fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Negotiation 101 for Freelancers
By: Kahli Bree Adams
Tags: Business, Small Business, Entrepreneurship, Solopreneur, Freelancing

Building confidence

Being confident and enthusiastic is the key to successful negotiation. I know that I was certainly lacking in confidence when I first started out as a freelancer. Confidence is rooted in the knowledge that you will probably be successful at something because you have been successful at similar tasks in the past. But can we project confidence even when we lack self-assurance? Yes! In fact, there are several things we can do to achieve this:

Act the part

Imagine yourself to be a confident person. Get that image in your mind and act it out. Even if you’re nervous, act confidently. Stand up straight, dress professionally, and try to play the part. Fake it till you make it, if you will. As a natural introvert, this took me a while, but I got there eventually.

Give yourself a pep talk

Listen to what those voices are saying inside your head. If they are eroding your confidence, stop those tapes and replace them with new, encouraging messages. I know I’m my own worst critic, and maybe you’re the same. But positive self-talk can do wonders for your confidence.

Listen

Confident people are generous enough with their time to listen to others. Show interest by asking relevant questions to make your counterpart feel heard and understood. This will help your case. I definitely feel more comfortable and appreciated when my counterpart seems interested in what I have to say.

Know your stuff

Your confidence obviously can’t be all a front. If you are prepared and sure of your facts, you’ve got a better chance of projecting confidence. That’s because you’ll feel the part and know you won’t be put on the spot or called out.
Build Your Own Vue 3 SWR Hook
By: Rogerio Amorim
Tags: Vue 3, Programming, Vuejs, JavaScript, Vue

The Hook

Now it’s time to build our custom hook. We create a hooks folder inside src and then create a swr.js file.

We’ll start by creating a global cache and the function that will be exported and make all the work we need. By putting the cache outside of the returned function we ensure that it’s unique and accessible to all callers. The function will receive a key, and a promise, and will return the cached value if it exists. After that, we’ll resolve the promise and update the cache and/or return the corresponding response. Well use named export for the function (just a personal preference):

We get a big problem with this code because whether we have or don’t have the cached value, we’ll resolve the promise and return the updated value (or error). But in our piece of code, if we get the cached value it’s returned and that’s it. With this approach, we can’t move on and resolve our promise to revalidate the cache. Another problem is that we’re returning two kinds of response, one is pure data (from the cache) and the other one is a promise. And the error treatment is a little bit rough.

To make this work we’ll use Vue’s composition API ref. This utility creates a reactive and mutable object. By using this all we have to do is return the reactive constant and the callers will be notified of it. We’ll start this constant with the cache’s key-value or null (in case the key doesn’t exist). To avoid the possibility of the caller changing our state, we’ll use another composition API functionality, readonly . The second version of our hook code now looks like this:

It’s a lot better, but there’s still room for improvement. I think we can add and optional parameter to load the initial state (in case is not already in the cache) and return other parameters so that the caller knows if we are revalidating, if an error has occurred (and which error was that). Since now we are returning multiple values, it’s a better idea to create a state object with all the keys inside and update them accordingly. In this case, reactive is more suitable then ref. Another change we’ll have to do to make it possible for the caller to use destructuring and get individual reactive values is to make use of composition API utility toRefs .

Another feature I think would be cool is to add localStorage . With this addition, if the key has already been called anytime in the past, the user will be instantly provided with the data. To make the state saving automatic whenever the data change we can use watchEffect . We’ll wrap the localStorage ’s setItem method in a try-catch to avoid problems when the fetched data exceeds the quota, which will make our application stop working.

With these final changes, our custom hook is ready to be used
Fitness Cycling Over 60 | Gorilla Bow Week 4 Workout 2b | Mitigating Shoulder Pain
By: Marvin Mckenzie
Tags: Fitness, Health, Life, Strength, Seniors

https://youtu.be/KxeV-HhjzGY

Shoulder pain is not new for me. I have dealt with it for at least two decades and went through over a year of physical therapy for it about five years ago. I do certain stretches many times a day in a attempt to keep it under control. I thought the Gorilla Bow routine was helping it at first. But toward the end of week three the pain intensified and is now reaching intolerable levels. Thing is, I like the results of these workouts in every other respect. So I am going to bring my resistance down a notch or two to see if I can continue and work through it. I will also reintroduce some light resistance shoulder exercises to see if that helps.

Gorilla Bow 355 lbs Week 4 Workout 2b

-Dead Lift 15x355

-Chest Row 10x 160 (underhand and 5 second holds)

-Bicep Curls 10x50 (5 second holds)

-Toe Raises 15x355

My “Daily Visit with God” Journal/Devotional tool is online on Amazon.

Check it out at, https://www.amazon.com/dp/1723870420?ref_=pe_870760_150889320

This is a journaling book I created and published to help people who want to keep a record of their walk with God.

Hey! I created a new team on an app called Charity Miles. They have sponsors who pay 10 cents per mile for cycling and 25 cents per mile for walking or running to the charity you select. I selected Wounded Warrior Project. My team is @Christians_Care. We now have 21 members on our team and have donated over 6000 miles. I invite you to join me.

