fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Tom Brady says he’s “motivated to win my first Super Bowl without cheati- … shit”
Tags: NFL, New England Patriots, Tom Brady, Sports, Football

FOXBOROUGH, MA — New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady spoke with reporters this morning about his seventh trip to the Super Bowl and his quest to win a record fifth ring for a quarterback, but seemed to have briefly slipped into a moment of accidental candor — nearly admitting that all of his previous Super Bowl appearances were owed to New England’s proud tradition of cheating.

Asked a question about whether he was motivated to win this year and force Roger Goodell to hand him the Lombardi Trophy after the commissioner suspended him for four games at the outset of the 2016 season, Brady said he was not and then went into a long monologue on his true motivations.

“I’ve never felt this good about being in the Super Bowl,” he said. “There’s always been a nagging thought inside of me during our previous six times in this game, that maybe we didn’t really deserve to be here. But I feel good and just clean and innocent this time and I’m really motivated to win my first Super Bowl without cheati- … shit.”

The quarterback then laughed awkwardly, while turning bright red and stumbled to continue his train of thought.

“I mean, I’m … you know … motivated to win my first Super Bowl … against the, you know, Falcons,” he said. “Never met them in a Super Bowl before and they’re a real good team.”

Brady then excused himself from the press conference and walked off the stage as Bill Belichick glared at him from the side of the room. The Patriots have long stonewalled the media and the league office on the details of their operation, outside of terse denials in regards to their cheating, but Brady’s slip up was a rare crack in that facade and a shocking mistake by the 39-year old veteran.

But while reporters scurried to send out the news of Brady seemingly admitting to cheating, others question whether the “slip up” was planned misinformation.

“If the Patriots put it out there that they’re not cheating this year, the hope could be that everyone will think they’re finally being honest and not cheating,” read a New York Times editorial. “Meanwhile, they’ll continue and expand their cheating right in front of us. It’s a brilliant sleight of hand.”
Evaluating Apache Pulsar
By: Luke Stephenson
Tags: Zendesk, Kafka, Pulsar

Motivations

Zendesk currently use Kafka, primarily for publishing of events. We are also considering publishing the state of entities to Kafka, using compacted topics to keep only the latest version of an entity. We do this already, but are considering it for much larger data sets. These compacted topics will be very large (billions of entities). This will dramatically increase the amount of storage our Kafka brokers require. From reading up on Pulsar, it appeared to have some benefits for this use case and warranted further investigation. The following were the main reasons for looking into Pulsar.

1 — Reduced costs

We are planning to store some very large compacted topics. Most of the time there is no need to access the old data on these topics, so we can potentially save a lot of money by making use of tiered storage.

EBS gp2 (SSD) storage costs are approximately $0.10 per GB month. Compare this to S3 which is about $0.02 per GB month. In addition, with S3 we don’t need to store multiple replicas of the data, as this is already taken care of. If we are able to make use of tiered storage, we can potentially save a significant amount of money on storage costs.

2 — Dynamic broker scaling

Kafka brokers are stateful. To scale a Kafka cluster, a node (or nodes) are added to the cluster. Once the node is active, existing partitions need to be transferred from the existing brokers to the new brokers for the cluster to be balanced. This involves a huge amount of data transfer, and is not something that we want to do to a system which is already under high load as it may actually degrade performance in the short term.

This is only going to get relatively more expensive to scale up as we increase persistence requirements due to additional large compacted topics we plan on supporting.

With Pulsar we can scale dynamically with load. The Pulsar brokers even support dynamic load balancing and shifting of traffic to support load.

3 — More partitions

There are recommendations on the maximum number of partitions that a single Kafka broker can handle. From reading, it sounds like Pulsar can handle more topics than Kafka — “Seamless scalability out to over a million topics”.

I was curious to see / investigate if Pulsar could handle having data partitioned by customer / account.
Build Your Own VPN Using Google Cloud Platform
Tags: Google Cloud Platform, Security, Programming, VPN, Cybersecurity

Creating Your Own VPN

Go to the OpenVPN website and find “Access Server on GCP.” Then click “Get Started.” Once clicked, it will forward you to the Google Cloud Platform website. You should see the OpenVPN access server with a launch button beneath it. Click “Launch.” It will prompt you to create (or log into) a GCP account. For new members, it comes with a one-year free trial and $300 USD in credit (must be used in the trial period). After you create or log into your account, it will bring you to the GCP deployment manager with all of the OpenVPN settings. Scroll to the bottom and press “Deploy.”

OpenVPN GCP configuration

5. It should take a while to deploy OpenVPN. Once deployed, navigate to the Virtual Machine instances control panel (Navigation menu < Compute < Compute engine < VM instances). There, you should see a virtual machine named “openvpn-access-server-vm.”

Navigation to VM instances

6. In the OpenVPN Virtual Machine panel, you should see “SSH” under “Connect.” Click it. It should open a new window with a terminal in it. This is your virtual machine.

Navigation to the SSH

7. We have officially created the VPN. Now we have to access it, but before that, let’s change the password to the VPN by typing sudo passwd openvpn into the terminal. It should output an input field. Type your passwords. When typing your password, it looks like you’re not typing anything, but it’s just hiding what you’ve typed.

