fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Alone in The Dark With a Mind
By: Anna Breslin
Tags: Sleep, Poetry, Fiction, Love, Life

Alone in The Dark With a Mind

A poem

Paul Klee, “A Woman for Gods”, Public Domain

.

.

Alone in the dark with a mind

is a dangerous place to be.

I am full of thoughts turned inward,

in the softness of my bed.

Every vexation rises to the surface —

self-recriminations, doubts, worries.

Alone in the dark with memories I wish

were better, but too often I sold myself out

because it was easier.

Now I am full of frustrated

longing. I sleep alone with a mind-enemy

ready to do battle

with any semblance of peace.

Nightmares overtake me,

I awake unsettled.

My heartbeat pounds upside down

and my mind is on the downside

of half-awake.

Alone in the dark, I wish to be

without this mind for a few hours

and slip into the darkest reaches

of the deep sleep

I knew as a child.

~

© 2020, A. Breslin. All Rights Reserved
(悲報)Google商家被停權了怎麼辦?
Tags: Google My Business, 行銷, Google, Google Maps

Google My Business local business reinstatement request - Google My Business Help

Businesses with multiple specializations, such as law firms and doctors, should not create multiple pages to cover all…
Are You Feeling Pangry* Now? (*=Pandemic-Angry)
By: Berenike Schriewer
Tags: Culture, Anger, Relationships, Mental Health, Self

Pangriness: the state of being irrationally angry and/or more irritable due to the extended stress of being in a pandemic.

When I was a teenager, our teacher excitedly introduced us to the most famous opening sentence of a German novel.

It goes like this: “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”

On Bastille Day this year, I could suddenly sympathize with Mr. Samsa’s plight, as described in Franz Kafka’s work The Metamorphosis.

What happened is that I woke up to the realization that I had been turned into a prickly porcupine overnight.

I didn’t just feel like I had gotten up on the wrong side of the bed.

It’s like I woke up on the wrong side of the Atlantic ocean. (Given the American pandemic response, this is probably an accurate reflection of reality.)

I don’t recall ever having been in such a foul mood for no apparent reason.

After noticing that my levels of grumpiness were off the chart, I took action. And yet, even after meditating for 20 minutes and journaling, my prickliness still rivaled that of a cactus. (A cactus I would have, no doubt, managed to get into a fight with.)

I wasn’t the only one who noticed that I had been turned into a porcupine. While tending to the emotional claw marks my transfiguration had left on him, my beloved husband remarked:

“You know, it’s like when people are hangry… hungry and angry. Perhaps you’re just Coronavirus-angry. Is that a thing? Cangry?”

I stopped my tirades for long enough to remark that it should probably be called “pangry” (for “pandemic-angry) instead.

My husband smartly avoided me for most of that day.

(It’s probably just a coincidence that that day was not only Bastille Day but also a Tuesday which is associated with Mars — the Roman god of war.)
How Easy Is It Being Vegan?
By: Fee O'Shea
Tags: Lists, Vegan, Animal Rights, Life, Animals

How Easy Is It Being Vegan?

And I’m not talking about the food!

“The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.” ― Alice Walker

Image created in Canva by Author

Have you any idea how much a part of your life bits of animals are?

Life is not as easy as one thinks when it comes to being vegan! Oh, the food’s a doddle (that means easy), but trying not to use animals in other things that’s where the headache begins.

Thought today I’d give you a list, just in case you’re interested in finding out where the rest of the animal goes.

In the list below, most of the products have animal parts within them, for example, glue. Some glue is made with synthetic materials, others, however, have casein, blood albumin, fish bladders and/or animal tissues. The conundrum is that you have no idea what type of glue has been used. A pair of synthetic leather shoes may look vegan, but chances are an animal glue has been used.

Other products have been animal tested as in the case of pharmaceuticals. Another minefield for the vegan to navigate.

WARNING: This list may surprise you.

Packaging

Glue

Wallpaper

Carpet

Laundry detergents

Disinfectants

Steel,

Lubricants

Perfumes

Shampoos

Toothpaste,

Cosmetics,

Pharmaceuticals

Furniture

Ink

Paint

Linoleum

Insulation

But wait … there’s more!

Fabric softeners

Asphalt

Tires

Deodorants

Sunscreen

Soaps

Creams,

Fabric dyes

Sports equipment

Clothing, shoes, bags and other accessories.

Okay, so some of these things we have no control over — like car tires and asphalt, but others we can do something about. Look at what you’re buying and see if there’s a more natural alternative. There are some fantastic products out there that are animal-free.

Do you know of any others that can be added to this list?

I put out a monthly newsletter with snippets of news and other bits and bobs I think you may be interested in: Sign up for it here: Goldcardvegan.com/newsletter
82 Trans Stories from Western Pennsylvania Honor Trans Awareness Week
By: Sue Kerr
Tags: Transgender, Social Justice, Awareness, Storytelling, LGBTQ

The week before Transgender Day of Remembrance on November 20, we have Transgender Awareness Week to help raise the visibility of transgender people and address issues the community faces.

