fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
30 Popular Taglines Updated for a Virus Outbreak
By: Sara K. Runnels
Tags: Health, Culture, Humor, Advertising, Satire

30 Popular Taglines Updated for a Virus Outbreak

When Coronavirus calls for rebranding.

‪REI

#OptInside

‪Nike

Just Do It With Social Distance‬

‪Coca-Cola

Absolutely Do Not Share a Coke‬®

Kay Jewelers

Every kiss begins with Kay, and ends with, “Yikes, what are your symptoms?”

Allstate

You’re in good, clean, thoroughly-washed-for-20-seconds hands.‬

‪Gillette

The Best A Man Can Get…Right After a Hassle-Free Coronavirus Test

State Farm

Like a good neighbor, I’m not going to drive you to the hospital— too risky!

‪Bounty

The Quilted Quicker Picker Upper (You’ll Use as a Backup After Running Out of the Toilet Paper You Hoarded from Costco)

Budweiser

King of Beers. Prince of Not Sharing a Name with a Virus.

Apple

Think Different…About How You Handle Your Filthy-ass iPhone

‪Dunkin Donuts

America Runs on Panic & Fear

Gatorade

Is it in you? No, really. Is it in you right now? What’s your temperature?

Goldfish Crackers

The snack that smiles back, and then talks back after you’ve gone crazy being quarantined in your apartment for so long.

Maybelline

Maybe she’s born with it, maybe she contracted it from the dry-cougher in the elevator.

Toyota

Let’s go places nowhere near other people.

Wendy’s

Where’s the beef…over raising minimum wage so families aren’t left behind in times of crisis?

L’oreal

Because you’re worth it — maybe another 20 seconds under the faucet?

Men’s Wearhouse

You’re going to hate the way you look in a face mask, I guarantee it.

Chuck E. Cheese

Where a kid can be a kid! And mom and dad can definitely get a fever.

Dollar Shave Club

Shave time. Shave money. Shave your whole beard off because the CDC kind of said so.

‪Verizon

Can you hear me now? I’m calling from the bathroom— I can’t stop bathing in Purell. Shit, I forgot to put this conference call on mute.

Pokemon

Gotta Catch ‘Em All— Except, Well, You Know Which One

‪Capital One

What’s in your pantry?‬

CoverGirl

Wheezy, Queasy, Breathless (CoverGirl)

The New York Times

All the News That’s Fit to Temporarily Take Your Mind Off Touching Your Face

Las Vegas

What happens here, stays here, and is much more powerful than any “novel” virus.

Kentucky Fried Chicken

Finger Lickin’ Good, but For the Love of God, Don’t Do That Now

Visa

Everywhere you want to be. (So, Antarctica.)

Southwest Airlines

You are now free to move about the country for $17 roundtrip.

American Express

Don’t leave home without it. You know what? Just don’t leave home.
How Your Data Is Shaping the Future of Music; Your Favorite Radio Hits May Go Silent
By: Platform
Tags: Music, Net Neutrality, Streaming Music, Data, Spotify

Your Data Is Shaping the Future of Music — pigeonsandplanes.com

If streaming data is the new metric for success, we are all A&Rs.

Why the last big music label against streaming caved in — www.irishtimes.com

The ECM record label was long a holdout against streaming, with boss Manfred Eicher believing in the integrity of the “album”.

Your Favorite Radio Hits May Go Silent — www.bloomberg.com

Songwriters threaten to withhold their music if stations don’t give them a bigger share of revenue.

Those ‘Fake Artists’ on Spotify? Epidemic Sound CEO Oscar Holland Says There Was ‘No Special Deal’ — www.billboard.com

After four months of quiet, Epidemic Sound CEO Oscar Hoglund has finally spoken out at length in response to allegations that his company was promoting “fake artists” on Spotify’s playlists, and undercutting licensing fees and royalty payouts to traditional labels.

Voise Platform Upgrades to Alpha 0.2; Token to be Listed on Aussie Exchange — medium.com

Voise, one of this year’s most exciting blockchain projects, has upgraded its music streaming platform to include new features and fix the old ones.

Beginner’s Guide to Music MetaData. — medium.com

All that you need to know about music metadata. What are recordings, releases, release groups, tracks, etc.

Sonos One users can now ask Alexa to play Spotify music — techcrunch.com

In October, Sonos launched the Sonos One, raising the bar on what is already the gold standard in wireless whole-home audio. The big new feature? An..

Spotify’s RapCaviar turned the playlist into a movement, now Viva Latino is next — www.theverge.com

Spotify’s biggest Latin playlist is rolling out video internationally.

Amazon Music app adds Chromecast support — www.androidpolice.com

Amazon and Google’s relationship over the past few years has been nothing short of an epic love-war popcorn-worthy chess battle. Amazon removes Chromecasts… by Rita El Khoury in Amazon, Applications, News

What The End To Net Neutrality Means For Internet Streaming — www.npr.org

NPR’s Elise Hu talks to former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler about what the FCC decision to end so-called net neutrality means and what it will mean to consumers of internet streaming.
Hello Berlin! Hello WeWork! Hello LiskHQ!
Tags: Lisk, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, Team, Blockchain

Berlin, the biggest startup hotspot in Europe, is the city where the Lisk headquarters is going to form. We have been planning this step carefully for a few weeks, and are now in the final steps.

