fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
How Liquidity Can Enable Performance-Driven Decision-Making
By: Realblocks Team
Tags: Investment, Investing, Alternative Investments, Blockchain Technology, Startup

In late October, the CEO of Harvard’s endowment, the largest of any university in the world at $40.9 billion, stated he was not pleased with the fund’s 6.5% returns in fiscal 2019. CEO N.P. Narvekar identified illiquid holdings as one of the drivers for the disappointing results. The Harvard fund is not unique in wanting to obtain liquidity for seemingly illiquid asset classes. While illiquid investments are a core component to many of these long-term investment portfolios, they can often remove the ability to make dynamic decisions when the investments are not performing as anticipated.

Over the past few years, we’ve identified this issue as a pain point for many large institutions looking to invest in illiquid alternatives. In the case of Harvard, when there is a change in its investment strategy, they are forced to undergo a slow and protracted restructuring period in order to reallocate capital to different investment opportunities while still beholden to established performance estimates during this period. As endowments and other institutions are looking to adjust portfolios to address shifts in investment priorities or growing uncertainty of economic conditions, they chafe against illiquidity more and more.

However, through the digitization of these funds or investments on the blockchain, investors are granted greater control over their portfolio performance because they can more simply transfer ownership to interested parties. Provided the necessary demand is available, investors and institutions can access liquidity through a network of prospective sellers and buyers in order to enable performance-driven decision-making.

At RealBlocks, we’re seeing major demand for investment in the alternatives markets. A recent Preqin study states that the market size in 2017 was $8.8 trillion, and is anticipated to grow to $14 trillion by 2023. With immense growth in the alternatives market, we expect the demand for investor liquidity to also increase due to the reasons outlined above. Through our solution, we hope to help lead the transformation in developing a more open and accessible market for alternative investments.

To learn more about what we’re doing at RealBlocks, visit our website at www.RealBlocks.com!
An End-To-End Time Series Data Science Project That Will Boost your portfolio
By: Roberto Sannazzaro
Tags: Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Towards Data Science, Data Science, Programming

In this guide, I want to show you how to make time-series predictions of revenues based on real-life retail data, for these tasks I will be using a very common library: Prophet, developed by scientists at Facebook.

Why Prophet?

According to Prophet GitHub page:

“A tool for producing high-quality forecasts for time series data that has multiple seasonality with linear or non-linear growth”

Moreover, Prophet is integrated into the AWS ecosystem, making it one of the most commonly used libraries for time series analysis.

The data

The data used in this tutorial comes from a retail company, it has strong seasonality components due to the nature of the business where the data comes from. The data frame has been anonymized and it contains two columns: the datetime of the transaction and the amount of it.

Transactions appear at different hours of the day and to reduce the number of noise the data has been re-sampled daily, summing up the total revenues.

Additionally, the timestamp column has been converted to match the CET timezone, the main reason for doing this is to be able to have the data in an understandable format, making interpretation by us and eventually our clients easy. The following is the function used to achieve this:

Transactions were collected between June 2018 and October 2019 and it contains 11284 records of sales.

But let’s dive a little bit more into Prophet: according to Facebook Prophet’s documentation, the data to be fitted into Prophet must have a very rigid format: a column named ds for the points in time and another named y for the target.

Using the following snippets it is easily possible to achieve this:

At this step, the data might look ready to be used to fit a model but, after plotting the data a very important consideration has to be made:
Effective Way to Get Changed Rows in ADF BC API
By: Andrej Baranovskij
Tags: Java, Oracle Adf, Oracle

Did you ever wondered how to get all changed rows in the transaction, without iterating through entire row set? It turns out to be pretty simple with ADF BC API method — getAllEntityInstancesIterator, which is invoked for Entity Definition attached to current VO.

Method works well — it returns changed rows from different row set pages, not only from the current. In my experiment, I changed couple of rows in the first page:

And couple of rows in 5th page. Also I removed row and created one:

Method returns information about all changed rows, as well as deleted and new:

Example of getAllEntityInstancesIterator method usage in VO Impl class. This method helps to get all changed rows in current transaction, very handy:

Sample application source code is available on GitHub.
COVID-19 Media Factsheet
By: Tesnim Zekeria
Tags: Journalism, Covid Fact Sheet, Media

A weekly newsletter on the business of media from @AtlanticMedia, home of @TheAtlantic and @NationalJournal. Subscribe here: bit.ly/2miVHiQ

Follow
Ground Rules for Writing for Psych Ward Experiences
By: Kit Mead
Tags: Mental Health

For people who’ve been through the psychiatric inpatient system, voluntarily or involuntarily. This is not for people that work in them, but people who were put in them (unless you’re both). See the rules before emailing kit.p.mead@gmail.com to see about becoming a writer.

