fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Meet the D.S.A. Pattern 2017/2018 Board!
By: J. Lanters
Tags: Data Science, Study, Students

The secret of getting ahead is getting started

— Mark Twain

It’s September 2016 about 23 degrees Celsius, a warm day for the time of year. Three students make their way to the university to start their education within a field with one of the brightest futures ahead of all, only to find themselves some months later deciding to fill the first official board of the Data Science Association Pattern.

The joint bachelor program Data Science came into existence during the academic year 2016–2017 and thus represents two study years of students currently. As a student in such an innovative field you are a guinea pig; the university noticeably experiments with the curriculum and you — as friendly rodent — are doing your utmost to learn all the complex paths and problem-solving strategies, at which you become surprisingly skilled over time. Essential for this relationship is a study association: a central point of communication between data science students and the university.

“A few data science students were part of other existing study associations, but often did not feel at home.”

Opposed to boards of established study associations; Nadine, Eva and Daan spend most of their time laying the foundation for the study association. Besides familiarizing themselves with their own roles, many brainstorm sessions have been spent together with other bachelor Data Science students philosophizing what Pattern should stand for, what to prioritize and how to achieve it. This resulted in three focal points: academia, social cohesion and business (more about this later on). Also, constructing all the required documentation a student association is obligated to have such as articles of association and of course several devoted committees followed. In many ways this is similar to setting up your own business: you spend time thinking about what image you like to forge, building a network, constructing regulations to structure management and how to acquire and distribute your financial resources. In fact, being an entrepreneur within your study was an important reason for becoming a board-member for Daan, Nadine and Eva.
Are blogs the CB radio of our generation
By: Ben Edwards
Tags: Technology, Blogging, The Web

It should come as no surprise that I am very interested in how web logging and the web in general will shape the future. Yesterday’s post at Will Femia’s Weblog at MSNBC was about weblogs as potentially being the CB Radio of the late 90’s and today. While I had heard this analogy before — it was always in conjunction with an explicit negative connotation. Femia brings up the point that many CB Radio enthusiasts adhere to the belief that it was their beloved technology that served as a jumping off point for bigger and better technological breakthroughs. That got me to thinking again about what weblogs will lead to.

“Are Weblogs not an end but means to some larger goal like the democratization of the media or the supplanting of government as spokesman for the citizenry?”

I hope to post about some of the great things (and not so great things that weblogs can lead to in the coming days. And while I have a much less cynical view of the present web than this guy, I think we both could agree that there is much room for improvement and a bright future ahead for weblogs and the web in general if we collectively address some of the mediums main shortcomings.

While the author of the above site may feel he “can walk into any public library, no matter how tiny and underfunded, and find facts, stories, amazing information I would never touch in a month of webcrawling” or “go into a bar and hear stories Usenet hasn’t come close to in its 22 years of waffle” I would claim the reverse is true as well. The wealth of information available on the web is truly astounding. I think the author hits on the main strength of the web by trying to label it is as self-perpetuating, machine churning our lies and misinformation. The web and all of its content is valuable because it is not simply an encyclopedia of knowledge, reporting facts as truth. Truth, it has been argues is only relevant when perspective is taken into account anyways — and what the web definitely is — is millions of perspectives on our world.

This point leads nicely into something Anil posted on July 2nd about the atomic nature of individual entries of a weblog. Essentially a weblog, if broken down to its most basic elements, the post or single entry or idea would be the base component. Essentially then the web is simply made up of numerous ideas held together (in some cases loosely) in weblogs or groups of weblogs.
“To The Youth Of This City”
Tags: BlackLivesMatter, Civil Rights, Baltimore

The first day of May seemed to mark a turning point in the story of Freddie Gray, the Baltimore man who died of a severe spinal injury incurred while in police custody. His death set off a wave of protests that turned violent this past week. The State Attorney for Baltimore, Marilyn J. Mosby, announced on Friday that charges on multiple counts would be filed against six police officers related to Mr. Gray’s death.

“To the people of Baltimore and the demonstrators across America, I heard your call,” Mosby said as part of her statement. “For no justice, no peace.”

She also delivered a specific message to the youth of the city and, by extension, young people across the country:

“Last but certainly not least, to the youth of this city,” Mosby said. “I will seek justice on your behalf. This is a moment. This is your moment. Let’s ensure that we have peaceful and productive rallies, develop structural and systemic changes for generations to come. You’re at the forefront of this cause, and as young people our time is now.”

Youth Radio asked some of our partner organizations around country: Baltimore-based Wide Angle Youth Media and Alternate ROOTS; The Latin American Youth Centers’ Maryland Branch; Chicago’s Black Youth Project 100; and Henry W. Grady High School in Atlanta, to help gather voices of youth from across the nation. We wanted to know what young people felt not only about Mosby’s actions and statements, but about the events leading up to today.

