fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Don’t Wage War with a Worker Hive
By: Herschel Kulkarni
Tags: Product Strategy, Product Management, Core Competency, Go To Market, Covid 19

One important skill for a Product Manager is the ability to sell your innovations within your organization. Yes, you did user research. Yes, you have data to back your hypothesis. But how do you build a coalition around your idea so it has the legs to launch? A lot of dynamics play into this; one of which is working within your company’s cultural and organizational boundaries to get your product idea to the finish line.

Your company’s competencies and values are built unconsciously over time, but they are not necessarily labeled and communicated. Internalizing them helps your team creatively exercise those competencies. As a PM, you can successfully build coalitions around product strategies ONLY if you play within the boundaries of these competencies.

Swords or shields? — a timely example

Let’s say your enterprise SaaS company has some financial runway during the COVID-19 pandemic, you have some pathways forward, including:

Flex the warrior bee. Strap heat and take over neighboring hives — e.g. undercut the competition’s prices to gain market share. Channel the worker bee. Focus on providing value to existing customers — e.g. delight customers by helping them navigate the uncertainty.

Some companies gravitate to the ‘flex the warrior bee’ strategy - mobilize a task force to identify competitors who, unlike you, have been running “paycheck to paycheck”, and offer their customers your solution for pennies, bleeding competitors dry. Sneaky, right? This allows you to come out of this crisis with your foot in the door with 3–4 new enterprise customers, ripe for expansion.

Other companies turn inward, focused on keeping and expanding existing customers — solve complex problems for your very large customers. Use your worker bees to build and nurture strong relationships, and leverage them to weather the storm while your competitors (who have taken more risk) struggle and fail.

What kind of company is yours?

Of course it’s not black and white, but organizational identity oozes from the fabric of your strategy and culture. Here are a couple indicators:

How does your executive team communicate strategy? If your primary success metric is market share or growth over retention and adoption, you might be a warrior hive. How is your company built and where is it investing? Do you have a large sales and marketing team? Or are you heavy on engineering and customer success?

My name is Herschel, and I am a worker bee

As a PM, you have to internalize what kind of hive you’re living in to have high impact and influence. You have to label it. Label it loud and proud, and you will align yourself with your organization’s competencies.

You then will think up product strategies that you can sell and your team can execute on. Your engineers will build software that scales in the direction your customers need. Your marketing team will blast out messages that your target market will resonate with.

Embrace the worker bee, and go forth delighting your customers with good product thinking.
Alone but not lonely (most of the time) - 2
By: Akhila Krishnan
Tags: Alonebutnotlonely, Single, India, Documentary, Women

KADAK is a collective of South Asian women who work with graphic storytelling of different kinds. 'Kadak' means strong, severe, sharp - like our tea.

Follow
The Remnant of Ash
By: Ani Vidrine
Tags: Personal Growth, Mindfulness, Metaphysics, Spirituality, Poetry

The Remnant of Ash

Poems From The Porch

photo by Niklas Tidbury on Unsplash.com

It is not the Autumn leaves that are gliding gently to the earth this morning,

but white wisps of ash floating upward to the heavens.

Eventually settling,

they land silently, like snow that later melts away.

The crackling of the fire is an obvious counterpoint

to its mute remnants,

who are sleeping everywhere on the porch floor.

Now the black cat resting on a lounger

is freckled white.

She doesn’t seem to notice.

Ash is a byproduct of burning,

a consequence and a residue,

like my brief presence on this planet.

For truly I am known only by my effects,

flakes of ash left over

from the passion of Love

igniting the wood of my soul.

I am grateful to be the tender for Love’s combustion,

to give myself freely to Love’s flame.

This poem is a remnant of my burning,

whose intent is to spark the fire of Love

within you;

knowing always that the wood, the blaze, and the ash

are One and the same.
Half Drag
By: Doug Bierend
Tags: Representation, Nonbinary, LGBTQ, Drag, Queen

Half Drag

Photographing New York City’s drag queens at the intersection of their identities.

The premise of Half Drag is simple. Photographer Leland Bobbé’s striking, gender-bending photo series captures New York City drag queens with half of their faces done up in full regalia, the other half au naturel. The result, achieved without any digital effects, is a collection of portraits that put the visual iconography of gender into striking juxtaposition.

There is also a harmony, a wholeness within each split image. In each side, one naturally sees echoes of the other. The traction between the two poles of gender expression suggests that gender itself is anything but either/or. That’s not to say that the two sides in these images aren’t very distinct.

Indeed, Bobbé suggests holding up a card (or just your hand) to cover one side of each image at a time. The contrast is startling. “People have told me that the male sides in these photos seem vulnerable, the female side with the makeup and jewelry are so powerful,” he says.
Syntropy
By: Stephen C. Rose
Tags: Consciousness, Philosophy, Entropy, Life, Syntropy

Syntropy

It is amazing that this has been up for years with but 1800 or so views. Syntropy is a natural intuition by anyone who reflects on things whether aware of consciousness as a term or not. Entropy has always been an offense to intellect, not because it is not real but because it is only part of reality. Yet it is the coup de grace of those who believe that objectivity is all there is. Enough of this. The ideas in this video need wider circulation. Please post any added references that will aid further development of syntropic understanding.

