fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Extracting Keywords from a Text Using R Regex (Easy)
By: Deborah Kewon
Tags: Text, Data Analysis, Regex, Text Mining, Data Science

Step 2. Use Regular Expression

After cleaning, you can split the job description text by space and find the string that matches the list of state abbreviations (dictionary). Once it is done, you can assign it to the location column as below.

#creating a location column description$location <- NA #using for loop to extract all the states for (i in 1:length(description$text)){ #split the text by space

split <- strsplit(description$text[i]," ")[[1]] #comparing split with the state abbreviation

state <- match(split, stateabbreviation$Abbreviation) #if it matches, get the position of each state

state <- which(!is.na(state)) #extract the state based on the position

state_split <- split[state] #adding states to the new column

description$location[i] <- state_split[1]

}

In order to find the state abbreviations in the job description, I used the dictionary “stateabbreviation” I created.

And...Voila! Here is the result.

If you want to also extract the cities, you can simply use the same code with ‘which(!is.na(location))-1’. You use ‘-1’ because the cities come right before the states.
Completely Offline Bitcoin Transactions
Tags: Linux, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, Btc, Bitcoin

With the advent of Blockstream Satellite and widely broadcasted, passively-receivable Bitcoin data, a new era of Bitcoin adoption can occur. Areas without access to fast broadband connections can now trustlessly verify Bitcoin blocks and transactions, and receive BTC discreetly with common cheap hardware. With the Satellite API, those same areas can now receive arbitrary data — current market data, private messages, and data from exciting new use cases not thought of yet. All free. The broadcasts are free and the software is free with code available for auditing and improvement by the community.

For the first time, most of the planet’s population can receive bitcoin using their own fully validating nodes without expensive data plans. But how do they send bitcoin? There are a few cheap and accessible ways to do so. Transactions can be broadcasted via SMS, by mesh networking devices, and even sneakernet (simply transporting the signed raw transaction data on a flash drive or printed QR code).

GoTenna sells a simple to use mesh networking device, which along with a piece of software called TxTenna can broadcast Bitcoin transactions to a local mesh network of GoTennas. There is also growing interest and work being done on LoRaWAN — a similar mesh networking technology.

With this hardware setup, anyone can send and receive bitcoin without an internet connection. It’s resistant to network outages and can also maintain uptime through power outages since all of the hardware is run off batteries. The hardware can of course be run off of gasoline generators or solar panels if the power outage is longer lasting.
Exhaustion
Tags: Poetry On Medium, Ego, Gender Roles, Verse, Toxic Masculinity

Exhaustion

They Demand We Take Care of Them While We Beg Them to Take Care of Us. A Poem.

Photo by Ellen Araujo from Pexels

I wish for once a lover would see the bruising beneath my eyes

around my knees, mottling my thighs,

and put his lips to my forehead, hold me close and say

“Rest in my arms, and we can make love another day.”

But I’m sensual in nature, aren’t I? leaning into our breath.

You’ll feel my heat and afraid you’ll burn to death,

all you’ll want to feel is my body arching to your greed,

and I’m tired of satiating hungers when I too am tender with need.
Обновление программного обеспечения нод блокчейна Системы Bitbon
By: Bitbon System
Tags: Bitbon, Node, Blockchain Technology, Mining Pool, Pos

The Bitbon System is a large-scale infrastructure project, which represents a decentralized platform for Contributing. https://www.bitbon.space/en/home

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South Korea: Blockchain Law Society to Launch in Order to Develop Legal Framework
Tags: Framework, News, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Legal

A group of South Korean blockchain experts will set up a law-based agency to explore the technology and apply it in various areas of society, local news outlet Yonhap News reports August 20.

According to the announcement, the association, dubbed the “Blockchain Law Society,” is set to be officially launched in South Korea this Friday, August 24.

The blockchain-focused organization aims to develop a legal framework for applications of distributed ledger technology (DLT), as well as to establish cooperation between various fields such as “economics, computer engineering,” and business.

The Blockchain Law Society will utilize the efforts of experts from different spheres, such as legal bodies, universities, and other industry specialists in order to study the legal aspects of the new technology and to develop legislation for regulating blockchain, Yonhap News reports.

Earlier this year, the Korean Blockchain Association (KBA) announced an internal self-regulatory framework for its 14 member crypto exchanges, including such major requirements as operating clients’ holdings separately from their own and publishing regular finance reports.

In July, three South Korean ministries — the National Statistical Office, the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Ministry of Information and Communication — revealed a collaborative initiative to set up new industry classifications for domestic blockchain industry standards.

Recently, South Korea also announced plans to promote blockchain technology along with other seven fields of the domestic economy, planning to invest 5 million won or roughly $4.4 billion next year.

Source: cointelegraph.com

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Color Platform Meets “Purechain” and Introduces Hardware Security Combined Blockchain
By: Color Platform
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Color Platform, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin

Pax Datatech and ICTK Holdings made an agreement to cooperate on technologies. Choi Young-kyu, President of Pax Datatech, and Yoo Seung-sam, chairman of ICTK Holdings took photo to commemorate the event (www.etnews.com).

