fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
The rundown on the shutdown
By: Adriana Navarro
Tags: Politics, Congress, Border Wall, Trump, Shutdown

The recent U.S. government shutdown has been one of the longest and possibly the most expensive in American history.

What happened?

From Dec. 22, 2018, to Jan. 25, 2019, the government underwent a partial shutdown as Congress stalled over a federal spending deal that included funding for a border wall.

On Dec. 19, the Senate passed a short-term funding bill, a continuing resolution (CR), in hopes of stalling a shutdown until February. It had no funding for a border wall, but Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn said President Donald Trump would sign it.

The next day, however, House Speaker Paul Ryan said Trump refused to sign the bill “because of his legitimate concerns for border security.” House Republicans were able to pass a spending bill that included $5.7 billion for a border wall.

But the bill failed to gain traction with Senate Democrats and was voted down on Dec. 21.

Federal funding ran out and with no agreement on a budget for the fiscal year by the midnight deadline, the government shut down.

On Jan. 25, Trump signed a short-term spending bill into law that didn’t include funding for a border wall, ending the shutdown. The bill will buy Congress time to agree on a budget by Feb. 15.

How much did it cost the economy?

The estimated cost of the shutdown ranges from $6 billion from the S&P Global Ratings to $11 billion from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

On Jan. 25, S&P Global Ratings estimated the shutdown would cost $6 billion, about $3.4 billion more than the government shutdown in 2013 under President Obama and $3 million more than the amount President Trump requested for the southern border wall.

Earlier in the month, Moody’s Analytics estimated the shutdown could cost about $8.7 billion if it lasted until the end of January.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said the 35-day partial shutdown has cost the economy $11 billion, $3 billion of which was permanently lost. The CBO estimates that the economy will recover the other $8 billion as federal workers receive and spend their long-awaited paychecks.

How long is long?

Since 1976, there have been at least 21 government shutdowns due to gaps in funding.

The shutdown shattered the previous record of 21 consecutive days set under former President Bill Clinton.

Former President Jimmy Carter had set the highest record for the total number of days in a shutdown at 56. Although President Trump did not reached that number, he currently sits at second place with 39 days.
Telegram AMA — 1st April 2019 (Responses)
By: Morpheus Labs Team
Tags: Ama, Telegram, Blockchain, Bpaas, Community

Here’s what we have:

1. Can you explain how your Tokenomics will increase the token demand and eventually create scarcity for the ecosystem?

2. You said ALL of the different revenue streams like subscription fees for example, will be eventually paid in MITx. But it is just natural that you also need a share of the revenue to finance your business? Can you explain, what eventually will happen with MITx that are paid as subscription fees, and how they are locked? How will they come back in circulation?

3. Can you tell us something about the adoption of MITx? Like where you would love to see the usage of MITx?

Response: For Question 1–3; We’ve managed to launch the Tokenomics hours after our inaugural Telegram AMA was conducted. The answers related to the increase in token demand, token velocity and locks can be found in the release of the MITx Token Economics Article (Check out the link here.)
Struggling with Apple Keynote
By: Jan Schultink
Tags: Apple, Presentations, PowerPoint, Design, Apple Keynote

Struggling with Apple Keynote

I am currently doing a bespoke presentation design project for a client in Apple Keynote rather than my usual PowerPoint. Overall, Keynote is a great piece of software, but as a power user I seem to be hitting its limitations. Not in terms of features, but in terms of workflow.

In PowerPoint, I have developed a pretty rapid process to turn scribbled chart concepts in decent looking slides. (Confirmed by the occasional client who can look over my shoulder while I do some last minute edits close to a deadline). It is the simple things that you need quick access to: changing colors, resizing objects, aligning things.

In Keynote I am “tearing my hear out” to do a few things. I know this blog is read by many presentation design gurus, so maybe one of you can point me out what I am doing wrong.

Getting a shape color fill. I keep on clicking the rainbow circle, but it is not always clear whether it is active or not, and if it is, whether you are working on a font color, shape color, or outline color. The same with making things semitransparent: shape, text, line, or everything combined.

I can’t distort the aspect ratio of grouped items when scaling up or down. This is great for images, but not handy when you want to scale up an object composition to fit an entire slide exactly

When you select multiple items, you can’t scale up or down all of them together

You select items by “touching” them, not by including them in the entire selection box. As a result, you always hit objects such as the slide title by accident in your selection

I have not found a way to space out part of the columns or rows in a table evenly

For some reason, I cannot change the color of the left marker in a gradient. My solution is to put another marker on top of it. Again, this leads to frustrated clicking on the “fill” box.

In the full button, there is a nice arrow that activates a drop down menu with suggested colors, there is no way I can set these to some alternative color pattern.

Hopefully some of you can highlight a mistake I made, and/or Apple can fix things in a next update. Obviously, my presentation design app SlideMagic does not suffer from these issues…
The Snake
By: Mimi Bordeaux
Tags: Poetry, Experience, Madness

A serpent dwells where mind foretells falling into darkness. Thou sacred hand, oh how it pleads and knows not where this might lead. I am your night, the savage sight, windows knocking softly. She takes the hand and asks for him, a silent question that will never win.

