fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Mobile App Push Notification with Firebase Cloud Functions and Realtime Database
By: Cosmin-Ionuț Cîrlea
Tags: Firebase, Push Notification, Realtime Database, Android, Firebase Cloud Functions

Setting up Firebase Cloud Functions

Firstly, Firebase CLI (Command Line Interface) requires Node.js and npm. I recommend the version of Node.js that says Recommended for most users on their website- https://nodejs.org/en/.

Install the Firebase Tools. The easiest way to do this is opening a command prompt and navigate to the folder where you want to setup this service.

npm install -g firebase-tools

Afterwards you have to login to Firebase using the following command.

firebase login

This command will open a browser and will let you authenticate to your Firebase account. At the end of this process you will receive a message to let you know that the operation went well.

If you want to log out and choose another account you can use the following command.

firebase logout

After login, use the following command in order to initialize Cloud Functions. It will prompt a message like “You’re about to initialize a Firebase project in this directory: your chosen directory”. Choose “Yes” when asked if you are ready to proceed.

firebase init functions

This will prompt a dialogue to let you choose from several options using the arrows and the enter key. I suggest using an existing project.

After selecting the project you’ll be asked to choose a language to write the Cloud Functions, I went for Javascript.

Afterwards you’ll be asked if you want to install dependencies with npm? Choose yes. And with that, Firebase initialization is done.

Writing Code for the Cloud Function

Check your folder where you’ve done all this work and you will see a sub-folder called functions . Inside you’ll find the index.js file where you will write your code for Firebase Functions. I will use it as a trigger for when I make a change to a specific node in the database.

The notification is fired when a node is added or changed in the path you’ve given

What does this function actually do? Every time something is written into the specified node the value is caught with change.after.val() and saved into an object. After saving the object a new notification is created with values from that object as title and body . In this example I’ve used the title and message properties to the object, but they could’ve also been other properties as strings. The important thing is that the property name from the database to be written exactly here, like title or message it could also be valueObject.imageUrl or valueObject.firstName .

When the code part is done you must deploy it to the server using this command:

firebase deploy

or

firebase deploy --only functions

You can check the log messages of your project by navigating to the Functions section, and selecting Logs in the main area of the window.

Conclusion

Cloud Functions are a great way to access backend functionality using Firebase and require little setup and no server of your own!

Have fun with it!
Weekly News Roundup (10/15/19)
By: Parul Gujral
Tags: Cryptocurrency News, Crypto, Blockchain, Bitcoin

Welcome to our Snowball cryptocurrency media digest. Here we will provide you with regular updates on trending news from the blockchain and crypto space.

US SEC Rejects Bitwise Bitcoin ETF Proposal: Another high-profile proposal for a bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) has been denied by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The agency, however, emphasized that the disapproval was not based on whether bitcoin has utility or value as an innovation or an investment. Read more.

Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and eBay All Quit Facebook’s Libra: Facebook’s embattled Libra project suffered a major blow on Friday as four payment processors — Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, and Mercado Pago — withdrew from participation in the Libra Association, the Geneva-based group Facebook created to develop the virtual currency. eBay also announced its resignation Friday. eBay’s former subsidiary, PayPal, quit the group last week. Read more.

SNB and Swiss Stock Exchange Team Up on Digital Currency: The Swiss National Bank and stock exchange SIX will jointly explore how to make central bank digital money available for the trading and settlement among financial market players. The buying and selling of assets based on digital ledger technology has the potential to reduce counterparty risk and create “significant” economic opportunities, SIX said in a statement Wednesday. The initiative is part of the innovation hub for financial technology the Bank for International Settlements announced it was setting up earlier this year with the SNB. Read more.

Vanguard Developing Blockchain Platform for $6 Trillion Forex Market: Mutual fund giant Vanguard has partnered with Nasdaq Ventures-backed blockchain startup Symbiont to develop a trading platform for the $6 trillion currency market, the companies said. With the new platform, Vanguard, which manages $5.2 trillion, aims to lower transaction costs for the trillions of dollars worth of currencies it trades annually by boosting peer-to-peer trading for investors, connecting them directly via blockchain technology. Read more.
Kali’s Dance
By: Radhika Tara Kali
Tags: Religion, Spirituality, Poetry, Kali, Watercolor

Watercolor by Radha Chetna Laxhmi

The ocean rises to cushion Kali’s feet

The war-dancer

Savage

Divine

The creator of all that eye can see

The goddess of death

The keeper of time

Bathed in blood

Clothed in victory

Killer of planets

Mother of the Multiverse

She lets the sickled waves of Varuni wash away her fury

Varuni delights

Colored by the seven rivers

Ganga’s sage foam

Yamuna’s alexandrite blue

Godavari’s sap swells in her valleys

Saraswati’s diamond music rings true

Narmada’s crushed sapphire

Sindhu’s emerald hue

Add Kaveri’s lapis to the mix

Richly, the primordial sea Ksheer is imbued

Kali dances her dance

Accompanied by her handmaidens

The music of thunderclaps rhymes in the black sky

The war-dancer rests

Just for a moment

~

Radha

In response to the prompt Evolution of Goddess by Vaishali Paliwal

P.S. Happy Navratri!
Learning from Teaching “What Works on the Web”
By: Angela Obias-Tuban
Tags: Design Education, Digital Strategy, Career, Teaching, UX

One of the CDM teams sharing their design recommendations, after reverse-engineering some wireframes

Learning from Teaching “What Works on the Web”

Achievement unlocked! Helping marketers practice wireframes.

