fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Hot Topics for the Music Business in 2018; What’s the Value of Bitcoin, Blockchain to the Music Industry?
By: Platform
Tags: Blockchain, Music, Streaming Music, Bitcoin

Bitcoin, Blockchain Technology Info: What’s Its Value to Music Industry? — www.billboard.com

Suddenly, a business that has spent the last decade making it more convenient to pay for its products is experimenting with digital cryptocurrencies that are technologically innovative, mathematically secure, and actually fairly inconvenient to use. What is to be done?

2018’s hot topics for the music business — medium.com

Smart speakers are going to change the game for music. Without a visual interface, how are you going to get your music to people? How are you going to stay top of mind? It’s like a new age of radio, but this time it’s personalised.

Why Can’t I Stream Aaliyah? Late R&B Singer’s Discography Still Locked Down by Her Uncle — www.newsweek.com

The beloved R&B singer would have been 39 this year.

Sweden Makes Music: How Diversity, Education and Tech Propel Swedish Artists Onto the World Stage — www.billboard.com

Sweden may be a small country — roughly the same size as California, with just one-quarter of that state’s population — but its artistic community has been a dominating force on the Billboard charts for decades.

As Voice Continues Its Rise, Marketers Are Turning to Sonic Branding — www.adweek.com

Why Visa, California Closets and more are rethinking audio.

How Voice And Audio Have Become The New ‘Touch’ — www.geomarketing.com

Prior to a panel discussion at CES, Pandora’s Susan Panico discussed building compelling, contextualized experiences for a voice-first world.

Nipsey Hussle Breaks Down His Streaming Revenue, Endorses Tidal — www.hotnewhiphop.com

In the streaming service debate, Nipsey Hussle endorses Tidal.

Watch out Spotify, Amazon Prime Music is hot on your tail for popularity — routenote.com

Who is the big dog in music streaming right now? You’d all say Spotify right? Well look out because Amazon Prime Music is coming up on them quickly.

How the Internet Has Changed the Game for DIY Artists — blog.symphonicdistribution.com

If video killed the radio star, then streaming services continued to beat the corpse.

Qobuz’s 24-bit Music Streaming Service Will Arrive Stateside In 2018 — www.ubergizmo.com

There are some who are particular about their the audio quality when it comes to listening to music, which is why many audiophiles tend to snub their…

Spotify tells label story with Warp Records ‘history lesson’ — musically.com

To the list of ‘surprising things we’ve seen on Facebook in 2018’ we can now add ‘Nightmares on Wax talking about the early days of Warp Records’.
How to optimize React applications with Lazy Loading 😴
By: Al-Amin Nowshad
Tags: Programming, Tech, Web Development, React, JavaScript

How to optimize React applications with Lazy Loading 😴

For your components, images, and what not

Lazy loading is an old technique to optimize web applications as well as on mobile apps. The thing is pretty straight forward - do not render things if they are not viewed or required at that moment. So, for example, if we have a list of posts to show, we should initially only render what’s on the viewport. That means the rest of the elements will be rendered later on demand (when they’re in the viewport or about to be on the viewport).

Why Lazy Loading?

Most of the times our users don’t see the whole web page, at least in the beginning. No matter how our application UI has been structured, there are certain components the user might not need initially or ever!

In these cases, rendering those components not only harms our application’s performance but also wastes a lot of resources (especially when they have images or similar data hungry contents).

So, loading or rendering those components on demand seems to be a more efficient decision. It can improve the application’s performance, and at the same time can save us a lot of resources.

How?

We’re going to make a sample application where we can apply lazy loading. First, we need to initialize our React application using create-react-app with the commands below:

create-react-app lazydemo

cd lazydemo

npm run start

This might take a few minutes to initialize and open our react application in browser’s 3000 port by default.

If you don’t have create-react-app installed on your pc, you can install with the command: npm install -g create-react-app

Now, we’re gonna make a list that’ll show some random posts. So, let’s get some dummy data first. Create a file named data.js inside src folder of our project. I’ve just copy-pasted the json response from this JSON placeholder endpoint https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts. You can create your own dummy data too. Following the format below should be sufficient for this tutorial:

data.js format
Python Curses Based ASCII Art Fire Animation
By: Chris Simpkins
Tags: Python, Animation, Programming, Fire, Software Development

Python curses based ASCII art animation by Mark Simpson displayed in iTerm2 on OS X

Get ready for winter with a toasty Python curses script that displays an animated ASCII fire in your terminal.

Gist courtesy of Mark Simpson:
How to design beautiful bar charts in Excel
By: Nicolas Carteron
Tags: Data Science, Excel, UI, Design, Data Visualization

There’s nothing more boring than a standard Excel chart. You might argue that the default settings “are just fine,” but ask yourself: is your goal to be “just fine”?

Assume you more than doubled your sales revenue over a year, working as Head of Sales for my Newsletter, Fundraisedd. Congratulations, that’s amazing, please ignore the shameless plug!

Now, say you want to showcase this in a bar chart. This is what Excel gives you out of the box.