Nothing but pain and ugliness were left

It grew and grew til there was nothing left her reflection disguised the sickness and regret Is it mad to think the mind is playing, only a blind man can see a deaf man screaming. Are we strange tonight do we frighten the light and the trees scare us in the breeze with their distrust. Take the milk from your mother’s breast, an opal took the place of lost amethyst.
Three Different Things: October 11, 2019
By: Sean O'Brien
Tags: Twitter, Retail, Digital Transformation, Amazon, Bots

Three Different Things: October 11, 2019

Twitter Analysis, Unstoppable Amazon, and AI Transformation

FTA — when bots tweet

Tim Wu, a law professor at Columbia, said, “Amazon is a microeconomist’s wet dream. If you’re a consumer, it’s perfect for maximizing the efficiency of finding what you want and getting it as cheap and fast as possible. But, the thing is, most of us aren’t just consumers. We’re also producers, or manufacturers, or employees, or we live in cities where retailers have gone out of business because they can’t compete with Amazon, and so Amazon kind of pits us against ourselves.”

Sure, Amazon is relentlessly changing retail and many other experiences… but keep in mind that retail competitor Walmart’s revenue(514B) dwarfs Amazon’s(233B). This isn’t a battle between Amazon and small businesses — it’s a battle between retail giants…. and next to Walmart, Amazon still looks like David.



3. AI Transformation Playbook

This is a sales document from Andrew Ng’s company, but a good resource if you’re introducing AI into your business.
Why Do All These Women Keep Accusing Me of Sexual Harassment?
By: Sarah Cooper
Tags: Venture Capital, Feminism, Humor, Satire

Hi. My name is Brad. You may not have heard of me before, but don’t worry, I’m rich.

As a successful venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, I’ve helped launch some of the most innovative startups in the tech industry. The creme brûlée cruster? Yeah, that was me. Listen, I’m changing lives.

Obviously I’m a smart guy, but one thing I can’t for the life of me understand is: why do all these women keep accusing me of sexual harassment?

Sure, I slept around in college, who didn’t? And yeah, I might’ve been called a “creeper” a time or two, but who hasn’t? And yeah, I use my position of power to get laid, but who wouldn’t?

I think the most important thing you should know about me is that I’m married. Marriage changed my life, mostly because it made all my friends think I’d become a new person who stopped trying to get laid all the time. Getting married was a brilliant strategy on my part. I talk about my wife all the time, she’s the first line of my Twitter bio so people know they can trust me. I talk about my family constantly so I look like a good guy who doesn’t sleep around.

So why are all these women openly accusing me of sexual harassment? I’m a businessman. I take meetings all day long, sometimes in the office, sometimes at a restaurant, sometimes at your house for a drink after dinner to talk more about this funding you need. That’s normal.

I help women. My hand on their knees under the table lets them know I’m on their side, I’m with them.

Do I want them to fuck me? Sure I do. Will it affect whether or not I fund their company? Yes, it will. Does that mean I don’t respect them? No! Well yes. But it’s not personal, it’s business.

All these women want to be treated differently. They want to be put in some special category because they’re “female founders”. And I do put them in a special category, I call it my spank bank. Ha! That’s a joke. Lighten up.

This one chick said she didn’t appreciate my advances. But she appreciated that advance check I gave her, didn’t she?

As far as I can tell, these women are harassing me. Would they be trying to get to know me if I didn’t have money? How shallow is that? Why do they show up to meetings wearing pants and blouses and earrings if they weren’t interested in a little something extra? Haven’t they ever heard of the cost of doing business? Yeah it’s called the CDB, look it up. I went to business school.

Okay, maybe I cross the line sometimes. But why belabor it? Move on. Who cares? It’s no big deal. It’s all in your head. It doesn’t matter. What matters is your company, which needs to get off the ground and me, who needs to get off.

It’s not sexual harassment, it’s quid pro quo — another business term you should get familiar with.

So stop accusing me of sexual harassment because honestly, I have no idea what you’re talking about.
How To Get Angular and Nginx Working Together Properly for Development
By: Andreas Frömer
Tags: JavaScript, Angular, Nginx, Programming, Development Tools

The Better Way

There’s a better way to get your browser to reload on its own after you make changes: ng serve will run a local server (default http:/localhost:4200 ) and serve the Angular compiled source directly to your browser.

The Nginx config is similar to the one above; however, you have to make an adjustment. You need to use proxy_pass to actual call the internal running node server on localhost:4200 .

server {

listen 80;



server_name your-app;



location / {

proxy_pass http://localhost:4200;

proxy_set_header Host $host;

}

}

Make sure to run your ng serve with the --public-host http://your.app parameter or the application will refuse to launch.

After restarting the nginx open the browser on your host machine and your app should be visible.

