fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Should We Cancel Our Parents?
By: Thomas St Thomas
Tags: Culture, Motherhood, Fatherhood, Parenting, Spanking

I had the pleasure of spending some time with my grandmother recently. She’s 90 years old, and for most of the day, pretty aware and spunky. Alzheimer’s is such a strange thing to witness. It’s as if a person you’ve known for years is coming and going throughout the day, and progressively going as the day wears on and she tires. Short term memory seems to be affected most of all as I repeat the age of my children several times an hour, but older memories are as sharp as ever. Maybe that’s why she enjoys telling them, and I enjoy listening.

One great story she told, as my mother and I listened, involved a pair of retired nuns coming to rescue my mother from a well deserved spanking. I assumed it was well-deserved as my mother even now is pretty mouthy and bossy. So the story goes, she ran circles around the bed while screaming “Murder!” which prompted the duo of nuns to find out who was killing a child. I don’t know if grandma ever caught her, or what they said to the retired nuns, but it got me to thinking about how the times and accepted delivery of punishments have changed in just one generation.

Popular opinion seems to be that spanking is no longer an acceptable form of punishment, likely because there is ample evidence that it is harmful. But, that’s not what I was thinking much about, nor do I care to debate the virtue of sparing the rod. I do know that I was spanked, and remember the belt and the embarrassment. But here I am, sitting with the perpetrators enjoying a story about corporal punishment and feeling no ill will. We actually had some good laughs.

Should we harshly judge a person’s past by the standards of today? If so, I think a lot of Pop-Pops, Memas, Mommies and Daddies of the past would be guilty of several transgressions. But I don’t see that happening and think that would be pretty silly. That’s how things were then and I probably would have done the same. So what about other transgressions of the past?

We seem to be in an era of historical deconstruction and everyone’s past is under a microscope. Some clamor at the chance to point out people and their actions which are today unacceptable by our current standards. This includes historical figures that owned slaves, statues of young soldiers who defended the losing side of a war, and anyone who is on record mentioning something we today find offensive. I’m just not sure that’s fair and I now worry about how all of us will be viewed by generations to come. Will it be by our accomplishments, or by our mistakes? Probably both, but hopefully with some deference to our humanity and some continued humility of their own.

My mother and grandmother were much more than just people who spanked their kids.
Make Your Heart Sacred
By: Lanu Pitan
Tags: Poetry On Medium, Spirituality, Poetry, Spiritual Saturdays, Spiritual Secrets

‘To encounter sacred is at to be alive at the deepest centre of human existence’

Photo by Adrianna Kaczmarek on Unsplash

Spiritual Saturday

Your heart is the temple of your being

Where you meet the holiness of the Supreme Being

Your duty to maintain the sacredness of your temple

And throw out the rubbish from your sacred heart

Your heart is the temple of your being

A call to awareness of holiness in every way

Beyond the walls that separate and divide humanity

And throw in that Sacred Love that unites humanity

Your heart is the temple of your being

A game of sacredness you have to win

As there is also desecrated heart

Where you allow all the rubbish to pile up

Wake up from that slumber

Wake up to your responsibility

You have a duty to keep your temple sacred

Is the deepest message of the Sacred Love.

Thank you, Darshak Rana, for the Spiritual Saturday Prompt, ‘’SACRED’’, and inviting me to participate.
A Kind of Determination!
By: Ak, Aaska Aejaz
Tags: Humanity, Poetry, Magnet Poetry, Chalkboard, Determination

A Kind of Determination!

The Writing Cooperative and Chalkboard Magnet Poetry Prompt

Image Source: Unsplash, Photo by Matthew Brodeur

I will run

I’ll keep running till my feet will not bleed

I’ll keep running till my breath will not shatter

I’ll keep screaming till my throat will not get numb

I’ll keep calling till I don’t see humans with humanity

I will run

I,

I’ll keep fighting till my soul is an imprisoned in my body

I’ll keep helping till my conscience is lightening up my mind

I’ll keep telling till nobody will hear my enthusiasm endeavor

I’ll keep standing till expectations will give the strength to awake

I will run

I,

I’ll keep continuing till the pain will not change into enduring

I’ll keep carrying till humanity’s weight will not convert into a shelter

I’ll keep exploring till kindness will not rise as a new morning in Universe

I’ll keep running till mankind will not escalate in ruthlessness’s era of cruelty!

I,

I will keep running because I know, It must be fulfilled one day!

©Aaska Ejaz, 2019. All Rights Reserved
Safein partners with Zero Knowledge Labs to ensure safety and transparency of the upcoming ICO
By: Audrius Slažinskas
Tags: Blockchain, Audit, Smart Contracts, ICO

We are proud to announce that one of the most respected smart contract development and audit agencies out there, Zero Knowledge Labs (ZKLabs) have been retained by Safein to create and audit our smart contract. They will verify the logic behind Safein ICO structure and ensure that all the required layers of security are implemented in the smart contract of the ICO.

