fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Explore & Visualize 200+ Years of Global Temperature
By: Kapil Sreedharan
Tags: Apache Spark, Gcp, Programming, Climate Change, Google Bigquery

We have all read about and experienced the effects of climate change every day around us. We have seen numbers like: The current global average temperature is 0.85ºC higher than it was in the late 19th century, and each of the past three decades has been warmer than any preceding decade since records began in 1850*.

I got curious about how climatologists determine these numbers. There is a whole lot of research going on in this area. I came across one important weather dataset from NOAA that is widely used in research.

In this blog, I will explain how I performed some simple analysis and visualized important patterns from NOAA’s historical weather data.

There are lots of insights that can be gained from this dataset. Keep reading to learn how you can do your own weather analyses using free cloud resources and open source technologies.

Prerequisite:

We will need AWS credentials to read from a public S3 bucket, as well as a GCP account to analyze the dataset on Google cloud.

Create AWS IAM user credentials to read NOAA data in Amazon S3

Sign up with AWS free tier if you don’t have an AWS account, and then follow the instructions to Create IAM user

Grant your user AmazonS3ReadOnlyAccess

Create an access key for your user. (Note down your Access Key ID and Secret access key. We will provide these credentials to our spark job.)

2. Create a GCP account if you don’t have one

GCP Free Tier — Free Extended Trials and Always Free | Google Cloud

Once you signed up and logged in to the GCP console. Activate Cloud Shell by clicking on the icon highlighted in the below screenshot. Cloud Shell provides command-line access to a virtual machine instance, and this is where we are going to set up our use case. (Alternatively, you can also do this on your laptop terminal)

GCP Console

Google Cloud Shell

For the source code, here is the GitHub project.

Now that we have our AWS and GCP credentials, let's get started.
display
By: Antoinette Nevitt
Tags: Poetry, Dead Poets Live, Relationships, Nature, Movement

I saw you -

out of the corner

of my eye.

I came in red.

I know that drives you crazy.

I feel your gaze on me,

then, zoom. You’re here in front of me,

hovering

in full display,

daring me

to glance at you.

What a little bully you can be.

I twirl like a matador

to see what you will do.

You scold me,

but before I see you leave,

you’re gone,

and I turn back to green -

until I see him -

out of the corner

of my eye.
Local Organizations Seek Long-Term Solutions for Trafficking Survivors
By: Orlando Free Press
Tags: Rehabilitation, Trafficking, Orlando, Human Trafficking, Florida

Photo by Gaelle Marcel

by Elyse Meredith Kelly | The Florida Free Press

Abolitionist groups in Central Florida have made great strides in increasing awareness of human trafficking, but awareness only scratches the surface of the issue. For sustainable solutions, rehabilitation programs are necessary to help survivors face the myriad challenges resulting from their time in slavery.

According to the National Survey of Residential Programs for Victims of Sex Trafficking, conducted in 2013, rehabilitation can take years, depending on a survivor’s mental and physical state. Physical wounds — from broken bones to reproductive issues — must be mended. Psychological trauma often requires even more time to heal.

In an effort to support survivors, multiple organizations in Central Florida offer wraparound care. The term describes a comprehensive care approach to healing and rehabilitating victims.

Latisha’s House in Central Florida is the newly opened second location of a Virginia-based safe house, focused on reestablishing female survivors.

“We are a long-term, residential program with a minimum of 10 months, which is different from a lot of other programs, which are often six months to a year,” Stephanie O’Connor, state coordinator for Latisha’s House, told The Florida Free Press.

O’Connor said every victim has a different story, each coming with a unique set of problems. This requires an individualized approach to healing.

“We’re not capped at a year,” she said. “We actually have them as long as needed to be able to be sustainable and successful when they move on.”

Latisha’s House helps women discover their own identity through art, along with providing essential services like health care, vocational training and trauma counseling.

Because victims of human trafficking are often stripped of identification upon entering a life of slavery, the organization prioritizes guiding survivors through the process of obtaining government-issued IDs.

Another local organization, The Lifeboat Project, is a long-term residential care program for trafficking survivors, in Apopka, Fla. The Lifeboat Project developed the Haven Home Program, which organizes and equips volunteer-based homes where survivors can safely heal. Once established in a home, survivors receive individualized care that includes counseling, health care and job training.

Haven Home aims to keep the barrier of entry low for those in need, but most support and rehabilitation organizations are funded by individual donations. Little government funding is allocated to these programs.

Latisha’s House, for example, is still gathering donations and volunteers as they finish their new location.

In addition to financial strain, organizations must navigate issues that arise from poor coordination with federal, state and local agencies, language barriers, and victims’ lack of legal status.
Dani
By: Melissa Boles
Tags: Love Story, Fiction, Fiction Writing

Photo by bruce mars on Unsplash

She’s 16 when he first meets her, standing across from him at the wood measuring station in her fathers hardware store, laughing. The door to his mothers room won’t close right anymore, not since the paramedics had to break it down. He needs to fix it. He has no idea how.

“What are you even trying to do?” She says, watching him stare at measurements he scribbled on his palm. He’s been back three times.