These two videos belong together. Both of them deal with the future as the source of the present. I am almost tempted to add something pataphysical to suggest the seeking of freedom in contemplating some implications of thinking beyond the pincers of materialism. Don’t get me wrong. Only from such a beyond can one love stuff properly.
My Christmas Wonderland
By: R Tsambounieri Talarantas
Tags: Christmas, Holidays, Photos, Chance Encounters, Memories

Merry Christmas and the Happiest of New Year’s to all my friends here on Medium and around the world.

Many of these decorations were my mother’s, I am so hopelessly proud to still feel her elegance around me when I display them.
Why You Should Say Goodbye to the Classic Bar Plot for Survey Data
By: Hannah Wnendt
Tags: Data Science, Data Storytelling, Surveys, Likert Scale, Data Visualization

The challenge

One of my former employers once asked me to visualize psychometric test results of leaders who were going to attend one of our workshops. Proud of my statistical knowledge, I have created a Boxplot which he printed out and come to me wondering: “Hannah, thanks for creating this, but what is it? Is this an intelligence test?”

What?

And we both laughed. I realized that my plot was meaningless to our audience without a proper explanation. It is our job to reduce complexity and present the results in an intuitive manner.

Another time, I worked in a project team which explicitly asked me to produce Bar Plots for Survey data and they had very specific ideas about all the details. As I was working under a lot of time pressure and did not yet have the right words, I just did what was asked for — feeling very unhappy about the outcome, although I actually went the “simple” way. But what was wrong? And what is a better way to present Likert-data in a concise and comprehensible manner?

In the following sections, I have sketched my course of thought for you with a little case-study. Imagine you were interested in your clients’ personal attitude towards Christmas. Accordingly, you run a quick survey with 50 participants. The items you came up with are the following:

Christmas has become only another occasion for excessive consumption.

Being with my family is the thing I enjoy most about Christmas.

Christmas does not really matter to me.

If I needed to choose, Christmas would be my absolute favourite holiday.

The amount of stress around Christmas exceeds the amount of joy to me.

I could not imagine to abolish Christmas as a national holiday.

Christmas has religious meaning to me.

Respondents answer on a 5-point Likert-Scale, ranging from “Strongly disagree” to “Strongly agree” for each respective item. After a while, you have collected enough data and need to visualize the results. How would you approach this?
Bugged by the dating scene…
By: Andy Anderson
Tags: Comics, Relationships, Dating, Humor, Funny

Looking to add some funny to your feed? Follow this page for new cartoons every week.

Follow
Introducing UPI and IMPS deposits with Zero Fee
By: Shubham Yadav
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Android, Crypto, Bitcoin, Blockchain

For the last few weeks, we have been working on bringing back a seamless trading experience to Indian cryptocurrencies environment. 5 days ago, we announced the listing of Zilliqa and 0x tokens. We have received a huge response from the community and we are very thankful for the trust that you have in us.

Today, we are honored to give back the community what they deserve the most!

Coindelta announces the free deposits through IMPS and UPI (All Banks) which will go live from March 21, 11:00 AM.

The key points to be noted are as follows:

1. Only UPI and IMPS will be supported.

2. There will not be any deposit fee.

3. The bank details will be available on my wallet page. Refresh or remove your cache if you do not see the details tomorrow at 11 AM.

4. For UPI, only Tez will be supported. In case you do not have this application you can download them by clicking the following link:

Tez (Android): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.nbu.paisa.user

Tez (Apple Store): https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/tez-a-payments-app-by-google/id1193357041?mt=8

5. A unique number will be required (and mandatory) to make deposits through IMPS and UPI. You can find your unique number in my wallet page under INR deposit section. The unique number must be put in the remark while making deposits.

6. If you are using any app other than Tez, make sure it supports sending remarks.

7. Please note that NEFT and RTGS will not be supported as of now.

Listing of KNC Token

We are also announcing the listing of KNC token which is a utility token in the Kyber Network. Kyber Network is a new system which allows the exchange and conversion of digital assets. You can convert your ERC-20 tokens instantly by going to https://kyber.network/.

The KNC wallet will be activated on March 21 at 11 AM with the market going live (KNC-INR) at 2:00 PM.

PS: The month isn’t over yet. Stay tune!

Cheers,

Coindelta Team
Rust: A Black Woman’s Story of Growing Up in Northeast Ohio
By: Tara L. Conley
Tags: Black In The Midwest, Midwest, Rust Belt, Women, Racism

Stories coming from mainstream press about Black and White life in the Midwest often get distorted. Decades of industrial decline and the war on drugs helped shape these narratives. But drug addiction didn’t start when Donald Trump was elected; neither did White economic anxiety. The economic downturn in Northeast Ohio began decades ago when steel and automotive industries left town. Family members struggled with mental illness and drug addiction long before these were considered national crises, and a scarcity of local resources and unemployment had a lot to do with it. It’s true that Black and White families suffered. Though, in comparison, Black families were less likely than White families to recover from economic decline and high unemployment. When White people managed, Black folks endured.

