fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Announcing the Winners of the Data Labeling Contest
By: Radiant Earth Foundation
Tags: Annotations, Data Challenge, Satellite Imagery, Training Data, Training Data For Ai

Representative hand-labeled task for the prize category, Best Quality Labeler.

Earlier this month, we organized a data labeling contest as part of the Cloud Native Geospatial Outreach Day sponsored by Planet, Microsoft, and Azavea. The contest was designed as a crowdsourcing campaign to encourage the global community to contribute to open-access training data catalogs. Participants were asked to identify cloudy pixels in Sentinel-2 scenes.

The labeling contest was conducted on GroundWork, Azavea’s annotation tool designed for geospatial data. We were amazed by the high participation worldwide and the community’s excitement to help develop a large-scale accurate cloud detection training dataset. In the end, 231 users around the world signed up and labeled 75,645 tasks, which equates to about 2 million km2 of classified Sentinel-2 imagery.

Several awards will be given to the top 83 contributors in six categories: Top Labelers, 3rd Place Labeler, Top Labeler from an African Country (who is not in the top 3 prizes), Top Woman Labeler (who is not in the top 3 prizes), Next 5 Top Labeler, Best Quality Labeler, and those with a minimum score of 10.

The Winners

The Top Labeler first prize is awarded to Solomon Kica (Uganda) and Jhomira Vanessa Loja Zumaeta (Peru). They each will receive a cash prize of USD 2,000, plus an open 50cm SkySat Image, tasked by each. We selected two participants for the top prize (and removed the 2nd Place Labeler prize) because their scores were incredibly close, a 3.6% difference, and both scores stood out from the rest of the participants.

Victor Ademoyero (Nigeria) wins the 3rd Place Labeler prize, Frank Anderson (Tanzania) the Top Labeler from an African Country, and Babalola Oluwabukola Kemisola (Nigeria) the Top Women Labeler. They each have won a cash prize of USD 200.

Mercy Akintola (Nigeria), Rami Soufli (Algeria), Erick Mnyali Tamba (Tanzania), Olanrewaju Michael (Nigeria), and Emmanuel Ogwal (Uganda) won the Next 5 Top Labeler prizes. They each will receive a cash prize of USD 60 or Hoodie.

All participants had excellent submissions, but some went above and beyond with their dedication and quality work. So we decided to add a new prize category for the Best Quality Labeler. Jon Engelsman (USA) wins this award, which is a cash prize of USD 500.

A total of 72 participants received a Minimum score of 10, winning a cash prize of USD 20 or a t-shirt. The winners in this category are listed below.

Thank you to everyone who participated in our data labeling contest and helped to make it a success! We will send you an email in the next couple of days with instructions to claim your prize.

The map shows the location of data labelers around the world who participated in the contest.

Minimum Score of 10 winners:
I’m a bullet in life’s gun
By: Nadia Camandona
Tags: Museums, Journey, Artist, Hr Giger, Art

Don’t forget that in the Museum you cannot take photos, only in the shop. What a pity! Maybe you think. But reflect: when you go to a concert and you watch it through your phone’s screen, don’t you lose the soul of your experience? Yes, sure, I craved a photo with Giger’s painting background, but if I did I would have lost the need to fill my eyes, my brain and my heart with his masterpieces. You know that only your soul will remember the detail that you cannot see in a book or also in your photo.

I sit down in front of his masterpieces and I drawn all the details that I wanted to take with me. It was one of the most intense experience I could do, as an artist.

Taking the emotions after a day spent inside the Museum. Video by ©Diego Caravana

I stayed in the Museum from the opening to the closure (with an obvious break at Giger-Bar). Eight wonderful hours. Wandered in the rooms, sit down, drawing, watching the impressive video, although they spoke in German and the subtitles were in French… but I didn’t know either of them (but I’m from Turin and a bit of French flows in my veins). This didn’t stop me crying during the scenes where fans approached him, already old and sick, to show all their respect (and also their tattoos!) and to bow to his talent.

I’ve never felt more like a bullet in the life gun than now. His Birth Machine at the entrance represents how I feel. How everyone must consider their passage in this life. My life has completely changed in these last years and the visit to Giger’s Museum has been a reference point, not only in my artistic life. No one who wants to explore one of the deepest meaning of the greatest life scary mystery can avoid this visit (no one knows if this is right).

My greatest regret is not having met him personally but his steps accompanied me along the rooms. His genius is alive through all the people who work to manage the life of his Museum.

This is not a Museum for everyone but this is its uniqueness. And you, are you ready for Giger?
Solidity Fundamentals
By: Ferdi Kurt
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Ethereum, Smart Contracts, Blockchain, Programming

Unsigned math operations should be carefully examined. There are some scenarios that need to be watched for as they can cause havoc in production, for instance, multiplication of two unsigned integers can cause overflow, or subtraction of two unsigned integers can result in underflow.