As we said before: it does “just fine,” but you did amazing. It’s time your charts achieve as much as you do!

Let’s look at how you could spruce things up a little!
How to Make a Delicious, Whole Foods Plant Based Pizza Sauce
Tags: Plant Based, Health, Food, Recipe, Whole Foods

Forks Over Knives has a wonderful pizza dough that is quick and easy to make, you can find the link here.

Now, my family still eats cheese, so I make up a double batch of dough and spread over 2 lightly greased cookie sheets. I make one for the kids, half with cheese for my husband, and half without cheese for me.

I like to top this pizza with diced mushrooms, bell peppers and green onions.

This recipe makes enough for several batches of sauce, so I make it up, divide it and freeze it for future pizzas. Since we make pizza every Friday, it makes sense to have extra sauce made up and in the freezer.
Muji: The Brand With a No-Brand Strategy
By: Kenji Farré
Tags: Marketing, Branding, Business, Japan, Strategy

Muji: The Brand With a No-Brand Strategy

Understanding the business model of a truly unique company

Muji store in Stockholm, Sweden. Image by Muji

The idea of a company not branding itself seems contradictory. In a world where brands allocate millions on marketing, it’s rare to find a company with a single-minded focus on the product at hand. That’s what makes Muji, short for Mujirushi Ryohin, meaning “no-brand, quality goods,” stand out among the rest.

The Japanese company sells conventional items such as household goods and apparel, but unlike most brands, Muji doesn’t want consumers to feel an urge to buy their products. Instead, as they put it:

Muji’s goal is to give customers a rational satisfaction, expressed not with, “This is what I really want” but with “This will do.” “This is what I really want” expresses both faint egoism and discord, while “This will do” expresses conciliatory reasoning.

To most marketers, this philosophy may seem outright bizarre. But Muji’s success suggests it’s a refreshing alternative. So how did they go about creating a truly unique company? What is their business model? And perhaps most importantly, what are the secrets behind Muji’s success?
Les thèmes de Dataviz: une base pour commencer
By: Martin Telefont
Tags: Storytelling, Typography, Communication, Data Visualization, Process

Sign up for The 'Gale

By Nightingale

Keep up with the latest from Nightingale, the journal of the Data Visualization Society Take a look
How Jay-Z’s 4:44 Defies the Odds of What it Means to Grow old in Hip-Hop
By: Evan Shrewsbury
Tags: Hip Hop, Jay Z, Music, Rap

The praise that Jay-Z has gotten from his late-career future classic has been so immense that it can be easy to forget just how much hate he received for his previous couple of albums. After his 2007 critically acclaimed American Gangster, it had been tough sledding for the Brooklyn native. 2009’s Blueprint 3, which was a mediocre attempt at an album full of radio-friendly cuts, failed to meet the expectations of everyone except the casual mainstream listener. Things arguably got worse in 2013 with the release of Magna Carta Holy Grail that saw a drastic shift in sound. After chasing pop-rap hits in 2009, Jay-Z attempted to dabble in trap production. Longtime fans and critics alike ripped Hov for his clunky bars, repetitively telling us how rich he was, and the fact that a man on the wrong side of 40 was choosing to rap over beats that sounded like they were curated for an artist half his age. By now, Jay-Z was quickly falling out of favor, a hip-hop legend making weak attempts to keep up with the times and sadly looking like the next veteran to earn the undesirable title of washed up and irrelevant. The man who built a legacy off club anthems such as “Big Pimpin’” and “I Just Wanna Love U” had gone stale. The people who were listening to Jay-Z in the club in the late 90s and early 00s were no longer there. Jay-Z’s primary demographic of listeners grew up, many entering their forties and no longer caring for his present-day music. Everyone but Jay-Z had grown up, and it was starting to show.
Write For ROI Overload
By: Scott D. Clary
Tags: Sales, Marketing, Write For Us, Business

Thanks for your interest in writing for ROI Overload!

We’re always looking for new contributors, stories, ideas and insights. We want to cover all aspects of what successful commercialization and growth looks like. This means we cover marketing, sales, strategy, tech, demand generation and growth marketing.

This publication is tailored to a community of growth focused operators, executives & entrepreneurs who share a love for growth, strategy, tech and business. We publish tutorials, case studies, tools & tech, advice, industry trends, strategy tips and expert insights.

All articles are published as part of the Medium Partner Program, which means you will be paid for your work directly by Medium.

We’re doing our best to give you a response within 3 business days, but if you don’t hear from us by then, you can assume we’ve passed on your article.

What We Are Looking For

Case studies

Analysis of real-world examples

How to’s / tutorials.

Guides

Ideas & opinions

Trends

Topic We Cover

Marketing

Sales

Demand Gen

Strategy & Planning

Growth Marketing

Social media

Creative

Paid advertising

Branding

Psychology

Sales cycle

Prospecting & Funnel Growth

Growth Marketing

Martech & Salestech

SEO

Copywriting

Marketing data analytics

Growth Marketing

Writing

Resources

Want to right about something else? Just ask! 📧 admin@roioverload.com

How to Submit an Article

When you’re ready, you can submit your article using this form.