ZKLabs specialize in code built on Ethereum platform. They have some heavyweight champions from Ethereum Foundation on board, including security engineer Matthew Di Ferrante and core developer Nick Johnson. The company has already audited smart contracts of AdEx and Tether among other clients.

Proper auditing is a crucial part of a successful ICO. We want to ensure that after the launch, there will be no technical or security issues coming up, the logic is in place and the process is optimized. After all, our goal is to make it simple, and this partnership will ensure just that by granting us a seamless token sale mechanism.

About Safein

Safein offers a blockchain-based, single-sign-on digital wallet. It enables the access to websites and other third-party services with a single click, eliminating the need for people to create and verify numerous accounts with many different login and password combinations. In addition, Safein returns control over personal information to its true owners — the people who are the subjects of the data . Safein discloses to websites and apps only the data elements that have been explicitly approved by a user, and by providing users with the ability to stop the sharing of data with any particular third-parties at any time. Safein also simplifies making and receiving electronic payments — whether denominated in classic, fiat currencies or in cryptocurrencies — by leveraging the same digital identity capabilities that it uses for authorization. Safein’s initial target markets include the cryptocurrency and gaming sectors, within which its management team enjoys significant prior experience and successes.

About Zero Knowledge Labs (ZKLabs)

Zero Knowledge Labs provide smart contract development and auditing services for projects built on the Ethereum platform, as well as general crypto protocol design and consulting. The company offers general operational security support, including setting up code review process, signing commits & binaries, proper access controls to repos and keys, disaster recovery/preparation, etc. ZKLabs also work with code auditing of smart contract code, and any other sensitive code. In addition, the company provides protocol design and analysis, review the whitepaper and platform from game theory, security, feasibility, and performance perspective. ZKLabs already audited AdEx, Tether, Polkadot, and others.
An Overview of Calculus: Foreword, Important Concepts, and Learning Resources
By: Dave Amiana
Tags: Mathematics, Machine Learning, Education, Engineering

Historical notes

The idea of calculus, according to some mathematicians and historians — such as Carl Boyer — have been motivated to solve one of the most famous problems in philosophy called the Zeno’s Paradoxes — these are set of philosophical problems, as proposed by the Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea, that supports the doctrine contrary to the evidence of one’s senses, the belief in plurality and change is mistaken and in particular that motion is nothing but an illusion [2].

In a race, the quickest runner can never overtake the slowest, since the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started so that the slower must always hold a lead.

Infinitesimal calculus was developed independently in the late 17th century by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.

Criticisms on the First principles of Calculus

In modern mathematics, the foundations of calculus are formalized in the field of real analysis, which holds full definitions and proofs of the theorems used in calculus. Foundations refer to the rigorous development of the subject from axioms and definitions that sought to have been deduced and logically justify conjectures.

In early calculus, the use of infinitesimal quantities was thought unrigorous and was fiercely criticized by a number of authors, most notably Michel Rolle and Bishop Berkeley.

Working out a rigorous foundation for calculus occupied mathematicians for much of the century following Newton and Leibniz, and is still to some extent an active area of research today.

Several mathematicians, including Maclaurin, tried to prove the soundness of using infinitesimals, but it would not be until 150 years later when, due to the work of Cauchy and Weierstrass, a way was finally found to avoid mere “notions” of infinitely small quantities [3].

The foundations of differential and integral calculus had been laid. In Cauchy’s Cours d’Analyse, we find a broad range of foundational approaches, including a definition of continuity in terms of infinitesimals, and a (somewhat imprecise) prototype of an (ε, δ)-definition of limit in the definition of differentiation.

Weierstrass, on the other hand, formalized the concept of limit and eliminated infinitesimals. Following the work of Weierstrass, it eventually became common to base calculus on limits instead of infinitesimal quantities, though the subject is still occasionally called “infinitesimal calculus”. Bernhard Riemann used these ideas to give a precise definition of the integral. It was also during this period that the ideas of calculus were generalized to Euclidean space and the complex plane.

Today, the field is equipped with foundations that have been carried on — developed — for ages. However, there still remains a question that is yet to be solved making the area of mathematical analysis, in general, an active research domain.
About R Programming and Step by Step Guide for Installing R in Windows
By: Positive Stud
Tags: Data, Installation, Data Science, R Programming, R

Step by Step guide for installing R & RStudio

Stepwise procedure for Installing R

Step 1: Click on this link provided below

Step 2: After opening the link, you are now required to go to ‘Windows’.

Step 3: Then, click on the ‘base’ subfolder.

Step 4: Now, the downloadable link is located at the top of the page i.e. ‘Download R 4.0.3 for Windows’.

Step 6: Now, load the ‘.exe’ file and follow the steps below. So, the R Console Page will be available at the beginning when you run the R Interface Program.

Step 7: Read the agreement and instruction carefully and click on the ‘Next’ button.

Step 8: Now, select your destination location folder for installing R for Windows and click ‘Next’.

Step 9: On the basis of the operating system installed in your computer system select the version and click ‘Next’.