Later in the contract security section, we will handle these type of scenarios using open source libraries like Open Zeppelin’s SafeMath.
It’s Over
By: Jeff Bailey
Tags: Communication, The Message, Photography, Failure, Broken

A gathering place for stories to be told, read and appreciated.

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Blondes, Bottles, & Brass Knuckles: The Legacy of Phillip Marlowe
By: Wess Haubrich
Tags: Crime, Movies, Cinema, Culture, Film

Especially with the untimely death of powerhouse character actor Powers Boothe, no discussion of Marlowe’s legacy would be complete without him and Philip Marlowe, Private Eye.

Powers Boothe opposite Kathryn Leigh Scott.

Boothe was one of the best in the role of Marlowe, second, in my view, only to Bogart himself. His version of Marlowe is such a departure especially from Elliott Gould’s satirical version in The Long Goodbye (1973), and even from the great Robert Mitchum in Farewell, My Lovely (1975) and the remake of The Big Sleep (1978), which should have been put in the same category of “untouchable” films that should have never been remade. Mitchum, I think, would have been better in those Marlowe roles had he been younger when they were made.

Marlowe (2017)

We have seen a sampling of the best Marlowe portrayals on both the small and big screen. Where might we see Marlowe and the private investigator as a whole, in the 21st Century?

Writer William Monahan (The Departed) has penned the new Marlowe screenplay based on Benjamin Black’s novel “The Black-Eyed Blonde”. A quote from Monahan to Variety gives me great hope for the film: “‘The book by Benjamin Black was a pleasure to adapt, and with Marlowe there’s no chance of even being asked to do it left-handed,’ Monahan said. ‘You have to do Chandler justice, carry a very particular flame, or stay home.’”

What gives me pause about Marlowe, however, is the casting choice. Liam Neeson is attached to the project as Marlowe. Neeson is an incredible actor, no doubt about it, but I wonder if he may be too clean, and not possess enough grit in his soul to really nail the part of Marlowe.

I would love to be pleasantly surprised there in Neeson’s portrayal, and I will certainly go see the film, if for no other reason than the simple fact that it is Marlowe. It is also a very good thing that a big Hollywood star could rekindle the interest in such a bad-ass character and indeed in noir itself. That part has me very excited, and hoping such a great character, and, indeed, character archetype, will get big screen justice again.

Wess A. Haubrich is the contributing editor of the film section of The Nu Romantics and London’s award-winning culture website The 405. He is also a “top writer” in “movies”, “mental health” and “culture” on Medium.com. He can be reached on Twitter or via email: wess@thefourohfive.com as he is always looking for cutting edge undiscovered cinema especially and innovative forms of all kinds of art to bring to his readers by probing the minds of their creators in interviews and features.
Day 4: Land of the Temples and Weed
By: Varsha Kini
Tags: Travel, Travel Writing, Photography, History, Thegirlwithabackpack

There is just so much to write about this place, and I am afraid that I would not do justice to the beauty that is Hampi!

Of all the places I have visited in the past two years, this trip would be in the top 5 memorable ones.

When you go to a new place, you would want to list out places of tourist attraction, but what do you do when the entire town is a tourist attraction?

The entire town of Hampi seems to be in middle of nowhere and from the moment I entered, I was transported into a different era. With temples that are thousands of years old and pre-historic boulders (some as high as a 3–4 story building) strewn all over, this town is a time warp it itself.

Over the course of many photographs to follow, I will try my best to word my 3 day experience in this place.

Hampi is divided into two parts, with the brash Tungabhadra flowing between them. Today, both the parts are culturally, polar opposites of each other. One boasts of pre-historic temples and that’s where most of the locals stay; cross-over to the other bank of the river and you are immediately transported to a hippie haven where quaint cafes pepper the narrow lanes. Here, I met some of the most interesting people, some of them I am still in touch with.

This photograph is of the excavation site in the Temple side of Hampi (that’s how I address them, temple side and hippie side).

Earlier known as the prosperous town of Vijayanagra, this is a portion of the palatial complexes built over the 12th to 16th Centuries. This ancient city was one of the pioneers in bringing forth the Hindu arts and cultures. In this era, the global interest in Indian culture and arts grew exponentially, and even today, one look at the remainder of this city, and you’d know why so!

I spent about a couple of hours strolling through a slice of Indian history, imagining the grandeur it had once been back in the day!

Well I cannot travel back in time, but I will definitely go back to Hampi :)
JavaScript Algorithms: Valid Parentheses (LeetCode)
By: Anatolii Kurochkin
Tags: Data Structures, JavaScript, Algorithms, Stack, Leetcode

Description

Given a string s containing just the characters '(' , ')' , '{' , '}' , '[' and ']' , determine if the input string is valid.

An input string is valid if:

Open brackets must be closed by the same type of brackets. Open brackets must be closed in the correct order.

