fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Integrity Breached
By: Randy Shingler
Tags: Leadership, Democracy, Politics, Integrity, Poetry

Sadness in watching alleged leaders

Integrity breached by so many of them

Focus on power, ignoring good of people,

Sadder still observing their followers

Taunts and violence in support of them.

Portends dismal days for our democracy

When not accepting votes as legitimate

Seeking to subvert majority’s will

Nefarious schemes hatched even by leaders

Disrespecting our new president-elect.

Warmer hopes for better days ahead

As generations of new leaders take hold

Perhaps innovative visions, better actions

Can invigorated our damaged democracy

And inspire more confidence in populace.

Restoring integrity in public life

When it’s been so rudely breached

Should be priorities for new leaders

As they begin orchestrating new days.
Technology that walks in the shoes of the patient
By: Elizabeth Elfenbein
Tags: Health Technology, Patients, Healthcare, Healthtech, Human Behavior

By Elizabeth Elfenbein and Prodeep Bose

For over a decade, we’ve been advising our clients and colleagues to “take a walk in the shoes of your customer” — to understand and empathize with the plight of patients and caregivers, so you can “get into their skin” and know how best to communicate with them.

Well, it’s really no different today, except now the shoes are walking in a technology-centered world, where devices and apps are doing more things to help these people manage and maintain their health.

Using technology to solve human problems

In the decade of walking in the shoes, technology has evolved at a speed that is outpacing that of humans — yet interestingly, in the process of evolution, it recognizes the need to address a human problem: health. In many ways, technology understands how to better connect and drive engagement and action in patients and caregivers, perhaps even more than humans do. And technology for health is in its nascent stage, just beginning to define the future and where it will lead to real time and future time, better outcomes.

Biometrics and biofeedback: the patients’ new shoes

“Walking in the shoes” takes on new meaning when it comes to technology-enabled health tracking. The foundation of health management has been episodic. When something happens, we go to the doctor and iterate the process of “describe, discuss, prescribe.” Continuous management and feedback on vitals, biometrics, pill compliance, and other real-world behavior will enable a shift towards continuous medicine — and in very real terms, allow for “walking in the patients’ shoes” beyond episodic empathy and sensitivity. We will see and understand the health transformation of people in real time by observing their lives, their health metrics, and their outcomes.

The key areas of innovation could be bucketed into four categories:

Monitoring

Biofeedback

Intelligent intervention (driven by predictive logic)

Robotics

The investment in these areas and the proliferation of companies developing innovative solutions is dramatic. Remote monitoring of pill compliance through programmed pill dispensers, use of biofeedback in managing ADHD and depression, exome-sequenced interventional logic for personalized and preventive medicine, and next-generation robotics to enhance or replace limbs are “always-on” platforms that change the function of a provider from somewhere between an interviewer and a detective to an analyst. As a financial advisor manages his fund’s health by constantly monitoring data, the provider-patient-caregiver relationship stands to be transformed to a proactive monitoring-driven intervention approach over an exacerbation-driven intervention approach.

Sensitivity and empathy are at the heart of the idea of “walking in the patients’ shoes,” and will always be at the core of care. Technology simply amplifies what is actionable and when.
One More Time With Me
By: Joanna Vang
Tags: Dreams And Visions, Saturday Poetry Prompt, Rejoice, Scrittura

One More Time With Me

Saturday Poetry Prompt: Reason to Rejoice

Photo by Christopher Rusev on Unsplash

I started the monologue in a space between two ends to

talk about life and dreams, the things I live that ain’t mine,

the vibrations of the people, the places, the dinner, the seasonal effects, the silence, the stillness, the attempt to re imagine something lost

I am now closer to my last breath and it will be easier

for several reasons to resonate because it was so perfectly

tailored to me, something I know that it loved me right back

so that’s the dilemma in what I was seeking

I was still staggering like an orphan made by the workhouse

before I lean on the bar with a pensive sigh

not enough time, not enough energy

yet we have enough, actually, we have too much…

too much stress, too much sadness, too much rejection

I try to imagine life without so many calamities and I can’t

so many times rejoiced and every cast was a loser

Why would I be here, if I wasn’t carrying the dead weight of a chronic life?

So why not, try one more time, the craziest fork with compassion from the suffering?

Recount choices or chances? Add, subtract, subtract, the result no simpler than my first choice, my last chance

so finally rejoice in the wilderness of life

to be relieved of the dead burden, of the dark of a dormitory

that remained for several years like a crime scene

So I left because there wasn’t anything worth staying for and

no prospect of anything worth having or becoming

and perhaps…

because there was only one last dream left behind

Hold fast to dreams,

For if dreams die,

Life is a broken-winged bird

That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams.

For if dreams go,

Life is a barren field

Covered with snow. by Langston Hughes

To my friend that believed in me, I hope we will have a reason to rejoice
Wouldn’t It Be Nice • 3
By: Mark Starlin
Tags: Life, Transportation, Wealth, Other Stories, Dreams

Wouldn’t it be nice if you lived in a neighborhood near an eccentric billionaire?

And he decided to fly over your house in a dirigible airship.

And while he was doing so he dropped a whole bunch of $100 bills out of the airship and watched them flutter down.

And a big pile of them landed in your yard.

And using an old-fashioned megaphone he yelled out, “Those are my payment for invading your airspace and blocking the sun momentarily. Have a sunny day!”
Owl Knowing How
By: Mary Holden
Tags: Owls, Thatch, Nest, Know, Soul

How do I know

to let all fly?

In dreams awake

my blinkish eye

sees wise an owl

leaves tree afar

in my own soul’s

graphed isobar.

Waking, walking…

need hydration

while seeking state

of my nation.

Who, hoo am I

that you I match?

We both know how

as nest knows thatch.

NOTE: This poem was produced by Kate Gray’s call to write this morning (www.kategraywrites.com/event/writing-together-every-day-at-9am/). The prompt was “You know how.” From the prompt, I heard “ow, ow, ow” and “who, who, hoo,” so I thought, “owl.” Just before the writing session, I was thinking about one of my favorite topics: How in both sleeping and waking a human manages one personality along the timeline that is being given attention. So no, I really don’t know how…but maybe the owl knows how? Or…maybe only the thatch of a nest knows something we don’t know.
CEO Report
By: Akihiro Yamase
Tags: Japanese, ICO, Token Economy, Icovo, Listening

ICOVO

We give shapes to possibilities on Ethereum.
Creating a Sliding mobile menu in Unity
By: Kunal Tandon
Tags: Programming, Game Development, Games, Unity, Technology

Often you hay have seen sliding of UI panels when navigating across an app. Like clicking on the settings icon slides out the home screen and slides in the settings menu.

In this article, we will be creating a simple yet scalable sliding menu system that I am personally using in most of my Android games.

I will be using DoTween for making animations. So you need to install DoTween package in your Unity Project

Creating the Home and Settings Menu

To begin with, I have created a scene with two UI elements (Home and Settings menu) covering the complete screens as shown in the gif below.

The Home and Settings are two images covering the full screen containing elements like settings button, back button, and Labels.

Creating HomeUIManager and SettingsUIManager

Now we need to create UI Managers for each of the menu screens. In this case, we will have two Managers, each for Home UI and for Settings UI.

Create a script HomeUIManager.cs and paste the following code into the file.

Create a script SettingsUIManager.cs and paste the following code into the file.

After creating these scripts, attach the HomeUIManager.cs script to the HomeUI panel covering the full screen.

Attaching HomeUIManager.cs to Home UI

Also, attach the SettingsUIManager.cs to the Settings UI element.

Attaching SettingsUIManager.cs to Settings UI

Now click on the Play button and notice how the Home and Settings menu gets position itself side by side with the Home menu completely visible and the Settings menu hiding beyond the screen.
since you left
By: Haiku Love Bites
Tags: Haiku, Relationships, Love, Poetry, Life

Photo by Jp Valery

since you left

haiku poetry — relationships

.

been months since you left

packed half the records and books

still sleep on my side

.
Rule-based cell annotation in Single-Cell RNA-Seq. Are we on right track?
By: Vivek Das
Tags: Machine Learning, Rna Seq, Genomics, Bioinformatics, Single Cell Sequencing

The post is in Single Cell Biology (not changed the content much from LinkedIn):

Details & discussion can be found here: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6540616360551161856

A fantastic pre-print that seemed to have touched a very important point of bias in rule-based cell annotation/assignment via selected marker genes. Something I always felt when I first saw single-cell RNA-Seq analysis in 2017. In 2019, it is amazingly transformative & helpful technology but still needs improvement as to my knowledge this problem persists. I will pen down my thoughts based on a LinkedIn post I made on this after reading an article

A work that pushed my critical thinking about the problem:

Fabian Theis group work led by Niklas D. Köhler & Maren Büttner points it out as well.

Some of my thoughts linked to the pre-print, discussions with others & its future prospects are outlined below:

Link1: https://lnkd.in/gBvWbzM

Having said that, I also encourage another Twitter thread that is linked to this:

Link2: https://lnkd.in/gNk6H9r

Greg Finak makes an amazing point about how single cell community often misinterprets or misrepresents while conveying the high-dimensional plots & if we do not take care it will haunt us in the future. Encourage everyone to read the pre-print, thread & reflect to understand the points addressed both in cell assignment via annotation & how deep learning/machine learning aids in Single-Cell RNA-Seq space.

I would encourage everyone to read the series of discussion I had with Mike Huss in the LinkedIn thread. We touched upon some insightful exchange of ideas there. I cannot thank enough Mike Huss for the engagement. We both agree about the transfer learning approach based on what Human Cell Atlas(HCA) is trying to build across tissues and diseases so as to improve or deviate from rule-based cell annotation.

A new version of Seurat V3 is published on such lines using anchoring approaches but I will make a separate post on that publication after detailed reading of that work along with LIGER.

(Souce: https://satijalab.org/seurat/)

Two articles in that space that are worth reading for single cell multi-omics integration:

Article 1: https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(19)30559-8.pdf

Article 2: https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(19)30504-5.pdf (LIGER Github: https://github.com/MacoskoLab/liger)

#AI #DataScience #predictiveanalytics #healthcare #medicines #genomics #pharmaindustry
Parallax
By: Jessica Lee Mcmillan
Tags: Emotions, Experience, Perception, Poetry, Self

the world at a different speed,

i mark the tones my sight takes,

where i feel in fragments

and in quiver of place.

it’s the dance of a failure to reach

those layers of sparkling universe

where dimensions mystify;

this stereoscopic view,

this dreamplace orbit.

my core beats out of depth

for an object displaced

where source light has died

but fizzles in afterglow.

and the eye is changed by its view

with no photo to mark the change

but indelible in the heart.

it’s a myth

that we aren’t vehicles of magic.

we are a line of sight

for the effect to rush through,

like hazy pastel swaths in sky,

here and then gone

in the divine glimpse.
A Wreck Home
By: Vaghawan Ojha
Tags: Poetry On Medium, Poetry, Lonliness, Art, Life

Slayed by this earth,

I slither to search

A life in this earth,

A home,

Wrecked,

Filled with gross pictures of the dogs,

Eating each other’s flesh,

There perched and waif,

I try to look beyond,

In the pellucid lake,

Sitting beside a goldfinch,

Conquered in the silence,

All these murmurs,

Of my home;
Every Capital partners with Astronaut Capital, Crypto’s leading asset manager
By: Jack Baldwin
Tags: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Australia, Investing, Ethereum

This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

We are very pleased to announce that Astronaut Capital will be our investment partner going forward.

Astronaut are as good as it gets in the cryptoasset investment space.

CEO Matt Dibb and his team have a professional background in independent microcap stock and ICO analysis, and raised more than 8500 ETH in their own token sale - $2.3m+ USD at the time.

Very few fund managers have that kind of first hand experience in the market they’re investing in — particularly when that market is cryptoassets.

What are friends for?

Every Capital and Astronaut will be working together to determine the best allocation of our investors’ capital.

Our investment thesis has been jointly developed, leveraging Astronaut’s experience in the market to date — through the ups and the downs.

We believe that the mix of cryptoassets we’ve chosen will deliver good returns while managing the inherent risk in this new market.

That’s the nice thing about being a hedge fund — not only can we invest into major cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and Bitcoin, new ICOs and altcoins — we can also use tools like stablecoins and Bitcoin futures to manage market volatility and downside risk.

Every will also be utilising Astronaut’s investment infrastructure. This includes some of the custodianship of assets we require, and contributing to our leading-edge security, ensuring that our investors’ funds are held safely for as long as they’re with us.

A performance to remember.

Astronaut have an excellent record of outperformance in the marketplace since they opened their token-backed fund in 2017. We do need to point out — past returns do not indicate future returns.

In the first 56 days of their fund (a short quarter ending on December 31 2017), Astronaut achieved unrivalled returns of 170% for their thousands of investors globally.

The first quarter of 2018 was more challenging, a tough time for every crypto investor. Astronaut still outperformed all major benchmarks: Ethereum, Bitcoin, and the overall crypto marketcap.

We value a few things really highly at Every Capital — transparency, experience, and clear-eyed analysis. These things ensure that our investors can have confidence in our fund and how it handles their money.

Luckily then, Astronaut ticks every box — they are the perfect partner.

Moving on:

We’re looking forward to reveal more about our investment strategy soon.

Being a regulated fund, we’ll release a Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) before we launch, which will have a deep dive into our philosophy and the workings of our fund.

In the meantime, sign up to our waitlist and spread the word. If you haven’t been to our site in a while, you’ll find a heap of new information.

Every will begin rolling out to select customers in Q3 2018.

Reserve your place on our waitlist now at www.every.capital
I wish I knew more JavaScript
By: Pito Salas
Tags: Geeky, Johnressig, Khanacademy, JavaScript, Programming

I know basic Javascript. I think I will be learning more soon. I think JavaScript is the language of the (near) future. Predicting what the language of the (further) future is would be impossible, as programming languages come and go. Hopefully they get better as they evolve.

Why do I say that it is the language of the (near) future? Compared, for example to Java, or Ruby or Python, or even Erlang? Here’s an article I wrote about that: how JavaScript may be the most important language for the web for the near future. Do you agree?

With that context, I was very interested to see Jon Ressig’s article about how Khan Academy is thinking about teaching programming languages. You know I am a big fan of Khan Academy: see Khan Academy to the Rescue.

Here’s what Jon has to say about JavaScript as a first language:

“At Khan Academy we’ve been investigating teaching Computer Science to students in some new and interesting ways. The most interesting aspect of which is that we’re likely going to be teaching them JavaScript as their first language.” (from: JavaScript as a first Language)

Read the whole article, it’s pretty cool!
Editor’s Note
By: Great Learning
Tags: Editor

Great Learning, crafts industry-relevant learning programs that help aspiring candidates learn, apply and demonstrate skills that are driving the future. Great Learning was conceived by Mohan Lakhamraju and Hari Krishnan Nair in 2013, with a goal to deliver high-quality learning outcomes in Analytics, Data Science, AI, Deep Learning, Cloud Computing, and Machine Learning. Today, we have grown to offer even more courses on marketing, design learning, cybersecurity and more that equip professionals with real problem-solving capacities. Our programs are taken by thousands of professionals globally to build competencies in the emerging areas of business and product development to secure and grow their careers.

Industry-Relevant Programs

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

· PGP — Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (PGP- AIML)

· PGP — Machine Learning (PGP- ML)

· Deep Learning Certificate Program (DLCP)

Business Analytics and Data Science

· PGP — Business Analytics and Business Intelligence (PGP- BABI)

· PGP — Business Analytics (PGP — BA)

· PGP — Data Science and Engineering (PGP — DSE)

· PGP — Data Science and Business Analytics (PGP — DSBA)

· Business Analytics Certificate Program (BACP)

· Data Analytics for Managers (DAM)

· Data Analytics using Excel (DAE)

Cloud and DevOps

· PGP — Cloud Computing (PGP — CC)

· DevOps Engineer Certificate Program (DECP)

Cyber Security and Software Development

· Stanford Advanced Computer Security Program (SACSP)

· Career Accelerator Program in Full Stack Development (CAPFSD)

Business

· Design Thinking — From Insight to Viability (SDT)

· PGP — Strategic Digital Marketing (PGP — SDM)

· PGP — Digital Business (PGP — DM)

International collaborations for global skills

Great Learning endeavors to upskill professionals with global skills so that they are prepared for real-world problems and complexities. Our collaborations with international universities help us realize that goal. We’ve collaborated with:

Stanford Graduate School of Business, Stanford Center for Professional Development, the University of Texas at Austin and more to bring our students the best faculty and mentors.

Dedicated career support

We don’t stop until our students successfully transition to the career of their dreams. Through GL-Excelerate, our learners get access to:
Security Risks in the Crypto Space
By: Cryptonomos Team
Tags: Ico Security, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, Crypto Security, Crypto

Prominent security failures by independent ICOs make the advantages of the Cryptonomos platform evident

After Bee Token’s exemplary community building program that saw their Telegram channel grow to 50,000 members and produce a fully subscribed whitelist, the sad story of their criminally hijacked token launch offers salient lessons for companies looking to control the chain of custody in their ICO. At last count, over a million dollars — almost a third of the total raise in the first 24 hours — had tragically been stolen by thieves who made a concerted, sophisticated, multi-angled attack on the Bee Token’s social, email, and fund raising platforms.

Repeated security failures are bringing ever greater regulatory scrutiny to crypto markets. In the past month Japanese Exchange Coincheck lost $530M worth of tokens to thieves. It’s fair to say that no company in this day and age can be totally immune to damage from malicious actors. Yet the simplistic collecting methods favoured by many self-developed ICOs like Bee Token — wherein a single wallet address is offered for deposit of ETH tokens — are ripe for criminal disruption. For Bee Token, a weak, one-dimensional chain of custody coupled with what appears to be a loss of control of their whitelist database and sophisticated, wide-scale attack over their main avenue of communication — Telegram — led to a rapidly unravelling nightmare for Bee Token that should have repercussions for the wider crypto community.

Cryptonomos offers a far more stable alternative to this structure of token collection by providing an isolated retail platform that creates barriers between token buyers and malicious actors. The attack on Bee Token was not simply a case of mismanagement as appears to have been the case with Coincheck, but was sophisticated sabotage that will give many ICO platforms and companies launching token sales pause for thought — we for one, are looking carefully at wide-scale attacks upon Telegram channels. However our token selling platform is largely immunized from manipulation of the type suffered by Bee Token — users on the Cryptonomos platform distribute crypto and we distribute tokens — wallet addresses are not publicly posted.

Crypto assets are a fledgling technology that is driving great change and disruption, yet which are also vulnerable to criminals in new ways. While legacy financial systems have had centuries to develop security protocols and systems, the crypto space is comparatively a brave new world. A secure, isolated, token buying platform like Cryptonomos lets token buyers and ICO companies feel reassured in their bravery.
Global Partnership Announcement — idap.io + Investing.com
By: Awanish Rajan
Tags: Bitcoin, Announcements, Investing, Partnerships, ICO

Hello idap.io community!

We are pleased to announce our collaboration with Investing.com today. With their help, we will be marketing our platform to an even wider audience. Investing.com is a well reputed resource for traders worldwide and provides news, analysis, charts, technical and investment tools along with access to brokers and educational content. Their major audience comprises of the traditional trading community and with our joint effort we hope to attract all institutional investors interested in crypto trading to our platform. We are glad to be partnering up with Investing.com and look forward to working together with them.

Mario Fiasconaro, Country manager Italy at Investing.com said,

“We really think that idap.io is going to change the trading landscape. We have faith in the founders and firmly believe that their vision is something we can get behind. We are more than happy to be partnering with them and helping them reach out to all the traders who engage with our financial portal.”

Awanish Rajan, the CEO of idap.io stated,

“Investing.com is a top-rated financial crypto portal — a one-stop-shop for all investors on the go. They have a huge, high-level and extremely engaged audience. They are one of the best platforms out there and we are elated to have them as our advertising partners.”
A Simple Favour is the type of film Hitchcock would make today
By: Tom Trott
Tags: Movies, Film Reviews, Movie Review, Film, Filmmaking

It’s a controversial statement, I know, because a lot of people haven’t liked A Simple Favour, and a lot of people love Hitchcock. But A Simple Favour is clearly inspired by Hitchcock and his contemporaries, that much is clear from the Saul Bass-esque title sequence:

The title sequence is done in this style

The main reason people would baulk at that statement though is that it’s not good enough to be something the Master of Suspense™ would make. But I don’t think that’s fair either (and not only because I liked the film).

Let’s take a look at the major criticism: “disjointed, doesn’t know if it’s a comedy or a thriller”.

Now let’s take a look at Hitch’s final film: Family Plot (1976). But not for too long, because it’s rubbish. In fact, look at the three before it too: Torn Curtain, Topaz, and Frenzy. They’re all terrible (occasional inspired visual moments aside). But Family Plot is probably the worst of them, and it’s the one with the most obvious comedy/thriller dichotomy.

Music by John Williams!

And yet it’s within this dichotomy that Hitchcock regularly created classics: The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes, Shadow of a Doubt, Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, North by Northwest, all run a fine line between comedy and thriller. And the later ones look like big glossy Hollywood productions, arguably like comedies of the time.

Not all Hitchcock films look like Psycho

Most look like this (also, why do Americans always serve such tiny cocktails?)

And do you know what else looks like a big glossy Hollywood production? Like a comedy…

No idea? I’ll give you a clue.

It’s fair to say that A Simple Favour doesn’t blend it’s genres as well as Hitch’s best (or as well as it blends a Martini), but it certainly blends them at least as well as Family Plot.

To be honest, the film it really reminds me of is actually not a Hitchcock film, it’s Charade (Stanley Donen, 1963). But Charade is the best Hitchcock film he never made, even if it is itself a little disjointed.

Not a Hitchcock film

A Simple Favour has other similarities to Hitchcock’s classics: an every-person protagonist, a femme fatale, Henry Golding is even quite like Cary Grant.

I believe that the real reason some audiences have had problems with A Simple Favour is that it is not the sort of film that gets made anymore. Thrillers are no longer made to be fun, they’re made to be disturbing and dark. You can thank David Fincher, amongst others, for that. Instead, A Simple Favour, is full of jokes, and they’re jokes that land. And not just sarcastic asides, they are actual gags. Just like the tiny razor in North by Northwest.

So if you’re going to be the 94,000th person to say that A Simple Favour doesn’t know what genre it is, then I say to you that it knows what it is, it’s just not something you like.

But you do really.
Office Etiquette
By: Edie Tuck
Tags: Humor, Toilets, Etiquette, Haiku, Toilet Humor

Office Etiquette

Show some respect

If it smells like roses when you walk out

We know what you did

Shut the door
How to Say Goodbye at a Slovenian Castle
By: Nick Maccarone
Tags: Life Lessons, Travel, Love, Friendship, Life

Photo by David Enzel

I walk the streets of Ljubljana one last time. It’s never easy to leave a place that’s made an impression, particularly as you get older. Eventually the days behind outnumber the ones ahead. The brevity of life and the breath of the world are enough to understand the first time somewhere new could be the last. It’s a realization not dismal, but freeing. Nothing is trivial and permission is granted to lose yourself in a way home doesn’t permit.

Nina and Ines, Slovenian sisters I met the night before, invite me to join them at Ljubljana Castle for Film Under the Stars. It’s an annual festival where movies from around the world are shown on an eight hundred year old courtyard. Communication with the girls has posed a problem, the fact neither of them own a smart phone the most pressing. Thankfully, I find it refreshing rather than frustrating.

I make my way up the hill where the fortress rests. It’s 7:45 pm, the movie will start soon. I walk around the vast green landscape surrounding the castle, taking mental snapshots of the winding trails, woods, and panoramic view of the city below. Dozens of people mill about, but without a sound. For a moment I feel as though I’m in an open abbey.

I cling to hope I’ll find the girls. Maybe I’ll see their bright white Vespa pull up in the lot nearby, or hear Ines’s distinct laugh — the kind you could hear at rock concert. Still, they’re nowhere to be found and there are choices to be made. I take my seat and watch as the courtyard quickly fills. The likelihood of finding them now as likely as seeing them ever again. I leave tomorrow.

Before I know it, the movie’s opening credits appear on the screen and for the first time I glance down at my ticket stub. It reads Captain Fantastic. The patio and café are packed. I’m half-convinced all of Ljubljana is here, even the girls.

I accept the rendezvous that wasn’t meant to be and allow the experience to unfold. I am here right now and someday I will not be. I take solace in the knowing my friends are here somewhere, sharing the moment underneath the same Slovenian sky. And that is enough.
Sentiment analysis on smartphones reviews (LSTM model)
By: Siddhartha Malladi
Tags: NLP, Machine Learning, Nlp Training, Reviews, Lstm

I have recently learned NLP as a part of my Deep learning course.

So, I decided to write a blog on Sentiment analysis on smartphone reviews which are scrapped from amazon.in, which would be very useful to beginners to explore NLP domain.

In this blog we will use a LSTM model to train the the text and it is a many to one model which inputs 2 or more values and outputs a value.

Contents-

Scrapping reviews preprocessing and EDA Training the NLP model

Technologies used- Python, Tensorflow, Seaborn, BeautifulSoup

Scrapping Reviews

I have used Beautifulsoup for scraping reviews.

First we have to get ASIN numbers of all smartphones we want.

I wrote some helping functions :

getAmazonSearch: take search query and page number to return HTML page Searchasin: take ASIN number to return Product page SearchReviews: take All reviews link to return Reviews page of product

Function to extract ASIN numbers:

data_asin[:5]

output:['B07SDPJ4XJ', 'B089MQ622N', 'B07X4R63DF', 'B07WPVLKPW', 'B086KCCMCP']

Then, By passing the data-asin numbers, we will go to the product page and get “see all reviews” link.

Using these “see all reviews” link and setting page number will we scrap all the reviews (mobile name, review title, body, stars ) and save them to a CSV file.

Now, we completed Scrapping reviews. Next to preprocess and visualize the information.

https://github.com/msiddhu/sentiment-analysis_on_phone-reviews/blob/main/reviews-scraping.ipynb

Preprocessing and EDA

Now, we have to do data cleaning.

The data contains noise like emojis, numbers, frequently used words(is,the, for), blank spaces. We have to clean them and convert all sentences to lower case characters for training to be done easily.

Example: RAW DATA:Nice phone from Samsung in this price. Display is good . Camera is not awesome but average. Battery will last 1 day with normal usage. N it has all necessary features. I got this for 8999 . So good phone under 10 k.As samsung so last for years. FILTERED: nice phone samsung price display good camera awesome average battery last 1 day normal usage necessary features got good phone 10 kas samsung last years

Using this filter_text() function we can clean all the data

Lets, visualize which words in the text are most commonly used:

By this we could see that most commonly used words like battery life,value money ,camera quality, don’t buy are some crucial bigrams for deciding the rating of smartphone.

Plot a graph for distribution of ratings:

distribution of ratings

Rating 1 or 2 — Negative

Rating 3 — Neutral

Rating 4 or 5 — Positive

https://github.com/msiddhu/sentiment-analysis_on_phone-reviews/blob/main/preprocess-and-eda.ipynb

Training the LSTM model for Sentiment analysis

And then download GloVe vectors which are pre trained on large text corpus and provide word-word co-occurrence. Simply, the words with same meaning or words provide similar conclusion have similar GloVe vectors.

We are using GloVe vec of 50-dimensions which are downloaded from kaggle.

Steps for preparing,
How the Israeli-Palestine conflict played out on social media last year
By: Damian Radcliffe
Tags: Israel, Social Network, Middle East, Palestine, Social Media

The Israeli Prime Minister’s son, Yair Netenyaho, tweeted in April that there’s no such thing as Palestine since there’s no letter “P” in Arabic.

The now-deleted tweet backfired as many commentators pointed out that the Arabic word for Palestine is “Filistine.”

Others noted the words Jewish and Jerusalem start with the letter “J,” yet there’s no letter in the Hebrew alphabet that has a “J” sound.

In August, the hashtag #BoycottIsrael was trending in the United States for a few hours after Israel banned following the Israeli government’s decision to deny entry to Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar over their support to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

There was some speculation that Israel’s decision was affected by US President Donald Trump’s tweet asking Tlaib and Omar to be barred.

Following this, the hashtag #MyPalestinianSitty, which translates into “my Palestinian grandmother,” gained traction after Israel’s ban meant that Tlaib would also be prevented from visiting her 90-year-old grandmother who lives in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

As CNN explained, “Tlaib and her congressional colleague, Rep. Ilhan Omar, had planned to visit Israel and the Palestinian territories… but the Israeli government banned them over their support for boycotting and divesting from the nation.”

After requesting an exception, “Israel decided to grant Tlaib entry, but under a set of restrictions that the lawmaker later said amounted to an attempt to silence her.”
America Is the Theocracy Our Founders Feared
Tags: Law, Justice, America, American History, Supreme Court

America Is the Theocracy Our Founders Feared ATrigueiro Follow Oct 10 · 2 min read

Protesting Theocracy

The recent nominee to the Supreme Court is a Catholic. This is no surprise. Almost all of the nominees since Roe v. Wade have been Catholics. The nation was founded by Protestants, deists and agnostics. Nonetheless, those who pass judgement on the nation are all passionate members of conservative Abrahamaic religions.

Most Americans understand why a Catholic woman was nominated. They are not surprised by the nomination. However, it would be beyond surprising to any time-traveling Founding Fathers. They would be horrified! Remember the first Europeans who came to America were Protestants. They sought religious freedom. The Pilgrims did not want the Vatican telling them how to worship Jesus. The first Europeans to settle in America were quite clear on this point.

The Inquisition had raged through Europe driving Protestants from the continent. If they wanted to be Protestants, living in Europe was difficult and dangerous. The anti-Catholic roots of this nation run quite deep. A strong case can be made for the Inquisition being the driving force behind the creation of the United States. Protestantism became the unofficial “national” religion even though many of the founders were deists. Jefferson even edited a version of the Bible leading many of his opponents to claim he was an atheist.

The religious persecution which so many had fled to create the nation meant they disliked AND feared the Pope. They also deeply distrusted any establishment of a NATIONAL RELIGION. The absolute power created by combining spiritual and civic powers, corrupts…absolutely. Protestants understood this because the Vatican had taught them through prison, torture and death. Ergo, they were quite tolerant of deists, agnostics and even atheists, because at least they were not telling them how to worship Jesus and then burning them at the stake if they refused to renounce their religion.

Generations later we now see the highest court in the land packed with representatives of the Vatican. It is indeed PACKED! There are six Catholics already seated on the court and now a seventh waiting in the wings. The religious uniformity of these nominations is illustrative of the theocracy we now live under.

Threatening to pack the court misses the point. There are real questions to be asked and debates to be had. Why does the Supreme Court even have this immense power? The United States is not supposed to be a dictatorship of five robes. There are remedies such as term limits and limiting the power of judges when it comes to jury instructions. There is a need for national focus on the extreme religious conservatism which now sits in judgement of the nation’s citizenry.

Will we have the discussion? There is a chilling effect given the religious fervor gripping a segment of the American populace. A new Inquisition looms in America.
Limited Handshake Socks Now On Sale
By: Alex Vela
Tags: Bitcoin, Namebase, Socks, Handshake, Ethereum

Limited Handshake Socks Now On Sale

Decentralize the Internet, Look Cool Doing It

Welcome to the new Internet. Here are your socks.

My name is Alex Vela, creator of Handshake Socks! These are limited edition pairs you can buy with BTC/ETH/USD and HNS, so get a pair while they last.

I wanted to make something that allowed me to give back to the community and create opportunities to meet and get to know everyone. I first want to thank Steven McKie for introducing me to Handshake. Since then I’ve had a lot of fun winning TLDs on Namebase and stacking dollarydoos. My PC is almost ready to mine. Still might need some help with that one McKie.

My excitement about Handshake inspired me to design and manufacture the first limited edition run of Handshake Socks. These socks are made using the finest combed cotton sourced from the southeastern United States. They were designed in Austin, TX and manufactured in North Carolina. Only 60 will ever be made and shipping is free. Let’s spread the word on Handshake, and look good doing it, together.

Welcome to the new Internet. Here are your socks.

— 🧦 Official Site: Handshake Socks

— 📨 Email: handshakesocks@gmail.com

Other Links:
New Features: Real-Time Notifications
Tags: Bitcoin, Announcements, Fintech, Ethereum, Crypto

Last weekend, the team released two exciting new features that will greatly improve your user experience. Remember to update your app in the app store to enjoy the changes! The latest version is 2.2.0.

Mobile Real-Time Notifications

Your Plutus app now delivers instant notifications on all essential actions, so you have peace of mind and heightened awareness of all app activity.

Payments

Every time you make an in-store or online payment, you will receive a mobile push notification highlighting what you paid and where you shopped within seconds. This comes with the added security benefit of being constantly aware of all transactions so you can freeze your card should you notice any suspicious activity.

Trading

Every time a sell order is matched, you will be notified, which means you can go about your daily activities and still be aware of the status of your trades; this awareness means you can subsequently log in promptly to confirm your sell transactions.

Account

We also introduced several other notifications relating to accounts including fiat deposits and KYC updates so you can be kept updated and take actions accordingly.

Future iterations will allow users to select the type of push notifications they would like to receive under ‘Settings’. This additional step will deliver a customised experience that meets your needs.

Pending Transactions

We also added the much-requested status update on your card transactions — we will now show all payments instantly rather than after settlement by the merchant, which can take up to several days.

Pending transactions are recent card transactions that have not been fully processed by the merchant. For these, we will display a ‘Pending’ status label; as soon as the transactions are settled, this label will disappear and the transaction is in settled status.

This gives you complete oversight over your funds, so you know exactly where and when your money has been spent at all times.

More to Come…

As you may have noticed, the user experience for both the web and mobile app is constantly evolving and improving; the team is dedicated to bringing you an enhanced user experience over time. If there are any features you are keen for us to develop next, feel free to leave them in the ‘Suggest a Feature’ section of your account.

As always, we have plenty more exciting news announcements in the not-so-distant horizon so please pay close attention to our Medium Publication. If you are not already part of our Discord community, join in the chat for extra snippets of detail and meet other warm-hearted community members.
10 JavaScript Memes To Lighten Up Your Day
By: Harsha Vardhan
Tags: Programming, Coding, JavaScript, Software Development, Web Development

I hope you could find at least some of the memes relatable. But hey, aren’t they chucklesome?

Laugh out loud and code intensely :)
How Can a Pastor Have a Genuine Devotional Life When Being a Christian is His Job?
By: Dr. Mckay Caston
Tags: Church, Christianity, Leadership, Spirituality, Religion

Professional Christian Syndrome

While on vacation this summer, I grabbed my Bible in an attempt to read it devotionally. Just one sentence in, I reached for a pen and paper — not to make a note for myself, but in order to outline a sermon. Rather than being in the presence of my Father to listen to him speak to me as his beloved son, I turned the moment into work.

As a professional Christian, that is what I do. Studying and teaching the Bible, leading worship services, offering public prayers. Religion is quite literally my profession. In the same way that someone may work as an accountant, or in pharmaceutical sales, or on a road paving crew, I work in the church.

I’ve compared pastoral ministry to the life of a coach: crazy schedule, seasonal ebbs, a lightning rod for criticism, living on the success of our last outing, etc.

However, when it comes to an authentic devotional life, I think the best pastoral comparison is with a gourmet chef. Few people besides those in the cuisine industry realize what it takes to become a gourmet or what preparing a banquet-style meal requires in preparation, not to mention presentation.

They don’t show up at the restaurant at 4:30, put on an apron, and whip up dinner for paying guests. They prepare for years in order to gain the experience necessary to oversee the lengthy and complex preparation of a gourmet dinner. But the ingredients and combinations of food, seasonings, and sauces also must be presented in a way that is not only edible but truly enjoyable.

Being a gourmet is unlike cooking Tuesday dinner for the family. A professional chef is often under a tremendous amount of stress behind the swinging doors that separate the kitchen from the dining room. It is hot. Fast. Sometimes furious.

Even though the chef may love his job in the food industry, I wonder what he does for dinner at home. While meal prep for ordinary folks may be a welcome diversion from ordinary life in the office or on the road, by the time he arrives home, the chef has been laboring over the stove for hours if not days.

I wonder if cooking feels like work to the professional chef.

That is how devotions can feel for the professional Christian. Whether worship, Bible reading, prayer or any other means of grace that the non-professional Christian may enjoy as something alternate from their job, for the pastor, it can all feel like work.

Is there anything we can do about professional Christian syndrome? I think so. In this post, I want to offer some suggestions that are designed to help me. I hope you will find them helpful as well.
The Road To Wooler
By: Richard J. Goodrich
Tags: History, Outdoors, Hiking, Pilgrimage, Travel

The Pennine Way, a 267 mile trail that originates near Manchester, shares a mile and a couple of hills with St Cuthbert’s Way. David, who is a keen hiker, would probably have liked to alter course and follow the Pennine Way south, but I remind him of our true task, hiking eastward. Another time, perhaps.

Despite the poor conditions — intermittent rain and a gusting wind from the north — the day’s hike is not as difficult as what we endured yesterday. The ascent of Wideopen Hill, coming after a long day’s hike, had been mentally mortifying. Even though the cumulative ascent of Day Three will be greater than our slog up Wideopen Hill, it does not seem as taxing: the hills come in smaller chunks, and I feel relatively fresh as we stair-step up the slopes. Our altitude increases, and by early afternoon we are high in the heather.

For the first time on the trail I see a grouse. These birds huddle beneath the purple heather, waiting to surprise unwary walkers, Moments before a hiker’s boot steps on them, they flush in a blur of wings and adrenaline-releasing shock. They flap away, making a chuckling cry that sounds like “Go back! Go back,” before settling into a new hiding spot.

Heather-clad hills reach to the horizon on Saint Cuthbert’s Way. Author Photograph.

We do not have to break trail through the thick heather, but the path becomes so narrow, that I am forced to place one foot precisely in front of the other. This gait, most frequently observed among tightrope walkers, tends to be unbalancing, and on a number of occasions, with wind striking my right quarter, I nearly topple into the bushes.

The rain, which has been intermittent through the day, gains strength and ferocity as we descend into Wooler. We are soaked through to the skin by the time we reach the car park at the foot of Wooler Commons. Unfortunately, the planners of St Cuthbert’s Way decided that this would be an excellent place to play a trick on the pilgrims. Rather than proceeding directly into town, the trail now makes a sharp detour, a meandering course up a hill (as if there hadn’t been enough hills already in our day). The direct route, along the road, would have seen us tucked up in a cozy B&B in no time, but as the rain and wind lashes our faces, we turn and trudge uphill to experience the long route into town. Stepping daintily between sheep droppings, I curse the sadistic trail planners one more time. It was simply too much. Larks and capers!

A vent in the clouds throws sunlight on the hills of St Cuthbert’s Way. Author photograph.

Wooler is the first large town we’ve encountered since leaving Melrose. It boasts a High Street with two cash machines, and a Co-op supermarket that was open until 10:00 PM! Civilization! After a lovely dinner, I slip between crisp sheets in the Black Bull Hotel. Our room is over the pub, and from below comes the monotonous voice of a game of Border’s Bingo. The caller repeats a series of numbers: “22…22…22. 33…33…33.”

I am footsore and exhausted. It won’t keep me awake for long.