fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Top 5 Free Resources for Learning SQL
By: Rebecca Vickery
Tags: Programming, Education, Technology, Data, Data Science

1. SQLBolt

SQLBolt is a completely free fully interactive introductory course. All SQL basics are covered including writing queries, filtering, joins, aggregations in addition to creating, updating and deleting tables.

There are practical exercises to complete after each concept is introduced which help to solidify your understanding of the topics covered.

2. Khan Academy

The Khan Academy Intro to SQL course is a great complement to SQLBolt as it includes video-based content around similar concepts. This provides some useful context and more in-depth explanations. It also does include some practical interactive exercises too.

3. Pop SQL

Pop SQL is actually a really interesting tool for collaborative SQL querying. It enables multiple users to share queries, store commonly used queries in a searchable library and provides a visual interface for analysis.

The Pop SQL website also includes a comprehensive library of SQL tutorials in their ‘Learn SQL’ section. What is particularly useful is that these are organised by database type, for example, Redshift or MySQL specific tutorials. This is helpful if you want to gain an understanding of how the syntax can differ across platforms.

4. SQLcourse.com

This course is similar in format to SQLBolt. It is very interactive with lots of practical exercises which you complete in their SQL editor. There is also a sqlcourse2.com which covers more advanced concepts using the same format and editor.

5. Learning SQL by Alan Beaulieu

If you would like to get a more in-depth understanding of the SQL language then a book can be a useful addition to your list of resources. Learning SQL by Alan Beaulieu is one of the best I have found and is available to read for free online via this PDF.

This book gives some useful background into the origins and usage of the language, provides an overview of query and table design and covers some more advanced SQL topics compared to the courses listed above.
New Updates! (charts, tickers &more)
Tags: Trading, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, Product Updates

Ola guys! It was a productive weekend! Today we are releasing 3 new features!

Tickers

Once you add any action into your strategy, containing a coin — a Ticker Panel will appear! The realtime price + 24h change will be shown for that coin and if you add more coins into one strategy they will be there too! Check this out.
Some retailers are too broke to go bankrupt — Five Best Ideas of the Day, May 5, 2020
By: Aspen Institute
Tags: Personality, Retail, Online Education, Wartime, The Five Best

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

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Course 1 — Lady Margaret Hall — 2 July
By: Oxford Summer Courses
Tags: Debate, Oxford, Lady Margaret Hall, Education, Social Media

Classes Begin Again this Monday and Evening Debate

With the final week of classes starting up this Monday, students reverted back to their normal academic routine with three hours of classes in the morning, a dinner in town, and activities during the evening hours.

Course 1 listening to Jordan and Ravi explain their stance on the amount of money floating around in sports.

For dinner, the group was split into 2 groups: one headed for Thaikhun and the other to Nosebag. After eating, the groups met back together for a scheduled debating activity led by our very own Oxford Law student helper, Ciara! Students debated topics on football, social media, freedom of speech, and luxury brands!
Mike the Headless Chicken
Tags: Chicken, True Story, History, Animals, Rooster

Mike’s Magical Story, The Headless Chicken

The story of Mike the Headless Chicken came from Colorado, about seventy-five years ago, or to be exact in 1945 when a farmer slaughtered the head of a chicken. But strangely after he slaughtered the chicken. The chicken did not die and still survived.

What happened to the chicken? The question then arises and stirs the public’s curiosity about the most popular chicken in America.

It began when Lloyd Olsen’s family and his wife had a guest who was none other than Olsen’s in-laws on September 10, 1945. Welcoming their parents, Olsen and his wife then cut their chickens on their farm in Fruita, Colorado to serve to the entourage of his wife’s family.

Olsen, who helped to behead his chicken, and his wife were then tasked with cleaning it up. However, one of the 40 or 50 chickens cut by Olsen that day did not behave like any other.

Of the many chickens that were cut, there was one chicken that later became famous even to the rest of the country. Even after the head was separated from his body, the chicken briefly walked and still able to keep pace with his posture. The chicken then returned to running normally.

Olsen also saw the chicken trying to peck on the ground without its head. This caused Olsen confusion because although the chicken lost its head, it could still walk like a normal chicken. Olsen then gave him the name Mike.

The chicken became known as Miracle Mike or Mike the Headless Chicken. After the strange incident, the next day Olsen sees Mike in good health, even like other chickens with their heads.

Seeing the chicken in fine condition, Olsen then keeps Mike alive. Olsen himself feeds his chickens by incorporating food and water using pipettes into Mike’s open esophagus.

Olsen also sometimes gave grain as food to his magical chicken. Mike’s events are very rare. The chicken had survived for up to 18 months in good health like a normal chicken.
About North East Together
By: North East Together
Tags: North East Together, Social Change, Leadership

We believe that bringing leaders together to tackle social injustice will create positive change — in our communities, organisations and the social systems we live and work within. Our network inspires social leaders, enabling collaboration and mutual support.

We offer a series of dynamic network events; self-organised collaborative working groups; pathways into coaching; and independent social change events.

It’s for leaders from the voluntary, charity, social enterprise, education, public and private sectors. It’s for experienced, new and future leaders of organisations, work, and ideas.

