fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
“Influencers” Are Not Smarter Than You And I.
By: Tim Denning
Tags: Tech, Instagram, Entrepreneurship, Startup, Social Media

Influencers who think they’re smarter than us are the problem.

The moment you become an influencer and think you’re smarter than everybody else is the moment your ego goes out of control. Intelligence is not measured by influence and it never will be. Creating a divide between people is what fuels wars and creates conflict.

Aim to bring people together. Focus on doing what you love rather than trying to force people to be “influenced.” Drop the attitude that leads you to think you’re smarter because all of us can be an influencer if we want to.

We can all game the social media newsfeed algorithms.

We can all sit on a phone all day and create click-bait content.

We can all pay people in third world countries to send fake followers to our fan page.
Showing My Skin on Social Media
By: Molly Mccord
Tags: Women, Social Media, Feminism, Body Positive, Gender

Showing My Skin on Social Media

Or anywhere for that matter — Instagram, a nude beach, in bed

Photo by Womanizer WOW Tech on Unsplash

There was a time in the recent history of my life where I hated the way I looked. I would scoff at myself and think, “I need to lose weight.” I’d be making concoctions, magic potions, and different remedies in the bathroom trying to soothe my acne. I would even gag myself in the shower after eating too much as a punishment. In 2003, I had back surgery. I finally thought, “Oh, good, now I can lose weight.”

That wasn’t right.

I wasn’t fat by any definition. In fact, I was a dancer all throughout childhood and into adulthood. I had strong quads, a defined midsection, and long, strawberry blonde hair.

It didn’t matter what I looked like. I had a hatred over my body.

I was sick. I was sick, tired, and annoyed at these hateful thoughts over my body. Everyone in college, on social media, and in any circle of my life seemed to love the way they looked and flaunted it all the time except for me.

Fast forward to 2015. I moved to San Francisco and started what I call my Feminine Embodiment Journey.

I Started Communicating with My Inner Child

It all changed when I finally decided to speak with my inner child. This meant breaking down some really tough psychological barriers in my mind and restructuring the relationship I had with my body. I wanted to invite a playful type of love into my life and take on a child-like wonder.

Touching myself, releasing orgasm anxiety, practicing self-gratitude every single day, I started pole dancing and spending an agonizing amount of time in front of the mirror rehearsing self-love mantras were some of the ways that I just started to scratch the surface of my Feminine Embodiment Journey.

I wanted to innocently see myself as a work of art that has her flaws but is perfectly fine sitting in them.

A child doesn’t care what she looks like naked. I wanted the innocence of a child and the ability to witness my body with a soft, grateful gaze.
Google Voice Silently Changes Outbound Calling Settings to VoIP Only
By: Robert Merrill
Tags: Google, App Update, Google Voice

Photo by Seth Doyle on Unsplash

It’s no secret that I use Google Voice for — just about everything I do. Having a google voice number is a great plus for helping me keep my business and my personal life separate, even though I use the same device (my phone) for everything.

However, without any notice, some fairly sweet UI changed seem to have taken place today on Google Voice’s web app, but subtly, the outbound calling feature seemed to just turn off the ability to dial out of Google Voice on the web and have it dial my phone first and then connect me to the candidate/client/person I am trying to call.

Gratefully, it seems there’s a preferences tool in Voice that allows you to turn on a setting to force Voice to call your phone first rather than using the Web to make the call (VOIP).

Strangely, this has eliminated the option to choose web calls vs direct phone calls on a call-by-call basis. It’s too bad you can’t make the decision any longer like you used to.

How to Update your Google Voice Settings to make web calls through your phone:

In the Google Voice web UI, on the left sidebar, go down to the three-vertical dots and tap.

2. Find the “calls” section and enable “Always use my phone to place calls”

3. Save and exit settings.
God Changes
By: Scott B. Heaton
Tags: Life Lessons, Inspiration, Spirituality, Science, Self Improvement

God Changes

A heretical idea about life, the universe, and everything

Photo by Vincentiu Solomon on Unsplash

Right now, while you sip your coffee, scrolling through your phone, the world is stationary. You, the objective viewer, sit still in a universe fixed in time and space. But in reality…

Earth is rotating on its axis at 1,000 miles per hour.

Earth is orbiting the sun at 67,000 miles per hour.

Our solar system is hurtling around the Milky Way Galaxy at 514,000 miles per hour. And, relative to our closest neighbor, Andromeda, the Milky Way Galaxy is clipping along through the “Local Group” of galaxies at 1.3 million miles per hour.

We have these numbers by measuring our movement relative to other things moving in space. It’s important to remember:

There is no “objective” viewpoint in the universe.

There is no such place as here.

There is no such time as now.

According to theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli,

Time is the form in which we beings whose brains are made up essentially of memory and foresight interact with our world: it is the source of our identity.

Everything, from the atoms constructing all we see and don’t, to the massive solar bodies rocketing through the cosmos along the curved edges of space-time, is in a state of transformation and movement. Rovelli goes so far as to say

Even what might seem like a thing — a stone, say — is really an event taking place at a rate we can’t register.

