fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Bitcoin Black Friday
By: Rhea Craib
Tags: Retail, Crypto, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, Black Friday

We all like discounts and sales, and no more so than on Black Friday, which is almost upon us (This Friday 23rd November.

What originally started in the US has now become an international occasion representing the beginning of the holiday shopping season. Retail outlets around the world open early to allow shoppers to take advantage of discounts and special offers on everything from clothing and electrical goods to cars and jewellery creating a ‘shopping buzz’ around the globe that pretty much all of us have taken part in one way or another!

The anticipated event was not something that the world of crypto was going to miss out on! Bitcoin Black Friday started back in 2012 in a bid to promote Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency community. The one day sale is the internet’s day for the ultimate consumer experience, offering the Bitcoin community a fun event to participate in while showing support for all those merchants that accept payment in Bitcoin. Just like the traditional high street Black Friday, Bitcoin Black Friday sees hundreds of retailers offering cryptocurrency users special offers on all kinds of goods to be paid for in Bitcoin.

Sites such as Spendabit lists products from over 400 different stores, here you can purchase anything from a designer watch and iPad to books, sportswear and electrical goods. Those who are looking to decorate before the festive period can take advantage of serious home furnishing discounts from Overstock, If you are looking for that extra special handmade or vintage gift then we recommend checking out Etsy. If something more extraordinary is on your list then why not treat yourself to some cryptoart.

Over the years we have seen the number of retail merchants offering Bitcoin as a payment option rise significantly, this not only places Bitcoin on the map as a serious method of exchange but highlights the increase of cryptocurrency adoption.

Whether you are looking to treat yourself or purchase gifts for the whole family, Black Friday is the perfect opportunity to experiment and make a purchase with cryptocurrency — you might be surprised at just how easy it is.

If you are new to the world of cryptocurrency and would like to find out more about Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency revolution before Black Friday, take a look at B21 Life cryptocurrency and blockchain technology education app. Here you can learn the basics, keep up to date with the latest news from within the cryptoverse and find out some fun and interesting facts.

We are always interested to hear from the crypto community, so let us know what you will be purchasing with your Bitcoin this Black Friday in the comments below! Our next blog will take a look at the top Bitcoin Black Friday purchases!
The Washing Machine
By: Lubna Yusuf
Tags: Poetry, Time, Love, Thoughts, Everyday Life

The Washing Machine

Blank Verse

Line Art Lubna Yusuf

The washing machine rumbles in quick wash mode

I pause my poetry for awhile

for things to be done, a day to go by

Plates, pots, pans sulk in the kitchen sink, staring in demand

The milk comes to a boil, I stir the bubbles

they rise, swell and spill out making a scene

again.

The washing machine gives a loud tumble roar

Ants take a detour as I scrub off the warm milk stain from the counter

but it has seeped into the crevices of the cold marble,

where you had put me down and taken me

Gentle and wild at once

In sweet warmth of wet skin

Sugar grains on coarse salt

Soak, tremble, spin, and drain

With one last groan it is done

aloud beeped the washing machine

A perfect wash to my poetry
Cryptoshares Pre-sale Now Live!
By: Tom Underwood
Tags: Blockchain, ICO, Investing, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency

We are excited to announce that the Cryptoshares pre-sale is now live! Get in quick for the 40% bonus as there are only 10 million Cryptoshares available for pre-sale! The pre-sale will run until March 31 or until the allocated 10 million Cryptoshares for the for pre-sale have been sold out. Due to unexpected demand the pre-ICO was forced to close a week early, so Cryptoshares may not last long.

Cryptoshares can be purchased in a variety of currencies including ETH, BTC, DASH, BCH, ETC and more via the payment portal. Click the button below to create your payment portal account and purchase your Cryptoshares!

Purchase Cryptoshares!

If the button does not work, simply copy and paste the follow link into your browser: https://ico.localcoinswap.com

We look forward to working together with all of you to build something revolutionary!

Kind regards,

The LocalCoinSwap Team
Tyler’s Travel Tales: Rwanda & Uganda
Tags: Rwanda, Social Impact, Africa, Water, Uganda

Part 3: I’ll be Dancing Like This

March 9th, 2018

The way you advertise a hotel seems to change as one moves from the city out into the more rural parts of Uganda. It’s almost as if you go from ‘ways we work to make you comfortable’ to ‘ways we work to distract you from your level of discomfort.’ As we drove out of Kampala today, the hotel signs quickly shifted from “free WiFi” and “air conditioning” to “cold drinks” and “pool table.” One sign simply said, “accommodation and meals” — with “meals” in quotation marks. I don’t even know what that means.

Right now, I’m laying on a not-so-cushiony, 3-inch-thick mattress that has surely seen bed bugs, I just killed a mosquito inside of my mosquito net, and I’m sweating. All of that to say… we should’ve done Uganda first. But here we are! Ready to start the second leg of our trip.

Before I get into that though — I owe you an update on our finish in Rwanda!