Follow
FlutterPub is now CodeChai ☕
By: Wajahat Karim
Tags: Coding, Programming, Software Development, Flutter, Productivity

CodeChai Logo

For the past year, me and my partner Danish Amjad have been running FlutterPub publication on the side with our lives. Although this year 2020 have been very hard and challenging due to Covid-19, but we are happy with the progress FlutterPub have made.

With over 13,000 followers and more than 12,000 views a day, this publication has got hundreds of awesome articles on Flutter by amazing writers around the world. But as time passed away, we realized that when there are more active publications about Flutter such as Flutter Community etc. then it doesn’t make sense to have other publication as well. This not only makes confusion for readers but also for writers, who have to decide which publication they want to put their articles in. This may increase competition, but we believe sharing knowledge should not be competitive. Rather it should be more encouraged and friendly.
Adrienne Rich, 1929–2012
By: Edith Zimmerman
Tags: Books, Adrienne Rich, Poetry

The wonderful poet Adrienne Rich has died. Here’s an excerpt from her Twenty-One Love Poems from 1977, via Richard Lawson. (And here are several more, from The New Yorker.)

No one’s fated or doomed to love anyone.

The accidents happen, we’re not heroines,

they happen in our lives like car crashes,

books that change us, neighborhoods

we move into and come to love.

Tristan und Isolde is scarcely the story,

women at least should know the difference

between love and death. No poison cup,

no penance. Merely a notion that the tape-recorder

should have caught some ghost of us: that tape-recorder

not merely played but should have listened to us,

and could instruct those after us:

this we were, this is how we tried to love,

and these are the forces they had ranged against us,

and these are the forces we had ranged within us,

within us and against us, against us and within us.
The Ultimate Foundation for Self-Control
By: Chad Prevost
Tags: Personal Development, Books, Self Improvement, Two Minute Takeaway, Authors

This quote is helpful in laying bare the foundations of what you need to ground yourself. We clearly live with the first three enemies more than we do with the latter three. Often, part of transformation isn’t about taking big, bold leaps, it’s about being able to assess what we want less of and controlling the parts of ourselves that want to override the system and function on autopilot. The three skills for self-control, however, are all about processes.

The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It by Kelly McGonigal shows us how willpower is a mind-body response, not a virtue. It is a biological function that can be improved through mindfulness, exercise, nutrition, and sleep.

Willpower is not an unlimited resource. Too much self-control can actually be bad for your health. Temptation and stress hijack the brain’s systems of self-control, and that the brain can be trained for greater willpower. Willpower is centered in a specific region of the brain (within the prefrontal cortex). It uses more energy than almost any other brain region, and therefore it gets tired after prolonged use each day.

It’s also like a muscle, in that training it through specific meditations, and breathing exercises increases its strength and endurance. Interestingly, over time, it is paradoxically far easier to resist temptations if you don’t try to repress them, but instead actually focus on them. Many mindfulness studies have proven this counterintuitive finding.
An Update on Our Weekly Specials
By: Jef Harmatz
Tags: Cooking, Depression, Mental Health, Comics, Food

An Update on Our Weekly Specials

Dealing with depression and finding deals
React JS: Passing Props
By: Chris Kakos
Tags: JavaScript, Web Development, Software Development, UI, React

Passing a String as a Prop

App.jsx

Parent Component

http://localhost:3000

Browser

App.js is the parent component. It currently has no state declared and even so, no child component to pass it to.Let’s see what passing down a prop looks like from a parent component to it’s child.

Passing A Prop

App.js

Parent Component

Now App.js has some state defined with a key of name set to the value of a string — "Chris Kakos" . On line 17, the parent is passing a prop — which is appropriately called name — down to its child component and setting the value of it to the current state — this.state.name — inside of JSX tags.

Receiving A Prop

ChildComponent.js

Child Component

ChildComponent.js is a functional component written in ES6 syntax. It is important to understand that props are sent down from the parent as an object. When a child component receives props, it can access them by using the identifer appropriately name props . Therefore, any prop passed down can be accessed with dot notation, starting with props followed by the name of the prop you wish to access — in this case name — as demonstrated on line 11.

http://localhost:3000

Browser

Passing a Function as a Prop

App.js

A more intermediate example would be to pass down some state as well as functionality that modifies state. First thing is to declare a piece of state to modify. In this case, I decided to create a counter that increments by 1. On Line 11, I set a key named count to a value of 0 . Next I have to create the functionality that is going to modify the current value of count .

On Line 15, I wrote an ES6 arrow function. I start by making a copy of the current state of count — it is not recommended to directly modify state. I then set the state to increment by 1 every time increment() is invoked.

Now that the functionality has been built, I use some ES6 to demonstrate the destructuring of two variables — Line 23 — and pass the current state of them, as well as my newly built functionality, into the ChildComponent as props.

