fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
My Dear Muslims — Part 1 : Let’s Together Reinspect the Idea of a Judging Allah
By: Hindavi Swarajya
Tags: Islam, Islamic Reform, Muslim

A judging Allah

Islam is full of instructions on how to live, what to eat, how to cut animals, how to live with your wife, when or when not to have sex [1], how to dress, how to punish people who’ve stolen or engaged in adultery, how to deal with Kaffirs (non-believers), and on and on.

Then the Quran goes onto instill fear in the hearts and minds of people who are not followers of Islam. It says if they die as a non-Muslim, which essentially means that they do not believe “There is no true god but God, and Muhammad is the Messenger (Prophet) of God”, then they will be sent into hell permanently forever thereafter. Ofcourse if they do believe this, then they will be sent to Paradise [2]. Forever ofcourse. With variation, this is true of other Abrahamic faiths as well.

And there are billions of people, around the world who constantly live in this fear of being punished after death.

Why would the creator of this mighty infinite Universe act so small and burn people in hell for transgressions they made during their lives on earth?

Why send messengers in different parts of the world, in different cultures, who disagree with Allah’s message in the Quran (even to date), and then punish the people who listened to those messengers in the first place?

To make matters worse, atleast 78% of the people on earth [3] do not believe in the messages of this version of the creator (Allah, and his Quran) — is the creator so incompetent as to not have an ability to send his instructions to all the human beings alive?

Why stop sending messengers — just go on sending them to remind people of the instructions?

Would it actually not be simpler to send a instruction manual or inscribe the instruction manual in people’s minds or tattoo them on children’s bodies as they appear out of their mother’s womb?

Why give people free-will and a fantastic inquisitive and curious human mind which questions everything and makes it own choices? And how sadistic is it for this Allah to be punishing people for choices they made out of their free-will, when free-will was given in the first place! What sort of free-will is free-will where if you make a choice other than the instructions in the Quran, then you are doomed into hell forever?
Creating Static E-commerce site with GatsbyJs
By: Perminder Klair
Tags: Static Site, E Commerce Software, Gatsbyjs, Contentful, Web Development

So, a few days ago I saw tweet from Kayle Gill about building static e-commerce site using GatsbyJs. That time I was in process of building an e-commerce website for my wife using NextJs (which is also awesome!).

Instead of building the site with NextJs I gave GatsbyJs a try. Within 3 days from Sketch design to the Live site, I made the site live. After that I tweeted about it and found that people are really interested in it.

Live demo of the site can be found here https://www.sejalsuits.co.uk/

I decided to open source the code of the site, it’s on Github now and I will keep developing and pushing code there and keeping the code clean as much as possible so that anyone can pick it up and use without making huge changes. Keeping things simple.

Also, API is on api branch, here it is.

While its open sourced now, I thought of writing a little article to fully understand it. So here we go.

Stack:

GatsbyJs (to build static site)

Contentful (Headless CMS)

Apollo Graphql (API for few mutations)

Services I used:
I Have a Good Reason to Believe in the Soul
By: Jacqueline Dooley
Tags: Spirituality, Family, Love, Mental Health, Parenting

When my daughter was alive, my family used to watch The Long Island Medium, a reality show that features a medium making seemingly miraculous connections with people’s deceased loved ones.

My husband and the girls loved to pick the show apart and point out when the medium, Theresa Caputo, was using cold reading techniques or just plain guessing.

A cold reading is a methodology that a psychic, medium, or other metaphysical practitioner employs to subtly get information from the person they’re reading.

The medium may ask an innocuous question or provide a vague impression of the deceased in order to elicit a response (e.g., “I’m sensing a young man coming through”). Once you offer up some concrete detail (e.g., “that could be my nephew”), the medium drops more hints until the person they’re “reading” is actually feeding them information about who they’re trying to contact in the spirit world.

One of Ms. Caputo’s common cold reading tactics was to drop a vague hint in a room full of people. She’d announce that she felt a spirit coming through — someone older with stomach pain,whose name starts with “J.” Inevitably, one of the dozens of people in the room would begin crying and name a relative who recently died of stomach cancer or whose appendix burst.

My husband and the girls always laughed at this obvious sleight of hand, but I would remain quiet, riveted, and fully on board with the reading. My daughter was battling cancer when we’d watched the show and I wanted to believe, even if she didn’t, that there was a way we could still connect if the very worst happened.

So, I watched Theresa Caputo and I believed, even though my family rolled their collective eyes at me. I watched and I wept, because some of the readings seemed miraculous and I needed miracles to be real when Ana was sick, but I especially needed them to be real after she died.
Potential
By: Anna Rozwadowska
Tags: Spirituality, Poetry, Life, Existentialism, Awareness

Hope is the antidote; love the condition, life, the addiction,

whence one came into the world through the umbilical,

whence one came into possession through the womb,

Plasticine, molded and shaped, a multi-colored spectrum,

according to the dynamics; the laws of physics, turn of the violet flame,

it so is, as light possesses higher frequencies,

truth is the single force that moves grey skies, stars that fall

at your feet, left on the raft of indecision.
Heaven’s Gate
By: Donald Raab
Tags: Poetry, Poem

A poem about the finality of life.