That was a blast.

It, for some reason, was one of the most nerve-wracking talks I’ve given. I was nervous about talking about “product” topics to marketers. Which is not a “fear*” that I was aware of before.

Achievement unlocked, though! I never thought the day would come that I would teach wireframing to Marketing people.

That was the craziest thing, for me. I was able to see marketing people take apart and compose a wireframe. Multi-page wireframes at that.

Thank goodness that they were amazing and got the point.

That — to understand what you need to plan for the web — you need to get into the shoes of the people who will make it.

That’s besides needing to get into the shoes of the people who will use it — which is for planning the functions, content and spirit of your site.

It is tedious; and there are a lot of copy points, and links, and elements. But that’s why it’s important to have clarity. And a clear userflow and user tasks.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg Was a Fighter, But I Feel Defeated
By: Jessica Valenti
Tags: Politics, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court, Feminism, Women

Ruth Bader Ginsburg Was a Fighter, But I Feel Defeated

RBG’s death is about more than her slipping away. It feels like American women are losing our grip as well.

Photo: Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post/Getty Images

When my 10-year-old daughter asked why I was crying, I couldn’t do much else but put my face in my hands — a weak attempt to hide my hurt from a kid who has already seen her parents at their most stressed and bereft these past few months. I left it to her father to explain who Ruth Bader Ginsburg was, why she was so important to women, and why the loss was so great that her usually-verbose mother couldn’t seem to get a word out without sobbing.

In the coming days we’ll read about Justice Ginsburg’s remarkable life, how she forever changed the United States and how its legal system treats women, and what her death means for a country less than two months away from its presidential election.

But all that dominates my mind right now is the image of a woman hanging on who just couldn’t anymore. Someone who knew what the stakes were and gripped on to life tightly, unwilling to give an inch till the very end.

That’s why Justice Ginsburg was more than an icon or a judge, more than a feminist luminary. She was, to so many American women, us: Fighting like hell to build our strength and protect our hard-won rights. And in this moment, that’s why it’s difficult not to feel as if Ginsburg’s death is about more than just her slipping away, but women losing our grip as well.

After all, how much more can we possibly take? Another sexual abuser on the Supreme Court? Another rapist in the White House? Or maybe just a few more forced hysterectomies in the government-run concentration camps that rob women of their children. It’s all just too much. And the death of a woman who fought so hard for better — just to see it spit on by an administration of liars and bigots — is enough to make any woman want to fade away along with her.

I know that’s not what she would have wanted. And while I’d like to say that her fighting spirit and verve for life will inspire me to keep going, I think I speak for a lot of women when I say: We need a minute. We are exhausted, beaten down, and tired of waging the same battles and defending the same rights that our mothers did. It is all so profoundly fucking unfair.

How many more of our icons will we have to watch die while their work is still undone?

I know American women will gather the strength they need to keep fighting — we always do. But I really wish we didn’t have to, especially without her.
《Agent Quant一週》過去一週大市成交超低，五窮月恆指果真要瀉？(5月6–10日)
By: Investbot App
Tags: Algorithms, 港股, 香港, 交易, 投資

investbot is strategic trading robot based on massive financial big data evaluation and machine learning to maximize profit. More details: http://bit.ly/2MWVdM6

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Web Security 05 — X-Frame-Options
By: Brian Shen
Tags: Clickjacking, Iframe, Nodejs, Web Security

2. Demo

What will happen if I don’t set any value? Let’s have a test: setup a simple malicious server (Port 8889) staticHack/index.html in which an iframe is added to embed our blog system (8888):

Backend static file server:

Now start our blog system and the malicious server together:

npm i

npm start

npm run-script startHack

The malicious site on 8889 can load our blog site’s content. That’s not what we are expecting.

3. How to fix

Quite easy, all we need to do is to set the options to deny in response in backend server indexSafe.js and our blog site won't be embedded in any other sites.

Now start again:

npm run-script startSafe

npm run-script startHack

As we can see, our blog system won’t be loaded in any site.

4. Sample of clickjacking

Let’s talk more about clickjacking. Clickjacking is one kind of common iframe attack where hackers embed an invisible iframe into your document (or embed your document into their own malicious website) and use it to capture users’ interactions. This is a common way to mislead users or steal sensitive data.

In our demo, we will try to load a login user’s main page, and try to lead the user to transfer some points to our account unconsciously. Let’s add another static page staticHack/hijack.html in malicious site to do 2 things:

embed our blog system in an iframe ( so that even a user thinks he is dealing with our coupon system on 8889 but actually he is interacting with blog system on 8888 )

( so that even a user thinks he is dealing with our but actually he is interacting with ) add buttons and inputs to let user input sensitive data (which should be in exactly same position)

node index.js

node indexHack.js

Let’s see our malicious coupon system (localhost:8889/hijack.html).

the input which let user to input Robot Check Code is exactly on the top of the transfer input in our blog system

is exactly on the top of in our blog system the next button is exactly on the top of the transfer button in our blog system

When we input the user02, and then click next, 5 points will be transferred to user02.

The problem is, a user won’t click such kind of page, because they see the basic elements of blog system. A simple solution is to set the opacity of the iframe to 0, but another problem will come: the inputs will not be able to focus or type anymore.