I give my YouTube vlogs the main title of “Fitness Over 60.” It is my goal to build a community of like minded riders whose purpose is to get and stay active and fit into their senior years. At 60, I see myself as just entering those years. I am not as fit as I would like to be, but neither am I trying to become a superstar athlete. I am becoming more fit all the time with:

-Regular cycling,

-Elliptical exercises

-Frequent resistance training (#mygorillabow) and

-Ketogenic/Intermittent Fast eating

are the main elements to my fitness plan.

I’m getting cash back rebates from my online orders from BSP — Rewards Online Shopping Mall. I shop everything from Walmart to my local Tractor Supply Store. I have received more than $1325 back in my bank from online purchases I would have made these purchases anyway.

Check it out at http://www.bsp-rewards.com/M04VB.

Check out our church website at, http://www.puyallupbaptistchurch.com

Listen to sermons I have preached at https://www.youtube.com/user/marvinmckenzie01

Check out the books I have written at my author spotlight on Lulu.com:

http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/marvinmckenzie

My author Page for Kindle/Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/author/marvinmckenzie

Notice: I do not endorse or agree with everything I hear on the podcasts I make reference to.
Free Dental Care at a “Day for Special Smiles”
By: Special Olympics
Tags: Health, Nonprofit, Dental, Arizona

On December 9, the dental college at A.T. Still University in Mesa, Arizona will be closed — unless you are a Special Olympics Arizona athlete. For that day, the students and entire faculty will completely devote their time and efforts to fill cavities, conduct cleanings, and provide a multitude of other dental care procedures to dozens of athletes in need — all free of charge.

The event is the brainchild of Abrahim Caroci, a student at the college who has been increasingly active in the Special Olympics Special Smiles program.

“This is all a product of me being exposed to Special Olympics,” he said. “Special Smiles is a great idea, but ideas are only great when you put them into action locally.”

And acting locally is exactly how Special Olympics Arizona is reaching out and finding athletes most in need. On Oct 15, the Program held its fall games and offered Healthy Athletes. More than 100 athletes were screened in the Special Smiles tent, and about half were found to be in need of follow-up care and invited to the December event.

“This is very exciting for us, to be able to bridge the gap between screening and dental care for the athletes,” said Isaac Sanft, Healthy Athletes coordinator for Special Olympics Arizona.

According to Abrahim, however, the December event is just a fraction of the impact he hopes to have on the health for people with intellectual disabilities. Using social media and a website he launched — www.globaloralhealthleaders.org, he wants to be able to connect dental students with resources, volunteer opportunities with Special Smiles wherever they live, research, and each other to collaborate and compare notes. Although just getting started, there are already “chapters” established in California, Texas , and even Brazil.

“If you want to change things, start on the student level,” Abrahim said. “They are the future oral health leaders.”
Facebook New 3D Effect
Tags: 3d, Facebook, Technology, Trends, Tech

Facebook New 3D Effect

The exciting new feature of Facebook

The exciting new feature of Facebook available now any guesses what it might be let me clear to you. You can now convert photos from 2D to 3D just with a single camera. Isn’t it great and unique one camera, two versions and a lot of fun.

3D first introduction

To clear the air, this 3D feature was first introduced in 2018, but due to some issues, it was only restricted to the users having high-end smartphones and supported portrait mode only. The company is back with the great feature again and this time users having iPhone 7 or above l, or having the average android phone can avail this opportunity as well.

All kind of photos

One more exciting thing to share regard to this feature is that it converts not only new photos that are just taken but also old photos as well. This is great isn’t, and the company further revealed that they had used advanced machine learning technology for the creation of this fantastic feature.

How to set everything

But there is one clause any guesses don’t panic its not that difficult thing to do you just need to update your Facebook app to avail the feature that’s it. The other thing worth sharing is that you need to go to news feed then what’s on my mind and then use the new 3D feature.

Few limitations

This feature is new, but it has a lot of importance as this enables almost everyone to avail of the 3D effect feature. There is one issue also that the quality of the pictures will not match the quality of the images taken with a dual high-end mobile phone.

Still, you can enjoy the feature tilt the photos and have fun with the exciting new addition to the Facebook features bucket.
NO STRINGS ATTACHED WITH JAVA.
By: Nonso Biose
Tags: Java, Programming, Strings, Software Development

Hello and welcome back to yet another exciting post in java. So far, as at the time of writing this post, I have had no reader on this post. But that ain’t gonna stop me from continuously taking time to share my ideas on how to understand Java better because that’s what we do for the things we love, hoping to make it big in the future.

Enough of the stories that touch the heart. Looking at the above picture and also the title of this post, you may begin to wonder what I might be insinuating. Even I am kinda wondering and confused but not because of what this post is all about (“ coz I am obviously the author”).

The Big question is this…. why would anyone ever enter into a relationship with Java, all in a bid to become a software developer and then decide not to want more from the relationship ???. Even I, could not help but turn her into my friend, I mean she’s clearly good at what she does. isn’t she???

