fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Java: Pass By Value or Pass By Reference
By: Ananya Sen
Tags: Singly Linked List, Java Object, Java, Data Structure Algorithm, Pass By Value

Java: Pass By Value or Pass By Reference

A simple guide to Java’s parameter passing approach

Many programmers often confuse between Java being Passed By Value or Pass By Reference. If only we could visualize our code, this won’t seem too big a problem.

Let’s start with the basics.

Data is shared between functions by passing parameters. Now, there are 2 ways of passing parameters:

Pass By Value: The pass by value method copies the value of actual parameters. The called function creates its own copy of argument values and then uses them. Since the work is done on a copy, the original parameter does not see the changes. Pass By Reference: The pass by reference method passes the parameters as a reference(address) of the original variable. The called function does not create its own copy, rather, it refers to the original values only. Hence, the changes made in the called function will be reflected in the original parameter as well.

Java follows the following rules in storing variables:

Local variables like primitives and object references are created on Stack memory. Objects are created on Heap memory.

Now coming to the main question: Is Java Pass by Value or Pass by Reference?

Java Always follows Pass by Value

Let’s see an example to understand the same:

Primitive Pass By Value Example

Explanation:

As java follows pass by value mechanism, the processData function worked on the copy of data. Hence, no change in data was there in the original calling function

Let's see another example:

Object Passing

What happened up there? If Java is passed by Value then why did my original List got updated? 😮 Looks like java is not passed by value after all? 🤔Wrong. Repeat after me

Java Always follows Pass by Value

Explanation:

Consider the following diagram to understand it better.

Stack & Heap Memory Representation

In the above program, “fruits” is passed to the processData function. “fruitsRef” is a copy of the “fruits” param. Both fruits and fruitsRef are created on Stack. They are two different references. But the interesting point is, it points to the same underlying object in Heap. So any change that you make using one reference is going to impact the common object.

Let’s see one more example:

Object Pass By Reference

Explanation:

Stack & Heap Memory Representation

In this case, we used the “new” operator to change the reference of the fruitsRef variable. fruitsRef now points to a new object and hence any change that you make in this object is not going to impact the original fruits list object.

In conclusion, Java always follows Pass by Value. However, we should be careful while passing object references between methods.
The Invisible Homeless
By: Louis Dennis
Tags: City Living, Self-awareness, Poverty, Short Story, Homelessness

The Invisible Homeless

I was taught a much needed lesson.

Photo by Ev on Unsplash

Growing up in the suburbs, I was rarely confronted with either homeless people or people asking for money on the street. It wasn’t just growing up in the suburbs; it was growing up in one of the richest countries in the world.

After moving countries, and moving to a large city, I felt confronted and — frankly — uncomfortable with the reality of homelessness and poverty. Walking down busy shopping streets, it wouldn’t be uncommon to be asked multiple times for money.

My uncomfortable feeling merged quickly into sadness and, over time, into a feeling of despair. I thought I could give one person money, but I don’t have enough to help everyone who asks.

I noticed on the trains, on the streets and in the restaurant terraces, that the majority of people just ignored the people asking for help. They either just shook their heads or pretended the people asking weren’t there. As time went on, I adopted this trait. I stopped looking at them, or talking to them, rendering them as practically invisible.

Until one day, walking down the street with my boyfriend, a homeless person said hello to us as we were passing by. This itself was not an abnormal situation. After assuming they only wanted money from me, without looking, without speaking, I walked straight by. Having previously talked about this, he said to me “I know you can’t give every homeless person money, but you can at least say hello to them”.

The reality of this broke my heart. How could I have gone, within three years, from feeling pain for these people, walking home putting money in their cups after work, to walking past without even acknowledging their existence? This moment was a big reality check for me. A reminder of who I am and, who I want to be.

It is easy to become accustomed to certain things and pretend, albeit sometimes unconsciously, that they do not exist. Now, every morning I walk past the same people sitting on the street, and I say good morning. I look them in the eyes and at least, give them the time of day that they deserve.

Homelessness is sadly something that everyone witnesses in their day to day life, but not something that is commonly talked about.

I hope this memory stays branded in my mind for the rest of my life.
The Importance of Celebrating Small Wins
By: A. Tiara
Tags: Self Improvement, Self Development, Progress, Mindset Shift, Motivation

How do we even make our ‘work’ meaningful?

I personally think that everything we do in life has its own meanings, even it’s as simple as smiling to a stranger on the streets. Some meanings are more visible and tangible than the others, but it does not mean it is less or not meaningful to your life.

If you don’t find meaning in what you are doing, you need to start questioning yourself. Now I know this might seem like lying to yourself about how you feel and what you do — and that’s not the intention here. But, you need to ask yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing?

Sometimes the answer will be something like: “I need the money to make a living” or “because the social script molds me to the person I am today.” But perhaps you can shift your perspective to something like: “though this job feels exhausting for me, it allows me to learn and grow.” And this is my mantra most of the time.
Fearless
By: Ann Litts
Tags: Courage, Self-awareness, Life Lessons, Mothers And Daughters, Anxiety

A reflection of My Life as seen by my daughter

Author’s Photo: Susquehanna County 4-H Western Grand Champions Circa 1974 — Ann & White Cloud

June 2017:

On Mother’s Day this year my daughter put this photo of me up on her Instagram account with a touching tribute to all the lives I’ve led. It moved me deeply. You have to understand, at this point in My Life, I care very little about what most people think of me. There are probably ten Humans on this earth whose respect I truly covet. My kids are at the very top of the list.

