fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Review: WRNs — Wide Residual Networks (Image Classification)
By: Sik-Ho Tsang
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Data Science, Image Classification

2. WRNs (Wide Residual Networks)

In WRNs, plenty of parameters are tested such as the design of the ResNet block, how deep (deepening factor l) and how wide (widening factor k) within the ResNet block.

When k=1, it has the same width of ResNet. While k>1, it is k time wider than ResNet.

WRN-d-k: means the WRN has the depth of d and with widening factor k.

Pre-Activation ResNet is used in CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100 and SVHN datasets. Original ResNet is used in ImageNet dataset.

The major difference is that Pre-Activation ResNet has a structure of performing batch norm and ReLU before convolution (i.e. BN-ReLU-Conv) while original ResNet has a structure of Conv-BN-ReLU. And Pre-Activation ResNet is generally better than the original one, but it has no obvious improvement in ImageNet when layers are only around 100.

2.1. The design of ResNet block

WRN-d-2 (k=2), Error Rate (%) in CIFAR-10 Dataset

B(3;3) : Original «basic» block, in the first figure (a)

: Original «basic» block, in the first figure (a) B(3;1;3) : With one extra 1×1 layer in between two 3×3 layers

: With one extra 1×1 layer in between two 3×3 layers B(1;3;1) : With the same dimensionality of all convolutions, «straightened» bottleneck

: With the same dimensionality of all convolutions, «straightened» B(1;3) : The network has alternating 1×1, 3×3 convolutions

: The network has alternating 1×1, 3×3 convolutions B(3;1) : The network has alternating 3×3, 1×1 convolutions

: The network has alternating 3×3, 1×1 convolutions B(3;1;1): Network-in-Network style block

B(3;3) has the smallest error rate (5.73%).

Note: Number of depths (layers) are different is to keep the number of parameters close to each other.

2.2. Number of Convolutional Layers Within ResNet block

WRN-40–2 with different l, Error Rate (%) in CIFAR-10 Dataset

And two 3×3 convolutions, i.e. B(3,3) has the smallest error rate than the others . Because as all networks need to be kept as near the same parameters, B(3,3,3) and B(3,3,3,3) turns out to have fewer skip connection which makes accuracy dropped. And B(3) has only one 3×3 convolution which makes the feature extraction ineffective within such shallow network within the ResNet block.

Thus, B(3,3) is optimal and gonna be used in the coming experiments.

2.3. Width of ResNet Blocks

Different Width (k) and Depth on CIFAR-10 and CIFAR-100
Celer Network 75th Weekly Project Progress Report (2/10–2/14)
By: Celer Network
Tags: Blockchain, Celernetwork, Celerweekly

Dear Community,

Happy Weekend! 🙌 Here is our 75th weekly project progress report on our community building and technology development! Meanwhile, you can also follow our Twitter account for more updates from Celer Network.

Ongoing Events:

1. Celer Team is at ETHDenver this weekend

We’re at ETHDenver with exciting milestones! 💻BUIDL: monetize your dApps with Celer SDKs 🎮PLAY: Win $2000 CelerX crypto tournament! 🎬LAUNCH&STAKING: Mainnet upgrade and State Guardian Network’s Testnet! Read more here:

2. Celer Network’s mainnet upgrade, Lyra, launches on Ethereum!

We have open-sourced the world’s first multi-hop-networked state channel “full node”. Celer enters a new era of network growth with a 3-phase plan. Read more:

3. Celer Launches State Guardian Network Staking Testnet with Open-source Code Release

Celer launches open-source State Guardian Network Testnet, an efficient, decentralized and general-purpose infrastructure to ensure security and offer great usability of state channel network and other layer-2. Staking test program details will follow. Read more:

4. Introducing CelerX’s newest addition: 21 Cash

21 Cash is a mix of two classic games: 21 and Solitaire. Train your brain and win real cash prizes in 21 Cash.

Technology:

Mobile:

Preparing for an internal testing version for refined crypto features

Preparing for an internal testing version for refined platform features

Preparing for an internal testing version for refined tournament features

Designed APIs for upcoming features

Backend:

Continue implementation of next phase CelerX servers and APIs

Launched SGN Testnet, with open-source code and documentation

Community:

Twitter: 19,128

Telegram: 23,610

WeChat: 9,766

Thank you for reading our 75th weekly report! ♥️Happy Valentine’s Day! Please join our telegram group to stay in touch and ask us questions!! We will see you next week! 🙌

Download CelerX now at https://celerx.app

Follow Celer Network:
สิทธิ์ประกันสังคมกับการว่างงาน (กรณีลาออก)
Tags: Employee Benefits, Resign, Employees, Benefits, ประกันสังคม

in In Fitness And In Health
Vue JSON Lint
By: Carol Skelly
Tags: JavaScript, Vuejs, Json, Linter, Web Development

A simple linter, validator & formatter using Vue.js 2

Vue JSON Lint

As a developer, one of my favorite go-to tools is jsonlint.com. I like it so much that I decided to make my own JSON Linter using Vue.js.