“I just need to replace the door frame on my parents’ bedroom,” he mutters, trying to make out whether one of the blue marks on his palm is a 6 or a faded 8. “I keep getting it wrong.”

“If it’s your parents’ room, can’t your dad do it?”

It’s a 6, he concludes, eyeing the yard stick and marking with a pencil. “My dad is dead.”

She doesn’t respond and when he looks up he wants to take it back. I’m just kidding, he wants to say, flashing the grin his father always used to say would make him dangerous one day. She looks like he hit her in the face and he tries to figure out what to say instead and then realizes it would be impossible to lie to her. Ever.

He shrugs. “That’s why the door frame is broken. The paramedics broke it.”

“Oh.” Her voice sounds small, like someone is standing on her vocal chords. “Sorry.”

He lets out a slow breath. “Can you help me?”

It takes her a second but she nods, reaching for a tape measure. “Sure, but I’m gonna need to measure the frame myself. You’ve been here three times — there’s no way your measurements are right.”

She was right. They weren’t.
Why Being Spiritual May Be Better Than Being Religious: My Talk at Ignite Phoenix #14
By: Rob Rynders
Tags: Spirituality, Love, Music

I had the opportunity to be one of the speakers at Ignite Phoenix #14. The title of my talk was “Why Being Spiritual May Be Better Than Being Religious.” I had an amazing time and met a bunch of new people. I can’t thank the Ignite team enough for this amazing opportunity and for being so supportive throughout the process. Also, thanks to everyone who encouraged me and continue to provide positive feedback as video of the presentation makes it around the internet!
How to win at NaNoWriMo
By: Gina Langridge
Tags: NaNoWriMo, Writing

I don’t expect to end Nanowrimo this year with a completed novel in my hands but I do hope to end with a 50,000 word story and a purple bar.

I’ve officially won at Nanowrimo eight times now and twice got half way before realising it wasn’t going to happen. That’s eight 50k word stories, and two 25k attempts. All of those were successes in my opinion because:

Every sentence I wrote was a sentence that probably wouldn’t have been written if I hadn’t been doing Nano

I found a wellspring of creativity in me that I didn’t know existed

I got better at some parts of writing that I’m bad at

I had fun

I pushed through when it wasn’t fun and achieved my goal (well, 8 out of 10 times I did!)

I met some very cool people who are some of my best buddies now

Doodles can provide inspiration for stories

I still prefer it when I get the winner’s purple and there’s an awful lot of advice telling us all how to get to the magical 50k. I don’t think any of it works for everyone but by now I know what’s likely to work for me and in case you can use any of my tips and tricks here they are:

An Excel (or similar) spreadsheet that allows me to see my progress in more detail than the Nano website does.

Lots of thought about the characters and the world I’m putting them into. Some idea of the plot. Making notes about some of that before I start.

Assuming I’m going to need two hours a day to write 2,000 words and freeing up that time as far as I can.

Not going on social media until after I’ve written my word count for the day.

Not giving up when suddenly my story seems like the most stupid story in the world and I don’t know what should happen next.

Taking a walk or a bike ride and thinking.

Writing anything, however ridiculous, when I need to get words down.

Not fussing about editing or not editing. If I want to remove typos and obvious ineloquencies, well I will. If I can’t be arsed, then I won’t. How much or little editing works for me is probably not the same as for anyone else and that’s fine.

Planning ahead for days when I won’t be able to write, like the day I’m at my sister’s all day helping her declutter, and the day I’m at a training for my new volunteer job.

Allowing myself to be silly and have fun.

Keep telling myself, “I’m not ready to give up yet”.

Judging by past results, I’ve got an 80% chance of success. In just thirty-two days I’ll find out if it’s worked this time!
South of the Border, New Partnerships Still Matter
By: Gabriela Rivera
Tags: Partnerships, Higher Education, Collaboration, Student Success

*This Letter to the Editor originally appeared on The Chronicle of Higher Education on May 1, 2019, where you can read it in full.*

To the Editor:

Your story, “How International Education’s Golden Age Lost Its Sheen” (The Chronicle, March 28), highlights challenging shifts in the landscape of international education, but the full picture may not be quite so grim. There may even be reason for optimism that the future of international education will involve more healthy, balanced collaboration between U.S. institutions and those abroad.

At a university where two of three campuses sit along the U.S. border, international partnerships are critical to our identity because they are also embedded in the communities we serve. Colleagues at San Diego State University are closer than those at peer institutions elsewhere in Mexico. And border crossing is often a daily activity, so our students are constantly reminded of our interconnected future.

Yet, if colleges and universities are to help secure that future, we must truly do so collaboratively. We have an opportunity to re-center our collective focus. And our measures of success can’t rest on U.S. enrollment numbers alone.

Instead, we should elevate programs like the Global Attainment and Inclusion Network (GAIN) from the American Council on Education that bring higher-education leaders together with concrete goals. Supported by the Lumina Foundation, the program brought higher-education leaders from three continents to one of our campuses earlier this month to share best practices aimed at improving attainment, access, and student success among marginalized communities around the globe.

