fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
ONE MORE COASTAL CO-WORKING SPACE
Tags: Startup, Bcrypt, Coworking, Alphateca

When the first ICO of the young and prospective project is in full swing, it’s catch-as-catch-can. Earlier Ilya revealed lures for investors in his Amsterdam Expo memories, and our team decided to wrap up the working week in a non-standard environment to activate the new potential.

One day our community manager came across a video channel with top co-working places in Bali, where people discuss the strategic planning of the company sitting behind a wooden chaise longue under the sound of the surf, which is revived by the constant brainstorming during the day. Splendid photos, happy teams, success stories and complete harmony — it’s more than just the location, and we could not help but try it. So, the beloved Gulf of Finland, yellow sand, and the most beautiful sky became Friday office for Alphateca.

Location:

59°53'00" N, 26°06'00" W

The Gulf of Finland coast

Reason:

We do not know for sure whether the team building had been planned and whether it was, but why should one miss the summer days because of the project? Actually, the project is cutting-edge enough to be taken with us. J

Outcomes:

Even scientists say that fresh air saturates brain with oxygen, activating the work of cells. During the 10 hours we spent together, we managed to hold two briefings, a large-scale brainstorm, discussed the upcoming introduction of new services on the platform, and found out that the ball game is not our forte, even though every Saturday the Alphateca team plays basketball. Thus, in the nearest future, the site will be implemented with the service “Private sale”, with the help of which your wife will never know that you have sold the family furniture to buy her an anniversary gift. Hope it would not turn out like in the stories of O. Henry*, for the rest of the details follow our networks.

* O. Henry — American writer, known as a master of short prose with an unexpected outcome and subtle humor. In one of his stories “The Gifts of the Magi,” the wife Della sold her hair to buy her husband a watch chain for Christmas, and Jim pawned the clock to buy her a comb.

We had a lot of interactive, and will you manage? Come on, match the feedback with the occupation:

1. Marketer

2. Designer

3. Funder

4. Media Manager

5. Developer

a. The sun, the bay, fresh air, laughter — everything that would distract from the work, contributed to its productivity.

b. It was just grand and fun. Unexpected and pleasant moments.

c. Someone is excellent at planning events, someone is responsible for cooking outdoors, and someone knows a lot of good stories.

d. Fresh ideas in an informal setting in a more relaxed way.

e. We managed to discuss a lot of things, and taxi service delay gave me an opportunity to stay in the privacy of my the bloody moon at night. The phone was dead, and I was able to enjoy strolling on a warm evening in the woods, hoping to find the way to get to civilization.

And finally…
The Highs And Lows Of Being A Work From Home Mom
By: Jessica Hillis
Tags: Motherhood, Work From Home Mom, Parenting, Work From Home, Working Moms

Since I started working from home, I have been able to be there for my kids when they needed me. I have been able to rearrange my work when they are sick or have field trips they want me to go on. I can be there for all of their school activities and I am home when they get home from school.

I like that I don’t have to get dressed up to go to work or that I don’t have to drive anywhere to get there. I can make my own schedule and work whenever it works for me.

There are no customers to deal with and I can do some cleaning or laundry in between my work sessions. I can still bake cookies and get a hot meal on the table for dinner every night.

I don’t have to pay for anybody to watch my kids for me. That right there is the main reason I found a way to work from home. Who could afford 3 kids in daycare? I can’t!

The Downside Of Working From Home

Image by Vidmir Raic from Pixabay

There are so many reasons why I would never want to go back to a “real” job. Right now, being home for my kids is the number one reason.

But there are drawbacks to working from home. It isn’t all that it is cracked up to be. It isn’t a dream come true, so to speak. I’ve had people express that I am so lucky to be able to work from home.

Yeah, so lucky.

You do realize you actually have to work when you work from home right? You don’t get paid if you don’t work; much like any traditional job.

Nobody is going to pay you to click around on the internet all day.

Sometimes it is really hard to find the motivation to work. Most times there are so many other things I would rather be doing. Like sleeping for one. I am great at procrastination. It’s a skill I have perfected.

It requires a lot of discipline to sit down, close all browser tabs on the internet, and concentrate long enough to actually get some work done. There is always something you’d rather be doing. You have to learn to keep yourself from doing it.

When I do actually get the motivation to work, my kids are a big distraction. Summer time is the worst. It was even worse when they were babies. There were times when I had to sit at the computer and nurse a baby at the same time.

Or try to bounce the baby in the bouncy chair while I tried to meet a deadline. Oh and “work when they are asleep” would be great advice if I could have ever gotten them all to sleep at the same time. Plus then when do I sleep? When do I get alone time?
Poetry Changes You as Nothing Else Can
By: David Majister
Tags: Creativity, Reading Rhombus, Spirituality, Poetry, Writing

POETRY

Poetry Changes You as Nothing Else Can

Glimpses into the magical world beyond

Photo by Taryn Elliott from Pexels

During my 10-day silent retreat, reading was forbidden. You could write, draw, walk, meditate, pray, eat, smile. Even browse the bookstore — so tantalizing. But no reading.

Each day I’d meet with Rob, my spiritual director. That was the only non-silent part of the day, chatting with Rob.