Imagine the hundreds of millions of years involved in the creation of a stone: the process of gas and liquids cooling to form heavier minerals beneath the Earth’s crust where the immense heat slowly formed solid minerals. And even after this process, the stone is still destined to erode, morph, or fuse itself into a wholly different form.

When we hold a smooth stone in our hands before skipping it across the gentle waves of a lake, we are not seeing the “thing” in its entirety, but a small episode of narrative unfolding across the infinite spectrum of time — and the episodic, relational nature of this event is the only way our finite brains can comprehend the “thing” in its endless unfolding of past and future events.

Nothing is static.

Everything is in flux.

Everything is in a state of motion.

Everything is in a state of change.

Everything we experience is relative to our personalized, unique “here” and “now.”
Our Personal Omaha Beach
By: Tom Wang
Tags: Life Lessons, WIB History, Strategy, Sun Tzu

June 6 marked the 75th anniversary of D-Day, the largest joint military operation ever.

The 129,400-troops landing wouldn’t have been successful without a one-year-long deception campaign on the site and the timing of the eventual invasion.

The shortest route across the English Channel would have the Allies land at France’s Pas de Calais region, which is 150 miles northeast of Normandy. The Nazis knew it and deployed massive troops and weapons there.

An obvious choice, Calais was rejected by the Allies from the very beginning. However, the Allies designed an elaborate scheme to nurture the Nazi’s assumption that Calais would be attacked.

The deception campaign could very well have been orchestrated by Hollywood. Nazi reconnaissance planes sighted bombers, airfields, tanks, and bunkers in the English region across the Chanel from Calais. They turned out to be all dummies, nothing more than painted canvases pulled over steel frames. In the meantime, real bombers escalated attacks on Calais as a prelude to the imminent “landing.”

To mislead the Nazis on the timing of the invasion, the Allies went as far as training an actor to impersonate the British general Bernard Montgomery. The fake Montgomery was sent to Algiers days before D-Day for the sole purpose of being seen by German spies. They would then persuade the Nazis that no invasion was imminent as the British general was in North Africa.

I don’t know if General Montgomery or General Eisenhower have read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. But their disinformation campaign came straight out of the first chapter of the classic.

“If you have the capacity to attack, pretend you don’t. If you plan to attack the near, act as if you will attack the far, and vice versa.”

Such diversion has worked over and over again throughout China’s history. In 200 B.C., Emperor Gaozu of the Han Dynasty learned that the Huns, the nomadic tribe at the northern border of China, was planning to invade. He sent envoys to the Huns. Most envoys came back and reported that the Huns was not a threat because “their horses were small, and soldiers looked tired.” Only one envoy saw through the deceit, “The two countries are in a standoff. Both sides should flex their muscles. The Huns seem intentionally showing a weak hand. It must be a decoy.” Gaozu dismissed this warning and went ahead on what he thought was an easy mission, only to find himself to be besieged by 400,000 ruthless Huns warriors.

Deceit never goes out of fashion. Certain personalities are more prone to fall for it. The most formidable enemy is never the other side, but our ego and folly, which are often harder to “land” on than Omaha Beach.
Rosie the Riveter’s Pioneering Predecessor
By: Timothy Key
Tags: Leadership, Self Improvement, Quality, Business, Innovation

Bessie Van Horst is an American essayist and author, whose best-known book The Woman Who Toils: Being the Experiences of Two Ladies as Factory Girls, published in 1903 included a preface by President Theodore Roosevelt.

Bessie and her sister-in-law Marie went undercover in various factories in the United States, ostensibly to reveal the poor working conditions for women and under-age children in American factories.

Born of money and educated in New York City private schools, Bessie worked for the Saturday Evening Post and co-wrote one book with Marie prior to undertaking their undercover expose.

They began to publish their factory work experiences in a column published in Everybody’s Magazine. The popular series caught the eye of President Roosevelt and he wrote a letter to Bessie suggesting a compilation into a book and that he would write a preface for the publication.

One of Roosevelt’s primary concerns for America at the time was the idea of race suicide (link to Wikipedia definition). As such, Roosevelt used Van Horst’s book as a platform to promote his cause, saying in part:
Trump in High School
By: J. Garcia
Tags: Questions, Short Shorts, High School, Donald Trump, Sadness

So, is it hate speech when two white boys randomly yell at a random black boy walking down the hall, “Trump! Trump! Trump!”?
My Meeting with k.d.lang
By: Mary Mcgrath
Tags: Music, Artist, This Happened To Me, Music Voices, Short Story

Photo by Tai’s Captures on Unsplash

My Meeting with k.d.lang

I knew she needed someone like me…

My girlfriend Erika and I were out for a night on the town, and decided to start our adventure at Marix Tex-Mex in West Hollywood, famous for their kick-ass margaritas and their gay clientele. We frequented this place regularly, because it had the best buzz for the buck.

We were on our third margarita with my partner said to me, “Look down there, isn’t that k.d. lang?” I squinted and realized that it was indeed one of my favorite singers.

