fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Explainable AI: Look Inside and Demystify Black Box Algorithms
By: Jason Behrmann
Tags: Machine Learning, Data Science, Responsible Ai, Zetane, Xai

Machine-learning algorithms continue to become common features in consumer goods and implicated within the operations of an increasing number of business applications. Along with this growing prominence is a growing responsibility for developers, regulators and average users of the technology to better understand the inner workings of these algorithms that remain, for the most part, mysterious black boxes. Explainable AI (xAI) is now a loaded term. Much debate concerning what ‘explainability’ actually means are ongoing, and proposed technical strategies to better explain the inner workings of artificial neural networks are at an early stage of development. Here we outline a handful of current technical strategies for more-explainable neural nets that we include as standard features in our software.

We recommend to use these features to gain a visual, simplified means to explain the inner workings of your models to regulators and clients. Please inform us in the comments section whether such xAI features do indeed facilitate discussions with non-technical stakeholders about the inner workings of your applied AI projects.
Gotta Simulate ’Em All — Pokemon. Simulating Pokemon Battles From…
By: Tyler Marrs
Tags: Data Science, Data, Gaming

Damage Calculation

Type Modifiers

In addition to the moves and Pokemon, I needed to obtain data to help quantify the damage. Pokemon is a turn-based game in which a player chooses an action to apply. This simulation is only concerned with attack moves to compute damage. Each Pokemon is a specific type, and so is each attack. The goal is to either defeat the opposing Pokemon or capture it. This simulation only captures victory and defeat. When an attack is applied, it may cause more damage given:

The attacking Pokemon type

The type of attack

The defending Pokemon type

Chart of type modifiers for Pokemon

The table shows how attack damage applies to a given Pokemon type. I retrieved it from this website using and cleaned it. The table captures exceptions to the default type modifier value of one.

Critical Chance Algorithm

The critical chance algorithm, based on a random number generator, depends on the attack. Some attacks are more likely to crit than others. I obtained the formula from this website and removed some flaws within the implementation of the game.

A couple of notable flaws include:

The original game formula intended for a 100% critical chance; however, the implementation resulted in a maximum of 99.6%. My implementation allows for a 100% critical chance.

Some boosting abilities decrease the critical chance when it should have increased it. However, boosting moves are entirely ignored in this simulation.

The algorithm takes the Pokemon’s base speed and the attacks critical chance rate to determine if a critical hit is occurring. The speed of the Pokemon is a big factor in deciding a critical chance.

Damage Algorithm

The damage algorithm determines how much damage to apply given the Pokemon attributes and critical strike boolean from the critical hit algorithm. These algorithms are derived from the formulas on this website.
Cats are absolutely brutal.
Tags: Comics, Cats, Domination, Poop

More from rstevens Follow

I make cartoons and t-shirts at www.dieselsweeties.com & @rstevens. Send me coffee beans.
W10 NFL Monte Carlo Projections
By: John Culver
Tags: Sports Betting, NFL, Predictive Modeling, Handicapping, Sports Data

How to interpret the ISW’s New Look Tables

p (w) % = Implied win probability per team based on the results stemming from 10,000 monte carlo simulated games (e.g. NYJ won 5,156 / 10,000 simulated games → NYJ’s p(W) % = 51.6%).

Avg. Score = The average (projected) score per team derived from 10,000 simulated games.

Spread = The average point differential between the two average scores.

Avg. Total vs. Market = The average total is equal to the the sum of each team’s average projected scores. The market is what ESPN’s quoted total (‘over /under’) is.

Market Spread = The current line or spread per ESPN’s NFL Daily Lines.

p (cover) % = Estimated likelihood that each team covers the spread given the market spread based on our 10k monte carlo simulations.

p (cover total) % = The likelihood that the total (i.e. the sum of each team’s final scores) goes over ‘O:’ or under ‘U:’ the market total based on 10k monte carlo simulations.

The ISW’s Power Ratings

The ISW employs its proprietary power rating system each NFL season beginning with preseason power ratings that are adjusted weekly according to team performance against the spread (ATS) as well as margin of victory throughout the season.

The ISW’s NFL W10 Power Ratings
8 Self-Love Practices to Raise Your Self-Esteem According to Science
By: Desiree Peralta
Tags: Inspiration, Life Lessons, Lifestyle, Life, Advice

What doesn’t work

I want to start the article by saying what tips don’t work to grow your self-esteem and what many people consider when they are trying to be happier and more positive.

The first one is “searching the positive side to everything”. This would be excellent advice if it weren’t for the fact that your mind isn’t really programmed to do it.

Sorry to be the one to tell you this, but we are meant to suffer.

For example, what if after presenting something you are proud to five people, four of them congratulate you but one tells you it was full of mistakes? What opinion do you think will weigh the most about your emotional state?

Exactly, the bad one.

As studies have shown, humans are designed to value the negative more than the positive. We become obsessed with the bad and forget the good more quickly. Our mind wishes to be unhappy.

This is known in psychology as the negativity bias, a common phenomenon in people who suffer from anxiety or depression. So negativity is not a conscious choice, but something that is deeply embedded within us.