Example 1:

Input: s = "()"

Output: true

Example 2:

Input: s = "()[]{}"

Output: true

Example 3:

Input: s = "(]"

Output: false

Example 4:

Input: s = "([)]"

Output: false

Example 5:

Input: s = "{[]}"

Output: true

Constraints:

1 <= s.length <= 104

s consists of parentheses only '()[]{}' .

Solution

The best data structure here is stack . Because we need to check the right order of these parentheses. For example, if we have {][} the number of parentheses is correct, but the order is not.

So. the algorithm is pretty straightforward — go through these parentheses and if we see an opening character we need to push it to stack , if not (closing) - we need to check whether the top of the stack is a corresponding opening character.

Let’s look at the example below {[()]}

Let’s think about how we can optimize this solution.

Photo by Jason Strull on Unsplash

We can create a Set with opening characters and Map with closing to opening key-value pairs. Now, we can easily understand if it’s an opening one or not. And if not we can easily figure out whether the stack has the corresponding top with the opening character.

It looks better, but we can still improve it.
Research: Targeting Mental Models of Climate Change Risk to Facilitate Climate Action (MECCA)
By: Iccdi Africa
Tags: Climate Change, Flooding, Adaptation, Mitigation, Lagos State

In addition, the MECCA research project assesses the climate change risk perception among communities, how risk perceptions are shaped by socio-cultural influences and how they can contribute to facilitating appropriate responses to climate change.

We are very grateful to be supporting this initiative as we are very concerned about the livelihood of people in such communities across Lagos. We look forward to doing more in building community resilience and make Lagos a better place for all.
Challenging the myth of rape in court
Tags: Criminal Law, Sexual Violence, Womens Rights, Afghanistan

Written by SAHR member, Natasha Latiff.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has just published a new toolkit for lawyers and other professionals on strengthening medico-legal responses to victims of sexual violence. This toolkit addresses many of the myths of rape which we have been challenging for many many years.

One of the myths that we have been challenging in our work is that rape is not usually a violent crime committed by a stranger. In fact, most rapes are committed by someone known to the victim and most rapes do not cause genital injuries. As such, a medical examiner is not likely to observe genital injuries in the victim’s medical examination report. Sadly, the absence of physical and genital injuries has usually led to an adverse inference found against victims. We call upon health professionals, prosecutors and judges not to solely rely on evidence of physical or genital injury as an indicator of rape.

“Because many rapes do not involve a significant amount of physical force, in most cases of sexual violence there will not necessarily be any physical injuries. In non-conflict settings, only approximately one third of rape victims sustain visible physical injuries.”

It is up to lawyers to break the system’s pious reliance on genital injuries as conclusive proof of rape.

Some takeaways:
Jeanne D’Arc
Tags: Poetry, Poems And Stories, Ekphrastic Poem, Jeanne Darc, Poetry On Medium

Jeanne D’Arc

Poem

Hipolyte Delaroche 1825, ‘ Jeanne D’Arc in Prison’

My tongue coils around the shafted silence,

And burns like a thousand suns.

Here, it is said, is my strength.

It is in the shadows that I grow, and become.

I am whole, they say, because I am closed.

I speak mystery, agnostic soul-song.

The others, those who speak with tongues,

Fiery, noisome, clamorous,

Marvel at my silence, at my martyrdom.

How comes she by such powers?

They hang me by the rafters,

And with gentle lashes, watch me dance.

©Nikhil 2020
Our First Appearance at ITASA
By: Formosa Taiwan
Tags: Workshop, Blog, Itasa

This Saturday was OFT had the pleasure of hosting a workshop at the 2017 Intercollegiate Taiwanese American Student Association — East Coast Conference (ITASA ECC.) It was a milestone hit; an achievement unlocked. Since the founding of OFT, being able to hold a standalone workshop at ITASA had been Jenny and my dream. I had been to ITASA during my time at Rutgers TASA, and it was an amazing venue for Taiwanese American groups of different colleges to meet, and bond with each other while learning more about Taiwan.

Charles, one of our older team members, hosted the 2006 ITASA ECC at NYU as well. “Back then it was more about learning different aspects of Taiwan,” He would tell me as I told him about my personal experiences.

[caption id=”attachment_4215" align=”alignright” width=”300"]

Minutes before the workshop started.[/caption]

Learning different aspects of Taiwan. That was the idea OFT was founded on. This weekend, we brought a workshop on the basics of the trilateral relationship between US, Taiwan and China. Scheduled at the same time as two other amazing workshops (both focused on the Taiwanese identity, one through film and the other through writing), our workshop seemed a bit dry. As my team and I stood in the room waiting for the workshop time to start, I started worrying about how many people would show up. My worry turned to nervousness as students started coming in. It was the largest crowd we’ve had so far.

The workshop ended. Students started coming up to ask more. My favorite comment was actually from our workshop assistant, “This is the second time I’ve heard this powerpoint and I’m still learning now things.” Before our workshop was officially placed on the program, we did the workshop for the conference team as well. This comment was great because it meant we were constantly improving our message and it also showed that with each listen about Taiwan’s history, new things can be discovered.