Step 10: Select your desired option on startup options and click ‘Next’.

Step 11: Select the option on installing the shortcut of R in the start menu and click ‘Next’.

Step 12: Select your desired additional task and click on the ‘Next’.

Note: Now, the installation process is started, and progress can be seen as shown in the image below.

Step 13: Congratulations! R has been installed in your Windows System. Finally, you can click on the ‘Finish’ button.

Step 14: Now, you can open your RGui using the shortcut icon or by going to the folder where you have installed it. Finally, you can now take your big step in the world of Data.

Stepwise procedure for installing R Studio

RStudio is an R-programming IDE licensed for Desktop and Cloud products available as open-source and commercial applications. Now, let’s have a look at the stepwise procedure that is to be followed for successfully installing R Studio.

Step 1: Download RStudio Desktop from the link provided below.

Note: For now we will be downloading the RStudio Desktop Free version.

Note: After you have successfully downloaded your file, you are required to Run the .exe file and carry out following the steps shown below:

Step 2: Here, read the agreement and instruction carefully and click on the ‘Next’ button.

Step 3: Select your destination location folder for installing R Studio for Windows and click ‘Next’.

Step 4: Provide your desired Start Menu Folder for installing the shortcut of R studio and click the ‘Next’.

Note: Now, your installation process gets started and your can see the progress as shown in the image below.

Step 5: Congratulations R Studio has been successfully installed on your Windows PC. Finally, you can click on the ‘Finish’ button.

Step 6: Now, you can double click the shortcut icon of R Studio or open R from the location in which you have installed R Studio.
Weird Second Jobs I’ve Had
By: Lisa Martens
Tags: Creative Writing, Millennials, Nonfiction, Humor, New York

Weird Second Jobs I’ve Had

Because I was smart enough to get into NYU but not smart enough for a full ride.

I just wanted to go to school without dying. Photo credit .https://stocksnap.io/photo/EQ3Q18SVL9

Watching cartoons while getting an MRI as part of a medical experiment.

Another medical experiment on memory that I…don’t quite remember.

Handing out fliers for knockoff perfumes near Grand Central Station.

Being a stagehand for a play about the founding fathers and porn. I can’t sew so I stapled the costumes together. The show must go on.

Selling sunglasses for a guy who was likely using the business as a front for illegal activity. He was always driving to Newark. He hid bags of money around the store. I quit when he asked for my social security number.

Making sure a boom box worked for belly dancing classes.

Line editing manuscripts for a publishing house, and going through the slush pile for gold. Boomers, it’s broke millennials referring your manuscripts to the real editors, so be nice.

Almost a job: while asking bars if they needed extra help, a gentleman told me if I needed cash we could go back to his house and “see what happens.”

I ran away.

Standing outside in December for the NYC holiday market. There’s no bathroom for staff. You just have to run to Whole Foods and hope no one steals from your shop while you panic crap.

Bike tour guide. At the time, I did not know how to ride a bike. A friend of mine hired me as an “independent contractor” to circumvent normal hiring practices.

Weekend tour guide of Governors Island.

Bike tour guide again, this time in Harlem. Quit after it became apparent tourists would die trying to cross 125th on a bike.

Repairing and cleaning Civil War-era weaponry.

Writing press releases for a chiropractic college (that were never published).

Tutoring college students with learning disabilities without being allowed to know what those disabilities were. One frustrated student picked me up.

Selling silver coins to men I met on the Internet. (That was my emergency plan.)

Proofreading stories for people off Upwork. One person (white) wrote a holiday anthology and made a race joke about Black Friday. They got defensive when I suggested removing the race joke. I never heard from them again.

Reselling my clothes and clothes other people threw away.

Same, but with furniture.

Trying to write a Wikipedia article about someone who didn’t really do anything, and getting it rejected because the only source was a book the guy wrote himself.

Taking photos of political bobble heads that were kept in a storage unit. Hundreds of them. Do you know what it is like to have hundreds of smiling bobble head dolls (Of Obama, the Clintons, the Bushes, Saddam, Osama) staring at you in a dark room?

Almost a job: On my way back from my tour guide job, a dude told me he could pay me to be a dominatrix, and that I’d be good because I looked sweet and innocent.

I ran away.

I write books.
2. 블록체인 기술이란 무엇인가
By: Hyungmok Joh
Tags: 블록체인, 암호화폐, 가상화폐, Korean, Blockchain

At the forefront of technological innovation, the blockchain industry is constantly changing and growing in an accelerated fashion. The Ceta Network mission is to nurture this evolution by providing foundationally sound projects with visibility and community building.

Follow
3 Ways to Future-Proof Your Project Management Career
By: Clément Bourcart
Tags: Product, Project Management, Careers, Personal Development, Business

The role of the Project Manager is bound to evolve in the near future, with advances in AI and related technologies which could have significant impact on the very nature of the role.

Indeed, at the core, what does every Project Manager do?