The WebSocket Problem

After opening the console you may see an error like:

WebSocket connection to ‘ws://your-app/sockjs-node/884/1u4qfrnl/websocket’ failed: Error during WebSocket handshake: Unexpected response code: 400

This happens because WebSockets uses two HTTP headers, the Connection and Upgrade header. After configuring the nginx to use a proxy_pass you need to pass additional headers.

server {

listen 80;



server_name your.app;



location / {

proxy_pass http://localhost:4200;

proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;

proxy_set_header Connection $http_connection;

proxy_set_header Host $host;

}

}

After this, your console should be clean of errors and the browser should automatically reload after changes are made to the source code.
How to merge two PowerPoint PPTX files together in Python
Tags: Merge, PowerPoint, Pptx, Python

Today’s solution makes use of an API, so let’s install its client now:

pip install cloudmersive-convert-api-client

Our function call for merge_document_pptx will need to include an API instantiation using a key. This is shown in the following example:

from __future__ import print_function import time import cloudmersive_convert_api_client from cloudmersive_convert_api_client.rest import ApiException from pprint import pprint # Configure API key authorization: Apikey configuration = cloudmersive_convert_api_client.Configuration() configuration.api_key['Apikey'] = 'YOUR_API_KEY' # Uncomment below to setup prefix (e.g. Bearer) for API key, if needed # configuration.api_key_prefix['Apikey'] = 'Bearer' # create an instance of the API class api_instance = cloudmersive_convert_api_client.MergeDocumentApi(cloudmersive_convert_api_client.ApiClient(configuration)) input_file1 = '/path/to/file' # file | First input file to perform the operation on. input_file2 = '/path/to/file' # file | Second input file to perform the operation on (more than 2 can be supplied). try: # Merge Two PowerPoint PPTX Together api_response = api_instance.merge_document_pptx(input_file1, input_file2) pprint(api_response) except ApiException as e: print("Exception when calling MergeDocumentApi->merge_document_pptx: %s

" % e)

Notice that you may use two or more PPTX files, which will be placed in order in the merged file. This allows you to repeatedly call merge_document_pptx using the previous call’s output, thus accommodating as many files as desired. Within this library, there exists a wide variety of other functions, allowing merging of other file formats, but also format conversion, document editing, and much more.
Don’t Fix Me
By: Afiyah The Poet
Tags: Poetry, Healing, Life, 365 Days Of Poetry, A Cornered Gurl

Don’t Fix Me

A poem about holding space for difficult feelings

Photo by Anastasia Vityukova on Unsplash

Don’t try

to fix my feelings

Don’t try

to make me feel better

Your well-intentioned words

feel like salt

instead of a balm

They stifle my healing

rather than facilitate

Allow me the pain

the sorrow

the agony

even the anger

I can’t move

till I first feel and heal

Hold your fixings

Hold your advice

I just want to be

heard and understood

Slow down with me

and stay with me

I won’t be here

for too long

Just hold this cup

so that I can

empty out

and begin to heal.
Cum să vii cu o idee de afacere profitabilă: ghidul final
By: Toma Grozăvescu
Tags: Afaceri Online, Cum Sa Rezolvi O Problema, Resurse Afaceri, Antreprenoriat, Brainstorming

Founder & Growth Hacker @SMARTERS Romania, my purpose is to show people that it can be done.

Follow
Nightingale Needs Illustrators! Plus, Some Tips for Your Next Data Visualization.
By: Isaac Levy-Rubinett
Tags: Tableau, Data Visualization, History, Data Science, Programming

Our readers know better than anyone that creating a data visualization is no small task. There’s data collection, planning, execution, tinkering, finalizing, and then of course presenting and effectively communicating about your work. Any one of those steps can take your visualization in any number of directions, which means that (a) the possibilities are vast, and (b) that process is critically important.

Nightingale has always hoped to foster a diverse and collaborative community that can trade stories and share ideas about that process, and this week we published stories that highlight some of the many ways to approach creating a data visualization.

Phil Hawkins started us off with Part 1 of his series, “So You Want to Pick a Data Viz Platform,” which focused on the pros and cons of Microsoft Excel and offers some instruction for creating visualizations in the platform. And even if you know everything there is to know about Excel, Phil’s modern retelling of The Three Musketeers that is set in an office environment will change your mind.

In his piece “Diving Into Global Information Design: Cosmology in the Large,” Paul Kahn took us on a journey back in time with an exploration of Cosmology as designed across the ancient world. His examination of monuments and narrative through an information design lens, and the beautiful images throughout the piece, can inspire how we conceive of our own design projects.

In his pursuit of something a little more unique than a traditional line graph, Joseph Berkner came across the Path Chart. His piece, “What’s the Path of Your Data,” considers its virtues and teaches you how to make your own.

Ripley Cleghorn thinks you should close the computer for your next data visualization—and we happen to agree with her. Creating your next data visualization by hand will force you to spend more time with your data and ignite your creativity, even when you open the laptop back up.

And if you’re wondering why this is so important, make sure to read Allen Hillery’s interview with Ben Jones, who worked at Tableau for six years before founding Data Literacy, LLC. Jones shared some of the most powerful user stories he’s come across in his career, and explains why “advancing data literacy can be one of the most important contributions of our generation and the next few generations to come.”

A Couple Announcements:

Nightingale is looking for illustrators to help us make our stories as beautiful as they are meaningful. If you are interested, we encourage you to get in touch and apply by filling out the form embedded in the link above.