This was our first ITASA appearance. It will not be our last.

Thank you 2017 ITASA ECC team for hosting us and allowing us to share not just information about Taiwan, but also our experience of exploring Taiwan beyond bubbletea and nightmarkets.

Learn more about ITASA here:
Guilt & I
By: Yaman Nimer
Tags: Guilt, Love, Depression, Poetry

I went thousands and thousands of miles away

not knowing where I am going and yet…

somehow you always find a way

to find me :

Caught

inside a thought,

eyes staring out the window, but

not really seeing anything.

hands on the wheel, but

not in control of anything.

as the shadow of every passing streetlight

crosses over my faceless face — a stunning undulation

between madness

and martyrdom.

and your voice whispers to me

“peace will find you when your heart is still.”

But I am never still,

I am

never

still.

— conversations between guilt and I
The Game
By: Ray Alez
Tags: Short Story, Fiction, Humor

Image by Lenn Waals

Prompt: You live in a small hut in mountains with insane internet speed and huge gaming rig but one day your PC breaks down and the closest repair station is 25 kilometres away and now you’re forced to face the beauty of nature.

I looked around. Resolution was pretty low compared to my VR headset. Textures were bleak, and lighting was mediocre at best.

I came closer to a tree covered in snow, sparkling under the sun. I touched it. I licked it. I smelled it. Yeah, I must admit that engaging senses other than vision was a pretty interesting approach. But it didn’t make up for the lack of content and quests.

Engagement was pretty horrible. The assets of trees were repeating for miles, with only minor variations.

I haven’t encountered any enemies, or magicians, or even a quest giver. Life seemed like a pretty pointless game without having much to do. Objectives weren’t clear, and goals were slow and boring to execute.

As I walked down the empty road, I saw some movement ahead of me. A bear? Finally, a mob!! I ran towards it, swinging my arms. He looked at me confused and a little scared, and then ran away. You’ve got to be kidding me!!

I chased it, slipped, and fell on the ground. Wait what? I didn’t see a healthbar anywhere in sight, but I definitely took some damage. Then I realized that I had no healing potion. A bear stopped, and looked around at me curiously.

Oh, shit. I’ve got no weapons and I don’t know how much hit points I have left. And no mana? Oh, man, this game sucks. AFK. AFK, I said!!

A bear was running towards me. Shit. F5-F5-F5!! There’s no keyboard, it’s not working!! How do I pause? Who designed this crappy UI?

Bear was close. Oh, well, whatever. I wonder where I will respawn.

As he attacked me, screen pretty quickly faded to black. “Game over” was my last thought.
An April Morning
Tags: Morning, Discipline, Nature, Rain, Poem

Alternatively, time could freeze

and I could write and look outside

Simultaneously -

Never miss a moment of this

The discipline of the rain

The stillness of the wind

I can see what is not there.

Treat all alike

This is the philosophy here -

It’s gone calmer

A garbage truck is heard

The morning is always calm

Definitive, no. Inaccurate.

I am certain

I am a fish and water is my joy.

Do you believe in these?

The mystics that unite us?

Water runs through me,

Uninhibited.

But green is my color,

Am I not a daughter of this Earth?

The wind is here

I see what now is there

The leaves sway

The drops have ceased -

Disciplined.
Puppy Pics and Savings Tips
By: Easy Simple More
Tags: Savings, Pets, Coupons, Kittens, Personal Finance

Puppy Pics and Savings Tips

Like saving money? Love cute puppies? Well, you’re in luck for the next 120 seconds of your life!

It’s time to power-up your interweb skills to get the discounts rolling in. Check out Piggy, a Google Chrome extension for automatic coupons (and cash back) at thousands of stores that you probably already shop at.

Now, are you ready to see something “awwwwww”some? Let the cuteness begin!

1. The City of Adoptable Angels

No-Kill Los Angeles is on a mission to save the life of every pet in the city, and you can be part of it. We swiped right on a few of the current cuties.
Listening to the Sox in New England: Red Sox Affiliates, Mapped
By: Stephen O'Grady
Tags: Radio, Red Sox

New England Red Sox Affiliates

Powered by Tableau

Like a lot of people, I catch a large number of the Sox games from the car each summer. Whether it’s visiting family, a long weekend away, or traveling for work, few things pass the time more effectively than a ballgame. At least for me. But nothing is more frustrating than getting to a critical part of the ballgame and losing the signal and then the game because you can’t find the local affiliate.

The last time we had this problem, the fiancée found and bookmarked the Wikipedia list of Red Sox affiliates here. This weekend found us traversing the green and white mountains, however, where neither of us knew from the list what cities or towns were actually close enough to pick up. In spite of being wicked clevah, I’d never considered that this was a problem with a solution. Fortunately, my fiancée is quite a bit brighter than yours truly and suggested that I map the affiliates.