We should also re-emphasize and celebrate student-facing partnerships and coursework that can introduce bi- or multi-national perspectives into our curricula. We’ve seen this first-hand through a co-taught course between our president, Dr. Fernando León Garcia, and Dr. Devorah A. Lieberman, president of the University of La Verne in California.

We’ve long known that cross-border collaboration elevates cultural awareness in ways that directly benefit students, while keeping faculty and staff apprised of best practices in teaching and learning. And a future in which international education re-emphasizes its purpose-driven roots may be more important today than ever before.

After all, we still have much to learn from one another.

Gabriela Rivera is Associate Director for International Affairs at CETYS University.
After Banning TikTok and Other Chinese-Made Apps, India Goes After Clones
Tags: Technology, Social Media, India, Apps, China

TikTok and several other apps were banned in India a month ago, and now the government there is cracking down on dozens of clones that have popped up in their absence.

The country’s ruling political party today announced the takedown of 47 Chinese mobile apps, including one called TikTok Lite. The apps were all “variants and cloned copies” of TikTok and the other 58 Chinese-made apps that were wiped from Indian app stores in recent weeks.

Indian authorities claim the apps were secretly collecting users’ data and sending it to servers in China, making them a potential spying threat. “This decision is a targeted move to ensure safety and sovereignty of Indian cyberspace,” the government said last month.

TikTok racked up 164 million mobile app downloads in India during the first half of 2020, according to research firm Sensor Tower. Since the ban, Indian users have flocked to other video-sharing apps, such as Roposo and Zili. However, the TikTok clone app indicates some users in the country are trying to circumvent the ban.

Other Chinese apps that India outlawed last month include WeChat and UC Browser, which come from the two biggest tech companies in China, Tencent and Alibaba Group. And others could be on the chopping block. According to the Economic Times, local authorities are examining 275 mobile apps, including Tencent’s popular gaming title PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, for violations of national sovereignty and user privacy.

In the US, the Trump administration is also considering a ban on Chinese-made social media apps, including TikTok. White House officials are worried the Chinese government could exploit the same apps to collect data on US citizens for spying purposes. However, TikTok has routinely denied that it poses a threat to users’ security.

“We’re committed to building an app that respects the privacy of our users and to being more transparent with our community,” the company said last month.
Three Different Things: July 23, 2019
By: Sean O'Brien
Tags: Data Visualization, Artificial Intelligence, Digital Marketing

Early Hours

For things just getting started.
A Inteligência Artificial está fadada a ser racista e sexista?
By: Lia Rodrigues
Tags: Inteligencia Artificial, Bias, Preconceito, Ux Translations, UX

Is AI doomed to be racist and sexist?

Once upon a time, humanity was using bias to survive — to assess potential dangers and keep us safe from the big wide…
How Do You Know?
By: Terry Mansfield
Tags: Knowledge, Poetry, Poem, Humor, Unknown

How Do You Know?

A haiku poem about a conundrum

Image by Wokandapix from Pixabay

How do you know what you don’t know when you don’t know that you don’t know it?

__________________

Thanks for reading.

Check out my stories on Vocal Media.

These are my most popular pieces, with many thousands of Reads:
What Is Screen Case in Computer Programming? (SCREEN_CASE)
By: Dr. Derek Austin
Tags: JavaScript, Software Development, Software Engineering, Programming, Web Development

What Is Screen Case in Computer Programming? (SCREEN_CASE)

For programming, ALL CAPS ISN’T YELLING, but it is less legible. SCREEN_CASE is commonly used for constants.

Photo by Waldemar Brandt on Unsplash

Take a look at the following code, and tell me if you can find the variable that I don’t want you to change:

Did you catch the hint from the capital letters separated by underscores? Using all uppercase is called screen case (or SCREEN_CASE).

The term comes from screenwriting, where newly-introduced characters appear in all caps, along with certain other words.

In software engineering, SCREEN_CASE is a programming convention to signify constants — variables that shouldn’t change:

“Constants are usually defined on a module level and written in all capital letters with underscores separating words. Examples include MAX_OVERFLOW and TOTAL.” — Python Style Guide

However, just like ALL CAPS IS SHOUTING ONLINE, you might want to avoid SCREEN_CASE for maximum readability:

“There is evidence [1] to show that all-caps is less legible and less readable than lower case. So constants are harder for us to read.” — Joseph Wilk

Using screen case is just a convention, not a rule. If you have a different personal preference for constants, go for it!

For example, you might use the const keyword in JavaScript. Just remember that JavaScript objects defined with const can have their contents changed, but nothing else can be assigned to that variable name:

(For truly immutable JavaScript objects that can’t be changed you’d need to use something like immer.)

Personally, I like SCREEN_CASE, because it makes me think “CONSTANT!” Plus, it’s a great way to point out magic numbers —numbers that are just hanging out in the code and need clarification.