Luckily , we can use other solutions:

put iframe in a div

only show part of it

Now our hack sites seems more convincible because we only show part of it:
ICO Alert Crypto Minute: May 3, 2018
By: Zach Quezada
Tags: Crypto Minute, Telegram, Investing, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin

Telegram Cancels Public ICO, raises $1.7 Billion in Presale

According to an article by CCN, Telegram, the encrypted messaging app has canceled plans to hold a public ICO after raising $1.7 billion in funding from private investors during their pre-sale. The decision is based on the preference “not to undergo the operational and regulatory hassles of opening the offering to the general public”.

Goldman Sachs to Launch Bitcoin Trading Desk

According to the New York Times, investment banking firm Goldman Sachs will begin using its own money to trade bitcoin futures in the near future. The news follows the hiring of Justin Schmidt, who will be the investment banks first digital asset trader. While skepticism remains, the step to begin futures trading may indicate the growing interest by Wall Street to enter the cryptocurrency realm.

Coinbase Discloses Corporate Data In Response to NY Crypto Inquiry

First reported by Coindesk, the popular cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has publicly shared parts of their corporate data. This data includes “the assets kept on Coinbase’s platform ($150 billion in total), the firm’s funding ($225 million to date), its financial position (“a profitable and self-sustaining business”), and its personnel levels (over 300 employees, 1,000 total when you factor in contractors)”.
Understanding and fixing N+1 query
By: Alexandre Ignjatovic
Tags: Sql, Ruby, Software Development, Performance, Technology

In this article, you’ll learn about the famous N+1 query that everybody is talking about, and how to fix and prevent them.

Regarding backend performance, there is a performance issue that everybody has heard about at least once: N+1 query. What you’ll hear less often is that baking a chocolate cake is a perfect analogy to explain it.

What’s a N+1 query?

TL;DR: The N+1 query problem happens when your code executes N additional query statements to fetch the same data that could have been retrieved when executing the primary query.

If you understood the previous statement, you can skip right to the next section: “How to fix it?”

If you did not understand the previous statement, don’t worry. We’ll sort it out together.

The recipe analogy

First, let put aside all those query, and SQL, and web application shenanigans, and imagine that you’d like to bake a cake.

For the sake of the example, let’s imagine that your fridge and pantry are not in your kitchen, but in your attic, forcing you to take the stairs anytime you’d like to fetch something out of the fridge.

Now, let’s imagine that you go to your bedroom to grab your cookbook, to find your chocolate cake recipe, and go back to your kitchen with it.

You check the first line:

200 grams of Dark Chocolate.

You go into your attic to fetch a tablet of chocolate, go back to the kitchen, and read the second line:

3 Eggs

Once again, you take the flight of stairs to fetch those 3 eggs, go back to the kitchen and read the next lines of the recipe:

100 grams of Butter

A bit exhausted by all those back and forth, you take the path to the attic, AGAIN. If only there was a simpler way…

What you would be experiencing, if you cooked this way, is exactly what happens when we have a N+1 query problem. Your ORM is forced by your code to do N additional queries (the round trips to fetch the ingredients) after the first initial query (when you fetched your recipe).

A concrete example

We’ll stay in the cooking business by considering a web application that displays a listing of cooking recipes like follow:
[美股研究] Datadog (DDOG) — 雲端監控平台(MaaS，Monitoring as a Service)
Tags: 美股, 中文, High Growth Companies, Datadog

當前大多數的雲端軟體均建立在複雜的Tech stack之上，因此在解決問題前常常需要花費大量的時間找到原因，相信許多業內的工程師或者是IT人員都曾經歷過花費數小時找到原因卻只花短短的時間解決問題的窘境。舉例來說在大公司內部可能你的Application是部署在private cloud之上，然後log卻又是輸出在內部的另一套系統，因此你必須開啟許多的視窗來做cross reference的動作。這種繁複的過程對公司IT造成了困擾，也降低開發人員在維護以及除錯的的效率。Datadog(DDOG)於是開發了一套整合型的監控工具且採用Pay as you go近年熱門的訂閱制，在平台上的Dashboard App/Infrastructure Overview主要分成了三個部分(Metrics，Trace and Log)。

Metric：指的是Infrastructure Metrics，例如：CPU/Memory使用率，Active Users，Database connection，System Load，Visualized Server Nodes。

Trace：指的是Application的追蹤紀錄。例如：Request Error rate，Request Latency，Total Requests。

Log：顧名思義就是所有Infrastructure以及Application的Log，尤其對個別Request的統計資料，例如Internal Server Error(500)發生了幾次，Error log的Stack Trace。

Datadog是第一間將這些資訊整合到同一個平台的公司，達到減少Cross Reference需要的時間，更迅速且清楚地即時監控Infrastructure/Application運作的情形，以及提供市場部門參考的數據(例如：最多人使用的功能)。

Datadog Product Release Timeline

Infrastructure Monitoring

Infrastructure Monitoring：這是Datadog最早對外公佈的功能，能即時對Infrastructure(CPU，Memory，Container，Database等等)實施監控確保系統的Availability，經由視覺化(visualization)以及建立與log或者歷史數據之間的聯繫，提供了整體系統的宏觀。

Service Map

APM(Application Performance Monitoring)：追蹤且分析Application的使用情形，例如哪些api被呼叫以及被誰呼叫，錯誤碼，延遲等等的訊息。透過客製化的Filter可以找出例如某個使用者的歷史紀錄，以及特定某行的source code，類似於browser的dev tool。除此之外，提供了許多的分析工具(例如：latency最高的前十個使用者) ，自動地將data flow轉成了service map減少開發人員找到root cause的時間，也建立了與Infrastructure以及log之間的關聯。

