fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
MapReduce algorithm and Mumbai’s Dabbawalas!!!!
By: Ananth Packkildurai
Tags: Google, Mapreduce, Dabbawalla, Mumbai

Today I had a chance to watch the Architecting for the Cloud: Demo and Best Practices by Janakiram MSV from Amazon and he through the interesting point about dabbawalas and mapreduce algorithm. I gone through some articles and write it down in my blog.

Dubbawalas functioning

Few things you should know about Dabbawala association:

1. It started in British rule way back in 1880 when many Indian people worked under British dislike the food and they want it to be served to them from home.

2. It got Six sigma certification(CMMi 6 level) which means 99.9999% successful delivery rate

3. Every day they doing 4,00,000 transaction of boxes in the radios of 60 KM in 3 hour.

Now what is MapReduce:

It was introduced by Google in 2004 and Hadoop is the famous open source tool that implements MapReduce Algorithm and it is the backbone of many larger data computations now.MapReduce basically a divide and con-quire algorithm which breaks down the problem in to small components and processing it in parallel to achieve effective computation on a larger data set. It is having two steps.

1. Map

2. Reduce

Map:

In the Map step the master node takes the input, partitions it up into smaller sub-problems, and distributes them to worker nodes. A worker node may do this again in turn, leading to a multi-level tree structure. The worker node processes the smaller problem, and passes the answer back to its master node.

Reduce:

In the Reduce step the master node then collects the answers to all the sub-problems and combines them in some way to form the output — the answer to the problem it was originally trying to solve.

Now do you wonder how dabbawalla functioning similar with MapReduce Algorithm?

Dabbawalla Map step :

Dabbawalla collects the boxes from individual homes of particular area ( Distributed Master node) and sort it out and partition in to groups based on the location and the buildings. Then they distribute in to nearest delivery point (distributed to workers node). Now at the delivery point (the workers point), if it is the destination they switch in to reduce step ( see below of Dabbawalla Reduce Step) else they perform same operation like partitioning and distributing to another delivery point ( next level of workers), which typically form the multilevel tree mode.

Dabbawalla Reduce Step:

Now if it is the destination point, the dabbawala’s collect all the boxes based on the partition and start to delivering it. If a particular building or street needs more boxes to be delivered, they allocate more workers ( dynamically scaling nodes based on the workload).

To read more about MapReduce, read here

Now you could say,
Hunt down social media accounts by username across social networks
By: Tommaso De Ponti
Tags: Hacking, Social Media, Social Network, Cybersecurity, Python

Hunt down social media accounts by username across social networks

How to hunt down Social Media accounts from usernames using Sherlock

Today, we will Hunt Down Social Media Accounts across social networks by using a great tool: Sherlock. This tool allows us to search for Social Media accounts by their usernames.

The first thing we’ll do is installing Sherlock, then we are going to learn how to use it. Finally, we’ll discover on what Social Media platforms Sherlock operates. Let’s get started!

Installation

Sherlock is a tool made in Python, so if you don’t have Python3 installed Sherlock won’t work. To install python3 you can follow this guide.

After having installed Python3, we’re ready to install Sherlock from Github:

If you don’t have git installed you can go through this repo and click the green button: “Clone or Download”, then “Download zip”.

Once you downloaded Sherlock, go through it: cd Sherlock . Now you are ready to use it

Usage

Now it comes the best part, we are going to search the “test” username across Social networks. It is really very simple, to do that just type:

python3 sherlock.py test

This command is going to search the “Test username” in 301 Social Networks.

By executing it you should start seeing as output this:

Done! We searched for one username across 301 Social Networks, now let’s see how we can search for multiple usernames.

Search for multiple usernames

To search for multiple usernames, just execute this command, remember that you must be in the sherlock folder, otherwise, it won’t work:

python3 sherlock.py test1 test2 test3

This command is going to search for tree usernames.

Pretty simple!

On what Platforms does Sherlock operate?

This is a Frequently Asked Question, knowing on what Social Media Platforms Sherlock operates is very important. Luckily, the Sherlock developers created a file in which there is a list of all the platforms Sherlock uses.

You can find this file here. Anyhow, you can also check the list down here:
Download the Profitable Free Traffic Mindset
By: Jeff Herring
Tags: Content Strategy, Content Marketing, Traffic, Traffic Optimization, Writing

Profitable Free Traffic Building

Download the Profitable Free Traffic Mindset

(And What It Is Not)

PresenterMedia with Permission

Profitable traffic building is one of the pillars of profitable online business.

And wanting a profitable online business is why you’re reading this article, right?

I promise to make it worth your investment of time.

The Profitable Traffic Building Mindset

In order to be able to do things in a profitable way, my experience tells me you have to first view things the right way.

So in order to view things the right way, we’re going to look at what the mindset is not, what it is, and how to install it, keep it and profit with it.

What it’s not

So there are lots of myths about creating a profitable influx of new eyeballs on your stuff. One of them is you have to pay for good quality traffic.

Now I have nothing against paid traffic. It’s a good thing. It’s simply that I’ve enjoyed a high 6 figure business for many years now based on 99% non-paid traffic.

