fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
New Partnership Announcement: Colu Partners With Metaco
Tags: Finance, ICO, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Blockchain

Colu has formed a strategic partnership with Metaco, an established blockchain company in the European market based in Switzerland. With its long experience building digital wallets and custodian solutions for cryptocurrencies, Metaco has developed SILO to overcome the technical challenges encountered by institutions dealing with cryptocurrency storage. SILO delivers military-grade secure cryptocurrency custody and payment processing to banks and other financial institutions.

Metaco, being a financial gateway, can help scale the Colu Local Network by connecting consumers and merchants on the Colu Local Network to traditional banking services. CLN interoperability with Metaco will help streamline and facilitate crypto payment processing that will push the crypto payments space forward.

Colu has been a pioneer in the blockchain space since 2014 and is well known for creating the Colored Coins protocol. Since then Colu has released the Colu Local Wallet which is now in use in four communities, located in Israel and the United Kingdom, with over 100,000 users. A subsidiary of Colu is currently developing the Colu Local Network, a payment network that aims to utilize the power of cryptocurrencies to create an open and transparent infrastructure for processing payments, that can offer a competitive alternative to credit card companies and closed-network payment providers. The Colu Local Network is expected to be integrated with Metaco by the end of 2018.

“Metaco and Colu have known each other for a long time and have both been active in the blockchain field for years. Metaco is an established financial gateway and we believe they can help us scale the Colu Local Network. We believe that we share a vision for the future of payment processing and we are anticipating future cooperation with one another.” Mark Smargon, VP Blockchain, Colu.
Liquid now accepts credit and debit cards
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Products, Bitcoin, Finance

Buying cryptocurrency should be easy.

Whether you want to buy Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP or any other digital asset, the process ought to be simple.

Nobody wants to have to jump through hoops.

That’s why we have introduced credit and debit card deposits so you can add fiat to your account to buy cryptocurrency.

Our trusted partner, Simplex, helps us provide a fraud-free card-payment processing solution that means you can get money into your account using your Visa or Mastercard usually in less than five minutes.

We’re making it possible to buy cryptocurrency with a credit or debit card.

As a Liquid user, you can use your credit or debit card to fund your account with Euros and, in the near future, USD and JPY.

Later, we will expand on this feature to give you even more options with your credit or debit card.

Card deposits increase flexibility and help you enter the market whenever you need.

You can buy Bitcoin with a credit card if the market is calling, buy Ethereum with your debit card if you think the time is right or use your funds to diversify your portfolio.

Adding credit card deposits takes us one step closer to opening up cryptocurrency to the masses. Our vision is to democratize finance and help as many people as possible get a piece of crypto.

Once you have a Liquid account you can deposit fiat straight from your card. Then after your account is funded, you are free to explore all that Liquid has to offer:

Buy and sell dozens of cryptocurrencies.

Margin trade with with up to 25x leverage.

Lend your assets and earn interest

Take part in token sales

Whatever you need, Liquid has a solution for you.

If you have Euros in your account, you can immediately buy Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Electroneum, DASH, QASH, RKT, and QTUM.

Against USD we offer Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, QASH, BCH, NEO, ONT, DASH, RKT and QTUM.

And of course, once you have Bitcoin or Ethereum, you can then buy any of the more than 100 cryptocurrencies we offer on Liquid.

All verified Liquid users can deposit up to 20,000 USD daily and up to 50,000 USD a month. The minimum deposit amount per transaction is 50 USDe.

There is a 5% fee to deposit from a credit or debit card, added to the amount you request to deposit, while the minimum card deposit fee is 10 Euros.

For example, if you deposit 1,000 EUR to Liquid, you will receive 950 EUR in your Liquid wallet. 50 EUR in fees will be deducted.

For more information, read the card deposits FAQ for Liquid.

Deposit EUR now on Liquid.
Tavşanların Hızından Gözü Korkmayan Kaplumbağalar
By: Mustafa Tuğrul
Tags: Girişimcilik, Edebiyat, Türkçe, Ekonomi, Kişisel Gelişim

Get this newsletter By signing up, you will create a Medium account if you don’t already have one. Review our Privacy Policy for more information about our privacy practices.

Check your inbox

Medium sent you an email at to complete your subscription.
Y’all talking to me?
By: Shakti Shetty
Tags: Lessons, Shakti Shetty, Conclusions

It beats me how despite being humans, we don’t know how to express ourselves through words. And then when we do — through poetry or a painting or a movie — it’s pure delight to witness our genius. So much said via short verses; so much asked with a few strokes of paint, so much revealed in a few scenes.

I’m no expert on poetry though i like to believe that i understand a fair amount. Be it Keats or Bharathi or Ghalib or Rimbaud, there’s no denying the fact that poets not only see things differently but also express themselves in a not-so-usual manner. For lesser mortals, seeing itself is a mighty task — let alone expressing what they saw.

Similarly, i can’t comment on art either. I appreciate the craziness of colour thrown on the canvas but that’s it. They say so much and their questions are best left unanswered. Hence i maintain a distance. Thank you very much.