Offered below are some of what they, and Youth Radio’s own producers found, both within the city limits of Baltimore and beyond.
Elizabeth I’s Ghost
By: Heidi E. Cruz
Tags: Tudors, Elizabethan England, Free Verse, Poetry, Historical Fiction

A crown and throne are the

Reminder of a French sword

Married to maternal blood,

An unmarked grave the

Offspring of this union.

The living child wandered

Nursery halls in the last of her

Clothes chosen for a

Bastard princess in disguise.

Springtime’s caress before her third

Year carried away the white in her

World with a simple stroke of

Pen and sword.

A removed presence haunts her

Childhood paces, “Why yesterday was

It was my princess and today

Just my lady?”

Each May is a reminder of

Another year since that day,

When she heard cannons

Celebrating a poor woman’s demise.

Twenty-three more springs did she see

Before the throne,

An undefeated love exceeded from the

Unmarked grave to the

Clasp of the child’s ring.

Forty-three more Mays,

Time elapsed, Gloriana found her

Mother waiting for

Physical separation was but a

Fleeting affair to earthly ties.
Antisemitism: Here and Now
By: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Tags: Conversations, Anti Semitism

Antisemitic grafitti at a synagogue in Huntsville, Alabama, on April 8, 2020 — the first night of Passover. —WAAYTV

Antisemitism has surged around the world since the deadly attack on a synagogue in Poway, California. Now those who scapegoat Jews and other minorities are preying upon the isolation, fear, and economic insecurity brought on by the coronavirus to spread their hatred. In this April 29, 2020, digital program, expert Deborah Lipstadt talks about the changing face of antisemitism in a troubled world.
Chrysalis
By: Elizabeth Helmich
Tags: Letting Go, Winter, Life Choices, Connection, Poetry

Fallen angels

in the snow

recollect structure,

fascia pulling distant

strands to reconnect

that which was all but lost.

Tongues reach

to collect flakes

that float

and flurry in

no hurry to

reach their destination.

The sky's

poker face looks

on behind

a thickened veil

between above and

below, while wings flap

up and down,

glee making

saints of those

who remember

a time when

flight was only

a leap away.
Optimizing Reflows and Repaints With Just CSS
By: Allison Chow
Tags: Web, Web Development, CSS, Technology, JavaScript

OK, How Do I Improve This?

Let’s focus on two common things that cause reflows and repaints:

Changes to the geometry or sizing of an element.

Animations through the CSS animation or @keyframes properties.

Why do these things affect performance?

Well, for each of these things, the browser has to do a lot of work to reformat the page to adjust the layout. Adjusting one element’s size can have a lot of impact on the surrounding elements, and as such, the browser does more than just touch the one node you edited.

For a more comprehensive list of what rules and attributes cause reflow, check out this Github page by Paul Irish.

What can I do?

Step 1. Batch your changes

Every time you write a statement that affects one of the mentioned attributes, like height or width, the browser does work.

A simple thing you can do is group all your CSS changes in a class, and then just apply or alter the classes applied to the node.

Below, you’ll see an example of regular adjustment of CSS:

let element = document.getElementById(“test-id”); element.style.paddingLeft = “20%”; element.style.marginRight = “25%”;

This, unfortunately, might not get batched into just one reflow by the browser. To speed this up, try:

Example of More Performant Styling

Another way to do this is just to edit the style as text like this:

element.style.cssText = “padding-left: 20%; margin-right: 25%;”;

This might not seem like much with just two attributes changed, but on a website with a huge number of styling changes, these small things can add up.

Step 2. Avoid super complicated animations

CSS has become really powerful, but with great power comes great responsibility.

If your animation:

covers a huge part of the page,

infinitely repeats,

causes repainting or adjustment of the layout,

you might not want to do it in CSS because it will kill your CPU.

What you can do instead is try to accomplish the same animation with composite properties like transform and opacity. These properties don’t affect the layout.

You can also try getting halfway there with an SVG and applying simpler CSS to that graphic.

Now what?

I found it super helpful to keep a record of what my web app originally performed like so I have a way to see if my changes actually helped.

Run a second test with Dev Tools to see if you were able to reduce the cost of your major repaint and reflow components, but even without that, hopefully your page feels faster and more responsive to use!
Finding My Way Back to Me
By: Deborah Christensen
Tags: Personal Growth, Life Lessons, Personal Development, Poetry, Healing

I take off my shoes and my bare feet feel shocked at the sudden contact with the dirt and grass underneath