We accept both drafts and already-published articles.

If you are already an author with ROI Overload, submit articles via the Medium article submission feature, not through the form.

Just a few housekeeping notes. If you have published with us before, that does not immediately mean that future posts will be automatically published. Each post is reviewed by our team to ensure that it meets quality guidelines we hold ourselves and our writers accountable to. This ensure the best possible experience & content for our readers.

If you don’t hear back from us in three business days, please assume we passed on your submission. We receive a large amount of submissions and although we try and respond to every submission, we can’t reach out to every single person who submits an article. That being said, if there are slight changes or modifications required for an article before it’s posted, we’ll definitely reach out.

Articles that are off topic, plagiarized, or too promotional in nature (main theme focuses on promoting a specific brand from a stakeholder, or individual with a vested interest) will not be considered for publishing.

Thanks for taking a moment to read through this guide. If you have any questions or anything isn’t clear, please feel free to reach out to admin@roioverload.com or leave a comment below this article, we’ll respond back asap!
charity:water’s scott harrison knows the value of marketing for non-profits
By: David Connell
Tags: Marketing, Nonprofit, Technology, Charity Water, Business

Scott Harrison of charity:water does what very few non-profit heads do: He elevates marketing within his organization, making it just as important as the work they do on the ground. This is radical thinking for a non-profit and one that might make traditional donors nervous. After all, some might think a crappy website means money is being spent more efficiently in the field. When in reality, having a crappy website usually just means you have a crappy website and likely significant organizational inefficiencies.

Harrison highlights his premium on marketing in the above interview saying, “The first person we hired helped me work on setting up water projects and the second person we hired was a designer.”

How important is marketing and creative to Harrison? Well, his creative director is his wife and nearly 40 percent of his lean 22-person staff is dedicated to marketing.

I give Harrison a lot of credit for not thinking like a non-profit CEO. He isn’t worrying about what donors might (or might not) say about overhead and marketing expenses. Instead, he’s marketing his product in the best way he knows how. If more non-profits would learn to throw these shackles off, stop thinking about what worked in the past and acted like a modern business they’d be a lot better off.

Most non-profit marketing departments are idea rich and resource poor. With charity:water that clearly isn’t the case.

If you’re not familiar with charity:water, they are a small, US charity that collects money to build wells for clean drinking water in Africa, Haiti and other desperately poor areas. They are also the hottest thing going in the non-profit space right now. Everyone is looking at charity:water as the leader in non-profit when it comes to marketing and brand building and no one has been able to replicate they’re secret sauce. There are lots of reasons why replicating charity:water is so difficult, but that’s another post for another day.
Putting your life in order
By: Katie Mccurdy
Tags: Patient Experience, Mental Health, Data Visualization, Healthcare, PTSD

When Alissa (not her real name) first reached out to me for help visualizing her health, she had a few motivations. First, she’d experienced years of mysterious symptoms; she’d gone to every type of doctor and tried many different alternative treatments, yet she still had symptoms. She needed help telling and showing her physical health journey to her numerous specialists and holistic practitioners.

But she also had a history of childhood trauma and an assault as an adult. She wanted to map out her life and see if this exercise might help her psychologically process what had happened.

As we started working together, I felt a little anxious. I am not a mental health professional, and I wanted to make sure that the process wouldn’t harm her in any way. I got some advice from my own therapist, and as Alissa and I started to discuss the traumatic things that had happened in her life, I explained that I was going to avoid going into any level of detail in our conversation. My job was only to capture approximate dates (so we could place the events on a timeline), and some text so we could label the event.

Alissa had kept assiduous records about her health for many years, and she shared many detailed spreadsheets and documents with me. This helped me fill in some details that were too difficult to talk about or too hard to remember.

After a few discussions, we had a very full timeline that showed her life events and traumas alongside her physical symptoms, the many treatments regimens and supplements she’d tried over the years, formal diagnoses she’d received, and more. Her timeline was actually the largest I’ve put together thus far. I’m including it below so you can see the information density; I removed all descriptive words, for privacy.
What’s new in audience, audio & voice, and data journalism? News Impact moves online to find out
By: Vera Penêda
Tags: Storytelling, Audio, Audience Engagement, Updates, Data Journalism

“Innovative Storytelling: Audience First”

Date: 6–8 October 2020

Who is your audience? How can newsrooms and journalists put their audience first and better engage with them? How can they reach new readers? Audience remains the number one priority for many newsrooms, especially with the shift towards reader revenue that many newsrooms are aiming for.

This Summit will be dedicated to finding ways for journalists to build a closer relationship with their readers. We will look into innovative storytelling tools and emerging technologies that don’t require large investments to attract new and more diverse audiences. We will also get inspiration from news organisations and journalists that have relied on closer relationships and the trust of their readers to survive the COVID-19 pandemic and plan their future.

“Newsroom Strategies: Audio & Voice”

Date: 20–22 October

Audio has changed the way we consume the news. Podcast consumption has exploded and emerging audio tools for transcription and voice automation make news production more efficient.

