fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
When Parks Are Closed
By: Aikya Param
Tags: Poetry, Environment, Memories, Outdoors, Beauty

When Parks Are Closed

But still we go for beauty and air, for love of place

Picnic table barriers. Martin Luther King Jr. Shoreline Trail, Oakland, CA. Photograph by Aikya Param, 8/24/2020

Binoculars and smart phone with me, I’m out exploring

But the Shoreline Trail is closed.

Yet people and dogs walk the path

And properly helmeted riders fly by on fancy bicycles:

Father and son, mother and daughters.

The Nature Center is closed, a pointy sixties modern

With fine facilities, is closed.

I snap photos with my phone distracted and drawn

By tiny flowers on the ground,

And the phone app tells me the names in Latin and English

Along with uses and how to grow

Them as well as warnings of leaf-eating things living there,

Spoiling their allure for gardeners.

Barriers of orange open weave sheets cover picnic tables,

Rough wooden picnic tables.

“We’re closed. Around this table, please don’t gather this year,”

Except for one in back of the field.

Memories of roasted marshmallows, sauerkraut,

And fluted white paper plates,

And fragrant franks and burgers in buns with relished veggie options.

I’m out expecting to enjoy beauty

And birds but only one Canadian goose waddles

And not one seagull soars overhead.

Another day I try the other

Shore and walk the Arrowhead Marsh Trail to see feathery

Wild oats and fennel umbrellas alongside.
Don’t Fear Failure
By: Laura Mcdonell
Tags: Religion, Growth, Productivity, Failure, Faith

Don’t Fear Failure

It is More Risky to Be Complacent

Photo by John T on Unsplash

Possible to Be Too Satisfied

The literal meaning of Complacency’s Latin root is, “Very Pleased”. It is possible to become too satisfied to a point where no amount of change, growth, or improvement seems necessary.
How 6 product designers tackle friction with product managers
By: Tarif Rahman
Tags: Product Design, Technology, Design, User Experience, Product Management

Catt Small

Title: Product Designer

Company: Etsy

Industry: E-commerce

Tweet at her: @cattsmall

What do you enjoy most about working with a PM on a product’s design?

PMs have a strategic mindset with a heavy focus on where the product is headed. And that’s great because, as a product designer, I’m thinking about the user’s perspective and how that fits into the business line. So when we get together, it’s much better for the direction of the product.

What is the main source of friction when working with a PM on a product’s design?

The biggest source of friction I’ve found is giving designs the time they need to be refined, but also ensuring we’re meeting timelines.

There’s this attachment designers get where we have this amazing thing we’ve considered, but often this ‘okay’ state gets released. It sometimes is better to just get something out and then improve upon it. So it can be a positive, but you have to actually iterate upon things because sometimes those ‘halfway’ designs release and they never get looked at again.

What are some tactical things about product design you think all PMs can do to better communicate with designers?

PMs should go into projects without assumptions. Based on larger numbers, one can say, “Oh, on average this is how people are.” But when you talk to individuals and gather qualitative data on people’s reasoning, you realize the many different user segments. It can be harmful to think of your users as a monolith. Once you abandon that way of thinking you can become a better, tactical strategist.

Also, participate in a design sprint. After we did a design sprint for a project, everyone was just more excited about design — especially the PMs. You’ll feel a lot closer to your designers and find it easier to communicate.

What’s one communication strategy you think PMs should adopt?

Asking more questions of designers. The best PMs I’ve worked with have asked of me directly instead of planning for me, or speaking for me, or saying “Hey Catt, we figured out this thing, now make it look nice.” It leads to this feeling of autonomy and ownership.

In your opinion, a PM can make a product designer’s life easier by…?

Trusting them. Trusting that where product designers are coming from is a place of genuine care for the users. And trusting that we have a special expertise that somewhat overlaps with product management but has its own perspective and is just as important.

Check out Catt’s design work here.
4 Habits to Build Focus in a Tempest
By: C. C. Francis
Tags: Self Improvement, Life Lessons, Self, Productivity, Focus

How do some people stay focused through hard times?

What is the link between focus on the one hand, and resilience on the other?

What Makes Some Brains More Focused Than Others? | Marvin Chun | TEDxKFAS

In this TEDx talk, neuroscience researcher Marvin Chun discusses the limits of the brain’s potential to multitask. He provides three tips for improving concentration — “simplify, relax, unitask.”

The full talk is well worth a watch. Below, I distill Chun’s three points into four related ones.
Here’s why decentralization is inevitable…
By: Mohit Mamoria
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Bitcoin, Economics, Inspiration

When Machines Think 💭

“Forget artificial intelligence — in the brave new world of big data, it’s artificial idiocy we should be looking out for.” — Tom Chatfield

Since the dawn of the industrial revolution and machines, there were always humans operating them and making them work. But over last few years, we have seen them becoming more of our thinking partners. Speaking of identifying faces in a CCTV’s video footage, or translating a sentence from Korean to Mandarin, or playing a match of Go, machines have continuously beaten humans.

