fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD is Nostalgic, Tragic and Disappointing
By: One Room With A View
Tags: Quentin Tarantino, Review, Hollywood, Movies, Leonardo Dicaprio

Courtesy of: Sony Pictures Entertainment

It’s impossible to view Once Upon a Time in Hollywood as anything other than a filmmaker in the twilight of his career looking back upon what the industry means to him. After all, having repeatedly claimed he’ll retire after his tenth film, this may be his penultimate effort.

Hollywood follows TV lead Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stuntman and best friend Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) as they struggle with their professional egos. Tarantino would balk at the idea, but Hollywood feels like the film of a man afraid he’s losing his touch. Dalton spends the film sweetly wracked with fears he’s not good enough and never will be; meanwhile Booth’s past personal indiscretions hobble any hopes of a major film career. Read into that as you will.

There were justifiable fears that Tarantino may treat the Manson murders with little sensitivity, and if that isn’t exactly untrue (in a way it’s better you don’t know and can’t guess), let’s just say it’s a pleasant surprise to find the controversial director in a more mellow mood. If there’s any of Tarantino’s usual historical revisionism on display it’s mostly a lament that Sharon Tate wasn’t able to live her life through film the way he has.

It may have inspired some of his most infamous shots, but Tarantino’s love of filmmaking also gives Hollywood a stuttering rhythm and little depth. A huge amount plays out in films-within-films or on-set sequences, which are fun, but reveal little.

Sadly, Tarantino’s nostalgic mood comes with some script misfires. Usually so slick and engrossing as a writer, here scenes and sentences clatter into each other with little bite or punch. Hollywood feels like the work of a man reaching for the novelistic dialogue of The Hateful Eight, the intimate characterisation of Jackie Brown, and the triumphant violence of Inglourious Basterds, but nailing none.

RATING: 3/5

By Tom Bond

INFORMATION

CAST: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Margaret Qualley, Timothy Olyphant, Al Pacino

DIRECTOR: Quentin Tarantino

WRITER: Quentin Tarantino

SYNOPSIS: A faded television actor and his stunt double strive to achieve fame and success in the film industry during the final years of Hollywood’s Golden Age in 1969 Los Angeles.
The Semiotics of Thatcher’s Handbag
By: Bryan Kwa
Tags: Culture, Style, Fashion, History, Politics

“To be born, or at any rate bred, in a handbag, whether it has handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution.” – Lady Bracknell, Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’, Act 1 (1895)

“Of course, I am obstinate in defending our liberties and our law. That is why I carry a big handbag.” – Lady Thatcher, former U.K. Prime Minister (1997)
Barbara Stanwyck, the queen
By: Rafaella Britto
Tags: Feminism, Barbara Stanwyck, Movies, Old Hollywood, Women in Film

This is a guest post written by Danielle Carvalho and originally published in Portuguese on her blog Filmes, Filmes, Filmes! Translated by Rafaella Britto.

Going through Barbara Stanwyck’s cinematographic trajectory is a challenge. The actress made almost a hundred of films, five years of a huge successful TV series in the 1960’s (The Big Valley, 1965–1969), other two of the award-winning show that bore her name (1960–1961). She debuted in Hollywood together with talking cinema (in 1929), after a period of relative success on Broadway, and only said goodbye to screens in the 1980’s, after another great success — The Thorn Birds (1983). A more auspicious end is impossible.

It’s even more difficult to address in only one article the conjunct of her extensive, profound work. It’s easier to pass through her with vagabond steps, stopping sometimes to admire an heterodox heroine or a cruel femme fatale; or to better appreciate that genius story of a noticeable cast, or that other one which is worthy only by its main character (because any story is worthwhile with her).
by Martino Pietropoli
By: Martino Pietropoli
Tags: Ilustration, Friday, Drawing, Comics

First thing in the morning: a glass of water and a cartoon by The Fluxus.

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Movie Review: Knives Out
By: The Film Addict
Tags: Film, Daniel Craig, Movies, Rian Johnson, Movie Review

But that doesn’t take away any of the suspense and fun of the film, as Knives Out plays by a unique plot that breathes some fresh air into the genre. It’s a story that shares a generous amount of truth to the audience as the clock ticks into the early hours of the film, and yet abide by that final piece of a puzzle that Johnson had planted into the plot as a dangling carrot. I prefer to call it a bait, because that is what motivates you to be continuously vested in the plot, but in some other way assures you that you already know the big picture, and persuades you to let your guard down.

There is a superficial lack of variety in the location where the events unfold, because, you guessed it, most of the scenes happen right within the Thrombey’s mansion. Still, I called it superficial because this, together with the absence of bold camera moves have been compensated by Johnson with extreme attention to the rich details of the mansion. Ironically, it never gets old seeing the antiquated mansion in action, because there is virtually a hidden treasure tucked within each scene. Besides, the maze-like layout of the mansion made me feel like a little kiddo who wants to explore that mansion even more.

