fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
In 1943, Piloting a Flying Fortress Over Italy Was One Frightening Job
By: Robert Beckhusen
Tags: Military, WIB History, War, History, Books

In 1943, Piloting a Flying Fortress Over Italy Was One Frightening Job

A B-17 pilot wrote home about gutsy attacks from Italian fighters

by ROBERT BECKHUSEN

The Italian campaign was the bloodiest conflict — in terms of soldiers who lost their lives — in the West during World War II. More soldiers died there than in North Africa, France or during the Allies’ advance into Germany.

American bomber pilots flying from North Africa also met fierce resistance and suffered high casualty rates. But their bombing runs were necessary to destroy Axis airfields before the July 1943 invasion of Sicily and the hop onto the mainland that September.

On that note, I recently received a copy of A WWII Journal: January 4, 1942-January 7, 1946 by Randy Graham, whose father R. Bruce Graham served as the pilot of a B-17 Flying Fortress based in North Africa with the U.S. 301st Bomb Group, and who was wounded in combat during the Italian campaign.

Self-published family histories of this kind usually have small readerships, and Randy initially set out to write the book for his son. But such books are valuable primary sources and can provide a close-up, day-by-day view of what the war was like for the people who fought it.

A WWII Journal is primarily based on Bruce Graham’s letters and his wartime diaries. War is, after all, mostly dull but punctured with brief moments of unimaginable terror. Graham, then in his early 20s, had these experiences.

An important lesson — don’t underestimate your enemy. He came away with a respect for Italian fighter pilots in the Regia Aeronautica as they tried to shoot him down over Sicily in July 1943. From the crews’ perspective, the Italians were a deadly and formidable enemy.

“We’ve got no easy assignment over here, Vic,” Graham wrote to Merced Bee columnist Vic Reich that month.

“And don’t be fooled by the wishful thinkers that the Italian’s [sic] can’t fight. In the air, they are plenty tough, and have ample guts. I know — I was wounded by an Italian fighter that couldn’t be scared off by my gunners. And now, they are getting twice as tough. You know the weakest guy in the world is going to put up a damn good battle when they try to drive a car through his house.”

During a mission in May 1943, Graham was flying in formation when Italian fighters attacked the American bombers. “I had leaned forward to adjust one of the instruments and — bop — I was hit.”

He spent three weeks recovering in a hospital after doctors removed a 14 x 26-millimeter chunk of shrapnel from his right arm.
The Challenges For Pastors’ Wives
By: Kadi Cole
Tags: Women, Leadership, Work, Religion, Equality

The Challenges For Pastors’ Wives

And a call to action.

As I’ve become more involved in the conversation regarding female leaders in the church, one perspective that’s stood out to me is that of pastors’ wives. Women married to pastors are really at the epicenter of this conversation, because they are tasked with unique responsibilities and, often, expectations they never asked to fulfill.

The research behind Developing Female Leaders involved sending out a survey to over 1,200 women currently leading in ministry in some capacity. Their feedback revealed a lot. Pastors’ wives shoulder unique challenges: church members expect things from them. Men — and women! — have certain biases against them.

On top of external pressures are the expectations these women hold for themselves! For example, if a woman considers herself a strong leader, the challenge of how to synthesize her own giftings with those of her husband arises. Oftentimes, pastors’ wives end up living out the leadership of their husbands, without fully realizing their own calling within the context of being married to a church leader. This can breed frustration, insecurity, and confusion about her own role.

On the other hand, if a woman doesn’t consider herself a leader, being married to a pastor can result in a lot of pressure to do things and be someone that doesn’t always line up with her true identity or giftings.

I have the greatest respect, and my heart goes out, for women who are pastors’ wives. On top of caring for those in their church, and caring for their husbands and families, they shoulder the burden of trying to define who they are in a church system that, historically, hasn’t always done the best job of assisting them in that exploration.

In Developing Female Leaders, I make the point that Christians ought to consider one another as individuals. Regardless of who we’re married to, we have our own gifts, callings, and purposes. While God calls us to come together and help each other achieve those callings, church union is never meant to eclipse anyone. Instead, the Body of Christ is meant to refine and celebrate each of us as we pursue Christ more and more fully!

Pastors’ Wives: don’t let anyone convince you that your identity in Christ is secondary or that it doesn’t matter. You are who you are, married to your spouse, for a specific purpose. You are God’s best for your husband, and have unique things to bring to the table.

For the rest of us: Let’s create less awkwardness for pastors’ wives: let’s let go of the biases and expectations that don’t line up with who they are. Let’s see them as individuals, and give them the same freedoms that we all desire in pursuing our God-given callings.
#36. How Can I Win at Medium?
By: Brian Goldrich
Tags: Writing, Medium, Statistics, Inspiration

It’s not your eyes. I took this picture. That’s why it’s blurry.

Th… what to write about today?

In my quest for material, I decided to dive into the stats page — the analysis of the analytics of the statistics page — to get an idea about what’s working and what isn’t based on the numbers.

And according to said numbers, posts about drinks (Iced Coffee) resonated with folks while posts about food (Bacon) fell flat. So it’s simple then: More posts about breakfast drinks.

But what the numbers didn’t tell me was that maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t so much the subject material that was uninspiring, but more the accoutrements. The picture might’ve been shit. Maybe it reminded people of Hormel Bacon as opposed to, say, Trader Joe’s (Beautiful) Uncured Apple Smoked Bacon.