And, as always, we are looking to add to our team of writers. If you would like to write for us, or even just want to bounce some ideas around, please let us know!
LUOF: Queering It Up
By: Grayson, Kirsten
Tags: Luof, Transgender, Queer

May 4, 2018

It’s even on time this week!

Social and Sites

Transethics always shares some of the most important and impacting articles. She recently has had to deal with a hacking incident that left her unable to help others for a bit there. If you can help with the financial impact of recovery, please check out the links below:

Reading List

Meat

One of the things I know many people are struggling with is getting people who aren’t members of the LGBTQQIA2+ community to understand how harmful the current administration is for us. Not every article below focuses on politics, but they’re all important reads right now.

Stay tuned for more information next week! Make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss a thing.
Take a Stand for Inclusion
By: Katie Brydon
Tags: Spread The Word, Respect, Inclusion

A testimony by Jacob Pasternack, a Best Buddies chapter leader at Olympic Heights Community High School in Boca Raton, Florida.

People can do a lot of things with words. Being able to accurately and appropriately express oneself is a key skill in any communication effort. Words can be used to motivate, uplift, and applaud peers. Words, however, can also be used to demean, criticize and hurt others as well. One such word that falls into the latter category is the R-Word. The R-Word is a word with one singular goal, to hurt and devalue the life of another. The R-word is truly unacceptable today as it is insensitive and ignorant. The negative connotation it carries when associated with those with intellectual and developmental disabilities alone should be enough for this word to be dropped. The pain, hurt, and negativity the R-Word spreads is unlike any other word, and it’s use truly impacts the recipient of the word. Being surrounded by people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, I see the negative impact this word has on them every time it is used. The heart-wrenching, defeated look smeared across the face of the recipient is truly horrible, and an experience that no one should have to endure.

Jacob (center) and his friends at a Best Buddies Olympic Heights chapter event.

Spread the Word is a huge campaign that invites people to celebrate all people and encourages everyone to use people first language. By making this pledge, you show that you are dedicated to promoting friendship, acceptance, and equality and dedicated to snuffing out hatred and bigotry. By making this pledge, you are committing to standing up for what is right and spreading positivity and inclusion wherever life takes you. Go to spreadtheword.global today to stand up for inclusion and friendship!
Upcoming ALAX Token Generation Event
Tags: Alaxblog, Tge, Games, Bitcoin, Blockchain

Here at ALAX, we are very busy preparing for our upcoming Token Generation Event (TGE) and the launch of our crypto-token ALX. We would like to use this time to explain, just how our TGE will work, the length, time it will last, how you can obtain ALX during our TGE, the breakdown of our token allocation, our intended use of the proceeds and the uses of ALX after our TGE.

There is a lot to cover so let’s jump right in. Our Token Generation Event is set to commence within a month and a half. The Token Generation Event (or TGE for short) itself is an opportunity during which participants and backers can show their interest in the project by taking part in it. During the TGE, ALAX will generate ALX tokens.

The TGE will allow the general public to obtain the ALX token before its release on any major exchanges and will provide the many supporters of the project with an opportunity to be directly involved. Funding generated will go directly to the development, marketing and ongoing management of the project and the overall platform, with 50% vested for one year after the initial generation.” said Kalvin Feng, Co-founder of ALAX.io.

The total number of tokens is set to 1,000,000,000 ALX (ALX is the token generated during the TGE). There is no soft cap, which means that our project will go ahead regardless of the amount raised. The hard cap of the TGE is set to 30,000 ETH which corresponds to 300,000,000 ALX. During our TGE we will accept a variety of coins and tokens for contributions — BTC, ETH, BCH, LTC, DCT, SPHTX with more set to be announced in the future.

The TGE is set to last for 6 days , commencing on Tuesday the 17th of April 2018 at 10:30AM UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) and will end on Monday the 23rd of April 2018 at 10:30AM UTC. It is made up of 2 rounds, the first round will last until the first 165,000,000 ALX are allocated with a special 10% bonus for the first 150,000,000 ALX. For The second round there are 135,000,000 ALX dedicated.

Token distribution will be done within 2 weeks after the TGE. Any unclaimed tokens which remain at the end of the TGE will be proportionally distributed to participants in line with their existing ALX stake. No tokens will be burned. Another important thing to note is that 50% of the ALX tokens that are not dedicated to the TGE will be locked in for 12 months.

In our whitepaper, we published the specific ways that the proceeds from the TGE will be used — 15% will be dedicated to the Legal Contingency fund, 10% for Partnerships and Integrations, 35% for marketing, user acquisition and community outreach, which leaves 40% for the development and growing of our ALAX platform.

This is just a short rundown of facts about our upcoming TGE. To find out all the details, check out our whitepaper on our website. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter and join our Telegram channel to gain access to the latest ALAX news and updates!
LOC Swap & HYDRA Airdrop | Infographic
By: Locktrip.Com, Loc Token, Official Blog
Tags: Altcoins, Crypto, Bitcoin, Blockchain, Airdrop

We are almost ready with the launch of Hydra mainnet! But before things start moving, we want to share everything you need to know in a quick infographic.