Read The story so far to learn more about North East Together.
GraphGrail Ai in Almaty
By: Tge Graphgrail Ai
Tags: Blockchain, Road Show, ICO, Artificial Intelligence, Bitcoin

“Starship Troopers” represented by Mark Dakaskos, Eric Roberts, Carey Tagawa and Bai Lin arrived at the Cryptoconference within the framework of a trip around the country as the actors plan to take part in the shooting of a documentary about the nature and culture of East Kazakhstan.

Interest in cryptocurrencies from the representatives of the film business is easily explained. Blockchain technology has long penetrated the film industry as celebrities invest in cryptocurrencies and have already implemented many ICO projects in this area, and are discussing implementation of the technology in the movie industry.

In total, about 20 speakers from various fields of the cryptocurrency industry spoke at Cryptoconference. Traders, information security specialists, ICO projects promotion experts, suppliers of mining equipment, top managers of ICO projects, and members of blockchain associations.

One of the brightest and most significant was the speech of Yeseta Butin, chairman of the Kazakhstan Association of Blockchain and Cryptocurrency. The speaker prepared an appeal from the conference participants to the Governments and Central Banks of EAPC member countries to set up an advisory council on the development of legislation in the field of cryptocurrencies and to hold the first meeting of the Council in Almaty.

“The approach to regulation and the laws being drafted, in our opinion, should create favorable conditions conducive to the development of new technologies and attracting investments in this sector,” said Yeset Butin in his report. “The lack of regulation in Kazakhstan on the cryptocurrency market, and even worse, the introduction of a ban on this activity in the conditions of a global regulatory trend may lead to the curtailment of innovative projects in this area.”

The GraphGrail Ai team also attended the event as invited special guests and had ample opportunities to converse with various projects. Among those that have gained the most attention are Firelotto.io , ICO Box, Gold Mining Capital, Swissquote and others. Multiple opportunities for fruitful cooperation and partnership lay at the foundation of the event and GraphGrail Ai has taken full advantage of the opportunity. Several details on the partnerships and cooperation established with other projects attending the conference will be made public within the coming weeks.

The next Cryptoconference will be held on February 28 in Minsk and will bring together more than 500 people and 25 experts in the field of cryptocurrency, blockchain and ICOs.
The Verge is apparently running out of content.
By: Henry Gruett
Tags: Technology News, News, Technology, Technews, Tech

The Verge is apparently running out of content.

I mean seriously, an article about turning your calculator app sideways? And the sad part is that the article actually gets kinda in-depth, pointing out shortcomings of the “secret scientific mode”…

For starters, there’s no ticker tape feature, which lets you see all the operations you’ve just done, which is useful when you need to see if you’ve already added a value or not. It also makes some essential functions like parentheses — which I use in almost every math equation I do — hard to access.

It then starts suggesting alternative calculator apps.

Thankfully, there are other options: PCalc offers a more robust calculating experience, and offers a free PCalc Lite version that’s also worth a download. Or for more serious math, there’s the TI-30XS, which can make some things (like fractions) so easy it almost feels like cheating.

Technically, you shouldn’t have a comma after the word experience. Just saying.

At least the replies on Twitter are great:
20 Machine Learning Projects on NLP
By: Aman Kharwal
Tags: Python, Programming, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Science

Natural language processing (NLP) is a widely discussed and studied subject these days. NLP, one of the oldest areas of machine learning research, is used in major fields such as machine translation speech recognition and word processing. In this article, I’ll walk you through 20 Machine Learning projects on NLP solved and explained with the Python programming language.

20 Machine Learning Projects on NLP

Hope you liked this article on 20 Machine Learning Projects On NLP Or Natural Language Processing With Python Programming Language. Please feel free to ask your valuable questions in the comments section below.
Honest Diversity in Tech Report
By: Sarah Cooper
Tags: Funny, Humor, Women In Tech, Satire, Tech

Honest Diversity in Tech Report

The Most Accurate Diversity in Tech Report You Will Ever Read

This is an excerpt from my new book, How to Be Successful Without Hurting Men’s Feelings — out October 2018.

In the interest of transparency and mounting pressure from other companies doing it, we are very excited to release our Annual Diversity in Tech Report and share all the gains we’ve made in hiring “other people”.

1. Employee breakdown

Our overall employee breakdown remains diverse with people representing different backgrounds.

Sarah Cooper / TheCooperReview.com

2. Educational background

Our workforce comes from a diverse educational background.

Sarah Cooper / TheCooperReview.com

3. Hiring

Our hiring criteria ensures we have a diverse pool of candidates.

Sarah Cooper / TheCooperReview.com

4. Senior leadership

Our standards for diversity extends to our senior leadership, as well.

Sarah Cooper / TheCooperReview.com

5. Diversity by department

Although it varies by department, our departments are also wildly diverse.

Sarah Cooper / TheCooperReview.com

6. Sentiments on diversity

We encourage and are proud of the diverse perspectives people have on diversity.

Sarah Cooper / TheCooperReview.com

7. Salaries

Salaries are also diverse.

