fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Doctors are becoming happier with their work life
By: Stanford Medicine
Tags: Careers, Healthcare, Physician Wellness, Burnout, Stanford Scope

Doctors are becoming happier with their work life

By Mandy Erickson

Finally, we have some good news about physician discontent: A recent survey found they’re feeling better about their jobs than three years earlier.

About 44 percent of physicians who responded to a nationwide survey between October 2017 and March 2018 reported at least one symptom of burnout. In 2014 that number was about 54 percent.

Tait Shanafelt, MD, the director of Stanford’s WellMD Center and an advocate for physician wellness, offers some possible explanations: The unhappiest doctors have left the profession; 2014 was a bad year because of health system mergers and new administrative requirements; and, most optimistically, health care organizations are improving working conditions.

The research appears in Mayo Clinic Proceedings. Shanafelt explains in our press release:

Over the last couple of years, we have begun to think about the well-being of health care professionals through the lens of the system and practice environment rather than through the lens of personal resilience. There are now large-scale national efforts as well as efforts at the institutional level in many organizations to reduce physician burnout and promote physician well-being… We can’t say for certain, but it’s looking like those efforts may be starting to make a difference.

While the downtick in burnout is encouraging, physicians are still less satisfied with work than people in other fields, even non-physician types who work long hours. Other professions showed a burnout rate of about 28 percent, a level that has held steady since 2011, when Shanafelt started conducting the triennial survey.

Not all medical specialties saw an increase in workplace happiness. Physicians in general surgery and obstetrics and gynecology reported little improvement when it comes to job burnout.

If nothing else, surveys by Shanafelt and other researchers have proven that physician burnout is a problem worth addressing.

“Anytime a study came out on physician burnout, people would say, ‘Well that’s true for all workers; everybody is stressed out; doctors are no different,’” he said. “There was a need for an ongoing nationwide study that would compare physicians with other workers in the United States.”

Image by Westfrisco
Elon Musk: First Mars City Will Take 1,000 Starships, 20 Years
Tags: Future Technology, Space, Mars, Elon Musk, Technology

Musk believes creating a sustainable city on the red planet requires transporting a million tons of cargo from Earth over two decades.

By Matthew Humphries

Elon Musk is never one to shy away from answering the difficult questions regarding his ambitious projects, which is why we now have a delivery time for the first Mars city.

As TechCrunch reports, earlier this week Musk spoke at an Air Force Pitch Day in San Francisco, which offer investment to interesting startups that could advance military technology. The talk and questions that followed touched on Musk’s business interests including Tesla and SpaceX, but also resulted in further discussion on Twitter.

The tweeted questions stemmed from the claim each SpaceX Starship launch would only cost $2 million, because as Musk explained, “the economics have to be something like that to build a self-sustaining city on Mars.”

As the discussion continued, Musk shared further details in response to the questions posed. We now know that Musk believes he’ll require 1,000 Starships in order to create the first sustainable Mars city. The reason so many are required is due to the two planets only aligning once every two years and the fact each Starship is limited to 150 tons of cargo.

As to how long the city would take to build, Musk also has an answer. He believes the city will require a million tons of resources transported from Earth, so using those 1,000 Starships it would take roughly 20 years to complete. In other words, Musk could be living on Mars before 2050, assuming he’s capable of making the journey in his 70's.
This Shirt May Not be Bulletproof — but Tesla’s Sense of Humor Might Be
By: Steve Berry
Tags: Tesla, Elon Musk, Cybertruck, Marketing, Humor

Tesla isn’t a company to underestimate a little self-deprecating humor.

Remember how the supposedly bulletproof glass of the Cybertruck window shattered? Here’s a refresher:

How many other people do you know that could get up on stage, fail spectacularly in front of a live audience (and the entire internet), and then with a straight face, say to their marketing team “Let’s put that on a shirt and sell it.”

So they did.

The $45 asking price is a bit much for a t-shirt, but it is 100% cotton. More importantly though, it’s the definition of bold marketing; it’s smart, genuine, and if you ask me, pretty hilarious. But the world has come to expect that of Elon Musk these days.

It accomplishes three things in one fell swoop:

It piggybacks off the viral fame of the Cybertruck’s window gaffe, It says “we’re not afraid to fail, as long as we learn (and therefore profit) from it,” And it reminds the world that there’s not a more bulletproof sense of humor than being able to laugh at yourself.

We can be sure Elon is laughing all the way to the bank right about now.

Update: Case-in-point, since the time of this posting, the shirt has sold out. Twice in two days.
They made my life incredible…
By: Admir Kurman
Tags: Hip Hop, Star Wars, Spacex, Jk Rowling, Elon Musk

“It’s still magic even if you know how it’s done.” - Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

Humankind’s history is rich and densely populated by people who did incredible things in various areas of life and improved the world. Starting from prophets Sarah and Moses and all famous persons lived far before and after Genghis Khan and those who lived in later periods as Charles Darwin, Nelson Mandela, Steve Jobs and those who still makes us happy as J.K. Rowling.