A couple of days in, I went on a walk in the country lanes around the retreat center, and I told Rob about what happened:

“A butterfly landed in the hedgerow, right in front of me,” I said. “I just watched. It was a beautiful blue and white. Then I reached out to touch it, to cup it in my hands, and it flew away.”

The incident left me overwhelmed with wonder. I told Rob how it reminded me of some lines from William Blake:

He who binds himself to a joy

Does the wingèd life destroy

He who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in eternity’s sunrise

As Rob’s role was to be my spiritual guide, I expected him to use this as a starting point of interrogation, to ask: “What joys are you binding yourself to?” or something like that.

But that wasn’t Rob’s way. Instead, he asked: “Do you like poetry, then?”
The Art of Storytelling Is to Make It Personal — So You Can Quietly Change the World
By: Tim Denning
Tags: Social Media, Marketing, Movies, Storytelling, Writing

The Art of Storytelling Is to Make It Personal — So You Can Quietly Change the World

Told through a man who fell in love with an octopus

Photo by Julia Kadel on Unsplash

I hate nature documentaries. They make me sleepy.

Who has ever watched a nature documentary with David Attenborough and not fallen asleep? His voice is calming. They should get him to do a feature on the Calm Meditation App. But tell stories, no thanks, David.

When my girlfriend suggested we watch “My Octopus Teacher,” I was ready to cry. I thought it was going to be hosted by another David Attenborough wannabe. That was until I watched it in full.

My Octopus Teacher changed how I thought about storytelling forever.
Living in a Chroma
By: Robert Trakofler
Tags: Self Improvement, Poetry, Life, Art, Love

Living in a Chroma

Time I was

monochromatic.

Colorless

Clutch charismatic

Pseudo self

Scene emblematic

embracing

my enigmatic

displacing

scornful stigmatic

erasing

ego’s emphatic

replacing

flourish to static

hold fast

young man

times past

young man

loss vast

old man

dies cast

cold man

move fast

bold man

bloom blast

hues man

contrast

views man

contracts

new man

About the images… the first one I took right around the time I lost around 100 pounds. My body image was so negative I know this now to be from the experience of rape that occurred in my childhood. I decided to take a snapshot of my stretch marks and loose skin and not be ashamed anymore hiding behind the guise of eating and covering up my shame of self disdain any longer.

This is an old poem it has an old style beat quality to it but the message is about redefining myself and painting the truth and loving myself again
Number Support Group
By: Moyosore Sheriff Quadri
Tags: Humor, Fiction, Humour

FICTION

Photo by Paul Bergmeir on Unsplash

When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books. You will be reading meanings. – W.E.B. Du Bois

Hello everyone, I am Dr. Susan Van Cliff. I will be your moderator for this process. Before we start, I’d like to reiterate why we are here and what we seek to achieve.

The human race has been unfair to many things on our planet, even creations borne out of our sheer ingenuity, like numbers! Especially numbers! Like it or not, over the years, numbers have come to have their own voice and it’s time we heard it.

This is a safe space, just let us know…let me know what’s on your mind, whatever it is, nothing is off the table. There’s a small pamphlet underneath everyone’s seat, it contains well thought out phrases to say to show support to the speaker.

Okay! who would like to go first?
Configure and install AWS EMR
By: Aymen Lamara
Tags: Big Data, Automation, AWS, Terraform, Emr

The different key points in this infrastructure are:

Storage:

I use the first S3 bucket called bootstrap, which is going to hold bootstrap scripts for the cluster, and this is the only way to pass init scripts to [EMR].

The second bucket logs serves as log holder, that contains all bootstrap logs before and after EMR starts.

I also use EBS volumes attached to each node instance. You can choose between the use of a global storage like S3 bucket with EMRFS, so your data can be easily reusable by other resources. Or use a local storage like EBS volumes with HDFS, so the data will be available only inside your cluster.

Encryption:

EMR supports two types of encryptions:

In repos:

This concerns all storage data supports like S3 and EBS volumes. For S3 I use the server side encryption, it is free and does the job. For EBS I use a KMS key, and this is the only way to encrypt data for this service.

In transit:

This concerns the data in transmission between cluster nodes. For this I use a self signed certificate.

Data processing:

The cluster that I have used contains one master and two core nodes. I will explain in details this choice later. To know more about the role of each component, please checkout this [link].

Autoscaling:

Elasticity is one of my favorite features of the cloud. For cost reasons I would like my cluster to scale up whenever there is an important workload, and to scale down afterwards. The yarnMemory is the most frequent metric that is used for this case, it indicates the amount of memory available in the whole cluster. In my configuration i have used two rules:

When the available yarn memory is less than 15% for one 5 minutes window, the cluster adds two nodes at a time.

When the amount of available memory is greater than 75% for one 5 minutes window, the cluster deletes one node after each positive check.

You can check the configuration in details in the emr layer:

│ ├── emr │ │ ├── main.tf │ │ ├── outputs.tf │ │ ├── templates │ │ │ ├── autoscaling_policy.json.tpl

Access Management with IAM:

The cluster needs different IAM roles for different jobs:

To access S3 buckets, for bootstrap and logs.