This blog post is a summary of this article of Etnews, dated May 17, 2018

On May 17, Pax Datatech and ICTK announced a landmark partnership. Pax Datatech will develop a third-generation blockchain platform with ICTK’s “Purechain” Technology. Pax Datatech is developing the “Color Platform”, a blockchain platform which simplifies the dApp-development process.

PUF(Physical Unclonable Functions) is a technology that uses digital fingerprints created during the semiconductor manufacturing process. The “Purechain” team (ICTK, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Kyung-hee University, and Epinomy CL) has unveiled the world’s first blockchain technology to incorporate PUF. Purechain enables real-time transactions that is made through consensus between two nodes only, without third-party intervention, which makes it fast and secure.

Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) Chip

Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum have a myriad of problems with transaction speeds & costs, scalability, and other things that hold it back from mainstream adoption. The PUF allows Pax Datatech to address these issues at once without compromising the decentralized nature of the blockchain.

▶Download Whitepaper

Have a Colorful Day :)

Join Our Chatroom to Learn More!▼
自動測試與Jenkins — 談回歸測試的日常
By: Yu-Song Syu
Tags: Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, Test Automation, Regression Testing, Jenkins

Kuma老師的軟體工程教室

Welcome to the Kingdom of Software Engineering
Sawtooth Sequence Java Solution
By: Prashant Kumar
Tags: Dynamic Programming

A sawtooth sequence is a sequence of number that alternate between increasing and decreasing. In other words, each element is either strictly greater than it’s neighboring element or strictly less than it’s neighboring elements.

Problem Statement:

Given an array of integers arr, your task is to count the number of contiguous subarrays that represent a sawtooth sequence of at least two elements.

For arr = [9, 8, 7, 6, 5], the output should be countSawSubarrays(arr) = 4.

Since all the elements are arranged in decreasing order, it won’t be possible to form any sawtooth subarray of length 3 or more. There are 4 possible subarrays containing two elements, so the answer is 4.

For arr = [10, 10, 10], the output should be countSawSubarrays(arr) = 0.

Since all of the elements are equal, none of subarrays can be sawtooth, so the answer is 0.

For arr = [1, 2, 1, 2, 1], the output should be countSawSubarrays(arr) = 10.

All contiguous subarrays containing at least two elements satisfy the condition of the problem. There are 10 possible contiguous subarrays containing at least two elements, so the answer is 10.

Input:

An array of integers

Output:

return the number of sawtooth subarrays.

Solution:

import java.util.*;

import java.lang.*;

import java.io.*; public class Solution {

// Function to count the number of maximal contiguous

// increasing and decreasing subsequences

static long countSawSubarrays(int[] arr) {

int n = arr.length;

long ans = 0;

long[] saw = new long[n];



// check edge cases for n = 0,1,2

if (n == 0 || n == 1) {

return 0;

}

if (n == 2) {

if(arr[0] > arr[1] || arr[1] > arr[0]) return 1;

else return 0;

} // saw[i] represent the size of sawtooth subarray including index i.

// first element cannot form a sawtooth sequence

saw[0] = 0;



// initialize the saw[] array for n=2

if(arr[0] > arr[1] || arr[1] > arr[0]) {

saw[1] = 2;

}



for (int i=2; i<n; i++) {

// check if including ith element forms a sawtooth sequence

if((arr[i-2] < arr[i-1] && arr[i-1] > arr[i])

|| (arr[i-2] > arr[i-1] && arr[i-1] < arr[i]))

{

if(i==2) {

saw[i] = saw[i-2] + 3;

}

else {

saw[i] = saw[i-2] + 2;

}

}

// if ith element forms a sawtooth sequence just with previous element

else if(arr[i-1] > arr[i] || arr[i] > arr[i-1]) {

saw[i] = 2;

}

}



// compute ans, which is sum of all (non-zero values - 1)

for(int i=0; i<n; i++) {

if(saw[i] <= 0) continue;

ans += saw[i] - 1;

}

return ans;

}



// Driver code

public static void main (String[] args)

{

int[] arr = {1,2,1,2,1};

int[] arr2 = {9,8,7,6,5};

int[] arr3 = {-1000000000,1000000000};

int[] arr4 = {10, 10, 10, 10}; System.out.println(countSawSubarrays(arr));

System.out.println(countSawSubarrays(arr2));

System.out.println(countSawSubarrays(arr3));

System.out.println(countSawSubarrays(arr4));

}

}

Output:
BubbleTone CEO Yury Morozov Shares his Outlook on Bitcoin
By: Bubbletone Blockchain In Telecom
Tags: Bitcoin, Blockchain

BubbleTone CEO Yury Morozov shares his outlook for bitcoin. What is your unique prediction for cryptocurrencies and crypto space?
Time Series Forecasting with SARIMA, Holt-Winters’, and Prophet
By: Daniel Corley
Tags: Time Series Forecasting, Bootcamp, Transportation, Data Science, Bootcamp Experience

For my latest project in Flatiron’s Data Science bootcamp, I was tasked with running a time series prediction. I chose to go with data on interstate traffic volume on I-94 westbound from St.Paul to Minneapolis, found on the UCI machine learning repository (here). This particular stretch of road is known for backups and closures, drastically effecting commute times. There were over 40,000 observations of hourly volume for a six year period between 2012 and 2018, with some major gaps leading up to 2016.