Log Management：Datadog目前提供超過350種以上可整合的Tools，基本上已經涵蓋絕大部分公司以及個人的需求。除了將Log整合到單一介面外，還提供可以Graph以及Alert(透過不同的channel，例如：Mail, Slack)的功能，甚至還有討論區的功能讓使用者可以在發生問題的地方直接留下自己的意見。基本的Search，Filter，Analyze和Export的功能當然是不可或缺的，開發人員可以透過Datadog的Restful API直接將這些功能整合至自己的產品打造客製化的Dashboard。

User Experience/Network Monitoring：這兩個是今年才公佈的新功能，User Experience基於數據分析模擬使用者行為且可用來比較真實User的使用情形。此外也能在不影響效能的情況下監控Network Traffic且也能圖形化。

最後對Datalog的業務提供點個人看法，大家可能覺得Datalog Platform的功能沒有新意，就是將所有Infrastructure以及Application的使用情形以及Log整合到了單一的平台，雖然在個別的Tool內肯定已經有內建專門的monitoring service，但開發者更需要能快速地理解不同Service之間的關聯，然後Datalog就是抓住這個痛點提供了相當完整的Monitoring Service，至於產品為什麼能成功，主要來自於現在Hybrid的開發環境已不像以前單純。不論是大型或者中小型公司，許多產品都整合了相當多thirdparty的功能，除非像Google，Microsoft這種員工數極高的公司，不然很少公司內部會有足夠的人力資源開發類似的工具，即使如此也不一定整合競爭對象的產品。我個人覺得只要能搶下足夠的客戶(公司規模：employee < 10000)，都會是穩定中短期的收入來源，因其客戶的黏著度肯定不低。然而隱憂的就是即使整合了大部分市面常見的Tool，假使有競爭者加入這個市場且只對主流Tool進行整合，最後又提供價格破壞性的策略，那長期而言Market Share可能會不這麼穩定，畢竟就算市面上有1000+的Tool，但可能60％公司在使用的就是那固定的2–30個，因此Customer Retention Rate以及New customer growth絕對是需要長期注意的部分。

Datadog於今年九月IPO，而11/12也就是明天將在after market會公布IPO後的第一次財報，就目前IPO的S-1文件可以歸類一些大家比較看重的數據。

S-1

https://reurl.cc/lLz8YE

Financial Report

DBER (Dollar-based Retention Rate)：2018年約為151%，而2019前半年為146%，相當驚豔的成長數據。

Customer Count：目前客戶數為8846，季成長約為7%。

Revenue：2019前半年為153.3M，YOY 79%，推估2019 Q2為82%，前整年Revenue約為332.9M。上半年有60%的營收成長來自於既有客戶，由此可知客戶滿意度極高。有些公司替超過一半的員工都註冊了Datadog，甚至超越了Engineer Team的總人數。

文章尚未整理完畢，打算將S-1以及財報數據的部分用另一篇文章進行分析，但因為ER即將開始希望讓大家先認識這間公司，歡迎有問題的互相交流。如果覺得我寫的文章對您有所幫助，歡迎追蹤且多多拍手鼓勵，也歡迎追蹤Facebook Fanpage：https://www.facebook.com/frankuslife。
Loched and Loaded
By: Return Date Unknown
Tags: Nature, Diary, Travel, Mythology, Blog

Day: 185

Towns / Cities Visited: 118

Countries Visited: 20

Steps Taken Today: 8,173

Steps Taken Around the World: 3,087,085

A luxury in and of itself, we indulged whole heartedly in a sleep in before tumbling out of bed for the days adventure. We’d had grandiose plans to go hiking, but with the heavens dousing this land, once again, in a heavy blanket of rain, we decided to drive to our first destination and assess the weather when we arrived. Rain or not our day was to be loaded with lochs. First up on our day of exploration within the Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park was the largest of them all in this fair country, by surface area at least; Loch Lomond. Now, fun fact for those off you interested in linguistic origins, ‘loch’ is Gaelic for ‘lake’, and ‘lomond’ comes from the Gaelic word ‘laomainn’ meaning ‘beacon’, in reference to Ben Lomond, the mountain which looms over the lake on its eastern side. For those of you who are instead interested in the geological formation of this loch, and those surrounding it, that can all be traced back some ten to twenty thousand years ago when great glaciers scarred the earth with their force, leaving a thin indent in the harder rock of the highlands, but spreading to a much wider cut when it reached the softer soils of the lowlands. The small undulations left by the glaciers now serve as islands in the lower part of the loch. Eventually, said glaciers disappeared as the earth warmed and the sea level rose, and these picturesque places were once, for a short time at least, connected to the ocean which now lays quite some distance away. When you look at the grand timeline of these prehistoric bodies of water, our existence really does seem rather inconsequential.