“You should go talk to her,” Erika suggested.

“What would I say to her?”

“You should ask her if she needs a back up singer!”

I was just drunk enough to realize that this seemed like a great idea. I fortified myself with another large gulp of my margarita and I lumbered down the stairs.

As I sauntered over to her table, I saw her give me a quick look hoping I wasn’t another annoying fan. But I ignored the nuance and headed to her table.

Obviously she and her girlfriend were having an intimate conversation, but I barged in anyway, stooping down to be at eye level with her.

“Oh k.d., you are one of my favorite singers…” I gushed.”If you ever need a back up singer, I hope you’ll keep me in mind.”

I handed her my business card. She took it quickly, and returned the gaze of her date. I ignored their body language.

“I have all your CDs…My email and phone number are on the card…” I added enthusiastically.

She looked down at my card, and nodded at me, rolling her eyes at her girlfriend. I meandered back up to the stairs to Erika who greeted me with approval.

For some reason though, I never heard from k.d. lang.

It was her loss.
Programming — Harry Potter Sorting Hat
By: Aaron Santa Cruz
Tags: Personality, Programming, Coding, Code, Sorting

When you start up the sorting hat, it puts what personality it’s testing in the box, and begins asking you questions according to that trait.

Openness Questions

The questions are taken from a large dictionary inside a dictionary. the first key of the dictionary is the personality trait, and the key (as the first key’s value) is the question without “Are you”. The value of the first key’s value is the house to add the points to.

Personality Traits Dictionary

As you see, all of the questions are a part of the “Are you” question. To ask the questions, we just call this function:

Ask Question Function

the game runs in a loop through each personality. It gets each question, and asks it by calling the ask_question() function. Then, it increments the house based on the return value of the ask_question() function.

The Game Loop

Lastly, a function to determine the house with the most points is called. If there’s a tie, it too adds it to the winning array.

Find Houses With The Most Points

the, the results of the program are returned to the user:

Output Code
Review | The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel (Multi) gets world-building right and delivers an all-around immersive experience
By: G. Hoffmann
Tags: Rpg, Games, Videogames, Game Review, PS4

Review | The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel (Multi) gets world-building right and delivers an all-around immersive experience

Combining elements of classic JRPG with solid storytelling and exciting battles, the game is a great start to the Cold Steel sub-series.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel is the first chapter in a tetralogy from the maxi-series The Legend of Heroes — a rather long-running Nihon Falcom (Ys series) franchise that has long remained unknown to most players outside of Japan.

Reaching the West in the wake of its previous sub-series (Trails in the Sky) localization, the game went through PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita before hitting PCs in an updated Special Edition. This latest version, in turn, serves as the basis for the latest port of the title for the PlayStation 4, setting the stage for the recent arrival of the long-awaited third installment of the trilogy on Sony’s platform.

Amid so many relaunches, the question that may remain for the interested player, but who has not had the opportunity to introduce himself in the series, is: is it worth to start this journey of hundreds and hundreds of hours through the Erebonian Empire?

The short answer: yes, it’s worth it!

“Why?”, do you ask me? Check out our longer answer below!

Developed by Nihon Falcom and published by XSEED Games / Marvelous USA , The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel was released in December 2015 for PS3 and PSVita , August 2017 for PC and March 2019 for PS4 . Version used for review: PS4.

Nobility at war

Set in the same world as the Trails in the Sky trilogy, Trails of Cold Steel brings an ambiance that blends steampunk and high-tech elements. While the plot in this chapter brings a number of references to the lore previously set in the series, I can tell from my experience that this is a great entry point for total “newbies” — having been my first experience with the franchise, I never felt like missing any context through the hundreds of hours of content.

This time the focus of history is on the Erebonian Empire, a territory that unifies several geographically and culturally distinct centers of power under the command of a noble caste, headed by four large families.

In an age-old society profoundly transformed by the arrival of Orbal technology, in which the marks of a recent war are still present in everyday life, we are presented to the Thors Academy, a military school where young people from all over the empire study a whole range of disciplines, from the art of cooking to the art of combat.
Exceptions to the Rule: When to Skip the Hyphen
By: Karen Degroot Carter
Tags: Editing, Learning, Productivity, Writing, Grammar

Exceptions to the Rule: When to Skip the Hyphen

Even when a compound adjective precedes the noun it modifies

Image from PDPics from Pixabay

In my post “When You Should Hyphenate, Open, or Close a Compound Word,” I explain a few rules, including:

When an open compound word is used as a compound adjective that precedes the noun it modifies, it should be hyphenated.

This rule applies in the following examples:

She is a well-liked student.

That was an ill-advised decision.

This contains high-quality ingredients.

That is a little-known secret.

As with most grammatical rules, though, there are exceptions. Consider the following sentences:

Of the two, that is the more popular option.

In the group, this is the most popular option.

Of the pair, that is the less popular option.

In the group, this is the least popular option.