We are not meant to be happy all the time, so “searching for the positive to everything” will not work to grow your self-esteem.

The other one is “you must program your mind with positive affirmations”.

A study published in 2009 in Psychological Science wanted to verify the effectiveness of this type of reprogramming.

The result was that the participants who used these positive affirmations not only did not improve, but they ended up feeling worse.

The reason is that when you repeat to yourself that you are exceptional or wonderful, your brain immediately asks a question: “Why?”.

Your brain is not naive.

If they can’t find the answer, they won’t believe what you’re saying. They will reject the claim and they will feel worse.
Spirits of the Year Past: Highlights from 2019
By: Edie Tuck
Tags: Top 3, Magic, Prompt, Life, Truth

My Top Three Favorites of 2019

This was actually extremely difficult. Choosing only three pieces for the entire year when I’ve read so many incredible articles by so many gifted and talented writers as proven to be quite the challenge. So I’ve gone back through my own ‘responses’ to see which ones seemed to have touched me the most. Here’s what I found!

A Guide to Figuring Out Who You Are After 50 -By renee tarantowski

“ Life is not a sprint. Be still. Quiet your mind. Take a walk outside. Whatever it takes for you to take a look at your life from your own lens. Sit with this idea of what you will do with this one miracle of a life.”

Although I’ve got a decade before I get to 50, I feel that this is relevant for any age. Figuring out who you are doesn’t actually need a time-stamp. It simply requires you to reflect quietly on your life; figure out the things you love, the things you don’t…the titles you have, and the titles you might want.

This is a brilliant piece about life and recognizing one’s truth. It really touched me, and I feel it most definitely did not garner the attention it deserves. I hope you’ll all read it and give it its due credit!

2. I’ll Never Stop Insisting Santa is Real -By Rachael Hope

This one is making a second appearance — the first being in my December 10th Top 3 article. It really touched me and I feel it definitely deserves another shout-out!

Magic is all around us — not only at Christmas time but every single day. We have to believe in it to see it. To feel it. That’s something that tends to fade as we grow older…adulthood gets so bogged down with real life, stress, and responsibility, that we push aside what we believe is ‘frivolous’…the fairy tales of childhood. What we forget is that it’s those exact fairy tales that bring us so much joy.

For me, this story isn’t only about Christmas and Santa, but about learning to find and keep that joy, magic, and wonder in our hearts in our every-day lives.

3. The Danger of Looking Under Stones -By Crystal Jackson

This is another repeat for me, taken from my Top 3 article from October 29th.

Sometimes, the old adage of ‘leaving no stone unturned’ can work in our favor. Other times, it can have the opposite effect. When we start caring too much about what people think about us and then start looking for evidence that what they’re saying might be true, or want to prove them wrong, we can get ourselves in very deep emotional trouble.

The moral: Don’t worry (don’t even think) about what others may think of you. Ignore the gossip and rumors if there are any. Simply live authentically, following the path of your own truth.
Curves
By: Rebeca Ansar
Tags: Poem, Haiku, Poetry, Museums, Art

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How to Import Swift URLRequests Into Postman
By: Kenneth Poon
Tags: Xcode, Swift, Programming, iOS, Postman

How to Import Swift URLRequests Into Postman

Bridge the popular API testing client and Swift’s native URLRequest

How to import Swift URLRequests into Postman

Postman is a simple tool to create and fire API requests. In this article, I will be sharing how we can capture Swift URLRequests fired from our iOS application and import them into Postman. This technique will be helpful to share requests among teammates during development. As a bonus, I will also showcase how to intercept Firebase HTTP requests.

In your Podfile , add pod 'URLRequest-cURL' .

This is a cocoapod library that attempts to re-engineer the components that were used to construct the URLRequest object.

The usage is pretty simple. Call the getter variable cURL (applied through extension) to get the formatted cURL command in String :

// let request = URLRequest()

print(request.cURL)

Here’s an example of what the String value may look like. Don’t be surprised to see additional headers attached to your requests. Try printing the cURL command onto the Xcode console:

curl -X POST 'https://www.anonymousapi.com/checksPassword?apikey=XXYYZZ' -H 'Accept-Language: en' -H 'Content-Length: 91' -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{

"email" : "alpha2@gmail.com",

"returnSecureToken" : true,

"password" : "password"

}'

You can import the cURL Command into Postman by importing it as raw text:

Importing the cURL request in Postman

After importing, you can view all the header and payload-body values in Postman. This becomes useful for developers trying to debug API issues.

Inspecting the request payload in Postman
Record Amounts of Cash on The Sideline Can Fuel The Current Bull Market
By: Asger Bruhn
Tags: Investing, Money, Economy, Stock Market, Finance

FINANCIAL MARKETS

Record Amounts of Cash on The Sideline Can Fuel The Current Bull Market

Several factors indicate the bull run is in its early innings

Photo by Lloyd Blunk on Unsplash

2020 has been a wild year on the stock market. Currently, the broad US indices are at or close to all-time highs. Yet, institutional investors sitting on piles of cash with nowhere else to turn for returns than the stock market.