It really boils down to:

Setting up a project structure, governance and managing the delivery team through the project lifecycle

and through the project lifecycle Building detailed project plans reflective of project phases, utilizing the best-suited methodology or framework to the work at hand (e.g. Agile, DevOps, Waterfall or Hybrid delivery models) — and prioritizing activities and tasks on the plan accordingly

reflective of project phases, utilizing the best-suited to the work at hand (e.g. Agile, DevOps, Waterfall or Hybrid delivery models) — and on the plan accordingly Managing stakeholder expectations and reporting on project progress, risks, issues, and dependencies to create visibility and drive resolution

Most of the above could well be largely, if not entirely, automated within the not-too-distant future.

If AI is now entering the boardroom, helping C-Suite executives make top-level strategic decisions based on vast amounts of data and self-generated insights…it can surely run projects and even programs or, eventually, coordinate entire portfolios of work by itself.

And we are only in the early days of understanding the possibilities and impacts which AI could have on the running of organizations. Sundar Pichai, Alphabet Inc’s CEO, described it as “more profound than fire or electricity”.

AI effectively levels up human Project Managers by:

Augmenting human intelligence — by having instant access to immense datasets, and independently generating insights from them. For instance, surfacing risks and roadblocks before they become real, in a predictive manner Enabling autonomous decision-making — by producing an infinite range of project scenarios, testing products, and gathering customer data faster than any human team could Taking away the repetitive, low value-add tasks — for instance by producing live project status reports, tailored to the stakeholder group the information is needed for, or automatically recording time spent by each team member on a project

So, how do you stay ahead of the curve?
A Simple Google Sheet Template for SaaS Cash Flow Projections
By: Nicolas Carteron
Tags: Data Visualization, Startup, Entrepreneurship, Financial Projections, SaaS

A Simple Google Sheet Template for SaaS Cash Flow Projections

Save yourself some time while building your financial models for your fundraising

A few weeks ago, I published an in-depth analysis of Customer Acquisition Cost and how to forecast it:

I received many questions about the Excel model I used to build the Cash Flow Projection, so I decided to write this article to explain how you.

Add the template to your Google Sheets

You can use my model on Google Sheets by following this link and clicking “Make a copy” when prompted. This will copy the file in your own Drive.

Inputting your assumptions

On the left side of the sheet, you will see this table.

Change the assumptions in the blue cells to suit your own business model needs.

For your Gross Margin and your Monthly Fixed Costs, go to the respective sheets and do the same, edit the blue cells!

Author’s note: this model only takes into account 1 monthly plan paid monthly. It doesn’t account for various tiers of service or the possibility to pay yearly in advance.

Doing this will update the table on the right side of the sheet and the charts accordingly.

What you’ll get

A Cash-Flow table

This will give you a simplified overview of your cash flow over the next X periods. You can easily extend it to cover more periods.

Use it as a basis to create your own, more detailed model.

3 charts

One for users, one for your cash burn, and one for your cash in bank.
Get Reward by Asking High-valued Questions about Mixin Network
By: Mixin Evangelist
Tags: Mixinmessenger, Oceanone, Announcements, Mixinnetwork, Community

Mixin Network just hit a series of milestones. Over 100 million transaction is completed in Mixin Network soon after it’s officially released on Sep.30, 2018.

To express our sincere gratitude to the community members for the support all the time, and help popularize Mixin Network far and wide, we decided to record a video to further address the testnet of Mixin Network.

In this video, Cedric Fung, founder and CEO of Mixin Network, will show up and make remarks on the most concerned issues, such as developer community plan, technical features, and even detailed thoughts about node plan and all real stuff.

Here’s how:

Ask any questions about Mixin Network in this sheet. High-valued questions will be answered by Mixin Network CEO in our forthcoming video record, and the questioners will be rewarded with 0.1–1 XIN according to the value of question.
Becoming Mrs. Lewis
By: Jennifer Hammersmark
Tags: Lovestory, Cs Lewis, Book Review, Spirituality, Review

The Improbable Love Story of Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis

You know you have a good novel when you can’t put it down, and this is one of those. Patti Callahan does a wonderful job authoring this historical novel as she draws us into the complicated lives of two amazing writers.

Joy Davidman, in desperation to make sense of her life, embarks on a spiritual quest. She begins by writing a letter to C.S. Lewis (Jack). To her surprise, he actually answers her. This begins a journey of two great people building a rapport and friendship across the miles. A friendship they both needed, more than they even knew.

The love that grew between these two unsuspecting characters through their letter writing is inspiring, albeit fraught with obstacles and challenges. But aren’t we all.
Top 8 Most Common Questions I Get Asked as a Data Scientist
By: Rose Day
Tags: Leading Women In Data, Machine Learning, Opinion, Data Science, Leadership

4. What does a typical day as a data scientist look like?

My day tends to have three main focuses: sprint work, project planning/road mapping, and research.

Sprint Work — This work refers to most of the items I take on during a sprint. Sprint work can include fixing a bug in code, creating new functionality in a library, or running an analysis on some data based on customer input on an issue. Sprint work is my planned three weeks’ worth of work.