All that expensive backdrop and the apprehending story requires an equally dedicated act to bring it all to life, in which, Johnson had struck a lottery with Ana de Armas, and perhaps a consolation with Daniel Craig. They said that the eyes are the window to your soul, which rings true for de Armas. Maybe that is why Johnson often rewarded Marta Cabrera with unusually close-up, shallow depth of field shots towards her face as compared to other characters. De Armas’ oftentimes moist (with just the right amount) eyes that were choked with worries, tell more story than many other things in the film.
Blockchain Technology
By: Oladayo Oladipupo
Tags: Blockchain, Fintech, Blockchain Technology, Technology, Bitcoin

So, then, how does the blockchain work?

To begin, we need to explore the concept of “keys”. With a set of cryptographic keys, you get a unique identity. Your keys are the Private Key and Public Key, and together they are combined to give you a digital signature. Your public key is how others are able to identify you. Your private key gives you the power to digitally sign and authorize different actions on behalf of this digital identity when used with your public key. This can be better explained as a traditional bank account where your account number stands for your public key and you PIN is your private key. In the cryptocurrency world, this represents your wallet address (public key) and your private key is what lets you authorize transfers, withdrawals, and other actions with your digital property like cryptocurrencies.

Every time a transaction occurs, that transaction is signed by whoever is authorizing it. That transaction might be something like “Peter is sending Sade 0.4 BTC”, will include Sade’s address (public key), and will be signed by a digital signature using both Peter’s public key and private key. This gets added to the ledger of that blockchain that Peter sent Sade 0.4 BTC, and will also include a timestamp and a unique ID number. When this transaction occurs, it’s broadcasted to a peer-to-peer network of nodes — basically other digital entities that acknowledge that this transaction has occurred and adds it to the ledger.

Each transaction in that ledger will have the same data: a digital signature, a public key, a timestamp, and a unique ID. Each transaction will be connected, so if you move back one transaction in the ledger, you may see that Chuck sent Peter 0.8 BTC at some time. If you move back another transaction, you might see that Dan sent Chuck 0.2 BTC at some other time before that.

The anonymity of cryptocurrencies come from the fact that your public key is just a randomized sequence of numbers and letters — so you are not literally signing with your own name or some sort of handle. A public key doesn’t tell you the real identity of the person behind it. You are also more or less free to generate as many key pairs as you want and have multiple cryptocurrency wallets.

Use Case of this technology

Blockchain technology can be integrated into multiple areas. From its adoption as a distributed ledger for various cryptocurrencies to implementation by financial industries, health care industries, energy, Fintech just to mention a few who had started embracing the power of the blockchain technology.

Indeed this is just the beginning for this new technology with more time and various deficiencies of the technology being look unto and addressed, there is a lot more to come from this technology.

Hope you are informed with this information? Let me get feeds
DAZN CEO on Bellator Partnership: “DAZN will be a must-have for fight fans in the U.S”
By: Edward Carbajal
Tags: Sports, Streaming, James Rushton, MMA, Dazn

Bellator found an answer to the tape delay issue for their overseas events and it is called DAZN. DAZN (pronounced The Zone or “Da Zone”) already streams 15,000 live events and 100 million hours of sports content globally each year, will be available in the U.S. this September with exact pricing and dates being announced this summer.

DAZN already streams Matchroom Boxing events and has jumped into the world of mixed martial arts along with Bellator to bring seven exclusive live events and content related to their upcoming welterweight grand prix.

“It’s simple; fans want to see great fighters in competitive fights so we’ve handed the keys to Scott Coker and his venerable team to go out and recruit even more top-level talent to further stack Bellator fight cards and build on their success,” said DAZN CEO James Rushton. “With the combination of this investment and our recent announcement to bring more than 30 nights of boxing to the platform annually, DAZN will be a must-have for fight fans in the U.S.”

Speaking with Frontproof Media, it does not look like they are going stop there.

So fans showing their interest in submission only grappling and other sports when DAZN makes their launch in the U.S. this summer you best give them a follow on your favorite social media outlets. While they are focusing on Bellator and boxing, for now, Ruston said they will be doing a lot of “social listening”. Make sure you are heard.

While you’re at it, gives us a follow too as Frontproof Media intends to follow any company that features boxing and MMA.
¿Qué es Customer Experience Management? El cuidado del ciclo de vida de un cliente
Tags: Marketing Digital, Español, Clientes, Customer Experience, Empresa

in Both Sides of the Table
Things to know while granting API access for your crypto exchange account.
By: Vamshi Vangapally
Tags: API, Cryptocurrency, Exchange, Bitcoin, Software

Things to know while granting API access for your crypto exchange account.

A question being asked frequently by a lot of our website visitors is “whether the platform or the software has access to their trades and could potentially place trades or access their funds?”

Photo by Koen Eijkelenboom on Unsplash

API = Application Program Interface.

API is a way to interact with the system (In this case, it’s an Exchange) from an external application. This interaction is/can be restricted by the system(Exchange). A user can grant Access and Authorization using the settings on Exchange.

The access is a multi-level feature and could be one of the below options.

“Read Only” or called “View only”— this will only allow someone to read your transactions to get an idea of what you are doing or provide you analysis about your transactions. Applications with this access CANNOT alter or perform any actions on your account. “Trade” — This is something used for allowing external applications to trade on your behalf. These could be high-frequency trading systems or brokerage accounts. Allowing this access is very risky and should never be granted to applications unless you TRUST them completely with trading on your behalf. “Transfer”— This access will allow the third-party applications to send and receive assets. This is not recommended to be granted to general third-party applications. This could potentially sweep away all your funds if left in wrong hands.

Now that you know what an API is and the differences between various access permissions, you can grant permissions knowledgeably.
It’s all-electric for the nuns of Nazareth
By: E E News
Tags: Electric Car, Roadtrip, Electric Vehicles, Environment, Religion

by Joel Kirkland, E&E News reporter

Sister Molly Thompson of Sisters of Charity of Nazareth at the wheel of her Chevy Bolt. Joel Kirkland/E&E News

Originally published in E&E News.

NAZARETH, Ky. — Sister Molly Thompson is still getting used to the features of her electric Chevy Bolt. As she rolls up to a stop sign on the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth campus here, the regenerative braking brings her up short.

And then there’s the racy accelerator pedal that she secretly enjoys.

“In fact, I need to really watch it,” said the nun in her knit sweater. “I can be looking at the speedometer and, oops, what happened there?”

The 80-year-old nun, who just celebrated her birthday, is a den mother of sorts among the sisters who live at this 200-year-old convent. She joins Sister Theresa Knabel to help remind people of the congregation’s mission to be stewards of the environment.

That means trying out new technology.

She drives one of the four electric cars purchased by Nazareth in the past two years. Three are at this campus, which is about 30 miles south of Louisville, and the other is in the city, where it helps shuttle around older members of the congregation.

“Not putting pollution into the air. That’s one contribution I can make to saving the planet,” Thompson said.

The congregation started defining what it means to care for Earth in 2000. Its members pledged to analyze their own habits. Then they passed guiding principles in 2014 around managing the land. In 2017, the set a target for zeroing out their greenhouse gas emissions.

Sister Molly Thompson (right) and Sister Theresa Knabel checking out our Kia Niro. Joel Kirkland/E&E News

When they brought on Carolyn Cromer, the convent ecological sustainability director, to help think through what more could be done, its fleet of cars came up. Transportation has eclipsed power plants as the biggest emitters of carbon dioxide emissions tied to global warming.

“The sisters are ahead of the curve by far,” Cromer said. “They’re putting their money where their mouths are.”

What happens next? They look for opportunities to replace more combustion engines with electric cars. But Cromer and Knabel, who chairs the congregation’s Western Province Car Committee, said it’s still hard to find electric cars on sales lots.

Western Kentucky is “Ford country” to people around here. Ford Motor Co. is behind other automakers in introducing electric vehicles. Locally, it builds the Ford Escape and Lincoln-brand cars in a 3-million-square-foot plant in Louisville. It employs nearly 4,000 people at the site.

Ford employees are abundant in local pews, and the nuns know that the local plant makes traditional Ford SUVs. Still, the nuns take it on faith that the example of their vehicles, paired with a bully pulpit, can turn down the brakes and hit the accelerator.
Wrist Pain and Risk Factors
By: Arpit Khemka
Tags: Wrist Tendonitis, Wrist Pain, Carpal Tunnel, Osteoarthritis, Physical Therapy

Wrist Pain — Carpal tunnel syndrome

A primer on wrist pain in Medical News Today covers several possible causes of wrist pain, as well as what can be done to treat the pain.

Common conditions leading to wrist pain include:

- Carpal tunnel syndrome

- Osteoarthritis

- Triangular fibrocartilage complex injury

- Wrist tendonitis

- Ganglion cyst

- Wrist sprain

You’ll know you have wrist pain if you are experiencing stiffness in the wrist, trouble gripping objects, or a clicking sound when moving your wrist.

Depending on the type of pain, wrist exercises may help reduce the pain. SimpleTherapy’s wrist program is worth checking out.
Christ, the Hope of Christmas
By: Michele Thomas
Tags: Illuminated Curated, Poetry, Christmas, Christianity, Religion

POETRY

Christ, the Hope of Christmas

An acrostic poem

Photo by Pierre Bamin on Unsplash

Christ, born in obscurity

Hope arises to all forlorn

Remembering God’s surety

In a babe, a King was born

Sweetly herald angels sing

Thine heart supply overflows

Miraculous hope He brings

Adorned in holy righteousness

Satisfied with Christ, I cling
Inequality Extends to the Heat on Our Skin
By: Damon Beres
Tags: Race, Heatwave, Environment, Climate, Racism

People in the southwestern United States have endured unbearable heat this year, but their struggle is not evenly distributed. Homeless people face unique risks from the weather without access to shelter, air conditioning, or cold water. In cities like Los Angeles, a majority of them are Black or Latinx.

As Drew Costley writes in OneZero, only six cooling centers opened in L.A. during a heatwave earlier this month, leaving dangerously few options for the city’s 66,000 homeless residents. “That’s 11,000 homeless people per cooling center at a time when crowded spaces are particularly risky,” Costley writes, reminding us that the Covid-19 pandemic has already disproportionately impacted Black Americans.

“Black and Latino people already disproportionately suffer from the heat because of racist redlining housing practices, lack of investment in green space, underlying health conditions, and overrepresentation in outdoor occupations like farming or construction,” Costley continues. His story draws on expertise from people like Kristina Dahl, PhD, senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. It’s a sobering reminder that, in many ways, inequality has been Sharpied into the blueprint of our future.
The Flipbook Tree
Tags: Writing, Poetry, Grass Trees, Haibun, Fresh Darlings Revision

The Flipbook Tree

A revised version of Flipbook Trees

She gazed beyond her reflection on the rectangle glass. A dog-eared notebook slept on her lap swaying gently with the rhythmic turning of gears. She let the world behind the glass tell her its story; a flipbook of moments.

The grass tree came into the page, neither a grass nor a tree. Yet. As quick as the wheels turned on the rails, the tree animated before her eyes and grew: now

a gumtree peeling, standing naked for sun’s lusty heat

then

a fern green, unfurling the ways of the worlds

here

freshly fallen, a night storm’s debt collection

there

a eucalyptus rising, a future home

she blinked

it died a stone

ahh!

a grass, it rebirthed

a tree

a grass tree — shorter, sturdier this time.
UI Engineering for Data Visualizations with Angular and D3
Tags: JavaScript, Data Visualization, Angular, D3, UI

I think nothing beats D3 (a library) for advanced data visualizations. I also happen to think nothing beats Angular (a framework) for code organization. So, I usually mix both to do UI and data visualization stuff.

I’d like to introduce you to what I think are the best practices and patterns that I’ve stumbled upon when doing UI software development.

The problem at hand

In my early days, many times I ended with a mess of code when doing complex D3 data visualizations. More than I’d like to admit.

But now, Angular have prevented that, many times over.

The code organization facilities provided by it, have helped me with the following issues:

Messed up spaguetti-code when doing complex D3 data visualizations.

Unclear mental model of how all the parts of the visualization interact and work.

Fear of refactoring code because it might break and it’ll be hard to track down what/when/where/why it stopped working — the who, that I know for sure!

Can hardly reuse any code (expcept for copy-pasting some parts) because it is all too tangled up.

You might be thinking: But hey, I need no stinking framework to have a good code base!

Well, probably not, but it does help to have one. A lot. Even more if you work in a team.

With Angular I know exactly where to put my data services in — so does my team — and how to inject them where needed to create data-aware components.

As a result it gives you a clear understanding of how the important bits flow into your visual components.

So, if you always wondered: What’s the best way to go when implementing code for data visualizations? Or which are considered best practices for doing frontend development? Then read along my friend, I’ll be publishing articles on said subject in UI Theoria.
[프로그래머스]수박수박수박수박?. there’s nothing to say about this
By: Hyunjun Kim
Tags: Algorithms

there’s nothing to say about this..
Investasi Telkomsel ke Gojek: Kolaborasi Dua Juara Lokal
By: Indra Buwana
Tags: Digital, Telkomsel, Investasi, Gojek, Startup

in Both Sides of the Table
The Social Media Experiment is Failing
By: Michael Horner
Tags: Society, Debate, Lifestyle, Social Media, Self

The Social Media Experiment is Failing

The amount of ignorant posts on social media is appalling.

Social media at its finest. Photo by Tim Bennett on Unsplash

I told a friend at the end of March that the only way I saw the pandemic executive orders ending was if there was a violent revolt.

The difference between myself and everybody else is that I would never post that on social media.

Why? First, simply because it is my personal opinion not even based on any facts, just a feeling. Second, I use social media to post pictures of my latest running adventure, to let people know I love my beautiful wife and to see pictures of places I would love to visit someday.

I just don’t believe social media is the place to be sharing your latest conspiracy theory, damning people you disagree with or airing your grievances.

That is what social media has become and it is destroying the way we agree and disagree with people. It is far too easy to hide behind a keyboard and share your kooky theories than ever before and it is doing great harm to the psychology of how we function as a society.

We will not begin to heal as a nation or a world until we see social media as the tools they were meant to be and stop using them as just another means to divide as societies.

My opinions are simply that, an opinion. A firmly held belief based on strong assumptions of what I see in the facts. My opinions are neither right nor wrong. They are simply an opinion.

Therefore, I restrict my opinions to what I can say personally to another human being who can hear the emotion in my voice, see the sarcasm or disbelief on my face and make correct assumptions based on the humanness of my expressions and voice inflections.

Social media is too jaunted to share personal opinions on, where words are in black and white, where your mood upon reading words determines whether you agree or disagree.

The social media experiment is failing.

Of course, that is simply my opinion and since these are mere words, you will have to decide whether I am being serious or sarcastic.
From Monolith to Microservices
By: Kelsey Kerr
Tags: Microservices, Go, Startup, Technology, Software Development

How we got started with microservices

We started with just a few microservices, as we read that knowing when to create a new microservice is as much of an art as it is a science. With this in mind, we erred on the side of caution and only split out the obvious pieces first. We decided to keep our user, authentication, model metadata, alerts, and tenant management logic in a service and split out the following pieces into separate microservices:

inference ingestion

inference & metric retrieval

Inference ingestion was an obvious candidate for a new service because it could be easily decoupled from the rest of the platform, and it was something that we knew would have to scale horizontally to meet customer data load. We designed inference ingestion as a lightweight service that makes use of Kafka to ingest both streaming data and batch data. From here, it naturally made sense to create an additional service that was responsible for retrieving inferences and calculating metrics on these inferences. It was important to consider performance here and we knew that our choice of data store was crucial to our ability to serve up insights quickly. With this in mind, we were able to leverage the expertise of our data engineers to choose the right data store for our inferences and write the microservice that was responsible for retrieving inferences and calculating metrics. While our data engineers worked to build these microservices, the remaining backend engineers began tackling API design and the remaining product work. After designing our APIs and getting through the implementation of the user, authentication, metadata, alerts, and tenant management, it became evident that the alerting part of our platform was a good candidate for its own microservice. Below you’ll find a simplified diagram of the architecture we arrived at.
Warrandyte is dry
By: A.C. Flory
Tags: Pond, Frogs, Alpacas, Australia, Warrandyte