View from WeWork onto the Berlin Reichstag.

Oliver emigrated 2 weeks ago from the United Kingdom to Berlin, and has settled himself quickly into the city’s pace. I moved here on the 5th with just my MacBook Air, my other stuff should arrive in Berlin within the next days.

On Friday, the 5th, we had a meeting with WeWork in order to check out their offices. They enable us to focus on working, instead of spending valuable time finding a suitable office. They offer different options for startups and individuals; either a public desk or a private office with internet, power, AC, drinks, coffee, furniture, a great location, and more. The most important factor for us, is that we can upgrade to bigger offices each month, as long as one is available.
Mapping the Route to the Aha Moment
By: Daniel Morales
Tags: Books, Summaries, Daily Challenges, Hacking Growth

Mapping the Route to the Aha Moment

Hacking Growth by Sean Ellis & Morgan Brown

Solve challenge here: https://www.bookcademy.com/home/show_daily_challenges/mapping-the-route-to-the-aha-moment

The first step in hacking activation is to identify each point in your customers’ journey toward the aha moment. We are assuming that you have already determined, in the process of making the product must-have, what constitutes the magical moment.

To see how to create your map of points along the way, let’s use the case of the grocery app. As you might recall from Chapter Three, the team has determined that the aha experience comes when shoppers realize they can use the app to easily and quickly order their groceries on the fly, in those in-between moments when they’ve got a bit of spare time, or as they randomly think of or remember an item they need as they are running around and going about their daily lives.

Just reading through these steps you can think of many ways in which users might lose interest or become frustrated and exit the app rather than making a purchase. In growth hacking, it’s crucial that you never assume why users are behaving as they are; rather, you’ve always got to study hard data about their behavior and then query them on the basis of observations you’ve made in order to focus your experimentation efforts most efficiently on changes that will have the greatest potential impact. Even if you think you understand what barriers to activation are, the true story can be quite surprising.
Baking in Black and White Website
By: Kas Tebbetts
Tags: Recipes, Baking, Website

Dear fellow foodies, bakers, and otherwise hungry people,

I have finally created my own website!

There you browse my recipes by category, save your favorites, and easily print them! You can also learn more about me and the history behind the food I bake.

Thank you so much for following my baking blog, Baking in Black and White, on Medium.com! As a self-taught baker, photographer, and history lover, I can’t tell you how much your support means to me.

Please check out my new website and subscribe!

Love from the kitchen,

Kas
Replace Delegation With Combine in Swift 5
By: Zafar Ivaev
Tags: Programming, iOS, Xcode, Mobile, Swift

Getting Started

Consider the following two screens:

On the first screen, we simply display a list of items. When we tap on the “Add Item” button, the second screen is presented, allowing us to append new items.

The traditional approach to implementing it would be as follows:

ItemsViewController

As we can see, in the addButtonTapped(sender:) method, we create the AddItemViewController and assign self to its delegate property.

We conform to the AddItemViewControllerDelegate to obtain a newly added item and update the tableView .

AddItemViewController

Here, in the doneButtonTapped(sender:) method, we run the delegate’ s didAddItem(item:) and dismiss the view controller.

How could we make this even easier? What if we did not need any delegate protocols and could simply observe for a new item inside the ItemsViewController ?

Welcome Combine’s publishers and observers.
Introducing SwiftUI’s New @AppStorage, @StateObject, and @SceneStorage Property Wrappers
By: Anupam Chugh
Tags: Programming, iOS, Swiftui, Mobile, Swift

SwiftUI @AppStorage

An AppStorage property wrapper is used to read and write values to the UserDefaults . Every time the value of the AppStorage property wrapper changes, the SwiftUI view is invalidated and redrawn.

It behaves the same way as @State property wrappers, except that it’s used to communicate between a UserDefaults key and the SwiftUI view in a convenient way. The following code shows how we used UserDefaults with the State property wrapper before iOS 14:

The new @AppStorage property wrapper does this in a single line:

@AppStorage("name") var name: String = "hey"

AppStorage also allows you to use a different suiteName for UserDefaults other than standard .

Additionally, we can also set the default value for the UserDefaults key directly inside @AppStorage by using the wrappedValue argument.

Here’s the syntax for each of the cases above:

Notice how in the second case, the @AppStorage type is implicitly determined from the wrappedValue set as boolean.

It might seem attractive to use AppStorage in TextField — especially since storing and updating login credentials is a common use case. But in doing so, your UserDefaults would update every time the user enters or deletes something from the TextField, which may not be ideal.

A better scenario for using @AppStorage is in counter-based applications to persist values across the app sessions. Or even in the new SwiftUI TextEditor to build a handy Notepad application.
Video & Links — Regulation & Bitcoin
Tags: Bitcoin, Regulation, Cryptocurrency

Articles on ICO, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain. If you like the blog then please help support the publication via https://www.patreon.com/cryptbytestech. You can join to chat with me at https://t.me/joinchat/E-6WAkQsiIyJ2tQ4423hrA.