Philip Corbett, associate managing editor for standards at the New York Times, once stated: “In general, comparative or superlative modifiers with ‘more,’ ‘most,’ ‘less’ or ‘least’ don’t require hyphens. Use one only if it’s needed to avoid ambiguity.” If references to things such as “comparative or superlative modifiers” make your head hurt, it might be helpful to simply memorize this rule, which applies regardless of the placement of the compound word in question within a sentence:

Do not add a hyphen in a compound word after more, most, less, or least.

Less special compounds

Keep in mind, though, that “comparative or superlative modifiers” with “lesser,” “better,” or “best” do take hyphens when they precede the nouns they modify:

He is a lesser-known expert on that subject.

His father is a better-known expert on that subject.

His grandfather is the best-known expert on that subject.

So it might be helpful to memorize this rule as well if you think you might confuse these words with their hyphen-averse counterparts noted above:

Add a hyphen in a compound word after lesser, better, or best when that compound word precedes the noun it modifies.

One way to remember

Another option is to simply drum into your brain “more, most, less, least” over and over again, since this is the group that defies the standard rule related to hyphenating compound words that precede the nouns they modify. When I was a kid, I’d repeat facts for tests while I rode my bike around my neighborhood. Just imagining my 10-year-old self repeating “more, most, less, least” while she pedals along helps me remember that each of these four super-special words is even more special because it never, ever takes a hyphen. It also helps to consider the saying “more or less” as a reminder that both “more” and “less” (and their counterparts “most” and “least”) are in this unique group.
Keep the Sunny Days Comin’
By: Nana Kim
Tags: New York, Poetry, New York City, New Stand

AJ Morgan Sunglasses (Also available in a ton of other styles)

Still haven’t found the perfect pair of uber flattering shades? Considering squinting your way through the rest of summer?

Don’t quit the search just yet, fellow city dweller. Come stop by one of our stores and we’ll help you find the one that was made to sit on your face.

Instax 8 Instant Camera (Also available in Blue, Pink, Black, Raspberry)

An iconic Tumblr artifact. Likely the most photographed Polaroid ever released. If you’ve never owned such a kawaii camera in your life, did you even live at all?

SunnyLife Carnival Kite

Forget — just for a minute — how old you are, channel that inner child, and go fly a kite. Because there’s nothing quite like running in an empty field with a multicolored nylon bird sailing high behind you.

Even if that’s not your idea of a good time, you’re bound to have a niece or nephew out there who’d love the heck out of this thing. Think about the children!

COOLA Spray Sunscreen SPF30 in Pina Colada

Sunblock in a can brought to you in the fruitiest flavor of all. Plus, this outdoor must-have is made with certified organic ingredients like cucumber, algae and strawberry extracts, so your skin stays nourished and hydrated #SprayAllDay. “Have your fun in the sun and then some.”

Standard Baggu

Made of 100% ripstop nylon, able to hold 50 pounds worth of stuff (yas), and available in every aesthetic, everyone needs a practical-chic Baggu. Plus, it’s machine washable. Emergency chocolate melt onto everything? Bottle of sunblock lotion leak everywhere? (Should’ve gotten the spray *wink*) Nooo problem. Just pop it in the washer, and BOOM, good as new.
From Team Teacher to Team Player
By: Barbara L. Ciccarelli
Tags: Teaching, Self Improvement, Supervisor, Education, Training

There are those who will tell you that there are many disadvantages to team teaching:

“Some teachers are rigid personality types or may be wedded to a single method.”

Although my supervisor had been teaching these course for years and they had a certain structure, he seemed quite happy with me bringing up new ideas or approaches. In fact, very early on he asked me to put together some new course material or keep it in mind. If I did a draft of something, he would give feedback very promptly and then we would discuss the best final versions. I liked that there seemed to be a lot of process in the job.

“Some simply dislike the other teachers on the team.”

My mentality from the beginning fought against a negative attitude toward the supervisor because I was very happy to find myself in this particular job which combined many of my professional interests. Now that it has been two years, I feel that we know each other pretty well and have a good working relationship.

“Some do not want to risk humiliation and discouragement at possible failures.”

I can understand this sentiment because with team teaching, especially if you are in front of your supervisor, you risk embarrassment when you are trying things for the first time and don’t have much experience to draw from — not teaching itself but the material, activities and methods. Also, as I said earlier, I hadn’t team taught for many years and that took getting used to as well. There is a big difference from your classroom being your own domain and sharing that space.

“Some fear they will be expected to do more work for the same salary.”

I wouldn’t say the team teaching involved a lot more work though you have to coordinate with someone you don’t know very well and be flexible with their work habits.

“Others are unwilling to share the spotlight or their pet ideas or to lose total control.”

Sharing the spotlight I don’t think was a problem for either of us, but the team teaching was a challenge because as I said earlier I brought 26 years of teaching experience to the table, and even though we might be equals as lecturers, I was basically shadowing my supervisor. It was not usual for me to be in a subordinate role, but it wasn’t really a problem for me either as I saw this as a new opportunity to learn something, that being the course content and requirements. Rather than good cop bad cop like in my first team teaching experience, the impression the students got I thought was clearly that he was the authority. This was probably the case because the students soon learned that he could best answer the many questions they had about the course. Furthermore, it was clear that he had the final say in all matters because he was the coordinator of the minor.
How do you remove a specific item from an array in JavaScript?
Tags: Angular, JavaScript, Programming, Front End Development, Web Development

How do you remove a specific item from an array in JavaScript?