ChildComponent.js

Child Component

The props are received the same as the previous example only this time, I need a way to invoke increment() in order to modify the current state of count . To achieve this — on Line 19 — I added a button with an onClick Event Handler that will invoke increment() each time the button is clicked, ultimately modifying the current state of count .

http://localhost:3000

Browser

*CLICK*

Browser

*CLICK*

Browser

*CLICK*

Conclusion

Props play a vital role in making code more modular. This was a quick demonstration to illustrate how to get started. There is a lot more complex was to use props that really optimize the functionality. I hope this has been a good starting point. For further information and examples, look no further than the official React documentation.

Onward.
Asking Deeper Questions
By: 𝘋𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘢 𝘊.
Tags: Humor, Energy, Short Story, Storytelling, Life Lessons

Top of the morning to you, lovely people!

I don’t know about you, but I adore questions. I love asking them, not so much answering them. I like the infinite possibilities that open up for me to reflect upon that don’t require a definitive answer.

This Thursday’s story is all about questions. Can we expect to obtain genuine insight into the mysteries of life? That is up to each and every one of you to decide.

All I can say is: Be still and listen!
Here’s How to Build Your Own DIY MBA in Digital Marketing
Tags: Digital Marketing, Marketing, Media Consumption

Author: Sujan Patel / Source: Entrepreneur

Image credit: Jannis Tobias Werner / Shutterstock.com

Life moves fast in the world of digital marketing. In fact, since 2013, digital media consumption in the United States has increased by 49 percent , according to comScore.

So, considering a career in this field might be wise. But, when you’re trying to build a career in digital marketing, you may find it difficult to keep up with the industry’s ever-increasing rate of change. So, is it even worth it to invest in a formal education?

The answer is that, while most employers like to see at a least a four-year degree, what you learn about digital marketing at a university won’t be the same as what you learn in an actual digital marketing job. Instead, to become successful in your career, you need to be prepared to learn on the job and gain skills in the field.

Why schools don’t teach digital marketing

Because digital marketing changes so fast, schools struggle to keep up. Richard Geasey, an internet marketing consultant and lecturer at the University of Washington, wrote in Inc. that, “Most schools are staffed by instructors who know nothing of internet marketing. The field is so fast and quickly changing they have no chance to learn anything useful and present it to students.”

Most of those instructors, moreover, often have very little practical experience in digital marketing. They may have studied marketing for years, but if they don’t have real-world experience to share, they won’t be able to properly teach the subject.

So, instead, what instructors teach is the basics of traditional marketing, which does provide a strong marketing foundation; but it doesn’t prepare students for the practicalities of working in the field itself. There are no classes on social media management and none on marketing automation, email marketing or the myriad other topics you’re bound to come across in your career. These things are learned from working in the field.

Writing for Marketing Land, Travis Wright, host of MarTech Talks, wrote, “I’ve spoken at several business schools, including the University of Chicago’s, Booth School of Business and the University of Utah, David Eccles School of Business. Each time after I’m done presenting, students approach me feeling scared — due to the overwhelming lack of knowledge and job readiness they have. I let them know what they didn’t know that they need to know.”

The need to self-educate

…

Click here to read more
A reading list in the wake of the killing of George Floyd
By: Laurie Hahn Ganser
Tags: Book Recommendations, Social Justice, Racism, Books, Anti Racism

Try one of these:

Waking Up White (Debby Irving): A little bit “racism for beginners,” this book takes on a narrative form and walks through systemic racism and how it benefits the white author in a clear, accessible manner.

Between the World and Me (Ta-Nehisi Coates): Coates attempts to answer the questions of racism in a letter to his son. He takes the biggest concerns of racist American history and frames them through personal stories of his racial awakening.

White Fragility (Robin Diangelo): Robin Diangelo explains that racial segregation is set up to protect white people from the discomfort experienced when presented with inequity and challenges to white norms. If you identify as progressive or liberal, this is for you. Diangelo spells out how white progressives are responsible for the perpetuation of inequity.

The New Jim Crow (Michelle Alexander): Alexander explains how the United States criminal justice system functions as a system of racial control. By targeting black men through the War on Drugs and other movements that have decimated communities of color, millions of people are permanently relegated to second-class status by a system that formally follows principles of colorblindness.

The Color of Law (Richard Rothstein): Rothstein methodically analyzes laws that have maintained and further facilitated racial segregation and inequity.

Evicted (Matthew Desmond): Based on years of fieldwork, this book follows eight families in Milwaukee and illustrates how our housing system perpetuates economic exploitation that disproportionately impacts communities of color.

Homeward (Bruce Western): Western depicts life upon prison release as former prisoners attempt to reenter society by describing the lives of the formerly incarcerated and demonstrating how poverty, racial inequity, and lack of social support lead to cycles of vulnerability.

Thick: And Other Essays (Tressie McMillan Cottom): Eight essays that blend the personal with political and turn narrative stories into analyses of whiteness, black misogyny, beauty culture, and status-signaling as a means of survival for black women.

Eloquent Rage (Brittney Cooper): Cooper answers the question, “So what if it’s true that Black women are angry,” spells out why Black women have the right to be, and explains just why anger is a powerful source of energy.
How to create a blank Word DOCX document in Python
Tags: New, Docx, Microsoft Word, Python, Create

Having the functionality to create DOCX files from within your app or website can open up quite a range of possibilities for your project. I’m not suggesting you set this up from the ground up, as that is actually a lot of work. What I am suggesting is that implementing this important feature can be done very easily if you know the right API to use. Let’s take a look.

Step one, install the client:

pip install cloudmersive-convert-api-client

Step the second, call the function:

from __future__ import print_function import time import cloudmersive_convert_api_client from cloudmersive_convert_api_client.rest import ApiException from pprint import pprint # Configure API key authorization: Apikey configuration = cloudmersive_convert_api_client.Configuration() configuration.api_key['Apikey'] = 'YOUR_API_KEY' # Uncomment below to setup prefix (e.g. Bearer) for API key, if needed # configuration.api_key_prefix['Apikey'] = 'Bearer' # create an instance of the API class api_instance = cloudmersive_convert_api_client.EditDocumentApi(cloudmersive_convert_api_client.ApiClient(configuration)) input = cloudmersive_convert_api_client.CreateBlankDocxRequest() # CreateBlankDocxRequest | Document input request try: # Create a blank Word DOCX document api_response = api_instance.edit_document_docx_create_blank_document(input) pprint(api_response) except ApiException as e: print("Exception when calling EditDocumentApi->edit_document_docx_create_blank_document: %s

" % e)

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you get things done. That’s right, send in your request and moments later your DOCX will be ready to go. From there, you can use some of our other API functions to fill it in, such as edit_document_docx_insert_paragraph, edit_document_docx_insert_table, and edit_document_docx_insert_image. Another similar function is edit_document_xlsx_create_blank_spreadsheet, which will allow you to create blank Excel spreadsheets.
The Pain Of A Mother’s Legacy
By: Glenna Gill
Tags: Life Lessons, Parenting, Mental Health, Mothers, Life

Photo by Xavier Mouton Photographie on Unsplash

Am I to blame for my son’s mental illness?

The best times of my life are when my oldest son spends the night at my house. He is a grown man living in another city in a serious relationship with his girlfriend and just graduated from college. When I first asked him to come over, I worried he might feel too old to stay overnight with his mother, but we have tons of fun cooking dinner, watching movies, and playing video games. After missing out on parts of his childhood, I treasure every second we’re together.

When I grow up someday, I want to be just like my son. He made Eagle Scout back in high school and finished four years of college in three years. He’s smart and funny and kind to everybody, including total strangers. I’m infinitely proud of him.

I’ve always said that if I ever get stuck in an emergency, he would be the first person I called. He once went camping with his friends armed only with a pocket knife and a pack of matches. If I had to describe him in one word, I’d say he’s strong, not just physically but emotionally. My boy has been a rock for me, always the wiser of the two of us.

The last time he spent the night with me, I was standing next to him as he was unpacking his bag. He took out a bottle of pills with a prescription label on it. I didn’t want to be nosy, but I asked out of concern.

“Honey, what are those?”

“Oh,” he answered. “This is just medication I take for anxiety and depression.”

My jaw dropped in shock, and a wave of tremendous guilt washed over me.

“Oh my God,” I blurted out. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay, Mom. They’re making me feel a lot better.”

I hugged him tight then, holding him in my arms even though he’s twice my size now. Depression and anxiety were the last things I wanted for my beloved boy, even though I knew all along there was a chance he would struggle with mental illness because of me. I had a diagnosis of bipolar disorder given to me 20 years ago, and my mother had severe clinical depression her whole life. She inherited it from my grandfather, who had episodes so bad he shut himself in the basement for weeks at a time. I’m not sure if it goes back farther than that, but it’s very likely.
The 4 Types of Career Planners
By: Isabel Nyo
Tags: Startup, Career Development, Careers, Work, Programming

Group 3 — Chameleon Group: Those Who Don’t Know What They Want

Photo by Nandhu Kumar on Unsplash.

As a manager and a mentor, I’ve had a few situations where I asked others what they want and received a blank stare in response. When prompted, I often received the answer, “Oh, I don’t know what I want. Can you tell me?”

Earlier in my career, I’d think to myself, “How can I possibly help someone if they don’t even know what they want for themselves?” But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve also become wiser. I’ve learned that we can help people in this group if we take enough time to know and understand them and if they have the right mindset. Asking the right questions, showing them opportunities, and giving them examples can all help identify what they might want for their career. This may seem like hard work, but it can actually be quite rewarding to be a mentor or manager of people in this group.