To run other EC2 instances when the autoscaling is started.

Network:
「故」事「新」編 ─ 楊富閔訪談
By: Fairbank Center Blog
Tags: Chinese, Literature, Fiction, Adaptation, Taiwan

The Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at @Harvard University is a world leading center for the study of #China.

Follow
A Cosmic Homecoming
By: Jennifer Tarnacki
Tags: Alaska, Wildlife, Awareness, Awakening, Environment

This indivisibility with nature, it slowly falls over your body. In the ever-present awareness of large creatures around you, you feel yourself to be woven into the web of life — human, not superior. We hunt moose and dipnet salmon in order to stock our freezers, participating in the universal preparation for winter, just like the other creatures. It casts in stark relief how much we rely on and need our environment and our animals to be healthy.

We humans think, ponder, reason, extract, build, create masterfully, but who is to say a tiny songbird completing its 1,000 mile journey across the Atlantic using magnetic poles as its guide has accomplished a feat any less epic? Or a family of whales navigating their blue world using sonar to ride ocean currents from one hemisphere to another? Or the cultural knowledge bears have of their ancestral lands, passed down through generations?

To learn and witness these myriad adaptabilities and ways of existing in the environment, whether underwater or skybound, is to know there is a force of creation. The biodiversity of creatures we live amongst is a tangible reminder of this: endless forms, most beautiful. I began to feel that in conserving our animals, honoring the sacred ecology of wild creatures, we would be conserving our humanity.

I began to see our skin as an interface holding something encased. This something, You, the endless god knows of you, in a thin cell, sharing the world with other conscious beings. Whether its a bear smelling prey miles away, or a migratory bird seeing Earth’s magnetic field, or a newborn whale learning to sing, or deaf and blind human building up a rich tactile awareness with which to experience and communicate. Life, in all forms, has a Oneness, an undeniable divine interconnectedness. This awareness toppled me from the supposed top of the food chain down into the grit and muck, and in that muck I found an intimacy, like returning home.

This could happen anywhere. There is equally unruly wildness in a patch of grass between highway medians in Newark, but by the very fact of its vastness and its creatures it seems to happen a little easier in Alaska. I still won’t feel resourceful until I’ve fished and hunted for my sustenance, and I’ve unequivocally determined that running water is the bomb, but for now I can still feel it working its strange, slow magic on me, an alchemical change, a cosmic homecoming, and I know I won’t ever be the same.
For the Love of Christ
By: Ena Dahl
Tags: Sexuality, This Happened To Me, Philosophy, Women, Religion

At the end of elementary school, as my faith started to slip in favor of the temptations of the flesh, my very Christian grandmother was staying with us. I arrived home from a date with a boy I had just kissed goodnight— sixth-grade style—and found her sitting in a chair in the living room. As always, her long wrinkled fingers were folded over a leather-bound Bible with a gold cross on the front. She was battling cancer at the time, and my first thought when I saw her was,

—How can I grow up and be a teenager with her still alive? I know that I’ll sin. But then, a different thought struck me: If she dies, she’ll be watching it all from heaven — which is even worse.

Her ghost, or rather the ghost of what she represented — the patriarchy disguised as faith — didn’t stop me from being a bad girl. I was just a bad girl in secret…

She longed for it though and would say, I can’t wait to come home to Jesus. I pictured the two of them, perched over a cloud, spying as I pretended to like beer and awkwardly explored my budding sexuality. I shrugged.

Her wish came through not long after. But despite my worries, her ghost, or rather the ghost of what she represented—the patriarchy disguised as faith—didn’t stop me from being a bad girl. I was just a bad girl in secret, deciding I’d deal with the billowing fires of hell when I got there.
5 Steps To Being Your Best Self
By: L Burrell
Tags: Mindfulness, Spirituality, Life, Positive Thinking, Mental Health

5 Steps To Being Your Best Self

The power of reframing

Photo by Amanda Jones on Unsplash

Is the glass half full or half-empty? Are you an optimist or pessimist? Do you allow defeat to dominate your thoughts? There is power in positivity! Sure, we all will experience trials and tribulations in life. It’s not about the challenges, but how you persevere. Do you allow a situation to dictate your destiny or do you get stronger and learn from every experience? No matter what you have been through in your life, you can choose to frame experiences to see the good. You are alive, with breath in your lungs.

That’s a reason to celebrate!

If you can see, hear, walk and talk, count it as a blessing because somewhere there is someone who can’t perform one of those life functions, often taken for granted. Did you eat a meal today? Do you have shelter? Count your blessings because everyone doesn’t have food and a safe and secure home. Are you employed? Even if you were recently laid off, do you know that the lay-off may have opened the door to more time for you? Perhaps it’s your time to start something bigger, better, and bolder! Something that you couldn’t previously make time and space for because of your previous job’s demands, can now get your attention. Sometimes God clears out things, to make room for the next blessing. Every morning the sun rises on new opportunities! You can choose to sit in sadness or see the beauty of fresh opportunity and perspective available every morning! You can choose to focus on your shortcomings or give thanks for and maximize your strengths!