In order to standardize this data, I chose to work with 2016–2018, and fill in any gaps which I did with an average of the hour before and after, then create a daily summation of these observations. This resulted in an average of 80,000 total vehicles being recorded on a daily basis. After cleaning, I was left with 802 days. This was split into 738 days for my training data, and 82 for my test. Exploring the data, this gave me a weekly seasonality to run my model.

In order to create my best-fit model, I needed to decide the best metric to judge the efficiency of my predictions. I chose to go with mean squared error (MSE) to show how inaccurate my predictions would be. This metric was captured with each model, with final results at the end.

The bulk of this project was completed with SARIMA which was the time series algorithm learned during the course, with an exploration into Holt-Winters’ and Prophet at the end. A link to my GitHub project if you’d like to dive deeper into my methodology:
Christmas, in my upbringing, was a holiday of Someone Else around, not of us.
By: Rebecca Sealfon
Tags: Christmas, Jewish, Holiday Season, Holidays, Judaism

Christmas, in my upbringing, was a holiday of Someone Else around, not of us. You see, Jews had to maintain their Jewishness in America, with a surrounding culture that gave constant reminders not to. A Christmas tree was unthinkable. Even our own holiday of Hanukah, traditionally a minor holiday in the Jewish calendar, was downplayed so as not to become a quasi-Christmas. But even a quiet Christmas-less home still feels festive when I wake up this morning, in the middle of an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
How to do EOS & Tron Token Swap on Bitbns
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Eos, Blockchain, Swap, Tron

Update 21st June: Tron token migration will begin from today till 25th of June. The token are being migrated from ERC20 to Mainnet TRX.

Bitbns is supporting the Tron migration, users can deposit their tokens and can be assured of getting the mainnet token as per the ratio defined by the Tron network.

TRON withdrawals will be paused from 11:30pm, 21st June 2018.

TRON deposits will be paused from 6 pm, 23rd June 2018.

During the swap event, TRON token trading will not be suspended. You can continue to trade TRX on Bitbns exchange.

Update 17th May: TRON and EOS are transitioning from Ethereum protocol to their own blockchain versions.

Mainnet Launch:

Tron will migrate from ERC20 protocol to its own blockchain version, vOdyssey 2.0, on May 31 2018. Also, EOS will migrate to its own blockchain on 2 June 2018.

Token Swap:

Official Tron Swap Date: 21st June — 25th June 2018.

Official EOS Snapshot Date: 3rd June 2018, Swap yet to be announced

We at Bitbns will support this migration and token swap. Users with TRX and EOS holding on Bitbns will receive the migrated tokens. The token swap will be taken care by the Bitbns team. Just follow simple steps to get your token swapped by Bitbns.

Token Swap — What to do?

Tron SWAP — Simple Steps

Deposit your ERC20 based TRX token before 21st June 11:30pm on Bitbns wallet. (Once you are done with this step, you don’t need to worry about the swap) Keep Calm & Trade: You can trade TRX normally post that.

Note:

TRX withdrawals will be paused after 21st June until the token swap is completed. No TRX deposit will be allowed after 24th June.

EOS SWAP — Simple Steps

Deposit your ERC20 based EOS token before 31st May 10:00pm on Bitbns wallet. (Once you are done with this step, you don’t need to worry about the swap) Keep Calm & Trade: You can trade EOS normally post that.

Note:

EOS withdrawals will be paused after 29th May 12:00 Noon until the token swap is completed No EOS deposit will be allowed after 31st May 6:00pm.

Join our Telegram channel for update on token swap.
ATTENTION! Today is THE LAST DAY of Pre-Sale!
By: Ubcoin. Cryptocurrency Reimagined
Tags: Ubcoin, Ubc News, Bitcoin, Blockchain

Ubcoin Market is global peer-to-peer Ebay-like marketplace for exchanging real goods (laptops, art objects, etc) to cryptocurrency and back. The easiest way to buy or sell something you own without fiat money involved. UBC is token used on marketplace as a means of payment .

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AMA Stream Summary. The Best Questions and Answers
Tags: Storiqa, Ecommerce, Stq, Ama

We have prepared this Q&A article which summarizes the main points of the AMA stream with Storiqa’s CEO Andrian Galkin that was run last Wednesday.

All you want to know about the project is here! 🌏

Here you can find summarized answers to the most interesting and important questions about Storiqa.

What is your stance on allowing electronic goods on the marketplace?

As you know from Storiqa’s WhitePaper, electronic goods have never been a part of our vision, as we focus on different categories. Moreover, electronics are much tougher to move across borders — for many products it is required to have special licensing, etc. However, we are working on listing electronic goods with a unique touch — anything custom-made or exclusive.

When is the release day?

