fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
LaSOT — Large-Scale Dataset for Object Tracking Models
By: Mikhail Raevskiy
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data, Data Science, Deep Learning

The dataset contains 1.5 thousand video clips with objects of 85 different classes. There are over 3.87 million frames in the dataset. Each clip contains the markup for one object. The boundaries of the object in the frames were marked manually.

Description of the problem

Despite the development of approaches for visual tracking, the development and subsequent evaluation of models is limited by the lack of datasets specifically designed for object tracking.

LaSOT — More about dataset

LaSOT is the first well-marked benchmark for training and evaluating tracking models. The average length of a video clip in the dataset is 2.5 thousand frames. In this case, the target object may disappear and reappear in the frame. This makes it harder for models to track an object. The length of the videos allows you to test approaches for continuous tracking of objects. Each video is additionally marked with a text description.

Summary of existing benchmarks with precise dense (per frame) annotations using log-log scale. Source: Arxiv

The creators tested 48 basic trackers on LaSOT. Experimental results and analysis are available on the project website

Arxiv Paper

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2009.03465.pdf

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A Drudge First?
By: Mark Escalera
Tags: Music, Genius, Sacrifice, Language Learning, Classical Music

Ignacy Paderewski is not a name well-known in many households today. He was born in a city now located in Ukraine.

However, he was hugely instrumental in seeking the favor of President Woodrow Wilson to help Poland became an independent nation that was not part of the Russian Empire.

However, for those who know music well, the name Paderewski is synonymous with the playing and composing of classical music.

At just 18 years of age, and as a mark of the skills he had particularly in playing the piano, this man was offered the opportunity to become a teacher at the Warsaw Conservatory, which is one of the largest and oldest music schools in Europe.

Over the course of his life, he gave many concerts around Europe and the United States.

It is said that at one concert, a woman was enamored with him and his playing. After several minutes of this unwanted attention, the great pianist is said to have stopped her and said, “Madame, before I was a genius, I was a drudge!”

Each of us has the ability to do what we want with our lives.

However, many of us do not avail ourselves of the opportunities that present themselves. We might want to take advantage of them, but we are not willing to be a drudge first.

For example, I might say that I would LOVE to expertly play an instrument, or that I would LOVE to speak fluent Mandarin. The reality is that I do not play an instrument with a great degree of skill, nor do I speak fluent Mandarin.

The question is not whether I have the ability to do either of those two things for I have the ability to take lessons and learn how to play.
Always be hacking
Tags: Hacking, Office Culture, Hackathons, Smart Home, Automation

Now everyone in the office has been invited to our new “home” using the Home App. People can set the thermostat to heat before they get to the office, change the color of the lights during the dark winter nights or make sure they turned off the lights when they’ve left.

Space

All the offices in our business complex share the same intercom to control the front door. Everyone in the office has a key to the front door, but as the hacky bunch of nerds that we are, we wanted something different. So, someone from the Hackerspace Pixelbar found a way to hack the intercom and unlock the front door using a simple Arduino and a relais. That way we could just open a URL in the browser and open the door. Meaning we’d never have to leave our comfy desks for a ringing doorbell.

But wait, opening a URL is nice, but how about mobile? What if we arrive at the office, but forgot the key to the front door? We’d have to open a browser and open the URL on our phone. Why not make an app for that? Well, we did. Soon the Awkward app was born. Using a simple “slide to unlock”, we can now unlock the door and enter in a second.

We extended the app as the iOS ecosystem grew. We added a widget for quick access, an Apple Watch app to unlock the door from our wrists and even notifications based on iBeacons, so that you don’t even have to open the app to unlock the door. We even have the door in the Home App using HomeKit and using the HomeKit automation we can turn on the lights as soon as someone opens the door!

Wait a minute. What if the bell rang, but nobody heard it because we’re all listening to death metal?! During our latest hackathon we wanted to build a notification system for the doorbell, but we didn’t figure out how to get a signal. We took a different approach. We placed a microphone on top of the actual buzzer. We now receive Slack notifications whenever someone rings our doorbell.

The hacking at our office still continues. Now that we know when the bell is ringing, we’re planning to make our lightbox “smart” and let it flash for a few minutes so people know where they need to be. The HomeKit Home App also has a flaw we need to fix. If you have more than one home in the Home App, you need to manually switch to the office. We want to solve this by making the Awkward app switch the home based iBeacons we’re placing in and around the office.

To us, hacking is part of what we do. We tinker, we build, we create. It’s a fun release and sometimes great ideas become reality. Until the next hackathon!
Start Here: Zero to JavaScript — function, for-loops, if-else
By: Jack Yeh
Tags: JavaScript, Hello World, Easy, Beginner

What are functions?

