fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Cloud Kitchen ทำร้านอาหารไม่ต้องมีหน้าร้านในยุค Food Delivery​
By: Hru Vetsutee
Tags: Innovation, Startup, Strategy, Cloud Kitchens, ร้านอาหาร

product management learner, working with organizations to change the way they think and work

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3 to read: How not to respond to John Oliver | Medium for publishers | Avoiding 10 data mistakes
By: Matt Carroll
Tags: Data Visualization, Social Media, Journalism, Media, John Oliver

3 to read: How not to respond to John Oliver | Medium for publishers | Avoiding 10 data mistakes

By Matt Carroll <@MattatMIT>

This week: Hey newspaper guy — when John Oliver’s compliments you in his own funny way, don’t get huffy; How Medium is becoming the tool du jour for publishers; and 10 (avoidable) data reporting mistakes.

BONUS: NewsPix helps digital newsrooms reinforce their brand: NewsPix is a free, open-source tool that presents a stream of news photos to readers. The Chrome extension is now open to any newsroom developer who’s interested. So dive right in. Asahi Shimbun, one of the world’s largest news organizations, just started using it. (Transparency alert: I helped develop NewsPix with my partner, Catherine D’Ignazio, a professor at Emerson College.)

Get notified via email: Send note to 3toread (at) gmail.com

“3 to read” online

Matt Carroll runs the Future of News initiative at the MIT Media Lab.
AWS Basics Part 05 — Selecting region for AWS deployments
By: Nethmini Romina
Tags: Cloud Computing, AWS, Aws Region, Devops Training, Cloud

When running applications in your own data centers you need to have proper disaster recovery techniques. Having a duplicate second datacenter is one method for disaster recovery. But when working enterprise-level, maintaining a second datacenter cost a lot.

AWS provides a cost-effective solution for this issue. AWS has large datacenter groups named “Region”. An AWS region is build to be closest to the business traffic demand. Each region is connected with high-speed fiber networks controlled by AWS.

Every region is isolated from each other. In other terms, no data can go in or out from the datacenter unless granting permission for data to be moved. There are 02 factors need to be considered when choosing a region for your application.

#01: Compliance

Before any other factor, you need to check whether your application has compliance. If your data should not leave a region, then select that region. As an example, if your data should be within Singapore, you need to select the Singapore region.

#02: Proximity

The next factor is how close you need to be with the customer. If your customer is from India, you need to select the India region. This is not compulsory. Say you choose the Singapore region for your Indian customers. Though data travel speed of the light, there can be a latency-the time for data to be sent and receive. So, choosing the region close to your customers is the best choice.

#03: Feature availability

Every year AWS releases new features and products for customer needs and requests. Sometimes these features and products require hardware. So, they can be available only for a limited region. However, your closest region may not have the services you require.

#04: Pricing

Though sometimes equal hardware is required to run services, depending on the region the operation cost may vary. As an example, you are running an application in the USA and Brazil. According to the tax structure in Brazil, the operation cost may a bit high than the USA Oregon region. So, if the price is your primary motivation, you can choose a low-cost region for your applications.
XTRD Update: May 20th, 2018
Tags: Bitcoin, Altcoins, Ethereum, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency

Weekly update #1

Dear community! This is the first XTRD weekly report. We plan to continue providing you with the latest updates on our project.

Summary

Product updates (May 13)

XTRD Team has visited Consensus 2018

Bounty #1 Summary

Product updates

On May 13 we have shared some news on what has been done on the technical side in the last several months. Please find more details in our Community Product Update. The XTRD team will continue to publish regular technical updates to keep our community apprised of progress in product and expansion.

Consensus 2018

XTRD team represented by Alex Kravets and Michele Guo has visited 4th annual blockchain technology summit Consensus 2018 held by CoinDesks on May 14–16, 2018 in New York. We will provide the community with the report on our visit in a few days. Stay tuned!

Bounty #1 Summary

We have released and distributed all the bounty tokens. Thank you to all participants in the XTRD bounty! We couldn’t have gotten the word out without your help, and it’s greatly appreciated. Find more details in XTRD Bounty #1 Summary. The first round is finished. We will publish the next bounty program shortly.
[097] — Office drones
By: Jet Ska
Tags: Culture, Work, Work Life Balance, 100 Naked Words

Do you hate your job?

Do you hate the nine to five grind?

Do you hate the commute with hundreds of dreary faces staring at their phones on the train?

What would happen if it ended tomorrow? What if you were given a cardboard box and your marching orders?

Where would you rather be and would it have enough power to get you out of bed every day?

Ever sit at a meeting table and look around at the pale faces, dark shadows under their eyes and expanding paunches? Get the sense we are all dying in here one agenda item at a time?

Our sedentary lifestyles are killing us softly.
The Value of Design in Hard Times
By: Michael Schofield
Tags: Podcast, Business, Economy, Design, Product Design

Subscribe to Metric UX on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Stitcher, and the rest.

When the market’s taken a spill, when your earned revenue is down — people aren’t leaving their homes, folks have lost work, uncertainty leads to spending scarcity — then the easiest line-items to cut are those that involve external consultants. You need to preserve your budget to take care of your colleagues, your business, your livelihoods.