All these people in a way made our lives better, easier and undoubtedly their projects containing a super important “human centred” ingredient led us to consequential and existential life and being.

The changes are always difficult but in the majority of cases they are for the best, sometimes for us, it may be hard to adapt them and they push us beyond our comfort zones, however, after all, we end up with quite great accomplishments in our life activity. Still, we’ve got plenty of other cases when the humankind had an epic fail in the result of the invention as an atomic bomb, all sorts of weapon and production of plastic. In the process of making, if we do things bearing in mind ecology and protection of the planet, a human being may excel, get better opportunities and a better world for future generations.

“People today have forgotten they’re really just a part of nature. Yet, they destroy the nature on which our lives depend. They always think they can make something better. Especially scientists. They may be smart, but most don’t understand the heart of nature. They only invent things that, in the end, make people unhappy. Yet they’re so proud of their inventions. What’s worse, most people are, too. They view them as if they were miracles. They worship them. They don’t know it, but they’re losing nature. They don’t see that they’re going to perish. The most important things for human beings are clean air and clean water.” — said Akira Kurosawa, Japanese film director.

Like any other person in life, I was also influenced by the deeds of a bunch of prominent persons and influencers. We, human beings always learn from each other and make lessons learned from the achievements and inventions of others. That starts in childhood and in a way affects on the evolution of our characters and makes our own story.

I’d like to recall Oprah Winfrey’s words said during Golden Globe in 2018, “I’ve interviewed and portrayed people who’ve withstood some of the ugliest things life can throw at you, but the one quality all of them seem to share is an ability to maintain hope for a brighter morning, even during our darkest nights.”

I’ve got top 10 personas and stories that shook my life and for sure made it incredible. I would rather call them brands that influenced my thinking and life perception and they definitely found their place in my heart.
In communist Romania where I grew up, it was really cool to have a Secret Police Officer in the…
By: The Vivi
Tags: Communism, God, Secret Police, Romania, Angels

In communist Romania where I grew up, it was really cool to have a Secret Police Officer in the family/as a friend. We felt closer to our “Leader and Father” — Nicolae Ceausescu — if we knew someone who was (sometimes remotely) in some way connected to the leader of Romania.

At that time, everyone was afraid of listening to foreign radio stations, read religion/occult/politics etc books, speak against Ceausescu’s regime, even making jokes was a terrible thing to do.

The way I have felt God for a long time has been like through that Secret Police connection in the family: I would be connected, I knew more than others, I had less social fears (but had other fears instead, mainly of the officer…)

So, God has been this punisher who secretly loved and forgave me using his angel officers.

However, in 1989, Nicolae Ceausescu, our communist leader — our father as he used to call himself — was killed by the communists close to him, without a fair trail.

The Secret Police are still around, running Romania.
The Effects of Mass Hysteria
By: Rum Ham
Tags: Communism, Politics, The Crucible, Mass Hysteria, Hysteria

While reading the Crucible I noticed that something felt off about the town of Salem. There was a sense that something was lurking in the background hurting and traumatizing the residents of Salem. In the novel, many accuse the devil, but in reality, it was the mass hysteria that truly caused these problems and the residents and they start to think irrationally. They start refusing to listen to reason and eventually it ends up killing innocent people. The mass hysteria caused them to truly believe that the Devil was attacking Salem. Neighbors started turning on each other and relationships were destroyed.

I connected this to the Red Scare that occurred in the United States of America during the 1950s, which was the fear that communism had infiltrated American society and was spreading, similar to witchcraft. McCarthyism, named after U.S senator Joseph McCarthy, is the practice of accusing others of treason without proper evidence. Many Americans were accused of communism by their neighbors. This is very similar to how the girls were able to accuse women in Salem of witchcraft without any real evidence proving that they communicated with the Devil. However, the mass hysteria had already taken over and many people blindly believed the girls causing the death of many innocent women. Many of the lives of these innocent people were disrupted because of these accusations. The Crucible and Red Scare are examples that prove how mass hysteria can disrupt society and ruin the lives of many people.
What is the difference between private, personal, and collective property?
By: The Gay Motherland
Tags: Private Property, Communism, Socialism, Personal Property, Anarchism

This is a topic that leads to a lot of confusion because of the way that private property is discussed in capitalist society.

What is private property?

Private property is anything which is owned and profited off of by someone other than the people who work on it. Private businesses fall into this category. The business owners make money simply by owning the business, even if they are not involved with its operations in any way. The workers do not have control over what they create nor any profits they generate.

What is personal property?

Personal property is simply the stuff that you use and own. Your car, house, toothbrush, computer and furniture are all examples of personal property. Socialists and communists do not want to abolish this.

What is collective property?

Collective property can take many forms and consists of stuff that is owned collectively either through workers or the greater community.

Worker owned cooperatives are an example of collective property. In such cooperatives, the workers of a business own it together. Decisions are made by the workers and they reap the profits of their own work.