Sarah Cooper / TheCooperReview.com

Ongoing efforts

We continue to make diversity a top priority and have created a Diversity Council to lead and drive these efforts.

Sarah Cooper / TheCooperReview.com

I post new humor weekly! Sign up for my free newsletter to get updates.
Learn redux-optimist
By: Robert Chen
Tags: Front End Development, Programming, React, JavaScript, Redux

Learn redux-optimist

Simplify optimistic rendering with redux-optimist library

Pikachu evolves into Raichu

The redux-optimist library has been extremely helpful to me, and I’d like to share that with you. I’ve designed a simple tutorial where I’ll walk you through how to set up and use the middleware. We’re going to use a sweet Pokémon API as our demo practice. We’ll fetch this Pikachu and optimistically evolve it to Raichu. If the request fails, then we’ll devolve back to Pikachu.

Let’s install the dependencies we need, in your terminal:

yarn create react-app app-name

cd app-name

yarn add react-dom

yarn add react-router-dom

yarn add react-redux

yarn add redux

yarn add redux-thunk

yarn add lodash Follow along to set up Redux, or skip ahead to step 3 if you have your own preferred Redux setup.

a. open src/index.js

b. Create action file, in your terminal: touch src/pokemonActions.js && open src/pokemonActions.js

c. Create reducer file, in your terminal: touch src/reducer.js && open src/reducer.js

d. open src/App.js

e. open src/App.css

3. Let’s install redux-optimist now, in your terminal:

yarn add redux-optimist

4. I suggest committing here; that way you can see your git diff before implementing redux-optimist and after redux-optimist :

git add . && git commit -m "feat(redux): finished setting up redux"

5. Modify our pokemonActions.js to create new actions and pass some responsibility to the redux-optimist library:

6. Create a middleware folder and create this file getRaichu.js inside the folder, in your terminal: mkdir src/middleware && touch src/middleware/getRaichu.js && open src/middleware/getRaichu.js

7. Import and use the getRaichu.js middleware in our index.js :

8. Modify our reducer.js to work with the new actions and middleware:

9. Now, in your terminal, yarn start and open up your console. I’ve placed a couple console.log to help observe the procedure of our action, middleware, and reducer.

You’ll notice that the object in GET_RAICHU_BEGIN is a mock Raichu, where I only supplied the name and image. Then when the request succeeds, GET_RAICHU_COMPLETE sends the full object returned from the API to update our store.

10. Now let’s imitate a failed request by commenting out the fetch request on line 32 in getRaichu.js and commenting in line 33.

This time you will see that we optimistically render Raichu until the request comes back as a fail. The store will automatically revert back to Pikachu. At this time we also capture the error from the failed request and display it to the user. So, moral of the story, don’t evolve your Pikachu :)
Lenovo has launched its low budget smartphone Vibe K5 in India
By: Joseph Green
Tags: Ecommerce, Technology, Technews

You may be looking for a smartphone but your budget is limited at around 7,000 in Indian Rupee which is equivalent to $104, in this case, your inexpensive amount is enough to purchase Lenovo’s smartphone because on 13th of June yesterday Lenovo has launched its Vibe K5 smartphone in India which has a market price of INR 6,999 ($104).

Lenovo’s Vibe K5 smartphone is formed with a bunch of marvelous features like it has a 5.0-inch 720p display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 415, 2GB RAM, 16GB expandable storage and also a 13 mega-pixel back camera that will satisfy you with crystal clear photos and with its 5 mega-pixel front camera your selfies will look prefect. This is not the end, it also has stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos, a metal body, TheaterMax, dual SIM, and a 2750 mAh battery.

For your convenience here is the full details of Vibe K5, according to GSM Arena

BODYDimensions142 x 71 x 8 mm (5.59 x 2.80 x 0.31 in)Weight142 g (5.01 oz)SIMDual SIM (Micro-SIM, dual stand-by)DISPLAYTypeIPS capacitive touchscreen, 16M colorsSize5.0 inches (~68.4% screen-to-body ratio)Resolution720 x 1280 pixels (~294 ppi pixel density)MultitouchYesPLATFORMOSAndroid OS, v5.1 (Lollipop)ChipsetQualcomm MSM8929 Snapdragon 415CPUQuad-core 1.5 GHz Cortex-A53 & quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A53GPUAdreno 405MEMORYCard slotmicroSD, up to 32 GB (dedicated slot)Internal16 GB, 2 GB RAMCAMERAPrimary13 MP, autofocus, LED flashFeaturesGeo-tagging, touch focus, face detection, HDR, panoramaVideo1080p@30fpsSecondary5 MPSOUNDAlert typesVibration; MP3, WAV ringtonesLoudspeakerYes3.5mm jackYes– Dolby AudioCOMMSWLANWi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, hotspotBluetoothv4.1, A2DP, LEGPSYes, with A-GPSRadioFM radioUSBmicroUSB v2.0, USB On-The-GoFEATURESSensorsAccelerometer, proximityMessagingSMS(threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Mail, IMBrowserHTML5JavaNo– Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic

– MP4/H.264 player

– MP3/WAV/eAAC+/FLAC player

– Photo/video editor

– Document viewerBATTERYRemovable Li-Ion 2750 mAh batteryMISCColorsSilver, Gold

Consumers can purchase this remunerative smartphone Vibe K5 with INR 6,999 ($104) through Amazon in India and also the Vibe K5 Plus is available for INR 8,499 ($127).
My Tweets Got Me In Trouble With The FBI
By: K. Thor Jensen
Tags: Life, Twitter, Crime, FOIA, FBI

My Tweets Got Me In Trouble With The FBI

It all started with a harmless Wells Fargo joke. Well, I thought it was harmless.