On the contrary, i can go on and on about cinema. I’d be ungrateful if i didn’t admit that it has played an enormous role in keeping those few shreds of sanity still alive in me. I haven’t contributed anything to this particular art form but i’ve reaped a lot in return. Joy, grief, insomnia, unbridled laughter, calm, disturbance, unrequited hardons, a state of absolute nothingness, hypnosis, etc. Everything.



PS: We’re talking about expressions, right? I forgot to mention the musicians. They cunningly use heartbeats in their compositions. We don’t even realize it but it’s there somewhere. Dub dub dub dub…either softly or harshly. And if you pay heed, it’s somebody’s heartbeat. Yours, maybe. Maybe mine. That’s an expression too. Without any words to begin with.
More than 200 Advertisers Join Facebook Ad Boycott
By: Paul Dughi
Tags: Social Media, Pop Culture, Advertising, Digital Marketing, Facebook

Facebook’s facing a revolt among advertisers. Where will it end up and will it have a real impact?

The campaign is asking businesses to stop advertising on Facebook in July to send a message.

“We are asking all businesses to stand in solidarity with our most deeply held American values of freedom, equality and justice and not advertise on Facebook’s services in July.” — Stop Hate for Profit

So far more than 200 companies have pledged to join the movement. Search Engine Land published a list of companies. Here are some of the bigger brand names:

Adidas

Ben & Jerry’s

Clorox

Coca-Cola

ConAgra brands

Denny’s

Ford Motor Company

Hershey

Honda Motor Company

HP

Levi Strauss

Microsoft

Pepsi

Pfizer

Reebok

REI

Starbucks

Unilever

Verizon

What would you do with $70 billion? We know what Facebook did. They allowed incitement to violence against protesters fighting for racial justice in America. — Stop Hate for Profit

Mark Zuckerberg responded in a FB post with a series of actions.

“Facebook stands for giving people a voice — especially people who have previously not had as much voice or power to share their experiences.” — Mark Zuckerberg

Among them are:

Providing Authoritative Information on Voting During the Pandemic

Additional Steps to Fight Voter Suppression

Creating a Higher Standard for Hateful Content in Ads

Labeling Newsworthy Content
Let’s stay stronger together and win this.
Tags: India, Rbi, Government, Bitcoin, Blockchain

First things first. Media blows things out of proportion.

There is no ban on cryptocurrencies or trading or any blockchain related thing.

RBI just has mentioned that entities under its purview should not provide services to these companies. This just means that RBI is trying to stifle a way by regulating in the flow of INR to digital asset exchanges. This would be overcome.

Your crypto, INR are completely safe with us. And we would urge users not to panic sell.

We are introducing things to ensure users can get better rewards for the cryptos they hold with options like margin trading. Margin trading has been extended to other 12 more digital assets now. Check them out here

There are definitely ways to resolve this. And we would work on the same. One of them is —

We are supporting this petition and we urge all of you to spread the word everywhere. We are already at 10,000 + in a day. Sign it here.

In south Korea after 220K people signed a petition and there was massive momentum and the South Korean govt overturned the decision to ban crypto.

We applaud the steps taken by other exchanges and would give full support to fostering a dialogue with RBI and concerned regulators on this.

We as a crypto community need to stay strong and together in this. We have been the early adopters of this revolution. We need to educate and explain constantly to regulators, negative proponents on how being associated with blockchain has impacted you. Once we do this constantly and enough times we would win. There have been instances like this like SavetheInternet — Where TRAI tried to stifle net neutrality in India. In the end the users won. But it was not until the voice was raised multiple times everyday in different forms by hundreds of thousands of supporters. So tag official twitter handles of RBI, finance ministry, the prime minister and make your voice heard. Send them emails here. Go to their office. Constantly remind them.

We are here for the long-term. We would continue no matter what till we establish India at the forefront of blockchain revolution. This we just see as a minor blip in the long road ahead. We love the fanatic users who are going strong. We would win this. Let’s stay strong.

And today 7th April, there would be a flash sale on Dash. No changes in that. :)
Five years ago in crypto
By: Norbert Gehrke
Tags: Ethereum, Cryptocurrency, Crypto, Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto

“The Crypto Decade” by Robert Küfner will be released in Germany on September 20, 2018

In July 2013, the Winklevoss twins filed their Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust, an exchange traded fund (ETF), with the US Securities Exchange Commission. According to the Winklevii, the ETF was ‘designed for investors seeking a cost-effective and convenient means to gain exposure to Bitcoins with minimal credit risk’. In practical terms, investors would be able to trade bitcoins as if they were stocks. The ETF was also a means of further legitimizing bitcoin, an idea that had not escaped Mt. Gox. Still headquartered in Japan, it filed with the US Treasure Department to register as an MSB and comply with money-laundering laws. In September 2013, SecondMarket created the Bitcoin Investment Trust, a bitcoin-only investment fund. SecondMarket’s CEO was Barry Silbert, who had lost to the Winklevoss twins in the earlier fight to partner with Charlie Shrem and invest in BitInstant.