Photo taken in Kauai, Hawaii with moon behind clouds

Background

This is the first poem I ever wrote. It is about the sense of helplessness and loss of control everyone may feel in the final moments of their life. The poem was published in my high school literary magazine in 1987.

Heaven’s Gate

Here I am,

Moving? No.

Lost in time;

time so slow

A breath of wind,

too soon I fear.

Heartbeat withering,

for death is near.

Upon a table

troubled will.

Breathing rapid,

fighting still.

My life before me

in mind’s eye.

Nothing accomplished

before I die.

God have mercy

on me I pray.

Forgive my sins

of yesterday.

-Donald Raab

Reflections on living the life you’re given

The poem may seem dark, sad and depressing, but there is a motivational message in the words. Minimize your regrets. Be kind. Complete things. Appreciate the little things. Celebrate a win every day. You do more than you realize. You are more important than you realize.
Just Write The Damn Script Already
By: Maalik Evans
Tags: Self Improvement, Tips, Career Advice, Writing, Screenwriting

Just Write The Damn Script Already

10 Tips on Getting Started in Screenwriting

Photo by Brad Neathery on Unsplash

“Just write it,” is a common phrase I hear from my talent manager. Now, no one is saying it’s going to be an easy process, but there is validity in this statement.

First thing’s first, write it down.

That idea you have for a screenplay, novel, blog, article or whatever it is. Simply write it down — on a sheet of paper, on your computer, on your phone, on Final Draft, or wherever you have access to jot something down.

When an idea comes into your head, capitalize on it because it may not stick around for long. It could be the most outlandish idea or not make much sense at all, but for the love of God write it down. You never know where it could lead you to. Hell, J.K Rowling began writing Harry Potter on some napkins and we all know how successful our good sis is.

Anytime I’m conceiving a script and a new idea pops into my head for a particular scene, or character, or for the overall storyline, I immediately jot it down. I could be in the middle of a conversation and I’ll tell whoever I’m talking to, “Hold up, I just got an idea. Sorry, one sec.” I also do this for any Medium article ideas I have —I jot it down on the Notes section of my phone.

It could be late at night or you could be in the shower, but as soon as that idea appears in your brain, WRITE IT DOWN ASAP. I’ve made the mistake of not doing this in the past and it’s no fun to lose a great idea. Sometimes it’ll find its way back to you, sometimes it won’t.
Hiking The Narrows
By: Mark Starlin
Tags: Other Stories, Travel, Life, Love, Adventure

Sometimes the path is wide open

It’s easy to see where you are going

Sometimes the walls close in

The way unsure

It’s best to keep walking

If you are able, take a companion

The road is better shared

Burdens are lessened when shared

Sharing experiences connects souls

And strengthen bonds
Why Now is The Time to Put Your Last Money in Bitcoin
By: Lucien Lecarme
Tags: Economics, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Investing, Coronavirus

This is why Bitcoin is the perfect safe haven cryptocurrency for investing your money in times of economical crisis, disruption and collapse.

It is time for the real Bitcoin to stand up.

Why? Before the age of Corona Virus Fear, when our economy seemed anything near from a coming total collapse, Bitcoin was hijacked by good old hedge money, government funds and wales. Retail money was struggling to keep up with its volatility like goldfish fighting for the last nibbles of food the wales didn’t eat.

This has now all changed overnight.

Not only our economy is facing total meltdown, but also our more for me is less for you driven society, our ecological systems and political structures are facing a Nightmare on Elm street scenario.

The first signs are obvious. The FED declared to be able to have infinite money. What a surprise. Nervous press conferences try to convince us the banks are safe. When did we hear this before?

When the real trust is broken on a fundamental level the voice of corruption sounds like you should trust now like never before

When this kind of messages start appearing we know that our economy as we knew it hit the unavoidable iceberg. Our Titanic of infinite money printing and middlemen sucking up all the wealth is making water in the deeper compartments while the captains of the ship urge us to act as nothing has happened.

Are we the orchestra that is supposed to keep on playing when we all feel clearly that the ship is tilting sideways?

No folks, it is time to walk calmly to the lifeboat. Bitcoin

Here is why.
Validate your backlog regularly to avoid wasted development time
By: Robert Drury
Tags: Software Development Firm, Product, Product Management, Product Owner, Product Manager

Validate your backlog regularly to avoid wasted development time

Or you’ll be building things that people no longer want

We all know what a product backlog is:

A product backlog is a list of the new features, changes to existing features, bug fixes, infrastructure changes or other activities that a team may deliver in order to achieve a specific outcome.

We all also know that you can add items more quickly to your backlog than your team can deliver them.

Without conscious effort, your backlog will become uncontrollable.

One way to address this is to not put all the ‘ideas’ into the backlog, and instead keep them in another location ready for when you need them. I call this the Ideas Warehouse, Mike Cohn calls it the Holding Tank.