Why and when do readers prefer audio over text? What strategies can newsrooms adopt to develop their audio products? What new storytelling skills are required to produce quality audio for journalism? At this Summit, we will explore new technological developments around audio & voice. This doesn’t just mean podcasts, but also text-to-speech, audio for AI assistants, and automated transcription. We will break down the challenges that accompany the rise of audio, such as the role of platforms in the podcast world, monetisation of audio products, and building newsroom strategies to integrate voice in the production workflow.

“Data Journalism: Build Trust in Media”

Date: 3–5 November 2020

How can data be used to regain trust from readers? Fact-based journalism combined with great storytelling skills and backed up by data, has never been more in demand. While data journalism is not new, it has never been more important than in this misinformation age. But COVID-19 has eroded confidence in the media at the same time European news organisations have seen a decline in the trust of their audience for the past five years. Turning to data journalism is a crucial step in reversing these trends.

How can journalists combine data analysis with traditional reporting? How can data journalism counter misinformation? How can we lobby for better access to data? At this Summit, we’ll take you behind the scenes of some of the most successful data-driven stories out there. We will share the latest technology tools and resources to help advance your data skills, and showcase newsroom collaborations that are on the right path to advance data journalism.
How to Fill Items in Columns in a CSS Grid Layout
By: Rahul Nayak
Tags: Reactjs, CSS, Programming, React, JavaScript

Here Comes the Coding Part

If row-wise…

If the arrangement had to be made row-wise, it would have been very simple. For this, the CSS would be as follows:

CSS code for row-wise arrangement

The full code, including the CSS part, would be as follows:

Full React code for grid component

Output

Row-wise arrangement of grid items

As you can see, the numbers are arranged row-wise. Here, the grid items flow in a horizontal direction, automatically creating new rows as necessary. A new row is created when the flow of grid items has reached the end of the columns. This is also known as row-first arrangement because a row starts only when the previous row is filled entirely.

But our requirement is to arrange the items column-wise…

To arrange the items column-wise, we need to know the number of rows in the grid layout.

I can explain why we need to know the number of rows. In a row-wise arrangement, a row starts only when the previous row is filled entirely (i.e. the number of items in the previous row has become equal to the number of columns).

Similarly, in a column-wise arrangement, a new column starts only when the previous column is filled entirely (i.e. the number of items in the previous column has become equal to the number of rows). So, we need to know the number of rows.

How can we know the number of rows to be made in the grid layout?

By using basic math!

We know the number of grid items. We know the number of columns. So, Math.ceil(itemsCount/columnsCount) will give us the number of rows to be made. This formula will also ensure that the number of rows is minimized.

We need to minimize the number of rows because if we take any bigger random integer as the number of rows, the grids will not be filled efficiently. There will be emptiness in layout.

The following CSS is to make a column-wise arrangement, and since we have to dynamically set the grid-template-rows field, it is not present in the following code:

CSS code for column-wise arrangement

The full code, including the CSS part, will be as follows:

Full React code for grid component

On line 16, the number of rows is calculated.

On line 17, the grid-template-rows field is dynamically set.

Column-wise arrangement of grid items

Here, you can see that the numbers are arranged column-wise with a fixed number of columns (3). Also, the number of minimized rows is five. If the number of rows was smaller than five, the arrangement would not be possible. And if the number of rows was greater than five, there would be empty spaces in layout. A column starts only when the previous column is filled entirely.
Weekly Stock Spotlight
By: Ibillionaire Capital
Tags: Money, Stock Market, Finance, Google, Investing

Weekly Stock Spotlight

Featured Stock: Alphabet (GOOGL)

Alphabet Inc Class A: GOOGL

Alphabet Inc Class C: GOOG

Market Cap: $656B

$656B 2016 Rev.: $90.3B

$90.3B Founded: September 4, 1998

September 4, 1998 Founders: Larry Page and Sergey Brin

Larry Page and Sergey Brin CEO: Sundar Pichai

Sundar Pichai HQ: Mountain View, California, USA

52-Wk Low: 672.66 / 52-Wk High: 1,008.61

iBillionaire Investors:

7 out of 15 Billionaires on the iBillionaire platform own GOOGL stock

iBillionaire Investors:

Leon Cooperman Dan Loeb Larry Robbins Chase Coleman

5. Julian Robertson

6. Ray Dalio

7. George Soros

Google at a Glance:

Although now owned by the parent holding company, Alphabet Inc, Google remains the go-to internet giant we all love and use on a daily basis. In fact, since the release of the search engine in the late 90s, Google has become so much more: the most profitable lines of business include Google AdWords, AdSense and Search Advertising, Android, Google Fiber, Nest Labs (producer of smart thermostats) and, Verily Life Sciences (health projects). Let’s not forget Google’s research on self-driving cars.