So I did. I’ll see if I can tweak this a bit going forward to improve the usability, but in the meantime, if you find yourself in New England short of a Red Sox radio affiliate, we hope the above is of use to you.
I Was Forced to Come Out of the Closet When I Was 16
By: Itxy Lopez
Tags: Equality, LGBTQ, Sexuality, Love, Self

We were kissing on a friend’s bed.

She lifted her head and asked me, “Is it okay if I leave you a hickey?”

I said no because my parents would see it.

We’d been dating for exactly one month, but neither of our parents knew. Our friends knew, and anyone who saw us holding hands in the school hallway knew, but neither of us was ready to come out.

She was — is — bisexual, but I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t even know I liked girls until a couple of months before we started dating.

If my parents saw a hickey on my neck, I had no idea how they’d react.

Anyway, the kissing continued. Eventually, she lowered her head and started kissing my neck, and a few moments later she met my eyes, and with fake worry, she said she’d “accidentally” left hickeys.

My eyes widened, and I got up to look in the mirror. Sure enough, two dark marks were in visible spots on my neck.
The World
By: Vicki Nemeth
Tags: Life Lessons, Poetry, Free Verse, Dreams, Poverty

I was walking in the world,

the beautiful and terrible world

at the foot of an airy, rocky, woody mount.

The grass was gold and

the sky was blazing blue

yet it had rained to flooding just then.

Streams galloped down the mountain,

roared over rocks,

dragged driftwood.

I looked down

and the worms…

What else should they have done? Drowned in the saturated gravel?

Yet now the worms were swept by the stream,

battered against sticks and stones or

drowning in the undertow,

bleeding from the slices in their sides.

Here, on one rock,

one worm, not yet bleeding,

clings for dear life.

It tries to catch the other worms as they are swept by.

Each one it grabs it feels up and down:

Perceiving the latter’s wounds, it lets go —

Why risk being pulled down with one who will die anyway?

Yet the stream is long and the source far and full

for a worm.
The Biggest Unsolved Problems in Computer Science
By: Shalitha Suranga
Tags: Algorithms, Technology, Computer Science, History, Programming

P vs NP

Computers can solve various sorts of computational problems. In theoretical computer science, computational problems are divided into several categories such as NL, P, NP, PSPACE, etc. P-class refers to problems that can be solved in a deterministic Turing machine using polynomial time. Here, a deterministic Turing machine is an abstract computer that can execute instructions in a linear order. In simple words, P-class problems have reasonably fast algorithms on physical computers. For example, sorting a list of integers is a P-class problem since efficient sorting algorithms have O(n²) time complexity, not an exponential time complexity.

On the other hand, NP-class refers to problems that need a non-deterministic Turing machine if we need to solve them using polynomial time. Here, a non-deterministic Turing machine is an abstract computer that can execute instructions and decisions simultaneously. In simple words, NP-class problems have very slow algorithms compared to P-class problems. For example, the traveling salesman problem has very slow algorithms which are having exponential time complexities. Importantly, there is a polynomial-time algorithm to verify a solution for an NP-class problem.

The challenge is to prove whether P equals NP or P doesn’t equal NP. Most people (including me) feel P doesn’t equal NP but it cannot be easily proved. However, if someone proved P equals NP, it will be the biggest turning point for the computer since searching problems can be solved using amazingly faster algorithms and people will solve a lot of hard decision problems by using algorithms without machine learning like alternative solutions.
Meet the Color Platform Advisory Team Part 2- Vincent Gramoli
By: Color Platform
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Ethereum, Blockchain, Color Platform, Bitcoin

Last time we met Chris Howard, a seasoned entrepreneur and expert in all things technological. Welcome to the second installment of the blog series introducing Color Platform’s illustrious advisors.

It is axiomatic that today’s wonders become tomorrow’s punchlines. We often take for granted today’s ubiquitous, high-speed internet and so might chuckle at the thought of the telegraph as the world’s first information superhighway or even dial-up internet as its next incarnation. Like the telegraph and the internet, Color aims to be a new paradigm in how blockchain technology can help the average person can transact deals and communicate. For this reason, we are pleased to introduce Dr. Vincent Gramoli!

Vincent is currently a professor and the head of the Concurrent Systems Research Group at the University of Sydney, which focuses on distributed computing, and a senior researcher at Data61, the technological research wing of CSIRO, an Australian public research corporation. He has been affiliated with leading research institutions all over the world over the course of his career, including the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation, the University of Connecticut, Cornell University, the University of Neuchâtel, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, and National ICT Australia. He has spent his career studying blockchain-related computer science fields, including algorithms, distributed systems, and parallel programming.