Still, what we see now in the name of artificial intelligence (AI) is merely the tip of the iceberg. We have organizations building AI models in silos and training them on their historical data. But the Pandora’s box will open the day we can have all these organizations collaborate on AI models that do better than what any of those individual AI models could do.

We are yet to see the moment in AI along the lines of ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.’

Time for an example, I believe. Almost every bank has an AI that detects the probability of payment being fraud. Each bank has been training their version of the models on their historical data. It makes some banks better at fraud detection than others, which sometimes they position as one of their strengths to their customers. While only some people might buy banking services from a bank solely based on their expertise in detecting a potential fraud, the bigger problem of fraud payments is an issue for society at large. But for banks, their business and profits are equally (if not more) important than just doing good for the community.

If in an imaginary world, banks choose to work together and build a standard fraud detection AI model that serves all the banks equally, they will not be able to capture the economic value of their data. If banks choose otherwise, there would still be people suffering from fraud payments.

Interestingly, in such scenarios, decentralization allows us to capture the economic value as well as do good for the society at large. How exactly? Here’s how — banks together can train a common AI model that is stored on a peer-to-peer network (blockchain). Anyone can take the latest copy of the model from the network, train it further with their data, and submit it back to the network with a proof-of-training. If the network accepts that the additional training improved the model’s performance, it recognizes it and marks it as latest for others to train it further. Whenever the network accepts a trained model, the trainer gets paid in the network-specific tokens that can be used in return to use the model. That’s how the trainer captures the economic value from its data, and at the same time, the common trained AI model makes it possible for every bank — even a new one — to use the trained model — therefore, doing good to the society.
Broken promise
By: Rob Cullen
Tags: Free Verse, Resilience, Poetry On Medium, Mental Health, Resistance Poetry

foto©robcullen2010

Broken promise

…

Two days of hard blown snow fall,

mountain roads are blocked now,

it’s two days since your long phone call,

but without the help of a snow plough,

I’m unable to keep my promise.

…

Today I walked down from the hills,

waded through drifts of deep snow,

to reach the chemists for the pills,

but everywhere I went was closed,

I found it hard to avoid or dismiss,

…

Your loneliness — the sadness of your grief.

It was the first time you’d spoken,

of being in this world without the belief,

of being a healer and in touch with the broken,

spirits of the dead, perhaps a false genesis.

…

I heard your words of shame and remorse,

after the latest chemical imbalance of your brain,

stranded you in a nightmare with no recourse,

the fear of voices, that constant refrain,

repeated, over and over again, of your disgrace.

…

My fear for your well-being is greater now

tomorrow I will make good my promise.

©robcullen24122020

copywrite nonattributable

There is a tradition in Ireland on Christmas Eve to light a “Strangers candle” to guide family home and those travelling and maybe need shelter.

…

I will light our candle this year for those carers who have managed through such a hard year to look after family and friends whether it is through covid19 or through mental health problems and have struggled to do the best they can.

…

I wish peace to you at this time and that the New Year brings calm and hope.

….

©robcullen24122020
The UnLived Life
By: Ann Litts
Tags: Family, Aging, Self-awareness, The Road Not Taken, Life Lessons

The high school boyfriend who broke up with me over the word, “No.” He went on to become politically active in the small town we grew up in. His wife is referred to as Mrs. Mayor.

There was the day I stood in that very same high school — recruiting paperwork in hand — just a signature away from joining the Air Force. I had the grades and in return for a few years of My Life — they would pay for me to become one of their nurses. I could have gotten my education free and back then — there was no war on the horizon. I’d have been stationed away from Small Town, USA with a chance to see the world and challenge myself. In the end, I allowed the needs of others to sway this decision.

One day a co-worker had a birthday party for her boyfriend. She convinced me to come — even though there were only a few people I would know. I reconnected with an old friend from high school. We built a wall of beer cans and he ended up driving me home. Less than a year later, he became my husband.

A boy — then man — I had a crush on since I was thirteen floated in and out of My Life. He and his wife were uncle and aunt to my kids. There was never any doubt on his side of the equation that I was friend-material. He loved his wife with all his heart and they belonged together. He never had children.

For the fourth time in six months, I bled. Late. And just short of calling the OB to confirm a pregnancy. In the days before EPT — it was always a waiting game. I had one child; I stressed over not being able to repeat this exercise. Until that fourth time, that time I had held on a bit longer and the bleeding didn’t stop. I was having an incomplete miscarriage and required surgical intervention.

I didn’t take the first full-time nursing position I was offered after graduation. I didn’t even take the scholarship from the facility where I was a nursing assistant — as it meant a three-year commitment once I graduated. The year after I graduated, my husband was transferred to North Carolina and I went to work for a facility here.

When I was fifty-years-old, I walked away from my marriage. I had more failed relationships in the ensuing ten years than I can count.