In March, panic over the impact of the lockdown of the world economy in response to the COVID-pandemic triggered an abrupt drawdown.

The S&P 500 dropped more than 25 percent from peak to bottom, with the 9.5 percent plunge on March 12 being the largest daily fall since 1987. The drawdowns were even larger in severely affected sectors such as travel and entertainment.

Barely had the dust settled before a swift recovery brought the major US indices back toward their all-time highs, despite the real economy struggling to regain territory.

November saw news of successful clinical trials for several vaccine candidates — a sign of relief for investors. News of efficient vaccines and the imminent distribution of them in the US has brightened the outlook for the world economy in 2021 and injected investors with additional risk appetite.

The week of Thanksgiving saw both S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite close at weekly all-time highs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average had its 3rd highest weekly close, crossing 30.000 for the first time ever during the week.

CNN’s Fear & Greed index — an index of seven indicators of investor sentiment — currently sits at extreme greed. Scoring 92/100, it indicates investors are all guns blazing.

Investors may wonder whether valuations have been stretched too far. The current rise in covid-infections across the US and Europe bring uncertainty around when lockdowns will end. There are also concerns about the economy’s speed of recovery.

But as argued below, several factors contribute to further upside potential in equities over the coming twelve to eighteen months. They range from low interest rates and growing central bank balance sheets to accumulated liquidity burning in the pockets of investors with nowhere else to go.
Manipulating Data With Django Migrations
By: Victoria Drake
Tags: Programming, Software Development, Data Science, Technology, Learning To Code

What’s Under the Hood?

Django migrations are Python files that help you add and change things in your database tables to reflect changes in your Django models. To understand how Django migrations help you work with data, it may be helpful to understand the underlying structures we’re working with.

What’s a database table?

If you’ve laid eyes on a spreadsheet before, you’re already most of the way to understanding a database table. In a relational database — for example, a PostgreSQL database — you can expect to see data organized into columns and rows. A relational database table may have a set number of columns and any number of rows.

In Django, each model is its own table. For example, here’s a Django model:

from django.db import models

class Lunch(models.Model):

left_side = models.CharField(max_length=100, null=True)

center = models.CharField(max_length=100, null=True)

right_side = models.CharField(max_length=100, null=True)

Each field is a column, and each row is a Django object instance of that model. Here’s a representation of a database table for the Django model, Lunch , above. In the database, its name would be lunch_table .

A table representing lunch_table.

The model Lunch has three fields: left_side , center , and right-side . One instance of a Lunch object would have Fork for the left_side , Plate for the center , and Spoon for the right_side . Django automatically adds an id field if you don’t specify a primary key.

If you wanted to change the name of your Lunch model, you’d do so in your models.py code. For example, change Lunch to Dinner , and then run python manage.py makemigrations . You’ll see:

python manage.py makemigrations

Did you rename the backend.Lunch model to Dinner? [y/N] y

Migrations for 'backend':

backend/migrations/0003_auto_20200922_2331.py

- Rename model Lunch to Dinner

Django automatically generates the appropriate migration files. The relevant line of the generated migrations file in this case would look like:

migrations.RenameModel(old_name="Lunch", new_name="Dinner"),

This operation would rename our Lunch model to Dinner while keeping everything else the same. But what if you also wanted to change the structure of the database table itself and its schema? Maybe you’d also like to make sure that existing data ends up in the right place on your Dinner table.

Let’s explore how to turn our Lunch model into a Dinner model that looks like this:

from django.db import models

class Dinner(models.Model):

top_left = models.CharField(max_length=100, null=True)

top_center = models.CharField(max_length=100, null=True)

top_right = models.CharField(max_length=100, null=True)

bottom_left = models.CharField(max_length=100, null=True)

bottom_center = models.CharField(max_length=100, null=True)

bottom_right = models.CharField(max_length=100, null=True)

It’s database table would look like this:
SwiftUI NavigationLink Hide Arrow Indicator on List
By: Mahmud Ahsan
Tags: Programming, Software Development, Swift, Swiftui, iOS App Development

This is a common problem when I first started developing SwiftUI based iOS application on iOS 13. I wanted to hide the arrow indicator for NavigationLink within a list. There is no modifier to hide the arrow, unfortunately. So here are the solutions for iOS 13, iOS 14, and iOS 14.2.

1. iOS 13 Solution:

Basically using a ZStack we layered the item. So within the ZStack the first backside item is the NavigationLink line 20, and the top item is a HStack line 26. The HStack contains a Text view and it hides the backside NavigationLink view.

2. But the problem is, on iOS 14 it doesn’t work.

So on iOS 14, if we add a .buttonStyle(PlainButtonStyle()) it works.

3. But the problem again appears on iOS 14.2

So here is the final solution that works on iOS 13, iOS 14, iOS 14.2. Besides using the layer hack, you have to additionally add a .opacity(0.0) to hide the arrow.
Anomaly Features & Reviews, Year in Review — Most Read of 2019
Tags: Featured, Publishing, Reviews, Interview, Essays

Anomaly Features & Reviews, Year in Review — Most Read of 2019

Our most read features and reviews of 2019.