If you belong to this group, try to seek advice from a good manager, mentor, or even consider hiring a career coach.
Naive Bayes Classifier in Machine Learning
By: Indhumathy Chelliah
Tags: Programming, Data Science, Python3, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning

Naive Bayes Classifier in Machine Learning

Mathematical explanation and python implementation using sklearn

Photo by fotografierende from Pexels

Naive Bayes Classifier

Naive Bayes Classifiers are probabilistic models that are used for the classification task. It is based on the Bayes theorem with an assumption of independence among predictors. In the real-world, the independence assumption may or may not be true, but still, Naive Bayes performs well.

Topics covered in this story

Image by Author

Why is it named Naive Bayes?

Naive → It is called naive because it assumes that all features in the dataset are mutually independent.

Bayes, → It is based on Bayes Theorem.

Bayes Theorem

First, let's learn about probability.

Probability

A probability is a number that reflects the chance or likelihood that a particular event will occur.

Event → In probability, an event is an outcome of a random experiment.

P(A)=n(A)/n(S)

P(A) → Probability of an event A

n(A) →Number of favorable outcomes

n(S) →Total number of possible outcomes

Example

P(A) → Probability of drawing a king

P(B) →Probability of drawing a red card.

P(A) =4/52

P(B)=26/52

Image by Author

Types of probability

Joint probability Conditional probability

1. Joint Probability

A joint probability is the probability of two events occurring simultaneously.

P(A∩B) →Probability of drawing a king, which is red.

P(A∩B)=P(A)*P(B)=(4/52)*(26/52)=(1/13)*(1/2)=1/26

Image by Author

2. Conditional Probability

Conditional probability is the probability of one event occurring in the presence of a second event.

Probability of drawing a king given red → P(A|B)

Image by Author

Probability of drawing a red card given king P(B|A)

P(B|A) =P(A∩B)/P(A)

Image by Author

Derivation of Bayes Theorem

Image By Author

Naive Bayes Classifier Example

Bayes theorem is an extension of conditional probability. By using Bayes theorem, we have to use one conditional probability to calculate another one.

To calculate P(A|B), we have to calculate P(B|A) first.

Example:

If you want to predict if a person has diabetes, given the conditions? P(A|B)

Diabetes → Class → A

Conditions → Independent attributes → B

To calculate this using Naive Bayes,

First, calculate P(B|A) → which means from the dataset find out how many of the diabetic patient(A) has these conditions(B). This is called likelihood ratio P(B|A) Then multiply with P(A) →Prior probability →Probability of anybody in the population having diabetes. Then divide by P(B) → Evidence. This is the current event that occurred. Given this event has occurred, we are calculating the probability of another event that will also occur.

This concept is known as the Naive Bayes algorithm.

P(B|A) → Likelihood Ratio

P(A) → Prior Probability

P(A|B) → Posterior Probability

P(B) → Evidence
Beyond Good and Evil: Animism and the films of Hayao Miyazaki
By: Ronan Mclaverty-Head
Tags: Environment, Japan, Animism, Spirituality, Anime

Animism is the belief that gods and spirits — and the anima (“breath”) that they exude— inhabit things both living and inert. Eurocentric anthropologists originally used the term negatively, believing animism to be a stage in the evolution of religion from primitive belief to more “advanced” monotheism. This view should be rejected.

I am definitely an animist. I don’t mean that as some kind of poetic characterization of my love for nature. No, I definitely believe nature — rock, animal, and tree — is animated by more than just the material sum of its parts.

My lad and Mr Oak. Worcestershire, England. Source: Ronan McLaverty-Head.

Take these hills and trees near my home. Should I get a good death, they may be the last thing I see as I lay dying at home as an old man. The hill is North Hill in Malvern, Worcestershire, and it looms both over the house I was born into and the house in which I now live.

I believe that this hill is more than its granite and grass. It is “North Hill,” the animation of that granite and grass. It — and the things that live in it and around it — has, to borrow a Japanese idea, kami-nature (more on kami below).

The same goes for this old oak tree. I touch him every time I see him. I greet him as an old friend. My kids swing on him. He was here before me and will be here after me. He is beautiful and he is definitely “Mr Oak” and not just “oak tree.”

Is this Age of Aquarius madness? I don’t think so. Consider Japan. Japanese animism is not some modern neo-pagan, pantheistic revival but a deeply embedded consciousness of the yaoyorozu no kami, the “8,000,000 gods.” 70% of the Japanese may not be part of institutional religion, but there remains a deep spirituality in Japanese culture nonetheless.
Dark Towers Review — Timely Insights on Who Owns Donald J. Trump
By: Sebastian Stone
Tags: Politics, Books, Finance, Reading, Donald Trump

Dark Towers Review — Timely Insights on Who Owns Donald J. Trump

Whether he pays up is a separate question.

Dark Towers by David Enrich

What did an ordinary German lender have to do to realize its American investment banking dreams? Monetize the scraps. In order to compete with the biggest and most profitable firms on Wall Street starting in the 1980s, Deutsche Bank had to excel in the business that established firms didn’t want. One of those scraps was to be the future President of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump. After Trump burned most of the big banks following his wave of loan defaults from his Atlantic City casinos, nobody on Wall Street would touch him. Except Deutsche.

Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction tells the story of this tenuous financial marriage. The author David Enrich narrates the tale through some of the key characters who were instrumental in the process. While he paints Deutsche as a dysfunctional criminal enterprise (which it is), he neglects to assess the industry holistically. There are a number of problem childs, as illustrated in another book I recently reviewed, Billion Dollar Whale (which describes Goldman Sachs’ disastrous dealings with 1MDB, the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund). Deutsche may be the leader of the pack, but the point is — there is a pack.

Apart from the narrow assessment of the industry and at times hyperbolic targeting of Deutsche, there is oftentimes too much attention paid to Val Broeksmit, the troubled son of a former senior Deutsche employee who committed suicide. Val may have been one of the main sources for Enrich when writing the book, but there was unnecessary focus placed on his role, which in reality was more amateur private investigator than protagonist.

What the book does get right is its highlighting of the enablers who made the Trump real estate empire possible, even when he was notorious for defaulting on loans and not paying his business partners or contractors. The book gives a vivid view into Trump’s financial situation and makes clear who owns him — Deutsche Bank. Trump has personally guaranteed to his biggest creditor $340 million, which comes due in 2023 and 2024. Overall, the book provides timely insights into a financial firm with American investment banking ambitions that was permitted by a culture of noncompliance to do business with a politically radioactive client infamous for not paying his bills or keeping his promises.
О Cистеме простыми словами
By: Bitbon System
Tags: Investment, Systems Thinking, Smart Contracts, Business Intelligence

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

Follow
Need for high margin cryptonative service.
Tags: AI, Bitcoin, Software Development, Cryptocurrency

Bitcoin with PoW and Nakamoto consensus is the first censorship resistant form of money. Yet, money is useful only as far as you can spend it on something useful. Most of the useful things in the world are sold currently only for fiat money. Fiat money is controlled by state that have exactly zero or even less interest in promoting censorship resistant money. Thus state agencies are intrinsically motivated to perform Choke Point operations on any on- and off-ramps from fiat to crypto. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point for details. For the same reason, state agencies are motivated to spread FUD about crypto, increase exchange rate volatility, and introduce naked speculation instruments (e.g. cash-settled ETFs) This cannot be solved by a mere promotion of cryptocurrencies. Someone has to provide a high-demand scalable product or service. Yet, most business and business models require significant input in form of resources and/or services, which brings on/off ramp choke points vulnerability back again. Thus we need online native services sold only for crypto. But low margin online-native services (e.g. hosting) won’t be enough since any possible savings due to crypto can be easily blocked by increased complexities of getting into crypto. This plagues most ICO products and services: they can’t offer service with sufficiently high margin to do a tenfold overkill for the problems of getting into crypto. Thus, to convert people to use censorship resistant money, we have to offer a scalable, high margin, popular, and defensible service that would be available only for crypto. “Software is eating the world” Marc Andreessen said. But outsourced software development services usually are considered low margin high body count businesses. Only if you’d be able to replace or augment humans, you’d be able to create it in a scalable way. For the last 2 years, I’ve been working on DevNull.AI project to achieve this goal in practice. This post marks the end of the stealth period and announces the availability of a clear roadmap to the AI, developing software, that would help and even replace junior developers in teams. To achieve censorship resistance, it would run on Pandora Boxchain with some custom juice.

Originally that was a tweetstorm at https://twitter.com/akhavr/status/1031448291039477760
Where Does Hope Even Come From?
By: A Singular Story
Tags: Life Lessons, Mental Health, Self, Culture, Philosophy

When it isn’t trying to kill me, my brain has this peculiar habit of handing over to curiosity and letting it wander at will.

Hope is always unexpected and manifests in the most defiant ways, in situations that would normally preclude it. Hope is always unexpected and flies in the face of evidence seeking to undermine it, too, because it is generous and benevolent by nature.

Hope wants to believe that the human animal is good and capable of so much more than we give ourselves credit for, especially against all odds.

Hope transcends the possible and this is the reason why we love hero narratives so much and why it is the measure of our proudest achievements.

Hope is a puppy, loyal, loving, and a paragon of indefatigable enthusiasm that appears out of nowhere the minute you were about to give up on it.

You thought hope had run away but it found the way home and brought your heart back, too.
Using the Command Line to Install Packages from GitHub
By: Frank Ceballos
Tags: Spyder, Github, Anaconda, Python, Pip

Installing Package from GitHub

Now we are ready to install packages directly from GitHub. In this example, we are going to install the MetaFlow package from Netflix. Here the package description:

Metaflow helps you design your workflow, run it at scale, and deploy it to production. It versions and tracks all your experiments and data automatically. It allows you to inspect results easily in notebooks.