Bitcoin’s credibility as ‘real money’ continued to rise. Federal Judge Amos Mazzant ruled in Texas that bitcoins were a currency while judging the case of a suspected Ponzi scheme involving bitcoin investments. Financial market data provider Bloomberg added a bitcoin ‘XBT’ ticker to its terminal on the 9th of August to help people track bitcoin’s price.

Lawmakers in Europe began to pick up the pace too. The German Federal Ministry of Finance recognized bitcoin as ‘private money’, sanctioning its use in sales, and exempting bitcoins from tax when held for more than one year. Meanwhile, the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYSDFS) subpoenaed 22 companies and investors to investigate possible use of bitcoin for illicit activities and to follow up on consumer complaints.
Virtual booths, online conference, and lots of work during this year’s Techsylvania
By: Flavia Mocan
Tags: Fuckup Nights, Devlife, Life At Salt And Pepper, Techsylvania

As the title clearly states, we recently put a lot of effort into creating the S&P experience for Techsylvania 2020: Beyond Borders. But let’s go to the beginning of the story.

Beginning of life as we did not know it

Back in spring, all our plans at S&P for the new quarter, and basically for the whole year, were a bit shaken. The majority of our team is still working remote, a proper team building was out of the question (we really wanted to top last year’s boat trip that you can read all about here), and lastly, we did not have any idea of what was going to happen with all the tech conferences and events that we were supposed to go to. Luckily, the amazing Techsylvania team dropped the news of an online tech conference. We were so happy that the theme “beyond borders” was literally becoming a reality, and we salute their initiative and passion to continue what they started, even under these challenging circumstances.

Preparations for the unknown

We were not familiar with the concept of having a virtual booth at a tech conference. The Techsylvania team guided us through the whole process, through the setup and all the possible scenarios that we had at our disposal to make our presence seen and memorable at the conference. But we knew we got four good months to plan it all out. The task list seemed easy and doable at first:

Create a virtual booth

Organize a satellite event

Host a workshop

Easier said than done — you can trust us on this! We did not want our interaction with the conference participants to look like a regular Zoom meeting, Skype call, or Google Hangouts call. Of course, these are great tools that come in handy more than ever with this pandemic, lockdown, and remote working. But it did not seem like the best choice for what we had in mind.

Step 1. Setting up the virtual booth

After thorough internet research where we scoured for cameras, lights, and microphones, we decided to let the professionals do their magic. We’ve joined forces with the team at NumaFilm. These guys know what they’re doing, and after one meeting at our office, they managed to use our space like it was designed for filmmaking. Together, we turned one of our favorite meeting rooms, the Gordon Ramsay room, into a literal studio. Just take a look at this set-up.
Blogging Guide YouTube Channel
By: Medium Formatting
Tags: Blogging Platform, Médium, YouTube, Blogging Tips, Writing Tips

Hey everyone

I just wanted to let you know that I have started uploading some short videos / tutorials to YouTube, discussing Blogging strategies. I currently only have a few videos on my channel, but I plan to upload more. So please check it out and subscribe so that you don’t miss any new content!

The videos will cover many of the stated topics of Blogging Guide, such as:

Medium

Substack

WordPress

Social Media Marketing

SEO

Building a Brand as a Blogger

If there are any topics you want to learn more about (whether it’s through a video or article) feel free to leave a comment on this article or a private note.

Please be sure to Subscribe to my channel!
The Enduring Currency of a Good Story
By: Sarah Thomas
Tags: Creativity, Storytelling, Literature, Books, Writing

The Enduring Currency of a Good Story

Toiling for your craft pays off.

Photo by Andy Beales on Unsplash

Gilgamesh, the pre-biblical son of a goddess mother and mortal father, is considered to be the world’s first action hero. The epic Sumerian poem, featured in the seminal work on mythology, Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With A Thousand Faces is, in the words of the guru, the ‘greatest tale of the elixir quest.’

Gilgamesh leaves the sumptuous walled surroundings of Uruk in southern Mesopotamia in search of the secret ingredient of immortality; the plant ‘Never Grow Old’ (Campbell, 2008 eds, p158.), the elixir of life.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is estimated to be over 4000 years old and has survived countless wars and revolutions. That’s pretty good innings. Even the process of uncovering the poem at the end of the 19th century by self-taught anthropologist George Smith bears all the ingredients of a time-traveling tale.

Stories beget more stories.

A good story holds an enduring appeal and as the platforms change from 8th-century clay tablets to books in libraries available to some, then onto books in homes available to all. Now to the multitude of digital media channels, we see the currency it still holds.

If you’re a writer, a well-wishing stranger has probably fed you the J.K. Rowling fairy-tale, as if you hadn’t heard it before.

“Maybe you’ll write the next Harry Potter,” they say, trying to make conversation or maybe even just trying to cheer you up as you sip on your glass of free tap water at a fancy bar event.