No matter what you go through, there is always a positive side. It’s up to you to choose to see the good! It’s up to you to see the beauty of the rainbow, that appears after a storm as opposed to focusing on the storm itself. See the fact that the storm may have watered and given life to plants. View the rain water as a source to allow crops to flourish and grow and ultimately serve as nourishment for our bodies! See the storm as a chance for you to slow down. It’s up to you to allow tension and any test to become a testimony.

How can your story be used to reflect ultimate glory?

You are what you think. If you allow life to defeat you, you will be defeated! If you feel inadequate, you will be inadequate! If you feel helpless, you will be helpless! If you think you will fail, you have already failed! But, winning begins with your mind! You frame your success! If you think you can win, you have already won! Reframe your thoughts to be a mindset of success!

If you speak life, positivity, success, happiness, and reframe any remnants of failure, you will see obstacles and building blocks stumble down. You will see barriers break. You will see chains break! You will watch walls collapse! You will see lights shine brighter and your abilities will become more than possibilities! You will begin to not only dream, but flourish in your reality!
How To Write a Marketing User Story
By: Emanuele Nicolotti
Tags: Marketing, Storytelling, Lean Startup, Teamwork, Agile

How To Write a Marketing User Story

And why it should be the first thing you do for your customer

Photo by Alexander Andrews on Unsplash

In the previous post, I mentioned the idea of how shifting the attention from transactions to relationships would help marketing teams in delivering value both to the customers and the company. I’m sure it is nothing new for many of you, but I understand that others may find this transition pointless, complicated, and ultimately discouraging. That’s why I suggested to start small by making the hierarchy of roles and responsibilities in Marketing more flat and open, and by replacing a certain waterfall approach with a more collaborative flow of work, the planning of which could involve the entire team.

Changing abruptly is never a good idea. So, instead of knocking this new approach over the heads of your coworkers, you’ll have to start small. For instance, it’s better to be careful with branded terms, like “agile”, “lean”, or “kanban.” After all, no one likes to be taught from above by another team member. People want advice, not lessons.

In this piece, I’ll show you how to write a user story to make sure you deliver gradual change to your customers. The idea of user stories comes from agile software development, but, in my opinion, they’re the first and easiest step to ensure your services are going to be of great value for the user.

Let’s get into it!
Caught In The Middle. A Brief Opening Reflection
By: Garrett Ruble
Tags: Sexuality, Storytelling, Life, LGBTQ, Religion

My enthusiasm for being able to write and contribute to a community such as Reaching Out cannot be understated. I think it is obvious in many ways why this kind of project is so important and so needed. I would like to highlight one of the reasons this community is so promising for me, personally.

Reaching Out is not only a place to shine a light and talk about the many transgressions and shortcomings of religion for LGBT people, but also a place where those of us like me who feel stuck in peculiar places can help each other. What do I mean by peculiar places?

I mean the middle. That place between what feels like two opposing camps: religion, and the LGBT community. Ostracized by one, and alienated from the other. Those of us who once affirmed traditional views of sexuality from the lens of conservative religion in one flavor or another, but who no longer believe those claims, and who have lost family, friends and communities because of it.

But also those of us who are unsure of how to integrate into the rich and ever-growing LGBT community because of our past. Because our upbringing and former beliefs in many ways still inform our views on sex, relationships, and personhood. And those views are not widely shared or practiced amongst our queer peers, so we don’t know how to relate or integrate into the very communities of which we are supposedly a part, and sometimes we don’t even want to.

These are all things I have been feeling very keenly recently, and have been trying to put into words. This middle, this third space, this arena of “other”, to me feels like no man’s land. I feel caught in an identity that does not mesh well with either community, and it feels like being stuck in a desert between two cities.

On one hand, I no longer believe many of the things about myself that I used to under the influence of conservative Christianity, but I also do not know how or even feel comfortable integrating into the LGBT community because of many attitudes and behaviors regarding sex and relationships, which differ vastly from what I was raised to value. I feel disoriented while trying to blaze my own trail. Many days I feel lost, confused, and directionless in a world that either doesn’t care or doesn’t know to help.

That’s why Reaching Out is so important to me. Because I can help shine a light for the religious community on the realities of living as a gay person in a conservative world. Because I can start to process my own thoughts and experiences through writing to be shared. Because maybe through my own processing, I can help others, and others can help me.
Up your npm game with these 4 practices
By: Yousif Al-Raheem
Tags: Node Package Manager, NPM, Npm Package, npm Weekly

Fourth: Use npm package variables

During our development time, we (my team) usually never write API function calls, instead, we rely on code generators like OpenAPI code generator with Swagger. If you add that script it’s not gonna look clean at all because it requires you to specify the URL to the swagger.json file. I know OpenAPI generator has an option of passing a config file, but I’m using this as an example of any other script that requires passing long variables like URLs. In that case, the script will look like this:

This command can be simplified by using npm package variables. Basically, you can access any piece of information inside the package by prefixing it with $npm_package_ , for example accessing the name and version of the repository would be like this: $npm_package_name and $npm_package_version . You also need to remember that underscores replace dots. Imagine if you’ve imported the package.json file as an object in a JavaScript file and you’re trying to access the repository’s URL, you’ll have to do this:

const pkg = require('./package.json');

console.log(pkg.repository.url);

Now, replace pkg with $npm_package and dots with underscores to look like this $npm_package_repository_url . You might be thinking “What about arrays?”. Good question! Just pass the index number like this: $npm_package_keywords_0 .