The Vue App

const app = new Vue ({

el: '#app',

data: {

jsonstr: "",

jsonerror: ""

},

computed: {

prettyFormat: function() {

// reset error

this.jsonerror = "";

let jsonValue = "";

try {

// try to parse

jsonValue = JSON.parse(this.jsonstr);

}

catch(e) {

this.jsonerror = JSON.stringify(e.message)

var textarea = document.getElementById("jsonText");

if (this.jsonerror.indexOf('position')>-1) {

// highlight error position

var positionStr = this.jsonerror.lastIndexOf('position') + 8;

var posi = parseInt(this.jsonerror.substr(positionStr,this.jsonerror.lastIndexOf('"')))

if (posi >= 0) {

textarea.setSelectionRange(posi,posi+1);

}

}

return "";

}

return JSON.stringify(jsonValue, null, 2);

}

}

})

The HTML / Vue Markup

Used Bootstrap 4 for the CSS…
The Law of Sines with Proof
By: Wojciech Wieczorek
Tags: Education, Science, Mathematics, Math, Geometry

The Law of Sines with Proof

It states that the ratio of any side to the opposite sine in a given triangle has a constant value.

Each triangle belongs to one of three groups about which membership its angles decide. These are the right, acute, and obtuse triangles. The law of sines holds within them all.

Right triangles

There is a right-angled triangle with the vertices A, B, C at which angles are α, β, γ, where α is the right angle. Lowercase a, b, c are the lengths of the sides that opposite vertices marked with the same, but uppercase, letters. I will repeat this scheme for all the other cases. So, keep it in mind for faster catching what is going on within the next problems.

The question, how to compute the area of a triangle?

It is quite simple. Just multiply any of its sides times the corresponding altitude and divide it by 2. Notice also that two altitudes are catheti while one is not. We should start by adding this one to our picture.

How to compute h?

Altitudes always form right angles with providing them sides. So, we have two the right-angles triangles using which we could compute h by the sine function.

Let us do it for both of them,

computing the area of the ABC triangle using both of the above notations for h, plus one more (we want to have sine for all the angles,) thus:

What are we trying to prove?

That, all ratios of a side to the opposite sine are equal.

If that so, a side should stay inversely with sin90°, b with sinβ, and c with sinγ.

What must be done to make it happen?

By looking at the above equation, it is clear that each part of this equation needs what it misses. So, all these terms must be multiplied by 2/abc.

And, by taking its reciprocal,

the law of sine appears in the known form.

Acute triangles

Comparing this triangle with the right one, its angles are lower than 90°. But, it does not change the logic behind the proof. There is still a necessity to tight the sines up to their opposite sides. To do so, 3-different expressions of its area are needed that will involve these sines.

So, what to start with?

As with the earlier case, we need any two of its altitudes to make a dish.

Nothing more left than to express its area with these altitudes.

And, for the same reason, it has to be multiplied by 2/abc. Once done,

the dish is cooked.

Obtuse triangles

Pretty much everything is the same as before. The whole procedure goes the same way. But, yes there is a but.

Where are altitudes of obtuse triangles defined?

Only one of them is inside, while two go on the outside. But we need two…

How to bite it?

That is where the sine’s supplementary angle identity comes in handy. You can read about it in my earlier story, just here.

And, it is the solution to the problem. Because whether an altitude is inside or outside makes no difference for the sine function. So let me now draw two.

After this, we could write down area equations.

However, sinα’=sinα, thus:

Now, multiplicating it by 2/abc and taking its reciprocal results with the law of sine.
Field Ready: The Startup Using 3D Printing For Disaster Relief
By: Singularity University
Tags: Singularity University, Disaster Relief, 3D Printing, Global Grand Challenges, Field Ready

Field Ready: The Startup Using 3D Printing For Disaster Relief

From 2008 to 2013, how many people were displaced on average yearly due to natural disasters?

Try 27 million people.

Today, natural disasters, war, and country-level crises displace hundreds of millions of individuals yearly.

Though there are many disaster relief agencies dedicated to serving these at-risk populations, humanitarian aid supply chains are slow and cumbersome.

Learn more about the SU Labs Startup Accelerator

What this means is that the people most in need of immediate aid often can’t get the resources they need. Even when response is timely, field response teams can’t always accurately predict the supplies they’ll need.

“Our goal has always been to transform the way aid agencies work.” — Laura James, Co-Founder of Field Ready

Field Ready, a non-profit organization that’s fresh out of the SU Labs Startup Accelerator, is using 3D printing and digital manufacturing to overcome logistical challenges and improve disaster relief aid.

Why 3D printing? The agile nature of the technology allows teams to make customized response solutions; 3D printed water filters, oxygen splinters, prosthetic limbs, and more, based on the current needs of the individuals on the ground.

These tools not only make it easier for doctors and nurses to provide care, but make treatment more effective, too.
Scenes from Quarantine
By: Daniel Bala
Tags: Traveling, Black And White, Film, Photography, Photos

A student’s photographic look-back at the weirdest summer break in recent times.

For me, in small-town Ontario, it was a foreboding presence off in the distance. For many communities around the world, it was, and still is, the enemy at the gates, with their streets as the battleground.

So how did the lockdown affect me? In short: not much. For me, in small-town Ontario, it was a foreboding presence off in the distance. For many communities around the world, it was and still is the enemy at the gates, with their streets as the battleground. The travel restrictions did, however, shake up my plans, but it forced me to take a second look at the beautiful places within my own backyard and appreciate my time spent with friends even more.

