fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Recursive Functions in JavaScript
By: Ross Mawdsley
Tags: Web Development, Recursion, Beginner, JavaScript

Above, you can see that the functionality of JS’s while loop can be replicated using recursion. Although I don’t know of any advantage to doing this, it’s interesting nonetheless.

Reversing a String

I’m not sure how useful this example would be in the real world, but it’s certainly one I’ve been asked in tech tests, and I wish I’d known how to use recursion to solve it!

So, as with the factorial example above, our recursion logic can neatly fit within a ternary statement. In this case, our escape (aka ‘exit’) condition checks if the argument passed into reverseString() will be "" and if so, an empty string "" is returned in kind, and the recursion stops.

When first called, reverseString() immediately calls itself, but with str.substr(1) as an argument {The substr() method, when given just one argument, simply returns a substring cut from the original: omitting a set number of characters from the front of the string, as stipulated by the integer value that’s passed as an argument}. So in the above example, the first character will be removed, giving “eversed”. This is what is passed to the 2nd recursive call (i.e. reverseString('eversed') ) but what is returned from the first call is: reverseString('eversed') + 'r'

This 2nd reverseString() call is known as a ‘nested’ function call. And it is very important to note that the most nested function call returns first. So, to take a simpler example than reversing “reversed”. Let’s try reversing “yes” to explain this further. The nested returns would play out as follows:

Somewhat counterintuitively, the “most nested” (here labelled 4th) return, is returned first. And so, we follow the blue arrows backwards up the nesting to get the ultimate return “sey” (see bottom of image).

Note: In our factorial example above, the order that the nested returns were evaluated didn’t really matter, as multiplication is commutative. However, it’s important to understand it in this example.
End of Paper Money offers Opportunity for Blockchain Companies
Tags: India, Money, Blockchain, Demonetization, Bitcoin

Events in India demonstrate that the impending death of paper money is a major opportunity for blockchain-based financial services companies. The chaos created by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s drastic demonetization demonstrates the potential and danger of the cashless future.

Modi stunned Indians on November 8, 2016, when he went on TV and declared that the nation’s two most popular banknotes would be worthless within 50 days. All 500 rupee and 1,000 rupee notes were withdrawn from circulation and replaced with new bills.

Demonetization was designed to discourage terrorism, smuggling, organized crime, tax evasion, and counterfeiting, Modi claimed. Some government officials later admitted the move was done to force India into a cashless society.
When We Were Kids
By: Alex Burns
Tags: Exulansis, Creative Writing, Fiction Writing, Fiction, Short Story

When We Were Kids

Literally Literary and The Writing Cooperative prompt

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

There was a boy, once — Matthew. The kids in the schoolyard made fun of him, as so often kids do. He was tiny for ten, and try as he might, he could never quite keep up with the other kids. But he was kind and he was smart, all the qualities adults said mattered, but none of us kids quite understood yet.

I only remember Matthew in bits and pieces, flashes of childhood memories. He was my brother’s friend, not mine. They would play soccer together, and my brother would go to Matthew’s house for playdates when his other friends were busy.

I couldn’t tell you where Matthew’s house even was anymore, but I remember that it had a long driveway you had to go down to get to it. And at the bottom of it, standing on the front stoop, would be Matthew, every time. Waiting happily, grinning ear to ear.

I remember his smile. It felt too big for his face, like it was a hand-me-down he hadn’t quite grown into. But it was so genuine that even I, a too-cool-for-you thirteen-year-old at the time, couldn’t help but smile back. That was just who Matthew was. All kindness and too-big smiles.

But then one day, Matthew got sick. The kind of sick that us kids couldn’t understand. There were whispers in the school pick-up lines, parents talking about tests and scans, tiptoeing around some dreaded “C” word. Emily from third period said her mom had called it cancer. I had read My Sister’s Keeper that summer, and so I nodded my head, thinking I understood what cancer really was.

Matthew left school for good that fall. He and his family moved to Palo Alto, temporarily they said, to be closer to Stanford’s hospital. It would be fine, they said. And so us kids believed them. If a parent said it was going to be fine, it would be.

Three weeks later, I sat in the passenger seat of the car, my dad driving my brother and I home after my volleyball match. It was a perfectly normal evening after a perfectly normal day. I remember my phone chiming, a text from Emily of third period. A text like any other, except when I opened it, it wasn’t like any other. I think I might have gasped. Or maybe a sob escaped me. I couldn’t tell you, for sure.

All I know is that my dad asked from the driver’s seat what was the matter, and in my shock, I told him Matthew had died. The Stanford doctors hadn’t been able to stop the tumor from spreading. That’s what Emily from third period had said, so it must be true.

From the backseat, I heard my little brother start to cry.
The SIN of Voting Democrat (ICYMI)
By: Cody Libolt
Tags: Church, Voting, Politics, Ethics, Christianity

In the video below, Jacob Brunton and Cody Libolt cover hot topics from the culture, politics, and Christianity.

American political topics have become extraordinarily contentious for Christians. Here is our perspective on whether (and how) Christians should discuss politics. We explain why it is a sin to vote Democrat — and what to do about it in your church.

Video below:

The above presentation is just the first half of our discussion. Access the exclusive full length podcast by becoming a Patron.
The wait is over. Nuo is now live globally!
By: Varun Deshpande
Tags: Android, Banking, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, Bitcoin

This is a day we have been looking forward to ever since we decided to undertake the mammoth task of building a bank on blockchain. And that day has finally dawned. Nuo is now live globally on the play store.

Click here to Install Nuo app and sign up now.

Everyone who has supported us thus far and continue to support us, we have something for you. We are making ‘you’ a part of our growth.

Starting now, we are giving away 100 Nuocoins each to first 10,000 users who signup and if you haven’t signed up already you might be missing out.

We are launching this beta release (code named zetsu) with:

Super fast signup (~30 secs) and fingerprint login Secure wallet to store crypto currencies — BTC, BCH, LTC Peer to Peer payments with an address, QR Code or NFC Nuocoin Airdrop for signup, top-up, transactions and referrals Funded wallets with test currencies to try the app Preview of our decentralised and global lending product

And most importantly we have decided to do something revolutionary which no other bank can ever dare to do — be transparent.

Being transparent is a pledge which we don’t take lightly and we understand the responsibilities that come with it. As long as we exist, we will try to live by this pledge every single day. After all, we are in this together.

Nuo aims to be a decentralised and transparent crypto banking platform for emerging markets with a goal to create a global alternative to traditional banking.

Our team based out of a small office in Mumbai has put in their heart and soul in delivering a product which each one of you would be proud to call your own. We want our users and supporters to be our biggest evangelists and help us spread the word and guess what we just made that super easy for you.

Once you sign up, you would get a unique referral link/code using which you can invite your friends to be a part of our app. For every successful referral we would be giving you 50 Nuocoins.

Although this is a beta release with limited features, Nuo is the first real global product out of India in this space and we are proud to present a beautiful product in the hands of a global audience.

Let’s build a global bank of the future, together.

If you have any doubts please feel free to reach out to us at info@getnuo.com or checkout our website for more details: https://getnuo.com

Join our telegram community: https://t.me/officialnuochannel

Follow us on social media: Twitter | Facebook | Linkedin | Youtube
Will I Ever Have Sex Again?
By: Rachel Brindell
Tags: Relationships, Gender Identity, Dating, LGBTQ, Transgender

So, what am I trying to say here exactly? I want to help people understand the fears, anxiety, and even excitement related to this trans person’s ability, inability or desire to start having sex after transitioning. As an MTF trans person, one of the first things I experienced on my testosterone blockers was an inability to have an erection, not to mention my libido ran away, arms flailing never to be seen or heard from again. Did it end up in a universe far far away? Perhaps one day it will be discovered on a star ship or in a TARDIS. But for now, let’s just say that I am for all intents and purposes a virgin.

It certainly feels like I’m a virgin. I have no idea how to have sex, and it’s like starting over. Hell, I don’t even know if my next partner will be of any specific gender, trans or not. But I do know this. I will have to learn all over again, how to use my body to give and receive sexual pleasure. That scares the crap out of me. There are so many unanswered questions that I never had to concern myself with before.

· Will I be a success or a failure as I learn?

· Will the anxiety prevent me from performing?

· Will my partner (she, he or they) be patient with me?

· Will they want to explore this or just get their rocks off?

· How will I explain any of this to a prospective sexual partner beforehand? Or should I?

· Which of my parts will I find erogenous?
Spindeln i civic tech-nätet
By: Digidem Lab
Tags: Civic Technology, Civic Tech Network, Civictech

Network 🕸️ of people working with technology 👩‍💻 for the common good 👍 and digital tools for community 💞 + democracy 🖐️ + transparency 🔎

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Self-Awareness and Self-Education in the Wake of (Yet Another) Police Shooting
By: Robert J. Norris
Tags: Current Events, News, Civil Rights, Police, Racism

During the first week of my classes, I always talk about frames of reference.

I share with my students elements of my own background. My own history. This typically includes personal characteristics; that I’m a white, heterosexual, cisgender man. But I also tell them that my life has been split between New York and North Carolina (making me both a pizza and BBQ snob); that I studied sociology and history in college before focusing on criminology in graduate school. I share with them my love of books and music and video games and craft beer (yet another snobbery of mine).

Why, you might ask, in an academic setting — where the goal is the sharing and expansion of knowledge — would I share such personal and seemingly-unimportant aspects of my own life?

For one, I firmly believe that sharing personal aspects of our lives helps to build real, human connections between teacher and student. Those connections, in turn, enhance learning for all of us. But that’s a topic for a different post.

For my purposes here, I want to focus on another point. That is, that knowledge cannot be divorced from experience. How we perceive the world around us is profoundly shaped by our own histories. The issues on which I focus, the ways in which I engage with them, the ways in which I discuss them — all of these are influenced by my background and personal experience. My personal history provides context for how I learn and teach; it is my frame of reference for understanding the world and the society in which I exist.

In short, knowledge is not fully objective.

