fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
For This CEO, It All Started With Head Start
By: National Head Start Association
Tags: Early Childhood Education, Head Start, Politics, Education, Early Education

Head Start supported Cicely on her path to success

In an interview to celebrate Head Start Awareness Month, Cicely shared how Head Start started her off on her impressive, winding journey. For Cicely, attending Head Start and sharing the program’s impact is nothing short of a family tradition.

“I’m blessed to have come from a family who are big believers in Head Start, both then and now,” she said. “My brother attended Head Start, I went to Head Start, my nephew who is now 18 went to Head Start, my cousins went to Head Start, and we all went to Head Start in the same community.”

That community is still central to who Cicely is today. When she visits her hometown, Cicely and her family reminisce about Head Start friends and teachers because, in a small town like Woodbury, the Head Start community is integrated into life outside the classroom, too. Cecily recalls that when she was a child, she knew she had to be on her best behavior at Head Start so her parents would get a positive report when her family inevitably ran into her teachers at church or out and about in the community.

Cicely’s firm belief that Head Start was imperative to her own educational and professional journeys, as well as those of her family members, makes her a dedicated Head Start advocate. “When I was in Congressman Davis’s office, as well as Congressman Cooper’s office, we signed on to every letter, every bill, we supported every opportunity to support Head Start financially from the Capitol Hill perspective,” Cicely explained, “We knew, and we know — I won’t say past tense because currently we know — how important it is.”

Cicely hopes her story will reach those who do not yet know the power of Head Start. She hopes that by demonstrating how for her, it was the foundation that helped propel her into success, others will be inspired to support Head Start, too. “I thank the National Head Start Association for your continued work on behalf of children like me. And hopefully other children will have the opportunity to benefit from Head Start, as I did.”
그렉 콜빈, 핵심 로드맵 이행을 위해 알고랜드의 이론팀에 합류
By: Algorand Kr
Tags: Blockchain, Ethereum, Algorand Korea, Algorand, Cryptocurrency

Algorand Inc. built the world’s first open source, permissionless, pure proof-of-stake blockchain protocol for the next generation of financial products. This blockchain, the Algorand protocol, is the brainchild of Turing Award-winning cryptographer Silvio Micali.

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Smart solutions for determining compatibility with metaphactory and RDFox
By: Felicity Mulford
Tags: Industry, Artificial Intelligence, Configuration Management, Knowledge, Data Science

Following our earlier blog post on ‘Determining Compatbility’, we have teamed up with our partners at metaphacts to create an innovative knowledge graph-based application. The application is built on top of metaphactory, a knowledge graph management, visualisation and interaction platform, and RDFox, our knowledge graph and semantic reasoning engine.

Together, metaphactory and RDFox deliver unprecedented results in compatibility determination scenarios by allowing users to quickly and efficiently gain access to actionable and meaningful insights. This blog will demonstrate the functionality of the metaphactory & RDFox joint solution, using an industrial configuration use case example.

This blog was co-written by Irina Schmidt (metaphacts). Thank you to Ilija Kocev, Daniel Herzig (metaphacts) and Valerio Cocchi (Oxford Semantic Technologies) for their work on the demo system. Click here for the full White Paper.

Why knowledge graphs for compatibility?

Knowledge graphs have structural advantages over traditional models for solving compatibility solutions. They overcome the flexibility limitations of relational databases as data is stored as richly connected entities, the system can be updated easily, and end-users can undertake targeted search, discovery and exploration. Knowledge graphs ensure data is FAIR — Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable.

Determining compatibility is integral to many business models and processes. The process requires the user to check millions of combinations, to assess whether components fit together, or if components meet specified requirements. Additional factors may also need to be taken into account, for example, regulations or customer budgets.

metaphactory and RDFox in action for configuration management

With our knowledge graph-driven application for industrial configuration management, support engineers, product managers, technical planners, or technical maintenance specialists can evaluate components such as motors, gears, switches, power supplies and controllers, and their individual characteristics. The user can determine how components fit together and how they can be combined to create solutions that solve very specific customer needs or maintenance requests, while staying within a predefined budget.
The Banks of Google, Amazon and Facebook — The Five Best Ideas of the Day: May 5, 2016
By: Aspen Institute
Tags: Banking, Refugees, Education, The Five Best

A nonpartisan forum for values-based leadership and the exchange of ideas.

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Matlab vs Python
By: Adith Nadar
Tags: Python, Adith Nadar, Data, Data Science, Matlab

Matlab is a numerical computing environment and programming language. The standard library in Matlab does not contain as much generic programming functionality but include matrix algebra and an extensive library for data processing and plotting. Mathworks provides toolkits for extra functionality.

To do scientific computing in Python, you need additional packages like Numpy, Scipy, Matplotlib, and an IDE. People coming from Matlab prefer a feature-rich IDE. There is a handful of IDE’s available, some of which are for free.

Python is open and free, it is very easy for other parties to design packages or software tools that extend with Python. It is possible to create applications using any of the major GUI libraries. Another example is Cython which enhances the speed of algorithms by converting Python to C programming language.