These are fairly ordinary moments taken during a most extraordinary time. They aren’t perfect, documentary-like images, but are instead the results of my progression through a summer lost.

The Beginning

The whole scale of the pandemic still hadn’t sunk in yet; we were still speculating. My friends and I would debate whether our school would close down and the students sent home. One week later, things got worse and we got the boot. My summer break began early — in March.

A mostly empty Toronto.

Home Sweet Home
Flooded Streets
By: Eashan Reddy Kotha
Tags: Poetry, Life, Poem, Haiku, City Living

Haiku is a form of poetry usually inspired by nature, which embraces simplicity. We invite all poetry lovers to have a go at composing Haiku. Be warned. You could become addicted.

Follow
Running and Communicating With Containerized Applications on Google Cloud
By: Adarsh Kumar
Tags: Containers, Google Cloud Platform, Docker, Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing has completely revolutionized the way we interact with the internet. Today, it’s impractical to maintain personal machines to make your app or website reach the general public around the world. Rather, all you need is write your code, deploy it on the cloud and let it handle everything else for you!

There are numerous cloud providers on the internet today which completely take off the load from your shoulders regarding scaling, maintenance and performance of your applications, so that you as a developer can focus more on what your application does.

I’ve been learning Docker for the past few days and trust me, this is one of the best skills you can develop as it’s an excellent set of platform as a service products that uses OS-level virtualization to deliver software in packages. Here’s what it means:
JET8 Social introduces an interview with Marc Torrent, one of the most relevant thinkers and promoters of Data Culture in Spain.
Tags: Press Release, Weekly Update, Data Culture, Technology

JET8 Social introduces an interview with Marc Torrent, one of the most relevant thinkers and promoters of Data Culture in Spain. JET8 Follow Sep 30, 2019 · 1 min read

JET8 Social is proud to present an interview with one of the most relevant thinkers and promoters of Data Culture in Spain, Marc Torrent.

Torrent is the Director at Big Data Center of Excellence in Barcelona. Along with his team, they implement innovation projects to help companies and organizations extract valuable information from the data they acquire.

According to Torrent, with the continual development and advancement of technology, he believes it can help us become a better society. With the use of technology in the workplace, his vision is that humans can become more productive and be able to concentrate on tasks they enjoy. However, to achieve this there has to be an ethical debate and an agreement on the future we all want.

On the JET8 technology, he highlights JET8’s User Data Exchange Programme which protects a user’s personal information. Users are given the choice to opt-in if they want third parties to purchase their personal data directly from them.

A JET8 Social interview not to be missed!

For media inquiries, please contact:

Keshia@jet8.io, PR and Social Media Manager
Egypt’s Unemployment Continues to Rise
By: Amr Eleraqi
Tags: Economics, Infotimes Stories, Egypt, Unemployment

Egypt’s unemployment rate has increased five-fold during the last four years, according to a report issued recently by the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS). Now, there is one Egyptian unemployed among every eight Egyptians.

Unemployment was at 13 percent in 2014, while it was nine percent in 2010. Still, the rates vary between governorates. It reached it’s peak in Port Said — the Suez Canal city — with 26 percent. While it is not exceed 3 percent in South Sinai, where most of Red Sea resorts are located.

“Unemployment is a global problem. Still, it’s more severe here in Egypt,” said Mohammed Safan, the Minister for Manpower, during a TV show on Al-Hayat Channel. He said that “international rate is no more than five percent, but it reaches 13 percent in Egypt with 3.4 m jobless.”

According to CAPMAS, the unemployment rate among men is an estimated 8.9 percent while the unemployment rate among women is 25.8 percent. Moreover, the urban governorates registered the highest rates of unemployment with 16.1 percent. The unemployment rate among secondary and university graduates was around 40 percent in the category of youth.

CAPMAS’ rate looks a bit conservative as the Arab Labor Organization and United Nations have estimated earlier unemployment in Egypt at 25 percent. The World Bank, has also announced that decreasing unemployment in Egypt needs no less than 6 percent of economic growth in 2020. While it does not exceed 2.5 percent for now.

“The unemployment rate has highly increased between July and September 2013 due to the political unsteady situation and violence raise,”said a study by the World Bank.

The government data has already showed that between 700.000- 800.000 new job-seekers are entering the job market every year, which is more than the number of jobless people mentioned earlier by the minister.
Dr. Timnit Gebru, Joy Buolamwini, Deborah Raji — an Enduring Sisterhood of Face Queens
By: Joy Buolamwini
Tags: Diversity In Tech, Women In Tech, Research, Aritificial Intelligence, Racial Justice

Before the headlines, the covers, the blockbuster papers, the awards, and Coded Bias, the feature-length film that glimpses our friendship, Dr. Timnit Gebru, Deborah Raji, and I locked arms in sisterhood. This was a sisterhood formed knowing that as outsiders in academic institutions and emerging researchers exploring the limitations of artificial intelligence, we would need each other.

This week Timnit was ousted from Google for demanding research integrity and Deborah was featured in the 2021 Forbes 30 under 30. These cases are examples of how as highly visible and accomplished Black women we live at the intersections of privilege and oppression, praise and evisceration. The contrast of the Forbes recognition and Google’s Gebrugate reminded me of how we were attacked by Amazon for showing that they, like their peers, sold biased A.I. products despite the impact and recognition of our prior research.

