fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Solidity: Do We Really Need a Safer Math?
By: Rosario De Chiara
Tags: Crypto, Solidity, Blockchain, Programming, Ethereum

Solidity: Do We Really Need a Safer Math?

A look at the SafeMath library from OpenZeppelin

Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash.

In Solidity, there are plenty of different alternatives to things you take for granted in other languages. Strings and math are two examples.

“Arithmetic operations in Solidity wrap on overflow. This can easily result in bugs, because programmers usually assume that an overflow raises an error, which is the standard behavior in high level programming languages. `SafeMath` restores this intuition by reverting the transaction when an operation overflows. Using this library instead of the unchecked operations eliminates an entire class of bugs, so it’s recommended to use it always.” — OpenZeppelin docs

“Operations in Solidity wrap on overflow” refers to a specific thing bound to the way numbers are represented in computers and in Solidity, in particular.

In the following smart contract, I have implemented a simple method to test the underflow and the overflow (as usual, right in Remix):

Once compiled, you will be able to invoke the two methods that — with the appropriate inputs — will show the weakness of the native number representation:

Please note how I’ve used int8 as the type of input and output of the methods. This will allow me to rapidly describe the implementation.

What you see in the previous figure is what the sentence “operations in Solidity wrap on overflow” means. Now, just imagine if the uint8 we fiddled with represents an amount of some precious assets. This just means that your system will work gloriously in the majority of cases (increments and decrements far from the limits of the representation) and will fail dramatically, producing an inconsistent state.

At this point, it is clear that we do need a safer math — even in the simplest smart contract.

Let’s now see how the previous example works using SafeMath for the increments/decrements.

SafeMath is provided by OpenZeppelin for uint256 . This means that it will never overflow with our example that uses uint8 . For example, you should overflow if you pass a 255, but it will not because it will be represented within SafeMath as a uint256 .

For the sake of clarity, I have “developed” a uint8 SafeMath version by simply replacing uint256 with uint8 in the original SafeMath. And I have named it SafeMath8:

You can use it right in Remix and import it as shown in the following example:

As you may notice, we ask Solidity to “attach” the methods defined in SafeMath8 to the uint8 . This way, we are allowed to invoke the methods sub() and add() that represent the new, safer way of subtracting and adding two unsigned integers.

The next figure shows what you get by invoking the two methods with the parameters to get overflow/underflow:

By invoking the methods, you will not get any result apart from what is shown in the console for the two invocations:

The two methods fail with a proper error message returned in human-readable form.
Matrix Computation With NumPy
By: Irfan Alghani Khalid
Tags: Mathematics, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Data Science, Computer Science

Matrix Computation With NumPy

How NumPy Can Simplify Your Code And Increase Its Performance At The Same Time. Broadcasting and SIMD come to rescue!

Introduction

Performance is really an important aspect when we are solving problems using Machine Learning, especially Deep Learning. Using a neural network for calculating things can become a complex calculation because it involves matrix and vectors to it.

Suppose we want to calculate a 25 x 25 matrix that is being multiplied by 5. At the first time you are being introduced to programming, You will calculate vectors or matrices that look like this,

for i in range(25):

for j in range(25):

x[i][j] *= 5

If we use this method, it will make our computation longer and we will not get the result at the time that we desired. Thankfully, in Python, we have NumPy library to solve this matrix and vector calculation.

By using NumPy library, we can make that 3-lines of code become 1-line of code like this one below,

import numpy as np # Make it as NumPy array first

x = np.array(x) x = x * 5

And if we compare the time, for this case, the conventional way will take around 0.000224 and the NumPy method is just 0.000076. The NumPy is almost 3 times faster than the conventional one, but it also simplifies your code at the same time!

Just imagine when you want to calculate a bigger matrix than in this example here and imagine how much the time that will you save. This calculation is classified as vectorization where the calculation has occurred on a matrix or vector representation. Therefore, with that computation method, it will save your time for the same result.

How is that happen? What is the magic of NumPy so it can calculate the matrix simpler and faster? This article will introduce you to the concepts of Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) and Broadcasting. Without further, let’s get to it.
“Despite the bullying and occasional lunch meat dumped on my head, I never stopped obsessing about technology.”
By: Megan Morrone
Tags: Technology, Nerds, Blog, Gadgets, Lance Ulanoff

“Despite the bullying and occasional lunch meat dumped on my head, I never stopped obsessing about technology.” Megan Morrone · Nov 16

Attention my nerd friends, there’s another blog on Medium that you need to follow right now. It’s written by one of us — a true geek from the time before being a geek was cool. Lance Ulanoff, the former editor-in-chief of PCMag.com, PC Magazine, and Mashable, has been writing product reviews on Medium for a while, but now he’ll regularly be blogging about the tech stuff that matters from the perspective of someone who has been around long enough to know.
Custom Methods on the Proto in JS
By: Carla Stickler
Tags: Bootcamp, JavaScript, Software Development, Basics, Code Newbie

So, this may not be new to you, and that’s ok. But today, I learned you can use the prototype in javascript to create methods on things like arrays and strings. This blew my mind a bit.