We spent our final few days in Rwanda visiting a community (and district) that does not yet have access to clean water. Families there, who live even higher up in the hills, make a three hour round trip each day to collect water from an unprotected source about 1,000 feet below. When there’s a line of people waiting (and there’s almost always a line), it can easily take another hour. So all-in, you’re looking at 4–5 hours every day for just one or two Jerry Cans of dirty water.

(Just to make it real… that’s like half of a season of Game of Thrones spent walking and waiting every single day.)

Once again, we found an incredibly lovable family who was willing to share their stories with us… a 50-year-old farmer and mother of six named Dativa who lost her husband in the Rwandan genocide and has been working hard to take care of her family on her own ever since. I’ll let the video series bring her to life later this year, but I will tell you that when we asked her what she would do when she saw clean water come out of a tap near her home for the first time (because she didn’t believe it would happen), she literally stood up and started dancing. “I will be dancing like this!” she exclaimed.

It was a powerful end to our week in Rwanda — knowing that Dativa and hundreds of others in her community will be dancing in celebration of clean water later this year. Moments like that make moments like this current mosquito net prison so well worth it.

Tomorrow, we hit the ground running in Uganda, where we’ll be working for the next week. If you want to map it, we’re staying in a town called Bugiri and spending our days near Lake Victoria (the largest lake in Africa) in the Namayingo District.

With the rural-ness also comes a lack of wifi. So don’t count on me for your basketball pools just yet. But I’ll try to report in when I can. In the meantime, thank you for all of your messages and prayers.

More to come!

Love, Tyler
As of next year B.C.
By: Moni Vazquez
Tags: Short Form, Covid 19, Short Read, History, Short Story

As of next year B.C. shall not mean Before Christ anymore. History is rewriting itself and created a new, worldwide landmark: the Coronavirus.

Believer, denier? Irrelevant. As it is irrelevant whether one believes in a little baby coming right at this time of year and growing up to be a lover of the righteous and a hater of… anyone else. The entire world counts years cutting a line in Before and After Christ.

Given the world-wide changes in human consciousness, life, habits and even words I propose we start fresh and call 2021 year 1 A.C.

First year after Coronavirus. The beginning of humanity coming together under a shared desire of compassion, support, and cooperation.

A dream, but we have to start somewhere…
Making A Splash
By: Mark Starlin
Tags: Fame, Humor, Fiction, Satire, Goals

Cyl had finally accomplished his dream of fame. He was the object of countless photographs. It wasn’t easy. He had to weather many storms to get where he was, sacrificing almost everything for his dream. But he had made it.

Now that he was famous, Cyl thought back to the years he spent underground as a drainage pipe. And before that, a Pringles can. And that one awful January as a Slinky. An ill-fated Christmas present for Danny Demolition.

It had been a tough climb, but none of it mattered now. He was a lighthouse, and no one would ever ignore him again.
Why I Take Netflix and Prime Videos on a Monthly Subscription(and Cancel Immediately)
By: Manoj Surya
Tags: Self Help, Happiness, Productivity, Sleep, OTT

Why I Take Netflix and Prime Videos on a Monthly Subscription(and Cancel Immediately)

#1 hack to save your money, time, sleep and to do something better

Photo by Thibault Penin on Unsplash

Amazon Prime yearly subscription would cost me 30% less than If I pay monthly.

While there is no yearly subscription for Netflix, I tend to cancel my card whenever I subscribe for a month. So there will not be any auto-renewal.

I got into this habit of paying monthly when I figured I was binge-watching and lost control of my sleep cycle.

There are days where I pushed through my day at work because my before night went binge-watching a series.

Once I started taking a monthly subscription, there were days where I was bored in the middle of the month because there are no new films or series I would like.

I might be doing this over a year and I can say I might have taken Netflix or Prime Videos subscription only for 5–6 months overall.

By doing this, I saved money. I got my ‘Me Time’ for many weeks or months because I was not in the Netflix or Prime Videos Worm Hole. My sleep pattern was much better.

I consciously decided not to renew Prime videos even If I am keeping an order on Amazon to save delivery costs. It’s just a big No.

The way I see it. My time is way costlier.

I was spending a lot of time on Amazon Prime or Netflix where I was not having too much satisfaction.

Even worse, half the time was just going in selecting which movie or series to watch.

In my opinion, I saved a few hundred dollars(or Indian rupees in my case) that I would have saved taking a yearly subscription. Because I value my time way beyond what I would save on a yearly subscription.

In my experience, there is not a single time where I took Amazon prime or Netflix for two consecutive months. I used the time I had for reading books, writing or sleeping early. All of which made me happy.

I am not saying you should avoid watching any movies or series. My point is, you may not need them the whole year and you may want to cancel it on the same day you renew(so it ends on your next month). You will know if you want to renew it for next month or not.

You won’t even have the Fear of Missing out feeling when you do not renew your subscription. Try it for yourself and see if is helping you free up your time.
How to build management skills before you’re a manager
By: Katie Riley
Tags: Product Design, Management, Design, Promotion, Startup

Giving effective feedback

Your success as a manager is measured by the outcomes of your team; giving your direct reports feedback is a critical way to drive better outcomes.