Achievement and acclaim, we have learned many times over, do not provide immunity to racism, sexism, misogynoir, intimidation, censorship, or haterade.

The spotlight both shines and burns, and it is imperative that we rally behind one another at all stages of our careers. I am forever indebted to Timnit, who showed up for me long before others understood the value of my work. As I wrote on Twitter, she has always had my back.

When I had the experience of coding in a white mask to have my face detected and decided to change research directions to explore algorithmic bias, it was then Timnit reached out to me as a late-stage PhD candidate at Stanford. She gave me the encouragement and validation to continue my exploration even as some colleagues around me at MIT were indifferent to the work or questioned my abilities. “Are you sure you want to do that kind of work?… It involves a lot of math.” This kind of questioning seemed to dismiss my degree in Computer Science from Georgia Tech achieved with highest honors. Why should I be afraid of math?

I repeatedly heard, “Why are you focusing on dark-skinned faces?” “Why Black women?” These statements revealed how unusual it was to some of my colleagues to center people of color and Black women in particular in A.I. research. Why not center people like me, people like Timnit, people like Deborah?

When I connected with Timnit, she made me feel both seen and heard. Situated at one of the leading computer vision labs in the world, she took me under her wing and helped me refresh the computer vision knowledge I had gained as an undergraduate. She didn’t question my abilities. She expanded them. She didn’t approach my ambitions with doubt. She became first an intellectual companion and soon a dear friend. I am not alone.
Photoshop Is Sapping the Spectacular Out of Photography
By: Barry Collins
Tags: Software, Photography, Photoshop, Adobe, Ethics

This is my most ‘liked’ photo on 500px. I knew it would be a hit the moment I uploaded it. There’s only one problem: it’s not really mine. At least, not all of it is.

The picture of the pier itself is mine, taken on Sunday, as I went down to Brighton beach in search of the starlings swarming over the pier. I was a day too late.

I took a perfectly nice photo, which I converted to black and white and uploaded to 500px on Sunday evening and it was fairly well received. Not a blow-the-doors-off viral smash, but 20 or so likes, enough to make it ‘Popular’ in the site’s gradings.

This one is all my own work… well, with a little Lightroom magic

However, as you can see the sky was pretty lifeless. That’s not really my fault — the sky’s the sky, I don’t have meteorological powers. I did what I could with the conditions at hand, as I teach people to do on my photography courses.

But Adobe Photoshop 2021 doesn’t want me to settle for dreary skies. One of the headline features of this year’s refresh was Sky Replacement, a new guided edit that gives you a selection of preset skies and lets you plonk them on your image.

‘Plonk’ is perhaps a little mean on Adobe’s efforts here. Photo editors have been replacing skies for donkeys years, but this new feature makes it so much easier. Pick your new sky from a library of presets (mine came from the ‘Spectacular’ folder), twiddle with a few sliders to make sure everything fits nicely and is suitably lit, sit back and count the likes.

Photoshop makes adding a new sky a cinch

Even though a half-decent photographer would easily tell the sky was fake — the water’s not the right colour temperature, there are no clouds reflected in the water — nobody on 500px.com seemed to notice or care. It’s my biggest hit on the site yet (or at least it was, I’ve taken it down now, I don’t take credit for something that’s not mine). I feel like an opera singer who’s covered a Taylor Swift song just so I can get to number one.

I don’t mean to sound pretentious. I’m a decent photographer, but I’m not troubling Magnum. I teach people how to get to grips with the basics of their camera, but I wouldn’t dare to ‘teach’ anything more sophisticated.

It just depresses me slightly that features such as Sky Replacement make it so easy to pull the wool over people’s eyes, to make an OK photo appear better than it is. You don’t even need to spend months learning Photoshop anymore. An idiot could do it. An idiot did.

Of course, Photoshop caters for all kinds of customers and I can well see how a stressed designer, being harangued by a commercial client to “make the picture more dramatic” might love a feature such as this.

But we’re losing something here. Skill, serendipity, the pure chance of being in the right place at the right time with your camera. The ‘spectacular’ is becoming commonplace. Photoshop (and its ilk) are making it harder to seek out the special.
BNN — Christian Lassonde: Short the whole lot of crypto-services and cryptocurrencies
By: Impression Ventures
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Venture Capital, Bitcoin, English, Fintech

“Easy in, not so easy out”, Christian Lassonde, Founder and Managing Partner of Impression Ventures was on BNN to talk about cryptocurrencies. Watch the video:
God, Forgive Me for Sending My Baby Back to You
By: Tmi Project
Tags: BlackLivesMatter, Abortion, Sexual Assault, Storytelling

Now, in the doctor’s office, I touch my stomach and feel what’s growing inside me, and I know it is his. I cry. I am so afraid to share this with anybody. I feel the same way I felt when my grandfather violated me — scared, alone, depressed, hurt, and damaged.

I am just a child myself. I am too young to have a baby. I continue to live life as if nothing has changed, even as I gain weight, and my stomach expands. I begin to feel a little compassion for my unborn child. But, my inner thoughts will not have it. I always hear a voice saying, “Rid your body of this demon seed.”