An alternative is to do a bit of spring cleaning, but either way one useful activity is to go back to the stakeholder and re-validate the idea and its worth.
Thinking About Not Thinking And Other Thoughts That Flew Through My Tortured Mind While Trying To Meditate
By: Pam Gaslow
Tags: Comedy, Satire, Meditation, Spirituality, Humor

Thinking About Not Thinking And Other Thoughts That Flew Through My Tortured Mind While Trying To Meditate Pam Gaslow Follow Nov 4, 2020 · 2 min read

Photo: Nikola Johnny Mirkovic/Unsplash

My mother once asked me, “What does it mean when people say they meditate?”

“Nothing,” I said, “Just ignore them.”

Meditation used to be this mysterious hokey, hard to understand mind trance that only Gandhi, or the spiritually elite tried to experience. These days, if you don’t meditate you’re spiritually unfit, and basically a loser who’s not “working on themselves.” My preferred path to relaxation is a hot bath or an orgasm, but before I wrote it off I had to at least try to meditate. I don’t know what goes through other people’s minds when they do it, but this is what went through mine.

Am I doing this right?

I’m tired.

Am I sleeping?

How long has it been?

Don’t think about that!

Stop thinking!

Am I thinking about “nothing” now? Or am I thinking about thinking about nothing which means I’m still thinking?

Why am I doing this?

Why does anyone do this?

Can you actually think about nothing?

I think I’m doing this wrong.

I can’t stop thinking.

I wonder if I’ll have sex this weekend.

Oh shit — I have to change the sheets.

Why am I always the one who has to clean the sex toys?

You’re not supposed to think about that right now!

Ugh, this is hard.

How do other people “not think?”

Are they all full of shit?

This is stupid.

Fine, I’ll keep trying.

Ho-hum . . .

I wonder how that hot guy in Laguna Beach is doing.

Does he meditate?

I’m not telling anyone that I meditate. It’s ridiculous.

If I fall asleep is that bad?

Should I count sheep?

I wonder how that hot guy in Jerusalem is doing.

Should I text him?

I mean sext.

What time is it in Israel?

How long have I been doing this?

If I never do this again am I a quitter?

This is stressing me out.

I’m just not one of “those people.”

I’m hungry.

I’m bored.

I’m annoyed.

I’m bad at this.

Is it ten minutes yet?

Am I a better person?

Am I less stressed?

Have I reached enlightenment?
Bootstrap 4 จะออกแล้ว !
By: Suranart Niamcome
Tags: Bootstrap, Highlight, News

SiamHTML

The collection of articles for front-end developers
Seven Deadly Wastes: Waiting
By: Jez Halford
Tags: Lean Startup, Agile, Software Development, Productivity

The Seven Wastes are an idea from lean manufacturing, and I’m exploring how they relate to software development. Last week was motion, and this week is waiting.

How long do you spend waiting for things? Well, that’s not actually important. A better question is: how long does your work spend waiting for things?

From the point you start work on a new item, to the point it is delivered to a customer, chances are it’s only actively worked on for around 15% of the time. That means that if it takes you ten days to deliver a new feature, it’s probably only been the focus of someone’s attention for a day-and-a-half.

But why does all that waiting around happen?

If you package your features up into larger releases then the ones finished first will have to wait for the ones finished later.

If you hand-over responsibility for the work between multiple teams or individuals then it will wait for them to become available.

If you start work before it really needs to be started then it will wait for stakeholders to be ready for it.

If you start work without understanding it then it will wait for you to clarify what you’re supposed to be doing.

All of those scenarios are probably familiar to you. They’re unbelievably common across the software industry. But they are wasteful practices.

While it’s very hard to eliminate waiting entirely, it’s relatively easy to start to reduce it. All you have to do is decide to work on one thing at a time.

That doesn’t mean work on one thing until you get blocked, and then switch to something else. All that will do is create inventory waste. Instead, it means pursuing a single item of work all the way to completion, ignoring all other distractions.

At first this will probably be hard, and you’ll need to be pragmatic about how you define “completion” (you’re not going to and eliminate large releases over night). You’ll spend a lot of time waiting. But because now you’re waiting along with the work, you’ll start to notice.

Gradually, this approach drives change in your team, in your process, and in your wider organisation, so that people are empowered to finish what they start without so much waste. It can be a long road, but even a tiny reduction in waiting waste can have a huge impact on your productivity.
Testable ViewModel With Mocking in Swift
By: Mehdi Mirzaie
Tags: iOS, Mvvm, Viewmodel, Swift, Unit Testing

If you’re using MVVM architecture in your iOS project you probably have a ViewModel that gets data from the network. So how can we write tests for that kind of ViewModel?

You should be able to test your App functionality without depending on data from dependencies, Right?

In this article, I will show you how you can achieve this.

Before we can write tests for the ViewModel we must make sure that the ViewModel is testable.

To make our code testable we should consider two concepts:

1 . Dependency Inversion

Dependency Inversion is one the principle of SOLID Design Principles that says :

High-level modules should not depend on low-level modules; both should depend on abstractions. Abstractions should not depend on details. Details should depend upon abstractions.