Twitter is a bad thing. The eternally profit-free microblogging service, lauded for spurring calls for freedom during the Arab Spring, has mostly devolved into a howling wilderness of fake news, bad takes and inventive insults. It’s a tremendous waste of time that no decent person should use.

Naturally, I love it.

I grew up in the wild and wooly early days of the Internet, before rules for behavior were set in place, and in those days verbal invective was the coin of the realm. You earned respect in some circles by how well you “flamed” — invented outrageous, cutting insults and levied them at your cyber foes. Twitter lets you take that art into the whole world, forcing celebrities, politicians and brands to be roasted in public.

When you break a rule on Twitter, there are a number of things that can happen. They can put your account into a hidden state, where people who don’t follow you can’t see your tweets for a period of time. They can lock it down completely and not reactivate it until you delete the offending tweets. They can delete your account entirely, forcing you to flounce off to more racist alternatives like Gab. Or, in a worst-case scenario, they can call the cops.

That’s what happened to me in 2013. I have a general rule that I try to respond to “promoted” tweets — where brands pay money to put their microblogging content in front of me — with derision and aggression.

My perspective on this is simple: my Twitter timeline is something I’ve curated to be relevant to my personal interests. By paying your way in there, you’re sort of like an uninvited guest at a very weird party, and I reserve the right to throw you out by your underwear.

Wells Fargo, the bank notorious for ripping off their own customers by creating millions of unauthorized accounts, found that out when they tweeted this and promoted it:

It’s “Summer Nights,” from the “Grease” soundtrack, in case you were wondering. My response was a little different.

I’m not a big fan of banks, especially malevolent corporate monoliths like Wells Fargo. I keep my liquid assets in a small community-owned bank and encourage everybody else to do the same. The tweet did OK — 18 retweets and 52 likes — and I forgot all about it promptly afterwards.

Wells Fargo didn’t, as I’d learn.
Step on a Crack
By: Deborah Barchi
Tags: Poetry, Self-awareness, Blue Insights, Life Lessons, Self

Step on a Crack

A poem about paying attention

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Step on a crack, break your mother’s back!

As a little child I watched my feet,

half shivering, half amused

side-stepping every crack.

In school I lost my glasses.

My mother was distressed.

I hung my head and wept.

Still later, I learned this lesson:

life requires attention…

to cracks, to mothers, to glasses,

to everything.
Better Swift Testing With Dependency Injection
By: Sjoerd Tieleman
Tags: Mobile Development, Programming, Swift, iOS, Xcode

Introduction to Dependency Injection

The main idea to take away from dependency injection (DI) is that it is a technique in which a certain object (e.g. a view controller) can receive an object it depends on (e.g. a view model) through some sort of configuration method or property. The great thing about this is that it is not tied to any specific software architecture (MVC or MVVM) and does not require any third-party framework to apply it (even though such frameworks do exist). It is actually quite a basic design pattern, but it gives you great flexibility.

Typically, there are three ways you can inject a dependency:

Through a custom initializer — A great option if you have full control of the initialization of the object (custom classes, structs, etc.), but not an option if you don’t (e.g. view controllers). Through a property — Simply create a publicly accessible property that allows you to set the dependency. Nice and simple, but not if you do not want the dependency to be accessible to others. Through a configuration method — Allows you to set the dependency easily and also allows you to hide the dependency from the outside world. Great if you want to make sure other pieces of code do not access your dependencies directly.

Each is more or less equal but offers slightly different (dis)advantages. We’ll explore DI using some sample code that injects a web service into a view model.

Without dependency injection

Assume we’re building a view model that needs to fetch a list of book authors to display in our app. The code could look something like this:

Even though we’ve made a nice separation between our view model and the actual service that fetches the authors, there is an issue here: We cannot test our view model in isolation because it calls the service and there’s no way to stop that from happening. Ideally, we would like to test the view model and the service separately. If we were to test the view model as-is, we would be testing too much and would have a hard time in the future if we wanted to refactor or replace our service.

With dependency injection

We’ll solve this problem by adding the option to inject the service and change it so it can easily be swapped to a different service (for testing purposes). Since we have full control over this custom class, we’ll choose the initializer-based approach. The result looks like this:

The key takeaways here are:

We’ve created a protocol that our service should adhere to. This makes sure we have a proper contract in place for what a service should look like. We’ve made sure to have our (existing) web service implement this protocol. We’ve changed our view model to accept an object conforming to this protocol through a custom initializer. This will be set to the service property. We provide a default service through the use of a default parameter. This provides us with a sane default when the object is initialized without a custom service object.