Four months have passed, and I am still unsure of what to do. My grandmother starts to notice the changes in my body. One day, when I’m on my way to school, she asks me flat out, “Are you pregnant?”

“Yes, grandma, I am.”

She explodes angrily, calling me names instead of offering the comfort I so badly need. I begin to cry, yelling at her, “This is not my fault. It’s yours! You think this is easy for me?”

“Well, you are not keeping that baby and remaining in this house.”

Now my whole family will be involved. She is sure to tell them what a whore she believes I am. What she doesn’t know is that I don’t want to keep this bastard child. Not another minute do I want to carry the child of a demon in my womb.

When I walk into the clinic, I see what I would have never imagined: Girls mostly my age dealing with the same thing. It’s like walking into the pits of hell. Filling out the papers, I begin to cry. The compassion I do not want to feel for this child returns.

Lying on the table, I ask God for forgiveness for what I am about to do. The doctor says, “Young lady, I need you to count to three. When you wake up, this will all be over.” Tears in my eyes, I picture the child’s face looking like some of me and some of him. “Please, God, forgive me for sending him back to you. He is only a child, and he deserves to be loved. Something I know I can’t do. I abort this child with a strong belief that he will be the angel you sent to watch over me.” A peace suddenly falls on me. I close my eyes and finally count to three.

I guess once this is over, I can finally tell my grandmother the secret I’ve been carrying for five months now: The child I’ve just aborted was mine and my brother’s child.
7 Tips to Conquering the Learning Curve
By: Matt Inman
Tags: Self Improvement, Life Lessons, Learning, Productivity, Personal Development

Whether it is getting that great new job, starting a new hobby, or wanting to speak a different language. When you start learning anything new, you will experience a steep learning curve at the beginning. That is followed by a single moment where the process clicks, and your brain wraps itself around the idea. I refer to it as my aha moment.

If you are like me, these moments make all the hard stuff that came before it worthwhile. I can still recall times in my life during the learning process when concepts clicked. There is a tremendous amount of joy that one feels when ideas become simpler. It’s not a mastery of the task, more of a moment when you know things will get easier.

For years now, I’ve worked on finding quicker ways to reach that mark. Shortcuts that make climbing to the top faster so the downward slope will be easier.

So the question remains, how can we speed up the process? Fortunately, we can look to science for assistance.

How can you speed up that aha moment?

Speak out loud what you are attempting to learn — When I coach speakers, this is one of the first lessons we discuss. Speaking aloud is the most important thing you can do to practice. You can’t just read the material. You have to hear it spoken out loud to fully comprehend its meaning. Take handwritten notes — While it may be faster to type, studies have shown handwritten notes are processed differently by the brain. This can lead to an increased understanding of the subjects being studied. Break study sessions out over days — Cramming the night before a test is never the way to go. You wouldn’t start practicing a piano piece the day before a concert. Why do the same for a physics test? Work on creating 30–50 minute study sessions for learning. Test yourself — But not immediately after learning. Wait to test yourself for a day or more. Having to recall what you learned from the previous study session will reinforce the learning process. Teach it to someone else — There is no more effective way to learn something than the pressure of teaching it to someone else. Get plenty of sleep — The more we learn about sleep, the more we realize how important it is to our health and well being. Getting a few extra hours of sleep a day can do wonders for your cognizant abilities. Drink plenty of water — Similarly to sleep; studies find that proper hydration keeps the mind in top form and ready to meet learning challenges.

Reflecting on these simple tips can decrease the time you spend on the wrong side of the learning curve. Getting you over the hump to continue the excitement and joy of learning.
I’m Forcing Myself Not to Shave Until Spring
By: Fleurine Tideman
Tags: Self Love, Patriarchy, Beauty, Feminism, Women

I’m Forcing Myself Not to Shave Until Spring

Why I’m going razor free this winter, whether I like it or not

Photo: Vika Aleksandrova / Unsplash

Shaving was never presented as an option, not really.

I remember first deciding to shave my legs at the age of thirteen, aware that other girls had already been doing it longer. I barely had any hair on my legs; I was fortunate to be blonde with fine hair. My mum was disappointed to see I had started shaving, insisting I don’t go above the knee, which seems ironic now as she is quick to point out when I haven’t shaved. Maybe it’s because she knew that once I did it, once I entered this club, there was no going back.

You could forgive a child for not shaving, but never a woman.

I started shaving before I had a chance even to know what the hair would look like. I started getting Brazilian waxes before anyone had ever seen the area.

I have been partaking in the ritual of removing all body hair for so long, horrified by even a few prickles. To arrive at the gym and realise it had been three days, rather than one or two, since I last shaved my armpits. I was keeping them low, minimising my movements to hide this fact. To be about to leave for the beach when I realise that I didn’t shave my bikini line, imagine the potential horror. To be out in public, see my trousers rise, and the new hairs sprouting by my ankle. Convinced someone would notice, convinced that it was enough to change their perception of me.

These tiny hairs hold so much shame and embarrassment. Something natural has somehow transformed into a sign of poor hygiene. It marks the ‘radical feminist’ to actually grow bodily hair, yet all it truly marks is stopping the fight against mother nature.