Each package is being developed by a different group of people, who are users of the package. Since python is an open-source ecosystem, most packages are driven by a handful of core developers.

The problem with Matlab

The algorithms are exclusive, which means you can not see the code of most of the algorithms you are using and have to trust that they were implemented correctly.

Matlab is expensive. Matlab can only be used by people with sufficient funds to buy a license.

The proprietary nature also makes it difficult for 3rd parties to extend the functionality of Matlab.

The semicolon. It can be useful to show the result when you type code in the console, but in scripts, it does not make any sense that one must end a line with a semicolon in order to suppress output.

Indexing is done with braces rather than brackets.

Advantages of Matlab

It has a solid amount of functions.

It might be easier for beginners.

The package includes all you need, while in Python you need to install extra packages and an IDE.

Advantages of Python

Free .

. Beautiful programming language . Python was created to be a generic language that is easy to read and write, while Matlab started as a matrix manipulation package.

. Python was created to be a generic language that is easy to read and write, while Matlab started as a matrix manipulation package. Powerful. Because it’s well designed, it’s easier than other languages to transform your ideas into code.

Conclusion

Python is a really huge language and community, with lots to learn. Remember, you weren’t a MATLAB expert the first time you opened the MATLAB development environment, and the same is true about the first time you write some Python code.
Business Partner Benefits — Reward Your Employees
By: Anonymous Duck
Tags: Blockchain, Investing, Technology, Business, Cryptocurrency

By partnering with BlockNode and rewarding your employees with BlockNode tokens, you are eligible to have a custom wallet skinned with your company logo featured within the wallet. Funds for this process are allocated with proposals via our governance system — these proposals are submitted by our core developers and voted on by the community — this is a service which is unique to BlockNode and is at the core of our product offering — to provide a decentralized, scalable and customized employee reward system.

To learn more, visit the BlockNode Telegram Channel: https://t.me/BlocknodeChatGroup
Team Q&A — Charly Ivor, Lead Developer
Tags: Blockchain, Developer, Driveinsider, Cryptocurrency, Interview

Each week we interview a member of the DRIVE team to learn more about them, what they like and what makes them tick.

This week is our wonderful Lead Developer, Charly!

What’s your name?

Charly Ivor.

What’s your role at DRIVE?

Lead Developer.

What did you do before you joined DRIVE?

I worked at another startup.

What’s your secret talent that no one knows about?

I’m a good cook and can repair things.

What’s the coolest thing you’re working on right now?

The scaffolding project for our future products.

Who inspires you?

Aristotle, Nicolas Tesla.

How do you like to receive feedback?

In a meeting.

Where’s your favorite place in the world?

San martin de los Andes.

If you could be any animal, which would you be?

A lion.

What’s the last book you read?

Clean Code by Robert Cecil Martin.

What are you passionate about?

Baking, being tidy, teaching.

Which four individuals, living or dead, would you like to eat dinner with the most?

Leonardo Da Vinci, Bob Marley, Buddha, Nicolas Tesla.

What is your favorite family tradition?

Meeting with the family every Sunday, no matter what happens.

What’s your favorite saying/quote?

“Think twice, code once.”

That’s all, thanks for your time!
#070 | Pure JavaScript To Replace Common jQuery Use Cases
By: Kelvin Zhao
Tags: Coding, Code, Jquery, Javascript Tips, JavaScript

I’ve used to always include the jQuery library for any project that I’m working on, but in recent years I’ve stopped doing so completely.

My two simple reasons for doing so.
E52 Part 2: Bob Moesta — Choosing Better for Learning and Healthcare
By: Jay Gerhart
Tags: Higher Education, Innovation, Jobs To Be Done, Healthcare, Podcast

In the second segment of our super-sized “Bobcast”, uber-innovator and Jobs to Be Done expert Bob Moesta digs deeper into his recently released first book, Choosing College: How to Make Better Learning Decisions Throughout Your Life, co-authored with Michael Horn. The book isn’t just about the college decision — it encompasses life-long learning, whether it’s executive education, bootcamps, or on-line classes. Since many parallels can be made between the higher education and health care industries, Ben & Jay also engage Bob about the struggles in making health care decisions and their similarities to education decisions. Having helped many companies develop thousands of products, Bob is now on a mission to help consumer be better consumers, in many aspects of their lives. Whether its education or healthcare, if people can prepare themselves better by helping them understand their own context and the outcome they are seeking, they will choose better — making the implicit explicit. As you will come to realize, choosing the right learning experience is just a beginning for Bob’s work to enable people to make better choices.

@bmoesta @michaelbhorn @ChristensenInst

Learn more about Choosing College HERE

Purchase a copy HERE

Examples cited:

@JayGerhart @TheBenReport @SherpaPod

A Sherpa’s Guide to Innovation is a proud member of the Health Podcast Network @HealthPodNet -

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The Big Bang of Banking
By: Ø Crypto Union
Tags: Cryptocurrencies, Banking, O Crypto Union, Malt

The Big Bang of Banking

With the need for more day to day basis financial services for cryptocurrency users evident for all to see, will the next steps for this newly emerging space be an evolution in the way we view banking?