Now if we use npm variable to organize the aforementioned script, it should look like this:

Not only it’s easier to read with npm package variables, it’s easier to maintain. You can easily swipe URLs and other variables if it’s encapsulated in an object.

Caveat

For some reason, npm package variables will not work with a dollar sign ($) in Windows. In order to access npm variables, you have to wrap it with a percentage sign (%) like this: %npm_package_version% . The problem with this is that if you’re depending on a build pipeline that uses a Linux-based agent, the percentage sign won’t work. Sadly, there is no unified way of accessing npm variables in Windows and Linux-based OS (e.g. MacOS). I guess the only solution for you if you’re using Windows for development is to have two scripts like this:
DFS in Binary tree
By: Gauri Wankhade
Tags: Datastrucutre, Algorithms, Coding, Python

To understand the Depth-first search in the Binary tree, we first need to know why it is called the Depth-first search.

A binary tree is a hierarchical representation of nodes carrying data. Each node contains three fields, one for storing value which we would pass eventually, and the other two fields store address of the left and right child nodes.

Just like every hierarchical structure, the tree also has one reference point. We call it root, which is the topmost node of the tree and has no parent node. In Binary tree, the root has at most two child nodes.

If you noticed already, the tree is not a linear data structure, we cannot access nodes by indexing as we do in linear data structures(Array, List, Stack).

Then, how we would ever explore this complex-looking structure?

Here, tree traversal algorithms come to rescue. There are mainly two types of techniques we use to traverse a binary tree.

DEPTH FIRST SEARCH BREADTH FIRST SEARCH

As the name implies, DFS traverse a tree by going in-depth recursively till it can and then backtracking to previously visited node. While BFS traverse a tree level by level.
Drunk Explorer Insults King and Loses His Life
By: Reuben Salsa
Tags: Salsa, Sailing, History, Trade, Business

The ill-fated armada

Sebald De Weert had his fair share of luck and misfortune. He was born in the cosmopolitan trading city of Antwerp in 1567.

There was nothing special about the sixth of 17 children. When his family fled the Spanish persecution, also known as The Spanish Fury of 1576, Sebald left with them.

They fled to Cologne before eventually gravitating to the Netherlands. Sebald, like any young Dutch man, was passionate about sailing and soon enlisted as a navigator on board a fleet of ships heading to the Indies.

A Rotterdam syndicate had high hopes of wealth with the plan to plunder Peru and Chile before heading to the Indies. The syndicate was made up of ex-refugees from Antwerp who had a major dislike of the Spanish.

The colonies in Peru and Chile were under Spanish control. Equipped for trade as well as war, five ships left port in 1598.

The ironically named ships were, Hope, Faith, Charity, Fidelity and Good News. Sebald got lucky. Before the ships had even reached the coast of Guinea (not very far at all), First Commander Jacques Mahu died.

Sebald was appointed captain of Faith when the original skipper became the overall Commander. Sebald couldn’t but help see this as a sign from god. A higher power blessing his life.

It wasn’t all plain sailing. The new Commander was risk averse and decided to winter on the Straits of Magellan. Simon De Cordes had failed to take advantage of favourable winds costing over 100 men their lives through starvation. It didn’t get any better for the fleet.

Once out of the straits, the wind and fog dispersed the fleet. The Good News suffered bad tidings as they were captured by the Spanish. Hope, ironically, vanished without a trace somewhere in the Pacific.

Fidelity, the faithful and loyal vessel, did make it to the Indies. Unfortunately the Portuguese took a fancy to her and captured the ship. Meanwhile Charity, captained by the infamous William Adams, rested in Japan with Adams trading his sailor status for that of a samurai.

Sebald was facing a mutiny. The crew no longer had the stomachs for a campaign that had veered so far off course with the lost of the entire fleet. Nobody felt like plundering anymore.

Forced to turn back, Sebald congratulated himself on a job well done. He had, after all, managed to chart the Falkland Islands. Yay Sebald! The syndicate naturally went bust.
Are you REALLY automating your infrastructure?
By: Dan Siwiec
Tags: AWS, Terraform, Infrastructure As Code, DevOps

The project at hand was subjected to both cases above — the AWS platform was a big shift for the application and required rethinking its architecture. Rapid prototyping was necessary to make quick progress but experimenting with various architectures left a big mess behind. Also, the team was relatively new to infrastructure automation and unintentionally leaned towards manual changes which sometimes slipped our minds before they made it into the scripts.

To address these problems, the team adopted an approach that, at first, felt overly radical — we would periodically completely wipe our AWS account clean. It is important to make a distinction between this and performing a terraform destroy which only removes the components explicitly managed by terraform. This would miss the exact point of this operation — identifying the areas which were not yet automatically provisioned. Our nuke of choice was an open-source, well-maintained tool named aws-nuke.