We are expecting to roll out a polished, fully fledged marketplace in the second quarter of the year, most likely in June. At the same time, we are also sticking to our Roadmap: minimum viable functions will be launched this month (by the way, have you already checked the last big platform updates?).

If you can pay with BTC, ETH, and fiat, which are much more common than STQ, why would anyone buy STQ to pay for goods on the marketplace? It looks like you are making the STQ coin completely unnecessary.

At this stage of crypto economy development, it is too costly to use STQ as the only means of payments on the marketplace. For STQ (or any other crypto) to be an efficient and cheap payment instrument there have to be a huge full-cycle crypto economy — meaning that those who receive STQ (e.g, Sellers or Storiqa as the company that runs the marketplace) need to be able to cover their own costs (salary, rent, materials, etc) by paying in crypto, which is not the case at this moment. Forcing all the parties to pay in crypto will only drastically reduce the demand for the marketplace — it would impose additional exchange costs (i.e., bank commissions), increase the learning curve for sellers (most of them are not aware of what crypto is), etc. At the same time, our strategy allows people, who haven’t known anything about cryptocurrency, to learn what is it and to start using crypto as a payment method. We believe one day we will see STQ as the primary payment instrument. At this time, however, a combination of crypto and fiat is vital for the growth of Storiqa marketplace.

Will, we ever get Binance, Bittrex or other big exchanges after a product is fully launched?

Definitely. We have already started some preliminary work on joining a very major exchange in a couple of months.

I would like to receive my tokens. When will the KYC be opened again?

It’s not feasible now. The initial KYC window was open for 5 months. New window will require substantial spendings for upkeeping and KYC procedures. We will inform all tokenholders via emails and Social Media when it becomes possible.

When Ture bugs will be properly fixed? When will the Android version be released?
Make Theology Simple Again
By: Eric Craft
Tags: Jesus, Theology, Religion, Spirituality, Christianity

Make Theology Simple Again

Theology shouldn’t be reserved for the academic elite

Photo by Jonathan Simcoe on Unsplash

I am a youth pastor, and I get the pleasure of having conversations with students regularly about our faith. While discussing the topic of salvation I started going over some basic theology terms, and what I came to discover is that none of them knew what the terms meant and most of them had never heard them before. The thing you need to understand about this group of students I was talking to was that they had all grown up in the church.

When I talked to my sister, who graduated a year after me from the same Christian university that prides itself on teaching the Bible, I found that she couldn’t tell me either. Granted my sister didn’t go to bible college to become a preacher or pastor, she’s an early childhood educator. But, the idea that there are believers who have been following Jesus for years and they don’t understand or know what terms mean that we find in scripture breaks my heart because theology is a vital part of our faith.

What Is Theology?

Theology, as defined by my Google Home, is simply the study of God. In essence, that is what most modern churches are trying to get you to do. When they push spiritual practices or attending service to learn or even to serve and live on mission, it all comes back to this concept of theology; studying, learning, and trying to understand this God who created us, everything around us, and died for us.

Theology is something that was taught since the very beginning. Ever since the days of Abraham, a guy in the old testament who is the father of the Jewish faith, people have been teaching on concepts of the Divine so that we might grow to understand it more.

Most of Paul’s Letters in the New Testament, while instructing and challenging the churches, teach theology. You can look to the book of Romans as a great example of this, especially around the idea of salvation and what it is and the purpose of it. Jesus himself even made it a part of his ministry. A classic example is the Sermon on the Mount found in Matthew chapters 5–7, a sermon that teaches a ton on who God is, what he wants, and what his kingdom is about.

Scripture itself points to the vital need for theology, that when we study and seek God we grow closer to him. Theology is the reason we study our Bibles, it’s the reason we practice spiritual disciplines, it is the reason pastors write sermons because theology is us growing closer, and understanding a God who loved us enough to die for us. Theology isn’t merrily for an academic, but it is for the average person sitting in the pew. Theology is vitally important for any follower of Jesus because without we can’t understand this Kingdom Jesus was trying to build. Thus not studying or teaching theology is not an option.
The Dream-Like Concurrency of Functional Programming Languages (F#, Multi-Lisp, CML)
By: Ismayil Shahaliyev
Tags: Programming, Computer Science, Functional Programming, Concurrency, Programming Languages

Concurrency in Multi-Lisp

Multi-Lisp is a concurrent version of the Scheme programming language when concurrency is implicitly called. The pcall construct (macro) serves this purpose. However, its safety is under question. As a result, the future construct comes into the spotlight, which is considered to be more productive. Just like pcall, it evaluates function calls wrapped inside it in a concurrent thread. Here, if the parent thread needs a return value from a function that hasn’t completed its execution, then the parent thread waits for its completion. Futures resemble forking combined with lazy evaluation.

Concurrent ML

The concurrent version of ML programming language. In CML, concurrency is supported with the help of threads and synchronous message passing. A thread is created with the help of spawn primitive. After the thread’s creation, its function parameter starts to execute on a new thread. It results either with produced output or through communications with other threads. Termination of threads, be it parent or child, does not impact the execution of the other.