In the wetter years since 2009, I had to get the grass cut before Christmas because the alpacas couldn’t keep up. This year we’ve had to start supplementary feeding early because the alpacas have mowed the grass down already.

In this first photo, I’m standing in my paddock, taking a photo of my neighbours’ paddocks. The three of us share the four alpacas.

This next photo shows a small, fenced off area [roughly 2 metres by 3] that used to be one of the alpacas’ favourite poop spots. Once they start using a spot they become very attached to it, and refuse to stop pooping there.

Unfortunately, this particular spot is really close to both the pool and the house, and the odd, gentle breeze can bring tears to your eyes. I’ve been trying to get rid of this spot for years, without much success. My latest plan has been to dig up the poop [and put it on the compost], dig up the soil underneath [to get rid of their scent], replace it with mushroom compost and plant something they love to eat [Lucerne]. Fingers crossed it works this time.

One area where I have had some success is with my ornamental ponds. One is less than a metre long, and the other is about 2.5 metres long, so both are quite small but the local frogs love them!

This next photo is of the larger pond and shows clusters of strange, white bubbles in amongst the water lilies and duck weed. Those, my friends, are frog eggs!

What’s that you say? You can’t see them? Hold on…

Tah duh!

I don’t really know why the frogs like my pond so much, but I’m thrilled that they do. It contains water cress and a host of other water plants so maybe I got the mix right without knowing it.

I hope my Aussie friends have had a great weekend, and I hope my international friends are still enjoying theirs. :)

cheers

acflory
An Inspiration to Have Positive Emotions
By: G.Lodhia M. Edu
Tags: Inspiration, Mental Health, Lifestyle, Advice, Shortstory

An Inspiration to Have Positive Emotions

Not letting go of your negative emotions is like putting a burden in your bag. Learn to understand everything that you feel.

You don’t have to forcibly inherit in you the positive thoughts but you have to transform the negative thoughts into something healthier so that you can feel positive and better.
Some Do’s And Don’ts To Help You Drive In Atlanta
By: Bebe Nicholson
Tags: Humor, Satire, Life Lessons, Funny, Driving

If you’re coming to Atlanta, you’ll want to fit in with other drivers and not immediately be pegged as an outsider, so I’ve compiled some do’s and don’ts that could help you feel more at home. They may sound counterintuitive, but remember: you want to be one of us. So here goes:

DON’T use a turn signal, no matter what. Approach turning in one of two ways: either drift aimlessly into the turn lane, straddling both lanes for a while and making everyone behind you wonder if you are going to drift back, or brake abruptly when you get to your turn and lurch into it as if you’ve suddenly realized, Whoa, Dude, here it is! But remember; no turn signals!

DO follow as closely as possible without nudging the car in front of you. If the car in front of you pulls into a turn lane, accelerate and swoosh past at lightning speed. The other car’s occupants will most likely look at you with admiration, because you are one fast and in-a-hurry person with important places to go.

DO act confused at the brand-new traffic circles cropping up all over Atlanta. Proceed as if you have the right of way no matter what and swing into that loop like you’re at NASCAR. You might even want to circle around twice, just for fun, before figuring out where to exit.

DON’T slow down for speed bumps. Better yet, speed up. There’s a sweet spot at every speed bump that you can hit just right so one tire rolls through the center, and you’ll get over that baby with only a hiccup. Plus, you’ll leave everybody behind you in the dust.

DO back into every parking space, never mind that you’re trying to fit a Suburban into a Toyota-sized spot, because you want to be able to make a quick getaway when you’ve finished your shopping. Take your time, even if a line of cars has backed up waiting for you to ease forward and back and forward and back and forward and back until you get that sucker positioned just right.

DO use your horn, that’s what it’s for! Be especially prone to honk at anyone trying to turn right on red. There might be a lot of cars whizzing by keeping the car in front of you from turning, but they should make their move anyway. They are holding you up!

DON’T adjust your driving speed for rain or fog or any weather conditions whatsoever. Only a wimp does that.

DO find the smallest space possible to squeeze through when you’re on a major highway behind two tractor trailers, one in each lane. Wait for one of them to edge ahead a speck and leave you just enough space to dart between. People will be amazed at your bravado. But don’t give the truck drivers the finger as you roar past. That’s rude, and we ARE in the South where rude is frowned upon.