But, you might hate screen case, and I’m fine with that too. 😛

Happy coding! 🤩🧐🐱‍👤🦄🐦
Micro-grid for Kalbarri in Western Australia!
By: A.C. Flory
Tags: Technology, Farm, Dawn Gill Designs, Grid, Kalibarri

As exciting as Elon Musk’s bet, and subsequent giant battery may be, there is a hell of a lot more going on in Australia that never gets a mention. Not sexy enough I suppose. Well, I think micro grids, renewables and batteries are very sexy so have a look at this:

This is the proposed plan for a micro grid in Kalibarri, WA. Kalibarri is a rural community which relies on power coming in via the Geraldton Feeder. Just one single source of power. When that power goes down, Kalibarri goes dark. Kind of hard to run homes, not to mention businesses, without power.

But all that will be a thing of the past once the micro grid is up and running. It will include power from the windfarm as well as power contributed by individual homes running solar panels. All that power will charge a 2 MWH [megawatt hour] battery, and the Geraldton Feeder will be there as well. All that equates to power security for a community that has had anything but. On a national level, the Kalibarri micro grid is also an example of what Australia can do in spite of the idiots in Canberra.

You can read the whole story here:

And now a big thank you to Dawn who found out about this development and sent me the URL. Dawn is a Silversmith who loves cheering people up. She would call this a cheeryuppy story and I couldn’t agree more!

Keep smiling, only four more days ‘till the weekend. :D

Meeks
Quote Of The Day
By: Davide Metrangolo
Tags: Quoteoftheday, Blog, Senza Categoria, Applewatch, Linkkpost

The Watch is Tim Cook’s product. And in the perfect Tim Cook way — subtle, understated, but incredibly powerful — he’s improving the world.
7 Lessons From Gary Halbert to Make You a Better Copywriter
By: Nick Waghorn
Tags: Creativity, Marketing, Psychology, Business, Writing

4. Get Attention

In the days of direct mail, Gary Halbert said there were two piles, the A pile, and the B pile.

When we view our mail, we filter out the important messages from the junk.

Whether it’s your company emails, social updates, or paid ads — it’s vital that we get on the A pile.

There are two ways to do this:

1. Clearly distinguish the value proposition and relevance to the reader

We’re far more likely to pay attention to content that clearly establishes its audience and value upfront. No tricks or B.S.

For example, we’re far more likely to read a personally addressed and carefully considered email than a generic email blast.

So ask yourself, will this tempt my reader to put my copy into the A pile?

Side note: I’ve written about this principle in a previous article, where I broke down Gary Halbert’s most successful sales letter.

2. Make your writing stand out

In lots of industries, we’re inundated with sales promotions and discounts. We’re desensitised.

If that’s the case in your business, try to do something a little different to attract the right kind of attention.

For example, Gary Halbert would often attach gifts like old coins or bags of dirt in his letters. These items would be enough to arouse curiosity in readers to put the letter into the A pile.

Often it’s just a case of considering, what’s a novel way of communicating with our audience. Is there something that we can do to separate our writing from the rest of the pack?
Blown Winter Grass V
Tags: Haibun Poem, Storytelling, Poetry, Art, Chalkboard

Hungry stomachs like tight hands, growling, bones cracking. I never felt I measured up as a man when I was younger. I don’t measure up now. Money like water through my fingers. Confidence like flowers broken by the fall’s first cold snap. Or, take the house and its scuzzy blue siding, its dandelion weeds like Gothic scepters, its grasses like husks of callus trimmed from giant heels. My dog walks best in his black nylon rope harness, walks proudest: head high, at a high canter. Nothing like a bowl of seasoned water after. Nothing in his stomach makes his stomach tighten and squeak. The nothing in my hands makes him turn, trot away. In the living room I find him. There, he’s whole. My wife believes him, makes a place for him beside her on the couch. His limbs at full stretch flood over half its length. He paws at the air while dreaming. His rippling growl, his closed-mouthed yipping, act on my heart like a clamp acts on a table edge. Or a walnut. Holds it together, then breaks it. I grow sick with power. His head fits my hands. His ribcage swells beneath my palm. I keep it there for several minutes while he and my wife sleep, waiting for my fear to subside. I can mount the French cleat and hang the head board above our bed. I can replace a feathered fan belt, cloudy engine oil. I can break apart the cardboard boxes and cases the baby’s things came in. I can punch in each box’s sides to snap the packing tape. I do so.

skull of a household

god ㅤalcohol-blanched ㅤsulphur

memories ㅤswans wilt
If You Don’t Believe In Yourself, Who Will?
By: Tom Stevenson
Tags: Self Improvement, Life Lessons, Travel, Life, Success

If You Don’t Believe In Yourself, Who Will?

You need to believe before you can achieve

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

The other day, I did something that I never would have done a few years ago.

I booked onto a mountaineering course and learnt some basic skills. While this may not sound like much, it did involve some technical aspects that a layperson would be unfamiliar with.

We learnt how to walk up a mountain covered in snow with and without crampons, and how to use an ice axe to make our way up too.

This was new terrain for me. I had never done anything like it before. When I am learning a new skill, I am very tentative and wary about what I am doing. Sometimes, this can manifest itself into doubting myself and working myself into a full-blown panic.

There were times during the day when I was wondering what the hell I was doing as I traversed my way up a white wall of snow with only the crampons on my feet and my ice axe stopping me from slipping into the boulders below, but I carried on regardless.

A few years ago, I may not have had the confidence in myself to complete such a task. I would have let the voices in my head get the better of me and I would have been paralysed with fear halfway up.

