fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
The Noise and the Signal. Soundwave has around 1.5 million…
By: David Lynch
Tags: Devop, Metrics, Monitoring

ALARMING

WE’RE NOT SCAREMONGERING — THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING!

Of course, it’s impossible to monitor dashboards constantly — at least if you want to get some useful work done. This is where alarms come in. At its most basic, an alarm triggers some action when some metrics has broken some bounds for some period of time. In reality, this can reflect something minor like a temporary blip in network connectivity, or the death of some vital application function. Understanding the difference, and alarming on such is an art in itself, one that it’s important to master. If your system is too sensitive, alarming on everything, then consumers of those alarms quickly become desensitised to them, ignoring the truly valuable ones. If there are no alarms, or the wrong alarms, adventures like our MongoDB one can be seen much more often than the black swan. Thinking of alarms as signals that represent app function is useful in defining their importance. For example, Play Processing Down is an alarm that directly aligns with app function. The key decision here is if this requires the immediate attention of an engineer and if so, to page or to email.

Some differing types of alarms

Alarming at just the right amount of fidelity is doubly important when your app needs to be up 24/7. Pages that wake up engineers at 2am subtract all the following days’ productivity from that engineer. Enough of those in a period and your engineering team turn into zombies that really do want to kill you. Considering the example alarm Timeline Feed is unacceptably slow. This has a tendency to happen around once every two weeks, around when the DB is busy processing overnight reports. Almost all of the time, it is explained by the load on the database and is temporary. Most of the time, this alarm was no longer triggered by the time an engineer came to intervene. Therefore, having alarm trigger kick off overnight was pointless. We are prepared to accept the chance of a minor loss of user experience for the sake of our engineers productivity. In fact that energy is better spent on fixing the root cause of this problem at source.

Just the right amount of alarming at just the right severity level is a tricky number to converge on. It may change over time and requires good judgement to nail. Quantifying alarms in terms of application function and framing it in terms of user impact, and engineer impact can make it easier to find the sweet spot.
My Bookmark Menu Is A Joke
By: Mark Starlin
Tags: Lists, Reading, Challenge, Stories, Bookmarking

My Medium bookmark menu has 1386 stories in it. That is ridiculous. If each story averages four minutes, that is 5568 minutes or 92.8 hours of reading required to clear that menu.

Right.

That’s not going to happen. Especially if I keep adding to the list.

So I have decided to quit adding any new stories to the menu until I get through the ones I have already bookmarked.

I could go through the menu and delete most of the old ones, but the amount of scrolling and selecting “remove” required would probably take as long as reading them all.

I imagine some stories are so old, they may not even be on Medium anymore. And I am probably no longer interested in some of them, or they are outdated.

Last night, I read five stories from the list. At that pace, it will take 278 days to get through them all. I better up my game.

I can only blame myself. I do these things all the time.

My family bought me a Playstation 4 for Christmas — five years after it was released. I am not complaining. I was still rocking the Playstation 3. The problem is, when you buy a console after it has been out for five years, there are constant game sales. The games are so cheap, I ended up buying more games then I can play before the Playstation 5 comes out and becomes five years old.

So I may have to use a read five, delete five strategy to get through the list before Medium turns into Medium 2.0.

I am open to suggestions.

Thanks.

Mark
How To Build ERC-721 Token From Scratch
By: Ata Tekeli
Tags: Non Fungible Tokens, Blockchain, Technology, Ethereum, Erc721

Simply called non-fungible tokens (NFTs). And we’ll develop one for us.

Since its creation, non-fungible tokens have had many applications that attracted the attention of numerous users, developers, and investors to invest upon. Consequently, it became an ecosystem where it has many applications. Now, we’ll outline how you can develop your own ERC-721 token on Ethereum.

What is an NFT?

NFTs are unique tokens that are not divisible. They’ve been used to represent securities and ownership of an asset. Since it’s being introduced, art, music, and many more fields benefited from tokenizing their securities.

Why NFTs became popular?

The main reason for NFTs to be popular is that it allows everything to be securitized on a network. This results in making securities known to all entities. Especially when ownership is threatened, records on the blockchain can be used with these tokens to define the owners.

How can we build one?

The first step for creating these tokens is to create a full ethereum environment and a coding editor which can be used to build applications on ethereum.

The second step includes thinking about how the software could be generated and how the economics would work. These questions involve how the ecosystem could be created, how it can be maintained, and how the value will be generated. Even more, how the ownership and power of the individuals could be defined in the whole system. After these questions were answered, it becomes much easier to design your own token.

The final step would include learning how to create your own with instructional videos on various platforms and open-source codes created by GitHub to understand the logic and algorithm. While learning to build one from scratch, it can be useful to stick to open-source codes and various instructional videos to help you learn faster.

After you learned how these tokens could be generated, you can either create your own network, finding a new development job, or doing both. People will have some sort of benefits depending on individual skills to create something in this field. However, there’s a massive future within these tokens and more institutions are trying to make their securities tokenized.

Have you ever built your own ERC-721 token? If you did, share your experiences in the comments section below.
Street chat with Roza Vulf
By: Casey Meshbesher
Tags: Street Chat, Female Photographers, Street Photography, Candid Photography, Photography

Please tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from, where do you live now? Your background with photography, how and when you were drawn to the street genre.