What does this mean? This means that if I want to create a method for a string, and be able to call it like so:

let myString = "Hey there you gorgeous human!"

myString.addIsString()

All I have to do is define it on the Prototype. What does that look like? Let me show you:

String.prototype.addIsString = function() {

return this + " - is a String!"

}

This addIsString method can now be called on any string! It will return Hey there you gorgeous human! — is a String!

We can do the same thing for arrays!

let myArray = ["Jerry", "Elaine", "Kramer", "George"]

myArray.addIsGreat()

This method we are creating is super simple, it’s a function that adds is great! to each name.

Array.prototype.addIsGreat = function() {

return this.map( name => name + " is great!" )

}

This addIsGreat method can now be called on any array and for each item in the array it will add is great!

Why does this work? Well, if you were to go into your devtools in the browser and define a string, you can call __proto__ on that string. What you will get in the console is a list of all the string methods that exist for strings. In there you will see toLowerCase and concat and a ton of others. Same with an array. You’ll see map and find and tons of other great array methods. All we are doing is adding our own personalized method onto the proto for these types for our use later!

Pretty nifty, eh?
Dearest Mumma,
By: Tasneem Kagalwalla
Tags: Poetry, Life Lessons, Relationships, Love, Inspiration

Six Years of poetry-only publishing, PoetsUnlimited was a diverse, engaging and authentic poetry magazine. For most of that time a daily publication, it was always diverse and original, and free-to-read by all.

Follow
An Overview of CyClean
Tags: Token, Cyclean, Bitcoin

Hello crypto-enthusiasts around the world! This is me again with another posting about the CyClean token. But this time, I am here for a quite different reason: to give a general overview of CyClean. I know it can be hard to read all of my postings since there are so many of them. So, I thought that it would be much better to summarize what I have written. CyClean token is not something difficult to understand. CyClean is about you and me.

1. More than just a currency

Many cryptocurrencies like Litecoin and Vertcoin only play a role as a medium of exchange. Even Bitcoin’s primary usage is as a means of payment. However, the CyClean token wants to do much more than that. CyClean wants to change the world. How? By incentivizing people to reduce air pollution around the world. If you want to own CyClean tokens, use electric vehicles! Save our ecosystem and get money out of it! Now it is time to incentivize people for doing something beneficial for our society. The CyClean project will be the starting point of this new paradigm.

2. An experienced team

I should tell you that there are many scammers out there, especially in the ICO market. I don’t want to deny that. What is the most common factor about scammers? Well, the fact that they are inexperienced in this field has been a common factor. This is why experience matters. People are crazy about EOS right now not because of its technology but because of its founder, Dan Larimer, who already founded two successful cryptocurrencies before EOS. What about CyClean? What is special about it? Look at who created CyClean. JPAY Inc. Well, maybe you are not familiar with that name. However, if you come to Gasan Digital Complex, you would know that JPAY Inc. has created a cryptocurrency that is being used in real life. There are an increasing number of people posting about using JPAY tokens to purchase real goods in the market. JPAY Inc. has successfully launched a cryptocurrency. It gives the CyClean development team a lot of credibility.

3. Based on a real product

I have a question. How many cryptocurrencies have real products? I think I can name a few of them, such as STEEM, a social network-based cryptocurrency. What else? Not many. Come on. There are more than 2,000 cryptos out there, but too many of them do not have a real product yet. This is a serious problem. What about CyClean? I can confidently say that CyClean is based on a real product since the CyClean rental service lets you rent the IMBIKE and the 3GO, an eco-friendly electric vehicle. You will even be able to pay for rental fees with the CyClean token. The CyClean ecosystem is real. This differentiates CyClean from many other cryptocurrencies.

This is a general overview of CyClean. How do you feel about it? Good? Bad? Crypto is not just about the price. It is about the future in which we are going to live. I not only think that CyClean is good but also that CyClean is needed. Once we can incentivize people to benefit our society, our lives will be much better. What the CyClean team is trying to sell is not the CyClean token but our future.
An Afternoon in People’s Park
By: Gary Mcbrine
Tags: Creative, Art, Photography, Inspiration, Travel

The China we hear about in the news is not the real China.

The people of China work hard to create a good life for their family, but they also enjoy many beautiful parks with family and friends.

These photos are taken in People’s Park in Chengdu, a city of more than 16 million people. The city has amazing architecture and some of the most beautiful parks you can imagine.
12 Mistakes That Stop You From Being a Programmer
By: Nuha Khaled
Tags: Advice, Programming, JavaScript, Software Development, Learning To Code

2. Practicing the Given Examples Only

Every course gives a set of examples to apply. So if you are learning about for loops, the instructor gives you an example, a few practicing problems, and that’s it. Some new learners are affected negatively by the school system. They feel satisfied with only doing the homework and studying the problems given. They feel they can do well enough that way, as they met the requirements. But later when the course is over, they get surprised that they can’t code anything different.

Instead, learners need to try to apply the same concepts to more problems — not only problems found on the internet but also to brainstorm more ideas to apply what they learned.
Gayest Christmas Songs
Tags: Gay, Holidays, Christmas, LGBTQ, Christmas Music

The Indigo Girls are actually my favorite band (yes, I’m that kind of queer person) and I love their holiday album Holly Happy Days. This is one of those quiet beautiful songs that just feels very Christmassy to me.