Another option is state ownership, provided that the state is democratic in nature. In this situation, many socialists believe that the people own the property together through the state. Examples of this would include state owned parks and state owned industries, such as single payer healthcare.

Other forms of collective property include union ownership (syndicalism) and community ownership (the community owns the property together without the need for a state). Socialists generally prefer some combination of these forms of collective property depending on their individual leanings.

Why do socialists want to abolish private property?

Socialists reject the idea that workers or the community should have the majority of what they make taken away. Private property allows an individual to profit regardless of whether they contribute to a given property in any meaningful way. Socialists object to this concept on a fundamental level. Additionally, socialists believe that every person, by virtue of existing, deserves access to the basic necessities of life particular to them.

In this sense, when socialists talk about “seizing the means of production”, they mean abolishing private property, ranging from private land (owned by landlords) to private businesses (owned by the capitalist class).

In many societies, before capitalists and feudalists seized control of the means of production, nobody owned it and workers kept what they had produced collectively. We wish to move to a system where people are not exploited by a small group of others who own everything and where resources are distributed based on need, rather than greed. All leftists, including anarchists, communists, and other socialists, wish to abolish private property in favor of some combination of personal and collective property.

This is a modified article based on this post we previously used.
A cup of Coffee?
By: Vikram Yadav
Tags: Coffee, Love, Lovestory, Storytelling

Born in a family that was used to having tea every morning, I certainly loved my cup of coffee. I remember when I first tasted it, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. For starters, It was bitter and quite plain compared to the tea my family was so fond of.

But, with time, I grew fond of it. The bitter yet sweet taste, the creamy texture, a dose of caffeine. It was more than enough to kick me out of my morning slumber.

However, there was something special about these coffee beans. For some reason, these brown kidney-shaped beans reminded me of mitochondria. The powerhouse of the human cells, full of energy. These beans always motivated me to try harder, to get creative, to try something new.

Being the shy guy, I needed something like that or maybe someone like that. Just like the cream blends with coffee and changes its very taste, I needed someone with whom I can blend in, someone special who can change me. Always believing, that someone will one day find me.

Which might be the reason why I was never physically attracted to someone. This very question always had me. I used to ask myself, what type of person I wanted. Whom will I consider worthy of being the cream of my coffee? I never even had a preferred type to start with.

But did I really need a life partner, or did I simply needed someone who can understand me, accept me for who I am. Someone who could take all my negativity and filled me with positivity. Exactly, like the cream takes away the bitterness of coffee and gives it a new taste.

Covered in these thoughts, I was sitting in a local cafe, adding cream to my coffee when suddenly I heard a little clattering. I wasn’t sure of the direction, but the sound was clear. “It must be close by”, I thought. So, I turned around. As I was turning my head, I looked at the people around me, something was odd.

The cafe had 5 rows with 4 tables in each one, with a total sitting capacity of 80 people. It was the rush hour, the cafe was packed as usual. I was a regular and I hated the crowd, so I always sit in the last corner near the backdoor. The door was connected to a narrow alleyway, so it had little to none traffic. It was loud but at least nobody bothered me.

However, the clattering had my attention. So I turned around. I looked up and saw something shiny across the cafe. It took me a second to realize that it was a silver spoon clattering with a cup, on the table at the opposite corner of the cafe. As I tried to get a better view, I realized that despite the rush hour, for some odd reason, there was nobody sitting between us.

I had a clear view now, and I was curious. So I moved my eyes away from the cup, to look at the person, and that is when it happened…..
“Then let’s make it memorable.” (2)
By: Shannon Lucas
Tags: Emails, Love Story, Mental Health

Dearest Skinny,

I stomped my feet today and not only did it lessen the fear of departicalization but also of moving throughout the day. But to be completely honest, I now fear my feet will fall off, or, I’ll accidentally get that soap on them and I’ll have to cut them off. I don’t know if stomping my ankle stumps will have the same effect. I just don’t know. When you’re around you help me with these immediate existential questions, and I love you for that and for walking in the rain with me all those years ago.

(I’ve spent quite a few minutes pondering how to start a second paragraph.) Parentheses are a reminder that imperfections are a part of life. I’m glad you started getting bits and pieces of yourself back. On a maybe-related note, I was saddened by how little we were communicating. I tried a few times to text you in the previous months and nothing much sprung up in the way of conversation, but I understand how people move on, or move at a pace different than my own, and that’s life and whatever and it happens and it’s okay — but we’ve known each other for six years now, and when we come together we do well together.

After my grandma died, after I sat by myself at her funeral for two days and then went home and asked the universe if I am alone, that’s when I started thinking how it would be nice to have someone with whom to go to weddings and funerals. The thing is, as I was filling out the profile, I started noticing some peculiarities, such as my interest in watching an inordinate amount of movies, going for walks, bowling, and having quiet moments together. These are all things I like to do with not just anybody, but with you. They are made better with you. They are filled with more detail. I don’t know if the universe ever truly responds, but we’ve known each other for six years now and we keep coming together and doing well together. (I’ve spent quite a few minutes pondering closing sentences.) I think we should consider doing well together more often, because at this point it feels different than the others who move on through circumstance and pace. At this point, I think if we were to move on, I think we would be leaving something significant behind.