Suddenly I feel naked and vulnerable

All because my feet are bare

And I stand fully clothed

But aware of how tiny and insignificant and cold my feet are

And how powerful the pulse of life through the earth is through my feet

And I am stripped bare of all pretence

Of my separateness

My path in life has to be made of dirt

And my feet have to be bare

How else can I continue to feel real

When all else is plastic and fast

And all other feet are padded for protection against the bare elements

I need to walk and get lost

Surrounded by acres and acres of green trees

To be able to find my way back to me

To my true self, my soul centre

As I am lost amongst many internal voices

And I don’t know where I am anymore

I need to breathe in the ocean and feel its salty wind against my face

And hear the rhythmic pounding of its waves on rocks

To find my way back to my own heartbeat

My own rhythm

And feel strong again, instead of weak

I need to be out in the wind

So it blows away all my angst and heaviness

And leaves lightness and freshness in its wake

I need to sit in the sunshine

Like the sun warms the trees

And bask in its glory with eyes shut

Allowing its warmth to invigorate and energise me

My eye reflects the whole universe

A river pulses in my veins

A spiral is in my DNA

A star lights up my heart

I am nature and nature is me

Water springs up in every land and country of the world

It is not only in one land

It is everywhere for all people’s

God supplies food and water to everyone

No matter where they live, and who they worship

Why are houses of worship limited to Christians or Muslims or Hindus?

With separate doors and separate waters of life for separate peoples?

How is this in line with nature?

It is not.

Trees talk to me

I sit underneath a vast expanse of leaves and each one moves and rustles and speaks

Each one makes up the whole and the whole is not solid but made of myriads of parts

I want all of me to feel strong like the tree

Not divided and fractured as I feel right now

This is my prayer.

Heal me.

Please help me find my way back to my wholeness.
Five Things to Do After 6 P.M: Evening Habits for an Additional Income
By: Rajesh Vairapandian
Tags: Inspiration, Growth, Self Improvement, Habits, Goals

Five Things to Do After 6 P.M: Evening Habits for an Additional Income

Try these simple habits and transform yourself into the next version.

Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

Every journey starts with a single step. Every dollar you earn in your life need your effort & time. Above all, you should have a passion for achieving your goal. If you have all these three, then the money is a by-product.

A few years back, when I realized how much time I have been wasting after office hours made me think this:

“You are responsible for your success or failure.”

I felt ashamed of myself and started looking for various ways to increase my income streams. I adopted a few daily evening habits that have helped me achieve my dream of having more than one income stream.

In this article, I share a few evening habits, and I cannot guarantee this will bring 100% success for you. However, you will find a way to reach your dream if you are consistent with your daily habits.
Ex on The Train at 4 am
By: Guy New York
Tags: Short Story, Relationships, Fiction, Erotica, Sex In Public

I’m stuck at a dying party with no one to talk to and a missing g-string. The street is hot and the subway is hotter but at least by now, it’s nearly empty. There are only two other people on the train, and I sit down directly across from one of them before I realize it’s my ex-boyfriend.

Shivers. Where those good or bad?

He’s looking at me with that grin of his and I want to slap him. And kiss him. God, I must be drunk.

He doesn’t say anything, but he looks me up and down trying to remember what I look like under these clothes. Eye contact lasts as he gets up and moves towards me. He still hasn’t said a word, and my body is doing things it shouldn’t. His hand grabs the railing above my head and he looks down at me with that grin.

When I finally look away, my eyes move down and lock onto his zipper. I know it’s under there. I remember. I remember far too well for being this close to him at 4 am on a subway when I’ve been drinking.

One of my hands is on his hip, sliding up under his tee shirt to his hard flat stomach. One of his hands pushes hair away from my face. My other hand presses against his cock through his jeans and I can tell he likes it.

He’s sitting now, and I’m on his lap. The train is moving fast and the old man in the corner is watching us.

I don’t know whose hands unzipped his jeans, and I don’t know who guided him into me, but I do know it was me who kissed him so hard I drew blood. His hands slid under my skirt, gripped my ass tightly, and pulled me down around him until I could feel his pelvic bone against my clit.

I’m screaming into his mouth as I fuck him, and I barely notice that the train has stopped. It’s only another couple stumbling onto the train, totally unaware of us as they kiss against the door.

As we start moving again, he’s thrusting into me with the same rhythm as the train, and I’m remembering every single time we fucked. His hands are around me, I’m pushing onto him, sucking his lip into my mouth, and I can’t believe that I’m about to come.

I bury my mouth in his neck, moan into his skin as his fingers slide up between my thighs from behind. Oh god, I think to myself. He remembers.

Just as I begin to bite his neck, one finger pushes into my ass and I’m coming like I always used to. My body is shaking, my breath is short, and I know there are scratches on his shoulders.

When my breath slows down I can tell he’s still hard inside me. He could always last as long as he wanted. He could take me home, fuck me all night, and then fuck me again after breakfast.

The train stops at the next station. He’s kissing my neck, and holding me, whispering things into my ear about what else he wants to do before the sun comes up.

Before I know it, I’m sliding out the door just as it’s closing. The look of surprise hasn’t even registered on his face as he sits there with his big cock sticking out of his jeans.