1. Ace Visibility: 3 Books About Asexuality to Add to Your Library, by Marisa Manuel.

“In reality, asexuality is diverse, valid, and worth celebrating. And literature has started embracing it.”

Read the full round-up here.

“Even excluding the vast archives and lore of mainstream comics, there is so, so much out there: online epics spanning thousands of pages, countless web platforms for long and short-form comics, and thousands of artists producing everything from sugary four-panelers to sticky erotica to prickly, experimental memoir.”

Read the full round-up here.

“True story: having a diagnosis that belongs to the group that Esmé Weijun Wang writes about in The Collected Schizophrenias has left me feeling lonely at times, as if I’m living in a surreal world at others”

Read the full essay here.

“ Over the course of this playful collection of prose poems, Black encourages readers to open their eyes wider and have another look at the world around them the way nineteenth-century pastoral poetry sought to slow down time and emphasize the details that might get overlooked in the fast pace of modern life.”

Read the full review here.

“Aries is about finding the home inside your own body, inside your own mind, and occupying all of it, even the parts that are ugly or scary. To love life is to love yourself.”

Read the full horoscope here.
How to create an Article here
By: Michael M
Tags: Medium, Newbie, How To

What have I struggled to figure out how to publish an article here on medium.com? And in the end, it’s not that hard at all.

First, you can make an account here WITHOUT Facebook and / or Google, which I did not understand first.

Just click on SIGNIN and just use the email you disire to register with, the system will recognizes that there is no account for this mail and sends you an activation-email. That should have been told to me! :D

Then you have to give a little information about yourself and as soon as you did that you can start. Go to “New Story”, enter the title and the story and then press “Publish” in the upper right corner.

If you know how to do it, it is really simple. So tell us what you want, it’s really not that hard! =) — Hope to read you soon!
Building Vocabulary — Read, Explain, Describe (RED)
By: Holly Treece
Tags: Vocabulary, Pronunciation, Strategy, Education, Reading

Building Vocabulary — Read, Explain, Describe (RED)

Quick Strategies Series: Part 4

Read, Explain, Describe (RED) is a strategy that is used to build vocabulary acquisition for all students.

It leads to pronunciation practice.

It gives an immediate opportunity to use and practice the word in context.

Students read texts that use the words.

The following is included to present the new vocabulary word to the students.

What is (insert the word you are focusing on for the unit)?

It is pronounced: (be sure to add the pronunciation from the dictionary for the students)

Say it with me: (everyone practices the word together)

Things to Remember

Use the dictionary definition of the word

Give students examples on how the word is used in daily language examples

Provide cognates for the students from their home language.

Provide synonyms for the word so that students are able to connect the new vocabulary words to other words that they may already know.

The most important thing to provide for your students is a picture that will help them understand the word.

Time to Implement

This strategy will take approximately 7 minutes from start to finish during class time.

Materials Required

The teacher will need to identify a word that will be used in the unit that is essential for students to learn and understand. Typically PowerPoint is used to display the word on a SMART Board or other type of screen.

When to use

You will use this strategy anytime you are introducing a new unit or vocabulary that students will not be familiar with.
Bet on Chart Airdrop
Tags: Football, Betonchart, Bitcoin, Soccer, Betting

Amazing news, everyone: now you can participate in Bet on Chart Airdrop 🛫 and earn your CHART tokens fo free 🚀!

In order to participate in the Airdrop campaign, you have to fill the form on:🌐 https://airdropalert.com/join/betonchart

ℹ️ Airdrop is open until the 4th of September, 2018

ℹ️ To be eligible for our Airdrop, please join our

Telegram group: https://t.me/betonchart

ℹ️ Maximum 10.000 participants allowed to the Airdrop
“Dobrze skaczę”. “Dobrze biegasz”. Jak kamień…
By: Rafał Bill
Tags: Wearables, Healthcare, Metrics, Parkour, Data Visualization

Product chef with strong business analysis mindset. Behavioral economics explorer. Parkour evangelist, who never gives up on overcoming the obstacles.

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A Throwback Dessert that Still Holds Up
By: Mary Andino
Tags: Cooking, Dessert, American, Baking, Recipes For Cooking

When I think of food from the 1950s and 60s, it evokes images of gelatin, fondue, canned food, and lots of mayo. It makes me think of Betty Draper in Mad Men serving Chicken Kiev and Ambrosia Salad. In other words, these decades do not represent the pinnacle of fresh, delicious food in America. However, a recipe from my grandmother is one shining light that helps redeem this era of food. Hello, Dolly Bars are a dessert that is simple to make but still brings the “wow factor.”

Hello, Dolly Bars Never Disappoint!