Love,

Man of Moon
“I Feel Comfortable When I’m With You”
By: Jeanice Felincia
Tags: Comfortable Person, Lovestory, Poetry, Depth Of Words

I do remember the exact time and feelings and all the surroundings. I could hear cek-gung-gung birds chirping, the crikets making sound, the leaves dancing and the wind blows softly.

I could recall it very clearly, we were in the middle of a pine forest

It was the second day of you staying in my home town, not planned at all

We were walking, trying to reach the waterfall, but it was too late so we didnt manage to do it that time

So we sat in a gazebo, sitting on a cold cement, and wiping all of those ants that were trying to hear our conversation

I could only understand 75% of your words.

Not sure if it’s because you talk so much, or is it because of the language barier that we had

However, I remember

You were telling me about your ring, that you would never take it off, and all of your reasons why

You were telling me; passionately, about your dreams, about your obsession with Tarzan, and gorilla

After a while, we were sitting in a silence, you look deep into my eyes, gazing, then those words coming out of your mouth,

“I feel comfortable talking to you. I feel comfortable when I’m with you”

I don’t understand the depth of that words yet at that time, because you will realize that not everyone could understand you as you grow older.
How long can you keep hatred in your heart?
By: Suresh Chandak
Tags: Stories, Love, Lovestory, Morals Stories, Moral

How long can you keep hatred in your heart?

A kindergarten teacher had decided to let her class play a game. The teacher told each child in the class to bring along a plastic bag containing a few potatoes. Each potato will be given a name of a person that the child hates. So the number of potatoes that a child will put in his/her plastic bag will depend on the number of people he/she hates.

So when the day came, every child brought some potatoes with the name of the people he/she hated. Some had 2 potatoes, some 3 while some up to 5 potatoes. The teacher then told the children to carry the potatoes in the plastic bag with them wherever they go for 1 week. Days after days passed, and the children started to complain due to the unpleasant smell let out by the rotten potatoes. Besides, those having 5 potatoes also had to carry heavier bags. After 1 week, the children were relieved because the game had finally ended.

The teacher asked: “How did you feel while carrying the potatoes with you for 1 week?” The children let out their frustrations and started complaining of the trouble that they had to go through having to carry the heavy and smelly potatoes wherever they go.

Then the teacher told them the hidden meaning behind the game. The teacher said: “This is exactly the situation when you carry your hatred for somebody inside your heart. The stench of hatred will contaminate your heart and you will carry it with you wherever you go. If you cannot tolerate the smell of rotten potatoes for just 1 week, can you imagine what is it like to have the stench of hatred in your heart for your lifetime?”

Moral: Throw away any hatred for anyone from your heart so that you will not carry burden for a lifetime. Forgiving others is the best attitude to take. Negativity about someone will keep peace of your mind away from you. Remember the good things about him/her, and let go of the hatred.
“Are you happy now?”
By: Jeanice Felincia
Tags: Writing, How To Be Happy, Love, Lovestory, Poetry

This is a question coming out of my mouth after a few months of not talking to you

“No, I’m not.”

I thought you find your happiness already because God has sent you someone that should’ve fill your void.

Then I ask you what do you do to make you happy?

“I could think of a million ways to be hard on myself, but I don’t have the answer to your simple question.”

Then you gave me a same question instead of an answer. I was confused when you ask how can I make you happy?

“It was a tough question for me too.” I answer.

“You don’t have to really do it of course, I just want to know how.”

Of course I am no one to do it for you anymore sweetie, but I don’t have the answer to that question too.

At this particular time, I am sure what to do to myself.

For almost 2 years, I was trying to give and give and give, and making sure what I gave is the best, and I’m giving mostly me, I tried to give the best version of myself for one only purpose, to make you happy, to help you open your eyes and see that you’re worth. You’re worth all the love, you’re worth of all of the happiness., you’re worth all of the best things. I was trying to prove it to you.

But when you told me you are not happy.

When you ask me how to make you happy.

It’s like a slap on my face. A punch even.

So that is the reason why you can’t see what I was trying gave you.

How can you feel loved, how can you be happy? You were too blind to see it yourself, thinking that you’re unworthy, and shuting down yourself, trying to prove yourself, being hard on yourself.

Not knowing how to make you happy.

How can anyone else give you happiness when you don’t know to receive?
I Hurt Another One
By: Jeanice Felincia
Tags: Writing, Still Love You, Poetry, Love Story

This one, he’s a nice guy.

Well, he made a couple mistake but it was mild.

He sent me flowers too, I know that’s not his thing but he was trying and that’s cute.

But, I know he’s not the one.

I told him to let me go 5 times, until he finally say yes, but still trying anyway.

Maybe it is my fault for not taking my own words seriously, because, you know, it feels good to be loved.

Pero,

I could learn how you feel through him.