Feedback should tell you what to do in the future to get a successful outcome. This excellent anecdote from Sunstein & Thaler’s book Nudge explains how simple yet critical feedback is:

Suppose you are practicing your putting skills on the practice green. If you hit ten balls towards the same hole, it is easy to get a sense of how hard you have to hit the ball. … Suppose instead you were putting the golf balls but not getting to see where they were going. In that environment, you could putt all day and never get any better.

As a manager, you are the one with visibility into how well your directs are “putting.” By giving frequent feedback, your directs will have more ability to improve over time.

But giving feedback can be tough. As a manager, you’ll need to do it often, but at least from my experience, it’s not something I practiced as an IC. When my role changed, I struggled with feeling like the judge of others — I worried my directs would find me mean and dislike me. I really hated the mental image that someone who reported to me would go home to complain about me over dinner that night.

So if you see management in your future, practice giving feedback, and practice often. Books like Radical Candor can be a great guide on the theory and best-practices of giving feedback, but the more practice you can get now, the more comfortable you will be when you do make the switch to management.

How to practice giving feedback as an IC

Use your 1:1s

Tell your manager you want to build this skill, then use your regularly scheduled 1:1 as a safe space to practice. (Are you sensing a theme yet?) Ask your manager to give you one piece of feedback a week; write it down and consider the words used, the structure of the delivery, and your reactions — think about what made it effective or weak, and discuss that with your manager. Practice repeating the feedback given to you out loud to get comfortable with speaking the words. If they are open to it, give your manager one piece of feedback each week, and discuss the delivery the same way.

Making your 1:1s work for you is a great way to fit in time for your own growth and development each week.
KuCoin Users Can Now Manage Their Portfolios With Shrimpy
Tags: Blockchain, Investing, Technology, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency

The people have spoken. They want Shrimpy with KuCoin.

Shrimpy users love KuCoin. The diverse selection of assets paired with the support for NEP-5 Tokens makes it an attractive addition to our platform. Today, we are rolling out KuCoin to all Shrimpy users.

Sign up today to begin managing your KuCoin assets through Shrimpy. It’s free to use and easy to get started.
The Only Valuable Success is What Matters to You
By: A Singular Story
Tags: Success, Mental Health, Culture, Life Lessons, Self

The Only Valuable Success is What Matters to You

You get to define achievement for yourself

Photo by Juan Jose on Unsplash

One day, I discovered I was dead in every sense of the word but for the inconvenient fact I was still breathing. Back then, being alive had been a burden for some years, one I spent most of my waking hours seeking to eradicate. In terms of execution, I went as far as tipping all the pharmaceuticals I had amassed courtesy of my script jockey bully of a GP into soiled cat litter. No matter how much I wanted to exit life, I knew I’d never have it in me to methodically sift through two days worth of fossilized turds and pee patties.

This was my first brush with tangible achievement in many, many years: I outsmarted a brain that wanted me dead; I saved my own life by taking away the one weapon that had been taunting me daily. Doing so cleared up considerable space in my bathroom cabinet and made me wonder what I might fill it with, what might feel like love on my neglected body. This was a novel thought; self-care is often anathema to depressives and I hadn’t seen a hairdresser for a year and a half by that point. While I had always maintained excellent personal hygiene, mine was a minimalistic, no frills approach; I was clean but I looked like death.

Since shops don’t sell hugs, I got a tube of body lotion instead. To funnel what little money I had at my disposal into such a luxury felt like a bold declaration of love to life. I decided to find out what might happen if I stopped dying for a while and tried to extricate myself from major depressive disorder stasis.

Was it even something I could do?
Consistency is hard
By: Joseph Emmi
Tags: Writing, Life, Journal, Discipline, Commitment

Consistency is hard

So here we go again…

Consistency is an attribute or skill that many wish to have or aspire to. It is hard though, that’s why many fail along the way, quit after a few attempts or don’t get the courage to even try in the first place.

Why?

Because it’s not only about repetition, which indeed is key and intrinsic, but about discipline, saying no and trying over and over again. It’s about the fight against yourself, the bad habits, distractions, temptations, or whatever that can get in the middle between you and the goal you’re trying to achieve.

That’s it. Plain and simple.

How to overcome this? Try and and try again.

It will feel shit, yes. Some days or weeks will happen in between the last solid stint you had and you’ll ask yourself ‘why?’ – Why are you unable to get back into it when you had such a great period three weeks ago? You were committed, focused and strong. You had it.

And you Actually did, but something else came up, and then you said tomorrow, and the same the day after that. You probably even tried to catch with those pending days, trying to fill the gaps so you could get back on track and continue that spree like if nothing ever happened.

Then probably the weekend arrived or you were tired, that lead to a bigger break and without even noticing you don’t know where to start again. The momentum is now lost.

Now what?

You’ll probably debate what to do. Should you start from scratch again? Should you pick up where you left? Is it even worth to try one more time? What if you start and stop again? Do you really want to do it? But most importantly, why is that it feels so difficulty again? I mean, you already done it before, right?

The last is a great question and is worth to explore to find out, so you can tackle properly and react upon it next time it occurs rather than succumb upon it.