On the surface, this dessert might seem like an odd hodge-podge of ingredients: graham crackers, chocolate chips, coconut, walnuts, butterscotch chips, and sweetened condensed milk. A mixture of these foods sounds more like it would result in a greasy, overly sweet type of trail mix than a tasty dish, but that’s precisely the charm of this recipe. After thirty minutes in the oven, you are blessed with deliciously chewy, moist, and sweet bars. The technique is almost too easy- one merely has to layer the pan's ingredients in the correct order and bake. The simplicity of this recipe- and the lack of any knives (except for the nuts) or stove use- makes it a safe and good means of introducing kids into the kitchen; they can help smash the graham crackers into small pieces and layer in the ingredients. Exhibit A: I made these frequently as a child, and here I am writing about baking recipes in my free time.
Running Mantis Bug Tracker on MS Sql Server with Unicode Supported
By: Jin Weijie
Tags: Sql, Utf8, Mantis, System

Mantis is a great issue tracking system. But you may encounter some difficulties when you try to run it on Microsoft sql server and with Unicode(like my scenario, Chinese).

Here’s the solution:

When you try to deploy the MantisBT using build-in install page, you may encounter errors and cannot continue, so I modified the sql, please find mantis_initial_new_utf_8.sql the the package in the download section. Then you can create the initial database.

You also may find the Unicode may not working and the file upload feature, replace the adodb-mssqlnative.inc.php and file_api.php and replace the corresponded files in the mantis package.

Please download the original MantisBT mantisbt-1.2.18 and modified files here: http://www.jinweijie.com/download/mantis_sqlserver.zip . Hope it helps.
The 3 Best Business Books of 2019 (According to Every Other Best-of-2019 List)
By: Todd Sattersten
Tags: Work, Leadership, Best Biz Books, Business, Book Excerpts

The 3 Best Business Books of 2019 (According to Every Other Best-of-2019 List)

11,000 business books are published every year. Here are the three you need to crush 2020.

In the world of business books, there are 11,000 titles published every year. The sheer volume of new books makes it impossible to sort through them all.

As readers, we need help, and that help arrives each November in the form of awards and best-of-the-year lists from media outlets and retailers, directing us to the favorites we already knew and surprises we may have missed.

This year, six of the best-known Best-of-Year lists for business books narrowed the list, but they still collectively recommended over 100 different titles. While the FT/McKinsey and Strategy + Business lists focus on corporate and global issues, Inc. magazine writes for entrepreneurs and small business owners. The retailers Porchlight Books, Bookpal and Amazon highlight titles like a bookstore, combining what they liked with what sold well.

For most readers, getting through every book on these lists would take up way more than a year’s worth of reading. I could add to the confusion by curating my own list of favorites. Instead, I decided to look at whether these six lists had any picks in common.

Each book tackles something we are all struggling with today: how to get better at solving complex problems, as individuals and as groups of people.

It turns out that there were three books that appeared far more frequently than others across lists this year, with each book appearing on five of the six lists I reviewed: Range by David Epstein, Nine Lies About Work by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall, and Loonshots by Safi Bahcall.

Narrowing 11,000 books to just three titles makes things wonderfully convenient. That kind of widespread agreement is rare. So naturally I had to read these books to find out why they were drawing such praise across the board, and what they might have to teach us as we step into the new year.
A Couple of Book Recommendations
By: Tim He
Tags: Christianity, Reading

Megan Chan — Humble Roots by Hannah Anderson

This book was an easy read that I had the joy of reading with a few women at my home church. It’s short, concise, and was applicable to all the different demographics I read it with. It helped me view my life in comparison to how God views my life. By proclaiming the infinite grace, majesty, beauty, and many other attributes God upholds, this author did a great job of reminding sinners of where their rightful place is in the world — made in God’s image, not the other way around. The main argument she wants to get across is how we, as humans, allow for pride to overtake our lives, while humility in our place on this earth gives us freedom to enjoy our lives and our God in the context of our failures. With that as the overarching theme, the author breaks pride down into the smaller parts of the thoughts that consume us: our hopes and dreams in the context of the Lord, and topics such as rest, death, and emotions. This book is also heavy with testimonies of her own life if visuals help you understand a concept better.

This book changed how I view my life as a Christian. As university students, we live our lives always looking and working towards the future. When I thought about my future, I saw it as something that I could attain if I just work harder. But what if that’s not God’s plan for me? Can I have humility in knowing that God has a better plan for me and I can not only trust it but find joy in it? What will happen if my goals become needs instead of wants? I’m just running in circles of disappointment in what I cannot achieve this way. But, there is hope for me, and hope for you, too. Because of God and the work that Christ has done for us on the cross, there is no need to be perfect. We were not made to be perfect, but to bask in the glory of who God is. Our imperfections bring light to what we are not, and most importantly to what God is. Once we see that, everything in our lives either falls away or aligns.

As I thought more about this book for this blog post, it seems quite applicable for the times we are living in now. What would it mean to have humility in our perspectives of our lives now? Through the panic, chaos, and everything we are experiencing that is not in our control (but is anything, really?) our God has His Sovereign hand over everything, still working things for our good and His glory.

An added bonus in this book: black-and-white plant drawings for fun colouring times.
Give Back Through Edge. In an effort to unite the crypto…
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Charitable Giving, Blockchain, Bitcoin, Covid 19

In an effort to unite the crypto community in giving back to fight the COVID19 outbreak, Edge, in partnership with The Giving Block and many of our exchange partners, is doing our small part to contribute.