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Who said we cannot unit test SwiftUI views?
By: Alexey Naumov
Tags: Software Development, Programming, Swiftui, Mobile, Swift

The Tool

Since there’s no access to the inner shadow attribute graph of SwiftUI, I tried to use Swift’s reflection API. Xcode uses it for printing out the contents of variables when we stop on a breakpoint in the debugger. And I was surprised by how much information was available inside the SwiftUI views.

It turns out SwiftUI views have a very ramified inner structure, so the first thing I had to implement was a recursive traversing of inner attributes:

If you call this function for a simple view hierarchy, like this one:

… you’d get a pretty long output. However, this could be restructured in a more readable and concise way:

"view" of type AnyView

↳ "storage" of type AnyViewStorage<Text>

↳ "view" of type Text

↳ "modifiers" of type Array<Modifier>

↳ value = []

↳ "storage" of type Storage

↳ "verbatim" of type String

↳ value = "Hello, world!"

I had a gut feeling that it just can’t be that simple — there had to be a wall I won’t be able to get through with using just reflection, but I was curious how far I could dig.

And as it turned out, there were many pitfalls waiting for me on the way:

All types in reflection are erased to Any Computed properties, such as var body: some View , are not available in reflection There are generic private structs and function types, which are tricky to cast the value to It’s hard to initialize a struct for which all init methods are private SwiftUI dependency needs an injection through Environment There are significant variations to the hierarchy after a tiny tweak of the input — for example, Text("Hi") vs. Text(hiValue) Overall there’s a lot of obscurities and a lack of information about the private structures

In this article, I’ll talk about interesting use cases I encountered and the ways I addressed the challenges, but before that, let me show you what I’ve got after a few days of trial and error:

With this library, you can extract your custom views from the hierarchy and evaluate its state in unit tests:

You can read the actual values from the standard SwiftUI views, such as the String value of Text .

And it’s also possible to programmatically trigger side effects on behalf of the user:

By now, the framework supports the majority of views available in SwiftUI for iOS and macOS, as well as views ported from UIKit with UIViewRepresentable :

AnyView , Button , DatePicker , Divider , EquatableView , ForEach , Form , GeometryReader , Group , GroupBox , HSplitView , HStack , Image , List , ModifiedContent , NavigationLink , NavigationView , Picker , ScrollView , Section , SecureField , Slider , Stepper , TabView , Text , TextField , Toggle , VSplitView , VStack , ZStack

I did eventually hit a few unbreakable walls, but overall, I’m satisfied with the result.

OK, it’s time for some hacky stories.
Review: SENet — Squeeze-and-Excitation Network, Winner of ILSVRC 2017 (Image Classification)
By: Sik-Ho Tsang
Tags: Deep Learning, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Image Classification, Data Science

In this story, Squeeze-and-Excitation Network (SENet), by University of Oxford, is reviewed. With “Squeeze-and-Excitation” (SE) block that adaptively recalibrates channel-wise feature responses by explicitly modelling interdependencies between channels, SENet is constructed. And it won the first place in ILSVRC 2017 classification challenge with top-5 error to 2.251% which has about 25% relative improvement over the winning entry of 2016. And this is a paper in 2018 CVPR with more than 600 citations. Recently, it is also published in 2019 TPAMI. (Sik-Ho Tsang @ Medium)
A Thousand Needles of Death
By: Enne Baker
Tags: Death, Literature, White Objects, Poetry, Life

A Thousand Needles of Death

A Poem

Photo by Dan-Cristian Pădureț on Unsplash

There is so much happening

In my slow quiet world,

I am floating in a

Place where so much

Is happening, my smile,

A weak shield,

Rigid,

Every time when

I am touched by strangers,

I become more weary,

I become wounded, I walk

By the gaggle of strangers,

As people want to go

Past me, I am touched

By my arm, my back,

Just to embrace someone

Else, this club I’m

In, with easy membership,

My spirit is revoked by

A touch of a sacred pin

That makes a crying sound when my blood

Dropped to the steel sky floor.
Dart Extension In Flutter. A solution to extend the functionality…
By: Anubhav Gupta
Tags: Cross Platform, Flutter Widget, Flutter, Dart, Extension Method

Introduction

Extension methods, introduced in Dart 2.7, are a way to add functionality to existing libraries. we can add getters, setters, and operators inside our extensions. But we cannot add instance variables. Dart extensions are one language feature that should be used sensibly.

Using Extension Methods in Dart

To use extension methods in a package, the pubspec must have a minimum SDK constraint of at least 2.7.0.

Suppose that we are trying parse string into an integer . for example :

int.parse('123')

It might be nicer, shorter, and easier to use if we have that functionality be on String instead: So, let's create one

Here’s how you might implement the extension method parseInt() , using an extension (named NumberParsing ) that operates on strings:

extension NumberParsing on String {

int parseInt() {

return int.parse(this);

}

}

Now that we have the new functionality on String let's use it:

'123'.parseInt()

Isn't it is easier to use and shorter?

