fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
This Meme Made Me Laugh. Until I Realized It Could Have Been Me.
By: Caroline Zelonka
Tags: Death, Personal Growth, Memes, Wisdom, Life Lessons

This Meme Made Me Laugh. Until I Realized It Could Have Been Me.

With age comes wisdom, and wisdom brings humility.

I was 32 years old when I watched the World Trade Center come down. I tuned in to the live broadcast right after the North Tower was hit. Though workers in the South Tower were initially told to remain, that they had nothing to fear, many of them ran out of the building.

Wimps, I thought.

Then the second plane hit. Both towers collapsed. And I shuddered. Not just at the surreal nature of the attacks. In that moment, I realized I would have been one of those workers who stayed inside the building.

Because at 32, I did not think of myself as a fearful person. I took pride in keeping calm in a crisis. And even if I was a bit scared, would I miss out on this chance to watch history unfold from such a unique vantage point?

As I read about the last days of Richard Rose, as captured in a series of Facebook posts, I realize how lucky I am that the COVID pandemic hit when I was older. Because at 36, I might have been that guy. The one who was determined to live without fear. To not believe the hype. Who didn’t want to miss out on the chance to attend an awesome pool party.

Richard tested positive for the virus on July 1, a few weeks after that party. At the time, his biggest complaint was the two-week quarantine period.

A day later, he’s feeling worse. Much worse. Panic starts to sink in, his contempt morphing into anger.

Less than 19 hours later, sensing the end was near, Richard resorts to dark humor. Gotta love him for that. I would have done the same thing, at 36 or any age.

On July 3, no more posts. Friends thought he might be in Facebook jail. A day later, they found out the awful truth.

By all accounts, Richard was a well-loved guy and a good citizen. He was an Army combat veteran who served two tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He had 800 followers in a paranormal group, and many real-life and online friends, who posted tributes following his death.

Richard Rose’s life was easy to turn into a meme. Four posts that fit neatly into a square box on Facebook or Instagram. But it’s also easy to see, even in middle age, how we all can have blind spots, or a sense of exceptionalism, in the face of an unknown enemy. Most Americans knew little about Al-Qaeda when the Twin Towers went down in 2001. Even fewer knew much about COVID-19 when lockdowns were ordered in 2020.
Is the Way You Use Burndown Charts Helping or Holding You Back?
By: Mark Gray
Tags: Technology, Leadership, Programming, Product Management, Agile

Origin and Purpose

The burndown chart originated with Ken Schwaber at the turn of the millennium. His intention was to provide scrum teams with a simple toolkit to use during a sprint. In the years following its invention, it gained popularity and saw widespread use. At its core, a burndown chart is a simple graph. It has the amount of work remaining on the vertical y-axis and elapsed time on the horizontal x-axis. A straight line is then drawn between the upper left and lower right corners. This line represents the ideal progress during a sprint.

The chart is intended for a single task: monitoring the progress the team is making towards achieving the sprint or some other defined goal. The original concept made use of total estimated hours for the vertical axis and days for the horizontal axis.

Can we meet the goal is the only question a burndown chart answers.

Anyone who has worked in development knows that accurate estimation is near impossible. Once you start to work on a task, you are entering into a learning phase. This nearly always leads to discoveries that were not included in your estimate. So the estimate to complete needs to increase. The inability of teams to accurately estimate effort for IT has been known since the early days of computing. It was even an agenda item at the first-ever NATO IT conference in 1968.

Consider this example. You estimate eight hours to complete. After working for four hours, you believe that there are still eight hours of work remaining. This is the reality of development in an IT setting. The burndown chart tracks the new total estimate to complete at the end of each day against remaining time. The team will then use it to judge if they can still achieve the sprint goal given the estimated total of work remaining and the remaining time.

Using the burndown chart in this way requires the team to re-estimate the remaining total work on a regular basis. If they do not, the burndown chart becomes worthless. In the 20 years that burndown charts have been around, they have evolved to better reflect the way we currently work. They have also been hijacked by traditional managers and used to monitor and control the team, turning them from a useful team tool into a weapon of oppression.
What does it take to raise capital, in SaaS, in 2020?
By: Christoph Janz
Tags: Venture Capital, SaaS, Startup

What does it take to raise capital, in SaaS, in 2020?

How does the SaaS Funding Napkin look like in this crazy year?

If you were hoping that this post would contain the definitive answers to these questions, I’ll have to disappoint you and ask you for some patience. Sorry. It’s not like we have no idea at all — we’ve obviously seen a lot of financing rounds, inside and outside of our portfolio, and we’ve made a number of new SaaS investments ourselves. But we’re hoping that some of the nice people reading this post will help us improve the quality of our answers.

But let’s take a quick step back. About four years ago, we tried to come up with a back-of-a-napkin answer to the question of what it takes to raise capital in SaaS. The rest is SaaS history. OK, that’s a little pretentious, let’s say it’s napkin history. 😜 In any case, it’s become a tradition for us to ask that question and publish an updated version of the napkin once a year. ¹⁾

In the first two years, the napkin data was based on what we had seen in the market and anecdotal feedback from a few other investors. In 2018 and 2019 we sent out a Typeform to a much larger number of SaaS investors, so the dataset became much more solid over time.