To the rest of the question, the answer is all the same and it’s simple. IT DOESN’T MATTER.

There’s only one answer to all these. IT DOESN’T MATTER.

It doesn’t matter what you’ve done, what you thought, the intention of picking up. It’s all about the actions.

You stopped? START AGAIN

Those questions are not going to help you, and probably nor will do the answers, because no matter how it looks or sounds like, it will still in your head.

This is about execution. It’s doesn’t matter how big or small. Action and nothing else.

Want to do/create/make stuff? The go do that stuff. You stop? You start again.

And yes, in case you wondering, what this me talking to me self, this is me starting over again, and again, and again…
How To Become The Best Version Of Yourself
By: Steve Spring
Tags: Self Improvement, Inspiration, Happiness, Life Lessons, Health

How To Become The Best Version Of Yourself

Pursuing meaning is the true path to success

“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life,” — Viktor Frankl

Viktor Frankl was a prominent Jewish psychiatrist and neurologist who spent three years in a Nazi concentration camp. During his time in the camp, he lost everything he had including his wife and both parents.

But, somehow he survived the worst conditions imaginable and went on to write a bestselling book, Man’s Search for Meaning, which tells his experiences in the camp. In his book, he tells us that the difference between those who died and those who lived came down to having meaning.

“Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.” — Viktor Frankl

Meaning is what kept Viktor Frankl alive, and meaning can also help you become the best version of yourself.
Quick Lessons in Data Science practice
Tags: Analytics, Data Analytics, Machine Learning, Data Science, Data Analysis

Become Sherlock Homes by applying Feature Engineering in practice

Basic statistics and mathematics is your compass in the field of Data Science. You must have it to have a sense of direction.

You are better-off choosing one of R or Python or Matlab or any other platform, and become a master in it than attempting to get dirty with all of these.

Right from the start, version-control your work with a tool like Git/Github/Bitbucket. It can save you from a lot of headaches.

Don’t under-estimate the importance of understanding the problem domain. Domain knowledge is the secret weapon for Data-Manipulation.

Don’t under-estimate data cleansing. It pays to cleanse your data.

Pay attention to how you impute your data and document why you took that approach.

Don’t ignore exploratory data analysis (a.k.a EDA). It not only improves your problem-domain knowledge, but also instigates your creative juices towards solutioning.

The EDA that you do in the beginning is the road that you lay for your presentation on insights and solutioning to business stake-holders in the end.

Master the art of Feature Engineering to improve your probabilities of becoming the celebrity Sherlok Homes of Data Science.

Don’t jump into esoteric modelling. Start simple.

Don’t jump into a model because it is popular. Know how the model works and how you can tune it to improvise it.

It is better to make Data Scaling as mandatory part of your data pipeline, than have it as an optional thing. It gives more options to try out various models.

Data-modelling is both the art and science of finding that optimal trade-off between bias and variance. Enjoy the game.

Almost always you don’t get a 100% accuracy with your data-modelling. And when you get it, question yourself and your approach. Triple-check your understanding and get it reviewed before celebrating. Save yourself the unwarranted heart-break.

Find opportunities to pair-up with someone to teach or learn. You will end up learning something for sure. It has its definitive ROI for you.

Up-skill with deliberate practice. How well you practice (quality)is equally important if not more than how much you practice (quantity).

That is all to the list…for now.

Got something to add to the list? Do share your pro-tips as comments.

Like what you read? Don’t forget to click the clap button and share it with your circles.

Have a feedback or two for me? Do drop your comments below. I’m all ears for it.
Hypothesis test with an example. Untangle hypothesis test with a…
By: Chandrasekhar Gundluru
Tags: Hypothesis Testing, Machine Learning, Mathematics, Stats, Data Science

Introduction:

what is a Hypothesis testing?

A statistical test that gives evidence to accept or reject the null hypothesis with a sample of data from the condition which is true for the entire population.

If we have to show two distributions are different then we prove by contradiction by assuming both distributions are the same which is our null hypothesis.

Example:

Consider C1, C2 population heights of students fom two classooms. The problem is to prove that the mean heights of C1 and C2 are the same.

Steps to follow for Hypothesis Testing:

a)Choose the Test Statistic:

Test statistic=The difference in population means.

Observed difference in mean (uc1-uc2) = 30

The test statistic has to be calculated given the data.

b)Assume the Null Hypothesis(H0) and the alternate hypothesis(H1)

Null Hypothesis (H0)= There is no difference in the means C1 and C2

There is no difference in the means C1 and C2 Alternative Hypothesis (H1)=There is a difference in the means of C1 and C2

c)Set the Significance Level (alpha)

Set alpha based on business requirements say 0.15(15%) in this case

d)Calculate P-Value with resampling and permutation test:

“The p-value is the probability of obtaining the test statistic result from the sample data assuming that the null hypothesis is correct.”

P-Value=P(Occurring ofobservation|H0 is assumed to be true)

resampling and permutation test: As the null hypothesis is true, the assumption here is C1 and C2 are the same.