I’ve curated 82 stories from our #AMPLIFY project to illustrate the multi-faceted experiences of transgender neighbors in Western Pennsylvania. Our project asks people to describe their own identity so it is possible there are other trans voices amongst the narrative, but these self-identified contributors represent 26% of our total contributors. Data from 2016 shows that about .6% of adults living in the United States identify as transgender so the trans community is well-represented in the AMPLIFY data.

Thanks to them, you have a snapshot of the lived experiences of 82 trans neighbors in their own voices. I hope you will some time to browse their Q&A’s and absorb some of the wisdom they’ve shared with all of us.

We’d love to include your story as we move forward. Click here to fill out the Q&A. It takes about 30 minutes of your time. You can control what name you use and make the decision about using a photo. Anyone who meets these criteria can contribute:

Identify as part of the LGBTQ community (however you define that)

Be at least 18 years of age

Have ties to at least one of the 26 counties in Western Pennsylvania (you also define what constitutes a tie)

That’s it. You can submit your story today if you like.
Eso que tú haces
By: Alberto Sáez
Tags: Soltar, Enseñanza, Español, Notas, Vida

in Both Sides of the Table
Using Recoil: A New React State Management Library
By: Victoria Luquet
Tags: Reactjs, JavaScript, Programming, Recoil, React

Using Recoil: A New React State Management Library

Install Recoil and start working with it today

Photo by Wendong Yao on Unsplash.

Recently, Facebook’s team announced a new state management library for React that looks and feels very promising.

Recoil is a very powerful tool to manage complex states and to prevent the confusing passing around of props among components.

You might be wondering, ‘‘Will Redux get deprecated or fully replaced?’’ Well, the answer is “No!” Even though Recoil is powered by Facebook itself, Redux is still used by the majority and has a pretty strong community.

Even if you already know and have mastered Redux, having other options is a great way to expand your React knowledge.

Enough talking. Let’s get started with a very simple Recoil example.

You want to start by installing Recoil on your React project:

If you are using yarn, “yarn add recoil.”

Now, you want to create your first Recoil state, and there are two ways to achieve that: creating an atom or a selector. We are going to use the atom for now. If you want to learn more, check out the official documentation.
Free to Run
By: Samantha Lazar
Tags: Songs, Sky Collection, Freedom, Poetry, Lyrics

you’re free to run

like yesterday’s winds

you’re free to fly

on tomorrow’s wings

no need to suffer

for your art anymore

a chance to wander

for what’s in store

let bliss be yours

let life be yours

once more

gallop on

no time like this to waste

carry on

as no more fears to face

you were born to fly

you were born to try

you’re free to run
Book of Orbsアップデートとビットガールズ（Bitgirls）モードの公開
Tags: Blockchain, Bitcoin, Counterparty

in Both Sides of the Table
Two angles
By: Jennifer Cabral
Tags: Police Shooting, Poetry, Notes, Campus

First angle.

You were barefoot.

They held a gun.

You held a knife. Not even.

You kept walking.

They fired.

You died.

Second angle.

You were barefoot.

They held a gun.

You held a knife. Not even.

You kept walking.

They fired.

You died.

Written in response to two of the videos capturing the shooting of Georgia Tech student, Scout Shultz. He was killed by campus police on Saturday, September 16th, 2017.
New Tool for Fixing Race Relations
By: Dawn Downey
Tags: Race, Customer Service

Photo by Hunter Haley on Unsplash

Lousy customer service at a hardware store inspires my solution.

I wait for my husband to join me inside the hardware store. He’s returned to the car for his phone. We need our phones, because I tend to wander off while shopping. That, combined with my absent-mindedness, presents potential for trouble. Once, not paying attention, I’d almost stuck my arthritic black hand into the back pocket of a short round white guy, mistaking him for Ben, the short round white guy I’m married to.

The store’s entry is more spacious than I’d expect, almost as big as a cineplex lobby. It’s fitting they’ve set up a section of munchies right by the door, like a concession stand. For a movie fan/hardware nerd like me, this has just become an ideal entertainment venue. I grab myself a bag of Cheetos.

There are two cashiers in sight, one of them is either asleep or in a coma. The other, a middle-aged man, is engrossed in a magazine, but sees me through the eyes in the back of his head. He scans the Cheeto bag and turns pages simultaneously. “Dollar seventy-three,” he says to his magazine, then shoves the cash into the drawer. “Want your receipt?” he asks the cash register.

On behalf of the register, I say, “No thanks.”

I forgive this level of surliness in teenaged clerks. They’ve earned the right to a bad attitude, given the hormones wreaking havoc in their systems. But from a man old enough to shoulder a mortgage, I’m accustomed to some attention, even if only a sexist, Have a good day, little lady. The cashier’s hostility puts me on edge.
Wanna Know How I Got My Wings?
By: Ellie Scott
Tags: Humour, Short Story, Fiction, Comedy, Flash Fiction

Photo by John Towner on Unsplash

Well there I was, hanging out with my friends after school, all of us bored out of our minds, when some bright spark decided we should play Chicken.

You know what Chicken is? It’s this dumb game where you run out into a road in front of a car and try to get to the other side without getting hit. Stupid, right?

What’s stupider is that I didn’t know how to play. Never heard of the so-called ‘game’ before in my entire 16-year-long life. But I didn’t tell the guys that, did I?