Here are some examples of functions, copy and paste them into the console:

> function sayHello(name) {

console.log("Hello, " + name + "!");

}

< undefined > function plus10(num) {

return num + 10;

}

< undefined > function bigger(a, b) {

return a > b;

}

< undefined

We just declare 3 functions, function always follows this syntax:

function nameOfFunction(0 or more input variables) {

var result;

step1;

step2;

step3; // This is where the magic happens

....

return result;

}

When you are declaring functions, you are actually creating a function Value, and storing it into a Variable. The following code is quite similar:

nameOfFunction = function(0 or more input variables) {

var result;

step1;

step2;

step3; // This is where the magic happens

....

return result;

}

We are packaging input variables, return variable, bunch of steps, and the desired return value into a function, and saving that function into a Variable.

So, what can we do with function? We can call them and run through their steps when convenient:

> sayHello("Stranger");

< VM213:2 Hello, Stranger!

< undefined > plus10(32);

< 42 > bigger(9000, 1)

< true

Function steps get run through when you put ( values ) after their name.

Steps can be any computations you can think of:

Call other functions (or even itself in some cases!) Grab stock prices from the internet Calculate PI (careful, this may drain your laptop battery) Download images as ZIP Checkout shopping carts Copy String values from the current page

The power of functions become obvious when you realize that throughout your day, there are some tasks that can be grouped together into a single function. Instead of doing them one by one yourself, you can have Chrome follow through each steps and just get you the result. Don’t let other people know though… They might want in on this shortcut.

If you are only passing in number/string/boolean types into functions, you may be content to stop the lesson here and start automating your daily tasks.

But, what if you need to pass in Arrays or Objects? This is where for-loop comes in.
Unhinged: A Road-Rager’s Secret Letter to the Society
By: The Film Addict
Tags: Movies, Movie Review, Film, Russell Crowe, Film Reviews

Unhinged: A Road-Rager’s Secret Letter to the Society

93 minutes of Mad Max: Fury Road style road-zipping action

Source: Solstice Studios

Unhinged is pretty much like an old beaten-up car. You won’t know what is truly wrong with it until you drive it to a nearby workshop to have a thorough check. Once that is done, more often than not, you will get the shock of your life by one of these two things — the length of the listed parts required to be changed, or, the total bill of the repair.

Lift the hood up, and Unhinged can easily churn out 20 other alternative names for its unconventional tale of road rage and revenge. Like, “Russell Crowe’s 90-minute Course Towards Friendly Driving”. Or “Mad Tom: Slippery Roads”. Hmm, perhaps, “Lord of the Steerings: The Two Beaters”? But still, I like “Crouching Crowe, Hidden Caren” as well. But since director Derrick Borte has chosen a short and simple name for Russell Crowe’s road-rage adventure, we will just stick to Unhinged.

Unhinged, other than suggesting to you an unattached truck door that is about to drop real loud on the floor, also means mentally unbalanced — the condition that embroils the key person for the character study laid out by Borte. Crowe plays Tom Cooper, a random road-user who seems to be deeply depressed by what’s been happening around him, though I highly suspect that it is not his real name. Why? Because if I would to go on a road-rage spree, I would introduce myself as David Copperfield.

At the other corner of the ring, we have a Caren. Caren Pistorius. Pistorius plays Rachel, a single mother who is driving his teenage son, Kyle (Gabriel Bateman) to school when the traffic-jam’s of New Orleans drive her and Cooper into a perfect storm. The situation becomes much worse when Rachel’s divorce-lawyer, Andy (Jimmi Simpson) steps into the narrative. How much worse the scenes can appear to you pretty much depends on composer David Buckley (Angel Has Fallen, Jason Bourne), who has fortified Unhinged with layers after layers of tonal intensity.

Derrick Borte’s road-rage extravaganza is best enjoyed blind — if you have not read any synopsis of Unhinged and plan on seeing it, I highly suggest that you don’t. That is also the reason that I do not divulge anything excessive here, to prevent spoiling your experience. The film’s opening scene is perhaps one of the better crafted ones in recent history. If you step in blind enough, the intro can be mystery-packed and a little unsettling, because Borte literally throws you into chaos with questions and conflicting elements appearing on-screen.
Cul de sac
By: Em Unravelling
Tags: Poetry, Observation, Life, Suburbs, Poem

The road just stops and you can’t drive any further.

All of the houses match each other

with their huge windows, like indifferent eyes

watching. The saddest ones are the ones

trying to be just a little bit different,

maybe a red door instead of a white one. Maybe a bay tree.

I think about all of the choices. I think

about how this carpet that looks like porridge,

these curtains with the subtle sateen stripe

were all careful choices, once. Agonising.

Days of flipping the heavy pages of glossy brochures

looking for a different sort of beige.

It is worst on Sundays. On Sundays, there is nothing to do

but drink the wine they offer me and pretend

that I am different because I could turn the car around if I wanted to.
How can You have more money?
By: Aliyan Shaikh
Tags: Entrepreneurship, Money Mindset, Money Management, Money, Business

How can You have more money?

Money is not everything, but everything needs money.

Spending money is easier than earning money. Are you spending your money on the right things? If you are, then you’re definitely going to be richer soon.

Photo by jcomp on freepik

Everyone wants money, but they don’t want to work for it. You also want that’s why you are reading this post very carefully. It can only be possible when you work on your goals. It will take some time. You cannot be rich overnight. Once you become rich enough, you will know the real value of money. You will think 100 times before spending.