So let’s put aside the mindset that the only good traffic is paid traffic.

What it is

Here’s the right way to view no-cost traffic before you do no-cost traffic:

The right free traffic is highly qualified free traffic that will turn into high quality prospects and profits.

Get traffic from junk sites and you’re going to get junk traffic.

Get traffic from authority sites like YouTube and Medium and you’re going to get high quality traffic.

These are folks who have invested anywhere from 2–10 minutes of their time to watch your video or read you article. So they have raised their virtual hand to tell you they are very interested in what you have to offer.

How to install the mindset

3 steps:

1) Discard the notion that no-cost traffic is junk traffic

2) Get it that the right non-paid traffic is high quality traffic

3) Get your content on Medium, get high quality free traffic and enjoy the benefits

How to keep the mindset

If you are not consistently getting and enjoying free traffic, then it’s easy to slip back into the myth that free traffic is junk traffic.

So the way to keep the profitable free traffic mindset is to constantly build your sources of non-paid traffic.

WARNING: This is addictive. So proceed with extreme caution. When you follow these steps on a regular basis it’s very easy to find yourself, on a daily and sometimes hourly basis, enjoying all the benefits of high quality free traffic.

Bonus Tip: — Wanna know how I create profitable content like this in just moments? Easy answer: Templates. And I’ve gathered 21 fresh content ideas and my favorite templates for you into a 26 page guide.

Grab the free guide right here.
Community Voice: Why Do We Love (Or Hate) The Linux Command Line?
By: Oliver Kelly
Tags: Command Line, Terminal, Linux, Questions, Cli

I have been a Linux user for a little over 2 years for my personal computing. During my time with Linux I’ve noticed something: we love the command line. But why?

Pictured: A fun way to get your system’s info | Image by Jason Evangelho on Garuda Linux

What follows is the beginning of an open-ended discussion with the larger Linux comunity…

I spent 20 years using Windows (I still use today for work as a lot of us do) and out of all that time, the only time that stands out when I used the command line in Windows was to ping an IP or google.com to test and diagnose network issues.

In Linux I use it all the time, and I don’t even second guess it.

Want to install an app or a bunch of apps at once? Open terminal:

apt install [APP NAME] [APP NAME] or snap install [APP NAME] [APP NAME]

Moving files and folders around:

mv folder1 folder2

Deleting folders:

rm -rf /folder1

We can even chat on Telegram, listen to our music on Spotify, check the weather, and watch Star Wars through a terminal interface.

Seriously, try this:
I’ll Never Read Every Book There Is
By: Mary, Pepper
Tags: Life, Self, Books, Tech, Reading

Trust me, I am very aware of the people who think that I’m wasting my time trying to devour every book that passes under my nose. They like to publish thought pieces like listicles of all the other things I could be spending my time on or their treasured life hacks for how to speed read or their many resources that seem to be overtaking the grown-up Spark Notes scene.

And that’s great. For them.

I think all of those reading shortcuts do a great job of passing the information from page to brain without all the fuss of those, you know, words in the way.

But to me, that entirely misses the point.

I’m going to keep reading, and I’ll read the whole book at my regular pace, thank you very much.

Because if I thought of reading as a way to convince others of my intellectual worth, I think I’d drive myself into a panic attack near daily.

I’ll freely allow that I am almost certainly not the target audience for suggestions such as those. I am not any kind of high-powered corporate shark, and I am not the CEO of anything but my household.

Even if I was, I still would not consider a single minute of my reading wasted.
What is Code 85?
By: Jonathan Hsu
Tags: Education, Startup, Programming, Business, Coding

Mission Statement

Code 85 exists for the masses. Programming is not just for developers — anybody can be interested in, learn about, and benefit from programming. Whether you are a student or a professional, a child or have children, our content creators are here to help you learn to code.

We’re not here to be on the cutting edge of technology. Our goal is to provide easy-to-understand, accessible guides for anybody taking an interest in programming.

The 85 Brand

The 85 Brand represents learning and accessibility.

According to artificial intelligence research conducted by the University of Arizona, Brown University, UCLA, and Princeton, the optimal success rate for learning is 85%. This means that a failing result occurs the other 15% of the time. The “85% rule” appears to be a sweet spot for maximizing learning and growth.

The 85 Brand also represents an outreach goal. We strive to create content that is accessible for a wide audience. Embodied in style, content, and community, we want to empower as many people as possible to learn a new skill.

How Can You Help?

We’re here to share knowledge, but like they say — it takes a village. Remember that you’re part of a learning community.
The Preacher In The Garden of Evil
By: Carl L Lane
Tags: Life, Sexual Assault, Womens Rights, Race, Religion

I had moved in with Grandmama on Bamboo Street when I was about thirteen, after Mama did the thing, and the preacher would drive down the street in the big black car, with the windows rolled up, with the air blowing. Usually he just blew the horn or waved as he drove by, but from time to time, he would stop in front of some church member’s house and roll the windows down, and talk bible with some old man or some young woman.

One summer day, it was hot as hell and Grandmama didn’t have no air, so I was standing out on the porch with my friend Tangy, before they moved, and the preacher stopped. Me and Tangy both had on shorts and t-shirts. I think we might’ve been fifteen then.