At the suggestion of our gracious Airbnb hosts, we had decided to marvel at the beauty of the lake from its shores in the quaint little town of Luss on the western bank. An hour later we were pulling into this sleepy little village, and by the grace of whichever old Gaelic gods control the weather, the rain had let up, if only for a moment. Overshooting the carpark saw us having to do a loop through the rabbit warren of one way streets off the main motorway, dodging the seemingly oblivious wandering of locals and tourists alike, and being stuck between admittedly gorgeous little stone houses while a truck and a van blocked the way for us and the line of cars to our rear. After a solid five or ten minutes, one of the drivers decided that we had made enough stern and rather frustrated eye contact with them and shifted his van to clear the way. Car parked, rain coats on, and packed lunch in hand, we soon became a pair of the aforementioned wandering visitors, and were soon standing on the gently lapping shores. As we gandered across the water; past the speckle of bobbing boats, nonchalant seagulls, and the prismatic arch of a rainbow; our eyes reached the misty mountains, and I couldn’t help but think that I had not seen such a sight since we were on the shores of Lake Geneva all those months ago.
Weak Spam Filters are Turning ‘Email’ from Inbound to Outbound
By: Mohammad Lafi
Tags: Email Marketing, Email, Email Marketing Tips

As a digital marketer, I’ve always had a special place in my marketing arsenal for email marketing, whether it was a retail client, a service company, or a content website, email marketing have always been on mind when developing marketing strategies.

Why? Well, for starters, it was the most intimate of all other marketing channels, a special bond forms when you love a website enough to willingly give them your email address and give your permission to be contacted by them from time to time. This is no longer the case; the majority of email addresses are collected through sign up forms, comment boxes, and lead generation forms, you are practically forced to provide your email address, at least if you want that free ebook or want to sign up into a web service.
Transcendence
Tags: Poetry, Surrealism, Poetry On Medium, Magic Realism, Poems And Stories

Photo by Jordan Heinrichs on Unsplash

The orchard was fragrant and slouched in the wind.

I had lost my sense of time,

And each break between

Utterances seemed endless. A great gulf of time

Opened before us. We chatted for centuries, talking

About the same things, over

And over, now with one pair of lips, now with another,

All of us, you, me and our shadows, failing to remember

That the view we were now contesting

Was the one we had defended earlier.

We held a dialogue, like two fauns,

Another species, half animal, half human.

And I realised there were lots of us in the garden and forest,

Our faces covered in hair. Strange beasts.

And our bats had settled in the trees,

Singing their blind prothalamions.

The night held its glassy synthesis,

Grew immense, an intense Neruda night,

That I had to slip

Into the shadow of the tree to escape.

And there I hide still.

© Nikhil
F.E.A.R. is a Chaotic Genre-Bending Horror Experience
By: Anthony Wright
Tags: Gaming, Halloween, Horror, Features, Videogames

F.E.A.R., developed by Monolith Productions and released in 2005, occupies its own unique space within the horror genre and it’s a shame to see the lack of influence that it’s had on the industry.

The premise is short and sweet. A Special Forces unit known as F.E.A.R. (First Encounter Assault Recon) is sent to hunt down a man named Fettel, one of the game’s main cannibalistic antagonists. It isn’t long however before everything goes wrong and the player is pushed into a paranormal world of telepathically controlled supersoldiers, invisible teleporting ninjas, and extremely bloody hallways. It’s all just a little strange, isn’t it?

Source: Monolith Productions.

F.E.A.R. has some terrifyingly realistic lighting for a game released in 2005 and the game uses it to its full potential. Instead of just throwing scary images and sounds at the player, Monolith uses the environment to dynamically freak the player out in some extremely effective ways. Whether it’s a light suddenly being blocked out by an invisible enemy or a shadow of a figure suddenly appearing on the wall in front of you, it’s wonderful to see a horror game that breaks the scripted feel that most horror titles suffer from even if it is just an illusion.

There’s nothing more chilling than a room suddenly being filled with darkness, deliberately breaking the player’s flashlight and forcing them to turn around to expose whatever horror is waiting to reveal itself.
Analysts: Despite Crypto Mining Decline, Nvidia Will See Increased Revenue This Quarter
By: Darren Lee
Tags: Crypto, Nvidia, Tech, Mining

Analysts polled by FactSet suggest that Nvidia will see increased revenue this quarter despite “waning” cryptocurrency mining, Marketwatch reported August 10. The purported increase is due to strong demand for gaming devices and data-centers.

While analysts suggest that the company’s revenue from crypto mining hardware will decline, the U.S.-based graphic processing units (GPU) manufacturer will see significant growth in its gaming and servers sales. Revenue from Nvidia’s gaming sector is expected to grow by 47 percent to $1.75 billion on a year-on-year basis while data-center revenue is expected to surge 78 percent to $740 million.

C.J. Muse, an analyst at Evercore, concurs with other analysts, saying that “data Center/AI remains an area of strength, particularly when considering additional benefit of a new gaming cycle favoring Nvidia.” Muse added:

“We believe concerns around a likely falloff from cryptocurrency-driven Ethereum GPU mining strength are largely exaggerated, and Nvidia will likely power through any tough compares from cryptocurrency-driven tailwinds.”

In May, Nvidia reported that it generated $289 million from processor sales to the crypto market. Nvidia’s first-quarter crypto sales amounted to over 9 percent of overall revenue for the company, which stood at $3.2 billion.

Chips for crypto mining made up 76 percent of (Original Equipment Manufacturer) OEM revenue, which was up 115 percent from the previous quarter. Nvidia, however, suggested that sales to the crypto market will likely decrease by two-thirds in the second quarter.

In July, the company’s estimates were proven as the price of specialized GPUs declined along with sinking prices in digital currency markets. Nvidia’s main competitor Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) unveiled in April that 10 percent of the company’s revenue during the quarter was attributed to blockchain or mining, though the company’s CEO Lisa Su said that blockchain was “a bit of a distraction in the short term.”