“You go first,” they said, since I was the new kid in town.

And I was all like, “Yeah, sure, cool, awesome,” without actually clarifying the rules of the game. I just wanted to fit in with the idiots, okay? In hindsight I did a pretty good job.

So I go first, with no idea what the hell Chicken is, and I improvise. I head out into the road, head bobbing, arms flapping, feet scratching at the ground. Yes — I pretended to be a chicken.

And the guys all start laughing which makes me think I’m playing the game right, so I go all in and start clucking and squawking and pecking at imaginary worms. They’re all clutching their sides, cackling away, and I’m so proud of myself for being so fucking awesome at Chicken that I don’t see the car coming.

Next thing I know, I’m in Hell. Turns out that the woman driving the car got a bit of whiplash when she hit me, and apparently that’s grounds to send me to Hell. You’d have thought my being dead would be dues enough, right?

So there I am, in Hell, fucking fuming at this ridiculous turn of events, when I learn that it’s about to get so much worse.

See, when you get to hell, you’re assigned an eternal punishment that fits your Earthly wrongdoings. If, for example, you had a penchant for farting in enclosed public spaces during your life on Earth, your eternity in Hell would be spent in a small room surrounded by demons with endlessly gassy bowels I know this because I’ve met the poor bastard in this exact scenario. Gross. Kinda funny, I have to admit, but gross.

The punishment deemed appropriate for my wrongdoing? I was turned into a chicken. An actual chicken. Feathers and beak and scaly feet and all. And that’s how I got my wings.

It’s not all bad. A little humiliating, I guess. The demons find it hilarious; they’re forever making jokes about rotisserie chicken… at least I think they’re jokes. But I can’t complain — it’s way better than whiling away eternity in a fart room. Trust me, you never get that smell out of your clothes. And on the plus side I get to eat fresh eggs every day.

Don’t pull that face at me! Food is scarce in Hell. And they’re my eggs, from my own feathery butt. If anyone deserves to enjoy them it ought to be me — squeezing them out isn’t fun, you know. I don’t understand why everyone makes such a fuss about it. It’s only like eating your own bogies and everyone does that. Right?

Anyway. That’s my story. Don’t feel bad for me, just learn from my mistakes. If you’re gonna play in traffic, clarify the rules of the game first. Otherwise it could go terribly wrong.
Major Setback
By: Valerie Dela Cruz
Tags: Poverty, Education, Pandemic

There’s always a proportion of adults who have been pulled away from an opportunity of an education. This pandemic would likely increase it.

Photo by Edmund Lou on Unsplash

In poor countries, the barrier to leaving a poverty-stricken life is already high. The pandemic combined with poor governance will drive this barrier even higher.

During the initial wave of global lockdowns, I could not help but think of the poor that I wrote my thoughts here. The children who beg in the streets of Manila, the capital of the Philippines, were already aplenty before this pandemic. Now, school closures and job losses would have pushed many families to tap their children and their idle time as an easy source of labour. The working conditions they would be subjected to would barely be protected.

If families can barely eat three meals a day, these children will be pulled into working longer than the lockdown. The longer they are out of school, the more unlikely they are to return to school.

Years from now, we will hear of grown children whose life path was completely altered by lockdowns and school temporary closures. I’m referring to those who don’t return to school. They would have more challenges getting jobs, higher likelihood of producing more children than they could support, have poorer health choices, higher levels of desperation which could lead to crime, and so on.

If people recourse to policy to lower the barriers to escaping poverty, including having an education, maybe we can minimise this impact. Unfortunately in poor countries like the Philippines, many policy-makers are not voted based on policy-setting capabilities.

We probably do not see how big a setback this pandemic is and will continue to be.
Already Faded
By: Jessica Lovejoy
Tags: Heartbreak, Poetry, Love Poems, Love, Relationships

artificial love

even from

the beginning

from the first day

and never before,

for before you

does not exist.

and even though

I know the truth

I must say

without hesitation,

losing you

has become

my greatest fear.

what will I

be left with

when this

is all over

for

I love you

even when

I don’t want to.

how will I

remember you by

when yesterday

has already faded

into grey skies

and lavender lies.

my artificial love

you will always be

the deadliest concoction

I’ve ever sipped

from —

drinking slowly

enjoying the hurt

as it tears me apart.

© Jessica Lovejoy 2019. All Rights Reserved.

Author’s note: I was scouring the old notebook for little pieces of poetry, and sometimes, with the right sad music, I can take myself back to the days of before and remember the unhappiness of longing for something that was never really mine, but wanting it so bad nevertheless.

It’s bittersweet that heartbreak, while such a deadly and numbing thing to know, can produce so many beautiful lines of poetry.
The Disruptor CMO Playbook
By: James Chadwick
Tags: Business, Marketing, CMO, Leadership, Startup

The Disruptor CMO Playbook

19 strategies CMOs can use to take charge, adapt faster, and optimize the metrics that matter

Red Bull are the champions of ‘storydoing,’ one of 19 top CMO strategies.