My daughter’s insight into My Life gave me pause. I had always considered myself a fretter, plagued by anxiety and panic attacks since I was a teenager. And yet, here I was kicking ass at age 14 on 1000 pounds of beast who had way more anxiety issues than I did (poor baby).

My internal voice had told me a story of a woman who kept to herself and played it safe, a rule follower and perpetual Designated Driver personality. Yet, in reality, I had always embraced change and movement in My Life. I just never could get out of my own way to see it.

The disconnect between who I thought I was and what I had actually accomplished was a real eye-opener. And to recognize it, all I had to do was stop listening to the voice who kept telling me I was this, or I was that.

Turns out — I was NOT this or NOT that.

Because even though the voice had been there my whole life whining about all the stuff I shouldn’t and couldn’t be doing, apparently I just went right ahead and did it anyway. And my daughter had noticed. She had picked up on the fact I had done pretty much anything I wanted to do. Even when other people told me I couldn’t do it, I still did it. Even when one of those people happened to live in my own head.

I had never hesitated to take the next step or stayed stuck too long in situations which required action. Inside I might have been screaming “OH NO!” but externally it was full steam ahead.

In the end, that’s really what defines our lives. Not our doubts, but our responses to them.

Do we listen to the voices who tell us we can’t?

Or do we do what we know we can?

Namaste.

Author’s Photos: Me & My Current ‘Horse’ — Circa 2015
❤️ Logo inspiration, week #14
By: Drahomír Posteby-Mach
Tags: Inspiration, Design Thinking, Design, Graphic Design, Branding

❤️ Logo inspiration, week #14

One logo a day to inspire all the logo lovers

Hello beautiful reader, this is Drahomír, the logo designer. Welcome to the curated logo design inspiration site (I am not the author of the featured logos). One logo every day in 2020. I hope you will like it.

Polarbröd logo design

Stu Toy Inventions logo design

Rhino logo design

Monkey reading logo design

UK Parliament logo design

Old Norse logo design

Rainforest Alliance logo design

Svan logo design

Bent Play logo design
Top 10 Most Lethal Pandemics in History
By: Andrei Tapalaga
Tags: Covid 19, Pandemic, Science, History, Health

10. Influenza A (H1N1) — 150,000–575,000 deaths

This pandemic was caused by a variation of Influenzavirus A (subtype H1N1) and the last crisis occurred 11 years ago in 2009, although there had been other influenza A pandemics in previous periods. The newly discovered influenza A (H1N1) virus is a new subtype of influenza virus that is transmitted to humans and contains genes from swine, avian and human influenza viruses, in a combination that had not been observed until that year. nowhere in the world. The symptoms of the new influenza A (H1N1) in humans are generally similar to the symptoms of seasonal human influenza: fever, respiratory symptoms, such as coughing and runny nose, sore throat.

Other symptoms may occur, such as generalized pain (especially muscle pain), headache, chills, fatigue, vomiting or diarrhea (which are not characteristic of the flu but have been reported in some recent cases of influenza with the new virus). In some cases, serious complications can occur even in healthy people infected with the new virus.

In June 2009, WHO classified the disease as alert level 6 (ongoing pandemic), meaning the occurrence of community outbreaks (locally occurring without the presence of an infected person coming from an initial outbreak region). One year later, on August 10, 2010, WHO announced the end of the pandemic. In 14 months, the virus made its way around the world, infecting between 11% and 21% of the population, although the mortality rate was lower than other diseases, considering that it resulted in between 150,000 and 575,000 victims.
The Bull & the Bear — Predicting Market Trends using Technical Indicators
By: Mahnoor Javed
Tags: Trading, Stock Market, Machine Learning, Finance, Data Science

The Bull & the Bear — Predicting Market Trends using Technical Indicators

The 5 Technical Indicators to Predict the Market

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

In this article, we will go through the 5 basic (yet powerful) technical indicators to understand the bullish and bearish market trends.

We will start by understanding the stock market prediction and then dive into a few indicators in order to understand bullish and bearish trends!

Stock market prediction is the act of trying to determine the future value of company stock or other financial instruments traded on an exchange. The successful prediction of a stock’s future price could yield a significant profit. Whenever we are studying the stock prices and predicting future trends, we come across two types of approaches/analysis:

Fundamental Analysis is a method of measuring the intrinsic value of a share by examining related economic and financial factors. Fundamental analysts study anything that can affect the security’s value, from macroeconomic factors such as the state of the economy and industry conditions to microeconomic factors like the effectiveness of the company’s management. The technical analysis seeks to predict price movements by examining historical data, mainly price and volume. The core assumption is that all known fundamentals are factored into price; thus, there is no need to pay close attention to them. Technical Analysis helps traders and investors navigate the gap between intrinsic value and market price by leveraging techniques like statistical analysis and behavioral economics

Technical Analysts use several indicators to predict future trends. Indicators are an indication of something happening in the market, and while they are good tools to study the market at present, they cannot be “solely” trusted in future predictions.