“Thanks,” I say, as I blow him a kiss and walk up the stairs into the early morning.
Meta-Meme me Into Oblivion
By: A Singular Story
Tags: Relationships, Culture, Self, Poetry, Social Media

Meta-Meme me Into Oblivion

An online monument to hope for an audience of one

Photo by ETA+ on Unsplash

There’s something inviting about the outsize girth of your spirit.

When I see the outside of you, I want to hide inside.

What is a selfie but a visual form of autofiction?

Life doesn’t contain you: You contain it.

I am in awe of your many folds.
Consulting frameworks
By: Jan Schultink
Tags: PowerPoint, Keynote, Layout, Mckinsey, Presentation Design

I added a new set of templates to my presentation design app SlideMagic: consulting frameworks. It was an interesting journey back in time (I used to work for 10 years at McKinsey back in the 1990s).







Putting them in SlideMagic was interesting, it shows exactly what SlideMagic is supposed to do for business presentations. Take unnecessary complexity out of visual designs down to a level that the chart still says what it needs to say, but that you do not need to have a degree in graphics design to make them. I had to make slight deviations from the original here and there (Both SlideMagic and layman designers do not like curved shapes for example), but the end result is pretty good.







As to the content of these frameworks. They are more tools to help you think about a problem than slides that will get your audience jumping out of their chairs. Many of them are linked to classic micro-economics theory (demand/supply/competition). I think the strategic issues of many companies today have moved beyond these problems. Still some frameworks can work to kick start a discussion, they good old SWOT works great in group white board discussions.
A Few Words On Acting Presidential
Tags: Politics, George Bush, 2016 Election, Donald Trump, President

I’ve never given a tremendous amount of thought to George H.W. Bush. Recently, he’s been in and out of the news for stories of groping and terrible groping-related puns. All things considered, he’s gotten off a lot easier than the Lauer’s and the Spacey’s and the, um, CK’s.

Scrolling slack-jawed and drooling through Netflix the other night, as I am wont to do, I came upon a documentary titled “41 on 41.” The movie is, essentially, a series of rosy snapshots and postcards reviewing the life and times of GHWB. The roster of talking heads boasts former presidents Obama, W. Bush and Clinton, as well as other distinguished politicians, coaches, dignitaries, and Roger Ailes. So it isn’t perfect.

I’ve been accused of going far too easy on the Bush family on this blog in the past, so indulge me here. The documentary shares stories about Bush Sr.’s kindness, calm in the face of global unrest, and his penchant for hand-written notes to hotel doormen and foreign diplomats alike. It’s one-sided, as many of these types of documentaries are. There are stories of him saving classmates from hazing rituals, and tales of his remarkable ability to befriend Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Dana Carvey.

A young Condoleezza Rice served as a director in HW’s National Security Council. She told one story that seems utterly improbable today. As the Berlin Wall was being torn down, Rice, and a number of other advisers to the President, began offering advice on what he could say upon his arrival in Berlin. He needed to mark the occasion. The Berlin Wall was coming down. The leader of the free world, presumably, would be in town.

“No,” Bush told his team. “This is a day for Germany,” not a day for the United States to steal the spotlight. His response was similar to the one he issued at the disbanding of the Soviet Union. Restrained.

This was the most striking part of the documentary. Bush Sr. was not a particularly compelling figure. He wasn’t a fiery orator or ideologue. I have no interest in debating his policies here, or measuring his economic or social impact as President. In the history books, it seems he simply bridges the gap between the swaggering Reagan and Clinton eras. Fair or not, his steadiness as a politician and a person doesn’t play well in political sizzle reels.

The only similarity between Bush Sr. and the current denizen of the White House is their propensity for grabbing a handful of heinie that doesn’t belong to them.
Dart Linter — Maintaining a Healthy Flutter Codebase
By: Harshvardhan Shinde
Tags: Lint, Linting, Linter, Flutter, Dart

Lint Packages

Just like most of the flutter packages, we have some lint packages readily available to use in our projects. As with all other packages, we need to add the dependency for the lint packages in our pubspec.yaml file. However we do this under the dev_devpendencies section.

All the lint packages come with a pre-configured analysis_options.yaml file. The only thing we need to do is to include it in our own file. We will take a look at two popular lint packages.

Enabling default Google rules: pedantic

This package contains the lint rules used by Google in its dart code. To include this in our project, we need to declare a dev dependency in our pubspec.yaml file:

dev_dependencies:

pedantic: ^1.9.2

Run pub get , and then add the following line to your analysis_options.yaml file:

include: package:pedantic/analysis_options.yaml

This will include all the lint rules specified in the pedantic package.

