fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
How I landed my first internship at a San Francisco startup
By: David Peletz
Tags: Technology, Software Development, Startup, Job Search, Internships

As a college sophomore who had recently declared a computer science major, I knew that I wanted to find a summer internship, but had no clue where to start. In the past, I’d held jobs over the summer and developed some skills with web development and SEO, but I had only taken a few CS courses and didn’t know if I had the technical skills to land a software engineering internship. For the first couple of months, I did what many people do. I applied to as many internships as I could find. I waited around, got denied by some places, and got ghosted by others.

I knew that I didn’t have much experience, so what could I expect? When applying to these internships, I felt like I was putting my application into a black hole and was unsure as to if anyone even saw my resume.

What I decided to do next may come as a surprise: I looked for internships on Craigslist. I wanted to find a way to get my application seen by someone and knew that applying to job postings on Glassdoor, LinkedIn, and Indeed wasn’t working for me. I wanted to put myself into a smaller pool of applicants where I wouldn’t be competing with hundreds of others for a role.

While applying for internships on Craigslist, I would always follow the instructions in the job listing to a tee. This was important. Often, we are drawn to taking the easy way out, but showing that you’ve put effort into your application goes a long way.

I soon found a listing for a business development internship at a conversational AI startup called Augment CXM. In this role, I would be able to leverage my web development and SEO skills while learning more about business. I made it clear early in the interview process that I was also interested in data science and was ultimately able to work on some really cool data science projects as well.

Below are some key insights that I gained during my first internship search that I’d like to leave you with:
TUNA: Shark Attack
By: Mads Ellegård Skovbakke
Tags: Short Story, Comics, Storytelling

If you like what you’ve read, be sure to hit recommend below, to pass this story along to your followers! As always, consider following Panel & Frame for more emerging voices in Comics, Literature, Film, and Art!
Offline Sandwich
By: Tomasz Wróbel
Tags: Startup, Lifestyle, Programming

Distractions are bad. Distractions make you dumber. Eliminating distractions is impossible. We can try to contain them instead of eliminating them.

Offline sandwich is a way to structure your workday in a way that you put distractions into their boxes, thus giving yourself a good piece of quality time.

Offline Online Offtopic

Offline phase

focus

coding

investigation

Online phase

pull, push, watch the build

review commits — force yourself to do it

review PT — force yourself to do it

overcommunicate

Offtopic phase
Albert Einstein’s Statement about Creativity and Age Haunted Me Years Ago
By: Hoang Nguyen
Tags: Creativity, Experience, Personal Development, Mindset, Design

WORKING

Albert Einstein’s Statement about Creativity and Age Haunted Me Years Ago

But now, my creativity has no limits.

Illustration by Storytale

There is a popular belief that 30 is the age limit for those who do creative work: People can only come up with great ideas when they are young. Once the 30s kick in, this ability gradually decreases, and they cannot generate ideas anymore. Even Albert Einstein said:

“A person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of 30 will never do so.”

I used to be haunted by this belief.

I started studying Design two years later than same-age friends, seeing no outstanding talents, and knowing the 30-year-old limit made me feel confused about everything and doubt my career choices from time to time. This was especially true at the beginning of my career when work was stagnant, there were tons of unfinished projects, and ideas just did not seem to come when I needed them.

But does age limit creativity?

Now 33 years old, I can say the age limit on creativity is just a myth, and mindset is the key thing to decide your creative ability is limit or not.

“I am the explorer” mindset

“I am an expert” mindset

“The explorer” searches for ideas with the mindset that what might come up could be anything, “I don’t know, but then I’ll know,” while “the expert” goes looking for things “I have understood, or already know how to do because otherwise, how can I call myself an expert.”

Perhaps, people with the right skill, attitude, and passion tend to seek to grow their expertise in the early 20s, becoming an “expert” in the early 30s, and this has made the 30s gradually become the limit for others.

I think Albert Einstein’s quote has simply been misinterpreted. What he meant was probably “try hard to do something when you’re young,” maybe because the average human life expectancy was low at that time (about 30–40 according to WHO statistics).

But believe me, age has absolutely nothing to do with each person’s creativity. Suppose you are stuck searching for ideas for an ongoing project or spending many days and hours and still cannot find a satisfactory solution. In that case, don’t worry.

Here, 6 strategies for believing your creativity has no limits.
MapReduce Patterns and Examples
By: Pito Salas
Tags: Scalability, Programming, Mapreduce, Geeky

Great review article:

“In this article I digested a number of MapReduce patterns and algorithms to give a systematic view of the different techniques that can be found in the web or scientific articles. Several practical case studies are also provided. All descriptions and code snippets use the standard Hadoopâs MapReduce model with Mappers, Reduces, Combiners, Partitioners, and sorting. This framework is depicted in the figure below.” (from Highly Scalable)

Worth reading if you are interested in how Hadoop and friends might apply to the problems that you are trying to solve: “MapReduce Patterns, Algorithms, and Use Cases”
Crypto Daily: Bitcoin Will Grow To $30,000, Ethereum — $800
Tags: Xrp, Ethereum, Cryptocurrency, Crypto, Bitcoin

Over the last day, the price of Bitcoin has risen by 6% and is close to the $28,000 mark. The dominance of Bitcoin in the market continues to grow and is now over 70% As a result, the market capitalization of Bitcoin currently exceeds half a trillion dollars.