Bullish/Bearish Trends

Image from Nosheep on Unsplash

Market trends are of two types; Bullish & Bearish.

‘Bearish Trend’ in financial markets can be defined as a downward trend in the prices of an industry’s stocks or the overall fall in broad market indices. ‘Bullish Trend’ is an upward trend in the prices of an industry’s stocks or the overall rise in broad market indices.

The commonly held belief about the origin of these terms suggests that the use of “bull” and “bear” to describe markets comes from the way the animals attack their opponents. A bull thrusts its horns up into the air, while a bear swipes its paws downward. These actions are metaphors for the movement of a market.
Cómo crear una infografía con una plantilla de PowerPoint
By: Isabel Herrera
Tags: Marketing De Contenidos, Destacados, Hubspot

in Eudaimonia and Co
Understanding the Application
By: Ken Bourke
Tags: Csharp, Programming, Dotnet, Software Engineering, Software Development

You can pass data to a method using method parameters. The values passed to a method can be used inside of the method to influence the return value.

For example, you may define a method that adds two numbers together. The parameters for the method are two numbers, a and b. The return value of the method is the sum a + b. Each time you call the method in your program, you can pass different numbers to the method to get a different return value.

The Main method has a parameter called args. We’ll talk about args more in the next section.

Sometimes, there is confusion about the terms ‘parameters’ and ‘arguments’. When you define a method, you also define the names and the types of the values that are passed to the method. These are the method’s parameters.

When you call the method in your program, you pass an actual value, called an argument, to the method for each parameter.

WriteLine

Finally, on Line 9 we have a call to the method WriteLine which is part of the Console class.

The method WriteLine accepts a parameter of the data type String. In our application, we pass the argument “Hello Ken!” to the method.

WriteLine takes this argument and prints it to the Command Prompt window.

What’s Next?

In this part of the series, we explored that structure of the Program.cs file. Along the way, we got a brief introduction to concepts like directives and namespaces, classes, and methods.

Don’t worry if those concepts are unclear to you — we’ll go into much more detail as the series progresses. As you work through examples, you will begin to understand each concept better.

In the next part of the series, we’ll learn how to make our application interactive by accepting user input and using that input to modify the output of our application. You can find that part of the series here.
An Introduction to SwiftUI
Tags: Mobile Development, Programming, Swift, Swiftui, Xcode

Order

In SwiftUI, the order of modifiers matters. For example, if you want to have a rounded background for your text, then you need to use the background modifier before the cornerRadius modifier:
Crypto Market Snapshots: News of the Week
By: Kript Team
Tags: Cryptocurrency News, Blockchain News

⏳ What happened with the market in the last 7 days?

- BTC dominance: 55,1% (↑1,6%)

- 24h Vol: $13,8 billion (↓1,4%)

- Market Cap: $112,6 billion (↓13,5%)

🔝Top 5 coins:

#1 Bitcoin: $3560,33 (↓11,3%)

#2 XRP: $0,31 (↓13,9%)

#3 Ethereum: $92,7 (↓18%)

#4 Stellar: $0,12 (↓25%)

#5 Bitcoin Cash: $106,06 (↓36%)

🔝Top 5 tokens:

#1 Tether: $1 (stable coin)

#2 Binance Coin: $4,75 (↓7%)

#3 Maker: $336,01 (↓13,8%)

#4 TrueUSD (stable coin)

#5 USD Coin (stable coin)

📈 Gainers:

#1 Veros: $0,003501 (↑560%)

#2 EvenCoin: $0,268367 (↑502%)

#3 KWHCoin: $0,001122 (↑142%)

📉 Losers:

#1 XinFin Network: $0,001808 (↓53%)

#2 SegWit2x: $0,000421 (↓48%)

#3 Repme: $0,006896 (↓47%)

👆TOP News

📍 Huobi has released details on DLT Gibraltar License and announced its 2019 expansion plans. Read more

📍 Chinese government have invested almost $6 billion into blockchain this year. Read more

📍 Japanese authorities are going to establish a system to prevent people from evading taxes on their cryptocurrency earnings. Read more

📍 South Korean financial authorities are considering cryptocurrency tax implementation. Read more

📍 Ethereum Constantinople hard fork will be launched at block 7,080,000 on around January 14, 2019. Read more
Weekly Sprint 10
By: Robert Mineroff
Tags: Gaming, Videogames

After my critique last week, most of my programming for the game was finished. I had designed my game in a way that it is simple for me to keep adding new things. So my goal has been to continue adding to my game up until the 28th when we have our show. I have been spending a lot of time working on my visuals for the game and most of them have been made already, from the backgrounds to most of the chachter animations, so I intend to spend this next week finishing and polishing my visuals and gameplay for the show. Besides those, there is not anything else I have to work on to finish my project.
Introducing Nefertiti, a simple crypto trading bot.
Tags: Telegram, Bitcoin, Bots, Golang, Cryptocurrency

What are the bot’s most important commands?