But constraint, especially when that constraint is sudden, unpredictable, and symptomatic of problems widely outside of your control (or even the control of your industry, or your country) — constraint causes strategic tunnel vision focused entirely on stemming the blood flow. All the constellations in your worldview blur while you focus on a small point in the sky.

This is sane.

But one of the things you’re not doing now — or doing less of — is aggressively trying to understand how the service landscape has changed. This is the landscape where the service you provide, and your products, dot grainy plains that stretch far to the horizon. It is the landscape of your users’ journeys — all of them.

Your organization or business exists because the services you provide intercept these journeys. They do not exist for any other reason.

That landscape has changed. It has changed dramatically. What once was — let’s say — a pastoral, sprawling lawn, is now an archipelago. The journeys have been existentially upset and are newly adapting for if not survival then a new reality, like neurons branching.

If you yourself or your colleagues aren’t surveying your service landscape, then while you focus to triage the wound, you aren’t questioning — or, if you are, you can’t answer — whether your services will still be in demand. Do your users’ journeys still follow the same path?

It is not just that design is reconnaissance: design is intelligence.

How differently, then, do you value the role of service design? How differently do you prioritize your colleague, or your consultant, or the time you all allocate as a team to shift your attention to the window?

Remember: the user experience is a metric.
Broken Memories
By: Alexis Busso
Tags: Long Distance, Love, Memories, Poetry, Relationships

Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash

His fingertips brushed the outline of her body as if tracing a drawing from memory, making sure to color inside the lines

Her eyes fluttered open.

She wanted this moment, captured in a snowglobe, frozen in eternity.

The morning, drifting to evening, accompanied by the sounds of guitar strums and the scent of lingering coffee.

He smiled, apprehensive and gentle,

All the uncertainties raveled in a single line, resting between his brows.

Unspoken words vibrated to the response of each movement, ricocheting to create a familiar melody.

A melody that only they could hear.

Their culture, worlds apart, separated by oceans and everything in between.

But in this space, where together was both nowhere and here,

They knew. The future, hinging on the edge of promises, reflected in each other’s eyes.

Like a sculpture that remains unfinished or a dissonance chord unplayed, yet the ending was revealed within the first words.

Their lips touched, galvanize by the electric pulse,

Blood beating through their veins, infused into a single beat.

He finished the last touches, shading in the light that danced on her back.

The memory, still. Complete.
Open Your Mind, Change Your Reality
By: Aline Müller
Tags: Mindfulness, Philosophy, Self-awareness, Empowerment, Self Improvement

Open Your Mind, Change Your Reality

The art of choosing the life we want to live

Photo by Arie Wubben on Unsplash

Nothing changes, right? Society keeps broken; we keep lacking clarity, stuck with the same insecurities. The good news is, that's not true. Technically, the only thing we can count on is for change to be constant. The tricky thing would, in fact, to keep things just as they are.

Sounds weird? If so, how do we manage to "keep all the same?"

Here is the thing: at any second there’s nothing but now. That means that after this second there’s nothing but an unlimited potentiality. Our future hasn't been created, yet it is made of all the actions we are about to take.

What happens is that we alter the endless potentiality in our lives by making a choice, and we often choose to take a step similar to the one we had just taken before. Surprise surprise, drastically different results don't materialize.

Every time we make choices we alter our reality. Or rather, we create reality. Our experience of life is shaped moment by moment, according to the ways we act and respond to life. We are maybe not happy with our work life, but we keep with it, work on weekends, without ever taking time to contemplate what the hell we are doing with our lives.

Or it might be that we feel upset, and we choose between feeling sorry for ourselves in bed eating a gallon of ice cream without telling us a single loving word, and a walk in the woods. Even before doing any of these actions, the process of choosing one of them already comes loaded with self-talks and personal narratives. And each of these choices will transform our sadness and self-image in a different way.

Every decision we take opens up a new path, a new possible direction. Our state of mind alters our experience of reality. What our choices are doing is defining the shape of the unlimited potentiality of the future. Through it, we constantly alter our experience of the world.

Mind you, there is not one world, but 7,5 billion ones.

That’s why one’s reality is so different from the other (all types of privilege situations left aside). We all see life differently. We allow social conditionings to impact us differently. We develop different self-talks. Finally, we allow all of these to impact our potential differently.

To live is to be the master of our reality through the choices we make. The master gets to choose how big or how small his/her life gets to be.
Book Review: A Dangerous Man by Robert Crais
By: Peter Flom
Tags: Book Review, Thriller, Books, Mystery

Robert Crais photo by Mark Coggins from Wikimedia Common

Isabel Roland is a 22 year old bank teller. One of her somewhat regular customers is Joe Pike. One day he is her last customer before lunch. At lunch Isabel (known as Izzy) is kidnapped and Pike sees it. The average person might not notice or, if they did, would perhaps call the police. Luckily for Isabel, Joe Pike is not an average person. He is a dangerous man and he rescues her. But her troubles aren’t over because she wasn’t some random victim: The men who tried to kidnap her keep coming. And Joe Pike (and his partner Elvis Cole) keep helping her.