The first time we did this, our hands were shaking as we were confirming this very destructive operation, which the tool requires you to do twice, for safety measures. The result of this was disastrous — an attempt to reprovision the application with our automation scripts failed with multiple incomprehensible errors. Recovery took a better part of the week and team morale was low — it felt like we just shot ourselves in the foot and took a huge step back. However, what was not immediately clear, was that in the process of rebuilding what we just destroyed, we would benefit in two ways.

First, we discovered all the tweaks we’ve made and haven’t automated — some of them we completely forgot about, others were simply not documented. The nuke operation identified them so that we could make an explicit decision about automating these changes or documenting them.

The second lesson came after we performed the nuke again — this time with a bit more confidence in our automation. Applying the manual changes, now well documented, for the second time and later third and fourth, we experienced the pain of manual configuration first hand and following the principle of frequency reducing difficulty and the old CI/CD mantra — if it hurts, do it more often — we were strongly incentivized to double our effort to automate them.

If it hurts, do it more often and bring the pain forward.

— Jez Humble, Continuous Delivery

Over time, we performed the nuke multiple times and eventually, it ceased to stress the team. We grew an appreciation for it as another tool in our toolchain, that helped sharpen our saw. It increased the quality of our automation, as well as solidified our confidence in the process, in very much the same way frequent production deployments do in the traditional CI/CD approach. We eventually incorporated the nuking into our regular stakeholder showcases and finally, those became pretty uneventful and boring. The good kind of boring 😉

Happy nuking, everyone!
I Refuse To Close The Door
By: Kim Mckinney
Tags: Life Lessons, History, New Year, The Bad Influence, 50 Words

50 WORDS

I Refuse To Close The Door

Thrifty Words Theme Challenge #18: Closure

Photo by Miikka Luotio on Unsplash

My parents yelled when we left the door open. You know, you’re letting the air out. Yet sometimes it’s expedient. It makes it easier to go back and forth. 2020 is like that. We haven’t learned enough from it yet. Let’s leave that door cracked, as we go into 2021.
Indecent
By: Kern Carter
Tags: Creativity, Life Lessons, Poetry, Freedom, Anxiety

Photo by Tom Pottiger

I’m watching it all fade away.

A pack of wolves biting at every piece of my clothing.

Ripped sleeves. Torn collar. Shredded like a cocoon till there’s nothing left.

Now everyone can see me.

Indecent.

A small part of me wants to pick up the pieces and arrange them to cover my skin. Instead I lift my head to the sky and place my palm on my heart.

Then I run.

Only my instinct knows where to go. The pack follow stride for stride.

I think this is freedom.
Stop Saying COVID-19 is Good for the Environment
By: Isabelle Flückiger
Tags: Save Energy, Covid 19, Awareness, Pollution, Pandemic

You may argue that this is only a temporary state, but it goes back to responsible handling after a while.

Unfortunately, our last big crisis, the financial crisis, teaches us that it is not temporary.

China is one of the first countries that has recovered, and the recent economic data supports that it is pushing back to the economic growth path on a level of at least as before the pandemic.

Finally, for nearly nine months, we could not travel anymore. Until we have a vaccine, and the virus is ebbed away, it will not recover. And the experts do not expect that this will happen before the end of 2021. More than one year is still ahead of us!

I do not need a crystal ball to predict that the campaigns with the support of governmental subsidies for traveling around the globe will start, and people will overcompensate for all the time they had to stay at home. The collapse of the environment at all the travel hotspots is inevitable. Or would you still consider staying at home after all the austerity for relieving the pressure on our environment?

So, stop giving all these isolated examples for showing that the pandemic is beneficial for our earth. No, it is not. It is a threat.

And this threat will hit us even more and for a longer time than the current recession.
A Poem Of Well Deserved Thanks
By: Speaking Fiction To Power
Tags: Gratitude, Poetry, Humor, Rhyme, No Crime In Rhymin

A Poem Of Well Deserved Thanks

For The Hard Workers At No Crime in Rhymin’

Photo by Howie R on Unsplash

Do they like to rhyme in Colorado?

That’s something that I’d really like to know.

There’s a great place. Limon, Colorado.

If they rhyme there I’ll pack my bags and go.

Hmmm. Could I find someone to go with me?

To a place I would really like to see.

I’d like to find someone who likes rhymin’.

Someone who’s in their g’damn rhymin’ prime.

Would Joe Váradi deem to go with me?

I suppose I could ask him and we’d see.

Joe, ever seen the Rockies from Limon?

(A muck a muck at No Crime in Rhymin’.)

I’d like to ask this woman named Laura.

Sheridan. Gives off a rhymin’ aura.

She worked hard to help me with my poem.

Must have thought he could learn if I’d show him.

And then of course there is Mary Holden.

To her I am also quite beholden.

Part of the team at No Crime in Rhymin’,

They know good rhyme is not Simple Simon.

We could have us quite a trip to Limon.

I’d expect we’d spend the whole day rhymin’.

They wouldn’t have to worry ’long the way.

For all of us, of course, I’d gladly pay.
Testing: Differences between TDD, ATDD and BDD
By: Steven Curtis
Tags: Development, Software Development, Testing, Software Engineering, Programming

Test-Driven Development (TDD)

Test driven development revolves around using Unit Tests to test code, decoupling dependencies from the code (using techniques such as dependency injection).