There are only two ways to have more money. First, Increase income, and second is Decrease Expenses. Now, how you can increase your income and decrease expenses, both ways are given below:

1. INCREASE INCOME:

Never depend on a single income, especially when you have only one job. Job losing has become very usual nowadays. It is the era of the internet. People are earning passive income just by using social media.

Here are some ways you can increase your income.

2nd job. Side hustle. Better paying job. Invest in stocks. Online business. Real estate. Paid surveys. Review websites and apps for cash. Freelancing is the best option. Blogging. Earn passive money by using Instagram. Teach another language.

2. DECREASE in EXPENSES:

Most people don’t know the value of money because their grandparents or parents leave a legacy behind them. Later, they end up losing all the money and business. If you want to know the value of money, go and try to borrow some.

Here are some ways to decrease your expenses.
Announcing publications with Twitter images
By: Lynn Chiu
Tags: Science, Science Communication, Twitter, Scicomm, Social Media

Announcing a paper with a Twitter image is eye-catching and saves time. It is also an excellent way to start a Paper Thread.

an image for a new publication in a special issue

I’ve been experimenting with new ways to disseminate publications from the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (@EES_Update) project on Twitter (background: I’m their communications officer and am also a researcher in the area).

I’ve found that creating an image template dedicated to publication announcements is eye-catching and saves time. So far, I’ve developed two types of images for the EES.

Blog posts:

Special issue journal articles:

This is what they look like in a tweet:

The hope is that once our audience is used to the graphic types typically used in our channel, they might be able to associate a Gestaltian global “look” with a type of announcement.

Using Twitter images might be a good alternative to screeenshots of abstracts or the first page of papers. While these screenshots shout “I am a paper!” it is not attractive and the abstracts are hard to read on a small screen. Perhaps a compromise would be “abstract images.” I’ll give that a try next week!

To create a twitter image for a paper, all I have to do is to put the key information into a formatted template on Powerpoint and then export the slide into a PNG file. I’ll explain how I set up a template soon, but first, I’d like to tell you how I got to this point, “recipe website” style.
Meet Kofi.
Tags: Gardening, Brooklyn, Community, Gofundme Heroes, Health

Kofi first heard about the 13,000-foot plot of land through a friend in the gardening community. In an area that’s one of the fastest-growing real estate markets in New York, the massive lot had somehow been forgotten for over a decade. When Kofi first found it, the area was filled with piles of garbage and shattered glass; its only residents were vagrants and drug dealers.

“I like to think about how the things you see every day affect your life, and the potential they have,” says Kofi. “I wanted to see how this space could serve the neighborhood.”

To start, he needed to determine who owned the lot so he could get permission to bring his vision to life. After countless hours of research, he was given the green light to begin cleaning up years of trash and decay. Throughout months of hard labor, Kofi and a few close friends cleared endless piles of garbage, removed 14 invasive trees, and hauled in roughly 10 tons of soil for planting, often working late into the night.
Token Clarity Feature Update: Following an ICO
By: Seline Jung
Tags: Blockchain, Ethereum, ICO, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency

The “Follow” feature update in Token Clarity is one we’ve been working hard to rework processes for. We had it up and running in the early days of Token Clarity, but unfortunately, it fell by the wayside in the last month or so due to some other research priorities that commanded much of our time. We are excited to be bringing it back, and in a more refined way, instead of casting our net too wide with tracking too many ICOs — including ones that users are not interested in.

One of the existing features in Token Clarity right now is the ability for users to “Follow” an ICO of interest. Following an ICO means the user will receive alerts in the bot on updates and changes to said ICO. You can also “Unfollow” a project at any time.

The change is that we here at the research desk are winnowing down the number of projects we’ll be following closely, based on the number of followers the project has. At this time, we will not be sending alerts and updates on ICOs that have closed.

Below are the updates users will be receiving alerts about:

White paper changes, including version updates, changes to the team, section additions and removals

Changes to terms of sale, including dates, hard cap, token price, total supply and minimum purchase requirements.

Product development updates

Users will also be able to “Replay All Updates” in Token Clarity to see all alerts that have been sent about an ICO without following one. Just type in a backslash and the token ticker to pull up an ICO.

The top 10 most-followed ICOs in Token Clarity (live and upcoming sales, only) at the time of writing are:

Envion /EVN

Shipchain /SHIP

Kairos /FACE

Metronome /MTN

Ink Protocol /XNK

Flying Money /FML

Zilliqa /ZIL

Dadi /DADI

THEKEY /TKY

Rentberry /BERRY

We will be tracking these ICOs most closely, for now. If there is an ICO that piques your interest, Follow it in Token Clarity. Or, let us know which ones you’re interested in by joining our forum. If there are enough users following it, we will track it for updates and alerts. We hope to expand this feature to include more ICOs and more kinds of alerts, including live updates on the progress of a sale and opening and closing notifications.
Lost Altitude
By: Phil Rossi
Tags: Science Fiction, Short Fiction, Flash Fiction, Relationships, Short Story

Flash Fiction

SpaceX/Unsplash

Once his spaceship aced inspection, Lyndon joined The Race To Space Rocket Festival, the most elite derby on the circuit. Lyndon was determined to win the grand prize and achieve his life-long fantasy: a career in the National Space Program as an engineer and designer.