There is no doubt that the debate upon whether or not crypto can, shall or will be regulated, and to what extent those regulations extend, will not be resolved any time soon. An issue that can be described as far more clear-cut are the consequences that not being aware of the regulations can have upon a project. The coinmarketcap charts are littered with the remains of projects, whom for one reason or another, were crippled and brought to their knees by unforeseen or underestimated legal requirements.

Being “ahead of the regulation” has been more than just a statement of intent for us here in team Ø. Our legal counsel have been to us more like Sherpas than lawyers! Without them, guiding our every foot step through the treacherously shifting and often unwelcoming terrain, we would most likely be far less ensured of our benevolence with the regulating bodies during our ascent. We know, for those who have followed us for some time now, that the journey has been slow to progress in places, but we’d like to thank every single member of our community who has supported us this far.

The top of the mountain is in clear sight!

Whilst it is only within recent weeks that the island of Malta has been the subject of much attention, Ø has been establishing relations there for quite some time. In fact, it is through the MFSA that Ø has been engaged in obtaining the relevant banking licences we require, namely, an EMI and MTF licence. With the expert guidance of Andrew Zammit and his team at GVZH Advocates, as well as Thibault Verbiest and many more besides, we foresee that Ø could receive its provisional EMI licence as early as Q4 2018. With this under our belts, Ø will be equipped with the tools we need to start rolling out the full range of services and benefits that we have to offer!
The Little Boy and the Thousand Roses
By: Jocelyn Soriano
Tags: Children, Fiction, Childrens Books, Short Story, Creative Writing

The little boy and the firefly journeyed aimlessly for days. The boy who did not know what to do suddenly did not know where to go. Must he go back to the place where he wasn’t good at doing anything? Must he go back to his old house where there is now only a big hole? Or must he go on where nothing is ever certain but where some things might still be possible in the end?

“Where are we going?” inquired the firefly after a yawn, feeling a bit sleepy after a day’s journey.

“I’m not sure,” replied the boy. “But I better go where I’m not sure rather than go back where I’m certainly good for nothing.”

“But–but is there such a place?”

“I don’t know. There must be a place where I can be good at something…even if I may never know my name.”

“I do hope so,” the firefly said, trying to give an encouraging tone. After another yawn, the firefly finally got some sleep, snoring every now and then as only fireflies from that world could ever do.

Meanwhile, the boy thought about what happened to his home. He thought about the big man whose only talent was to crush rocks with his big hands. Was he going to be like him? Despite trying to put on a brave face in front of Ben, he was really losing hope. He didn’t feel like going anywhere at all. He just wanted to sleep and to remain where they were. Yes, that’s what he’d do. In the morning, he would tell Ben, but then — why was there someone tickling his ear?

“Wake up, little boy! Wake up,” the firefly said as he darted near the boy’s ear.

“What…what is it?” the little boy mumbled as he tried to open his eyes.

“Just tell me we’re not dreaming,” the firefly said.

“Dreaming? I guess…I guess we’re not,” the boy replied as he got up and saw the breathtaking scenery before him. Never before has he seen such a marvelous sight, not even in his dreams. Never before has thousands upon thousands of roses bloomed so beautifully together as though they had been there from eternity.

Why have they failed to see this the night before? Was it because of the darkness? Or was it because of the shadows cast from his own heart?

It’s amazing how something beautiful can suddenly change the way you feel, how it can comfort you and heal you and give you peace.

All that he could do now was to take in everything, to take in as much beauty as he possibly could. It was like being able to breathe again, as though he has forgotten how. It was like being able to believe that light still exists, and because it does, maybe he could still believe in hope. Maybe he could still find a way.

“Ben, do you think we’re still alive?” asked the little boy.

“I think I’m more alive now than I’ve ever been!” replied the firefly.

The little boy agreed. He knew that just by gazing at those flowers, something from within him started to live again.

You may also want to read:
Qtum(QTUM) in our workplace?
By: Ishana Pandit
Tags: Bitcoin

Blockchain is a vast topic and has many cryptocurrencies under its wing. Every month a new one enters the market. We all know about the most popular cryptocurrencies; Bitcoin and Ethereum which are widely used for mining. Another important cryptocurrency of Blockchain is, Qtum(QTUM). It was launched in 2017 and since then has become a part of the largest cryptocurrencies in the world. Qtum takes the security of Bitcoin and combines it with ethereum’s smart contracts. An important point to note is the usage of Qtum is designed specifically for business.

“four round silver-colored and gold-colored Bitcoins” by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

While I covered major benefits of Blockchain Protocol, my classmate, Collier Hansen’s blog on “ 2019 Blockchain Baddies” has also provided more insight on my research questions. We are already aware of the different Blockchain currencies in the market and day by day new competitors are aiming at becoming the leading blockchain currency. The global cryptocurrency market is definitely not slowing down anytime soon(Hansen, 2018).