Starting today, May 5th and running through Monday, May 25th, we’ll be donating commissions for trading operations that take place inside of Edge. These donations are being matched to varying degrees by our participating exchange partners: Moonpay, Bits of Gold, Bity, ChangeNow, Changelly, and Godex.

Edge users can participate in this effort to fight the outbreak by using our participating exchanges in the Edge wallet. All Edge users can give back by using our partner Moonpay for their fiat to crypto swaps and ChangeNow, Changelly, and Godex for their crypto to crypto swaps.

Moonpay allows users all over the globe to buy crypto via a credit card and Apple Pay. Moonpay will donate 45% of their trading commissions to the COVID19 relief efforts. ChangeNow, Changelly, and Godex, our crypto to crypto partners, will donate 100% of their commissions to the COVID19 relief efforts.

In addition to the above partners, our European users can give back by using our fiat exchange partners, Bity and Bits of Gold. Bity will donate 100% of their commissions, allowing users to exchange up to $5000 a day with no KYC via a SEPA bank transfer. Bits of Gold will donate 40% of their commissions, allowing users to exchange up to $10000 a day via a SEPA bank transfer. Bits of Gold also offers Israeli users the same opportunity via an Israeli Bank Transfer.

How To Participate

In order to take advantage of this promotion, new users haveto download Edge via this link: https://dl.edge.app/covid. Existing Edge users can activate the promotion by tapping on the same link from their mobile device.

After you download or activate Edge using the above link you’ll see a promo card inside of Edge indicating the promotion is active. You can then use our participating exchanges and have your fees donated COVID-19 relief efforts. Tap on the promo card to see a list of the participating exchanges.

If you have any questions about the promotion or how to participate do not hesitate to reach out to our support team at support@edge.app.

For more information on participating organizations in the crypto ecosystem, organizations that will be receiving these donations, and how you can get involved Click Here.

Download Edge
Consciousness
By: Paul Mulliner
Tags: Philosophy, Poetry, Yoga, Spirituality, Mindfulness

Consciousness

is the sky of our heart

the cosmic ocean of our being,

the universal self gazing

through all life

dissolving thoughts of separation

like sunshine dissolving mist,

it brings seeing and experiencing

into our lives,

and it’s continuously

transforming itself into electrons

and the biochemistry of living beings,

becoming visible as our Universe.

Like music

becoming cosmic wave-patterns

observable as a human hand,

it’s vibrationally transforming itself,

and emerging continuously into appearance

as trees, flowers

and human beings.

When we inwardly focus our attention

it dissolves all conceptual boundaries

and thoughts of separation,

as we realize its presence

and know the conscious silence,

the song of the inexpressible.

And the silent voice

of our intuition guides us

through our life,

helping us find our own connection

into this intelligence in the Universe.
Problems
By: Darshak Rana
Tags: Problems, Spiritual Secrets, Poetry, Spirituality, Lifelessons

POETRY

Problems

Come with an expiry date

Photo by Sébastien Barbieri on Unsplash

Problems are like traffic signals

They come for a fixed time

And die after that

The more we fuss, the more they annoy

But if we wait patiently

For the red light to pass

For it to die

Without losing our temper

Then it turns green

And departs happily

And we can move on

Swiftly in our Life.
Photograph
By: Somsubhra Banerjee
Tags: Memories, Photos, A Cornered Gurl, Haibun, Poetry

Today, Maa sent me a photograph on WhatsApp. A black and white family photograph. Charmingly beautiful. How magnificent this has endured the passage of time and stayed so close to the original? Proper aging you may say. There’s a kid there, of eight or nine, happily staring towards the camera.

an old photograph

ignites many memories,

re-creates lost bonds.

Yes, that’s my mother. Childlike innocence laced on her face. Seeing my mother as a kid, my lips smiled subconsciously. I was transported suddenly to that era, probably thinking about how her childhood might have been shaped. So different from mine, the surroundings, everything might have been so different. What was going on in her mind? To play with her little sister and her big brother as soon as the picture-taking session gets over, or to climb a tree to bring down the mangoes? Did she know that many, many years later, this photograph would act as a bridge and her son would flow back in time? To her era? With her people? Imagining himself standing somewhere in that photograph?

how beautifully,

an old photograph connects,

past with the present.
An Advent Prayer, Week 3
By: T.C. Judd
Tags: Religion, Advent, Book Of Common Worship, Prayer

Eternal God,

you sent John the Baptist

to prepare the way for the coming of your Son.

Grant us the wisdom to hear your will,

that we too may prepare the way for Christ

who is coming in power and glory

to establish his kingdom of peace and justice;

through Jesus Christ our Judge and our Redeemer,

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,

one God, forever. Amen. (from Book of Common Worship, WJK, 1993)
by Martino Pietropoli
By: Martino Pietropoli
Tags: Saturday, Architecture, Comics, Cartoon, Humor

First thing in the morning: a glass of water and a cartoon by The Fluxus.