Over time, Rust Belt neighborhoods like Elyria appeared stuck in a Norman Rockwell painting, except buildings that were once quintessential landmarks of an idyllic, bustling town became dilapidated and abandoned. In this world, there is no burgeoning middle class, and Black people aren’t seen in the foreground of American life. This vignette appears in American politics too. Despite the fact that two of the largest counties in Northeast Ohio, Cuyahoga and Lorain, voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, many of them Black voters, Whites who voted for Trump remain the sole face of the Midwest working class in Northeast Ohio.

And perhaps for this reason, as a way to feel unstuck and write my own story, I left Northeast Ohio after high school.

I am a child of the Loving Generation. My experience of class in Northeast Ohio was greatly influenced by my father’s racial privilege and my mother’s blue-collar work ethic. Growing up in a working-class family meant financial stability was temporary. My parents had good jobs that didn’t last. They were pro-union. They were also an interracial couple in a newly desegregated world. They were firsts. My mom was the first Black female lineman for the Elyria Telephone Company in the 1970s, and my dad, a White superintendent at General Motors, advocated for Black workers to organize and receive fair treatment in the workplace. They married in 1979, 18 years after the Supreme Court decision Loving v. Virginia overturned laws outlawing interracial marriage in the U.S. Though their marriage was legal, our family still had to navigate overt racial discrimination in Northeast Ohio.

Though they didn’t know it at the time, my parents engaged in a tactic that early civil rights groups used to bring attention to racial discrimination in housing. My dad was the family’s tester. He scouted rental properties around town because my parents had a better chance of renting a place if the landlord knew a White man was signing the lease, not a Black mother. My experience, although not the norm, underscores the psychological harm families endure when Black women aren’t valued.
Learn about peacebuilding and other interfaith groups on December 16.
By: Rebecca Sealfon
Tags: Peace, Cooperation, Peacebuilding, Religion, International Relations

Learn about peacebuilding and other interfaith groups on December 16. The United Religions Initiative (URI), a worldwide consortium of more than a thousand peacebuilding and other interfaith groups, is celebrating its new Cooperation Circles (CCs) over Zoom on December 16. One is a group I maintain, Quora’s Israel-Palestine peace forum Unity is Strength. I expect to attend and speak for one minute about just a few of the many things we have done. Reach out to the contacts on the image below if you would like to join.

Here is more information about Unity is Strength and how I came to start this forum.
I Replaced The Word ‘Millennials’ With ‘43-Year-Old White Men’ And Now These Headlines Are *Italian Chef Kissing Fingers Gesture*
By: Amanda Rosenberg
Tags: Humor, Tech, Millennials, News, Men

Why Are So Many 43-Year-Old White Men Having Zero Sex?

— NYMag

How 43-Year-Old White Men Are Ruining The Workforce

— Philly Mag

Proof That Fancy Job Perks Can’t Keep 43-Year-Old White Men Happy

— Fortune

Why Are So Many 43-Year-Old White Men Having Children Out Of Wedlock?

— The Atlantic

The Hot New 43-Year-Old White Men Trend Is Hating 43-Year-Old White Men

— VICE

Is The Future Of Your Church Doomed Without 43-Year-Old White Men?

— Christian Post

How Tumblr Plans To Pay 43-Year-Old White Men To Blog

— Inc.

Why Are 43-Year-Old White Men So Hard To Manage?

— Forbes

Martha Stewart Still Confused About What 43-Year-Old White Men Are Exactly

— Vanity Fair

UK Businesses Don’t Understand ‘43-Year-Old White Men’

— Campaign Live

Why Aren’t 43-Year-Old White Men Buying Diamonds?

— The Economist

Kendall Jenner Urges 43-Year-Old White Men To Vote For America’s Next President!

— WWD

Weak Hands? Weak Body? 43-Year-Old White Men Lose Grips

— USA Today

Country Music Proves That 43-Year-Old White Men Are More Patriotic Than You Think

— Forbes

Churches Using Pokémon Go To Get 43-Year-Old White Men In Pews

— The Boston Globe

I’m A 43-Year-Old White Man And My Generation Sucks

— New York Post

Why Employers Need To Empathize With ‘Entitled’ 43-Year-Old White Men

— Fortune

And of course…

Why Are 43-Year-Old White Men So Obsessed With Food?

— The Atlantic
Prioritizing Diversity Is Whose Job Again?
By: Hiba Ganta
Tags: Programming, Tech Ethics, Diversity In Tech, Diversity, Ethics

As a technologist, you’re unconsciously trained to segment people into personas and groups based on their behavior or demographics. Segmentation allows for personalization, and personalization is what the layman can and should expect. Technology should meet an individual where they are in their user journey: I co-sign that type of experience 100%.