Tests should be written before the code is written.

The TDD process involves writing Unit Tests before code is written. For the developer this means you must know the behaviour of the code before any particular algorithm is written to solve a problem. TDD asserts some conditions that may be the output of some particular function.

It also means that you need to write enough tests to cover al the paths through the code in question, this means we need to make sure that our code coverage is a good percentage of all of the lines of code we write.

The TDD process does not stop a developer refactoring code and maximising the efficiency of code that will go into production (far from it). As part of the usual code review process TDD also fits satisfactorily, and since you are arguably you are reviewing your own code as you go (with a good quality test making it clear whether or not your code is of suitable quality) you can make a case that TDD is likely to provide even better code than that produces without the methodology in place.

There are several great advantages in using TDD:
Marching Forward
By: Suntonu Bhadra
Tags: Future, Poetry, Time, Science, Theory

POETRY

Marching Forward

will stop at the end

picture was taken by the author

Inside the concrete jungle of an urban utopia

I capture the snap of a clock,

tick-tock, tick-tock

indicating the marching forward of time.

Then, I recalled a theory

debatable, controversial, and a fearful one

once the last atop of the universe will be ripped apart,

when the universe will converge into darkness,

and when no elements collide or merge or mingle

to form anything new

only remains will be the empty, dark, cold space

the momentum of time will halt forever,

no marching forward, whatsoever.

Although in the symmetric reality, it can move backward too.
To Think in New and Smarter Ways, Try Inventing Your Own Words or Concepts
By: Akshad Singi
Tags: Self Improvement, Life Lessons, Psychology, Advice, Ideas

To Think in New and Smarter Ways, Try Inventing Your Own Words or Concepts

The limits of your language are the limits of your reality.

If you were to ask a mother from the Pirahã community how many kids she has, she wouldn’t be able to tell you. She would be able to tell you the names of all those kids, but she won’t be able to give you a number as to just how many times she’s given birth.

Don’t judge her just yet. She’s not a bad mother. The simple reason why she doesn’t know how many kids she has is that her language doesn’t have numbers. Her language doesn’t have words like one, two, ten, etc. Instead, her language has words that roughly translate to one, a few, many, etc.

What does that mean? It means that if you ask a guy from Pirahã community to differentiate between two baskets of apple, one having 14 apples and one with 13 apples, they literally won’t be able to do it. To him, both baskets will have many apples.

Because they don’t have numbers, they cannot count. The entire field of Mathematics is miles beyond their imagination. This means that such a community cannot ever build skyscraper or computers. They cannot ever advance like the rest of the world has. And it’s not because their brains are incapable, but because their language is.
Margin Trading digital Assets
By: Ekene Obi
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Trading, Margin Trading

As a crypto margin trader there is an opportunity for a trader to lend funds 3x worth what he owns and make x3 profits, this is a quick way to make money. If you are a good trader and also a quick way to lose money if you are a novice.

Say for instance you have just $2 x N361 =N 722.00

Using Margin x 3 trading you have: 3 x 2 x N361 = N2,166 to trade with

When you make a trade say your profits target is 3%:

That means using without margin: 1.03 x 2 x N361 = N743.66

With margin your profits 3 x 1.03 x 2 x N361 = N2,230.98

Your profit without margin is: 743.66–722.00 = N21.66

Your profit after using x3 margin is 2,230.98–2166 = N64.98 (You make x3 profits)

If you have $200 (i.e. about N72,200) and you make ten good trades with a profit margin of 3%, you will have a total of:

N649.8 per $18, (if you earn this every from 100 good trades, keeping the profit margin within 3%, this will return almost 10% of the total amount invested).

With the high-risk volatility of cryptocurrencies it is important to mitigate risk, curtail greed, create a system that is highly probable and avoid over leveraging and over shooting profit margin.

Bitfinex exchange provides x3 margin high risk (bitfinex.com)

Bitmex exchange provides x100 margin extreme risk (https://tinyurl.com/y8vnzp3v)

“The next question is, how can one make 100 good trades and how much work is required to achieve that?”

Yes, its possible especially if you don’t want to lose money, as margin trading also gives the equal loss times how much margin you took, the best way to keep within the limit and not lose any money is to keep it very technical and no emotions involved.

Accurate and responsive indicators that tell you when to sell and when to buy, just like; Exponential Moving averages 9 and 5 cross using 4hour time frame. If you don’t know what this is or how to use it you might need further tutorials on how.

Basically,the exponential moving average lays emphasis on the current price movements and the previous closing values to draw a line moving with prices , the 5 days is faster and the 9 days is slower , if the 5days EMA crosses the 9 days ema from below and cuts through price, this means it’s ok to buy; meaning the new price movements are increasing faster than the previous 9days, and vice versa.

It’s important to use the 4 hour/2hour time frames for your trades and these are more accurate for daily movements. Never put all your money into one trade mitigate your losses by putting not more than 10% in a position and reduce your loses to 3% and taking profits above 3% depends on your strategy. Note that this is for highly experienced traders who know when to get into the market, placing trades and taking profits.