With this in place, we can turn to testing our code.
Male Ejaculation May Lower Prostate Cancer Risk
By: Michael Hunter Md
Tags: Wellness, Sex, Lifestyle, Health, Cancer

I want to remind you of some of the prostate cancer symptoms. The American Cancer Society offers that “most prostate cancers are found early, through screening. Early prostate cancer usually causes no symptoms. More advanced prostate cancers can sometimes cause symptoms, such as:

Challenges with urination, such as a slow urine stream or urinary frequency (especially at night)

Blood in the urine or semen

Trouble achieving an erection (erectile dysfunction)

Bone pain, such as in the spine, hips, ribs, or other areas

Leg or foot weakness

Loss of bladder or bowel control, secondary to cancer pressing on the spinal cord (advanced stage)

Many of these symptoms are the result of something besides prostate cancer. I occasionally awaken at night to urinate, given my age and associated benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). This condition is a non-cancerous overgrowth of the prostate with age and is remarkably common. Even so, please let a valued healthcare provider know if you have any of these symptoms.

Photo by Online Marketing on Unsplash

Takeaway message

While more confirmation is needed (and recognizing that the studies are observational and thus do not represent high-level evidence), ejaculation may reduce a man’s risk of getting prostate cancer. Also, ejaculation does not appear to lower the risk of the most deadly forms of the disease.

The type of ejaculation may make a difference: Semen produced during sex has higher levels of sperm and other substances. It’s possible that these differences may affect prostate cancer risk. While ejaculation may lower your risk of prostate cancer, additional strategies include:

Maintaining a healthy weight.

Keeping physically active.

Finally, check-in with a valued healthcare provider about prostate cancer screening. Thank you for joining me today.

References
Yemen and the MB/Qatar situation
By: Afeef Nessouli
Tags: Politics, Religion, Bahrain, Law, Qatar

I have been lucky enough to not only work alongside Farea al-Muslimi in Beirut at Beyond Reform and Development/Irada but help interview him at CNN when I worked for GPS, as well. Here he explains that Yemen is too weak a country to make independent decisions or escape the implications of disagreements in its neighborhood (re: Muslim Brotherhood and Qatar vs. everyone else). Yemen basically didn’t withdraw its ambassador from Doha, Qatar like Saudi, the UAE and Bahrain had in early March, but that shouldn’t be seen as reflective of its policies. Yemen hasn’t criticized its neighbors for their stance on Doha, but Sanaa is now feeling the heat. The Gulf dispute remains a matter near and dear to Yemen because the countries around influence the actors inside Sanaa. Read al-Muslimi’s great analysis at al-Monitor, he explains what the Muslim Brotherhood, Yemen and the rest of the region’s limited options means for Yemen.
Muslims in the UK armed forces
By: Virtual Mosque
Tags: Armed, British, Forces

Imam Asim Hafiz is not surprised that more and more Muslims are joining the British military. He is in no doubt, either, that British Muslims can be good soldiers?. That is not because Mr Hafiz was the first Muslim chaplain for the Armed Forces when he was appointed in 2005. Nor is it because he is now an Islamic adviser to the MoD. Rather, it is because, as with an increasing number of Muslims, he believes that there is no contradiction between being of Muslim faith and choosing to defend Britain.

Hafiz was invested as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire earlier this month, during a ceremony that coincided with Islam Awareness Week. To mark this, the MoD announced that, since 2007, the number of Muslims serving in the British Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force has risen by more than 40 per cent. It goes against public perception, but Mr Hafiz says that it is to be expected. “The increasing number of Muslims in the armed forces is a natural change, because society is becoming more tolerant and young Muslim men and women feel more able to come forward and serve,” he says.

One of the objections, from our Sunni brothers, against the Promised Messiah, Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad sahib, is that he ‘supported’ the British rule in India. He did not support the British rule in India but he was grateful to them for rescuing Muslims from the situation they found themselves in when they lost political power and gave followers of every religion the opportunity to practice it openly and to preach it.

Sunni Muslims were on the one hand decrying Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad sahib and on the other joining the British military and civil service. Sunni Muslims even attacked and killed Sunni Muslims of Turkey during World War I while fighting for the British Empire.

The same thing is happening now. In those countries where Muslims are in a majority they give sermons and speeches about the necessity of violent jihad but when they come to the West, they become pussy cats. Now their followers are joining the British army.

Original Source: Independent
It’s Time To Fundamentally Rethink Artificial Intelligence
By: Landon Garrison
Tags: Machine Learning, Data Science, Aritificial Intelligence, AI

Quick Summary: Neural Nets, datasets and Model Size

For those who aren’t familiar with Neural Networks, terms like Model Size and dataset, what do I mean? Let me first briefly explain Neural Nets, then I’ll explain Model Size and datasets. If you already know all this, skip to the next section.