While the bot supports many commands, the two most important ones are buy and sell . These commands are designed to be running in tandem.

You will need to start one instance of sell per exchange, regardless of how many market pairs you are trading in, for example:

sell --exchange=GDAX

The sell command listens for buy orders to get filled, and then automatically opens new limit sell orders for them. In essence, this command will auto-sell your trades. By default, the bot will try and sell them at a 5% profit.

You will then need to start an instance of buy for every market pair you want the bot to be trading in, for example:

buy --exchange=GDAX --market=BTC-EUR

and
Keep the Time to Yourself with This Binary Wristwatch
By: Cameron Coward
Tags: Wearables, Wristwatch, Design, Makers, Geek

How do you ensure a millennial will always be late? Get them an analog wristwatch! Horrible, cringey dad jokes aside, most of us rely on digital clocks these days. Heck, it’s possible you don’t even own a dedicated clock or watch, and you just use your smartphone like a normal person. But, digital doesn’t always mean “easy to read.” If you want to make sure you’re the only one who can tell the time, you could build Tobias’ BCD Binary Wrist Watch.

Binary clocks and wristwatches are hardly new, and geeks have been using them to prove their dedication to the lifestyle for decades. But, this is one of the most stylish ones we’ve ever seen. The shape is reminiscent of a classic Casio F-91W, and the sleek design is very attractive. It has three functions that can be displayed on the surface-mount LEDs: time, date, and stopwatch.

All of the circuitry is built into a custom-designed PCB, and runs off of an ATtiny1617 microcontroller. That’s ideal because it consumes very little power. Tobias used capacitive touch buttons built into the PCB to keep the design as minimal as possible, and to keep the BOM (Bill of Materials) tight. The PCB and components fit nicely into a compact 3D-printed case, and that’s topped off with a good ol’ fashioned nylon wrist band. Of course, you’re still going to need to learn how to read the time in binary.
A Little Bird with Polka-Dot Wings
By: Hal H. Harris
Tags: Culture, Politics, Race, BlackLivesMatter

I took some time off from writing to rest over the Thanksgiving break. My wife and I prepared the feast for the first time in our lives and we done did good. Grilled turkey, dressing, collard greens made in an Instapot, seven cheese Mac and cheese…we have finally ascended to the highest level of cooking, the part of your life where the family trusts you with the holiday meals.

My son, during the flurry of activity, has a Fisher-Price playmat that sings songs when he kicks at it. A total earworm of a tune has lodged itself within my head — Purple Monkey in a Bubblegum Tree.

The former humanities teacher in me is obsessed with the way the song uses the word “could.” The second verse of the song makes me the most emotional:

Maybe you, could be/

A little bird with polka-dot wings, and/

You could fly, to the sea/

Then you could fly back to me/

The realities of being a Black father and a parent during a pandemic always makes the “could” stick out to me. It’s a conditional statement. There is the choice for the little bird to just fly and never come back, and leave me wondering why or where he is. It’s also hope, that the beloved with always return home.

Surprising depth from a children’s song, y’all.

What I’m Writing

Van Jones and Dave Chappelle Show the Limits Black People Face in Getting Out Our Stories. I compare both men as they choose their responses to the 2020 Election.

Our modes of storytelling all have a relationship with complicity. How do we get more white people to honestly negotiate with our anger on 400 years of enslavement, segregation, and mass incarceration?

What I’m Reading

“The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart” by Alicia Garza. I finished the book and it is both a favorite and a necessary companion piece to the other book that deeply influenced my thinking this year — Frank Wilderson’s Afropessimism.

I find myself emulating Garza in my professional and personal lives. I work for an organization dedicated to educational equity and racial justice. I get my coins guiding programming that has school leaders leading their staffs to be less anti-racist. Like Garza, I focus on multi-racial coalitions that are deliberately intersectional.

But I cannot let go of the grip Afropessimism has in my heart. I am the foil of humanity. I am who humanity looks toward when it is unsure of itself.

400 years of social death and othering has furnished a sublime resignation in my bones that Afropessimism voices. It is always gonna be hard. It is always gonna be this way.

Till next time.
從小米利潤結構，分析還原 AIoT 雙引擎戰略背後的核心目的
By: 侯智薰 Raymond Ch Hou
Tags: Business, 中文, Aiot, Xiaomi, 小米

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The Parallels Between Playing Music And Programming
By: Ryan Knightly
Tags: Musicians, Music, Programming, Software Development

As a coder and a musician, do you notice any similarities between the two?

Definitely!

In both, there is a great sense of order, yet endless room for creativity and bending the rules.

To be fair, you can play a note that’s slightly out of key on an instrument as part of your creative freedom. With programming however, you can’t just slightly change the syntax as part of your creative expression, because compilers don’t fool around.

You still have room for creativity though, because every time you design an algorithm or data structure, or even just name a variable or method, there are endless possibilities to choose from. It is up to you to decide what works best, and what feels best, similar to how a musician can choose to play virtually any note, but it is up to them to pick what feels best.

Of course there are different types of programming and different types of music though. For example, I wouldn’t say that simply memorizing songs and playing them back perfectly exhibits the same creativity and freedom that programming does.