Santa Baby — Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles

This might actually be my favorite song on this entire playlist, and for certain is the best rendition of this song that I have EVER seen/heard. Take everything you think you know about the Santa Baby song and make it….way gayer.

So gay, so sweet, this is my favorite song from Mary Lambert’s new 2020 Christmas Album Happy Holigays (I can’t believe it took until 2020 for an artist to make an album with this perfect name).

From RuPaul’s Slay Bells album, “Nothing for Christmas” is the campy Christmas song you’ve been waiting for. After all, what could be better than combining drag and Christmas carols?

I didn’t think of Hallelujah as a Christmas song but every radio station and play list I’ve heard this year has been including it so….. Why not! KD Lang’s rendition of Hallelujah is pretty heavenly and will now have a treasured spot on any gay Christmas playlist I make.

Lesbian icon Melissa Etheridge from her holiday album A New Thought for Christmas gives a new spin to this rock Christmas song. In the pandemic for anyone who is missing someone this Christmas season I think this song will take on a new meaning.

It’s hard to go wrong with this upbeat fun, classically gay Christmas song. It’s the perfect holiday tune for decorating the Christmas tree to or for going out of a walk or drive to look at holiday lights.

This reimagined tune is from the “It’s a Pony Kind of Christmas” album (highly recommend). Rainbow Dash is by the end of the cartoon series is canonical gay so in addition to being a cool flying rainbow pony her Christmas song definitely belongs on my gay Christmas favorites.

New Orleans hip hop artist Big Freedia gives us a super queer Christmas song! “I’ve been naughty, but I’ve also been nice” don’t miss the festive outfits, great dancing and catchy beats!

This is an old-school 90s gay anthem that just had to make it onto the list. Full of figuring out family strife and being your best gay self plus influencing kids in the family to question their heteronormative families. It’s a real folky gay feel good song.

I love just about any rendition of this classic Christmas carol, but to hear it sung by non-binary icon Sam Smith is pretty special and the perfect way to round out this holiday mixtape.
Barter
By: Jane Woodman
Tags: Free Verse, Poetry, Gratitude, Growth, Love

This dull day of grey clouds

skimming a soft wet sky

crows hopping through grass

stabbing grey grubs under leaves

still exposed by no-snow…

such a day slows thought

muffles sound and sense

to a buzz barely heard

under the swarm of feeling

just like the sensation of long ago

when I was seventeen.

I didn’t remember my dreams

when I was seventeen

just as now when I wake

to these bright days

filled with lightness

bounded by every grace

I may have dreamt brilliantly

of fractalled skies

full of spinning stars

of sweeter music

than ever played

or of love’s own face

restored by hope and faith…

If I do so dream

or otherwise

it is without trace or imprint

diminished to no thought

by the scope of waking joy.
The Watchers
By: Edie Tuck
Tags: Paranormal, Supernatural, True Story, Memories, Ghosts

The Watchers

My earliest memory

( Photo by zelle duda on Unsplash)

I remember waking up, I was shivering. Through the bars of my crib, I could see my blanket. It lay on the floor across the room. So did my teddy bear. How did it get there? I was just a baby, and I’d been asleep. Then I saw them.

They stood, quietly. At the foot of my crib, long-fingered bony hands resting motionless on the painted white wood. Their stern, unsmiling faces staring down at me in, disapproving. They wore blue dresses today. The last time, they’d been pink.

Their hair, mousy brown and streaked with silver, was pulled into severe buns at the napes of their necks — their necks, tall and thin, chins up in superiority. The starched collars buttoned up to their throats, ending in slight ruffles.

Why did they stare at me so — unblinking? Had they never seen an infant before? These — these ‘school marms’, almost identical, the three of them. They could have been sisters — and maybe they were. They never spoke. I couldn’t speak — I didn’t know how yet.

I didn’t move — I simply stared back, frozen in fear. Somehow, the thoughts in my mind weren’t those of a one-year-old. They shouldn’t be here, in my room. In the early morning hours. And yet I knew they would come again.

And they did, and every time, I would wake in my crib. Chilled as the air they brought with them. And although nearly four decades have passed, I can still see their gray skin, concaved cheeks, and pinched mouths. I can still remember the cold.
100 Words On….. The Cyber Skills Gap
By: Logan Daley
Tags: Skills Gap, 100 Words Project, Careers, Cybersecurity, Information Technology

Photo by Branko Stancevic on Unsplash

One may argue the Cybersecurity skills gap is partly due to how we fill these roles by overlooking diversity. Thinking we must have a technical background and already be established in Information Technology works against us. While those skills are undoubtedly beneficial, we are missing out on untold numbers of highly skilled and experienced individuals with an aptitude and drive to be outstanding Cybersecurity professionals. We wrongly evaluate them for what they lack rather than possess. Ignoring what they have and denying them an opportunity to realise their potential in our industry ensures the only growth is the skills gap.
GANA BITCOIN
Tags: Criptomonedas, Tecnologia, Peru, Blockchain, Bitcoin

in In Fitness And In Health
Novel Excerpt: Where the Bad Seeds Grow
By: Tina Morlock
Tags: Novel Excerpt, Coming Of Age Romance, Fiction, Young Adult Books, Young Adult Fiction

From the opening scene of my debut novel, Where the Bad Seeds Grow:

I know you. Your life has been spent watching what they do and wishing you could be a part of that perfectly painted picture. That girl in the middle never wears the same pair of shoes twice. Don’t mind the blisters that have taken up permanent residence on her tired heels and the stress fractures she hides beneath her perfectly sculpted legs. That girl had a name once, but it doesn’t escape my lips anymore. Us cheerleaders have each other’s backs, but we only honor that promise until we step outside that circle of superficial protection. And once we step away from the pack, we become a mutant, and then we’re as ordinary as the rest of the school we try to ignore.