Personas are a tool that has always sounded nice in theory, but, if I’m being brutally honest, has not been taken out of my PM toolbox all that often. The impact of well-mapped and deep user personas is not felt immediately by a product team in a for-profit business. If you’ve read up to this point, you should already be able to guess where I’m going with this: Grouping humans based on a logic that is not properly informed will, eventually, result in deepening and spreading systemic inequality.

In order for these personas to be truly representative, you, as a technologist, need to have an uncanny ability to question bias and identify your own lazy assumptions and heuristics to understand users better. There are reasonable heuristics or shortcuts you can take when building something, but thought needs to be given to how wide you’re casting the net and doing your research. Testing and validating with only those people around you and those you’re familiar with will result in problematic design. Any and every tech team or data scientist has the bandwidth, if they choose, to visualize the diverse spectrum of target users. We choose not to. It’s easier not to.

A thousand shortcuts without a breadcrumb trail behind you can lead you too far off the path.

Normalizing diversity on a macro level requires that it be normalized the way our technology is designed, given how deeply digitized our lives are. This is the level of influence that technologists hold. Race and diversity issues need to be decoupled from being solely an HR/marketing initiative and become a design imperative. There will never be enough space made for this if product teams don’t lead on this front.

If you’re reading this and work in tech, think about the side of history you want your product to be on. Think about the part of the future you’d like to help shape. Don’t reduce your work to being a forgettable app that takes up space on phones. The world needs smart technology that automates all the functions of a society we actually want to live in.
Succumbing
By: Jordan Michael Becker
Tags: Poetry, Love, Sonnet, Passion, Poem

Sometimes I wish that I could get enough

of you, your laugh, your hands, your voice, your skin,

that I could feel the wind blow twice as rough

and not demand a stronger gust begin.

But as it stands, this fervor charges forth

toward unforeseen, inevitable ends.

My south has now disguised itself as north,

and every pathway forward only bends.

As frozen planets fly around their sun,

so madness orbits passion, I suppose.

The evergreen against the fire has won,

for underneath the ash, a forest grows.

So fragile as my pounding chest may seem,

unconscious is the only way to dream.
Articles That Touched a Nerve
Tags: Sexuality, Infidelity, Love And Sex, Cheating, Affairs

Articles That Touched a Nerve

Will they affect you?

Image per author

These are a few of my articles that seemed to touch a nerve.

I am just tired of pretending to be happy.

Just Fuck IT-itus.

Ready to call it a day and be real.

When a cookie is NOT better than sex.

I don’t care what food group, it’s a no brainer. Sex wins.

When lovers disappear.

Surviving a drought.

This year was the toughest, driest desert I had been in since starting affairs.

My body. It’s been a battleground of self-acceptance.

I’ve won and lost many times through the decades.

I’m desirable and then I’m not. I value myself only when men want me.

Wasting time.

I have wasted far too much.

Looking for a lover has left me tired and jaded. It’s not worth it, I conclude.

Until, I get horny again.

I’m way too picky, I’ve discovered. I want what I want in a lover.

And I’m tired of not finding it.
Twisted Haiku Fairy Tales
By: Jason Mcbride
Tags: Poetry, Flash Fiction, Haiku, Fiction, Fairy Tale

Poet’s Note

I’ve never gotten too old for fairy tales. I hope my children never do either. I’ve been bugging my older children to read Michael Chabon’s Summerland. I know they’d love it. But, they’re at the age where all parental recommendations are considered suspect.

I started listening to the audiobook version with my younger two children and even though we are only in the first chapter, they are captivated.

In his introduction, Chabon explains the power of fairy tales. Humans continue to retell the same stories, each generation putting their own twist on things.

To me, the core of a good fairy tale, folk tale, or tall tale, is its horror. The best stories frighten us, make us laugh at our fright, but stay with us enough to make us worried about hanging our arms over the edge of our beds at night.

Haiku seems the perfect way to put my twist on a few fairy tales. The stories are so familiar that 17-syllables is enough to make the allusion to the original story clear, and still have enough room to tweak it a bit.
Gender Dysphoria Story Shared
By: Pierre Trudel
Tags: Theequest, LGBTQ, Autobiography, Love, Transgender

Thee Quest loves to share moments with others. We are a publication that loves to highlight people’s lives during their Quest.

We all have a story and some of us need to tell others. Thee Quest is the place to share with others how we feel.

On coming To Terms With Being Trans is all about Abbie. It is her story as she wants us to see it. Thanks, Abbie for being you!
How to Use Google Managed Certificates on a Google Cloud Load Balancer
By: Leonard B. Butz
Tags: Https, Certificate, Google Cloud, Load Balancing, Gcp

What you need:

Load Balancer that you want to have HTTPS enabled

Some workload, backend or website that should receive HTTPS traffic

A domain that you want to secure. The DNS entry for the domain must already be set up to point to the Load Balancer's external IP address.

Steps to a managed certificate:

Please read through the whole article before you start. Just to make sure that you understand all steps so that you don’t end up with a broken domain, website, or Load Balancer.