Static types and dynamic

You can’t invoke extension methods on variables of type dynamic . let's have look at this code below:

dynamic d = '2';

print(d.parseInt()); // Runtime exception: NoSuchMethodError

Where as you can invoke extension on variables type static . Here you can see :

var v = '2';

print(v.parseInt()); // Output: 2

The reason that dynamic doesn’t work is that extension methods are resolved against the static type of the receiver. Because they’re as fast as calling a static function.

Where this can go in Flutter?

You can not talk about Dart features without mentioning the impact this language feature will have on Flutter.

Flutter’s Widget API is designed with composition in mind which means that multiple Widgets can be composed to create UI. Flutter has Widgets for nearly everything, even small things like Padding . The downside of this is that this can result in heavy nesting which makes parts of your code look messy.

So to overcome that, we could define an extension on the Widget class:

Padding with less messy code

Using Extension Methods we can avoid nesting and also chain multiple calls without adding more indentations.
Visual memory
By: Jan Schultink
Tags: PowerPoint, Presentation Design, Books, Data Visualization, Story

A year after discovering it, I finally got around to reading Moonwalking with Einstein (affiliate link), by Joshua Foer. A journalist gets fascinated by memory championships, and takes on the challenge to participate himself. On the way he explains how to train your memory, and puts memory in a historical context.







Why am I interested in these types of books? Presentations are all about helping people remember your story. We all know that forcing people to remember bullet points be repeating and repeating and repeating them does not work. The brain needs a visual story around which to store your message.

And it turns out that is exactly what memory champions do. They commit random numbers, names, facts, to rooms in virtual memory palaces in their brain. These palaces are often based on places the contestants know very well: a home, a school, a library. In these rooms, the objects are placed in the most outrageous (memorable) ways possible, including smells and sounds. After you put everything there, you can simply take a walk in your virtual memory palace and see all objects in front of you.







Scientists now think that the brain actually never forgets anything (capacity: 10–100TB). The problem is accessing the information. The brain needs an emotional stimulus (smell, visual) to unlock its memory. Slightly different than a indexed memory access of a computer. People think that we are so good at remembering places, locations, stories is survival: how to find a place with food, and then more importantly, how to find the way back home was a more useful skill in the stone age than remembering phone numbers.







With these techniques, you can teach yourself to remember thousands of unrelated items. And it just shows the power of the brain. Remembering is actually pretty simple when compared to the computing power it takes to coordinate hitting a baseball mid air.







Scientist think that forgetting is important for our mental well being. Just remembering everything is very stressful and distracting. That is the reason why some people with brain dammage can perform these extraordinary memory stunts.







The book gives interesting insight in our learning process. The brain is lazy and tries to put things in auto-pilot mode as soon as possible (driving a car for example). Once there, it does not consume a lot of energy, and does not cause distraction to do other tasks. Sometimes people experience this with learning. The cure to this is to move yourself outside the comfort zone, start trying, and most important of all make sure you are exposed to a direct feedback loop to tell your brain what worked, and what did not.







But what is the point of memorizing anything in the current time of abundant digital storage? The author argues that creativity in fact is future memory. You need to be able to provide sufficient hooks to stick new ideas, new insights to.







An interesting read.
OTPPAY: SMOOTHENING THE CRYPTO SHIFT
By: Martin Muroria
Tags: Blockchain, Bitcoin, ICO

When Blockchain was invented in 2008, no one knew the extent to which it could be applied. Created initially as a way to solve the challenges that faced the cryptocurrency market, Blockchain has proved to be the most valuable internet invention so far.

There are so many companies that are basing their systems on the blockchain platform. They have new brilliant ideas that will influence our lives in the future and for generations to come. All these companies have their own token system which enables them to create an economic environment for their members. Most trading within these platforms either occur in their respective tokens or in other know cryptocurrencies. Trading in cryptocurrencies is advancing at a high rate but the problem with cryptocurrencies is their unpredictability. Its value fluctuates often thus making trading difficult especially when dealing with exchanges between cryptocurrencies and fiat.

Otppay has created a system, also based on blockchain, that will use artificial intelligence, which it will design, that will have the ability to convert cryptocurrencies and fiat for ease of use across all platforms. Cryptocurrencies are popular but they have not been fully accepted around the world, once they do, there will be a big trading problem as people try to convert from different currencies while trading.

Otppay will require its users to purchase Otppay tokens facilitate a stable exchange platform for fiat to cryptocurrencies. Otppay tokens (OTP) are utility tokens that will make the Otppay ecosystem efficient. Otppay will conduct ICO sales to raise funds towards the creation of this platform. There will be a pre ICO sale and two rounds of the main ICO. 600 million tokens will be up for sale to the public during this period. Different bonuses will be given during each stage with early purchases earning more bonuses.

For more on Otppay and participation in their ICO visit the following links,

· https://otppay.io/Assets/otppay-whitepape/OTPPAY_White_paper_v1.1.pdf

· https://otppay.io/
Развитие партнерских отношений компании «СИМКОРД» — шаг к развитию Децентрализованного автономного сообщества Системы Bitbon
By: Bitbon System
Tags: Simcord, Decentralized, Partnerships, Digitalization

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

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Jalāl Ad-dīn Rūmī’s Weirdest Sex Tale and Penis Shortening Device
Tags: Life Lessons, Stories, Weird, Sex, Life

I came across an interesting article online last week, that read Kompanje’s clinical case report about a remarkable penis-shortening device invented in 1593 by the surgeon Hildanus.