He likes me so much, he even proposed to me, weird.

He’s willing to leave his country “just to be with you”, he said.

I know I might be everything he wanted, actually heard this a more than 5 times already, if you’re a womanizer, does this makes me a manizer as well?

It’s not too hard to find someone who likes me, but it is very hard to find someone that I like.

He was nice, he wants me, but.

He doesn’t listen like you do.

He doesn’t look at me like you do.

He doesn’t talk to me like you do.

He doesn’t understand the depth of my words like you do,

He doesn’t behave like you do.

He doesn’t think like you do.

He doesn’t dress like you do.

He doesn’t defend me like you do.

He doesn’t call me like you do.

He doesn’t have wisdom like you do.

He’s not an alpha like you do.

He said something you would’t say.

He told me to drive scooters for him, unlike you.

He’s always available, unlike you.

He can’t tame me like you could.

He’s not you.
“Hi Jeanice”
By: Jeanice Felincia
Tags: Writing, Lovestory, Poetry, Moving On

My heart was exploded.

My brain freezed.

My blood rushes.

I feel like the world is stopping.

This simple message, succeed to bring a hundred questions to my head

Enough to make me stare at the wall for a few days

Enough to turn me to power off mode

Enough to dysfunction my eyes, leaking it

“What do you want?”

“What are you trying to do?”

“Do you regret what you did to me back then just now?”

“Why did you text me?”

“Why didn’t I blocked you?”

“Why you didn’t text me through your new number?”

“Do you keep me in your old phone so she can’t see it?”

“There must be something going on between you and her.”

“What are you trying to make me feel?”

But the only thing I could say is: “Hello, is there anything I can help?”

Just like that, a total submisive for you.

I can’t express my feeling ever again, and there’s no reason to.

But you make me confuse. Why did you try to flirt with me?

Don’t you know I am not immune of your sweet talking?

Don’t you know how much I miss you?

Don’t you know how hard I’ve tried to put you out of my head?

But still, I can’t help not to feel excited, I admit.
I Know I Shouldn’t, But I Did Anyway
By: Jeanice Felincia
Tags: Writing, Jealousy, Love Story

We all know things that we should and shouldnt do, didnt we?

But sometime it’s easier to do something we shouldn’t do when we feel like nothing’s goes right anyway.

It was a lonely night, and I was scared, so I open up my phone and swiped right, and left, and right, and right, and right, not really sure of what I’m looking for.

Talked to this redneck, he was alright and this one is willing to fly just to see me, things I always dreamt about, only with different person in my head, but I was agree to see him anyway, in my head I was trying to replace some memory of a specific person.

I regret every decision that I made, this toxic person, literally is the opposite of what I wanted to see in a person, and he’s in front of me, thank God I’m still alive.

I keep comparing and comparing and comparing. I wanted to escape, but my mind is like a parasite, looking for its host.

Then in the same time I was daydreaming about one person, a bomb exploded right on top of my head.

I saw something I dont want to know, the truth.

I break down, jealousy fills my head and my soul in just a second.

And the only question keeps coming out of my head a thousand times: “Why?”

No mater what the answer is, I already know what to do. But sometimes we are stupid because of love, and I needed a company so bad, even a redneck is fine for this time.
A Blind Man’s Love
By: Suresh Chandak
Tags: Lovestory, Stories, Moral Stories, Love

A Blind Man’s Love

A man married a beautiful girl. He loved her very much. One day she developed a skin disease. Slowly she started to lose her beauty. It so happened that one day her husband left for a tour. While returning he met with an accident and lost his eyesight. However, their married life continued as usual. But as days passed she lost her beauty gradually. Blind husband did not know this and there was not any difference in their married life. He continued to love her and she also loved him very much. One day she died. Her death brought him a great sorrow. He finished all her last rites and wanted to leave that town.

A man from behind called and said, “Now how will you be able to walk all alone? All these days your wife used to help you”. He replied, “I am not blind. I was acting because if she knew l could see her skin condition due to a disease, it would have pained her more than her disease. I didn’t love her for her beauty alone, but I fell in love with her caring and loving nature. So I pretended to be blind. I only wanted to keep her happy”.

Moral: When you truly love someone, you will go to any extent to keep your loved one happy and sometimes it is good for us to act blind and ignore one another’s short comings in order to be happy. The Beauty will fade with time, but heart and soul will always be the same. Love the person for what he/she is from inside, not from outside.
TRAIN A CUSTOM YOLOv4 OBJECT DETECTOR (Using Google Colab)
Tags: Yolov4, Object Detection, Face Mask Detection, AI, Machine Learning

4) Create & upload the following files which we need for training a custom detector

a. Labeled Custom Dataset

b. Custom cfg file

c. obj.data and obj.names files

d. process.py file (to create train.txt and test.txt files for training)

I have uploaded my custom files for mask detection on my GitHub. I am working with 2 classes i.e. “with_mask” and “without_mask”.