2 . Dependency Injection

In software engineering, dependency injection is a technique whereby one object (or static method) supplies the dependencies of another object.

Enough with the theory, let’s get our hands dirty by Coding.

Below image demonstrates what we are going to create.

Abstract Network Layer

This piece of code is an Abstract layer that contains every method we need to implement in the target classes.

We need two methods, one for getting home data and one for comments.

Protocols can be handy for creating an Abstract class.

URLSession

URLSessionNetwork class is responsible for fetching data from the network using URLSession by implementing methods of Abstract Network Layer.

Mock

This class generates fake data by implementing methods of Abstract Network Layer.

ViewModel

Now we can create our ViewModel

As you may have seen, the ViewModel constructed by an Abstract Network Layer. But Why? Can we just create it by an empty initializer and then use the URLSession class in methods?

The answer to the question is something that I just mentioned above that is Dependency Injection.

We want to inject our ViewModel to be either a URLSession class or a Mock class. The ViewModel doesn’t care which one of them will be injected as long as they are a subclass of Abstract Network Layer.

Note

Notice that all of those classes marked with “final” keyword well it has two reasons:

1 . There is no need for overriding those classes.

2 . Classes will use Static Dispatch so the performance will improve.

If you are curious about Method Dispatch in Swift Programming Language this article will help you through that:

Alright now our ViewModel is testable

“Mission Passed “

Let’s dive into the writing Unit tests.

Our ViewModel has two functions so we need to write two tests.

If you need the complete source code you can find it on the below link.

Consultation

Before you’re going to write unit tests for your code you must make sure that your code is testable. Dependency Inversion and Dependency Injection will help you through that.

If your code has some part that gets data from dependencies then you need to Mock that dependency so you can write unit tests for that.
How to finish in the top 10 percentile in Bike Sharing Demand Competition In Kaggle? (part -1)
By: Vivekanandan Srinivasan
Tags: Machine Learning, Pandas, Sklearn, Kaggle, Data Science

Every aspiring data science professional has always wanted to participate in Kaggle competitions. Like most of them, I started my humble Kaggle journey through the famous Titanic-Machine Learning From Disaster competition. Kaggle has a handful of datasets ranging from easy to tough, which the user can explore and get practical expertise in data science.

Bike Sharing Demand is one such competition especially helpful for beginners in the data science world. It is a fairly simple dataset suitable for applying some concrete statistical techniques like Regression and also for some advance ensemble models such as Random Forest and Gradient Boosting algorithms.

The bike-sharing demand analysis is split into two parts. The first part of the blog helps you to get started with the dataset and discover some interesting patterns between dependent and explanatory variables. Model building is covered in the second part of the blog where we start with basic techniques such as Regression and work our way through Regularization and end up building complex ensemble models. At the end of the analysis, we will reach top 10 percentile on the public leaderboard.

As far as this blog is concerned all the exploratory analysis and model building is performed using python. Python has got some excellent libraries for data science like pandas , numpy , seaborn and sklearn which we will be using throughout this blog.

Refer to the Github link for the complete Ipython notebook.

Competition Details

Bike-sharing systems are a means of renting bicycles where the process of obtaining membership, rental, and bike return is automated via a network of kiosk locations throughout a city. Using these systems, people are able to rent a bike from one location and return it to a different place on an as-needed basis. Currently, there are over 500 bike-sharing programs around the world.

The data generated by these systems make them attractive for researchers because the duration of travel, departure location, arrival location, and time elapsed is explicitly recorded. Bike-sharing systems, therefore, function as a sensor network, which can be used for studying mobility in a city. In this competition, participants are asked to combine historical usage patterns with weather data in order to forecast bike rental demand in the Capital Bike Share program in Washington, D.C.

More information about the dataset and competition can be found on the following link Bike Sharing Demand

Data Summary

As a first step lets do three simple things on the data.
How to Access Remotely Deployed Android Devices
Tags: Golang, Tools, Tips, Android, Programming

In my work, there are times when I deploy devices running on Android at a distant location. Sometimes having a shell is useful for debugging or doing some updates to the device.

Here, I propose one possible solution using a few different applications.

The List

When thinking of the solution, I try to keep the setup as minimal as possible.

Termux (An Android Terminal Emulator, we can execute scripts, run nodejs, etc…) Reverse Shell Binary — Checks with 4. and connect to remote server if it’s for the device Remote Server (For the Android Device to connect to, as well as where we will send the commands) A HTTP server — For the Android Device to check whether to run the command

Termux

Download the APK here: https://f-droid.org/repo/com.termux_99.apk. After that, install termux on the Android Device.

To automate script running on startup, install Termux:Boot https://f-droid.org/repo/com.termux.boot_7.apk.

Then create a file ~/.termux/boot/start-service with the following contents.

#!/data/data/com.termux/files/usr/bin/sh

while true; do sleep 5; /data/data/com.termux/files/reverse HTTPSERVER ACCESSTOKEN; done;

What the file does is to run a while loop which will start the reverse binary if it crashes/stop.

Reverse Shell Binary

The binary is written in Golang. I chose Golang as it allows cross compilation and outputs a single executable binary. This makes it easy to deploy on different devices other than Android. You could be running a Raspberry Pi and the code can still work.