Her best friend, the one whose hair is always perfectly platinum blonde, would probably kill herself if you knew that under the extensions and the years of chemical damage, she had disgusting-looking scabs she spends hours itching at night. If you show up at her house late at night, you’ll notice the blood underneath her brittle fingernails she spends nearly an hour washing away every morning.

The threat of suicide is real. Last year, the perfect-haired girl had to wear a hat to school for a solid week because her hair stylist had a family emergency. One of the football players stole the hat off her head during lunch, and she spent the night in the hospital after swallowing almost-too-many sleeping pills. The official word at school (if I remember correctly) was that her parents forced her into a short stay at an eating disorder inpatient center because they caught her throwing up for the 100th time. Bulimia is a much trendier character flaw than an attempted suicide caused by a severe case of body dysmorphic disorder. Mental illness is mental illness, but an eating disorder is only another name for a diet. Or at least, in our circle, it was.

There’s one last girl in your line of sight I haven’t mentioned yet. By design, she’s hated by everyone around her and everyone who craves to be around her. It’s the curse of being the most popular girl in school. As cliché as it sounds, there is one in every junior high and high school in America. Everything down to her black lace panties was ironed at midnight the night before. There is no minute of her day that isn’t spent being perfect, unless, of course, you count the hour after school she spends tracking down her drug dealer, whose sole purpose is to charge her fifty dollars a gram for the perfection burning a hole in her perfectly symmetrical nose. She tells everyone the nosebleeds are due to a hereditary disorder, and if you want to get real, she’s completely honest. Her mother left her with her grandparents at the age of five because getting high was much more important than a snot-nosed brat she couldn’t love if she were ever capable of such an emotion.

Read more excerpts and/or purchase.
Analysis of Augur (REP)
By: Izak Fritz
Tags: Augur, Smart Contracts, Blockchain, Prediction Markets, Bitcoin

A decentralized prediction market platform.

Augur attempts to decentralize the prediction market by allowing users, rather than a centralized figure, to confirm the outcomes of events. First an event is created, it could be the outcome of a binary event (Lakers vs. Celtics) or it could be a non-binary event (How many inches of snowfall were there in January). Then the event happens, but how can we trust that the reported outcome of the event is correct? The users on the network announce the outcome of this event and gain reputation (REP) if they told the truth, and lose REP if they lied. A user is considered to be lying if the majority of the other users disagree with their reporting.

This platform allows users to bet Bitcoin on certain events while also gaining REP (reputation) by validating the outcome of events. This plan effectively eliminates the requirement for a totally honest oracle to validate the outcomes (ie. Las Vegas betting firms).

The basic of the Network is as follows:

Event Created -> Event added to the market -> Users bet on the event Event happens -> Users vote on the outcome Users lose and gain REP for reporting correctly Users gain or lose Bitcoin for predicting the event correctly

Currently Augur is waiting on their smart contracts to be audited and tested by CoinSpect, a reputable smart contract code auditor. Back in July of 2017 there was a serious security bug found in one of the smart contracts during an audit, here is a link to more information: http://bit.ly/2v5C71w. They are now going through the second and third round of contract audits to make sure that they are usable and safe. They also recently released a new version of their white paper because the product has changed in the past few years since the ICO.

My Thoughts:

I have a problem with the platform taking over three years to be released. I checked out the beta version of the platform and it was really hard to use and needs a lot of work. I understand that it takes a lot of work to develop a platform of this scale, but Augur was launched in 2015; I think they should have something significant to show for it by now. I do not think the price is justified and it would take a lot of new developments for me to invest.

I would need to see these things at the bare minimum:

A mainnet release of the prediction market that is highly functional, and has a large amount of users.

The platform is well developed and works smoothly. They have spent years on this so it should be pretty good when they actually release it.

If Augur can’t get these things done in the next 6 months, I don’t think Augur can live up to the hype from the past three years.

Additional Resources:

Please note: all opinions I have expressed are my own.
Latest Data Reveals the Actual Size of The Gender Gap at the Academy Awards
By: Alice Corona
Tags: Gender Gap, Academy Awards, Data Journalism

Latest Data Reveals the Actual Size of The Gender Gap at the Academy Awards

A data-driven analysis of gender representation in 88 years of Oscars

Over the 88 editions of the Academy Awards, several things have remained constant. The Red Carpet. The golden statuette. And the absence of women nominees.

Which isn’t to say that women are absent from the event. During the Academy Awards season, pictures of actresses monopolize the front pages of websites, magazines, newspapers, and TV shows. Their bodies are discussed, their designer clothes, their hairstyles, their make-up, their dates.

And still, very few women are actually nominated for an Oscar. And even less win one.