For threads to communicate with each other, channels are used (similar to goroutines and channels in Go programming language). Here, two main functions — send and recv (receive) messages are used. The type of the send operation below is inferred to be integer, when recv returns the value of the channel.

let val ch = channel() send(ch, 10) recv(ch)

Send and receive can take place when both the sender and receiver are ready (otherwise, they wait). Functions can take channels as parameters. Just like in Ada programming language, synchronous message passing should be able to decide which message to choose when more than one channel receives one, when the guarded command do-od construct does a random choosing. The event is the synchronization mechanism in CML.

F#

F# is a part of .NET family [1], so its similarity to C# while implementing concurrency will look extremely strange.

let createThread() =

let th = new Thread(MethodMan)

th.Start()

Synchronization is not required for shared immutable data, but things are different with mutable data. In this case, locks are used. As noted in the book, a mutual heap-allocated variable is of type ref. It can be changed with the aid of a lambda expression which uses := operator. The prefix ! gets the value of ref.

let s = ref 0 lock(s) (fun () -> s := !s + x)

Learn about mutable and unmutable objects in Python in an Analytics Vidhya article.

Asynchronously called threads use BeginInvoke and EndInvoke subprograms and IAsyncResult interface, just like in C# (refer to the previous article on concurrency for more information).

Parallelism in Lisp

For parallelism in Lisp, refer to this paper.
Gold & Silver Market Report for Dec 26, 2020
By: Thomas Ott
Tags: Investing, Gold, Trading, Bitcoin

Photo by Dmitry Demidko on Unsplash

Gold & Silver Market Report for Dec 26, 2020

Gold and Silver prices edged lower this week, closing out a fantastic year for the metals. Bitcoin charged higher last week!

It’s Saturday, December 26, 2020 and this is the last Gold and Silver market report for 2020! Look to more market reports in 2021 with additional market commentary when applicable.

Gold and Silver Markets closed lower last week with Gold closing down -0.58% to $1,874.69 and Silver down -0.46% to $25.82.

Our proprietary models all point to Gold and Silver being fairly valued at these levels. Any price movements above these values are considered forthy and prone to corrections. Conversely, any prices moves below these values constitutes a good value play.

Gold Chart

Bears came out this week to stop any upward price moves for Gold. We had previously written that Gold appears to be making lower highs and lower lows. Our models show that the trend for Gold remains down and we continue to see lower price moves for Gold in the next week.

Our models are predicting a lower close for Gold next week to the $1,866.00 level.

Note: Red lines are key resistance, Green lines are key support

Silver Chart

Per the usual, Silver had a volatile week but Silver Bears stopped a potential test of the $27.61 resistance line. There was an attempt to break out of the range that Silver has been in for several weeks but it failed too.

Our models point a lower close for Silver next week, to the $25.60 level. Trends remain down with prices expected to drift within $22 to $26 level until a successful test and break out above the resistance line.

Note: Red lines are key resistance, Green lines are key support

Gold to Silver Ratio Chart

The Gold to Silver Ratio closed lower this week to the 72.59 level, a strong indicator of Gold and Silver’s congruent moves last week. Our models are predicting a higher move for the ratio to 73.23. This indicates that Silver prices may ease to the downside or that Gold might move higher from there. Whatever it ends up being, expect the gold and silver markets to be volatile next week.

Note: Red lines are key resistance, Green lines are key support

BTC to USD Chart

Starting in 2021, we will be including a current Bitcoin chart and running our proprietary models against this cryptocurrency. To close out 2020, here’s a current chart of Bitcoin vs the USD. It’s easy to see that prices are in a strong uptrend but our models predict a lower close for Bitcoin next week, down to the $26,600.

We have been avid “collectors” of Bitcoin over the years and believe that it can be a store of wealth, much like Gold and Silver and their coin derivatives.

Note: Red lines are key resistance, Green lines are key support
Finish Strong: Final Steps After a Conference
By: Sarah Willey
Tags: Professional Development, Business, Professional, Networking, Conference

Finish Strong: Final Steps After a Conference

It isn’t over until you’ve done these two things

Photo by Chris Montgomery on Unsplash

I’ve been attending a lot of conferences lately. Since March, I’m now on my seventh virtual conference. (I’m not only a working professional but a doctoral student, so I am attending a mix of conferences related to my field as well as academic conferences!) I’ve learned that there are some really important things to do after a conference ends.

Review Notes

I always sit down either the evening of the last day of the conference or the next morning to review all of my notes. For me, that mostly means reviewing what I tweeted, but whatever your note-taking style is, you’ll want to review what you learned. I also look at notes other people shared in the conference app and on social media to see if they captured any take-aways that I missed.

My goal is to come up with a list of 3 things that I can do now based on what I learned. Maybe a session gave a new way of approaching my work, or a new way of analyzing the data to evaluate success that I can try out.

Bonus: If you’re into writing and sharing content (and aren’t we all, here on Medium?), a post-conference blog post is a great way to help others in your field learn from your experience and a nice addition to your content calendar. When I write one of these, I focus on big picture trends and key takeaways that will be relevant to anyone. (See an example here of one I wrote this year!)