In this (weird) year, we thought that it would be great to go beyond our network and try to get an even more comprehensive view of the market. So if you’ve raised financing for your SaaS startup in the last ~ 11 months, invested in a SaaS company, or have reliable data about your neighbor’s Series A, it would be awesome if you could answer a couple of questions:
HSLU Student Results 2019
Tags: Hslu, Data Visualization, Infographics, Data Storytelling, Design

The third year in a row the YAAY team (Nicole Lachenmeier and Darjan Hil) has been teaching data visualization in the program digital ideation at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts.

background

The program digital ideation combines information technology and design. In the module “information aestethics” YAAY is teaching the students in a three week (9 working days) intensive workshop how to develop a data visualization for web.

data source

The data we chose this year was provided directly from two audience groups. The first is the so called media monitoring and the second are the voting results from the canton Lucerne.

media monitor

The media monitor is a joint research program from the Publicom agency and Swiss federal office of communication.

Medienmonitor Schweiz 2017 zeigt das Potenzial von Medienmarken oder Mediengattungen für die Meinungsbildung und gibt Aufschluss zur Meinungsmacht der Medienkonzerne.

voting results canton Luzerne

The ballot results have been pitched by Nathalie Grillon from the statistical office Basel from the follwoing source.

the results

Andre Lergier (scrollytelling)

Giada Rastelli (clickable ipad)

Till Lötscher (scrollytelling)

Karin Fischer (scrollytelling)

Christoph Schmidt (scrollytelling)

Cornel von Wyl (clickable ipad)

Fabien Jeckelmann (clickable ipad)

Luka Kramer (scrollytelling)

Simon Wirth (clickable ipad)

Lukas Goossens (scrollytelling)

Paula Weibel (scrollytelling)

Download

You can download all the results here as high resolution PDF. Please respect the code of authorship in case of sharing or using the results.
An incredible revelation of someone so completely lost that even the concept of escape is…
By: Mike Meyer
Tags: Tragedy, Life, Trump, History, 2016 Election

An incredible revelation of someone so completely lost that even the concept of escape is permanently erased. From the start of this disastrous episode it was obvious that she has never expected such a bizarre string of events. This analysis shows the outlines of what is left. Only the frame and pieces of herself with her son in hopeful motion to somewhere unimagined is left.

There is literally no way to piece a person together from these iconographic elements. Neither she nor anyone around her notices. Perhaps because their lives are so filled with lies and pretense? To say more is simply not possible . . .
How to Get Anyone to Email You Back: Simple Tactic Works 99% of the Time — Guaranteed!
By: Phil Autelitano
Tags: Email Marketing, Advertising, Marketing, Business, Internet Marketing

Just about ALL of my marketing is done online, and more than half of my SELLING is done via email, with the rest accomplished via phone or in-person. My ads and content pull in the leads who more often than not email rather than call. I usually respond right away, but then, sometimes it takes forever to hear back from them. They’re always in a hurry to get the info I provide, but they’re obviously NOT in a hurry to be sold.

Obviously, email selling is much less efficient than selling via phone or face to face, where an entire deal can be wrapped up in mere minutes. Instead, sometimes it takes days, months, or even a year of follow-ups and/or goings back-and-forth to close a deal this way, but that’s the nature of the beast in this online business that we do. So to counter this, I’ve developed a few tactics over the past 20 years that help speed things along. Here, I’m going to share one of them for the first time ever:

When I’m emailing a prospect (or client) and they’re just not getting back to me, I often use a variation of this last-resort approach to break the ice that’s forming/formed from the non-contact. Here is a transcript of an actual email I sent recently. You’ll get the idea. Use it responsibly and you’re email responses will soar to new heights — guaranteed.

Subject:

Bob — are you OK????

This subject line has brought more customers back from the dead than, I don’t know, a guy who brings people back from the dead for a living.

Body:

Hi Bob -

I’m just following up again on our conversation the other day. I emailed you a few times, but STILL haven’t heard back . You know, I know this guy who had once had a client who didn’t respond for days and turns out he had been beaten and robbed, then bound and gagged in his basement where he eventually died from choking on his own vomit while trying to scream for help through the bloody rag in his mouth. It was horrible.

Luckily he called the SHERIFF to check on him… Hopefully, YOU are OK though — at least let me know THAT MUCH so I don’t have to call anyone!

Sincerely,

Phil Autelitano

(Ice broken.)

Send a variation of THAT and watch how fast they get back to you. If I’ve sent that email 1,000 times, I got 999 responses from it — and I can tell you I’ve probably sent it 10,000 times, at least. THAT is how powerful it is!

But remember, with this new power I’ve given you comes great responsibility. Please use it wisely and only as a last resort.

— P.