JavaScript Basics

Below are some ways we can remove items from an array.

1. Removing item

let value = 500 let arr = [100, 200, 30, 40, 500, 3000] arr = arr.filter(item => item !== value) console.log(arr)

// [ 100, 200, 30, 40, 3000 ]

2. Removing multiple items

The better advantage of this method is we can remove multiple items at once.

let remove = [20, 30] let arr = [10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 30] arr = arr.filter(item => !forDeletion.includes(item))

console.log(arr)

// [ 10, 40, 50 ]

3. Using the array Splice method

First we need to find the index of the array element which we want to remove using indexOf and we can use splice

The splice() method changes the contents of an array by removing existing elements and/or adding new elements.

const data = [20, 50, 90]; console.log(data); const index = data.indexOf(50);

if (index > -1) {

data.splice(index, 1);

} // data = [20, 90]

console.log(data);

4. Using the Underscore js

This library does support the without method which will remove specific values.

_.without([10, 20, 10, 0, 30, 10, 40], 0, 10); // => [20, 30, 40]

5. Using the Lodash

We can use lodash _.pull (mutate array), _.pullAt (mutate array) or _.without (doesn't mutate array),

var data1 = ['aa', 'bb', 'cc', 'dd']

_.pull(array1, 'cc')

console.log(data1) // ['aa', 'bb', 'dd'] var data2 = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']

_.pullAt(data2, 0)

console.log(data2) // ['b', 'c', 'd'] var data3 = ['i', 'j', 'k', 'l']

var data3 = _.without(data3, 'i') // ['j', 'k', 'l']

console.log(data3) // ['i', 'j', 'k', 'l']

References

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5767325/how-can-i-remove-a-specific-item-from-an-array

Are you preparing for interviews? Here are frequently asked interview questions in Angular. It covers the Latest interview questions for Angular and Frontend development. Let’s check how many of these questions you can answer?
Project Management: Stop Robbing Peter to Pay Paul
By: Quentin Pierrot
Tags: Work, Best Practices, Project Management, Technical Debt, Anticipation

Project Management: Stop Robbing Peter to Pay Paul

How spending more time on first decisions can help you derive more flexible systems while keeping your sanity

Anatomy of a Catch-22

If you buy a house that is an hour’s drive from where you work, no matter how well you optimize your time, you’ll undoubtedly lose 2 hours per (work) day. If you engage with the wrong partner, no matter how zen you are, you’ll eventually live in a nightmare. If you chose a job that doesn’t suit you, whatever the ex-post narratives you’ll reassure yourself with, odds are great that you’ll hit a dead-end.

Because we navigate through time in only one direction, our entire life is path dependent and first decisions set the course. There are foundational choices that narrow the universe of possibilities, in such a way that subsequent decisions are anecdotal. Ironically, those often need to be made at an early-stage and under strong uncertainty.

This statement also holds true in the context of corporate projects. Most of the time, the first project decision will be more structuring than the second one, the second one more than the third one, and so does the fourth one. Moreover, many projects involve cross-department collaboration, which rhymes with dependencies, sequential processes and monolithic planning.

As a consequence of this:

The ability to change course, which would be linearly decreasing with time (green curve below) if all decisions had equal “structuring” consequences, is convexly decreasing (blue curve).

which would be linearly decreasing with time (green curve below) if all decisions had equal “structuring” consequences, (blue curve). Cost of change (red curve) convexly increases.

If we were to allocate time and energy to the most critical decisions in terms of impact/degree of irreversibility — which seems to be a wise purpose — , we would, therefore, focus on projects that are in the initiation phase, even more when convexity is involved. But that’s usually not what we do.

Instead, we tend to focus on short-term emergencies that are related to landing projects for which the die is in large part already cast. Therefore, we do not leave enough time and energy to make sound first decisions in the projects that are in the initiation phase.

And here is the Catch-22: with a reduced time and energy budget and under lower perceived emergency, we make a number of flawed decisions in new projects (underestimation of complexity, insufficient involvement of key stakeholders/decision-makers, unrealistic user requirements, etc.). Those decisions end up generating delay and emergencies in their closing phase, preventing us from focusing on the fundamental choices to be made for the new projects. And we can loop in this cycle for years.
Access The Yellow Brick Road Here:
By: Ariel Dresser
Tags: Spirituality, Literatura, Writing, Growth, Poetry

Yellow Brick Road & Down The Rabbit Hole

Maybe if just to tie my heart in a noose. So to can't fall loose. So it can't breathe the in's and out's of Men's…
8 Effective Ways to Boost Your Child’s Financial IQ
By: Abraham Hispraise
Tags: Children, Money Management, Money, Finance, Parenting

Disciplined, financially-educated children will, in turn, produce self-controlled adults who can manage their finances properly.