Connect with People

Networking is really important in any industry. In-person conferences offer a chance to meet up in person, to have brief conversations at the mixers and vendor fairs or between sessions, and the after-hours breakfasts, dinners, and trips to the bar. A good virtual conference will also offer some social activities, perhaps via zoom. Either way, networking during the conference is just the beginning — it’s what happens after you go home that really matters.

When I log off at the end of the event, I make a list of everyone that I met. First, I find them on LinkedIn and Twitter and connect. Second, I email the people I really want to talk to more and schedule some zoom meetings. These steps are so important, because those are the people who will later collaborate, commiserate, and open doors you haven’t even thought about walking through yet!

I hope these tips help you out next time you attend a conference!
ICYMI: Bootstrap XD Plugins From the Command-Line With Xdpm
By: Rob Kleiman
Tags: Cli, JavaScript, Adobe Creative Cloud, Plugins, Xd

In case you missed it: here we share the highlights from the Xpdm 4.0 release, which included the ability to bootstrap a plugin using the CLI, if that’s your preferred method for working on XD Plugins.

Xdpm is a powerful tool for developers who prefer using the command line when developing plugins for Adobe XD. Back in December, we released Xdpm v4.0 that brought the ability to bootstrap a plugin from the command line.

Overview

With the release of v4.0 you can use the xdpm bootstrap command to create a new plugin scaffold right from the command line. You can use it to generate different plugin types, including headless (no UI), panel-based, modal-based, and modal-based using React. Additionally, you have the option to specify the name for your new plugin’s directory from the terminal.

Any of the bootstrap commands will generate the appropriate folder structure and make it easy to begin creating your plugin.

Usage

Commands

# Bootstrap a headless plugin:

xdpm bootstrap # Bootstrap a headless plugin in dir ./my-panel:

xdpm bootstrap my-panel # Bootstrap a panel plugin:

xdpm bootstrap panel # Bootstrap a panel plugin in dir ./my-panel:

xdpm bootstrap panel my-panel

Bug fixes

Two bugs also were resolved in this newest release:

Xdpm now exits with non-zero code (1) when xdpm validate manifest validation fails.

manifest validation fails. Improved manifest validation for latest requirements

How to get started

We invite you to try it out in your own workflow. The tool is available on GitHub and npm. To install for the first time or update your existing version (requires Node.js):

Review the readme to see all the commands and features currently available beyond bootstrap. If you see other areas needing feedback, please submit a pull request.

Special thanks to Ash Ryan Arnwine, Kerri Shotts, Pablo Klaschka, Yoshiki Takeoka for making this release possible.
How To Implement A Linked List In JavaScript.
By: Akhilesh Ojha
Tags: Javascript Tips, JavaScript, Javascript Development, Singly Linked List, Datastrucutre

After going through the title you might think, why are we even using JavaScript to implement a Linked List, why can’t we just use C++ or Java which support prebuilt DS functions? To be honest, you are not wrong, JavaScript does not support Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) and it does not have any built-in functions for any Data Structures (except Arrays), however with ES-2015, a new class keyword was introduced and we will be taking advantage of that. But again, is implementing Data Structures really hard & is it even worth our efforts?

You will get an answer to this once you go through this article.

Through this article we will try to understand and implement the following:
Using service blueprints to design better workshops
By: Nick Komarov
Tags: Service Blueprint, Workshop, Service Design, UX, Customer Journey Map

Using service blueprints to design better workshops

I teach other people to use service blueprints to design services, so why am I not using it to design my own workshop service?

Last year, I left my peaceful full-time job, became a freelance design consultant, and eventually, among other things, had found myself designing and delivering workshops on design thinking, customer journey mapping, and service design. At a certain point, I was asked to curate a short four-day course, which meant thinking through everything from overall curriculum to daily agenda and roles of invited lecturers and tutors.

List are confusing, maps are clear and awesome!

Having never done this before, I started planning the whole thing by writing down a bulleted list. I had seen other people do it that way and naturally assumed that it was the way to go. Turns out that planning a four-day event was a little bit more complicated than it sounded (what a surprise!) and, after the first couple of iterations, I realized that something wasn’t working. There were too many things to grasp — interconnected student activities, teachers’ actions, and artifacts to produce. A bulleted list was simply not enough for that. That was the moment when I thought, “Hey, the course that I’m working on is actually a service! I teach other people to use service blueprints to design services, so why am I not using one here?!”

Rows represent students actions, artifacts, outcomes and teachers actions

I really like the anatomy of a service blueprint by Adaptive Path, which they explain in their awesome guide. I use it as a starting point for all my projects and adjust as I go. So did I here working on my course blueprint, I first mapped out the “Action” row — class & student activities across 4 days. Then one by one I filled in service moment columns — “Staff actions”, i.e. what teachers were to do during each activity; and “Touchpoints” — i.e. which artifacts, such as templates, we needed to facilitate the activities and which outcomes would be produced by students.