8. Go back to the GCP website, specifically the VM instance control panel. Go to the OpenVPN VM and there should be an external IP column. Copy that string of numbers.

Navigation to the Virtual Machine external IP

9. Open a new tab and type:

https://{external IP}/admin

Tip: If it says that the connection is not private, click “Advance,” then click “Proceed to external IP” if you want to proceed to the next step.

10. A login page will show up. The username is OpenVPN and the password is the one you set in the terminal. Log in.

OpenVPN login

11. A dashboard will show up. This is where you can edit your VPN. At the beginning, there are only a few settings you have to change. The first one is so the client’s traffic goes through the VPN. To enable it, go to Configurations < VPN Setting < Routing < ”Should client Internet traffic be routed through the VPN?” < Enable. And the second one is to change the network setting. To edit it, go to Configurations < Network Settings. Make sure to save your changes.

OpenVPN dashboard

12. To enable the VPN on a device, go to:

https://{external IP}

And download the supported app for the selected device.

OpenVPN download page

13. After downloading, open the app. It should already be logged into your IP address. Enable the VPN. Now all of your information passed from that device is encrypted.
Las damas, los niños y el contenido primero
By: Emiliano Cosenza
Tags: Writing, Storytelling, Design, UX, Content Strategy

UX Writer and Conversational Designer 🤖. Pannonica and BeBot.design founder. Consultant. Ex UX at Mercado Libre. Journalist and jazz lover.

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OUROBOROS
By: Burak Acar Koyuncu
Tags: Featured, Poetry, Destiny, Time, Vicious Cycle

taken aside from the distracting tide

which fuels the time so she can decide

where to pull the strings, where to guide the story,

while the fool assumed a golden “SORRY!”

A bow aiming downward, painted in blood,

shooting sorrows dressed untainted, aloud

the whistle calls for murder till the hit,

impact betrays the hook on the burnished bit,

the offence predestined to miss the heart,

Fate, yet unsatisfied with the victim’s part,

charmed the weakling like a snake charmer without fail.

Toothless looser fell in love with its own tail,

he confusedly hugged his time to bide,

taken aside from the distracting tide
Awareness
By: Harley King
Tags: Sacrifice, Spirituality, Poetry, Awareness

Awareness

A Spiritual Poem

Photo by Joel Filipe on Unsplash

A hand touches

my memory and

floods my heart

with the love

of God. I run

through the cornfields

of my childhood

and taste the pleasure

of a doughnut

on a Sunday morning.

She was my lover

when the years were

young and frost covered

the ground. I sacrificed

our son on the altar

of salvation and the table

of repentance. I have

no more patience to give,

no sorrow to forget,

only a cup of tea to drink.

Copyright © 2020 by Harley King
Helena Walks Boogie
Tags: Humor, Art, Creativity, Coronavirus, Comedy

Brand NEW pub! My essays, fiction & humor can be found in several Medium publications. But, if you can’t find them THERE, you will find them HERE! All organized and stuff. follow my main page: https://medium.com/@anniewoodinhollywood

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Beauty in Overcast Light
By: Louis Hart
Tags: Weather, Nonfiction, Life, Nature, Beauty

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

I stand on the bank of the creek watching the cold water flow by. An overcast sky and the snow on the ground combine with the dark water to present a mostly colorless world of white, black, and assorted shades of gray.

Most would call it a dreary scene and for a moment I feel a wave of intense loneliness and melancholy. So much unhappiness in the world. Such bitterness and hate. Seemingly endless misery. What a sad state of affairs.

I am suddenly jolted out of my reverie by an icy blast of wind blowing down the canyon. “Wake up!” it seems to say. “Look around you! Open your eyes!”

I look closer at the surrounding scene. Even in its nearly black and white mode, I realize I am still in the presence of the abundant beauty of creation. It fills me with joy as I experience its happy sights and sounds. The chuckling river. The sighing of the wind as it blows through the tall pine trees. I pick up a small rock from the edge of the river and gently touch it to my cheek. I carefully replace it as I feel a rush of energy and love lift me up.

Feeling chilled I notice the wind is getting colder and flurries of snow have started. I realize I must immediately return to the car. The storm is arriving early and I must leave now for the road will soon be closed by snow.
COSS.IO October 24th 2018 updates
By: Coss Team
Tags: Blockchain, Exchange, Coss, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency

On the 14th of October, an incident was reported to us. One of our users was targeted by a third party, and his funds were reported stolen.

We take the security of our exchange and users very seriously, and an immediate and thorough investigation was launched.

For security reasons, we cannot go into detail on our methods, but the results of the investigation shows that the user’s password was compromised outside of COSS; at no time was any user password breached on our systems.

We urge all users to use a password that is exclusive to the platform you use.

Additional security measures have been implemented to prevent the stolen funds from crashing the order books.

To our community, we would like to seek your cooperation to monitor any transactions from this address which we believe to be the wallet containing the stolen funds:

To the perpetrator(s) of this incident, if you are reading this; we will not pursue this case any further if you return the 9.8 million COSS tokens as seen in the linked address above to the ERC address below:

0x8bdfCC2C644Ef0bd226dfccbBDaa7553930560a0

Upon receipt of the funds, we will undertake the appropriate actions to make sure that the funds are returned to the rightful owner.
Get Ready To Rumble
By: Nick Plante
Tags: Ruby on Rails, Hackathons

So like everyone else, you probably have a killer web app idea you’ve been sitting on. Maybe you’ve thought about building it, maybe you’ve even drawn out some diagrams on the back of a napkin, but you just haven’t found the time to execute it. The unfortunate reality is that sometimes you just need an excuse, or a little push, to get something awesome started.

Sound about right? Then this one’s for you. Enter the Rails Rumble, September 8–9, and consider yourself pushed.
Collection of Curated Stories on ILLUMINATION-Curated
By: Maryjo Wagner
Tags: Writing, Family, History, Life Lessons, Illumination

Collection of Curated Stories on ILLUMINATION-Curated

Selected Stories by MaryJo Wagner, PhD hosted on ILLUMINATION-Curated

Licensed from 123RF; copyright, damedeeso. Jack checks “Daily Dog” for curated stories on ILLUMINATION.

An Actor Played My Father in “Band of Brothers”

#WORLD WAR TWO 2 #BAND OF BROTHERS #D-DAY

My birth-father John Derrick Halls, a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne, was killed by Nazi gunfire on D-Day, June 6, 1944. And actor played his part in Steven Spielberg’s HBO Series “Band of Brothers.”

The Past Makes Us Who We Are

#GOLD RUSH #PIONEERS #HISTORY

My Great-grandfather Herman came west to what is now Denver, Colorado in 1859. He hoped to strike it rich during the Gold Rush. After digging for gold proved futile, he opened a saddlery business. His wife Anna followed in 1860, crossing the Overland Trail with a covered wagon. After proving up on a homestead, she raised 7 children, had her own cattle brand, and built one of the first brick houses in Denver.

The Piano Recital: A Near-death Experience

#MEMOIR #MUSIC #BACH

Although I loved my piano, even practicing, I was traumatized by required piano recitals. I gave up the piano to sing in choirs. My career as a chorister came to an end the night I almost fell off the risers while singing the Bach Mass in D-Minor with large choir, organ, chamber orchestra, and harpsichord.

What Can You Do When the World Is Falling Apart Around Us?

#INSPIRATION #MENTAL HEALTH #SELF IMPROVEMENT

Smiling which is easy, quick, and changes your brain pattern can take you from down in the dumps to feeling positive. Eating a piece of chocolate, petting your cat help too. Try singing or taking a walk. Purposely doing something that feels takes the edge off. If done consistently, it improves the quality of our life during these difficult times.

Post Your Content Everywhere

#CONTENT MARKETING #WRITING #LITTLE WOMEN

Louisa May Alcott died a millionaire from the sale of Little Women and other books. An astute business woman, she was the bread winner in her family. Her story about writing, publishing, and marketing has lessons for authors today. Her books were serialized and sold in many editions, a reminder about the benefits of repurposing. She listened to readers and changed Little Women to please them.

Watching John Lewis’ Homegoing

#CIVIL RIGHTS #JOHN LEWIS #HISTORY

John Lewis, Civil Rights leader, had his skull crushed marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. My granddaughters marched across the Bridge in honor of the 50th anniversary of Lewis’ march and in memory of a less well-known activist, Jonathan Daniels, murdered while protecting a young Black woman.

I thank Dr Mehmet Yildiz and the ILLUMINATION editors for their encouragement of my writing in Illumination-Curated.
Telegram Bot with Python for Todoist
By: Amir Yousefi
Tags: Python, Programming, JavaScript, Software Engineering, Software Development

Interacting with API in Python

To build a useful Telegram bot, You need to have a good knowledge of working with API.

I read a lot of tutorials for creating Telegram bots, but I wanted to write a bot that works with real-world API, not a bot to show some cat pictures(which is also very cool, by the way).

Todoist is a great tool for managing to-dos. Although it has a great mobile application, it may help you or your team to have your tasks in Telegram.

Also using Todoist API, you will learn how to interact with real-world APIs.

APIHandler Class

Todoist has an official Python API library. Using it you can easily interact with Todoist API. First, we are going to examine this official library. Then with the Python requests package, we are interacting with Todoist REST API. Because many of third-party API doesn’ thave such Python libraries, it’s important to learn how to use Python requests package to make HTTP requests for RESTful API.

Getting Todoist access token

Before we begin, you need to get an access token for Todoist API. Simply go to the Todoist app console and create a new app. After creating your app, you will see client id and client secret which you need to use in a production-level app for user authentication.

For now, we only need to get the access token for our tests. Scroll down and you can see your access token. Now let’s try it in action.

Todoist official Python library

Now install TodoistAPI package with the Python pip running this command: pip install todoist-python

Using Todoist API library, it is very easy to get the projects.

Don’t forget to put your access token in api_token variable.

Interacting with RESTful API using Python requests

To make an API call you need to use Python requests package. Install it using pip: pip install requests

The requests package has two main functions we can use to make get or post requests.

We can make a get request to get all tasks from Todoist.

Todoist API call with Python requests get method

Or, make a post request to create a new task in Todoist

Todoist API call with Python requests post method

To have a clean code let’s create a class for our API handler.

APIHandler class to Todoist API

In __init__ function, we get two parameters to set api_token and api_url . Also, We create an instance of TodoisAPI from Todoist Python library to use when it’s necessary.

All other functions are using requests package get or post function to make an API call.

Now, we can get project lists, get all tasks, get tasks by project, or create a new task. If you need any other functions to interact with Todoist API, you can add that to the APIHandler class.
Your Ultimate Python Visualization Cheat-Sheet
By: Andre Ye
Tags: Statistics, Python, Visualization, Data Science, Data Analysis

Initiating the Graph World

Creating a figure is necessary to specify the graph size.

plt.figure(figsize=(horizontal_length,vertical_length))

Seaborn styles can add grids and styles to the graph space. There are four styles in seaborn, which can be loaded using .set_style .

sns.set_style(name_of_style)

Seaborn contexts are built-in pre-created packages of how you may want your plot to look, which affects things like the size of the labels, lines, and other elements of the plot, but not the overall style.

sns.set_context(name_of_context)

All plots have whitegrid style. This was set separately.

Seaborn color palettes provide a set of colors for the chart to be colored by, which can give your plot the feel or context you want your audience to feel.

Seaborn has dozens of curated palettes. They are loaded with

sns.set_palette(name_of_palette)

Four palettes are visualized in a kde plot.

You can access all the names of seaborn’s many palettes by deliberately setting an incorrect palette:
Coming Soon: Our New Design!
By: Gauthier Lebbe
Tags: Schools, News, Innovation, New Features, Education

A familiar structure

An event still consists of three tabs; the votes, the messages, and the participant pace. Following user requests, we have implemented some changes to make your experience more enjoyable.

Quick access to event settings

All event settings are within reach, regardless of the tab in which you are currently working. You will find them always in sight and readily accessible by clicking on the gear in the top right corner of the interface.

In short, picture a change in scenery while driving the same car; you will notice some aesthetic changes, but the inner workings remain the same.

Any thoughts? Share your feedback and, if you have any, your suggestions with the team!

The Wooclap Team

Connect deeper

☞ Gauthier is inbound marketing manager at Wooclap, an online platform with which to stimulate classes and measure student understanding of material. You can follow Wooclap on Twitter, Linkedin, and Facebook.
XRP Utility Fork Supported on Bitkub
Tags: Xrp, Ethereum, Bitcoin, Hardfork, Bitkub

Bitkub.com is a new generation digital asset and cryptocurrency exchange platform that offers advanced cryptocurrency exchange services

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Can You Be Imprisoned By Love?
By: Antony Pinol
Tags: Guilt, Love, Family, Relationships, Self

For a man my age my life is far from typical. Though many may say this, I would wager that mine is further from normality than most.

I am twenty-nine years old, I am the full time carer for my thirty one year old sister, we live together with my sixty-six year old retired mother.

Some people might look on my situation with admiration. Others with suspicion.

What is motivating that twenty-nine year old man with the whole world at his feet to remain still, stuck in one place, physically and mentally?

Their doubts would be well founded. I ask my self a similar question most days. Often when the day is dawning and distractions are waning, I am left with nothing to confront other than the question of what my life’s purpose really is.

The experience of feeling this question saturate my presence is not pleasant. It’s heavy. Suffocating. I feel like I’m drowning and the air that I’m gasping for is an answer to the question that I don’t know.
Could Dance Meditation Be the Secret Doorway to our Creative Flow?
By: Jasmine Soumana
Tags: Writing, Creativity, Meditation, Spirituality, Spiritual Secrets

MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

I discovered this technique accidentally, while I was experimenting with dance as a warm-up for my yoga practice.

I had learned about dance meditation during my training in India, but practicing it in a room full of other students wasn’t fruitful for me. It felt awkward, I couldn’t turn off my thoughts of how ridiculous I might look. I love dancing, a lot. But mostly when I am alone. So when I returned home, I started dancing before my yoga practice. Mostly because it seemed much more fun than doing 10 sun salutations in a row. And like I said, I love dancing.

This is when I noticed that every time I would start my practice by dancing, things started to flow on their own. Everything aligned, my breath aligned with the rhythm of the music, my body movement was in perfect harmony with my breath, I would completely forget myself. My yoga practice would be longer and deeper, more flowing. For the first time, I became one with the practice.

It was as if my body was moving on its own. And I was simply watching it.

THE UNEXPECTED CONNECTION

The more often I danced before my Yoga Sessions, the longer the dance periods became. Sometimes I would even completely skip the asana part and just dance for hours. I would turn on any music that made me feel like moving my hips, close my eyes, and let go into whatever movement felt good. After I’d become tired of dancing, I would turn off the music, sit down, and simply listen to the silence, feeling into the after-effects. And wuuushhh.. gates would open and creativity flush in.

I noticed that dancing allowed me to tap into my creative flow, within only a few minutes.

I would start writing fanatically, filming hours and hours of video material, one idea after the other entered my head. It happened frequently. The more I danced, the longer I’d find myself in the zone.

Discovering this — and because the world was facing its first global lockdown — I decided to isolate myself for three days, no phone, no internet, just me, my journal, a bag of incense sticks, and music. Though I expected to become incredibly bored after a while, it seemed like these three days rushed by in minutes. The result was a 10-hour long dance meditation, a ton of new ideas, and hours and hours of filming material. This weekend I discovered a new side of myself. And it felt genius! It felt like I had entered another realm.

But what had happened? Was this a manic episode? Was I slowly going mad?
Mural
Tags: Poetry, Imad, Ipoetry, Mural, Creative Writing

Mural

A Poem

Photo by Alex Bailey on Unsplash

Perhaps, what you need to do is listen

Pay more attention and take a closer look

You might see something else,

The angles may be realigned.

Subject to interpretation, a painting has many colors

Nonetheless, the artist knows

The meaning intended behind every line.

Leaving clues scattered across the canvas

A map waiting to be transcribed.

The mural may be mystifying,

Like a labyrinth with many pathways

Yet only one reveals an exit.

Splattered paint on fine edges

Intricately crafted, to hide his message

If you can decipher the riddle, then perhaps you will see

The beauty behind the madness

The sadness he tries to hide

Emotions might just unravel, if you care to take a closer look.

His expressions are with his paintbrush, conversations he does not like

Or divulging deeper feelings, to the ones he loves the most

He would rather, keep it hidden

Behind lines of many meaning,

Leaving hints within his picture.

Hoping when you see, you will realize.

The words that are too heavy, the tears he never sheds,

The reason for his blank emotions and why he seems uncaring.

The treasure of this here mural, I hope you will understand.
2 Simple Ways You Can Make a Positive Difference
By: Rejoice Denhere
Tags: Lifelong Learning, Personal Development, Positive Thinking, Changemaker, Positive Attitude

Identity

My grandmother was a woman who was proud of her African heritage. She embraced it wholly and allowed it to reflect in her daily life.

As a young African child, growing up in a country where there was racial and gender-based discrimination it was hard to be proud of my identity. I wanted long straight hair and a straight nose. I would pinch my nose with a clothes peg in the hope that it would change shape. It remained the same, much to my chagrin.

Gran taught me to accept myself as I was. She highlighted my best qualities and praised me, which raised my self-esteem. When I decided to get married she was one of the first people I told. I was absolutely thrilled when she attended my wedding. Apparently she missed her only daughter’s (my mother’s) wedding.

Because of her influence, I am proud of my African heritage. I wear my hair natural. It is healthier than it ever was when I used hair straightening products.

My nose is still flat but I can breathe the same oxygen as everybody else through it. My skin is still brown — a God-given natural glow with no need for bleaching.

How and Where I Made a Difference

We had a Quiz Night in the community where I lived. Only two of us were of African descent. During one of the questions, a photo popped up on the screen displaying a multi-legged caterpillar on a tree branch.

“In which African country is this eaten?”

I recognised the creature in the image instantly. In fact, I had eaten one myself. I wanted to shout the answer. However, as I looked around the room and noticed people grimacing and on the verge of throwing up, I hesitated. They spat out comments like, “Yuck, what kind of a person would eat that?!” which made me want to run from the room.

But then something rose up within me. No one would make fun of my heritage. No one could make me ashamed of my identity. I shouted out the answer.

“Correct!” We high-fived each other in celebration and a smile crept up my face as I added, “I’ve eaten those caterpillars and they’re delicious.”

Upon that sudden revelation, my team members whipped their heads round with a collective gasp. Okay, I didn’t have to add that last bit but it felt good saying it. At the end of the evening people came and asked me questions about the caterpillars. They left that place more knowledgeable and less judgemental. I left with my head held high.

Takeaway

In being myself and being proud of my heritage, I give others permission to be themselves too. I know I don’t have to change myself to fit in. As a result I am accepted for who I am.
Medium Publication Optional Title for Editors and Writers
By: Casey Botticello
Tags: Medium, Publication, Labels, Formatting, Tag

The Optional Title Section is a label that exists in Medium publications. The function is new to Medium (as far as I can tell) but it appears to be a label that can be modified for any writer or editor. This could potentially be useful in larger publications where there are hundreds if not thousands of writers and editors.

Below is a screenshot of the about section of my Medium publication, FAANG, and its writer and editor section:

You can see that there is an “optional title” tag available for each writer and editor:

How Do I Customize the Note From The Editor Section of My Publication?

Step 1 — Locate the about section of your Medium publication. Depending upon your publication layout, you may find this button in several places. However, it can always be found at the very bottom of your homepage.

For the purposes of this example I will use my publication, called Escaping The 9 to 5:

Alternatively, you can add “ /about ” to the homepage of your Medium publication URL:

Step 2 — Click on the edit icon at the top right corner of your page:

Step 3 — Scroll down to find the Editors section. Above an editor or writer’s name (in faint text) is placeholder text that says “optional title.” Click here and type in a title for any writer or editor.

For example, you could enter something like “Publication Founder” as demonstrated in the image below:

Notes on The Optional Title Section
Talking local government websites with Katherine Rooney
By: Ben Proctor
Tags: Digital Analytics, England, Google Analytics, Data, Local Government

Photo by Charisse Kenion on Unsplash

We recently published a report into the use of local govenment websites in South West England.

This is the second in a series of reports we are publishing into the use of local authority websites.

The report itself is great (obviously I’m not in any way biased) but we wanted to talk about some of the slightly wider issues arising from the data. So we asked Katherine Rooney to sit down with us. We recorded the conversation and released it as part of our occasional podcast series “Talkoot: the podcast for people working to build excellent public services”.

Katherine has a real depth of experience in public services, data and South West England. It’s 24 minutes, 10 seconds of website analytics gold.

You can listen to just this episode on Soundcloud.

Or subscribe so you never miss another episode.
5 Steps to Ace Your Next Coding Interview
By: Jasmine Wu
Tags: Technical Interview, Coding Interviews, Programming, Software Development, Startup

Step 1. Understand All the Requirements Before Starting

If anything is unclear, ask your interviewer at the beginning so you’re not wasting time.

Make sure you know which programming languages you are allowed to use, the time limit, how many questions you’ll be completing for the interview, if you’re allowed to use outside resources like Google, if you are allowed to have other tabs open, etc.

You don’t want to be accused of cheating during your interview, so make sure you follow all the rules.
If Wishes Were Butterflies
By: Sandy Knight
Tags: Haiku Hub, Poetry, Haiku, Prompt, Wishes

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How to deal with image resizing in Deep Learning
By: Adriano Dennanni
Tags: Convolutional Network, Keras, Machine Learning, Image Processing, Deep Learning

TL;DR: The best way to deal with different sized images is to downscale them to match dimensions from the smallest image available.

If you read out last post, you know that CNNs are able to learn information from images even if its channels are flipped, over a cost in the model accuracy.

This post studies a similar problem: suppose each color channel has a different size. Which are the best ways to train an image classifier in those circunstancies?

First, let's create a simple model to serve as base for some comparisons that will be made in this article:

Layer Output Shape Param #

=================================================================

InputLayer (None, 100, 100, 3) 0

_________________________________________________________________

Conv2D (None, 100, 100, 32) 896

_________________________________________________________________

MaxPooling2D (None, 50, 50, 32) 0

_________________________________________________________________

Dropout (None, 50, 50, 32) 0

_________________________________________________________________

Conv2D (None, 50, 50, 64) 18496

_________________________________________________________________

MaxPooling2D (None, 25, 25, 64) 0

_________________________________________________________________

Dropout (None, 25, 25, 64) 0

_________________________________________________________________

Flatten (None, 40000) 0

_________________________________________________________________

Dense (None, 128) 5120128

_________________________________________________________________

Dropout (None, 128) 0

_________________________________________________________________

Dense (None, 2) 258

=================================================================

It's a simple model, able to tell dog pictures apart from non-dog pictures, with only two convolutions. After training it for 10 epochs (using complete 3-channel images, 100x100 pixels), the results are:
Short form kicks off with a poetic bang, thanks to poet Samantha Lazar, who released this poem in…
By: Christina M. Ward
Tags: Friendship, Poetry, Short Read, Pomprompt, Poem

Short form kicks off with a poetic bang, thanks to poet Samantha Lazar, who released this poem in response:

Experiments in Short Form by Samantha Lazar

The poem is a lovely read — and it represents a lot of how poets have been feeling on the Medium platform for a long time now. May the short-form changes be ever in our favor!

Thanks Samantha for lifting us all with your beautiful, poetic voice. You are a lovely soul, my friend!

~Christina

Fiddleheads & Floss Writing Services

Let’s Stay In Touch.
How to connect XSplit broadcaster
By: Yellow Duck
Tags: Services, Live Streaming, Xsplit, YouTube, Instagram

Yellow Duck is an application that will allow you to live stream to Instagram from your PC machine via XSplit encoder.

Yellow Duck gives you the ability to get your Instagram RTMP URL and stream key, which allows you to stream from external devices.

After you open XSplit click Broadcast — Set up a new output — Custom RTMP.

2. Use “Yellow Duck” as a name. Copy your RTMP URL and stream key from Yellow Duck application to your XSplit RTMP URL and Stream Name fields accordingly. Set Bitrate to 2000, set Audio Bitrate to 128, then click OK.

3. Change scene resolution by clicking resolution text in the top right part of the app.

4. Create a custom resolution of 720x1080 as it’s default resolution of Instagram streams and use it for streaming.

5. Make sure to rotate all your sources clockwise once so it’s more convenient to watch your stream on a mobile device.

6. In order to start the live stream, click Broadcast — Custom RTMP Yellow Duck.

You need to update Stream Key before each stream and start stream only while Yellow Duck application is running.
SIREN News October 2017
Tags: Advertising, Siren

Welcome to SIREN news for October 2017. September was a busy month, with lively discussion and debate at dmexco, AdWeekNYC and Spikes Asia, as well as a number of awards wins and pioneering thought leadership. Read more about the great stories from around our network below.
Gaming Used to Treat Health Issues May Quadruple by 2019
By: Patients Loremipsum
Tags: Predictions

When faced with a serious health issue, Jane McGonigal, PhD and senior researcher at the Institute for the Future, turned to gaming as a way to enable and speed her recovery. In this podcast, she discusses the various ways we can implement gaming to promote health benefits — such as playing Candy Crush Saga to lose weight or using Tetris to prevent PTSD.

It’s a fascinating area of study, and her insights are all based on real scientific findings. So give it a listen. These approaches can be used across disease states and in our own personal lives to enhance mental and physical health.

Jane McGonigal’s latest book SuperBetter is coming out this September.

Listen to the podcast here.
New England’s Series A Deals — Part II
By: Matt Snow
Tags: Venture Capital, Technology, New England, Fundraising, Startup

Recently, The Buzz profiled the a number of market maps on the New England Venture/Startup Ecosystem including the following:

These market maps continue to be very positively received by our subscribers so we’re continuing to deliver. This week, we’re back with Part II of the New England Series A deals series. Here’s the list:
The Power Of No. Thanks To The Product Objective
By: Stephanie Pagano
Tags: Product Development, Okr, Product Management, Product Manager, Objectives

One of my favourite things about Objectives and key results (OKR’s) is the Product Objective. Otherwise known as a “one liner”, a single sentence that gives the power of “No”. As a Product Manager (PM), I lean on this a great deal.

As PM’s, we have many great ideas from countless sources that land in our laps. But, we have limited time and by saying yes when we want to say no, we can over commit our teams. Everything we say yes to, takes away our capacity to deliver on our objectives.

But why is it so hard to say no?

Because we fear disappointing others. When put on the spot, we often respond based on our anxieties rather than our rational mind. Benchmark Psychology “Saying “No”- a beginners guide” recommends

“When you are put on the spot, learn how to say something like “I’d like to think about that before I give you an answer” or “I’ll need to check my diary before I give you an answer”. This will give you the chance to step away and consider the opportunity rationally.”

So what does this mean in a Product context? In this case, the easiest thing to do is take some time to consider it, take a moment to assess whether the request will help deliver on your goals and objectives. You can consider whether it is a “No”:

Just for now — the idea may help you solve a problem and deliver on your goals, however it isn’t a priority currently, as what you are working on right now is more valuable.

Forever — The idea doesn’t help solve the problem you are trying to solve.

Either way, be sure to listen to the requests, thank the team or individual to appreciate their time and effort involved in thinking of an idea and sharing it with you. You can divert attention to your product “one liner” which helps present your response in a rational way which you can share back with your stakeholders. Your thoughtful explanation ensures they’ll be more receptive than if you’d responded with flat out “No” or the classic “I’ll put it in the backlog!”
Projec1 u2da1e #6
Tags: DevOps, Worldup, Football, Soccer, Betonchart

Hello, everyone! The first week after World Cup 🏆 is coming to an end and new sports events are already waiting its turn. So do we continue the development process, and as usual we are going to update you with the latest news on Bet On Chart project.

Remember we told you about a special development platform we created for beta testing 🖥️? So this week we’ve successfully managed to get live data from the match between Germany 🇩🇪 and Sweden 🇸🇪, and transform it into a chart! With this data, we double our efforts to develop an improved logic of chart flow and shaping 📈. So it would be soon available for public demonstration — just keep in touch with us on our Telegram channel: https://t.me/betonchart to see it first!

And some more information about our closed beta testing: we go on with improving and perfecting our widget, so we created some sort of a special app that allows us to scale and reconfigure it with a simple click 🖱️! With this simple thing we will form widget that would not only give you a perfect representation of whats going on on the field, but it also would amazingly blend with the chart!

So that was our first week of developing after the Football World Cup. How did you spend it? Feel free to comment on our Twitter page: twitter.com/betonchart, and see you next week!
What Interviewing at Google Taught Me About Handling Rejection
By: Rivo Kienan
Tags: Careers, Google, Self Improvement, Programming, Life Lessons

What Interviewing at Google Taught Me About Handling Rejection

4 things I learned from watching a dream opportunity slip away

Photo by Matteo Di Iorio on Unsplash

There are tons of success stories about how people have prepared and cracked interviews at top tech firms like Google, Facebook, and Amazon. However, hidden behind these success stories are stories of those who didn’t quite make it.

When I got a call from a Google recruiter on a cold morning in January 2020, I was thrilled. For anyone associated with technology, aspiring to work at Google is a dream-come-true opportunity, and I had to give it my best shot.

The interview process was rigorous, as expected. After four months and eight rounds of interviews, juggling between a full-time job and late nights preparing for the interviews, I made it through the last round and was approved by the Google hiring committee.

I was finally ready to receive the offer letter and pop that bottle of champagne to celebrate the fruit of my hard work.

Alas! I was informed that as a result of the ongoing pandemic, there had been a slowdown in the hiring process. They now had only one open position, and the decision had to be made between me and another candidate. They didn’t make me an offer as the other candidate had a slight edge.

Huh?