Let’s look at numbers. Did you know that in the history of the awards, only 17% of the nominees have been women? Or that in the upcoming 2016 Oscars, five categories had no female nominee at all?

Note: Silk has been discontinued as of Dec. 15th 2017 so links are broken and visualizations are static. Will replace them asap.
Four Steps To GIFTING Bitcoin
Tags: Money, Blockchain, Investing, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin

Step 1 — Funding Your Purchase

Generous gifter first needs to send money to an exchange. Don’t forget, the aim is to pay little to no fees. If you don’t already have an account on a cryptocurrency exchange, check out my guide to opening one here.

Step 2 — Buying BTC

Buy BTC on the exchange, or if you know someone you trust, feel free to ask them to buy you BTC or buy BTC from them — allowing you to skip the exchange completely.

Step 3 — Setting Up Gift Wallet

Download a wallet that you’ll use as the “Gift Wallet”.

My suggestion is to use one of the following:

GreenAddress (iOS, Android, Chrome — Free)

I personally prefer this wallet, due to the fact you can have multiple wallets within one app (much like a bank), as well as it also incorporates many fundamental properties that a Bitcoin/crypto wallet should have i.e. Full control of your Public/Private Keys, decentralised validation, 2FA for transactions & full control over fees plus a bunch more. More info can be found here.

Jaxx (iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, Linux — Free)

Mycelium (iOS, Androud — Free)

I’ll step through the process for GreenAddress.

Creating The Gift Wallet On GreenAddress

Create Gift Wallet

Once the app is downloaded, go ahead and step through the wallet creation screens.

You should write down the mnemonic passphrase and store in a safe place. THIS ALLOWS ACCESS TO YOUR BITCOIN. DO NOT SHOW TO ANYONE! (unless we are at Step 4)…

2. Create Gift Account

Once set up, go to menu (top left of the screen) — SETTINGS > ACCOUNTS > CREATE A SIMPLE ACCOUNT > Name it what you like!

3. Wallet Address To Send BTC To

Next hit the “Show URL and address” button to obtain your wallet address.

4. Transfer BTC From Exchange (or person*) to Gift Wallet

Use the wallet address to transfer the BTC you just bought. The reason I use GDAX is because it allows zero fee trades AND withdrawals, so it’s all part of the masterplan to gift BTC without giving the miners a gift!

*Using a person would incur a mining fee, unless they have BTC already on GDAX.

At this stage you should have; 1) a gift wallet 2) BTC in your gift wallet 3) paid zero fees.

Step 4— Giving The Gift of Financial Freedom

Now there are a couple of things to consider here:

Is the person you are gifting BTC to responsible or not!? This may seem like an odd thought process, however, with Bitcoin/cryptocurrency — you are your own bank! You have no one to fall back on incase something goes wrong i.e. your phone is lost/stolen, your computer or other device holding your Bitcoin breaks for whatever reason and you haven’t backed your sh*t up. As such, it is imperative (and I don’t say this lightly) to not become one of the increasing number of people who LOSE THEIR BITCOIN!

If they are responsible we will go down one path, if not, we will take another.

2. How creative are you going to get with your gift?
Winter Lights
By: Victoria Ponte
Tags: Poetry, Winter, Poetry On Medium, Blue Insights, Winter Moods

Winter Lights

In the darkest, coldest season we look

For any brightness, we can find

Nature brings us sunrises through morning dark

The light on the snow can be blinding

We are cheered by artificial lights, too

Christmas lights strung light up the world at night

Candles cast a warm glow in our homes

Decorated trees are lit

Shining soft hope

All around us
Dark Corners
Tags: Poetry, One Line, Halloween, Horror, Photography

We catch our breath when we find skeletons standing alone at night… but scarier still are the faces they take on, in the dark corners of our next dream.
Urban Legends Rewritten To Reflect How Women Behave Today
By: Kyrie Gray
Tags: Women, Humor, Halloween, Culture, Feminism

Photo by Mehrdad Haghighi on Unsplash

Urban Legends Rewritten To Reflect How Women Behave Today

Get Smart Not Gutted

The Hook

A boy and girl were making out in the back seat of a parked car. His hand was going for the hem of her skirt when she heard a sound from outside.

She shot up, alarmed. “What was that?”

The boy rubbed her shoulders, trying to get her back in the mood.

She wasn’t distracted. “I heard a scratching sound. I want to leave.”

“Aww baby, you’re just nervous…”

“Excuse me baby, but I’m not nervous. We literally turned off the radio because the news was all about an escaped maniac from a nearby asylum and YOU thought it was ruining the mood. Speaking of which YOU don’t get to tell me when I’M in the mood. We’re leaving.”

“Fine.” The boy put his keys in the ignition and angrily drove off. The killer in the bushes cursed. He’d been looking forward to gutting some teenagers. Although he was happy that the girl stood up for herself.

The Babysitter

Shelly was sitting, with her legs curled under her sweater, on the couch while reading a magazine when the phone rang. Thinking it was the parents calling to check in on the kids, she answered without concern.

“Hello!”

“Have you checked on the children?”

“Yeah, about an hour ago. Is this Doug? You sound weird.”

“Maybe you should check on them again.”

“Ok Doug!”

After hanging up she grabbed her cell phone and dialed 911.