I was born and spent most of my adult life in Vilnius, Lithuania. At some point I have relocated to Germany. Spent half a decade there until I finally moved to Rome, where I am currently based.

I have always had a tight connection with photography since I was a teenager. I remember I even had an internship in some local newspaper in Vilnius during the Soviet times. Back then, of course, I was shooting on film, using Russian cameras like ‘Smena’ and ‘Zenit’.

But life takes its own turn — I got married, had two kids, and had to get a serious job as well as study. There simply was no time to shoot professionally, so I was taking pictures of my children, family and friends, and developing them myself having a “dark room” in my bathroom.

As time passed by I changed to digital and kept documenting my travels. Until seven years ago, when I moved to Rome and finally got the opportunity to dedicate most of my time to photography. Being self-taught, I relied a lot on books, magazines and the web. I got subscriptions to some photography magazines and educational literature to follow lessons on landscape, macro and everything else that could actually help me develop my skills. As well as photowalks and workshops with some great photographers from around the world, which has helped me to amplify my vision, and to understand my professional standing.

About the genre — though I don’t like to put labels on my photography style and prefer to keep the door open to different genres, I feel most comfortable with street and documentary. It allows me to record real moments of real life that flash briefly past my vision. It is a type of art that gives me a possibility to express myself and sometimes share my feelings.
Making Yogurt Magic
By: Susan Orlean
Tags: Magic, Instant Pot, Yogurt, Pandemic

Making Yogurt Magic

A brief humblebrag of my kitchen shenanigans

I believe I have awed many of you by mentioning — casually tossing off, in fact — that I have made my own yogurt during the pandemic. Even I am awed by having done it. I wish I could say it was really hard, or that I studied yogurt-making on MasterClass before attempting it myself. Will you think less of me if I admit that it’s easier than flossing? As in, you push a button?

We eat a lot of yogurt in my household; my teenage son vacuums down a large container in a day or two. When I first bought an Instant Pot, I noticed its dashboard included a “yogurt” setting, but I never gave it much thought because my son only likes Trader Joe’s yogurt. Besides, I assumed you need access to some complicated alchemy in order to transform milk into yogurt.

Then came the pandemic, and taking frequent trips to Trader Joe’s just to replenish our yogurt supplies seemed insane. I took another look at the yogurt setting on the Instant Pot and thought, “Hey, I went to college! I bet I can do this.” And indeed, I could. As I learned by reading the Instant Pot Owner’s Manual, that super-secret codex I had failed to ever open, all it involved was putting a tablespoon of yogurt into a bunch of milk and pressing the “yogurt” button.

Eight hours later, presto: Yogurt.

The first time I made it I was so astonished that I kept poking the yogurt, expecting it to devolve back into a gallon of milk. I started making it regularly, but I never got over feeling like it was some kind of magic trick. The day I visited the baby horse felt enchanted enough as it was but finding a giant tub of yogurt in my refrigerator that I had, with my very own hands, made earlier that day seemed like another part of the spell.
The Love Letter [i]
By: Nosh Komen
Tags: Poetry, Love, Love Letters, Short Story, Written Tales

The Love Letter [i]

A poem made of love

Photo by Tú Nguyễn from Pexels

It pains

I can feel the pinch

When all you do

Is to love

And the loved

Is not me

Am single in tears

Whisper love to my ears

And together we will be in years

I am not perfect, I know

Being perfect will try

Please don’t compare me

With the tall muscular guys

You see in the movies

Come and taste mine love

Coz that’s the only way you’ll love me

I have never loved before

The previous left me

When love just got ignited

Reasons, Anonymous

My face makes smiles

Each moment we meet

The lips are thirsty for kisses

Each time you cross my eyes

With joy, my left cheek blushes

This is what my broken heart desires

I am in constant fantasy

My arms are uncontrolled

When you are around

It’s like a grasping reflex

Of that of an infant

A sincere grasp, I can feel it

To my palace,

Come, I show you

What these words mean,

you will understand better

When I demonstrate them for you
#diary_28_December_2020
By: Noah Coin
Tags: Noah City, Noah Project, Defi, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency

Hello, Anton speaking!👋

1. Yield farming is one of the most promising ways nowadays to make passive earnings in the DeFi industry.🦄 There is a chance to try it out and earn “NOAH`s DeFi ARK” and “Q DeFi Rating” coins. You can still can for the “Alpha testing stage” of NOAH’s DeFi ARK and receive these coins as rewards.💎

🔵 If you want to add your ETHereum address into the “approved addresses list” and participate in the next testing stage >> please submit your details using this Google Form:👇

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/16f2kTCKCyzz6OnjFCloeiAPRsKnyvNODbKKSj9tyv-8/edit

2. Please, fill out the form above and answer some important questions regarding investment activities and your risks awareness.🧐

💡 Are you aware of the risks in DeFi \ crypto investment? How much capital should you put into any risky crypto opportunity to make a profit?

👍 My advice: you should invest a small amount of money, only what you can afford to lose. Any type of investment is risky.

💡 Are you aware of the risks in DeFi Smart Contracts?