I am growing out my hair because every negative voice in my head tells me it is disgusting, unattractive and inappropriate, and I need to prove them wrong.
Math Problems for Toddlers
By: Elle Rogers
Tags: Satire, Math, Humor, Parenting, Miscellany

1.) If Teddy wipes boogers on 548 different surfaces inside the house, how many Clorox wipes will his mommy need to sacrifice to kill all the germs?

2.) Sierra has five hotdogs. She gives one to her little brother as a bribe to keep quiet about who gave the dog a haircut. How many seconds will it take her brother to snitch once he inhales the woe begotten frankfurter?

3.) Liam is on fire because he played with matches. How many scissors should he run through the house with in order to poke out both of his eyes?

4.) Gretta loves Elmo, but Elmo doesn’t know how Elmo feels about Gretta. How many times will Elmo refer to himself in the third person before Elmo comes to terms with Elmo’s feelings?

5.) There are 57 toddlers on this morning’s Zoom preschool meeting. If 32 of them are throwing tantrums, 3 are smiling, and 15 are picking their noses, how many are climbing their parents' faces while shrieking “Baby Shark” at the top of their lungs?

6.) Gus is sad because Ella shoved him for being “too orangey”. How many times will he need to hit her over the head with his stuffed fire truck before he stops crying?

7.) Madysunnn is confused about how to spell her name. How many “n’s” should her parents have used in order to avoid passive-aggressive comments from teachers, neighbors, and random strangers at the grocery store?

8.) Graham has five fruit snacks. How many seconds does he need to hold them in his freakishly strong little fist before he can use them to glue his big toe to his eyeball?

9.) Stewie hasn’t had a bath in three days and his daddy is wrestling him into the tub. In how many octaves can he shriek the note “C” before all the windows within a five-block radius shatter?

10.) Bella has 2,582 stuffed animals. How much maple syrup will she need to dump on them before they are all fully transformed into “pancakes”?

Extra credit: Calculate the surface area of the 10-foot teddy bear Grandma purchased from Costco “just because”.
The #DataDigest
Tags: Data Anlysis, Cities, Big Data, Urban Planning

For more information about this release, read this article.

On the Road Again

We’ve had an incredible September visiting customers and attending a bevy of industry events throughout the country. We are learning so much and using the feedback we collect to fuel the direction of mySidewalk. In October we’ll be traveling to:

APA–Missouri : October 5–7 | Springfield, MO

: October 5–7 | Springfield, MO NRPA Annual Conference : October 5–7 | St. Louis, MO

: October 5–7 | St. Louis, MO APA–OKI (Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky) : October 5–7 | Indianapolis, IN

: October 5–7 | Indianapolis, IN Texas Economic Development Council Conference : October 19–21 | San Antonio, TX

: October 19–21 | San Antonio, TX APA–California: October 22–25 | Pasadena, CA

If you are going to any of these events, or if we’ll be in your neck of the woods during the conference, let’s meet up! Simply email hello@mySidewalk.com to schedule a time to connect.

We LOVE City Managers!

We spent last weekend at the ICMA National Convention hosted right in our own backyard–Kansas City. Our favorite part? The GovTech & KC BBQ tour we hosted with SeamlessDocs and SmartProcure on Sunday night. We had an amazing time meeting the City Managers that attended, learning more about their cities, and sampling local BBQ. Cheers to innovative #GovTech (and KC BBQ too)!
Everything You Need To Know About The Symbols On Our Plastic Containers
By: Oyku Uzuncarsili
Tags: Animals, Coffee, Plastic, Sustainability, Environment

The plastic types, with the associated code, are:

# 1 — PET or PETE — can be recycled

Used in the manufacture of beverage and water bottles, plastic food containers, and pens, this plastic has the most common usage rate. However, since they are designed for single-use, heavy metals and various chemicals can mix into the water when you refill and use it. These bottles are hardly soluble in nature.

# 2 — HDPE or HDP — can be recycled

HDPE or HDP, which is mostly used in the production of milk, detergent, oil containers, toys, and plastic bags, does not mix a chemical in water and is shown as the most preferred plastic by experts when it comes to water.

Photo by Weiqi Xiong on Unsplash

# 3 — PVC or V can be recycled, but contact your recycler

This plastic is used for CDs, sanitary ware, doors, furniture, food containers, soft materials, and toys. This plastic, which can mix two toxic materials into water, is not recommended for use in bottles.

Efficient recycling practices could save companies millions. In Apple’s latest Environmental Responsibility Report, the company said it recovered more than a ton of gold from recycled devices — that’s an estimated worth of $40 million.

# 4 — LDPE — recyclable, but contact your recycler

This plastic is forbidden to be used as a water bottle, although it does not mix any chemicals into the water. It has the possibility of contaminating chemicals that it does not mix with water to foods.

# 5 — PP — not recyclable

Standing out with its hardness and lightness, PP has a high resistance to heat. So much so that when heated, unlike other plastics, it does not melt. This makes it a good preservative for the product it preserves.

# 6 — PS — not recyclable

PS, which is a cheap and light plastic type used for many different purposes, is generally used in disposable style cups and containers, egg containers, etc. used for. When heated, it can emit carcinogenic compounds. Therefore, it is not recommended for long-term use.

Photo by Brian Yurasits on Unsplash

# 7 — Other plastics like nylon and styrene — not recyclable

We should take care of our environment and ourselves; it is our planet, so being ‘selfish’ should not be applicable when it comes to mother nature.