I used to get that a lot when I was writing plays, and it was a choice between crushing their well-wishing sentiment by saying there was no Harry Potter kinda budget in theatre or just smiling and acknowledging their attempt at cheering you up. I usually opted for the latter path.

Now I don’t write plays, I write stories, and the J.K. story still wafts in and out of my consciousness and conversation. The power of one woman and her imagination and later on, perhaps some business savvy is still irresistible dreaming fodder and music to our soul.

More about J.K. later on. Firstly I want to go further back a bit to look at the enduring power of a good story, and a note to say that currency in the context of this blog just means anything useful.

J.K. Rowling certainly enjoyed a hard cash currency from her stories, but Charles Dickens, Bram Stoker, and Roberto Saviano have earned, or given I should say another kind of payment to the readers of the world.
專業整合行銷廣告媒體商 JS Adways 傑思愛德威，大讚企業通訊軟體 JANDI 帶來的高效率
By: 曹凱閔, Km Tsao
Tags: Marketing, Management, Project Management, 企業協作工具, Jandi User

in In Fitness And In Health
Lost and Found
By: Teri Bayus
Tags: Love Letters, Love

Lost and Found

As I sit on my porch swing and gaze for hours at the night sky filled with stars that have lived forever and yet still twinkle for me to see, I am more sure than ever that love is eternal. It’s a feeling that never dies — although it’s corporal body is fleeting and the ability of two souls connecting seemingly infinite and impossible. But I see the magic of when those lovers fit together like puzzle pieces even in the 1000 different configurations. I have been gifted enough to my find my star dust among a stranger who has became a part of my passion. A privy to my needs and desires. An answer to my question. Can anyone love me? Can passion sustain? Are we worthy of the greatest gift? That baring of my real soul- spilling my secrets- letting them in. I’m proud to say YES! I’ve taken that leap with a stranger. And they have healed and salved my wounded soul. They have inspired and uplifted me. Given their passion, devotion, love and friendship to a stranger.

Because they too seek connection. Mostly in prose, which we translate into flesh, alas alone in different zip codes and time zones. But the intent is as real as taking his head in my hands and making sure it gently reaches the pillow. Looking deep into his eyes where the prose doesn’t follow but the energy clearly communicates that he’s different. He matters. He is deeply loved even from afar where flesh will never mingle. He’s moved me. His hand print is on my heart. That will stay like a love note carved in a tree. Internal and so precious.

I fear this is goodbye. My wings have been clipped. I’ll miss you and thank you for the passion you shared. You are important. You deserve love. Thank you for finding and releasing me.

Teri’s Culinary Erotic Book, Consumed is available at http://www.amazon.com/Consumed-Teri-Bayus-ebook/dp/B016DW85PA
Predicting Police Call Demand for Fun (and Prophet)
By: Andreas Varotsis
Tags: Crime, Data, Pandas, Data Science, Python

Predicting Police Call Demand for Fun (and Prophet)

Quick and Dirty Predictions with LAPD Call Data

How hard is predicting policing demand in this age of easily accessible data-science? I’ve been exploring time series regression techniques, and while on the more advanced side they can get really complex, you can also use open source tools to quickly create operational insights, like here, where I’ve used publicly available LAPD call data to anticipate demand.

While some time series techniques require a fair bit of extra technical knowledge — I spent more time than any sane person should trying to understand how an ARIMA model works this weekend— we’re lucky in that Facebook has open-sourced their forecasting model, Prophet, and it’s staggeringly easy to use. In both R and Python (which I’ve used here) the library is easy to install and follows techniques you’re probably familiar with. At the most basic, all you do is feed it a series of points in time and the value you’re trying to predict, and it will account for daily, weekly and yearly seasonality and produce some surprisingly accurate predictions.

Thanks to the Police Data Initiative, I was able to obtain detailed call data for the LAPD from 2015 until the end of 2019. The data is mostly clean, so aggregating it was quite straightforward — the code is available on Github.

Where possible, make sure your data has a reliable frequency (for instance daily, weekly, hourly, etc) — some time series model will struggle with missing data, though Prophet had no issues in my testing. In my data-set, I ended up with 43825 hourly observations, for a total of just over 6 million calls.

I then used the Facebook Prophet quick-start documentation to essentially walk me through fitting our data into the model and making some initial predictions.

Once you’ve fit your model to your existing data, Prophet can then make predictions as far into the future as you want it to. For my purposes, I’ve asked Prophet to plot predicted call data for 2020 data onward — obviously it won’t be able to account for COVID, but notice the confidence of the algorithm is in the early months (based on historical trend data) and how this diverges over time.

Hourly Call Demand (Historic and Predicted)

It might look messy, but keep in mind this is predicting hourly demand, rather than daily, which allows for more granular level prediction, but does add quite a bit more noise.
How the Right Music Can Boost Your Coding Productivity
By: Piero Borrelli
Tags: Technology, Productivity, Work, Web Development, Coding

Did you know that music helped to win WW2?

I’m referring to the magical effects of a UK government program called “Music While You Work”. Launched in 1940 with the idea of broadcasting cheerful music in factories twice a day to boost the overall morale of its workers, improving their productivity to get the army the munitions they needed.