A Dangerous Man has that great quality of thriller novels: It grabbed me from the opening page and didn’t let me go until the end. It also had some other qualities I like in a thriller:

The plot, while full of twists, is also straightforward: Bad guys are after Izzy. Good guys (Pike and Cole and also various law enforcement people) are trying to protect her while figuring out why people ar after her.

The writing is clear and basic and doesn’t get in the way. I don’t want fancy language in thrillers, but I also want grammatical sentences. Crais delivers both.

The plot keeps moving. In some forms of literature, I’m a fan of digressions. But not in thrillers.

A clear delineation of good guys and bad. This isn’t the place for moral ambiguity or philosophical conundrums. Good. Evil.

Believable characters. OK, you have to sort of accept Elvis Cole and Joe Pike for what they are, but at least when they get hurt it hurts. And Izzy is very believable as a confused and frightened young woman.

Isabel’s history is gradually revealed at the same time as Pike and Cole pursue the bad guys and it’s an interesting history; I won’t spoil the plot by saying how it is interesting but the reveal is well-done.



Fans of the series may enjoy learning a bit more about John Chen, the brilliant criminalist who sometimes helps Cole and Pike and is willing to break the rules to do so. I find Chen a bit of a problem as he is rather a stereotype not just of a dorky scientist who is clueless about life, but also of the ``Asian man’’ with some of the same characteristics. Yeah, sure, there are some people who fit the stereotype, but perpetuating it isn’t great tactic. There’s no need for Chen to be Chinese; there’s not even a need for him to be a man. How about a dorky but brilliant woman scientist from Oklahoma?



But, overall, I very much enjoyed A Dangerous Man and I think fans of the genre and the series will too.

Robert Crais is the author of more than 20 novels, including 17 in the Cole/Pike series. He has also written for television and has won several awards for his work.
How we wrote the Fastest JavaScript UI Frameworks
By: Ryan Carniato
Tags: Technology, Programming, JavaScript, Software Engineering, Web Development

Lesson Learned

Six months ago on my birthday, I wrote: How I wrote the Fastest JavaScript UI Framework. On that day Solid for the first time was the fastest in the world according to the JS Frameworks Benchmark. I imparted my wisdom on where the frontend was heading and what you should look for in a framework. This time around, Solid has surpassed even that benchmark, but we are looking at a very different landscape.

The amount of fine-grained reactive libraries holding the top spots in the benchmarks has boomed. Web Assembly hasn’t taken off. Despite superior execution speed, the overhead of interacting with the DOM means that at least for the near foreseeable future optimized JavaScript libraries will outperform WASM. Virtual DOM hasn’t moved much (although Inferno looks like it has reclaimed its crown).

I created DOM Expressions hoping to enable people to take a common runtime and bring their reactive libraries and opinions to create their perfect UI developer experience. That was a naive dream. Instead of people using my libraries they just grabbed the code wrapping it into their libraries and have started taking things their way. Six months ago I would have never imagined that someone would take my code, in the name of shaving a few kilobytes, create a library that offers only a subset of the same features, and have almost 300 stars on Github. That’s amazing. That’s what open source is about.

Solid owes its pedigree to Surplus which proved JSX was a viable solution for reactive libraries (Sorry Rich Harris, but on this, you are emphatically mistaken). And of course, localvoid(Boris Kaul), who at this point, list reconciliation routine is something that pretty much every top library uses.

Neither would have I guessed that a small community of users would through feature requests, drive a refactor that would take web performance to new heights. That whenever I had a new idea there would be people eager to discuss, or whenever I was feeling exhausted there would be kind words waiting. People are there who take time to edit my articles or correct my naive TypeScript definitions. I owe many people my gratitude, as none of this would be possible without them.

Six months ago I felt that I was mostly alone. Now, this has grown beyond just me.
Monitoring Iran’s Vegetation Density & Coverage via MODIS Satellite Imagery
By: Darren Smith
Tags: Ndvi, Vegetation, Iran, Satellite, Climate

2017 to 2020

This article shows the state of vegetation health across Iran between May 2017 and May 2020 as calculated using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from NASA’s MODIS satellite, via the Soar platform. The month of May was chosen because it is the best maximum representation of vegetation growth across the region. This analysis takes into account the effects of both climate and topography.

The darkest green areas mainly consist of mixed dense Caspian Hyrcanian (northern Iran) and Zagros mountain oak forests (western Iran). However, it should be noted that significant intensive farming is also found both around the aforementioned locations and also throughout the nation as a whole.

Caspian Hyrcanian forest in northern Iran (left) & Semi-arid landscape farming in eastern Iran (right)

In particular, substantial areas of intensive farming has been developed over the last three years in central, southern and north-western Iran, further drawing on water resources from local landscapes, which are otherwise considered semi-arid or even desert (brown to beige).

Interestingly, over the past 3 years, overall Iran is becoming greener during the month of May as shown with areas of increased farmland throughout the nation, no matter the landscape or terrain.