C=C1 union C2 Sample C1' and C2' from C find difference in mean from these sample U’

repeat this experiment for 1000 times store{U’1, U’2, U’3'……….U’1000}

If 900 times means of sampled data< 30(observed test statistic) then p-value=100/1000==0.10

p-value==0.10

e)Reject or accept the Null Hypothesis.

p-value (0.1) is less than 0.15 (significance value) Hence, we got evidence to reject the null hypothesis, there is a difference between the means of heights of the students from two classrooms.

Reference:

www.appliedaicourse.com

Check out:
Luxor Tech Launches Bitcoin Pool
By: Luxor Tech
Tags: Cryptocurrency Mining, Mining Pool, Community Update, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency

We’re excited to reveal our biggest product launch to date: a Bitcoin Mining Pool.

Luxor Tech is North America’s largest mining pool operator, supporting 15 different coins and over 8,500 miners. We are experienced in delivering high quality pools, with strong uptime and customer service and are thrilled to bring this knowledge to the Bitcoin Mining Industry!

A Brief Timeline

Luxor was founded in late 2017 by a team of devs committed to creating high-quality mining products to support the industry.

The company was created because we truly believe that crypto will fundamentally change value creation & transfer in our future society (for the better). From the beginning, we have all thought of classical Nakamoto consensus (Proof-of-Work) as the only proven and tested mechanism for securing a decentralized platform. We revisit this debate as a team monthly, and our conviction in the consensus mechanism is still as strong today as it was back in 2017. This means the future of decentralized finance will require responsible guardians to efficiently harness energy to maintain the security of networks. We strive to be one of those responsible guardians.

We started 2018 with a small team and two mining pools. Over time, we received great feedback from our community. We understood that miners valued high-grade mining pools with strong customer support and a mission to improve the ecosystem in which they operated.

By October 2019, we have built a total of 15 public mining pools and a suite of enterprise-level mining products. We are proud of what our team members have been able to build with the support and feedback of our community.

Pool Details

We are excited to introduce our first PPS+ pool. For further information on PPS+ please check out this article we wrote.

Our Bitcoin pool is AsicBoost compatible, allowing miners to improve the efficiency of their operations.

We are starting by offering Nodes in the US, China, Asia (Singapore) and Europe.

What’s next?

In the horizen, Luxor plans to implement Stratum V2 which among other things gives individual miners the ability to control which Bitcoin transactions to include in their newly mined blocks. As a result, the Bitcoin network becomes more decentralized and censorship resistant as operators of large pools no longer centrally determine which transactions to include into blocks.

How to Get Involved

We are continuing to expand our operations, please contact us at hello@luxor.tech if you would like to partner to further build our mining community.

We’re also on Discord. Ping us there at https://discord.gg/5qPRbDS

Also follow us on Twitter for Pool Updates: https://twitter.com/LuxorTechTeam
The Most Awesome Paradox Ever (Part I)
By: Hein De Haan
Tags: Game Theory, Paradox, Artificial Intelligence, Choices

Impossible to solve? Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

After a lot of research and programming, your work is finally done: you built an Artificial Superintelligence. Just like Skynet from the Terminator franchise, your ASI starts to “learn at a geometric rate”. In particular, you notice how good it is at understanding human psychology: it predicts human decisions so accurately, it becomes creepy.

On a sunny Saturday, your ASI decides to play a game with you. It places two boxes (box A and box B) on the table in front of you. Box A is opened and you see a thousand dollars inside. Box B, however, is closed, so you don’t know what’s in it. The ASI gives you a choice: you can either get box B only, or get both box A and box B. Then it tells you the twist: it has made a prediction about the choice you will make. If the ASI predicted you pick box B only, it will contain a million dollars. If on the other hand the ASI predicted you will pick both boxes, box B will contain nothing. You know your ASI to be an extremely good predictor. What will you do?

The dilemma above is called Newcomb’s Paradox, after its creator William Newcomb. As it turns out, there is a so-called dominant strategy, and it is picking both boxes. You see, there is either a million or zero dollars in box B. If box B contains a million dollars, choosing only box B will get you a million dollars, but picking both boxes will give you a million plus a thousand dollars. So in this case, picking both boxes wins. If box B contains zero dollars, picking both boxes will still get you a thousand dollars more than picking only box B, because box A always contains a thousand dollars. Picking both boxes wins again! So, it’s an easy decision, right?

Well, no. You see, while the above analysis is perfectly logical, there is another strategy that seems equally valid: assuming the ASI’s prediction is correct (which it in all probability is), there are only two outcomes to this game: either you choose box B and John predicted you would, or you choose box A and B and, again, John predicted you would. Looking at it like this, you either get a million dollars (by picking only box B) or a thousand dollars (by picking both boxes). Clearly, picking only box B wins in this analysis.