Of his many notable research efforts, one of his more recent developments has been attracting global attention. Vincent is developing the Red Belly blockchain, a class-leading blockchain in terms of speed and security. It has proven capable of processing over 600,000 transactions per second, whereas blockchains like Bitcoin are only currently capable of processing 7 on-chain transactions per second (TPS) with current implementations. Even industry leading non-blockchain payment networks like Visa’s are only capable of processing less than 10% of Red Belly’s throughput. What is remarkable is that Red Belly’s performance increases the more participants there are on the chain. Furthermore, the Red Belly blockchain is safe from many traditional attack vectors because it is immune to forking, which is when two or more different versions of the ledger begin to emerge. It prevents a slew of problems, such as double-spending, which is when a user asserts their blockchain ownership rights twice. This security occurs by ensuring that there is a consensus among blockchain users before a new block is assigned.

Vincent’s expertise and experience in this field make him an invaluable resource to have advising our project. We believe Vincent, and advisors like him, will be key to keeping Color Platform on the cutting-edge of not just trends, but security and development that will help ensure Color stay secure, innovative and utilized ahead of its competitors.

Have a Colorful Day :)

Join the Chatroom to Learn More!
Constructores Semánticos / Named Constructors en PHP
By: Francisco Ugalde
Tags: Named Constructors, Refactoring Patterns, PHP, Software Development, Software Architecture

Senior Software Engineer | I love coding, software architectures and all new technologies. I’ll try to share, in an easy way, all the bits of my head.

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家具コンペ2019、審査結果の発表！
By: Fraze Craze
Tags: インテリア, 日本語, デザイン, 建築, 家具

in In Fitness And In Health
NE : The Neglected East
By: Anshul Pandey
Tags: My Thoughts, Delhi, Loksabha, Media, Mizoram

“India is going through it’s political semi-final”, proclaim some of the prominent media outlets, actively analyzing the political scenario in India on whether or not Congress would retain the states, on whether or not BJP would clean sweep and whether or not a new party in Delhi would pose a challenge to the national parties. Of special mention is the fact that Delhi election were treated in a manner that it is going to decide the national polls scheduled for next year.

Amidst all this analysis and panel discussions, one doesn’t find a mention of what is going to happen in Mizoram. Mizoram elections attracted almost no print or television real estate. All the prominent media panelists sitting in Delhi seem to care less as you go farther from Delhi. Obviously for reasons best known to media personnel Mizoram was the last on the agenda, probably because of it’s small size and distance from Delhi (farthest among the NorthEastern states) and that it is not going to affect anything in Delhi panel discussions or the LokSabha polls anyways. Mizoram was not even polled by the agencies doing exit poll analysis, except the special mention of IndiaTV-CVoter (the only agency I have heard) who cared to do some post poll analysis on Mizoram.

Stock markets too showed that it did not care about who wins in Mizoram. In fact the stock market did not even care if Congress was going to retain Mizoram, (according to IndiaTV exit poll analysis) since it surged ahead based on exit polls suggesting a big win for BJP (having a business friendly PM candidate) in other four states.

It personally took me some effort to go and find out about what actually happened in Mizoram polls, who is going to win, who are the prominent parties. Despite the painstaking efforts of our forefather to unite the country after it was in shambles post Independence, we often forget that NorthEast India matters and people there are as much Indian as from (supposed) ‘mainland India’.

With the increasing number of students and economic migrants coming to Indian metros from seven sister states, there still seems to be a prejudice against them evident not only in form of crimes but that our own government had to intervene to protect Indians from Indians. One can only be sad when MHA has to issue an advisory stating ‘zero tolerance’ policy for crimes against people from NE. It was a sorry state when NE people had to leave their own country to relocate to their own land.

And despite all the rhetoric in espousing the cause of NE, there is little evidence to suggest that things are changing on the ground. There is negligible understanding about the people from NE in other parts of India because we have chosen to neglect it.

It irks me when we blame westerners/outsiders for our problems, but behave like westerners to our own people from the east. Probably a day would come with our collective efforts that we would have at least one chapter in study books, one program on television, one article in newspapers and a real place in our hearts devoted to the land that brings light to India.
CRUD With a Desktop Electron App
By: Pavel Ilin
Tags: API, Electronjs, Programming, JavaScript, Electron

CRUD With a Desktop Electron App

Performing operations in our Electron app

Image source: Wikimedia

Last week I wrote an article about creating basic desktop applications with Electron. Today we will talk about performing CRUD operations in our application.

FYI, CRUD is an acronym for create, read, update, and delete operations.

While we don’t have a real API, we can use the JSONPlaceholder fake API. All requests that are going to be sent to this API will get a response as if we were working with a real database, but there are going to be no changes on JSONPlaceholder’s end.

Let’s get started with an HTML file:
The Power of PS4’s “Dreams”
By: Joshua Gad
Tags: PlayStation, Gaming, Art, Features, Virtual Reality

Last year when it went into early access I was happy to give it a try. The game offers two modes, a creation mode and a browsing mode called “dream surfing” that allows you to explore the Dreams other people have created. As a game designer comfortable with modern game engines, I wasn’t exactly the master Dreamer I had hoped to be.