The subset image below shows the growth in both intensity as well as extent of farming around Shiraz, Fars Province between 2017 and 2020.

The Iranian plateau is also home to many lakes which are found at different altitudes and landscapes. The last two winters in Iran have seen above average rain and snowfall which has resulted in several interesting changes:

🔗 Infilling of Lake Urmia in north western Iran

🔗 Increased surface run off from mountains forming greener valleys

🔗Unprecedented flooding and subsequent filling of many desert lakes such as the Jaz Murian Depression in south east Iran which increased to over 3,000km2 (see below)

In conclusion, it is apparent that whilst Iran is infact ‘greening’ the merits and source of this increased vegetation density and extent is worthy of further analysis. On one hand, the welcomed increase in rain and snow-fall in the past couple of winters has helped, but it is also clearly evident that farming has also drastically increased. The imagery data in this poster shows that this increase is not limited to just one region, rather it is widespread to include semi-arid and desert landscapes. Finally, the state of Iran’s mountain forests is undetermined and it is hard to ascertain their current status with the supplied imagery data, however it is hoped that increased forestry management by authorities is working

Special notes:
Autonomous Drone Equipped with Modified Nail Gun for Roofing Work
By: Cabe Atwell
Tags: Drones, Construction, Engineering, Quadcopter, Beaglebone

Drones have been used for several interesting applications, including package deliveries, building rope bridges, and even used to build low-cost houses. Engineers from the University of Michigan have designed a new drone for another great application, roofing houses, which it can accomplish autonomously without a human pilot. Over the last few years, construction companies have utilized drones for some job site tasks, such as surveying, 3D modeling of buildings, and site inspections.

The autonomous roofing drone places the nail gun on a shingle positioning point, fires a nail, and moves on to the next location. (📷: University of Michigan)

The team has developed a construction drone that goes one step further by being a roofer. More accurately, it’s an autonomous roofing flyer capable of laying down shingles using a nail gun. It accomplishes this by placing the gun on a positioning point on the shingle, driving a nail, and then moves on to the next.

The drone was designed around a DJI Spreading Wings S1000 octocopter outfitted with a modified Ryobi 18-Volt ONE+ Lithium-Ion Cordless AirStrike 18-Gauge Brad Nailer, which uses a limit switch and trigger powered by a 10,000mAh LiPo battery rather than using compressed air. A series of external cameras and onboard sensors help the drone find the target on the shingles, which uses in-flight data processed by a BeagleBone Blue running ArduPilot software.

Typically, a nail gun requires pressure (or trigger pull) to fire a nail into the shingles, which is easy for human hands, but not so much for a drone. To overcome this obstacle, the engineers wrote an algorithm that allows the drone to apply the required force. Construction workers shouldn’t worry about losing their roofing jobs to a drone quite yet, as the platform is only a proof-of-concept that’s incapable of replacing humans and can only operate for 10 minutes at a time.
Here’s Why Life Is Much Harder for a “Night Owl”
By: Wajeeh Khan
Tags: Health, Life, Sleep, Science, Productivity

Understanding Sleep Architecture

Ideally, if you get a good eight-hour sleep at a time that is “optimal for your chronotype”, you’ll get all the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) and non-REM (Deep Sleep) sleep that you want.

For humans, sleep comprises of 90-minute cycles, each of which, in turn, encloses REM and non-REM sleep. In the first half of the night, deep sleep contributes much more to these cycles as compared to the REM sleep. But in the second half of the night, the balance switches.

So, if a morning person who ideally sleeps at nine and wakes up at five, goes to bed at 11 instead — you’d think he lost two hours (25%) of sleep, which is correct, in a way. But considering that the first half of the night comprises primarily of non-REM sleep, he might have lost like 70% of the non-REM sleep.

Similarly, if a night owl who ideally sleeps at two and wakes up at ten, have to get up perhaps for a morning class at eight, he loses 25% of his total sleep, but maybe 70% of the REM sleep.

Point being, the quality of sleep is spelled in terms of whether or not you get the required amount of REM and non-REM sleep every day.

If you’re a night owl, if there’s a genetic predisposition that pushes your circadian rhythm forward by a few hours — it doesn’t necessarily deprive you of a right to quality sleep. You can still get all the REM and non-REM sleep as long as you’re getting eight hours of sleep at a time that is optimal for your chronotype.

Your circadian rhythm might even direct sleeping at four in the morning and waking up at noon. As long as you’re sleeping during these hours, you’re fine.
अतीत — The Past. Polyglot poetry on the act of letting…
By: Dipti Pande
Tags: Hindi, Polyglot, Poetry, Poetry On Medium, Life Lessons

Dipti Pande is a psychologist. She enjoys writing poetry, psychology, spirituality, and philosophy.

She is an editor at Illumination and Polyglot Poetry.

Connect with her on Twitter Instagram & Facebook
“Beaded Baby Moccasins”
By: The Hairpin
Tags: Joanne Dominique Dwyer, Poetry, Featured Poet

by Joanne Dominique Dwyer

If love is like a doll’s shoe —

the color of nascent snow

that laces over the ankle

or the polychromatic beaded baby moccasins

we saw lying in the museum drawer

that belonged to an infant from a sea tribe of seal hunters.