“Grandmama!” I called to her through the screen door when I saw the preacher stop. He smiled big, the way Mama used to say he did when he was trying to get you to put your light bill money in the collection basket.

“Y’all alright?”

“Yes sir, Reverend.” Tangy answered. She was smart and cute, long and thin. As hot as it was, she was nervous talking to the preacher and she rubbed the yellow skin of her arms like she had a chill.

“I haven’t seen either of you young ladies in church in a long time. You’ve become lovely young women since the last time the Lord has seen you in his house.”

We each thanked him. Then the preacher looked right at me.

“How is your mother doing?”

“She’s alright.” I looked down at my feet for a second when he asked me about Mama.

“I’ve been meaning to go down there and pray with her, but you know the church just keeps me so busy.”

“Yes sir.”

“Help me remember your names again, it’s been so long since I’ve seen you ladies.” When he rubbed his thick black and gray mustache the gold band on his finger shined in the sunlight.

“I’m Tangy.”

“And I’m Flower.”

“Flower. Flower.” The preacher said my name over and over, and his lips and teeth moved like he was chewing on it.

Grandmama finally came out, round and solid, drying her hands on an old dish towel, smiling and waving at the preacher, throwing “Praise the Lord’s” and “God bless you’s” into the opened window of the big black car, like fresh flowers at a summer wedding.

They talked for a few minutes and the preacher quoted some scripture. When he asked how she was doing Grandmama told him it was tough with the two of us trying to get by on her social security check, and the preacher said he’d pray for us. The preacher offered to ask the congregation to help, but Grandmama was too proud.

When they had finished talking and the tires of the big black car were just barely starting to roll away, the preacher’s last words were, “Such beautiful young ladies, sure does my heart good.”
The Internet Map: a visual representation of the relationship between 350,000 websites | The Verge
By: Ipg Media Lab
Tags: Google, Internet, Visualization, Traffic, Facebook

The Internet Map: a visual representation of the relationship between 350,000 websites
The Man Who Has Endowed $44.3 Billion is a Frugal Clothes Buyer
Tags: Data Visualization, Data, Data Science

Bill Gates, co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that has a 15-year endowment of U.S. $44.3 billion is a self-proclaimed frugal clothes and jewelry buyer. The U.S. $28.0 billion that Gates himself has donated to the largest private foundation in the world could have bought him 26 million pair of Versace’s most expensive jeans, but he’d rather focus on seeing human society accomplish the 3 following things in the next 20 years:

1. “First is an energy innovation to lower the cost and get rid of green house gases. This isn’t guaranteed so we need a lot of public and private risk taking.”

2. “Second is progress on disease particularly infectious disease. Polio, Malaria, HIV, TB, etc.. are all diseases we should be able to either eliminate of bring down close to zero. There is amazing science that makes us optimistic this will happen.”

3. “Third are tools to help make education better — to help teachers learn how to teach better and to help students learn and understand why they should learn and reinforce their confidence.”

This post will provide a deeper insight on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, taking the foundation’s 2014 transparent contribution graphs and making them interactive in Plotly.

These interactive graphs were made using Plotly’s web app. To securely share graphs and data within a team and make interactive dashboards, sign up for a PlotlyProfessional plan or contact us about Plotly On-Premise.

1. What Exactly are the Gates’ Funding?

Total funding in 2014 approached $4 billion, making the Gates’ Foundation the second most generous philanthropists in America to Warren Buffet.

2. A Global Reach

$442,290,000 was put toward developing agriculture, a sector that could be threatened by global warming.

3. Going to Battle Against HIV, Malaria

The Foundation donated U.S. $1.1 billion to health-related issues in 2014. 38% of that amount (or $423,320,000) was aimed at HIV and malaria

4. Contributing in the Fight Against Tobacco

$30,000,000 was contributed toward tobacco control and for good reason — “overall mortality among both male and female smokes in the United States is about 3x higher than that among similar people who never smoked.”

5. Improving the U.S. Education System

The Gates’ contributed a generous $405,270,000 to the hotly debated U.S. education system.

If you liked this post, please consider sharing. If you’d like to learn how to make these graphs, visit our website or check out our tutorials. We have tutorials that show you how to make and embed graphs in your website, blog, or apps. To learn more about how companies are using Plotly Enterprise across different industries, see our customer stories.
Don’t Be a Dunce!
By: Jeff Gates
Tags: Politics, Graphic Design, Elections

“Don’t Be a Dunce!, (c)Chamomile Tea Party, Jeff Gates, Some Rights Reserved.

Most of us would agree that politicians, especially those running for office, will say whatever they think we want to hear — well, whatever their base wants to hear. I don’t know what to say about the rest of you who actually do believe the promises our candidates make. Washington Post opinion writer, Dana Milbank, illuminates.

The realities of running for office are very different than the realities of being in office (except when they overlap). It’s not just you and your handlers making the decisions. Others are involved. And those others have their handlers, their bases, their strategies, and their aspirations. The problem: most of us don’t believe much of what they say. The answer: start telling the truth. Your first chance is the GOP debate. Put the electorate before your career. Cut the rhetoric.