It seems there are two perfectly valid but opposing strategies. Discuss your strategy in the comments!
नई डायरी
By: Aditya Ojha
Tags: Hindi, Memoir, Diary, Littérature

Galiyaara Podcast

Hindi Podcast | Your coolest hotspot for Hindi and Urdu literature | Poetries and Desi Stories |
Cook up success with this recipe for teamwork…
Tags: Success, Team, Design, Motion Design, Teamwork

At Created we got our measuring cups out to give you our favourite recipe for tasty team success:

1. Pre-heat the oven with Trust

Trust is the solid foundation of a great team; the dough, if you will. But you’re going to need a few important ingredients to make that sweet sweet base.

Numero uno, you’ll need clear boundaries. These can be clear personal or set by the company, like contactable hours.

You’ll need to be reliable. If you don’t deliver on those promises, trust is immediately threatened.

Don’t forget: everyone needs to be accountable. Speak up if you screw up. Make sure everyone feels they’ll be supported, not blamed.

Check out Brene Brown’s amazing work on The Seven Elements of Trust for more about generosity and making time for others.

2. Add lashings of responsibility

Give your team space and lots of autonomy. It’s the spoonful of sugar to sweeten the deal.

The role of a leader, self-appointed or not, is to help people come up with answers, not dictate them. Teams need to feel a sense of ownership over their work. Don’t let a head chef’s ego get in the way of team input.

3. Roll together with common goals

Any team needs a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Sometimes the smell of hot cookies just won’t cut it.

Every member of the team needs to be aligned towards a common goal. Every person needs to understand why they are there, what’s expected of them and what unique flavour they bring to the table.

4. Let it burn. Make mistakes.

Mistakes are GREAT. Sometimes it’s the only way to learn what works.

When things go squiffy, don’t berate your team. If someone makes a mistake, everyone who’s part of the project has a responsibility to fix it and help.

5. Ice the cake: communicate

Communicate, communicate, communicate. We just can’t communicate to you how much you need to communicate.

Find the magic taste combination that works best for your team: email, Slack, Asana… Whatever it is, find it, use it and review them regularly to check their still to everyone’s taste.

P.S. Did we mention you should communicate?

6. Compliments to the chef

Get yourself some self-raising feedback. It should be part of your team’s culture. If nothing’s raised, it can’t be changed.

Keep your emotions out of it, give and receive it factually and you’ll be just fine.

With this advice, we know you’ll cook up a storm. Keep ideas and ingredients fresh, and take those setbacks with a pinch of salt.

Related Resource
Popcorn, oscars and prototypes: #CinemaJourney hackathon
By: Next Media Accelerator
Tags: Hackathon, Media, Virtual Reality, Cinema, Tech

#hackathon #movie #film #innovation #media

Going to the cinema is for some people a hobby, for others a passion. Some like to watch movies together with friends, others prefer to devour a bag of popcorn on their own. At #CinemaJourney hackathon, participants had the challenge to make the experience of going out to watch a movie as innovative and engaging as possible.

Lights, camera and…hack

The first hackathon organized with weischer.media, the biggest cinema advertising agency in Germany, gathered an international crowd in a brand new, inspiring location, the Ruby Hans Coworking, in Hamburg.

Participants from around 10 countries got together in teams and at the end of two-and-a-half days presented nine ideas to transform the cinema, be it by using VR and AR to interact with movies, or by getting personalized souvenirs and cutting lines before the film starts.

Mentors

The hackathon journey would not have been as fun and rewarding without the help of the mentors, who dedicated time to talk with all teams, share their expertise and give advices (and also let them play with VR Oculus in the meantime).

Sarah Lee, Art Director — NPIRE GmbH, Jannis Funk, Co-Founder Cinuru Research, Ira Tittler, Program Manager Next Commerce Accelerator (NCA), Simon Graff, avid nerd, and VR enthusiast, Franziska Knoefel, Manager Digital Revolution (Weischer.Media), Robert, Weischer.Media Kino Nerd, Stoyan Yankov, productivity and performance coach.

Jury, mentors, organisation team, VR and popcorn overload: some highlights of the hackathon.

Jury

A special thanks also to the jury members (aka the academy), whose complementary points of view (from the cinema management to acting) helped facing the uneasy task of selecting three winners.

Stefan Kuhlow (CEO, Werbeweischer GmbH & Co. KG), Matthias Wolk (Co-founder, VRtualX), Bastian Schimon (Marketing Manager, Flebbe Filmtheater), Lydia Richter (Actress, storyteller, filmmaker and designer)

And the Oscar goes to…
Eavesdropper
By: Enne Baker
Tags: English, Poetry, Art, Creativity, Literature

Poetry

Eavesdropper

A Poem

Photo by Franco Antonio Giovanella on Unsplash

I thank the cobblestones

In silence while you

Were following me.

I am talking to a

Friend of a friend, of

A friend—a gaggle of

Doppelgangers in my

Life, saying the same things,

Praying one day you follow

And hear me.

My tongue is dancing freely

With information, licking

Behind your war shot

Ear.

Like a rack of

Clothes, you hung on to

My every word.

The death of my

Husband had just occurred,

And it couldn’t be neither of

Us,

My deaf-friend and I,

That day of the meeting.

This small city is my country,

A black sheep herding the blackest of

Sheep, to slaughter and eaten lamb.
Toll The Human
By: Mike Essig
Tags: Hope, Poetry, Art, Writing, Life

Shutterstock

In each finale, there is a start.