The program was a hit. With managers from all over the country citing how much more productive their factories had become. Even up to 15% more. And up to this day, it is believed for that little effort of playing music to have its beneficial effects for the country on winning the war.
My Balkan Conflict
By: Darryl Willis
Tags: Poetry, Conflict, Love, Literally Literary

Dubrovnik | Photo by Darryl Willis | All Rights Reserved

The walls around the city rise

and penetrate the Adriatic.

They jut against the blue-black skies,

safe haven from the tossing tides,

a fortress built with stone and brick.

Below, the undulating sea,

above, the dark tempestuous clouds

clash and writhe in ecstasy

as the watchman turns to see

untouched, unmoved, cold and proud.

The world of late has stood this way:

unmoving thought encased in stone

a city pinned against the day

while all around surging, swaying

love churns and moves to bring it down.
3 reasons why every (small) business must have an online presence.
By: Adriana Miron
Tags: Business, Marketing, Digital Marketing, Business Strategy

Why is online marketing so effective? The internet has brought tremendous changes to our lifestyle, as today you can do pretty much everything on it, from buying movie tickets, to furniture, everything is just one click away.

Below is an overview of the best 3 reasons why digital marketing can be beneficial to you:

Maximize your investment:

It’s critical for businesses that are growing to get the most out of each dollar spent, and fortunately, being online is one of the best ways to do this. Start with a website, but remember to use analytics tools that will help you measure the effectiveness of this and other channels you might use.

Expand your reach:

This is especially valuable as customers nowadays have too many options to choose from, and having an online presence can really make a difference when it comes to reminding them of why they should prefer your product or service.

Connect with customers:

The industry has evolved, and so have your customers buying practices. In order to get closer to your audience and build a lasting relationship with them, you must get to know their behavior and preferences, and the key to this is through speaking to them at the just the right time in their buying process. Most of the times this is online.

Where do I start?

The most important asset you can get is a website, as this is the reference point for your customers to learn more about and interact with you.

You can always leverage other useful tools like social media and other online channels.
We are born to be a butterfly
By: Darshak Rana
Tags: Motivation, Poetry, Life, Philosophy, Poem

Like a crawling caterpillar,

Meandering from leaf to leaf,

Comfortable are we,

With our daily monotonous lives,

Forgetting the ultimate truth,

That we’re born to be a butterfly.

All that we require is to let go

of our cozy comfort zones,

and build a cocoon of transformation,

Around ourselves,

and dream to be a beauty,

of magnificent charming colors.

If we believe and accept, we can.

Like a butterfly, emerge from our shell,

to feel the warmth of the sun,

and find a new dimension of life,

by spreading our intellectual wings,

and discover our potential to fly.
How To Use Vincent Van Gogh’s Learning Technique To Help Master More Skills
By: Peter Burns
Tags: Creativity, Innovation, Learning, Art, Skills

“I must continue to follow the path I take now. If I do nothing, if I study nothing, if I cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost.” — Vincent van Gogh

At 27 years of age, young Vincent was lost. He had spent years wandering around, moving from job to job, city to city, sometimes finding himself without work for extended periods of time. At one point, the red-haired Dutchman decided that bringing people closer to God would be his calling.

However, after failing the exams to get into preacher school, van Gogh instead took up a lay missionary position in the district of Borinage in the western part of Wallonia in Belgium. This, like all his previous experiences, would not last. Tired of his strange ways, the local church authorities terminated his contract after only a short period of time.

Distraught, and not knowing what to do, Vincent once again hit the road. He covered the 75 kilometers it takes to reach Brussels by foot. Finding no solace in the Belgian capital, the dispirited ex-missionary did the only thing he could think of. He moved back in with his parents in the south of the Netherlands.

“The Vicarage at Nuenen” 1885 by Vincent van Gogh

The problem was that even there, the eldest of the van Gogh siblings couldn’t get any comfort. While intent on helping their son out, his father and mother were not appreciative of his life choices. Feeling directionless, Vincent spent most of his time lying around, thinking. His mind was searching for a purpose.

In a letter to his brother, Theo, he wrote:

“I appreciate that very much, but that doesn’t alter the fact that eating and drinking and sleeping isn’t enough, that one yearns for something nobler and higher, indeed, one simply can’t do without it.”

Depressed after years of failure, Vincent van Gogh had reached a low point. Yet all the soul searching was not in vain. On one of those cold, rainy days typical of the Low Countries, the wandering Dutchman had an epiphany. He discovered his life’s true calling. The failed salesman, the failed preacher, and the directionless youngster finally saw a clear path. He would become a painter.

His mind knew that this journey would not be easy. At an age when most artists are entering the most productive years of their careers, Vincent van Gogh was still a novice. Untalented, but determined, he set out on his new mission with an intentional fervor.

“In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.”

How did this man on the edge of turning 30 go from zero to one of the world’s most celebrated artists? There was a method to the madness, one that allowed Vincent to rise up in the ranks. It’s a method that can be replicated by anyone in any walk of life who wants to turn their life around.