See all the posters from the Chamomile Tea Party! Digital high res downloads are free.
There For Tomorrow
By: Arin Segal
Tags: For, Theres, Music, Tomorrow

There For Tomorrow has been part of Warped Tour for the past few years and lead singer Maika took some time to chat with me about this year’s tour, their favorite nonprofit and how the band started.

Q: What initially got the band together?

A: We were just young in middle school and just being in the same area, same kind of music we just kind of grew together from there.

Q: What has been your favorite part of Warped Tour this summer?

A: Probably just seeing all the love from our fans. I mean they go really out of their way to come show support to us every day. Our stage is usually in the most obscure placement of Warped Tour, but they find us and make it a great show every day so we’re very appreciative of that.

Q: Who has been you favorite band to see play?

A: There are so many good, entertaining bands, but I would probably have to say either The Acacia Strain or Middle Class Rut.

Q: Is there a nonprofit on the tour that the band works with?

A: We are a part of To Write Love On Her Arms and have supported what they’ve done for years and we know many of the people who lead that campaign from its creation so we are really close with them and we just recently met a great company today who are shooting to feed a million children in need of food in Somalia called Hello Somebody and we are very supportive of them as well.

Q: What are the plans for after tour?

A: Just to keep releasing content, but stay tuned in to our webisodes and everything we have going on and we will be releasing fall tour dates soon on our website!
The Moment
By: Paroma Sen
Tags: Poetry On Medium, Poetry, Moments, Love, Beginning

That moment our eyes met across the room

You looked right into me, searing me

Your half smile, quarter dimple

Piercing my heart, slamming through me

That moment was your truest, our truest

Truer than when we sit down,

share a drink, then a meal,

then Coachella, then Thanksgiving,

then wedding bells, then cradle mobiles

Truer than when we collaborate

and make a kitchen island, then a baby,

a backyard patio, an “other woman”,

a divorce settlement, a broken heart,

lives seared apart.

Yes, that moment,

right at the beginning

That one was the truest by far.
The Most Overlooked Marketing Tool on Medium
By: Toni Koraza
Tags: Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Art, Writing, Community

The Most Overlooked Marketing Tool on Medium

Medium responses can drive more relevant traffic than Quora, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook combined

Source: Author

Most successful writers will tell you to stay away from your stats. And that is true. You shouldn’t obsess over metrics. But we all do obsess over it — even those who tell you not to look at your stat pages (they’re probably the worst).

Stats are somewhat of recognition of your work. The answers to how many eyes have seen your message and how many people agree are in the stats. Stats are essential. But you shouldn’t look at them frantically every 7 minutes.

“Nothing changed, Karen, get back to writing.”

Every once in a while, I open the stats page to an awesome surprise. And the same happened this morning. My views exploded. The stats marked a seven-fold increase compared to a regular day. And I was confused, as I couldn’t see a single over-performing article. It took me another minute to figure out what’s going on.

Comments. The answer was in the bloody comments. Another Medium comment exploded in views, and thousands of eyes read my 120-word response. (The words “comment” and “response” are used interchangeably in this article.)

The whole scene was underwhelming, to say the least. Responses drove most of my traffic that day, and you can’t put that traffic behind a paywall.

Your responses also count to your total views on Medium. I can’t change this on my Apple devices. You could potentially open up each article and count the views you got today, and figure out what’s really going on. Still, if you have hundreds of published stories, you might decide there is a better use for your time.
Patience
By: Atheno Boldly Fearless
Tags: Self Love, Poetry, Patience, Poem, Love

Patience is a devoted commitment

A promise to what could be different

To what you know may yet be made

A hope for nothing you would trade

Resisting all temptation of finality

Until the ideal becomes reality

And the truest sign of a vision pre-drawn

Is long and arduous patience undergone

On that eve of awaited perfection attained

The most savory gift is temptation abstained

To present a love long and solemnly withheld

Even before that vision in your mind’s eye dwelled

That your heart in ambition you did conceal

And loved the ideal more than the real

To have remained committed faithfully

To your desire’s unceasing certainty

That no illusive mirage gleaming

Could hope to satisfy your yearning

Patience measures your love of you

And your growing horizon too
Thin Gloves
By: A Story Each Day
Tags: Short Story, Fiction, A Story Each Day

Please be aware that this story contains harsh language and some violence.

The drill bit slipped and dove into Joey’s hand. He screamed as an eruption of blood sprung from the mangled flesh. He grabbed his hand and cringed, and looked around for help.

He turned toward the rest of the work site. It was a large site — dozens of contractors and construction workers, all grinding the hours of the day to a fine shred. He yelled again. But no one answered. They’d all gone to lunch, or something.

He turned back to his hand and his eyes scanned for something that could delay the bleeding.

“Why didn’t you have thicker gloves, Joey? Hm?”

Joey turned.

“Paxton! Help me out, I — ”

“I see that. Why didn’t you have thicker gloves?”