This time, however, I trusted myself and my ability to learn new skills and I embraced the challenge. I backed myself to rise the challenge and I did.

If I don’t back myself to succeed, then how can anyone else? We can be our own worst enemies at times. Sometimes, all we need is a little belief in ourselves and we can achieve more than we ever thought we were capable of.
A short step by step guide on how to approach a dataset
Tags: Data, Machine Learning, Data Visualization, Data Science, Boston

A short step by step guide on how to approach a dataset Lukas Follow Apr 11, 2020 · 5 min read

Photo by Osman Rana on Unsplash

As someone who enjoys travel, sites like Airbnb, Tripadvisor or Hostelworld are perfect. Besides giving information about the next destination you can travel too, they also collect countless amounts of data that can be used to visualize, analyze and countless other ways to interact with the data.

In this Post, we will look deeper into Airbnb listing data from Boston. The data for this insight is from Inside Airbnb. We will look closer into the listing and calendar files of the dataset.

listings consist of 6155 rows and 106 features about the different listings of a host.

calendar consists of 2246575 rows and 7 columns with features of the different listings at different prices on different days.

After taking a brief view into the data the first questions that came to my mind were:
Remote Deposit Capture (RDC)
By: Sankaet Pathak
Tags: Banking, Finance, API, Computer Vision

Today we are launching support for Remote Deposit Capture on our deposit accounts.

This is how RDC is traditionally done:

Find a vendor who can give you an SDK for RDC [Example] Find a bank who will accept and process the files generated from the SDK Write a Check21 file parser [Example] Write logic for returns and risk management

Here is how you do RDC with us:

Deposit a check electronically by submitting an image of the front and back of a check. No SDKs required. We’ll even accept and process a check that looks like this:

We are able to do this with the help of our computer vision stack. This is the same stack we use for other products, eg:
Free Market Token major sponsor at the massive BLOCKConscious Summit in Brisbane
By: Free Market Token
Tags: Events, Cryptocurrency, Crypto, Bitcoin, Free Market Token

Source BlockConscious

Free Market Token are a major sponsor of the massive BLOCKConscious Summit — August 10th — 12th in Brisbane, Australia.

The event will see 45 speakers over three days. Co-founder Nathan Burns will be presenting alongside some crypto heavy weights like Roger Ver, John McAfee, Alexander Borodich and NEM’s Jason Lee.

Along with Free Market Token, the event features some of the best Australian blockchain projects including Travel by Bit, Melbourne’s Blockchain Centre and CanYa, plus many more.

This three day immersion in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane will showcase some of Australia’s best projects and minds that will deepen your knowledge and proficiency in Cryptocurrency by listening to top-notch resource speakers who will navigate you into the basics and intricacies of this digital currency venture. BLOCKConscious Summit offers you a timely opportunity to validate your existing moves, rethink your options, clarify your direction, and address your concerns surrounding this cutting edge digital currency market that would make you leave the Summit with a great sense of purpose and personal well-being.

At BLOCKConscious you can pay for your hotel, restaurants and bars with crypto to be immersed in the full experience of blockchain and cryptocurrency.

“We’re really excited to be a major sponsor of BLOCKConscious 2018 in Brisbane. There’s an all-star line up of speakers — it’s going to be fantastic fun“, said Nathan Burns, Free Market Token Co-founder.

You can get your hands on these hot tickets to BlockConscious here.

Share your BLOCKConscious Summit pics with us in the Free Market Token Telegram community.
Feature Proposal: Adding more custom preset groups to Sketch
By: Sebastian Helms
Tags: Development, Sketch, UX Design, UI, Design

I thought it would be best to create something many people could find useful. So I built a collection of many social media image presets. My plugin, containing many popular social media image formats (e.g. Profile and banner images for Youtube, Facebook, etc.) creates an additional new preset group called “Social” next to the existing “Custom” one. At least it did for Sketch version 3.x back in the days.

Since the release of my plugin I had so much great feedback! The repo on github gathered some stars. Additions as well as bug reports, feature requests for more formats, or updates in sizes, etc. were sent via twitter and github.

I integrated as many of these ideas as best as possible. And as Sketch released updates to the app I tried to make sure my plugin would continue to work with the newer versions.

Sadly at some point, with a version update in the lower 40s the way my plugin extended the app’s functionality did not work as expected anymore.

So I went out to investigate…

Technical difficulties

A referencing XML file on your hard drive contains all available custom artboard presets. It’s located within your home directory:

~/Library/Application Support/com.bohemiancoding.sketch3/artboard.plist

Without getting too technical — an XML file is a text document with a simple syntax to create hierarchical structures like the following:

Tree

• Root

• Trunk

• Branch

• Twig

• Leaf

A preset group is created by adding a block of code like the following at the right place within the artboard.plist file — containing two custom sized presets (Preset 1 and Preset 2) in this example.