Please think again when you’re about to buy an item which is ‘single-use’ plastic. You can start by buying a 100% plastic-free reusable coffee cup :) ☕🌱
Medford VFW Steak Night
Tags: Beef, Medford, Headlines, Entertainment, Families

Where’s the Beef?

Come join the Medford VFW for Steak Night located at 317 Church Road, just east of Kirby’s Mill. It will be held on Sunday Nov. 6 from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. It will include a delicious steak, potato, green beans, salad, roll and butter and coffee or tea all prepared by chef Denny. The cost is $12 per person.

For more information call (609) 654–9823.
Congress Takes an Important but Small Step to Prevent Sexual Harassment on the Hill
By: Aclu National
Tags: Politics, Sexual Harassment, Washington Markup, Metoo, Congress

Congress Takes an Important but Small Step to Prevent Sexual Harassment on the Hill

Mandatory sexual harassment training alone isn’t enough to change workplace culture on the Hill.

By Vania Leveille, Senior Legislative Counsel

DECEMBER 1, 2017 | 12:45 PM

Members of the House of Representatives adopted a resolution this week that would require each of them, along with House employees and officers, to complete an annual mandatory training on workplace rights, including on preventing sexual harassment. The Senate passed a similar resolution last week.

This is good news. If done well, these kinds of trainings can help employees identify the types of behaviors — beyond the obvious — that constitute harassment. They also strengthen employees’ resolve to report offenders.

But let’s be real.

We know that trainings will never end the scourge of sexual harassment that infests Congress and other workplaces across the country. Congress must do more to clean up both of its chambers. And it can start with a laser focus on accountability and leadership in its 535 offices in our nation’s capital and thousands more in states and districts across the country.

A 2016 report from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission outlines everything that employers and employees across America, including those on the Hill, need to do. To truly have a sexual harassment free workplace, it is crucial that the commitment and example come from the top and that systems are instituted to hold each individual accountable, including those whose responsibility it is to help prevent and respond to sexual harassment.

The report should be required reading for every congressional office. There’s little doubt that a piercing, honest, and painful discussion about leadership, accountability, and power dynamics in every congressional office and workplace in America is long overdue.

Fortunately, some members of Congress are attempting to go even further to get their house in order. They have introduced legislation — The Member and Employee Training and Oversight on Congress Act, also known as the ME TOO CONGRESS Act — that would pretty much scrap the much maligned, and deservedly so, process for investigating and resolving claims of sexual harassment and other workplace violations.

Congress is starting to take steps in the right direction, but our elected leaders must go much further than mandatory sexual harassment training for members and congressional staff if they want to change the culture on the Hill.
Thank you so much for sharing Dr Mehmet Yildiz.
By: Dr Jeff Livingston
Tags: Facebook, Editor, Social Media, Writing Tips

Thank you so much for sharing Dr Mehmet Yildiz. We were growing the medical pub Being Well Facebook presence and these blocks wiped out all of our work.

This is a very helpful work around. Our medical writers want to provide trustworthy, validated health content especially during the pandemic. I was crushed when an article on mask utilization called “Making Kindnesses More Contagious During the Pandemic” was removed for “violating community standard.”

If encouraging kindness is now offensive, then we are all in trouble.
Breakout Startups for 2020 by Xpo Network
By: Ankit Kumar Singh
Tags: Xpo Network, Startup, Breakout Startups, Career Advice, Career Development

About Xpo

Xpo is a talent network built for Engineers by Engineers. We help ambitious engineers find breakout companies to work by researching startups from them.

Learn more 👇

Why We Started Writing Breakout Startups

Here’s what Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, told Sheryl Sandberg when she was hunting for a job,

Get on a rocket ship. When companies are growing quickly and they are having a lot of impact, careers take care of themselves. And when companies aren’t growing quickly or their missions don’t matter as much, that’s when stagnation and politics come in. If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat. Just get on.

Sheryl has a knack of finding rocketships. First, she found Google, then helped Facebook become a “mature company”.

However, finding a rocketship company is not easy. It usually requires two things(As Naval Ravikant says)s:-

Research Networking

Out of these two points, Networking has become relatively easier with the advent of Twitter.

It’s the research that matters.

Breakout Startups Is an attempt to solve for research catering to people who want to get in on rocketships.
3.14 Components of the Hut34 ‘Data Economy Stack’
By: Peter Godbolt
Tags: Data, Data Science, Encryption, Blockchain, Enterprise Technology

Happy π day to one and all! To celebrate, we wanted to update you on 3 and a bit components which compose what we’re calling a ‘Data Economy Stack’ — currently being battle tested for release in the Hut34 Labs. Read on!