🧠 Keep in mind: Smart Contracts in DeFi could be hacked, even if they were properly made and Audited by recognized Solidity auditors.

Get your New Year’s gift from QDAO DeFi! 💰🎅🎁

We are raising the interest rates from November 24th 2020 to February 21st 2021. 💸 🔝

Safely store your crypto and enjoy awesome earnings with the upcoming Bull market! 💲💲💲

All the details are here: https://bit.ly/3kXx4Gr

Just look at this serious penguin! 🐧 I’m almost sure that it’s Skipper from “Madagascar” cartoon and he’s preparing an escape plan again 😂
Young Fatherhood
By: Estacious Charles White
Tags: Resilience, Poem, Teen Pregnancy, Poverty, Parenting

A boy wearing man clothes

two kids barely out of his teens

he wants to be the father his

dad never could be

he wants to free his child from

the shackles of poverty

but doesn’t possess the tools

to prevent his child from becoming a fool on the streets

Faith rests in the heart

he can create a better start

return to the education

he neglected and

prevent damnation

to the institution of incarceration

which consumed many of the black male generation

including his own sperm donor or creator

he is a young father

dreams fill the mind

he isn’t blind

to the fact the road is hard

but the journey is worth the goal

to protect his child from a brutal existence

in a world that doesn't care

and never fair

Estacious
The Weight of Expectation
By: Hana Leshner
Tags: Micro Fiction, One Lined Poem, Poetry, Beauty

Falsely applied, violently observed, benignly subjugated, viciously accused, perhaps in the end she could have slipped the gilded cage, the silken knot, the cut-glass vase, but for the label: a beauty.

Image: Silvestri Matteo, Unsplash
Atlas Obscura’s top travel selects
By: Alex Begin
Tags: Articles, Community, Travel, Partnerships, Photography

Last month, we teamed up with Atlas Obscura to takeover the Travel topic. We asked you to submit your favourite travel memories — from shots of hidden gems, to top secret travel destinations. Thank you to everyone who took the time to upload their photos — we were blown away by your submissions.

Today we’re excited to share Atlas Obscura’s top 20 picks with you.

Atlas Obscura’s top travel selects
Yes, She Will
By: A Rustic Mind, Manali Desai
Tags: Feminist, Freedom, Women Empowerment, Gender Equality, Feminism

No, you can’t wear that dress, it’s too short

No, you can’t go out late at night, it’s not safe,

No, you can’t be friends with boys, it’s not good for your reputation,

Photo by Ingo Doerrie on Unsplash

No, you can’t study further, it’s of no use,

No, you can’t run a business, it’s something out of your capacity.

Every time women are told ‘no’ with some or the other reason attached

But women are no longer bound by these negations and notions.

Because yes, she can and will wear that dress, as it’s her body

Because yes, she can and will go out late at night, as she can protect herself

Because yes, she can and will be friends with boys, as her reputation is not dependent on that

Because yes, she can and will study, as it’s of use for her identity

Because yes, she can and will run a business, as it’s as much in her capacity as for anyone else.
Welcome to the AITrading universe!
Tags: Machine Learning, User Experience, Trading, Blockchain, Bitcoin

Welcome to the AITrading universe!

We help traders to earn more. We help people to trade easily.

Financial markets are among the largest global markets. Their total volume is 400 trillion USD and growing. At AITrading, our mission is to provide equal opportunity for everyone to participate in it!

With a little help from the world’s best technologies, we want to break the old paradigm according to which the most sophisticated technology and financial knowledge were only available to financial magnates and greedy banks.

With AITrading everybody will be able to benefit from that deep blue ocean of global financial markets. As for crypto, although it is a relatively small lake at the moment, we believe it will become a new Eldorado that will redefine the global financial landscape.
Jual-Beli Storiqa (STQ) dengan Rupiah di Indodax
By: Digital Asset Indonesia
Tags: Bitcoin Exchange, Indonesia, Indodax, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin

in In Fitness And In Health
2019 GTB Shopper Summit
Tags: Gtb Industry Insights

GTB’s first Shopper Marketing Summit for industry experts took place on Monday, October 14 at the historic Ford Piquette Avenue Plant.

The summit invited major global tech and media brands to Detroit and featured speakers from GTB’s sister WPP companies — AKQA, Blue State, Triad and VMLY&R — as well as eMarketer, iterate.ai, Amazon and Facebook. Sessions explored topics such as new marketing models, including subscription services and direct-to-customer marketing. New technologies, including voice commerce, AI decision engines and service apps, were also presented within real-world case studies.

During the Summit, we were able to ask these industry experts for their views on the future of shopper marketing.
Laravel 7.x — P4 : Return View (routes)
By: Dino Cajic
Tags: Laravel, PHP, Programming, Web Development, Software Development

We looked at how to return some basic HTML in the previous article, but we want to move out of the route file; that’s not what the route file should do. The route file should direct you to the controller that in turn returns the view. For simple static pages, it’s fine to return the view directly from the route and there are a few ways to achieve that. First thing though, we have to create a basic view. We’re going to be looking at views extensively in later articles, but this is a basic introduction that’s more focused on the route than the view itself.