Enabling Effective Dart rules: effective_dart

This is a community package that contains the lint rules as per the official Effective Dart guidelines. To include this in our project, we need to declare a dev dependency in our pubspec.yaml file:

dev_dependencies:

effective_dart: ^1.3.0

Run pub get , and then add the following line to your analysis_options.yaml file:

include: package:effective_dart/analysis_options.yaml

This will include all the lint rules specified in the effective dart package.
A growth marketer guide to designing A/B tests using python
By: Tds Editors
Tags: The Daily Pick

By Daniel Bourke — 9 min read

Manuela emailed me the other day asking the question “How can a beginner data scientist like me gain experience?”.

Great question.

It followed with, “I did some courses and did some projects, but some interviewers said: ‘I liked your formation but you don’t have the minimum experience we want, come back later!’”.
The Chosen One
By: D. Levolt
Tags: Short Story, Fiction, Thesceneandheard, Government, Guns

Steven Mercer was indistinguishable from anyone else. Even his name; unremarkable. He marveled at being able to Google it and not find any “famous” name twins. This was exactly why they found him so appealing.

Steven was at his desk one Tuesday morning when a man in a suit approached him.

“Steven.” He smiled and extended his hand. “Mark Fogel.”

Steven shook his hand and introduced himself. Must be some new hire, he thought. Probably a new manager in Accounts Payable.

“Steven, would you come with me for a minute, please?”

Shit.

This was never good. A million reasons raced through Steven’s mind during the 30 second walk to the office.

“They found out I left early on Friday. They’re gonna chew me out over that stupid report I half-assed last quarter. Oh Jesus, what if they’re laying me off. But they probably wouldn’t do it in private. That can’t be it. Right? They’d just show up with a cardboard box and tell me to get the hell out by noon. Shitshitshitshitshit.”

Steven was mentally updating his resume when he sat down across the desk from another suited man he’d never seen before.

“Well…here he is,” said Fogel.

“Steven.” The same smile and handshake as before, with this new guy. Another nondescript man like Fogel, but with harder features.

“Who are these two?” Steven thought. “Oh Christ, they’re gonna clean us out and replace us with their cronies.”

“Steven, this is Bob Merlino,” said Fogel.

“Hi.” Steven shook hands with Merlino. “Steven Mercer. So, uh…what’s up — I mean, what can I do for you? Did I do something wrong?”

“No, sir. No, not at all. Actually, you’re just what we’ve been looking for.”

Steven’s eyes lit up ever so slightly. A promotion? A raise? OK, maybe a few layoffs wouldn’t be so bad if he could get a little extra. Maybe even an office like this one.

“As a matter of fact, you’re perfect. That’s why we made the arrangements we did.”

Hell yes! He WAS getting that office!

“We’ve already notified your family. They weren’t thrilled about it. Not at first. But they came around. They understand. These things have to happen.”

Steven looked at Merlino blankly.
New Crystal Features: Geographical Attribution, New Clustering Algorithm, Real-Time Risk Scoring, & Slack Notifications
By: Crystal Blockchain
Tags: Crystal Blockchain, Bitcoin, Blockchain Analytics, Bitfury, Bitcoin Lookup

In the latest update to the Crystal Blockchain platform, version 2.12, clients now have access to a whole host of new features that enhance compliance and due diligence requirements

1. Geographical Attribution

Users can now view the (potential) location of a transaction through IP address analysis, improving the quality of digital asset compliance checks (based on geo-segregation) for key institutions, exchanges and agencies.

2. Real-Time Risk Scoring

A risk score will now be assigned once a transaction enters the Mempool, meaning you can see the risk score value for unconfirmed transactions as well. This means our users can analyze the risk of a transaction even before it is entered into the blockchain.

3. New Clustering Algorithm

We are delighted to release our updated clustering algorithm.

With this new feature enabled, we can now increase coverage capabilities by dozens of millions of addresses, as well as decrease the number of false positives.

4. Slack API

Our customers will now be able to receive notifications from Monitor and Cases not only via email and the API, but also via Slack — making notifications more visible and manageable for our users and their teams.

Crystal clients will now be able to get notifications via Slack when any transfer triggers the alert or when any address of interest changes its balance or risk score. We’ll be adding more features in the coming weeks and months to improve the user experience.
James, I believe you also seek contentment.
By: Gwen Saoirse
Tags: LGBTQ, Teamwork, Philosophy, Religion, Friendship

“five black rocks” by Colton Sturgeon on Unsplash

James, I believe you also seek contentment. Your struggles against the wrongs that organized religion, bigotry, and its associated influences over political leaders is, in essence, a battle for contentment. Is not your goal for LGBTQ people around the world to live their lives in peace, free from persecution?

I think there is much more overlap between you and Eric than what your words would lead one to believe. I would caution against implying that friends in the community who take active steps against bigotry, racism, and mass incarceration are in any way shape or form, apathetic.

Again, there are the biggest of differences between those who seek contentment and try to right the wrongs in the world to get there, and those who live in contentment while people around them suffer. They are not one and the same.