Project Planning and Road Mapping — I am the team lead for my group, and therefore spend time cleaning our backlog of work, adding new concepts, and road mapping what the months ahead look like. During this time, I am working with stakeholders and other team members to add information where needed and roadmap the next few months.

Research — If I am not doing one of the two above, then I am researching what is in the market, new techniques that have come out, and ways to solve problems that we are currently facing. As mentioned previously, data science is a revolving door of new ideas, concepts, and teachings. You will spend a lot of your time learning what has come out and if it applies to your work or not. My research can be either part of my sprint work or project planning. It depends on what I am doing that week.

Lesson: Your day will vary depending on the type of role you pick. Make sure you choose something that suits what you want to be doing in your position.

5. Why did you choose data science as a career path?

I didn’t initially choose data science; it chose me. I began college as an English major and studied for two years as one before transferring to another college and becoming a computer engineer. It was during my final year of undergraduate that I began to explore my love for data. I worked on a research project that required me to ingest data from sensors and user input for analysis. It was then that I thought I was initially interested in becoming an embedded engineer. I explored the idea for a while, took a few more classes for embedded programming and chip design, and then did an internship.

The more I got into looking at data for embedded system, the less I wanted to become an embedded engineer. Then I began my master’s in data science. As I took more classes and worked with different datasets, I began to enjoy big data challenges. Data science is an evolving field that lets you interact with people of all backgrounds. It offers new challenges each day, and with additional data comes additional problems to solve. I didn’t initially choose data science, it chose me, and I am glad it did.

Lesson: Life is not a straight forward path. There will be many twists and turns in it. You may not know where you will end up, and that is okay.
What it’s Really Like to Have an Eating Disorder
Tags: Life Lessons, Self Love, Eating Disorders, Mental Health, Weight Loss

Down the rabbit hole of weight loss

I remembered a TV program I came across before, talking about a ‘magical solution to weight-loss’. It was simply to weigh yourself every morning and night and track it on a graph that was visible in the bathroom.

Without putting too much thought into it, I decided to try it.

Little did I know that that was the start of my disordered relationship with food and my body.

Although I wasn’t following a specific diet program, I noticed that after going on a night swim, my weight was lighter the next morning. I got excited. The little hit of dopamine each time I saw the graph going down became an addiction.

I started to exercise every day — first, a light jog. But after a month, I was waking up at 5 am before school to fit in a session of Billy Blanks workout (I have no idea how I continued this for so long). I’d eat a small breakfast of just yoghurt and fruits, forbid myself from buying snacks at school, and ate a tiny packed lunch. I drank water like there was no tomorrow; because that’s what I knew to do to lose weight. At night, I always made sure I went to bed with a rumbling stomach, because I thought that way, my body would burn fat in my sleep.

Fast forward, and I’d lost nearly 20kg in less than six months.

People started to tell me I was ‘fit and healthy’ now. I could finally wear everything I’d wanted to, and I enjoyed taking photos with my friends.

But I felt incredibly empty, both physically and mentally. I was always exhausted. I still remember walking home from school and always crashing on my bed every day because of how draining it was.

I wanted to stop, but I couldn’t.

My parents started to get worried. But not in a ‘help a daughter with an eating disorder’ way. More in a ‘stubborn daughter refuses to eat’ way. They’d tell me to ‘just eat more’ (which is the most useless thing you can say to someone struggling with an eating disorder).

In many Asian cultures, ‘eating disorders’ aren’t openly discussed. Even my doctor at the time (who was Chinese) didn’t diagnose me with an eating disorder. She, like my parents, just said ‘eat more’.

I spent many months feeling stuck. I kept on finding a new reason to postpone putting on weight. My prom was coming up, so I didn’t want to change my dress size. I was going to go on Holiday this summer, so I wanted to look good in a swimsuit.

But deep down, I was just so scared. I felt as if there was a starving, raging monster inside of me, and the moment I gave in, it would engulf me.
How I Managed to Get 40,000 Views on Quora in Less Than a Month
By: Adam Skali
Tags: Social Media, Marketing, Digital Marketing, Quora, Writing

Why Quora?

The number one reason would be because, for the number of users it has, it isn’t as saturated as it could be. With this, I mean that with 300 million users and not as many of them answering questions, Quora is a good place to get organic views and create brand awareness

One of the reasons why this happened is because of their Quora Partner Program, where you can get paid by asking questions. This made it so that the number of spammy questions increased, and also made quite a few of the top writers leave the platform.

This could be seen as a problem — or as an opportunity. While it is true that the spammy questions get annoying, it is also true that you can still find great questions, and the dissatisfaction of other writers with the platform is your chance to create a name.

The other advantage of Quora is that it might be the best platform for you. If you are reading this, then you are most likely a writer who wants to grow their brand. This means that you shine with long-form writing, and it also means that you might have fewer opportunities to shine on Instagram or Youtube.