Instead, I would say that programming is more analogous to improvisational music, which is what I most often play myself.
What Was Your Life?
By: Samantha Lazar
Tags: Sky Collection, Loss, Poetry, Life, Death

What Was Your Life?

Sky Collection — Poem 61

Photo by Karsten Würth on Unsplash

I will hear you when the songs of my childhood play

or I know an old scent will send my mind there wondering

if you are with me again

I’d like to tell you I’m grateful

you took us as far as you could

although I will never understand how your heart beat

and how you spent your hours on this earth.
Build a COVID-19 Dashboard in Python with Plotly Dash
By: Michael Chrupcala
Tags: Python, Programming, Coronavirus, Technology, Data Science

Ever since the first cases of COVID-19 appeared on American soil, it was unclear exactly how many people were exposed to the virus. Fortunately, the U.S. has dramatically increased our testing capacity since then.

But we’re still playing catch-up. And in the face of conflicting reports of the number of confirmed cases, our team of data scientists and web developers built a dashboard to show the most accurate data we could find, in the cleanest way possible.

And now that we’ve finished & launched our dashboard, we wrote this high-level code overview for data scientists & programmers to follow along.

Demo of https://ncov19.us/

Dashboard Features

When we started designing the above dashboard, we knew that some major features we wanted to include were the following:

Number of tested, confirmed cases, and deaths in the US, all 50 states, and all US counties (plus Washington D.C. & US territories)*

A heatmap of the largest concentrations of confirmed COVID-19 cases

Locations of public testing centers in each state

News updates from major health org’s via Twitter and their websites

*We’d also like to include the number of recovered cases but we’re searching for a reliable and accurate dataset before we do.

Tutorial Outline

Broken down into all its parts, a dashboard is simply a bunch of datasets that are shown in a visually-appealing way. Every chart, graph, and table in our website was a dataset that we found, cleaned, and styled using CSS.

With that in mind, here are all the major steps that we’ll cover in this tutorial:

Decide which inputs we need for our app (tech stack & data sources) Initialize the Plotly Dash web app Web page routing for desktop/mobile users Scrape & clean the data for our visualization Display & style the data as a graph or chart

(Github repo in case you’d like to follow-along)
George Floyd. Ripping at the Seams. Tribute to George…
By: Kira Dawn
Tags: Jesus, Poetry, Spirituality, Death, George Floyd

I felt the pain

That morning.

Hung my head to cry.

I was not expecting

The unexpected.

Death looked

Premeditated.

George Floyd dies.

Watched his soul rise.

Body just a vessel

Lifeless vs Living.

Why is this even being debated?

Having a hard time forgiving,

I have much respect for all souls alike.

The color of skin

Can go take a hike.

You should not judge a man on.

Previous Mistakes.

You look at his present behavior.

See the growth that he makes.

People trying to defame his character.

Yeah. Okay. Whatever.

I don’t care.

Who am I to look into somebody and tell you who they are?

It is the racist fucking assholes sitting at a lowlife bar.

World fallling apart.

Love Uprising.

People think we are uniting.

I believe we are dividing.

The devil is a great deceiver.

He mocked Christ.

Our Prophet.

Our Leader.

God’s son made me a believer.

Satan is the king of lies.

Evil men laughing at Jesus

Our Messiah is crucified.

On the third day

Jesus was alive.

Evil lurking in every

Dark corner.

This is it.

Time for the Uproar.

Lucifer sporting a look we call insecure.
A really cool invitation to Facebook
By: Gérard Mclean
Tags: Dog, Facebook, Blog

[caption id=”” align=”aligncenter” width=”226" caption=”A step up in a Facebook badge”]

[/caption]

Wow, this really impressed me! I was immediately drawn to befriend Tina because her Facebook badge to her profile was super inviting. It has her face on it and she is smiling. And, she has a really cool blog.

Wonder if Facebook thinks this is outside their scope of “badge use compliance” but I don’t really care and Tina probably doesn’t either. It is cool.
Within Us All
By: Fleur Sauvage
Tags: Self Improvement, Inspiration, Poetry, Manifestation, Spirituality

depositphotos (free)

Many lives urging to be born throughout

foundations of the world — wanting only

to move and to breathe. Still. Within us all

Here, giving birth to dream — to wake from sleep

Pressing through pain, realize its purpose

Many lives urging to be born throughout

The decider of this life, beyond life

The never born formless, yearning to be.

To move and to breathe. Still. Within Us All

Given passage to Shangri-la, we are

pangs of labor growing still through this flesh

Many lives urging to be born throughout

To open the doors of Heaven on Earth

Awakening: the Will of the Divine

To move and to breathe. Still. Within Us All

Every breath, a Hymn wherein praise is sung

Amidst the bedlam of cacophony

Many lives urging to be born throughout

To move and to breathe. Still. Within Us All

Wishing you All: Abundance, Health, and Joy in this New Year

-FS
Intel Accumulated Substantial Risks
By: Irina Slavcheva
Tags: Stock Market, Intel, Investing, Technology, Semiconductors

Credit: Photo by Slejven Djurakovic

Intel is a company of systemic importance and its production facilities are even a matter of national security in the U.S. In the past few years the company found itself surrounded by competition which grows not only in numbers but also in diversity and we should not exclude the possibility of another big tech joining Apple in moving forward with computing units of its own design produced at large scale.