Or maybe, just maybe it was the title of the post? Instead of “Bacon. Period.” perhaps I should’ve called it “The Bacon I’ve Been Eating is Having Its Period.” Sorry, I know that’s crude, but it surely would’ve gotten, at a minimum, a cursory peek by more than the four folks who took the 2 minutes to read it. Special shout out to my wife, my dad, Mike and Jacob.

(Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy… my post about stainless steel cleanser hasn’t been released yet but based on the numbers I think I have a winner!)

I mean, surely it can’t be my writing. My writing is awesome. So said my Daddy when I spoke to him this morning. He, in that reassuring, fatherly way in which everything I do is awesome, told me so.

Trying to figure out how to win at Medium is like taking stabs in the dark. I think. Although I’ve never actually taken a stab in the dark. I ought to try. I hope I don’t hurt a loved one. That would suck.

But yesterday, when it was looking grim, a solution fell from the sky, like manna from heaven, courtesy of Medium themselves, or elizabeth tobey who is a Mediumer. She gave me helpful hints about How to Win at Medium.

Apparently, what I need to do is include a really cool photo. Check. (This one’s a little blurry but deal with it.) And I should use a catchy Title, because it’s not about what you write, it’s more about the initial hook. I wonder if I should use a bobber with my cast. And then I need a solid subtitle — is that the lure? Or is it the other way around?

Fast forward to the drop caps. I like to think of it as dangling cap. I got this one, too! Check. And tags are my friends! Yay!!!! Check, got those, too.

Most importantly, write something worth reading. Checkity, check, check, check. I mean, who wouldn’t want to read about a household cleanser.

I can hear Ethel Merman now…
Pencil Problems #45: Goals for 2019
By: Kent Fenwick
Tags: Book Publishing, Side Project, Podcast, Ecommerce, Goals

For everyone who has been following along 2019 should be a fantastic year for Nick. He has a print copy of his book in hand and has decided to set the goal of getting it published.

Kent had an epiphany over the break and decided that Able Cells is a business, not a side project.

And Nick and Kent share one of their favourite new inspirational videos from Arnold himself.

Enjoy,

Kent
The Perfection Paradox
By: Deborah Barchi
Tags: Self Improvement, Poetry, Writing, Creativity, Life Lessons

The Perfection Paradox

Seek it and ye shall not find

Perfection is illusive as a shimmering mirage;

yet we strive for it, ignoring the wisdom of our hearts.

How many vibrant poems and songs still remain unsung,

robbed of life and passion before they have begun?

The quest for perfection mistakes mere brass for gold,

resulting in many a brilliant tale left untold.

So let’s remove perfection from our daily quest,

and nurture instead our talents at their very best.
Solace
By: Tre L. Loadholt
Tags: Poetry, Dogs, Love, A Cornered Gurl, Pets

what do you do with

old love that bends at the

very thought of it?

you connect the dots

build homes from

every crooked line

and then —

you look at your faithful companion

while she sleeps

haphazardly in the afternoon sun.

you are thankful

she excuses you when

you forget the little things.

forgiveness is her motto.

her little heart beats for you

and no one else.

finding solace in her truth

is all that matters,

nothing else compares.
The Simple Document That Kept Me Alive
By: Scott Ninneman
Tags: Suicide, Mental Health, Mental Illness, Bipolar, Suicide Prevention

TW: Suicide, self-harm, no-suicide contract

The middle of the night is the hardest. When the world is dark and most healthy people are safely sleeping, then the monsters that are mental illness come out in full force to torment you.

The constant noise and lack of sleep leave you willing to do anything to stop the madness. Sadly, for many people, that willingness can include suicide ideation.

Believe me, I get it. Thoughts of suicide have been part of my daily life since some time in fourth or fifth grade. These beasts have been my companions for nearly forty years.

Life is worth living, though. It may not always feel like it, but it is always the truth.

What follows is my story of how a piece of paper helped me through some of my darkest hours.
How are you holding up, Pale Suzie?
Tags: Humor, Comics, Society, Baking, Internet

More from rstevens Follow

I make cartoons and t-shirts at www.dieselsweeties.com & @rstevens. Send me coffee beans.
CSS & financial tips & tricks
By: Ben Edwards
Tags: Google, The Web, Investing, Technology, CSS

Technology, design, startups, society, and other topics of interest to me, Ben Edwards. Since 1998.

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Decentralizing Identity Podcast: The three models of digital identity
By: Judd Bagley
Tags: Blockchain, Juddbagley, Identity, Timothyruff, Bitcoin

Timothy Ruff, CEO of Evernym, recently launched the Evernym blog with a really impressive piece examining the three models of digital identity. I talked to Timothy about the process of creating this piece, which will go down as an important bit of thought leadership in the rapidly evolving area of self-sovereign identity.
Disappointed
By: Gb Rogut
Tags: The Bad Influence, Short Story, Fiction, Flash Fiction

50 WORDS

Disappointed

Thrifty Words Theme Challenge #17: Stimulus

Photo by Polina Zimmerman from Pexels

I slammed on his door; I couldn’t wait to surprise him. I had been waiting for so many days to see him again, my body hungrier than my mind.