I’m not surprised to hear that you feel that Taoism is apathetic. I feel think that is an oversimplification of the concept of wu-wei, a core tenet of Taoism. It is not a concept of inaction, but rather one of persistent action that is in harmony with nature. I think of it as changing the world without harming others along the way. Yes, you can change the world by burning it all down, but you’re gonna hurt some innocents along the way.

One thing is for certain. If you can’t build and maintain any harmony and momentum with those who are on your side, then you won’t be effective. At that point, you might as well be apathetic.
SCI Daily Crypto Digest: Twitter’s Turn!
By: Jervis C. Tinimbang
Tags: Blockchain, Bitcoin, Philippines, Cryptocurrency, Fintech

March 27, 2018

Image from Coindesk.com

Bitcoin tested support at $7,800 before rebounding and going back above $8,000. Lack of interest in this quiet market continued to weigh on the crypto space, as well as news that Twitter is joining Google and Facebook in banning ICO ads. BTC continues to be stuck within a wide $7,800 — $9,200 range and currently trading at the bottom of this range.

Support is at $7,800 while resistance levels are at $9,200 and $10,000.

*BTCPHP: 452,810 / 419,360

*USDPHP: 52.1580

*BTC market cap: $139B

*Crypto market cap: $313B

Heatmap image from coin360.io

News:

*It’s official. Twitter confirms that it is prohibiting ads of ICOs and token sales on its platform, joining Google and Facebook who made similar moves earlier. A spokesperson from the micro-blogging site explained in an email that they “know that this type of content is often associated with deception and fraud, both organic and paid, and are proactively implementing a number of signals to prevent these types of accounts from engaging with others in a deceptive manner.”

*The Cointelegraph reports that South Korea’s largest multi-billion dollar conglomerates in various sectors including insurance, telecommunications, gaming, and Internet are entering the cryptocurrency market by funding up-and-coming exchanges. The article outlines how conglomerates Kakao, NHN, SK Telecom, and Nexon are invested in crypto exchanges Upbit, OKCoin, and Korbit. The article further concludes that “the stability of leading cryptocurrency exchanges could allow the South Korean market to continue growing at an exponential rate with sufficient capital and resources to compete against the global cryptocurrency market.”

*Nvidia (NVDA) is feeling the strong demand from cryptocurrency miners, saying that they must increase the production of its graphics processing units (GPU) to address the shortage caused by cryptocurrency miners. Crypto miners snapped up GPU cards from companies such as Nvidia and AMD, pushing its sales to record levels. Nvidia’s stock in particular has more than doubled in price, YTD, even after returning a 3-bagger to its investors last year.

*Would-be Litecoin merchant processor LitePay has abruptly terminated its operations, the Litecoin Foundation announced in a post on its website on Monday, Coindesk reports. LitePay — which also claimed it would offer a crypto wallet and “LitePay debit card” through which users could convert litecoin into U.S. dollars — was unveiled in December of 2017 and set to launch in February of this year.

SCI | buybitcoin.ph | Bitbit | Keza | Rebit
Cultures Unite in the First Trailer for A24’s ‘Minari’
By: George Bell
Tags: Movies, Art, Culture, Film, Entertainment

When I heard that Steven Yeun was starring in a new film set on a farm, I thought it was a dark return to the less than stellar second season of The Walking Dead. Turns out it’s something much better. Film Twitter darling A24 is back with yet another release, the Korean-American drama Minari.

From American director Lee Isaac Chung, Minari follows a Korean-American family who moves to a small farm in Arkansas in hopes of a better life, no matter how hard the change is. Just from the trailer, which A24 just released the other day, it is clear that this is a wholesome family drama which after a year as bad as 2020, couldn’t be more welcome.

Alongside former Walking Dead star Steven Yeun (I’m still not over Glenn if you couldn’t tell) are South-Korean actresses Han Ye-ri and Youn Yuh-Jung who both have made a name for themselves in Korea, winning multiple awards. Already it is clear that Youn Yuh-Jung will give a stand-out performance here, as the stereotype breaking grandma who has excellent chemistry with grandson David, played by the pretty, sorry I mean good looking, Alan S. Kim, in his debut role.

Minari is already a hit with critics with the film earning a 7.9 rating on IMDb and currently has a prestigious 100% on Rotten Tomatoes after 27 critic reviews. The film has been sweeping through film festivals as well, with Minari taking home Sundance Film Festival’s Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award. Other directors are also praising Lee Isaac Chung’s work with The Farewell director Lulu Wang taking to twitter to say “ Yes, I’m crying. You have no idea how long I’ve waited for this film “.