Moving on to the reason this post was made, in Java we have something called a STRING and it is simply a sequence of characters that are surrounded by double quotes as opposed to the primitive datatype known as “CHAR”. CLICK HERE to find out about it.

Now with the existence of a String, we can store as many sequences of characters as we want in a variable…. (‘you probably know this right?’). I probably haven’t said anything different from what you know right? Well let's move onto the freebies that come with strings in java

A string in Java is not part of the 8(‘Eight’) primitive datatypes that are used to store values of all kinds. it's actually an object like the other objects you create out of classes in java.

So I have a question for you. Have you ever subscribed to a website and then you got an email that said hello and then a subversion of your name? Or you probably may have used the find and replace tool in Microsoft Word and Adobe PDF reader. Well, those functions or abilities are present in Java and can be used on its STRINGS. They are known as String Methods in Java.

What are the String methods??. Simply put, these are functions that can be carried out on a String. Strings as earlier noted are objects, so that makes it possible for methods to be called on them (“Methods are and can only be used on objects and not primitive data”).

Here, I shall list a few string methods with their brief explanation.
7 Foods You Should Consume for Total Body Transformation
By: Jeremy Colon
Tags: Health, Diet, Nutrition, Metabolism, Food

Photo Credit: Pinterest

I pass this secret to all my supporters so please enjoy! The List below shows 7 food types that help cure each problem in its respective category.

1.Crown Foods

Problems: Issues with sleep/wake cycle, feeling, disconnected from your body or others, difficulty meditating, spiritual discomfort.

Foods: Mother Nature :) Fresh Air, Sunlight, Nature

2. Throat Foods

Problems: Thyroid Disease, Frequent Sore Throat, Difficulty Expressing Feelings

Foods: Blueberries, Blue Raspberries, Figs, Kelp

3. Eye Foods

Problems: Depression, Poor Eyesight, Hormonal Imbalances, Poor Intuition

Foods: Purple Potatoes, Blackberries, Plums, Purple Grapes

4. Heart Foods

Problems: Heart, Lung Problems, Asthma, Allergies, Fear of Intimacy

Foods: Broccoli, Kale, Chards, all other Leafy Greens

5. Solar Food

Problems: Gas, Bloating, Liver Issues, Stomach Ulcers, Eating Disorders, Lack of Confidence, Procrastination

Foods: Yellow Peppers, Yellow Lentils, Yellow Squash, Oats, Spelt

6. Sacral Food

Problems: Infertility, Hip Pain, Sexual Dysfunction, Emotional Imbalances, Creatives Blocks

Food: Seed, Nuts, Oranges, Carrots, Pumpkins

7. Root Foods

Problems: Colon Issues, Lower BackPain, Varicose Veins, Emotional Issues, Surrounding money and security

Foods: Beef, Parsnips, Rutabaga, apples, pomegranates, protein

If this blog offered you any value, please recommend it and share it with others!

Also please connect with me on my website, Facebook page, and Instagram if you want to stay in touch or give me any feedback!
Creating a New .NET Project. C# From Scratch Part 2.1
By: Ken Bourke
Tags: Software Development, Csharp, Dotnet, Learning To Code, Programming

Welcome to another part of the series C# From Scratch, a course dedicated to teaching you everything you need to know to be productive with the C# programming language.

In the previous part of the series, we learned how to interact with .NET on our machines using the .NET CLI, a tool that was installed as part of the installation of the .NET SDK. That part of the series is available here.

In this part of the series, we’ll create our first C# project using the .NET CLI.

Creating the Project

Use the command ‘dotnet new’ to create a new .NET project.

The command returns with some information about the different options that can be used to create a new .NET project.
The value of UX design
By: Priyanka J
Tags: UX Design, UX, Business, Design

As we spend more and more time with our digital devices, we are all that we describe as “users”. When we visit a website or use an app all we are looking for is a way to have an effortless experience, without having to think less and do less.

There are reasons why some search engines feel better to use, why some payment apps feel safer than the others, why it’s easy to use one website’s customer care service and on the other, we can’t seem to find the options we are looking for. All those unforgettable user experiences come from well planned and executed design solutions. Businesses that recognize the value of UX design understand the importance of providing memorable experiences to their users and believe in creating long-lasting relationships with them.

“That’s nice to read, but what exactly is the value of UX design.”

To make the case for the value of UX design more legitimate, let’s speak the language of numbers.

Effects of bad UX design

Companies lose $62 billion every year due to poor customer service.

70% of customers abandon purchases because of bad user experience.

91% of non-complainers just leave and 13% of them tell 15 more people about their bad experience.

Results of a good UX design

Research shows that, on average, every $1 invested in UX brings $100 in return. That’s an ROI of a whopping 9,900%.

A well-designed user interface could raise your website’s conversion rate by up to 200%, and a better UX design could yield conversion rates up to 400%.

8 in 10 customers are willing to pay more for a better user experience.

UX business cases stats

Jeff Bezos invested 100X more into customer experience than advertising during the first year of Amazon.