But XRP continues to have problems — the price fell another 12% and dropped below $0.20.

Let’s see what to expect from Bitcoin ahead of the new year:

Click here to learn more
How to solve Binary Classification Problems in Deep Learning with Tensorflow & Keras?
By: Murat Karakaya
Tags: Activation Functions, Keras, Accuracy, Muratkarakayaakademi, Loss Function

In this tutorial, we will focus on how to select Accuracy Metrics, Activation & Loss functions in Binary Classification Problems.

First, we will review the types of Classification Problems, Activation & Loss functions, label encodings, and accuracy metrics.

Furthermore, we will also discuss how the target encoding can affect the selection of Activation & Loss functions.

Moreover, we will talk about how to select the accuracy metric correctly.

Then, for each type of classification problem, we will apply several Activation & Loss functions and observe their effects on performance.

We will experiment with all the concepts by designing and evaluating a deep learning model by using Transfer Learning on horses and humans dataset.

In the end, we will summarize the experiment results.

I split the tutorial into three parts. In this first part, we will focus on Binary Classification. Next part, we will focus on multi-label classification and multi-label classification.

If you would like to learn more about Deep Learning with practical coding examples, please subscribe to my YouTube Channel or follow my blog on Medium. Do not forget to turn on notifications so that you will be notified when new parts are uploaded.

You can access this Colab Notebook using the link given in the video description below.

Furthermore, you can watch this notebook on Youtube as well!

If you are ready, let’s get started!
Little Sapling
By: Jenine Bsharah Baines
Tags: Poetry, Nature, Life, Trees

To Baby Harper

Photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash

Little Sapling, next time I see you,

you’ll have mastered the art of balance

and reminded yourself how to grow upright

toward the sun,

although the sun rooted within you

before your first cry

and your smiles warm us

with delight,

even as we sense

the ache to come — knowing

that such trust, faith, and openness

will burn off like clouds at dawn

as the clock quickens.
What does your best writing day look like?
By: Beth Van Der Pol
Tags: Creativity, Productivity, Inspiration, Routine, Writing

Writer’s Blog

What does your best writing day look like?

Mine includes candles and a bath, not a word count… should it?

When I ask you about your ideal writing day, what do you think of? Is it an emotion? A word count? An atmosphere? All of the above?

More and more I’m realising that no matter how many words I write in a day I haven’t yet accomplished my ideal writing day.

It turns out word count might not actually matter. I’ve written over 12k words in a day before (my personal best), and it wasn’t my ideal writing day.

My perfect day.

One of my favourite writing days so far was a day that I wrote very little. It was maybe a thousand words which is a good number but less than I usually accomplish on a workday.

The thing that made that day so perfect was a combination of the weather and the atmosphere I set up around me.

It was a dark and stormy night. Okay, it was more a dark and stormy mid-afternoon. It was tipping it down, and the sound of rain against my window was so relaxing. I had a lo-fi playlist going in the background and a fragrant candle burning. My fairy lights were on, and I was in the zone. The tapping of the keys perfectly complimented the sound of the rain on my window. This was my most perfect writing day so far.

Often times we writers can get so caught up in the work of our writing that we forget the artistry in it. It’s okay to be a little bit picky about the atmosphere in which we create. Granted I’m not going to wait for it to rain every time I want to write, but I can maybe play a rain sounds playlist if I really want to.

Are you working in a place that inspires you?

Writing doesn’t have to be inspiring every time; don’t get me wrong. I’m not of the mindset where I have to be inspired to work.

Sometimes getting back to that place of fun and entertainment can be great for your relationship with writing. I recommend that at least once in a while, you figure out where and when you write best and spend some time in that moment.

You never know what you might discover.

While you don’t need to be inspired to work well or efficiently, there is something to be said for what you can accomplish if you feel inspired when you’re working.

Working when inspired not only helps you to create some beautiful gems of writing, but it can also help you reinforce your writing habit. Creating a favourable environment for writing can help you return to that page. Writing becomes more and more of a positive experience, one that you want to keep returning to.

So find a way to live in your perfect writing day. Write in that day as often as you can.

As always, I cannot wait to see you on the bookshelf!
5 Reasons I Chose to Become a Programmer
By: Shubham Pathania
Tags: Software Development, Startup, Software Engineering, Programming, Learning To Code

5 Reasons I Chose to Become a Programmer

Programming is a paradise for inquiring minds

Photo by James Harrison on Unsplash.

I still remember when I decided to become a programmer. It was a summer break, and like every year, we used to visit our maternal uncle. My cousins were both older than me. They were studying engineering and computer science.

I used to spend around two months with them every year. They taught me pretty cool stuff related to computers, which I used to flex in front of my school friends.

They were pretty fluent in programming and always advised me to follow suit. During my first year as a programmer, I had my doubts. But over the years, I’ve fallen in love with programming and it keeps giving me more reasons to feel that way.