Pretty cool ;)

So first we will grab the URL for the master branch. In this example, the URL for the master branch of the project MetaFlow is:

Then we need to remove https: and add .git to the end of this URL like so:

//github.com/Netflix/metaflow.git

To install the MetaFlow run the following pip command:

pip install git+git://github.com/Netflix/metaflow.git

Figure 6 — Installing MetaFlow directly from GitHub.

That’s it! To test it out, open Spyder by running the following command in the terminal:

spyder

And import Metaflow with:

import metaflow

If you get no ModuleNotFoundError then you are good to go.
Living Autopsy
By: Barry Dawson Iv
Tags: Inner Peace, Storytelling, Pain, A Rebels Prompt, The Rebel Poets Society

Living Autopsy

Photo by Ivan Babydov from Pexels

I will cut you deep,

no, deeper,

much deeper than your

jagged rancor

gashed my naivety,

deeper than your sensitive

nerve endings, deeper

than the tentative ending

served by you, deeper

to sever where

marrow serves up

new bad blood.

As for the old bad blood, well

I’ve bled all that away

onto ancient battlegrounds,

nourishing worms, beetles,

wildflowers

with rusted, self-serving

archaic thoughts like

you are the fucking worst.

Do not misunderstand;

you are the fucking worst, but

I no longer seek

to hurt you as you did me,

but I will cut you

deep enough

to make your ancestors

cry out,

belying the nature

of your suffering.

Tit-for-tat is your lullaby,

but I will hum my own tune

for your living autopsy;

I know better now,

and to know you better

requires more

than butchery,

it requires steady hands

flayed layers and

deeper cuts.

Slashing through malice

using sharper malice,

like bone-on-bone

only dulls the blade.

I am far more interested

in exploratory surgery.

The blade I wield

forged in empathy

rather than animosity

will labor carefully

through each incision.

Until I find the real you.

I know I cannot hope to

find and rescue

the child you keep

locked inside,

But if maybe together we

get a glimpse of them,

you may find the courage to

save them yourself someday.

Now lie still, for this may cause

severe and sustained discomfort.

Neither of us will enjoy

this gruesome process,

but observe the pain

and perhaps together,

but most likely separately

we might find out for ourselves

where all that hurt comes from.
Trust in News Sources: The Great Political Divide
By: Paul Dughi
Tags: Trends, Politics, Trust, News, Popular

Americans may be more polarized than ever when it comes to news about politics. While that may not be a shocker, we now have hard data to show just how it plays out and the differences between party affiliation and trust in news organizations.

The research from Pew Research Center tested 30 news organizations as part of the study and then sorted results by political affiliation.

Who do you trust?

“…evidence suggests that partisan polarization in the use and trust of media sources has widened in the past five years. A comparison to a similar study by the Center of web-using U.S. adults in 2014 finds that Republicans have grown increasingly alienated from most of the more established sources, while Democrats’ confidence in them remains stable, and in some cases, has strengthened.” — Pew Research Center

You can read the full report here.
The Silent Voice
By: Paul Mulliner
Tags: Poetry, Spirituality, Self-awareness, Yoga, Mindfulness

The silent voice of our heart,

the conscious ocean

inside all life

and all experience of life,

the invisible and inexpressible

bringing everything visible

and all expression

into the world,

is a cosmic consciousness

throughout the Universe,

a soundless resonance

inside all space everywhere,

it breathes the breath

of the invisible

into our heart,

and weaves us into the fabric

of a conscious Universe,

joining us into each other.

It’s the synchronistic intelligence

that orchestrates the Universe,

the silent voice of intuition.
Android: What is LiveEvent LiveData?
By: Satya Pavan Kantamani
Tags: Android App Development, Programming, Java, Android, Kotlin

Example

For example, let’s consider a simple TV show app where there is an activity that has two fragments. FragmentShowsList displays the list of shows, and upon the click of the show in FragmentShowsList , we will be navigating to FragmentShowDetails , which displays the show details. But what if there was a common button action in both fragments (e.g. SUBSCRIBE ) where, upon the click of that button, we hit the subscription API and post the result using LiveData? As the same LiveData instance is being observed in both fragments upon receiving the result, we need to show a success dialog in the case of FragmentShowsList and toast message in the case of FragmentShowDetails .

But the problem comes as we are observing a single ViewModel instance. If FragmentShowsList is on top, it receives the result and shows dialog. But later if we navigate to FragmentShowDetails , it will show the toast message without clicking on the button because it’s observing the LiveData that contains a value.

Our activity will look like this:

Its XML looks like this:

Now let's create the fragment_shows_list layout file:

Next, let’s create FragmentShowsList :

Next, let’s create FragmentShowDetails :

And fragment_shows_details :

Now let us run and check the output:

Things to observe

I clicked the subscribe button on FragmentShowList . On the result, it showed the success dialog acknowledgment, which is expected. When I clicked on the navigation button, it navigated to FragmentShowDetails but unexpectedly also displayed a toast message that was not expected or required. When I clicked BackPress on FragmentShowDetails , it was replaced with FragmentShowList but showed a success dialog that was not required or a case of duplication.