If you want to launch yourself into a new challenge, you can reuse the approach that van Gogh and many other people used to perfect their craft.
NEM now available at Bitpanda!
By: Nem Europe
Tags: Xem Cryptocurrency, Nem Blockchain, Bitcoin, Blockchain

We are happy to announce that NEM is now available on Bitpanda. You can buy and exchange XEM on their platform.

Bitpanda GmbH is a fintech company based in Vienna, Austria specialised in selling and buying Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It has quickly grown to become Europe’s leading retail broker for cryptocurrencies with over 850,000 users.

Bitpanda.com is a fully automated platform: As soon as the payment is confirmed, the cryptocurrencies are automatically sent to the buyers. This technique allows them to provide their customers with the best and fastest service in the business.

https://www.bitpanda.com
emFATic Roundup: April 2019
By: Misty Fritz
Tags: Fat, Life, Self, Body, Monthly Roundup

I don’t think you’re fat, I think you’re beautiful

Talk to me like a person, and look at me and see my whole self, without thinking about my weight first off.
Expanding West Coast Resilience
By: One Concern
Tags: Resilience, West Coast, Cupertino, Natural Disasters, AI

At One Concern we have a vision of planetary scale resilience, where everyone lives in a safe, sustainable and equitable world. This is our north star and our guiding ambition, but we aren’t naive about what it will take to achieve it.

We are painfully aware that the world we inhabit is rife with disaster and hardship. Here in the United States, 2017 was the most expensive year for natural disasters in the country’s history, with a total cost of more than $300 billion. The West Coast alone suffered a staggering $20 billion in damage. Tragically, 59 people in California lost their lives and thousands more up and down the coast had their livelihoods disrupted.

However, in the face of these sobering statistics, we know that a commitment to resilience can and will save human lives and livelihoods. That’s what motivates me and my team here at One Concern. To us, nothing is larger than life. That’s why we are working so hard to help communities build a web of resilience up and down the West Coast.

A Web of Resilience — Today Cupertino, Tomorrow Your City?

This is why we are so excited that the city of Cupertino, home of Apple, has decided to partner with us to become the newest member of a West Coast resilience network — with more communities preparing to join in the coming weeks

(L-R) Nicole Hu, One Concern CTO | Ahmad Wani, One Concern CEO | Cupertino Mayor Darcy Paul at the January 31, 2018 State of the City Address

“I commend Mr Wani and Ms Hu for their concern and dedication… efforts like theirs are critical in ensuring that we are prepared as we can be in emergency situations … You can imagine how powerful [One Concern’s technology] could be in a situation where you’re trying to prepare. Where you’re trying to drill and respond” ~ Cupertino Mayor Darcy Paul

Through our application of benevolent AI and a combination of human expertise, science and deep learning, we are empowering cities like Cupertino, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Woodside and Portola Valley with insights that help the dedicated emergency response professionals and public servants in these communities better prepare for, mitigate against, respond to and recover from natural disasters.

We are so proud to be working with our partners in these communities and are honored by the solemn trust they have placed in us. This is only the beginning though.

We will be adding new partners to our expanding web of resilience over the coming weeks and months. Not only cities and towns, but also civic organizations and private companies, all of which comprise a deeply interconnected resilience ecosystem.

Each new partner will have the opportunity to share their experience and expertise across the system; leveraging the expertise of each individual member to increase the network’s strength for the benefit of all.

The work of building a more resilient West Coast starts now. Come join us!

~ Ahmad Wani

Co-founder and CEO, One Concern

www.oneconcern.com
Alienus Non Diutius
By: Alok Tyagi
Tags: Startup, Software Development, Organization Development

Pixar motto “Alienus Non Diutius” (Latin for “Alone no longer”) speaks volume. Pixar is probably the only Hollywood production house that emphasizes collaboration where crew remain employed one movie after another. This is considerably different from other production houses where everyone is on a contract for one movie. Once the movie is over folks moves on to their next production forming another crew with other production houses or whatever else they can lay their hand on.

Is it just a coincidence that Pixar continues to deliver hit after another hit? or is it the team work that make Pixar stand out. Consider Toy Story, Monsters Inc, Bugs life, Incredibles, Finding Nemo, Cars, Wall-E, etc.

“Alienus Non Diutius” hits the nail for software organization. Gone are the days of lone rangers where organization rode on the back of heroes only to find they can’t scale. Heroes are still needed (actually by a lot) — but someone who knows how to be part of a team environment. Such heroes bring sea change in an organization. These gifted individuals groom other strong players bringing high tide in the organization and make it play on a level field otherwise not possible.
please don’t do this.
By: Lisa Martens
Tags: Poetry, Relationships, Poem, Love, Dating

please don’t do this.

a poem, a warning.