It reminds me of an even older description of a similar device — not by a medical scholar, but by the great Persian humanist, philosopher, and poet Jalāl Ad-dīn Rūmī (1207–1273).

In his poem, “The Importance of Gourdcrafting,” Rumi vividly describes the sexual interactions between a woman and a donkey.

There was a maidservant who had cleverly trained a donkey to perform the services of a man. From a gourd, she had carved a flanged device to fit on the donkey’s penis, to keep him from going too far into her. She had fashioned it just to the point for her pleasure, and she greatly enjoyed the arrangement, as often as she could!

The poem continues with the maidservant’s mistress who “peeked through a crack in the door and saw the animal’s marvelous member and the delight of the girl” and joins with the donkey, ignoring the advice of her servant to use the gourd:

Her fire kindled more, and the donkey politely pushed as she urged him to, pushed through and into her intestines, and without a word, she died.

The carved gourd described by Rumi obviously has the same purpose as the device invented by Hildanus: preventing damage by too deep penetration during coitus. Both authors had a different reason to publish though.

Hildanus’ goal was purely medical, whereas Rumi teaches us a moral lesson: “Don’t open your shop before a Master taught you the craft.”

Rumi was right and — three centuries later — might even have inspired Hildanus to craft his remarkable penis-shortening device.
If Anything Happens
By: Melissa R. Mendelson
Tags: Yesterday, Covid 19, A Few Words, Poetry, School Shootings

If Anything Happens

But So Much Already Has

Photo by Daniela on Unsplash

When we think about yesterday,

we will only remember Covid.

We’ll forget the pages before that,

stories of terror and heartbreak,

tragedy, so much tragedy.

We won’t remember.

Maybe, we don’t want to remember.

We rather better memories, happier times,

but when were those times?

So many lives have been destroyed.

They’re still being destroyed,

and we’re still trying to survive.

We are hoping

that if we hold on,

push ourselves to tomorrow,

we’ll find those times again,

those moments of happiness and love

and not despair or tragedy.

We have known so much pain,

and we do deserve a time,

where we are free from it.

Maybe, that time is tomorrow,

but we must not forget yesterday.

This poem was inspired by If anything happens I love you.
What You Should Do to Nail Your Next Sales Call
By: Shannon Hennig
Tags: Entrepreneurship, Startup, Sales, Business, Marketing

If you’re a small business owner or entrepreneur, you’re likely familiar with the sense of dread that can wash over you when you make a sales call.

Whether it’s a cold call, a hot lead, or something in between, sales calls can cause a lot of anxiety. There can be a lot riding on the line for you and your business, and your result could spell disaster.

Some go so far as purposely planning to avoid sales calls and knowingly hurt their business growth because of this fear.

What I’ve learned as a small business owner is that sales calls are essential to moving towards your broader business goals and that they aren’t THAT bad.

In fact, they can be fun and something that you look forward to (well, maybe not quite that great) — but they stop becoming an anxiety-inducing appointment in your calendar.

Moving from fear to a place of calm assurance doesn’t happen overnight, and it requires practice and dogged perseverance to get better.

But you can make it happen with a solid plan and a willingness to practice and learn. Over the last year, I’ve invested in numerous courses, books, and other resources to help me gain an edge when I’m on the call with a potential client.

Through the process, I’ve learned a lot, made some big mistakes, and now you can benefit from my trial and error.

Try these five tips when you have a sales call on your calendar. They’ll go a long way towards helping you nail it — or at the very least make it feel a lot less scary.
Amazon, retail and consumers. Real tech wins.
By: Unshackled Ventures
Tags: Immigration, Startup, Fashion, Women, Retail

Amazon is a behemoth. A brilliant one too. Between the proposed acquisition of Whole Foods and now the launch of Wardrobe Prime, I’m legitimately excited. This is the world we, as consumers deserve. Highly efficient, logistics companies capable of increasing volume and lowering costs. This is significant innovation, built on nearly 20 years of expertise. It’s not fast and irresponsible. And venture capitalists should take note.

Betting on incremental business model changes has a shelf life. While these types of companies may exhibit “great traction and high-growth rates”, they run the risk of playing the never ending user acquisition game. A game only suited for endless pockets. This is why we don’t invest in delivery companies or incremental business innovations. Over the next 3 years (and perhaps the past 18 months), we will watch VC-backed startups struggle. Struggle for new customers, to own a larger share of the wallet, and ultimately fail to reach a liquidity event that supports the exorbitant amount of capital they’ve raised.

This is why we bet on technology first-startups. Technology based on key insights and new mandates. Hard to replicate business strategies. Take for example Lily, the first commerce platform for women’s fashion based entirely on emotional intelligence. The team has spent the past 2.5 years building it — painstaking at most times. There are no subscription boxes, no delivery fees, no inventory. Just technology that gives the company new data, with or without a purchase. Users and retailers love it. It drives behavior never seen in the offline world. This is their moat. New and unique data only they have — perceptions and emotional state. The primary reason 1 in 3 users keep on buying — 10X industry average. It’s because Lily just gets them.