Enterprise workers beavering away generating data. Value is captured by HutX and traded internally and externally.— Photo by Alex Kotliarskyi on Unsplash

The Hut34 ‘Data Economy’ Stack

All three (and a bit) of the case studies we’re about to walk through utilise the underlying Hut34 stack — the toolkit we spent a good 18 months building, and which is now approaching it’s v2 release. Here is an overview of the components which make the magic happen;

The Hut34 Wallet : Onboard users to the ETH ecosystem in one click by abstracting private keys to OAuth. 500 users and counting experiencing what we believe to be the best onboarding process available. Super quick, easy, and with what we think is the lowest friction in the world. HutX Data Protocol : HutX is how we bind data to value. It’s a data object which contains a 0x protocol object which settles the value transaction onchain, and additional parameters being the data model, the data location, the data hash, and the data itself in either encrypted or unencrypted form. Expect to hear far more on this as we deliver solutions to our first enterprise clients and tweak some features in preparation for release. Colossus & StationY : Colossus is our micro-service and smart contract suite which allows users to derive additional encryption keys from their ETH private key — so RSA public / private keypairs can be generated, bound to the user’s ETH address, and subsequently read from the blockchain in order to encrypt data uniquely at the point of settlement of a HutX trade. StationY is our signals collection app which we’re providing to enterprise clients to turn their stakeholders and communities into data armies. These two are a killer pairing.

0.141. Node.js driven ‘serverless’ arcitecture : The ‘little bit extra’ which we’ll sign off on π day with puts us squarely in the middle lane of current enterprise best practice. Reams has been written about the benefits of serverless arcitectures, and we’re experiencing first hand the remarkable benefits of being able to scale both to zero to control costs, and also to scale up almost limitlessly to generate the compute necessary to deal with large data sets, and also to harness tools like BigQuery to return meaningful results from queries against the entire blockchain in seconds.

The above is really a quick overview of our current efforts; expect to read more detail about both the tools we have built, and the exciting opportunities we’re delivering on to clients we can’t wait to tell you all about!

Onwards and Hutwards!

The Hut34 Team.
In the Eye Where Peace Lies
By: Ana-Maria Schweitzer
Tags: Poetry, Covid 19, Self-awareness, Emotional Balance, Spiritual Secrets

In the Eye Where Peace Lies

Escape strategy

Photo by Francesco Ungaro on Unsplash

Here we are, in a channel of time

one that drags us like bugs

warned by the stick of damnation

pushed in a stream of aversions

aversion for touch,

aversion for showing a grimace,

a smile, a grin or a shock,

aversion if not keeping the distance,

aversion for moving around.

We’re mourning the world that we lost,

we’re mourning the world that we’re losing,

we’re drifting downstream with the hope

that its force won’t crush us by rocks.

Between despair and denial

there’s the eye of the storm,

a respite from dismay,

an escape from the fray.

Every poem I write, every poem I read,

an escape from COVID,

an escape for a glimpse

in the eye where peace lies.
How to Easily Load Test Serverless Apps With Postman and AWS
By: Allen Helton
Tags: Software Development, Serverless, Programming, Postman, AWS

How to Easily Load Test Serverless Apps With Postman and AWS

Load testing should take a couple of days, not a couple of weeks. We have the tools available at our fingertips…for free

Photo by Dan Freeman on Unsplash

When you mention load testing to a software engineer, nine times out of 10 you see a slight wince in their face. Why? Because historically, load tests have been painful.

Building automated test scripts is tedious, developers didn’t think about performance at scale during the initial build, and nobody knows how to address the issues that crop up as a result.

Sounds like a recipe for disaster. Necessary disaster, but a mess nonetheless.

Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash

Enter serverless. If you’ve built your app using FaaS (Functions as a Service), you’re in luck. You likely already know about the numerous benefits of AWS Lambda, but you can add easy to load test on there now too.

A core tenet behind serverless apps is to be API first, which means you are able to fully exercise the system via endpoints. All you need in order to load test is just a way to chain these requests together to build your test scripts.

Once you have your test scripts, you need a tool that can run them at scale. Our good friends at AWS have provided us with a tool that does just that.

Lastly, you need to be able to monitor the system health while the load test is running. Guess what? AWS has us covered on that too.
The Genius of Bill Nye Unmasked
By: Bo Stapler
Tags: People, Masks, Covid 19, Science, Health

Like many other people, I believe wearing a mask in public at this stage of the pandemic is an easy and effective action we can take to reduce the spread of Covid-19. In recent years, the practice of medicine has become increasingly evidence-based leaving behind much of the unproven anecdotal dogma of the past. For example, doctors used to order anti-arrhythmic drugs for abnormal heart rhythms seen in patients in the hours after a heart attack until studies showed that this practice was actually detrimental to recovery. In general, this paradigm shift towards evidence has been of great benefit to the medical field. However, there are occasions when the requirements of data-driven medicine can stand in the way of common sense.

At the moment, the medical evidence regarding the effectiveness of cloth masks in the pandemic remains fairly low-quality for a couple of reasons. It is difficult to ethically conduct prospective studies with a proper control (i.e. non-mask-wearing) group. Likewise, it is also challenging to isolate confounding variables in retrospective studies because additional elements of mitigation in certain populations have often been implemented alongside mask-wearing. This lack of quality data can be frustrating to public health leaders and medical providers who are usually hesitant to make recommendations without strong clinical evidence.

Enter Bill Nye. In his two short videos, Nye reviews in clear language why masks are important and provides a concrete visual demonstration that viewers can link to his verbal explanation. One doesn’t require a Ph.D. to understand this Science Guy. Nye uses science to explain the concept of masking as it applies to the broadest of audiences. His message is so powerful and important because society can’t receive maximum benefit from masking if only the scientifically inclined mask up. We need each and every one of us on board. Thank you, Bill Nye, for sharing your gift of science with the world.