The mining hardware price fall has not dissuaded manufacturers from producing new crypto mining hardware. In May, ASUS announced the release of its “second generation” cryptocurrency mining motherboard, which was scheduled to launch in North America at the beginning of the third quarter of 2018.
The Masks Behind These Masks
By: Jonathan Greene
Tags: Poetry, Self, Masks, Resistance Poetry, Culture

The Masks Behind These Masks

A Poem

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

The layers of masks we wear today is overwhelming

because these paper versions and neoprene ones

and all of the other side ties and double rungs

are all just holding masks over our faces

when in reality we’ve all been wearing masks for years

They just weren’t the viral-protective kind

but we have been using them as protection

from ourselves and what we feel like on the inside

The masks behind these masks are those of hyper-masculinity

and overconfidence and oh so much woe is me white fragility

that it’s almost a benefit to us all to have to wear these masks

the ones that serve and protect and block and deflect

the viral load being breathed onto us by inadvertent onlookers

and mask-resistant blowhards just waiting to be asked

to put a small thing over their mouth and nose

to protect everyone else in the general vicinity

and somehow, to them, a mask is a sign of aggression

And isn’t that really the mask behind the mask?

The mask of insecurity and ignorance and general distaste

for others roaming the world alongside each and every one of us

My stoic mask shields me from my crumpled heart

An origami personification of a twice-broken soul

and I can even take that heart and that soul

and hide them behind the mask behind my new mask

and now I can assure the world that no one will find the real me

The layers of masks we wear today is overwhelming

but that has nothing to do with our COVID-19 protective masks

because they are only shielding our face and protecting our health

while our masks behind the masks are burying us deep within ourselves

so we don’t even know what we look like anymore, on the inside
Introduction to the Basic Principles of Functional Programming in JavaScript
Tags: JavaScript, Software Development, Coding, Functional Programming, Programming

Immutability

Unchanging over time or unable to be changed.

When data is immutable, its state cannot change after it’s created.

If you want to change an immutable object, you can’t. Instead, you create a new object with the new value.

In JavaScript, we commonly use the for loop. This next for statement has some mutable variables.

For each iteration, we are changing the i and the sumOfValue state. But how do we handle mutability in iteration? Recursion.

So, here we have the sum function that receives a vector of numerical values. The function calls itself until we get the list empty (our recursion base case). For each "iteration" we will add the value to the total accumulator .

With recursion, we keep our variables immutable. The list and the accumulator variables are not changed. It keeps the same value.

Observation: We can use reduce to implement this function. We will cover this in the higher-order functions topic.

It is also common to build up the final state of an object. Imagine that we have a string and we want to transform this string into a url slug .

In object-oriented programming in Ruby, we would create a class, let’s say, UrlSlugify . And this class will have a slugify method to transform the string input into a url slug .

It’s implemented!

Here, we have imperative programming saying exactly what we want to do in each slugify process — first lower-case, then remove useless white spaces, and, finally, replace remaining white spaces with hyphens.

But we are mutating the input state in this process.

We can handle this mutation by doing function composition, or function chaining. In other words, the result of a function will be used as an input for the next function, without modifying the original input string.

Here we have:

toLowerCase : converts the string to all lower-case.

: converts the string to all lower-case. trim : removes white space from both ends of a string.

: removes white space from both ends of a string. split and join : replaces all instances of match with replacement in a given string.
Why the exchange always attacks by the hackers?
Tags: Fintech, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, Hacker, Bitcoin

Hackers steal the private key to the wallet or discover the loophole of the exchange.

E-wallet private key is equivalent to the code to the e-wallet. Once the private key is stolen, hackers may transfer the assets in your account or receiver new assets.

In general, hackers steal the private key of wallet in the online exchange and transfer the money through blockchain system instead of decoding the algorithm of the cryptocurrency or the blockchain verification system.



In January this year, the Japanese exchange Coincheck had suffered from the most serious theft. Cryptocurrency with a value amounting to 56.8 billion Japanese Yen (approximately NT$15.68 billion) has been stolen overnight, and a total of 0.26 million users suffered from losses. Coincheck has compensated for the losses on its own. However, after the news was spread out, the market value of the New Economy Movement has declined 11%, and other cryptocurrency prices have suffered from the knock-off effect.

Therefore, within the entire system of blockchain, the unsafely results from the exchange itself and the e-wallet instead of the encrypted algorithm or blockchain. As such, choosing the exchange and e-wallet with care become the critical issue.

Although all the exchanges may have chances to be invaded by hackers, the importance attached to customer information by the exchange and the protection of the exchange may show the suitability of such the exchange regarding investment. Also, exchanges with more stringent requirements on such aspects may be more capable of protecting users’ assets.

Regarding the holders of cryptocurrency, except for e-wallet in the exchange, it is recommended to purchase the cold-storage wallet similar to the physical wallet, which adopts the off-line mode to save all the cryptocurrency. Transfer the money from the wallet to the exchange only when conducting a transaction. Although the cold-storage wallet is very safe, the holder shall be aware that only remembering the password may access the assets in the wallet.
Computational Ants: Agent-based Visualization with OD Matrices
By: Mit Media Lab
Tags: Research, Data Visualization, Data

Ira Winder, Changing Places group

So you want to make a model of a system, but you don’t think you have all of the data you need? This is actually a very common situation in modeling. Before going on a quest to search for more data, I often remind researchers that a good model might not need as much data as they think. Personally, I think elegant math models operate with minimal data. The less data you need, the easier it is to deploy, calibrate, and scale the use of your model in the Real World, after all.