So when I ponder the twists and turns of My Life — these are biggies. The crossroads moments of UnLived Lives that led me to the life I did live.
Medium Add Article To Publication
By: Casey Botticello
Tags: Draft, Publication, Writing, Format, Medium

Medium does not make publishing your articles in publications nearly as easy as it should be.

Luckily, there are a number of resources such as Smedian which help bridge the gap between new writers and editors of existing publications.

However, once you have been approved as a writer for a publication, many Medium users are left wondering:

How Do I Add My Article to a Publication?

This article provides a quick overview of how to do this.

Adding an Article to a Publication

Step 1.

If your article is already published, click the edit icon (gear icon) at the top right of your article, and then select the edit story button.

Note: If your article is still a draft (has not been published) you can skip this step.

Step 2.

Click the three dot icon (⋯) and select the add to publication button from the drop down menu.

Step 3.

You will now see a list of publications. These are all the publication that you are an approved writer for or are publication where you are the editor/owner.

If you are an approved writer, you will see the following message:

You must complete the submission process in order for your story to be sent to the publication’s editor. The editor will be responsible for publishing your draft.

If this is the case, select the publication that you want to add your article to and you will see the following message:

Click the submit button to submit your article to a publication for review.

If you are the owner or editor of a publication, you will see the following message:

This signifies that you can add an article to a publication and it will be auto-approved for publication (because you are the owner or editor).

Select the publish button.

You can also remove your article from any publication. Simply click the three dots icon (⋯) and then click the remove story from publication button.

Notes About Adding Articles to Medium Publications
The Brilliant Scientist Who Stopped the Roman Army
By: Mythili The Dreamer
Tags: World, Culture, Technology, Science, History

The story of Archimedes

Archimedes was the resident of the city-state of Syracuse on the east coast of Sicily, founded in 734 BCE. During his time the state was a powerhouse of art, science, and commerce even rivaling Athens.

Archimedes shared a close relationship with the king and was often called to suggest solutions to civic problems within the city. From inventing a water pump to remove rainwater from ships to testing the amount of gold in the king’s crown (remember the Eureka moment when he ran naked?), Archimedes’s brilliance made him the most respected scientist of his time.

It was around this time that the Romans attacked the state. A huge Roman army under their famous general Marcellus laid siege outside the walls of Syracuse. Well versed in siege warfare, the Romans expected the conquering of the city-state to be a cakewalk as ships carrying ladders and grappling hooks sailed toward the city with the intention of scaling its walls.

But they had grossly underestimated the brilliance of Archimedes. Archimedes devised a series of devious engineering marvels that repulsed Marcellus and his army in every assault. What was expected to finish in two days went on for two years with the Roman army waiting outside the walls, frustrated and terrorized by a ‘local’ engineer as they called Archimedes.

Some of his marvelous creations were simply too brilliant even for today’s times.

The Archimedes Claw

The Archimedes Claw was a notorious invention in which huge beams could be swung out over the walls and some of also dropped huge weights, punching holes through the ships and sinking them.

Others had a claw or grappling hook, which grabbed hold of the rigging or rails of a galley, raising it, shaking it, and capsizing it. The terrifying spectacle of a ship being lifted and thrown stuck terror within the Romans.

The Archimedes Catapult Engine

The historian Plutarch describes the catapult engine as a series of “engines” designed to hurl arrows and rocks at attacking Roman troops and ships.

According to him, some of the rocks hurled from Archimedes’s catapults weighed as much as 10 talents — around 700 pounds. He also describes different types of catapult engines with varied ability to hurl or shoot projectiles at attackers both at great range and directly under the city’s walls.

The Archimedes Death Ray

This was the most lethal of Archimedes inventions. The invention involved a huge mirror that could focus sunlight onto the wooden Roman ships and cause them to burst into flames.

The device consisted of a large array of highly polished bronze or copper shields arranged in a parabola, concentrating sunlight into a single, intense beam. This single device spread havoc among Roman sailors who even mutinied rather than getting burnt to death.

Marcellus could not afford any more direct attacks and he suffered heavy losses. What began as a short siege had become a stalemate that went on for two years.
Time To Get Your #BUILTBYGIRLS Swag On
Tags: Swag And Flavor, Womenintech, Startup

#BUILTBYGIRLS Program Manager Danielle Letayf and Marketing & Partnerships Manager Victoria Marlin

Everywhere we go, people be asking: where can I get one of those?! Well, we’ve kept it a secret — until now.

Head over to Bow & Drape to get your very own #BUILTBYGIRLS sweatshirt and join the sparkly swag crew. We know it’s on your bucket list.

Click here to buy.
Hospitals shut their doors as plague upon plague hits Yemen
By: Brian Whitaker
Tags: Covid 19, Yemen, Middle East, Dengue Fever, Coronavirus

Aden’s main hospital surrounded by rubbish and floodwater. Photo via Twitter.