The procedure is normally risk-free, but some down-time of your services is to be expected. Open the Load Balancer that you want to secure and click the Edit button

3. Open the Frontend configuration of the Load Balancer, click the HTTPS tab in the accordion on the right. In there, open the dropdown for the Certificate. Click on Create a new certificate.

4. In the new mask, enter a name for the new certificate. Select Create Google-managed certificate and add the domain into the appearing text field.

Note that you can add multiple domains to the same certificate. For this to work correctly, all domains must already be set up so that their corresponding DNS “A” entries point to the external IP of the Load Balancer that you are editing right now.

Click Create to finish this step.

5. Make sure that the newly created certificate is selected as Certificate for the HTTPS configuration of your Load Balancer.

To finish this step, click on Done.

6. To finish the Load Balancer configuration, click on Update.

Here goes nothing!

7. The Load Balancer will now add your newly created certificate. This can take a few seconds. Just reload the page of the Load Balancer a few times until you see the certificate for your HTTPS rule on the Load Balancer.

The new certificate will show up as PROVISIONING after creation. It can take up to 10 minutes for the certificate to become ACTIVE.

Once the certificate is in state ACTIVE, it can take another 10 minutes (it took once even 35 minutes for me) for the new cert to really “kick in” on the Load Balancer.

That’s it; your Load Balancer is now HTTPS secured.
The Story of Data — Issue 1. This week we look at data journalism…
By: Correlation One
Tags: Inspiration, Data Science, Data Visualization

Welcome to the first issue of The Story of Data. This is where we help you level up your data communication skills with learning resources and inspiration.

Resources

How to make visual, data-driven essays

The Pudding is an award-winning data journalism publication and they created this guide about approaching the design of visualizations. We really like the step-by-step approach and the examples of the essential process of iteration.

Introduction to Datapane

This article introduces a Python library that lets you easily build embeddable and sharable interactive reports. We think it’s really important to create dynamic representations of your work that others can explore by modifying parameters.

Visualizing Survey Data

This article covers best practices for visualizing different types of survey question types. A good review if you don’t normally deal with this type of data.

Get Inspired

Liverpool on the cusp of Premier League glory

We really like the Financial Times annotated visualization of Liverpool’s season.

Compare that to FiveThirtyEight’s coverage. A world of difference!

—

Movie Waves in 21st Century

Visualizing box office data is a pretty common project in data science, but we thought this was a fresh take on an old favorite.

—

How Cable News Reacted To The Cohen Hearing

We felt bad for bashing on FiveThirtyEight earlier, so here’s a really interesting way to depict word clouds from them.
Commercium — White Paper v.2
Tags: Blog, Commercium, Announcements, Cryptocurrency, White Papers

Executive summary

Consumers are consistently using the digital environment to transact. The expanse of digital transactions covers a wide arena of industries and sectors with a plethora of services, products and value transfer. Commercium is designed for the consumer of the digital environment and modern world, with an emphasis on capital & commerce markets.

Commercium comprises of cryptographic proof dual blockchain, decentralized and purpose built for real world uses with functionality enabling individuals and business entities to intuitively, and confidently facilitate and operate several electronic financial instruments and activities securely.

Commercium’s ecosystem consists of cryptocurrency & blockchain technology architectures combined with business architectures segmented to facilitate seamless integrations for the electronic (digital) environment and serve as a conduit of physical assets into the electronic environment. This is achieved within being a store of value and value transfer through electronic financial instruments of contracts, swaps and swaptions, private equity interests, ISAs, which are created, modified, traded and settled within the commercium ecosystem.

Through its ecosystem Commercium will harness, being a store of value and value transfer in additional areas such as wealth management & death care markets. Aiming to work with and develop partnerships with regulatory bodies and create necessary entities as it continues to evolve. Modernizing blockchain and realizing the benefits of technological advancement starts with consumer level accessibility and delivering the tools that meet the demands of corporate and regulatory frameworks.
Find your own way
By: David Hope
Tags: Flow State, Water, Haiku, Tao, Evolution

I think therefore I write. I have an MA in Creative Writing. I write fiction and short thought pieces. There is more about me and my other work on LinkedIn.

Follow
Support Vector Machines — Thinking like vectors!
By: Dhruv Aggarwal
Tags: Algorithms, Support Vector Machine, R, Data Science, Machine Learning

Photo by Chiplanay on pixabay

Support vector machines work well in high dimensional space with clear margin or separation thus thinking like vectors.

Support Vector Machine(SVM) is a supervised non-linear machine learning algorithm which can be used for both classification and regression problems. SVM is used to generate multiple separating hyperplanes such that it divides segments of data space and each segment contains only one kind of data.

SVM technique is useful for data whose distribution is unknown i.e which has Non-regularity i.e data in spam classification, handwriting recognition, text categorization, speaker identification etc. I listed applications of support vector machine with it.:)

This post is about explaining support vector machines with an example, demonstration of support vector machine on a dataset and explanation of generated outputs of demonstration.

What lies behind SVM with example?

Picture exclusively created

In Support Vector Machines, we plot each data as a point in n-dimensional space(where “n” is the number of features) with the value of each feature being a value of a particular coordinate. Then, we perform classification by finding hyperplane that differentiates the classes.

Example

Consider a dataset containing Apples and Oranges. So, to classify them, we use Support Vector machine ad labelled training data on plane.

Photo by Sarah Gualtieri on Unsplash

A support vector machine(SVM) takes these data points and outputs the hyperplane (which is a two-dimension line of equation y = ax + b) that best separates the tags. The line is called the decision boundary i.e anything that falls to one side of it is classified as Apple and anything that falls to the other as Orange.

The hyperplane(Two-dimensional line) is best when it’s the distance to the nearest element of each data point or tag is the largest i.e specified on maximum margins.

Picture exclusively created

All points on the line ax+b=0 will satisfy the equation so, we draw two parallel lines ax+b=-1 for one side and ax+b=1 for the other side such that these lines pass through a datapoint or tag in the segment which is nearest to our line, then the distance between these two lines will be our margin.
Mathematics Hidden in a Prayer Book
By: Aven Desta
Tags: Archimedes, History, Mathematics, Discovery, Ancient History

On July 16, 1907, the New York Times published a story with the headline — BIG LITERARY FIND IN CONSTANTINOPLE; Savant Discovers Books by Archimedes, Copied About 900 A.D. The article was referring to the newly discovered Archimedes Palimpsest. The palimpsest contains two yet unknown works of Archimedes — the greatest Mathematician, Physicist, and Engineer of ancient Greek.

Like other findings in history, this one has a story to tell. Only this time it’s a big one. So let's ask, how was it discovered? how did such work survive this long? what does it contain? and where is it now?

(whisper: Jeff Bezos bought it, probably)

1. Discovery

The ancient book seen above is a Medieval Christian prayer book made from a goat parchment. The book was made and kept in Mar Saba — A monastery between Jerusalem and the dead sea — around the 13th century and contains a prayer for repentance, for the sick, and a child naming ceremony.

Mar-Saba monastery by franzreinicke from Pixabay

For anyone who closely looked at the prayer book, however, there is another hidden text and figures underneath the prayers. The book is a palimpsest —a page from which the text has been scraped or washed off so that the page can be reused for another document

In 1906, Johan Hieber, a professor of Philology and expert on Archimedes' work, went to Constantinople to study the mathematical work underneath the prayers and concluded it was the work of Archimedes.

Johan Hieber published his works in 1915. And his work was translated into English by, T.L.Heath — a mathematician who also translated Euclid’s work.

Thanks to Johan Hieber and T.L.Heath, the book is now the oldest digital book on Google books.

But to everyone’s surprise, seven years later, the manuscript went missing in the midst of the evacuation of the Greek Orthodox library in Istanbul. (more on this later)
Nesting Doll
By: Jessica Niziolek
Tags: Peace, Acceptance, Nesting, Dolls, Let Go

Photo by Opsa, via Pixabay

Painted smile you give.

Keeper of lost dreams faded.

All broken in sea-salted tears.

Never fall out…

Accepting goodbye.

Nesting doll

You there still.

Instead, you are stoic.

Never to hear a tiny sound.

In peace, you let go.
Solitaire Sipped
By: Third Act
Tags: Breakups, Poetry, Prose, Divorce, Loneliness

Source: Jacob Rank

Phone in hand.

Tears cascading.

Cards flipped.

Solitaire sipped.

Rehearsing how it might go, I was overwhelmed with grief. Thirty years I had honored, protected, and loved her. Now I imagined, how our most difficult exchange might flow.

What reaction would there be, when I announced, my resignation to divorce; concluding the need to move on; companionship and comfort I longed.

Could she possibly imagine, the excruciating pain, from even brief contemplation? Would she call me an abuser, in search of misogynistic sex, or would she understand my deep need, for emotional connection and support; the same she once provided, but no longer could.

Rejection stands.

Relationship failing.

Memories scared.

Solitaire sipped.

On me, divorce visited despair. In darkness, there was no hope of repair. Some days, more time in the fetal position than standing. I needed someone to hug me and tell me everything would be ok. The woman who had done so for 30 years, now refused. In a huddled mess, I would sometimes reach out for help, but then I would pull back, fearing my vulnerability exposed, would be used against me in court. Worse still, I felt a burden. For both our sakes, someone needed to take her place.

Love forsaken.

Quivering limbs shaking.

Connection taken.

Solitaire, no mistaking.

Oh great Cupid,

You bludgeoned me stupid.

Lonely hand,

I’d like to lose it.

In darkness,

My heart be gripped.

Pucker my lips,

One more time,

Solitaire sipped.
Announcing the Casa Lightning Node
By: Michael Borglin
Tags: Lightning Network, Cryptocurrency, Crypto, Bitcoin

Announcing the Casa Lightning Node

The easiest way to use Lightning available today.

Greetings from Michael Borglin and Thomas Connors of the Lightning Ramp team!

Today we are pleased to finally reveal two big secrets:
Plastic Toys Are Not Allowed in My House
By: Mindy Morgan Avitia
Tags: Family, Parenting, Life Lessons, Feminism, Motherhood

Plastic Toys Are Not Allowed in My House

And other dumb things I said before I had a kid.

Photo by Susan Holt Simpson on Unsplash

Just five short months ago, I was 8 months pregnant with my first child. Since I had an out of hospital birth, everything had to be prepared when we got home, only eight short hours after her birth. My nesting kicked into overdrive the last 6 weeks of my pregnancy.

My mom was in town indefinitely to help.

All my bottles and nipples were stored in labeled bins, “slow flow, medium flow, fast flow.”

Diapers are organized neatly on her changing table.

All of her clothes hung and stored by size, labeled, of course.

A full drawer of burp cloths ready to catch any craziness that may come out of her

And like any first-time parent, I was both over-prepared in ways that I didn’t need to be and drastically under-prepared in other ways. Breastfeeding was relatively easy for both of us, so she rarely bottle-fed. So many bottles are stored in labeled containers that have never been used still.

She also rarely spits up, so the drawer full of burp cloths is really just taking up perfectly good dresser drawer real estate.

As for my mom and the diapers — both of them were needed.

What was most unsettling for me during pregnancy was that no matter how much I planned for my daughter’s arrival, there would inevitably be things that I didn’t plan for. Like the number of onesie pajamas she actually needs (way more than expected). And how terrible muslin blankets are for swaddling, even though they look so much cuter. Velcro swaddles for the win, always.

I also loathed the idea of primary-color-sound-making-terrible toys. You know the ones. The ones we 90s kids grew up on. I remember my brother had a helicopter that made the most piercing sound that even I, as a toddler, wanted to throw in the trash.

These noise-making-not-developmentally-sound toys did not fit the aesthetic or learning environment I was building for our daughter. They were not allowed, I vowed.

Parents, are your eyes rolling in the back of your head yet?
How I Scored a UX Designer Job During the COVID-19 Recession
By: Claire Johnson
Tags: Job Search, UX, UX Design, Job Hunting, Covid 19

How I Scored a UX Designer Job During the COVID-19 Recession

Amidst the chaos of a global pandemic and economic collapse, I devised a strategy that brought me three offers in three days.

Photo by Matthew Henry from Burst

At the beginning of 2020, which most of us now remember as the calm before the storm, I decided to begin seeking new job opportunities. I was working as a contractor at a large company and I was hoping to find work somewhere else in a full time position. Also, I wanted to relocate. I figured there would be better opportunities — both professional and personal–outside of my mid-sized midwest city.

As soon as I decided it was time to refine my resume and start seriously applying, COVID-19 came to the United States and caused our economy to fall hard–and fast. The unemployment rate rose from 3.5 percent in February 2020 to 14.7 percent by April 2020. A whopping 42% of U.S. adults report that someone in their household had either been laid off or taken a pay cut from their job due to the coronavirus outbreak.

I was extremely fortunate to have been able to remain employed, with the added privilege of working from home.

But still, I was disappointed that my plans to find a new role seemed to have been thwarted. My prospects were bleak: a junior designer with two years of experience in a city with an underwhelming amount of opportunity and a tanking economy. I decided to search anyway, but with low expectations.

In the spring, I made use of my time at home in quarantine by overhauling my portfolio. I added more case studies and refined the design with a new WordPress theme and created a new resumé to match. I spent entire weekends in front of my computer

Once I was satisfied with my portfolio and resume, it was time to start applying.

The many hours that I had previously used for a portfolio makeover were now being dedicated to searching and applying for jobs. I scoured LinkedIn, Google Jobs and Indeed daily. I applied to any UX or Product Designer role that didn’t require 3 or more years of experience in the two or three cities I was interested in relocating to.

I kept my phone nearby in case someone would call. I refreshed my email constantly. I heard nothing.

I didn’t receive any responses, except for the occasional generic “Thank you for your interest. We have chosen to move forward with other candidates”. I prefer these to no response at all.

I wasn’t going to give up. As a UX Designer, I knew that solving problems required strategy. I decided to be more strategic with my job hunt.

I developed a new approach and within one month I received not one but three job offers in three days. Here’s a breakdown of the necessary steps for having a successful job search during a recession.
The Doup of the Duopoly 💸
By: Henry Gruett
Tags: Technology News, Technology, Night Shift Newsletter, Technews, Tech

Newsletter #2: 12/25/20

Welcome back! I’m surprised you didn’t unsubscribe after that first newsletter but I won’t judge. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

War and Privacy 🔫

Apple is releasing changes in the next version of iOS that would require users to opt in to being tracked by apps like Facebook. Facebook is, understandably, not happy about the move. They tried to play the small businesses card in that the less targetted ads would hurt small businesses (and them of course). Apple responded that they’re standing up for the consumer. It’s not looking good for Facebook.

Best Buds… in Crime 🤝

Facebook and Google have apparently made an agreement to monopolize (or duopolize) the ad industry on the web. And Texas (of all states) is suing them over it.

Facebook has now started running full-page newspaper ads in protest to iOS 14. I can’t think of a more 2020 statement than that.

And who can forget the EU being… the EU.

Maximum Content 🎧

Apple’s latest AirPods Max still have more info coming out on them. Here’s some interesting stuff on the new headphones (including an article by your’s truly):

This is also a really good review of AirPods Max by Snazzy Labs:

Russian Bear Troubles 🇷🇺

Using a backdoor in some IT software from SolarWinds, there have been reports of many government agencies and companies, including Microsoft and The Nuclear Weapons Agency, being hacked. It’s possible these hackers have had access to internals since March of this year. While the hackers remain unknown, it’s suspected the attack could’ve been operated by the Russian group known as Cozy Bear.

Microsoft has since addressed the attack on their blog:

Buffing Up 💪

Reports are showing that Microsoft is working on their own ARM chips, following in step with Apple Silicon. They’re apparently working with Qualcomm to modify the chips they already have made. It should however be noted that while it’s possible the chips are being developed in the Azure branch of the company, not surface. The chips are meant for their cloud computing servers, but could possibly be integrated into Surface products.

Slow Day I Guess 🐌

The Verge released an article about how you can turn the calculator app sideways to open up a scientific calculator on your iPhone. Definitely not their proudest moment.

So Long 2020 🥳

That’s it for this week. The next newsletter will come in 2021! Happy holidays!

🧇
[UPDATE] The new Simplified COSS Fee Structure is here
Tags: Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Ethereum, Coss Exchange, Bitcoin

“We cannot become what we want to be by remaining what we are.”- Max Depree

COSS is a user and community-oriented exchange and that means designing everything around the user to give them the best experience possible.

We launched the best crypto trading fees in the world yesterday.

A lot of things are under development — a tedious process — in our effort to bring the most to the community. Integrating new features requires a lot of discussions, planning, designing, followed by the execution of the idea. Then begins the testing process to ensure that we roll out an upgrade and get cracking with the next thing. Not complaining though, since all this hard work is going to pay off.

COSS developers have recently been at work to introduce a simplified trading fee deduction system. Here is an overview of what it was like earlier and what’s changed.

Until today, when a user traded an asset pair, COSS charged trading fees from both assets in that trading pair.

Do you know what this means? Over a hundred trading pairs of approximately 80+ cryptocurrencies generated us fees in as many assets. You can only imagine the time and energy that went into decluttering this mess. The Fee Split Allocation (FSA) was also being executed by the DAO with these assets.
Which ending verse would you rather
By: Harper Thorpe
Tags: Humor, Poetry, Writing Prompts, Love, One Line

Instead of love-making from dawn to noon

I’d rather sing love songs that make you swoon

But if you’d rather make love ‘til you swoon

My feelings aren’t hurt, you’re singing my tune

Or if you’d rather that dawn to noon thing

I’ll lose the guitar, and play the box spring

Or if you’d rather make love all damn day

Just this time, I’ll let you have it your way

Inspired by Michael Stalcup’s prompt, Would you rather, and as always, thanks to Kathy Jacobs, our host!
Neighbors Twice Daily
By: Gwen Saoirse
Tags: Rural, Photography, Trains, Street Photography, Neighbors

Neighbors Twice Daily

Street Photography Challenge

My street, or is it the forest’s scar? — photo by me

I grew up in rural America. Attending a large university was a culture shock I was ill-prepared to handle, but I successfully adapted to the strange, people-filled world.

Future cider mill — photo by my daughter

One of my friends once shared with me that he was worried about his girlfriend traveling home to her corner of rural America to see her family. This was in the pre-cell phone age, and the thought that she might get stranded in the country with car trouble terrified him. His perspective was alien to me; I couldn’t imagine a safer place to be stranded.

Where I live, fences are intended to keep things in, not out — photo by my daughter

Despite acclimating to college and apartment life, I sought out the familiarity of the countryside to raise my family. There are only eight houses on my two-mile-long road. After ten years, I still have not met my all of my streetmates.

The cracks in the tire were there when I bought this tractor 15 years ago, and it still holds air today — photo by me

Things do move a bit slower where I live.

In the warmer months, I like to take my morning coffee on the front porch so I can listen to the birds. At bedtime, I enjoy listening to the frogs through the open bedroom window.

It's amazing how different the songs are, the only changing variable is the time.

You won’t find any rust on the tops of these tracks — photo by my daughter

One thing doesn’t move slowly here. Twice daily, the Amtrak blasts by our house at around 80 MPH. The tracks are located about an eighth of a mile down the road.

The coyotes will herald the coming night train several minutes in advance. While I barely register the blaring train horn anymore, I’ve never quite grown accustomed to the insane cackles of the coyotes.

I wonder if the train’s passengers can hear them too, my neighbors for thirty seconds, twice a day. If my college friend were aboard that train, I’m sure the eery sound would make him want to wrap a protective arm around his girl.
Measuring
By: Martino Pietropoli
Tags: Digital, Drawing, Humanity, Illustration

Did you find this article interesting?

If you liked it and if you feel like it, leave some claps to help whoever wrote it to pay his Lamborghini Urus.

Thank you!