The mission still called for an astronaut, and those cry babies from the flight schools always demanded more money than they’re worth. Not a pilot himself and afraid of heights, Lyndon stuck to the blueprints and physics of the dream. That’s when Martina breezed into the foundry.

“I wanna be your test pilot and astronaut,” Martina said.

“I do need an astronaut, but all the money’s gone — sunk into this darn spacecraft,” Lyndon confessed.

Martina marveled at the chrome creation, opportunity, and chance to fly a real rocket ship. Martina wasn’t here for the money and assured Lyndon he could prorate the payments.

“You wanna be a rocket scientist and I wanna be an astronaut. Let’s make this work,” Martina said.

What choice did he have? An Internet fundraiser seemed impossible at this point. Lyndon rolled the dice and hired Martina on the spot.

SpaceX/Unsplash

Martina proved to be a winner and knew how to finesse and muscle the craft. Unlike those yahoos from the academies, Martina sensed exactly when to twist, turn, and fire from a holding pattern.

The more guts Martina showed in the warm-ups, the better Lyndon began to feel. It stoked Lyndon’s heart whenever Martina returned from the stratosphere. All lit up from the crazy joy Lyndon’s rocket brewed.

Lyndon resumed his work. No way could he screw this up. Like the past failures, when Lyndon’s rockets imploded on the launch pad or blew apart mid-flight. If anything happened to Martina, he’d hate himself forever.
Have You Read the Latest Double Feature?
By: Brianna Bennett
Tags: True Crime, Newsletter, Friday Night Crimes, Culture, Crime

Last Friday, FNC officially returned with not one, but two stories at the same time! We featured crimes from Ohio (the Cleveland Strangler) and Louisiana (the Dunbar disappearance).

This week will feature Hoosiers and murderous caretakers. Stay tuned!

Read the latest story here:

https://bit.ly/308lPEb
How to Design the Perfect Digital Menu Board — A Guide to Designing Digital Menu Boards
By: Eva T
Tags: Digital Marketing, Design, Digital Signage, Restaurant Business, Novisign

Digital menu boards are only useful if they have a clean and well-designed layout. If designed properly digital menu boards can improve your customers experience while helping you sell more food. From proper images to organized digital menu design, it is important that you take the time needed to create your digital menu.

Here’s a couple of items that you should keep in mind when designing your digital menu board:

- Use HD images that are taken with a digital camera or 7+ cellphone

- Add some form of motion, short clips of food items being served or made

- Use adequate spacing between menu items, descriptions, images, and pricing

- Excellent menu category breakdown

- Make sure the layout is adjusted correctly
​​Hackers stole 14% of the total volume of Bitcoins and “Ethereum”
By: Ico, Crypto News
Tags: Ethereum, Token, Technology, Hacker, Bitcoin

​​ Hackers stole 14% of the total volume of Bitcoins and “Ethereum”

For all history of cryptocurrencies hackers could steal bitcoins and tokens of Ethereum for the sum of $1,2 billion, or about 14% of all stocks existing today. Autonomous Research reported about it.

Do you want be the first to read news of blockchain and crypto industries?Subscribe to our newsletter & join our Telegram channel.

Director for financial strategy, Lex Sokolin Autonomous Research noted that cryptocurrencies theft “turned into an industry with a profit of about $ 200 million per year.”

According to WinterGreen Research, hacker attacks on cryptocurrencies caused losses to companies and governments in the amount of $ 11.3 billion in the form of lost taxes and commissions from legal transactions.

Meanwhile, against the background of new attempts by hackers, the market for software, services and hardware solutions to protect Blockchains could grow from $ 259 million in 2017 to $ 355 billion in the future.
Audience Fracked
By: John Herrman
Tags: Vine, The Internet, Content

“Through adorable animated characters, kids can watch videos that are appropriate for a young audience. Swiping right or left shows a new Vine, and you can tap the screen to hear quirky sounds.”
Meet the first three speakers for Leetspeak 2017
By: Madeleine Schönemann
Tags: Leetspeak, Conference, Tretton37, Stockholm

After nearly five months of intense work the Leetspeak speaker’s committee have looked over and searched for speakers for Leetspeak 2017. We have worked hard to make sure to select speakers of relevance for this year’s theme, Build for the Globe, but also to select speakers with diverse backgrounds and different views on technology.

We are now ready and proud to announce the first three speakers for Leetspeak 2017 in Stockholm. We would hereby like to present David Yahalomi, Jack Langworthy & Tess Ferrandez.

David Yahalomi is a GraphQL enthusiast and the organizer of the GraphQL TLV community. He is part of a group of freelancers called The Guild and a contributor to Apollo’s graphql-subscriptions project.