Or the rutilant pink blossoms

of the locust tree that bloomed in the dark

while I slept dreaming of my arrival

on a red-eye wearing a long to the floor skirt —

not of a postulant, but of a flower vendor

or a woman covering disfigurement.

Freud believed that religious faith

is a wish-fulfilling illusion.

I can’t locate faith in a carved or uncarved pew.

I’m more focused on the altar boy’s shoes.

Under his white robe he’s wearing a man’s black loafers

vastly oversized for his small feet with

sufficient spare space for a coyote den in each toe.

I want to buy him a kite.

If love is a mezzanine floor we will not fall from,

a hand holding back my hair from my face

as I’m sick on the side of the bus.

The mouth so at home in the vicinity of pavement.

Pew also means to enclose, as in men who were

as willingly pewed in the parish church

as their sheep were in night folds.

Freud also believed civilized life imposes suffering,

yet he always wore a dinner jacket.

We delaminate layers of old paint

bleach sheets in the shade.

I take out the oily ham from the beans,

the unflattering photos from the folio,

the quotes about repressed homosexuality

being the reason Sigmund’s patient Little Hans

is afraid of horses.

— Poetry, March 2013

Joanne Dominique Dwyer’s first book of poems, Belle Laide, will be published by Sarabande Books this spring. She lives in Northern New Mexico where she works with the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project.
The New Bitcoin Debate: Proof of Work Change vs. Defensive Patents
Tags: Bitcoin, Blockchain Technology, Proof Of Work, Bdpl, Bitcoin Mining

The Bitcoin Defensive Patent License (BDPL)

“One of the best ways to (reduce miner centralization) is to encourage mining individuals or entities to grant their respective mining patents under a mutually defensive patent license that is tailored to address the unique needs of the Bitcoin or other blockchain protocol(s) and prevent any one mining consortium from obtaining the dreaded ability to launch majority (or near majority) attacks.” -BDPL

This exciting new patent is an extension of the former Bitcoin Defensive Patent proposed by Blockstream. Crafted with the help of an incredibly qualified intellectual property attorney of 14 years who is also a “director of emerging technologies for a non-governmental organization working with the United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization,” the patent seeks to re-facilitate the spirit of sharing blockchain innovation (which has been stunted due to the rising number of blockchain patents). By signing up, companies will be able to gain access to all the other patents in the BDPL, but they must also share theirs as well.

Now this may not sound like the most attractive arrangement for businesses, especially because proprietary products are how many companies thrive in today’s capitalistic economy. Luckily there’s a huge incentive to join the BDPL, especially if you’re a mining company.

Asic-Boost as the Lure

Little Dragon Technology LLC announced on March 1 that it would sign up for the BDPL. As the current holders of the patent on Asic-Boost, they are essentially offering it as an incentive for other mining companies to join the BDPL.

In fact, one company has already started to reap the benefits of being part of the defensive patent. Halong Mining has announced that they have successfully integrated Asic-Boost into their specialized computers, becoming the first Bitcoin mining hardware company to do so. This bodes well for the Bitcoin community as Slush Pool has also added overt Asic-Boost support in preparation for some of these miners to come online.

Now if I’m Bitmain, I have two choices:

Join the BDPL to use Asic-Boost but give up my other patents I have and/or could be developing. Not join the BDPL and watch my profitability and hashrate dominance dwindle slowly as others capitalize on the increased efficiency up to 30%.

Many in the blockchain community view this as a win for decentralized mining:

However, not everyone in satisfied with the result:
Listening to Solve — One Problem at a Time
Tags: Listening, Writing, Opinion, Life Lessons, Relationships

Listening to Solve — One Problem at a Time

An opinion

Photo: Author’s own, Courtesy — Siri on iPhone X

In sudden wonder, I realized how often I have slapped one of my problems on someone, as they shared theirs. Instead of listening and being there for them, I had said, “Yes, I am going through one that is even worse!”

My problem was always bigger, harder, and more important than that of others. I did not realize what I was doing until very recently. I was describing to a friend an incident that left me hurting for quite a while now, and as soon as I got to almost the end of my story, she found a crevice and started to put her trouble story in. Her response to my problem was her own problem.

I ended my conversation with her that day with disquiet in my heart. My problem did not get a way out. Moreover, it was compounded with a concern for my friend’s problem.

But above all, I became aware of my own faux pas. I understood that there were instances in the past where I was not helping those, who, at one point or another, was trying to tell me about their hardships. Because I was doing the same thing my friend did. I was throwing a problem of my own to them as soon as I was finished hearing about theirs.

With this realization, I was standing face-to-face with lost opportunities to take a real listen.

Often, we make our problems BIG in our hearts. So, perhaps, when others are telling us their problems, we listen to them not to be there for them and actually hear them out, but to respond — with our own. But that makes us retreat farther from solving a problem.