Qtum’s new features enables an user to code in any language which makes work faster than before. All these plus points are attracting people and encouraging “A multitude of other companies to make equally as proactive moves towards a more mainstream and efficient blockchain” (Hansen, 2018). What the author means is how Blockchain will give an opportunity to any kind of firms, start ups to compete on an equal and same platform. As, all companies will be using this technology, it will be interesting to see which one of them uses Blockchain in an efficient way to maximize their profits.

I cannot wait for businesses to start using Blockchain. Very soon every employee will be “Blockchain savvy!”

Hansen, C. (2018, September) 2019 Blockchain Baddies. Retrieved from https://medium.com/universal-currency/2019-blockchain-baddies-320e4b89f885
Reality Does Not Exist
By: Tom Stevenson
Tags: Self Improvement, Life, Life Lessons, Philosophy, Psychology

What if I told you reality does not exist?

That what you see only a daily basis is not what it seems. You would probably look at me with a strange expression and assume that I had gone crazy!

However, this is a very real phenomenon. We see the world as we perceive to see it, not how it is.

Our moods, thoughts and mindset shape our reality. The world that we see around us is a reflection of these.

While one person may see a beautiful sunset, another may see nothing more than the sun dipping below the horizon.

We may see the same event, but we may not see that event in the same way. The environment around both people is the same, it hasn’t changed.

Yet, it has triggered different emotions due to how the person was feeling at the time or how they perceive the world.

This is where reality becomes subjective instead of objective.

What we see around us, is what we choose to see. There is no meaning to what we see, it just is. We are the ones that assign events meaning depending on our outlook.

This has a number of implications. If you fail to take command of how you perceive the world, your perception of it will be chosen for you.

But, it also means that with time and practice, we ourselves can change our own perceptions.
My City: Denver, Colorado
By: Amber Carlson
Tags: Colorado, Places, Home, Cities, Denver

Of course, if you really want to get away from it all, you don’t have to go far to do it. The Rocky Mountains are only a 30-minute drive from the heart of the city, and they’re an enormous part of the draw for people moving here: we’ve got famously excellent skiing and some of the fluffiest, powderiest snow you’ll find anywhere.

During the warmer months, there are all kinds of places to hike, camp, mountain bike, or fish. If you love any and all things outdoors, you’ll find no shortage of things to do here.

The funny thing is that I didn’t become “outdoorsy” from growing up in Colorado. I went up to the mountains for plenty of school trips, ski weekends, and hikes, but I can’t say I go often these days. I think we who are from here feel the same way about the mountains as people in a coastal town feel about the beach: in a way, perhaps, we take it for granted.

It’s not that we don’t know that we live near some of the most majestic wilderness in this part of the country. We do. But we become so used to our surroundings that sometimes we forget to be in awe of them.

For most of the days of my life, I’ve looked to the horizon and seen the mountains. Actually, as a kid, I learned to tell which way I was facing by looking for the mountains — always to the west, ever-present, silent and imposing, standing watch over the city with all its twinkling lights and bustling activity.

The thing I love most about the mountains is how they can instantly shift your perspective on life. Drive up Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park one day, with all its winding twists and curves, until you reach a high-up spot where you can get a panoramic view of the glacial valleys below, and you’ll see what I mean.

Looking out from a vantage point like that, all the world goes quiet. The rush of thoughts slows to a trickle. It’s humbling to realize just how small we are compared with the vast wild space that surrounds us — and essential for us to be reminded of our smallness at times. Somehow I find it comforting.
Why articles like “things I wish I could tell my younger self” don’t work
By: Lily Chen
Tags: Life Lessons, Youth, Life, Advice, Wisdom

Why articles like “things I wish I could tell my younger self” don’t work

The one thing they all missed

If you Google “things I wish my younger self knew” or “open letter to my younger self”, you will not get a shortage of answers/links.

Even on Medium, I have seen more than a few stories along this topic.

Yet when I read through them, I can’t help but think of one thing: “my younger self did know many of these things.”

But did she do anything about them?

No.

For example, one common advice is “don’t care too much what people think about you.” (i.e. give less fucks).

My younger late-teen/early-twenties self have indeed come across countless articles on this topic. Not only that, but I have heard it from friends and family as well.

But here is the thing, when we are young, we are also more insecure. We don’t yet have the experience, the wisdom, and the self-confidence to grasp the value of this piece of advice. As a result, we often fall short of following it.
Regatta
Tags: Bridge, Poetry, Sailing

Regatta, splashing under bridges,

white sails sipping the spray and

dodging waves, the zig zag race

of keeling prows dividing lanes

while sun hats watch from banks

misled by their sudden appearance

as rocky shoals beckon and gulls chatter

and the turn to make the Harvard Crimson

slot down their traditional foes from New Haven

while the mispronounced Thames flows into the bay.

Somewhere up the shore, the long sandy beach

now shadowed by a nuclear reactor swooping

down a crescent beach, fenced in by a boardwalk

and stony bridges where commuters swoon past

reading their devices, ears plugged in,

contempt in the familiarity of the transit

now happening upon the dank grey debarking

in New London’s ill fated train station.