Never such a thing as truly over.

It is not difficult to argue

that this is no time for the fatuous

and that nothing is more fatuous

than scribbling poetry at dawn.

But love and desire will out.

We must sing of this world

not some better unknown star.

The given is the wool we weave.

All times, equally terrible,

equally sublime.

The eternal politics of horror

must never cloak the human heart

in hopeless, dreary night.

We must cling to the light,

and insist the better bells

of our only human souls toll.
Ebooks, Audiobooks Are Popular, But Print Books Remain King
Tags: Technology, Books, Reading, Gadgets, eBooks

According to the Pew Research Center, 65 percent of Americans have read a print book in the past year, while 25 percent have read an ebook and 20 percent have listened to an audiobook.

By Rob Marvin

We spend most of our time at PCMag talking about the endless wave of technological innovation changing society for better and for worse, but that doesn’t mean the old world just stops.

My favorite example of this is reading. While more and more Americans get their news from social media and do most of their reading on ebooks, tablets, and smartphones, the majority of adults still read old-fashioned print books.

According to a study from Pew Research Center, print books continue to be significantly more popular than ebooks or audiobooks. Around 72 percent of US adults told Pew they’ve read a book in some format in the past year, and 65 percent of those respondents said they read a print book. That’s compared to 63 percent in 2015, though the last two surveys show a drop from 71 percent in 2011. Only 25 percent of respondents said they read an ebook, which is down 2 percent from 2015.

The share of Americans who listen to audiobooks has also risen, from 14 percent in 2015 to 20 percent in 2019. For most respondents, though, it’s not one or the other; it’s a mix. While 37 percent of readers said they read only print, 28 percent read both print and ebooks or audiobooks, and only 7 percent read in digital formats. That said, about a quarter of respondents haven’t read a book in the past year at all.

Personally, I’ve tried ebooks and audiobooks. While I read most of my news via digital media outlets these days, when it comes to books, I’m still exclusively print. In a world where so much of our day is spent staring at one screen or another, one of my favorite feelings is putting my devices out of reach and picking up a paperback.
Insomnio
By: Uriel Cortes
Tags: Noche, Español, Pensamientos

in Eudaimonia and Co
LexNLP — Library For Automated Text Extraction & NER
By: Rohan Gupta
Tags: NLP, Text, Named Entity Recognition, Machine Learning, Data Science

LexNLP — Library For Automated Text Extraction & NER

Using LexPredict, upcoming advanced library for Named Entity Recognition (NER) to extract names, addresses, dates, etc.

Introduction

A few weeks ago, I had to extract certain types of data from a set of documents and wondered what was the best way to do it. The documents were all leasing forms with data such as entity names, addresses, dates, amounts, conditions, etc.

I started out the old fashioned way, using regex to identify certain fields with their respective synonyms in each document. I had to manually set up the rules for extracting each type of field.

Photo by micah boswell on Unsplash

However, I later discovered LexNLP and its capabilities. All of my required data was extracted with LexNLP without having to write any rules. I was quite amazed by the library, but did not find any tutorials apart from the documentation. So, here I am creating a gateway to LexNLP for other data professionals who could benefit from its features.

Below is an overview of LexNLP, which is made by ContraxSuite. I provide examples for extracting certain kinds of data such as dates, entity names, money, and addresses. The library is currently available for extraction in English, Spanish and German.
Duration of The Cycle
By: Kieran D. Kelly
Tags: Neoclassical Physics, Neoclassical Relativity, Relativity, Physics, Special Relativity

T-min

The “frequency” of light is always expressed in cycles per second, and is therefore just another way of talking about the time interval or “duration” (T) of a single cycle. Accordingly, there is an inverse relationship between duration and frequency, which is given by

Equation (16) ______________ T= 1/f

This means that the relationship between the duration of a cycle and its cycle-length can be written as

Equation (17) _____________ T= (λ-c) / (c)

Given that c is a constant, this equation effectively tells us that as the duration goes down, so too does the cycle-length. But we know, from equation (13) above, that the cycle-length can never go to zero, which means that the duration can never go to zero. Consequently, when the cycle-length is set to its minimum value equation (17) becomes

Equation (18) __________ T-min = (λ-min) / (c)

Thus, we can now see that a further consequence of the second postulate of NCR is that no cycle duration can be less than a “minimum duration” (T-min).

And, given that (λ-min) equals (2π) times the Planck Length, the minimum duration of any cycle must therefore be equal to (2π) times the Planck Time.

[Note 1: This equates to a time of 3.38742 x 10⁻ ⁴³ seconds.]

[Note 2: I will show at a later date that T-min is the smallest unit of time, not the Planck Time as is widely believed.]

Thus, having previously established that no cycle-length can be less than a minimum distance, we now see that that fact requires that every cycle must also have at least a minimum duration.