Phil Autelitano is Founder/CEO of Mediarazzi. We develop TV channels and content for Roku and Connected TV! www.mediarazzi.com

@PhilAutelitano
Pixels With Purpose
By: A Singular Story
Tags: Self, Love, Digital Life, Poetry, Relationships

Salvation snuck up on me as pixels with purpose

It teleported into my pocket without introduction

Before stepping off a train with an anxious smile

Clearly identifiable human warmth in person

It teleported into my pocket without introduction

That first serotonin hit of sincere concern

Clearly identifiable human warmth in person

Thawed a heart fluent in disaffection and silence

That first serotonin hit of sincere concern

A blessing I held between my shaking hands

Thawed a heart fluent in disaffection and silence

To win over a mind paralyzed by noise

A blessing I held between my shaking hands

Solace and comfort on a colorless winter day

To win over a mind paralyzed by noise

Invoke curiosity as the future and the cure

Solace and comfort on a colorless winter day

Conversation unfolds one question at a time

Invoke curiosity as the future and the cure

Speak, for only dialogue can dispel loneliness

Conversation unfolds one question at a time

The present becomes a four-handed ode to life

Speak, for only dialogue can dispel loneliness

Yet yesterday hangs heavy, bleeding into today

The present becomes a four-handed ode to life

All we thought gone and lost forever returns

Yet yesterday hangs heavy, bleeding into today

Patience teaches us the alphabet of gentleness

All we thought gone and lost forever returns

Grace is a slow drip infusing reality with a glow

Patience teaches us the alphabet of gentleness

Cracking us open to reveal the surprise within

Grace is a slow drip infusing reality with a glow

Salvation snuck up on us as pixels with purpose

Cracking us open to reveal the surprise within:

Even as data packets, we are still capable of love.
Unique $20 Presents Every Fresh Graduate Would Appreciate
By: Katrina Angco
Tags: Lifestyle, Gifts, Graduation, Money, Shopping

You’ll get best gift-giver honors for these thoughtful gifts.

You can give an awesome present to the graduate even if you’re on a budget!

Do you want your present to stand out from among the throngs of gifts the graduate in your life will receive? The good news is, you don’t have to shell out so much money for a gift that will wow. The internet is a treasure trove of one-of-a-kind presents, and we’ve compiled some that will surely make your recipient go awwww. They’re available at awesome prices, too — just install Piggy, a free browser extension that applies coupons and redeems cash back for you automatically, before going shopping to get great discounts:

Download Piggy here

The gift: Customized Franklin Planner.

The discount: Sign up and get 15% off on your next order, plus there’s 6.0% cash back, too. Build a special planner to inspire your graduate to aim higher and work harder in pursuit of his/her dreams. Franklin Planner offers a variety of designs to choose from, complete with motivational quotes and cool layouts that would get anyone excited to jot down lists and plans.

The discount: 25% off their graduation selection, plus 7.0% cashback. This is the site to be if you’re looking for motivational pieces for your graduate. They have everything from cards and mugs, to notebooks and necklaces, but this “Your Adventure Awaits” set is a complete package teeming with inspiration.

The gift: A course from Udemy

The discount: All courses on sale at $15, plus get 20% cash back. Learning shouldn’t end in school. Encourage your graduate to keep leveling up his/her smarts by gifting him/her with a Udemy course. Pick one that will complement his/her degree, or something aligned with his passion. Either way, this one’s a gift that will reap him/her major rewards.

The gift: Barnes and Noble books

The discount: 65% off thousands of books in their clearance sale, plus 2.0% cash back. Even non-readers will benefit from self-help or hobby books — they’ll appreciate the extra life advice and boost of confidence as they search for jobs and life direction in general.

The gift: A Personalized Photobook from Photobook Worldwide

The discount: 50% off, plus 5.0% cash back. Pictures are worth a thousand words, and a beautiful photobook that tells the story of the graduate’s college life is a gift that will be treasured forever. Help him/her relive the good times, the challenging ones, and everything in between with this sweet personalized present.

Love how far your $20 has taken you? Online shopping just got friendlier on the pocket, thanks to Piggy. It’s not just the graduates in your life who are over the moon, I bet — you, too, are so happy with how much you’ve saved.
Worrying About the Thing is Not Doing the Thing
By: Lisa Martens
Tags: Mental Health, Self, Anxiety, Digital Nomads, Life Lessons

0 to 100.

This is an anxiety disaster for the me of three years ago. I used to literally have nightmares about driving, and now there was an emergency situation.

It was like my nightmare was coming true.

Well, that’s one way of looking at it.

The old me would have shut down, 100%. I would have just frozen in place. The pressure of having to drive would have caused me to have a mental breakdown right there and then.

I didn’t want that to happen.

I didn’t want that to be who I was anymore.

Worrying About the Thing is Not Doing the Thing.

Last night, as I was struggling to put the idea of driving out of my mind, a friend of mine was worried about an important exam they have to take.

I reminded them to focus on just what they had to do, and not the exam itself.

Because worrying about the thing is not doing the thing.

Anxiety tricks you. You imagine every situation. You imagine the worst that could happen. And you think you’re preparing yourself. You think you’re being smart.

But when you engage in this make-believe, anxiety sucks out your energy so that you have less of it when you have to actually do the thing.