“Hello, I’m alone babysitting and I think someone is going to harm me and the kids.”

“Are you sure you’re not just being hysterical?”

“Look my intuition says a creepy man is upstairs waiting. Probably Doug, but he is really creepy so I’m not wrong on that front. Please don’t belittle the situation, and wait until we trace the call and find out that he is upstairs and the kids are dead. Just because I’m a girl doesn’t mean you get to assume I’m being hysterical. Send someone NOW.”

The police arrived and managed to subdue the man upstairs who tried to flee out of the bathroom where he’d been hiding, waiting to jump the babysitter as she entered the sleeping children’s room.

Killer in the backseat

The killer crouched low in the backseat. His knife ready. He’d seen the beautiful young woman leave her car, without properly locking the door, and enter the mall almost an hour ago. It would be just a matter of time before…

Beep beep!

He smiled as the doors unlocked. After they were further down the road and the twilight changed into darkness he would — -

He didn’t have time to finish the thought. Both passenger doors open and he was staring at the gun of a police officer.

“Drop your weapon. Hands in the air!”

In the back of the police vehicle he asked the officers, “What happened to the woman?”

“She’s getting a ride home from another officer. She checked her back seat before getting in the car since she was alone. Come on! It’s 2019. What woman doesn’t listen to true crime podcasts?”
3 Lessons Learned from My Three-Year-Old’s First Encounter with Racism
By: Jeanne Yacoubou
Tags: This Happened To Me, Racism, Biracial, Family, Parenting

3 Lessons Learned from My Three-Year-Old’s First Encounter with Racism

If only I could do it over…

Photo by Taariq Hendricks on Unsplash

It all started as an innocent encounter between two three-year-olds at the playground.

My biracial daughter, Amira, had approached another little girl (White) to invite her to play together. I’ll call her Abby.

Abby’s mom came over immediately, grabbed her daughter’s hand, and pulled her over to another part of the playground with her daughter looking back toward us, confusion etched in her frown.

It was only when Abby looked away, toward the children playing in front of her and looked interested in joining them, did mom release the girl’s hand.

Shocked and rejected, Amira burst into tears. I hugged her.

“I know you’re hurt by that. It was bad for that mommy to take the little girl away so you couldn’t play.”

Amira stopped crying. I gave her another hug.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t hug away her first taste of racism.

To calm my daughter down and distract her from what appeared to be a traumatizing experience, we took a few trips down the sliding board together, then hit the swings.

Soon Amira’s expression brightened when she recognized a friend in the sandbox and ran toward her, smiling.

The incident forgotten for the moment, I knew it had affected her for the time being. Permanently? Only time would tell.

I thought about what I’d say to her later if she brought it up.

And I wondered if the time for frank and open discussion on racism (at her level) had arrived.
Recap of IoT Chain (ITC) Activities in May
By: Iot Chain
Tags: Announcements, Itc, Iot Chain, Blockchain

Dear community members,

It has been another busy month for the ITC team! Let’s review the events and community activities that took place in May.

-ITC Meetups-

2018/5/16 · New York, United States

4 Blockchain Projects You Can’t Afford to Miss in 2018

Together with Spark Capital Management and Fordham Fintech Network, IoT Chain held the private New York meetup — “Four Blockchain Projects You Can’t Afford to Miss in 2018” to communicate with Blockchain enthusiasts, investors, and industry peers in North America. The ITC team explained that data ownership will become a global issue in the upcoming era of the Internet of Things. They stressed that data rights belong to the user.

2018/5/13–5/16 · New York, United States

Consensus 2018

From May 13th to May 16th, 2018, ITC IoT chain team was invited to attend the Consensus 2018 conference. ITC’s co-founder Lyu Xinhao claimed that the most important value that IoT brings to the blockchain is to solve the problem of establishing a reliable connection between the real and digital world.

2018/5/13 · New York, United States

Blockchain Asia II Meetup

On May 13th, 2018, the IoT Chain team was invited to the New York meetup “Blockchain Asia II — New Frontier”. Co-founder Lyu Xinhao delivered a keynote speech on the affect of blockchain on the IoT industry. He also shared the goals, technology and vision of IoT Chain to blockchain enthusiasts, investors, and developers from North America.

2018/5/1–5/3 · Singapore

WDAS 2018 World Digital Assets Summit

On May 1st, the IoT Chain team travelled to Singapore to attend the 2018 World Digital Asset Summit (WDAS). The team delivered a keynote speech sharing IoT Chain’s technology and vision, and interacted with colleagues, developers and investors from the industry.

-Community Activities-

2018/5/31 · Chinese & English Community

AMA Community Q&A Activity

In May 2018, the IoT Chain team hosted a community AMA event. The top questions were selected from the community, and members received 5 ITC tokens for their contributions. Over 10 high quality questions were selected and answered live in the official ITC Telegram channel on May 31st. The team plans on conducting similar AMA events in the near future.

2018/5/11–5/13 · Chinese community

2nd ITC Customized T-shirt Welfare Interaction

From May 11th to 13th, the IoT Chain Chinese community participated in their second ITC t-shirt contest. The top 10 participants from the interactive ITC Bounty System who managed to also get 10 likes for their comments received a customized summer ITC brand t-shirt.

-END-
컬러 플랫폼의 성장통, 누가 살펴주시나요? 컬러의 세 번째 어드바이저, 아루티언 박사님을 소개합니다!
By: Color Platform
Tags: Color Platform, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Ethereum, Bitcoin

Colorful dApp Platform. "Color" is a revolutionary blockchain platform that focuses on developing easy to use dApps (https://colors.org)

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Staking Balances & Rewards on PoS tokens TEZOS— COSMOS — EOS — NANO — DUNE
Tags: Staking Rewards, Valuation, Accounting, Portfolio, Staking

UPDATE TRY IT OUT: LIVE SAMPLE SHEET

I wrote this medium in complement to Pull Crypto Wallet Balance directly on Google Sheets where you can retrieve almost any cryptocurrency (150+ with biggest market cap) balance from a wallet address and the article Pull realtime lending rates from DeFi platforms where I show you how to benefit from arbitrage opportunities on lending rates.

This article will be useful for you, if you want to get your staking balances as well as your rewards in real-time which could be of use for accounting and portfolio valuations. I’ll be using Google Sheets, it is a free, web-based program for creating and editing spreadsheets.

At the end of this medium, you will be able to automatically retrieve staking and reward balances from the following cryptocurrencies:

TEZOS— COSMOS— EOS — NANO — DUNE

The CRYPTOSTAKING & CRYPTOREWARDS Formula

This is what your Google Sheet will look like once you finish the setup:

Screenshot 1: a Google accounting sheet with the share of Staking, Rewards and ‘available’ Balance

The CRYPTOSTAKING function returns the amount staked for the wallet address you provided. Available for TEZOS , COSMOS, EOS, NANO and DUNE. You will be able to retrieve the amount through the following formula:

=CRYPTOSTAKING(“CRYPTOCURRENCY TICKER”,” PUBLIC WALLET ADDRESS”, optional refresh_cell)

2 Required Parameters + 1 Optional

{“CRYPTOCURRENCY TICKER”} The cryptocurrency TICKER/SYMBOL data to fetch, for example the tikcker of Tezos is XTZ. {“PUBLIC WALLET ADDRESS”} The wallet address associated with the cryptocurrency you want the balance from. Please pay attention, DO NOT ENTER your private wallet address. Optional {EMPTY CELL REFERENCE} ONLY on 3rd argument. Reference an empty cell and change its content to force refresh of the balances.

The CRYPTOREWARDS function returns the amount of rewards you get from staking. Available for TEZOS and COSMOS. You will be able to retrieve the amount through the following formula:

=CRYPTOREWARDS(“TICKER”,”WALLET ADDRESS”, optional refresh_cell)

I open sourced the code for anyone that wishes to get the staking and reward amounts. The staking and reward amounts are directly taken from the block explorers (TZStats, Blocks.io, CosmoStation, Nano Crawler, DunScan.io,…).

Below I displayed a couple of examples on how you can use these 2 functions.

EXAMPLE 1: Tezos from Tezos Capital Legacy

Wallet Address: Tezos Capital Legacy fund

For this first example, I’m interested in getting the staking and reward values for the Tezos Capital Legacy Fund that has the following wallet address: tz1TDSmoZXwVevLTEvKCTHWpomG76oC9S2fJ

Below, I’ve made a screenshot of the balances on the Tezos Block Explorer (TZStats).
Resolving the Dilemma Between Native and Progressive Web Apps
By: Siana Macdad
Tags: Mobile, Android, Programming, iOS, Progressive Web App

What Is a Native App?

A native app is a smartphone application developed for a specific platform. Native apps are written in languages supported by those platforms.

For instance, Java and Kotlin are used to build Android apps while Swift and Objective C are used for native IOs apps.

This allows native apps to use the operating system’s tools and frameworks as well as the capabilities of the hardware. But because of that, we have to build the app twice if we want it to be available on the Apple Store and the Google Play Store.

Pros of building a native app:

Native apps have the best performance.

Support common platform-specific features. Native apps have the most access to advanced features like NFC (Near Field Communication).

On the other hand, the principal drawback is the cost:
“You Touched My Life”
Tags: Prison, Ohio, Rehabilitation, Incarceration

Everyone in prison has a choice about how to serve their time. The Tapestry program teaches the resident to make positive choices rather than the negative ones that brought them to prison. It assists the programmer with understanding how their choices affect others in their community and focuses on ultimately achieving role model behaviors. The programmer begins to notice others in their community who have greater hardships than they do, such as those serving a life sentence who also are role models.

“You Touched my Life” day is a Tapestry outreach to recognize prison residents serving lengthy or life sentences who make a difference with their own positive choices despite the adversity of a long prison sentence. It is a day of affirming these positive choices by saying, “Good job. You make a difference! We noticed you!”

The Tapestry women, and the alumni, reach out to these residents by inviting them to write an essay describing how and why they decided to make better choices. These essays are published into a booklet accompanied by positive affirmations written by the Tapestry and alumni residents. The Tapestry women also write personalized positive encouragements, called positive strokes, expressing how these residents touched their life.

The overall effect from this event brings about uplifted spirits and the inspiration to strive to do better works to others in the prison setting. This day may also motivate or inspire other women serving life sentences, or lengthy sentences to make better choices because they noticed someone cared enough to say “Thank You for Touching my life”.