This year we will also have Jack Langworthy joining us. In 2009, Jack moved from his home in Los Angeles to a remote Tanzanian village to teach mathematics as a Peace Corps Volunteer. In the village he became obsessed with agriculture, as everyone farmed for a living and seemed stuck in a cycle of poverty. After reading Peter Thiel’s book Zero to One, Jack became convinced that software could innovate African agriculture at scale. Together with his colleague, Magnus Kerker, he built an online trading platform so remote farmers could access buyers outside of their villages and get their food to market at a better price: for consumers and farmers.

The third speaker for Leetspeak 2017 is Tess Ferrandez. Tess is a full stack developer on the Microsoft Platform. Over the course of her career she has done everything from soldering circuit boards, burning EEPROMs, debugging nasty hangs and crashes, to developing apps and working with UX. She is equally passionate about beautiful algorithms as she is about beautiful User Interfaces and awesome User Experiences.
SKO1 ►SKO Token Swap Instructions
By: Sikoba Network
Tags: Sikoba, Sikobapay

To prepare for the implementation of our tokenomics strategy, we have launched a new SKO token, which is also an ERC-20 token on Ethereum. The addresses of the two contracts are:

Old SKO1 contract: 0x4994e81897a920c0FEA235eb8CEdEEd3c6fFF697

New SKO contract: 0x6B40089e6CBa08696D9ae48F38e2b06fAFF81765

This post describes the procedure for swapping SKO1 for the new SKO tokens. All examples in this article will use MyEtherWallet to illustrate the necessary actions.

Note that this automatic swap will be possible until the end of 2020. SKO1 holders who have not swapped their tokens until then will still be able to request a manual exchange afterwards.

Allow transfer of SKO1 tokens by new contract

To prepare for the SKO1 ► SKO swap, you must first “allow” the new contract to transfer your old tokens. The elements you will need for this are:
Never forget an EF Core migration anymore, rely on webapp HealthChecks
By: Guillaume Guerra
Tags: DevOps, Entity Framework Core, Software Development, Dotnet Core

Always listen to the cat

Sounds familiar ?

It’s Friday afternoon, you’ve accepted to handle your team’s weekly delivery. It has to be up by Monday and no one else is available.

Although you know you shouldn’t deliver on a Friday, you’re confident, you have released this app a million times, piece of cake :

Package delivered in Azure DevOps ✔️

Swagger is up, webapp has started ✔️

Yummy cookie eaten ✔️

Few hours later, production goes crazy, 500 errors everywhere, datacenter is on 🔥 🔥 🔥.

Too bad, you were having drinks with your friends, you’re running back home.

Ultimately, CSI (or AppInsights logs, it depends) will unveil the awful truth, you forgot to run an EntityFramework migration 💔

You hate yourself, you broke production, and most of all, you wasted a great Belgian 🍺.
Relic
By: Annie Caldwell
Tags: Poetry, Memories, Free Verse, Aging, Poem

Welcome to Lit Up -The Land of Little Tales. Here you can read and submit short stories, flash fiction, poetry - in brief, your own legend. We're starting little. But that's how all big stories begin.

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The Surprising Truths Autism Can Teach You About Communication
By: Avery Strange
Tags: Mental Health, Disability, Diversity, Relationships, Psychology

The Surprising Truths Autism Can Teach You About Communication

Autistic people are known for bluntness — but is that a bad thing?

Photo by Jamie Fenn on Unsplash

It’s strange how the tiniest moments of life get stuck in your head and play on loop. Recently, my memory earworm is about a beverage.

My boyfriend and I had been together for well over a year when it happened, and we went to my parents’ house to hang out with my family. We sat down on the couch like we always did, and a few minutes later, my sister asked, “Aren’t you going to offer him a drink?”

I was flabbergasted. Was I supposed to get him a beverage? Why did I have to get him a drink, but he didn’t have to get me a drink? Hell, why did anyone need a drink? Is there a reason he would be thirsty? I’m sure he would tell me if he was thirsty, and then I’d get him a glass of water. Or did she mean alcohol? I mean, weird, but I could go for a glass of Moscato…

Looking back, I remember going to my friends’ houses as a child. You enter their home, invade their personal space, and you’re immediately offered a beverage. You enter someone else’s house, and now it’s yours, and they have to wait on you. I never thought about it. I never connected the dots.

It’s “etiquette.”

Let me be blunt with you: etiquette makes no sense. None. Least of all to someone on the spectrum.

I’ve long since realized that there’s nothing wrong with being on the spectrum. The trouble isn’t always the symptoms — it’s living in a world that doesn’t understand them, and has a low tolerance for slip-ups.

Therefore, if we’re going to talk about etiquette, let’s start with language: something that autistic people are surprisingly masters at. Why?

Autistic people mean what we say.
Day 29 — I Finished and Published My Book
By: Mateja Klaric
Tags: Self Publishing, Writing, This Happened To Me, Publishing, Books

The book is finished! I published the ebook edition today on Amazon and uploaded the manuscript to Draft2Digital. The official publishing date is December 10, but it will be available for pre-order till then at a discount.