With this concept in mind, let us now look at what this tells us about cycle duration in general.
I’ve Forgotten Far More Than I’ve Remembered
By: M.G. Siegler
Tags: Information, Productivity, Books, John Carmack, Reading

This is something I think about quite often as well and honestly why I think I read fewer books versus, say, news articles. That sounds lame on the surface because a book is viewed as more prestigious and rich, but I think the flipside of what Carmack is saying is also true: books are stuffed with far more filler than an article, obviously (also obviously talking about non-fiction here).

As Carmack goes on in his tweet thread, I also sometimes look a pile of unread books (or even the ones in digital form on my Kindle) and think: my god, I don’t think I’ll ever get through all of this in my lifetime. Even if I set out to do it, I don’t think it’s a realistic goal given that more new books are always coming out that I would want to read too. This “in my lifetime” spooks me a bit — we’re already beyond what I can possibly get to, even though I want to.

And the point about AI is seemingly tangential, but it is interesting to consider that while not only may we not get to all the books we want to read, nor may we retain all the info we do read, a computer would suffer from neither limitation.
Time
By: Georgia Lewitt
Tags: Poetry, Writing, Time, Fiction, One Line

Her long hair white with the wind,

she shook her head no, time didn’t

steal lives away, a bunch of cells

swarming together found a name

for their disintegration.
Stock Performance Analysis using Financial Functions for Python
By: Caio Milani
Tags: Programming, Technology, Finance, Business, Data Science

Putting it to use

In our framework, we’ll use ffn for all data retrieval and manipulation, as well as matplotlib for the graphical approach.

%matplotlib inline is a ‘magic function’ in iPython, called with a command line style syntax. With this back-end, the output of plotting commands is displayed inline within front-ends like the Jupyter notebook, directly below the code cell that produced it. The resulting plots will then also be stored in the notebook document. Analogously, %pylab inline is used to control the default size of figures in the notebook.

We’ll start using ffn while importing data for analysis. By default, ffn.get function uses Yahoo Finance to gather historical data on securities and futures negotiated in Capital Markets from all over the world. We will restrain our analysis example on four “Big Tech” companies, commonly called “GAFA” — Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon.

This should give us a data frame containing a ‘date’ indexed column, already in datetime format, along with four other columns, each providing the adjusted closing price of the chosen stocks.

As a start, a simple line chart can tell us how all these securities performed over the period.

Note: If you’re interested in a interactive chart approach, checkout my early post.

The .rebase() function allows us to plot the time series from a common starting point, so that we can see how each stock performed relative to each other.

Our next step should be focused on the returns of each security. Tackling frequency distribution, histograms are powerful tools for distinguishing shape, identifying central points, variation, amplitude and symmetry of the returns.

Since we’re looking at four companies from the technology sector, naturally, they follow a similar return pattern. This may be verified by finding the correlation between them, which can be observed by plotting a heat map, as follows:

Now, for ffn’s main performance measurement, we can calculate and display a wide array of statistics using the calc_stats() method.

Although the result interpretation requires a bit of statistical knowledge, this large set of metrics can provide us simple conclusions, such as: Amazon stocks had the best performance between the Big Techs analysed, since, in the given period of the time series (nearly 65 months), the company provided a 671.14% return to it’s share-holders. Apple presented a 182.03% return, followed by Google and Facebook’s almost identical return rate of 139.95% and 139.85%, respectively.

From there, we can also access the underlying performance stats for each series, including monthly returns, drawback charts and more.

Conclusion

Financial Functions for Python provides a huge set of useful information regarding stock performance in a very simple and straight-forward way. Combining it with matplotlib, we can intuitively detect stock trends or patterns, as well as technically interpret statistical insights to tell a enlightening story.
How to Maintain Brand Loyalty in a Pandemic World
By: Rebecca Borrego
Tags: Brand Strategy, Consumer Behavior, Digital Marketing, Pandemic Response, Influencer Marketing

Summer 2020: The Virtual Revolution has dawned. Our economy was destined for a radical shift and COVID-19 has been the catalyst to our new virtualized world. Nearly every industry has been impacted and companies are shifting strategies and prioritizing values in order to stay afloat. Here are 3 ways to maintain brand loyalty in a pandemic world:

Own up to ethical responsibility. Today’s brands are looking beyond their own profits and reflecting upon values and the impact their product or service makes on society. We have seen a spike amongst brands that have established a mission to use their power to positively impact the planet and people. Increased transparency in supply chain, product ingredients and/or profit contributions are all essential to brand trust. Successful brands recognize that consumers hold the largest stake in a brand’s digital voice. In fact, 64% of consumers expect a brand to represent them and solve societal problems. Take your customers through a complete journey. A customer’s experience with a brand starts the moment they decide to research a brand, which makes reviews and peer referrals one of the most important factors in a purchasing decision. As more people are shopping online, the website experience, customer service, packaging, and product integrity are all critical factors to a positive brand experience. Upkeep your product quality standards through digitized word of mouth. Today’s consumers want less volume and higher quality products. The first recession of a generation along with greater awareness of sustainability, calls for products with greater integrity and a lower carbon footprint. We no longer have in-store product samples or the ability to try or touch a product before buying. Purchasing decisions are now completely digital which has given rise to the value of digital word of mouth.

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