<dict>

<key>name</key>

<string>Group Title</string>

<key>presets</key>

<array>

<dict>

<key>height</key>

<integer>800</integer>

<key>name</key>

<string>Preset 1</string>

<key>width</key>

<integer>600</integer>

</dict>

<dict>

<key>height</key>

<integer>1024</integer>

<key>name</key>

<string>Preset 2</string>

<key>width</key>

<integer>768</integer>

</dict>

</array>

</dict>

Sometime after Sketch v40, regardless of how many groups I add to the XML structure of the artboards.plist file, only the first one is interpreted within the application. Bummer!

I hereby would like to make a case to change this behavior...
Something concrete
Tags: Design, Typography, Concrete Poetry, Paperposts

On a visit to Portland I popped into a great little fashion/design boutique called Johan (as I can never resist anything Scandi sounding). I got chatting with the owner and found out she’d spent time in Malmö and Lund — small world. Then it got even smaller, all (at least a lot of) her books were supplied by The Idea of the Book who I know through the Letterform Archive. Anyway, as traveling I had to limit myself to just one purchase so grabbed; anthology of concretism edited by Eugene Wildman. Mostly because my shelves are severely lacking in the concrete poetry department. Here’s a taste:
Simplifying Precision, Recall and F1 Score
By: Neo Yi Peng
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Analytics, Data Science

Simplifying Precision, Recall and F1 Score

Explaining evaluation metrics in basic terms

Machine learning terms can seem very convoluted, as if they were made to be understood by machines. Unintuitive and similar sounding names like False Negatives and True Positives, Precision, Recall, Area Under ROC, Sensitivity, Specificity and Insanity. Ok, the last one wasn’t real.

There are some great articles on precision and recall already, but when I read them and other discussions on stackexchange, the messy terms all mix up in my mind and I’m left more confused than an unlabelled confusion matrix — so I’ve never felt like I understood it fully.

A confused confusion matrix

But to know how our model is working, it is important to master the evaluation metrics and understand them at a deep level. So what does a data scientist really need to know to evaluate a classification model? I explain the most important ones below using visuals and examples so it can stick in our brains for good.

Accuracy

Let’s start with the easiest — Accuracy. It is literally how good your model is at guessing the correct labels or ground truths. If your dataset is pretty balanced and you care about getting every category correct, this is all you need to worry about.
How to Send Emails From Firebase With the Trigger Email Extension
By: Geoffrey Bourne
Tags: Email, JavaScript, Firebase, Google Cloud Platform, Programming

Set Up the Trigger Email Extension

Click on the Extensions link in the lower-left corner of your Firebase console.

2. Choose Install on the Trigger Email card — or choose “Learn more” to get a full overview of the extension.

3. You’ll find yourself at the four-step wizard. You can view the function’s source code if you’re curious. The important parts of this wizard are setting up billing (meaning if you’re in the Spark plan, you need to upgrade to the Blaze plan), granting access to the email function, and configuring the extension (see 4, below).

4. Configuring the extension requires you to have an email provider, such as Sendgrid, Mailgun, or Postmark. At your email provider, get the SMTP URI. This usually contains the provider's domain and API key. Once you have the SMTP URI from your provider, insert it into the field SMTP connection URI . If you run into trouble, look through your provider's documentation.

Next, set the email document collection where you’ll be writing your emails to send (most people just use “mail”). Don’t worry about creating the “mail” collection ahead of time. It will automatically be created the first time you write to it.

You also need to set your FROM email and REPLY-TO email addresses.

Quick tip: The latest version of the Email Trigger function allows you to specify a From name, such as “John Smith.” Simply use this format in the FROM field:

John Smith <john@smith.com>

Finally, you can optionally give a Users Collection or a Template Collection.

User Collection: A collection of documents keyed by user UID. If the toUids , ccUids , and/or bccUids recipient options are used in the added email document, this extension delivers email to the email field based on lookups in this collection.

Template Collection: A collection of email templates keyed by name. This extension can render an email using a Handlebar template, if the template is specified in the added email document.

We will talk more about the template collection later. Also, see below in the reference section for the available fields.

And that’s it. Your Trigger Email is set up.
The Invisible Elephant in my Photos
Tags: iOS, Photography, Google Photos, Image Recognition

Just another way to travel in India

Last evening, my 14 year old commandeered my Mac to hunt down a photo of an elephant walking down the road behind our car. My Mac’s ‘Photos’ app has nearly 17,000 pictures. Not surprisingly, she didn’t find the elephant. She wasn’t too pleased, and demanded to know why I hadn’t tagged the image.

Trying to think of a shortcut to track down the missing beast, I recalled the shot was clicked on the road to her school, but not the exact date. A quick scroll through thumbnails wasn’t good enough to spot that elephant.

I ended up having to painstakingly scroll through thousands of photos taken over five years. It took nearly half an hour to locate the pachyderm.

It’s a nice shot, considering it was a split second snap taken by a 10 year old kid, against the light, and from a moving car. Of course, it would have been infinitely better if she hadn’t beheaded the mahout!

Anyway, the incident made me reflect on ‘photo search.’

I’m aware that ‘photo search’ lags far behind ‘word search.’ After all, the ability of a device to recognise what’s in an image, is still work in progress with Google Photos currently leading the pack.

At this point, I have a face palm moment.