They could see the competition if they knew it was there,

look out on the windswept waters, with sheets tearing

on winds, but cracked asphalt, and piles of leaves

and hustling cabs demand their attention.
Does anyone else find not being able to have single spacing annoying?
By: J. Garcia
Tags: Writing, Opinion, Poetry, Medium Help

Please enlighten me as to the thought processes that led the developers of Medium to not allow single space paragraphs.

I normally do not mind pressing enter and automatically have the paragraphs separate to double space, but when I am writing poetry—which I dabble in once in a while—it is extremely frustrating not being able to control the spacing between lines. I have looked around, googled, and generally tried a couple of things but I cannot find a way to control the spacing on Medium.

If you have figured it out or think it is a good idea to allow some sort of control over spacing please leave a comment.

Please, I’m begging here, please, enlighten me if you have figured this out. There is nothing more frustrating to a poet than not liking how his poem looks, after all, isn’t a substantial part of poetry the act of arranging words and lines on a page?
GraphQL Server With Node.js
By: Prachi Thacker
Tags: Expressjs, Nodejs, GraphQL, Rest, Api Development

Over the past decade, REST has become the standard for designing web APIs. It offers some great ideas, such as stateless servers and structured access to resources. However, REST APIs have shown to be too inflexible to keep up with the rapidly changing requirements of the clients that access them.

BTS: Before RESTful APIs, we had RPC, SOAP, CORBA, and other less open protocols. Many pre-REST APIs required complex client libraries to serialize/deserialize the payload over the wire. A fundamental difference compared to today’s RESTful APIs, is that SOAP is strongly typed using formal contracts via WSDL (Web Services Description Language).

The RESTful architecture was introduced in 2000 as a much simpler way to enable the machine to machine communication using only the ubiquitous HTTP protocol without additional layers in a stateless and type freeway.

Now: REST uses the standard CRUD HTTP Verbs (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE) and leverages HTTP conventions and centered around data resources (HTTP URIs) rather than attempting to fight HTTP.

3rd party developers to a new API need to only reason about the data model and leave the rest to HTTP convention rather than digging deep into thousands of operations. In other words, REST is much tighter coupled to HTTP and CRUD compared to SOAP but provides loose data contracts.
The Frustrating Misery of Clothing a Fat Body
By: Rachael Hope
Tags: Shopping, Body Image, Equality, Fat, Beauty

One Christmas, some unwitting relative gave me a gift card to The Gap. I was incensed because I knew that nothing in that entire store would fit me. I went in to my local mall and asked to speak to the manager, telling them that I couldn’t use the card because they had nothing that would fit me. I was as righteous as I could manage, but my efforts were fruitless.

I guess I never really expected that they’d give me cash for the card, but it’s one of the first times I remember using my voice to speak up about noninclusive sizing. I was in my late 20s.

Stores like the Gap and Forever 21 clearly don’t cater to bigger customers. In her article, The Problem with Shopping While Fat, Samantha Puc explains why even stores that offer a plus-size selection don’t really cater to fat customers:

…the fact is, several retail chains offer a plus-size section in their general stores, but the clothes there are nothing like the clothes throughout the rest of the store. They’re covered in sequins or have tons of frills or have no shape whatsoever. Wet Seal + was the first store I’d seen that offered plus-size clothes as cute and affordable as stores that don’t offer plus sizes. I don’t want to shop at Lane Bryant. I can’t afford to shop at Torrid. Ordering from ASOS Curve breaks the bank every single time. And aside from Old Navy, which doesn’t offer a lot of nice adult clothing, those are the only stores that offer clothes that fit me.

In department stores that have them, the plus-size sections are often inaccessible and unwelcoming, lacking larger mannequins or nearby fitting rooms. Even stores that cater to plus sized customers, like Torrid, are often crammed into such small spaces that I have to turn sideways to walk through the aisles, and it’s pretty much one shopper at a time, wait your turn.

Even stores that cater to plus sized guests, like Torrid, are often crammed into such small spaces that I have to turn sideways to walk through the aisles.

Samantha is right about one other thing: being fat is expensive. If I want a plain, soft t-shirt from Torrid, I’m looking at $35–40 for something that’s okay, but not particularly high quality. Their fabric fades with washing and stretches, and I don’t put any of my shirts or dresses in the drier to prevent shrinking. I’ve joked with my boyfriend that my Torrid card will never have a zero balance because despite the super-high interest rate, it’s how I manage to clothe myself.
Prime Day 🛍
Tags: Covid 19, Shopping, Retail, Amazon, Business

Prime Day was first launched in 2015. For Amazon, this initiative has become one of the most important retail and marketing events of the year as it acquires new Prime subscribers and allows Amazon to promote its products and services.

This year’s Prime Day was held in 20 countries and had initially been pushed back because of the coronavirus pandemic. Still, third-party sellers were able to cash in more than $3.5 billion from the event.

These numbers represent a 60% increase from last year’s sales. Amazon said the top-selling categories included bedding, wireless accessories, nutrition and wellness, arts and crafts, as well as health care.