August 2020 update — Also check out a new essay How to Create Facebook Ads with AI in 8 steps

The typical CMO tenure is half that of the CEO — 3.6 years compared to 7.2 years. One of the reasons we’ve seen Chief Marketers struggle for decades is that they don’t get a full mandate to disrupt. Without it, they adapt too slowly and they can’t shift the metrics that matter.

Armed with more customer data and tools than ever before, it’s time for the new generation of Chief Marketers to step up and show how marketing can drive both immediate results and long-term, sustainable growth. But how?

Based on my own experience at Facebook, Intel, WPP, and several startups, as well as over 50 conversations I’ve had with industry experts and some of the world’s best marketers, here are the plays that Disruptor CMOs are making to build high-performance teams and get long-term results.
Central Sahel: How peace can sprout from rehabilitated soil
By: George E. Fominyen
Tags: Conflict, Burkina Faso, Hunger, Sahel, Niger

On a hot October afternoon in Ouallam district, in Niger’s western Tillabery region, the air is still as the sun’s rays hit the hard, crusty, red earth. Contrasting with this almost lunar surface is a field of green.

“This site’s changed everything for us,” says Biba, a woman in her fifties, pointing to where a few men and women are using sickles to harvest grass. With a laugh, she adds: “It’s helped us to work together and it keeps the peace.”

Biba and other residents of the three villages in this commune started working on this community-resilience project after identifying the rehabilitation of barren land as their most pressing need — it would enable them to grow the hay they need to be able to keep livestock.

Here in the Sahel — the vast strip of Africa that runs south of the Sahara Desert between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea — 80 percent of the land is degraded. The region is one of the world’s most hit when it comes to climate change.

Severe fluctuations in weather reduce access to key resources and disrupt the delicate balance between farmers and herders who share water and grazing lands. Participants in the Ouallam project took to an enhanced form of an ancient water-harvesting technique to rehabilitate the land. They dug half-moons — crescent-shaped pits that retain rainwater and improve the soil.
Digitalising traditional property sales
By: Ville Yli-Knuutila
Tags: Information Technology, Finland, Case Study, Blockchain, Technology

How we helped Tomorrow Tech with the DIAS project

Because knowledge is power, the DIAS team started by researching the sales procedures and the legislative changes of property law. The team wanted to make sure that the technological solution they were building would cover every aspect of property transactions, and would be safe and easy to use.

Once the team had done that, two of our full-stack developers, Herkko and Tommi, quickly joined the Tomorrow Tech team in building the smart contract process, using Corda blockchain framework, Clojure and Kotlin. Focusing on the backend, we started in the project in the spring of 2018 and the first POC version test sales were done by the end of that year.

Resolving the challenges of a project in flux

Tomorrow Tech’s vision was to create user-friendly, reliable technology that all the parties involved in apartment selling process could quickly start using.

The team experimented with new technologies and concepts, finding that many elements of the solution needed to be changed and re-planned before working solution was found. There were plenty of daily challenges too, and we even witnessed the whole service move from one cloud platform to another in just 24 hours.

Talk about a fast day at the office, but that’s what happens when you get excited about a new project.

An overall improvement of the effectiveness of apartment sales

The first transaction using DIAS happened in 2018, and the current plan is to launch the platform during the summer of 2019.

Needless to say, we’re proud of the positive results and love the new platform has received. With our help apartment sales will be faster, more secure and convenient. Banks will be freed of the tedious manual labour attributed to paper certificates, and all deals are cryptographically certified in the future. Both the buyer and seller can relax, safe in the knowledge that all documentation is recorded.

At present, transactions almost always require the old in-person meetings between stakeholders and buyers, but this will gradually go out of style, making buying property in Finland an easy and secure experience for everyone involved.

“Kodan developers helped us to create real value out of something that was new for us all.” - Sami Honkonen, CEO at Tomorrow Tech

—

For more information about the case, contact our CEO Marko Loukkola: marko.loukkola@kodan.fi or +358 (0)44 552 5952.

For more Kodan: www | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

—
You can provide value to your readers by asking yourself just one question: what do I seek as a…
By: Zach Klebaner
Tags: Writing, Everything Short Form, Reading, Creativity, Writing Tips

You can provide value to your readers by asking yourself just one question: what do I seek as a reader?

When I have asked myself this question over the years, I have come upon many answers. My reading goals are as diverse as humanity. I read to learn and be entertained. I read to be surprised and delighted. I read to make money and gain inspiration. I read to become a better person.

By knowing what you want, you gain a better understanding of what others want. Those other people are just like you and they are your potential readers. They seek value by learning, laughing, and loving. They want their lives improved and their minds unlocked. If you can do this for them time and time again, then you are in business as a writer.

If you can’t — well, then, you can always practice. :)
Mom never liked her only child.
By: Prickly Pam
Tags: Mental Health, Candour Prompt, Parenting, Self, Life

My mother had Major Depressive Disorder. She always wanted a pill to make her feel better. Once she felt better, she never wanted to talk about her negativity. She never wanted to see a therapist.

She suffered through several episodes of severe depression that put her in the hospital.

As I entered my teenage years she was a bitter, angry woman. If I made her mad she would yell at me then bitch to my father about me. He begged me not to make her mad so she wouldn’t take it out on him. So my number one priority in life was to not do anything to make her mad. You see, both my parents’ happiness depended on it.