You would ask, how would listening solve any of our problems? Well, I think each of our problems is unique to us, and its scale often seems insurmountable. And in most cases, we are alone responsible for solving it. But the intensity of the problem, determined inside of us, is so heavy that the solution, or even the imagination of the same, is buried under that. Nobody probably can solve our problems. But if someone listens to them, and says that they understand it, the heaviness caused by the problem lifts off a little bit.

The problem becomes even bigger and harder as we assume, often in haste, that nobody will understand it — or help us solve it. But when we hear people say that they understand, it immediately rejuvenates us a little bit. We immediately start to hope that the problem can get solved after all. Nobody but ourselves will be solving them, as the weight lifts off and we can access the energy deep within us. That can only happen when we start hearing each other out, one problem at a time.

~Thank you, Edie Tuck, for giving my writings a home at Imperfect Words.
NaPoleonX Update 23/01: Last chance to get 20% bonus
By: Napoleon Group
Tags: Bitcoin, Investing, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, News

Dear Napoleonians,

ICO has been launched and we have already exceeded the 4.5 million EUR bar. Moreover, the feedback from the community has been amazing and we are thrilled to see the enthousiasm going up throughout the various channels. On behalf of the NaPoleonX team, I want to thank you deeply for that.

A big leap has been made, but the greatest is yet to come!

Last chance to grab your 20% bonus

The 20% early bird bonus is still available for very little time, as we will soon overtake the 5 million EUR raised and the 24 hours limit at 11:00 UTC.

After that, the bonus goes down to 10% until the 10 million EUR mark.

Want more bonuses? Get referrals!

You get 5% of the amount bought by all your referrals (up to 5), and they also benefit from a 5% bonus of their contribution thanks to you.

You will find your unique sponsorship code on your dashboard only once your contribution made (can take some time, be patient). Your referrals will have to paste the code you gave them, it’s as simple as that!

Our recommendations regarding your contribution

We recommend 100,000 Gas and 50 Gwei in order to avoid any risk of failed transaction. 50,000 Gas and 25 Gwei being the minimum viable.

Never pay from an exchange! We would not be able to identify your payment and refund you in case we need to do so.

Any question? The NPX team is available to answer your questions on the NaPoleonX Telegram group or on contact@napoleonx.ai. You can also check out the whitepaper, and the FAQ for answers.

Be careful of scammers! NaPoleonX team members & channel admins will NEVER contact you directly offering private sale, please report if you happen to be contacted by scammers impersonating team members.

Best regards,
Cryptology Signs Agreement to Enable Bank Transfer Operations
Tags: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Crypto, Cryptocurrency, Fintech

Breaking news: wire transfers are on! It was a long way to get where we are now. We’ve received many requests to realize bank transfers on Cryptology for topping up and withdrawing funds. Finally, here they are.

We’ve finally reached an agreement with our payment partner so that you can easily deposit and withdraw fiat on Cryptology. Besides, a transfer is available to be carried out right in the application with the lowest commision. We are very excited to share the news with you as this actually means that Cryptology moves toward a completely different level of service. So let’s touch upon the details now.

We provide SEPA bank transfers which covers payments in euro only and stands for Single Euro Payments Area including 28 countries of the European Union, four member states of the European Free Trade Association. Main and most important advantages of wire transfer are high level of security and speed of transfer, i.e. fast access to funds.

In order to deposit EUR via bank transfer you need to choose EUR from “Wallet” tab on our web platform, click on “Bank transfer” and fill the form in. Please be informed that Unlimited verification is required for this transaction method.

Our exchange now supports most popular cryptocurrencies and several tokens which number is being currently increased. This step gives a new impulse to Cryptology making it a comfortable environment for investors and satisfying all their needs.

We are constantly searching for new market prospects and progressive blockchain projects to keep moving as fast as the crypto ecosystem changes.

Enjoy the benefits of fiat operations on cryptology.com.
Lifechanging Things I Learned From Being In Cryptospace For 2 Years
By: Lucien Lecarme
Tags: Startup, Crypto, Blockchain, Life Lessons, Inspiration

My first startup, the early day's phase

The main thing I learned while working for the first startup for a year, is something that is the most difficult thing for many working in this fascinating industry.

Let me first tell you how I got there

It started with a dream. I got invited to a huge catamaran yacht in Ibiza where I live and I met the owner, a very successful computer tech visionary millionaire. We had a good click and next thing I know I was floating on the Nile in Egypt on one of his other 4 boats. He had invited about 45 people, presented his vision, and boom.. a startup was born.

A rare mix of investors, people coming from companies like IBM and other computer giants, and a bunch of spiritual hippies with some cool skills. I fit in the latter category.

The mission; disrupting the complete Internet as it is today by building a new decentralized internet, bringing innovation at the edge with a cheaper, much greener distributed network of mini data centres all around the globe.

My task: Storyteller.

W.T.F?

Let me explain

In order for the movement of decentralization to work, many people on this planet need to become more responsible and embrace different, higher values than greed and power alone. Just to mention the two that are kind of the fundamentals of the pyramid system we try to get rid of today.

For this to happen, a new story needs to be told. We need to imagine this future first, to frog leap into a world where technology will really serve humanity in its evolution. To avoid a world where AI runs us.