I had completely forgotten that I had uploaded my entire library onto Google Photos when they offered unlimited backup with the caveat of a slight reduction in resolution. Google even preserves the EXIF info of the photos. I should’ve searched for the elephant in Google Photos rather than on Photos.

Never mind. I’m curious to know how good Google Photos is in ‘photo search.’ So I open the app on my iPhone and do a quick search for elephant. The app offers up eleven photos from my Google Photos library that it believes are elephants. This includes the picture my kid was looking for.
Top Brands of 2016 Report -Infographic
Tags: Branding, Infographics, Data Visualization, Business, Design

With a network of 29 offices in 22 countries, Interbrand is a global brand agency and publisher of the highly influential Best Global Brands annual report. Here are the highlights from 2016:

Originally published at blog.infogr.am on October 30, 2016.

Follow us on Medium and sign up for our weekly newsletter!
Mystic Sun
By: Mahesh Cr
Tags: Poetry, Bhakti, Sri Aurobindo, Yoga, Sri Krishna

I am lit by the rays of a Mystic Sun

Travelling from afar, the limbs of the One.

To my mind and senses they do lend

A covert support, an ability to fend.

Often my walk is unsteady, speech falters

My heart barren, mind on strange altars.

All is bedlam and of method bereft

Who then props me and my daily craft?

When on edge and I know no way

Then comes a Blue-Hand that bids me stay.

My unfailing companion is this Mystic Sun

And I an eager subject of His vast dominion.
Parents & Educators: Do You Follow Proper Netiquette Rules?
By: Joe Mazza
Tags: Social Media, Parent Leadership, New Teachers, Leadership, Technology Integration

It seems like everyday, I witness a conversation online between two people that makes me cringe. Sometimes it involves family and sometimes you can tell there is an “elephant” on the page. DID YOU KNOW THAT WRITING IN ALL CAPS MEANS YOU ARE YELLING!?Most of us adult social-networking users have never really had a course on “netiquette” or formally learned how we should be behaving online. I mean, would you act that way if the person were right there in front of you instead of hiding behind a computer screen? One thing’s for sure, face to face communication with eye contact, tone and empathy will never be a better alternative to typing an email or leaving a comment on someone’s page.

As adults, educators, parents, grandparents, WE are responsible for setting a good example for children and for students while we are online communicating. The future of social media is now, and it is simply not going away. Whether it is Facebook, AIM, Twitter, Google+, cell phone texting or any other social networking device or site, we need to stay highly educated on the do’s and dont’s, and frequently share that knowledge with children of all ages.

For teachers and parents in a home-school partnership, netiquette is nothing short of vital. A simple netiquette blunder could lead to hard feelings, a lack of communication or misinformation, trust issues and a high anxiety level for all parties involved. In the end, one person suffers- the child or student involved. Please pass this along to those around you. Our children deserve to not only have great role models physically, but also while we are online.

Below is a video found on youtube.com which, in under 3 minutes, delivers some tips to help us groom our “netiquette.” A Google Doc version has been provided here.

Curiosity Fix: Check out how young Korean students are learning about Netiquette below.
“Your call is important to us”
By: Jessica Lim
Tags: Disney, Customer, Zappos, Business, Customer Service

This is not a knock on customer service representatives. Not at all.

In fact, I wholeheartedly believe that every single person should work customer service at some point in their lives. As a whole, we are so incredibly rude to our servers, our retail workers, our customer service representatives. We ought to see how the other shoe fits.

Rather, this is a knock on companies that put product first and customer service as a far last priority.

We live in a world where so many of our customer service interactions begin with an over-saturation of lies and deceit. Customer service is rarely adequately staffed, trained or focused upon.

Think about it. Most of the time, when we finally get in contact with a real person, we are already so frustrated by the company’s obvious disinterest for our time and concerns. Thus, no matter how good the representative is, our entire experience is tainted.

While we may interact with a singular representative, the reality is that good (and bad) customer service is top down.
Editor
By: Patrick M. Ohana
Tags: Suggestions, Words, Poetry, Sonnets, Editors

Editor

A rudimentary rant

Most editors are dandy creatures of habit

If the text looks somewhat fluid

and the language is adequate

they will publish it even before midnight

or during the mean hours of the night

Bless their hearts and awoken minds

Several editors, however, take some liberties

with our texts and especially our poetry

splitting a sonnet into parts

Please, don’t do that

A sonnet is fourteen connected lines

Shakespeare made sure of that

Some editors add punctuation

Please, don’t do that either

There must be a reason a point is missing

Do I have to write a text with my poem

I won’t take the time to do it

It’s up to the reader to interpret the words

on the screen (or the page)

the words are only mine in print

not when they appear on gadgets as sounds

or when your eyes peruse them for some time

Other editors leave notes with suggestions

That’s only half a consolation

If they don’t like it

They shouldn’t publish it

There are other publications that will

Those editors that notice a gigantic typo

Thank you for letting us know

We will correct it on the spot

Yet some typos may be there on purpose

to piss somebody off

I’m always annoyed by bad grammar

so big deal

It’s my problem

and perhaps the publication’s

which may have overlooked it

Thank you all editors

for making the effort

to spread our words around the world

We do love you

no matter the poetic cost
The First Ad in Human History
By: Sean Kernan
Tags: Marketing, Life, Advertising, Humor, Business

The First Ad in Human History

From a long, long, long time ago

Source: Pic by Riccardo Resciani

Today, advertising is a trillion-dollar industry. Commercials are everywhere. You literally can’t escape them.