Third-party sellers account for 58% of the company’s total merchandise. With that in mind, Amazon must have brought in around $7 billion in sales in this year’s event. \

This could help the company report a record fourth quarter, even during this pandemic. According to analysts surveyed by FactSet, this could be the first time that Amazon exceeds $100 billion in quarterly revenue in the fourth quarter.

I am not a financial advisor and my comments should never be taken as financial advice. Investments come with risk, so always do your research and analysis beforehand.
Launching WiCDS Medium publication
By: Wicds. Org
Tags: Writing, Publication, Women In Tech

Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash

“A word after a word after a word is power.”

— Margaret Atwood

Albert Einstein once said that you don’t understand it well enough if you can’t explain it. This is true from the Data Science perspective too. Often, we think we know the concept well but have difficulty explaining the same to others. It is where writing a blog comes in handy. Understand a concept; write it down as if you’re explaining it to a child. Add diagrams and images to elaborate more. Add references and attributions, and in this way, you shall imprint the point in your mind, concretely.

We at WiCDS are launching our Medium publication today to offer a platform to all our budding writers. If you have an idea, just pen it down and we’ll publish it and give it a shout out. No idea is small or insane. No topic is outdated in data science. Try explaining a Machine learning concept, introduce or explain a library, share some coding ideas. And to top it all, we will publish non-data science stuff too.

So what are you waiting for?. Email with your draft at wicds.org@gmail.com. We will then add you as a writer to our Medium publication, and you can start sending your drafts to us. It really is that simple!
A New Medium Publication Devoted to Chess
By: Benya Clark
Tags: Board Games, Chess, Culture, Learning, Games

Photo by Jonathan Ybema on Unsplash

Today, I’ve launched a new Medium publication devoted to chess: Getting Into Chess. This is a publication for everything chess-related, from strategy to news to personal essays.

The publication is looking for writers. I’m happy to have anyone with something interesting to say about chess, regardless of your ability or rating. You can find more information in the submission guidelines.

If you’re a chess player or interested in learning, I hope you’ll follow Getting Into Chess.
I’m on a sabbatical and it’s not at all what I expected.
By: Hassan S. Ali
Tags: Careers, Work, Life, Life Lessons, Sabbatical

Plot Twist!

I recently left my job at The Onion after three-and-a-half years. I’m super grateful for the opportunity to work alongside the funniest people in the country, doing the best work of my career. Major bucket list item: checked.

“So Hassan, where’s your new gig?”

Um, I don’t have one lined up. Instead, I decided to take one of those “sabbaticals” to figure things out. Both personally and professionally.

Everyone was so excited for me: “You get to do whatever you want! Embrace this opportunity to just BE and do what you’ve always been wanting to do.”

So starting out, I had a general game plan in my head. It sounded heavenly.

What I had in mind:

Days full of sunrise yoga, daydreaming in coffee shops, writing songs on my guitar, reading books, writing on Medium, writing a screenplay, people watching in the park, traveling, befriending wild animals a la Cinderella, etc.

What actually happened:

A lot of freaking the fuck out!!!

Sure, it was fun to chill and do whatever for a week at first. But then, stuff started to feel off.

You know that feeling you get towards the end of a vacation? The one that’s like, “Okay, that was fun, but I’m ready to get back to my routine and responsibilities.” My time off has been that feeling, EVERY DAY. But there are no set responsibilities to return to. And when that happens day after day, you start to feel really antsy and ungrounded.

A couple key factors at play:

Going from daily social interaction with coworkers to minimal daily social interaction.

Going from structured days to structure-less days.

Going from having a purpose to my day to not having a defined purpose or set goals to accomplish.

Going from the predictability of a career I’m good at, to exploring totally different career paths I could take.

For some people, that’s liberating. For me, that all added up to a daily sense of unease, aimlessness, and a hit to my self-worth that no amount of dog memes on Instagram could help.

No joke, I literally stared at my reflection in a fountain one day and said, “What am I doing?” (Melodramatic enough for you?)

But, like most things in life, you adapt. And while it SUCKS to have to experience difficult emotions and existential/career crises, those do help you grow in the end. (Don’t you just wish there was a shortcut to those a-ha moments without having to go through the pain? Elon Musk, get on that.)

A month and a half later, I’m getting a better handle on this sabbatical thingy. It’s still not perfect, but then again, what in life is?
Victory Through Suffering
By: Jason Park
Tags: Religion And Spirituality, Sports, Book Review, Swimming, Books

Victory Through Suffering

A review of Tera Bradham’s powerful new book “Swimming For Freedom”

Have you ever been in a challenge you just weren’t sure you would make it through? Maybe that challenge is happening right now, with most of the world and the United States especially at a significantly higher level of stress due to COVID-19 and the death of George Floyd. Maybe you had a failed relationship years ago and you didn’t know how to recover what you lost. Maybe, like the author of this book, you had an injury of a health issue that seemed to have no answers. Maybe you don’t have any of these “big” things at all but the brokenness of this world is threatening to take you down. Any of the above scenarios is a great reason to pick up Tera Bradham’s new book (released June 2), Swimming for Freedom.