AirBnB’s Mike Gebbia credits UX with taking the company to $10 billion.

After Virgin America redesigned their digital travel experience they experienced a 14% increase in conversion rate, 20% fewer support calls, and flyers booked nearly twice as fast, on any kind of device.

In the McKinsey quarterly, The business value of design they tracked 300 companies for more than five years and concluded, diversity among companies achieving top-quartile MDI performance shows that design excellence is within the grasp of every business, whether product, service or digitally oriented.

So, what do we see here? It’s not just number, It’s how UX design has proven itself to be the most credible part of a digital experience. Good design is an enabler and is the only differentiator. To create a memorable experience that works both in favor of the users and business owners comes only through design.
The Music Plays On — Mahler Symphony №1
By: Donato Cabrera
Tags: Las Vegas Philharmonic, California Symphony, Donato Cabrera, Mahler, Music

Gustav Mahler, 1881

Gustav Mahler had every intention of becoming a composer. However, the professional success he attained and experienced during most of his career was based almost solely on his rather considerable skills as a conductor. Why did this happen?

In 1880, three years after graduating from the Vienna Conservatory, Mahler composed his first large piece, the incredibly dramatic cantata, Das klagende Lied (“The Song of Lamentation”) and submitted it in 1881 for the Beethoven Prize of the Vienna Conservatory.

It didn’t win. Mahler would later complain that the conservative jury’s decision condemned him to a life conducting in the theater. Let’s take a look at the jury members — Johannes Brahms, Karl Goldmark, Johann Nepomuk Fuchs, Josef Hellmesberger und Franz Krenn. Conservative, perhaps, but certainly not an incompetent jury. Let’s take a listen to the piece that did win the Beethoven Prize that year, Robert Fuch’s Piano Concerto in B flat minor, Op. 27.

The decision prompted Mahler to throw himself into a career of conducting and for the next four years didn’t compose, slowly moving himself up the ladder of conducting positions in provincial opera houses. In 1884, while working as the kapellmeister for the opera house in Kassel and inspired by his hopeless infatuation with one of the sopranos, Mahler composed his song cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (“Songs of a Wayfarer”).

Four more years would pass when, in 1888, the twentyseven-year-old Mahler, now the second conductor at the Leipzig opera house, befriended the grandson of the famous German composer Carl Maria von Weber, who shared with Mahler his grandfather’s unfinished opera, Die Drei Pintos. Mahler completed it using the unfinished material as well as adding his own compositions. It was his first major success.

Unfortunately, Mahler fell in love (and probably had an affair) with Weber’s wife, Marion Mathilde. This hopeless romance resulted in Mahler throwing himself into his next composition, a five movement Symphonic Poem. Mahler left his post in Leipzig in May of 1888 and assumed a new post as General Music Director of the opera house in Budapest in October. A year later, in November of 1889, this five-movement Symphonic Poem was premiered. In 1891, Mahler became the chief conductor for the opera house in Hamburg and in 1893, there was a second performance of his Symphonic Poem, now with the subtitle, Aus dem Leben eines Einsamen (From the Life of a Lonely-one). It was not until 1896 for a performance in Berlin that he decided to omit the Blumine movement, finally creating what would become his Symphony №1. Let’s listen to this touching, omitted movement.

It was never well received during Mahler’s lifetime and the symphony didn’t really catch on until Bruno Walter and Leonard Bernstein performed and recorded it in the 1950’s and 60’s.

Here are my favorite performances.

I can’t help but share the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra’s triumphant performance in the Berlin Philharmonie in 2012
Cold Temperatures Can Make Your Workouts More Efficient
By: Alexandra Sifferlin
Tags: Exercise, Fitness, Health, Life

Photo: Jordan Siemens/DigitalVision/Getty Images

In the Before Times, I was a frequent gym-goer. I’ve always felt more accountable in a fitness class. But the Covid-19 pandemic has significantly changed my workout habits. Because I live in a small Brooklyn apartment, most of my exercise happens outside. I was worried about how the cold temperatures would affect my ability to get cardio exercise, but it turns out exercising in chilly temperatures is not so bad. (Especially when you’re wearing a warm mask!)

It also turns out there’s compelling science to support exercising in the cold. As Markham Heid reports, as long as you take precautions, cold temperatures can actually make your workouts more efficient. Exercise produces body heat, and the body has to work to regulate that temperature. This is why exercising in high heat or humidity can feel so miserable. Exercising in cooler temperatures can be more optimal for the body performance-wise.

Claims that working out in the cold can lead to changes like weight loss, however, are overblown, as my colleague Dana Smith reports. So do not go on a winter run for that purpose. Rather, if you’re looking to push yourself a bit harder and run a bit longer — working out in the cold might be worthwhile.
Forget Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Elon Musk Is Redefining Innovation
By: Emanuel Marques
Tags: Technology, Innovation, Space Exploration, Future, Inspiration

Forget Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Elon Musk Is Redefining Innovation

To innovate will no longer be just releasing another website or app

Photo by Matt Ridley on Unsplash

We have always looked upon Steve Jobs and Bill Gates as the most significant innovation gurus in the world. I mean, Steve Jobs’ Apple revolutionized the way we use our phones, creating the first smartphone along the way, and Microsoft established the widespread use of personal computers. Even nowadays we refer to a general computer as a PC.

These men were the starting point of an entire technological revolution that happened (still happening?) since the ’80s, where people started using computers for personal use. This growth was even more noticeable when the modern Internet was made available in 1995.

The following years brought new tools that made our lives easier almost every year. Windows was released, Google was created, Amazon was founded, PCs started to become cheaper and more people could afford to have one at home. At the moment, it’s hard to find someone without a computer and easy internet access in the developed world. Things changed a lot in 30 years.

Image from pplware

Computers and Smartphones Are the Past in Terms of Innovation

The computer and smartphone industries are starting to stagnate. There is way too much competition for new companies to thrive, and the established players are hardly bringing something new to the table.

I mean, foldable smartphones? Yeah, it’s cool to show to our friends and all, but it is not something that one was hoping for their phones to have. Don’t take me wrong: It is an engineering marvel. I wonder how they managed to make a display that can be folded in half. But the average consumer doesn’t care about the technical stuff.

What can it do for me?

The functional part of technology is what makes it either be a success or a disaster. We have plenty of examples of great technology that were never a success because it didn’t match the user’s expectations:
How Long Does it Take To Rank #1?
By: Jordan Silton
Tags: Google, SEO, Digital Marketing

How long does it take to rank #1? Well, this website is quite new … bought the domain on August 6th and started working on it immediately. The first thing I did was block search engines. This may be surprising, but it’s actually a good idea until you get the website presentable for the general public. I robots.txt blocked the site and implemented a no-index meta tag.

So when did I really launch the site? On August 26th, I removed the no-index meta and allowed all search engines access again through robots.txt. I posted my first blog entry, and the website was off and running.

The first thing to show up in search results was my blog post. FeedBurner is quite amazing; with Google Caffeine, blog posts get listed within minutes if not seconds. After that first post, it took quite a for Google to display the rest of my pages in search results. Today is September 11th, and I can say that I now see all my pages indexed properly with accurate titles and meta descriptions. Plus I rank number one for my own name … on Google that is.

Sixteen days after my site launched (which I think is a pretty relevant for my name), Yahoo and Bing still haven’t listed JordanSilton.com in the top results. Just because Google indexes all it’s content really fast doesn’t mean that the content is more relevant for a specific query. Bing’s Stefan Weitz recently spoke about how Bing is trying to do search smarter.

It may take a little longer, but validating the quality of search results is surely important. Both Google and Bing do a remarkable job of sifting through millions of web pages and choosing those most relevant for any individual query. It’s quite outstanding that my website, which gets 5–10 visits per day, can we crawled and indexed so quickly. It used to take search engines several months to update the results for websites with thousands of visits per day. Now, some results appear instantaneously.
The UTMB through the prism of data: typology of race management. (English version)
By: Maxime Bataille
Tags: Data Science, Clustering, Trailrunning, Machine Learning

This ultra-trail is certainly the most challenging in the world every year. The distribution of time does not follow the normal law. The peloton gathers the “less good” riders, as shown in the graph.

Time distribution (Standardized data)

Typology of race management

First analysis: Quick start, complicated final

Note: The following study does not take into account participants who did not complete the race.

First, we tried to understand how the riders manage their first part of the race. We consider that the first part of the UTMB is done in Courmayeur at KM 78. The second part of the UTMB is therefore spread out from Courmayeur to Chamonix over the remaining 92 KM. Each runner devotes a given percentage of his final time to complete the first part of the race, which is noted as T1. Thus the second part of the race takes T2% of the time to each runner, with T2 = 100-T1.

By doing so, we can compare the race management of runners with very different performances. François d’Haene, like a mid-race rider, can both devote 42% of their final time to cover the first half of the course for example.

We notice that the distribution of variable T1 is normal.

Distribution of variable T1

On average, participants spend 37.5% of their final time on the first part of the course (Courmayeur is not exactly in the middle of the course. The average value of T1 is therefore logically far from 50). Others go very fast and spend only 30% of their final time on the first part of the course. But they spend 70% of their final time on the second part! On the contrary, some riders spend more than 43% of their final time on the first part, and 57% on the second part. Race management is therefore very variable between each runner.

We tried to understand what race profile each rider adopted according to his final performance. On the graph below, the data has been normalized. The best runners have a final time (y-axis) close to 0, while the runners with the highest T1 values have a value close to 1 on the x-axis.

Final result according to the percentage of time spent on the first part of the course (T1)

We notice that the best riders spend a large part of their overall time on the first part of the course. As an example, François d’Haene and Kilian Jornet respectively spent 42.24% and 41.73% of their final time on this first part. However, “start carefully” is a necessary but not sufficient condition to achieve a very good performance. Legs still play a major role, of course.

The riders who started quickly were among those who achieved the worst times. This is a notorious lesson.