Follow
Token Distribution
By: Bubbletone Blockchain In Telecom
Tags: Telecom, Token, Distribution, Blockchain, Token Sale

We are glad to announce that the first token distribution has been successfully finished! Users who checked and added their ETH addresses again (if it was necessary for them) and completed KYC before June 29 have received their tokens.

They can check their UMT balance. Here are the contract details:

— Token Contract Address: 0xc6Be00F7ed386015A3c751d38c126c62F231138d

— Token Symbol: UMT

— Decimals: 18

The distributed tokens are frozen until the end of July 10. You cannot transfer them from one wallet to another.

Those crowdsale participants who purchased UMT tokens with vesting will receive their tokens by July 15. Those participants who added their ETH wallet addresses and completed KYC after June 29 will receive their tokens by August 1.

Currently, we are in the process of registration on the Etherscan tracker.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

Attention! We are still missing the information from 258 token holders who have not added their wallet addresses and have not completed KYC to receive tokens. Please, do this ASAP or your tokens will be locked until September 2018. You can do this at https://ico.bubbletone.io/login

AIRDROP TOKENS

Those airdrop participants who added their correct wallet addresses have already received their tokens.

BOUNTY TOKENS

Those bounty participants who added their correct wallet addresses have already received their tokens.

NEXT STEP

We give those users who should have received tokens by July 10 — as they completed the required actions within the required time period — five days to check their balance and contact our support if needed .
Setting Up The Environment For Your First (or Next) Ruby CLI Application
By: Maxwell Harvey Croy
Tags: Ruby On Rails Development, Ruby on Rails, Coding, Ruby, Programming

/bin

When creating your project directory, /bin should be one of the first folders you create. Typically, this is where you’ll place your run.rb file and where you’ll dictate how the program should run. Beyond that, let’s not spend too much time here, as that’s really all there is to see.

/config

Next up, we need to create a folder to define our environment for our program and make sure that we can call on any necessary resources as the program executes. That’s typically handled within your /config folder by a file known as environment.rb . This file contains instructions on which resources to require for your application to run, as well as how to access any other functional dependencies for your app (databases, tests, etc.). This file is essential in building out an application, so don’t forget it. If you plan on using any Gems (which I’d recommend), this is the place to tie that resource into your project as well.

/lib

The /lib folder (sometimes /app folder) comes next in your project directory. /lib is where most of your code will eventually live, and where you’ll dictate how your program should function. Within your /lib folder should be a /models folder that contains all of the files for your classes. You’ll be spending most of your time in this folder, as this is where you’ll be building out the application of your dreams!

Other Files And Folders

Beyond those three main folders, there are a few other things you’ll commonly find in the directories for CLI applications.

The first of these is a /spec folder, which contains tests for the program. You should always be testing your code to make sure it functions properly in various situations. With that said, writing tests for your application is a skill that comes a bit later for some programmers, so feel free to leave this out if you’re not sure where to start.

Next comes the Gemfile. This is a file where you can require any Gems necessary for your project. “But, Max,” you might say. “I thought Gems were required in the environment.rb file?” Well, sometimes they are. But more often than not, you’ll see them required in a project’s Gem folder, which will then be compiled using a Gem called Bundler in that project’s environment file. You can learn more about that process here.

Rakefile is often found in project directories as well. Rake is a built-in feature of Ruby that allows programmers to build out their own administrative tasks, allowing them to speed up their development of an application. This might be slightly out of your reach as well, so don’t worry if you don’t see a use case for this quite yet. However, know that your Rakefile will be essential once you start building applications with ActiveRecord.

Finally, you have your readme file. At this point, you should understand the purpose of this file, but if you want advice on how to write a KICKASS readme, check out the link below:
The Up and Down Day
By: Christine Ren
Tags: Children, Short Fiction, Short Story, Poetry, Poem

(Credit unknown)

It’s been an up and down day

a black and white ride

says the girl

just a girl

on a star-drenched tide

I was here

then was there

but am getting nowhere

It’s been an up and down day

a rip-roaringdy flow

says the girl

just a girl

in the moon’s undertow

I twirl and I whirl

I crash and I dash

but the high and low track

never brings me right back

Confounded she calls

to deepest sir deep

that funny old Neptune

who’s surely still asleep

Rousing a rise

with a rattle and roar

Neptune emerges

from a slurb of a snore

I’m simply not getting it down

says the girl with a frown

This circular thing

won’t circle, my King!

Now old deepster Sir Neptune

is a man of few words

preferring instead

to nap like the dead

In a rush of a gush

he pats the girl’s head

hush shush,

hush, hush, hush

Then with a great thrust

he casts in a shine

a gold rod and gold line

the best of it’s kind

Plip ploppy blue

and in the King reels

twelve silver fish

for a young watery miss

With a flourish and grin

his hands start to spin

and his crafting begins

A sprite silver crown

he finally hands down

in a bend oh so deep

so the girl doesn’t weep

and forever can keep

Now the watery heart

of the fluid glass lass

forgets for a time

her worries in kind

She dive jives alive

tip tappity floppin’

a girl of pure ripple

and boisterous flipple

The girl

just a girl

with a crown

no more frowns

trails a glittery wake

foam sparkle

she makes

But still!

she tumbles and wrastles

end over end

never ebbing right back

not getting the knack

Hum thrummin’

hum do

through all of that sparkle

is how she meets Warkle!

Eight climbin’ fla flew

hum dum-didity-do

a fellow quite grim

and one sparklin’ limb

offers a hello and shake

straight up and straight through

that quite glittery wake

Hi there. I’m Warkle!

Well met. How d’you do?

says the girl

just a girl

to one very uncertain

eight-limbed octopi

Recede rippledy do

cascade dipplely don’t

I’ll never learn

this thing called to float

says the shy octopi

to the girl

just a girl

under the night-jeweled sky

in those waves

oh those waves

But it only takes one!

says the girl

not a girl

never a girl

who said a girl?

as the shy octopi

caught a wave

just one wave

and the girl realized

I am the ocean

not salt

nor mere spray

she shouts

to the heat of the day

Then she sighs

a big sigh

birthing the rhythm

of the tides

a repetitious spell

only she could tell

Now all remember her name

and it’s never quite been the same

Look! There she is

that woman of the waves

dancin’ as she please

to the tune that she made.
Pet-Agog-y
By: Background Noise Comics
Tags: Humor, Comics, Cats, Teaching, Fall

New season. New changes.

Lots of new stuff for everyone to get used to.
Hunter Biden vs. Trump Taxes Story Comparison
By: Adam Meldrum
Tags: 2020 Presidential Race, Donald Trump, Hunter Biden, Social Listening

Hunter Biden vs. Trump Taxes Story Comparison

A snapshot comparison of story and topic distribution across digital, social, and mainstream media

Updated: 10/19

Axios makes a similar point:

Updated: 10/18

For this analysis we compared story & topic/keyword distribution across a few different analysis platforms.

Key Findings:

— The official NYT “Trump Taxes” story received more engagements across social media. (You could infer this was because it’s distribution was not limited.)

— Subsequently, the official New York Post “Hunter Biden” story has received less engagement (as it’s distribution was limited).

— The potential/estimated reach of “Trump Taxes” as a discussion/topic was significantly less during the the three day window of the story vs. “Hunter Biden” across social and non-social platforms.

— There was a much greater volume of mentions in other media stories of “Trump Taxes” during the three day window vs. “Hunter Biden”
Grabbed by the Zhort and Curlies
By: The Crypto Telegraph
Tags: Blockchain, Zcash, Cryptocurrency, Employee Engagement, Bitcoin

How to broker a deal, Zcash style

It’s finally happened. The developers are revolting. No, not that kind of revolting — namely the 30-something, fedora-toting neck beard many people think of when the words ‘computer whizz’ are bandied around — more the French and Russian consideration of the word.

A programmer decided to, for want of a better word, racketeer when all seemed rosy in the world of Z-Cash’s anticipated Overwinter hard fork. Mere days before completion, the sole maintainer of Z-Cash’s window wallet, D. Jane Mercer decided he was fed up of working for free. So, he threatened to launch a rebranded competitor. His beef came from the fact the donations and payments for his work had dried up in recent months.

This sent the Z-cash community into meltdown. The Overwinter upgrade was a pre-cursor to another hard fork, Sapling, in October. Had Mercer taken the threatened leave of absence from the Z-cash project, this would have left all Windows wallets no longer viable after Sapling. It should be noted that the Windows variant is the most popular wallet variant for Z-cash.

Fortunately, the community rallied, and was subsequently joined by the Z-cash foundation, and Mercer was paid in excess of $15k in a matter of days. This appears to have placated him.

For now.

A Timely Reminder

It should be noted by all projects in the crypto-market that they are only as strong as their weakest link. There is a lot of money washing around the industry at the moment. Anyone working on a currency or token should be able to expect reasonable payment for their efforts on a successful project. In the case of Z-cash, with a centralised foundation, the fact that one of their own was struggling and yet soldiering on should be a massive blow to their pride. That it took a potential revolt to highlight it should make them hang their heads in shame.

Hopefully, this will act as a timely reminder for other projects in the space that a team’s efforts should come with remuneration and a definite consideration of their wellbeing if a central foundation exists to police such matters.
The ISW: W13 NFL 2019 Odds & Data
By: John Culver
Tags: Sports Data, NFL, Sports Betting, Lean Startup, Sports

W13 Initial Value Plays

Each week, The ISW identifies weekly value plays. These plays should not be misconstrued as official picks, plays, or wagers as we believe long-term wagering ROI is more a function of bankroll management and allocation than of win rates.

We define value as instances where the odds of covering are at least >52.4%, and when spreads between our win and/or cover probabilities and the market are substantial — yielding positive long-term expected values (EV). The last thing we ever want to be confused with is as a tout. We’re long-term-probability-minded here — remember 52.4% is almost the same as a coin toss, but the margins is where the value lies. In the long-term, the EV will deliver alpha.

The ISW’s W2–12 Initial Value Play Performance