Sharing my frame of reference with students allows them, I hope, to critically consider the things I teach and how I teach them. And I encourage my students to consider their own frames of reference and to critically assess their own perspectives. I implore them to consider others’ frames of reference and seek to understand and empathize with others whose life experiences differ from their own. Such is a critical element on the path to learning and growing; it moves us toward empathy and humanity.
FAB Use Cases: the decentralized blockchain exchange in 2019
By: Fab Info
Tags: Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Decentralized, Dex, Exchange

In this series, we tackle different potential use cases of Fast Access Blockchain and how we can build a better world through our solutions.

New Applications, New Business Models, New Possibilities

Applications which are an ideal fit for blockchain technology have the following characteristics:

Involve multiple organizations

Where trust is key, or trust is presently severely eroded

Proof is key

Involve exchange/transfer of assets or value

Involve data sharing or presently suffers from silo’d data

Benefit from micro transactions/streaming

Have opportunities for new business models, products or services

Connect with FAB and build your Dapp on FAB.

One of the most important use cases is the decentralized exchange that builds on a blockchain. By using a decentralized exchange, you can transfer and track all your transactions on Chain. No other third parties can change the data once it is being proceeded by the network. Once the order is been created, the smart contract will execute and finish the digital asset transfer. You can always review your transactions histories by checking the transaction record at the chain explorer (FAB explore).

eXchangily explorer demo

Let’s take the eXchangily decentralized exchange as an example. eXchangily is not only a distributed order book, where you can trade digital assets end-to-end, but also an efficient payment gateway for you to easily exchange cryptocurrencies within your wallet. Nowadays, in 2019, you can also trade your cryptocurrencies inside your decentralized Wallet. The decentralized wallet stores the wallet’s private key on your local mobile device. Compare with the centralized exchanges like Binance, Coinbase, Huobi, Okex, etc. The decentralized exchange is hard to get hacked since the transaction is proceed from end-to-end and no centralized party has excessive control over all users assets. A decentralized exchange like eXchangily gives users/investors 100% control power over their own digital assets. Therefore, it ensured the safety of their assets by holding their own private key and data. It is like investors holding their key to the home.

The eXchangily is powered by FAB public infrastructure that everybody has the same right to join the network and earn profit by contributing to the network.

eXchangily will soon launch its Testnet version next month (end of July 2019). After doing intensive testing, eXchangily can successfully transfer their digital assets within their decentralized wallet.

How to register eXchangily and join our July testing?

Visit https://exchangily.com/login/signup Or send an email request to sarah@fabcoin.co

what you will get from the Testnet version?

How does eXchangily work?
Pemanfaatan Teknologi dalam Islam
By: Didik Tri Susanto
Tags: Islam, Opini, Teknologi

Written by

Proud to be Moslem | Introvert | Backend Engineer | VP of Engineering DOT Indonesia | dot.co.id
Investing In Crypto Is As Easy As 1, 2, 3
Tags: Technology, Blockchain, Investing, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin

Interested in getting started with crypto?

Setting up your first cryptocurrency portfolio is complicated. It takes time and effort to build the knowledge necessary to successfully take advantage of this emerging market. This article will walk you through a 3 step process to get you into crypto for the first time and help you set up a diverse portfolio!

1. Binance

Sign up for a free Binance account.

Select “Funds” on the Navigation Bar → Select “Balances” → Select Deposit on the asset you want to own. This will show a “Deposit Address”. Copy this address so you can use it in the next step.

2. Changelly

Go to Changelly. Select the asset you own. This will be USD for a first time crypto investor.

Then select the asset for which you copied the “Deposit Address” in the previous step.

Follow the steps on Changelly to input your credit card information and the deposit address to complete the purchase. This will send the cryptocurrency you just purchased directly to your Binance exchange account.

3. Shrimpy

Register with Shrimpy for free.

Once logged in, connect your Binance exchange API keys to the Shrimpy application. This process was previously detailed here (note, the design has changed, but the process is the same):

Now, visit the “Allocations” tab. This is where you can select the assets you would like to own and specify the percent of each asset you wish to own.

You are now set up!

You have successfully created your first cryptocurrency portfolio. In order to deposit more funds, simply revisit the “Changelly” link above and repeat the deposit process.
How I Reduced Docker Image Size from 1.43 GB to 22.4 MB
By: Mohammad Faisal
Tags: DevOps, Programming, Software Development, Docker, Coding

How I Reduced Docker Image Size from 1.43 GB to 22.4 MB

In 5 Simple Steps

Photo by Guillaume Bolduc on Unsplash

If you are working in web development then probably you already know about the idea of containerization and how it’s so great and everything.

But when working with Docker image size is a great concern. It’s often over 1.43 GB for just the boilerplate project that we get from create-react-app

Today we will containerize a ReactJS application and learn some tricks about how we can reduce the image size and at the same time improve performance.

The tricks will be shown for ReactJS but it’s applicable for any kind of NodeJS application.
How to Secure Angular Environment Variables for Use in GitHub Actions
By: Richard Abraham
Tags: Github Actions, Angular, Workflow Automation, Programming, Environment Variables

Steps

1. Setting up a .gitignore file

Ensure that the contents of the environments directory are part of the .gitignore file (on project root) so that these are not part of the code being pushed into a public repository.

2. Install Node.js packages

We need to install yargs to parse command-line arguments and dotenv to load environment variables from a .env file into process.env . Also, we will use the native fs package (no need to install) to work with the file system.

npm i -D yargs dotenv

3. Setting up a .env file

The .env file should be created on the project root folder. It allows us to securely define the secret API keys (e.g. FIREBASE_API_KEY ). You can add as many secret keys or access tokens to this file as required.

4. Setting up a setEnv.ts file

One might wonder why we wouldn’t make use of the environment.ts and environment.prod.ts files provided by default in an Angular project. This is because Angular, by default, considers these files as static and therefore they do not get compiled.

Thus, it is necessary for us to find a method to dynamically generate these files during compilation. This is where the setEnv.ts file comes into the picture. Where do we add this file? Let us create a scripts directory within src\assets to hold this file ( src\assets\setEnv.ts ).

To suppress TypeScript lint suggestions, we enclose the code within:

We import the methods to be used using:

We will configure dotenv to pass all the environment variables from the .env file into process.env . Additionally, we will use yargs to read the command-line arguments passed ( — environment=prod or — environment=dev ) when this file is called.

We will create a helper function that allows us to copy the dynamically generated environment variables into their respective files. In case the file does not exist, it will create a new file in the given path.

Since we added environment.ts and environment.prod.ts to the .gitignore file, these files along with the environments directory will not be available in the public repository of GitHub. Thus, every time a new automated workflow is triggered, these are created dynamically.

Finally, we dynamically generate the environment variables specific to the environment chosen that contains the secret API keys. For local development ( npm run serve ), the environment variables will be added to environment.ts , whereas for the production environment ( npm run build ), they will be added to the environment.prod.ts file.

This is what the complete .setEnv file looks like:

5. Update package.json

In order to call the setEnv.ts with specific command-line arguments, we will need to update the package.json :
A Stray
By: J.L. Littlejohn
Tags: Short Story, Art, Fiction, Obsessions, Poetry

This nouveau phenom

a phantom painter,

eclipsed by the dingy harbors

in her canvases

of alleywalls and sidewalks,

shuns the sun

beyond

those darkened corridors.

A knowing stray

…she stays

her distance

to the come and go again

of the breaking day.

A feral corsair

of the backstreets

serendipitous night

under inky skies

avoiding…..

as cautious creature

s l i n k s

to fade as shadow would

betwixt the Crescent’s

dart & pry

a cursorial-hunting

of her anonymity

- she navigates

the cold of concrete maze

strewn

an abundance

of artist’s wraiths

left shadowy debris

in casualty

and namelessness.

An artful dodger

without a Fagin,

in gauzy glimpse

thrice now

by him ㅤas she fled,

has purloined this nite

as his idée fixe

gave taunt again…

on faltered step

to her pantomime.

As critic documents each

of her masterful works

ㅤ in startled glance

of her traipse between

the parceling

of a moon’s blanching light

into slivered rays

he caught sight –

to beauty ㅤstrange

ㅤ…alluring

but unsettling.

Profound radiance

of her porcelain white

a delicate flesh

ㅤ luminous …

donned a villainess’ shroud

of modern habiliments

….. black hoodie

and jeans.

Her svelte androgyny

a sapling’s trunk ㅤ

perhaps, 19.

Beneath that hood

a cloche of hair rippled

a bevy in swan’s down.

Her flutter of lashes

ㅤwispy ghosts

ㅤof gypsy moths

across a lunar face ㅤ …pale

as frosted breath

upon a windowpane.

Eyebrows swept

a flight of gander’s wings

ㅤhovering

above a lost-in-the-forest gaze

as eyes wide in low spark

ㅤ glint ㅤa galaxy

two suspended planets

color of an autumnal sky

their watery light blue-grey

…..liken those waves

on her sometimes

furious ocean.

As her art has…

her preternatural talons

now curve and clench

his captured heart

duality’s intrigue

- intangible hail from blackness

and lambent

hark of moonbeams.
What’s Laughter Got To Do with Learning?
By: Upen Singh
Tags: Self Improvement, Life Lessons, Humor, Education, Life

Here’s a funny story.

I was speaking with my 9-year-old niece online last week. She told me what just happened during one of her online courses the other day. As she was speaking to her classmates online, her 4-year-old brother (my nephew) came in the room totally naked asking her if she could help him tie his shoelaces.

She and all her classmates went crazy with laughter.

Her eyes were wide-open and full of glow as she told me this story.

Later on during our conversation, my nephew also told me that she has started a family business and wants me to apply to her company. She shared her business-document with me via Google Docs.

Her eyes were wide-open and full of glow as she told me this story.

This makes me think about the type of education that would actually be meaningful.

Just yesterday I was taking a quiz online, as part of an online course that I am taking from Stanford University. I scored 100%. This morning, however, I could not really remember the core concepts I studied yesterday.

My formal education is happening all over again — repeat, memorize, and internalize.

I wonder if my education would have meant much more if my learning was accompanied by intense humor.

And perhaps we would all really learn and become creators.
The Flow
By: Yohanan Gregorius
Tags: Poetry, Spirituality, Muse, Routine, Universe

The Flow

Poem Inspired by my Muse and a 17-minute walk at 2 am under the stars

Photo by Dave Hoefler on Unsplash

Where shall I start? This morning? Last night? Does it matter? Does the structure of the poem about without routine require a beginning and an end?

I didn’t know what it was about when first I was in my idea, pace, think, pace more mode, but then again, inside of course knew

I woke a little after 00:00, very groggy, no, dissociatively foggy as is my norm these days both as I nod off and as I wake, then it’s sixteen after one when I decide to put feet on the floor

shall I break the haze with some HIIT as has smacked so well — Nah, I feel like a walk

I turn north out the door, it’s quite dark, perhaps my friends are behind clouds, but then my eyes adjust and a warm smile engulfs my face as I begin my stroll along Milky Way

My sense of wonderous awe grows with every step, and then POW as I turn south for home, the sky is vast and my friend Orion smiles and I get warmer yet chills

Will wonder never cease, I am not alone — the silhouettes of a herd of deer dart across the road perhaps 40 yds yonder, disappearing into the leafless thicket as suddenly as they had appeared

I am like a tourist looking up at the lights of Time Square the whole way home until I start to listen to the wind talk to me with the chimes on the house up the hill and with the chatter from the crisp brown leaves that somehow on 23.12.20 still cling to their branches despite the firm breeze

At a point in time several hours past from this POV I decided to play tennis for the first time in two years; I called and booked a lesson for 8pm — waiting on the court at 8 minutes after I call the desk “where is the Pro?” “Oh I heard you say court-time. A lesson one books directly with the Pro.” I don’t say, “WTF have you been smoking?”

“Do you have a ball machine…”? and so the flow continued

Idea, pace, think, time to write. MacOS update on iMac has 26 minutes to go. Go get laptop…

What is the central idea about which I am so ready to write? Flow. Go with it. We do not need the structure of routine. That’s what the myopes need. We have the vision to know that we have all the structure we need all the time because we perceive the connection between us and everything — we, the stars, the leaves, the flag on the pole barking from the NW breeze, we are all connected to Source — what more structure could anyone need?

I know from the energy that just pushed through my body almost bringing me to tears that Rama agrees and so proud of me are my creators (flood gates just opened)

YG
Making a Crane
By: Phil Mendez
Tags: STEM, Kids, Makerspaces, Education, Teaching

Making a Crane

A Covid-Friendly Makerspace Activity

I run a Makerspace. Usually, we dig into buckets of electronics. The kids explore microwaves, iPads, CD players, laptops, cell phones, blenders, drills. They take things apart and put stuff back together using shared materials in an area just for us.

With Covid, I have had to rethink the way things are done. For starters, I have to travel, so my Makerspace Lab became a Makerspace Kit. I also had to think about transfers to virtual learning. Could the activities and culture we were building together continue online?

Some things never change. We still start with a greeting, a share, and a creative warm up (like making a giraffe behind your head with just a sticky note— so more in the “extra” section). We still talk about the design process: sketching, ideating, prototyping, getting feedback. We still practice the 4Cs: Collaboration, Critical Thinking, Creativity, Communication (though I haven’t found it important to name those skills, we use them). We still make cool stuff.

For day one of Makerspace, we made cranes.

the result: cranes in use

It was minimalistic enough that I could make it happen with very few and cheap materials. It leans heavily on communication and collaboration because operating the crane requires everybody’s effort, thinking, and agreement. Perfect.

So, after the creative warm up, volunteers passed out the following materials.

(1) paper clip per student

(1) string per student

(1) rubber band per group

(1) cup per group

Building the crane is pretty simple. You tie the paper clip to the string. Then you hook all the paper clips to one rubber band. voilà. (You really don’t even need a paperclip. You could just attach the string directly to the rubber band, no problem.)

The result was pretty cool.

the crane result

As a reflection — Makerspace in the era of covid has me thinking, “how can I leverage the simplest, cheapest materials to continue to provide an amazing experience for makers?” The scrappiness, it turns out, fits the maker movement well.

Extras

Want more? Here you go.

My daily carry.

My daily carry. When I need to move between classrooms, I have found a small tray helpful for essentials like sticky notes, pens/pencils, paper clips, sticky dots, string, and rubber bands.

A creative warm up.

A creative warm up. Kids made a giraffe behind their head (so without looking) using a sticky note. Kids presented their works of art by describing the parts and intention. I’ve done this with adults too. Just as effective.

Tip for cutting string.
Запуск 2-го этапа развития Биржи Цифровых Активов. Предстарт открытых торгов
By: Bitbon System
Tags: Bitbon, Криптовалюты, Trade, Биржа

The Bitbon System is a large-scale infrastructure project, which represents a decentralized platform for Contributing. https://www.bitbon.space/en/home

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Casa Node Update — 12.31.18. YOU get a bug fix, and YOU get a bug…
By: Nick Neuman
Tags: Lightning Network, Cryptocurrency, Crypto, Product Updates, Bitcoin

Casa Node Update — 12.31.18

YOU get a bug fix, and YOU get a bug fix!