I have only to finish formatting the paperback edition (adding the last touches) and I’m DONE. Tomorrow, when I upload and publish the paperback, I will feel like a NaNoWriMo winner. It’s not a 50,000 words book, but I’ve achieved my goal and that’s all that matters — the book is out!

It was hard and I feel exhausted after the initial thrill and excitement gave way to the consequences of not having enough sleep and working too much for a whole month. I will party in December, I guess, now I just need a very long shower and a good night sleep (which is unlikely, given the three furry creatures I live with, two of which are extra spoiled cats).

Hope you are all doing well too. Here’s to the last day!
Why I Write My Truth
By: Cameo Contreras
Tags: Christianity, Writing Life, Religion, Life, Love

I recently wrote of a thirty-day challenge I would be undertaking, a plan to try and cover every situation with Christ-like love. I will readily admit it’s an area of my life I struggle with. But I felt ready. I knew God had been calling me to do this and I thought, how hard could it be? I can avoid certain people who already annoy me, and worst case, I’ll bite my tongue. I told you I had work to do.

Cut to later that afternoon. I’m picking my children up from school and my son gets in the car, scabbed, bloodied and haphazardly covered in clumsy band-aids. For roughly the third time that week, he’d had an encounter with his frienemy/bully. I’d already been in contact with the teacher and school principal, yet nobody had seen fit to call and notify me. Instead, his teacher had given him the band-aids and that was the end of it.

Livid doesn’t describe my mood adequately. Suffice it to say I was anything but, Christ-like love.

Which is why I hadn’t written a follow-up. I couldn't share my failures in Christ because what if I hindered someone's walk? In a time when people are just looking for an excuse to mock God or negate his power, I didn’t want to be the reason someone doubted. But then I remembered the grace of his message and it occurred to me: His Love, His Grace; It’s neverending. As long as we keep getting up and trying, as long as we’re repenting and moving forward, his grace is sufficient. Not an endless well of free-passes, but sufficient.

“But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” — 2Corinthians 12:19 NIV

We have to walk through this life with our eyes forward, not looking to the left or the right but firmly on him. Because he loves us and doesn’t expect perfection, just that we earnestly seek him.

When I failed, I could have given up. But doing so would not have brought about any glory to the kingdom of God, only the enemy. There are some who choose to be very conservative in their message. Very religious. Concerned about an image they too easily discount some, including only those who look qualified. God did not come for the qualified. He qualifies the called. I’m called. He’s qualifying me. Excuse me while I get this right; but in the meantime, I’ll continue sharing all of my ugliness, and all my beauty. I’ll continue to share all of my truths. It is for the hurting and afflicted that God came for and for a time, I was among them. I pray it’s those who are touched by my truth.
Special Pig Promotion — Birth of the Pig
Tags: Ethereum, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Japanese

A blockchain game about collecting, training, evolving and trading Monsters, built with blockchain and VR technology. Think Pokemon on blockchain.

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The Best Debate Isn’t the One You Win
By: Colleen B. Higgs
Tags: Ideas, Debate, Science, Discovery, Lessons Learned

We may still disagree after our conversation, but if I leave our interaction with a better understanding of where you’re coming from? That is gold.

Unscientific arguments based on science

“It’s a scientific fact.”

He said it like that was the indisputable end of the argument.

I had no comeback. Not a good one, anyway.

I was a kid who avoided debates. Having my words questioned and having to respond immediately? The whole thing sounded terrifying.

I’ve come to value debate though I still prefer having time to process.

To hear a different perspective can be valuable — if I am listening. We may still disagree after our conversation, but if I leave our interaction with a better understanding of where you’re coming from? That is gold.

I knew his argument had holes, but I didn’t have the words to take down such a strong sounding statement.

It’s tempting to sounds clever. When my goal is to “win” the debate, I’ll resort to empty phrases that sound smart. I’ll try to trip up those who see the issue differently.

But those strong sounding arguments are often just shutting down what could have been a meaningful conversation.

“Scientific fact.” End of discussion.

Yeah, but… No. It’s not the end of the discussion. It’s not a solid argument.

It’s not even a scientific argument.
The transition from Genevieve to Ø
By: Ø Crypto Union
Tags: Blockchain

“Problems, however, are rarely solved on the spur of the moment. They must be organized and dissected, then key issues isolated and defined. A period of gestation then sets in, during which these issues are mulled over. You put them in your mind and consciously or unconsciously work at them at odd hours of the day or night — even at work. It is somewhat analogous to trying to place a name on the face of someone you’ve met before. Often the solution to a problem comes to you in much the same way you eventually recall the name.” William Redington Hewlett

Genevieve & Cie were first established in 2014 with the main goal and vision of incorporating capital into small businesses to stimulate growth for both investors and local economies. Founder and CEO, Fabien Dureuil, comes from a background more than 10 years of experience in finance, legal and financial engineering, leveraged in the Wealth Management sector.