I found myself sitting on my balcony, staring at the sky wondering what I could have done differently. Where did I screw up?
Beacon of Hope
By: Aiyanah Rose
Tags: Inspiration, Poetry, Photography, Audible Sundays, Music

In the distant horizon I stand steadfast and true,

rays piercing through viscous gray skies,

illuming the way for seekers and strays

whom yearn for the lure of harbor in my light.

Through darkest of storms my radiance gleams

to greet the eyes of your soul,

glowing with warmth over savage waves

offering refuge and calm at my shore.

When tumultuous waters wrestle with strength

to drown between massive swells,

espy the pulse of my fervent beams

and head inland, bidding tempest farewell.

My lucency is your lifeline at sea

when headwinds billow and rage.

Not wind, nor rain, nor strife, nor pain

will extinguish my light in vain.

When the tide rolls out and calls your name

you will journey afar again.

Here I will stand at the base of the sand

your beacon of hope, your friend.

Music Notes: At 1:52 in the song, a pulse begins, almost resonant of a heart beat. Since lighthouse signals are emitted in long flashes or pulses, I really connected to this sequence. Each lighthouse has its own unique beam and pulse pattern, which ship captains reference on a master list to identify which lighthouse (in the world) it is by its pulses and timing. Also, around 2:24 toward the end, it begins to wind down and introduce a quiet “angelic voice”. I could just envision a craft going back out to sea, like the verse mentions “the tide rolling out” — then the audible wind down and phase out, ending with the pulse.

Photo and verse © 2020 Aiyanah Rose
Confusion can be important.
By: Sarah Firth
Tags: Complexity, Personal Growth, Confusion, Learning, Dunning Kruger Effect

Although confusion is often seen as a problem, an indulgence or a form of self-sabotage, it can so often be an essential ingredient to learning, challenging your assumptions and growing.
Lithograph Coupon Hunting
By: Kurt Nelson
Tags: Mickey, Service, Customer, Disney

Today I had my first experience with Disney customer service. It was not positive, but they did fix the problem.

I called (407)560-PASS to attempt to figure out why I have never received the Mickey Monitor and the corresponding lithograph coupons. First off, there is no menu option for existing passholders to contact guest relations, so I punched 0. After at least 5 transfers, I finally got to the right person. They checked my information and for some reason I had not been marked to receive Mickey Monitor. They said they fixed it and I should receive the appropriate issue in a couple of weeks. That’s great and all except that the coupons expire next week. I ask what he can do to get me the coupons by Saturday or if I can pick them up. Nothing. I ask to speak to a supervisor with more power, and he says he is out. Now I called again, punched 0, and am currently on hold waiting for them to fix it. Ok, now they said the best thing I could do was fill out the contact form on the website. I asked for a supervisor, and he is being much more helpful. Mr. Supervisor said he is putting one in the mail for me today, and I should receive it before Saturday.

For anyone else’s future reference, call and ask for guest services. If needed, request a supervisor.
Normal Distribution and Beta Distribution: What They Are, and How to Generate Them and Visualize Them in Python
By: Cristina Sahoo
Tags: Normal Distribution, Python, Beta Distribution

This article describes two popular distributions, the Normal Distribution and the Beta Distribution. It also shows how these can be generated and plotted in Python. If you find this article interesting, helpful, or you simply just liked it, remember to CLAP!! Please don’t hesitate to contact the author with questions, feedback, and if any errors were made. Enjoy, and happy coding!

The normal distribution is a probability function that describes how the values of a variable are distributed. It is a symmetric distribution where most of the observations cluster around the central peak and the probabilities for values further away from the mean taper off equally in both directions. Extreme values in both tails of the distribution are similarly unlikely. [1]

A normal distribution is a common probability distribution . It has a shape often referred to as a “bell curve.” Many everyday data sets typically follow a normal distribution: for example, the heights of adult humans, the scores on a test given to a large class, errors in measurements. The normal distribution is always symmetrical about the mean. [2]

The standard deviation is the measure of how spread out a normally distributed set of data is. It is a statistic that tells you how closely all of the examples are gathered around the mean in a data set. The shape of a normal distribution is determined by the mean and the standard deviation. The steeper the bell curve, the smaller the standard deviation. If the examples are spread far apart, the bell curve will be much flatter, meaning the standard deviation is large. [2]

I recommend trying out this code on your own in Python, and modifying variable values when generating the distribution, then observing how the visualization changes. :-).

# import libraries

import numpy as np

import pandas as pd

from scipy import stats

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

We will use Python’s np.random.default_rng().normal() function to generate a set of 1,000,000 numbers to create a dataset that follows a normal distribution with mean 0 and standard deviation 1.

# mean

mu = 0

# standard deviation

sigma = 1

# number of observations in our dataset

n = 1_000_000

# construct a random Generator

s = np.random.default_rng(0)

# generate an array of 1_000_000 random values that follow a normal distribution with mean mu and st.dev. sigma

r = s.normal(mu, sigma, n)

We now have an array r which contains our data points that follow a normal distribution. However, we want to look at descriptive statistics, and to do that, it would be more useful to have these data points in a dataframe object. Below is code for transforming the array into a dataframe, and then viewing the descriptive statistics on the dataset.