The binary works as follows.

Get MAC address of device Check HTTP Server for remote server ip and port Connect to remote server using tcp Execute commands received over tcp Exit if crash

With the source codes, we can build it by running go build reverse.go . This output a binary for our current computer.

Copy the binary to the device you want to control remotely and execute it. The HTTPSERVER and ACCESSTOKEN is described in the next section

chmod +x reverse

./reverse HTTPSERVER ACCESSTOKEN

As the binary may crash, we use a while loop to start it if it does so.

while true; do sleep 5; ./reverse HTTPSERVER ACCESSTOKEN; done;

Remote Server

The remote server job is to listen for connection from the device and sends commands over tcp to the remote device. We have to ensure that the port we want our remote device to connect is opened.

For this, I spin up a droplet on DigitalOcean and run the command.

nc -lnvp 4444

That’s it for the remote server.

HTTP Server

The HTTP Server should be a fixed endpoint. For this, I am using repl.it for a quick http server. Repl.it gives us a fixed url for example https://ReverseShell.username.repl.co. We will then embed that in our remote device. Hence whenever we want to start a reverse shell, we can just change the parameters deviceMAC and remoteServer .

With all that, we should have a reverse shell on our remote server now.
Basics of Using TensorBoard in TensorFlow 1 & 2
By: Sebastian Theiler
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Tensorboard, Programming, Python, TensorFlow

Contents

How TensorBoard Works Visualizing the TF Graph (and Keras Models) Types of Summaries Use in model.fit Conclusion

Note: this tutorial is primarily built for TensorFlow 1.x, and most code samples will be written assuming you have TF 1.x installed. Despite this, in the subtitle section of each code sample, there will be a link to the TensorFlow 2.x version that will produce identical results, unless the code is untranslatable.

The biggest change in TensorBoard from TF 1.x to TF 2.x is the renaming of tf.summary.FileWriter to tf.summary.create_file_writer . You can read more on changes here.

How TensorBoard Works

> TensorFlow 1.x

The main component of TensorBoard is the tf.summary.FileWriter object. FileWriter is initialized with the name of a directory, commonly './graphs' or './logs' , and then optionally, but recommended a graph or session.

We then call the FileWriter.add_summary() method with a summary , and a global_step , e.g., epoch number, which writes to a file in the directory earlier specified. summary is a unique type of data returned by objects such as tf.summary.scalar or tf.summary.histogram , we’ll talk more about these types later.

For example, we could run…

We’ll talk about this example later, under “Types of Summaries”>”Scalars”

…to add a bunch of fake accuracy values with their epoch number.

> TensorFlow 2.x

The main component of TensorBoard is the tf.summary.create_file_writer object.

We then perform our operations inside of a with create_file_writer().as_default() block, where we can finally add a summary.

Summaries are special functions, such as tf.summary.scalar , that write data to TensorBoard. We will look deeper into these functions later.

Putting this all together, we find something as follows:

We will break this down part-by-part as we continue.

Starting the Web-server (TF 1&2)

Finally, we can start the local TensorBoard web-server by running the following command in a terminal:

tensorboard --logdir=<DIRECTORY NAME>

For example, if we named our directory './graphs' we would run:

tensorboard --logdir= './graphs'

This is analogous to starting a Jupyter Notebook
An Idea (by Ingenious Piece)
By: Adelia Ritchie
Tags: Politics, Poetry On Medium, Poetry, Life, Climate Change

Two Americas

Say goodbye to our oligarch

Photo by Chris Barbalis on Unsplash

slinky dresses

perfume ads

disco balls

trendy fads

grocery carts

sleeping bags

whiskey bottles

packs of fags

designer clothes

stiletto heels

cocaine habits

fancy wheels

no clean air

scant food supply

poisoned water

rainforest dry

reward the rich

but tax the poor

split up families

start a war

play more golf

drink fine booze

while glaciers melt

no time to lose

storms wreak havoc

droughts bring fires

why not appoint

more truth deniers?

cities sink

while rallies start

and say goodbye

to our oligarch!

Adelia Ritchie, 2020
Abat-jour
By: Marianna Piani
Tags: Poetry, Poetry On Medium, Bipolar Disorder, Poesia

Per chi fosse interessato, ho pubblicato il mio primo volume in versi:

“Le solitudini e i luoghi” (200 pg. A5 paperback, disponibile online)

(I republish here from my Blog, but it’s never just copy & paste: writing is always a changing and evolving process. Here the original version of this text. If you wish to know more about me as a woman and amateur writer, I’ll be glad if you visit it.)
Exploring the World from my Room: Working at the World Justice Project
By: Fsi Student Programs
Tags: Internships, Fsi Students, Stanford

About the author: Sean Gallagher ’21 is an FSI Global Policy Intern with the World Justice Project. He is currently an International Relations major at Stanford University.