How many LOC will you receive? How many HYDRA will you receive? How does the airdrop work? Feel free to share the infographic below in the communities you are part of.

Right now we are targeting early to mid December as the swapping date. We will make multiple announcements and share a step by step guide on what you need to do, once swapping is available.

🎉 Hydra now has its own Twitter! Join and follow through the link below.

👉🏼 https://twitter.com/hydra_chain
Delphy Monthly Airdrop — February 2019
By: Ada Gao
Tags: Prediction Markets, Blockchain, Airdrop, Ethereum

Time flies faster in the Crypto world. It’s almost end of February 2019, can you believe it? And it’s time for the Monthly Delphy Airdrop. If you have been holding DPY (Delphy token) at the moment of snapshot, you will benefit from our Monthly Delphy airdrop. Yes, you heard that right!

We value our community, in fact Delphy promised to give 50% of all DPY tokens, which equals to 50 million DPY tokens in total, to our token holders in a linear distribution way within two years, for free. By end of each month, Delphy will monitor the number of holders and the amount of tokens held by each holder at a randomly picked moment (a snapshot) decided by Delphy. This reward program has started from Oct, 2017, as said before, will last for 2 years.

The total amount DPY token to be awarded to our holders is exactly same amount every month, which is: total of 50 million (DPY) /24 (months) = 2,083,333.33333 (DPY).

For February 2019, the snapshot moment is 18:00 on 27th Feburary, 2019, Beijing Time. The number of tokens to be received by a holder = the amount of token held at snapshot moment/ 40— transaction fees(which is about 0.5DPY at this moment = Gas price * Gas used/Price of DPY). (Why 40? Because, the total months for airdrop is 24, and till now, 16 airdrops have already happened.) Due to the transaction fees, if the number of DPY tokens you are holding at the moment of snapshot is less than 20, you will not be able to receive airdrop.

You can get the airdrop, if you keep your DPY tokens at your exchange account, like gate.io, okex.com, cybex.io, and CoinMex.com. However, the speed at which the tokens are received, may depend on the workflow and workload of the respective exchanges. Therefore, if you would like to get the airdrop immediately, the best option would be to have your DPYs in your wallet.

Thank you for your continued support!

About Delphy

A Decentralized mobile social platform for prediction markets. Delphy is a decentralized, mobile prediction market platform built on Ethereum. The Delphy App is a light Ethereum node running on mobile devices. Delphy uses market incentives to allow participants in a market to communicate, instantly and transparently, their wisdom regarding the outcome of upcoming events, effectively predicting the future. We design Delphy from the start to be decentralized, which makes it difficult to manipulate prediction results.

These are our official social platforms:

Telegram Ann: https://t.me/DelphyANN

Telegram Chat: https://t.me/DelphyCHAT

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Delphy_org

Medium: https://medium.com/delphy

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Delphyfoundation/

Bitcointalk: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2046622.0

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Delphy/

The Delphy Team
바이낸스의 첫 법정통화 거래 개시
Tags: Binance, Blockchain, Korea, Cryptocurrency, Uganda

Binance Exchange provides cryptocurrency trading for fintech and blockchain enthusiasts globally, with multilingual support over a variety of services.

Follow
RightMesh Bi-Weekly Update: May 3, 2019
By: Amber Mclennan
Tags: Blockchain, Mesh Networks, Rmbiweeklyupdate, Wireless Mesh Network

Press

Brianna mentoring students at SURGE

On April 20th, our Manager of Global Partnerships, Brianna MacNeil, spoke and mentored at SURGE in Cape Town, South Africa. The immersive event taught teens and young people about blockchain technology and how it can play a role in addressing global challenges. Brianna spoke on the state of connectivity and gave an overview of RightMesh after the morning session.

At the beginning of the day, none of the attendees were familiar with blockchain. The group, led by UNICEF and ETH Global, took the students through several exercises to teach them the fundamentals of blockchain and the history of money, set them up with a trust wallet, and had them receive currency from a volunteer in the UK to show the speed of transactions. By mid-day the group described the technology as ‘life changing’.

“It was a truly amazing experience to witness their transition from never having heard about blockchain to realizing the transformative power of the technology.” Brianna said, “They immediately grasped the potential and power of RightMesh and connected with the issues of internet shut downs and affordability issues.’

ETH Cape Town

ETH Cape Town

Leading minds within the blockchain space joined together with over 200 internal hackers, developers, and students, to collaborate on building a decentralized future using ethereum. Our Manager of Global Partnerships, Brianna MacNeil, acted as a mentor to the hackers. Winning projects included a decentralized preference-based voting system, a voice to text job creation tool, and an incentivized p2p streaming application.

TF Blockchain

On April 25th, our CPO, Saju Abraham, spoke at TF Blockchain in Vancouver, Canada on ‘Productizing Blockchain.’ He was joined by Paul Walsh of MetaCert and Layne Lafrance of Axiom Zen. The event was a great opportunity to discuss active use cases and network with other technology executives.