But when that woman opened the door in nothing but his t-shirt, it was clear I was no longer stimulated.
The Month in Crypto — March 19. Bitcoin bull run, Facebook coin…
By: Alex Clegg
Tags: Blockchain, Bithumb, Ethereum, Facebook, Bitcoin

Bitcoin bull run, Facebook coin rumours, Bithumb & DragonEx hacked.

The News

A bullish price surge has just happened. At the time of writing, bitcoin is up 15% over the last 24 hours, rising above the 50, 100 and 200-day averages for the first time since December 2017. Many of the other large cryptocurrencies are showing double digit gains. coindesk

Facebook has continued hiring blockchain engineers and is now reportedly working on its own cryptocurrency according to The New York Times. Facebook haven’t confirmed anything yet. nytimes

Bithumb, the largest South Korean crypto exchange was hacked, with $13M stolen. It was reportedly an inside job. coindesk This came just days after the Singaporean exchange, DragonEx was hacked for $7M. coindesk

A report produced by Bitwise Asset Management indicates that 95% of bitcoin trade volumes are fake. sec

Rakuten, the Japanese e-commerce giant, received a license from the Japanese Financial Services Agency for a new cryptocurrency exchange. medium

Capital

Kakao, the South Korean messaging application raised $90M in a private coin offering. bloomberg

Etoro, the social trading application, acquired Firmo for an undisclosed amount. Firmo are a smart contract infrastructure provider. techcrunch

Adoption

LVMH, the parent company of luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton, will launch a blockchain to track the authenticity of luxury goods. coindesk

Avnet, the Fortune 500 electronics company is now accepting bitcoin as a form of payment. avnet

UPS announced a blockchain-based platform to help businesses distribute their products online. ups

Market:

The positive uptrend in February has continued throughout March. As mentioned a price surge has occurred in the last 24 hours resulting in the market rising 25% overall this month. Bitcoin is up 24% since the 1st March with a global average of $4,760 USD. Ethereum is up 13%, sitting at a global average of $153 USD.
Prayer for a Saintly Sinner
By: Juliette Van Der Molen
Tags: Feminism, Sex, Poetry, Erotica, Lit

feet stumbled across

tumbled stone

where whispers of

ancient slippers

meet modern feet.

one stocking —

torn,

hands cradle

my hips and

i am rocked

in rhythm

with the cadence

of ghost murmurs

and plaintive

pleas and the

constant click,

of rosary beads.

my open mouth,

bathed in

green,

blue,

red,

sucking in stained

glass hues,

a sinner sanctified

while you enter me

like a prayer.
On Making A Multilingual Search Engine
By: Pratik Bhavsar
Tags: Python, Programming, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Science

I am taking these components for doing the POC

Model — Multilingual Universal Sentence Encoder Vector search — FAISS Data — Quora question pair from kaggle

You can read more about USE in this paper. It supports 16 languages.

STEP 1. LOAD DATA

Let’s first read the data. Because the quora dataset is huge and takes a lot of time, we will take only 1% of the data. This will take around 3 minutes for encoding and indexing. It will have 4000 questions.

STEP 2. CREATE ENCODER

Let’s make encoder classes that load the model and have an encode method. I have created classes for different models which you can use. All models work with English and only USE multilingual works with other languages.

USE encodes text in a fixed vector of size 512.

I am using TFHub for USE and Flair for BERT for loading the models.

STEP 3. CREATE INDEXER

Now we will create FAISS indexer class which will store all embeddings efficiently for fast vector search.

STEP 4. ENCODE AND INDEX

Let's create embeddings for all the questions and store them in FAISS. We define a search method which shows us the top k similar results given a query.

STEP 5. SEARCH

Below we can see the results of the model. We first write a question in English and it gives expected results. Then we convert the query to other languages using google translate and the results are great again. Even though I have made a spelling mistake of writing ‘loose’ instead of ‘lose’, the model understands it as it works on the subword level and is contextual.

As you can see, the results are so impressive that the model is worth putting in production.
Revisiting A Forgotten Christmas Classic: Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol
By: Rebecca Hill
Tags: Movies, Classics, Animated, Holiday, Christmas

Christmas Movies Image provided by Pixabay

Christmas is the season for movies full of cheer and hope. Every so often, we find a movie that has been forgotten in the annals, lost to the newer generations who have discovered newer Christmas films.

Back when I was younger, my dad shared a movie with us that he watched as a child. Since then, it has become a tradition in our house to watch it each year. When I first met my husband fourteen years ago, he had never even heard of the movie! It might never top his favorite list, but it’s one that is a fun and captivating film.

Becoming Familiar With Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol

Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol was released in 1962. Of course, it features the many scenes that we are familiar with — Tiny Tim, the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, and some sad little tales along the way. The animation definitely shows its age, but it’s one that should be mentioned among the enduring films of the times. This remake of Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol” just might captivate your heart.

This movie, full of little lessons and Christmas spirit, with a few different spins on the Christmas classic by Mr. Dickens, but still embodies the core of what the author was aiming for. As one reviewer of the film stated, is it even Christmas without watching this film?

My Thoughts On This Classic Film

As I said earlier, this might not be everyone’s favorite film, but it deserves to be watched at least once. There are many adaptations to Charles Dickens Christmas Carol, but this is one (much like The Muppet Christmas Carol) that will resonate with kids.

It can be a little harder to find these days, but it is definitely worth watching at least once! I have loved this movie since I was young, and the many different nuggets that are nestled within. I hope ya’ll enjoy this hidden holiday classic as much as we do!