So within all the different platforms to create a name for yourself as a writer, I think that Quora and Medium are the best at the moment.
Things You Can Do While Waiting for Election Results
By: Susan Brearley
Tags: Advice, Inspiration, Ideas, Humor, Election 2020

Watching election results is so 2016. And we’ve already given up on the entire year of 2020, so let’s just get on with the rest of our personal lives, shall we?

There will be plenty of time to continue the good fight in reforms of all sorts. We don’t need to put all our energies into this one day, believing all the change will happen in the next 24 hours.

We’re smarter than that. Pirates know it takes lots of planning and map reading to navigate and find the buried treasure.

Photo by N. on Unsplash

While others are adding to the already too large puppy pile of negative energies, here’s an alternative list of TED Talks I’ve recently watched that were hella inspiring! I hope you enjoy them.
Token Presale Started!
Tags: Dreamteam, Token Dreamteam, ICO, Esports, Blockchain

April 12, 2018 — The DreamTeam Token Presale is Started! Check your inbox for the invitation link with Presale details and investment info. Become part of the biggest Esports ICO today and get a 15% bonus on your investment! https://token.dreamteam.gg/#preSale

DreamTeam Token Presale Info:

Hard Cap: $7 000 000

Presale Invite Links Sent: 12th of April (12:00 PM NYC, 17:00 LDN, 19:00 MSK, 00:00 HKG)

Presale End: 19th of April (12:00 PM NYC, 17:00 LDN, 19:00 MSK, 00:00 HKG)

Exchange: 1 ETH = 1600 DREAM

Currency: ETH, BTC

Bonus: 15%

BMin. Сontribution: $50 000

Max. Сontribution: Unlimited

About DreamTeam:

DreamTeam — infrastructure platform and payment gateway for esports and gaming.

DreamTeam is the ultimate teambuilding and skill-growing platform that solves problems for hundreds of millions of gamers who want to build, grow, manage and monetize their teams. And with the unlocking of blockchain and smart contract technologies, DreamTeam is building a one-of-a-kind payment gateway for players, teams, tournaments and sponsors.

For more information on DreamTeam and its ICO, please visit https://token.dreamteam.gg/

Stay in touch: Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn |BitcoinTalk.org
Data Visualization Design 7 | Highlights, Distractions, Hierarchy, and Text
By: Adam Edelweiss
Tags: Data Visualization, Data Science

Highlighting

(1) Main Principle of Highlighting

The main principle of highlighting is that at most there can only be 10% of the visual design that should be highlighted. To highlight a specific thing in the graph, that must be important to the storytelling.

(2) Ways to Highlight

Bold, italics, and underlining can be used for titles, labels, captions, and short word sequences to differentiate elements. Although the bold is the most preferred one compared with the others. The problem for underlining is that it actually adds to the clutter and the problem for Italics is because it doesn’t stand as much as we expect.

We can also use upper cases and typeface for highlighting but this can also add to the clutter.

Color is a good way to highlight something we want if this appears infrequently, and it is also a feature related to bold that we usually use them together. Our final option is to change the size of the texts and the larger they are, the more important they will be in a plot.

2. Eliminate Distractions

(1) Common Distractions

Clutter: the element that doesn’t add information

No Context: need to give more information so that your point makes sense

(2) Identity Distractions

In practice, not all the data in a plot are equally important so that we can get rid of some of them to make a plot more rational. It is important to know that when the details are not important, we have to summarize them and remember the details in case we are asked about them.

To deemphasize elements that are necessary but don’t impact your message we can use light grey for plotting them so the audience knows that they are going to be less important than the others.

3. Create Hierarchy

(1) The Definition of the Hierarchy

The sequence that we expect the audience to go through in plots is the hierarchy that we have designed in the plot. This is a key element of visualization because people can know what to do without any further instructions.

(2) Tools for Hierarchy

To set up a hierarchy, we can firstly use different sizes and colors and they would tell the people where to start reading and what is the order. We can also highlight the most important part and this helps the audience quickly process the information.

4. Add Proper Texts

(1) Where To Use Texts?

First of all, all the graphs need titles. It is also that every axis needs a label to explain the meaning of the variable. You can also annotate important points directly on the graph and also put some important footnotes (source, date, necessary assumptions, methodologies).

(2) Golden Rule

Never assume that the plot will be telling the same story if you imply a conclusion. If you want to draw a conclusion, state it in direct words and then attach the statements to the graph.
Quirky for Mobile Products?
By: Pito Salas
Tags: Technology, Programming, Mobile, Quirky

I read about Quirky.com in the paper the other day. From my perusal it’s a site where people (you and me) can submit ideas for manufactured products.

For example, let’s say I have an idea for a dog leash with a built in flashlight. Clever eh? Well, you can describe it to the best of your ability and submit it to the Quirky.com site.

Ideas are socially curated (translation: visitors to the site can vote on how much they like the product.) Once they reach a certain threshold then the Quirky staff analyzes the idea from a design, marketing, manufacturing perspective, and decides whether it’s worth pursuing. If it is, they actually design or mock it up and put it up for “pre-sale” in their catalog. If enough people buy it then the product is actually created and you (the inventor) gets a small cut of the profits. Here’s their diagram of the process.