Last but not least, DO drive in the snow and ice, although all the television stations and radio announcers have warned you to stay off the road because it’s treacherous, given that Atlanta doesn’t have snow plows and everything pretty much shuts down. The snow will be gone by tomorrow, but you have an unparalleled opportunity to land in a ditch, which can be fun if you like walking home in the snow.
The Raving Moon
By: Sylvia Stein
Tags: Moon, Poetry, Moonlight, Coffee House Writers, Poem

The Raving moon shines at night.

The Raving Moon is shining bright as it surrounds the night.

You hear the sounds of the water hitting the small rocks in the lake.

Lovers lie nearby stricken by the captivating view.

It is almost like the moon is sending kisses in the wind.

The stars begin to twilight through the sky.

The Raving Moon is cascading an overflow of rays that fall right into the waters.

It shines a light on the lovers who passionately embrace one another on the midnight breeze.

Then as night begins to fade and the wee hours come into like the stardust hitting the air it is filled with a majestical awe which becomes so celestial and pure.

When the morning comes the raving moon is gone and all sits still until the night comes again.

For now the wind plays a symphony in the sky and all will wait again to see the raving moon.
La tecnología nos forzara a evolucionar
By: Jorge Pérez
Tags: Futuro, Diseño Generativo, Español, Lecciones De Vida, Emprendimiento

Serial Entrepreneur & Marketing Strategist | CEO of VayronLabs Media | Join me in my journey as I document it.

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Sísifo y su roca, nosotros y nuestra vida
By: Isabel Ginés
Tags: Reflexiones, Español, Pensamientos, Filosofía, Vida

The line it is drawn

The curse it is cast

The slow one now

Will later be fast

As the present now

Will later be past

The order is

Rapidly fadin’.

And the first one now

Will later be last

For the times they are a-changin’.

—Bob Dylan
SIMDAQ Marketing Road Map Q4 2018
Tags: Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Altcoins, Cryptocurrency News, Bitcoin

We are glad to share our current and future plans! Here is our “Marketing Road Map Q4 2018”. There are three main directions of our development.

1. Increasing the number of platform users

We are going to create and test different campaigns and analyze the best traffic sources.

· Google AdWords

· Facebook campaign

· Twitter campaign

· YouTube campaign

· Banner campaign

· Bounty campaign “Bitcointalk forum”

· Bounty campaign “Twitter & Blog”

· Waves cross marketing campaigns

· Other cross marketing campaigns

· Articles and releases publishing campaign

2. Platform Engagement & User Retention

It is very important to entertain users and make them use and love our product.

· Educational content creation

· Video content creation

· Launch of Customers’ mechanics

· Offer and Incentivization Program

3. Increasing website conversion rate

LP is the main field and real oportunity to introduce our product so it is very important to improve it.

· Optimization of pages’ design

· Text content creation

· Video content creation

· Set up and optimize conversion funnel

· Add incentives to act right away
The Friday Drink You Didn’t Know You Needed
By: Susan Orlean
Tags: Cocktails, Mules, Weekend, First Person

The Friday Drink You Didn’t Know You Needed

Please join me in hoisting a Mule

Photo by George Potter on Unsplash

Because it’s Friday and we — all of us — have had a surreal week, I think we — all of us, and certainly ME — need a stiff drink. Herewith, I would like to share the magic elixir that has lubricated many of my pandemic evenings. It’s called a Cucumber Mule. I first enjoyed one in a restaurant in the Hudson Valley; I ordered it because I like mules (the animals) and because I like vodka (the liquor). Also, the “cucumber” part of it made it sound virtuous, like a salad.

First ingredient: Cucumber vodka. Believe me, this exists.

Second: St. Germain, which is a sweet liqueur made from… shoot, I don’t remember. Something tasty. It comes in a really pretty bottle, which you can save and use for your olive oil, although then every time you use olive oil, you’ll feel like you’re making a cocktail. Not sure whether that’s a thumbs up or down.

Third: Lime juice. Don’t use lemon unless … well, maybe you can. I don’t make the rules; I merely follow them. But I suppose if I were dying for a mule and I only had lemons, I’d go rogue.

Fourth: Ginger beer. I’ve never tried making this drink with ginger ale and I bet it would be disgusting. Too sweet. Stick to ginger beer. I hoard Fever Tree because it’s really good.

Mix these together. There is probably some ratio you should use, and if you feel strongly about it, be my guest and Google it. I just pour some of each ingredient into an attractive glass and taste it along the way until it’s good. The advantage of this is that you get to drink while you’re making your drink, like snacking on cookie dough while you’re baking.

Oh, ice. My husband is obsessed with “smooth, clear ice, really good ice” which in its specificity and nerdiness reminds me of how all of my college boyfriends were obsessed with audio equipment. Me, I just use whatever makes it cold and I don’t examine each cube as if it were a show beagle at Westminster for chrissakes. I mean, seriously? Just get some fucking ice, smooth and beautiful if you need that, straight out of the ice-maker if you’re made of rougher stuff.

Bottoms up.
A Cautionary Poem About The Brooding Hero
By: Kyrie Gray
Tags: Culture, Humor, Poetry, Love, Books

Image by VintagePhotoMix from Pixabay

A Cautionary Poem About The Brooding Hero

His hair is beautiful but his intentions are not

Beware the brooding hero,

with his strong jaw and and smoldering eyes.

He can see your heart that’s pounding

and slightly quivering thighs.