You can find a copy of it here: Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol
“Pear Woman”
Tags: Art, Self-awareness, Thesceneandheard, Beauty, Autodidacticism

The artist was inspired by the different human body types and especially the so-called “pear” shaped body.

Now people work hard on their body image and everyone wants to look fit and ‘skinny’. No-one tries to love themselves just the way they are.

Fashion dictates and imposes how women should look. No one ever tells us how to ‘love yourself ‘and think about what is the most important to the self.

In this artwork I wanted to show the beauty of women who are perfect and sexy in their natural look.

-Krystsina Lukyanchyk-
$OST News: Simple Token, “OST” now available for purchase on 3 of the top 5 global crypto exchanges
By: Jason Goldberg
Tags: Blockchain, Ethereum, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Tech

We promised the crypto community that one of our plans for early 2018 was to make Simple Token, OST, available for purchase for potential users and customers of the platform in the most popular places. Widespread availability of OST is critical to our plans to bring blockchain to the mainstream, and for us to reach companies and developers who want to make use of the OpenST Protocol and software.

We pleased to announce that as of Thursday 11 Jan, 2018 OST is available for purchase on 3 of the world’s top 5 ERC-20 crypto exchanges: Binance, OKEx, and Huobi.

And we are just getting started!

Thanks for your support Simple Token community. Your passion for our mission drives us forward.

Learn more and chat us up in our Telegram channel.
🎤We are not seeing lots of big companies went ICO, why?
By: Crypto Influence
Tags: Social Media, Ethereum, ICO, Interview

Kodak coin was launched during Consumer Electronic Show in January 2018 and when the coin was launched, Kodak price increased 450 million dollars.

However, we are not seeing a lot of big companies went ICO, why?

We were fortunate to have Bruce Elliott to interview with us, the president of ICOx Innovations, who founded Kodak coin and KodakOne platform project, and partnered with East Kodak company to launch the KodakOne ICO. ICOx Innovations provides the process and technology. It finds big brands and bring them to the blockchain space. And Kodak is the first big name company they helped stepped into the Blockchain and Cryptocurrency space.

He is also mentioning that

“Bringing big brands to ICO will make the customer adoption easier, and we think that’s the key to have a sustainable coin economy in the next 2–3 years.”

What’s your thought on why big companies not going ICO? If you are ICOx what is the next big company you are going to go after for launching ICO?
SEO Check Lists การให้คะแนน สำหรับ Metatag
By: Chalermchai Prompunya
Tags: Google, Developer, SEO, Artisan, Keywords

We are a full-scale digital agency based in Chiang Mai, Thailand, specializing in software development, design, and digital marketing consulting.

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Convolutional Neural Network: theory and code
By: Matteo Tortoli
Tags: Convolutional Network, Code, Cnn, AI, Deep Learning

Convolutional Layers

These layers are called so because they perform a convolution operation. Briefly:

convolution is a mathematical operation on two functions that produces a third function expressing how the shape of one is modified by the other.

How this operation is applied to a CNN? Let’s suppose we have in input a greyscale image, and the correspondant matrix is the follow:

Input matrix

Now we must define a “convolution matrix” named as filter or kernel, whose main goal is to apply a filter to the image. Applying the kernel to the input matrix allows to highlight its characteristics, such as the edges, the subjects and so on. Having said that, let’s define the kernel as follow:

Kernel “Edge-detect”

and now let’s see the convolution operation in action:

First step

The first step is to take from the input matrix a submatrix (let’s call it “A”) of the same size as kernel starting from position (1,1) and multiply A and kernel. The mathematical operation is:

(10 x 1)+(2 x 0)+(0 x -1)+(50 x 0)+(7 x 0)+(7 x 0)+(0 x -1)+(0 x 0)+(25 x 1)=35

then we move one position to the right and repeat the operation:

Step 2

since we are “at the farest right” of the input matrix, we move one position lower and repeat the operation again:

Step 3

last step:

Step 4

Done! This output matrix (called feature map) has two characteristics:

the dimension is lower than the input matrix (from 4 x 4 to 2 x 2); the values ​​inside highlight the characteristics of the starting image (like the edges).

We can notice that we started the operation from the top-left corner of matrix and we slided to the right of one position, until we reached the top-right corner. Then we moved to the bottom of one position and we repeated the process again, until the input matrix is examinated.

And that’s all about convolution. Next step: pooling layer.
Twitter Sentiments Analysis using a Classification Algorithm
By: Pallavi Gupta
Tags: Data Sci, Naive Bayes Classifier, Machine Learning, Twitter Sen, Data Science

Create a function, prepare_data_set, as shown below, it is used to prepare a training set from X_train, X_test datasets.

def prepare_data_set(data):

datasets=[]

for row in data.values:

tweet_words = clean_tweet(row[0])

label = row[1] # important point to be noted here, we are adding

# array of data, not individual element

# ((tweet_words,label)) instead of(tweet_words,label)

# link words with classification label to train model



datasets.append((tweet_words,label))

return datasets

Create a function, clean_tweet, as shown below, as it is used to delete unnecessary data from a tweet.
The Kindness Of A Farmer
By: Vee Goldman
Tags: Kindness, Hope, Poetry, Life, Kindness Of Strangers

The Kindness Of A Farmer

A sack of potatoes

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

A young woman widowed with children so small

Was now on her own would she manage it all?