Finally, we note all the same that the majority of the riders (navy blue zone) adopt the same strategy.
The Self-Titled Interview: Dave Porter
Tags: Music, Better Call Saul, Breaking Bad, Culture, Preacher

Is New York the place you like to vacation in rather than live?

[Laughs] I lived in New York for a very long time, during my twenties. I went to school just outside New York City, at Sarah Lawrence College. And I lived in New York until I was 30. Then I was part of an exodus of people who left New York after 9/11. I moved to LA in 2002. And that’s where I’ve been since. But I still have a New York number because when I first moved to LA, I had clients in both places and shuttled a lot back and forth.

You must have had no choice but to live in LA once you got involved with more major TV shows.

That’s totally true. I wish I’d done it earlier in my life. I hemmed and hawed about it for a bunch of years, but I was having a fun time and making a good living writing music for commercials and documentaries — the kind of work you find in New York as a composer. But to do the dramatic stuff, you absolutely have to be in LA. It was a sobering transition, moving to LA, because I thought my New York credits would help me leapfrog ahead of people. But of course, it didn’t, so I spent a couple of years on the couch watching Law and Order, waiting for the phone to ring.

Is being a composer as competitive and cutthroat as being an actor?

It is. You’d be amazed at how many composers are cycling throughout LA. It’s very competitive, right up there with acting, directing, and writing. There’s just a lot of talented folks. The good news is there’s more work than there’s ever been in terms of quality television to work on. But it’ll never be enough for all the people who want to do it.

Right; it’s not just Law and Order spinoffs anymore.

Yeah, I never had a TV in my twenties, so it was novel when I moved to LA. LA is a very different town; in New York, you can walk out the door and entertain yourself. In LA, you kinda have to have a plan. You have to have your people, and things going on, and that takes a while. The first few years are pretty tough for most people who move to LA.

But you said you were part of an exodus. Does that mean you already had friends there?

It was a different world. I had one friend who lived in LA but there were others coming from New York around the same time. It was kinda find-your-own-way. Lots of people will tell you that the first friends you make in LA won’t be the ones that last; you’re just desperate for people to hang with, to get out of the house. It’s a process of finding your own crew. But now I feel like I have as good of friends in LA as I once did in New York. I still miss my friends in New York though.

Yeah. I’ve been away for about a year and a half after living about a decade there, and that’s the one thing I miss the most — the people. That, and the feeling that you could walk for five minutes and feel like you’re part of something, whereas LA can feel very compartmentalized.

Yes. You can see a lot going on but you’re not invited.
Microsoft learning pathway for data engineers (2020)
By: Jack Latrobe
Tags: Certification, Azure, Data Engineering, Learning, Cloud

Hello!

My name is Jack and I help lead the Microsoft practice at Servian. A big part of my role is helping grow the skills and capabilities of our consultants in Azure and other technologies. I often get asked what Azure learning pathways people should consider studying, based on their specific background and experience. Whilst I am always happy to spend the time with people discussing their goals, I thought it would be good to capture and publish some of the more common guidance that I give to our consultants and our clients. I hope that this guide will be helpful to others when they are starting their journey into Microsoft and Azure, specifically for a data engineer.

I work with lots of very smart data engineers. I’m pretty handy with a pipeline myself, but some of these folk make me look like a plumber, by comparison. So, for our article this week on Microsoft Learning Paths, I’ll be exploring part of Servian’s Azure data curriculum that our very own Chithra Koushik has pulled together for our learning squads and client teams to follow.

Ahh yes, Data Factory, my old friend — Image credit: @brucebmax

This is the second in our Microsoft Learning Pathways series, with our first article for those considering their AZ-104 Azure Administrator exam. We’ll add more learning paths over the next few weeks, including for DevOps, Security and Power BI, so stay tuned.

TL;DR: AZ-900 (3 days) -> DP-900 (5 days) -> DP-200 (4 weeks) -> DP-201 (4 weeks)
What Will Survive A Plastic Ocean
By: Zach J. Watson
Tags: Environment, Poetry, Writing Prompts, Climate Change, Oceans

What will survive a plastic ocean?

to recycle is to use a potion, a cure

supernatural is its power to protect

not only humans but creatures that

call the ocean home

What will survive a plastic ocean?

to recycle is to cause a commotion

amongst those who deem our planet's

health a non-issue

What will survive a plastic ocean?

the notion that if we ignore and

deny the slow-destruction of our

climate’s change

our planet’s health

is no hoax

What will survive a plastic ocean?

to care is to display emotion that

humans are not the only beings —

that dive deep in a sea, beautiful

the ocean

is not single-use.
International Organisations Increasingly a Target of Cyber Attacks
By: Maya Plentz, Editor, Founder, The Un Brief
Tags: Health, Cybersecurity, UN, Government

The global health crisis has seen an exponential increase in cyber attacks in hospitals and international organizations.

The UN Brief interviewed Alex Urbelis, Partner at Blackstone Law Group, a cybersecurity firm in New York.

His firm has developed a way to anticipate threats by using domain name registration scanning, drawing from his wide experience working for the private sector, and government agencies on both sides of the Atlantic.