Today’s update is small due to the holidays, but it has some bug fixes for Lightning that will help a lot of users, so we’re excited to get it released!
‪A Thousand Arrows
By: Melinda Smith
Tags: Creative Writing, A Cornered Gurl, Friendship, Love, Poetry

‪A Thousand Arrows

A making. An unmaking.

Photo by Franck V. on Unsplash

I am unmade

By a thousand arrows

By the bridge that groans and splinters

By saline waters that rush below

You look upon‬

‪My bloody flesh‬

My rotting wounds‬

My half-formed scars‬

‪Your fingers trail

‪Each part of my hurt‬

‪Each broken piece‬

Each cellular eulogy‬

‪You tend me, mend me‬

‪With thread of silk‬

‪With breath of honey mead

With promises I know are earnest

‪For you ‬stand here, naked, too

Baring your own ghosts to the moon

Bearing the weight of mine

Bearing more than I have ever borne

Or will again
Deep-diving in Linguistics and Localization
By: Vinayak Jhunjhunwala
Tags: Voice In Apps, NLP, Voice Assistant, Localization, Linguistics

Language is an important part of our lives. It is a uniquely human gift which lets us communicate and differentiates us from primates. But language is much more than just a means of communication. It is also an inseparable part of our culture. Different cultures have a different way in which they use their language, and they have differences which cannot be underestimated. Linguistics highlights these cultural nuances.

Linguists were earlier limited to academia, but now people are taking note of the importance of linguistics in Natural Language Processing. Companies are hiring linguists to help in incorporating these cultural nuances while building these models and for conversational design. Companies now realize the importance of designing conversations for chatbots and voice apps for the consumers, and linguists can help them design these conversations.

These conversational designs become even more critical when companies expand into new markets.

Spoken Arabic is different and Arabic while reading is different

Joseph Tyler is a PhD in linguistics and heads conversation design at Sensely. Sensely is a medical conversational AI assistant. He gave a brilliant and insightful workshop on the importance of linguistics and localization.

The process of localization for a simple application is quite complex . This becomes even more complex when you are trying to localize — chatbots and assistants. This is because businesses are dealing with crucial components like NLP, ASR, and TTS. Localization has to be done individually for these building blocks which is not a trivial effort and it needs a lot of investment.
Be nice to me! )>😽
Tags: Cats, Humor, Friendship, Comics

The Startup

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ROYALBOILER: BRANDON GRAHAM’S DRAWN OUT COLLECTION ARRIVES THIS OCTOBER
By: Mike Gagnon
Tags: Image Comics, Comics, Comic Books, Art, Press Release

PORTLAND, OR, 07/30/2018 — Brandon Graham (KING CITY, PROPHET, MULTIPLE WARHEADS) will release an in-depth artist’s retrospective collection — ROYALBOILER — this October.

This collection spans Brandon Graham’s 20-year career and includes select cover work, illustrations, drawings from his work in animation, and assorted art, along with pages from his sketchbook, showcasing influences from all over the globe that combine into something uniquely personal.

ROYALBOILER: BRANDON GRAHAM’S DRAWN OUT COLLECTION (ISBN: 978–1–5343–0853–4, Diamond code: AUG180191) hits comics shops on Wednesday, October 24th and bookstores on Tuesday, October 30th. It can be preordered via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Indiebound, and Indigo.

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ABOUT IMAGE COMICS

Image Comics is a comic book and graphic novel publisher founded in 1992 by a collective of bestselling artists. Image has since gone on to become one of the largest comics publishers in the United States. Image currently has six individuals on the Board of Directors: Robert Kirkman, Erik Larsen, Todd McFarlane, Marc Silvestri, Jim Valentino, and Eric Stephenson. It consists of five major houses: Todd McFarlane Productions, Top Cow Productions, Shadowline Comics, Skybound Entertainment, and Image Central. Image publishes comics and graphic novels in nearly every genre, sub-genre, and style imaginable. It offers science fiction, fantasy, romance, horror, crime fiction, historical fiction, humor and more by the finest artists and writers working in the medium today. For more information, visit www.imagecomics.com.
Glowing Orb
By: Elaine Hamilton
Tags: Moonlight, Magic, One Line, Moon

Glowing Orb

A One-line Poem For December 2, 2020

Photo by Author

Oh moon

what secrets do you hold

looking up to you

on a night so cold

there is beauty in your light

why are you so shy

won’t you tell?
Coinme Update 1.26.18: Coinme Wallet Functionality
Tags: Crypto, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, Updates, Bitcoin

In our update last week, we spoke about the next wave of Coinme ATMs and the growth of our team. This week we have an announcement from our engineering team about our Coinme Wallet:

UPTOKEN COINME WALLET FUNCTIONALITY

Our team has been working around the clock to improve the features of the wallet, and we are excited to announce the UpToken Coinme Wallet is live! If you participated in the crowd sale and chose to receive your UpToken in your Coinme Wallet, you will now see your balance when you log in.

UpToken Balances now show in your Coinme Wallet

On December 20, 2017, we also began rewarding 1% “cash back” in the form of UpToken to all of our ATM users. We are working on the best way to display this data to our users, and we are excited to bring more people into the UpToken community every day.

EMAIL LOGIN

As of this Monday, January 22nd, users now have the functionality to log into the Coinme Wallet with either a US driver’s license or an email.

You can now login with your email address at CoinmeWallet.com

If you have logged in with your driver’s license in the past, and never entered your email in the user profile section of the wallet, no worries. Simply enter your primary email, and follow the prompts to enter your US driver’s license number and password!

As always, we are looking forward to hearing your feedback on the wallet. Please feel free to comment here or reach us on Facebook or Twitter.

Thank you, and happy Friday everyone!

The Coinme Team
Welcome to The Blockchain Bar!. Explaining the blockchain beer-to-beer
By: Collin Müller
Tags: Distributed Ledgers, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, Peer To Peer, Bitcoin

Welcome to The Blockchain Bar!

Explaining the blockchain beer-to-beer

Blockchain might be the next big thing. Everybody talks about it. But who really understands what it’s all about and how it works?

Do you want to know? It’s simple. To learn how blockchains works, just listen to our story of a cozy little bar.

When the bar was in danger, its regular guests decided to take things into their own hands. They turned it into Blockruption’s Blockchain Bar and now run it themselves.

To organise the bar, our friends at the Blockchain Bar applied some well-known concepts that had been around for decades or even centuries, such as beer tokens and how to work together.

The result is a collection of rather special bar rules. But they are easy to understand and easy to apply. And, yet, somehow the bar now works pretty much like a blockchain or other beer-to-beer … uh … peer-to-peer system.

In our Bar, you will learn about all major concepts around blockchain. But, of course, without formulas, gibberish and ugly diagrams. Instead, we have a nice bar, a couple of strange guests, and cold beer. Sounds good? Maybe too good? You better find out … go to Episode 1.

And if you like it, please tell others about TheBlockchainBar.com
Análisis Técnico de Bitcoin del 17 de septiembre. Terminando de tomar impulso.
By: Cristóbal García
Tags: Altcoin, Analisis, Trading, Cripto, Bitcoin

in In Fitness And In Health
Oracle JDBC 19.8.0.0 on Maven Central and Spring Initializr
By: Kuassi Mensah
Tags: Spring Boot, Oracle Jdbc, Gradle Dependencies, Spring Initializr, Maven Central

Good Things Come In Pairs

Paraphrasing the Chinese proverb, we are announcing: (i) the 19.8.0.0 release of the Oracle JDBC drivers on Maven Central and (ii) “flavors POM” in Spring Initializr.

19.8.0.0 on Maven Central

We are following the same structure as in 19.7.0.0 including: pre-established dependencies, single artifacts (a.k.a. DIY), and Gradle dependencies.

Spring Initializr — Dependency Management for Flavors POMs

As described in my previous blog post, “flavor POMs” are pre-established dependencies that pull a set of jars; these include ojdbcX-production, ojdbcX-debug, ojdbcX-observability, ojdbcX-observability-debug (with X = 8 or 10).

We’ve added these flavors POMs as a response to the Spring Boot tracker 23450. In other words, these pre-established dependencies are now part of our BOM file and can be pulled by Spring projects, similarly to their other starters.

Exciting Things Ahead

The bonus part of this blog is that Oracle R2DBC driver and Oracle JDBC support for GraalVM Native Image are coming soon!

Watch this space @kmensah.
Firebase Storage Gotchas
By: David Dal Busco
Tags: Front End Development, Web Development, Firebase, Programming, JavaScript

Firebase Storage Gotchas

Key points for Google Cloud Storage that I learned while implementing private assets and reverting two days of work

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

When was the last time you reverted several working days?

I recently took some time to make the assets, moreover the content, private for every user of our web editor for presentations, DeckDeckGo.

After two working days, I finally noticed that I misinterpreted one fundamental point of Google Cloud Storage and I figured out that I had to revert my new implementation because our assets were actually already private.

That’s why I’m writing this new blog post, hoping that my “unlucky” experience might help someone else in the future.
The Land of Lincoln Part I
By: Alan Asnen
Tags: Memories, Past, Travel, Poetry, The South

The Land of Lincoln Part I

His Story Is History…My Story Is Mystery

Photo by Fatih Kılıç on Unsplash

Talledega I-20

travelling down a road

should mean a look ahead

for things to come

a travel down this road

to confront a past

that generated one future

and places me on this road

One dead dog, two, and then a third

large, tan, mangled, fresh,

no more than 500 feet away

emergency lights flashing

a truck on the side of the road

and as I pass

I see the driver

tall, large, holding his hands

behind his hips

as if pregnant with worry

looking out towards a ridge

where part of the nation’s pride

is known

He stares

There is grief in the way he turns his neck

towards the edge of mountain and sky

and I recall that stance

that posture

My mother used to tell me to save things for posterity

I didn’t know who she meant
Remembering And Forgetting: An Interview With Author Ylva Ostby
By: The Team W
Tags: Memory, Forgetting

Why do we remember and forget stuff? In this episode of the Human Tech podcast we talk with Ylva Ostby, a neuropsychologist from the University of Oslo, who, with her sister, Hilde Ostby, has written a book for everyone about memory.

Your browser does not support the audio element.