It’s not easy and over the next number of years we anticipate more excitement around applied AI and intelligence. Finding a balance for growth and tech is critical, and we will invest at the ground floor. For companies that own the data pipes, we applaud you. Especially in the consumer world, where your data can’t be created or found anywhere else.

Congrats to all the consumers of the world. We are winning.

w/b Manan Mehta
This AI designs beautiful Forest Landscapes for Games!
By: Chintan Trivedi
Tags: Deep Learning, Game Futurology, Artificial Intelligence, Game Design, Computer Graphics

This AI designs beautiful Forest Landscapes for Games!

Overview of the paper “Data-driven Authoring of Large-scale Ecosystems” by K Kapp et al.

Designing large areas of forests in games can usually be a time consuming task for game designers. Randomly placing trees and plants of any species around complex terrains like hills and valleys do not yield very realistic results, so knowledge about vegetation is also required alongside a lot of manual efforts to design a good forest. Thankfully, this is also a task where Machine Learning can be used to let the computer design realistic forests by learning from real-world data.

Our paper in focus today does just that. It is titled “Data-driven Authoring of Large-scale Ecosystems” and is published at this year’s SIGGRAPH conference in Computer Graphics.

Interactive Tool. [source]

It provides an interactive tool where you can easily define the style of the forest you want to build in your game, and the rest is taken care of by the Deep Learning models in the background. The final output can be rendered immediately so you can quickly assess the output and make any necessary changes, thereby saving a whole lot of time and efforts. This Deep Learning method learns about different types of plants and vegetation like canopy height, under-storey layer and forest floor.
Once upon a time, Trump felt the pain of teetering on the horns of a dilemma over Iran
By: Rashmee Roshan Lall
Tags: Iran, Impeachment, Donald Trump, Iran Nuclear Deal

Before a formal impeachment inquiry began, Donald Trump’s bullying persona was struggling with his inner peacenik, or at least the non-interventionist who lives within his substantial frame.

After unilaterally withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, and imposing as many sanctions as possible on Iran, Donald Trump was trying to play the statesman.

That’s a controversial statement.

Mr Trump may be president of the United States but he’s not a statesman. He may pretend, but we can see what he’s doing.

He has routinely threatened Iran with war — or the nearest economic equivalent, “maximum pressure” sanctions that are beggaring the country and provoking it to ever more desperate measures. And yet, he doesn’t really want to take the US into yet another protracted conflict.

This, despite blaming Iran for the mid-September strike on a major Saudi oil facility, which briefly dealt a crippling blow to Riyadh’s exports, and shook global markets. Mr Trump’s secretary of state Mike Pompeo called the drone strikes an “act of war on Iran.” But Mr Pompeo’s boss did not say the same. And did not offer a strong response.

As the Washington Post’s Anne Gearan wrote at the time: “Trump is caught between a political imperative to confront Iran — pleasing hawkish Republican supporters and allies Israel and Saudi Arabia — and his own political instincts against foreign intervention and toward cutting a deal.” In fact, Iran’s regional adversaries don’t want a conflict and they’ve been slow on the incendiary rhetoric.

So, what happens next? We should give thanks that Mr Trump felt the pain of teetering on the horns of a dilemma. War is not a solution. Equally, there doesn’t appear to be a solution for Mr Trump to seize. He has left himself no particular path for diplomacy right now. Mr Trump’s personality and predilections have made the situation with Iran more dangerous.

And then there is the impeachment inquiry. Washington will be consumed with that, not with Iran, for the foreseeable future.

Originally published at https://www.rashmee.com on September 30, 2019.
I Love The Giant Home Depot Skeleton
By: Funny Or Die
Tags: Funny Weird, Funny Nsfw, Spooky Season, Home Depot Skeleton

There is no autumn, there is no fall. Those are antiquated terms from a bygone era. Now, there is only Spooky Season. And each year Spooky Season brings with it bigger, better, more outrageous decorations and costumes. One of last year’s finest offerings to appease and give thanks to the pumpkin gods was a 9-foot-tall inflatable squid costume, which seemed pretty difficult to top. Difficult, but not impossible, apparently, because it has decidedly been topped.

Behold, the 12-foot Giant-Sized Skeleton with LifeEyes

Home Depot A new King of Spooky Season has arisen, and here he is. Long may he reign.

Look at this thing. Really look at it. Take your time with it.

Is there any sensible argument to be made for dropping $299 plus tax on a 12-foot-tall lawn ornament? No. But does this look like a guy who gives a shit about your “reason” and “fiscal responsibility”? Again, no. Fuck no. It’s called the 12-Foot Giant-Sized Skeleton. Its name already says how giant it is but it says Giant again just to really send the point home, and to make it clear that you — I — don’t mean shit. It doesn’t need your justification, it transcends it. We’re lucky if we get the chance to stand in its presence.

Those other decorations should be embarrassed. They should pack themselves back up in their dumb regular-sized Rubbermaid bins and chuck themselves back into the attic like the fools they are. That house in the picture is worth, what, probably a cool $900,000 and change? Doesn’t matter. It might as well be a shack, the 12-Foot Giant-Sized Skeleton with LifeEyes is the most valuable thing on that lot now.