Intel was one of the companies which saw significant increase in demand in the first months of COVID, driven by Data Center purchases from both Cloud providers and governments.

In fact, Intel’s results were notably improving on the back of this demand as early as Q4 2019. Nonetheless, Investiger’s analysis of the company’s drivers concluded that Intel has accumulated substantial risks internally which were masked by the good results.

From the same perspective, at the market close on October 22, before reporting Q3 earnings, INTC was trading 15.7% down year-to-date, compared to a 7.2% increase in S&P 500 for the same period.

This material is prepared for Investiger and is based on findings from the Robalyst platform. To get insights on other companies visit www.robalyst.com.
Experiencing the “Science” in Data Science
By: Dima Shulga
Tags: Engineering, Software Engineering, Data Science, Software Development

Science is defined in Wikipedia as:

“A systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe”

or in my abridged version:

“A way to describe the reality”

Maybe it’s too deep of a definition, but eventually Science is a process of creating an idea (a model) of how the world/universe works. One important property of science is the fact that it must be “testable” or “measurable.” Once you have a hypothesis, you must be able to test, measure and reproduce your results in order to prove that this theory/idea/model describes the space good enough.

In Data Science we do exactly that. We have some problem (as in engineering) and we try to create a model that describes this problem (the world) in the best way possible, so that we could create predictions/conclusions about our problem. We perform experiments with this model, measure our results, make sure we can reproduce our results and finally create a product (or a report). One not so nice thing about experiments is that they might fail. Also, unlike with engineering, we don’t know 100% that we solved the problem, and it’s very hard to know what approach will work and what won’t (that what experiments are for).

A big part of a Data Scientist’s job is to run experiments, and experiments may fail. You may have a bright idea about your problem, the intuition says that this idea must improve the performance of your model greatly, you work hard on developing this idea, you test for days and finally you discover that your idea .. well, didn’t work. It didn’t work because you missed something, because the world doesn’t work as you think it is, because you have not enough or not good (noisy) data or million other reasons. That’s frustrating, or at least frustrating for a junior Data Scientist (or any scientist) and especially it frustrating for a software developer (or an engineer).

After a while, I came to realize that this is the fun part of the job. You may fail, but when you succeed that’s a great feeling. Data science is fun and I love it!
Exquisite Objects: Discover Rare and Beautiful Books on Kickstarter
Tags: Kickstarter, Design, Publishing, Books, Projects We Love

Throughout the month of February, Kickstarter will celebrate Exquisite Objects, a collection of artful publishing and design projects created to delight the senses. Here, Kickstarter’s Director of Publishing Margot Atwell shares a bit more about the initiative.

Spending an afternoon in a rare or secondhand bookshop is one of my favorite things to do. Trailing my finger along the spines of gorgeous leather-bound gold-embossed hardcover books; sliding a book out of its protective slipcase and thumbing the deckled edges. Beautifully published books create new entry points into classic works and encourage new ways of experiencing old stories. They can also signify that a text is worthy of a reader’s time and attention.

This month, we’ve invited a few of our favorite creators to dream big and make something truly stunning and out of the ordinary. We call these works “Exquisite Objects” because the care put into their creation far surpasses the common paperback — these works incorporate an attention to detail worthy of a museum display. To borrow a phrase from Josh O’Neill of Beehive Books, these books are “refined, gorgeous, and elegant, but still somehow kind of punk rock.”

A few of the projects you’ll see this month include:

You can explore all Exquisite Objects projects here.
ROMANIA CELEBRATES WORLD TOURISM DAY-2015
By: International Relations
Tags: Eastern Europe, Diplomacy, Ecology, World Tourism Day, Anton Caragea

IRICE is dedicated to promote the international relations of Romania and to develop the economic, cultural and diplomatic relations with nations of the world.

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Azbit Meets Ubex At Crypto Summit 2018
Tags: Blockchain, Partnership, Entertainment, Bitcoin, Fintech

“Today I will do what others won’t, so tomorrow I can do what others can’t”, legendary Jerry Rice once said. Both projects are already facing tomorrow and doing “next to impossible” things! While Ubex is building an AI platform on the blockchain, Azbit is combining the most popular and in-demand financial services under one single platform.

Changing the world of crypto and blockchain takes more than ideas. In actual fact behind every great idea there’s a ton of work. Who understands you better than like-minded people? We’re glad to meet Ubex at the Crypto Summit in Switzerland!
The Impact of the Political Paintings of Faith Ringgold
By: Froyle Davies
Tags: Art, Artist, Life, BlackLivesMatter, Social Justice

It was 1967, the year I was born. Martin Luther King Jr had already delivered his famous, ‘I have a dream’ speech, and Faith Ringgold was painting pictures about the condition of American society. Her paintings were not the images that Dr King was dreaming about, but rather, the emotionally charged paintings of race riots and inequality.