With small mouths to feed and jobs needing to do

Through sadness, she wondered would she make it through

And sat in her porch perched for all them to see

A sack of potatoes to add to their tea

The sacks they would come and she never did know

Who left them to find through wind, hail, and snow

The sacks made a difference to her daily life

It eased things and gave her less trouble and strife

Nothing was said and no soul ever seen

A sack of potatoes showed someone had been

But find out she did who was leaving them there

A strong kindly Farmer who did duly care

A sack of potatoes helped her to get through

And widowhood could come to me and to you

A Farmer called Samuel was leaving the sacks

And he remained careful to cover his tracks

The kindness of strangers a wonderful thing

To be kind can make your heart bigger and sing

The story of this was told to me by the Widow, now in old age herself. The Farmer leaving the sacks was called Samuel. He lived to ninety years of age. He now lays forever under a starry sky on the edge of a Barley field.

He was my Uncle. I miss him to this day.
Android w/o DI — Update. All about the Flow
By: Bob Dahlberg
Tags: Kotlin, Android, Architecture

Android w/o DI — Update

All about the Flow

Photo by Fabio Bracht on Unsplash

In the original post, I used a BroadcastChannel in my AppStream to send messages between different parts of the application. Since Kotlin 1.4, I would suggest that you use the SharedFlow instead.

I’ve done the switch in my applications due to two reasons.

It is designed to replace the BroadcastChannel completely. Simplifying the code so that everything is a Flow. not forcing developers to know the Channel API.

If you want more reasons, I’d suggest you take a look at this link: https://kotlin.github.io/kotlinx.coroutines/kotlinx-coroutines-core/kotlinx.coroutines.flow/-shared-flow/.

I’ve also updated the example code to use this in a branch named “feat/sharedflow” to reflect those changes.

Here is the updated AppStream, which is the only piece that needs updating for the switch to happen.
December 6, 2017
Tags: Steemit, Questions, Crowdini, Comments, Games

EMAIL WAS LATE YESTERDAY

In an effort to make the posting to Steemit a little more reliable we broke the job that sends the emails.

Because of that the email didn’t go out until about 11:50 am est. Hopefully we fixed it and today’s email goes out on time. 🤞

Luckily it doesn’t look like it affected the voting numbers.

Oh, one other thing I keep forgetting to mention. I have moved the reminder email time to 6pm est. I just checked and I still need to update the my account page. So if you weren’t using that because of when it was being sent hopefully this helps you out.

All the best,

Jason
The “What If” Game for writing…
By: Josh Hallman
Tags: Joshford, Game, Stories, Josh Hallman, Story Telling

in Eudaimonia and Co
Top Trans News
By: Pierre Trudel
Tags: Womens Rights, LGBTQ, BlackLivesMatter, Transrightsarehumanrights, Theequest

Every day people are Gay Trans lesbians because they are everyday people.

Being in love is not reserved for heterosexuals because religious people say so. They divorce, separate, leave children every day, yet they are everyday people?

Human rights are for everyone, every day.
Куда идет Система Bitbon?
By: Bitbon System
Tags: Investors, Биткоин, Bitbon, Bitcoin, Growth Hacking

The Bitbon System is a large-scale infrastructure project, which represents a decentralized platform for Contributing. https://www.bitbon.space/en/home

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The video games that improve kids’ social skills
Tags: Science, Sme, Research, Technology, Psychology

The video games that improve kids’ social skills

Identifying behavioural issues early on can help improve outcomes in later life.

by Joanna Roberts

Video games that are specifically designed to test and improve children’s social and emotional skills could enable parents and teachers to spot issues and help children improve their behaviour and performance at school as well as in later life.

Imagine racing through a virtual labyrinth against an alien and losing. Given the chance to rerun the race — which you don’t know is stacked against you — or quit, how many times would you try again?

The answer for most children is four or five, according to Dr Daniel Peña, a clinical psychologist at Alava Reyes, a psychology centre in Madrid, Spain. If a child gives up after the first go or keeps going time after time, it could signal a problem with their ability to manage frustration.

The race is just one scenario in Gomins, a games app designed by Alava Reyes to help parents detect emotional or social problems in children aged between four and 12.

‘We frustrate children in the video games and then observe their response,’ said Dr Peña. ‘(In the alien race) children with trouble in the competency tend to give up too soon or too late.’

Dr Peña says the point of the app is to test skills such as stress control, decision-making, emotional recognition and tolerance. Throughout a game, the app records the child’s responses in order to flag behavioural issues. Pressing a particular button repeatedly could indicate problems with impulsivity, for example.

It also uses artificial intelligence to assess the child’s facial expressions as they play the game, which are captured through the camera on the mobile device. The results, which Dr Peña says are based on extensive research of what constitutes normal behaviour, appear in the parents’ part of the app and are double-checked against a questionnaire for parents about their child’s behaviour.

The app, which is designed to be used in the child’s normal environment, is not intended to replace psychological diagnoses, but can be a simple way of carrying out an initial screening. As part of the development, it was tested in a clinical setting to compare its ability to detect emotional problems with professional methods.

‘For emotional problems like depression and anxiety, the reliability is quite good,’ said Dr Peña. ‘We share about 30–40% of the variance with the clinical tools. Video games are (a) less reliable tool to assess children but (you can) imagine a child at home is more prone to play a video game than to do a long set of questions.’
CodeSubmit for Mobile App Developer Assessment
By: Tracy Phillips
Tags: Mobile App Development, Andriod App Development, Hiring, iOS App Development, Recrutement

CodeSubmit for Mobile App Developer Assessment

Test candidates for iOS and Android dev skills on CodeSubmit

CodeSubmit is excited to add mobile development to our library of programming aptitude tests! Hiring teams can create their own assignments for iOS and Android, or use one of the CodeSubmit Library assignments to assess mobile development skills.

With CodeSubmit for Mobile, you can test candidates on all the skills you may need in an app developer. For iOS, that includes skills and capabilities like:

Knowledge of iOS programming languages (Swift, Objective-C)

Ability to develop an app for different devices: smartphones, tablets, etc.

Ability to work with most frequently used APIs and open-source libraries

Knowledge of IDE, REST/JSON/XML standards; MVP, MVVM architecture patterns

If you’re hiring an Android developer, you can test for:

Practical knowledge in Android programming languages (Kotlin, Java)

Experience working in open-source ecosystems and libraries

Knowledge of Android NDK and architectural patterns — MVP, MVVM

Familiarity with Android version updates and their APIs

And after your candidate is finished, reviewing their assignment is also easier than ever — with CodePlay for Mobile, your candidate’s application is easily previewed right in your browser:

CodePlay for Mobile

After launching CodePlay for Mobile, you can view your candidate’s submission in whichever device you prefer, making it easy to simulate how the app would perform in the real world.

Wanna give it a try for yourself? Simply sign up here to try it for free, no credit card required.
New Safein CTO Promises Efficiency, Simplicity, and Security
By: Audrius Slažinskas
Tags: Chief Technology Officer, Code, Team, Executives, Startup

Simply great: we finally have a new CTO! A graduate of the Cambridge University, Edvard Poliakov joins our team to ensure that our code is simple, our processes are efficient, and our security posture is exemplary.

As a mathematician, Edvard enjoys solving problems. He constantly analyses complex domains, trying to understand them and making use out of it.

He believes that simplicity is the key for any software project: from the code that is easy to read for a developer to the UI that is intuitive for the end user.

“What I like most about the change that software brings to our lives is the convergence of various tools. We have an app for all the music in the world. A single decentralized authentication protocol. All the IT infrastructure you might need from a single cloud provider. Time has come for a decentralized identity management platform”, — said Edvard.

Our co-founder Vladas is especially happy to welcome Edvard to our team. They have studied at the University of Cambridge together.

“I know that Edvard is extremely talented, hard-working, and always looking for challenges. We are putting together a team which fits together not only regarding their technical competences but also their personalities and would be ready to deliver results immediately.” — noted Vladas.

Edvard was a tech lead at Euromonitor International, a software developer at Danske Bank and Softwire and other companies.

Welcome!

Connect with Edvard on Linkedin.
Friday The Thirteenth
By: Elisabeth Khan
Tags: Poetry, Letters From Li, Literary Impulse, Li Weekly Editorial, Fiction

Friday The Thirteenth

Fear not! Just read!

November Night. Painting by Alexey Zuev (www.fineartamerica.com)

Friday the 13th is, in popular culture, an inauspicious day. If you’re at all superstitious, you might want to stay home all day. Because, what if a black cat crossed your path to compound the dangers of this ominous date? Or what if you inadvertently walked under a ladder? Or, heaven forbid, broke a mirror? I shudder to think of it.

Just kidding.

For some people, though, it’s not a laughing matter. There’s actually a word coined specifically to describe this persistent, irrational fear: “paraskevidekatriaphobia” (para-skev-EE-dek-a-tri-a-PHO-bia), from the Greek words Paraskeví (Παρασκευή, Friday), and dekatreís (δεκατρείς, thirteen).

The various explanations as to why this calendrical oddity should raise fear in the minds of people may be purely speculative, still, it’s a fact that the phenomenon has a measurable economic impact in much of the Western world. Sufferers of this phobia will refrain from all kinds of activities on a day like this. For example, they may avoid traveling, or making major purchases, or even giving birth (which would mean a lifetime of bad luck for the baby!).

If you are one of them, you could probably use some lovely poems and stories to take your mind off all the things that could go wrong today. As do we all, in these pandemic-stricken times. Curling up with some fresh reading matter is the antidote to a host of ills. And we are happy to present three exceptional contributions: two great poems and one spellbinding short story all the way from the UK.

If there’s a common theme to them, I would call it perseverance: never giving up. Like Poetry personified in On Pointe, and Atlas in Keeping It Together, and the narrator in Amy, I hope we can all find that strength and diligence to make it through these trying times and come out smiling on the other side!

Friday’s LI Reads

On Pointe by Joe Barca

Holding It Together by Shalini C

Amy by Svetlana Smith
How Is This Christmas Different for You?
By: Debbie Walker
Tags: Middle Pause, Life Lessons, Love, Family, Christmas

How Is This Christmas Different for You?

We want to know!

Photo by freestocks on Unsplash

Christmas 2020. Two words that contain a time burned in our hearts for at least two generations. Those who remember and those too young to remember.

This season and year, for that matter, is an oxymoron. A contradictory term or words that go against common sense but are true, anyway.

Separate yet connected. Alone but not lonely. Apart together.

These phrases leave us with a hint of sadness and a glimpse of hope. We may be connected in our hearts or on Zoom but physically apart. (For the first time in many years, for some.) It may be the last time we ever see them, for others.

This year has been a year of immense sadness but hope is on the horizon. The vaccine is here, in time for Christmas. The celebrated Hope for the human race is also here, the birth of a Savior.

At Middle-Pause, we all want to hear stories of your oxymorons. Enlighten us. Encourage us. Include us.

That being said, it’s time for your reading pleasure! Drum roll, please…

Christmas 2020: How is it Special for You? — Marilyn Flower

Vaginal Dryness — the two little words that can clear a room! — Helen Clare

My Hair Has Gotten Thicker Since Menopause — Bebe Nicholson

I’ll Be Alone for Christmas but Not Lonely — Katie Michaelson

Is Your Inner Critic Still Torturing You? — Mary Gallagher

The Christmas Doll’s Gift — Katie Michaelson

Our purpose is to encourage, inspire, and empower you to live a life of meaning and purpose. Whatever that is to you.

Leave any comments, suggestions, or just send us virtual words of love and support (We sure need it!) at middlepause51@gmail.com, follow us on https://twitter.com/MiddlePause; https://www.pinterest; STOMP!

Remember, To engage is to empower!

Also, if you are in a crisis of managing work, family, parenting, caregiving, disability, racism, or menopause; check out how I created an oasis of peace in my life.

Until next time…

Peace & Blessings!

Your Superheroes!

From Debbie, Margie, Marilyn, and Meg
BBC Interviews Ben Shapiro
By: W. Island
Tags: Politics, Current Events

His edges get quickly snatched

If you read What We Know, I regularly call out the media in the United States. From covering the empty podium waiting on Trump while Hillary’s policies were called too wonky; their failure to call lies “lies” (seriously New York Times should get an award just for their creativity); to their obsession with articles about Nazis and serial killers. But there inability to actually interview their guests is the most frustrating. They let people like KellyAnne Conway get away with lying, talking over them, and more importantly not ever answering any of their questions.

So it was with glee that I watched an interviewer on the Andrew Neil from the BBC smacking the heck out of conservative nutjob Ben Shapiro. Shapiro is obviously used to the softball interviews of Fox and CNN and he wasn’t prepared for actually being expected to answer questions about his shady past. Shapiro thought he was just going to promote his book. Andrew Neil had other plans. And just like all bullies when confronted, Ben Shapiro whined like a little child and stormed out.

Please enjoy. In case you missed it.
Space
By: Rebeca Ansar
Tags: Poetry, Poet, Love, Relationships, Poem

your love

head spins off the axis

of this twisted orbit

is dizzying

these questions

with caustic answers

I spare myself

speak lies

for our delicate peace

ask strangers to

show the road

a place I cannot follow

catch me

every plot has

its resolution

ours is severed rope.
What we believe in. Chronotope
By: Katya Serova
Tags: English, Urban Planning, Data Visualization, Smart Cities, Data Science

Fragment of an article in Tatlin Mono — “Young architects 2014”

Habidatum Chronotope: map (2D) + time (vertical)

City as a Process

A modern city is a process unfolded in time and space. To study such a city is like to perform a piece of music or listen to it when the impressions of the passage being performed at the moment are immersed in the context of what has already been played, and the momentary pleasure complements the integrity of the performed fragment.

The view on the city in static defined the current toolkit of urban studies. There are virtually no tools for analyzing the time trajectory of a place.

Free Time of Space

Meanwhile, such trajectories open up new opportunities for citizens, businesses and city authorities. With the help of the Habidatum Chronotope platform, you can identify the “free time” resources of a place, the mode of its use at different times of the day, week, month, year.

According to Habidatum, approximately 60% of the time urban space is not in use: thus, the resources of urban activity growth and compaction are huge. Habidatum Chronotope platform helps detect free “temporal niches” in different areas of urban space.

Compatibility of Functions in Time and Space

The demand for free “temporary niches” raises the question of the compatibility of different functions when sharing the same place at different times — a situation reminiscent of the “right of passage” in the old medieval cities, when the street was used for the passage of cattle and people alternately. The compatibility potential of different functions can be assessed using analytical indicators that determine the “space capacity” and “usage type” for different categories of users of the platform.

Event as a Change of Trend

Habidatum believes in a special definition of urban “event” — for us, it is not just a single happening (football match, accident, demonstration, etc.). Oppositely, it is a change of “trend” or “pattern”. Data processed through special analytical “filters” in real time allow recording the change of “trends”, whether it is a change in a given parameter (for example, the average length of the trip) or a spatial pattern (for example, the configuration of ethnic diasporas in the city).

Real-time vs. Historical Analysis

Most of the professional tasks solved with the help of Habidatum Chronotope platform are in the between real-time monitoring and traditional historical analysis. The platform allows doing both, not limited to any of the extremes. Its main goal is the practice of “lean planning”, whose application requires linking historical analysis to constant engagement in the process that is studied and seeks adaptation of urban development scenarios based on the constantly updated information.

Thank you for reading. Appreciate your comments!
Belajar Fundamental OOP Dengan Javascript.
By: Yudi Krisnandi
Tags: Polymorphism, JavaScript, Abstraction, Oop Concepts, Encapsulation

I am a web developer and also I have a passion for teaching.