As much as I was looking forward to spending the summer working at the World Justice Project in Washington DC, I have to say that there are definite advantages to being at home in the Pacific Northwest. For one, the weather here is far better — working in DC might be the dream, but the heat and humidity is… decidedly less so. The way I look at it, I was lucky to have the chance to travel earlier this year (I spent my fall and winter quarters studying abroad with Stanford’s BOSP program), and this summer I still get the opportunity to experience something new from the comfort of my hometown: working with the World Justice Project.

The World Justice Project works to increase understanding of and adherence to the rule of law. I work on the team that creates their flagship publication, the Rule of Law Index. The Rule of Law Index combines polling data from 128 countries (and counting) with expert input to analyze the state of the Rule of Law around the world by measuring responses across eight factors, including the absence of corruption, fundamental rights, and constraints on government powers. So far, my work has focused on the expert side: searching for qualified respondents in countries that the WJP is targeting and analyzing expert input from past surveys. The team that I’m working with is incredible, and I’ve really appreciated the work that both the WJP and FSI have done to make this internship possible.

Even though I am across the country and several time zones away, the WJP has managed to put (non-work focused) videochat groups together to help build community. I’ve joined groups that practice Spanish and French (which have been particularly helpful, given the physical distancing of it all). Normally, the WJP encourages interns to attend events put on by organizations in the DC area, so I’ve been enjoying attending different online events hosted by think tanks.

When not working, I’ve loved running in some of my favorite trails, and I’ve been slowly learning how to cook more than mac and cheese (I’ve been reading Samin Nosrat’s Salt Fat Acid Heat, though the food I make looks like the designs from the book were somehow both over and undercooked at the same time). Hopefully by the time I write my next blog post, I’ll have figured out how to make something tolerable!
31% of Baby Boomers Are Making This Terrible Money Mistake
Tags: Money, Budget

You’re no doubt aware that the more financially secure you are going into retirement, the better you’re likely to fare once your career actually comes to a close. But a new survey by real estate company Clever reveals that a large chunk of today’s baby boomers are making one big mistake that could compromise not only their near-term finances but their long-term finances as well: They’re not setting money aside for emergencies.

A frightening 31% of baby boomers, in fact, do not have an emergency fund. If you’re part of that statistic, it’s imperative that you accumulate some cash reserves — before an unplanned expense drives you into debt at the worst possible time.

Image source: Getty Images.

You need money in the bank

You never know when you might encounter a costly home or vehicle repair that pops up out of the blue. Similarly, you could get injured and rack up a host of medical bills or even lose your job for a period of time and therefore go without a paycheck. That’s why you need an emergency fund — money in a savings account that you’re able to tap in a pinch.

Ideally, your emergency fund should contain enough cash to cover three to six months of essential living expenses. If you own a home and a vehicle, you’re generally better off sticking to the higher end of that range, since there’s more potential for sudden expenses to creep up.

If you don’t build an emergency fund, when a bill catches you off guard, you might be forced to charge that expense on a credit card, at which point you’ll start accruing interest when that balance doesn’t get paid in full. That interest will then continue to build, costing you more money and preventing you from using your cash for more important purposes, like building retirement savings.

Worse yet, if you take on debt later in life, you risk carrying it with you into retirement. That can quickly become problematic when you’re living on a fixed income and you’re forced to use some of it to keep your credit card company at bay.

A better bet? Cut back on some expenses in your budget to build savings as quickly as you can. That could mean selling a car you can technically get by without to avoid paying for insurance and maintenance, or it could mean canceling the cable service you rarely watch and cooking at home for several months rather than dining out. Getting a second job for a period of time could also help you build emergency savings relatively quickly, and you’re never too old to get one. In fact, it’s a good idea to take on a second gig a bit later in life, because if you succeed at it, you’ll have the option to carry it with you into retirement and use it to supplement your income.

Going without emergency savings is a big mistake at any age, but when you’re nearing retirement, it can hurt you even more. Rather than continue to put your financial well-being at risk, take steps to build some cash reserves, even if it happens slowly but surely. Not only will it give you peace of mind in the near term, but it could prevent you from wrecking your golden years.
The Git Way for a Smart Contract to Receive Ether
By: Jordi Bassagañas
Tags: Solidity, Ethereum, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, Smart Contracts

So, are you ready for the Git way to learning new things?

Here’s the commit log for you to do the exact same thing I did:

Let’s recap, your work starts with commit 23b4ab7 :

npm init

And ends with commit 727495b :

truffle migrate --network ropsten

By following the git log steps on your side as described above, you’ll end up with a new smart contract address up and running on the Ropsten testnet, ready to receive ether and display its balance.

A pretty basic thing for the time being for learning purposes!

But remember, the important thing to note is that smart contracts can receive ether too as if they were Ethereum accounts. This may sound somewhat confusing to a newcomer to dapp development, but yes, it works like this.

In a nutshell, if you want your EtherReceiver.sol contract to behave as an ether receiver, just make sure to write a receive ether function.

Most probably this is the simplest one that can be written:

function () payable external {}

Basically this prepares the contract to receive ether, that’s it!

As the official Solidity documentation states, a contract can have at most one receive ether function, which in turn must have external visibility as well as payable state mutability.

It works.