In 2015 Fabien was first introduced to the world of blockchain technology. He was struck by the similarity between tokenization and securitization in the financial world.

GXCoin

After finding early success with the initial fundraising phase of GXCoin, the decision was taken to evolve the vision first conceived by the original team. GXC, an ERC20 token, was replaced with a unique dual-token system of GXVC and GXE, both utilizing the innovative ERC223 format.

GXVC

Prior to the second stage crowd-sale, Fabien was in Abidjan, holding key negotiations with members of local government. It was whilst there, that he was introduced to Adli Takkal Bataille. Adli, an early investor in Bitcoin and other blockchain projects, they quickly found common ground in discussing the lack of real-world financial services available to holders of digital assets.

As the second round funding stage was nearing completion, Adli joined Genevieve as Director of Strategy helped Fabien troubleshoot issues faced with the marketing of the project. Simultaneously, the rapidly expanding and evolving team were able to benefit from an investment in private equity.

Now, in the Summer of 2018, Genevieve has utilized its equity to begin to nurture it’s ambitions of a fully self-sufficient system of democratic banking, proving a platform real-world financial services necessary for the crypto-economy. An evolved product platform that enables that original ambitions of Genevieve to come to life, whilst building the infrastructure of other services around it in order to ensure it’s long-term stability and ability to thrive in this volatile economy.



This platform of products, controlled and owned by its members, will be the first of it’s kind, a ‘crypto union’.

ocryptounion.io/
The Shipping Optimization Challenge: A New Data Science Competition
By: Valeriya Kushchuk
Tags: Data Science Training, Data Science Competition, Artificial Intelligence, Logistics Companies, Shipping Companies

The Shipping Optimization Challenge: A New Data Science Competition

We’ve partnered with CTRL F, a London-based logistics firm, to bring you our biggest competition yet.

We’re excited to announce the newest addition to our AI competition platform: the Shipping Optimization Challenge. We encourage our international data scientist community (where new members are always welcome!) to submit their optimization models to help a client of CTRL F — a logistics firm in London — determine the best way to ship goods.

It’s always challenging for logistics companies to reduce shipping times and costs. Being able to predict these values helps reduce domino-effect delays and improve the overall reliability of deliveries. Finding the best way to ship packages may even help reduce the negative impact of shipping on the environment.

That’s why CTRL F, a global company based in London, partnered with bitgrit to launch this competition. The goal of this competition is to more accurately predict shipping weight, quantities, and delivery time.

F inding the best way to ship packages may even help reduce the negative impact of shipping on the environment.

🚛 Part 1: Forecasting Delivery Time for Shipments

The first dataset contains historical shipment information with known shipping times. Contestants must use the data to train the model and forecast the time required to process each shipment.

The other two parts of the challenge require a time-series forecasting model:

🚛 Part 2: Predicting Shipping Quantities

The second dataset contains historical shipment information over a 16-month period spanning from 2019 to 2020. We’re asking competition participants to create a model that provides a daily forecast of shipment quantities processed over a 2-month period.

🚛 Part 3: Predicting Shipping Weight

The third dataset uses the same information from challenge 2, but asks participants to use this data to create a model that provides a daily forecast of shipment quantity and weight in the 2-month period following the timeframe covered in the dataset.

To qualify for winning a prize, participants need to make a submission for each of the above parts.

The prize breakdown is:

1st place: $4,000

2nd place: $2,500

3rd place: $1,000

The competition started on Oct. 6, 2020, and will end on Nov. 30, 2020 at 8 a.m. UTC. To learn more about the competition and to sign up, head to our website!

Note: The original deadline for this competition was Nov. 17. After receiving many requests for a deadline extension from our users, we set the new deadline of Nov. 30.
A TCR that decentralizes token listing on DEXs
By: James Todaro
Tags: Blockchain, Token Curated Registry, Tcr, Decentralized Exchange, Ethereum

User experience on The Token Registry

In the development of nascent technologies, protocol design breakthroughs can often be applied broadly. This is certainly the case in the recent explosion of decentralized ecosystems. While a particular development may be designed with a specific use-case in mind, the fundamental game theory, incentive scheme and protocol is likely widely applicable.

One contemporary example is SpankChain’s state channels. While originally launched in 2015 as a payment system for adult content, SpankChain’s state channels have been widely praised as a potential solution to increasing throughput and decreasing gas costs in the Ethereum ecosystem.

For us, what started out as a Token Curated Registry (TCR) of physicians, has evolved into an entirely new TCR design for curating any list of objective content.

The MedX TCR was designed for the purpose of creating a decentrally maintained, global network of physicians where verifiers worldwide reviewed physician credentials for admission to the registry. This network of physicians could then be instantly accessed for free by any healthcare or telemedicine application (more details can be found here). This TCR design, however, can be used for a multitude of other applications. Specifically, I’d like to discuss the potential utility of our TCR in decentralizing the token listing process for decentralized exchanges (“DEXs”).
Living The Dream of Istanbul
By: Nes Laidler
Tags: Living, Home, Culture, Travel, World

I used to live on the Asian side — we call it the Anatolian side—and work on the European side. This was a kind of personal preference, but I had many friends who choose the same type of life. Even sometimes it takes hours to cross the bridge — as many people use the same route to go to work. Still, it was worth it to choose this way. The reason behind it is; the Asian side has its own atmosphere. It is a calm, greener, and better place for families who prefer living in a family atmosphere.