To communicate between two different fragments inside an activity, we commonly use the shared ViewModel of an activity to eliminate boilerplate code with an interface. But scenarios like the one above cause unexpected behaviors to arise if not dealt with correctly.

Now let's add the LiveEvent class to our code, change two lines of code in the ViewModel, and see the magic:

There was nothing to change in the code for the activity or fragments — just a simple change on two lines of code in the ViewModel:
3D graphics using the python standard library
By: Henry Haefliger
Tags: Programming, Python3, Graphics, Python, 3d

3D graphics have become an important part of every aspect of design nowadays. From game development, to web development, to animations, to data representation, it can be found everywhere. Because of this, it would be great to have an graphics engine in python, an easy to work with language, to develop other projects with. All the code in this article and more can be found in my github repository: https://github.com/hnhaefliger.

In this article, we will be working using python3 and its standard library. To begin, we will create a new .py file and import tkinter, the gui library and math, for geometric functions such as sine and cosine:

The next step is to create our engine class and initialise the display window:

So lets walk through this code. We are creating a class called ‘Engine’, which will initialise with a height, a width, a distance, a scale, points and triangles. We will ignore the last two for now. The height and width represent the size of the window we create in pixels, the distance represents the distance between the viewer and the object and the scale is the size of the object we generate. We then create a new Tk window and give it the name “3D Graphics”. Finally we create a canvas in that window, on which we can draw our shapes.

If we look at a 3D coordinate, it has the shape of (X, Y, Z), however, we can only display a point in 2D space, that is why we need to write a function in our class to flatten the coordinates:

This code uses two formulas to generate x and y coordinates from 3D x,y,z coordinates using the distance and scale of the object.

Next, we write a function to draw a triangle between 3 points, this is the method generally used in 3D graphics as it enables us to link points with a single shape.

This code creates a triangle between three points on our canvas using the create_polygon method. Now we can draw our cube:

If we say that our self.points array contains a list of the coordinates of the cube’s vertices and the self.triangles array a list of points to link we can see that this code creates our 2D coordinates from our points and then links them with the triangle. Now we can test our program like below:

And we should get an output like this:

Which is our cube.

To summarise, we managed to create an engine which, from a set of 3D points creates a displayable model. In a future article, we will discuss how to play with different simple animations such as rotations on our cube.

If you check out my github repository, you will find sets of coordinates you can use to generate models like the ones below:

Since writing this article, I have made significant changes to my code, however, the core functionality is still the same.
The Shape of Character Design
By: Hana Al-Ali
Tags: Illustration, Character Design, Design, Character, Shape

Shape language is much more than a few geometric shapes as they all represent meaning and personality. It’s often categorized into 3 types of shapes:

Natural/Organic shapes are classified as shapes that appear irregular or asymmetric and seem to have a curvy flow to them. By composition, almost all the shapes found in nature are organic. Examples are trees, leaves, flowers, etc.

Geometric shapes are more precise they’re the basic shapes such as squares, rectangles, circles, triangles and crosses, and so on. They also look symmetrical and have sharp edges and angles in their structure. Examples are circles, squares, rectangles, and triangles.

Abstract shapes Have a form that is recognizable, but not real. These are variations of organic shapes stylized or simplified. The abstract shape of a person would be a stick figure. It’s often a mix of geometric and organic shapes.

Additionally, it doesn’t end there as specific shapes represent different meanings that help within the character designing process.

Squares represent stability and it is a dependable, familiar shape symbolizing honesty and solidity. They are not flashy or attention seekers as far as the shapes go. However, some would say they are dull, but creative designers would transform them to add depth to a character.

Triangles are associated with energy and power to indicate direction. Triangles may give a sense of action, tension, or even aggression. They can symbolize strength on the one hand, while conflict on the other.

Circles have a sense of freedom in terms of movement. They may also represent power and energy in their movement. Ovals and circles are graceful and complete because of their curved lines. They give a sense of perfection and integrity. Circles are great types of The Innocent, The Caregiver, The Everyman.

The shape language technique is still being used widely today and it can be especially recognized in major motion pictures such as Walt Disney movies. Moreover, a specific study on Big Hero 6 in which each character has a different shape and represents their personality.

Starting from the left, Wasabi is a clear square shape and his character is dependable and honest however, he’s also neurotic and compulsive. The last two qualities go against what a square should be, but that’s when a character designer chooses to make them more interesting or interactive.

The next character is GoGo Tomago, she is more circular shaped. Her character is fast, tough, athletic, and an adrenaline junkie which fits the circle description. The next four characters are more circular, rounded rectangle, and oval.

Additionally, the most prominent out of them is the last character Baymax. He has a very large circular shape which essentially connects to his character as a Caregiver. His roundness allows him to be more approachable along with being a calm character.