“I…”

Paxton’s words wove the beginning of a twisted conversation that only a Site Manager could produce. Joey felt his hand grow numb. A pool of blood collected on the plywood below him. It dripped onto his boots.

“Why, Joey? Can you tell me why?”

“Damn. No. Paxton, help me!”

“Thick gloves. Not that hard. Why didn’t you have them?”

“Because. Damn it, Paxton, why can’t you get something to help?”

“Why didn’t you get thicker gloves?”

Blood soaked the plywood flooring.

“It doesn’t matter! Just get something to help me, damn it!”

Paxton leapt forward and violently grabbed Joey’s hand. He twisted together a tourniquet with scrap cloth and rubber bands, until the bleeding started to subside. Joey whimpered in pain. Their eyes met.

“Why didn’t you wear thicker gloves, Joey?”

Joey didn’t answer. His pain grew into fear.

“I… I don’t know.”

“Do you want to know why?”

“Yes.”

Paxton smiled, grabbed Joey’s two shoulders, and sent a creeping chill down Joey’s nerves as he stared him in the eyes.

“Maybe you weren’t wearing a thicker pair of gloves because your father learned from his father to always buy the thin ones. And his father bought the thin gloves because he had bad circulation, and wasn’t meant to be a construction worker in the first place. But of course, he took up all that fucking construction work because that was what everyone was doing in the 50’s, weren’t they?”

Shock began to set in, and Joey shook and quivered. But Paxton ignored him.

“Your father had bad circulation in his hands, didn’t he? Yes, he did.”

Paxton looked up. The rest of the workers started toward the site, finished with lunch. Paxton turned back to Joey.

“And now, all because of some government construction policy in the 40’s, you’ll have bad circulation in your hands, too.”

He turned and walked away. Before he stepped out of the framing, he turned back and yelled:

“Just don’t let your fucking grandson buy thin gloves, damn it!”
Three Times Meditation App Calm Won at Marketing
By: Fab Giovanetti
Tags: Creativity, Marketing, Social Media, Startup, Business

Three Times Meditation App Calm Won at Marketing

What you can learn from great marketing stunts

A few days back, meditation pioneers Headspace announced their upcoming Netflix series. The app has just announced a three-series deal with Netflix that kicks off in January 2021 with the Headspace Guide to Meditation.

Overall, Headspace's marketing strategy can teach us a lot about creativity in the marketing space, yet it’s not the only meditation app to look out for. Calm is another B2C that came from behind as it started two years after Headspace.

However, with a $1.5 million seed round, Calm got to $40 million and profitable and overtook Headspace in revenue in 2017 despite having a smaller team and now Calm has been raising $2 billion. The startup has been leading the news space for a good part of 2020, and with good reason.

Calm is yet another example of a wellness unicorn, as it continues rapid growth with over 100 million downloads and four million paying members.

From a business perceptive, Calm has been a leaner company since the beginning, so they had to focus on building a simple and well-designed meditation app that was high quality and not focus on corporations and B2B deals.

Yet, this is not a piece about seed funding or business growth, but a series of highlights of some great (and perhaps less known) stunts Calm has pulled in the past year, and why it shows that its exploding growth was less about luck and more about well-thought-out choices.

Below are three key examples of how Calm nailed their marketing strategy.
Yanny or Laurel according to Jan Bot
By: Pablo Núñez Palma
Tags: Social Media, News, Trending, Experimental, AI

Yanny or Laurel according to Jan Bot

On how Jan Bot gets inspired by trending news to craft its own films.

The event took place in mid-May 2018. It started with a confused –and probably extremely bored– group of high school students debating if the computer generated voice they recorded from an online dictionary was saying “Yanny” or “Laurel”. Unable to agree among themselves, they started a forum on Reddit. But users of Reddit did not seem to agree either, which caused a fuss and more debate. Shortly after that, a Twitter celebrity caught this thread and posted a survey with the audio file. It asked: “What do you hear?! Yanny or Laurel”. For one of those unexplainable things that make the Internet so mysterious, the Tweet became viral.

Cloe Feldman’s Tweet made ‘Yanny’ or ‘Laurel’ viral.

Many other users started making reference to this Tweet, including prestigious institutions, like the US Department of Defense, who posted the following:

The US Department of Defense was one of the many Institutions that successfully joked about the ‘Yanny’ or ‘Laurel’ buzz.

Even members of the White House jokingly debated around this issue.

Video produced by The Guardian where staffers at the White House are asked about “Yanny” and “Laurel”.

And while most comments succeeded in being funny, not all of them did. Some of them actually failed. And from those, some failed epically, even tragically, like the one made by the US Air Force that, trying to take advantage of the rippling success of their peers at the Department of Defense, tweeted the following:

This tweet published by the U.S. Air Force was quickly removed. But it remained long enough accessible for the press to notice it.

Definitely not funny.

After blows of trolling commentaries, the Tweet was quickly removed from the Air Force’s page. Unfortunately not quickly enough to get the attention of some of the major news sites, like CNN.

CNN comments on the Tweet posted by the US Air Force. This news item inspired Jan Bot to generate a video inspired by ‘Yanny’ or ‘Laurel’.