Ten Covid-19 cases have now been confirmed in war-torn Yemen where health services face an increasingly desperate situation. Aside from coronavirus, they are already struggling with at least two other plagues — dengue fever and chikungunya.

The seat of the Covid-19 outbreak is the southern city of Aden where 25 people in various parts of the city are reported to have died from undiagnosed causes during the last few days.

Nineteen of them died in their homes on Friday, according to the Yemeni website Al-Masdar Online. Symptoms described included joint pain, which is more characteristic of dengue and/or chikungunya than Covid-19.

Dengue and chikungunya (known locally as “al-makrafus”) are common diseases in Yemen. They are spread by mosquitoes and it’s not unusual for people to catch both viruses from the same insect bite. A surge in new cases was expected following last month’s natural disaster when floods swept through Aden.

Al-Masdar reports that some of those who have died were turned away from local hospitals while others chose not to have treatment, fearing they would become infected with Covid-19 if they went to hospital.

Their fears of local health services were not unreasonable. A photo posted on Twitter on Thursday shows the city’s main hospital — the 500-bed Gomhoria teaching hospital — surrounded by rubbish and floodwater.

The announcement on Wednesday that five Covid-19 cases had been confirmed in Aden led some of the private hospitals to close while others are not admitting patients with symptoms that could be Covid-19. This is blamed on a lack of protective equipment for medical staff, and there are stories circulating in the city of doctors and nurses abandoning their jobs.

Of the three most recently confirmed Covid-19 cases, two were in Aden and one in Taizz province, further north.

The Taizz case is described as a 40-year-old man who works in a jewellery shop in Aden. He had travelled to Taizz province by car with his family last Monday despite having developed symptoms two days earlier. He is said to have been reported to the authorities by someone in a fish market and was then taken to the Republican General Hospital in Taizz city.

News of the man’s infection has since prompted demonstrations outside the hospital by local residents who object to having Covid-19 patients treated nearby — for fear they might catch the disease. They demanded that such cases should be transferred to “an empty area outside the city”.
Meet the Platio Team: Chief Growth Officer — Mark Jackson
Tags: Marketing, Crytocurrency, ICO, Finance, Banking

Mark Jackson, Platio’s Chief Growth Officer

Mark is Platio’s Chief Growth Officer, who has 18 years’ experience in developing digital strategy, performance marketing and advertising as well as user growth for SaaS/consumer platforms. His proven capability to develop and execute new initiatives and formulate digital strategies across multiple businesses and markets, combined with his strong background in digital performance marketing strategy and growth, will be key in building Platio’s user base and value for the business.

For Mark the potential of cryptocurrencies is vast. “Crypto and Blockchain can have an immense and genuinely groundbreaking impact on cultures, industry and economies,” he says, “but it needs projects like Platio to make it work.”

His decision to work with Platio was simple. After all, “why wouldn’t you want to be involved in something that can bring a genuine answer to the problems faced by the crypto industry?”

A lover of science fiction, Mark enjoys relaxing with novels by Isaac Asimov and Vernor Vinge, and is an unashamed fan of Star Wars and the Marvel movies.

Mark is a highly creative strategist and marketeer. As you might expect, that creativity extends outside of his work: he produces his own music and even designs and builds his own furniture!
§33 Mass Panic, Capitalism, and Snow
Tags: Snow, Panic, Psychology

Flipping channels in a hotel recently, I came across a show about avalanches. Naturally, I was reminded of intellectual accountability in the halls of public discourse.

For those needing a refresher (as I did), avalanches are not primarily the result of the weight or amount of accumulated snow, but the lack of friction the snow encounters on its path downward. After several cycles of melting, freezing, and accumulation atop each newly-frozen crust, the snow blanketing a mountain can become a stratified stack of separate layers capable of freely sliding over and past one another. The slightest tremor can trip the first domino: it is, quite literally, a slippery slope.

In his book Thinking, Fast and Slow (2013), economist Daniel Kahneman describes a phenomenon known as an availability cascade as a chain of events caused largely by the media’s exploitation of people’s erroneous capacity to assess an issue by its salience and fluency.

As the press increasingly compete for ‘attention-grabbing’ headlines, a statistically insignificant risk can get trapped in a feedback loop — breathless coverage and its resultant panic mutually reinforcing one another, self-propagating and inexorable, and potentially redounding to “public panic and large-scale government action”. An avalanche.

But we shouldn’t be so swift to condemn. Despite our purported desire for journalism to be a sacrosanct bastion of truth-seeking and reporting, media outlets are businesses operating in free markets and beholden to their stakeholders. If we want journalists to present us with representative, equitable coverage of the facts as they are, that must become the market’s demand in practice. Each individual must embody the friction that resists the intoxicating advance of sensationalism, independently quantifying each risk and weighting it by its statistical significance instead of how many people are talking about it — and turning off the TV until coverage is proportionate. You and I write the rubric by which these firms operate, and if we’re willing to abide mass hysteria, we’re just as culpable for flattening that poor skier.