Google remains a strong long-term growth opportunity: the founders Page and Brin continue to diligently work on their vision to “organize the world’s information”, which included the decision to split stock in 2014 to retain company control. The 2 classes of public shares you can buy are GOOGL, which retains voting rights and, GOOG, which does not. It’s no wonder than 7 of our billionaires are invested in GOOGL stock!
The Common Approach to Binary Classification
By: Jake Batsuuri
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Naturallanguageprocessing, Programming, Movies, Deep Learning

Here are the topics of study in this article:

Input & output

Encoding & decoding

Validating

Predicting

Regularization

The General Approach

The general approach to building deep learning algorithms is gonna be first knowing what data you have and in which format. Then figuring out what your goal is with the data. This step is what we call the Input and Output Step. At this stage, we should also partition the input examples into Training Set and Testing Test.

At this 30'000 feet above view, we know in general terms if we have a classification or regression problem. With this information we figure out how to get our input data transformed into a viable input to the neural network. This stage, we should call the Encode and Decode Step, also in the real world called Preprocessing Step.

We know the rough architecture of our neural network. But in the Architecture Step we will commit to the layer architecture specifically, based on how complicated the input data and how complicated the task is, you will use more or less layers.

The next step is the Components Step, when you will choose the loss function, the metrics and the optimizer. The metrics are what you will use to regularize.

And finally the most important step of training. In the Training Step, we will choose a rough number of epochs to iterate. As well as the batch size. This step may also be called the Fitting Step, because you are fitting the model to the data.

In the last step, Evaluation Step, you evaluate all the metrics and stop the fitting process right before it over-fits. The model will freeze the weights at this stage and theoretically it is optimally positioned to give high accuracy on unseen data.

These steps are quite simple, but if it seems still a bit abstract. The following is a simple example to solidify you understanding.
5 Front-End Challenges That Will Get You Pumped Up to Code
By: Indrek Lasn
Tags: Technology, Programming, Web Development, JavaScript, Startup

5 Front-End Challenges That Will Get You Pumped Up to Code

Get really good at coding by building these projects

Photo by EJ Yao on Unsplash.

Some individuals are particularly excellent at coding, and you could also belong to that group.

Not a single person became a pro at programming overnight. Mastering programming involves putting in tons of work. You’ll have to be coding as often as possible to get really good at it.

Yes, some people are geniuses — I’m not one of them — but even geniuses need to put in the work.

Getting good starts with practice, practice, and more practice.

Without further ado, here are the coding ideas I promised. Use each idea as a source of inspiration. Pick something that makes you excited to code and get on with it.

Use whatever tools or programming language you prefer. With each idea, I’ll add a list of stuff you’ll learn by building it.
Amazon S3 Hands-On — An In-Depth Step by Step Tutorial
By: Furqan Butt
Tags: S3 Bucket, S3, Aws S3, Cloud Storage, AWS

This article aims to provide a hands on to beginners of AWS S3 service. We’ll explore the following features that are provided by the S3 service:

Creating Buckets and Uploading data to S3.

Buckets and Object Keys Structuring.

Exploring S3 Storage Classes and Life Cycle Management.

Exploring Bucket Versioning.

Exploring Object Replication (CRR VS SRR).

Restricting Access to Objects and Buckets.

*If you are not familiar with the S3 service visit my last article on AWS S3 which explains all the above-mentioned features in detail.

**If you are unfamiliar with cloud computing and AWS in general visit my article on the basics of AWS and cloud computing.
Support Vector Machines- An easy interpretation of categorizing inseparable data
By: Namrata Kapoor
Tags: Machine Learning, Clustering, Data Science, Kernel Trick, Support Vector Machine

In Machine learning the Support Vector Models are used for supervised learning based on associated learning algorithms for classification and Regression based analysis.

If you have examples of data marked as belonging to one of the classes, SVM training algorithm assigns new data one of the classes as non-probabilistic binary linear classifier.

An SVM model is a representation of the data points in space, mapped to each class so that the examples of the separate classes are divided by a clear gap that is as wide as possible. Examples of new data are then mapped into that same space and predicted to belong to a class based on the side of the gap on which they fall.

In addition to linear classification, SVM can also categorize non-linear data using a kernel -trick.

When supervised learning is not possible and the data is unlabeled, data clustering approach is taken to categorize the data into one of the category, this learning is unsupervised and applies support vector clustering algorithm.

This support vector algorithm is used to categorize the unlabeled data into its nearest category.

When the original problem is stated in finite dimension plane, the problem to categorize the data may not be possible in linear space.

It was thus proposed to have a higher dimension in which data can be separated and classified, to keep the computational load low so that that the pair of input vectors may be computed easily in space by defining in terms of Kernel Function.

Kernel Trick

Kernel trick is actually giving a solution in a plane which doesn’t exist originally in problem.

If we get a set of data as below we see that these cannot be categorized linearly with a straight line.

If we have the values as mentioned in image below of x-y axis, and plot them on 2D plane of x-y, we see that it cannot be categorized.

To add a new plane to it, we need to have a value for 3rd dimension which will easily separate out the red and green data point’s category.

We will try 3 equations here.

1) x + y

2) xy

3) x**2

As mentioned in the table above we can clearly see that xy formula has separated out red and green data points with values 0 and 2 respectively.

Now add 3rd dimension as z axis and plot the values of xy on it. We can see that these are easily separable with red data points going down and green going up.