Beware the brooding hero

draped dramatically in his cloak.

He’ll tell you all about his dark past,

but won’t acknowledge that you’ve spoke.

Beware the brooding hero,

protagonist extraordinaire.

You’ll forget he’s problematic

the moment you touch his thick dark hair.

His rude behavior you’ll ignore,

and too his manners that are inept.

You won’t be able to resist his charms,

his marriage proposal you’ll accept.

Beware the brooding hero,

should he try to marry you to quick.

He’s hiding a wife, or prideful heart,

and needs a tough lesson that will stick.
Dev tools are dead…Long live the dev tools
By: Maeliza S.
Tags: Developer Tools, Programming, Software Development

Developers’ tools have emerged alongside Computer Science. Their ultimate goal has always been to make developers’ life easier. But, what makes devs’ life easier today has nothing to do with what it was back in the 60’s. In this post we go through the evolution of dev tools and we argue that we are facing the rise of dev tool 4.0.

Let’s walk through the history of dev tools from the physical punched cards to AI-powered tools.

Dev tool 1.0 : papers and boxes

Let’s do some digging into the first-generation of computers, and meet with punched-cards. Back then, they were the basic unit of data.

If you dreamed about running a program, you’d rather be patient and highly careful. This is why. First, as a developer, you would write your instructions in an old programming language (like Cobol or Fortran). It was written on a piece of paper, the coding sheet. Then you’d pass over your coding sheet to a keypunch operator that would “encode” it into a source deck. The source deck was a bunch of punched cards and each card was one line of instruction 😥 Then (yes I know that’s a lot)…the source deck was compiled by the computer operator into a program deck. And finally, that program deck could be fed to a computer to run!

Source deck

Have you ever seen a program running perfectly on the first try?… Well you can be sure you had to repeat the whole process again and again and again before it worked.

These steps were individually really long and cumbersome. So, the main concern of programmers was to save time. The first generation of dev tools helped to solve these challenges.

To fix bugs, programmers had to go through the source deck. Initially, it was just a bunch of cards with some square holes. Reading back the original program was taking ages. So, keypunch printers were invented. On top of each punched card the translation in natural language was written. It was the first program reading interface.

What about the code complexity? With one instruction per card, it was easy to get entangled in complex programs. To monitor the complexity programmers stored the source deck in boxes (first source code hosting system 😎). The size of the boxes was actually built-in to fit the maximum batch size for a computer to run. This was an easy way for programmers to see when they had to refactor their code.

At the early stages of Computers, programmers were dealing daily with cards, boxes, rubber bands, and request forms. That might not seem highly sexy but dev tools had to be physical back then.

🏓 If you want to play with old school punched card, you should give a try to The Virtual Keypunch
Get Rid Off Fake Reviews with a simple technique!!
By: Sai Durga Mahesh
Tags: Fake Reviews, Statistical Analysis, Cosine Similarity, Online Shopping

Photo by visuals on Unsplash

With the increasing demand for online shopping, Reviews became a keyword in our lives. Most of us check for ratings and read reviews before buying a product online. We can find at least 2 different brands for a single product. Here comes competition.

Certain parties can misuse these reviews aiming to gain popularity or to discredit a product using “Fake Reviews” . These are also termed as “spam reviews”.

One may consider the reviews as fake if

a. they are from different users on same product

b. they are from same user on different products

c. they are from different users on different products.

Technique

Any similarity metrics such as cosine similarity can be used to find similar reviews. Then we will verify the user id and product id of each review.

Procedure to be followed is:

Remove the stop words. Remove commonly used words in online shopping such as bad, good, price, product etc.. Obtain root words using any stemming or lemmatization technique. Calculate similarity score using cosine similarity

5. If score is greater than threshold then we will check if these reviews are from same users or same products. If either of conditions met then we can consider review as fake.

Implementation

We will implement above simple steps on amazon reviews dataset.

Perform stemming and removal of stop words.

from nltk.stem import PorterStemmer ps=PorterStemmer() data['Review'] = data['Review'].apply(lambda x: [ps.stem(y) if y not in stopwors for y in x] )



Calculate cosine similarity.

from sklearn.feature_extraction.text import CountVectorizer cv = CountVectorizer(stop_words='english') tfd= cv.fit_transform(data.Review)

new_pd = pd.DataFrame(tfd.toarray(),columns=cv.get_feature_names()) from sklearn.metrics.pairwise import cosine_similarity

matrix = cosine_similarity(new_pd)

Check for threshold and required conditions to be met.

remove_rows=[]

for i in range(len(matrix)):

for j in range(i):

if(i!=j and matrix[i][j]>0.7 and raw_data.iloc[i,:]

['PRODUCT_CATEGORY'] == raw_data.iloc[j,:].

['PRODUCT_CATEGORY']):



remove_rows.append(i)

remove_rows.append(j)

Remove these rows from data frame.

data.drop(remove_rows,inplace=True)

Applications

Removing fake reviews can improve sentimental analysis. Also this technique can improve results of topic modelling.

Complete Code

I have applied above technique on “Amazon Reviews” dataset and performed sentiment analysis and topic modelling. Full code can be accessed here.