/Travis Klein

References:

Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2013.
How to Make Your Mind a Beautiful Place
By: Primal Dhillon
Tags: Self Improvement, Life Lessons, Happiness, Life, Psychology

The art of intentional thinking

Photo by Paul Gilmore on Unsplash

Our world is in our minds.

And, we have the power to make it either a beautiful place or a miserable place.

When we are having a rough day, it’s important to remember that, some things are going to make us sad or upset, but how long we dwell on them and how much we let them get to us depends, many times, on us.

Whatever we talk to ourselves about, becomes our narrative.

The thoughts that bring us down grow like snowballs. The longer we roll them in misery the bigger they get. Eventually, they become like a tsunami. Every time we scrape their parts, we rake them up and dig deeper into them it becomes harder and harder to get out of the whirlpool. In our increasing pain, we forget that the tsunami does not exist for everyone, just that it is in our mind, our self created reality.

It starts to hurt even more than the initial jab of pain. This leads to a second, more important consequence.

Our problems become our focus and the solutions become side issues.

When I keep reminding myself of my problems my mind becomes filled with a “poor me” syndrome. These clouds color my vision, and it is almost like driving with glasses covered in dirt: everything I see is through the unclean lens.

At this point, we are guilty of impaired driving.

One way of moving forward is to change the lens we are using to look at the road ahead. Imagine at this point if we got brand new glasses?

One may choose to dwell on a disagreement forever, allow it to fester, and make it one’s long term battle.

or

One may choose to let it go and not to get so deeply affected by every part of that unpleasant interaction. It is almost like proactively choosing to ignore it or minimize it in your mind.
How a Buddhist Monk Taught Me to Stop Overthinking
By: Larisa Andras
Tags: Religion, Self, Mental Health, Mindfulness, Inspiration

How a Buddhist Monk Taught Me to Stop Overthinking

It all comes down to a simple two-word question

Photo by billow 926 on Unsplash

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been creating scenarios in my head, juggling between the past and the future. Trust me when I say it’s easy to lose yourself in a story for a good few minutes. Just grab your headphones and play a dramatic song that fits the screenplay. It almost feels real, doesn’t it?

The best thing about it is that you can do it anywhere. You don’t have to lay in bed or a hammock. No, no, no. If you are an experienced player, you can easily zone out in the middle of a conversation.

Does it sound familiar? I’m sure it does. But how do we put an end to it?

They say practicing meditation is the secret to a clear mind. And it is, to some extent. I’ve been doing it regularly for one and a half years and boy, oh boy, did it make a huge difference. However, until recently I was still finding myself overthinking. I’m a veteran after all.

My left foot was on a wooden boat, full of people who create scenarios in their heads. The right one was on a yacht where people manage to stay in the present moment. Van Damme and his epic split have nothing on me.

I should probably work more on my metaphors, though.

Back to our story, how about some good news too? You can use a simple hack to say goodbye to overthinking. Here’s how to do it.
List Comprehension in Python
By: Abinash Panda
Tags: Python3, Lists, Python, Comprehension, For

Every now and then we come across List and Dict operations in our code. Python gives great syntactical sugar to work with List and Dicts.

Photo by Clément H on Unsplash

Whether it is initializing a new list or transforming an existing list, list comprehension is often very handy.

Consider the following code:

Now we want to capitalize the fruit names. Instead of writing multi liner for loops like this

We can achieve the same thing in a single liner with Python’s list comprehension:

This is awesome. The syntax to remember is:

output = [expression for item in collection]

or

output = [doSomething() for var in list]

Let’s look at a few more examples:

Performance Comparison:

Python List comprehension is generally much faster than normal for loops. Here is a comparison of the same:

For loop vs List Comprehension

Conclusion:

List Comprehension is a powerful and beautiful tool available in Python for developers, also comes with great efficiency.
7 Awesome Ways Publicly Available Datasets Can Help Your Business Flourish Unparalleled
By: Shantesh Mani
Tags: Open Data, Free Data, Kaggle, Public Dataset, Data Science

The information has become an essential resource in the modern world. Whether you are a researcher, a government policymaker, a student, or an entrepreneur, you will likely use insights to make decisions. While businesses prepare to pay a premium to get quality information, the landscape of information availability has drastically changed in recent years. Classified information remains essential. However, publicly available datasets have made their mark in recent years. What are publicly available datasets and how businesses can benefit from them? Read on, as we answer these questions in this article.

The Democratization of Information

If you manufactured a product in Western Europe 200 years back, you likely competed with other manufacturers in the vicinity. Even if another business manufactured the same product in the Asia Pacific, it couldn’t compete with you. The logistics infrastructure to enable the Asia Pacific manufacturer to sell its products in Western Europe didn’t exist. However, a more fundamental factor ensured that you competed only against local businesses at that time.

Democratization Of Information and The Future of Technology

This factor was a lack of information. Your customers in Western Europe didn’t know that the Asia Pacific business existed and manufactured the same product. The lack of democratization of information created an environment where you only had a few local competitors.