So when it came the time for Jan Bot to comment on this trending topic –because “Yanny” or “Laurel”definitely was one– this CNN article served as main source of inspiration.

Here is the resulting video:

Jan Bot film inspired in ‘Yanny’ or ‘Laurel’. Se details of the film at Jan Bot’s Catalog.

As you can see, Jan Bot’s films deflect the original meaning of the news while reflecting the real intellectual capabilities of Artificial Intelligence today. It embraces the banality of online media and uses it as inspiration for creating obscure found-footage films that feed back into the social media streams, acting as commentaries to the news that originally spawned them.
How to Date Women in Germany
By: Marcelino Granda
Tags: Funny, Satire, Guides And Tutorials, Humor, Dating

You most likely already know each other for years and are both wondering why exactly you are dating.

Let’s say that the stars aligned, Bismark and Emperor Willhelm had your back, and she’s seen your BMW.

Side note again — make sure it is not a model 3 BMW, those are for immigrants. Well, a lot of immigrants drove them 15 years ago. Immigrants are now driving model 5. Don’t have that one either. Don't drive Mercedes, too. Rich immigrants drive those. Since you’re reading this guide, you don’t own a Porsche… That would have been perfect… Actually, BMW model 3 is cool again, I guess. Kind of an understatement. Try not to look like an immigrant in it, though. If you want to avoid dating altogether, just drive a French car. If you’re an immigrant, that might be actually beneficial. Who knows, really.

Where were we — dating. The first couple of dates should take place publically during workdays. Germans visit family during the weekends.

Everyone is an academic.

Since everyone is an academic, people have studied in one place and grew up in another one. For the average German woman, this could mean she grew up in Hannover, studied in Berlin, and now works in Munich. Weekends are reserved for friends and family 500km away at best.

Always use the metric system. Anything else is not sexy!

What should you talk about?

Here is a list of topics Germans love to talk about:

Work

Ask her what she does for a living and how she got there. If you desire to know what else she does in her life, try to disguise the question a bit like so:

“How does being a dentist, blogger, and local guide influence your hobbies? What were your hobbies again?”

If you’re at some point being asked questions yourself, they will mostly relate to your job and what grinds your gears.

Germany is quite liberal. You don’t have to be a lawyer or physician anymore to have a high social standing. You have to use buzzwords. Here are some jobs in combination with buzzwords that work wonders:

Any profession in healthcare — talk about how the healthcare system needs to be more digital. You don’t have to understand what that means. Nobody does.

Any profession in the automotive industry. You bought a diesel-powered car once. It’s somehow bad now. Cry about it. Germans love that.

Marketing. Wear a hat and have a beard. Perfect!

The ultimate job — Unternehmer. This literally (actually not figuratively) translates to “entrepreneur.” Have you sold something once? Great, you’re an Unternehmer. Are you currently unemployed and post a lot on Instagram? You’re a digital “Unternehmer”!

Now you’re equipped to tackle the first phases of dating and finding love in Germany.
What if I train a deep neural network with random data?
By: Francesco Gadaleta
Tags: Machine Learning, Neural Networks, Data Science, Programming, AI

Would you train a neural network with random data? Moreover, are massive neural networks just lookup tables or do they truly learn something?

Today’s episode is about memorisation and generalisation in deep learning, with Stanislaw Jastrzębski. Stan works as post-doc at New York University. His research interests include:

Understanding and improving how deep network generalise

Representation Learning

Natural Language Processing

Computer Aided Drug Design

What makes deep learning unique?

I have asked Stan a few questions I was looking answers for a long time. For instance, what is deep learning bringing to the table that other methods don’t or are not capable of?

Above all, Stan believes that the one thing that makes deep learning special is representation learning. It turns out that all the other competing methods, be it kernel machines, or random forests, do not have this capability.

Moreover, optimisation (Stochastic Gradient Descent) lies at the heart of representation learning in the sense that it allows finding good representations.

What really improves the training quality of a neural network?

We discussed about the accuracy of neural networks depending pretty much on how good the Stochastic Gradient Descent method is at finding minima of the loss function.

What would influence such minima?

Stan’s answer has revealed that training set accuracy or loss value is not that interesting actually. For instance, it is relatively easy to overfit data (i.e. achieve the lowest loss possible), provided a large enough network, and a large enough computational budget.

However, shape of the minima, or performance on validation sets are in a quite fascinating way influenced by optimisation. In other words, optimisation in the beginning of the trajectory, steers such trajectory towards minima of certain properties that go much further than just training accuracy.

So what happens if you train a neural network with random data?

Stan’s answer, while not shocking has a very important message to keep in mind.

The future of AI

Finally, we speak about the future of AI and the role deep learning will play.

Stan’s opinion is very moderate with respect to what many journalists and experts dare to say about Artificial General Intelligence, killer robots and agents with superhuman capabilities.

We hope you enjoy the show!

Don’t forget to join the conversation on our new Discord channel. See you there!

Originally published at https://datascienceathome.com on November 12, 2019.
Why The Superhuman Tracking Issue Matters
By: Justin Hunter
Tags: Email, Silicon Valley, Startup Lessons, Privacy

This post originally appeared on Graphite’s company blog.