Steven Yeun isn’t just set to star in the film but will be an executive producer alongside Josh Bachove and a small-time actor you likely haven’t heard of: Brad Pitt. This combination of American and Korean culture isn’t just present in the movie itself but throughout the production. Lee Isaac Chung is a Korean director working with American film company A24. Steven Yeun is an American-Korean actor. In a recent tweet by Yeun, he said “ MINARI is the story of an American family. I really hope you get to see it. This one is for everybody “. This film marks a great turning point in cinema as the culture begins to overlap, bringing people together and hopefully is the first of many.

A release date is yet to be announced but hopefully we can expect Minari in the new year.

Words by George Bell
When to shift from hourly to project-based pricing
By: Monica Galvan
Tags: Freelancing, Visual Design, UX, Money, Business

How to come up with your base hourly rate

The first step is to research what graphic designers are paid in your area. This will help give you a baseline for what to charge. A big factor in coming up with the minimum amount you should charge has to do with your location and cost of living. An expected hourly rate in Austin, Texas will vary greatly from San Francisco, California. You can even use results for full-time graphic design roles to help you come up with a rate. You’ll just have to do a little math to break down the yearly salary into an hourly rate.

Collect data from various salary websites

To start searching for what graphic designers make in your area, try sites like Glassdoor, Payscale, Indeed, and LinkedIn. It may be helpful to start a Google spreadsheet to keep track of the data you collect. Be sure to keep in mind the level of experience. If you’re a junior-level graphic designer, you don’t want to record pay rates for a senior designer. Most of these websites, allow you to filter by years of experience.

Unfortunately, most of these sites are best for uncovering the salaries for these locations, rather than an hourly rate. So let’s calculate a base rate from this example. Here is a search result for graphic designer salaries on LinkedIn for the San Francisco Bay Area.

Alt: Example of graphic design salary rates from LinkedIn

Now, this is just one example. Adjust your salary searches and calculations based on the averages you find for your area and your level of experience.

Calculate an hourly rate based on yearly salaries

There are 52 weeks in a year, so divide $65,000 by 52 weeks. This comes to $1250 per week. Since there are 40 work hours in a week, now let’s divide $1250 by 40 hours for a total of $31.25 per hour. This means you should charge no less than about $32 per hour as a freelance graphic designer in the San Francisco Bay Area. But this isn’t a hard and fast rule.

As you can see from the graph, some graphic designers make more, some make less. What sways the date in one direction or another? It depends on the company size, industry, and also on your level of experience. There are so many factors but this helps give you a general idea of where to start.

Ask for more than what you’re comfortable with

As a designer who has been in the industry for many years now, I wish I could give my past self this piece of advice. Ask for more than what you want. You should feel a little uncomfortable with the rate you set, that’s how you know it’s in the right ballpark. If you ask for exactly what you want and the client agrees, you’ll likely be disappointed in yourself and wonder, what if I asked for more? In fact, the longer it takes for the client to agree on payment terms, the better. If they agree immediately, most likely they were willing to pay you more.
【CoD:BO4】ABR223は3点バースト性能を活用できるかが攻略の分かれ目
Tags: Gaming, Bo4, 日本語, Videogames, PS4

in In Fitness And In Health
Is Your Website Costing You? Why Responsive Design is a MUST in 2017
By: Lyndsay Bouchal
Tags: B2B, Responsive Design, SEO, Web Development

If your website isn’t responsive, yes, it’s is costing you business. Here’s why: In April 2015, Google increased the weight of “mobile-friendliness” as an organic search ranking signal. If your website didn’t reflect a responsive design — one that automatically scales to the device on which it is being viewed — you began declining in organic search rankings. And if your rank fell, you became less likely to be discovered and limited new business opportunities.

So, it’s been two years since Google began penalizing websites for being non-responsive. Are you one of them?

In addition to falling in Google’s ranks and decreasing your chances of discoverability, your users are forced to continually zoom in, zoom out, resize, and scroll, frustrating your audience. Your users are probably fleeing the site before they even find what they’re looking for.

When a prospect or client visits your website, it should be a simple, seamless experience. The most important information (see Stats #9 and #10 from our recent blog for some insight) — should be found extremely quickly with little clicking or scrolling.

One of the worst things you can do is promote something on a mobile app like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn and drive them to a website that isn’t responsive; a strong reason for an increased bounce rate.

Users just expect sites to be mobile-friendly these days: Forty percent of smartphone and tablet owners search for B2B products and services on their devices, according to KoMarketing research. That number is only going to grow as mobile devices become more and more prevalent and advanced, and currently more than half of all US web traffic is from mobile devices. Couple these facts with Adobe research that found nearly 40 percent of website visitors stop engaging if the site’s layout is unattractive.

If your website is already on the bandwagon, kudos to you! If not, we hope we’ve made a solid case for responsive design.
Create a simple REST API endpoint using Webtask.io
Tags: API, Web Development, Programming, JavaScript, Node

Webtask.io is a service by Auth0 that allows you to run single pieces of code in the cloud through HTTP calls.