What if we created a similar service, but focused exclusively on products for app phones (e.g. iPhone and Android.) What do you think?
Love Reading on Medium?
By: Matilda Fairholm
Tags: Followers, Médium, Algorithms, Authenticity, Writing

Love Reading on Medium?

Imminent changes make authentic following more important than ever.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

I’ve never been a fan of “follow for follow”. Maybe it’s because I wasn’t the popular kid at school and was always picked last for sports teams. I was that kid who never quite fit in.

Perhaps, and more likely, it’s because I lived, for most of my adult life, somewhat dishonestly. I painted a picture that looked like a happy family when inside I was dying, the impact of two decades of domestic abuse tearing apart my very soul. I said I loved my husband, when truthfully I hoped he would die.

Dark, I know.

But that is what living a lie does to you. The dishonesty literally turns you into something, someone, that you are not.

Now, in my late forties, I have one rule.

Real, or nothing.

In other words, you get the real me, whether you are family, clients, my now husband (who is a living saint by the way) or a stranger. Everyone.

Like it or lump it.

Maybe that’s why I don’t like the follow me and I’ll follow back mentality. It screams a lack of authenticity.

As I said in my earlier piece on this topic, wouldn’t you, as a writer, prefer to have 100 readers who are eagerly waiting for you to publish the next piece, than 1000 who don’t even know your name?

I still feel that way. If this piece offends you and you don’t want to read my work, unfollow me, I really don’t mind.

Because I’m writing for engaged readers, not for followers.

Authentic following is about to become a whole lot more important.

Medium is embarking on a complete overhaul of the Medium App which includes a much greater focus on putting the work of writers you follow right there on your home page. I have no technical expertise whatsoever so I won’t attempt to explain further. You can read more about it here.

What I have gleaned from what I have read so far is that, rather than an algorithm deciding what stories will be brought to our attention, the reader will decide, based what writers and publications that reader follows.

If you, like me, love reading on Medium, then being discerning about who you follow has never been more important.

Losing followers doesn’t mean losing readers.

I read something in one of the Facebook groups last week about ‘losing followers’ and I felt a little guilty. I regularly go through my following list and unfollow anyone whose work I’m not genuinely engaging with. In my logic, that’s just being honest. It’s not intended to be hurtful.

What is the point in looking like a reader when you are not?

Writers want readers, not followers.

Followers who are not readers add nothing to the writer’s growth.

My personal view is that it is impossible to genuinely engage with the work of thousands of writers. As a reader I’m excited about the change, because the writers I genuinely engage with will be front and center on my homepage.

That’s a win for me as a reader and hopefully a win for me as a writer as well.
How (and why) you should use TypeScript with Node and Express.
By: André Gardi
Tags: Nodejs, JavaScript, Typescript, Expressjs, Web Development

During the beginning of my career, I was a desktop developer, where strong typed languages dominate the market.

When I migrated to web development, I was fascinated by every new feature on languages like JavaScript and Python. The fact that I didn’t have to declare the type of variables brought me productivity and my work became more fun.

So the first time I heard about TypeScript, the idea seemed like a step backwards in the evolution of the language.

Did I change my mind?

Yes, but it depends on the case. For personal projects, in which I work alone, I still prefer the productivity of plain JavaScript. But, for larger projects, where you work as a team, I recommend using TypeScript. Throughout this article I will explain how and why.

TypeScript

If you still do not know what TypeScript is, I recommend reading this overview: https://www.tutorialspoint.com/typescript/typescript_overview.htm

And the official 5-minute tutorial:

https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/typescript-in-5-minutes.html

But we can say, superficially, that it is ECMAScript 6 with strong typing.

Productivity vs maintenance

By definition, “TypeScript is JavaScript for application-scale development”. That is, the work we have with the initial setup of the project is compensated with the maintainability of complex projects. Let’s point out why this happens:

Type safe = less errors

By defining types in your code, you allow the IDE to acknowledge errors in the use of classes and functions that would only be perceived at runtime.

Example:

Here I am using Visual Studio Code which points put two errors:

On line 6: we are trying to pass a string parameter to a function that only accepts numbers.

On line 9: we are trying to assign, to a string, the result of a function that returns a number.

These two errors would go unnoticed, without Typescript, resulting in some bug on the final application.

The IDE exposes the project modules more easily

In complex projects we have hundreds of classes distributed across multiple files. When we define types, the IDE is able to relate objects and functions to the files that gave origin to them.

When using control + click on a method or class, imported from another file, the IDE will automatically navigate to the imported file, highlighting the line where the reference was defined.
7 Tips To Maximize PyTorch Performance
By: William Falcon
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Data Science, Pytorch

Throughout the last 10 months, while working on PyTorch Lightning, the team and I have been exposed to many styles of structuring PyTorch code and we have identified a few key places where we see people inadvertently introducing bottlenecks.