Under the resources/views directory, create a file and name it about.blade.php. Don’t overthink it: right-click -> New File.

Copy the content out of the index.blade.php file and paste it in there. Modify it to match the code below.

To return the about.blade.php view to the user, we need to create a route. We’ve already seen one way to create a route when we returned our index.blade.php file. Create a new route in routes/web.php and add the code below.

When the user visits the about-us page (127.0.0.1:8000/about-us), Laravel will return the about.blade.php view with the help of the view() helper.

You can also return a view with the Route::view() syntax. It’s incredibly common for Laravel to return a view that special syntax was developed to deal with that concept. Let’s create another page called company. Under resources/views, create company.blade.php and add the code below (similar to About).

This time, we’ll use Route::view() to retrieve and return the company.blade.php file. Add the code below to your routes/web.php file.

The first argument that the view() method accepts is the URL parameter. The second argument is the view that it will return. If you navigate to 127.0.0.1:8000/company-page, you will receive the content from the company.blade.php view.

The last bit of code that we’re going to add are links to our index.blade.php file.
AWS Glue 101: All you need to know with a real-world example
By: Kevin Bok
Tags: Aws Glue, Etl, Pipeline, Data Science, Glue

AWS Glue 101: All you need to know with a real-world example

Full ETL Pipeline Explained.

In this post, I will explain the design and implementation of the ETL process using AWS services (Glue, S3, Redshift). Anyone who does not have previous experience and exposure to the AWS Glue or AWS stacks should easily be able to follow through.

Before we dive into the walkthrough, let’s breifly answer (3) commonly asked questions:

So, what actually is AWS Glue? What are the features and advantages of using Glue? And What is the real-world scenario?
Sunrise 20201220
By: Jenny Lawton
Tags: Poetry, Gratitude, Haiku, Mindfulness, Life

entrepreneur, mentor, advisor, mother, wife, dog parent and lover, tennis player : changing the world one woman and entrepreneur at a time

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The Colors of the Man
By: Michael Madill
Tags: Political, Poetry, Poem, Shakespeare, Corruption

Photo by Pierre Bamin on Unsplash

What can he do,

And cannot get a crown?

Shape changer,

Face framer,

Chameleon painter,

Murder smiler.

Disproportioned on the inside,

Bearing a mountain of envy on his back,

Conscience shrunk to a withered shrub,

A frail ego corrupted by some bribe,

Forsworn by love, embraced by hate.

We are fickle, blown from

One allegiance to another,

Blind, perhaps complicit

In the deforming effects of ambition.

Feeling the unsaid shame,

We are desperate to change our colors.



3 Henry VI III:i-ii

There’s a five-hundred-year-old tragedy being replayed now, with less gravitas and worse language. So, I started with Shakespeare’s words and turned them round to suit the day.
When White People Show Their True Racist Selves
By: Rebecca Stevens A.
Tags: Equality, White Fragility, BlackLivesMatter, Anti Racism, Racism

By the time I got to the last floor, I knew that this job would be short-lived. I had been insulted or threatened by at least half of the people that lived in the building and for no other reason than the fact that I was black. It was 11:30 am, half an hour before I was to meet my boss. I had signed up four subscriptions and was hoping for just one more. I rang the doorbell and an old white man answered.

He didn’t seem surprised to see me so I started reciting my pitch.

“Oh, why do you need to talk at the door, I’m old and can’t stand here long, please come in and have a coffee”.

“But I can’t,” I responded sheepishly.

“It’s a pity, I really like the magazine you have in your hand, but I can’t stand much longer”, he responded, a gentle smile on his face. He moved to shut the door.

“Wait, I’ll come in”, I said.

“That’s good, let me go get the money”.

“Money, no, you don’t need to give me money. The way it works is that you sign up now and the company will send you an invoice”.

“Oh ok”, he said, eyeing me with now what seemed like a lustful glance. I became concerned.

“So, here is the form, if you sign it, I’ll get it processed and you’ll receive your first magazine in two weeks”, I said.

“Ok, ok, I get it. Come sit down in the kitchen, let me make some coffee”, he insisted.

I began to feel uneasy but the old man looked weak and frail. I knew I could take him down if I had to.

As we approached the kitchen, he turned to me and said:

“You’re a beautiful black girl. You excite me”.

I pretended as though I didn’t hear him.

“I have lots of money, look at all my money”.

I turned around and noticed that he was holding out a wad of cash, about USD 500.

“I’ll give you all of this money if you rub my belly for a bit”.

I look at the dirty old man in disgust.

“No sir, I don’t want to rub your belly. I need to go”.

“But I won’t buy anything if you don’t rub me”, he said menacingly. His whole demeanor had changed. His kind eyes had grown darker, he looked mean, even threatening.

“No thanks sir,” I managed to say.

I hurriedly ran towards the front door, unlocked it, and left, my heart pounding in my chest.
I Checkmated Beth Harmon
By: Adam Hrankowski
Tags: Math, Chess, Netflix, The Queens Gambit, YouTube

Anya Taylor-Joy as Chess Grandmaster Beth Harmon (Netflix, “The Queen’s Gambit)

CHESS

I Checkmated Beth Harmon

And you can too.

