at dadnoir.com & twitter.com/dreamanxiety

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Tokenbox Platform Launches Trading Contest and Gives Away 1 Million TBX
Tags: Tokenbox, Crypto, Trading, Bitcoin, Tbxnews

Tokenbox Platform Launches Trading Contest and Gives Away 1 Million TBX Tokenbox Follow May 21 · 3 min read

For a month, participants will be competing in trading digital assets on the platform to win 1 million worth of TBX tokens.

Tokenbox calls on all digital asset traders out there to take part in an unprecedented competition. Both professionals, and those who would like to try their hands at trading cryptocurrencies and tokens, are invited to join the big Tokenbox race.

The contest starts on May 25th, 2020. Final call is June 25th, 2020. During these consecutive 5 weeks all registered traders will be managing their portfolios and trying different trading strategies in order to boost their score and performance charts. On June 30th a champion will be announced and awarded from a substantial prize fund of 1 million TBX tokens.

Instructions on how to participate in Tokenbox Trading Contest 2020

Those willing to challenge themselves for great trading should register on the Tokenbox platform up until June 10th, 2020. Number of players is not limited.

Once a trader’s account is registered and verified, a deposit should be added in any currency, exceeding or equivalent to 50 USD. The platforms accepts major cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash.

It is convenient to have additional sub-accounts to diversify portfolios and experiment with strategies. Only one trading account with maximum profitability will be selected for the final ranking.

The only indicator for obtaining a higher rating is the return (ROI) gained during the competition period. The return is calculated in USD, and performance can be easily checked anytime in a trader’s account.

In the final part of the race, participants who are ranked from 1 to 10 will be pre-approved as Tokenbox designated portfolio managers and will be able to create a portfolio for managing investor’s assets on the Tokenbox platform.

To learn more about participation and to follow the contest updates go to https://contest.tokenbox.io/.

Tokenbox is a convenient state-of-the-art platform for trading digital assets. Advanced security infrastructure, deposits options for both cryptocurrencies and bank cards, designated wallet that allows to convert currencies on site, multiple portfolios that can be managed under one account for various strategies — all this makes the platform a unique and simple tool for professional managers and digital funds. Tokenbox is aimed at creating a one-stop-shop, full scale service for buying, managing and investing in digital assets.
How The $15 Minimum Wage Became A Rallying Cry On Both Ends Of The Spectrum
By: Jamie Mah
Tags: Culture, Business, Minimum Wage, Food, Politics

Today, I woke up to the news that Jeff Bezos wasn’t the devil after all. Well sort of. News broke out that Amazon, the silver medal winner in the race for a trillion dollar valuation, would be raising its minimum wage to $15.00 for all full-time, part-time and seasonal working employees. This news, a shock for many, myself included, is one you would never expect a massive corporation to voluntarily declare, let alone implement.

We live in the era of high stock prices and stock buybacks, both of which have very little interest in the needs of employees. If you are not familiar with stock buybacks, let me enlighten you. A stock buyback is essentially a company’s way of saying “we have extra capital, and instead of re-investing in our company or its employees, we’re going to buyback our own stock to elevate its valuation, which really only helps the rich people who work there and those fortunate enough to own stock options.” Therefore, Amazon’s decision today is big news and should be a watershed moment for Amazon’s low wage earners whose rights have been sorely ignored for some time.

But wait…there’s more.

Just now, I’ve learned that Washington, DC lawmakers have voted to block a bill that would have raised the minimum wage to $15 for all restaurant servers and tipped employees. This comes just days after Premier Doug Ford of Ontario said that he intends to scrap the labour reform legislation the previous Liberal government implemented last year which also would have raised the minimum wage to $15.

Just like that you have one step forward and two steps back.

The politics of the $15 minimum wage has become in itself a major issue for businesses and workers. On one end, you have companies who claim they will have to curtail employment, hours and benefits if forced to pay a higher minimum wage. There are many studies showing this theory isn’t necessarily true, yet, many capitalists will have you believe otherwise. Nonetheless, if you own a restaurant that’s hanging on by the thread of a bad month, a $15 minimum wage will hurt you. So there is some logic in this statement.

On the other hand, workers say that their inability to garner higher pay, equal pay and better benefits has lead to a general sense of despair. One of the main criticisms of Amazon was how many of its employees relied on food stamps and government subsidies to make ends meet. Bernie Sanders even launched a bill aptly titled the “Stop Bezos Act” to help remedy the issue by forcing large corporations to pay a tax for every employee who collects food stamps or a government subsidy.

With a growing amount of anger and disconnect on both sides of the aisle of this issue, how does one proceed with regards to understanding which to root for?

Regardless, of your current stance, this topic might just come down to one central concept: dignity.
Remembering the Idyllic Garden of My Childhood
By: Danika Bloom
Tags: Humor, Family, Culture, Life Lessons, Food

Growing up we had a vegetable garden. A huge vegetable garden that my mom tended. I don’t recall ever being asked to help and goodness knows I was not the kind of kid to offer to do the hard work of weeding or the scary work of sitting on the ground where spiders hide (and then crawl up your back).

Mom grew all the things that can be grown in the short Quebec summer: rhubarb, peas, beans, carrots, beets, chard, radishes, tomatoes and zucchini…so much darned zucchini.

She grew more than our small family could eat as it ripened, so some of it was canned or frozen for winter, some given away (zucchini…so much darned zucchini), and some became my little brother’s first job, going door-to-door with a wagon selling homegrown, beefsteak tomatoes.

Recently I was home visiting Mom and I remembered her garden and all the fresh veg we got to eat when I was a kid, with that sepia-toned image that makes everything look idyllic.

Mom’s memory was not the same as mine.

She said, without a hint of nostalgia:

“That blessed garden…

every spring I’d turn the soil

then buy seeds

then plant the seeds

then weed, weed, weed, weed

on the hot, humid days while you kids swam in Grandma’s pool. Then I’d pick the vegetables

prepare them for the freezer

thaw them

cook them for your dinner

and put them on your plates. But you didn’t like vegetables

you didn’t eat them

so I’d throw them in the trash

then carry the trash bag with all my hard work out to to the curb. It took years, but eventually, I got smart. I bought the seeds and gave them directly to the garbage man.”

I’m afraid to share the way I remember our family road trips with Mom…
每日幣讀 0411
Tags: Blockchain, News, Cryptocurrency, Sevencoin

in In Fitness And In Health
Guarda Multicurrency Web Wallet
By: Guarda Wallet
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Erc20, Zcash, Ethereum, Bitcoin

Apart from constantly improving the set of our secure non-custodial mobile wallets, Guarda is now introducing the advanced multicurrency web wallet, featuring the most popular crypto coins and tokens.

Security and privacy stay our priorities across all products. Guarda Web wallet doesn’t require you to create an account on the platform or share any private information. As it is also a light wallet, we do not have access to the wallet keys or store your passwords. It makes Guarda the most advanced and secure interface for direct interaction with the blockchain.

The wallet functions by generating keys for all supported currencies within the browser. You don’t have to create wallets on your computer, downloading the whole blockchain and waiting for it to synchronize each time you launch it.

We know that a truly great product combines functionality with outstanding user experience. Our team has meticulously worked out every feature and button to make Guarda web wallet easily comprehensible from the start and convenient for everyday use. We are striving to create the best interface, equally convenient for novice and experienced clients.

Guarda web wallet enables you to manage your cryptos as well as buy them all in one place. The full list of features includes:

Receiving and sending the currencies

Transaction history

Built-in exchange

Purchase with fiat

Import and export of the private keys

Wallet backup

If you are already an experienced crypto adopter and have the wallets for the currencies we support, you can use Guarda web wallet without needing to create a new wallet and transferring your assets there. Simply choose the “Import or restore” option, enter the private key for your wallet and enjoy Guarda experience!

It is important to note that as we do not store any of the access data for your wallet, you are fully responsible for its security. Save your private key and password in a safe place and make sure not to lose it or share with anybody.

We hope you will enjoy Guarda web wallet and looking forward to your feedback!
2021 Changes are Coming to Centina Pentina
By: J.A. Taylor
Tags: 2021, Microfiction, Pentina, Centina, Change

The start of a new year is a great time to start something new. And with the dawn of 2021, Centina Pentina will be starting some new things.

If you’ve been writing here for any length of time, you’ve grown used to two prompts each week — one for Centinas (100-word stories), and one for Pentinas (50-word stories). For our first prompt of the year on January 1st, we are introducing what we call “Writer’s Choice.”

Writer’s Choice will be a single prompt every other week and you as the writer get to choose if you would like to write a Centina or a Pentina related to that prompt. Sometimes fifty words aren’t enough. Sometimes one hundred words makes a micro story lose its punch. Now every other week it will be up to you to choose whether your prompted story is a Centina or a Pentina!

With this new prompt format, we are also going to change the way we feature stories. The featured column will feature only three stories (one Centina, one Pentina, and one that is a Writer’s Choice). Yes, that means story selection will become more competitive, but with a tougher competition comes a greater reward. Chosen stories will now be featured longer, giving your winning story more time on the publication’s homepage! To ensure your story is eligible to be featured, use Medium’s built-in separator at the bottom of your story and let us know if it’s related to one of the prompts.

We are grateful to be a part of such a gifted community of writers. Thank you for contributing such entertaining stories to Centina Pentina. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Avoid Social Isolation and Stay Healthy as a Freelancer
By: Kahli Bree Adams
Tags: Business, Work, Self, Remote Working, Freelancing

Avoid social isolation

To stay healthy and motivated, it is important not to feel socially isolated in our home offices. Once the initial excitement about being able to work in your pyjamas and not having to commute to a stuffy office wears off, some freelancers may feel alone and cut off from the rest of the world. Some work long hours and rarely leave their home. According to a Viking survey, nearly two-thirds (64%) of freelancers reported that their job makes them feel lonely on a daily basis.

Here are some steps you can take to avoid feeling socially isolated:

1. Stick to fixed office hours and socialise after work.

2. Network with fellow freelance professionals in your area.

3. Arrange regular lunch dates with friends or colleagues.

4. Join a local business group and attend their meetups.

5. Use social media to network and talk to others.

6. Join a co-working community and work there a couple of times a week.

7. Go for walks or join a gym to get out and active during breaks.

8. Ensure your office is welcoming and tidy to help you stay motivated.
High Expectations Nonet
By: Joe Váradi
Tags: Nonet, Expectations, Reality Check, Friendship, Poetry

of all the things to be talked down from

a delusional ego trip,

a proverbial high horse,

a precarious ledge …

impossibly high

expectations

is the most

bitter-

sweet
Morning
By: Urvi Karani
Tags: Nature, Floral Week, Flowers, Poetry, Morning Routines

It gives me immense joy to help those in need and I feel content in making someone’s life a little easy.

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Small Amounts To Learn Investing
By: Mitchell Stulken
Tags: Crypto, Cryptocurrency, Investing, Ethereum, Bitcoin

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This is something I need to work on. I know and tell people to be patient but have trouble doing it. I knew I should wait to buy into Achain but did, anyway.

With this volatile of a market, if you just wait, many times you will get the buy or sell price you want. The price has to be within reason though, nothing crazy.

This is another reason why starting with small amounts is a good thing. The amount I invested was $100. So nothing crazy. It allows me to make mistakes and learn, but not be hurt so bad from a loss.

I am only down 10% on this trade as of now, which isn’t bad. Just need to be patient and wait for the price. If I would have been patient in the first place I could have gotten a better buy in price though.

Well not exactly breaking news, but some positive news. NASDAQ came out and said they are open to becoming a cryptocurrency exchange.

This is obviously good news. It makes sense though. These people are not stupid and see the amount of money that can be made. They want their cut.

They would like more regulation before considering it. Which also makes sense. Regulation of some sort is coming and probably is needed. Hopefully whatever happens doesn’t hinder innovation or profitability.

And now for your viewing pleasure…..
Interview With a Self-Taught iOS Developer
By: Jeffery Morhous
Tags: iOS App Development, Careers, Programming, Career Change, Ios Development

Interview With a Self-Taught iOS Developer

How Frank Foster went from IT to iOS

Here’s the tweet that I’d been waiting for since I started following Frank back in April.

Frank comes from an IT background, and landed an iOS development job in the middle of 2020. Heck of a year for a career change. About a month ago, he agreed to sit down with me and talk about his journey to becoming a Mobile Software Engineer, and his story is definitely worth sharing.

What was the beginning of your career like? How did you break into tech without a degree?

I actually, funny enough, used to work at Apple. I was a genius at one of the Apple stores. I worked there for about 6 years, starting at sales and working my way up to genius, which is pretty much everything. Towards the end of my time there, I said “You know what, I need a change of pace, I’m going to start coding.” I poked around, initially looking at game development. I started off with all the worst preconceptions of how great I was gonna be, and found out very quickly — “Oh no, this is not easy.” It was super hard. I ended up switching to an IT job, and did that for about two years. I came across an opportunity from University of Idaho — they had partnered with Apple to offer free coding classes to the community, and they were looking for someone to run it. So I figured, “What better way to learn than by teaching!” That was in 2018, and I eventually left my IT job, and went to a better IT job at a pretty mature startup. Shortly into the work-from-home stuff, the company I was working at was hit with layoffs. At this point, I’d been doing this teaching coding thing for a few years. I figured I either go back to another IT job, which I won’t enjoy, or I can jump into iOS development.

So how did your job search start?

I had a few apps under my belt, but I still took a few months to study, work on my own apps, and work on my twitter, LinkedIn, and Resume. There’s definitely an element of being known, creating some legitimacy.

How does Twitter fit into your story?

Twitter went from this thing where I knew I had to do it for my career, to genuinely enjoying the community. That’s how I met you, and that’s how I met a number of people — I’ve even been to a couple twitter dev meetups!

When did you start applying for a new job?
Cheetos
By: Tejas Suresh
Tags: Humor, Poetry, Satire, US Elections, Trump

We all view the world through a unique lens. Politics is in literally everything from our churches to our social organizations to news events and crime to our governments. This is the place to share your view, regardless of your political leanings: all are welcome.

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Explaining BlockChain to a Novice in 150 words
By: Gayan Samarakoon
Tags: Blockchain

Explaining BlockChain to a Novice in 150 words

Blockchain is a database that is replicated and shared via a peer to peer network of computers. Hence the concept of a distributed ledger that is a public record of transactions. Whenever a change is made on the ledger, it is broadcasted across the network of computers and changes all other copies of the database if the algorithms run by the computers determine that the transaction is valid. This distributed ledger is also highly secure as one participant cannot alter one part of the ledger without altering a large number of replicated copies held across a network of participants. Blockchain allows the transfer of assets between two parties without the need for trust and increases the auditability and efficiency of transactions as well as remove the need for third parties thus reducing the costs of these transactions. Blockchain also exists in two states: Public or Private

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Simple vs. Compound Interest: Computations and Misconceptions
By: Joshua Siktar
Tags: Personal Finance, Loans, Mathematics, Derivatives, Interest Rates

The Two Main Formulas

There are two major formulas to consider for simple and compound interest calculations. Doing lots of practice problems will help you ingrain these problems into your memory, should you need them on the job or for use on an exam. But that’s true for a lot of formulas. Here they are:

Image courtesy of Art of Problem Solving software TeXeR

Of course, these formulas won’t do much good if you don’t know how to use them. There are many ways to use these formulas, and that is much of what this article will cover. The first step in exploring that is to know what all of the variables mean.

I: this is the amount of interest that accumulates over some period of time. In many cases this is the variable of interest, or the thing you want to solve for.

P: this is the principal amount. That’s the amount of money in the initial transaction or loan.

r: this is the interest rate. This is often given as a percentage, but you need to convert the percentage to a decimal (move decimal to the left two places, and remove the percent sign) before you use it in a formula.

t: this is the amount of time that passes, often given in months or years.

A: this is the total amount of money that has accumulated. If a loan is made and paid back later, A will be the principal amount of the loan combined with any interest that has accured. I’ll talk about this a bit more in the next section.

n: this variable only makes sense for compound interest. It indicates how many times interest is compounded per year. In other words, how many times is more interest applied to the principal amount of the investment?

The most straightforward way to use these formulas is to find I for the simple interest problem, or A for the compound interest problem. In either case you’ll need to know the values of all of the other variables in that equation. What if you want to just find the amount of interest for a compound interest problem? How can the things we’ve gone over help us? Let’s talk about that now.