A visualization of a simple Artificial Neural Network

Artificial Neural Networks (Neural Nets) is a software method used to build AI models. The reason the method is called Neural Nets is that the original creators of Neural Networks wanted to mimic how we learn as humans in computers. Neural Nets contain “Artificial Neurons” which allow computers to do basic tasks like recognizing a picture of a dog or do complicated tasks like driving a car. How does it work? Neural Nets go through a process called “Training”. I’ll spare you the technical details, but for a Neural Net to “learn” a task, it’s shown thousands of inputs (like images) so it can generalize to do that specific task. So for example, if you wanted a Neural Net to recognize traffic objects, you’d show it 10,000 images of a stop sign, 10,000 images of traffic lights and so on. After that, the model would practice (Train) recognizing these images for hours, days or even weeks after it got through the dataset. This is what a dataset is: A set of inputs that allow an AI model or Neural Network to learn a task.

Now that you have a brief understanding of datasets, let’s talk about Model Size. An easy way to think about model size in the context of Neural Nets is to recall the artificial neuron portion of Neural Nets. Like our human brains, each neuron has a connection to another neuron. This is similar to Neural Nets and an easy way to think about Model Size when talking about AI. Each artificial connection has a function that allows a Neural Net to make a prediction or a decision. So, Model Size can be thought of as the raw number of artificial neurons in one model.

Now that you have a general understanding of datasets and model size, let me continue explaining the pressing issue: The Compute First Era.
Adam Simcock: CEO Set to Fight Carbon Pollution through Eco-Friendly Cryptocurrency
By: Joshua Munson
Tags: Adam Simcock, Climate Change, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, Environment

Adam Simcock is not your average CEO. It’s not every day you get a chance to invest in a coin that boasts a CEO who works for The United Nations and has been accredited by the U.N.F.C.C. In 2016, Adam Simcock proposed a treatment to help reduce pollution in Africa.

To put into perspective the damage that is being done and why it’s important for us to adopt this new project, I will reiterate what was previously stated by their research team.

“Bitcoin’s network consumes more energy than 82% of countries on earth. Energy consumption from crypto is expected to double again by 2020. The carbon emissions created by crypto are currently contributing to the release of carbon which in turn is destabilizing the environment. Carbon emissions contribute to climate change and will have long term, costly, negative impacts on the environment.”

Adam currently is taking his expertise to the world of cryptocurrency. With his current project, CarbonChain, his ultimate goal will be to make an impact in reducing carbon emissions globally. By adopting an eco-friendly system, both investors and the planet will see positive returns. Follow my blog for continued updates on CarbonChain.
Why Giving is the Fastest Way to Happiness
By: Chris Teutsch
Tags: Self Improvement, Happiness, Personal Growth, Life, Life Lessons

Give as if Your Life Depends on It

The fastest way out of unhappiness is to give.

If you’re feeling down and depressed, I guarantee you’re focused on yourself. Your problems. Your deficiencies. Your lack.

Take the focus off of you and go and serve someone. Find anyone, ideally, someone less fortunate than you, and give to them.

Volunteering at a homeless shelter is what I’ve always done. I’d see people who had real problems. Literally having to worry about food, clothing, and shelter.

I was worried about if I’d get an acting gig as I drove home in my brand new Jeep. These people were worried about where they’d sleep later on that night.

Our problems may seem big, but someone right now is saying goodbye to someone. That’s a real-life and death issue.

It’s Not About Me. It’s About We

We as a society are so focused on getting. Everything is about what we can gain.

The equation is backward. If you want to get more from life, you have to give. The more we give to others, the more we will get later on in life. The whole concept of karma is quite practical.

However, I think we should give for the sake of giving. Not to get.

Give your time and your attention. Give your presence, help, effort, and energy. Doing this will always improve your mood.

Giving to others fulfills the soul in a way that sends chills up your spine and sends tears of joy streaming down your face.

So if you are depressed, take the focus off of yourself and your problems. Make the conscious choice to give to others without the expectation of gaining anything in return.

Choosing to do good for another human being is the noblest of actions we can take.

We need it now more than ever.
March 18 — the manufacturing gods want me to buy polarized plugs
By: Ruth Grace Wong
Tags: Ecommerce, Startup

Turns out my 3 outlet adaptor supplier doesn’t actually have the supplies.

As I look for a replacement, I realize that I was ordering non polarized outlet adaptors when I needed polarized ones. Phew! How lucky that the non polarized ones never shipped.

My boyfriend came to visit from Canada that day, and I found out about the polarized plug fiasco at about midnight. So I was desperately trying to figure out the sourcing and taking this picture while he was sleeping beside me.

I was really struggling to find this part online until Angelo helpfully educated me: these are called polarized taps!

I messaged a bunch of sellers on Alibaba about the part, but they didn’t get back to me quickly enough (I started getting texts and messages from them on Wednesday and Thursday, 4+ days later).

So instead, I’ve been looking into dollar store suppliers. Here’s a list of the ones I’ve looked at so far:

Concord Import

Concord Import had a three outlet tap with a ground, but I needed one without. I’ve ordered lightbulbs and extension cords from them, and am waiting for their arrival.

Their website says FREE SHIPPING, but actually you have to make the order, and then contact them about the shipping quote. They told me that shipping costs $120 for my order, but they would give me a discount and only charge $40. I paid for shipping over the phone via credit card.

UPDATE: The lightbulbs didn’t arrive, and a week after I got the extension cords I called Concord Imports. The sales rep Yari told me that the lightbulbs I had already paid for were out of stock, but she found me comparable lightbulbs that cost a couple cents more each. I paid the difference and got free shipping for the new shipment.