Follow
Life, Matrix and God ? Purpose of human life
By: Abhay Srivastav
Tags: Philosophy, Spiritual, Meditation, Life Lessons

Meditation is one of the way to see beyond the illusion.

Have you ever felt that there are never-ending problems in our life? Almost like the world is against you. Something is stopping us to realise the true happiness or the real truth. We are always planning for the next moment but never really reach there. Everyone around you is trying to tame you, trying to slow you down, rejecting your ideas, keeping you waiting, trying to waste your time. Then you are not alone. Many of us feel the same. There is some secret hidden in the world. The world is not as it seems. Someone doesn’t want us to realize the real truth. They want us to get stuck in the web of Maya.

Let’s talk about Maya. In Hindi, it is Maya or The Matrix. If you have seen the movie Matrix, you either think that it is just another action movie, or you have connected with the character of Neo at some deeper level. How he was looking for the truth. Because he knew there was something wrong with the world. And then when he finally realized his true identity and defeated all the Agents. And this is all an illusion, he finally wakes up.

Aren’t we all Neo, waiting to wake up?

My latest belief or theory about Maya is inspired from this video. The video is in Hindi. The gist of the video is that the world is an illusion and we have forgotten our true purpose here. At the end of our life, we all have to go back to the source or God (if you may say).

Now why would God or someone create this illusion of the world to trap us here. I think that God has sent us here to make us learn something. We will keep repeating this cycle of birth and death, till we have realised the real truth. Or as they say in Hinduism, that it is our Karmas from our previous life that lead us to the next birth. And till the time all our Karma are not resolved, we will keep coming to this world to learn and repay all our Karmic debts.

The same thing is told, in some movies. You have to see some of the movies and shows in order to understand the context here. Here I’m listing some of them. I would highly recommend to watch them.

The Truman Show

The Matrix

Hang the DJ

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

P.S. I’m on this parallel spiritual path. I know i haven’t reached the final destination yet. But i know it exists and if are on a similar journey. Let’s connect.
Rapha Prestige: Kamikatsu
By: Lee Basford
Tags: Rapha, Photography, Travel, Cycling, Japan

The final team made their way in darkness along the mountain trail in conditions that could be potentially life threatening. After coming in to view the riders were safely escorted by the headlights of our Land Rover.

For more information about upcoming Prestige events visit Rapha.cc
The Top 10 Serverless Links of 2017 ⚡️
By: Za'E Johnson
Tags: Serverless, Openwhisk, Cloud Computing, Lambda, Cloud Services

2017 saw the arrival of Statuscode’s latest newsletter Serverless Status. Curated by Raymond Camden, the newsletter covers the latest updates on serverless architectures and paradigms.

Here’s a run through of what subscribers of Serverless Status were reading in 2017.

Rafal Gancarz

A roundup of key Serverless computing platforms, tools and frameworks available.

Featured in May’s Issue 4

yaron haviv

Nuclio is a framework, written in Go, for high-performance Serverless real-time event and data processing.

Featured in October’s Issue 26

Mark Boyd

“Startups are building next generation stacks combining GraphQL, cloud-based storage, and edge service providers to deliver their sites. The next goal? To make the whole architecture model serverless.”

Featured in September’s Issue 20

Matt Billock

A performance and usability comparison of three function-as-a-service providers: AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions and Microsoft Azure Functions.

Featured in August’s Issue 15

Amazon

A practical five module online workshop from Amazon that focuses on AWS Lambda, unsurprisingly, and covers areas like user management and RESTful APIs.

Featured in July’s Issue 11

Randall Degges

A well made argument that webhooks are more often the right way to go for situations where customers are extending upon your service.

Featured in October’s Issue 24

Hacker News

A Hacker News thread with over 100 comments answering the question: ‘How was your experience with AWS Lambda (Amazon’s serverless platform) in production?’

Featured in June’s Issue 8

Peter Sbarski

A cool calculator to provide estimates for Serverless usage across Lambda, Azure Functions, Google Cloud Functions, and OpenWhisk.

Featured in June’s Issue 9

John Chapin

Featured in July’s Issue 10

Node.js YouTube Channel

A walkthrough of one company’s entire Serverless stack, with a heavy focus on the ‘why’.

Featured in May’s Issue 2

Many thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this roundup of 2017 in Serverless be sure to give it a clap. 👏
Remarkable Poetry on YouTube
By: Dr Mehmet Yildiz
Tags: Self Improvement, Poetry, Writing, Life, YouTube

This is just the beginning!

More and more videos will be coming soon.

We love innovation and fun.

I will share new videos of our poets in story format.
Everything EOS #37:Dan Larimer FUD, Virginia Tech Blockchain Hub, and BPs Going Carbon Neutral
By: Ico Alert
Tags: Blockchain, Eos, Medium, Podcast, Everything EOS

Rob Finch (Cypherglass) and Zack Gall (ICO Alert) discuss Dan Larimer’s recent barrage of activity on Telegram, good news about Block.One’s ongoing partnership with Virginia Tech, and more!

Everything EOS is a podcast hosted by Rob Finch (Cypherglass) and Zack Gall (ICO Alert) that follows the EOS ecosystem: dApp spotlights, VC partnerships, announcements, and more!

Follow us on Twitter at

@BlockchainZack

@icoalert

@finchify

@CypherglassBP

Originally published on blog.icoalert.com

https://blog.icoalert.com/everything-eos-larimer-vtblockchain