In this post we will review a data-light technique for modeling flows of people using a simple and common data set called an origin-destination matrix (OD matrix, for short).

Video: Nina Lutz

WHAT IS AN ORIGIN-DESTINATION MATRIX?

Trip behavior data is often collected as an OD matrix. An OD matrix reflects aggregate flows between a number of discrete locations over a period of time (Fig. 1).

Figure 1. A conceptual diagram of an origin-destination matrix. Source: Dr. Jean-Paul Rodrigue, Dept. of Global Studies & Geography , Hofstra University, New York, USA.

Unfortunately, an OD matrix does not capture routing between locations. It’s also challenging to visualize the weight and directionality of flows for larger matrices. The following modeling techniques, however, can help us recover the missing information.

METHODOLOGY

For our exercise, we’ll use a 2D environment created in Processing. An OD matrix is randomly generated (Fig. 2 and 3). In a simple visualization, trip counts are represented by lines connecting points. Larger counts are represented by thicker lines. Color in Fig. 3 is arbitrary but unique to each OD pair.
美國指數型ETF規模、交易量排名&報酬率(2018年)
Tags: Medium, Spy, Etfdb, Etf, Vanguard

ETF Database: The Original & Comprehensive Guide to ETFs

The leading source for the latest developments on ETFs and more
Love of Friendship
Tags: Poetry On Medium, Aninjusticeprompt, Relationships, Rainpoem, Poem

Love of Friendship

A poem of deep friendship

Photo by Emma Tin on Unsplash

speaking with you

settles right where

my brain meets my heart

nestled in the corner

where peace resides

takes away my tears

it’s only your voice

the way you grab my hand

drains the pain

only deep friendship

agape true love

occupies our souls
“A Christmas Wish” Film Review
By: Shain E. Thomas
Tags: Movies, Writing Prompts, Holiday Films, Film Reviews, Entertainment

It would be nice if the Lifetime channel were to focus its efforts on creating quality rather than quantity. One of the latest Christmas themed made for television films Lifetime put out, A Christmas Wish, is marginally adequate.

Written and directed by Emily Moss Wilson, the film revolves Maddie’s title desire for her sister. Maddie wishes for her sister, Faith, to experience true love for the first time. The following day, Faith meets Andrew. Is Andrew, seemingly perfect, Faith’s one true love? Whilst anything is possible, Wyatt seems the better fit.

Maddie only wants the best for her sister. This is what most siblings want for family members. Seeing Faith not spend her life alone is Maddie’s wish for her sister.

The film stars Hilarie Burton, May Badr, Brett Beoubay, Adalyn Bergeron, Amy Brassette, Ryan Broussard, Kenneth Kynt Bryan, and Ryan Cabrera.

The main aspects focus on Faith’s career and her love life. Even though Wilson touched upon various tropes found in such productions, whilst some were twisted and redefined, much more could have been done to make A Christmas Wish stand apart from the numerous other television films the channel produces.

Image Credit: IMDb.com

The only facet of the production that resonated with me was the inclusion of gay characters Grant and James. Grant, Wyatt’s brother, is married to James. With my believing representation is a must, Lifetime should be commended for doing the right thing. Showing every part of society accurately, especially the LGBTQ community, is something entertainment production companies should do as a matter of course.

A Christmas Wish was televised on Lifetime Thursday, 28 November 2019. With the channel pushing out so many Christmas themed films, it’s clear there wasn’t enough space on the December schedule to cram them all in. Lifetime should seriously rethink the quantity over quality thing the channel currently has going.
Dear Readers and Writers — an Important Update
By: Heath ዟ
Tags: From The Editors, Puc Letters

It’s been apparent to most of you that Poetry Under Cover has been just barely active for a while now.

I first want to apologize for that. I know some of you have waited and waited on a submission to be published or just being added as a Writer in the first place. It’s not because we don’t care. Marika and I have loved this place, but we’ve both been saddled with other responsibilities to the point that we’re not doing our readers or writers any justice here.

With much love and many many fond memories, I’m shutting down activity here. I’m not deleting anything, and I’m not saying PUC won’t come back to life at some point, but, for now, we’ll not be processing submissions or adding new writers.

I apologize for those with submissions or new writer requests pending. We’re just not able to give you the attention you deserve at this point.

I assure you that your stories will be displayed here, as always, regardless of the activity status, but we won’t be at all bothered if you need to remove any stories published here.

It was an honor to be your Editors.

With much love and gratitude,

Heath ዟ

and

Marika
I Gifted Stocks to My Brother on His 18th Birthday — Here’s Why
By: Asger Bruhn
Tags: Money, Self Improvement, Personal Finance, Life Lessons, Investing

Pursue and Achieve Goals

By nudging myself to be aware of my preferences and thus remember how much I value long term benefits, investing has made me realize the pleasure from the journey.

It is not only the destination that gives me satisfaction. It is also the feeling of moving in the right direction.

It’s possible to cultivate this mindset by pursuits — at work, doing sports, or practicing different art forms. I find that working toward achieving something gives me a sense of belonging and a deeper meaning in a lot of the small things I do. It keeps me focused on doing the stuff I either enjoy or that will bring me closer to where I want to be in life.

Achieving goals is an awesome feeling. It beats every form of quick-fix dopamine kick I can offer my brain by snacking, binge-watching series, or playing video games.