I am part of that army of storytellers that sparks that very important revolution not with bits and bytes, but with words.

Next thing that happened, we were meeting in the owners’ penthouse in Dubai on the 71st floor, to further forge the digital swords, make a strategy, and get to know each other better.

This was the pure excitement phase.

We were going to change the world, and we all felt privileged to be part of a team that was going to create a new internet, from the people, for the people. We contacted the former inventor of the WWW, Berners-Lee, and asked whether he would like to invest.

We were high on blockchain.

I assume many of you in this space must have felt this too. The Everything-is-possible mentality since blockchain will change this world forever and our plan is the best and we will all be heroes soon.

It lasted from around 2017 till the end of 2018.
我們都還在練習與自己相處
By: Alvin Chen 陳俞安
Tags: 讀者投書, Talks, Diary, Friendship, Relationships

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The Decade That Destroyed the Modern American Woman
By: Adrienne Grimes
Tags: Reading, Book Review, Pop Culture, Feminism, Girl Power

’90s Bitch: The Decade That Destroyed the Modern American Woman’ — Allison Yarrow

I recently read a book for a class.

It was actually a much more momentous moment than it sounds, as it was the first time in my first semester of grad school that I actually got to read something of interest to my future thesis… Whatever that may be.

I chose Allison Yarrow’s 90s Bitch: Media, Culture, and the Failed Promise of Gender Equality, a journalistic review of the crappy way high profile women were treated in the media during the 90s.

It wasn’t exactly what I thought it would be.

I picked up this book hoping for a 90s pop culture review of trends like the Spice Girls, Girl Power, and chick flicks — all of which were presented, but more as a way to set the stage for the main event.

What I wasn’t looking for, but still highly appreciated?

A refresher course on the stories of Anita Hill, Monica Lewinsky, Tonya Harding, Marcia Clark, and many more. The way these women’s stories are told with emphasis on how they were filed away into trendy female-specific troupes is very interesting to follow.

Would I recommend this book to everyone? To the right person — sure! The views Yarrow presents are a must read for any budding feminist, but heed this warning: they are strong.

Something I found interesting weeks after reading this book?

That it apparently has two titles. Or so the internet thinks. When searching online for quotes, Goodreads supplied me with this title: 90s Bitch: The Decade That Destroyed the Modern American Woman.

I wonder when it turned into the title printed on the cover now? I personally think ‘The Decade That Destroyed the Modern American Woman’ sounds like the journalistic, strong feminist approach that Allison Yarrow upheld throughout.

The eventually chosen title sounds like the type of scholarly thesis dissertation I apparently would choose to read for a school project.
Human Factors in Avalanche Accidents
By: Mountain Research
Tags: Avalanche, Mountains, Education

An IMR collaborative research project

Each summer the Institute for Mountain Research supports a number of student/faculty collaborative research projects. We’ll get updates on the research throughout the summer and the year. In one of these projects, Russ Costa and Jadie Adams will examine the roll of human decision making in avalanche terrain. They describe their project like this:

In an essay presaging the “science wars” of the 1990’s, John Maynard Smith, a British engineer turned theoretical evolutionary biologist and geneticist, noted the following concerning humans’ difficulty in distinguishing between science and myth:

“If, before going into battle, a man sharpens his spear and undergoes ritual purification (or, for that matter, goes to mass and cleans his rifle), he may regard the two procedures as equally efficacious. Indeed, they may well be so, one in preparing the spear and the other himself. If we regard the former as more scientific, it is only because we understand metallurgy better than psychology.” (p. 376)

This distinction also largely reflects the present state of avalanche safety research and education. As noted by Maynard Smith, we understand than material more than we do than the mental, and the physical more than the psychological, leading to the assumption that the former is more scientific in explanation and more efficacious in education. Although several recent efforts have brought some necessary attention to psychological, “human” factors in avalanche accidents, the field is still largely dominated by the science of snow, not of human decision making and behavior.

Recent decades have seen a surge in the amount of human travel in avalanche terrain, and a parallel upturn in literature and other educational material devoted to avalanche awareness and safety. The present proposal aims to analyze, via textual analysis and quantitative meta-analyses, the extent to which human factors, in contrast to snow, weather, and mountain terrain characteristics, are analyzed and discussed in this growing literature on avalanches. Results of this initial project will be used to develop future projects in this area and to provide recommendations for developing new avalanche safety literature, research programs, and safety courses. We operate from the standpoint that while snow sliding down a mountainside can often be a forceful event, it is only classified an “avalanche accident” if a human (or human structure) is involved in the event, and thus the study of human factors is as important as the study of snow and terrain factors in accident prevention.
The ‘Stupidest’ Self-Made Millionaire
By: Elad Simchayoff
Tags: Luck, Business, Nonfiction, History, Money

Timothy Dexter’s Mansion, Newburyport, 1806. Photo: A Pickle For The Knowing Ones

A Very Lucky Fool

With his new wealth, Dexter became even more flamboyant than before. He purchased a mansion in Newburyport’s High St. and decorated it with huge arches and golden balls. Dexter order 40 custom-made wooden statues in the image of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and other known figures. Two of the statues were made in the image of Dexter himself, one of them with the inscription: “I am the first in the East, the first in the West, and the greatest philosopher in the Western world”.