Before long, we’ll have to wait to skip an ad before opening our physical mailbox.

Advertising has always been around. But mass advertising didn’t become the norm until the mid 19th century, when you saw a sophistication of the process, with ads routinely appearing in newspapers and magazines.

1898 Horse Ad Haggerty

A hundred years prior, in Japan, written ads were common. You saw large banners promoting different products in markets.

During the keto area, there were frequent ads for their medicinal practices.

Kinseitan Medicine ad from Tokyo in 1806. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Sliding back another 500 years, we get to the Middle Ages.

Most advertising consisted of simple words describing what that place did: “butcher,” “blacksmith,” “tailor.”

Or it would simply display a symbol that represented what service the establishment provided. Illiteracy rates were high during this era and thus businesses had to adapt.

A render of common medieval advertising — this one a blacksmith. (Image by CGTrader)

Outside of that, word of mouth and town criers were the most common forms of advertising.
Everything you need to know about Reverse Staking
Tags: Staking, Digital Currency, Cryptocurrency, Crypto, Token

Utrust has recently announced its new app. You can read all about that here. One of the reasons why we were eager to enter this new chapter was so we could unlock the full potential of our token, UTK. There’s plenty more features to come, but we’re starting with reverse staking.

The article above includes a primer on what it is, but we felt like this truly awesome feature deserved an article of its own. Let’s start by looking into traditional forms of staking:

Traditional staking creates weak tokenomics

Many companies started providing incentives for people to lock up their tokens and just keep them in place. If you didn’t move a predetermined amount of tokens for a certain period of time, you got a reward in the form of more tokens. Those incentives, most of the time, came right out of the company’s reserves. This has some very troublesome consequences down the line. As more tokens flooded the market medium-long term, they were mostly sold, creating even more selling pressure.

It’s basic economics.

You increase supply, do nothing to increase demand, what happens?

We don’t believe great tokenomics can be built this way.

But we wouldn’t like it anyway

By encouraging holders to keep their tokens, we are treating these currencies as if they were simple financial assets. We don’t see them that way. We view digital currencies as money. Money isn’t something you keep in a giant bin like Scrooge McDuck, it’s something you use. True adoption only happens if you can use digital currencies to pay for rent, groceries, utility bills, and everything else.

This flies in the face of what we interpret as the vision of Satoshi Nakamoto when creating Bitcoin. Satoshi strongly opposed central banks’ tendency to solve fiat currencies’ problems by pumping more money into the system. Printing money is a recipe for future disaster.
How US 25 percent tariffs might affect next-generation consoles — Game World Observer
By: Oleg Nesterenko
Tags: Technology, Gaming, USA, Economy, China

The U.S.’ trade war with China might enter a new phase as the Trump administration proposes tariffs of up to 25% for thousands of imported goods. Among them are a number of items related to video games, specifically consoles.

The timing for the proposal is unfortunate as the industry is preparing for the arrival of the next-gen consoles.

The economics behind consoles typically rely the loss leader strategy. It means that the console manufacturers sell the hardware to retailers at a loss to themselves. The idea is to incentivize customers to buy the consoles at an attractive price. Then, over time, companies break even through game sales and subscriptions.

Imposing 25% tariffs would force companies into mitigating their initial loss. The pricing would inevitably go up, which will likely discourage consumers. This, in turn, might delay the transition to the next-generation consoles.

“Tariffs will hurt the American economy, its industries, and its consumers.” Entertainment Software Agency, via GameDaly.biz.

The previous wave of 10% tariffs has already affected AMD and Nvidia. Besides video games, the tariffs also target tabletop games and coin-op arcade games.

Hearings on the new tariffs will commence on June 17. New tariffs could come into force as early as June 24, which would have an adverse effect on the video game industry in this fiscal year.
Solitary Thinking
By: Prince Humphrey
Tags: Life Lessons, Thinking, Life, Mental Health, Thoughts

There’s no simplicity in thinking and there’s not much solace in thoughts. I’m not an expert in understanding the thought process but my intention is to expound on my perpetual state of thinking. The constant state of spinning the wheel without brakes. It’s constant and perpetual. Sometimes it’s unforgiving like a school master. It’s often said that one is capable of controlling their thoughts and while I concur with this general sentiment I believe there are exceptions. These exceptions are not related to the thought process itself but the individuals themselves.

I humbly class myself as one of these people. In statistical parlance, we are the outliers. We spend the best part of our time thinking whether deeply or lightly. Even while asleep the mind is still busy. Call my mind a journeyman.

Thinking has allowed me to delve into a realm rarely visited my mortals. Many who ever attempted this journey never returned. Yes, I’ve been fortunate.

I remember things with the clarity of a painter’s shoddy work still dripping with paint and with the clarity of the planetary bodies in an astrologer’s telescope. It is vivid. It is defined.