Photos from freepik created by brgfx

In a recent article on Forbes, here’s what Beth Kobliner, author of the New York Times bestseller Get a Financial Life, and a member of the President’s Advisory Council on Financial Capability, had to say.

“Look at the mortgage crisis and how many families lost their homes — 3.9 million foreclosures. Look at the amount of money — $1.1 trillion — we owe in student loan debt. The amount — $845 billion — we owe in credit card debt. It’s pretty clear that adults don’t know much about money. To help the next generation avoid the mistakes of their elders, and to live financially fit lives, they need to be taught the essentials about money.”

These days, it is easy to find young adults who are either uncertain or carefree about their financial future, with almost zero saving and investment habits, working 9-to-5 jobs, and hopping from one loan scheme or credit card debt to another.

On the other hand, there are other young adults, relatively rare, who could even be more youthful than our first category. This second group of adults also work 9-to-5 jobs, but have some money left in their salary accounts each month, are growing businesses or side hustles, and run savings accounts along with it.

The difference between these two groups in our illustration lies in how they manage their finances and what kind of financial background they are exposed to from an early age.

You see, although it’s possible to learn how to manage one’s finances at any age, it’s usually better to do so from an early age.

Learning to manage finances from a young age not only makes the process more fun and less stressful but also exciting due to the lack of financial pressure at that early stage of life.

Exposing a child to financial literacy from a young age is essential for a lot of different reasons.

One of these reasons is that it can increase the chances that they will begin to manage their finances properly earlier than later, and as a result, end up better positioned financially by the time they are adults.

One of these reasons is that it can increase the chances that they will begin to manage their finances properly earlier than later, and as a result, end up better positioned financially by the time they are adults.

There are several different ways to achieve this. We will only look at a few of the critical ones here.
Leaving
By: Allan Rae, Alto
Tags: One Line Poetry Prompt, Writing, Chalkboard, Poetry, Leaving

Your Turn

Please share your own one-line poem on the word “leaving”. Either as a response to this post, or if you prefer to write it as a stand alone piece, just make sure to leave a link to it in the response section below.

FYI: Responding to a prompt adds you to the notification list.
Find Courses More Easily
By: Dennis Tseng
Tags: Ntu, Shiny, Herokuapp, R, Course

This is a place for articles related to R, data analysis, and data journalism.

Follow
Market analysis of June 13, 2019
Tags: Crypto, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Market Analysis, Cryptocurrency

Conclusion

BTC and ETH are in ranges. Our advice? Be patient and follow the evolution of prices according to the supports and resistances indicated above ! we advise you to wait for a support or a resistance break and to reassess the situation.

Note: breaks must be accompanied by a high volume, otherwise it could indicate false breaks whose sole purpose is to trap traders!

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For any question, our team will be happy to answer you on our support which is open 7/7 days.

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Shadows in autumn. I looked out the window: shadows…
By: Afshan Nabi
Tags: Autumn, Misanthropy, Silence, Poetry, Shadow

Photo by Slawek K on Unsplash

I looked out the window:

shadows stretched across the road.

Like traps.

Straight as tree trucks, branched like branches.

Dark as darkness.

Cutting across the sunlit road.

Abruptly, completely, at regular intervals.

The road was empty of people and cars.

Everyone was trapped and nobody was left to walk the roads

It was a disaster —

It was soothing —

the emptiness of the bright roads,

the absence of the throbbing sound of cars,

that drilled into my ears,

keeping me awake at night

irritating me,

like tiny insects crawling onto my skin.

I wish the shadow would take all the cars,

swallow all the city,

leave only sunlit leaves,

the autumn breeze,

Leave the quiet —

quiet enough to hear the scraping of the leaves against the pavement

leaves caught in a whirlwind, round and round, dizzying.
Introducing Deep Learning Sessions Lisbon
By: Lucas Soares
Tags: Deep Learning, Programming, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Neural Networks

Introducing Deep Learning Sessions Lisbon

An Artificial Intelligence meetup hub in the middle of sunny Lisbon.

The Deep Learning revolution that took over the world in the last few years has changed the landscape of computation. The fascination with this technology is not restricted to academia or industry and people all around the globe have developed a growing interest in understanding the inner workings of these models.

Here in Portugal, this transformation has been as strong as ever and a while back a group of curious students and AI enthusiasts created the “Deep Learning Sessions” meetup group — A community in Lisbon that revolves around the intriguing challenge of unraveling the mysteries of Deep Learning by hosting free events to gather experts to discuss the field and share their experience.

How It All Started

The founders of our group passed us the torch after leaving to pursue their academic careers. The original creators of the group were:

Cátia Fortunato

Cátia is a biomedical engineer that found her true passion in the endless task of understanding how the brain works. In the beginning of the year, she moved to not-so-sunny London, to pursue a Ph.D. in Neuroscience where she is using computational models to enhance brain-computer interfaces. Her free time is split between climbing, sailing, and occasional dancing.