The rewards are not instant, but they are much more powerful and longer-lasting.

Setting goals need not be overly ambitious, neither do they always have to be very concrete. Concrete goals can be both a motivation booster and a motivation killer. It depends on the situation.

I set concrete goals in cases where I am working in a structured manner towards something that is measurable and realistic — like increasing my bench press from 105 kg to 120 kg before my next birthday.

When it comes to investing, I don’t. Instead, I am true to my values. The lack of a concrete goal means I can adjust how much I add to my savings as my life unfolds. Forcing myself to save a specific amount of money doesn’t provide me any value, since there are months where I set aside way more than others.

Further, predicting where the market moves in the short term is not something I am capable of. Pursuing targets for portfolio value would stress me out.

Since adopting this mindset, my ability to set money aside has skyrocketed. My returns are also going up, but experience has contributed to this — and it may in part be a coincidence.

It is important to note, that what works for me, may not be optimal for others. I will not try to enforce my brother to do exactly as I.

Instead, introducing him to the stock market should help him determine what he values, motivate him to pursue the objectives he desires, and enjoy it along the way.
Learning the True Strength of Women
By: Rose Mary Griffith
Tags: Sisterhood, Sexism, Relationships, Feminism, Women

Un-evolved women

None of that scares me the most. It is the un-evolved woman who brings me great fright — the one not trying to lift up women around her. The woman trying to control the women in her world who are striving to be their best. A few years back, a writer was beginning her publishing career. I bought every book and promoted them when I could, even though I tired of the stagnation of the characters. I didn’t want to seem like sour grapes since my mystery was still being written. When I published my writer’s travel journal and showed her, she glanced at the cover and said that’s nice. She handed it back to me and changed the subject to her latest release. I was crushed by the lack of joy she showed in my accomplishment.

These women keep other women “in their place” more than a man does.

Madeline Albright spoke the brilliant line, “There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.” These are the women who terrify me. Without unity, where are we?

The cliche of us as nurturers

Then there are the hollow women. These are the ones living through others, who don’t elevate themselves by celebrating passions of their own. They perpetuate the fallacy that women are the only nurturers. While we do shine with the forte to do as Albright said and build others up, men also nurture. For us to deny cultivating what we need to flourish is to keep ourselves bound to the nurturing myth. Not offering or asking for help, counsel, or mentoring drives away the very women we need, segregating ourselves more, and harming our spirit deeper.

When we unleash our mettle, our influence and loudly announce to the world who we are, we create a whirlwind of energy that spirals out and comes back from the unique people in our orbits.

Strong women

Being powerful women is not about warring with men. There is no merit to increasing the distance between the sexes. Males and females are as different as night and day and like disparities between religions and races, our contrasts should be celebrated, not negated.

Look around your world and be amazed at the indomitable women you know. They’re in your church, your work place, and among your circle of friends. These are the women who work boldly with bravado and quietly with inner grit making the world a greater place.

Finally,

Women are spinning vortexes of vitality and resilience. We are a band of sisters full of character, aptitude, and vast desires to always be better, be more, and achieve the next goal.

We become these grand people by the honest giving of ourselves to each other. By sharing the search for the ongoing, ever-evolving answers to who we are — boundless and remarkable.

This ongoing metamorphosis of indefatigable women is the credo of true Sisterhood.
Wayside Denizens
Tags: Poetry, Thesceneandheard, Success, Failure, Life

When the hard road sidelines dreamers,

bypassed time and again by fortune’s favorites,

keeping faith in fairness is the hardest thing of all.

On the weary and crowded line of strivers’ row

the air is choked with equal doses

of longing, despair, panic at time slipping away.

Endlessly frustrated aims prompt doubt

in the minds of even the most confident,

increasingly uncertain of their merit and mettle.

Experience mars innocence, envy erodes goodwill,

and it’s all they can do just to carry on, hoping to live

to see themselves vindicated, pleasantly surprised.

Strange how they cherish and cling, even while

dispirited and brokenhearted, to inmost aspirations

safeguarded against outrageous slings and arrows.

Even when they quit they keep going,

cheating on their conceding,

unwilling or unable to surrender once and for all.

Always their best is never good enough,

yet always their best gets better and better,

itself a meaningful feat fueling further struggle.

Then one day, half asleep in the heat, the dazed glimpse

through dissipating haze at a space opening wide

for them to merge and mingle among smiling passers-by.

The on-ramp to success abruptly unobstructed,

they put on some speed and leave defeat in their dust,

bitter years of yearning blotted out amid skid marks.
Bitcoin mining power plants are here
By: Kel Dennis
Tags: News, Energy, Blockchain, Energy Efficiency, Bitcoin Mining

Recent headlines illustrate thousands of electric companies planning to run Bitcoin mining rigs. It has been said that Bitcoin mining uses as much power as Ireland and consumes 30 times more electricity than Telsa Cars.

If you’re asking yourself, what bitcoin mining is, check out my introductory piece on the subject.

Morgan Stanley estimates it costs $3,000 to $7,000 to produce one bitcoin. But honestly, can we trust Morgan Stanley if they do not specialize in Bitcoin? Nevertheless, the overall consensus is that mining is expensive.

Big Plans for Bigger Plants

IOT Group and Australia’s Hunter Energy may have a solution for the high energy cost of Bitcoin mining. Both are teaming up to create an economic solution for crypto miners.