Their book is called Adventures in Memory and is brand new this week.

The best ways to reach Ylva are:

Ylva.ostby@gmail.com

Ylva.ostby@psykologi.uio.no

@ylvaostby on Instagram and twitter

or through their publisher:

Greystone Books: corina.eberle@greystonbooks.com
The 2020 Scrum Guide: Think About the ‘Why’
By: Niels Nieuwenhuizen
Tags: Scrum Master, Scrum, Agile, Product Management, Software Development

Product Goals for greater focus

We already had the Sprint Goal and now they introduced the Product Goal. The Product Goal aims the team forward with a focus to a larger valuable objective. So each Sprint, and therefore Sprint Goal should take the team closer to the desired outcome.

When you only read about this, you might think well, yeah that’s logical I don’t need an updated Scrum Guide telling me that. But we need. Too many times you see teams work in short sprints, delivering value here and there and everything’s fine. After a year or longer the team notices that they don’t really have a horizon to look forward to. Short iteration is great for agility and focus, Sprint Goals are fantastic for focus and short visions but we always lacked a bigger vision.

Now Product Owners and Scrum Master could have noticed this before. A lot of teams probably created Outcome related roadmaps or vision statements. But not all teams did. Certainly not teams starting with Scrum. With the Product Goal in the Scrum Guide, I believe we will aim more for using Scrum to deliver value instead of implementing Scrum as a goal. Scrum is about delivering value, Scrum is not about Scrum.

With a Product Goal as our true north, we always know how to make decisions. When we say yes to one feature we immediately know that we're saying no to something else. All the decisions will be made for the greater cause, the Product Goal.

To some, this may sound like an anti-pattern for Agile ways of working. But it's not. Scrum always said that we should make plans and aim for the future. Just make your goals flexible. In complex environments, things change. It just does. A clear goal can help us create clarity in day to day changes. With every inspection moment, we should reconsider our Product Goal. Is this goal still the goal we’re chasing or has the world changed to much?
Buddha Describes 5 Hindrances That May Stop us From Living Up to Our Full Potential
By: Akshad Singi
Tags: Lifestyle, Life Lessons, Advice, Spirituality, Mindfulness

Buddha Describes 5 Hindrances That May Stop us From Living Up to Our Full Potential

And how to overcome them.

Photo by Sabine Schulte on Unsplash

There are two mistakes along the way to mastery: not starting it, and not going all the way — Buddha

I’m in the middle of an inner revolution where I’m going all-in on mindfulness to go all-in in my life. After reading about a monk who burned himself to death, yet sat absolutely motionless while being consumed by flames, I realized that mindfulness is much more potent than I comprehended.

Besides, it’s these monks that have the most insane work ethic. They spend a very significant part of their days meditating. That cannot be easy to do over and over again, their entire lives. And I realized that the best way to understand the true power of mindfulness would be to dive into the brain of one such monk. And who’s a better choice than the ultimate Buddhist monk, Buddha himself.

Which is why I’ve spent the past few weeks reading about Buddhism and understanding the principles that Buddha shared that monks use to master their minds. That is when I came across the concept of the Five Hindrances. The Five Hindrances are obstacles that every monk must overcome on a daily basis on their path to liberation. That said, the five hindrances are not exclusive to monks and also apply to us non-monks. If we’re to understand the five hindrances and follow Buddha’s advice on how to overcome them, we too can learn to unlock our most extraordinary selves.

Which is why I spent some time contemplating these to try and figure out how they come into play in my own life. I penned down my thoughts in my journal. I recommend that you take some time to do so too. I’ll share a picture at the end of this article if you need some reference! But for now, here are the five hindrances.
Set up Analytics on an Angular app via Google Tag Manager
By: Adriano Di Lauro
Tags: Angular, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Angular 4, Angular 6

Bundle everything together and complete the implementation

What are we missing, in order to see things work?

We need to add the GTM initialisation script, this should be done in “index.html”, as up as possible in your app’s <head> tag: and, as already mentioned, just below the first definition of window.dataLayer.

In theory, if you want to use GTM just for analytics, you might as well initialise it from the Angular code, in your app.component, or in the initialisation of your CoreModule if you have one: because the user cannot interact at all until the app is loaded, so there is nothing to track before. So, if you only use GTM for analytics, I actually suggest doing this, because it’s a cleaner and more controllable solution.

But, if you use GTM as well for tags other than analytics, it’s definitely better to call it from the HTML and have it loaded as soon as possible.

What about events tracking? This seems to be the thing that worries most the people who developed the few GTM-Angular extensions out there: but as I said, really, the best and cleanest solution is just to mark with HTML classes the elements you want to track, and do all the heavy lifting from GTM.

By the way, remember to be a good frontend developer: add click event + GTM class on an anchor (<a> tag). If you track clicks on a non-anchor, or on a div that contains an anchor along with other stuff, you can get unexpected side effects in GTM (click not firing all the times, for instance)

With the advent of Angular, typescript, and all the other fancy javascript frameworks, I found that a lot of backend developers started putting their hands in frontend without knowing what they are doing. HTML markdown has still its importance, even inside a modern single page application: have respect for the HTML, and everything will be cleaner.