Let’s start by getting caught up. Mike Davidson, a entrepreneur, former Twitter employee, and new superhero in the fight for privacy, tweeted about Superhuman’s surveillance tactics:

Superhuman is the hot new email client that you still have to get an invite to use. It’s the go-to client for Silicon Valley tech investors and entrepreneurs. Remember, it’s an email client. Not an email marketing platform. There’s a significant difference, and that difference wipes out 98% of the arguments in favor of Superhuman’s tactics.

Anyway, Mike had some Twitter conversations about the privacy issues, and then over the weekend wrote an article outlining Superhuman’s surveillance practices, how it teaches end-users to practice surveillance, and how it’s flat-out a poor ethical choice by the company. It’s a great read, and you should check it out. For those that don’t want to read that article but are oddly interested in reading this one, here’s the tl;dr:

Superhuman, by default and without consent, inserts a tracking pixel in every email a Superhuman user sends. This is common of email marketing software, and most people who receive mass emails have a general sense that they are being monitored when they open those emails. This is different, though. This could be an email from your boyfriend. It could be an email from your boss. It could be an email from a serial-killer. Hell, it could be from anyone. And Superhuman gives all of those people unfettered access to your private email activity.

It’s not cool, and anyone defending it is seriosuly misguided, intentionally disingenuous, or a bad person. No reason to sugar coat it.

The Broader Problem

The decision by Superhuman to add tracking pixels is bad enough, but what may be more concerning is the public’s reaction. We want to believe that after Facebook’s scandals, after Google’s privacy violations, after it all we as a society have grown an appetite for more privacy. But the reaction to Superhuman’s tracking methods seems to run counter to that belief.

By reading the responses on Hacker News (not usually the best place to gauge an actual response to something), you’ll see that there’s a significant number of people who shrug and say this should be expected. But it’s not just Hacker News.

The replies to Mike’s tweet are similar. In fact, the public’s reaction to dark patterns, in general, are almost planned out before the reaction ever happens. This is how we’ve been conditioned. We accept it because “that’s just how it is.” Or “you want free, you have to deal with this.” (Hard side note here: Superhuman is very far from free).

This feels like the first real test of the public’s response to privacy issues since Cambridge Analytica made everyone a privacy expert. And thus far, I think the public might be failing.

That said, Graphite will continue to fight the fight for privacy. Graphite will continue to embrace ethical design. Graphite will, simply put, be good.
HP Predicted Who Wanted to Quit. Should Companies Guess Their Employees’ Behavior?
By: Alice Greschkow
Tags: Data Science, Work, Predictive Analytics, Business, Human Resources

HP wanted to save money — and learned a lot about employee motivation

For HP, losing experts is expensive — not only because the company could lose the creative potential to the competition. Training new staff costs time and productivity — it takes several weeks, if not months, for team members to become involved in processes and topics. The HR experts saw a potential saving of 300 million US Dollars through a lower rate of change.

In 2011, a team began to collect and analyze data. They wanted to understand which employee would likely be willing to resign soon. What they found out, was not surprising: promotions, salary increases, and the rotation of positions had a positive effect on the desire to stay at HP. Those factors on one hand expressed appreciation, on the other hand, they ensured that new tasks and more responsibility would make work interesting. Appreciation and novelty are essential for the motivation of employees. Routine kills every spark over time.

However, there were also surprising findings: Especially in the sales department, a high number of promotions harmed the willingness to stay. Sales staff demanded a significant salary increase with each promotion to be willing to stay. If this was not the case, the promotion signaled to the salespeople that they were valuable enough to find a good job elsewhere with better conditions. HP learned how different personality types were attracted to certain jobs and departments and how they behave in atypical ways, in contrast to the average.
Types of Guys That Girls From Las Vegas Have Dated
By: Liberty Ann
Tags: Relationships, Humor, Dating, This Happened To Me

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Moving on from mushrooms to new members and memories
By: Amber Moore
Tags: Updates, Poetry

This week at the PhoneMe workshop, we had a great deal of excitement; first, our new number is officially up and running: 604 — PHONEME (604–746–6363). Next, we were so fortunate to have two new poets join us! It was a busy table today, and we started off the session by listening to one of our poet’s, Graham’s gorgeous poem about a statue in Gastown entitled “Angel raising a hero.” With searing lines including “we have become students of violence” and “religion has raised heroes on both sides,” the group was mesmerized by his work — the perfect kick-off to get our creativity going.

Moving on to the first prompt of the day, we turned from mushrooms last week (read about that here if you missed it: https://medium.com/phoneme/pondering-poetry-plants-and-place-2357ba07cd63) to the topic of memories today. We were invited to consider one thing we remember and to dig for a memory we had forgotten. Then, we were to negotiate with our memories and write a poem based on which memories we want to ‘keep’ and which ones we are willing to ‘discard.’ A few items that we wrote about keeping and ditching included:

giving up

checklists

the beauty of trees

the calls of whales

a cactus

keys

being ‘the death of the party’

chasing rabbits

sons

cheesecake

a desire to impress

Next, we paused with our writing to discuss languages and histor(ies) of British Columbia before moving on to do some poetry recording.