Upcoming Events

SATELLITE 2019, May 6–9th

With over 15,000 attendees, SATELLITE2019 unites aerospace thought leaders, entrepreneurs, executives, end-users and engineers together in one place for the largest global connectivity technology event of the year.RightMesh CEO, John Lyotier, will be speaking on a panel alongside David Howgill, President of Huckworthy, J. Armand Musey, President and Founder of Summit Ridge Group LLC, and moderator Michael Potter, Co-Founder and Director of Geeks Without Frontiers.

We’re hiring!

Our team is continuing to grow! We’re looking for passionate problem solvers to join our growing team and help us connect the next billion.

Current open positions include:

How You Can Be Involved
About Zulie Rane
By: Zulie Rane
Tags: Zulie Rane, Medium Partner Program, Medium

Tools I use

Writing

I do all my personal writing inside of Medium’s editor. If you are wondering how to get started, I created a video here that walks you through the basics.

I do most of my professional writing inside Google docs.

My email list lives on ConvertKit. If you want to start building your email list (and I highly, highly recommend you do!) ConvertKit was what got me started. It’s super easy, visual, intuitive, and helps me feel like I’m writing emails to real people, not just a list. The free plan gives you 1,000 subscribers — here’s the link to sign up.

This is an affiliate link, which means if you do go beyond 1,000 subscribers and upgrade to a paid plan, I’ll earn some money. It’s free for you.

Research

My favorite tools are Google Scholar and NCBI, which lets you search for full scientific articles. I firmly believe the best writing is research-backed, and those two tools give me access to all the information I need to write accurate, interesting, and useful articles.

Videos

For my videos, I use Canva to create the thumbnails. I edit videos using iMovie on Mac. I film using this camera, this tripod, and this microphone.

These are affiliate links. If you buy them from Amazon, I make a small amount of money at no cost to you.

When I create live streams, I use StreamYard. I can’t express how much I love StreamYard — it’s easy to use, it lets me really connect with the folks who are interested in what I do, and the version I use is 100% free and does everything I need it to.

Professional Designers

I have a lot of skills to my name — design and websites are not one of them. I hired Jada Dreyfus to create my website, my Medium banner, my YouTube banner, and my logo. If you like what you see, feel free to contact her at dreyfusjada (at) gmail dot com.
Stop, Your First Draft Is Never Going to Be Perfect
By: Itxy Lopez
Tags: Creativity, Advice, Books, Writing, Writing Tips

One of the most intimidating parts of writing a novel is the infinite number of possibilities. You can take your story up, down, sideways, or all around.

How should my character act? What words do I use to portray this next scene? Should I use this idea or the one I had earlier? You don’t know if there’s a right or wrong answer.

These struggles probably sound superfluous — but here I am, having them. Writers advise we follow the characters, but I think my protagonist is just as indecisive as I am.

Still, I didn’t want indecisiveness and confusion to stop me. I wanted to embrace it and use it to my advantage. So, I decided to write and write (and write a bit more) until I found the right words.

If you’re like me and you don’t know which direction to take your story, do what I’m doing: write everything.

Take it one sentence at a time — even if they’re terrible.
2020 is a Toxic, Triggered, Gaslit Mess of Abuse and Trauma Oozing all Over the Internet
By: A Singular Story
Tags: Social Media, Culture, Media, Mental Health, Language

2020 is a Toxic, Triggered, Gaslit Mess of Abuse and Trauma Oozing all Over the Internet

Everything that is human has an orange stain

Photo by Mahbod Akhzami on Unsplash

The barely literate mess that is anti-intellectualism loves buzzwords, an SEO banquet of meaninglessness on steroids going off like random fireworks. It splatters every platform it touches. Sometimes, it even causes words to melt into their antonym.

Honest has been appropriated by Alex Jones and fans.

Terminology once the preserve of those who had studied the human psyche in depth, had degrees, and years of considerable expertise is being bandied about willy-nilly. As a result, we have people who believe someone disagreeing with them constitutes gaslighting. Toxic, meanwhile, continues to reinforce mental health stigma some 17 years after Britney Spears had a moment with the word and sang its praises.

Because bad boys always capture the imagination.

Now, toxicity is both reprehensible and covetable in equal measure, although Alexander Litvinenko would likely have begged to differ.

Doom and gloom buzzwords are conversational and societal polonium; we get dumber, our individual and collective mental health wobbles. One day, it’s gone and everything and everyone comes undone.

Perhaps we can stop it.
Bitcoin made digital money. Now TAU makes smart money
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, Bitcoin, Economics

Disclaimer: These are my opinions and do not reflect the opinions of the TAU foundation. There will be things I say that might bother you. There will be opinions that may not be completely informed. For those of you who know how to issue constructive feedback and share knowledge, I implore you to help educate and lead all of us in thoughtful debate. For the rest, your opinion will be ignored.

At the TAU project, we have been asking one question over and over.

What is wrong with Bitcoin?

I sit in the camp of thinking it is by far and away the best solution humankind has ever come up with for a currency. Wences Casares, CEO of Xapos, does an excellent job of succinctly explaining why here

OK, so what’s wrong with it if you like it so much and what can TAU do better?

Bitcoin is digital money that does not address the velocity of money. TAU is smart money that actively encourages it.

that actively encourages it. Bitcoin will inevitably lead to a “tragedy of the transaction fee commons”, where low fees will be ignored . TAU’s harvesting methods ensure that fees will always stay low based on their return in block rewards.