[Story written and submitted by a Tapestry outside volunteer.]
Fetch Requests and Controller Actions: Connecting the Frontend to the Backend
By: Waverley Leung
Tags: JavaScript, Code Newbie, Guides And Tutorials, Ruby on Rails, Full Stack

Structuring the Request with Fetch 📨

This is my favorite part; structuring the request from the frontend to send to the backend! To explain this, I will be making a “post” request to create a new user.

First, before we do anything else, we need to set up the route on the backend to allow this post request to happen.

post “/users”, to: “users#create”

Next, we write our fetch (“post”) request in our .js file in the frontend! To understand my example below, some important context to know is that the user is filling out a form and I am using their input to create a new user. There is an event listener for when the user submits this form; once they submit this fetch request will be triggered.

fetch("http://localhost:3000/users", {

method: 'POST',

headers: {

'Content-Type': 'application/json',

},

body: JSON.stringify({

first_name: userFirstName,

last_name: userLastName,

age: userAge

})

})

Compared to a “get” request, a “post” request needs more information that will be passed in as a second argument (after the url). The information will let the fetch know that this is a “post” request (method), metadata about the actual data we want to send (headers), and the actual data (body). For more information about this second argument and what “method”, “headers”, and “body” are, check it out here.

In my example, for a user to be created I need to know their first name, last name, and age. I will be getting this information from the input of the form they filled out and sending it through the body as key-value pairs. The values the keys are pointing to (userFirstName, userLastName, and userAge) are variables I defined outside of the fetch request.

Bonus! Getting the user’s input from a form ✍🏼

As previously mentioned, this fetch request is inside of a “submit” event listener on a form. To get the value of the input fields we need to pull the information from the input fields.

let userFirstName = event.target.fname.value

let userLastName = event.target.lname.value

let userAge = event.target.ageInput.value

If we did event.target.value it wouldn’t work because the event.target is the form and a form does not have a value. Instead, we are targeting the html input field by their id (fname, lname, and ageInput) and getting the value from there.
Tonight’s comic is thinking about going vegetarian again.
Tags: Theory Of Mind, Vegetarian, Philosophy, Comics

More from rstevens Follow

I make cartoons and t-shirts at www.dieselsweeties.com & @rstevens. Send me coffee beans.
Le 1er numéro d’Ohmymag version Mook est en kiosque
By: Groupe Cerise
Tags: Millennials, Media, Print, Do It Yourself, Inspiration

in In Fitness And In Health
New City, Old Love
By: Srishti Das
Tags: Poetry, Poems On Medium, Fiction Writing, Fiction, Poem

Maybe I’ll see you again

when we’re older; hopefully wiser

less self-conscious

about our wildly untamed hair,

crooked gait

and disproportionate ears.

At least I’m hoping I will.

I’m hoping that one day I’ll walk down the street,

pushing past the men crowding the falafel stand,

haggling over the extra 30 pence and more toum,

the vendor’s hope that they have a nice day

getting lost in translation,

and I stop.

I’ll smell an old perfume on a new stranger

and find my heart longing

for the winters

when you’d bring me a blanket to cuddle under,

I’d insist on sharing yours ’cause you’ve kept the best one for yourself,

and we’d breathe each other in

and pretend like we weren’t.

It’ll be redolent of your first heartbreak,

when you drown yourself in cologne

instead of tears -

“a chick magnet” you’d call it -

and I breathed it in,

hoping it would fill the cracks and crevices

of my young heart,

like my very own Kintsukuroi.

And I’ll be on a street

next to the falafel vendor,

breathing in the peeling gold of my heart

in a dusty metropolitan

where my heart never suffered heartbreak -

hoping it had,

just so that I could see you

30 seconds after your cologne reached me.

Maybe I will, one day.

Or maybe it’s just a hint of nostalgia

on a strange face,

smelling just familiar enough to make me stop

but not enough to draw me out of my reverie.

I think I’ll buy one of those falafels after all.
MDL Disneyland® Paris Major Data Analysis
Tags: Gaming, Mdl Paris Major, Dota 2, Dota2 Tournament Analysis

Team Secret is the Champion of MDL Disneyland® Paris Major

We had a fantastic Major; all top 8 teams have excellent performance. Let’s go into the data directly.

The meta is already figured out by many teams, the hero picks are narrowed a bit, but thanks to Team Secret tried some rare heroes, like Pudge and Ancient Apparition, we still have some diversity.

The powerful aura of Guardian Greaves also changes the meta a lot, due to the bonus regen and armor under 20% health, heroes are much harder to kill and sustain become an important factor in team fights.
Conscious Space
By: Paul Mulliner
Tags: Mindfulness, Philosophy, Meditation, Spirituality, Life

A universal conscious space inside all of us and everywhere throughout the Universe is continuously becoming electrons, flowers, trees and human beings.

Moment by moment it’s changing the fabric of itself into all life and all experience of life.

It’s the raw stuff of consciousness itself and we can find it inside us by inwardly focusing our attention.

As our attention rests in the pre-conceptual inner space, we become aware of the un-altered stuff of consciousness itself.

Consciousness un-altered by thought, like an ocean untouched by wind.