We spoke about his firm, the Blackstone Law group, his education both in cyber security and law, and his career working in Europe and the US for the luxury sector, and government agencies.

Urbelis discusses the different ways that organizations can keep their staff and systems updated when handling devices, and carrying their day-to-day work with email and the cloud.

Listen to the interview in our SoundCloud channel:

Urbelis is also a co-host of the Hacker Radio Show.

Alex Urbelis is an infosec lawyer / CISO | Words at @CNNOpinion and @TheIntercept| Co-host of @HackerRadioShow UL Security Council Member / http://blackstone-law.com
”Snowplay”
By: Background Noise Comics
Tags: Comics, Cartoon, Weather, Snow, Relationships

Who needs to romp in the snow more- grownups or kids?
An Opinionated Way to Structure React Apps
By: Bruno Sabot
Tags: JavaScript, Architecture, React, Reactjs, Programming

An Opinionated Way to Structure React Apps

Based on my experience acquired building several big projects

Photo by Dayne Topkin on Unsplash.

When we first develop a React app, we can just put every component in a folder and it works. But when it comes to larger projects, it might be difficult to find our way between files if we keep using React this way.

So how can we handle a bigger project? Dan Abramov has a way. You don’t think this is very helpful? Actually, it is. It’s the best way to find the perfect architecture that will fit your needs, but at a cost of many iterations in folder creation and removal.

Today, I’m introducing the result of my many moves, making a base structure for people seeking a way to improve their own.
A Short Introduction to VADER
By: Ravi Malde
Tags: Machine Learning, NLP, Spotify, Data Science, Music

nltk.sentiment.vader

Valence Aware Dictionary and sEntiment Reasoner (VADER)

What it is.

VADER is a module in the nltk.sentiment Python library that was specifically created to work with text produced in a social media setting, however, it of course works with language that originates in other contexts. VADER is able to detect the polarity of sentiment (how positive or negative) of a given body of text when the data being analysed is unlabelled. In traditional sentiment analysis, the algorithm is given the opportunity to learn from the labelled training data. A classic example would be predicting the star rating of a movie review based on the written review of a given critic. The star rating would be the target variable and the text would be the predictor variables.

In the sentiment analysis of song lyrics, we do not have any labelling. The lyrics are not rated on a scale of 0 to 10 (0 being negative and 10 being positive). So how is VADER able to gauge sentiment, then?

VADER uses a lexicon of sentiment-related words to determine the overall sentiment of a given body of text. Below is an example of how the lexicon is structured, with each word having a valence rating:

VADER has built this labelled lexicon using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, which is a crowdsourcing platform that pays ‘crowdworkers’ to perform tasks en masse, resulting in an impressively efficient method for doing this.

Preprocessing. Nope.

The incredible thing about VADER is it doesn’t require a great deal of preprocessing to work. Unlike with some supervised methods of NLP, preprocessing necessities such as tokenisation and stemming/lemmatisation are not required. You can pretty much plug in any body of text and it will determine the sentiment.

VADER is even smart enough to understand the valence of non-conventional text, including emojis (i.e. :-( ), capitalisation (i.e. sad vs SAD) and extended punctuation (i.e. ? vs ???). This is what makes the module so good at analysing social media text. Additionally, VADER removes stop words automatically so there is no need to do so yourself.

Working with VADER

We can use pip install nltk in the command line to install the library on our device. Then we need to import VADER into our programming environment using the first line of the code snipped below.

We can then initialise the sentiment analysis object and use the polarity_scores() method to determine the sentiment of a string. The output of this is four normalised scores:
Lyft Data Science Interview. As of January 2018, Lyft could count 23…
By: Vimarsh Karbhari
Tags: Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machıne, Interview, Data

Subscribe to our Acing AI newsletter, I promise not to spam and its FREE!

Thanks for reading! 😊 If you enjoyed it, test how many times can you hit 👏 in 5 seconds. It’s great cardio for your fingers AND will help other people see the story.

The sole motivation of this blog article is to learn about Lyft and its technologies helping people to get into it. All data is sourced from online public sources. I aim to make this a living document, so any updates and suggested changes can always be included. Please provide relevant feedback.
Software Engineering Artifacts — Let’s agree on Terminology
By: Valentin Grigoryevsky
Tags: Software Engineering, Software Development, Software Testing, Web Development, Software Architecture

Commonly-used “Epic” or “User Story” cover just a fraction of the entire picture, and it worth understanding that software design and development is not so flat and goes beyond these two primitives.

The presented diagram covers just the highest level of details — so-called “Level 0”, to denote the “width” of the model, not yet paying much attention to its “depth”.

If you need more information on the Layers — take a look at the AIFORSE Framework — Software Engineering Enterprise Processes Map (08/Jan/2019).
A Rap Connoisseur’s Favourite Poetic Rap Lyrics Explained
By: Amy The Maritimer
Tags: Hip Hop, Lyrics, Music, Rap, Poetry

Aesop Rock, Daylight

I got a friend of polar nature, and it’s all peace

You and I seek similar stars but can’t sit at the same feast

Metal Captain, this cat is askin’ if I’ve seen his bit of lost passion

I told him: “Yeah,” but only when I pedaled past him

Aesop Rock is another Rhymesayer artist. His lyrics are incredible but it is also essential to read them and decipher them as you would a poem. Many of his lyrics are deep metaphors. I still don't understand many of his lyrics, despite being a fan of his for many years.