You’re probably wondering, “what are LifeEyes?” Oh, oh I’ll show you what LifeEyes are. I got your LifeEyes right here, pal.

Home Depot GAZE

These LCD eyes are powered with four C batteries and the screams of innocents.

They are somehow both flat like a character from the deeply cursed late-nineties series Cyberchase yet endless with intensity of a black hole, mysterious and terrifyingly awesome like the First Testament God. I guarantee if you stared into the 12-Foot Giant-Sized Skeleton’s LifeEyes for long enough you’d be able to see your own death.

Home Depot

In the description on Home Depot’s product page it says it’s “designed for indoor or outdoor use”. Look, you’re free to make your own choices, but if you put this thing inside your house? Congratulations, that’s not your house anymore. It’s your new giant skeletal overlord’s house now.

Need more information? Well, if the name 12-Foot Giant-Sized Skeleton with LifeEyes is somehow not clear enough for you, Home Depot does also say what theme this decoration falls into — Skeleton. Yeah, idiot, Skeleton is an entire theme now. Don’t ask questions.

Listen, I don’t know the full ramifications of erecting the 12-Foot Giant-Sized Skeleton with LifeEyes and staking it on your lawn, I don’t know what kind of Pandora’s box that’ll open. All I know is it deserves to be feared and respected, and it doesn’t come with batteries.

I Love The Giant Home Depot Skeleton
unapologetic and unforgiving
By: Rebeca Ansar
Tags: Self, Poetry, Experience, Poem, Life

one marigold afternoon

we strapped on our masks

and drove to the plant nursery.

green, wood, and soil

the possibility of growth

enraptured me

as I ambled through the aisles.

when we arrived back home

I carefully clasped the snake plant

between my eager hands

chosen

for its unapologetic beauty

vertical trajectory and sharp tip

its natural shape

beautiful and formidable.

after, I tended to our new cactus

and spent the next few minutes

tweezing unforgiving needles

from my hand.
Edge Detection in Opencv 4.0, A 15 Minutes Tutorial
By: Dan Ringwald
Tags: Opencv, Computer Vision

Getting Up and Running

Example of what can be achieved with this tutorial

So you want to build a super cool computer vision tool? You will need to isolate objects’ or persons’ contours to simplify your video.

But first, let’s begin this tutorial with the basics. This tutorial begins with how to load, modify and display a video with OpenCV 4.0 in Python.

Follow a tutorial to install OpenCV and find a video you want to play with (I use this video). Finally, fire your favorite text editor to run this example:

Below is the result this example yields using an excerpt of a French TV show:

The raw data I work on, as displayed by OpenCV

Still objects edge detection

The Canny Filter

Let’s jump to the extraction of the edges in the scene.

The most famous tool to perform this task in OpenCV is the Canny filter. It is based on:

the gradient of the image (the difference between two adjacent pixels)

of the image (the difference between two adjacent pixels) a hysteresis filtering.

The hysteresis enables the selection of lines of adjacent pixels contrasting with their neighbors.

For the full sequence of steps of the Canny filter, please refer to the image below. Also, feel free to consult this very comprehensive description of the steps of the Canny Filter.

The successive steps of the Canny filter

Check out the example below to check how the Canny Filter is used in OpenCV:

From left to right: the original image, the canny filter output with low thresholds, the canny filter output with high thresholds

The Canny filter thresholds can be tuned to catch only the strongest edges and get cleaner contours. The higher the thresholds, the cleaner the edges.

Rough threshold values are most of the time enough to do the job. This Quora thread will help you understand How to set the thresholds in canny edge detection?

The bilateral filtering

Notice how the plant in the background or the left man’s tie both look messy?

Read the full article here.
In a carefully managed release of data, QuantumScape announced that its lithium-metal battery…
By: Steve Levine
Tags: Electric Vehicles, Quantumscape, Tesla, Lithium Battery, Technology

In a carefully managed release of data, QuantumScape announced that its lithium-metal battery would take a car 240,000 miles and recharge in 15 minutes. The data show the cells working comparatively well in cold temperatures.

I wrote in The Mobilist yesterday about how the San Jose-based battery company is playing down what it must do next: Scale up from a single-layer cell to 100 layers, make its separator without defects, and do so fast and continuously. But when discussing his own work, Elon Musk says scaling up is 99% of the effort. The prototype is just 1%.

QuantumScape also stopped short of assuring rightful battery skeptics: It has offered up paid expert assessments, rather than an independent, third-party evaluation, like from a Department of Energy (DOE) lab. At these major turns, we see a furtive company rather than one intent on giving outsiders confidence.
Am I Too Liberal for You? Why, Thank you!
Tags: Politics, Women, Feminism, Equality, Liberalism

I was with a friend when the topic of dating and marriage came up. I’m in my thirties and single, so this seems to be a topic of curiosity with many of them, especially younger ones.

My friend, who is more than half a decade younger than me, was just starting to date again after a nasty breakup, and had asked me this question: what do you look for in your partner?

I listed the obvious first — honesty, wisdom, maturity, loyalty, independent thinker, etc. Oh, and someone who doesn’t expect me to do their laundry for them or cook for them. The last two were obvious inside my head because I hate doing laundry and cooking. I hate doing them for myself, so I sure don’t want to do them for anyone else.