When you’re able to create what you want in Unity, Unreal, or other tools, learning a console-specific motion-controlled engine doesn’t exactly have the most bang for your buck. The creation tools do have a natural flow to them once you get used to it, and like any game engine, it just requires a bit of practice before you know where everything is. However, I did have fun just messing around trying to paint things.

Ultimately I settled on being a Dream surfer rather than a creator. The best part about Dreams is that you can find just about anything on there, from totally imaginative and interactive original experiences to hilarious meme-style shorts mocking just about anything you can think of.

The craziest thing about this game that has seemingly endless content is that every day it keeps getting better. Creators find better techniques, are able to compartmentalize systems, copy and paste entire models, environments, and mechanics — it gets really complex. If Dreams has only been available for just under 2 years, and the creations are already this ambitious, hilarious, good, and bad, then I can only imagine what amazing Dreams I’ll be able to experience in the future.

Whatever you want to play, even if it’s another game, even if that content is from another medium, someone has at least started to recreate that in Dreams. For instance, there exists a channel of Dreams dedicated to recreating some beloved franchises like Mario, Sonic, Crash, Spyro, and much more. When Dream surfing you also stand the chance of stumbling upon something that you have never even imagined. Some dreams are surprisingly great works of fanfiction, beauty, or just fun game mechanics. Other times you can tell it’s a work in progress. But no matter what, you get a sense that someone thought about what you (or they) wanted to experience and took the time to build it.

Although a lot of game developers will probably opt out of becoming Dream creators, the power of Dreams is that the people who haven’t created interactive art before can now have a chance to try it out. And maybe someday they do decide to take up game development on a keyboard and mouse. But even if they don’t, it doesn’t matter because they have gotten a taste of what Dreams and what interactive media have to offer. It is often said that the more people that can make games, the better the industry and the games will be.
Let’s do this! Let’s define “friendship”!
Tags: Life, Comics, Humor, Friendship

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I make cartoons and t-shirts at www.dieselsweeties.com & @rstevens. Send me coffee beans.
Democracy Is Only Good If My Side Wins.
By: Marc Kassam
Tags: Satire, Politics, Comedy, Elections, Humor

Democracy Is Only Good If My Side Wins.

Otherwise, it’s fraud or something.

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

I love Democracy, only if it gets the people I like elected though. Otherwise, I don’t particularly care for it and will never accept the results.

There’s no reason anybody should have a different opinion than me yet somehow people do. When those people win elections it means there must be something nefarious going on, there’s no other reason. Maybe dead people voted, or voted more than once, or did something else to cheat and steal the election as there’s no way it’s legitimate.

Our nation cannot stand when we let the other side have their say. Only my say is what counts and anybody who says otherwise probably has committed some crime and should be arrested. Anybody who disagrees with me should therefore be thrown in jail so we can truly be a free country. #LockHerUp #LockHimUp #LockThemUp etc.

We are a Republic, not a Democracy, which clearly means we only allow one political persuasion to have their say: MINE. Anything else is communism, or socialism, or some other type of “ism” I never really bothered to research. Just my totally unbiased media sources tell me it’s bad so I believe it.

We must count every LEGAL vote, and by legal I mean votes for my side. Any other vote is definitely fake and must be thrown out. That way I can continue to feel comfortable in my insulated bubble and I will never be forced to confront ideas that are new or different from what I am used to. The world can continue to be the same forever without ever changing. Just as it always has.
About Me — Matt Spengler. I have no idea what I’m doing
By: Matt Spengler
Tags: Introduction, About Me

About Me — Matt Spengler

I have no idea what I’m doing

The Basics

I’m Matt, and no, the subtitle wasn’t a mistake. I literally have no idea what I’m doing.

I have a Bachelors degree in Criminal Justice from Quinnipiac University and a Masters degree in Government from Johns Hopkins University. I thought it would be easy to find a job after I finished graduate school, but no one would hire me — and I mean no one.

There are too many paths out there and eventually, I ended up back where I started — not having the slightest idea of what I should do.

So I started writing.

I guess I always enjoyed writing to some extent, but I didn’t realize that I would enjoy it this much, and I especially didn't realize that people would value my writing as well. I’m a naturally curious person, so this platform gives me an excuse to research things that I can transform into an article and allows my mind to be as creative as possible.

My Writing

I’m not sure how many people actually enjoy politics.

Even though I have a degree in Government, I don’t really like domestic politics at all. I think it’s boring. But somewhere along the way, I was told that I have a unique perspective on certain topics that impact people’s daily lives. My main areas of study in graduate school was on Eastern European geopolitics and protest movements, which are super interesting to me but are understandably niche topics. You can skip those articles if I publish them, I won’t be offended.

My main goal when I’m writing is to take some political topics that we might find boring and tackle them from an angle that makes it more compelling. It doesn't alway work. I want my writing to be thought-provoking, but also for the reader to come away with something that they might not have known before reading the article. I take the information that I put into these articles very seriously because I want the reader to feel comfortable knowing that the information they got was accurate. You can get inaccurate information a lot of other places.