So I tried taking my own advice. When I caught myself starting to think of all the horrible things that could happen, I read something. I did something else. I went outside with the toddler and watered plants. I asked the older child about the video game they were playing. I set my alarm early so I could do yoga and make myself a good breakfast before the kids woke up, instead of rushing.
Jummah Khutbah from Berlin
By: Virtual Mosque
Tags: Berlin, Friday, Jummah

Brother Inshaal is currently studying German at University and whilst on a trip to Berlin asked to give the Friday Khutbah (sermon) at our stunning and world famous Berlin Mosque.

This was his very first Khutbah and he starts the Khutbah in fluent German before completing it in English.
The Rebel and His Mother
By: The Good Men Project
Tags: Parenting, Rebel, Poetry, Childhood, Motherhood

The Rebel and His Mother

What happens, he wondered, if I break this rule just a little bit?

Photo credit: Shutterstock

By Kitt O’Malley

When my son was a preschooler in daycare

His class had a field trip to the local In ‘N Out

As we walked back to the daycare center

My son held my hand

We walked in pairs down the sidewalk

His daycare teacher said

Everyone stay on sidewalk

Do not step into the driveway or the road

My three-year old son touched his foot in the gutter

Just his tippy toe

His teacher swiftly grabbed him from my hands

Took him with her to the front of the line

She gave me another child to walk

A more compliant, less rebellious child

My son, he was rewarded

He got to walk at the front of the line

Beside his favorite teacher

I was punished

Humiliated actually

Bad mother

Cannot control her child

Later that day when I returned to work

I told this story

One of my bosses smiled

Kitt, you love that in your boy

That your boy rebels against the rules

Just like the Berkeley rabble-rouser you once were

Pushing the limits

Yes, it still brings a smile to my face

That I have a son who dared touch his toe to the gutter

He understood the importance of staying with the group

He understood the spirit of the law

He did not run out into the road

Yet he questioned, dared to test, the letter of the law

What happens, he wondered, if I break this rule just a little bit

The memory also hurts

How dare that teacher rip my son from my hand

How dare she judge me and my child

Deem me unfit to walk my son back to daycare

Before I had to return to work

Return to work judged an ineffective mother

Return to work rather than stay with my son

Now that I think about it

He punished me

How dare I go back to work

How dare I not stay home with him

—

The story was previously published on The Good Men Project.
Should You Stop Using .forEach() in Your JavaScript Code?
By: Joey Colon
Tags: Technology, Programming, JavaScript, Software Development, Web Development

Introduction

Coming from a PHP background, when I first saw people utilizing .forEach() method to walk through their arrays, my nooby self thought nothing of it — it’s the same exact implementation of a standard for loop, I told myself. After writing some JavaScript code, I quickly realized that the two had their differences.

In this article, I want to outline the differences behind the standard for loop and .forEach() method as well as comment on some of the benefits that each brings to the table.
Running an Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) test
By: Ganiyah Issa-Onilu
Tags: Statistical Test

Remember the blog series I shared recently on my solutions to weekly assignments in a Data Management and Visualization course offered through Coursera, where I worked on finding an association between two variables in the Gapminder dataset in order to accept or reject my hypothesis, and also answer the research question.

Data Analysis Tools — Analysis of Variance test

Now, I have decided to go further into the research by performing a statistical test i.e. the ANOVA test known as Analysis of variance. Analysis of variance assesses whether the means of two or more groups are statistically different from each other. This analysis is appropriate whenever you want to compare the means (quantitative variable) of groups (categorical variable). The null hypothesis is that there is no difference in the mean of the quantitative variable across groups (categorical variable), while the alternative is that there is a difference.

I had to refine my research questions because I want to compare the means of the quantitative response variable (i.e. co2emissions) of the created four groups from the explanatory variable (i.e. relectricperperson) . The refined research question is:

Does the level of electricity consumed per person have an association with the carbon dioxide emitted in the environment?

Hypotheses for statistical test

The null hypothesis is that there is no significant difference in the means of the co2emissions variable across groups of the relectricperperson variable. The alternative hypothesis is that there is a difference in the means of the co2emissions variable across groups of the relectricperperson variable.

The Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) test

To perform the ANOVA test using the two variables selected for the research, I created 4 groups of the explanatory variable (i.e. relectricperperson). These groups are categories that show the level of electricity consumption and they are : low, lower-medium, upper-medium and high levels. The program and the summary of results of the ANOVA test are below:

Means and Standard Deviations of the four electricity levels

Summary of ANOVA test result

Interpretation of Result

The ANOVA test report shows that the F-statistic value is 2.208 and the probability i.e. p-value is 0.0903. The p-value is greater than the threshold (0.05) meaning that the null hypothesis cannot be rejected and there is no significant association between the level of electricity consumed and the carbon dioxide emitted.

It is not necessary to conduct post hoc ANOVA test because the ANOVA test is not significant.

This is the end of my solution and I hope you found my article interesting. Please leave a note if you have any feedback or suggestions. Thank you.
Case Study: When Plot Interferes with Storytelling
By: Josef Cruz
Tags: Stephen King, Storytelling, Writing Tips, Writing, Writing Challenge

Under the Dome: An Overview

Okay. So if you’re with me so far, let’s turn back to Under the Dome.