In full disclosure, I know Tera personally. We went to the University of Arkansas at the same time and our paths crossed through social connections and classes. I knew her shoulder was injured when I met her, and I learned that there was a significant amount of pain involved, but I didn’t know the details so I was excited to see the whole story. Little did I know that her book would have the heart of a classic sports comeback story with a gospel message that will speak to anyone who reads it.

Bradham was a star swimmer in the state of Texas, on track to compete on the Olympic stage, but a mysterious shoulder injury hampered her career. Swimming For Freedom charts the course of her swimming career, but it is not chiefly a swimming book. It is written at a level that any reader can follow no matter their background knowledge in swimming, and it is, at its heart, a book that follows her journey mentally, spiritually, and physically. More than that, it does a terrific job. I’ve read my share of inspirational sports books through the years, and Swimming for Freedom belongs with the best of them. Her story is at the same time astounding and relatable, and her journey to and through faith in the God of the Bible can be a testimony to all.

We all have struggles, whether life-transforming like Bradham’s or momentary but significant bumps in the road. If you’re going through one of those, I implore you to read this book. If you love sports books, swimming, inspirational Christian books, or great memoirs, those are all terrific reasons to pick it up as well. I pray that her message reaches as many people as possible.

I usually post an Amazon link for the books I review but, while Swimming for Freedom is available on Amazon, it is less expensive to buy it through her website right now (terabradham.com) if you use the code LAUNCH20 at checkout.

I received a review copy of Swimming for Freedom courtesy of Tera Bradham and Broadstreet Publishing, but my opinions are my own.
Emeralds
By: Anna Rozwadowska
Tags: Poetry, Natural World, Haiku, Generation, Existence

Top Writer in Poetry. I am a writer, photographer, psychic, medium, and spiritual guide.I have an M.A. in Environmental Sociology.

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Dev Protocol Update — 何が起きているのか？. Dev Protocol…
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Cryptocurrency Investment, Developer, Open Source

Founder FRAME00 and Mother 1-year baby 👶 Entrepreneur since 2011 and started Dev with family in 2018. Develop the creative universe 🌝

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This week Articles
By: Javascript Jeep
Tags: Coding, Programming, JavaScript, Javascript Jeep, 100daysofcode

These are the articles that are freshly created this week. I hope you like this

Detect network online/offline State using JavaScript

One-Time Event Listener in JavaScript

Asynchronous Image Loading in JavaScript

Difference between append and appendChild method

Inserting elements in JavaScript Array

Implement and, or logical function in JavaScript

Remove all Children of an DOM Node in JavaScript
Showing Signs of Damage
Tags: Friday Fix, Microfiction, Writing Prompts, The Friday Fix, 50 Word Stories

Showing Signs of Damage

The Friday Fix: Build and Destroy

Photo by Oriol Portell on Unsplash

This home movie was more painful than sad. Watching Christmas in her husband’s childhood. Little sister opening presents. He, in turn, opens his. He leaps up to show Dad, whose back remains turned: ignoring his boy while doting on little sister. Boy gives up, slouches away. Already a broken man.
เที่ยว แม่กำปอง ฉบับชั่วโมงเดียวกลับ
By: Sutthipong Nuanma
Tags: Thailand, Lifestyle, Amiearth, Meakampong, Chiangmai

in Eudaimonia and Co
Dark Theme on Android: What & How (technical and functional overview)
By: Daphné Gripon
Tags: Google, UI, Android, Google Io 2019, Dark Theme

For design and development, you have 3 options:

A. No Dark Theme Support

There is nothing simpler, you have absolutely nothing to do. By default, no application will have Dark Theme on Android Q. Which means if a user switches their phone to Dark, any application not handling it will stay the same.

This, of course, is not recommended by Google. Indeed, imagine the user goes into Dark mode and all of the applications are darkened, except yours. Your app will definitely stand out, but not for the right reasons.

B. Let the device create your app’s dark theme on its own

Example: App with default theme on the left, app with Force Dark applied on the right.

To let the device create your app’s dark theme, you need a new feature called Force Dark.

It runs at rendering time and looks at the views to figure out which ones should be inverted in order to run dark. It modifies colors of backgrounds, texts, custom views and vector drawables.

It’s an opt-in feature. To enable it, you just need to set the toggle in your app’s theme, as follows:

One thing to keep in mind is that Force Dark is not optimal and not meant to be a final dark theme. It should be used as a temporary transition, to give you time to polish your app’s custom theme.

[NB: If you feel like Force Dark’s automatic adaptation is unsatisfactory by causing reading issues or by degrading the visuals of your app, you can disable it for specific views in their layout file by adding android:forceDarkAllowed=”false” ]

C. Customize your own dark theme

Example: Force Dark on the left, custom dark theme on the right

Finally, the best way to handle Dark Theme is to do it yourself. If you look at the example above, Force Dark did a good job with its own Dark Theme but several areas could be improved. Like the white depth bars on the left, which are too bright compared to the rest of the UI; there is not enough contrast between the text and the background, and lastly, that blue color is not cutting it.