Dexter purchased a fleet of large transport ships and declared his intentions of going into the international trade business. Some of his business rivals and disgruntled neighbors decided to try and make him lose his money.

One of these neighbors recommended to Dexter to sell warming pans (flat pans with long handles used to warm beds) in the West Indies. The West Indies is a tropical area, known widely for having year-round hot weather. Relying on the tip he received from his ‘friend’, Dexter bought 42,000 pans and sent them in 9 ships to the West Indies. Upon arriving, his captain (some sources claim it was Dexter himself) rebranded the warming pans as ladles. The ladle/pans turned out to be a hit for mixing sugar and molasses at the plantations. Dexter sold all of the stock for an almost 80% profit.

Dexter was convinced to gather stray cats in Boston and sell them in the Caribbean. A seemingly crazy idea. However, Dexter’s cats arrived at the Caribbean island exactly when a rat infestation hit; He sold all of his stock to grateful warehouse owners.

Dexter sent wool gloves to Polynesia and managed to catch Portuguese traders embarking on a trip to China and in need of warm clothing. He sold all the gloves.

Dexter bought an extraordinarily large amount of whalebone. No one understood what can be done with it until the French fashion trend of large corsets arrived in the US. These corsets were partly made of whalebone; Dexter controlled the market and the price.

Dexter’s biggest deal, and arguably the luckiest one, was the sale of coal to Newcastle. Dexter didn’t know that Newcastle already had a very large coal mine. Selling coal there was basically like selling ice to an Eskimo. Miraculously, when Dexter’s shipment arrived the coal miners were on strike. Dexter’s coal was all sold, and at a very substantial price.

With every successful deal, Dexter grew richer and richer. But as time passed, he also grew more troubled, delusional even, and his life turned into a complete mess.
Introducing Vizlib Switch: the combined power of UX Components in Vizlib Library
By: Lukas Pangonis
Tags: Business Intelligence, Data Analytics, Dashboard, Data Visualisation, Qlik Sense Extension

Business users feel comfortable using BI solutions that have a familiar interface and controls — when the interface operates in the way they expect it to, intuiting their needs. And when users feel at ease with an application, they’re more likely to use it to handle their everyday data analysis needs.

To support their analytics journey, apps should be simple, intuitive and hassle-free.

Keep it simple with Vizlib Switch

We’re pleased to introduce Vizlib Switch, a new component for Vizlib Library. Vizlib Switch enables users to customise and manage their charts and dashboards easily in Qlik Sense. Turn measures, dimensions or colours on and off or switch between the charts in your container grid with familiar, user-friendly controls.

To maximise the benefits of Vizlib Switch and improve the user experience, combine it with your visualisations to make your dashboard options and controls easy to access. Leverage Vizlib Switch to guide users by:

✅ Adding simple switch functions to ensure switching between dashboard functions is smooth and intuitive for all data users.

✅ Including basic on/off functionality for easy data exploration that guides the user journey smoothly.

✅ Including checkboxes for easy-to-use checks and controls that users are familiar with and confident to use.

Vizlib Switch making data analysis hassle-free

👉 Pro tip: You can use Vizlib Switch to change any variable which can be defined in a Qlik expression:

Toggling dimensions and defining measures

Changing charts and dashboard views

Updating KPI sets, themes or accessibility settings

Guided analytics components, such as Vizlib Switch, help to direct the user’s path as they explore data. These solutions not only save business users time, but are also key to keeping the data flowing in an organisation.

Get started with Vizlib

Need to boost BI adoption in Qlik Sense? Try Vizlib. Sign up for a free trial today — available for up to 5 users! It’s that simple.
Jesus on Trial
By: Alex Rowe
Tags: Faith, Theology, Easter, Spirituality, Christianity

It should jolt us when we recite in our creed that Jesus “suffered under Pontius Pilate.” As wrote Karl Barth, a twentieth-century theologian: “When in the midst of the Confession of the Christian Church, at the moment when we are on the point of stepping into the area of God’s deepest mystery, such things come into view, one might well ejaculate with Goethe, ‘A foul business! Fie! A political trick!’ But there it is, ‘under Pontius Pilate . . .’; and so we must ask ourselves what this means” (Dogmatics: An Outline).

What does Jesus before Pilate mean? It could mean much: we could reflect, for example, on how the Faith, then and now, cannot be detached from machinations of political power and the rulings of the State. But let us see in this story, for now, a sobering reminder of the this-worldliness of the Gospel. God acts in this world, in the world we live, so let us not try to escape to another. The Gospel is not abstract. God acts in Christ, carpenter and incarnate, through nails and gnarled wood, pierced flesh, hot blood and water.

Jesus was at the mercy of Pilate, and through Pilate was in the hands of a State that both misunderstood him and wanted rid of him. He was condemned to an execution he never deserved. He was helpless, and all was apparently hopeless. And yet, here God acts. Here and not some place else, God is at work. Though the injustice is blatant, even Pilate is mysteriously part of plan.