Photo by Aman Shrestha on Unsplash

please don’t do this — because my heart gives up quickly

and i like being alone.

please don’t do this — because i move on

even when i don’t want to

it’s a part of what they call

my disease.

please don’t do this — i don’t do

threats or jealousy

because i have been threatened

so many times

my soul has the same pushback

as stepping on mud

have you ever been to the dentist

and they inject your gums

and you feel numb

that is how i feel

when i see you walk away with

someone else

maybe you want

a fiery passion

a big scene

please don’t do this — you won’t get a reaction

you’ll just lose

what you already had —

please don’t do this

because i’m not a reflection of you

when you move

i may not move

i may stay still and watch. i am not

a mirror

i am an audience.

please

don’t do this.

what if i say it sternly

like a mother —

are you turned on?

please don’t.

do this — here is what i want

i will lay out

three options like

t-shirts on your bed. Pick

a course of action.

please don’t do this.

my hands will limply open and you will slip away.

and when you come back, they will

be closed.
Dear Employer: I Do Naughty Things With Post-It Notes
By: Amanda Closs
Tags: Work, Corporate Culture, Business, Workplace, Business Strategy

Photo Credit: Me with the help of my iPhone

Dear Employer: I Do Naughty Things With Post-It Notes

And I am not sorry because I have seen others do worse!

Have you ever gone through the old photos on your smartphone as a sort of spring-cleaning ritual? That is precisely what I was doing when I found this little nugget above. At first, I could not place it, since I did take it in early March. You remember early March at least vaguely, right? We weren’t on pandemic lockdown yet so we were still working at our cramped cubicles or in dreary hand-me-down offices.

I admit this was a piece of décor in my office. It is rather contemporary in the artistic genre, it always sparked a conversation with my office visitors. Depending on who asked, I would tell a different story. My typical story, to those I considered outside the circle of trust, was that it was tracking the number of donuts I’d consumed at work each year. Disturbingly enough, many people believed that! Reference my diatribe about my employer’s horrible choice in friends!

In reality, these Post-It Notes were tracking the number of people who were promoted into director or vice president roles at the company each year. Yes, I used my company’s office supplies to track their follies around the expansion of upper management.

I realize this is a misappropriation of office supplies. In my defense, I typically used this size Post-It note for honest to goodness work. They were great for page markers and document flags.

The real crime occurred when it became de rigueur for some groups to plan processes with the use of multi-colored, various sized Post-It notes on bare walls. I submit the following photograph as evidence of that criminal act of which I was an unwilling participant on more than one occasion.

Photo Credit: Me with the help of my iPhone

Imagine the exorbitant sum of money spent across the organization on this healthy supply of Post-It notes! All along, we were using them to devise plots to overthrow the current systems and tracking missteps.

When I consider the severity of the crime, I am not convinced that I am the criminal in this particular situation. I mean, really, dear employer?! Did we honestly need 27 more directors and/or vice presidents added to the roster in 2019? If I recall correctly, that was the same year we endured significant lay-offs and furloughs during Q4, yet you came back strong with hiring or promoting 15 more directors in Q1 2020.

For this reason alone, I consider myself the Robin Hood of Post-It Notes, and my cause is noble and just.
Trading Vacancy
By: Mark Kelly
Tags: Trading, Finance, Nonfiction, Cryptocurrency, Crypto

There’s another personality trait that can impede trading success, which is compassion. If the world is going to hell in a handbasket, it can sometimes be patently obvious that the financial markets are going to crash, and there are products available to capitalise on this eventuality.

Immediately after 9/11, when the rest of the world was standing aghast and open-mouthed, some traders were making millions from the entirely predictable tanking of the markets.

The same was true during the financial crisis of 2008.

And the same has happened again as the effects of the Coronavirus have rippled out across the globe.

A robot trading automatically and without sentiment would detect the increase in market volatility and load up without remorse on futures and options designed to profit from sudden market movements.

But we aren’t robots, and it seems unethical to profit directly from the suffering of so many.

So, even when it doesn’t need a crystal ball to see the imminent downturn in the markets, some residual sense of compunction and humanity stays my hand more often than not.

Guess I’ll have to hunker down and wait for the good times to return!
Ethereum in Emerging Economies
By: Austin Thomas Griffith
Tags: Burner Wallet, Emerging Markets, Labs, Ethereum, Emerging Economies

The project is 100% open source with no revenue model. If you would like to contribute, there are many open issues and bounties. If you would like to help financially, help fund a bounty or contact me directly. In an effort toward better decentralization, please fork the repo and build/support/evangelize your own version!

I’d like to extend a huge thanks to the people above that are addressing these emerging markets. This also wouldn’t be possible without DAI and the xDai chain either, so thank you to Igor and team over at POA and the MakerDao team too!

The original idea for a DAI wallet came from Alejandro Machado [read more about his Open Money Initiative]. He has a team pushing this idea forward, massive props guys, you know who you are! One team member in particular is Mikhail Dobrokhvalov who is building out a much more mature wallet solution in parallel with the Burner Wallet. Also, I didn’t even come up with the name “Burner”. That happened organically on crypto Twitter.