Fast forward to the 21st century. Customers all over the world can now easily find out about your competitors in the Asia Pacific and elsewhere in the world. The democratization of information has increased competition.

However, we talked about one side only! You, the Western European manufacturer, can now sell your product in the Asia Pacific. Customers there are now equipped know about your work too, unlike 200 years back! The democratization of information increases the proverbial “size of the pie” also.

For businesses, though, the democratization of information hasn’t been as easy as what customers experience. Companies advertise their product, and customers all over the world can find them over the Internet. However, market information isn’t that readily available.

When businesses needed demographic and competitor information in a target market, they would likely need the help of a market research company. If you lead an industry, then you probably know that market research reports aren’t cheap!

Publicly available datasets are changing the dynamics. From the standpoint of businesses, they are democratizing information.
How to Use React Hooks
By: Mike Pottebaum
Tags: React Hook, React, Reactjs, Functional Programming

I first learned how to program with Ruby and got very comfortable with object-oriented programming. I got so comfortable that when I started to learn JavaScript, the concept of functional programming seemed strange and a little scary. React hooks seemed incomprehensible.

I chose to avoid all of it at first, building mostly class components. But as I learned more about JavaScript, I started to see the advantages of functional programming and how JavaScript is built for it.

I vowed to build more functional components, to build every component as a function. But I quickly ran into a big problem; I inevitably turned components into classes whenever I needed internal state or lifecycle methods.

This is where React hooks come in. They allow you to use state and lifecycle methods in functional components, and you only need two functions: useState and useEffect .

useState

As you can probably guess, useState is how you use state in your functional component. Specifically, it provides you with access to a part of your component’s state and a function to modify the value.

const [ part, setPart ] = useState(null)

The variable part holds the value of this piece of state and setPart is a function you can use to modify that value. The argument passed to useState is the initial value of part . So in this case, the initial value of part is null .
5 XIN token bounty: Improve Mixin Network Java SDK
By: Lin Li
Tags: Open Source, Blockchain, Bounty Program, Mixinnetwork, Java

Task: Improve the existing Java SDK to support all Mixin Network API .

Award: 5 XIN Token (about $700) for the best solution.

Process:

Contact me via email lilin@mixin.one, or via Mixin Messenger ID 31367

Create an open source repo on GitHub, write your code, let me know your repo address.

Timeline:

Submit your code before April 12.

The final result will be announced before April 20.

Mixin Network developer resource

Mixin developer tutorial
【產品經理 PM｜需求文檔 PRD】優惠券發放的產品設計，需求文檔怎麼寫？
By: 侯智薰 Raymond Ch Hou
Tags: Design, 產品經理, Product Management, Prd, 中文

PRD文件參考｜App 端與 Web 端

Google Drive is a free way to keep your files backed up and easy to reach from any phone, tablet, or computer. Start…
Помогите нам распространить эту новость!
By: Natalia Kiseleva
Tags: Data Visualisation, Conference, Visual Design, Dataviz, Outlierconference

Sign up for The 'Gale

By Nightingale

Keep up with the latest from Nightingale, the journal of the Data Visualization Society Take a look
RISE Core 1.1.1 — Mainnet
By: Andrea Baccega
Tags: Blockchain, Postgres, Nodejs, JavaScript, Typescript

We are thrilled to announce that RISE core version 1.1.1 is now available for download.

RISE 1.1.1 required 278 commits, 265 file changes, more than 23k lines added along with 11k removed. You can see the full changelog here.

The collection of all the improvements made since 1.0.0 results in a much higher transaction per second throughput. Benchmarks shows that the new RISE core is capable of handling up to 1000 transactions per second* with a i7–7700 CPU. To compare, Ethereum can only process 15 TPs and Bitcoin can only process 7 TPs due to block size limit 1MB.

Considering the current amount of transactions per day in RISE mainnet we decided to not “stretch” the current block size limit in 1.1.1.

The TPS indicator should be particularly meaningful for future sidechain operators that requires such high amount of Transactions Per Second.

The new update will have the following improvements, including but not limited to:

Atomic block processing

Peer banning — Delegates are now more motivated to keep their node online

Lightweight block and transaction processing

In memory block transaction validation

Node upgrade from v6 to v8

Typescript upgrade from 2.6 to 2.8

PostGres upgrade from 9.6 to 10.4

Database level constraints

Migration from pg-promise to sequelize

Restored topAccounts API

Restored PUT transactions API

For a more in-depth technical update on what’s new in RISE core 1.1.1 and how we achieved it please read this post.

How to update your RISE node to 1.1.1

If you are running a RISE node this release requires some extra attention when updating. We have crafted a script that should ease the process.

Please note that the update might take up to 5 minutes. Do not halt the update script!

To update, login your VPS and head over the home directory. Then issue the following commands:

After the update script finishes a further database upgrade will kick in. You can check your node status by running ./manager.sh status inside the rise folder.