Faith Ringgold, born in 1930, had grown up in the blocks around her neighbourhood in Harlem. This was not an easy time for people of colour in America, but Faith’s childhood had been happy and creativity had been an active part of her family life. Ringgold’s mother was a fashion designer, and her father an avid storyteller. These creative folks encouraged Faith’s pursuits throughout her life, as she became a teacher, artist, professor and activist.

American People Series #1: Between Friends & #3: Neighbours, Faith Ringgold, 1963, (Faith Ringgold: Die, Anne Monahan, photo by writer)

Ringgold began creating her American People Series in 1963. The earlier paintings were more subtle in their statements of inequality. #1: Between Friends, expresses the underlying hostility between the races, where pretence and performance mask racism and inequality. #3: Neighbours, explores the cold reception of the white neighbours when a black person moves in next door. This she achieved through her use of cool blue tones and blank facial expressions.

Ringgold’s art was not just political statements. She painted her experiences, the emotions she felt from the events and people in her life.

Die, however, was not a subtle painting or one that could be easily dismissed. Reaching the length of 365cm or 12 feet, this two-panelled artwork stood to make a statement. Consisting of ten almost life-sized, both black and white, well-dressed adults. They fight, flee or die, as two interracial children cover unnoticed beneath them. Blood is splattered across Ringgold’s canvas, resembling a crime scene, and mindful of Jackson Pollock’s mural scale drip paintings.

The artwork was exhibited at Ringgold’s first solo exhibition at the Spectrum Gallery and put on display at the entrance, where it definitely made an impact.

“I was just trying to read the times, and to me everyone was falling down. If it upsets people that’s because I want them to be upset.”

Ringgold’s political painting caused outrage when it was exhibited. It was all the blood and visual horror. Unlike the current race riots, which have been streamed daily around the world, at that time, the extent of the police brutality and random violence was not being shown on the news. There was so much unrest going on, but unless you were physically at the spot when it happened, you didn’t know what was taking place. Faith wanted people to see the tragedy of the events that were happening around them.
The Great Possibility — and Risk — of this Moment
By: Resonance Network
Tags: Covid 19, Worldbuilding, Worldview, Transformation, Another World

Photo by Nathan Anderson on Unsplash

The current worldview, formed over hundreds of years, is in collapse. In this moment, we see not only the collapse but the ways in which it brings about a great opportunity for new, reimagined worldview. We are liberated the moment we understand that a worldview is something we can create collectively.

During this global slowdown, the universe is demanding change of us. The COVID-19 virus, microscopic and infinitesimal as it is, has called upon us to transform.

In the excerpt below from Workshopping the Worldview, beloved teacher Norma Wong discusses the opportunity of this moment, and the risk we face if we fail to pay attention to it.
Find Your Wabi-Sabi
By: Corey Mccomb
Tags: Personal Development, Writing, Creativity, Productivity, Life Lessons

In today’s data-driven world, we love to analyze success and failure. Success leaves clues, but data tells a story. And there’s more data on what works and what doesn’t than ever before. You too can have an algorithm for greatness for just a few monthly payments. But living outside the proven formulas and paint-by-number guides are the personal quirks and ticks that make us unique.

The Japanese call it wabi-sabi — the beauty found in the imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It’s our wabi-sabi that points us toward the things only we can do, in the way only we can do them. And more important to our productivity than doing the good, the great, or the perfect, is the ability to do the things that only we can do.

In the bestselling book, Blue Ocean Strategy, authors W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne explain the difference between companies that create new categories and companies that compete in existing markets. They call it Red Oceans vs. Blue Oceans.

Red Oceans are all the industries or categories that already exist in the market. Companies that live in Red Oceans are forced to compete with rivals over existing market share. Nike vs. Adidas. Pepsi vs. Coke.

Blue Oceans, on the other hand, are new markets where there is no competition. In a Blue Ocean, demand is created, not fought over. Companies in a Blue Ocean find rapid growth because, by simply existing, they create a new category. AirBnb. iTunes. Cirque du Soleil.

There is success and meaning to be found in both Red and Blue Oceans. However, to get the most out of our productivity, we’d all do well to discover ways to separate ourselves from the pack. This isn’t easy. When it comes to discovering what makes us special or different, we’re often the last to know. This is yet another reason that having a group, or a tribe, can be so powerful. The good news is that no one has to put extra work into being different. You’re already you. You already have the quirks and a unique set of fingerprints. The key, like so much in life, is becoming aware.

The writer Zora Neale Hurston once said, “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” To tune in and turn your wabi-sabi into a compass, start with this question: “How am I different?” Not, better, just different. It’s once you can answer that question that you’re free to ask, “How can I be different AND better?”

And if you struggle to answer either of those questions right now, don’t worry. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve rewritten this article in an effort to sound like myself. What matters is that you ask the question. Keep it in your back pocket. Miles Davis — the true blue original — said it best: “Man, it can take a long time to sound like yourself.”
Why Fair & Lovely Finally Dropping ‘Fair’ Is Not Fair Enough
By: Anu Sachan
Tags: Women, Feminism, India, Black Women, Equality

Hindustan Unilever Limited has finally changed the name of its famous Fair & Lovely, a skin lightening cream, to Glow & Lovely after 45 years since its inception. It has also promised to remove the words ‘skin lightening’, ‘fairness’, and ‘whitening’ from its marketing campaigns and will also remove advertisements about women getting fairer skin on using the cream.