To show this in linear space we know the solution is between xy=0 and xy=2 i.e. xy=1 , y=1/x, which is exactly the shape of line shown in image above.

It is to be noted that working in a higher-dimensional feature space increases the generalization error of support-vector machines, although given enough samples the algorithm still performs well.

Thanks for reading!
the revolution will be sanitized
By: Lisa Martens
Tags: Society, Poetry, Jobs, Poem, Covid Diaries

the revolution will be sanitized

and backed up onto the cloud

taken by me.

i walk into a store and the once-human greeter

had been replaced with a

trash can with an arrow taped to it

fewer humans, fewer risks

fewer paychecks

trash can with arrow

never tires, never need to sit

never complains

about upward mobility, about racism

trash can with arrow

has the upper hand —

trash can with arrow

will take our jobs.

i pass by a mannequin head on a stick

wearing a mask

it’s another sign telling people

to wear a mask when they enter the store

but something is foreboding

about the disembodied, dead-eyed head

wearing the n95

the revolution will be sanitized

uploaded to the cloud

backed up

fully charged

use hand sanitizer before

setting your former place of employment

on fire, please.

what body part can i sexualize for cash?

feet? hands?

who do i yell at

whose balls should i step on?

there are all these powerful rich men

who love to be dominated

by the people they oppress —

the revolution will be socially distant

organized online

with signs six feet long —

multitasking.

your protest

doubles

as a ruler.

a rich man asks me

what it’s like to be an immigrant. i sigh

I am american

but what — does this fulfill some

fantasy of his? do i let it go, put a flower in my

hair, speak with an accent?

what part of myself do i sexualize

my brown skin, my big eyes?

the revolution will be disinfected

bring lotion

or your hands will crack.
A Rose Spreads its Fragrance
By: Dr. Preeti Singh
Tags: Poetry, Nature, Sonnet, Roses, Creativity

On the 23rd of December, I went for a wonderful walk with my friend Malashri Lal to the heritage park at Sunder Nagar, New Delhi. When we saw the beautiful roses, she was very keen that I write a sonnet for the Black Prince which is a maroonish black colour of a rose. The colour is quite rare.

She was also keen that I write more poems on roses since we both gushed after seeing such beautiful flowers in the garden.

Whitney Rose also loves roses like me. Her name is also a rose which is so sweet. My appreciation and thanks to her for publishing my poems in her publication Flicker and Flight.
Implementation of Simple Linear Regression using Formulae
By: Adesh Dalvi
Tags: Machine Learning, Linear Regression, Python, Algorithms, Data Science

Photo by Ridham Nagralawala on Unsplash

Probably the first algorithm you come to know when you start exploring the world of machine learning is linear regression!

It is a simple yet powerful supervised machine learning algorithm. It tries to find the best fitted straight line from the points. In other words, this algorithm assumes output variable can be calculated from a linear combination of the input variables.

Fig 1. Visual representation of a linear data set

The above figure represents a simple Demand vs. Product Price scatter plot. After seeing this plot, we can say that there is a reasonably linear correlation between both the variables. As demand of the product increases, product price also increases. In linear regression, we try to find the best fitted straight line through such points which results in minimum prediction error.

There are 2 types of linear regression:

1. Simple/ Univariate linear regression

2. Multiple/ Multivariate linear regression.

The number of independent/input variables defines the type of algorithm.

If there is only one variable on which output variable depends, it is called simple/ univariate linear regression. For example, let’s assume the quality of wine only depends upon the pH value irrespective of other attributes. In this blog, we will understand simple linear regression using the formulae which we are going to explore further.

Quality of wine = a (pH) + z

Here, z is a constant also known as intercept and a is the coefficient added to the variable.

What if there are more attributes which affects the quality of wine? Let’s assume, there are many attributes like pH value, citric acid, residual sugar, alcohol etc. which affect the quality of wine. In multivariate linear regression there are at least 2 variables which affect the output variable.

Quality of wine = a (citric acid) + b (residual sugar) + c (pH) + d (alcohol) + z

Here, a, b, c and d are the coefficients added to their respective variables along with an intercept i.e. z.
How I Safely Returned to Running After Childbirth Using an Evidence-Based Approach.
By: Vee Uye
Tags: Womens Health, Running, Health, Childbirth, Fitness

Walk Before You Can Run

The first walk I managed was around the block. It probably took less than 10 minutes and my partner, Lucy, had to carry bubba as I was too sore. A few weeks later I’d extended that out to a couple of miles, always listening to my body. At first, the walks were cut short by that dragging/heavy feeling in my pelvic region I’d been warned about in the guidelines. I knew I was healing when I stopped feeling that sensation.

Before I started running, I got myself to the point where I was comfortable walking an hour and a half with bubba in the sling and I was feeling good. In addition, I purchased an aerobic step. Being in lockdown slashed the opportunities for moving throughout the day so I wanted to try and combat that. My little girl liked being in movement as she dropped to sleep for naps, so instead of relying solely on my swiss ball, I also did low step-ups while I held her to my chest. Within 100 steps, her eyes flutter closed. Within 200 steps, she’s lightly snoring. Within 300 steps, she could be transferred to her cot, and I’d got a work out in.