TAU’s harvesting methods ensure that based on their return in block rewards. Bitcoin does not and will not have the capacity to handle all transactions on-chain. TAU is built with the solution to this in mind.

POW is unnecessarily unfair. POS supports the wealthy. POT is egalitarian

TAU is an experimental cryptocurrency that focuses on speed of transactions, the velocity of money, and near zero transaction fees

In subsequent articles, we will discuss each of the items in more detail, and also attempt to address bigger assumptions :

What is Proof-Of-Transaction (POT)

Does velocity of money matter?

If there were no money printing powers being abused, would there still be need for monetary policy?

Does wealth inequality need to be solved at the currency level?

TAU will be announced in the next few days on bitcointalk with our technical whitepaper coming soon after.

We call this an experimental cryptocurrency. We will be imperfect.We were brave enough to make a new consensus mechanism and present it to the world. Even our ideas of initial distribution will be considered extreme (hint:it will be aimed at getting nocoiners involved in the crypto revolution). We ask that you be brave enough to give us your honest constructive feedback and participate in our quest to ask the hard questions and make the hard decisions.

Stay tuned for more and “Stay Active”!
BitTorrent (BTT) Airdrop for Tron (TRX) holders on Coindelta!
By: Team Coindelta
Tags: Bitcoin, BitTorrent

Details:

Recently, an article has been shared by BitTorrent Inc. revealing the details of the Airdrop. The first BTT airdrop will be initiated when the TRON’s block height reaches 6.6 Million (6600000). You can check the current block height here.

Here is the timeline of the Airdrop:

1.) 11th February, 2019 : 10,890,000,000 BTT (First Airdrop)

The ratio of BTT airdrop on Feb 11 is approximately 1 TRX = 0.11 BTT, due to the uncertainty of TRX block rewards and coin burn, the final ratio may be different.

Example: If you are holding 100 TRX in your Coindelta wallet, then you will get approximately 11 BTT tokens at the time of the first Airdrop.

2.) 11th March, 2019–11th February, 2020: 990,000,000 BTT per month

3.) 11th March, 2020–11th February, 2021: 1,072,500,000 BTT per month

4.) 11th March, 2021–11th February, 2022: 1,155,000,000 BTT per month

5.) 11th March, 2022–11th February, 2023: 1,237,500,000 BTT per month

6.) 11th March, 2023–11th February, 2024: 1,320,000,000 BTT per month

7.) 11th March, 2024–11th February, 2025: 1,402,500,000 BTT per month

How to get BTT tokens on Coindelta?

The only thing you need to do is hodl TRX on Coindelta and you will automatically get BTT tokens in your wallet. We will update you further as and when we get more details about the Airdrop.

We will take snapshot of the TRX holdings in February corresponding to which the you will get the BTT tokens. The date and time of snapshot will be communicated to you later.

That is all for now! If you have any doubts or queries please do not hesitate to contact us on our telegram group. You can also send us a mail at support@coindelta.com.

With love for the Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies,

Coindelta Family

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Download our mobile apps for seamless trading:

Coindelta Android App

Coindelta iOS App

Important links:

Coindelta Website

Coindelta Support
Underrated and Underplayed: Thundamentals — Never Say Never
Tags: Life Goals, Music, Underrated, Mndp Favorite, Underplayed

The dream? One day we’ll make a killing, and dance like the guy in this video. Otherwise, our ’94 Corolla saves on gas and maintenance… so there’s always that.

We love lossless, and Tidal has licensed this MNDP favorite.

We approve.
How To Incorporate the Entire “Star Wars” Expanded Universe Into Canon
By: Joel Eisenberg
Tags: Star Wars, Movies, Film, Books, Science Fiction

How To Incorporate the Entire “Star Wars” Expanded Universe Into Canon

Disney, this can be done, storyline contradictions and all.

Cover art by Drew Struzan for Steve Perry’s 1996 “Shadows of the Empire” novel; characters copyright The Walt Disney Company

Introduction

The opening of the floodgates came at the midway point in “The Force Awakens,” when Rey exclaimed to Han:

“Luke Skywalker? I thought he was a myth.”

Followed a few seconds later by:

“So the Jedi were real.”

Order 66 had occurred only about half a century earlier, which surely reverberated throughout the galaxy far, far away. No matter if Rey was naive, uninformed, or simply surprised due to the lethargy of her own early existence, her statements nonetheless lead to a viable question:

As the “Star Wars” EU (Expanded Universe) is now called “Legends” by Disney, within this universe what is the difference between a legend and a myth?

The Bismarck Tribune, in an exploration titled “Examining the Difference Between Myths and Legends,” succinctly states: A legend contains some facts and becomes exaggerated to the point where real people or events take on a “larger than life” quality. In contrast, a myth isn’t based on fact, but is symbolic storytelling that was never based on fact.

A cursory glance of various dictionaries will likewise define the terms.

So straight away our “Star Wars” legends contain facts within them, while myths … do not? Rey believed Luke was a myth. She was wrong.

The implication is both myth and legend in this universe have their basis in facts.