For a country known as the land of myriad colors, rich cultural diversity, and delectable food, tragically, Indians are highly obsessed with fair skin, especially for women. Take a look at any person recommending any girl for marriage, she would definitely be fair, light-skinned, or at least the funniest one yet — wheatish. Dare a dark-skinned bride be looking for a groom.

India’s Obsession with Fair Skin

India is a hot and humid country (Southern half of the country is in the tropical zone while northern half in the temperate zone) and its inhabitant have been historically dark skinned. Numerous gods and goddesses (Krishna, Sita, Ram) in Hindu mythology are dark skinned.

In the 10th century, came fair skinned invaders from Central Asia, bringing along with them the concept of fair being beautiful. As they conquered lands and kingdoms, their accepted criterion of beauty became a norm. The public looked up to the fair skinned kings and queens associating white complexion with royalty.

In the late 15th century, Europeans began landing on the Indian coast. They landed as merchants but by the 18th century, they had dislodged local kings and had started ruling the country. The stigma of dark skin was further buttressed during this period and has continuously worsened since then. Being fair-skinned meant that the British lord would not turn away from looking at your face, or you might get a menial job under him for survival. By the time India became independent of the British (1947) being fair-skinned was increasingly in demand even among Indians.

One would have thought that Indians might have done away with the fair skin fetish with the British gone, but not unsurprisingly, it stuck. Even after independence, the desirability of fair skin did not diminish. Women were encouraged to get fairer skins by applying lotions, balms, creams, and untested potions. Such is India’s obsession with fair skin that even today, white foreign tourists are treated with reverence and are fawned upon while the black tourists do not get a similar treatment.
Creating Crisp Charts for Mobile
Tags: Mobile, Media, Data Visualization, Data, Data Science

According to comScore’s 2017 U.S. Cross-Platform Future in Focus, as of December 2016, 69% of digital media is consumed via a smartphone or tablet, with the remaining 31% going to desktop computers.

This is in stark contrast to data from late 2013, when the smartphone/tablet vs desktop media consumption battle was very nearly 50%/50%.

Amidst the height of the digital age, sharp mobile graphics are more critical than ever.

So the next time you’re building a Plotly masterpiece, consider using our new “mobile” graph feature. It’s super easy and will ensure that your graphs look as fly on mobile as they will on the 100 inch big screen.

What You Don’t Want Your Graph to Look Like

While the above graph looks fantastic on a laptop or desktop, that’s just a small segment of the potential viewers. Without being touched up using Plotly’s mobile tool, the graph looks about as bad as Donald’s decisions around global warming. Okay, maybe not that bad, but check this out:

But no stress, because in a few screenshots we’ll show you how to finesse that mess into something that’s sure to impress…

Under the style dropdown, select “Mobile.”

2. In the “Mobile” menu, select “add a view.”

3. Within your “new (mobile) view,” change the max width. Bear in mind that most mobile devices have a width of 480px or less.

4. Under the style dropdown, select “Layout” then “Canvas.” Make sure your canvas size is set to “Custom” and that your view is “View 1.” Then, change the width of your graph to the same size that you specified in step 3.

5. You’ll notice that our previously added notes look horrid. For crisp graphs on mobile, get rid of them.

6. Back in the “Layout” menu now, we’ve changed the “title and fonts” size. We’ve also erased or significantly shortened our axis labels.

7. You can adjust the “Margins and Padding” to best suit your graph. Typically, 50–50–25–25–0 looks the best on mobile, as pictured below.

8. You’re done. Look how sharp the mobile version looks now, along with an equally sharp desktop version.

But what happens if you tilt your mobile device horizontally to get a better view of a graph?

Watch how responsive Plotly graphs are to such a change 🔮

Plotly is built by computational scientists with degrees and research expertise from McGill, Harvard, Stanford, and other world-class institutions. Making no-compromise open-source software for scientific visualization is our full-time job and passion. Want to support our work? Consider purchasing a Pro plan. For less than half the cost of a Tableau license, you’ll get support from our engineering staff and time-saving ways to save and share your work with colleagues, advisors, or managers.

Pro Plans for University students and instructors ($59/year)

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Healthy Eating: Mandarin Almond Chicken Recipe
Tags: Wellness, Healthy Recipes, Healthy Eating, Marianne Bloudoff

We’re thrilled to kick off our Healthy Eating series featuring our HealthTap Influencers. Every week, we’ll be featuring a different delicious, healthy, and easy-to-follow recipe from one our community of Diet and Nutrition Experts.

This week’s recipe is courtesy of Marianne Bloudoff, a registered dietitian, foodie, and blogger living in British Columbia, Canada. She works with families to make healthy lifestyle changes. She is also a HealthTap Founding Influencer and blogs at French Fries to Flax Seeds.
吵翻天的高雄幣是什麼？
Tags: Blockchain, Chat, Sevencoin, Cryptocurrency, Kaohsiung

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