We’ve taken great care to make sure that PyTorch Lightning does not make any of these mistakes for the code we automate for you, and we even try to correct it for users when we detect them. However, since Lightning is just structured PyTorch and you still control all of the scientific PyTorch, there’s not much we can do in many cases for the user.

In addition, if you’re not using Lightning, you might inadvertently introduce these issues into your code.

To help you train the faster, here are 8 tips you should be aware of that might be slowing down your code.
How to do TDD in Android ? Part 1 — Overview
By: Nilesh Jarad
Tags: Android App Development, Tdd, AndroidDev, Mobile Automation Testing, Android

Tutorial series for android automation testing . Using JUnit & Espresso .

Automation tests are important as it ensures quality while developing application.TDD enforces writing tests before writing implementation.

Refer this previous tutorial for more information about TDD.

Testing pyramid :

As we can see Pyramid below,

Unit tests cover large section of pyramid making solid base. Unit tests are easy to write.

Integration Testing ensures integration of modules is correct and cover second large piece of Pyramid.

Functional testing usually describes what the system does and occupies smallest amongst the three part.

There are many testing tools and frameworks that can be used while developing application. Some of them are provided & supported by Google and some of them are third party .

Types of testing in Android :

Unit Test

Unit tests mainly target smallest functionality (like method, class , component or small module) with isolation from other component.

Tools used for Unit Test

JUnit is a simple framework to write repeatable tests. It is an instance of the xUnit architecture for unit testing frameworks.

Robolectric is popular Android unit test framework that allows faster test execution by running tests on the JVM (no device or emulator needed😊).

Instrumentation Test

Instrumentation Test (UI) are tests that mock User Interaction like clicking button , Typing text in EditText. Android Instrumentation is a set of “hooks” into the Android system that allows you to control the lifecycle of Android components (i.e. drive the activity lifecycle yourself instead of having these driven by the system). These tests require an actual device or emulator to run .

Tools used for Instrumentation Test

Espresso — Android UI Test Framework provided by Google that handles test synchronization very well.

UIAutomator — Android UI Test Framework provided by Google for testing across multiple apps at the same time.

Robotium — Third party Android UI Test Framework (Robotium vs Espresso)

Selendroid — Selenium for Android

Package Structure for Testing :-

In our project, two folders host our tests which are test and androidTest.

Test :Unit tests are hosted in this folder. These tests run on JVM and do not requires Android device or emulator. This type of test have no access to any android framework specific component like Context.

androidTest:- All Instrumentation (Espresso) tests are hosted in this folder.These tests need physical Android device or emulator in order to run.

In next post, we will dive deep into what architecture to follow & implementation for unit testing .

Meanwhile , would like to hear suggestions & inputs on this.

Cheers 🍻 !!!.

Hit that little ♥️ below .

Checkout Next post :
Oh No
By: Robert Merrill
Tags: Email, Hoax, Myth

Oh, no.

I just deleted an email that was forwarded to all people who like trees, live in the Mountain time zone, and all employees of Nabisco…

[caption id=”attachment_285" align=”alignleft” width=”150" caption=”Yummy.”]

[/caption]

Also, the person who sent it to the person who sent it to the person who sent it to the person who sent it to the person who sent it to me knew of a person who knew of a person who knew of a person who knew of a person who got a mysterious check co-signed by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and for $9,346.98 three weeks and two days after he forwarded this very same email to everybody in his address book (which happens to be the same week he rescued the Mrs. Fields’ cookie recipe from being stolen, and single-handedly supressed a violent vigilante uprising in Nigeria through helping their Minister of Foreign Aid to escape the country through a small wire-transfer of $17,346.22).

It’s my undestanding that Bill Gates himself received this email (on his top-secret GMAIL account) and was so astonished at it, that he promised to pay everyone who reads it $1.00 and also would pay $1.00 for everyone they forward it on to (since they have a new software they just launched that tracks such things). Bernie Madoff got the email on his Verizon Wireless Web-enabled phone (blatant product placement) and immediately forwarded it to everyone in his address book exclaiming that if they forwarded it on, they could make all the money back that he stole from them!

[caption id=”attachment_284" align=”alignright” width=”150" caption=”Al Gore invented the Internet, strawberries and Hip-Hop music.”]

[/caption]

I deleted the email because I thought it was a HOAX!

The problem is, the President of Argentina apparently got this very same email (it has been circulating for THAT LONG) and called it “junk”, then his son died eight days later!!

“Of course, this is a hoax,” I thought, until I was stunned to learn that The son of former Argentina president Carlos Menem was, indeed, killed in a helicopter accident in 1995.

WOW.

I don’t know anybody that was using email in 1995 except russian hackers, Al Gore, and Strongbad. Also, upon further research, I have learned that a lot of famous people’s parents must have deleted this email too because a lot of them have died, too.

If you have anything you never told me, that you have to get off your chest, now is the time… because my days, it appears, are numbered.