Having said that, beware that withdrawing ether from a contract is a different story covered in another GitHub repo.

Now with the contract address at hand, let’s confirm everything works as expected by sending, let’s say 0.5 test ether to it, and see what happens.

Figure 1. Select the Ropsten test network on your Metamask crypto wallet and then click on the Send button.

Figure 2. Send 0.5 ETH to the contract address and click on Next.

A few seconds later, a Metamask confirmation popup will be displayed saying the transaction was successfully confirmed and therefore can be viewed on Etherscan.

Finally, don’t forget to visit Etherscan to type your contract’s address in the search box and get its balance.
What is Blockchain Governance?
By: Color Platform
Tags: Governance, Col, Color Coin, Color, Blockchain

If you’ve read the whitepaper of Color or other blockchain projects, you’ve probably heard the word ‘governance’ by now. Many people in the blockchain space are interested in discussing TPS, consensus, token economy, etc, but to a lesser extent the governance that makes these decisions possible. Behind the scenes, there is a lot that goes into making these decisions, and they aren’t always easy, as we’ve seen this year with multiple forks of major blockchains.

First of all, let’s look into the origin of the word ‘governance.’ Governance derives from the Greek word ‘kubernaein,’ and it means to steer(a boat or ship). In modern English, it now means the actions and processes by which stable practices and organizations arise and persist.

However, Blockchain Governance is a decision-making process among thousands of people on how to operate the system rather than one person or organization manage the system.

All the individuals involved in the Blockchain Governance might or might not be interested in this decision-making process. Therefore, when designing Blockchain Governance, we need to consider it to encourage members to participate in the decision-making process and prevent dogma and unchecked decision making of half-baked or ill-intended ideas.

There are mainly two things to contemplate regarding designing the Blockchain Governance.

How the rewards are divided and handled. How code changes occur in the “core” code.

Blockchain Governance is an essential element to create a sustainable decentralized system. There is no perfect solution to governance in general, because it is a process centered around the human element for human needs, but in the upcoming governance blogs, we hope to show why we believe cryptocurrency governance participation is not just for the technocrats, and why it is critical that we get everyone involved.

Have any questions? Stay connected with us through our Telegram channel.

Have a Colorful Day :)

Join Our Chatroom to Learn More!▼
Tales of an AirBnB Host
By: Susan Brearley
Tags: Short Story, Relationships, Life, This Happened To Me, Humor

Human Stories

Tales of an AirBnB Host

Guest of the Week — #2, Armando the Amazing

This is me and Armando Batista. He first arrived here a couple years back. Maybe it’s already been three years? Time really does move quickly when you are having a great time.

Armando was attracted to my listing for “Just a Couch”. Literally the title. Still out there too.

It was super affordable. Of course, the other alternative is couch surfing, which is free. But I share my fresh baked goods, so there’s that.

Toni Morrison had carrot cake. I have banana bread.

Armando is a self described multi-hyphenate. He’s pretty flexible and there’s not much he isn’t capable of doing.

He came for a couple nights. We had fun sharing conversation and eating. Then he left.

He found a friend’s couch nearby.

Then, to my surprise, he booked again, and came back.

And he kept coming back. Pretty soon, he had his own bedroom here. And was pitching in with household chores. He even started tagging along on my outings to go clean bathrooms and do laundry at other AirBnB homes I take care of.

We would listen to music as we worked together, sing, and tell story, and laugh. In the evening, we’d tell more stories, cook, bake, drink great beer, and sometimes sake, put colanders on our Pastafarian heads, listen to more music and dance around the kitchen.

We hosted other guests. We threw parties. We talked about past heartbreak and future love.

At one of our larger parties, a pipe burst in the basement and water was gushing into a room, all over the floor, in the middle of the event. I quietly, but with urgency, informed Armando about my discovery.

Unknown to the guests, he and I disappeared into the basement, and began to trouble shoot and solve the problem. I thought, wow, this guy. Any woman who falls in love with this guy will be so blessed. He has it all. Heart. Spirit. Determination. Critical thinking. Flexibility. Humor. Passion. And he’s learning to bake the best banana bread on the planet (mine)! What more could anyone want?

He fell in love. He moved away. He got engaged.

I love them both. I can’t wait to see their babies. And play Grandma.

Last night, on my birthday (!), he published his first poem here on Medium.

I hope you will support this wonderful spirit in a human spacesuit, this high priest of Pastafarianism, this loving HUMAN BEING, in his adventure here on Medium.
Redesigning a sleep and activity tracker’s e-commerce page — a UX case study
By: Caitlin Sowers
Tags: Product Design, Case Study, UX Design, Mobile, User Experience

As a new UX designer looking to up my UI/UX skills, when I came across the Oura ring, a sleep and activity tracker, and thought:

I want to buy this… why are they making it hard for me?

…I got to work.

Background

Oura is a Finland-based tech start-up launched in 2013 with one product: the Oura Ring. Did I mention the ol’ Duke of Sussex wears one? Pretty big deal.