Each deployed piece will run under a sandbox with some limitations:

limited processor time

a limited amount of libraries available per task

limited storage

But these limitations serve to present an environment where you can expose your application through HTTP, in easy and scalable way, without getting into the nitty-gritty of server administration or environment configurations.

There are many other features available like token validation to control access, secret data, and metadata. If you want to know more of how Webtask works, their documentation has examples of what you can do with this technology.

Let’s start to code the basic REST API

To create a webtask, you’ll need to use the webtask-cli. This is a command line application that allows you to manage your webtasks.

So first install it in your enviroment:

npm install wt-cli -g

Then initialize your session, using this email login process:

wt init your_email@something.com

Once you do so, you should receive a code to activate your account.

Now you can proceed to create the file that will be logic of our webtask. You can name it whatever you want, but remember that it will be part of the URL the service will later provide. Let’s name it:

basic-rest.js

and lets add the following code to it:

Navigate from the command line to the location where you saved the file and run this command:

wt create basic-rest.js

You will receive a URL that you can use to check your webtask, similar to this:

https://webtask.it.auth0.com/api/run/wt-myemail-gmail_com-0/basic-rest?webtask_no_cache=1

From your browser navigate to the your url and you will see the response of your application:

{"error":"GET method not implemented"}

Which is the response we expected from our code. Now you can add any logic you want to each one of the methods. You can then test the other methods (POST, DELETE, PUT) using postman or curl.

And that’s it. You have deployed a service without any additional configuration or administration. The great thing about this service is the ability to integrate webhooks from external APIs and interact with the data or query using other backends.

There are many features and options I didn’t explored but you can check their webpage and now more about them.

Hope you liked, let me know what you think in the comments sections. Happy coding!
What is HTTP
By: Sankalan Dasgupta
Tags: Internet, Front End Development, Web Development, Backend Development, Network Security

Principles of HTTP

HTTP is a synchronous protocol, which in this case means that after a client sends a request to a server, it waits for a single response. The server can only respond to requests. It cannot initiate a connection to the client.

Another principle is that HTTP is a stateless protocol. That means each individual request sent over the protocol is unique, and no request is connected to another request. This means a HTTP server needs not keep track of any state information. A HTTP server will not remember whether a client has visited it before, or how many time.

To fix this, http allows sessions. Stores the states between browser and server. So, http is stateless not session less. To share the information about where the user is in the sequence it uses cookies. In short we can say that cookies keep track of the user of that particular session.

Cookies: An HTTP cookie (web cookie, browser cookie) is a small piece of data that a server sends to the user’s web browser. The browser may store it and send it back with later requests to the same server. Typically, it’s used to tell if two requests came from the same browser — keeping a user logged-in, for example. It remembers stateful information for the stateless HTTP protocol.

Another principle is that http work on request and response pairs. Every action performed over HTTP starts with a request using one of the HTTP methods and ends with a response containing an HTTP status code saying what happened to the request along with the data like headers and content.
7 Women Reveal Why They Treasure Their Man
By: Leah Njoki
Tags: Relationships, Love, Marriage, Life Lessons, Family

Trish: “How he laughs with me.”

Trish, the tall, slender, and incredibly funny lady, said, “I love how Eric laughs with me at the silliest of jokes, how we watch goofy shows and throw secret glances at each other when people do stupid things. Eric laughing with me shows he relishes my company.”

“It makes our relationship blossom. As for small mistakes? We don’t worry much about them. We’ve learned how to overlook them because we’re more focused on having fun than illuminating each other’s faults. Oh, did I tell you making up is a piece of cake? Let me give you a short story.” Trish sat upright, ready to narrate her story.

“Eric took me to salsa dance once. When practicing, the heel of my shoes broke off. I fell and landed on my back as my bracelet snapped, and the pearls sprawled across the floor. As Eric helped me get up, he tripped on a pearl and landed next to me. After what seemed like an embarrassing eternity, we burst out laughing. That salsa song became our signature song when we want to loosen up.”

She continued, “Last week, we almost missed our flight. Eric was extremely anxious because he couldn’t find his passport. I was hot under the collar, and the tension was so thick you could slice it with a knife. When we started the car, guess what was playing on the radio? Our song! An avalanche of memories came flooding back, prompting bursts of laughter. Although we arrived at the check-in counter, panting like pigs, all the tension had lifted. Simply because we found a reason to laugh together. ”

Why it’s important:

Laughing together brings you and your woman closer. Like Trish and Eric, you get each other without having to utter a single word. You almost become each other’s mind-readers. And that adds pizzazz to your love.

When you’ve got a good vibe with your woman, overlooking minor mistakes and diffusing life's daily tension becomes much easier. This cements your love. Studies show that a couple that laughs together creates a strong and positive bond because they sincerely enjoy each other.