I like so many more things beyond just the political realm, though. I love to explore culture and social justice issues, which I try to analyze using my educational background and life experiences. If I can use my articles to teach one person one thing, then it’s worth it.
A Short Introduction to Making Money Online
By: Walid Ao
Tags: Money, Online Business, Hustle, Enterpreneurship, Freelancing

Selling your time

Develop a skillset people are willing to pay for and find the people who are willing to pay for that skillset.

Some of us possess a skill people are willing to buy. The rest of us can learn a new skill over the internet, and then utilize this acquired skill to sell services over the internet, e,g, video or photo editing.

You can sell your services on Fiverr and Upwork for people and companies to find you. Skim through the sites and find the skill you can learn fast — learn it and then offer your services for others over the internet.

Selling a product

Selling a product online can catapult your money earnings online. It is scalable, and it is not directly linked with your tie and effort.

You can sell third-party products, or you can sell your own products. Third-party items can be sold either via dropshipping, affiliate marketing, or selling customizable items.

Selling your own product requires development, reproduction, distribution, and maintenance. Here, digital products have a clear advantage compared to physical products. Their reproduction, distribution, and maintenance is relatively simple compared to physical products.

Digital products can be an App, a webpage, an online course, or an e-book, among others.

Use your likeability

To promote your services and your products, you need to find people who know, like, and trust you.

The best way to make people know, like, and trust you is by offering valuable and free content. Use the free and valuable content to build your mailing list, followers, and audience over time. When it is time to sell your time or product, these followers will most likely purchase it because they already saw the value of your free content.
5 Ways to Achieve and Live the Life You Desire
By: Emmanuel A. Anderson
Tags: Life, Life Advice, Self, Inspiration, Success

Be your own fan and support

In going after your dreams, you wouldn’t find people to support you most of the time. Everybody is busy being conventional. So, when you decide not to be one of them but different going after a life bigger and better than the narrative, most people will become disappointed and wouldn’t support you. Everything about you and your journey will be a lonely one. Not even your family or parents will help and spur you. Therefore, you must have it in mind and be courageous and self-supportive when things turn out this way.

You must always have it at the back of your head to be your own fan, cheerleader, and motivator. Suppose you believe that what you are doing or going for is the best thing for you to make your life better and live the life that you desire. In that case, you want to help and encourage yourself without waiting for someone because pursuing a dream is a lonely thing to do, and you must have the courage to do it alone.

All my life and going after my dreams, I have been my own fan. Nobody has ever done that for me. The people who are supposed to do that don’t understand what I’m doing with my life than to talk of supporting me. I know it alone, and I have to be my motivator. The same is you. And that’s what you must-do if you are going to achieve the life you desire.
Loess
By: Roy Reichle
Tags: Poetry, Haiku, Landscape, Love, Yellow

Photo by John Shaw

My family and I live in the Loess Hills of northern Nebraska, near the Missouri River. The hills formed from the accumulated yellow dust (loess) deposited by glaciers during the Ice Ages and then was blown into an ancient prairie, where the grasses caught the dust and held it anchored.

Today it lives as islands of rolling hills topped by cottonwoods, burr oaks, and open grasslands. All of it surrounded by cropland. However much it has changed, the loess hills inspire me. Here is a trio of Haikus that feebly attempt to capture this land I live within.

These yellow hills swell,

below whisper cottonwoods

telling love stories.
UX para fomentar el sector teatral
By: Diana Bl
Tags: UX, UX Design, UX Research, Design Thinking, Español

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Where were you when I needed you the most?
By: Kimberley Chung
Tags: 100 Naked Words, Poetry

What were you thinking,

when you first saw my face?

I didn’t ask for it to be born

in this cruel, egotistical world

Aren’t you supposed to be with me,

when I needed you the most?

What were you thinking,

when you were counting the stacks of money,

while I was teaching myself how to count in numbers?

You should be proud of me,

the person I have become,

without your guidance and life lessons.

Couldn’t you atleast listen to me,

when I reached out to you?

Could you atleast shed a tear for me,

when I painfully gathered up all my courage,

to tell you my deepest secrets?

What were you thinking,

when I came into your life?

[41/100]
Places I’ll Never Visit
By: Mary Keating
Tags: Racism, Discrimination, Education, Poetry, BlackLivesMatter

“Of Visitors — the fairest –

For Occupation — This –” Emily Dickinson

anni Roanokae on pexels.com ( photo:abstract of textured gray and black shaded shapes where top is grayer and grows increasingly darker going downward)

In the spaces

behind the crisp ink

they wait for me

Voices etched into paper:

Langston Toni Maya

but it takes me awhile

to dwell in their possibility

because I’m not aware

they’re even there

when I do discover them

their words mix with mine

Enlarge this house called life

And I grieve a narrow history

washing black words to blank

spaces where all colors

once spread wide

to gather Paradise

now a deferred dream

aching to explode