I spent one week redesigning the Oura Ring’s mobile and desktop “Buy” page to improve user experience, cart abandonment, and conversion rates. This redesign has no affiliation with Oura and was used as an educational exercise.

Below is the Oura Ring’s existing mobile and desktop “Buy” page:
Gitcoin Now Easily Integrates w. Github - Chrome Extension Enters Beta
By: Kevin Owocki
Tags: Funding, Chrome, Github, Gitcoin, Open Source

When we launched Gitcoin in September 2017, we knew that there were a few design considerations that were very important to realize our mission to Push Open Source Forward.

We wanted to launch Gitcoin with some of the best repos in web3. So we launched funded work for Metamask, Truffle, EtherDelta, and MyEtherWallet. ✅ We wanted the work available to be well-scoped, on-roadmap, and fairly priced. So we worked with our Pilot Projects to curate a small handful of test issues that we could do so. ✅ We wanted the workflows of our users to seamlessly integrate into the tools they already use.

I am proud today, to say that today we are announcing a major step towards integrating Gitcoin into Github, with the beta launch of the Gitcoin chrome extension.

To read the rest of this announcement visit: https://gitcoin.co/blog/gitcoin-now-easily-integrates-w-github-chrome-extension-enters-beta/
10 of the Best Quotes About the Power of Momentum
By: Matthew Royse
Tags: Self Improvement, Personal Development, Success, Quotes, Momentum

10 of the Best Quotes About the Power of Momentum

The key to success lies in building your momentum

Photo by Nadir sYzYgY on Unsplash

You can determine your success based on your momentum.

Actions produce great results. The sooner you build your momentum, the easier it is to move forward. Momentum is one of the most powerful forces you can have on your side.

To get something started, it takes a lot of energy and work. After the movement is started, it takes less work and energy to keep it going. The key is to get started and get the ball rolling.

Newton’s first law of motion says every object will remain at rest unless compelled to change its state, while objects in motion stay in motion. Energy is built from energy so get momentum working for you and then all you’ll need to do is set your sails and go with the winds.

To help you understand the power of momentum, here are 10 powerful quotes to help you become unstoppable in your career and in life.
The 2020 Guide to Growing Your Audience With Pinterest
By: Adam Skali
Tags: Social Media Strategy, Pinterest Marketing, Pinterest, Marketing Strategies, Pinterest For Business

How To Find Keywords: Practical Examples

Example 1: Keyword search for career

Pinterest will suggest popular topics based on the text you enter in the search bar (from the moment you start typing actually).

Once you click enter, you’ll see the most searched keywords related to the topic (as shown below).

Screenshot of “career” keyword search on Pinterest

You can start pulling these keywords to use in your profile and Pin descriptions.

Typically, the first options you see are fairly broad. If you want to narrow your focus or be more specific, click on the different terms to see the keywords associated with each topic.

It’s quite hard to rank first for a broad category like career. Find additional descriptors that apply to your content — this helps users narrow the search field and increases your probability of being seen. The more specific, the better (see below).

Screenshot of specific keyword search on Pinterest

Take a look at the Pins that are ranking the best within a given keyword search. What color Pins are generating the most traffic? Are the most popular Pins with words or only with images?

Utilizing this information can help with naming, refining your content, and reaching a larger audience.

For example, the most popular Pins for a keyword search of career contain text and use images in blog format (see below).

Screenshot of popular Pins for “career” keyword search

Example 2: Keyword search for lifepath

A keyword search for lifepath yields numerology images — this isn’t the audience we’re looking for. Knowing this, we can avoid using lifepath as a keyword for our business account bio and Pins.

Screenshot of popular Pins for “lifepath” keyword search

Pay attention to what kinds of images are being used — this can help steer you towards or away from images like the ones you were going to use.

In the case of searching for career, popular Pins feature images of women. This implies that using images of women may increase visibility.

Google and Pinterest

Another place to search for keywords and their relevance is Google. Typically, popular searches on Google are also popular on Pinterest.

Once you identify popular searches, use them to help name and describe your Pins.

The next step is learning how to optimize your Pinterest profile.
The Literally Literary Weekly Update #6
By: Jonathan Greene
Tags: Publication, Poetry, Fiction, Ll Letters, Writing

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Happy Wednesday and welcome to your weekly update from Literally Literary. These updates are here to highlight some of the top stories and poems from the past week. We may be biased, but we think our writers are crushing it.

Here are some of the top works since the last letter:
Utah’s Mysterious Monolith
By: M.G. Siegler
Tags: Utah, Monolith, 2001, 2010, Science Fiction

I love basically everything about the Utah monolith mystery — obviously — but especially this statement from the Utah Department of Public Safety:

“It is in a very remote area and if individuals were to attempt to visit the area, there is a significant possibility they may become stranded and require rescue.”

What a cryptic way to try to dissuade people from finding it! And while rational minds might think of reasons why such a department would want to dissuade such things — it also seems weird to issue such a statement! Adi Robertson of The Verge pulls out the great 2010 reference: “ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE”. I mean, the statement really is basically that!

Anyway, leave it to the internet to track down the likely home of the monolith with the help of Google Earth. Still no word on how and/or why it’s there.