If you have yet to see the new Netflix mini-series, The Queen’s Gambit, worry not. This article contains (almost) no spoilers.

My Queen’s Gambit game vs. Bot Beth Harmon on Chess.com

The story follows the career of (fictitious) Elizabeth Harmon (Anya Taylor-Joy). After her mother’s tragic (of course) death, Beth is sent to live at the Methuen Home for Girls. She begins her study of chess at age 9 under the guidance of the school’s custodian, Mr. Shaibel (Bill Camp).

The Queen’s Gambit is a work of fiction. However, the Internet has vivified Harmon’s chess career. YouTube chess experts analyze her games, (which are based on historical games). Chess is unlike any other sport in that the full details of an entire game will fit on a 3 by 5 card.

Antonio Radić dissects Harmon vs. Borgov (Source).

Today, I played White against 8-year-old Beth on chess.com. I opened with the Queen’s Gambit (of course). Poor Bot Beth (Chess.com rating: 800) didn’t stand a chance. The website hosts seven Beth Bots, which simulate her play from ages 8 to 22.

Considering Harmon first sees a chessboard at age 9, perhaps I shouldn’t be so cocky about beating a simulated 8-year-old.
Pointing fingers
By: Bora Kwon
Tags: Theresa May, Politics, European Union, UK Politics, Brexit

It was a bad-tempered week in Brexit

With such a massive shift in the political landscape on the horizon it was bound to happen, but lots of Brexit players were a bit tetchy this week.

‘Whoever leaked, I WILL find you’

Who leaked?

Rather than anything that happened around the negotiating table, it was talk of what did (or didn’t) happen around the dinner table that caused the first big row. If you thought your family meals were fractious, you might want to avoid a dinner invitation from Theresa May and Jean-Claude Juncker.

Someone 👀 , leaked an unflattering account of Theresa May to the media. Nick Timothy, the prime minister’s former chief-of-staff accused his old opposite number in Juncker’s office, Martin Selmayr, of blabbing to the press. Enraged, Selmayr bit back.

Don’t poke the academics

A Conservative MP has managed to provoke the mild-mannered academics of the land. Eurosceptic government whip Chris Heaton-Harris, wrote to British universities asking for the names of professors who teach Brexit courses. Cue accusations of a “McCarthyite” witch hunt.

No 10 quickly distanced themselves from the letter, but other colleagues rallied around the inquisitive minister, who said he was researching for a book.

Never one to miss a controversial front page, the Daily Mail used the episode as an opportunity to highlight the Remain-heavy attitudes of the academic community.

Vote or no vote

The prime minister and her Brexit minister suffered a misalignment of messages over the question of when parliament will be given a vote on the final Brexit deal. David Davis created confusion by revealing Parliament may not get a vote on the final EU exit deal until after Britain has left. No 10 begged to differ.

Talkin’ bout transition

Big business doesn’t like uncertainty and the issue of the post-Brexit transition deal is making CEOs nervous.

How long will it be? The government are aiming for two years, but the EU is making noises about 20 months. Business would like as long as possible….

You’re welcome

Away from the drama of leaks and rows, there are worried citizens around Europe wondering whether or not they will be able to stay in their country of residence after Brexit. Whilst there are no firm guarantees, Spain has said that Brits in the country will be welcome to stay. From our side, our foreign secretary Boris Johnson has spoken out to reassure EU citizens living in the UK that they will be protected “whatever happens”.
Daily Bit #182: Just Keep Building
By: Daily Bit
Tags: Crypto, Binance, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin

Top Story

Just Keep Building

“You may say I’m a dreamer

But I’m not the only one” — John Lennon

— Changpeng Zhao, Binance CEO

Why are we plugging unconfirmed quotes of quotes as our headline opener for yet another issue? It’s simple, really — CZ is a man of ambition. Tales of Binance’s humble beginnings, from a $15 million ICO to the Top Chef of all crypto exchanges, have been making their rounds throughout Consensus Singapore as the conference rolls on.

What’s next? World domination. Granted, CZ’s playbook is moderately altered from the likes of Napoleon, Caesar, etc. — but the idea here is crypto everywhere. The goal is to launch five to ten fiat-to-crypto exchanges, roughly two per continent.

For context, Binance doesn’t offer fiat-to-crypto (F2C) trading

Available trading pairs are only quoted in Binance Coin (BNB), Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin (BTC), and Tether (USDT). Pivoting to C2C from F2C could be considered a major pivot.

CZ’s response: “Fiat is still where all the money is in… And we’ve got to open that gate.”

He’s not wrong. As far as marketplace growth goes, it’s not coming from people who already trade on exchanges.

And sheesh, if anything — there’s a net outflow

Traders and gamblers send funds to siloed (as in not linked to bank accounts) exchanges to try to flip a profit while the platform itself rakes in withdrawal fees and trading fees. For a most spectacular read on the matter, check out The Dark Underbelly of Cryptocurrency Markets by Nic Carter.

What’ll take time: Working with regulators. That’s exactly why Binance has yet to break into US markets. So as a workaround, CZ is starting with smaller fish. From his experience, regulators in smaller countries are more willing to have conversations. The approach calls to Ari Paul’s post on table selection — position yourself in areas where you can win.