This song is my favorite of Aesop’s. If you get a chance, you should definitely listen to this song and read the lyrics: They will blow your mind. This song is a combination of thoughts Aesop has about his life.

In this passage, he is talking about a friend who is very different from him. Although they have the same goals, they can’t seem to collaborate professionally. There is a great level of respect between them even if they can’t work together.

Some people believe “metal cat” is a reference to the amazing MF Doom, another wordsmith rapper who performs while wearing a metal cat mask.

The last line was my favorite in this song. He has been asked by his friend if he ever has regrets in his life and he replies that he only regrets his mistakes when he goes back to the past and reflects on them. This is my interpretation, but other fans may have a different view.

Either way, Aesop Rock never ceases to amaze me.
Seyifunmi Adebote, Others To Speak At UN’s #Youth4ClimateLive Series — IG Live
By: Iccdi Africa
Tags: Climate Change, United Nations, Renewable Energy, Wash, Youth Development

Seyifunmi Adebote, a young environmental leader in Nigeria will be speaking through the UN Youth Envoy’s Instagram account as part of a panel on a special Instagram Live on Friday, August 21st between 06.00 pm-06:45 pm WAT. This is part of activities to set the stage for #Youth4ClimateLive Episode 3: Driving Youth Action.

Other youth speakers on the panel include India’s Environmentalist and Wildlife filmmaker, Malaika Vaz and Dominican Republic’s Climate and Youth Activist, Claudia Taboada. The IG Live session will be hosted by Ahmed Badr on Connect4Climate’s channel in partnership with the office of the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth as part of the #31DaysOfYOUth campaign and the #Youth4ClimateLive Series.

Seyifunmi Adebote

As a run-up to Pre-COP26 in Milan, Italy and the COP26 which will now hold in Glasgow, the United Kingdom from Monday, 1 November 2021 to Friday, 12 November 2021, the Youth4ClimateLive Series is hosted by the Italian Ministry for the Environment, Land and Sea, in collaboration with Connect4Climate — World Bank Group and the Office of the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth.

Seyifunmi’s innovative approach to climate education through his widely-listened-to Climate Talk Podcast has earned him this spot on Friday’s Instagram Live. He is expected to address a global audience, discussing “What Meaningful Youth Engagement means”, and highlighting effective climate-focused initiatives and opportunities in Nigeria and internationally.
5 Must Know Active Record Methods
By: Yahjaira Vasquez
Tags: Activerecord, Software Engineering, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Coding

Ordering

First up, we have the ordering method. This can be used to organize our database in a specified way. We can order, alphabetically, numerically, ascending order, descending order, etc.

How do we use it?

To use the ordering method we can call .order on a class like so:

This will order our movie instances by title in ascending order.

We should pass in an argument to specify which attribute will be used to create this order. We can also pass in an argument for how we would like the order to be (asc or desc), but if this is not specified, the order will be ascending.
The MIT Media Lab and the Open Music Initiative
By: Neha Narula
Tags: Open Data, Music, Bitcoin, Blockchain

Cryptocurrencies and their underlying technology provide a way for people to transfer value and make payments without using a trusted intermediary like a bank or credit card company. But at the MIT Media Lab, we’re interested in more than just payments: this technology has the potential for far-reaching changes across industry and government by enabling open, decentralized data platforms. So when we heard about the BerkleeICE Open Music effort, we knew this was a good application for the research being undertaken by the MIT Media Lab Digital Currency Initiative.

One of the biggest problems the music industry faces today is a lack of transparency. There is no uniform way for participants to identify ownership regarding any piece of music. Because of this, it’s hard to send money to the people who should be making it. Artists often don’t even know how revenue is shared or when their songs are played. There have been a few attempts to fix this in the past; the most recent being the Global Repertoire Database. One reason that effort failed was contention over who would own the data.

We think that a distributed system, in the form of a digital ledger of music contracts, might be the answer to this particular problem. We can design a common format and an open platform for licensing data. In a distributed system, many entities can work together to maintain an open, transparent database that everyone runs, but no one owns.

This technology is not a panacea for all the problems afflicting the music industry. It’s going to be a long, hard road to bring together stakeholders and design a solution that the entire industry can get behind. We’ll have to solve numerous challenging problems around data integrity and integration, and deal with legal complexities across jurisdictions.

But we now have the tools to build an open architecture for music rights, using a decentralized platform. We’re excited to work with Berklee College of Music and the Open Music Initiative to create a foundation for innovation, not only for rights management but also for music itself.

Neha Narula

Director of Research, MIT Media Lab Digital Currency Initiative

Marko Ahtisaari

MIT Media Lab Director’s Fellow and Co-founder and CEO, Sync Project