Today, I am going to share those reasons with you. I hope this will help beginners to see the actual benefits of being a programmer and will encourage others to go for it.
Queens of the Stone Age — Villains Review
By: Matthew Leonard
Tags: Album Review, Music, Villains, Queens Of The Stone Age, Josh Homme

Queens of the Stone Age — Villains Review

Homme & Co. shake it up

Queens of the Stone Age, the venerable rock group headed by Josh Homme released their seventh studio album entitled Villains to fanfare and fan worry. Queens brought Mark Ronson (“Uptown Funk,” Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black) in as producer and many fans were concerned that Ronson would shift the band towards pop.

Fans had nothing to worry about. Villains’ opener “Feet Don’t Fail Me Now” let’s everybody know that this is still Queens through-and-through. A near two minutes of buildup creates tension thick enough to cut and then it all comes bursting out. Jon Theodore, who joined the band for 2013’s …Like Clockwork, backs Homme’s signature voice with a driving drum beat as fuzzy guitar licks abound.

The lead single “The Way You Used To Do” dives further into Homme’s love for music that can make you dance, while keeping a bite and cynicism that Queens have come to be known for. Nothing is quite as it appears, and the band have mastered the eerily disconcerting shifts needed to keep listeners on their toes.

Ronson’s influence is few and far between, seemingly acting more as a nip-and-tuck producer to keep the album wound tightly throughout. The albums shift towards faster tempos, at least compared to …Like Clockwork, is a welcome change that gives the album a much more playful vibe than the dark and brooding previous album.

Not to say that Homme doesn’t go to dark places. “Fortress” and “Hideaway” delve into the depths explored by the band previously, while giving these ideas and themes a different delivery system. “Fortress” strikes a chord with a more electronic soundscape and calm, accepting vocals from Homme.

“Head Like A Haunted House” is the shortest track on the album, at under 3:30, and it savagely rips it’s way through that run time. Sandwiched in-between two longer, slower tracks it is deftly placed to break up any monotony in tone that could have otherwise been exhibited in the middle of the album.

“The Evil Has Landed” and “Villains of Circumstance” close out the album with two intense and careening dives through Homme’s mindset. “Villains of Circumstance” breaks into a decidedly different direction while keeping Homme’s dark and witty lyricism at the forefront.

Queens of the Stone Age have produced yet another album full of great tunes, and this time you can dance to most of them. Villains might not hit the emotional heights of …Like Clockwork or the intensity of Songs for the Deaf, but it is a smart, slick, and strong album to redefine a 20-year-old band that doesn’t seem to show any sign of slowing down.
How to Add Custom Spacing between Arranged Subviews of UIStackViews?
By: Akshit Zaveri
Tags: iOS, Software Development, Swift, Programming, Mobile

Power and Limitation

One obvious advantage of UIStackViews is how the Spacing property works. You set it to 16pts and every arranged subview of the stack view will have a fixed 16pts space in between it. That is already magic in itself.

But this can also be perceived as a limitation. Not all layouts will require this kind of symmetrical spacing between views. What should you do in that case?
Let’s Let Loose Our Howls
By: Louise Foerster
Tags: Life Lessons, Poetry, Covid 19, Love, Joy

Photo by Vance Osterhout on Unsplash

We blare our sirens,

Hammer on pots and pans to let them know

How much we admire

Their courage, dedication, devotion

To doing what they can to cure, calm, alleviate

The pain of the now we’ve brought upon ourselves.

When is it our turn?

We’re struggling too,

Doing our best to live with old and new heartache,

To make a living even when we’re flattened by loss,

Yearning to read stories and kiss young heads goodnight,

To hug others finally solid and warm and real in our arms,

To clasp them to our hearts until we’ve had our fill (and that may never come).

Assaulted by breathless media twisting facts to fit their story,

Blocked by bureaucrats, fear mongers, and baseless rumors,

Driven to doubt ourselves, mistrust the sun and fresh air.

Because there is danger everywhere: be vigilant and guarded

Even though the worst is going to happen no matter what you do.

It’s time to celebrate us.

Let’s howl our fear, rage, despair

Until we have no more howling left.

Let’s release the howls,

Make room for hope to spread its wings and soar.

Photo by Sandeep Kr Yadav on Unsplash

Let’s stretch newly expanded hearts

Into our next lives,

Not denying the pain and the fear,

But not making them all we are.

Hope has been there all along,

Quiet and gentle hands tending, doing, creating

The future we are making now.

Photo by Jordan Wozniak on Unsplash

Thank you Bridget Webber for the incredible piece that got me howling:
Powered by Oculus Go, Authentically Us Hits the Streets in 5 States for Pride
By: Fovrth Studios
Tags: Jesseayala, Virtual Reality, Updates, Transgender Rights, LGBTQ

Oculus Go gives immersive content new mobility and ease of use. Pride Foundation is testing the Oculus Go’s versatility this month at LGBTQ+ Pride parades and festivals across Montana, Oregon, Alaska, Washington, and Idaho.

The films feature transgender leaders currently residing in Idaho, Oregon, and Montana, with the goal that, through shared culture and community, these stories will further acceptance of and ally-ship with our transgender and gender diverse community members.

The list keeps expanding, but here are pride events that Pride Foundation’s street team will be present showing Authentically Us. Stop by, experience, and learn more about Pride Foundation’s work for LGBTQ+ social, political, economic, and legal equality!

Tag @GoFovrth and @PrideFdn or use the hashtags #TransVoices or #AuthenticallyUs, and we’ll share your photos from #PrideMonth2018!