I desperately wanted to do something she would approve of. But everything I tried backfired.

When she said I wore too many drab clothes, I got myself some colorful dresses. The first time I wore one of them she said, “Why did you get that? It’s so gaudy!”

When she said my hair was “too long and stringy,” I got a cute short haircut. When I got home she said, “Oh my God, why did you do that to your hair?”

When I came home with a report card with six As and one B, a report card that was stamped “HONOR ROLL” with red ink, she yelled at me for getting a B.

When I was in my 20s, she told me she wished I would move somewhere far away so she would have somewhere to visit, as her sister did. I disappointed her by marrying a local man and staying in town.

When I was pregnant, she told me that her first thought when she found out she was pregnant was, “Oh, no! Now I’ll have to quit working!” Oh. How comforting.

She often told me I should play basketball as she had, but I was just not athletic. When I finally took up a sport (hockey), she disapproved vigorously because hockey was “not a girls’ sport.”

We bought a four-bedroom, two-bath home on 22 wooded acres. I thought she would be proud that we had such a great place; she had grown up in a remote area herself. No; she complained that it was too far out in the country on a dusty, dirt road. On the rare occasions when she would visit, she sat there looking like she was going to get cooties from my house.
Hacker Spends Entire Day Hacking Pigeoncoin
By: List Of Ico
Tags: Bugs, Crypto, Cryptocurrency, Hacking, Bitcoin

Hacker Spends Entire Day Hacking Pigeoncoin

A hacker recently spent an entire day trying to exploit a vulnerability of the Pigeoncoin cryptocurrency to steal 235 million PGN tokens. However, these tokens were worth only $15,000.

On September 27th, the users from the BitcoinTalk forums noticed suspicious blockchain activity. It was then later traced back to a user by the name of “mrsandman1”.

The actual vulnerability was a bug in the Bitcoin code which was found and patched eight days back. The bug, known as CVE-2018–17144 is one of the more severe bugs on the Bitcoin network.

If the bug had been exploited, it could allow hackers the ability to crash Bitcoin network nodes and create a 51 percent attack to carry out a double-spend attack.

As reported by ZDNet, the bug was fixed by the Bitcoin team. However, it would take some time for other cryptocurrencies who are based on the Bitcoin code to patch this bug as well.

Emin Gün Sirer said “Copycat currencies are at risk. By definition, there’s always a group upstream that knows their vulnerabilities”. Emin a renowned cryptographer and a cryptocurrency expert. He is also a professor at Cornell University.

This is what happened to Pigeon coin. The developers were unable to patch the bug and it was still vulnerable when the hacker tried gaining access. By the time the bug was eventually patched, the hacker was able to access 235 million PGN tokens. This is about 25 percent of the total PGN coins on the market (923 million).

The reason that the hack was able to steal such a low amount of money was that Pigeoncoin is among the least traded cryptocurrencies on the crypto market. In fact, one PGN coin is equal to $0.000066. The market cap of this currency is $60,000.

The hacker did not pay attention to these factors and hence they put in a whole day to extract a sum of $15,000 in the process.

Notably, all the major cryptocurrencies that are based on the Bitcoin code, such as Litecoin have already patched the bug.

This article was first published on ZDNet.

To know more visit: https://listofico.com/
Anatomy of an HTTP Request
By: Patrick Divine
Tags: Http Request, Servers, Http, Programming, Protocol

HTTP Overview

HTTP is one of the many protocols (strategies of communication) used to transfer data from one machine to another across the internet. It is the protocol that browsers primarily use to communicate with websites.

For instance, when you go to www.wikipedia.org, an HTTP request is created and transmitted to Wikipedia’s servers, which in turn render and transmit an HTTP response back to the browser.

The HTTP protocol is a “text-based protocol”, which means that this strategy uses human-readable characters as its means of communication.

So, as an example, a request to search for “test” on the bing.com website by going to https://www.bing.com/search?q=test looks like this:

GET /search?q=test HTTP/2

Host: www.bing.com

User-Agent: curl/7.54.0

Accept: */*

Pretty cool, right? Let’s break this request down.
Hayalinizi Çizin
By: Hüseyin Mert
Tags: Uml Tool, Uml Diagrams, Mikro Business, Girişimcilik, Uml

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Deployment-time Adaptation of RL agents without any reward
By: Chintan Trivedi
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Reinforcement Learning, Computer Vision, Game Futurology

Deployment-time Adaptation of RL agents without any reward

Overview of the paper “Self-Supervised Policy Adaptation during Deployment” by N Hansen et al.

One big limitation of image-based reinforcement learning agents is that their performance drops a lot if significant visual changes are made to the input from training time to deployment time, even if the core task remains the same. This is not something us humans struggle with so much. For example, if you learn very well how to play one particular game, you can very easily play another game of the same genre even if you are playing it for the first time.

So today, I want to share a paper that tries to tackle this problem and introduce adaptability to RL agents so they too can play multiple games with different graphics just like humans. It is titled “Self-Supervised Policy Adaptation during Deployment” and it introduces a method to adapt our RL agent to deployment environments that happen to be different from our training environment. This promises to make it much easier to train RL game agents on a specific environment and then port them over to different games that belong to the same genre.

Let’s take a look at how this method adds deployment-time adaptation where there are no reward signals available to fine-tune the RL agent’s learned policy.
Don’t Use Wait in Your Cypress Tests
By: Dirk Hoekstra
Tags: JavaScript, Programming, Tdd, Front End Development, Testing

Don’t Use Wait in Your Cypress Tests

Fixing Cypress flakiness

Photo by Dhaval Parmar on Unsplash

I recently had a Cypress test that was very flaky. Sometimes it would pass and sometimes it would fail.

One day, after three failed deployment pipelines thanks to this test, I decided to improve it once and for all.

The Cypress error I was getting didn’t tell me a lot. The #results DOM element wasn’t found, but this could have been due to many things.

Cypress error message

When I opened the test, it looked something like this:

Disclaimer: this is a simplified example

Can you spot the problem?

Spoiler — the issue is on line four: cy.wait(1000) .

The search bar performs an API call to the server. However, in our CI environment, this API call was very slow. This would result in Cypress searching for the “Hand Sanitizer Pro” product while the API was still loading.
What Scares Me Most Is How Seriously My Students Take Lockdown Drills
By: Emily Kingsley
Tags: Teaching, Culture, Education, Schools, Guns

What Scares Me Most Is How Seriously My Students Take Lockdown Drills

Terrorism and gun violence are as much a part of their reality as Snapchat and Insta

Credit: Jonas Jacobsson/Unsplash

In the fall of 2010, I was in my first year of teaching middle school science, and I hated lockdown drills.

I was eager and young, and I resented the six-minute interruption in my classes. Whenever the principal’s voice came over the intercom announcing that we were going into lockdown, I had to herd my 26 excitable students into the corner of the room, close the curtains, and lock the door.

As a new teacher, my classroom management skills were terrible. Maintaining order in my classes, while also teaching, was difficult enough. During the lockdown, I had to convince my students to remain still as they huddled together in the dark.

I pleaded with them to be quiet, bribing them with promises of gum or a Friday movie. As with many drills in those early years of my career, someone would fart or get the giggles or moo like a cow and the class would erupt in hushed laughter.

Finally, the principal announced that we were all clear, and I had to salvage the remaining few minutes of my class time, rushing through notes or activities so that my instructional time didn’t take a hit.

At the next staff meeting, teachers received updates about the drill, as well as reminders to keep our classes quiet. We were asked to follow protocol by slipping a green or red card out under the door to indicate whether or not everything was OK.
New Starbucks partnership with Microsoft allows customers to pay for Frappuccinos with bitcoin
By: Statecraft Tech
Tags: Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Starbucks, Bitcoin, News

Photo by KTrade

【Publish by Sarah Whitten | Kate Rooney】

Starbucks is jumping on the cryptocurrency bandwagon.

The Seattle-based coffee giant is working with Microsoft and a leading global exchange on a new digital platform that will allow consumers to use bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies at Starbucks.

Starbucks along with Intercontinental Exchange, Microsoft and BCG, among others, is working to launch a new company called Bakkt that will enable consumers and institutions to buy, sell, store and spend cryptocurrencies on the global network by November. The platform with convert bitcoin and other cryptocoins into U.S. dollars that can be used to buy a Cold Foam Cascara Cold Brew, Matcha Lemonade or anything else at Starbucks.

“As the flagship retailer, Starbucks will play a pivotal role in developing practical, trusted and regulated applications for consumers to convert their digital assets into US dollars for use at Starbucks,” Maria Smith, vice president of partnerships and payments for Starbucks, said in a statement. “As a leader in Mobile Pay to our more than 15 million Starbucks Rewards members, Starbucks is committed to innovation for expanding payment options for our customers.”

Cryptocurrency skeptics have challenged its use for payments because of its volatility. Bitcoin for example, has dropped by roughly 50 percent this year, and its value often changes by hundreds of dollars in a single day.

But with Starbucks taking cryptocurrency seriously, it could help bitcoin break through as a mainstream currency. It could also be bullish for prices, which have struggled to find footing since the end of 2017.

“It’s very big news for bitcoin because people say, ‘Where can you spend it?’ Now at every single Starbucks,” said Brian Kelly, founder and CEO of BKCM. “Starbucks is seeing some kind of demand for acceptance of crypto and bitcoin, and to tie up with a huge regulated institution like the ICE is really positive for the space.”

Starbucks would not be the first retailer to accept digital assets. Overstock.com was the first to accept bitcoin in 2014. Expedia, Shopify and CheapAir have also said they accept cryptocurrency as a form of payment.
Breath! You are already calm and happy
By: Krishna Jena
Tags: Mindfulness, Philosophy, Kpjena, Self Improvement, Meditation

Every present moment is the happiest moment. It is only to be realized. Happiness is already knocking at the door, we just have to open the door and windows of our heart to let it enter. It is already within us; it is waiting at our door, but how to connect with it, how to experience it, and finally how to let it enter our lives.

The simplest and easiest way to feel the happiness within us, and make our-self instantly calm and happy is through conscious breathing. I do not call it meditation because it can be practiced anywhere and anytime, no matter whatever you are doing. It is simply breathing, nothing else but mindful breathing.It makes us aware of the present; it makes all worries go out of our mind and calms us, relaxes us. There is no past, no future but only present awareness. It is a channel, a bridge to connect ourselves to our own inner peace and true nature.