João Carvalho

João is a science enthusiast with a passion for the intersection between machine learning and biomedical technology. Currently, as a first-year Ph.D. student in the Institute for Machine Learning at ETH Zürich, he is working on improving generalizability and interpretability in supervised and semi-supervised models, as well as bringing state-of-the-art models into medical applications. His hobbies include avid gaming, guitar playing, and reading!
Find the Maximum Sum of a Contiguous Subarray
By: Teiva Harsanyi
Tags: Programming, Coding, Java, Arrays, Algorithms

Problem

Maximum sum of a contiguous subarray: InterviewBit

Find the contiguous subarray within an array (containing at least one number) which has the largest sum. For example given the array [-2, 1,-3, 4, -1, 2, 1, -5, 4] , the contiguous subarray [4, -1, 2, 1] has the largest sum = 6. For this problem, return the maximum sum.

Solving Process

Brute Force Solution

If we don’t take enough time to think about the fundamentals of this problem, the first solution we may think of is the brute force one.

The idea would simply be to test a subarray by removing either the first or the last element.

To avoid having to compute each time the sum of a subarray, we could keep a count variable initialized from the initial array and updated throughout the algorithm.

First, we need a function to compute the sum of all elements in an array:

The core algorithm could be implemented both iteratively or recursively. For the sake of this example, let’s implement it using recursion:

At the end of the function, we return the maximum value between:

The current count

The subarray without the first element

The subarray without the last element

Let’s take a look at the time complexity. For each element, we recurse two times. This means the time complexity is O(2^n). Indeed, the time complexity of a recursive function that makes multiple calls is O(b^depth) with b the number of times each recursive call branches. Meanwhile, the space complexity is O(n) due to the recursive implementation.

This complexity may remind us of the basic Fibonacci problem which can be efficiently solved using dynamic programming. Yet, in this case, it is not necessary to implement something that complex.

Let’s take a closer look at the problem and see if we were not missing something.

Kadane’s Algorithm

Let’s take a concrete example with the following input:

4, -1, 6, -100, 5

Here, we can directly say the maximum sum is 9. But what’s the reason to keep -1 but not -100 in the maximum subarray? Obviously, because in this context, keeping -100 would just reduce the maximum possible sum.

The solution is to keep a counter and to increment it with each element. If at some point the counter is negative, there is no need to keep track of the past. We erase the counter and we just move on to the next element. This solution is known as the Kadane’s algorithm.

Let’s see a possible implementation in Java:

As we can see, the solution is very simple but simplicity comes with practice. However, it was absolutely mandatory to understand the fundamentals of the problem to solve it.
Майнинг обеспечения консенсуса: 9 шагов — и мы у цели
By: Bitbon System
Tags: Майнинг, Consensus, Bitbon, Mining

The Bitbon System is a large-scale infrastructure project, which represents a decentralized platform for Contributing. https://www.bitbon.space/en/home

Follow
Most Data Problems are not “Big Data” Problems
By: Thomas Nield
Tags: Sql, Big Data, 97 Things, Analytics, Data

When the “big data” buzzword peaked in 2015, I remember NoSQL, Hadoop, MongoDB, and other unstructured data technologies being touted as the future of analytics. Many organizations started collecting data faster than they could organize and store it, so they simply dumped it on a cluster and scaled horizontally as needed. Many companies put enormous expense into migrating off relational databases like MySQL and onto “big data” platforms like Apache Hadoop.

Amidst this movement, I was teaching an O’Reilly online training on SQL. I had one participant suggest that relational databases and SQL might be a legacy technology. If the lack of horizontal scaling was not enough reason, relational databases have all this pesky overhead to structure data in a normalized fashion, as well as enforce data validation and primary/foreign keys. The internet and connectivity of devices caused an explosion of data, so scalability became the selling point of NoSQL and “big data”.

The irony is that SQL interfaces were added to these “big data” platforms, and this happened for a reason. Analysts found NoSQL languages difficult and wanted to analyze data in a relational data fashion. A great majority of data problems are best modeled as relational database structures. An ORDER has a CUSTOMER and a PRODUCT associated with it. It just makes sense these pieces of information should be normalized in separate tables rather than a blob of JSON. Even better, there’s peace of mind knowing the database software will validate an ORDER and check if the CUSTOMER and PRODUCT are in fact existing, rather than let data corruption quietly creep in due to bugs on the front-end.

The truth is most data problems are not “big data” problems. Anecdotally, 99.9% of problems I’ve encountered are best solved with a traditional relational database.

There are definitely valid cases to use NoSQL platforms, especially when an enormous amount of unstructured data has to be stored (think social media posts, news articles, and web scrapes). But with operational data, relational databases force you to think carefully about how your data model works and to get it right the first time. It is rare that operational data of this nature gets so large a relational database cannot be scaled.