Columns represent service moments — i.e. students’ and teachers’ actions and resulting outcomes at any one moment of a time

It worked like a charm — a complete picture of the intended experience came together, which is kind of like the point of service blueprinting, right? I had the visualization of the program end-to-end, which I could easily communicate, discuss with, and update everyone involved in bringing it to live. The invited teachers could see the parts they were responsible for and understand how they contributed to the greater whole. Finally, I had a complete list of the artifacts (e.g., slide decks, templates, posters) that needed to be produced.

Four-day workshop service blueprint

Since then, whenever I have to prepare a workshop, I jump right into the realtimeboard and get mapping!
The best way to meditate: Try not to laugh
By: Shamontiel L. Vaughn
Tags: Humor, Peace, Meditation, Laughter, Meditate

The best way to meditate: Try not to laugh

If you could never focus on meditation before, these videos should help

Photo credit: Jakayla Toney/Unsplash

Whether you’re trying to get Fitbit points or just trying to master any way to not spazz out on your co-workers, meditation is inarguably a solid technique to learn. According to Forbes, “mindfulness meditation decreases activity in the default mode network (DMN), the brain network responsible for mind-wandering and self-referential thoughts — a.k.a., ‘monkey mind.’”

Considering mind-wandering is typically associated with too many distractions (including political nightmares), less happiness, and often drowning oneself in the past or regretting something in the future, any way to help one settle his or her mind can come in handy. I’ve been to enough vegan festivals to know that there will always be a tent full of people doing yoga and another one with people doing meditation, and it rarely if ever works for me. I can zone out at home, but I usually end up opening my eyes to realize the sun is out and six to eight hours have passed. Does that count as meditation, too?

But why didn’t anyone ever tell me about humor meditation? If I’d have known about this category of mindfulness, I’d have mastered meditation years ago. If you’re still having trouble zoning out and relaxing, check out these six videos below as examples.
Building iOS Widgets Screen using Expo
By: Alex Melnyk
Tags: React Native, Expo, iOS, Scroll, Widget

The main

To implement the same behaviour of scrolling we need to use system scroll or build something similar, but I’ve chosen to use system one.

The main idea it’s to take the ScrollView, it’s quicker way to get expected behaviour, but if you try to put widgets inside you will see that they are scroll up, so the best way to put ScrollView over the widgets and listen to scroll position of ScrollView to bind all logic related to collapsing/expanding widgets, in this case, we will have the exact scroll effect like in the system.

Widget

As you can see, each widget has a blurred background with dark/light tint depended on the system’s, to implement it we just need to use BlurView which is out of box in expo.

Rounded corners we can do with border-radius and overflow properties of a view.

Complicated thing it’s a widget’s content, most of all logic will be target to implement expected behaviour when user scrolls the screen, a top widget’s content collapsing like the content attached to the bottom of widget’s content, that’s why we need a trick there, we need to put subview with absolute position alignment to bottom of content, of course, we need to apply relative position to the widget’s content to avoid binding on root view/screen also to avoid header overlap effect on the content we need to add a space to the top of content in fact margin for header size.
Due To Overwhelming Demand Verasity Airdrop Extended To 40M Tokens!
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Verasity, ICO, Ethereum, Bitcoin

Edit: The airdrop has now closed.

It’s been just over 3 weeks since we launched the VERA Airdrop. With over 10M VERA (VRA) available to be claimed by 25,000 people, we were expecting the campaign to run throughout most of our Token Sale.

Since the announcement, the Verasity community has grown incredibly fast and over 25,000 people have already signed up to the airdrop. Our team have been blown away with the enthusiasm, positivity, and feedback we have received from you all!

Due to the exceptionally high demand for VERA, we have decided that while a 10M VERA airdrop was good….

A 40,000,000 VERA Airdrop is BETTER! Effective immediately, the maximum number of entries to the airdrop has increased to 100,000 people!

Our referral program is still live which means once you have taken part in the airdrop, you can get even more VERA by referring other people to join us on our journey of building the next-generation video sharing platform!

Once you’re on https://verasity.io/airdrop you’ll be taken through the claim process.

It’s simple and only requires a few steps. Tokens will be released within a month of the public token sale finishing.

Verasity is a next-generation video platform and we want you to be a part of our community!

Once the tokens are gone, they’re gone, so don’t miss your chance — claim your airdrop tokens today!

Please share this with anyone you think might be interested!

Airdrop participants will need to do full KYC/AML procedures before we release tokens. Individuals from Cayman Islands, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United States are unable to take part in this airdrop and will not receive tokens.

Join our community:

If you want to join the conversation about Verasity then please follow our various accounts below!

Website: https://verasity.io

Telegram: http://t.me/verasitychat

Twitter: https://twitter.com/verasitytech

Facebook: https://facebook.com/verasitytech

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/verasity

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/verasity
Work a lot? I’ll pass, thanks.
By: Klára Kőszeghyová
Tags: Tips, Self Development, Life Lessons, Hustle, Self Improvement

Even now the influencers are all about hustling and putting the time in something you want etc. Sure, they are right, but only to a degree. I disagree with the idea that working a lot on something means that you will be successful in the future.