There are other ways to make money from trading bitcoins without leverage, but buying at bottoms and holding for awhile till the price gets high, those whom bought at $600 last year 2017 are still in profits even though the price went as high as $19,000.

What do you think of margin trading? Let us know in the comment section below.
§66 Boring Modern Nature
Tags: Boredom, Art, Antiquity, Hans Blumenberg, Alfred Brendel

“…Alfred … finds… nature — quite threatening because it is quite uncontrolled and it makes him cold, and it blows him away…His inspiration comes from art, from painting, from literature…’ (“Alfred Brendel — In Portrait” 1996: 00.59.58- 01.00.45)

Why does pianist Alfred Brendel have an aversion to nature?

One interpretation previously offered (see §64), departs from the idea that a work of art’s production requires chaos accompanied by a ‘sense’ or ‘veil’ of order. In Brendel’s case, order stems rather from the arts than nature, which might even undermine order. To complement this answer, the following provides a historical-cultural analysis.

In his essay Shipwreck with Spectator*, Blumenberg (1979) investigates the historical conceptualization of the metaphor of seafaring. In antiquity seafaring is bound up with a view of nature setting boundaries for humans, resulting in a close relationship with ideas of transgressions and punishments:

‘What drives man to cross the high seas is at the same time the crossing of the boundary of his natural needs.’ (Blumenberg 1997, 28–29)

In Blumenberg’s historical analysis it is not until the Enlightenment that a fundamental metaphorological transformation takes place:

‘In complete contrast to this, it will be one of the fundamental ideas of the Enlightenment that shipwreck is the price that must be paid in order to avoid that complete calming of the sea winds that would make all worldly commerce impossible.’ (ibid)

This constitutes the modern transformation — as a taming of nature. Perhaps the nature that the modern Alfred Brendel relates to is not an ‘uncontrolled’ wilderness but corresponds to the piercing critique of that Ernst Jünger once hinted at: modernity is boring.

‘One of the best objections that has been raised against [the bourgeois] valuation [for a good, rational and ‘fundamentally secure humanity’] is that under such circumstances life would be intolerably boring.’ (Jünger 1993, 29)

Modern nature, then, to the true artist, is a drag.

/Fred Weibull

*‘Schiffbruch mit Zuschauer (1979)

References

“Alfred Brendel — In Portrait.” 1996. BBC 4.

Blumenberg, Hans. 1997. Shipwreck with Spectator [Orig. Schiffbruch Mit Zuschauer, 1979]. London: The MIT Press.

Jünger, Ernst. 1993. “On Danger [Über Die Gefahr, 1931].” New German Critique, no. 59 (Spring — Summer, [1931): 27–32.
Meet Kevin.
Tags: Philadelphia, Gofundme Heroes, Education, Community

In between raising a family and working as a full-time youth detention counselor for the city, Kevin focused on securing funding for the learning center. He received material donations from the community and small foundation grants, but decided to launch a GoFundMe to cover the extra expenses and fund new projects.

The average day brings in about 15 kids, says Kevin, but that number can easily double in the summer months. He realized that in order to continue growing, they simply needed more space.

“I’m always thinking about how to make the learning center better,” he says. “The responsibility that we have to these kids is big. I hate telling somebody that their kid can’t come and learn something because there’s no room.”

To solve that problem, Kevin is working on an expansion of the SMLC. With the help of the Philadelphia Housing Authority, he was able to secure the lot next door to the learning center so they can help more kids every single day. Kevin has big plans for the new building, which include enlarging the bathroom, creating a new kitchen area for cooking lessons, and adding a functional office space for the administration.
No More Expectations
By: 𝘋𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘢 𝘊.
Tags: Short Story, Inspiration, Prompt, Energy, Spiritual Secrets

What is it about expectations that makes them so enslaving? Oh, how I would love to know! This quixotic human tendency to cling to illusions, where does it stem from?

My experiences with expectations fall under two categories:

My projections unto another Another’s projections unto me

Projections are addictive! Sorry to let the elephant out of the room. They are addictive because they reinforce the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, stories such as “Hi, I am X and I am a victim of circumstance.”

Other people’s projections unto us usually bother us, but when it comes to ours…Man, are we able to find justifications as to why we’re entitled to their love, time, attention, services, etc. But here’s the irony of life…Expectations never lead to those things we desperately seek to experience. They do, however, lead to frustrations and heartache.

Whoever said an expectation is a a shelter that offers temporary feelings of security, was a genius. But they forgot to mention how quickly this shelter can turn into a prison with no apparent escape.

So learn one thing, that to expect is bad and that the world is not here to fulfill your expectations -Osho

I refuse to be imprisoned by my expectations and be attached to outcomes. That’s like saying somebody owes me the happiness and fulfillment I should be giving myself. It’s like being an empty glass, awaiting for a full glass to come and fill you up. Why would anyone ever even attempt to give away their resources to fill in the voids within me? What an absurd thing to wish for!

Nobody would and nobody should.

I release expectations along with the petals of my old self.

Neither am I attached or detached.

I simply let things happen — whatsoever happens.