#TransVoices #VR #virtualreality #Pride2018 #AuthenticallyUs #goFovrth #LGBTQ #LGBTQEquality #Pride #OculusGo #360Video
تدعم أجهزة XPOS® قريبًا عملاق الدفع عبر الإنترنت PayPal
By: Pundi X Sherif
Tags: Blockchain, PayPal, Payment, Pundixarabic

Pundi X is a leading developer of blockchain-powered devices, including the world’s first point-of-sale solution, the XPOS, which enables merchants and consumers to do transactions on the blockchain in physical stores.

Follow
Good Food, Good Mood: 5 Foods to Lift Your Mood
By: A. Tiara
Tags: Healthy Lifestyle, Lifestyle, Gut Health, Mood

“Gut health is the key to overall health” — Kris Carr

These days I’ve been invested into gut health more than ever because I now know that the gut holds the key to many things, including our immune and our emotions. This is because 95% of our Serotonin -the neurotransmitter that helps regulate mood, is produced in our gastrointestinal tract.

In an article by Harvard Health Blog about Nutritional Psychiatry, Dr. Elva Selhub mentioned that our “gastrointestinal tract is lined with a hundred million nerve cells, or neuron, it makes sense that the inner workings of [our] digestive system don’t just help digest food, but also guide emotions.”

The function of these neurons is influenced by the “good” bacteria in our intestines. These bacterias help protect the lining of our intestines and ensure to provide a strong barrier against the toxins and other “bad” bacterias that we consume and or exposed to us daily.

“Good” bacteria will help improve our nutrients absorption capability and help activate “neural pathways” from our gut to our brain.
What Does Entrepreneurial Freedom Mean to You?
By: John W Hayes
Tags: Business, Entrepreneurship, Work

“Freedom” by rawpixel on Unsplash

For many people, one of the main motivations behind starting their own business is the idea of the freedom it represents. In many ways, this is quite a bizarre concept because most of the small business owners I know are also some of the hardest working people I know. Despite this, I know very few who, once they have made the leap, would go back to the 9 to 5.

Entrepreneurial freedom is about so much more than escaping the same old, same old of the working day. It’s about being the master of your own destiny and reaping the rewards of your own endeavors.

Forget the 9 to 5

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life. It might be a bit cliché, but the old saying is true.

When you embrace the life of an entrepreneur, you can forget the 9 to 5 — probably because you’ll be working the 5 to 9. But when you love what you do, your job becomes your passion — and how many hours could you dedicate to something you were truly passionate about?

A Note on Passion

Of course, some jobs might appear to be more open to the concept of “passion” than others. But if you put your heart and soul into any job it’s very easy to become passionate about what you do. Strive to be the best hairdresser, plumber, baker, shopkeeper or guest house owner and your passion will help you reach the top. When you are master of your own destiny, the only thing that can hold you back is your ambition.

Note: Almost every trade has a “celebrity” thought leader. The only difference between the guys at the top of the ladder and those further down the rungs is ambition and opportunity. Opportunities have a habit of presenting themselves to the most ambitious and hardest working.

What About Risk?

Entrepreneurs don’t fear risk, they embrace it. Some months will almost certainly be better than others and the entrepreneur’s ride can be a bumpy one at times — but what job doesn’t have ups and downs?

In fact, I believe the biggest risk in life is regret. If you think you have it in you to become an entrepreneur, you’ll only have one person to blame if you don’t take the risk.

Don’t Quit Your Day Job

If you think the entrepreneurial life is for you, it’s not quite time to quit your day job — at least not yet. The Internet has opened up a vast range of opportunities for wannabe entrepreneurs to dip their toes in the water and test markets.

eBay and Amazon provide the perfect route for start-up retail businesses. Etsy is an amazing platform for craft- and design-based businesses. Upwork can help you sell any professional service, and sites like Udemy and SkillShare provide a valuable resource for entrepreneurs in the education and training industries.

The opportunities to test your market, optimize your strategies and grow accordingly have never been so easy or affordable.

Grab a Slice of Freedom Today

What could you do to help yourself secure a little entrepreneurial freedom? Share your comments below:

This post first appeared on the iContact Email Marketing Blog.
WebGoat Without password Challenge
Tags: Ctf Writeup, Challenge, Webgoat, Infosec, Solutions

WebGoat Without password challenge

Second WebGoat challenge, we have to log in as Larry, let’s see what’s in here

The “Forgot Password” link is fake and not much in HTML source

Burp shows that, apart from the request to /WebGoat/Challenge5.lesson.lesson and its HTML, there is not much else when requesting the page

There is a /WebGoat/lesson_css/challenge6.css file loaded for the challenge but it does not have anything interesting inside

Let’s try to log in as Larry

Login request on Burp

Here’s the login request on Burp, and of course “password” is not the correct password

If username and password parameters are present but their value is missing in the request, the challenge will complain for the lack of input

If username or password parameter is missing altogether, we get error status code 400 — Bad Request

the “remember” parameter is optional both in value and in parameter presence

let’s see what happens by putting a single quote in

Request with single quote in Burp

We get a nice Java SQL exception

Java SQL error

And by checking the error, there we have the login SQL query

Java SQL error with injection

So yes we have SQL injection here

Request with SQL injection and authentication bypass

There you go, we have logged in as Larry and the response has a flag further down the feedback string

Put the flag in the lesson submit field and you are done

This concludes WebGoat Without password Challenge

I hope you liked it.