Labeling your Dataset

Input image example (Image1.jpg)

Original Photo by Ali Pazani from Pexels

You can use any software for labeling like the labelImg tool.

labelImg GUI for Image1.jpg

I use an open-source labeling tool called OpenLabeling with a very simple UI.

OpenLabeling Tool GUI

Click on the link below to know more about the labeling process and other software for it:

NOTE: Garbage In = Garbage Out. Choosing and labeling images is the most important part. Try to find good-quality images. The quality of the data goes a long way towards determining the quality of the result.

The output YOLO format label file looks as shown below.

Image1.txt

4(a) Create and upload the labeled custom dataset “obj.zip” file to the “yolov4” folder on your drive

Put all the input image “.jpg” files and their corresponding YOLO format labeled “.txt” files in a folder named obj.

Create its zip file obj.zip and upload it to the yolov4 folder on your drive.
TRAIN A CUSTOM YOLOv4-tiny OBJECT DETECTOR (Using Google Colab)
Tags: Object Detection, Yolov4 Tiny, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Computer Vision

3) Create & upload the following files which we need for training a custom detector

a. Labeled Custom Dataset

b. Custom cfg file

c. obj.data and obj.names files

d. process.py file (to create train.txt and test.txt files for training)

I have uploaded my custom files for mask detection on my GitHub. I am working with 2 classes i.e. “with_mask” and “without_mask”.

Labeling your Dataset

Input image (Image1.jpg)

Original Photo by Ali Pazani from Pexels

You can use any software for labeling like the labelImg tool.

labelImg GUI for Image1.jpg

I use an open-source labeling tool called OpenLabeling with a very simple UI.

OpenLabeling Tool GUI

Click on the link below to know more about the labeling process and other software for it:

NOTE : Garbage In = Garbage Out. Choosing and labeling images is the most important part. Try to find good quality images. The quality of the data goes a long way towards determining the quality of the result.

The output YOLO format labeled file looks as shown below.

Image1.txt

3(a) Create and upload the labeled custom dataset “obj.zip” file to the “yolov4-tiny” folder on your drive

Put all the input image “.jpg” files and their corresponding YOLO format labeled “.txt” files in a folder named obj.

Create its zip file obj.zip and upload it to the yolov4-tiny folder on your drive.
Train a Hand Detector using Tensorflow 2 Object Detection API in 2021
By: Aalok Patwardhan
Tags: TensorFlow, Object Detection, Python, Machine Learning, Object Detection Api

Image by Author

Train a Hand Detector using Tensorflow 2 Object Detection API in 2021

We use Google Colab to train our custom object detector on a dataset of egocentric hand images Aalok Patwardhan Mar 5·6 min read

I wanted to make a computer vision application that could detect my hands in real-time. There were so many articles online that used the Tensorflow object detection API and Google Colab, but I still struggled a lot to actually get things working. The reason? Versions of libraries and code change!

Here is an example of using this detector in a virtual theremin:

Video by Author

This article should guide you on what works right now (March 2021).

I will assume you know basic Python skills, and enough know-how to look up what you don’t know from other tutorials! 😂

Things we will be using:

Google Colab

Tensorflow Object Detection API 2

The Egohands dataset: http://vision.soic.indiana.edu/projects/egohands/

Steps:

1. Set up environment

2. Download and Install Tensorflow 2 Object Detection API

3. Download dataset, generate tf_records

4. Download model and edit config

5. Train model and export to savedmodel format

Acknowledgements:

Big thanks to github users molyswu, datitran, and gilberttanner from whom I have taken some code and modified it slightly. Please do check out their tutorials as well.

1. Set up the environment

Open up a new Google Colab notebook, and mount your Google drive. You don’t need to, but it’s super handy incase you disconnect from your session, or just want to come back to it again.

from google.colab import drive

drive.mount('/content/drive') %cd /content/drive/MyDrive

We are now inside your Google Drive. (You may need to change that last %cd incase your drive mounts to a slightly different path).

Google Colab will be using Tensorflow 2, but just in case, explicitly do this:
Review: ION —Inside-Outside Net, 2nd Runner Up in 2015 COCO Detection (Object Detection)
By: Sik-Ho Tsang
Tags: Data Science, Object Detection, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning

3. From Vanilla RNN to 4-Direction IRNN

3.1. Vanilla RNN (Plain Tanh RNN)

In Vanilla RNN (Plain Tanh RNN), tanh is used for activation:

3.2. 4-Direction IRNN

And the team from Prof. Hinton suggested IRNN, which is a kind of RNN, that is composed of ReLUs and initialized with the identity matrix. (If interested, you can visit the paper in arXiv, the paper called “A Simple Way to Initialize Recurrent Networks of Rectified Linear Units”.)

Since it is done within an image, it is a lateral RNN. An example is as shown below. This step is repeated for each row (Right/Left) or column (Down/Up).