Which leaves us with this: Within the “Star Wars” universe, how many other of the currently branded “Legends” are, indeed, factual?

How can Disney’s creative team, then, as storytellers, incorporate “Legends” into the canon?
react + d3 = vx
By: Harrison Shoff
Tags: JavaScript, Charts, Visualization, D3, React

But first a story — stop me if you’ve heard this one.

You’ve fallen in love with React. You’ve built a redux app. You’ve dabbled with GraphQL. You’ve started following along with Relay Modern and Apollo Client. But your next project is a dashboard that requires building some charts.

“Not a problem,” you say.

You know how to make charts. You just need to use d3 and magic dances across your screen.

Of course, the last time you made a chart with d3 was 3 or was it 4 years ago? Doesn’t matter… A few bl.ocks.org later and you get a sense of how to put the familiar in your text editor. “Just need to hook into a DOM node,” you say.

“Not a problem,” you say. React gives you some escape hatches to hook into the DOM. You find yourself spending more developer time in componentDidMount() than usual. But that doesn’t sit right with you. Maybe there’s something out there that does that for you so you don’t have to worry about that. “Just need to drop in the data,” you say.

Charting libraries are great until they’re not. Doesn’t look like off-the-shelf has created the chart you need make. “I wish there was something more like d3 I could use,” you say.

Enter vx

react + d3 = vx

Mixing two ways to update the DOM is never a good time. Telling your team members to learn d3 to use the charts you’ve made is also never a good time.

Found yourself in the place before? Me too.

So I set out making a library of low-level components that could be used to build up reusable charts or those one-off requests or that special idea you had for a visualization that you’ve never seen done before.
Join new Bounty campaign MyTrackNet on Reddit
By: Evgeniya Lukacheva
Tags: Bluetooth, ICO, Bitcoin, Tracking Software, Blockchain

Reddit Bounty campaign. Budget is 30 000 MTN.

Your account should be at least 30 days old and have 20 posts or comment karma.

Your total account karma must be at least 30.

Rules and upvotes for stakes are important for this bounty campaing.

For posts:

10 upvotes: 5 stakes

20 upvotes: 10 stakes

50 upvotes: 20 stakes

100 upvotes: 50 stakes

300 upvotes: 100 stakes

Comments on posts are out of campaign. Upvotes for comments are not counted.

Rules:

1- This campaign is limited to 100 participants

2- For a post to be counted, it needs to be posted in one of the following subredits, or cryptocurrency related subreddits: r/bitcoin, r/ethereum, r/ethtrader, r/icocrypto, r/cryptocurrency

3- Posts and Comments with negative Karma will not be accepted. Any kind of spam will not be rewarded either.

4- Stakes will be awarded the posts have at least 5 upvotes.

5- External posts should link to either MyTrackNet website or MyTrackNet official announcement on bitcointalk.org

Fill the form with your details: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1IkV3Sxuzbic5Y8WygfFZFuLnazkpIp50eZ1kgbSp0h8/viewform?edit_requested=true

You can check your application status to Reddit Bounty campaign: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WZDBwPRtGYfIspru2DE0cT8KPVRX7YRhNoEMiAZE4Qk/edit?usp=sharing

Any questions concerning Bounty MTN you can ask in Telegram group https://t.me/MyTrackNetB
Apples
By: Agnes Laurens
Tags: Creativity, Poetry, Fruits, Life, Writing

Apples

Round

Small, and big

Red, green and yellow

All tasty for a bite

Sweet and sour

Just as a snack
How to Turn Coding Into a Habit and Maintain It
By: Fernando Mendoza
Tags: Self Improvement, Habit Building, Routine, Programming, Learning To Code

Get started

Starting easy is something that’s really useful when you are building the habit of daily code. It’s really common to talk about this when it comes to going to the gym and working out:

“You can start developing the habit by simply putting your exercise clothes on and getting on your car.”

Setting aside dedicated time, getting on your computer and coding some lines, even if it’s just for 10 or 20 minutes a day can really make the difference when it comes to getting started. The quality of the work you do doesn’t really matter at this stage, it’s something you can work on once you develop consistency. Keep in mind that this is just a useful strategy when it comes to building new habits.

Photo by MICHEL ANDRADE on Unsplash

It’s also useful to remove the “opposite factors” of your new habit. For instance, if you want to develop the habit of healthy eating, you might want to buy less candy or fast food.

I know, when you want to code and the opposite factor in your case is watching content or playing video games in the same computer, it may be slightly harder to remove them. But what you can do is to setup your environment so it’s harder to do something else when you feel the desire of doing something else instead of building your habit.

You can do this by customizing your text editor to your liking, removing direct access to “non-productive” apps or restricting the time. In the end, self-control is really hard to develop as well: “why should I do something today when I can relax for now”. It’s a matter of spending time with balance, which is, you guessed it, hard.
Merry Christmas! Cypress — Dec.25/19
By: Jennifer Hammersmark
Tags: Skiing, Outdoors, Mental Health

Dr. Jen's Ski Report - 12/25/19

December 25 2019 Merry Christmas everyone! I would like to dedicate this report to all of the staff who were working…