PVXs — https://twitter.com/pivixih
Blockchain Report — 4/3/2018
By: Christopher Durr
Tags: News, ICO, Dj Khaled, Bitcoin, John Mcafee

Intel Files Bitcoin Mining Patent; John McAfee Tweets For Money; DJ Khaled Promotes Fraudulent ICO

Intel Files for a Bitcoin Mining Hardware Patent

Intel has apparently filed for a patent on March 29th, 2018 for a “Bitcoin Mining Hardware Accelerator”. The abstract of the patent states that a system on chip implementing a Bitcoin mining hardware accelerator may include a processor core, and that the hardware accelerator is optimized to mine digital currency. No doubt this represents a push by Intel to be at the forefront of cryptocurrency mining hardware. You can see the entire patent HERE

John McAfee Advertises That He Will Promote Your Cryptocurrenncy For $105,000

A page from the McAfee cryptocurrency team brags about the John McAfee’s ability to cause a cryptocurrency to rise over 100% as a result of simply tweeting about it. It also states that 259,000 of McAfee’s followers own more than 50% of their assets in cryptocurrency, and that 224,000 of his followers have invested over $20,000 in cryptocurrency. Finally, at the very end of the page it states that McAfee charges $105,000 per tweet.

This should be a wake-up call to cryptocurrency investors — so-called “cryptocurrency experts” don’t always have your best interests at heart. Ask yourself what the person’s financial motives are for recommending a specific cryptocurrency.

I have archived the website in case it gets taken down. You can see the archive HERE.

DJ Khaled Played Himself — By Promoting a Fraudulent ICO

The SEC released a press release on April 2nd stating that it was charging the founders of Centra Tech, which created the CTR token, of orchestrating a fraudulent ICO. If the ICO sounds familiar, it might be because both Floyd Mayweather and DJ Khaled promoted the Centra token.

According to Fortune Magazine, Khaled posted as a caption to an Instagram photo “I just received my titanium centra debit card. The Centra Card & Centra Wallet app is the ultimate winner in Cryptocurrency debit cards powered by CTR tokens!”. Mayweather also made an instagram post about the CTR token, which has since been removed. This story teaches us a valuable lesson: you can’t trust record producers and boxers with providing good cryptocurrency recommendations.
Deth Klok
By: Taylor Foreman
Tags: Creativity, Short Story, Fiction, Microfiction, Flash Fiction

Deth Klok

A story about an app that knows when you’ll die

Photo by Justin Main on Unsplash

“Know the exact time and place of your death!” reads an ad on a billboard. “Choosing to not know is choosing to leave everyone you love without warning!”

Below the slogan is the app logo, which is a watch with a skull and crossbones. “Deth Klok”

A watch on a man’s wrist says, “Location of Death: Golden Gate Bridge. Time: 09/21 12:34 PM”

The current time is 9/21 at 12:33 PM. The man takes a deep breath. He steps onto the edge of the bridge. Everything in his reptilian brain protests his current circumstances, but he has nowhere else to go, no one else to turn to.

His phone buzzes. “1 Notification.” He opens it.

“Dear Dad,

I had a strange dream last night. You were in it. But not exactly. You said you were from another dimension and you came to me to save yourself. Isn’t that weird? You know how dreams can be.

Anyway, I looked at old pictures of us today. I realized that all of the things that you did to us…

This is hard to write. In a lot of ways, I hate you. But I feel compelled to write to you anyway. I want to forgive you, but I can’t. I’ve tried, and I just can’t. But I want to. For the first time, I realize that it’s a process, not a magic spell.

I’d like to start that process.

Do you want to get lunch this week?

-Dany”

The man wipes tears from his cheeks.

He checks the time. It’s 12:35 PM.
43 Openers To Text Your Crush Instead Of “Hey”
By: Luke Trayser
Tags: Copywriting, Advertising, Humor, Love, Dating

43 Openers To Text Your Crush Instead Of “Hey”

Get ready for a better response rate.

Art by Donnacha Kenny

Early in my career as a copywriter, I learned something useful: If I wrote something that did not work, it was not in my best interest to write the exact same thing again.

And yet, it’s what texters everywhere do when trying to get a response from someone they’re into.

hey

hey

hey

Stop it. You sound like the mashup of a 7-year-old and a horse.

Never fear, my clueless friend. If your texts constantly get crickets in response, you have come to the right place. For no one texts like copywriters.

We know our audience, we have a vault of diverse and fascinating information, and WE ABSOLUTELY REFUSE TO LET A CONVERSATION DIE. We’re not being ghosted. We’re simply in the early phases of a drip campaign.

Climb aboard. The train is leaving the station. Here are 43 openers to text your crush that work way better than whatever you’re using now.

p.s. I asked my colleague, Audra, for help in making this list and she was kind enough to oblige. She is funnier than I am and you should absolutely follow her if you value smiling and laughing. Follow Audra on Twitter.
Brilliant Writer Articles on Life, Love, Faith, Wisdom
By: Sarah Cy
Tags: Life Lessons, Blogging, Inspiration, Writing, Reading

Brilliant Writer Articles on Life, Love, Faith, Wisdom

“Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.” ― Jordan Peterson

Life is complicated. Here’s my personal cache of most important life lessons I learned that will hopefully help you avoid dumb mistakes and live more vibrantly.