To create your own Dark Theme, you need to use the -night resource qualifier. For example, the light version of your colors are in res/values/colors.xml. So if you want to define a night version for them, redefine the colors in res/values-night/colors.xml.

The -night qualifier works for every type of resource.

Android will pick the right resource definition at runtime, depending on the value of the Dark Theme setting.

Let’s say you want to make a dark version of an interactive map using the Google Maps SDK, just create 2 configuration files as follows:

res/raw for the light configuration, res/raw-night for the dark one

When it comes to images, Android can only invert vector drawables using color resources. If you need to adapt any images (jpg, png, etc) for your dark theme, you can put their dark versions in your res/drawable-night folder. Or, better yet, add a tint to your images. That way, the images themselves won’t be inverted but the tint will be affected by the theme change.
“I Fought The Devil and Won” EXERPT
By: Stephen C. Rose
Tags: Bullies, Religion, Christianity

Digital Art

Contents

On Kindle

Adam was glad it was once again Friday. He thought of exposing his awareness of the Dalton letter to his parents and requesting a change of schools, but he kept butting against the same grim realization. His wretched performance, no matter how agile his mind might be, would never suffice to make such a change possible. And the letter was two years old.

He might not be able to keep up at Dalton, even if he was interested. Maybe, he thought, there is something wrong with my mind. It thinks but it has severe resistances.

Adam could not stomach arithmetic. He could not comprehend the intricacies of science. He accepted things he could not understand. He recognized the value of fluency in a language. He knew the utility of having a vocabulary. He had language naturally. He could learn best by reading on his own. He could learn by talking if there was someone to talk to.
How to create a virtual data warehouse in Redshift
By: Marat Levit
Tags: AWS, Materialized Views, Redshift, Redshift Spectrum, Data Warehouse

The data warehouse

Let’s briefly introduce a typical data warehouse architecture.

A typical warehouse consists of three layers, staging, integration, and presentation. All data for the warehouse is sourced from our data lake and made available for consumption within the presentation layer.

Now let’s overlay the above with the appropriate AWS services.

Our data lake is, of course, Amazon S3 (no surprises there), our staging layer is not actually physicalised within Redshift but actually just Redshift Spectrum querying our Amazon S3 data lake, the integration layer (if required) is comprised of tables within Redshift and finally, we have our presentation layer. Up until this point, the presentation layer has always been physicalised (think tables)… but now we can actually virtualise it without compromising on performance thanks to materialized views.

The solution

I created a simple database within Redshift to learn about and understand materialized views. I converted MySQL’s Sakila database to Redshift (found here on GitHub) for use in this solution.

The solution consists of one fact, rental , and four dimension tables, customer , film , staff and store . For those visual learners out there, he’s a crummy ER diagram :)
Brown, it’s in Today
By: Marleena Garris
Tags: Poetry, Writing, Race, A Cornered Gurl, Black Excellence

Brown, it’s in Today

Quick! Hurry before it isn’t!

*Please read in the brassiest Yankee accent of your choice for best impact*

Photo by Clarke Sanders on Unsplash

Hey Ma!

Brown is in today!

I saw it on the news

They’re getting awards

Ooo girl, they got the panels,

look at those colors

It’s in today.

They’re building that girl up

instead of dragging her down,

fluffing her hair, instead of cutting it off

they’re letting him speak, and giving him space.

Child, brown is in today.

That’s the fourth movie I seen in the hood,

Is that a little black girl as a lead?

I think I see someone in politics,

let’s see how long it lasts.

Ma! Brown is in today,

but that girl is still wearing dark foundation, that does not belong to her . . .

and that man is still falsely accused . . . he never got to explain himself . . .

that woman can’t walk into work natural, because her hair is unprofessional . . .

a thigh gap “isn’t genetic” and “You’ll never look like the rest of them”

Her braids are ghetto, but her braids are fashion.

That’s okay, hey, chin up girlfriend.

Maybe brown will be in tomorrow.
What makes technology a companion
By: Ross Ingram
Tags: Technology Companion, Star Wars, Companions, Technology, Tech

I’m anxious. I’ve done this a handful of times before. My first product launch kept me up until 4 a.m. emailing potential customers. I was so worried (and tired) that I slept at the office. We did the launch thing several more times, expanding the Sphero global footprint. With each product addition came higher expectations as more people became interested in our quirky toy robots.

This one is different. Maybe it was anticipation from the several months of planning that went into orchestrating this cross functional symphony. Or maybe the churn in my stomach came from a decreased appetite since landing in Tokyo well over a week ago. Piled on with restless sleep. Whatever is making me anxious, i’m sure it has everything to do with the new Droid companion we’re about to share with the world.

I don’t really know much about BB-8. Only that he is the trusty sidekick of Poe Dameron, an X-Wing commander, and has some role to play in the upcoming Star Wars film.

Along with my colleagues, I became fascinated with the idea that the toys of today would blossom into the companions of tomorrow. I witnessed this firsthand. Our customers would talk to their robot and share aspects of their own identity. But what is a companion?