P.S. — Binance just launched Binance Info. Overall it’s a rather comprehensive dashboard for 1,405 tokens and counting.

Just remember… stay woke with ratings reports. Many will gladly give projects higher ratings for a price. Hopefully Binance is woke on that as well.
Metamorphosis
By: Kahli Bree Adams
Tags: Poetry, Nature, Haiku, Poetry On Medium, Haiku Fusion

A crazy collection of haikus from traditional ‘5-7-5' 3-liners to modern adaptations and interpretations. Topics range from humorous to melancholy, the whole shebang.

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A Song of Gratitude
By: Vincent Van Patten
Tags: Gratitude, Life Lessons, Travel, Life, Inspiration

I’m grateful for the sunshine that warms my skin when I feel blue. I step outside and feel its embrace take hold.

I’m grateful for my body that’s brought me here to this edge of land and sea. I try to stand up straight as often as possible; I strive to nurture my body and treat it with respect. We’re in the fight together, resting, building, strengthening, falling.

My shoulders bear the weight of the thoughts in my mind, but they get lighter every day as I learn how to deal with what I can’t control and take pride in what I can.

I’m grateful for the eyes that allow me to see the beauties in the world that I hold so dear — the tireless waves which soothe my spirit, the serenity of a twinkling night sky, a movie on the screen that makes me laugh and forget about the rest.

I’m grateful to hear and smell and taste the details that add depth to our lives. Music gives me strength; the smell of cinnamon and vanilla makes me think of being home for the holidays; pasta makes everything right.

I’m grateful for my friends, an indispensable part of who I am. We’ll always be together in this journey, and I know I’m never alone, no matter where I am. I hope they know they aren’t either. We’re finding who we are, and that’s no easy feat. But we’re in this together, and the ride’s only just begun.

I’m grateful for my family who put up with me in the times when I feel like me and the times when I don’t. They are my tribe, we are a unit, and I want to be there with them to provide encouragement and love.

But life comes and goes in waves, and sometimes I want to be alone. I’ll always come back home; I’ll always love, respect, and cherish them.

I’m grateful to live a life where I can feel incredible joy, whether boarding a plane to discover somewhere new or settling in for a night of reading my favorite book.

I’m grateful to feel peaceful more often than not, knowing the universe has a plan, and all we must do is surrender to it.

I’m grateful to feel love for humanity. We’re all going through something and I do my best not to judge. Just know that you’re loved.

I’m grateful to the animals of this planet — the mysterious creatures of the night and the beasts who roam wild and free through the mountains and the plains and the clear blue sky.

This is your planet too, and I long to share.

I’m grateful for the trees which give us breath, the wind that surges through my soul, and the clouds I feel I could fall asleep upon and drift for days.

I’m grateful to be alive. I am who I am, doing the best that I can. I’m grateful for you, too.
Let’s Start Decorating
By: Neha Sandhir S
Tags: Poetry, Holidays, New Year, Energy, Happiness

POETRY

Let’s Start Decorating

It’s time to celebrate the present and carve a beautiful future

Photo by Jovan Vasiljević on Unsplash

Let’s decorate

Our soul and heart

With gestures of goodness

Moulded in various forms

In this blessed present held so dear

Let’s try to reform

With lessons learnt from the past

Cruising peacefully into our future

Let’s carve a wonderful New Year!

©Neha Sandhir. All Rights Reserved.
Secrets Of Medusa
By: Sandhya Ganesh
Tags: Mythology, Art, Caravaggio, Painting, History

Story of Medusa and its relevance

Perseus and Medusa. Image Source: Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)

According to the legend, Medusa was a beautiful woman and caught the eyes of Poseidon. Due to a long-time feud between Poseidon and Athena, he wanted to defile the latter’s temple.

Poseidon persuaded Medusa, and both performed the act at Athena’s altar. Furious, Athena exacted her revenge by turning Medusa (an evident show of male chauvinism and patriarchy) into a snake-haired monster, albeit a mortal one, who was grotesque enough to turn beholders into stone.

Perseus, son of Zeus and mortal queen Danaë, was on the quest to slay Medusa to save his mother from the clutches of King Polydectes who coveted her.

Gods favored him by providing with five objects to overcome his ordeal — a knapsack to hold Medusa’s head; Hermes’s winged sandals; Hades’s helm of darkness (for invisibility); Zeus’s adamantine sword; and a highly reflective bronze shield from Athena.

Shield

The bronze shield plays an important role here as Medusa cannot be faced directly but only through reflection. Later, Medusa’s head was embossed into the shield and presented to Athena, who called it Aegis.

Medusa by Caravaggio has its base in the form of a shield. The portrait was done on a convex board made out of poplar with Medusa’s visage, bringing out its reference to Aegis.

The technique for the preparation and painting was complex.

The poplar board was covered with a layer of linen and given four different preparation layer. On top of it, an additional layer was added to make the background more reflective and another layer for the actual backdrop, which is greenish-yellow in color (a concoction of verdigris and lead-tin yellow paint).

Further, the painting was done with three layers of siccative oils, turpentine, and mastic with traces of beeswax. Finally, the shield was finished with a few layers for the protection of paint.

Self-portrait

Medusa vs Caravaggio. Image Source: Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain). Edited: Author

Unknown to many, Medusa is a self-portrait of Caravaggio.

If we look at the image, we can see that the forehead, bulging eyes, and the widened cheeks of Medusa resemble that of Caravaggio. He had used a convex mirror to study his reflection and used his features as an inspiration for the painting.

Why would anyone want to immortalize themselves as a monster?

Caravaggio had his face painted as Medusa to prove that he was, in fact, immune to her dreadful gaze. It is believed that Medusa was unaffected by her face.
Bitcoin Wallet — Our First Crypto Wallet
By: Sankaet Pathak
Tags: API, Finance, Banking, Bitcoin

We also want to make compliance and implementation work as minimal as possible for developers. So there are two novel aspects to the crypto wallet that aid that effort:

Exchange Custody

Exchange

We perform the exchange for the crypto and fiat on our side. No separate exchange integration is needed.

Custody

Likewise, we manage the custody of crypto. No separate trust or bitcoin wallet integration is needed.
RxJS: Stopped Notifications
By: Nicholas Jamieson
Tags: Rxjs, JavaScript

Photo by Erwan Hesry on Unsplash

RxJS — and Rx in general — offers a bunch of guarantees that make it possible to compose observable chains. Specifically, it’s guaranteed that:

observers won’t receive notifications after an error or complete notification; and

or notification; and observers won’t receive notifications after explicitly unsubscribing.

There is more information about this in the Observable Contract.

The guarantees allow for the declarative composition of observable chains: developers can focus on composing behaviours rather than keeping track of state. Without the guarantees, developers would be checking for errored or completed sources and composition would be more difficult.

A quirk that stems from these guarantees is that it’s possible for an error channel to be closed. For example, if an error occurs when an observable is being torn down, it’s not possible for that error to be reported to the observer — the observer will have already received a complete or error notification or will have already been explicitly unsubscribed. In RxJS, observers in this state are referred to (internally) as stopped.

Over the last few RxJS versions, the way this situation has been dealt with has changed.

Version 5

In RxJS version 5, errors that cannot be reported to stopped observers are — for the most part — swallowed, but synchronous errors that occur as part of the subscription process are re-thrown.

That means that, in some situations, errors that might otherwise be swallowed are thrown from subscribe . This behaviour was changed in version 6.

Version 6

In version 6, the throwing of synchronous errors from subscribe is deprecated. That means that the only channel available for reporting subscription errors is the observer. So with stopped observers, errors are swallowed.

This behaviour made determining the cause of a couple of bugs in the core library more difficult than it should have been. So, to give some visibility to errors that are effected within subscribe , version 6 traverses the chain of observers and if a stopped observer is found, the error is logged to the console — as a warning. If a stopped observer is not found, the error is sent as a notification.

Version 7

In version 7, the traversal will no longer be performed. In all situations, errors will be sent to observers as notifications. However, if the observer is stopped, the notification will then be sent to a configurable function, allowing the developer to take an appropriate action. If no configuration is provided — the default — the stopped notifications will be swallowed.

An example configuration looks like this:

Here, any error notification that cannot be sent to an observer — because it is stopped — will be thrown as an unhandled error.

Note that a next or complete notification that cannot be sent to an observer will also be routed to any configured onStoppedNotification handler. Generally, you won’t need to be concerned with those, but their being exposed can be helpful — especially, if you are building your own observable source and are investigating weird behaviour.
Longstreet Farm
By: Mike Dawson
Tags: Eat More Comics

Sign up for Taking Stock of COVID: New comics from The Nib

By The Nib

New comics from Matt Lubchansky, Keith Knight, and Niccolo Pizarro. Plus How Seniors Are Living With COVID-19. Take a look
Young Catholic Wife on the Stairs
By: Terry Trueman
Tags: Poetry, Erotica, Remorse, Regret, Sex

Young Catholic Wife on the Stairs

Some memories come back as less than welcome visitors from our less than loving pasts . . .

Image from Eduardo Cano Photos, Unsplash

I have to go back

A long ways

To remember

Just how I ended up

Making love,

Or having sex with

What’s-her-name?

on the stairs at her house.

(Actually, I remember her name perfectly well,

But last I heard she was

Still married to

What’s-his-name?)

Nonetheless, somehow

Even though she

Was very limited

In what she was willing

To do sexually,

We ended up

On the carpeted stairs

In their house . . .

. . . When he was,

As usual,

Away on a

Biz trip.

He shouldn’t have gone away

So often,

Although this is a

Typical sociopath’s approach

To justifying how

It was possibly okay

For me

To fuck his wife at all,

Much less on the

Carpeted stairs

Of their split level —

She was a dark-eyed

Beauty, destined, I’m guessing

To balloon up to

300 pounds,

But back then, gorgeous:

Big boobs, pouty lips,

(Not just pouty, amazing, unforgettable, perfectly

pouty lips)

Thick, stylish black hair.

Her cousin

Had been a background

Singer in a famous

60’s be-bop guys’ group

Who could have starred in

“Jersey Boyz”

But probably didn’t.

And now,

All these decades later

Remembering

So little else about

Her/us as an erotic item/pair.