I will leave you with this table to help aid your SQL versus NoSQL decisions:
Point-Free JavaScript
By: Emre Yilmaz
Tags: JavaScript, Programming, Functional Programming, Technology, Software Engineering

Point-Free JavaScript

Composable array method usage with functional programming

Photo by Bannon Morrissy on Unsplash

JavaScript started to gain mainstream attraction around 2009. Around that time, we got the high-performance v8 engine. A few months later, Node.js convinced us to take JavaScript seriously and then AngularJS stepped up front-end development to another level.

But what we are interested in in this story are the functional array methods introduced with ES5.

In 2009, JavaScript had some improvements like strict mode, JSON support, and functional array methods with ES5. Years later, React kicked in and introduced JavaScript developers to the functional programming paradigm.

More and more people started to use array methods like map , filter , reduce , every , some , etc.

The advantages of using these methods are immutability and enable coders to write declarative code. All those are great but the question is: “Do we use these methods effectively?”

I will show you how to get the most out of these methods using functional programming technics. Also, I will use close-to-real-world examples. I don’t believe in counter or foo-bar examples.

For the sake of simplicity, I’m not going to cover every detail or edge case. I’m going to hardcode some parts like parameters.
Sağ-Sol Çatışmasının Yeni Dinamikleri (1): Politik Doğruculuk ve İfade Özgürlüğü Tartışması
By: Engin Onuk
Tags: Türkçe, Sol, Sağ, Ifade Özgürlüğü, Politika

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The 12-Step Social Media Checklist
By: Larry Kim
Tags: Checklist, Entrepreneurship, Business Strategy, Social Media, Marketing

The infographic below shows a social media checklist of steps on how to write the perfect posts.

Is the message educational or entertaining?

Is the voice correct?

Is it too long?

Is the URL correct?

Should I target a specific audience with this message?

Did I use the right keywords and hashtags to maximize exposure?

How many times have I already posted something today?

Did I spell check?

Will I be okay with absolutely anyone seeing this?

Is this reactive communication or is it well thought-out?

Did I make the most of visual content — images, videos, slides?

Did I make the most of my update text — headline formulas, polls, quizzes?
Soma and the Psychedelic Origins of Religious Experience
By: Raja Choudhury
Tags: Spirituality, Consciousness, Religion, Halucinogens, Soma

In a talk I gave in 2015, I explored the origins of Vedic and Zoroastrian religious thinking in the Soma/Haoma Schools in the Indus Saraswati Valley, Egypt, Turkmenistan and Turkey as well as the use of Psychedelic Plant Wisdom across ancient India and all over the World. As Marijuana gets legalized in many countries and new scientific research into Psilocybin and Ayahuasca/DMT at Imperial College and elsewhere shows amazing results for depression, addiction, and well-being, I think it is time once again for us to explore our relationship with plants and with the Earth especially as we have become so disconnected from nature and will continue to do so as 50% of humanity moves into cities in the coming years.
Bütün Çocuklar İyidir
By: Rüstem Yurteri
Tags: Nihan Kaya, Psikoloji, Türkçe, Çocuk, Kitap

in Both Sides of the Table
I Tied The Knot With My Partner In A Foreign Land During This Pandemic
By: Cheshta Mann
Tags: Relationships, Marriage, Love, Advice, Life

I Tied The Knot With My Partner In A Foreign Land During This Pandemic

And this is what you can learn from my big day’s experiences.

Photo credits: Prisma Photography Studio

After dating for almost 2 years, my partner and I decided to take our relationship to the next level. Yes, we wanted to marry each other in the year when everything was falling apart.

Despite our imperfections, we knew we were perfect for each other and were in no mood to let our wedding be affected by these weird times.

In the first week of November, while we both were on our way back to home from work, my husband asked me about my thoughts on getting married. Even we both were on the same page, I had to pinch myself to ensure if this was happening for real.

And without being over-dramatic, I, with those twinkling eyes, instantly nodded my head with excitement! Now, the only question that we both were struggling with was ‘how shall we make this happen’?

This was the time when we didn’t want to risk our jobs, and fly to India to tie the knot. We didn’t want to take a chance and get stuck there. Also, we didn’t want to postpone it to the next year. We were in no mood to give the authority to this pandemic to decide on our wedding date.

We wanted to make this happen by the end of this year, and unluckily, my work and study commitments had given us a limited time window of organizing and managing everything. I had taken one of my exams in the second week of November, and the start date for the next course was November 28. So, all we had were two weeks to organize our wedding.

Somewhere, back in our minds, we knew that we had to get it all done, from shopping to arranging stuff for the wedding, in this limited time span.

So, after deciding that we both wanted to marry each other, at most, by the end of this year, and discussing it with other respective families, we got some good dates where we could have our civil ceremony as well as religious wedding as per our Indian traditions.

We applied for the marriage license, and booked civil ceremony on November 27. Though we had planned to have both civil and religious ceremonies on the same day, but that was not possible as the temple was pre-booked by some other couple on the same day.

We had the option to go for the civil ceremony alone, and then do the religious wedding in India. If it was the latter, then ‘when’ would have been a question for the coming days or months. So, we decided to take the plunge and chose different dates for both ceremonies.

Even if my wedding happened in an unusual manner during this pandemic, here are a few things that I learnt from it.