The European side is very energetic. Full of young people, lively and fast rhythm. The best part of it is full of history where I find some of Istanbul’s signature sites: Topkapi Palace, the Blue Mosque, and Hagia Sophia, and many many more… On the other hand, there are business centers, shopping malls, (The Kapalı Çarşı also known as Istanbul‘s Grand Bazaar began in 1455, 2 years after Mehmed II defeated Constantinople. To this day, it’s one of the world’s most-visited tourist spots, attracting over 90 million local and international visitors per year.) Bars, restaurants where you feel the buzz of the city. It is the more authentic side of the city, with its powerful sense of community.

Crossing the bridge by car or taking the ferry from one side to the other side become my routine by time after I have started my first job however I remember the days I used to stop a moment and look around to see the beauty of the city which used to take me to the dreams!

Istanbul surrounded by the amazing Marmara Sea which connects with the Black Sea through to the Mediterranean, and onto the Atlantic Ocean and the New World.

The waterfront is also full of stunning restaurants; I remember the days where I used to enjoy Middle Eastern and Mediterranean fusion dishes while watching the fishermen on the Bosporus sail by.

There are fantastic waterfront residences in Istanbul where I used the feel like I was looking at art paintings.
How To Deal With The Anxiety The New Year Brings You
By: Petiri Ira
Tags: Society, Anxiety, Change, Self, Goals

Abandon the cliché New Year's phrases

I don't know about you but I am so tired of hearing the “new year, new me” over and over again. For many people, it sets the standard of creating massive goals and expectations over oneself to achieve within 12 months. I find that setting smaller goals throughout the entirety of the year reduces anxiety as it decreases the amount of fear instilled in you.

Remember, the change you want to see in your personality and in your life happens gradually. It's a marathon, not a sprint. By saying you're going to be a completely new person come January 1st is a tad bit borderline. Just because it's the 1st day of the new year doesn't mean your goals are automatically instilled.

Shift your “idea” of what the New Year means to you

Once I shifted my perception of what the New Year meant to me personally, I found myself in a situation where I set myself up for more favorable results during the year. I encourage you to view the new year as a time for a change, reflection and growth. I find that this decreases my level of New Year anxiety because it fosters a new approach to life and a change in mindset. Because let's face it we will have to get over difficult hurdles throughout the New Year because life is not perfect.

You are in control of how you want to manage your view of the New Year, you don't have to push this overused idea that your year has to be "perfect” by societal standards because that's not real life.

Instead, once January 1st knocks on your door, urge yourself to stay in the present, don't stress yourself about creating a utopian view of the next 365 days.

Set actionable goals

Small, actionable, goals. It's a two-step process having smaller goals will allow you to achieve them more regularly and frequently cross them off. This will leave you feeling accomplished and worthy.

For example, say you want to travel the world you can break that into smaller segments. For instance, saying you want to travel to another neighboring city, then a new state, and then a new country.

Remember, as you cross off those goals, congratulate yourself, and recognize your success. Acknowledging the little things we do on a daily basis can calm our nerves and put us into a better state mentally. This can be accomplished in small stages throughout the year.

Conclusion

The fundamentals of the steps in dealing with your New Year's anxiety can be summarised into; setting smaller goals that are completed gradually, changing what the New Year means to you, and abandoning societal cliché's. Once we reach the first day of 2021, remind yourself to not compare your journey to anyone else's, it's your own lane. Stay in the present and take the steps to achieve those actionable goals.
DigiLab Collection: Cozmo
By: Ros Bell
Tags: Digilab041218, Robotics, Digilabcollection

Cozmo is our most adorable addition to the DigiLab collection

Cozmo is a little, cute robot who will do activities, play games and complete tasks whilst communicating with a mobile app. The more you play with him, the better he gets at stuff.

Equipment name: Cozmo

Technology: Robotics, Machine Learning

Price: £179

What it is/could be used for: Understanding machine learning, learning to code with Python, robotics, robot human interaction

Further Reading: Cozmo used in an educational context, explore this blog, it’s a really great resource.

Talking points: THERE IS SO MUCH STUFF TO TALK ABOUT AROUND ROBOTS! If you’re struggling with this one, then I genuinely don’t know what to say to you.

Tips

🤖 Find out what level of knowledge people have. If they are total and complete beginners, you can use the mobile app to do fun, interesting and easy things with Cozmo, for anyone who has a bit of knowledge, maybe try experimenting with the Code Lab.

🤖 Chat to students and staff, can they think of a cool project they might like to do with Cozmo? Invite them to code club!

🤖 Watch out for Cozmo near table edges, he’s still learning what’s safe and what isn’t.