This one memory,

(other than the neon pouty lips thing)

The carpeted stairs thing,

Rushes back

And I feel kind of

Bad about it.

I mean, we did it

A few times

In other places too,

Must have,

Their bed I think, I mean

We must have, right?

But why I had to

Have it on those stairs

Feels inexcusable now.

So,

What’s-yer-name,

(& you too, What’s-his-name,

For that matter)

If you’re reading this

(Her, not him),

Having followed my

‘Career’

Over all these long years,

Please accept this apology of sorts

For the tackiness of my actions, and

For the rug burns on your tailbone

And,

If you by some sick chance

Still harbor some

Small flame of that heat,

As I do,

Allow me to add,

Thank you,

For those days —

And if you’re ever in

This town again

And still under, say, 210 lbs or so …

*************************************

Wikipedia & Encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Trueman

http://www.encyclopedia.com/children/scholarly-magazines/trueman-terry-1947\

This poem Young Catholic Wife on the Stairs appears in this book:
ThunderCore Tokenomics: An Update
By: Chris Wang
Tags: Proof Of Stake, Thunder Announcement, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin

I am very excited to share some big news with you that will benefit all token holders.

As of July 1st, ThunderCore will make the following changes:

Token Release Schedule Change: The Token Release Schedule will be modified so that, rather than tokens being unlocked on a monthly basis, tokens will only be unlocked every 6-months (January and July).

The Token Release Schedule will be modified so that, rather than tokens being unlocked on a monthly basis, tokens will only be unlocked every 6-months (January and July). Team Lockup: The 375 Million Thunder Tokens that were unlocked in May following the initial exchange offering will be returned to the genesis block pool in the “Team & Advisors” wallet and locked-up until February, 2020.

Why Are We Doing This?

To better align the incentives of our community, our early contributors, as well as our employees.

To use this opportunity for the ThunderCore team to show our clear support and confidence for the project and the community.

To capture further value for the community in order to incentivize the growth of a healthy ecosystem.

With these changes, we greatly improve our tokenomics. With a stable supply and plenty of partnerships, product releases, and exchange partnerships coming up, we are confident in the growth of our token price.

For the numeric geek, these changes mean, along with our confirmed annual Staking Pool Service participants, an immediate 10.1% circulation reduction this month and at least an average of 18.5% reduction for the rest of 2019.

More details on our changes to the token release schedule and lockup plan are below, but I want to take this moment to thank our community for the support and patience they have given us as we bring a complicated and robust piece of technology to the market.

From all of us here at ThunderCore — Thank you.

Team Lockup

To date, 375 million Thunder Tokens have been released to founders and employees. As we are confident in ThunderCore’s future, 100% of our team has volunteered to participate in token lockup. All 375 million tokens will be returned to the “Team & Advisors” wallet in the genesis block and locked until end of February 2020. This means no employees or founders will receive tokens from the genesis block before our early contributors.

Any employee tokens sold will be bought back from exchanges by ThunderCore and returned to the “Team & Advisors” wallet in the genesis block. By July 30th, 2019, the wallet balance will be 1,500,000,000.

The wallet address for the Team & Advisors pool is:

0x7DcbD3F649f10521CEAFcd5fe389AE67b40020d6

Please see the appendix for more details.

Release Schedule

The Token Release schedule will be modified on July 1st, 2019 to unlock tokens every 6 months rather than every month, alleviating selling pressure.

Moving forward, reserve and incentive tokens will be unlocked to ThunderCore every July and January. This release schedule will continue until July 2022.

Current vs New Token Release Schedule
Daily Berminal Brief (8/21/18): Apple Co-Founder Is Involved With A Crypto Investment Startup And Australians Can Now Pay Their Bills Using Crypto
By: Berminal - The Crypto News Platform
Tags: Crypto, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency News, Australia, Bitcoin

The state of the market: It was a slow day for the Crypto market today. Half of the top 10 cryptocurrencies changed by less than 1%. Bitcoin (BTC) went from $6,481 to $6,300 today, but has already recovered and is currently trading at $6,456, bringing the 24-hour change to just -0.09%. Ethereum, on the other hand, continued falling below $300 and is currently priced at $282.28, losing 3.12% in the last 24 hours.

1) In a recent interview with NullTX, Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak revealed that he’s collaborating with Equi, a crypto investment company that is based out of Malta. He said they have investors with huge track records of good investments, and nothing beyond that. Wozniak, who initially claimed that he had sold all of his Bitcoins back in December 2017 at its all-time high, said that he now owns one Bitcoin (read more).

2) Australian Cryptocurrency exchange Cointree has announced a partnership with Gobbill, which would enable Australians to pay their bills in Cryptocurrencies. Under the partnership, Cointree will take care of the cryptocurrency conversion, while Gobbill will pay the bills on the user’s behalf. Through this deal, Australians will be able to use over 40 different cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and NEO (read more).

3) Popular Crypto exchange Huobi has announced a new product to streamline their token listing application process. Huobi saw a trading volume of $411 Million in the last 24 hours. Called the Huobi Automated Listing Platform, the exchanging is hoping to bring more transparency in the listing process. Contrary to the name, the new system will not automatically list any token or coin (read more).

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