A little background may be in order.

Chester’s Mill is a small town in Maine (you’ve never heard a Stephen King story start that way, have you?) that suddenly gets cut off from the world by an invisible dome that seemingly drops out of the sky from nowhere.

The two authority figures in town are Duke Perkins, the town’s sheriff, and “Big” Jim Rennie, a town councilman. The two are not the best of buddies, to say the least, but when Chief Perkins experimentally touches the dome, his pacemaker explodes (set off by the dome’s charge), killing him and leaving the door open for Big Jim to take charge.

Here’s where things get interesting.

Because just about all the commentary I have read about Big Jim and Under the Dome suggests he is this malevolent, power-hungry megalomaniac. And yes, that part of him is there. He DOES kill the town pastor who knows he is smuggling propane into Chester’s Mill to make methamphetamines.

There is that, yes. Some power grabbers are completely single-minded and unsympathetic.

But Big Jim, even while he is a take-charge, get-er-done kinda guy with a dark side, truly does seem to have the welfare of Chester’s Mill in mind, or at least he thinks he does, especially following the town’s predicament of being cut off from the rest of the world by a giant dome.

(Oh, and those methamphetamines? He isn’t really going to sell drugs near the town though he WILL use the proceeds to benefit the town.)

When the town is running short of water, he knows where the artesian wells are that can provide a much-needed resource.

When the farmer who owns the land on which the only operating well is located decides not to share, Big Jim reminds him of the welfare of Chester’s Mill is at stake. When the farmer brings in friends with guns to demonstrate how strongly he feels about his current position, Jim shows his willingness to step it up as well.

When Jim’s psychotic son locks his ex-girlfriend, Angie, up in an underground shelter, Jim frees her. He does try to get her not to tell anyone in town what happened, which earns her well-deserved disgust. But Big Jim does nevertheless let her go, and the two develop a kind of strained alliance as they try to manage the town’s unraveling social threads. The death of Rose, the local diner manager, at the hand of thugs strengthens their partnership. Rose and Jim were genuine friends, and Angie looked up to Rose as a kind of mother figure.

Jim has some fairly reprehensible qualities, but he also knows Chester’s Mill better than anyone and has access to resources. His soul and that of the town are the same. And he doesn’t, like the farmer with the artesian well, hold anything for ransom.
This Is Goodbye
By: Matthew Hammond
Tags: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Crypto, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency

Summa to Join Celo 🎊

Today, we’re thrilled to share that Summa will be joining cLabs to help Celo realize their shared mission of financial prosperity and inclusion for all. Through our journey, we’ve become one of the foremost providers of cross-chain architecture. Leveraging our unique expertise, we aim to help connect Celo to various other chains throughout the space.

“Through our work with Celo on Bitcoin relays, we discovered a shared passion for creating financial inclusion and prosperity. We’re excited to join their team to further connect Celo to the broader blockchain ecosystem.“

— James Prestwich, Founder at Summa

Joining cLabs will allow us to bring the benefits of our technology to a broader audience, expand our open-source work with wider application, and deliver value to end-users more directly. Through our combined efforts, we hope to bring the ecosystem a step closer to financial inclusion for all.

“The technical and interoperability expertise the Summa team brings to Celo will enable the Celo Reserve to be further diversified and decentralized in a permissionless way. This represents a significant milestone for the Celo community”

— Markus Franke, Partner at cLabs working on the Reserve

Finally, we want to give a special thanks to Mark Tyneway for his work on bcoin-relaylib, and Harsha Goli for his contributions to Riemann.

We’re excited about what’s next and can’t wait to see you on the other side.

With Love and Fabulous Hair,

The Summa Team

Summa provides cross-chain architecture and interoperability as a service solutions. We work actively with Ethereum (EIP-152), Keep, The Electric Coin Company (ZIP-221), and the Zcash Foundation. Our partners include Cross-Chain Group, Interchain Foundation, Nervos, NEAR Protocol, Agoric, and Celo.

Stay up to date with Summa on Twitter
Travel around the world, share unforgettable moments and kick off new immersive collaborative projects.
By: Rahel Demant
Tags: Digital Nomad Lifestyle, Remote Working, Vr First Global, Virtual Reality, Traveling

Join the XR Nomads Movement!

www.xrnomads.com

Do you know how VR/AR is developed, played and experienced in other countries? If you knew, you’d be surprised!

Just think about Japan, where developers don’t need tables to work — or China, where a large majority owns a VR headset. In India, VR is mostly a social occasion game, played at birthdays and with families, whereas in Germany, only the hardcore gamers will know and play VR/AR games and applications.

Do you have experiences with developers from other cultures and environments? Have you already learned new things by going to classes and workshops in different countries and learned to see your own skills from a new perspective? We are sure you have and are curious to learn more.

At the heart of XR Nomads is the curiosity to explore different life styles, cultures and VR/AR development modes to be inspired and take back new ways of working, developing and immersing ourselves. Localizing VR/AR content for different cultures across the world is a different effort from video games — and we will be at the forefront of immersing ourselves.

We know You are a curious and big-thinking, so each trip we design an exclusive, one-off program of local XR experiences and networking events specifically curated to the destination.