My friend stopped me at this point and said something unexpected, “you mean you’re liberal.”

Now, as far as my political affiliations go, yes, I’m liberal (I’m brown, a woman, Muslim, of course, I’m liberal!). However, I wasn’t thinking about my liberalism when I said I didn’t want to do my partner’s laundry nor cook for them. The particular follow-up felt ill-timed and the statement irked me, so I said, yeah sure, I suppose I am.
FAB Volunteers at Markham Food Bank
By: Fab Info
Tags: Blockchain, Volunteering, Events

The FAB Foundation believes in giving back to the local community. In Markham, as part of the Markham Board of Trade, we take immense pride in being a part of any initiatives that align with our values of economic empowerment for all.

On Saturday, August 18th, FAB Chief Marketing Officer/ Chief Information Officer Liza Horowitz was joined by FAB’s Product Manager Eugene Cofie and one of FAB’s Ambassadors, Goksel Tural to take part in helping the Markham Food Bank for the day. The team stocked shelves, unpacked food items and lifted boxes to help support the cause.

We would like to send a special thank you to the Markham Food Bank for allowing us to help and we look forward to frequent volunteering with them. To donate, visit their website above.
Established and emerging supply chain technologies in Ann Arbor collaborate to further field
By: Erika Block
Tags: Supply Chain, Local Food, New Economy, Ann Arbor, Food Systems

Up on our roof.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. (September 9, 2016) — Local Orbit, the supply chain platform for the new food economy, has moved into LLamasoft’s new office space in the McKinley Towne Centre building at 201 South Division in downtown Ann Arbor.

“We’re incredibly fortunate to find space that can accommodate our growing team, with facilities and a location that are typically out of reach for start-ups as they move beyond co-working spaces. Our team is happy and productive, and it’s a boon for recruiting,” said Local Orbit Founder and CEO Erika Block.

“But even more important, being co-located with an established company that’s working on supply chain challenges provides opportunities for informal interaction between our teams, and access to the knowledge and mentorship of people that have gone down a similar path. It’s a tremendous resource that we’re starting to tap into after only a few weeks.”

Based in Ann Arbor since opening its doors in 1998, LLamasoft is a global leader in supply chain optimization software and solutions. Since moving its global headquarters to McKinley Towne Center in June, the company is working to foster collaboration and innovation with other technologies with Ann Arbor roots.

“LLamasoft knows that in order to continue to provide leading technology, we need to keep up with developing trends and the business challenges facing the supply chain industry today,” said President and CEO of LLamasoft Don Hicks. “By working with Local Orbit we look to foster engagement between our teams to continue to shine a light on innovative food supply chains and emerging disruptive technologies.”

Local Orbit will host a workshop for attendees from around the country at LLamasoft’s event space November 7–9, focused on the topic “Transparency, Collaboration & Shared Value in Local Food Economies.” LLamasoft Executive Vice President Toby Brzoznowski will participate in a discussion about the role of supply chain data in growing local food systems.

Learn more.
New Year’s resolution, an excuse to fail
By: Timothy Key
Tags: Goals, Lifestyle, Write By Fire, Self Improvement, Habit Building

I dread going to yoga this coming Friday. I usually love going to yoga, it’s just that for the next month or so the little studio my wife and I love so much will be extra crowded. Starting sometime after tomorrow the attendance will swell with yogis motivated by the piety that only the newly resolved can claim.

They will fill the yoga studios across the nation and zestfully cast their dogs downward and soar their eagles. For about a month or so. Then we can get back to our regular routine with the regular folks that are always there and reclaim our yoga tranquility.

I certainly have been a participant in the New Year’s resolution tradition over the years. Typically, it is about living healthier and/or working out more. Just like most people.

Also like most people, I haven’t followed through on them for any length of time.

As I consider the most life-affecting moves I have made over the last decade, none of them found their genesis on January 1.

About six years back I made the decision to move around more. I started walking to work and anywhere else within a reasonable distance. It was a complete change in lifestyle, and it persists today through several adaptations over time. Now I walk in the mornings as the first thing in my day and try to incorporate as many other trips on foot as possible.

I made that decision in June.

The choice to start maxing out my pre-tax investment option at work (I had a 457 plan, it’s like a 401k) was made in March. Again, a decision with significant impact to my lifestyle and future; both for the better.

The decision to pursue an undergraduate degree in Emergency Medical Services management was made in an August. I embarked on my master’s degree journey at some point in a March, after completing the former degree path during a fall quarter.

I chose to quit my long-time career in a December and made the decision to propose to my wife during a November.

You get the point. None of the things that have significantly impacted my life were the result of a decision borne strictly out of hitting a particular preset mark on a calendar.

The most important and life changing events for me weren’t resolutions; they were decisions. More specifically, they were decisions that manifested through a series of well thought out and related choices.
Labor Day
By: Amateur Tattletale
Tags: Work, Happiness, Poetry, Labor Day, Life

The Tuesday After

Most do not wish to return. Others are chomping at the bit for the world to wake up and move again. Some are most wishing to be others. Few become others.