How to install RISE 1.1.1 on a new server

Installing a new 1.1.1 node is easy. After setting up your server with all the requirements (here ia guide), just issue the following command:



bash install.sh install -r mainnet wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/RiseVision/rise-build/master/scripts/install.sh bash install.sh install -r mainnet

This will install the latest RISE node version.

To conclude, if you liked the content of this post please consider starring the RISE repositories in Github to follow further developments.

If you are a developer head over our Slack to get in touch with us and share your thoughts on RISE.

Please join our Slack for further development discussions.
Why strong mental doesn’t matter
By: Chloe Leb
Tags: Exploration, Cycling, Motivation, Daily Post

It’s been 16 days since I left New York City. I cycled 15 days in 16.

For the first time today, I rode more than 100km. Thomas and I went from Winona to Toronto, Canada.

Before that, my best days were about 80km and still, it was tough.

Just 3 weeks ago, I had really never ridden a bike (at least not since I am 12 years old!). At the end of this day, I felt both relieved, starving and exhausted, and I wonder.

How did I manage to do it ?

A lot of people who are following this cycling trip told me that they wouldn’t be able to do it themselves. Mostly because they think they don’t have what it takes physically to succeed. I think they are wrong. I didn’t have what it takes and it didn’t matter.

At this time I thought that a strong mental is the only matter.

This is the thing that led me to take on the project to cross the US by bike. This is the thing I would have told you to work on if you were considering to make such a physical, emotional and personal experience.

But on the road then, I realized that something else more important matters.

A strong mental won’t make you achieve 100km per day. It won’t help you to get anything if you don’t know what you’re after.

The first thing that you need no matter what you aim to achieve in life is a GOAL.

You need to find this thing you are dreaming of, this thing you need, this thing that will change your life for good.

This morning, I had the goal to reach out Toronto. No matter how many kilometers I needed to do so, I would have done it today.

Several times this day I would have stopped to have a rest and Thomas and I would have probably pitched the tent 2 hours before we arrived in Toronto because of our lack of sleep and our hunger and thirst.

But today, I had a goal. Today, I decided to make it to Toronto. Since I had set this goal, my strong mental mattered.

Having a strong mental matters only when you know WHEN and WHY you need it.

The outcome was even better than I imagined. Because today, while I was achieving this goal, I beat my personal best: I cycled more than 100km!

Credit Startup Cycling

DO IT.
Does your website push visitors away or does it convince them to work with you?
By: Eric Jan Huizer
Tags: Marketing, Business Development, Work, Business Strategy, Connection

Framing your solutions in your buyers’ world is a very effective twist. No matter what you’re selling, it just works. Here’s what I mean:

Instead of writing “We have 70 fulfillment centers in 20 countries,” write “You’ll cut your warehousing costs in half when you take advantage of our supply chain’s infrastructure.”

Instead of writing “Our retirement solution will help you reach your retirement goals,” write, “Have the income you need to retire the way you want with our retirement funds.”

Instead of writing “Our cloud-based solution is designed using storage and networking from leading infrastructure providers,” write “Your website will let shoppers buy from you how, and when they want.”

Do you see the difference? The second option/version re-frames your solution using the buyers’ goals as the result that you are also going after. You need to practice framing it correctly, but doing this correctly will completely change the interactions with your prospects. (question 3)

Also, make sure that it’s easy to buy your product or service. Nobody wants to feel lost and not knowing what to do. The same is true for your website visitors, try to make it as easy as possible to buy. You can do this by explaining what they need to, it can be as simple as that.

Make an easy-to-follow plan for the buyer to follow. Explain every step of the buying process. Tell what the buyer can expect after they bought from you, let them know every step of the way to keep them updated on the process. The more you can explain what’s going to happen the better, but don’t overdo it by sending them 10 emails even before they receive the product. Keep the steps simple and clear, explain what’s going to happen and inform them the best you can.

Or you can make it even easier, by including a ‘buy button’. When the prospect clicks this button, he or she will be sent to a form or cart where they can finish the buying process. Or you can do like me, and include an explanation and a buy button on your website. Keep in mind that I sell a service and not a product, so this tactic might not work for you. (question 4)

Conclusion

Please, go ahead and examine your website and pretend that you a first-time visitor who is looking for answers. Pretend that you have looked at other websites before, but you are not convinced by them. You have a rough idea of what you want, but you are looking for that website where you feel that you are understood. A product or service that will help you get what you are looking for because they understand the problem you face and what the result of this problem is.
How to Write Microfiction and How It Improves Your Writing.
By: Sam H Arnold
Tags: Writing, Microfiction, Writing Tips, Fiction, Inspiration

How to Write Microfiction and How It Improves Your Writing.

Including examples of my work

SamHArnold

What is microfiction?

Microfiction is the art of writing a story in as few words as possible. Most short stories are between 1000 and 2000 words. Microfiction tends to be a story with a much smaller word count. Sometimes as low as 50 words. I write microfiction in 280 characters or less to fit in with Twitter.

At cafe sat a timid woman. She kept looking at her watch as if she didn’t quite believe the time. When anyone walked in she looked up. The blow was fleeting on her face. When he came in, she looked up smiled and left.- SamHArnold

The History of Microfiction

Microfiction was originally called flash fiction. Then word counts decreased further and microfiction was created. Recently it has become more popular and established itself in literature.

SamHArnold

The Structure of Microfiction

Microfiction is written the same as any fiction, it has a start and middle and an end. Characters need to be attractive to the reader. It is best to keep the characters name as short as possible to save on character count. Authors of microfiction must be strict in their writing. Every single word has to have a purpose. Where possible only one word is used to explore or describe something.

You need to write concise short prose that deal with all the issues in as few words as possible. It isn’t as easy as it seems. I start with a longer piece of writing and then edit the bones out of it.

Jack looked at the winning lottery ticket in his hand. He thought about what this meant. He thought about his girlfriend. The wind ruffled the ticket. He screwed it up and threw it away. No jackpot was worth that much trouble. — SamHArnold

Microfiction can Evolve Stories.

Some months ago I wrote this simple microfiction story. This came to me in a flash whilst I was sitting waiting for my partner to come out of the shop.

SamHArnold

From these short sentences, the story grew in my head. It was also helped by many people asking where the story when from here. I later wrote the post into a short story piece.

From the response from this story, I have now decided to extend the novel further into my fourth full novel. From one simple idea, the story has evolved and grown.

Microfiction is a medium that allows this like no other. A seed of an idea can grow into something bigger.

SamHArnold

Challenge yourself to write microfiction. Share the links to your stories below so we can all read them. For more examples of my microfiction visit my website.
To mesh or not to mesh
By: Juan Matías De La Cámara Beovide
Tags: Service Mesh, Linkerd, K8s, Mesh, Kubernetes

Service Mesh

I was told that a Service Mesh such as Linkerd, Consul or Istio, adds a lot of overload in my cluster. Keeping this in mind, a Service Mesh is not suitable to a small deployment. Instead, you should consider a Service Mesh when you client is big enough to deserve it.

But, how big a client must be to deserve a Service Mesh?

And more important, how much overload a Service Mesh adds to my cluster?

The answer is: I don’t know.

Because of this, I’m starting this POC, to answer this question.

Resources

Files here: https://gitlab.com/post-repos/to-mesh-or-not-to-mesh

Requirements

To run this test you will need:

a k8s cluster (we will use GCP)

kubectl

locust

docker (or any container engine)

git

We will use Linkerd, so you will need to download the CLI.

BFF

A simple Python APP that exposes a simple API and hits BACKEND. Once it get the BACKEND‘s response, it enrich this response and sends it to the client.

BACKEND

The BACKEND just answers the request with its version number.

Service Mesh

I will use linker for this test.

What we will measure?

We will measure two items:

WEB response times with Locust

K8s resources usage

Then compare these metrics on two scenarios:
Using Brand as a Partnerships North Star
By: A. Besdin
Tags: Brand Strategy, Startup, Partnerships

Choose partners based on values rather than reach to optimize for impact.

When considering who to partner with many teams focus on “the biggest brand that is willing to work with us”. Top-line growth is certainly an impact we intend to drive, but anchored by our brand strategy, our focus is “partners who share our values”. This answer opens up a universe of potential collaborators we would have otherwise overlooked — brands, fellow startups, community organizations, and influencers alike. We make no distinction. The result is coveted access to targeted communities where Skillshare will resonate strongly, with reach as a secondary consideration.

Make structuring a partnership dead simple — work with partners on only one thing.

Our atomic unit — “the most fundamental object of all in your service” (vintage ’12 Fred Wilson) — is a class. Per the brand strategy, it’s the one vehicle we use to make progress towards our vision of unlocking the world’s creativity. Following suit, a class is the atomic unit of all our partnerships. In other words, we don’t sell a “partnership offering”, we invite partners to collaborate with us on the one thing we’re already doing: building the world’s best catalog of online classes. The simplicity here keeps us moving lightning fast since anyone on the team can decide if a partnership idea is one we should pursue. It also ensures no resources are diverted away from company-wide goals.

Hire people who will represent your brand authentically, everything else is teachable.

We only hire people who understand our brand strategy, considering previous work experience secondary. These are not people covered in Skillshare stickers talking about the product nonstop, however expertly. These are people who get the creative community our brand speaks to. They’re able to articulate Skillshare’s vision with conviction (not a teachable skill) while being open to learning sales and account management processes (teachable skills). Of the 6-person team building and executing our partnerships, I’m the only one with previous partnership experience. My team — who I’d proudly argue is way better at this than I — is made up of a best-selling author, a graphic designer, a pianist, a DJ and the world’s only accredited sneakerhead.

p.s. Want to work with us? Our partnerships team is hiring.