Dollar Tree

Dollar Tree only had the item I wanted as part of an assortment of different items, and said that I could not order only one kind. I wonder if they are packaged at their facility and that they could give me just the one kind if I were already a loyal customer. They said that the assortment has a random number of each part which makes me think they aren’t prepackaged as an assortment.

Dollar Days

Dollar days also had the item I wanted as part of an assortment, and said that the assortment arrived at their facility already packaged, so they could not sell me just the one kind.

Dollar Item Direct

I ended up finding my part at Dollar Item Direct. I found out about them because their website was linked on an Alibaba supplier’s page. I’m kind of worried because I don’t have any views of the product other than this picture, so I just have to trust that it actually has 3 outlets and not just 1.

Total came out to $102.75 USD for 120 pcs, even cheaper than the original non polarized taps I was going to buy. Actually my order online was for 110 pieces, but they called me and said since they came in boxes of 24 I would have to buy 120 or 96. I paid for the difference via PayPal. Their shipping fees are nicely shown when you order, unlike Concord Import.
The Trump Prophecy: Why MAGA Can’t Listen to Reason
By: Dustin T. Cox
Tags: Politics, Religion, Spirituality, Trump, Film

The Trump Prophecy: Why MAGA Can’t Listen to Reason

Trump is more than human in the minds of his supporters

Image by Ralf Genge from Pixabay

In 2011, Mark Taylor, a retired firefighter from Orlando, heard the voice of God. Taylor had been struggling with PTSD following a house fire that had killed a young boy; he frequently dreamed of the child’s burnt countenance thereafter; demonic entities also haunted Taylor’s visions.

That’s when God spoke to him. The Almighty told Taylor that Donald Trump would soon be President, and assured him that the vile and bombastic game show host would bring healing and peace to the nation.

That’s the story Liberty University is telling, anyway. The 2018 film, The Trump Prophecy, was financed by the Republican party’s most devoted institution of higher learning; it dramatizes Taylor’s selection into the ranks of Moses, Elijah, and St. Paul.

While Taylor is the film’s protagonist, his personal story clearly isn’t the point. Rather, the audience takeaway is that Donald Trump is God’s handpicked President, selected to restore Christian virtues to a degenerate America.

It isn’t really Trump, you see, that will Make America Great Again. It is God.
Great data physicalizations, and what journalists can learn from them — Part 1
By: Alice Corona
Tags: Dataviz, Data Visualization, Ddj, Data Physicalization, Data Journalism

While working on Batjo, we surveyed dozens and dozens of data physicalization. In this post, I present an interdisciplinary selection of them, by focusing on projects that have potential applications/inspiration for journalism.

Physical data representations as social objects

In her book “The Participatory Museum”, Nina Simon discusses the concept of “social objects”. According to the author

“a social object is one that connects the people who create, own, use, critique, or consume it. Social objects are transactional, facilitating exchanges among those who encounter them” ~ Nina Simon, The Participatory Museum, Chapter 4.

Such objects spark a conversation and help strangers connect, on the basis of a shared experience. Journalists too, in their service to a healthy public sphere, also perform a similar function with their reporting. This makes Nina Simon’s description of social object as good starting point to imagine ways in which journalists could use a physical medium to communicate data.

Nina Simon identifies several characteristics that social object posses to varying degrees:

They stir a personal response, because they look like something you have a strong personal connection with: something that you own or owned; something that brings back memories from the past; something that has been made or shaped thanks to your contribution. They make an active intervention on the setting, drawing attention and creating a shared experience that can foster a conversation. It could be something that causes an interruption, a sudden sound or movement. They are provocative and shocking in a genuine way. This can be achieved, for example, by embedding powerful metaphors in the objects and their meaning. To work, they require the collaboration of several people, even strangers. They are relational objects that explicitly require and create a social connection.

In line with this framework, here are some great examples of data physicalization journalists could draw inspiration from, when designing physical data driven news installations for their audiences.

(Note that the following is not a rigid classification: some examples could actually fall in multiple categories)

Familiar

Some data physicalizations use objects we come across daily and invest them with new meaning and use them to build powerful metaphors.

Cross-fire is a short video directed by Geoffrey Mann. The piece uses audio excerpt from the dinner argument scene from the movie in the ‘American Beauty’. In the video, classic tableware is deformed on the basis of data from the sound waves of the dialogue, so that the tension of the scene is expressed directly by the objects on the table. (This is a video art piece, but the modified tableware objects, captured at a specific sequence of the video, have then also been manufactured).
Batches and Iterations
By: Benjamin Mosior
Tags: Agile, Software Development

The following is a rather unpolished glimpse into how we at Unica Labs think about batch sizes and iterations.

First, we expect our system to have a goal. For a software-building system made of people like ourselves, the goal is to deliver value in the form of working software.

We think of “batches” as the units of work into which “software-building” is broken down during an iteration. The work may be features, break/fix, or less-defined pursuits like design or experimentation, all of which may be composed of several batches/units of work. We strive for “smaller batches,” meaning the pursuit of greater granularity compared to what we might otherwise be doing.