And a naive version of 4-direction IRNN using the ReLU-based IRNN is as follows:

The equations above are those for right-direction IRNN, similar for left, up and down directions. To make it efficient, authors simplify the above 4-direction IRNN. To simply, first, the hidden-to-output is merged into a single conv, i.e. concatenation followed by 1×1 convolution:

Second, the input-to-hidden is also simplified by 1×1 convolution and shared the conv with 4 recurrent transitions:

Finally, two modified IRNNs are stacked together to extract the context features:
What does simple design really mean?
By: Antoni Botev
Tags: UI, UX, User Experience, Design System, Product Design

Simple. It’s a cliche. We all pretend to aim for a simple design. It sounds the same as the “Make the world a better place!” phrase in Silicon Valley. Like “minimalistic” and “clear,” it seems like these hype words have the power to increase the value of our design just by spelling them. But what does simple design mean? Unfortunately, I think it means different things for different people.

It’s the same with beautiful. How can we define what’s beautiful? What’s the magic formula?

“Do you know that humans are attracted to things and people they find aesthetically pleasing, to the point that studies have shown that both adults and children are more likely to trust someone they find attractive? The same theory seems to be true of apps and websites: people are more likely to give a beautiful application the benefit of the doubt.” — How Visual Design Makes for Great UX

Yes, we trust the beautiful.

Every morning I browse the latest Dribbble shots. I love it. I believe the UI trends are born there. Some time ago, when I was more actively uploading, I was trying to understand what’s the pattern. What’s that thing that makes the shots from the popular page look so much better than the rest. We all feel it — yes, these look great! But can we explain why?

Have you ever wondered what genuinely makes our design beautiful? What’s the magic dust that makes the difference? Do you think you’re able to describe it and list some rules about it? Does it mean that someone following those guides could build a beautiful design? I don’t think so.

Well, there are tons of books and thoughts on this matter. It’s a philosophical question people have been thinking about for centuries, from Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, and Pythagoras to the present days.

The Analysis of Beauty by William Hogarth

“Attempts to define beauty can be divided into two main groups: theories that regard beauty as a form of order and theories that regard beauty as a kind of pleasure.”

I was particularly impressed by this — beauty as a form of order. I think it best explains the need for a UI kit. It helps to get all our styles in order.

Kick-off

Define, Found, Shine. These are the three stages. We’ll go through them, and I’ll explain in full all the steps so, in the end, you’ll be able to do it yourself following the same process. And I’ll share how to download the UI kit and use it for free so that you could kickstart your new app design project.

You should plan it very carefully because there are some pitfalls:
Creating a design system in Figma: a practical guide
By: Marc Andrew
Tags: Design, UI, Design Systems, UX, Product Design

Do you like staring at a blank canvas every time you start a new project in Figma?

I’m guessing you’re not a big fan right?

Wouldn’t it be better if you could kick-start your design projects faster, and save yourself so much time?

Well. This is where a Design System can come to your assistance.

So, what is a Design System you may ask?

In its most basic form, I like to think of it as a Component Library and Style Guide rolled into one.

Something which enables you to have those core UI elements pre-built, ready to go, allowing you to focus on the nuances of a design project, and complete it so much faster.

So with all that said, let me show you how I put together my Design System; Cabana for Figma, and in the process help you better understand what goes into creating a versatile and powerful System for yourself.

PLEASE NOTE: This article is here to help give you valuable tips, and advice on the best way of starting your own Design System. It’s not a guide on showing you how to create one from start to finish. Who’s got time for a 10000-word article right?

OK. Let’s do this…
An Emoji For Your Thoughts. Microsoft’s new emojis
By: Microsoft Design
Tags: Design, Emoji, Microsoft, Design Language, Design System

Innately fun, innately Fluent

Trust and clarity were guiding principles for us throughout this process. We wanted people to trust that our new emoji style would recognize their intentions and reflect their humanity. People aren’t perfect, and there is beauty in our originality, which is why we chose an imperfect circle to be the silhouette shape for a head.

We also paid close attention to the expression in the eyes on our emoji and leaned into pronounced eyebrow expressions. It was critical for us to preserve the intent of the emotion while putting our design spin on them. Finally, because we want people to trust that they’ll be engaging with uplifting and inspiring designs, we leaned into bright, saturated colors and bold forms!

This video clip shows our modular perspective. By leveraging specific eyes, mouths and head shapes across the board, we created a unified set of facial features that can scale while maintaining a consistent look and feel.

To keep consistency across 1,888 emoji in various categories, we used simple geometric forms as the basis for each emoji in our new style. (If this sounds familiar, it’s because our connected icon system works the same way.) The octopus emoji really highlights this; instead of a more anatomical representation, we constructed it from circles and semicircles to give it more personality.

When you pay attention to the details, the ordinary can become extraordinary. The crab emoji pictured here exemplifies this through bold, beautiful colors and chunky, graphic shapes.

Maybe it’s the Pacific Northwest in me, but my favorite is the crab. From the graphic, chunky shape of the claws to the little circle joints all the way to the spectacularly vibrant color, this cool little crab exemplifies what I love about our emoji system: it makes even the seemingly ordinary emoji extraordinary. Crab or human, there’s beauty in our originality.