Step-ups were a considered choice. You can easily elevate the humble step up into a running-specific drill called — funnily enough — a Runner’s Step Up. Instead of just stepping up with one foot and then placing the trailing foot adjacent to it, you bring your trailing leg through so that you are flexed 90˚ at the hip and knee.

I love this exercise for so many reasons. When moving into this position, you’re working your gluteus maximus — or bum muscle — which is a huge driver in running. It also really challenges your hip flexors and quads. And if you pause at the top of the movement, you are working on your single-leg stability. Running is, after all, just a series of single-leg stances at speed. By adding the ever-increasing weight of a baby into the mix, I had a really simple but targeted running exercise I was able to do in short bursts throughout the day. It built up my strength and endurance even when I couldn’t get out and run.
Retro-Review: ‘Antithesis of Light’ by Evoken
By: Joseph R. Price
Tags: Death Metal, Album Review, Doom Metal, Music, Heavy Metal

Evoken’s 2005 album Antithesis of Light like most albums in the funeral metal genre is hard to review.

With funeral metal you have very long and slow songs with sparse lyrics. It’s not music meant for moshing or headbanging. Instead, it’s better listened to alone in a dim or dark room while you’re alone with your thoughts or with a few melancholic companions.

Much like ambient music, this is the sort of music that takes you someplace. The sounds put images in your head instead of words.

Sure, John Paradiso growls some lyrics here and there, but his guttural and slow delivery is more like another instrument instead of a front-man.

Aside from singing, Paradiso also plays bass. More prevalent throughout and central to setting the moods of the songs is Nick Orlando who churns out riffs that move like molasses and also deliver some echoing melodies throughout. Drummer Vince Verkay cements the slow pace with his boulder-like delivery. Keyboardist Denny Hahn and cellist Chris Kuffner add to the already dark mood.

The album

All songs but the 50-second intro clock in at more than 10 minutes each. There is not much change in tempo. All the songs stick to Verkay’s slow beat, hardly deviating from the course, with the few exceptions here and there. For some, this will probably get boring fast. Others, who appreciate the music for what it is, will be held in its thrall.

From dark echoes of “In Solitary Ruin” that kicks off the album to the crushing “The Last of Vitality,” Antithesis of Light does not hold back on its heavy sound. It can be a struggle to get through in one listen and that may be the intention. It’s not an easy album and that makes it even better.

The aforementioned “Antithesis of Light” is probably the most captivating track on the album with its black and Gothic metal vibe. It’s slightly faster than the rest of the album, though that’s like saying a turtle is fast compared to a snail. There are echoes of Emperor here as well Cathedral, making for a very listenable combination.

This is probably an album you’ll want to break into a few different listens. The drawback of funeral metal, or any metal that focuses on long songs, is that listening to a whole album at once can make all the songs meld together. If you’re determined to listen to it straight through, then at least give your self a few minutes for a break between each of the songs.

The verdict

Antithesis of Light is probably one of the most accessible albums that get put in the funeral metal genre. There’s a lot to recommend. The sound of the instruments sounds spectacular as far as the mix goes. Evoken are good songwriters, making their tracks differentiate from each other by dropping elements of black metal throughout. It’s moody and probably not what you want to listen to when you are feeling depressed with access to alcohol and sharp blades.

Anyway, it’s a good album. If you like your metal slow, heavy and dark, then Antithesis of Light is for you.
7 Habits Of Highly Effective Developers
By: Ann Adaya
Tags: Web Development, Work, Software Development, Programming, Software Engineering

7 Habits Of Highly Effective Developers

Because when the world keeps telling us to shrink, let’s go expand.

Photo by jimmy liao on Unsplash

“Often, one finds one’s destiny just where one hides to avoid it.” — Destiny

I wrote this article 6 months ago, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Self-taught Developers, for all the Self-taught developer like me, and it reached over 25k+ reads, and to celebrate its milestone, I would want to create another one, an article with the same purpose, teaching you how to think and not about what to think as most our educational system does.

One of the books I’ve read was all about learning how to think instead of thinking about what to think, I cannot express how thankful I am to be able to read that book, I’ve read a lot of books and only a few ones that changed my life.

After working for more than 4 years as a developer, I’ve reached a point wherein I have created my own definition of being a good developer, and trust me it is not about how good your program, being a developer is bigger than that.

Working from the worse Senior developers up to working with the best Senior developers had really helped me see things from different perspectives, and the funny thing is that the worse Senior developer I ever had was a Computer Science graduate, he is one of the top class in his university.

While the best Senior Developers I had worked with, most of them were Self-Taught, I may not have known them that long but it was enough for me to think that they are one of the best.

I’ve thought about it thoroughly if whether I am being biased because I am a self-taught myself but after a while, it came to my senses that I was not.

I’ve realized that my worse Senior Developer boss, along with other colleagues who are all CS graduates has become part of the Educational system, while the Senior Self-taught developers that I adore so much created their own path from scratch as I said, I’ve only known them for a few months now, but it made me realized a lot of things, especially on the thought of what kind of a developer I wanted to become.