Finally, we furiously wrote for the last ten minutes of the session (the time flies in the PhoneMe workshops!), working with the prompt ‘write your life story in five lines,’ and our pieces worked to teach us more about one another.

Please feel very welcome to join us at the VPL next week for the next workshop and/or call us and leave a poem! Remember, you can reach us at 604-PHONEME (604–746–6363).
Is This the Most Important Moment in Mainstream Movie History?
By: Joel Eisenberg
Tags: Star Wars, Movies, Television, Entertainment, Science Fiction

Is This the Most Important Moment in Mainstream Movie History?

Read on. I just may be serious.

In 1977, we were taken on the ride of our lives … and it ended with a reward. Well, two, actually.

Beautiful.

I was done by then. As soon as the end credits rolled and my family stood up and walked into the lobby, I quickly discovered I could not follow. My legs were totally numb and I could not stand, a fact that I seem to incorporate in every article I write about “Star Wars,” the first film or the franchise in general.

Lightning struck and I was damaged — or rewarded, as the case may be — for life. I knew from there what I wanted to do — no, scratch that, needed to do — for a living.

So I became a writer-producer for film and television.

Hell, some 42 years later during “The Rise of Skywalker” I choked back a tear when Chewie received his long-overdue medal. I’m mush when it comes to these films, a 56-year-old sucker deaf to toxic fandom who will buy anything this franchise will sell me.

Discerning? Sure. I didn’t care for “The Phantom Menace,” “Attack of the Clones,” or the “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” theatrical pilot. I could take or leave the two Ewok TV movies and “The Star Wars Holiday Special” is blasphemy on a hotplate.

But who cares, really? Life gets messy and imperfect too. Despite my less than enthusiastic reaction to the aforementioned franchise entries … I admit I’ve watched them all dozens of times.

I told you. I was scarred for life in ’77.

That said, I made a big comment in the title of this piece and I meant it. I believe the medal scene in 1977’s “Star Wars” just may be the single most important moment in the history of mainstream cinema.

Read on.
Feather, Simple Open-source SVG Icons
By: Alex Ionescu
Tags: Freebies, Icons, SVG, Minimal, Vectors

Feather is a collection of simply beautiful open source SVG icons. Each icon is designed on a 24×24 grid with an emphasis on simplicity, consistency and readability.

Feather, Simple Open-source SVG Icons

Using the icons is very simple. You can download the whole set or you can search for a specific icon using the included search function and download only that icons.

The icons can be used for free in your personal and commercial projects.

Download icons
The MetaCert Protocol White Paper: Index
By: Paul Walsh
Tags: Security, Ethereum, Bitcoin, Cybersecurity, Blockchain

The MetaCert Protocol White Paper: Index

The MetaCert Protocol White Paper is conveniently indexed.

The MetaCert Protocol White Paper has been indexed into subsections:

Download a PDF version of the White Paper

Introduction

Vision

Abstract

What Motivates Us

The Problem

The Proposed Solution

The MetaCert Protocol

Participants

Submitters

Validators

Purchasers

End Users

Protocol Incentives

Reputation Score

Token Mechanics

Staking for URI Claims

Validation Fees

Improved Brand Verification Process

How Tokens Can Be Used

MetaCert’s Prior and Related Work

Crawlers and URI Categorization Technology

Proven Track Record in Crypto

MetaCert Security Slack Bot

MetaCert Security Bot for Telegram

Cryptonite Browser Extension

Active Participation and Competition

A Team With Proven Domain Expertise and Experience

Overcoming the Challenge of Crowdsourced Data

Historic Approaches

Design Goals

Reputation Behavioral Signals

User Interface

Adoption Strategy

Who will use the Protocol?

Solution: The MetaCert Protocol

Decentralized Registry

Address the Identity Problem: Verified vs. Suspicious or Fake

Address the Trust Problem: Real vs. Fake

Realtime Protection Backed by Community Verification

Incentivize Community Contributions with Tokens

Freedom to Build Great Products and Services

Future Work

Nodes

Protocol Categorizer

Node Operator

Mitigation of Potential Risks

Token Sale Breakdown * (This section is not in the PDF)

Token Sale

Lock-up (Spread)

Protocol Roadmap
The Israeli Pilgrimage into Tunisia
By: Afeef Nessouli
Tags: Politics, Tunisia, Israel, Law, Religion

Tunisia doesn’t have diplomatic relations with Israel, but Israelis (and Jews in general) have traveled to the country for the annual pilgrimage to the Ghriba synagogue on the island of Djerba. However, this is the first year that Israelis have been allowed to use their passports to get into the country. They usually use a special document issued by Tunisian embassies. Now, Tunisia’s elected assembly accepted a petition to basically call out the tourism minister because of his decision to allow Israelis to use their passports to enter Tunisia for the pilgrimage. Read more about this development at ABC News.
為什麼產品設計師那麼喜歡寫作？
By: Jasmine Lin
Tags: 寫作, 自我成長, 文字, 設計思考, 設計

Written by

UX Designer / Information Architect from Taiwan, now living in Seattle.