In some of these emerging markets the on and off ramps to fiat are still shaping up. We see sites like localbitcoin and localethereum helping users connect, but there still isn’t a great solution. This remains and another open ended problem to solve. Let’s figure it out!

Thanks for following along on this journey. Keep an eye out for updates and let’s keep #BUIDLING and #SHIPLING! Learn more about me at https://austingriffith.com and on twitter @austingriffith
The Future of _______
By: Ajit Verghese
Tags: Innovation, Startup, Covid 19, Future Of Work, Diversity

Photo by Drew Beamer on Unsplash

At humble ventures we subscribe to the adage attributed to famed sci-fi writer William Gibson, who said, “The future is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed.”

We’re enamored with the future of all things not because it is going to happen but because it is happening around us, and if we pay attention we may learn a few things about ourselves and our own humanity.

“The future of _______” is a series of online pop-ups where we convene operators across specific industries to discuss where they are spending their time, the types of problems they are focused on solving, and where they see opportunity.

On Friday of this week, we’ll be hosting “The Future of Direct-to-Consumer: How Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) Evolves During And Post-COVID-19.”

Sign up for the event, and as always, sign up for our mailing list, follow us on Twitter or Medium, and stay tuned for future humble programming.
Twitter+
By: Terence C. Gannon
Tags: Twitter, Accountability, Social Media, Tech, Content Moderation

If you want to see people at their absolute worst, give them anonymity. Add the cover of others who are similarly anonymous, assemble them into a tribe, fuel them with a little anger and you have the only ingredients necessary for certain disaster. Examine the worst examples of humans’ atrocious behaviour toward others and you won’t have to look far to find a relatively normal society turned monstrous in the form of a faceless, angry mob. Their anonymity prevents any notion of accountability. The gravitational pull of social norms no longer applies and chaos is the result.

This is essentially where Twitter is today.

So—no more anonymous participation in the Twitterverse. Yep, you heard that right. No more clever handles, cute nicknames or ‘parody’ accounts. We will all know who you are and, in a broad sense, where you live. Everybody has a blue ‘verified’ badge. If, for whatever reason, a prospective user can’t meet that still relatively low bar, then they are not welcome to tweet. It’s just that simple.

To resource the massive effort which will be required to establish this one-to-one mapping of accounts to actual, identifiable human beings, Twitter would take all the resources currently doing content moderation and shift them over to account verification.

The sudden shutdown of Twitter’s moderation department, such as it is, won’t matter much. Twitter, along with most other social networks, has a near perfect track record of abysmal failure in content moderation. That’s not really their fault, though. The leaders of these social networks are spectacularly unqualified to determine what content belongs on their platforms and what doesn’t. Getting mad at them for an objectionable video or for messing with elections is like getting mad at the plumbers when the leaky faucet you called them to fix flows fluoridated water. Or doesn’t, depending on which side of that thorny issue you stand. What makes more sense is to have the only slightly less unqualified city council wrestle with whether we fluoridate or not. In that regard we can focus our fury, or delight, on them which is where it should be.

Instead of content moderation on Twitter, there would simply be radical accountability for what is tweeted by the person who tweeted it. There are already plenty of laws which protect or limit free speech which can be mapped through the platform to the individual who is the source of that speech. That person will then bear 100% of the responsibility for what they say. They will enjoy free speech protections already on the books. They will also be limited by statutes on hate speech and other content society—through a political process—has deemed unacceptable. Violating any of these laws either on a sheet of paper, at Speakers’ Corner or on Twitter makes not one wit of difference in how they are handled and the attendant consequences.

If I were Jack Dorsey, I would be running towards this imaginary future as fast as possible rather than continuing to fight a hopeless, ultimately losing battle to be anything more than the plumber.
Pitching for change: Early-stage companies seek social impact, investors
By: Tracy Chen
Tags: Attainment, College, Entrepreneurship, Diversity, Equity

David Neidlinger, Hager Sharp

By Tracy Chen

SAN FRANCISCO — More than a dozen early-stage companies met with potential investors, pitching their products in a “Demo Day” of new ideas and services to advance educational attainment.

“We need to have a range of tools to drive change, and this is an important one that allows us to deploy capital into these start-ups,” said Brad Kelsheimer, vice president and CFO of Lumina Foundation. Lumina hosted the event, in partnership with Autodesk Foundation, Twilio.org and SAP.iO.

Attendees had the opportunity to network, demo their products and services, and pitch potential investors and customers interested in impact investing — the use of capital to promote social change, including racial equity in post-high school learning and training.

Autodesk Foundation supports innovators working on issues including the future of work, workforce development and equity.

“Many of the organizations here are very much in alignment with how we think about our investments,” said Ryan Macpherson, the foundation’s portfolio investment manager.

Macpherson noted the growth in automation and artificial intelligence technologies.

“Like everyone else who is working in this space we know there are going to be some disruptions in the way in which people work,” he said. “These tools are vitally important in addressing these difficult problems, but they’re going to exacerbate some of the issues that we already see in today’s labor market.”

Here’s a look at Demo Day in pictures (story continues below)….