I’m not quite sure if you can see where I am going, but there’s a huge difference when a brain starts thinking inside a box then expanding itself into thinking outside the box, like what we were always told ever since, right?

But what if there is no box at all? Why would you think that there is?

Why can’t we start anywhere, why can’t we expand as far as we can, why would we even limit ourselves when we can do anything?

That’s the thing, there should be no rules on how much you can create, and on how much you can grow — because when the world keeps telling us to shrink, let’s go expand.
Гитарно-барочный электрический парад
By: Orion Nebula
Tags: Music, Baroc, Techno, Historia, Discovery

in In Fitness And In Health
Killer Cardio You Can Do At Home
By: Anthony Moulesong
Tags: Health, Fitness, At Home Workout, Cardio, Exercise At Home

The pandemic rages on. And on, and on, and… Many gyms are still closed, and even if they’re open, is it worth the risk of getting sick to go? On top of that, it’s getting cold outside. Exercise equipment is scarce due to overwhelming demand nowadays. Options for getting a good workout are getting more limited by the day. Luckily, I’ve got you covered with a simple at-home, equipment-free cardio workout to get your heart thumping and blood pumping.

High Knees

This workout revolves around an exercise called ‘high knees’. It’s a lot like running in place except much more intense. All you do is alternate between lifting each knee so that your thigh is at least parallel with the ground. You can even hold your hands out with palms open and touch your knee to your palm to make sure you’re getting high enough with each repetition. Sounds easy, right? It’s anything but.

The way you turn this into an effective cardio workout is using an EMOM (every minute on the minute) format. For fifteen seconds every minute, do as many high knees as you can. I can get forty in that time. You don’t have to count them every time; this is just a reference point so that you can set a pace. Then you rest for the remaining forty-five seconds before repeating the cycle. A great way to keep time is to use an interval timer, and there are tons of free phone apps so you don’t have to buy an actual timer.

One thing I should warn you about: sore calves. When you first start doing high knees, it’s very possible you’ll feel it in your calves the next day (or two). I recommend only going ten minutes until your muscles become accustomed to the exercise. If you’re new to cardio, you might be ready to stop after ten minutes anyway until you build up your wind.

I’ll give you a hack to extend your workout. When your legs are getting tired or you’re huffing and puffing like mad, you can switch from high knees to jumping rope. I know; I said no equipment! But jumping rope is just hopping, so you don’t really need the rope. I can hit forty of these in fifteen seconds as well. This is a way for you to keep going while your legs get a rest and you get your wind back. Once you’ve recovered, you can go back to high knees. You can alternate back and forth between these exercises every ten minutes, five minutes, or even every single minute. Do whatever helps you keep going. You eventually want to hit thirty minutes total, but take your time and work up to it if you have to. Nothing worse than overdoing it the first time and feeling SORE for days.
How to Provision a Cheap PostgreSQL Database in AWS EC2
By: Don Restarone
Tags: DevOps, AWS, Programming, Postgres, Ec2

Configure Postgres

We will be using the following steps as a guide for configuring our Postgres server.

lines 1 and 2 will refresh the packages and install the latest version of Postgres (image by author)

Let's break down the commands outlined above. The first two lines will refresh the packages in Ubuntu and install the latest version of Postgres.

sudo apt-get update -y && sudo apt-get upgrade -y

sudo apt install postgresql -y

Next we will log in as the default Postgres user (imaginatively named postgres) and create the user roles we will be using. I will simply name my user ubuntu and allow it to login and create databases.

sudo su postgres

psql -U postgres -c "CREATE ROLE ubuntu;"

psql -U postgres -c "ALTER ROLE ubuntu WITH LOGIN;"

psql -U postgres -c "ALTER USER ubuntu CREATEDB;"

psql -U postgres -c "ALTER USER ubuntu WITH PASSWORD 'ubuntu';"

Log out from the postgres user account and go back to your default user by entering the following:

exit

Find the postgresql.conf file (it’s usually in /etc/postgresql/12/main/postgresql.conf ). In case you are not sure, you can use a handy Bash command to find it by entering:

sudo find / -name "postgresql.conf"

Open the file with your favourite text editor (yes, mine just so happens to be Nano #sorryNotSorry). We will find the configuration entry listen_addresses and change it from the default setting to ‘*’ . This will allow the Postgres server to listen on the DNS name of the EC2 instance.

If you’re a heathen like me and use Nano, you can use the keyboard shortcut CTRL+W to search (image by author)

After that, find the pg_hba.conf and open it.

sudo nano /etc/postgresql/12/main/pg_hba.conf

We will allow authentication from remote connections by adding the following lines to the end of the file. This will allow connections from any IP address. Please note that in production, it would be a good idea to restrict connections to only the ones you need (a well configured EC2 security group should be sufficient, but for peace of mind you should add the IP address of your application server instead of 0.0.0.0/0)

host all all 0.0.0.0/0 md5 host all all ::/0 md5

For the new configuration to take effect, we will restart the Postgres daemon by running: