fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
CodeFund Feature: Ad Callbacks
By: Eric Berry
Tags: Advertising, Open Source, Ethics

CodeFund Feature: Ad Callbacks

Publishers can grow with CodeFund without sacrificing revenue

Original post found at blog.codefund.app

Building an ad platform can be tricky. Not only from a technical aspect but also regarding growth. It reminds me of the “which came first, the chicken or the egg” question.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

In our case, the chicken would be the publisher, and the egg would be the advertiser. Publishers attract more advertisers, and advertisers attract more publishers.

Last year we decided to invest in ourselves and play the part of the advertiser when paying ads ran out. These internally paid ad campaigns helped ensure that we had enough funds to draw in more publishers. As well as this worked, it ended up costing us all of our profits. Did it work? Yes. Was it sustainable? Hell no.

In 2019, we decided to stop paying publishers to place fallback ads. This decision will allow us to realize a profit, which of course makes it so we can be around for the foreseeable future. However, this may come at a cost to some of our larger publishers because they may be displaying unpaid fallback ads.

Ad Callbacks

To resolve this concern, we have recently added callbacks into our funder script that can be subscribed to by the publisher.

Here’s the code that generates the funder script:

The lines to note here are 3, 11, 14, 18 and 21. We trigger a new event called ‘codefund’ which contains the status of the embed. If the status is ‘ok,’ then we know that an ad rendered successfully. If the status is ‘no-advertiser,’ we couldn’t find an advertiser for the given property and visitor.

So let’s say one of our publishers wants to use CodeFund as the first option for ads (this happens a lot because we pay publishers higher rates). Now they can put in place an event listener that will render an ad from another network if there are no paying CodeFund ads.

Here’s an example:

Now that this change is in place, our publishers can grow with us without sacrificing their revenue.

To learn more, view our documentation at https://github.com/gitcoinco/code_fund_ads#embed-callbacks
eQuid: A Decentralized Organization Working To Thrive While Giving Back More Than We Take
By: Bill Delisle
Tags: Bitcoin, Side Hustle, Decentralization, Social Change, Cryptocurrency

“Icebergs in the water at Vatnajökull National Park in Iceland” by L.W. on Unsplash

It doesn’t take a particularly shrewd observer to notice that our world is quickly changing. Cultural, political, and military conflicts dominate the daily headlines. The nature of work is evolving, personal interactions are increasingly digital, and the planet of weathering these changes without much help from the people who inhabit it. All of this is occurring with such regularity that it’s almost easy to forget that it’s happening at all.

The irony of immersion.

What’s missed in this process is the potential to harness the best qualities of the digital age to create exciting platforms that make an impact and make money.

We live in an era where anyone can create a company that makes a positive difference in the world. More specifically, the emergence of cryptocurrencies and decentralized organizations raise the specter of what’s possible by removing old barriers and creating new opportunities.

To be sure, despite the incredible hype surrounding cryptocurrencies, the technology alone won’t solve anything.

Real solutions arise from inspired individuals who are ready to harness the power of technology to create new platforms that improve people’s lives.

That’s the underlying premise of eQuid.

eQuid is a decentralized network of individuals who use digital currency technology to facilitating activities that improve our collective quality of life while. It’s a place to build a meaningful product that is profitable and helpful.

eQid and its contributors are collectively reshaping what money can do and how it can help people solve problems. By harnessing the power of cryptocurrencies and the supportive ethos of digital community, eQuid is bringing people together to create platforms that make money and that make a difference.

Big social change starts with social interactions, collaborations, and currency. You’ll find each of those on eQuid. We hope you’ll take a look around, suggest a project, or support those those who already have compelling ideas.
Blockchain — isn’t it just a scam with lots of hype?
By: Kerman Kohli
Tags: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Cryptocurrencies, Distributed Ledgers, Decentralised

Being someone who’s in the tech industry, I’ve been hearing about the blockchain since 2015, but I never really gave much attention to it since I couldn’t really see what the big deal was.

Decentralised? Immutable? Distributed ledgers? So what?

This “so what” attitude changed for me when I met up with someone who described disruption something like the image below.

By the time you realise the tech isn’t disappointing it’s already way too late.

We’ve seen this countless times in history. Here’s snippets of criticism regarding the internet in 1995 and the iPhone in 2007:
Hiring is a broken government service
By: Monique Baena-Tan
Tags: Design Thinking, Government, Tech Design, Civictech, Hiring

Hiring is an extremely complex service for everyone. Anecdotally, I hear all the time of people who want to work in government, but end up taking jobs at Salesforce and GE because the hiring process took too long. I’ve also seen departments having over 15 positions vacant since the beginning of 2016 (i.e. 18 months of vacant roles in just one department in one city!)

Stories like these are what spurred the Talent Initiative at Code for America to use design thinking and data analytics to better understand the government hiring process and begin to re-imagine what a user-centered, data-driven, iterative hiring process might look like.

Last month, Daniella DeVera and I hosted an event for SF Design Week. We decided to put this event together to share some examples of our work redesigning the food stamp application process in California, and unpacking some of the ways we are helping people break into public interest tech, which you can learn more about here.

At Code for America, we have technical teams working on helping people get access to food assistance, and helping people clear their criminal records. But we also recognize that the best way to create sustainable change at scale is to build great teams in government. There are already plenty of incredibly talented public servants, but we envision a future where all government departments have UX evangelists, real time data dashboards, acquire new technology through modular procurement and have iterative processes built into their workflow. Together, these changes in operations ladder-up to outcomes that allow governments to operate more effectively and efficiently.

Hiring is tough for everyone

If we look at the private sector, hiring and recruiting is something on everyone’s mind. Organizations like Buzzfeed have redesigned their hiring process and Intercom has reflected on the 5 steps they take to making sure they’re hiring the right people.

What we do know about this double sided market

People want to work in public interest tech. Our job board has seen 5,840 sessions in the last 30 days.

Departments need talent and have vacancies. We hear this every day from hiring managers who have open roles but can’t find the candidates.

The current process isn’t optimized for matchmaking, and a lot of this has to do with hiring.

The government hiring process is complex
The Strength and Joy of Black Women
By: Shefali O'Hara
Tags: Black Women, Art, Friendship, Love, Simplicity

The Strength and Joy of Black Women

This painting is from my heart

African Ladies by Shefali O’Hara

My senior year at MIT I called a friend from the lab. I’d been up almost 40 hours debugging a circuit and needed emotional support.

She asked me when I’d last had something to eat. I mentioned a soda I’d had. A half hour later she showed up with a thermos.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“You need a hot meal,” she said.

I was puzzled by the contents. I’d never seen anything like it.

“You’re moving to Carolina,” she explained. Her dimples flashed. “You need to know what grits are.”

I ate them while she kept me company. She’d doctored them with cheese. I was nourished, which helped me through the rest of the day.

My friend was raised by a single mom in rural Alabama. She majored in materials science at MIT. She was tough, but also warm with both a wicked sense of humor and a strong Christian faith.

A few years ago, when I was recovering from a mastectomy, another black friend nurtured me. Every night for weeks, she sent me personal stories that she’d written to make me laugh. She texted them to me on my cell phone. I still have them.

She was also raised by a single mom, in Philadelphia. She had three daughters. She inspired the painting in the image above.

I wanted to show the resilience but also the joy and beauty of black women. They are some of the strongest people I know, yet also some of the most generous and kind.

When I gave the painting to my friend, she was radiant. She loved it.

It was one of the first paintings I ever created, but it meant a lot to me. One thing that surprised me was how many people have bought prints of it, since it is so simple. But that’s when I learned, when it comes from the heart, it doesn’t have to be complex to be meaningful.

Love and friendship are not complex. They can be as simple as a thermos of warm food or a story that makes you laugh. I’ve learned this from two beautiful, vibrant women. Their stories are rich and meaningful. And they’ve inspired my art.
“Hum for the Bolt”
By: The Hairpin
Tags: Poetry, Featured Poet, Jamaal May

by Jamaal May

It could of course be silk. Fifty yards or so

of the next closest thing to water to the touch,

or it could just as easily be a shaft of wood

crumpling a man struck between spaulder and helm.

But now, with the rain making a noisy erasure

of this town, it is the flash that arrives

and leaves at nearly the same moment. It’s what I want

to be in this moment, in this doorway,

because much as I’d love to be the silk-shimmer

against the curve of anyone’s arm,

as brutal and impeccable as it’d be to soar

from a crossbow with a whistle and have a man

switch off upon my arrival, it is nothing

compared to that moment when I eat the dark,

draw shadows in quick strokes across wall

and start a tongue counting

down to thunder. That counting that says,

I am this far. I am this close.

— Poetry, April 2013

Detroiter Jamaal May is the author of Hum (Alice James Books, Nov 2013), winner of the Beatrice Hawley Award, as well as two poetry chapbooks (The God Engine, 2009 and The Whetting of Teeth, 2012). His poems have been published widely with his most recent work appearing or forthcoming in Poetry, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, Blackbird, Michigan Quarterly Review, Gulf Coast, The Believer and New England Review.
Why Disney+ Could Knock Netflix Off Its Perch
By: Michelle Castillo
Tags: Media, Streaming, Technology, Entertainment, Television

Disney’s marquee streaming service, set to launch later this year, could quickly become the entertainment industry leader, derailing rivals like Netflix by offering customers some of the most beloved characters and recognizable titles for a lower price.

The new service, Disney+, will launch in the United States on Nov. 12 for as low as $6.99 a month, or $69.99 for the year — less than Netflix’s basic, non-HD $8.99 plan.

By adding Disney+ to its existing streaming services, which include ESPN+ and majority-owned Hulu, Disney aims to dominate the shift to online platforms by ensuring consumers will have access to its content wherever they are, and for generations to come.

The company projects it will have 60 to 90 million subscribers by 2024, a third of them in the U.S.

While Netflix is projected to spend $15 billion on content this year to fill its subscribers’ queues with programming across all genres, according to BMO Capital Markets, Disney doesn’t need to invest as much because of its extensive library of content.

With titles from Disney Motion Pictures and Pixar, and access to some of television’s most recognizable series, like “The Simpsons,” Disney already has a deep well of content that it can offer on its service in the next four years. Many will be included at launch.
Red Robot wants to form an unstoppable alliance.
Tags: Humor, Comics, Robots, Dating

More from rstevens Follow

I make cartoons and t-shirts at www.dieselsweeties.com & @rstevens. Send me coffee beans.
Big Thank You and Virtual Candles
By: Agnes Louis
Tags: Christmas, Joy, Happiness, Gratitude, Life

A big heartfelt thank you.

To those who sacrifice their valuable time — time they could have spent with their loved ones, time they could have spent doing what they want on this special holiday.

Instead, they serve.

Workers working the grocery, supermarkets, shops selling gifts, restaurants.

Healthcare workers — doctors, nurses, cleaners. Each and every person doing their part, caring for others on this special day.

Delivery runners, ensuring everyone celebrates with enough food in their belly, drinks to quench their thirst.

In my culture and many others, food is love, and thanks to those who serve and run, there is no shortage of either.

Online shop workers, mail-wo-men — Amazon, DHL, UPS, a long list of courier services too many to mention. For ensuring everyone celebrating worldwide gets their presents, sharing joy despite the distance.

Everybody.

Everybody who ensures everyone has a smile on their faces and laughter in their throats on this jolly day.
Table of Contents
By: Adrian Galvin
Tags: Self Improvement

Short written components for Adrian Galvin’s thesis on the phenomenology of science

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How about consuming organic products while paying with Bitcoin?
By: Ramon Oliveira
Tags: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Bancryp

How can we unite the essence of organic, healthy, sustainable and home-made products with cryptocurrency technology? Bancryp has a solution.

Once again, Bancryp innovates its actions and experiences for cryptocurrency users in Brazil. This time, Bancryp transformed an organic market allowing all producers to accept Bitcoin as payment.

Helping local producers to put themselves at the forefront of the market in such an innovative way allows Bancryp to create an ecosystem that unites people from all segments with technology. Approaching different audiences and simplifying the use of cryptocurrencies transforms the everyday life of people who have never been able to use them due to complexity or because of the lack of crypto-processing technology until now.

The Feira Noturna is a movement designed as a social-impact collective business. It was built upon the 4D fluxonomy, creative economy and the Sustainable Development Goals established by the UN (click here to know more).

Bel Zanella in a talk about organic products.

“We want to reduce the distance between the producer and the consumer, provide healthy food and promote agroecology, encouraging the local culture and development, as well as the sense of humanity. All of this united with technology and innovation” says Bel Zanella. She created the first Organic Feira Noturna in 2015, when she was still living in São Paulo and was the owner of an organic food restaurant.

Check out the video:

Participating in an Organic Market is part of Bancryp’s strategy to make cryptocurrencies accessible for common people, showing how simple it is to acquire, accept and use Bitcoin as a payment method.

“We are working to provide unique experiences to all those people who have cryptocurrencies, transforming the everyday life of not only who makes, but also who receives payments through the Bancryp technology” says CCO Alessandro Gomes.

Stay tuned to our official channels:

Telegram: https://t.me/bancrypEN

Facebook: https://goo.gl/uSFiLb

Instagram: https://goo.gl/UfKeSr

Twitter: https://goo.gl/8CbCms

Medium: https://goo.gl/tUawqp

YouTube: https://goo.gl/LmkeD2

Online Support: http://bancryp.com/
It’s Not All About Happy Endings
By: Bridget Webber
Tags: Short Story, Fiction, Life Lessons, Fantasy, Poetry

Far away,

when stories began “once upon a time,”

happy endings sung in storyteller’s minds,

They spun fanciful tales for eager ears.

I find,

though,

there’s nothing wrong with a tear-stained life that highlight smiles,

days when joy flows,

and the meadow flowers curl around your ankles,

to make you one with the stars.
A Weekly Web Design Roundup via Solodev
Tags: Tech, Web Design, Web Development, Technology, SEO

Every day new HTML, CSS, and JavaScript tutorials are posted to the growing Solodev Web Design Blog! Here is a list of what was added the week of February 27th!

By creating a demo video you can streamline your sales process, save money, and automate your lead generation initiatives. But where does the demo video go? You still want to capture prospect and lead information so just placing it on your website won’t do. That’s where this landing page design comes in. Not only does this design and functionality streamline your sales process, you still collect lead data, and you can give thousands of demos a minute without having to pool any internal resources to do so. Enjoy.

Learn More
為什麼贊助端？或說，為什麼訂閱媒體？
By: Yenting Lin
Tags: Media, Subscription, Subscription Economy

Yenting Lin and His Dots

The dots, and the lines that connects the dots.
Eye Candy for Cloudant
Tags: Couchdb, JavaScript, Web Development, Data Visualization, Cloudant

Chocolate Factory

To install the script, use the Firefox browser with the Greasemonkey extension.

Go to the cloudant-eyecandy.user.js Click on the Raw button Install the script when prompted

Once installed, log in to Cloudant and go to a view. In the view page, the new Chart button should now appear. If the button does not appear, ensure the script is enabled and try refreshing the page.

Visualizations like pie charts or bar charts assume some kind of aggregation on your data. The most direct way to do aggregations is to use Cloudant’s built-in reduce functions. Cloudant’s documentation on views (MapReduce) has the details.

Different charts expect data in different formats. Here are the schemas that SimpleDataVis will use to automatically render visualizations. You’ll notice that certain simple charts like bar and pie varieties expect data in the same format: [{ key: "", value: n }, ...] . In this case, the code will randomly pick one format to display. If you extend my userscript to select certain charts in this scenario, please let me know in the comments.

Once you have properly defined your database view, it’s time to visualize it. To see the aggregated results, be sure to check the Reduce button from the query Options menu in your view. Now, you’ll be all set to receive your Eye Candy.

Be sure to check your query options to enable aggregated results for visualizations.

If you’d like to try and reproduce the example in this article, replicate https://examples.cloudant.com/movies-demo into your own Cloudant instance (note that you might incur a small fee). Here's an example view definition you can use—be sure to select the _sum reduce function in the UI too:

Example view function that accounts for empty string values. You could also try just doc.Movie_rating in the if-statement and note the difference.

Sour Patches

The current implementation of the userscript works with the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox. However, you can easily modify it to work with other userscript manager extensions (for example, Tampermonkey for Chrome). Here’s the code for SimpleDataVis on GitHub. Theoretically, SimpleDataVis could also work with Apache CouchDB™’s new Fauxton dashboard. I’d love to hear about any modifications in the comments.

Thanks for checking out SimpleDataVis, and please ♡ this article to recommend it to other Medium readers.
It’s Official We’re on Android Now 🤖
By: Crumbs Team
Tags: Bitcoin, Launch, Cryptocurrency, Crypto, Fintech

Hey everyone 👋

Hey everyone 👋

…and a special hello to the Android users out there – you’re now able to begin investing your spare change into crypto! 💰📈

That’s right. We’ve extended the Crumbs public beta to Android, and are super excited to hear your feedback.

This version of the Crumbs app includes the essential features like rounding up your purchases into twelve crypto assets (currently MTL, BTC, ETH, XRP, BCH, EOS, LTC, ZEC, XLM, XMR, ZRX, DASH, ETC, BAT, and REP), setting up recurring buys (weekly and monthly), checking live crypto price charts, tracking your portfolio, and cashing out your crypto into USD. Our priority during the beta period is gaining user feedback, squashing bugs, and improving the stability and performance of Crumbs.

We take all of the valuable feedback and insights we receive from our supportive community to heart, and will implement many of your suggestions in future iterations of Crumbs. There are already some very exciting new features in the works that all started from user requests!

If you have any feedback or criticisms on how we can improve the user experience, please reach out to us on Twitter (@crumbsappio), or feel free to email me (Patrick@crumbsapp.io) or tweet me @patrickmro_.

To all of our early users: we’re very grateful for your patience and support, none of this would be possible without you. 🙏

Link to Play Store Beta 🤖 https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.crumbs.crumbs

Link to App Store Beta 📲 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/crumbs-app/id1294821136?mt=8
Conversational AI and its Impact on Future Consumers
By: Shyamala Prayaga
Tags: Voice Assistant, Conversational Ai, Voice Shopping, Conversational UI, Customer Experience

As many as 10.8% of smart speaker owners have used them to buy groceries, eMarketer reports.

Even when people don’t use their voice-enabled devices to make the final purchase, they use it ‘shop’ around and discover their options 26% of the time.

Conversational AI is at the heart of this.

It’s the tech that makes it possible for users to speak to their smart device as they would with a person, and be understood well enough for this kind of functionality to work.

To define it, conversational AI is the combination of AI and natural processing, and it leverages data to automate communication between a human user and a machine. And this is done to an accurate enough extent that the dialogue resembles human conversation.

Commerce is one of the areas where conversational AI is finding application, and that poses interesting questions about the consumer experiences of the future.

Typical Use Cases for Voice Assistants and Chatbots

With user adoption at 3.25 billion people worldwide, there are varied uses for conversational AI, especially where consumers are concerned.
Unit Testing made easy in Go
By: Uday Hiwarale
Tags: Go, Golang Tutorial, Programming, Golang

Like cells are the building units of our body, likewise, unit components make up software. Similarly, as the functioning of our body depends on the absolute efficiency and reliability of these cells, efficiency, and reliability of a piece of software depends on efficiency, and reliability of the unit components that makes it up.

So what are these unit components? They can be functions, structs, methods and pretty much anything that end-user might depend on. Hence, we need to make sure, whatever the inputs to these unit components are, they should never break the application.

So how we can test the integrity of these unit components? By creating unit tests. A unit test is a program that tests a unit component by all possible means and compares the result to the expected output.

So what can we test? If we have a module or a package, we can test whatever exports are available in the package (because they will be consumed by the end-user). If we have an executable package, whatever units we have available within the package scope, we should test it.
Trust issues: Why consumers hesitate before hitting the ‘buy’ button
Tags: User Experience, Customer Experience, Retail, Ecommerce

Jason Goldberg’s keynote was one of the highest-rated sessions Shop.org’s 2016 workshop. See the entire presentation on YouTube.

Walmart’s “order online and pay with cash” program was designed to appeal to unbanked consumers, but showed that a huge number of customers would go out of their way to pay at a store with a credit card instead of using the same card online. What can retailers do to make shoppers feel more confident? SapientRazorfish’s Jason Goldberg shared several proven tactics:

Processing fluency

Our subconscious brains trust sites that look better, which is why retailers should follow best practices in user experience, display overt trust symbols like BBB logos or security icons and make sure contact details like phone numbers are easy to find.

Social proof

People want to follow the lead of others who are similar to them. In simpler times, that meant avoiding empty restaurants. Now consumers rely on Yelp and other review sites, making social proof more valuable than brand when it comes to influencing purchase decisions. Customer reviews on product pages are a baseline expectation, and smart retailers are finding ways to make reviews even more valuable. For example, Adorama Camera invites people who have purchased cameras and accessories to answer questions submitted by shoppers who are considering the same purchase, and Target’s Awesome Shop spotlights products that are popular on Pinterest.

Absolute value

Brand was a shortcut for quality in the past, but now we use real data. Easy access to data makes brand less important than ever. When it’s easier to evaluate the quality and value of what retailers are offering, brand loyalty becomes less important. Retailers can rise to the top by being a source for product ratings, ingredient lists and other types of product information, and providing tools that help customers make smart decisions.

Transparency

Customers now know just as much or more about products and pricing as retailers and manufacturers, so the old world’s obfuscation models don’t work anymore. There are many examples of retailers providing previously hidden information to increase transparency and earn customer trust: Meh.com displays traffic and conversion stats on its homepage, Amazon notifies customers when prices change on items in their cart and Everlane includes pricing and cost information on product pages.
Who Let the Dogs Out?
By: Background Noise Comics
Tags: Comics, Humor, Alabama, Food, Travel

Written by

Daily comic by Lisa Burdige and John Hazard about balancing life, love and kids in the gig economy.
Starting a Minimalism Journey
By: Anaïs Schlienger
Tags: Purpose, Minimalism, Growth, Self Improvement, Life

Disclaimer, I am getting into minimalism because it is a trend. I don’t care how influencers live their life. I just know, deep down inside of me, that I need a clear space to live, and that I need to get back to what is essential. I feel overwhelmed pretty easily. When there is too much around me, in my head, or waiting to be done, I start stressing out and spending my nights thinking about it.

Minimalism is a way for me to feel better, safer, and free. My minimalist approach won’t be the same as yours, or as this particular book writer. It is something personal, and it is up to us to make the concept our own.

Learn. Read Books About It.

Reading is an unlimited source of experience and knowledge. Every time I want to dig deeper into something, I find that reading reference books and articles about the subject is the best way to do it.

Of course, I am going to turn to Marie Kondo, for the basics, and I have a bunch of saves Medium articles on the subject. Also, some personalities like Matt D’Avella and Just Joe Lee are inspiring me.

Minimalism is only a leading principle, and there are many ways to apply it to one’s life, and each of us can have a different approach to it. I want to learn more about other people’s experiences. To do what worked for them of not, and which approach is the best for me, as a working student.
Achieving successful separation
By: Finn Jackson
Tags: Leadership, Leadership Development, Conscious Leadership, Change, Change Management

Separation is an important part of growing

In a world filled with change, it is often not the physical changes we find difficult but rather the emotional and psychological impacts of letting go of the way the world used to be and shifting to a new reality.

Kodak didn’t fail because it couldn’t make digital cameras — Kodak actually invented the digital camera, in 1975. The company failed because it was so emotionally tied to its identity as a chemical photographer that it couldn’t take advantage of its own innovation. It couldn’t let go of its old identity. This left a huge opportunity for others to fill.

The owners of Starbucks saw themselves only as sellers of coffee beans and coffee-making equipment. Before he could change this to create the global chain of coffee shops we know today, Howard Shultz literally had to buy the company from them.

Successful adaptation, both personally and in business, requires us to manage our psychological and emotional transitions.

These come in three stages the first of which is called Separation.

Separation is about getting closure for a part of our lives that is over. It is about letting go of the way the world used to be and turning to embrace the new possibilities.

We can do this by recognising the good things the past has brought us (skills, resources, and lessons learned) and by creating an inspiring vision of how we will rebuild what matters most. Ritual also plays a part.

Before we can take on a new role or identity, we first have to let go of the old one. Only then can new results be delivered.

When did you last experience a major change in role or identity? Did you find you had to accept and let go of your old identity before you could fully step into the new one? Would it have been useful to have known how to do that faster?
In Rehearsal
By: Zach J. Payne
Tags: Poetry, Theatre, Self, Life, Passion

I swallow him: his eyes and song and voice,

and hypnotize myself into a state

of listening, absorbing every choice

he’s made, the prayers he’s uttered, wipe the slate

of self away, his bones become my own

the scoliosis and the heart attack;

no easy transformation, bend and groan,

consider the minutiae, every slack

of muscle, every word to him prescribed.

Now weight it all and shape the living clay —

but carefully! A writer once contrived

the shape of him, so wander not away

but step beneath the light and speak as him,

leave not a single flourish to mere whim.

This story is a response to Prism & Pen’s writing prompt Little Pleasures Lost and Found.

Other stories so far
Entering to the world of programmatic buying with me
By: Yenting Lin
Tags: Advice, Programmatic, Advertising, Digital Marketing, Mentorship

I’ve joined this world for a period of time, and I am truly grateful to the people who introduced me the opportunity. Especially to the people who’ve ever taught and shared with me, and I’d like to find a way to pass down the learnings.

That's why I am writing this post, and I'd like to keep writing as long as there's something worth knowing, learning and sharing.

Sign up to receive the updates directly from me.

Stay tuned.
Is Anyone Sleeping in this City Now?
By: Pablo Pereyra
Tags: Pain, Stream Of Consciousness, Prose, Insomnia, Creative Humans

Stream of consciousness — In response to Lindsay Lonai Linegar Write Through the Pain prompt.

Photo by Juan Rojas on Unsplash

The clothes over my skin. My lungs expanding, the diaphragm trying to push beyond the thoracic cavity towards the abdomen. The silence of the night when no one can sleep, my lack of will to enforce a curfew when there is no school. My lack of ability to inspire my children beyond the curated digital world of a fake reality, a fake pink pastel.

Don’t judge me. Or do. This is an exercise.

Am I breathing like I mean it? Like when I hear the turbulent air down my oropharynx as I hike up the hill. Who am I lying to, I’m not running. It is just the form of running. It’s two in the morning, and no one can sleep. Are we all waiting for the ax to fall, or do we have stories to be told?

The guinea pigs munch their food behind me in their cage. Don’t judge, just don’t get them as pets.

The city has its own silence at night. But it’s missing the tires speeding down the street at the time when no cops will show up. There is a certain electrical humming behind the more present grinding of the guinea pigs eating. A door closes as someone used the bathroom. Is anyone sleeping in this city now?
Rabbit Plagues, Genetic Algorithms
By: Mark Cleverley
Tags: Biology, Data Science, Computer Science, Evolution

What if I told you we have a massively complex, multi-threaded optimization function simultaneously running on trillions of distributed biological computers that update their own hardware and software — and it’s all solar powered. Sounds too good to be true.

It is. That function’s called evolution, and it doesn’t seem too compatible with our computers (without human intervention designing better computers).

However, we have some ways of emulating the efficiency of evolution: Genetic Algorithms are a way to emulate natural selection using math.

The evolution I’m fond of is punctuated equilibrium, which is much more rational than gradualism. Species don’t change much unless they need to, because there’s no room or reward for doing so. An environment-transforming event occurs, and in the ensuing vacuum, change happens rapidly until efficiency plateaus are reached.

Now consider a maximization/optimization function that you ran once, and it gives you its best solutions. Run it again, and it won’t change (probably). Change the parameters, and suddenly there’s room for change.

The core idea of genetic algorithms is the comparison, combination and induced variation of multiple individual solutions to a given problem.

The steps: population, fitness function, selection, crossover & mutation, ending in eventual convergence and termination. We begin with a population of individuals.

Modeling Historical Bunny-Related Issues

In 1859, Thomas Austin brought 24 European rabbits from England to Australia, and released them into the bush to create a population for hunting. 70 years later, there were 10 billion rabbits in Australia.

Rabbits living in the outback are environmentally problematic. They’re suited to their environment: the low-lying vegetation is suitable for grazing, they lack indigenous predators, and they reproduce at exponential rates. They’re an invasive species that cause hundreds of millions annually in crop damage and drive indigenous endangered species closer to extinction, the little bastards.

So we’ll model our genetic algorithm as a sample of Australia’s rabbit population, individuals containing ‘chromosomes’ comprised of ‘genes’. We’re representing their DNA as binary strings.
Interview with John Furrier
By: Fred Krueger
Tags: Workcoin, Freelancing

in In Fitness And In Health
✎ Life hacks
By: Whitney O Banner
Tags: Twitter

Hi, I’m Whitney. This is a newsletter full of tweets from my feed. Tap the tweet to view its thread.

You, human, do not. Here’s a newsletter!
Bisk Investing in Your Financial Future
Tags: Company Culture, Tampa, Employee Benefits, Orlando, Bisk Healthy U

You’ve probably heard that being financially secure takes hard work, determination and time. Here at Bisk, our employees have helpful resources available on-site!

For the past several months, employees have been receiving information and tips on becoming financially successful. We’ve dived into many topics, including saving for retirement through the Bisk 401(k), budgeting, identity theft and credit.

Employees from the Tampa and Orlando offices had the chance to attend seminars hosted by The Society for Financial Awareness (SOFA). The one-hour workshops allowed us to ask questions, talk openly and get feedback on ways to eliminate debt.

Here is what some employees had to say about the seminar:

“The seminars were informative, relevant, and knowledgeable. The presenter we had was personable!” “The seminars covered a variety of topics and helpful tips that you can use every day.” “The knowledge the instructor had and the quick easy ways to help you start to get your finances in order were very helpful.” “Please have more sessions!”

Employees attending the seminars received a Bisk financial folder that included presentation notes, a handy-dandy Bisk notepad, and a Bisk piggy bank, and were also entered into a raffle. Winners won finance-related games such as Monopoly, Payday and The Game of Life.

Gifts and More Gifts!

The fun didn’t stop there! Employees were given a worksheet activity to encourage their children to track their spending and save their money. Teaching kids the foundations of finance can establish good money habits for life.

Employees also had an opportunity to meet with our 401(k) advisers and ask questions about their contributions, as well as receive personalized information about their retirement.

We hope this campaign helped pave the way to financial strength for each employee here at Bisk.

Written by Magda
Code Smell 49 — Caches. Caches are sexy. They are a one-night…
By: Maximiliano Contieri
Tags: Programming, Cache, Caching, Code Smells, Clean Code

Code Smell 49 — Caches

Caches are sexy. They are a one-night stand. We need to avoid them in a long-term relationship.

Photo by Aimee Vogelsang on Unsplash

Problems

Coupling

Testability

Cache invalidation.

Maintainability

Premature Optimization

Erratic Behavior

Lack of transparency

Non-Deterministic behavior

Solutions

If you have a conclusive benchmark and are willing to pay for some coupling: Put an object in the middle. Unit test all your invalidation scenarios. Experience shows we face them in an incremental way. Look for a real world cache metaphor and model it.

Sample Code

Wrong

Right

Detection

This is a design smell.

It will be difficult to enforce by policy.

Tags

Premature Optimization

Conclusion

Caches should be functional and intelligent.

In this way we can manage invalidation.

General purpose caches are suitable only for low level objects like operating systems, files and streams.

We shouldn’t cache domain objects.

This page is hosted on a cached website.

Relations

More Info
Season of Loss: Processing the Forced Closure of My Family’s Small Business During a Global Pandemic
By: Natalia Brown
Tags: Family Business, Business, Small Business, Pandemic Diaries, Covid 19

My mother poured all of herself into building this business from a mid-shower brain child. Although likely too young to fully understand the weight of the moment, I vividly remember her nervous posture when she first told me about the idea. I remember sitting beside one another in thoughtful silence as we brainstormed the concept and mission that would define the brand.

Fast forward several months, my brother and I were tagging along during the maze of early planning, interviews, and logistics — often literally hustling to keep up with the pace of it all. Nothing has yet to match her laser focus, meticulosity, and unrelenting work ethic in every aspect of the business development.

As I got older and grew into my role, I became most involved in crafting the curriculum that was the lifeblood of this venture. It is still difficult to describe how I felt when I found out we’d be opening the first brick-and-mortar store. Having our very own footprint in the community seemed like a massive jump that was still light years away.

Needless to say, it all became real very quickly.

My first day in our store was spent building wooden stools that would soon be seats for thousands of junior scientists. The stools wobbled, squeaked, and stood in for tables during our construction day lunch picnics. I remember feeling so official as we selected furniture, met with designers, and planned signage. There was so much joy and pent-up anticipation as the grand opening day approached. I vividly remember working our quirky little popcorn machine that celebratory afternoon.

Over the years, I watched my mother lead this business with unmatched grace and tenacity. I met kids with fervent curiosity that still motivate me to be a more diligent scholar and empathetic communicator. I gained a great appreciation for the character of my community and value of collaboration from my incredible coworkers and all of our customers. I’ve contributed to my fair share of family arguments on meaningful business decisions, late-nights, and emergency re-stocking runs. I have gained a greater sense of purpose and clarity in my own work, and I’ve had the unmatched pleasure of watching my mother blossom into an exemplary entrepreneur and professional.

In the wake of servicing hundreds of grateful parents and educators, thousands of gleaming young eyes and curious minds — I am unsettled by the closure that has forcibly disrupted years of my mother’s wholehearted work and sacrifice.

She and the other entrepreneurs impacted do not deserve this ending.
Google Trends, Part 1: Beware those underestimating Democratic primary campaigns by Stacey Abrams, Beto O’Rourke and Bernie Sanders
By: Andrew Eldredge-Martin
Tags: Politics, Stacey Abrams, Bernie Sanders, Presidential Campaign, Beto Orourke

A Google Trends analysis of five big names considering runs for the Democratic nomination suggests that Stacey Abrams, Beto O’Rourke and Bernie Sanders have been able to distinguish themselves vs. other major unannounced candidates.

Google Trends, 12/15/18 to 2/16/19

Google Trends indexes search interest on a relative scale from 1 to 100, comparing the interest between the terms or topics in a given analysis.

Former Georgia state legislature minority leader and gubernatorial nominee Abrams was the clear leader in this group hitting 100 on this index when she gave the official Democratic State of the Union response.

Former Texas U.S. Representative and senatorial nominee O’Rourke was in second place in this time period with a score of 47 when he counter-programmed President Trump in El Paso, Texas.

Current U.S. Senator Sanders twice broke out with scores of 43 during news around his likely presidential bid in late January and 30 for his alternate State of the Union response. Also, looked at in aggregate, Sanders had the most overall search interest over the whole time period — just a little lower at peak times than O’Rourke and Abrams.

Former Vice-President Joe Biden, who leads in many public opinion polls nationally and in early states, has not broken through in the same way during this period. His highest index was 10 out of 100 during this period.

Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg faced similar hurdles, topping out at 4 out of 100.

There are too many great Democrats considering the 2020 presidential campaign to include everyone in a single analysis — and of course this is only looking at search traffic and is a single snapshot in time.

Update: Read Part 2 on geography here. And Part 3 here!
§60 Ways of being, seen
Tags: Davinci, Mass Tourism, Art, Museums, Mona Lisa

Visit any of Europe’s art museums or sites of historical interest and you will find hordes of people who flew hundreds (sometimes thousands) of miles to see works by Rembrandt, da Vinci, Monet, Van Gogh, Michelangelo. Having thrown their entire being across the world, these philistines insist on observing their experience through their personal digital devices. A majority, it now seems, flock to stand in front of these original works despite a copy being available a few clicks away through the same technology they extend by arm or selfie-stick.

This practice makes it clear that such tourists are less concerned with actually seeing these works and sites as they are being seen with them. As gaggles of them line up to take selfies with the Mona Lisa, or self-portraits of Dutch masters, we are witnessing the most recent phase in mass tourism’s ruination of any capacity to appreciate an art work: to stand before a picture in awe, consideration, disgust or indifference. It is becoming increasingly impossible — whatever time of morning you make it to an exhibition or popular historical site, to see the thing without being faced by those that have come to capture their own seeing.

In Note §35, Martin McNulty brought attention to the way that the material reproduction of works of art has taken on an intensified register in the age of digital reproduction. Digital media’s capacity for visual trickery has removed a work from its natural or curated context. In extending Berger’s case, the likes of Instagram and other highly visual platforms impact on the way we see and ultimately understand images. This trend is becoming even more intensified as the use of such technologies become the foremost medium through which our everyday is experienced, and our culture’s concern is more with that we are seen and can perform our seeing rather than see the thing itself.

/Pete Watt
『週額５０に仮想通貨で』００６ーICOでひとつなぎの大秘宝を探しましょう。
Tags: Bitcoin, Eos, 日本語, Ethereum

in In Fitness And In Health
MAYBE MILLENNIALS DON’T EAT CEREAL BECAUSE IT’S TOO DAMN EXPENSIVE
By: Ester Bloom
Tags: Cereal, Food, Millennials

MAYBE MILLENNIALS DON’T EAT CEREAL BECAUSE IT’S TOO DAMN EXPENSIVE

$5.50 a box? For WHAT?

As you may recall, I’m more pregnant than an elephant, which means I waddle around, exhausted, crying over children’s cartoons, and dealing with various food cravings. One thing I find I reliably want: cereal. I dream of easy comfort food in a bowl that I can eat with my fingers — I’ve never been one to sully cereal with milk — in an action that reminds me of being a kid myself and getting taken care of instead of having to do the care-taking.

There is, however, no cereal in my pantry right now. Is it because I’m yet another lazy-ass millennial who think cereal is “inconvenient” and can’t be bothered to wash a dish, as the media would have you believe?

NO. It’s because, around me, cereal is ridiculously overpriced. The cereal I like best, the one I grew up with and which has such a calming effect on me that my grandparents would stock it for when I stayed with them and my mom would send me boxes at summer camp, is Kellogg’s Product 19, and I don’t know what those various 19 products are but one of them must be uranium because it costs nearly $6 a box at the supermarket closest to me.

At the 2nd closest supermarket, it’s $5.50. WHAT A STEAL.

Cereal is made of wheat, corn, oats, and rice, all ingredients the USDA subsidizes like crazy as part of the Farm Bill instead of fresh fruits and vegetables, and then it’s padded with wood shavings and topped with more corn in the form of HFCS. It is not exactly a gourmet food experience. Why then is Kellogg’s charging me more than it would cost to buy a dozen free-range organic eggs?

Maybe this is my fault for having high-brow taste in cereal. If I were content with Froot Loops, I could follow my nose to Target or to the drug store, where cereal can often be found at a markdown. (Fun fact: each individual froot loop tastes exactly the same, regardless of color.) The great Lindsey Weber broke down this for us some years ago.

But, because I’m no longer six, I prefer seemingly wholesome and more filling stuff like Barbara’s, and look! Even on the Internet, it’s expensive.

Why should a box of Puffins cost almost $6? I’ve gotten shoes for $6.

The only place left that carries good, filling, and seemingly wholesome cereal for reasonable prices is Trader Joe’s. I wonder whether their sales are steady, even among the younger generations. I would bet they are. Because maybe Millennials aren’t lazy; maybe we’re just either broke or too smart to get taken in by the idea that $5.50 for a box of government-supported agriculture, hamster cage shavings, and sugar is a good deal.