How it Works

This list is organized in reverse chronological order. Recommended articles are bolded. Enjoy! 🐶
New Google Top Navigation
By: Jordan Silton
Tags: Testing, Google, Navigation

Last month, Google started testing what TechCrunch called a “sexier top nav bar”. It looks like google is rolling out this new top nav bar for the homepage and image search. This bar has a light gray background and a slightly darker line at the top. When a user hovers over the other services (Images, Video, Maps, etc.) a darker blue background is displayed behind the selection.

The top right navigation has also been updated. The “Sign In” button is specifically called out with a yellow top bar. This could be an effort to encourage users to sign in. The “search settings” drop-down has been replaced with the graphic of a gear, implying settings. iGoogle is now featured under this drop-down, further encouraging a personalized dashboard and requesting users to sign-in.

Image search received a similar navigation update, but right now this interface is not available for the other search features.

Since Google appears to be calling out the “Sign In” button, I would expect to see a bigger effort to encourage users to login across Google properties. What data is Google looking for?

Update: When I originally published the article on Dec. 19, the top nav was still in testing. As of yesterday, a lot more users were seeing the top navigation in testing and this morning, Feb. 17, it launched for all users across multiple Google services. The top navigation now works in Gmail in addition to Google search.
9.25 Presidential Social Intelligence Battleground Tracker — Language Analysis: NC v. FL Data
By: Adam Meldrum
Tags: Language Analysis, Social Listening, Joe Biden, 2020 Presidential Race, Donald Trump

9.25 Presidential Social Intelligence Battleground Tracker — Language Analysis: NC v. FL Data

A pulse of how potential voters in battleground states are discussing the Presidential candidates

Please check out the background post on this project if it is your first time reading.

— Our initial dataset from the week of 7.3 was detailed here.

— Data from the week of 7.11 was detailed here

— Data from the week of 7.19 was detailed here.

— Aggregate data to date through 8.14 was detailed here

— Language data from the weeks of 8.07 & 8.14 was detailed here

— Aggregate data through 8.25 was detailed here.

— Language data from 8.21–8.28 was detailed here

— Language data from 8.28–9.04 was detailed here

— Aggregate data through 9.5 was detailed here

— Language data from 9.04–9.11 was detailed here

— Aggregate daily support gained/lost data through 9.17 was detailed here

— A first look at Supreme Court Data was detailed here

— A deeper dive into Supreme Court Data was detailed here

Battleground States in our Analysis: AZ, CO, FL, IA, ME, MI, MN, NV, NH, NC, PA, TX, WI

Date Source: All data is publicly available and anonymized for our analysis from Twitter, Facebook, Online Blogs, & Message Boards.

Technology Partners: Eyesover & Relative Insight
Ramadan Muslim
By: Sarah Juma
Tags: Sex, Food, Women, Ramadan, Religion

When I think of Ramadan itself, I think of people drinking sherbet, passing around dates, feasting on biryani. I think of the grogginess of waking up a few hours earlier than I ever believed I could. I think of laughter, of prayer, of ritual, and spirituality. What I do not think of is feeling alone in my practice, a feeling I often have the rest of the year, too.

In the months that aren’t Ramadan, I struggle with my Islam. I want it to be louder — more political and intuitive, closer to the brand of Islam I saw in Muhammed Ali. I want it to be queerer — a place where janaat is truly for all, and surahs about the Prophet Lut are not thrown at folks for their gender or sexuality. I want it to be intersectional, where the diversity of the ummah is celebrated, and everyone’s struggles are supported; a place, not for the righteous and devout to flex their sanctimony, but for the sinners and the renegades to find their peace. I know this is not possible the rest of the year, but during Ramadan, it all seems within reach.

“In the months that aren’t Ramadan, I struggle with my Islam. I want it to be louder — more political and intuitive, closer to the brand of Islam I saw in Muhammed Ali. I want it to be queerer — a place where janaat is truly for all.”

The rest of the year we divide ourselves, divide down racial lines, between Sunni and Shia, the devout and the kaafirs, liberal and conservative, so on and so forth. And yet, any time I sit down at a table to break my fast, those lines seem less relevant. We can come together. We can accept these differences. All there is, is joy — joy to sit down with a group of folks who want to sit together, and to break bread together.

In moments like these, I feel closest to God. Maybe that’s my own fault. I am critical of organized religion. I think it often makes us slow to change and can be easily manipulated by bigots who demand blind devotion.
detailed error message in NPE,java14 feature
Tags: Java, Npe, Java14, Programming, Java14 Features

I think Almost every Java developer At some pointed in our life would have encountered with NPE in java, and what’s worse then getting NPE is that stack trace only gives you the line number where it occurred so you gotta debug it further to check which part /variable of your expression caused it.

Let’s take an example.

Integer x= y*z \\Line 10

If above line throws a NPE then it could be because either y or z is null and we won’t know it until we debug it .And for much more complex expression it becomes more difficult.

So what’s new in Java 14?

Since Java 14, NPE will have a detailed message in its stack trace . JVM throws a NPE whenever code tries to dereference a null reference, the JVM will determine precisely which variable was null , and describe the variable (in terms of source code) with a null-detail message in the NPE. The null-detail message will then be shown in the JVM's message, alongside the method, filename, and line number.

Error message is going to have two part, first part will contain consequence(What failed because of NPE) and second part will consist of reason for NPE. Let us understand it with a better example.

For the expression doFoo().b[i][j] = 99; where doFoo() is an static method in a class named as Foo , If doFoo().b[i] is null then error message would be something like this “Cannot store to int array because Foo.doFoo().b[i] is null” .

Detail null-message is by default disabled in java14 ,we can enable it by command line argument -XX:+ShowCodeDetailsInExceptionMessages .

But the question becomes why would they keep it disabled by default ?Why wouldn’t anyone want to have such an amazing feature? Here are few reason for that.
Your Ultimate Survival Kit For When The Shift Really Hits The Fan
By: Lucien Lecarme
Tags: Self Improvement, Economics, Spirituality, Transformation, Blockchain

Do you feel burned out? Is a load of debt pushing on your shoulders? What about depression, anxiety or the “I couldn’t care less” sensation when you get slapped in the face by Australian wildfires, a possible new war with Iran or another next catastrophe?

We all have been there, or worse, are in there. You are no exception.

Millions of other people are going through the same cycles.

You can be fired because of cutbacks, you are a student and you start your career with a Himalaya of debt, your friend commits suicide and nobody saw it coming. Your doctor tells you about your cancer and you thought you had a strong flew.

Ordinary life?

Maybe you have that inborn feeling that it all should have been better. We can do better. But humanity is fucking up and your shield against more insanity, populism, hate and further polarization is indifference, cynicism and a tsunami of fatigue.

What if I tell you it only will get worse.

Our earth is sick, we are sick. The only good news is that we are heading for radical system change.

Our financial system, politics, educational systems, medicare, the way we produce food, care for our soil, care for each other. It all needs a reboot on root level. Humanity will be finally on its way to thrive. But it will be 2030, maybe in 2035.

How to survive the system change? That coming dark night of humanities soul? The swift from the patriarchy into the age of Aquarius?

How to live through the coming age of disruption, catastrophes, chaos and anarchy?

Here is your ultimate survival kit for when the shift really hits the fan.
Reddit’s presidential race: Candidate mentions in comments
By: Felipe Hoffa
Tags: Visualization, 2016 Election, Reddit

Update: Reddit’s Upvoted made a full feature on this chart with added commentaries: https://upvoted.com/2015/11/14/which-2016-presidential-candidates-are-redditors-talking-about/

Quick visualization while flying between countries, updated with reddit’s October data thanks to /u/stuck_in_the_matrix:

# of comments mentioning candidate

The BigQuery query:

SELECT DATE(USEC_TO_TIMESTAMP(UTC_USEC_TO_WEEK(created_utc*1000*1000,1))) week, SUM(body CONTAINS "Bernie Sanders") BernieSanders,SUM(body CONTAINS "Ben Carson") BenCarson,SUM(body CONTAINS "Hillary Clinton") HillaryClinton,SUM(body CONTAINS "Donald Trump") DonaldTrump,SUM(body CONTAINS "Rand Paul") RandPaul,SUM(body CONTAINS "Jim Webb") JimWebb,SUM(body CONTAINS "Ted Cruz") TedCruz,SUM(body CONTAINS "Jeb Bush") JebBush,SUM(body CONTAINS "Paul Ryan") PaulRyan,SUM(body CONTAINS "Marco Rubio") MarcoRubio,SUM(body CONTAINS "Chris Christie") ChrisChristie,SUM(body CONTAINS "Carly Fiorina") CarlyFiorina FROM TABLE_QUERY([fh-bigquery:reddit_comments], 'REGEXP_MATCH(table_id, "2015_..$")')

GROUP BY 1

ORDER BY 1

Find more data and topics like these on reddit.com/r/bigquery, or follow me at @felipehoffa.

Update: Reddit’s Upvoted made a full feature on this chart with added commentaries:
I Was There When Ryan Giroux Went on His Mass Shooting Spree
By: Erika Sauter
Tags: Life Lessons, Politics, Social Media, News, Culture

I Was There When Ryan Giroux Went on His Mass Shooting Spree

During the Chaos Isaac Martinez Posted His Gunshot Wound on Social Media for all the World to See

Ryan Giroux Retrieved from the Arizona Republic @azcentral.com 2/13/2017

My husband and I were sitting in my truck in the high school parking lot this afternoon waiting for our son to get released from school. We were early. The bell wouldn’t ring for another 20 minutes. My mind had drifted but was brought back once I heard his voice question me. What are you thinking about?

I’m wondering what Giroux’s sentence was.

What got you thinking about that now?

It’s what I do. I catch myself thinking of all the lives I should have saved over the course of my career but couldn’t. The times I was so close but not close enough. Did I make a mistake? Did I hesitate? Were my immediate decisions wrong?

That’s the thing, there is only a second in immediate crisis intervention. It all depends on one second and I have to live with the outcome of my decision.
The Truth
By: Priyanka Srivastava
Tags: Writers On Writing, Poetry, Poem, Blue Insights, Poems On Medium

with too many things in my head i write to sort it all till the sky is empty and there’s no poetry

Follow
We Still Need Pride
By: M. J. Murphy
Tags: Pride, Pop Culture, LGBTQ, Gay, Youth

Photo: Pixabay | CC0 public domain license.

Amid arguments over the colors on the rainbow flag, the letters in the community acronym, the role of the police and corporate sponsorship, we cannot forget that, for some vulnerable kid from the suburbs or the countryside, Pride can be an eye-opening, even life-saving, experience.

Whatever our differences, we urgently need to preserve Pride for kids like me who drive into The Big City for their first Pride, have their eyes opened to life’s queer possibilities, and get wrapped in the arms of a loving crowd that will keep them from falling until they’re strong enough to walk on their own.

We need to hold space for them until they can claim for themselves the right to occupy public space as their full, authentic selves—a right we cannot take for granted in the ‘time of Trump.’
Tesler’s law: the conservation of complexity
By: Benek Lisefski
Tags: Product Design, Complexity, Design Thinking, User Experience, Design

In Why Life Can’t Be Simpler, Farnam Street brilliantly explains Tesler’s Law as it relates to what we’ve all experienced about digital product design.

Simpler isn’t always better

The first lesson from Tesler’s law of the conservation of complexity is that how simple something looks is not a reflection of how simple it is to use.

“People have an intuitive sense that complexity has to go somewhere. When using a product or service is too simple, users can feel suspicious or like they’ve been robbed of control.”

Complex actions require complex tools. Rather than trying to simplify the tools — stripping away or hiding functionality — what is needed is a better conceptual modal that makes the user experience feel simpler.

The conservation of complexity

Donald A. Norman explains:

“With technology, simplifications at the level of usage invariably result in added complexity of the underlying mechanism… What is simple on the surface can be incredibly complex inside: what is simple inside can result in an incredibly complex surface. So from whose point of view do we measure complexity?”

Hint: it’s usually us who bear the burden. When we strive for the elimination of complexity from user experiences, it forces designers and developers to work much harder — and build much more complex systems — to create the appearance of simplicity.

The complexity is never removed. It’s just moved from the user on to us. Never lose sight of how you’re measuring complexity. If you save 10% of complexity from the user but it adds 50% more complexity to build it, was it worth it?
What a Non-Binary Person Looks Like
By: Clio Hartzer
Tags: Gender Box, Lgbtqia, Nonbinary, Stereotypes

I need to clarify something, because people still seem confused about this.

Non-binary people are all younger, except the ones who are older. Children can be non-binary. So can retirees.

A non-binary person has long hair. Unless we have short hair. Or we could have asymmetrical hair. Mohawks are nice. So are buzzcuts. Mullets, too. Whatever.

At any rate, we change our hairstyle every day. Unless we don’t. And we dye our hair. Unless, of course, we don’t.

AMAB non-binary people shave all our body hair, and AFAB non-binary people don’t. Except when it’s the other way around. Or when we trim only the parts we want to trim. We have beards, we are clean-shaven, we have pretentious goatees or mutton chops. Whatever we like, really.

Non-binary people wear shirts and pants and shoes, except when we wear dresses or skirts and blouses. Or tunics. Or muumuus. We wear leather, or silk, or leather and silk, or neither one because we’re vegan, or neither one just because we don’t. Or, really, whatever else we feel like wearing. (Keep it legal, kids! Or don’t, I guess.)

Of course, non-binary people change our clothing styles every day, except when we don’t. Some don’t even change our clothing every day, just like some binary people. And that’s okay.

Non-binary people are the fashion elite except when we aren’t, which is pretty often.

Non-binary people wear make-up if we want to. If we don’t want to, we don’t. You can always tell a non-binary person because we’ll either be wearing nail polish or we won’t be. We have extreme piercings and body modifications and tattoos, except for the ones that don’t. We love to wear lots of jewelry, or maybe some tasteful accents, or, you know, none at all.

Non-binary people get surgery or take hormones or wear things that flatten bits or make things bulge or whatever… except when we don’t do any of that. And all of that, and not doing that, is okay, based on each individual person.

Because the whole point of embracing the non-binary identity for many (but certainly not all) non-binary people is that those inane gendered boxes that everyone wants to put us in need to be shredded and torn up. At least, for ourselves.

So if you see a person that looks like a man (or woman) who is dressed like you think a man (or woman) is supposed to look and who has a hairstyle you expect a man (or woman) to have, and they say they’re non-binary, believe them. They are.

And if you see a person that shreds every gender expectation you have for them and they say they’re non-binary, believe them. They are.

(Oh, and by the way, if either of these people say they’re not non-binary, accept that, too. Don’t tell other people who they are. They know themselves better than you do.)

What does a non-binary person look like?

However they want. And that’s okay.
ITC Logo Contest
By: Iot Chain
Tags: Announcements, Contest

Upload your own creative variation of the ITC logo to your social media accounts and tag IoT Chain and be in the running to win ITC tokens! Contestants should submit a logo that is based on the current official logo design.

Contest Details

1. Participants should submit their logo in either the JPG or PNG file formats

2. Deadline for submissions is 27 September 2018

3. The winner will be announced on 28 September

4. For more information, please contact @Ruihz via Telegram

Contest Entry Form: https://goo.gl/DfQxHJ

Prizes