The simplest method of conscious breathing, explained by Thich Nhat Hanh in “Peace is every step” is:

As you breathe in, you say to yourself, “Breathing in, I know that I am breathing in.” And as you breathe out, say, “Breathing out, I know that I am

breathing out.” (Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is every step)

There is no need to say the entire sentence. Only “In” and “out” will do while you breathe in and out. Be completely aware of the process of breathing, feel the movement of your belly — peaceful rising and falling — while you do it. Think nothing else; just enjoy the calming effect of your inhalation and exhalation. But it is impossible not to think. Therefore, think while breathing in that “I am taking in happiness”, and while exhaling think that I am releasing all thoughts of past and future. Simply be aware of your breathing — the calming effect of taking in and giving out happiness.

“Besides the simple “In-Out” exercise, we can recite these four lines silently as we breathe in and out:

Breathing in, I calm my body.

Breathing out, I smile.

Dwelling in the present moment,

I know this is a wonderful moment!” ( by Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is every step)

Do this simple exercise now. Enjoy your existence; enjoy your present.

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Binance Flash Update
Tags: Binance, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, News

Online activities

ZEN Competition — 10,000 ZEN to Give Away!

https://support.binance.com/hc/en-us/articles/360004205332

Binance Academy

Are you just as passionate about helping the progress of cryptocurrency and blockchain as we are? If so, join the Binance Education Initiative.

Binance strongly believes in the importance of free access to education.

With our upcoming educational platform, Binance plans to bring accurate, neutral, and entirely free information to the world.

To start things off, we’re putting out an open call to our users to participate. Create and submit your own educational video from the topics listed below and your video may be displayed on www.binance.com!
Clean Coffee #5
By: Chris Adams
Tags: Community, Sustainability, Climate Change

These are the notes from Clean Coffee #5 — the first one with organisers on two different continents! They may be a bit messy, and are mainly used as a stream-of-consciousness like set of notes to refer back to later for attendees, but they may be useful for you too.

Topics we talked about

There are so many (tech/digital) projects and groups of volunteer behind them trying to create useful tools to fight climate change. The result is that there are a lot of tools, most not working great and just add noise. Great passion doesn’t bring great products without funds. How to change that? — Andrea 🙋🏽🙋🏽🙋🏽🙋🏽

🙋🏽🙋🏽🙋🏽🙋🏽 How can I gauge the impact/usefulness of a “project”? I have little bandwidth I’d like to allocate it to something that actually matters — Avishay 🙋🏽🙋🏽🙋🏽

🙋🏽🙋🏽🙋🏽 The climate-active people I’m working with do not come from Tech. We have mismatched expectations (ex: Minimum-Viable-Product-and-iterate versus Why-Don’t-You-Just-Finish-a-Polished-App-Immediately). Fortunately this is by no means the first time Tech and non-Tech have interfaced. Suggestions on how to handle? — Denton 🙋🏽🙋🏽

🙋🏽🙋🏽 Is buying carbon credits actually a net positive, or does it just provide a feel-good escape valve while diverting resources to far-off goals? Are there better directions to encourage people to focus their $ first? — Alex 🙋🏽

Topics we didn’t have time to talk about

When discussing decisions about how you work in your team in terms of sustainability, what are your options? Can you bring it up in a retro? O you need sample policy? Is it a thing only mgmt can bring in? — Chris 🙋🏽🙋🏽

🙋🏽🙋🏽 How do you know what do ask when switching jobs to see how their actions match the severity of the climate crisis? Chris

Notes & links from the topics we discussed

Topic 1: There are so many (tech/digital) projects and groups of volunteer behind them trying to create useful tools to fight climate change. The result is that there are a lot of tools, most not working great and just add noise. Great passion doesn’t bring great products without funds. How to change that?

This ended up being a discussion about funding in the end — in many cases the projects mentioned that are started by people don’t progress very far because they run out of money. In that case, it’s similar to the rate at which small businesses fail, so it’s not surprising that few succeed.

If you are looking for funding options, they do exist.

Crowdfunding, and direct funding

There’s an exhaustive review of the options here in Snowdrift’s wiki.

Elsewhere Patreon and Opencollective are in use in other communities. Libreapay is another, very interesting, entirely open source, recurrent donations platform

Finding funding from grant making bodies

In the UK, groups like BeeHive Giving make it easier to find funds and apply based on what field you work in.

Increasingly, a number of organisations run flash grants, or adhoc versions. Examples would be Mozilla’s MOSS (Mozilla Open Source upport) grants or the Shuttleworth foundation Flash Grants.
How to To Lose Weight Fast While You’re Busy
By: Khadejah Jones
Tags: Fitness, Productivity, Self, Weight Loss, Diet

How to To Lose Weight Fast While You’re Busy

From someone with horrible eating habits.

Photo by Alonso Reyes on Unsplash

I’m twenty years old and almost two hundred pounds.

Every time I go to the doctor, I dread the weight conversation. He always tells me that I need to eat healthier and start working out more. Even if it’s walking thirty minutes a day.