Traveling to India and participate in the most exciting VR/AR conferences!

We’re all about finding the balance between the must-attend conferences, local VR/AR experiences and the coolest sight seeing activities — all catered to the groups preferences. In addition, we run workshops and co-create them with you. If you want to give a workshop to the group, we will schedule a date! Or select a skill that you want to learn and we will invite a local expert to teach you his/her knowledge!

What’s included ?

Accomodation and Coworking Space with VR/AR equipment

1 Ticket to major VR/AR conference (value min 1000 USD) and trip organization

1 Weekendtrip to a large international hackathon with potential prize money to win ;)

Networking events with regional VR/AR stakeholders, startups, developers, universities and more

Socializing events, 1 lunch and dinner per week

Additional Fee: VR/AR course and personal mentorship

Apply to join TODAY at www.xrnomads.com

Apply to join the XR Nomads movement and become immersed at the intersection of real and virtual worlds.

www.xrnomads.com
Here’s how shopping with MYCoin works in your favour!
By: Mycoin International
Tags: Bitcoin, Mycoin, Shopping

There are three aspects to this blog. Buyers, sellers and the platform that connects them.

There are so many cryptocurrencies out there, some promise high returns, while some stability. However, what about the people who wish to spend their dearest cryptocurrencies and buy stuff online? MYCoin International has come with the answer for the above question, by introducing a smart payment platform that lets you use your cryptocurrencies to transact without any hassles.

So, what are the features that make MYCoin International unique. Let’s take a detailed look at the features and their explanation:

Accepting a large variety of cryptocurrencies- Comparing the platform with conventional methods, MYCoin stands testimony to the fact that diversity is appreciated and encouraged here. Crypto coins and tokens can be used to get a lot of services and products.

Comparing the platform with conventional methods, MYCoin stands testimony to the fact that diversity is appreciated and encouraged here. Crypto coins and tokens can be used to get a lot of services and products. Safety is the most dependable feature , and at MYCoin its take very seriously. This is done to avert ubiquitous frauds. The problems people have to face because of hacks and malicious sites can strongly curbed with the advent of blockchain technology. Blockchain is unhackable owing to its transparent and highly secured ecosystem.

, and at MYCoin its take very seriously. This is done to avert ubiquitous frauds. The problems people have to face because of hacks and malicious sites can strongly curbed with the advent of blockchain technology. Blockchain is unhackable owing to its transparent and highly secured ecosystem. Dispute resolution — The resolution of the dispute is again an issue that needs to be taken care of, this ends with MYCoin International. The company has a quick and robust way of dealing with it. At MYCI a dedicated team constantly follows-up with both the buyer and the seller and becomes a seamless bridge between both.

— The resolution of the dispute is again an issue that needs to be taken care of, this ends with MYCoin International. The company has a quick and robust way of dealing with it. At MYCI a dedicated team constantly follows-up with both the buyer and the seller and becomes a seamless bridge between both. Reduced risk for buyers — MYCI’s platform covers many purchases right from a wide range of services to a long list of physical goods. This is possible by bringing trusted vendors to the platform, and vendors are given their payments in fiat currency. This becomes a win-win situation for both the vendors and buyers.

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Layman’s Introduction to KNN
By: Rishi Sidhu
Tags: Algorithms, Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Machine Learning

Layman’s Introduction to KNN

k-nearest neighbour algorithm is where most people begin when starting with machine learning.

Photo by timJ on Unsplash

kNN stands for k-Nearest Neighbours. It is a supervised learning algorithm. This means that we train it under supervision. We train it using the labelled data already available to us. Given a labelled dataset consisting of observations (x,y), we would like to capture the relationship between x — the data and y — the label. More formally, we want to learn a function g : X→Y so that given an unseen observation X, g(x) can confidently predict the corresponding output Y.

Other examples of supervised learning algorithms include random forests, linear regression and logistic regression.

kNN is very simple to implement and is most widely used as a first step in any machine learning setup. It is often used as a benchmark for more complex classifiers such as Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) and Support Vector Machines (SVM). Despite its simplicity, k-NN can outperform more powerful classifiers and is used in a variety of applications such as economic forecasting, data compression and genetics.

Genetics

Agriculture

Aviation — Air traffic flow prediction

As with most technological progress in the early 1900s, KNN algorithm was also born out of research done for the armed forces. Two offices of USAF School of Aviation Medicine — Fix and Hodges (1951) wrote a technical report introducing a non-parametric method for pattern classification that has since become popular as the k-nearest neighbor (kNN) algorithm.

Source: DTIC — The Declassified Paper in full.

How does it work?

Let’s say we have a dataset with two kinds of points — Label 1 and Label 2. Now given a new point in this dataset we want to figure out its label. The way it is done in kNN is by taking a majority vote of its k nearest neighbours. k can take any value between 1 and infinity but in most practical cases k is less than 30.

Blue Circles v/s Orange Triangles

Let’s say we have two groups of points — blue-circles and orange-triangles. We want to classify the Test Point = black circle with a question mark, as either a blue circle or an orange triangle.

Goal: To label the black circle.

For K = 1 we will look at the first nearest neighbour. Since we take majority vote and there is only 1 voter we assign its label to our black test point. We can see that the test point will be classified as a blue circle for k=1.
Pure exposure
By: J.D. Harms
Tags: Reflections, Questions, Chronic Illness, Nature, Poetry

I pulled, by the neck

several prairie flowers

some oxtails

felt the slope & twist

of the road by the fields

the cottages hidden,

but from the lake-view

like a row of empty cans,

peering down from a high shelf.

She rides alongside me,

hoping to discover something she hadn’t

known before

to begin her task of finding

of wanting to know.
My Favourite React Stack
By: Tom Buyse
Tags: Programming, Frontend Development, Redux, JavaScript, React

Bootstrapping a New Project

For easily getting started, I like to use a tool that bootstraps a new project. This way I don’t have to deal with any build tooling, and it just works.

Basically, I always go for either one of these options:

NextJS

Gatsby

A few months ago, I’d have chosen Create React App for building dynamic React apps. However, NextJS has quickly caught on and seems to be an overall better choice, in my opinion. It supports both static and server-side pages (hybrid) and focuses more on performance in general.

Gatsby is the framework I prefer to go for when building a full public-facing site. I like the focus on SEO and performance out of the box, as well as the great ecosystem. There are quite a few plugins available for easily integrating functionality like analytics, a CMS, and lazy loading images.

So in general: If it’s a public-facing site, I prefer Gatsby. If I’m building a dynamic (large) React application, I would use NextJS.
People love cheap cars, but hate cars that look cheap
By: Danillo Almeida
Tags: Future, Cars, Trends, English, Coronavirus

One of the latest trends we were building up to the beginning of this year was to create and adopt new solutions for transportation. Ride-sharing apps would take the concept of carpooling to the next level, self-driving cars could make transportation safer and more accessible, and electric propulsion would collaborate to energetic efficiency. However, the latest pandemic took the world by surprise and triggered a health crisis whose effects are yet to be fully understood and estimated.

After having its sales plummet in the first weeks, the automotive industry has finally started recovering in May: companies are slowly resuming production, as CAR Magazine says, and dealers are trying to attract people back by making several new sanitizing efforts, as Car and Driver shows. For now, they can only pick up the pieces and do whatever they can to resume normal activity as soon as possible. However, people are already studying which permanent changes industry and market might face.
Jupyter Standalone Might Just Be Better Than Anaconda
By: Emmett Boudreau
Tags: Data Science, Programming, Jupyter Notebook, Python, Anaconda

Advantages of Conda

At the roots of Anaconda is environment virtualization. Of course, this can be seen as a huge advantage to using Anaconda over standalone Jupyter. Additionally, Anaconda comes with the “ Conda” package manager, which isn’t quite as expansive as the regular Python Package Index.

As a result of these features, to an inexperienced soul, the startup learning curve of Anaconda Navigator isn’t as fierce as setting up docker images and virtual environments to run Jupyter out of. However, a significant disadvantage of Conda is the lack of the regular package index. Therefore, it is possible through only a pretty challenging loophole to install traditional Python packages that haven’t been published to Conda. For someone that uses a lot of APIs and assorted packages, this, of course, is a problem.

With that in mind, Anaconda certainly is a great tool for Data Scientists, with extension applications like VSCode, Spark managers, and much more all easily implemented into the navigator to work inside of your Conda terminal, it’s easy to see why this is a common choice among Windows developers. Interestingly, a lot of my Windows friends use their Conda REPL like a terminal, so the value is certainly there for them.
It’s OK to Have a Bad Run
By: Cailin Cowley
Tags: Fitness, Running Tips, Motivation, Healthy Lifestyle, Running

Photo by Bruno Nascimento on Unsplash

On Christmas Eve, I set out with the intention of running seven miles. It was an unseasonably warm 50 degrees out, so I was eager to hit the road and get a longer run in before the impending snowstorm swept in on Christmas day.

I was decked out in my best running gear: a quarter zip I got at the NYC Marathon Expo to remind myself that I’m a badass, my favorite lululemon leggings that always stay put, and my nice Nike sneakers that make me feel like I’m flying. I downloaded a new episode of the Girls Gotta Eat podcast, which I listen to religiously, and kissed the family pups goodbye as I hopped out the door, excited for the miles ahead.

I always forget that running in my suburban hometown is vastly harder than running in the city. Not only are there way more hills than there are in Boston, but there aren’t any sidewalks, so I have to contend with cars sharing the road and snow piles consuming precious real estate on the side of the street.

As I rounded the corner of a steep hill to finish out mile two, I felt heat creep from my chest to my neck, the temperature rising from pleasant to stifling. My gait felt off as I plodded up the hill, coming down hard on my feet and sending shockwaves through my shins. I focused on my breath to get it under control, but I couldn’t grasp onto it. Even as I went downhill, my whole body felt off and I was gassed. I started to dread the five miles ahead of me.

I kept going, trying to convince myself that it might get better. It didn’t.

As I transitioned into mile three, I got frustrated. This is a route I’ve done dozens of times! Why does the finish line seem so out of reach?

I was now bobbing and weaving on a walking path filled with various families taking advantage of the beautiful weather, their easy laughs contrasting with my misery. My tongue laid heavy in my mouth and my vision blurred, and I realized I was dehydrated with no fluids in sight. I had to call it quits, or I was going to pass out or injure myself — both of which I’d like to avoid.

So, I called my sister to pick me up and waited for her on a nearby park bench.

I sat there stewing for a couple of minutes, irritated that my plan for the perfect run wasn’t going to come to fruition, and worse yet, that I wouldn’t be able to run for a few days because the streets would be too icy.

Then, I realized I was being absurd.

One bad run won’t ruin all of my training. And just because I couldn’t control how things went, it doesn’t have to ruin my attitude. I still got outside and I still ran 3.5 miles, even though it felt impossible.

In the following days, I rested my body and drank more water, which I’d been slacking on since I’d gotten home. I listened to my body and moved when it felt right. Today, five days after the bad run, I decided to try again and was able to crank out 10 miles without a problem.

So yeah, despite the hiccup, I’m still the badass that my NYC Marathon quarter zip helps me remember that I am.
What To Do When Creative Self-Doubt Strikes
By: Christopher P Jones
Tags: Self-awareness, Books, Creativity, Writing, Inspiration

What To Do When Creative Self-Doubt Strikes

The only way to overcome artistic uncertainty is to return to first principles

Photo by Quentin Dr on Unsplash

The form that creative self-doubt takes for me, these days, is largely based on my propensity to compare myself others. The fact that we live in a global village — to use Marshall McLuhan’s prophetic phrase — can undoubtedly inspire, but it can also wear down. Within these global “communities” it is not difficult to find others whose powers of productivity are prodigious and whose voices, logically enough, stand out above all others.

They are the paradigms of success, so that it can sometimes feel that the only true precepts are “Be prolific” and “Never slow down”.

For me, speed has never been my best asset. Nor do I don’t want to hurry my inspiration. I want to take my time, to sink in, to draft and redraft, to learn slowly but surely.

Creative self-doubt can strike in other ways too. If often involves wanting to convince others of ones viability as a creative person — perhaps feeling that other people’s validation is a necessary right-of-passage. Sometimes it is.

One of my favourite artists is the Swiss painter Paul Klee, who lived and worked in the first half of the 20th century. I was surprised to learn recently that his younger days were fraught with all too-familiar moments of self-doubt, as he recorded in his diary in 1903:

“The feeling of responsibility toward my fiancée and parents and unsuccessful attempts to paint often brew a kind of suicidal mood. […] Father cannot find his bearings in my ‘fantasy.’ In her own way, mother probably has faith in me. Friends, some of them, are in part objectively despairing, some of them are not. And no doubt I give people much trouble as a friend.”

He ends this diary entry with the line “Love must never cease,” which appears to be addressed to his father. One can only surmise his meaning here: an invocation, perhaps, of what drives his innermost hopes and his motivation as a human being.
The Transformation
By: Edward Anderson
Tags: Science Fiction, LGBTQ, Romance, Short Story, Fiction

Embarrassment filled my face. Here in front of me for the first time was my father, and all I could focus on was the way he looked. There were so many questions that I could ask but the only one that formed in my head was “Why do you look that way?”

He smiled, at least in human form it was a smile. On Venus, it might have been a grimace or something but it looked pleasant. “I am not from Earth like you and your mother, so therefor my outer layer, what you call skin, is different. It has to be a different hue to protect us from the rays of the sun, and other issues that face my planet. But we are not here to talk about that, I came to you to help you through your transition. This must be a difficult period for you, my dear.”

“It is. All my life I have been a girl, I had my period when I was a teen and now to know that,” I took a deep breath, how did I explain everything I was feeling to a man that I had never met before. It was hard enough when I had to tell Matt that if we continued our relationship, one day he would be with a man. To have to explain all of this to someone I had never met, that was too much for me. “I don’t understand why I have to become a man!”

“In my culture, this change is a rite of passage. Women are made to feel inferior on your planet and most others, when we began this change it was so that nobody is treated differently from anyone else.” As he spoke, I could feel my legs start move. Slowly I was beginning to feel like myself again, relief flooded my body. “Where I live, no one knows what or who you were, all we care about is who you are now. My partner has always had male genitalia, and that bothers no one because the person they love also has the same sexual organs.”

“But Matt isn’t attracted to men,” I heard myself say as light flooded into my eyes, or my mind. I still wasn’t sure what was happening, but I wasn’t as scared as I had been when I first starting talking to my dad.

I could tell my father was trying to say something to me but once again I felt dizzy. It felt like I was being sent back to another place, another time. None of to made any sense to me, so I am guessing that it doesn’t make sense to you either. I felt someone touching my face, and could hear someone talking to me again.

“Amelia, are you OK?” Matt asked, voice full of concern. I searched his eyes for any hint that he may not be happy with what he was seeing, or that he was revolted by the sight of me. When I didn’t see any, I began to hope that maybe the transformation hadn’t taken place after all. “Say, something baby, anything. Let me know you’re alright, please.”