Reference

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0019850118307612?via%3Dihub
SCI Daily Crypto Digest: Relief Rally
By: Jervis C. Tinimbang
Tags: Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Fintech, Philippines, Bitcoin

March 21, 2018

Image from Coindesk.com

Bitcoin (BTC) is pushing towards $9,000 after news that the finance ministers of the G-20 did not decide on firm regulations right away and will instead come up with recommendations by July. Investors feared tight regulations and new rules, staying on the sidelines ahead of the meeting.

Support levels are at $8,700 and $8,300 while resistance is at $9,200.

*BTCPHP: 485,700 / 452,090

*USDPHP: 52.0450

*BTC market cap: $152B

*Crypto market cap: $346B

News:

*Finance ministers of the G-20 stopped short of new rules but were asked to have concrete recommendations by July. The finance ministers were said to have spent a lot of time discussing crypto, loudly warning that it could destabilize financial markets. During the meeting, they also defined crypto as an asset and not a currency, noting that it “lacks the traits of sovereign currencies” and that it doesn’t “satisfy the three roles money plays in an economy”.

*Fundstrat’s Tom Lee is calling the bottom, citing their firm’s measure of altcoins showing a 75% decline over the past 64 days. Fundstrat says that the likelihood that the current drop is high, given that the 64-day decline is roughly as long as the rally that preceded it. However, they warned that this does not mean that the bull market will resume immediately. Rather, a period of consolidation is more likely which may last for 150–175 days.

*President Donald Trump bans Americans from buying the Petro, the Venezuelan government’s cryptocurrency. Trump authorized Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to issue the necessary regulations to enforce his order. The ban complicates the Maduro government’s efforts to boost its foreign reserves through a digital token. Venezuela’s offering accepted transactions in U.S. dollars and euros, meaning that Venezuelan citizens are forbidden from participating given a ban on buying foreign currency.

SCI | buybitcoin.ph | Bitbit | Keza | Rebit
The Aura of Anacapa
Tags: California, Travel, Nature, Poetry, Photography

Scores of seagulls gather in clusters, all along the cliffs. This space is very much their own, and their presence overwhelms. They stare at me, like a white spell guarding over the terrain.
【理由その1】プロググラマー時代、こんな毎日じゃダメだと痛感したから
By: プロブロガーのタクスズキ
Tags: Work, Japanese, Blog

in Both Sides of the Table
Movie Madness
By: Forest Lewis
Tags: Heroes, Whatyourweekhasinstore, Startup

From Godard’s Contempt.

Nothing’s quite as recursive, nor a better inducement to madness than seeing your filmed image tomorrow of what you’re doing today. A well cut, professionally shot movie, posted anonymously to Youtube, and linked to from Facebook, concerning the mundane adventures of your daily life, today, watched from your phone on the M train tomorrow. Recalling then the spaces, the rooms you’ve been in just now, streets, stores, studios, try as you might you cannot recall any cameras being where the video proves that cameras had been; nor any hidden gopros either but based on the length and artistry of the long central tracking shot — concerning you chasing the pages of an important manuscript blowing wildly around Union Square — there should have been a great deal of gear and personnel, key grips, gaffers, lighting, boom mikes, to record so faithfully your valiant pursuit. It’s like you’re the unwitting comic hero in your very own Wes Anderson movie. But goddammit it’ll get a lot of views; so you’ve got that going for you.
Photographs
By: Elai Batac
Tags: Old Soul Young Body, Memories, Poetry, Vintage, Past

Soft glide of fingers in these old photographs

mixed faces of the past

frozen time and kisses

of sepia colored memories

I can almost hear the sound of reeling

Can I live there?

in honest love

and deep charcoal eyes

wore silk dresses of melted pearls

and gentleman’s’ gazes

waltz and wallflowers and baby’s breath

Oh, let me come back

to a past life I might have
Reclaim Your Data Privacy with the Best Privacy-Focused Alternatives
By: Markus Hatvan
Tags: Privacy, Tech, Security, Awareness, Data

Google Search Alternatives

This is probably the hardest switch you will have to make — at least it was for me. The search results and meta information (store opening times, movie ratings, weather forecasts, and more) that you receive through Google Search are often unbeatable.

I tried privacy-friendly search engines like DuckDuckGo, Qwant, and Ecosia for a while, but they often didn’t give me the results that I was looking for. Especially when querying for programming-related search terms, I often found myself receiving unrelated search results. When you are getting paid per hour as a freelancer, that is impractical as the additional time required to search more precisely can add up quickly.

Fortunately, I found out about StartPage, which I have been using for about six months now. According to the privacy policy of StartPage, this is how they operate: “When you search, your query is automatically stripped of unnecessary metadata including your IP address and other identifying information. We send the anonymized search query to Google and return the search results to you. We don’t log your searches.”

So when using StartPage, you basically use the capability of great search results from Google without getting tracked. I don’t really like the fact that I am still using Google under the hood, but this is the best solution available for me for now as I am receiving good quality search results again. I sometimes do still miss the meta results that Google provides like store opening times, movie ratings, and weather forecasts, but usually, it just requires an additional click on a search result in StartPage, which is manageable.

My recommendation: If you need to dig deep into a certain topic, use StartPage to get the best results or fallback to Google Search — otherwise, you can get great results by using Qwant as your default search engine as well.