“I get it, I get it.”

That’s what I’d say whenever he told me I gained eleven pounds out of frustration.

I’ve tried losing weight for years but I always failed. I’d work out all the time, but when it came to my diet, no dice.

Now that I’ve made a couple of tweaks to my diet, I’m on my way to losing fifty pounds. Here’s how I did it.
The Greatest Youtube Channels to Learn Coding
By: Iouri Sorokine
Tags: Influencers, JavaScript, Programming, Learning, Coding

The Coding Train

The Coding Train

Now comes the “Crème de la Crème”, the one channel that, in my humble personal opinion — rules them all — as it made me start learning to code on the first place: The Coding Train.

Daniel Shiffman, besides being a university teacher, creates tons of great content, mainly consisting in tutorials and weekly coding challenges (there are more than 150 at the present day). These mainly use Processing and p5.js libraries that allow to transform 20 to 60 minutes of intense coding in a nice graphical result: building a Snake game, visualising data, or creating a Chrome extension. To mention: all that is explained with a fair amount of unicorns, rainbows, and fun.

On the tutorial’s side, I highly recommend p5.js basics and The Nature of Code based on the host’s interactive book. It is important to keep in mind that Processing, p5 and all the extra libraries that are extensively used there are very specific and, once again, it is important to know the basics: vanilla JavaScript.

Maximilian Schwarzmüller from Academind

Are there more?

Yes! You might also want to check:

The App Builders Guide, that contains videos from many developers.

Stefan Mischook, who has a more “philosophical” content about tech and coding.

Fun Fun Function: entertaining, personal, mix between tutorials and general discussions.

Academind: two hosts, in-depths courses and a wide choice of topics, including working with databases and React Native, Youtube hosts some of them but the full content is available on Udemy.

Cold Steele: smaller, tutorial and exercises focused channel, that is worth a close look.

Dylan Israel: some own courses but also online courses reviews and help to get them done. Career tips are there as well.

(special thanks to André de Albuquerque for recommending the latter channels).

I hope that you enjoyed the read and that some of these resources will be helpful, if so, please feel free to 👏👏👏

And get ready for some hours of binge-watching!
Zen 231
By: Susan Brearley
Tags: Travel, Haiku, Inspiration, Poetry, Photography

Susan Brearley is a brilliant strategist and entrepreneur, a published book author, writer, seasoned editor, essayist, occasional comedy writer, and an accidental poet. She’s the happy owner of between 1 and 20 top writer badges on Medium, on any given day.

She is Chef, Elder and Program Director at Elf Works Lane Retreat Center, where she coaches and mentors people, helping them identify and create the life they were born to live, on the planet we all want to live on.

She is currently based in the mid-Hudson Valley, New York.

Stay in touch. Become a part of her Mighty Network. We bring together amazing womxn who inspire each other, so we may each lead the way into living the lives we were all born for.
Leaving Australia: Why moving away from the Netherlands is the reason I’m coming back
By: Annet Kloprogge
Tags: Travel, Mental Health, Expat, Australia, Adventure

It’s 2012 and I’m about to graduate from my degree in Media Design in a tiny town called Boxtel. My only thought; building a career in the United States.

I already knew how I was going to achieve it, I applied for the Digital Media course at Hyper Island in Stockholm and from there on I would conquer the United States through an internship in San Francisco.

During my first year, everything already went according to plan.

But of course I flew home around 5 times during those 18 months, to still be able to attend to Carnaval, visit festivals in Summer and spend Christmas with my family.

Still determined with my international plans, the internship period of my studies was getting closer. I send tons of emails to the best agencies in Portland, San Francisco and Los Angeles. In the end it got down to 3 internship choices in L.A., Shanghai & Sydney and I felt on top of the world!

Finally, I made a choice. Feeling tired and stressed from the intense experience that is called Hyper Island, I decided to join 4 classmates on a challenge at M&C Saatchi in Sydney. Suddenly I had two weeks to pack up the life that I had built up in Stockholm (including the 60+ kilo’s of clothes) and gave my friends and family back home a big fat hug while I was packing up to move my life ‘down under’.

But, Australia is a bit further away than Sweden and there’s a time difference of 10 hours. This means, in order to have Christmas dinner with your parents you have to get up at 6:00 in the morning, it means you have to wish your friends a Happy New Year when you’re sitting on the couch with a hangover & it means that you have to sing Carnaval songs at breakfast through FaceTime, while your friends are still drunk.

So, here I’m sitting, still in Sydney and just got offered a job at the company that made me move here. A dream come true. But, here’s the catch:

There is no way in the world that I’m going to stay.

There is only one thing I want to do right now, and that is moving back to the Netherlands and live my whole life there.

Why? Because in the 2 years I was away, I discovered so many things about my culture and the people that live in the Netherlands that I was never able to see before I left. For example; I love the way we say things as they are, how we go all out on a National day like Kingsday and how we put chocolate sprinkles on our breakfast sandwich. And there is so much more.

On June 15th, I’ll be arriving back to the country that I was born in, and I have never been so excited in my life. What’s that saying again? Oh yes..

“You never know what you’ve got until it’s gone.”