Last, but not least, we had to use this opportunity to make a change that only we could truly make — so long flat, standard paperclip, and hello Clippy!

Sure, we may use fewer paper clips today than we did in Clippy’s heyday, but we couldn’t resist the nostalgic pull 😊

For the refresh, we couldn’t resist transforming our flat, standard paperclip into the beloved Clippy.

Emoji are solidifying their role as integral communication tools in our online spaces, and you’ll be able to use each of these refreshed and new emoji across platforms and devices. Some of our new emoji are live in Flipgrid starting today, with the rest of them rolling out in the coming weeks. The set will come to Teams and Windows this holiday season, with Yammer, Outlook, and more lighting up throughout 2022.

Beyond emoji, we’re bringing our Fluent aesthetic to life within Microsoft 365 via more expressive themes, illustrations, backgrounds, and more. But first, we’d love to hear from you! What are some of your favorite emoji, and what new emoji would you create if you could be an emoji designer for a day?
Designing from the pixel up — A quick intro to atomic design
By: Luis Ouriach
Tags: 8px Process, Design Systems, UI Design, Atomic Design, Design Thinking

Enter Atomic Design.

Put simply, Atomic Design is the process of splitting up your design interfaces into the smallest possible component or module. With this mindset, you can break down then entirety of your application into smaller blocks; in a similar manner to Lego blocks.

With a modular approach to interface and application design, we can rapidly build out our new pages or components by utilising a bank of already existing work; similar to how you can build myriad objects from a single box of Lego blocks.

Practically, this means that our visual designer can pull together new templates in minutes using signed off modules, our UX designer can flesh out her wireframes using pixel perfect, real design components that have been established in the Upgrade Pack design system, whilst our developers access the system in the browser and can be sure that their code is as close to our design files as possible.

With the back and forth of design sign-off kept to a minimum, everyone’s a winner!

As well as speed, and given the independent nature of each design element, we’re not tied to device dimensions (a mobile phone or laptop screen) or platform (mobile app, or website dashboard) — the work we produce is cross functional and responsive from the outset. As the Upgrade Pack design system scales, we will be building on these simple principles to enable a rapid, but reliable, build process to occur for any new features that we roll out. This will enable a quick to market build process, making both us and our customers happy.

Here’s to modular!
Introducing Denali: A Themeable Design System
By: Jazmin Orozco
Tags: Design, Design Patterns, Design Systems, Design Process, Design Thinking

Discovering Opportunities to Scale

Before forging these new partnerships we explored our existing platform product family and workflow to identify opportunities for growth. An audit of our platforms revealed that they shared the same components (buttons, navigation, selection controls, etc) but the visual design and user experience of the components varied from product to product.

Based on these findings it became clear that the solution was to develop a design system of visually consistent components and a corresponding front-end framework. The unified visual design of these components would allow front-end developers from multiple products to work cross-functionally to develop them. This would result in a universal framework that could be used by all of our platform products rather than just one. This thinking led to the creation of Denali — a scalable, comprehensive, and themeable design system. Overtime, Denali allowed us to unify the user experience across our platform product family and facilitate efficient front-end development.

The Denali Design System

Denali is Verizon Media’s first platform focused design system. It caters to the needs of our platform products by providing the following:

Component library with corresponding front-end frameworks

Customization for themes

Engineering focused icon library

Design principles

Component library and frameworks

Denali’s component library contains 18+ individual component types with a corresponding CSS framework. Components are framework independent allowing you to take what you need and leave the rest. Additionally, our partnerships with engineers across our product family have allowed us to begin building out other industry-leading frameworks such as Angular, React, and Ember.
Storybook 5.3
By: Michael Shilman
Tags: Front End Development, Design Systems, React, Releases, Open Source

Storybook began with a simple goal: help developers build UI components and their key states. This is the easiest, most efficient way to think through component hierarchies.

We nailed this workflow and, as a result, Storybook is now the tool of choice for teams across the industry at places like Airbnb, Lyft, Slack, Twitter, and thousands more.

However, the bar on UI development has also been raised. In 2020, it’s not enough to provide great tooling for building and testing components. Today’s modern frontend teams also need to document and package their components into reusable design systems.

Storybook has been rapidly evolving to meet this challenge. Now I’m excited to announce our latest release — Storybook 5.3 supercharges building and documenting production design systems:

📝 Write stories and docs in MDX, the easiest way to interleave Javascript and Markdown.

the easiest way to interleave Javascript and Markdown. ✨ Generate best-practice documentation from your existing stories.

from your existing stories. 🌈 Available for major frameworks including React, Vue, Angular, Ember, Web components, and over a dozen others.

including React, Vue, Angular, Ember, Web components, and over a dozen others. ⚙️ Declarative configuration to simplify project setup and improve interoperability.

to simplify project setup and improve interoperability. 🔌 Design integrations to connect Sketch, Figma, Adobe XD, and more.

This is all fully compatible with Component Story Format (CSF) and the entire Storybook ecosystem of tools and workflows.