Thinking broadly, if we started out delivering all software in one batch, we would want to consider breaking that work into more batches. If we delivered one feature per batch, we would want to consider breaking the bigger features down so they can be delivered in multiple, smaller batches. Ultimately, we would want to push the limits of what seems reasonable until we know we’ve gone too far, and then pull back just a bit.

Ok, but why make batches smaller at all?
Face Detection in 2 Minutes using OpenCV & Python
By: Adarsh Menon
Tags: Python, Machine Learning, Facedetection, Opencv, Data Science

Face Detection in 2 Minutes using OpenCV & Python

In this quick post I wanted to share a very popular and easy way of detecting faces using Haar cascades in OpenCV and Python.

The video version for those who prefer that !

First of all make sure you have OpenCV installed. You can install it using pip:

pip install opencv-python

Face detection using Haar cascades is a machine learning based approach where a cascade function is trained with a set of input data. OpenCV already contains many pre-trained classifiers for face, eyes, smiles, etc.. Today we will be using the face classifier. You can experiment with other classifiers as well.

You need to download the trained classifier XML file (haarcascade_frontalface_default.xml), which is available in OpenCv’s GitHub repository. Save it to your working location.

To detect faces in images:

A few things to note:

The detection works only on grayscale images. So it is important to convert the color image to grayscale. (line 8)

detectMultiScale function (line 10) is used to detect the faces. It takes 3 arguments — the input image, scaleFactor and minNeighbours. scaleFactor specifies how much the image size is reduced with each scale. minNeighbours specifies how many neighbors each candidate rectangle should have to retain it. You can read about it in detail here. You may have to tweak these values to get the best results.

function (line 10) is used to detect the faces. It takes 3 arguments — the input image, scaleFactor and minNeighbours. scaleFactor specifies how much the image size is reduced with each scale. minNeighbours specifies how many neighbors each candidate rectangle should have to retain it. You can read about it in detail here. You may have to tweak these values to get the best results. faces contains a list of coordinates for the rectangular regions where faces were found. We use these coordinates to draw the rectangles in our image.

Results:

Similarly, we can detect faces in videos. As you know videos are basically made up of frames, which are still images. So we perform the face detection for each frame in a video. Here is the code:

The only difference here is that we use an infinite loop to loop through each frame in the video. We use cap.read() to read each frame. The first value returned is a flag that indicates if the frame was read correctly or not. We don’t need it. The second value returned is the still frame on which we will be performing the detection.

Find the code here: https://github.com/adarsh1021/facedetection
How (not) to design a ballot
By: Pito Salas
Tags: Politics, Design, Life, Ballots, Elections

My head is full of democracy and elections these days. How come, you ask? Well for the last year or so I’ve been working for the Open Source Digital Voting Foundation, on elections technology. This month’s focus is generating ballots for two elections happening in November. So more than usual, I am dreaming in black and white forms. Anyway…



I came across a couple of instructive blog posts about the new non-lever voting that New York unveiled this month. Predictably, when dealing with humans, some people don’t like them. You can’t please them all, right? But really the objections raised here are quite legitimate.



If this important yet rather esoteric topic interests you, here are three good links:
Nudged
By: Nuno Ricardo
Tags: Poetry, Life, Sonnet, Relationships, Self

Time shattered reflections of my soul

and blew away sharp pieces with a nudge

thin fragments pierced my hunger for control

my skin retained the memory of your grudge

The last bullets freed from war have missed me

my mind can now find comfort in the cold

cruelty won battles I could not foresee

this fight with time requires me to fold

Loud flames burned all bridges to before

new adventures cashed a blank check

my sails laid ravaged by the shore

on peace flags clothing the wreck

Our youth has stripped the future of its fog

leaving landscapes trapped in a mental monologue
Ancient Hills And Unseen Signs
By: Lark Morrigan
Tags: Poetry

Upon these ancient hills and forest pines

I stand with my face against the calm wintry air,

observing and seeking after unseen signs.

No measure of worth is ever mine to hold

with heaviness, I retreat to my darkest lair

below these hills that tell unspoken stories of old.

The spirit encircles me as I open my arms to the sky

inhaling the ethereal and exhaling my worldly cares —

allowing my young, restless heart to purify.
Avoid a Mental Breakdown. Allow Yourself to Release Pent-Up Stress.
By: Doc Jay
Tags: Mental Health, Mental Breakdown, Nervous Breakdown, Stress, Psychotic Breaks

Avoid a Mental Breakdown. Allow Yourself to Release Pent-Up Stress.

Your mind will eventually release it one way or another.

Photo by Daniel Lincoln on Unsplash

My impending mental breakdown drove me to regress back into my childhood.

When I was in college, I nearly had a mental breakdown. What saved me was a few trippy episodes of regressing to my childhood.

Before I realized, the giggles echoed. My ear to ear grin of a 7-year-old boy brightened the room. The problem? I was a 20-year-old man on the brink of mental breakdown.

Why would a 20-year-old man regress to a child-like state? I experienced an episode of age regression.

I was likely on the brink of a mental breakdown and didn’t even know it.