Why? Because I believe that if you are working a lot, but in a wrong manner, you won’t move an inch from where you are at that moment. Let’s say that I want to be a writer, but all I am doing is writing my journal without any planning, layout, strategy or goal in mind. Will it help me to be a writer? I seriously doubt so. Maybe someone will find my journal and decide to publish it (well, I don’t know what the future holds for us).

But I do believe that if you are working hard on something, if you are constantly trying to get better at what you do by either writing articles, books and sending them to publishers to see if they are good enough, then yeah, that does help you to become a writer. Why? Many reasons. You actually get feedback from people, even if it is strangers (that’s the best scenario, but I will get to that later) and you can move forward, and it doesn’t matter if you move by an inch or by a mile. The fact that matters is that you move, you grow, you get better. And you can do this only if you are working hard. Let’s once again use our example. You want to be a writer and, in my opinion, working hard means that you will research how to develop a character, how to keep the reader turning pages etc.

There is a catch however. You cannot just research and research, then you would rather be a theorist than an actual writer (no offense meant). Yes, researching is an important part of the job, it’s like you would want to teach someone something but you know absolutely nothing about that thing.

So, do your research, learn, get better, but you have to write as well. Write articles, write essays, write novels, books, poems, whatever that you like. And keep going. That’s the only way how the hard work pays off. By making mistakes and you learning from them. Sure, it does hurt when the publisher demolishes your book that took you a year or longer. But try to talk to them why they didn’t like it, what was the issue and then learn from it. Then, the next copy you will send them will be much better. Trust me.

Working hard doesn’t have to be time consuming. You can do it effectively, you can research theory while you are eating, you can read articles about your interest while commuting (don’t do it while driving a car, please), while you are waiting somewhere. We all have got phones and majority of them are always connected to the Internet, so make us of it. Be productive.

That’s working hard in my opinion. That no matter where you are, when you have the time, you work on yourself, you learn, read, educate yourself and maybe even other, who knows.
The Walking RED
By: Background Noise Comics
Tags: Christmas, Humor, Drinking, Comics, The Walking Dead

Written by

Daily comic by Lisa Burdige and John Hazard about balancing life, love and kids in the gig economy.
AXNET lists KIK with KIN/ETH and KIN/TUSD pairs
Tags: Technology, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin

AXNET’s Decentralized Exchange has now launched KIK’s KIN Token available for immediate trading, deposit & withdrawal. KIN will have the following pairs in our decentralized exchange: KIN/ETH & KIN/TUSD

The AXNET DEX allows traders to get access to a high-speed trading engine, with a centralized user-experience, while keeping custody of their funds. Users can connect their wallet via Meta-Mask, Trust Wallet, Ledger, Creating a New ETH account, or importing their private key(Not Recommended).

About KIN

Kik Interactive Inc. is creating a cryptocurrency as a first step to launching a decentralized ecosystem of digital services. The Kin cryptocurrency will first power a digital economy inside of Kik, and then will serve as the basis of interoperability with other digital services in the Kin Ecosystem.

About AXNET:

Asset Exchange Network OÜ (AXNET) is a licensed virtual currency to fiat exchange with a licensed virtual wallet platform based out of Estonia. We service our traders worldwide by giving them the first hybrid trading platform that offers both a Centralized and Decentralized exchange that allows our traders to toggle between the two. We are listing traditional BTC, ETH, and USDT pairs with also fiat pairs like USD and EUR through our license and banking networks. We are also launching TUSD pairs for our decentralized exchange to give a stable-coin trading experience.
UX designer at a small-size design agency or at a big-size company?
By: Sathish Kumar
Tags: UI Design, UX, UX Design, Careers, Ux Careers

A small design agency could have some where between 10–30 ppl working at max. Working at a place like this could be of great exposure in your early stages of design career especially when you are just starting in your design career.

The advantages working in a small size design agency are,

You get the opportunity to learn many things provided you have a good mentor.

You could be involved in stakeholder discussions, interacting directly with clients on the requirements and have design discussions.

You will have active involvement in all stages of design, wearing multiple hats and not doing just one UX role.

You can take care of a whole project along with a couple of team members and be involved in it from start to end.

You get to know the end to end process of how a product is conceptualised and put into the market if your agency is developing a product.

And it just keeps adding.

When working as a UX Designer at a large company which has dedicated teams for different roles with a huge workforce is quite difficult to gel in at the start and understand the existing process the company follows. Especially for a person who has worked in a small design agency before will take some time to set into the new environment.

Working in a large company has the following advantages,

You have lot of people in different levels of experience who can always provide their feedbacks and suggestions that helps you grow.

Separate team’s exist for different UX roles which helps you to master in any one role which you think you are good.

You will learn to manage time much better since there would be other teams that are dependent on the work that you do.

You will learn to be collaborative in terms of wether you manage your design files or when making design decisions as there will be a big team involved who also needs to be informed on the happenings.

Definitely a much better pay than a small size design agency

And lot more depending on the company that you get into.

Each has its own cons which I might not talk about here. One should choose which would suit them best and keep learning and grow your career.